Happy Reformation Year And Why It Still Matters (And Matters Just As Much)

Happy Reformation Year!

2017 is the year which includes the date of the 500th anniversary of the "official" start of the Protestant Reformation on October 31st, 1517 with Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. With that one seemingly innocous act, Martin Luther forever changed the course of Western and world civilization, in some ways for the worse but for the most part for the better. Those of us who cherish our salvation by faith through grace recognize the debt we owe to those God lifted up at great personal danger to shine the light of the truth through the oppressive spiritual darkness of the day.

While many Protestants and others celebrate or at least recognize October 31st as Reformation Day, this being the 500th anniversary year means a lot of additional attention will get paid throughout the year to Luther and what he started. It is of course worth noting that there were many other individual and group reformers who preceded Luther but they mostly ended up dead at the hands of the Roman leadership and their willing executioners and torturers in the state. Luther was notable in large measure because he managed to survive long enough to see the embers of reform burst into the flames, sometimes literally, of Reformation.

While I expect to talk a lot about the Reformation throughout the year, it seems fitting that my first post of the year focuses on the on-going need for Reformation. It is the erroneous belief in many parts of the evangelical/Protestant world that the need for Reformation is long past. We have moved beyond silly squabbles and instead have moved closer together, propelled by our common foe of secularism and our common defense of religious liberty against godless liberalism. When engaged in an existential fight like we are the enemy of my enemy is my friend. All well and good except the mission of the church is not to fight for religious liberty but to preach the Gospel, in season and out, when it is welcome and especially where it is not, making disciples and teaching them the commandments of Christ. We cannot do that with one hand while with the other we hold hands with those who deny that very Gospel.

I have friends and family who are Roman Catholic and this post, and all subsequent posts in 2017, are not intended to be an insult, simply a statement of what should be clear. I don't attend the Roman Mass not because it just isn't my cup of tea but because I believe what happens in the Mass and elsewhere in the Roman religious system runs counter to and is affront to the Gospel of Jesus Christ we see in Scripture. The vast chasm between Rome and the Protestant world was always very apparent until recently and it is neither loving nor honest to anyone to pretend that those differences have faded with time or are no longer important.

Case in point, Jorge Bergoglio, aka "Pope Francis" tweeted out this message to ring in the new year:

Let us entrust the new year to Mary, Mother of God, so that peace and mercy may grow throughout the world.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 1, 2017

Rather than putting together a response I am instead going to just reprint James White's response from a public Facebook post because he pretty much nails it (get it? nails it? 95 Theses?):

Why is the Reformation still important? Why is it proper for us to focus upon it this year in celebration of 500 years? Why do I pray that by the end of 2017 more and more of God's people will embrace the Reformation, and Reformed theology as a whole? Well, here is a tweet from the current Pope. He encourages Roman Catholics to "entrust the new year to Mary." Doing this, evidently, will result in "peace and mercy" growing throughout the world. And here I thought that could only happen as men and women bow the knee not to Mary, but to the Lord Jesus, in repentance and faith, trusting in His once-for-all work upon the cross as the perfect Savior. Rome's departure from the Gospel remains complete, and defiant. She continues to blaspheme the cross every time a man-made "priest" pretends to "re-present" the once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary upon a Roman altar. And she continues to enslave men with her endless gospel of sacraments and penances, which can never bring them peace. And in this tweet the Pope demonstrates once again the grossly idolatrous nature of modern Roman teaching concerning Mary.

How many non-Roman Catholics today understand why they do not bow the knee to Rome? In what is loosely called Evangelicalism, very few. One either has the wild-eyed bigotry of the Jack Chick variety anti-Catholicism, or the luke-warm "it's just a matter of taste" variety of synergistic Tiber-paddling that is so common today. May the number of those who knowingly, and out of a true commitment to sound biblical doctrine, reject Rome's pretensions, grow in this the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The fawning, fan-boy fascination many "progressive" evangelicals have for Jorge Bergoglio is not surprising while it is still troubling but many who would consider themselves "conservative" have no clue what the differences are between Roman teaching and Scripture. When so many in the church have no idea why they don't attend Mass instead of going to what are most often silly and vacuous "worship services", there is clearly a lot of work to be done. Likewise tens of millions of people are still caught up in the Roman system and have never even heard the Gospel presented clearly and these people are in the same need for hearing the Gospel as poor peasants in 1517 who had been taught that buying an indulgence with the money they could scrape together instead of buying food for their children would somehow purchase favor with God.

Do not for a second think the Reformation is unimportant in 2017 or that we have outgrown the need for what are considered petty theological squabbles or that winning political and cultural victories is critical enough that we ought to make common cause with enemies of the Gospel. As Jorge Bergoglio's tweet proves, Rome is still selling a false gospel that cannot save and only serves to obscure the true Gospel and preserve a corrupt religious system. I think that if Luther could see the church today he would marvel at many things but I also think he would desperately want someone to walk up to our own equivalent of the church door in Wittenberg, take out a hammer and a nail and declare boldly that the Gospel is the one place that we will not, that we cannot, compromise for the sake of any other issue. In the end, only the Gospel of Jesus Christ really matters.

An Unbeliever And A False Teacher Walk Into A Bar...

No this is not a joke, just a comment on the ridiculous blow up last week in the carnival that is the American political scene. Last week the Republican primary process merged with the global religious scene when Jorge Bergoglio, aka "Pope Francis", opined that people focused on buildings walls are not Christians during a trip to Mexico. His exact quote:

"A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian."

That comment is clearly aimed at Donald Trump who has made a southern border wall a cornerstone of his campaign and probably the only issue where he has spoken specifically about what he plans. I found the whole thing hilarious. Here we have a man who is by any measure of orthodoxy a false teacher wagging his finger at an American billionaire, media presence, serial adulterer and Johnny-come-lately "Christian" who seems to be completely ignorant of Scripture and the Christian faith with an attack that was as clumsy as it was risible.

What really makes this amusing is that non-Catholic fanboy supporters of Mr. Bergoglio are in a pickle because on the one hand they love Jorge and think he is the best thing since sliced bread but on the other hand are adamant that one must never be "judgmental" and question the faith of another person, no matter if they believe in a false religion or believe in no faith at all. "No one knows another person's heart" they intone piously, no matter how unscriptural that is.

Unbelievers arguing about who is an unbeliever, especially when the issue at question deals with politics and questions of border integrity and controlled immigration, is a ridiculous spectacle. It is a pretty neat sample of the wacky world we live in. Someone who sleeps with anything on two legs, marries and divorces on a whim, someone who thinks that he doesn't need forgiveness because he has never done anything to be forgiven for is not a Christian. Someone who venerates to the point of worship the mother of our Lord, who sits atop an anti-Christian religious hierarchy, who brazenly takes for himself titles and authority given only to Christ, who believes (regardless of what they protest) that one must perform certain acts to be forgiven, who leads religious services in an opulent palace while scolding the people in this world who have actually worked heard for their wealth is likewise not a Christian. All the pious public acts and flowery rhetoric doesn't change that. Never has and never will. Words are cheap, public actions are as well but what and how one believes is what determines whether one is a Christian or not.

The kerfuffle would be bad enough if it were not so incredibly hypocritical and ironic. As I and many others have pointed out, Vatican City itself is surrounded by walls to keep out undesirables. While Mr. Bergoglio did not erect those walls neither is he taking them down. Why not? Well Vatican City is a sovereign state and only grants admission to those it wishes. It protects her sovereign borders like any state that wishes to survive does. Whether you agree with Trump's proposal to build a wall on our southern border to secure that border like most civilizes nations (including Mexico I might add), it isn't an issue that divides believers from unbelievers. There are genuine, born-again believers who hate the idea of a southern wall and integrity in citizenship process. There are also genuine Christians who believe that such a wall is necessary to protect the borders. Which position is correct or even the more Christian is debatable. I happen to think that there is merit in the idea. America has millions of people who can work and yet choose not to and in their place we have migrant workers, millions of them here illegally, working those jobs. As an example, one of our local processing plants that butchers livestock is backed up into May for butchering cattle because they have so much demand but can't find enough people who are willing to work hard and actually show up to work. Meanwhile our nation is full of people who don't work, not because there are no jobs because there are millions unfilled at any given time, but because they are incentivized to not work. Secure the borders and enforce the necessity of work to those who choose not to work and the need for the illegal immigrant shrinks. Just as important there needs to be focus not just on those here illegally but also those who knowingly hire them. Put the plant manager and head of HR for a packing plant in Nebraska in jail for hiring illegals and you won't see so many employers willing to break the law to save a buck.

The walls around Vatican City are another issue. Those walls keep people out and they also protect the incredible treasure hidden behind the walls of Vatican City, from architectural marvels to works of art to treasures uncountable. I doubt anyone really has a grasp on how much wealth is held behind those walls. Adding insult to irony, the treasures of the Vatican including St. Peter's Basilica was funded in large part by money stolen from simple lay people through the blasphemous sale of "indulgences", a practice that was one of the catalysts for the Protestant Reformation. When Mr. Bergoglio, champion of the poor, conducts Mass in St. Peter's, he is doing so in an opulent, magnificent building paid for by the sweat and simple faith of the very poor he claims to champion. Mr. Bergoglio and his predecessors consisting of a litany of corrupt popes live in a sovereign state on land granted by the fascist dictator Benito Moussolini and sit like a pseudo-pious Smaug the dragon on a horde of stolen treasures.

So let's not waste much time deciding who is "right" in this public spectacle. Two unbelievers fighting over which one is the less unbelieving is absurd and should be treated as such. The church has more important issues to deal with.

The Burning Of The Bull

Hat tip to Tim Challies for his reminder today of a generally overlooked event in the Reformation. On December 10th, 1520 Martin Luther responded to the "papal bull" Exsurge Domine by setting that bad boy on fire. This papal bull was the "official" response to Luther's 95 theses and denounced him for asking the wrong sorts of questions. The bull from Pope Leo X seemed to be unexpected and certainly unimaginably harsh to Luther and it also seems that this event marked a change in Luther from a monk asking some questions to open rebellion against Rome. It is an arguable position that the burning of Exsurge Domine is the true start of the Protestant Reformation rather than the nailing of the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. With this response from Rome and Luther's refusal to stand down, he put his life on the line because he recognized how critical these doctrinal questions were.

We suffer as the church from our ignorance of the past, for upon the foundations of the past is built the church of today. Where the church is in error, and there are many examples, one can invariably look to church history to discover that these problems are not new or unique. There is indeed nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9) and we would all benefit from learning from the past rather than repeating the same errors over and over.

What Is More Important?

Tim Challies has been running a very helpful series on false teachers throughout church history. He has looked at men like Arius, Joseph Smith and Marcus Borg, mostly uncontroversial posts. Today he takes a look at a far more controversial false teacher, Jorge Bergoglio aka "Pope Francis". The comments are sure to be explosive. Few figures in the religious world get the sort of attention that Jorge garners. The head of the Roman Catholic Church always commands a large audience as the head of a religious organization with over a billion followers. This particular pope gets even more attention due in large part to his very public humble acts of mercy. Many evangelicals hang on his every public act even as they brush aside concerns over his theology. It seems the church is in desperate need of a serious conversation about this man and what he means, not just to Rome, but to the church of Jesus Christ.

As Christians we cannot ignore the very public witness that Jorge presents to the world. In a media driven world where Christians are painted in the worst possible light, Jorge Bergoglio is a notable exception in that his every public act of mercy and humility is broadcast around the world. I believe that this is because a segment of the cultural elite hopes that Jorge will overturn some of the culturally distasteful practices of the Roman Catholic Church, namely a celibate all male priesthood, hard-line positions against birth control, abortion and contraception and maintaining the historical insistence that homosexuality is inherently disordered. Whatever the reason Jorge gets far more, and more favorable, treatment from the media than any of his predecessors or any other contemporary religious leaders. For that reason alone the church needs to engage with this very public persona.

However, as Christians, we cannot separate the deeds from the doctrines. I maintain that one cannot be said to be "Christlike" when propagating a false "gospel". I am somewhat more of a voice crying out in the wilderness on this than usual, cautionary expressions regarding Jorge get the stink-eye among many in my online circles, and I also keep returning to this topic but as I have said many times before, when you have someone that is put forth as a representative of the Christian faith to a world (and more often than not a church) that is theologically illiterate it is irresponsible to not engage the underlying doctrines he champions that are anathema to the Gospel.

Even the most ardent fan of Jorge that has even a smidgen of theological background knows the questionable doctrines I am speaking of. The issue becomes whether those are deal breakers or not. For hundreds of years the answer to that question has been a resounding "yes". In fact even asking that question would be a puzzle for most of church history post-Oct 31, 1517. Many, many Christians were martyred for refusing to compromise on the very issues that contemporary Christians are too open minded and enlightened to be concerned with today. That is many things but progress it ain't.

There is a serious choice to be discussed in the church as it pertains to Jorge Bergoglio. Do we set aside his heretical teachings (Tim Challies does a decent job of presenting some of them in his piece) in favor of embracing him for his public acts of mercy? Or do we stand for the Gospel and give it priority over admittedly humble and humbling acts of mercy towards those outcast by society?

The charge of Christ is clear. He sent out His apostles with the mission of proclaiming the Gospel, making disciples and teaching them to do all He commanded. The order and priority is obvious and critical. Our first calling is the call to repentance. It is a call that needs to be extended even to a public religious rock star like Jorge Bergoglio. Acts of mercy, especially to the poor and the outcast, are a necessary implication of the Gospel but  they are secondary to our primary calling.

It will be unpopular and likely reinforce the stereotypes of the church in public but our stand for the Gospel must take priority. We can certainly applaud Mr. Bergoglio as he washes feet and serves the poor but always without compromising on the damning teachings he represents, teachings embodied even in the public title of "pope" that he embraces. The wolves among the sheep that are obvious aren't much of a danger, we can see them for what they are. The truly dangerous wolves are those that blend in with the sheep, wolves that devour from within wearing a smile and being embraced by their victims. That may sound harsh and jarring to ears attuned to our contemporary enlightened religious sensibilities but we are warned repeatedly to be on watch for those who seek to lead astray the sheep. Church, we have been warned. It is up to us to decide whether we take those warnings seriously.

Chasing The Approval Of The World

The media has been all abuzz with jarringly positive stories about Jorge Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis. I say "jarringly positive" because you pretty much never get any good press from the secular media on religious matters, doubly so for the Catholic Church which has, thanks to the sex abuse cover-up scandal, been a convenient punching bag for the media for a long time. Stories about Mr. Bergoglio eschewing some the lavish trappings of the papacy, showing extraordinary humility and love toward children and the ill, railing against the culture of greed and consumption and declaring that the Roman Catholic Church has been too concerned about doctrine have been plastered all over the internet and print media (I am told that some newspapers actually still use paper and ink. Weird.). Even the comment section of the stories about Mr. Bergoglio have been eerily positive, with many examples of people claiming to be atheists/agnostic buying " I ♥ Pope Francis" t-shirts and coffee mugs.

The evangelical world has not missed this and the chorus of praise for Jorge has been pretty deafening and one sided....

"See! SEE! Even atheists love the new pope! The world loves this guy! That is what we should be doing!"

Yeah. Except that doing what the world loves is really not the calling of the church. The world will continue to love Jorge Bergoglio as long as all he is doing is talking about loving people and being exceptionally compassionate to the poor while sweeping those inconvenient doctrines under the rug. You might say "Well what is wrong with that? Aren't we called to love each other and care for the poor, that whole  "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35)?" Absolutely and kudos to Jorge for his unusually fervent desire to love others. But that is not all we are called to. We are commanded to take the Gospel to the world to make disciples and then baptizing them in the name of Jesus Christ. We are not going to win the lost to Christ by doing what the world thinks we should be doing.

Recall that the crowds loved Jesus when they thought He was doing what they wanted: feeding them for free. When He started in with claiming to be the Son of Man and all that other stuff? Well they were quick to change their tune from "We ♥ Jesus!" to "Crucify Him!". We are not told to expect that the world will love us or even like us. We should expect just the opposite:

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:18-19)

Why does the world hate Christianity? Because we are "anti-gay" or so darn annoying about that whole abortion thing? No. The world hates Christianity because the world loves what is evil and abhors what is good. Not some of the world or just bad guys or Al-Qaeda or Wall Street Bankers. The world. Period. God has called us "out of the world" and because of that our minds and hearts are changed in a way that the world hates. Very few people read John 3:16 in context but when you do you see the full message of message of Jesus:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." (John 3:16-21)

The message of the Gospel is that the world loves darkness because its works are evil and because of that the world is already condemned by the Just and Holy God. The only hope for this world is not in doing good works like feeding the poor or embracing the leper, it is believing in the name of Jesus Christ. If you believe in Jesus you are saved from God's wrath. If you don't you remain under God's condemnation and the coming judgment. Those are the only two options. Jesus or judgment. If we were preaching that message more often we wouldn't have to worry about the world loving us too much. I don't mean to sound like I am brushing off our calling to serve the poor, to visit the widow and orphan, to feed the hungry and visit the prisoner. We absolutely must do these things because that is what Christ did and what we are called to do in response to our salvation. Part of why the world loves Mr. Bergogliois is that the church appears to the world to be far more concerned with filling our own coffers than with helping the poor. Keep in mind that evangelical groups and Roman Catholic groups have been quietly doing extraordinary work helping the poor and the orphan and the sick for centuries but the world barely noticed and rarely notes it in the media. If Mr. Bergoglio was teaching the core, non-negotiable doctrines of Catholicism with the same fervor that he speaks about caring for the poor, you can be sure the fawning media would be singing a different tune. He probably also wouldn't get the same adoring looks from evangelicals if he were doing that (I hope). No one seemed to be a big fan of Jorge's predecessor Joseph Ratzinger because he was just so darned serious about those messy doctrines. Setting up Jorge Bergoglio as the model we should emulate as evangelical Christians is misguided at best.

So Protestants, before you put the Tiger Beat poster of Jorge Bergoglio on your bedroom wall, remember why you are Protestant in the first place. Hopefully your reason is not "because that is what my parents are". I hope that most (some?) evangelical/Protestant Christians have given some thought as to why they are what they are. If things like transubstantiation, veneration of idols/relics, the papal office and all of the attendant claims and blasphemous titles, the rejection of the Biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone, etc. don't matter to you, I wonder why you bother. I have far more respect for Roman Catholics who have thought through these issues and embrace them than I do for "evangelicals" who have never given it a moments thought and go to a "worship service" instead of Mass because evangelical churches have better music and programs for kids so they don't interfere with our "worshiping". These are absolutely not secondary issues that can or should be set aside for the sake of false unity or to curry favor with the world. There is a reason that the Reformers and the Anabaptists were willing to face death by rejecting these claims (and many Catholics faced death for refusing to abandon them) and I don't think it is a sign of our maturity that for the most part we no longer care about them in any meaningful way. There is more, much more, to being a follower of Jesus than caring for the poor. If our gauge of faithfulness is the secular media of the world patting us on the head, we are in deep trouble.

Oh, so NOW it is tainted

(Rant Warning)

I have been steering clear of the latest iteration of the child abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church because it is an ugly event that is generating a lot of heat but little light. That was before this headline sent me over the edge:

Sex Abuse Scandals Threaten to Taint Papacy

Cases in the U.S. and Italy are the latest in a burgeoning abuse scandal on both sides of the Atlantic that now threatens to tarnish the papacy itself.

This “taints” the papacy? As if the papacy has been a swell institution all of these years? This taints it? In no way am I diminishing the clear evidence of cover-ups and abuse of power in the child abuse scandals and certainly there are few things more horrifying than pedophilia. Even in an age where all manner of sexual deviancy is not only tolerated but celebrated most people still have a natural revulsion to the abuse of a child. Of course given the course of our culture, can “Pedophile Pride” parades be far away? But I digress. Let’s examine the idea that this latest scandal taints an otherwise pristine office….

Not the overseeing of innumerable horrific executions of “heretics” who committed crimes like translating the Bible into the language of the common people. Charming behavior like flaying people alive, ripping out tongues with tongs, burning in a variety of methods at the stake to inflict the maximum agony. All done with the approval of the papacy.

Not the grotesque manipulation of the various European states that caused them to take up the sword against one another and led to years of war that caused untold death and destruction or the incredibly costly and ill-advised wars to retake the “Holy Land” from the infidels. The Crusades may have started out as a reaction to invasions of Europe but in the end it was merely a cynical and heretical attempt to reclaim a piece of land by the sword under the banner of the cross.

Not the use of threats and torture to try to create “converts” during the Inquisition, declaring success when a person recanted under methods of torture that make waterboarding look like a day at the beach. Those same Inquisitors also had the role of sniffing out "heretics" and showing them the error of their ways through torture and murder.

Worst of all, not the distortion of the Gospel into a series of empty rituals and the perversion of the fellowship of the saints into a dead institution that has given countless people throughout the ages a false sense of hope based on religious rituals.

No, none of those acts of villainy tainted the papacy. Only now, in 2010, do we see an incident that taints that office. I recognize that there have been atrocities perpetrated by Protestants over the years and many are every bit as grotesque (just ask the Anabaptists). The difference is that when someone who claims to be an evangelical does something sinful and contrary to the Gospel, I can point it out without fearing that it damages the church. For Rome, her “pope” must be above reproach. Make no mistake that the scapegoats will be numerous and the deflections vociferous and the faux outrage of the Roman church over the “smear campaign” against the beloved pope will be over the top.

I have friends, family and co-workers who are Catholic. I make a distinction as best I can between individual Catholics, even local parish priests, and the institution in Rome headed by a man who adorns himself in regal attire befitting an earthly king, who accepts adoration as “Holy Father”, who claims to infallibly speak for Christ (“The Vicar of Christ”), a man who wags his finger disapprovingly at the wealthy of the world for ignoring the poor while living in unimaginable luxury, a man who permits and expects people to bow down before him and kiss his ring. To me the papacy is little different than any other authoritarian religious leader who leads people astray. Evangelical Christians used to recognize this in pretty stark language. The Westminster Confession referred to the papacy like this: VI. There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God. That sort of language is jarring to our ears in an age of ecumenism and Manhattan Declarations. I guess it was easier to think of the papacy as Antichrist when you were so close to the time of burnings at the stake.

The papacy has been long tainted by fallible men claiming a place of preeminence that no man is been offered and no man has a right to. Joseph Ratzinger is no different, either when he was a mere cardinal or now that he styles himself Pope Benedict. The notion that after a millennium of heresy and inhuman acts in the defense of the power of Rome we suddenly find the papacy itself tainted is ridiculous. The very basis of the office of the papacy is tainted and an affront to the Gospel of Jesus Christ from its inception. It is high time that those who perpetrated these crimes against children be held to account and that those who enabled these crimes through overt actions or inexcusable indifference likewise be accountable as criminals.

(End Rant)

I too am a man

I was reading in Acts chapter 10 tonight and read this:

And on the following day they entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up, saying, "Stand up; I too am a man." (Act 10:24-26)

As I read that I pondered. If Peter is the first pope and all other popes follow in his line of succession, and if Peter refused to let Cornelius bow before him and worship him, why then is it considered proper to kneel before the current pope and kiss his ring or in prior traditions kiss his toe?