Schism Is As Schism Does

I have been watching the Episcopal Church by peeking through my fingers at the slow moving train-wreck for a number of years. By no small effort the EC-USA has been the tip of the spear when it comes to jettisoning orthodoxy for "progressive" political correctness and that has led to the demographic implosion that the Episcopal Church and other "progressive" denominations have experienced. Like a snake swallowing its own tail the progressives keep telling themselves that they need to just take one more step away from orthodoxy to bring people back but all they accomplish is ecclesiastical suicide.

Today the latest bit of bad news came down from the Anglican Communion,  the worldwide circle of churches which included the Episcopal Church. In a nutshell the Anglican Communion, which is far more vibrant and orthodox in countries outside of the U.S. and the U.K., announced a suspension of the Episcopal Church from the Communion for a period of three years. The exact wording is below:

7. It is our unanimous desire to walk together. However given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.

That is a pretty stinging rebuke from the worldwide Anglican body but the critical point cam earlier in the statement"

2. Recent developments in The Episcopal Church with respect to a change in their Canon on marriage represent a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching held by the majority of our Provinces on the doctrine of marriage. Possible developments in other Provinces could further exacerbate this situation.

What needs to be crystal clear is that "conservatives" who walked away from the Episcopalian church are not the ones who are causing schism. Rather the Episcopal Church by embracing a deviant understanding of marriage, gender and human sexuality has willingly placed itself outside of the boundaries of what can legitimately be called the church. They have departed from the church, not the Anglican Church in North America or other groups and churches that have left the Episcopal church. When someone or an organization deviate from the boundaries of the Kingdom, the only proper response is to separate from them. Despite the faux unity some propose, sometimes separation is the only proper response to those who embrace sin. Those who have left have departed not from the unity of the church but have returned to the unity of the church.

The Episcopal church has responded to the statement as one would expect including the obligatory obscene eisegesis of that most oft misapplied verse, Galatians 3:28:

Before the Jan. 14 vote, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry told the primates gathering Jan. 11-15 in Canterbury, England, that the statement calling for the sanction would be painful for many in the Episcopal Church to receive.

“Many of us have committed ourselves and our church to being ‘a house of prayer for all people,’ as the Bible says, when all are truly welcome,” Curry said in remarks he later made available to Episcopal News Service.

“Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all.  While I understand that many disagree with us, our decision regarding marriage is based on the belief that the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians are true for the church today: All who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ.”

“For so many who are committed to following Jesus in the way of love and being a church that lives that love, this decision will bring real pain,” he said. “For fellow disciples of Jesus in our church who are gay or lesbian, this will bring more pain. For many who have felt and been rejected by the church because of who they are, for many who have felt and been rejected by families and communities, our church opening itself in love was a sign of hope. And this will add pain on top of pain.”

The comment section is very instructive, including the frequent threat to withhold funds from the Anglican Communion.

The Bible is crystal clear. The same Paul that Mr. Curry so grossly misquotes is also the apostle who had the most to say about marriage, sexuality and how to deal with sin in the church. It is the undeniable witness of Scripture that one cannot simultaneously embrace and celebrate wanton sin and call oneself a disciple of Jesus.

So what? If you are reading this you likely are not Episcopalian or Anglican so why should you care? You should care because this disaster is a warning for the rest of the church, a warning that compromise with sin invariably destroys the church. The rest of the church should be constantly vigilant because what we see on display here can happen to any of us if we let loose our grip on the Bible as applicable and authoritative and clear on this and many other topics. I take no pleasure in the death throes of Episcopalianism but some of the most tragic events are the most instructive.

Is the Pope Catholic?

Growing up in a nominally Roman Catholic extended family, that snarky response to a question where the answer was obviously yes was an alternative to the fecal habits of bears in the woods. If you come from an ethnic Catholic Polish family, you have almost certainly heard that response.

These days that question might not be quite as tongue and cheek as it once was. Each day Jorge Bergoglio seems to be turning Catholic orthodoxy on it's head. Whether it is vaguely approving sounding language about homosexuality or railing against the "evils" of capitalism, the economic system that has done more than any pontiff to lift people out of poverty, it has to be bewildering and troubling for more traditional Roman Catholics because it sure is to me (bewildering anyway).

Today brings big news on the marriage front. In an unprecedented move, Jorge is making it even easier for married Catholic couples to get an annulment. Now annulment is a nice way of saying divorce accomplished by declaring that the marriage the church approved turned out to be a mess from the beginning. I don't know of many divorced couples who think their marriage was a swell idea in retrospective. By making it easier for people to ditch a marriage and go back to partaking of the Mass and remarrying, Jorge is talking out of both sides of his mouth, convening a summit on the family on one hand and installing a "6 marriages or fewer" express lane to end marriages on the other.

An analyst I was listening to on the BBC World News suggested that this was a compromise, Rome will go this far but no further. The problem with that logic is it never goes the other way. Every move to compromise, every move to placate progressives is permanent. You never come back, with the singular exception of the Southern Baptist Convention which managed to pull itself back from the brink before it went too far. Progressives will never compromise because they are ideologically driven rather than capital "T" Truth driven. That is why they denigrate Scripture and twist it for their own purposes. I don't think Jorge got snookered here, I think he is doing exactly what he plans to do in remaking the Roman Catholic religion in his own image. I have to wonder what the former "pope", Joseph Ratzinger, a very rare living former pope, thinks of what his successor to the "Chair of Peter" is up to. I imagine he might be regretting his decision to step down, at least privately.

The issue of divorce and remarriage, which led to the split with England and the formation of the Anglican church, has long been a non-negotiable with Rome, and rightly so. The Bible is crystal clear on this issue, even if one divorces for cause, i.e. fornication on the part of one party in the marriage, remarriage is forbidden. Compromise with the completely unBiblical and anti-Biblical "annulment" was bad enough but now the dam is is open and you can expect the Vatican to get a flood of annulments very soon. Make no mistake, it doesn't end there. Winning this one major concession will embolden those who are pushing for married priests, female priests and normalization of homosexuality. Rome is going to learn the lesson of her wayward former subjects in the Anglican communion, compromise to stem the loss of membership always has the result of speeding it up instead. This sort of stuff makes me glad that my source of authority is not some guy who gets elected in a religious political contest whenever a pope dies but the revealed and preserved Word of God.

Suicide As Self-Preservation

Yesterday I tweeted this....

The Boy Scouts are being fed the same lie that was force fed to mainline denominations and capitulating will have the same disastrous result

— Arthur Sido (@ArthurSido) May 23, 2015

In case this was another news item you missed in the media furor of "look over there at the Duggars, something happening with a reality show family is much more important that the bogus release of a handful of carefully screened emails by the Secretary of State on the Friday before a holiday weekend so she can claim 'transparency' when everyone knows it is a farce!", Robert Gates, the former Secretary of Defense and inexplicably the current President of the Boy Scouts of America publicly called for the scouts to permit men who engage in same-sex sexual deviancy to have unfettered and often unsupervised access to vulnerable teen and preteen males. Or more simply to allow openly homosexual men to be Scout leaders. According to Gates, allowing males attracted to other males to be Scout masters is the only way for the Scouts to survive.

Gates said several states had passed laws protecting employment rights based on sexual orientation.

"Thus, between internal challenges and potential legal conflicts, the BSA finds itself in an unsustainable position," he said. "A position that makes us vulnerable to the possibility the courts simply will order us at some point to change our membership policy. We must all understand that this probably will happen sooner rather than later."

Gates cited his experience with a California court's decision that sparked the end of the military's so-called don't ask, don't tell policy, which banned gays in the services, and said the Boy Scouts of America must act before it is compelled to do so by the courts.

"If we wait for the courts to act, we could end up with a broad ruling that could forbid any kind of membership standard, including our foundational belief in our duty to God and our focus on serving the specific needs of boys," he said. "Waiting for the courts is a gamble with huge stakes."

Gates noted that the U.S. is changing and "we are increasingly at odds with the legal landscape at both the state and federal levels."

"The one thing we cannot do is put our heads in the sand and pretend this challenge will go away or abate," he said. "Quite the opposite is happening."

So unless one allows the already tiny percentage of homosexual males, a number immeasurably smaller when you look only at those who want to be Scout leaders, to take positions of leadership in Scouting, the organization will certainly die from legal challenges. Keep in mind yet again that leaders in Scouting, especially scoutmasters, have an intentionally major impact on the formative years of young men. Now more than ever with so many male children growing up in homes without fathers and largely aimlessly, we need young men to be mentored by adults that instill needed virtues. Instead what is being proposed here is a cowardly capitulation, throwing young men into the fires of Baal rather than stand on principle. More on this in a moment.

Let me say at this point that I have no skin in this game, at least not directly. We tried Scouting for a few years but my boys just weren't into it. Besides that I have some very serious concerns over the Scouts tendency to blur the distinction between Christian faith and love of country and pushing moralism apart from the necessary new birth. Because Scouting is so deeply tied in with faith and includes faiths that range from questionable to outright heresies, it amounts to unequal yoking. All that aside it has generally been a net social good in this country. teaching countless young men practical skills and moral values that make them better citizens. It is also an organization that takes all of the traditional red blooded, patriotic American values and wraps them up neatly with a bow and that makes them a critical target for those who want to destroy any notions that some behavior is unacceptable and other behavior is more beneficial to society as a whole.

Back to my point. In the face of ever more strident and vicious attacks by homosexual activists and their cronies in the media, many are preaching surrender. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em or at least let 'em join you. Being sacrificed in this move by the Boy Scouts, and it will happen, it is only a matter of time, are the young men who love this organization and who desperately need it. My reasoning on this is simple. First, Scouts take an oath that includes a promise to be "morally clean".  Setting aside yet another problematic issue for Christians, namely the swearing of an oath, mankind has always more or less universally understood homosexual behavior to be the epitome of what is not "morally clean". Some with an out-sized voice in America might be seeking to silence those who express what our culture and what the Bible have always taught, something confirmed as unnatural and harmful by nature itself but that doesn't change it.

Secondly, and this is the more disturbing issue, there is something that ought to make anyone with an ounce of honesty and common sense concerned about having adult men who practice a form of sexual deviancy and have a proclivity toward sex with people of their own gender being placed in a position of trust and access to young men at a vulnerable time in  their lives.

This is going to get a little uncomfortable and awkward but it needs to be said. Why do we not have adult men taking teen-aged girls on overnight camping trips? Why are we so careful to select chaperons of the appropriate gender to watch over teens? Because the vast majority of men are attracted to women and even though they lack the emotional maturity of an adult woman, teen aged girls do have the physical body of an adult woman. That doesn't mean that all normal, heterosexual men are pedophiles, just that it is common sense to not put adults in a position of authority with vulnerable teenagers of the opposite sex. We have seen this often enough with coaches, teaches, clergy, etc. to know that it is a dangerous business. It is something we don't want to talk about because it is an unspoken social taboo but it needs to be said, especially since those social taboos are being knocked down at an unprecedented rate and you don't have to look far to see the same arguments being used to advance the normalization of polygamy, pedophilia and other deviant behavior. It is not a sound practice for men and women to make close friendships of people of the opposite sex who are not their spouse. That all too often ends disastrously. That is doubly true when forming an intimate relationship where one party is at a vulnerable age and the other is in a position of power.

Let us not make the mistake here of accepting the counter-argument that heterosexual men and homosexual men are value neutral when it comes to tending toward or against sexually deviant behavior like pedophilia. I have heard "Just because someone is homosexual it doesn't make them a pedophile!". That is true. However, two additional observations here. Pedophilia is largely a crime of opportunity like theft, some people steal when they have access to something of value and some people abuse kids when they have access to kids. Secondly, and don't miss this, people who are homosexual have already exhibited a willingness to engage in sexual deviant behavior. Advocates for homosexual normalization have done a pretty solid job to remove that truth from our cultural conversation but it is still the truth. So pretending that homosexual men are the moral equivalent of heterosexual men is ridiculous, homosexual men by definition disregard sexual morality. There is already ample evidence that having heterosexual men in positions where they have access to teen-aged girls is a bad idea, why would we want to double down on that by putting homosexual men in that same position?

Why would the Boy Scouts do this? For the same reason that "churches" and corporations alike capitulate at the barest whisper of bad publicity, namely that all institutions are conservative in the sense of being risk averse and mostly interested in self-perpetuation and this aversion to risk and bad PR goes up the larger the institution becomes. Kevin Williamson writing for the National Review says:

For those among the shrinking minority of Americans adhering to something like the Scouts’ longstanding view of homosexuality — that it represents a set of choices and behaviors that constitute at the very least a bad example for children — Gates’s decision must be understood as simple moral cowardice: The gay-rights movement is energetic and totalitarian, and its demands are fortified more often than not by the dictates of judges. Faced with overwhelming cultural and political pressure, Gates did not have the mettle to lead the Boy Scouts of America as a kind of Nockian remnant, keeping the tablets until such a time as civilization once again returns to certain eternal truths.

His less than subtle snarkiness aside, that is pretty much it. Gates has no interest in leading a diminished, counter-cultural Boy Scouts. He wants to pretend that this move will "save" the Scouts and perpetuate the institution. With that sort of incredible vision and lack of spine he ought to be appointed to lead the United Methodist Church or the Episcopal Church, or at least what is left of them, after the Boy Scouts die.

I already said I don't have skin in this game so why do I care? The Boy Scouts neither need nor want my permission or advice. I care for two reasons. First what is happening here is not irrelevant because I am not personally involved in scouting. As I have argued before, something can be a non-Kingdom issue and still be important because how we live as a society, even for the unregenerate masses, matters and this is a serious issue. Young men in this country are already at serious risk and putting them into this situation is dangerous and it is dumb. Second what is happening here with the Boy Scouts is pertinent to conversations happening all around us in the church. That is what I want to look at next.

Common sense aside. this is going to happen anyway. It might happen this year or next but it will happen and the once venerable Boy Scouts will allow homosexuals to be leaders in Scouting. What is going to happen after that is predictable. The Boy Scouts will welcome people with an admitted sexual deviancy into their ranks to placate a tiny minority. Many, many Scout parents will understandably withdraw from the Scouts and likely form another organization. Like many mainline denominations the Boy Scouts will fade into irrelevance and die, which is precisely what those pushing this change want. Just as in the cases of "gay marriage" and homosexual clergy, the aim is to remove a social structure that dares to suggest that any behavior, no matter how destructive, ought to be avoided. I don't believe for one second that homosexual activists care about getting married or having gay clergy or spending their weekend in a tent rather than having brunch and reading the New York Times, their aim is to destroy these institutions via compromise and fear because these institutions, flawed as they are, serve as a mirror to their own deviancy. They will be destroyed and it will happen in the name of survival.

The Boy Scouts are being told by their own leader that they must kill themselves in order to save themselves.

Those being pressured in the church to accept and embrace homosexual normalization had better pay attention to this. Like Lucy pulling the football away as Charlie Brown gets ready to kick it over and over, the church is told again and again that we need to get with the times in order to survive and every time we do, the culture laughs and pulls out the football. "We have to have women pastors", "We have to stop talking about modesty", "We can't talk about sin", "We need to welcome practicing homosexuals", on and on and every time the timid in the church do as they are told, it ends up gutting that part of the church. Then a new compromise is put forth as the latest salvation for the church in a hostile culture and Charlie Brown the Church lines up once again to kick a ball that everyone knows will not be there. You would think we would learn but common sense is no match for the human desire to be acceptable by others. In another analogy, many parts of the church are like the scrawny kid at school who gives the bully his lunch money and thinks that makes him his friend. I just kind of came up with that, it doesn't add anything to the post...

Pay attention to what is happening here church because there are voices all around us, both inside and outside of the church, telling us that we need to kill ourselves to save ourselves. That isn't an option. If we believe the words of the Bible, and that is a question that needs to be asked a lot more than it is, We ought to expect to be on the outs with the culture, in fact if we aren't something is wrong. Trying to win the world while at the same time being buddies with the world in a religious version of Stockholm Syndrome is foolhardy and contrary to Scripture. When voices in the church cry "Compromise!" remember that doing so has never helped the church and even worse is an act of direct and willful disobedience. I am far more concerned with the opinion of Christ, Paul, Peter and John than I am with the opinion of Robert Gates.

Ecumenism is not the same thing as unity

In less than a week religious leaders from around the world and across the religious spectrum will gather in Vatican City under the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to discuss marriage. The conference, called Humanum, purports to be "An International Interreligious Colloquium on The Complementarity of Man and Woman". If you read me very often you know that I am a big advocate of complementarianism so surely I am all in favor of this. Actually no. Quite the opposite.

When I examine the speaker list as an American evangelical I see some names I recognize and a lot I don't. At the top of the list that I do recognize are men like: Russell Moore. N.T. Wright. Rick Warren. Johann Arnold, current leader of the Bruderhof. Along with them are a host of men and

women from other religious traditions, or as I like to call them false religions. A whole bunch of Roman Catholic dignitaries who ironically are forced into an unbiblical vow of celibacy and yet are considered authorities on marriage. A top mormon leader. A lot of Muslims. A smattering of more esoteric religious groups. What is glaring from the invitee list is that there are a few people who are Christians and a lot more that are not talking about something that models and demonstrates the New Covenant relationship between Christ and the Church.

An event like this doesn't happen in a vacuum. Like two sides of a sand dune, the dual forces of the cultural religion of America are collapsing at breakneck speed. While "progressives" are racing one another to see who can deny the most central tenets of the Gospel, the "conservatives" are desperately making alliances with unbelievers and blasphemers in a desperate attempt to maintain their political power and influence. As a result many men that I respect and that publically hold to the "right" positions are nevertheless making common cause on issues they would admit are secondary to the Gospel. It is symptomatic of the mindset that compelled Albert Mohler to not once but twice speak to mormons about our common ground. It brings to mind the Manhattan Declaration and other attempts to find common ground where the sole foundation for common ground is absent, namely the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Make no mistake. To speak to people who deny Christ in a framework of the picture of husband and wife as a type of Christ and the church is to put the cart before the horse. Worse yet is for a Christian to attempt to speak on marriage without framing it in that way. You simply cannot truly begin to understand the blessing of marriage apart from the New Covenant relationship with Christ. Sure I loved my wife and cherished her and all of that before I was a Christian but I didn't understand what it meant to be united with her in a complementary relationship and I still am only scratching the surface of how I am to love her like Christ loved the church. Christian marriage as ordained by God is so much more than two people of the opposite sex pledging themselves to one another until death do us part and seeking some sort of fuzzy common ground, lowest common denominator definition and understanding of marriage inevitably diminishes marriage as instituted by our Creator.

Just to clear the air, yes what I am saying here is that Christians corner the market on understanding marriage. No, that doesn't mean that Christians are better at being married, that they make better husbands or wives or that unbelievers can't have fulfilling, loving marriages. It is simply to say that any understanding of marriage apart from the New Covenant in Christ is by definition incomplete and inferior. That sort of talk makes a lot of people twitchy. Too bad. In fact if you don't believe that I might gently suggest that you don't really understand the New Covenant, the eternal purpose of marriage (hint, it ain't about tax breaks and wedding registries) and the grand design of humanity made in the image of God as two distinct, equal, immutable and complementary genders.

Traditional marriage is not the Gospel. Religious liberty, whatever that means, is not the Gospel. Complementarianism is not the Gospel. The Gospel is the Gospel. What is on display here is trying to find unity in spite of the Gospel when the church can only have unity because of the Gospel. That unity is impossible to have with groups, sects and cults that deny that same Gospel that not only saves us but defines marriage for us. Russell Moore, anticipating the objections to his attendance, posted a preemptive strike with his post Why I’m Going to the Vatican. While I don't doubt the sincerity of his words and his conviction, his excuses ring hollow to me. The best thing he could do in an assembly hall full of unbelievers is not to talk about marriage but to preach Christ and Him crucified and call on those present to repent and be baptized. To do anything else is a betrayal of the Great Commission, even if done for the noblest of intentions.

I am going to try to watch and read what I can from this conference because it should be interesting. I suspect that it will be a lot of eloquent speech that amounts to nothing. I hope that in their time in Vatican City my Christian brothers have the opportunity to share the Gospel with the lost among them and that the Holy Spirit would soften those hearts. We can't preach marriage without preaching Christ. I pray that the fruit of this conference is not merely lovely speeches but changed hearts that are turned to Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Quisling "Christians"

For those unfamiliar with the term, "Quisling" refers to someone who collaborates with the enemy. It goes back to a man named Vidkun Quisling, an infamous Norwegian leader who collaborated with the Nazi regime in World War II. His name has become synonymous with collaboration in much the same way that Benedict Arnold's name is associated with treason ( or at least it used to back when history class included instruction in history. Yes, this is going to be one of those posts). Being a Quisling means placing personal safety, convenience, enrichment and acceptance over the well-being of others. In other words it is not a compliment.

We live in a religious/spiritual world that is rapidly being overtaken by the loud voices of religious Quislings, people who lack the conviction or fortitude or courage to stand for hard truths when there is a cost. Sure when something is popular and happens to line up with the truth it is easy but once that stops being true they stumble over themselves switching sides.

Just look at the news...

American clergy embracing homosexual marriage.

Theologians denying Creationism, hell, sin, the atonement, anything that might get them disinvited from the next cool kids academic mixer.

The Church of England voting to ordain women "bishops" in a response to incredible pressure from the secular centers of power even though England is already an incredibly secular nation and making women into "bishops" isn't going to do a thing to stem the tide.

On and on.

Compromising with the culture has gone from a niche hobby of people like the risibly named "Red Letter Christians" to a mainstream sport that resembles a race to the bottom. It has gotten to the point where even the most stunning betrayal of orthodoxy and Biblical common sense barely raises an eyebrow these days and seems to simultaneously be a badge of honor and a guarantee of book deals and blog traffic.

I know, I know. I am being:

unkind/judgmental/mean/intolerant/hateful/divisive/whatever.

Honestly I don't expect unregenerate people to act differently than they do nor do I think that making all sin illegal will stop unregenerate sinners from sinning. However when someone claims the name of Christ and chastises others who do for holding firm to positions that have long been settled in the church until the last five years, then I have an issue. Smiling at sin and even blessing it. Saying all is well when it is not. Being blown to and fro by the winds of the culture. Standing for nothing except not standing for anything. These aren't signs of spiritual maturity, they are signs of surrender, capitulation and accommodation. If you don't care that is your business but don't condemn those that do.

The Quislings are not alone in their misdiagnosing of what is going on around us and how to respond, as I have remarked before.  Others are seeking "enemy of my enemy is my friend" alliances with "conservative" heretics and blasphemers of all sorts in the  vain hope of winning a temporary reprieve for Christendom in America. Still others are "more of the same is the ticket" types, who hope that repackaging the same old religious nonsense, just with better presentation and more money, will suddenly make people sick of religion fall back in love with religion. Yeah right. Yet others are calling for returns to venerable religious traditions and institutions, some more ancient and corrupt than others but all nevertheless more deserving of a primo spot on the ashbin of religious history than they are in being revitalized after self-inflicted implosion.

While this is troubling, it is not surprising. It is painfully clear from the New Testament that the greatest threats to the church will come from within, not from without. Consider the words of Paul in his final instructions to the elders of the church in Ephesus:

I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. (Act 20:29-30)

History has perfectly fulfilled the prophetic warning of Paul and there is ample evidence of this today in people ranging from Frank Schaeffer to Joel Osteen to Rachel Held Evans to Todd Bentley. Religious charlatans who tell the world what it wants to hear in return for gathering influence, followers, power or money (or some combination of all four). They often (thinking RHE and Frank here) respond to orthodox criticism with cries of persecution and misunderstanding, making themselves martyrs and crying "Woe is me, I am so misunderstood! Buy my book!" while reaping the benefits of the acclaim of the world. Nothing like using a public platform to advance your agenda and then crying foul when others use the same public platform to refute your claims.

There is nothing mean or hateful about pointing out the ravenous wolves that Scripture itself warns us to beware of. I am conscious of my tone and I know it can be less than helpful but the ranks of the Quislings seems to swell by the day and the silence from the church grows more thunderous. In a church terrified of a future with no money, no influence and few friends in the halls of power, there often is simply not enough time for worrying about hard to understand and divisive stuff like doctrine. Who has time for that when their are lawsuits to file and tax breaks to defend, bank accounts to pad for a rainy day and church activities to plan? You might think this is unfair and that many sincere Christians have come to these conclusions based on their own study of Scripture. I have no doubt many sincere Christians hold these beliefs quite sincerely but here is the catch: if these were not culturally popular I don't think they would hold them. Besides, sincerely teaching error is still....teaching error.

If you want to stand on the sidelines, bleating piously about not judging, be my guest. I will not. I cannot.

Unity or Purity?

A great, thought provoking article by Mark Dever leading up to the Together for the Gospel conference...

The question for you and me is, when we teach others the truth, do we do it with condescending pride and arrogance—we know something they don’t? Or do we teach with the humility of one beggar sharing his bread with another?

Compromise is bad. Cooperation is good. But how do you tell the difference? What are the primary doctrinal positions for which we need to contend, and what are the secondary doctrinal positions about which we can disagree with charity and love?

Excellent questions, and one there is no easy answer for. Which is more important, purity or unity? I will admit I am more of a purity guy. If it is important enough for me to have a position on it, it is important enough to fight about. But there is a need for some sense of unity in the body of Christ. So which is it, unity or purity?

On the one hand...

Unity merely for the sake of unity leads to acceptance of heresy

If our only concern is to get along and be one body with no differences, we will invariably allow heretics to creep in unawares. If we compromise on one issue, why not the next? And the next? And eventually we find ourselves not debating election or eschatology, we find ourselves desperately trying to hold back the tide of homosexual clergy and witches as pastors.

Being unified does not require us to apologize for those things that we hold to be true. If you believe in the Biblical doctrine of election, don’t feel obligated to apologize for it for the sake of unity. Don’t feel obligated to point out that other Scriptures may appear to contradict your deeply held beliefs. If you don’t really believe it, don’t bring it up. And if you do believe it because the Bible speaks in uniformity about God’s predestining and His sovereign grace, don’t dance around, declare it as one of God’s precious and wonderful truths. If seeking unity requires you to gloss over strongly held beliefs, it may be that the unity is not the kind you should be seeking.

What is the basis for unity? Is it going along to get along? Is being nice to one another the highest Christian virtue? Or is the basis of our unity the truths which we declare and hold in common? What unifies us should be what saves us, and just as a compromised Gospel is a Gospel which cannot save, unity in anything other that the fullness of the Gospel, unashamedly declared regardless of cost is not true Christian unity at all. What divides us from the world is what unites us with each other, and more importantly with Christ. That is the only unity that matters.

On the other hand....

Purity at all costs leads to people sitting by themselves in church.

The only person who I agree with 100% of the time is the handsome fella looking back at me from the mirror. And luckily I am confident that he is right on, all the time. The problem is (and this is really the main problem in the world today) is that not everyone else believes exactly the same way he does. Holding firmly to the faith delivered once and for all to the saints requires holding fast, contending earnestly and being willing to separate from those who deny Gospel truths. It is often unpopular, but heaven is not a popularity contest. The purer the Gospel, the more sinners will find it offensive, and if the cross is not offensive to sinners, it isn't being declared properly.

Where do we draw the line? Where should we draw the line? How do we determine what is a non-negotiable versus what we can agree to disagree on? I would throw out that anything that falls outside of a few categories falls into the camp of non-essentials. They may divide how and where and with whom we worship, but it is not an issue of breaking Christian fellowship. Issue like justification by faith, the deity of Christ, the inerrancy of the Bible are the essentials. Issue like baptism, church government and eschatology fall into the areas of honest disagreement in the Christian family. Albert Mohler's article on Theological Triage is still the gold standard on what should divide us and what should not. We must be pure where the Gospel demands we be pure, but we also must not make demands on others that the Gospel does not require.