Swing And A Miss

I know Bo is kinda distracting but I love me
some Bo Jackson.

Baseball is a game of inches, especially at the Major League level. The difference between a great hitter like Miguel Cabrera hitting a fast ball and missing it is usually determined by a tiny difference in when and where he swings. I would say the same is true in theology. Usually the most dangerous false teachers are not nutjobs like Jim Jones, David Koresh or Victor Hafichuk because they are obviously crazy. No, the really dangerous false teachers and teachings are those that modify Scripture just a little bit. Even among generally orthodox Christians this can be true.

I was reminded of this when I saw an article from the Gospel Coalition on headcovering by Benjamin Merkle, Should Women Wear Head Coverings? .The genesis of his essay is the very real problem posed to complementarians when they talk about why women are forbidden to teach men in the church. A common response, one I have gotten several times, is to ask why passages like 1 Timothy 2:13-14 are universal and binding but the church doesn't teach that women should wear a covering apart from some rare examples in Reformed churches, the "Plymouth Brethren" and conservative Anabaptist groups. It is a legit issue, one I have raised before. I can answer someone who asks that question by affirming that my wife does indeed wear a covering and that she is the one who broached the topic with me, not the other way around but most other Christians need to come up with a legit excuse. This is pretty typical of the response. Benjamin affirms that both passages above make their argument from creation but then says it doesn't apply to headcoverings:

A closer examination of the two texts, however, shows it’s consistent to reject the need for women to wear head coverings (1 Cor. 11) while affirming they are not to teach or have authority over men (1 Tim. 2). The reason for this distinction is that in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul only indirectly uses the argument from creation to affirm head coverings for women. The direct application of his reasoning is to show that creation affirms gender and role distinctions between men and women. Therefore, Paul’s argument from creation which demonstrates men and women are distinct cannot be culturally relegated. The application of this principle (i.e., head coverings), then, can and does change with culture. In contrast, the argument from creation in 1 Timothy 2 applies directly to Paul’s prohibition, and therefore is not culturally conditioned.

He later says that coverings only point to a greater reality:

Third, it’s important to notice the passive nature of a head covering. A head covering was a sign or symbol pointing to a greater reality. It had no meaning in itself, but was a concrete expression of an intangible truth. Thus, Paul isn’t concerned with head coverings per se. Rather, he’s concerned with the meaning that wearing a head covering conveys.

I see where Benjamin is going astray here. I would heartily affirm that headcoverings are not the main question. Male headship based on the created order is. Amen! However that doesn't negate the fact that women in the early church, not just in Corinth, wore a visible, recognizable symbol for submission to male headship in the covering. The problem is his assumption that while in the early church, and the broader church for much of post-resurrection history, women did cover their heads, they don't have to today:

Christian women are not required to wear head coverings today when praying, since the symbol of a woman’s head being covered is different today than it was during the time of Paul (at least in many cultures).

OK, so what is this different symbol. How does a typical evangelical Christian wife in an evangelical church setting demonstrate the principal involved here? *crickets*. What about long hair? What about a wedding ring? The problem here is that neither of those indicate submission to male headship. Lots of women, including single women, have long hair but no one looks at a long haired woman and assumes she is a Christian submitting to her husband's male headship. The wedding ring is worse because most people that are married wear those and women who are anything but submitting to their husband's headship wear them. Of course there is also the problem of substituting something (jewelry) for headcovering when the wearing of external adornment is problematic at best and we are never given permission to do so in Scripture. What we end up with is a muddled argument from Benjamin that demonstrates that he doesn't really understand the arguments for headcovering at all. No one I know thinks headcoverings are the point in and of themselves. What we argue is that the physical, visible covering is the external symbol of headcovering is a commandment that has not been abrogated and the covering on a woman's head cannot be replicated by something else.

Let's look at a different example and apply Benjamin's reasoning. Baptism is an external sign of an internal change. I am born-again, which is not visibly apparent, so I follow the command of Scripture to be publicly baptized to show outwardly what has changed inwardly. Now the practice of baptism or ceremonial washing is deeply embedded in the culture of the 1st century. Based on his reasoning toward headcovering, we no longer use ceremonial washing in our culture so we shouldn't baptize new believers. In our culture we could maybe post on Facebook in place of baptism or tweet "Born again!". That is how people nowadays show externally to the world what is happening with them. You might say "That is silly, baptism is necessary because there is greater meaning in baptism that can't be replicated, like identifying with Christ by being buried with Him in the water and coming out of the water to represent new life!". I would say "Amen!" and "Exactly!" and then I would show how a woman having a symbol on her head to show that she is covered by male headship cannot and must not be substituted for anything else because it loses the critical symbolism. The word "head" is used for a reason and a different word makes no sense. To say that "The husband is the foot of the woman even as Christ is the foot of the church" makes no sense. The head is the top of the body, where our mind resides in our brain. Having a symbol there is not something you can substitute with something else.

I would imagine that anyone who advocates for a gender-less church and home is going to see right through Benjamin's argument because it is as flimsy and transparent as ziplock bag. I can't see how anyone who thinks women should teach men in the church and wonders why complementarians are so inconsistent in their hermeneutic is going to do anything but chuckle at his argument. I don't even think they are the audience. His audience seems to be male church leaders who bang the drum for complementary gender roles in the home and church but are afraid of saying anything that would offend evangelical women by suggesting that they need to cover their head. The hatred of Muslims in our culture doesn't help because a lot of people assume if my wife has her head covered she is either a Muslim or Amish. Where we live that isn't the case because so many women cover but in most of America that has been true. I would say that fear is the same reason we don't hear preaching from  the pulpit about why women shouldn't adorn themselves because in our culture getting dressed up and looking good for church includes jewelry and nice clothes. A pastor who depends on the offering plate for his living is probably dumb to suggest that those who put the money in the plate shouldn't get dressed in external adornment and instead should dress modestly in a comprehensive manner. This essay from the Gospel Coalition is completely counter-productive, providing flimsy cover (pun intended) for those who are afraid of offending the church with such a primitive notion like headcovering while at the same time confirming to those who oppose Biblical gender roles that we are hypocritical and inconsistent.

I know some may wonder why worry about something this silly when we have Planned Parenthood aborting babies. Let's fight the demonic anti-Christ of "choice" and leave this sort of stuff to the theologians. I don't see this as an "either-or" situation. Here is why.

First the obvious. Nothing is in Scripture by accident or as a superfluous detail. Everything that was preserved by God's sovereignty was preserved for our benefit. If Paul took the time to address headcovering in a church with issues like unrepentant and perverse sexual sin (1 Cor 5:9-13), we should not be so quick to dismiss it.

Second, those two issues are not distinct and unrelated, to the contrary they are very much related. The move to a consequence-less sexual free-for-all that has led to abortion on demand to sweep the results of promiscuity under the rug is the same movement that denies gender distinctions in the home and church. We have got to stop treating issues that face the church as if they are unrelated to one another!

In other words there are no unrelated issues in the church because they all have a common authoritative source, namely the Bible. Give Benjamin's article a read and see if you agree with my assessment.

Culture matters

It can be easy to dismiss what is written in the Bible as anachronistic, cultural relics for a time thousands of years ago that needs to be reinterpreted today in light of our supposedly superior and enlightened culture. This attitude is rampant in the church and not just in liberal, mainline denominations. We are so inculcated in modern life that a lot of the Bible with it's patriarchal, agrarian lifestyle can seem little more than curiosities of an age long ago. Kind of interesting, like the Amish, but certainly not applicable in our modern life with twitter and social media and the myriad other comforts that allegedly improve our lives.

For example, many people read passages like 1 Corinthians 11: 4-6 and reject that it is normative for today. You get arguments about temple prostitutes and women of low moral character, you get assertions that wedding rings are symbols that fulfill this today even though the message Paul is writing has nothing to do with the culture of the day:

Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. (1 Co 11:4-6)

That may have been fine two thousand years ago but covering heads now? It looks odd, out of place in our culture. After all, we are not living in the 1st century. This is America, circa 2010, and women covering their heads just seems distasteful.

Then there are gender roles, in the home and the church. Passages which are difficult for many people today like Ephesians 5: 22-24, 1 Corinthians 11:3, 1 Corinthians 14: 33-35 and 1 Timothy 2: 11-15 are seen as commandments steeped in a 1st century culture that are not applicable today. Those poor women in the first century were doormats. In our enlightened world, we should encourage our sisters to take on the same roles as men in both the family and the church! Sure the Bible describes that behavior as sinful but the culture today is so much better. We certainly need to adapt to the present realities of the world. Look at how much better off families are since women have started assuming the roles of men.

A final example might be found in the group dynamics of the church in the earliest days. The earliest church met in homes and met on a daily basis (Acts 2: 46-47). They held all things in common, not seeing private property and possessions as something to be cherished (Acts 2: 44-45, Acts 4: 32-35). They met for the purpose of mutual edification instead of “worship” and all the men of the gathered church were welcome and expected to participate (1 Cor 14:26). That might have been fine back then but I am far too busy to spend all that time with other believers. I have my own life to live! A couple hours a week is all I can really commit to. We should have no problem cramming in our fellowship with other believers into that time while leaving us independent to do what we want the rest of the time.

I think it is very dangerous to dismiss teachings of the Bible as “cultural”, applicable only to a people two thousand years ago but not today. That time may seem primitive to us but it was very specifically and purposefully chosen by God. The time and place of the birth of Christ was not a quaint accident. It was the exact time and place that God had chosen.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Gal 4:4-5)

God very purposefully sent His Son, at that time and into that culture, to redeem His people and establish His church. That fact should not escape us. The Gospel is cross cultural. By that I mean that it is not subject to reinterpretation based on the prevailing winds of cultural acceptance. It is true as it is, whether in 33 A.D. or in 2010 A.D., whether in Palestine or America. Even if the message is unpalatable to a culture, the Gospel overrides what man declares wise and replaces it with a truth that man declares foolish. What I mean by cross cultural is that no matter what the culture, the Gospel is the same and the commandments of God for His people regarding how they should live in community with one another and with the unbelieving world do not change. In many ways, the ways we are commanded to live and worship and relate are done specifically because they are counter-cultural and they form a witness to the unbelieving world that we are different.

There is a world of difference between approaching people in a culturally acceptable manner to proclaim the Gospel and changing or ignoring teachings of the Bible because they clash with our individualistic (narcissistic?) culture today. We may look at the 1st century and scoff at how backwards they were but are we really so advanced, so superior today? Given the state of the world, of the family and of the church I think it is hard to argue that we have figured things out to the point that we can set aside the Scriptures where our cultural bias sees fit. When we read Scripture and examine the culture of that time, we should not do so as anthropologists. We should do so in full realization that the culture that the church was established in was chosen for a reason. Far from a license for us to explain away Scripture, the cultural clash we see between modern life and the ancient world should spur us to live our lives in a more counter-cultural way.

The coming collapse and a vital conversation

A firestorm of sorts has sprung up in some quarters regarding a piece in the Christian Science Monitor written by Michael Spencer, aka iMonk, a fairly well known blogger. The name of the piece in the Christian Science Monitor is “The coming evangelical collapse”. I will say that I have taken issue with some of what Mr. Spencer has written in the past, but this article absolutely bears reading and the points he raises demand a conversation.

The article is fairly provocative and widely referenced online (perhaps because a blogger got published by a “real” news organization!). Mr. Spencer wastes no time in laying out his thesis. From the beginning paragraphs of his article:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

One thing I think Mr. Spencer integrates well throughout his article is this idea: There is a difference between American evangelicalism and the rest of Christianity, if that makes sense. The church visible in America is a totally different beast from the church in the less developed world (at least that is what I gather, my only experience in the less developed parts of the world was living in Kentucky for a few years). Mr. Spencer even goes so far as to reiterate a call many people have been making for some time, prayerfully desiring that missionaries from Africa, Asia and South America will come to the shores of America and Europe, bringing back to these lands the Gospel that once went forth from those continents but that is under assault in these days. The breakaway portions of the Episcopal church that have come under the umbrella of the international Anglican communion, including in many cases African episcopates, is perhaps a sign of things to come.

I am not sure that the decline will be quite as steep as Michael Spencer portrays it, but the demographics indicate that he is right that the trend is accelerating very rapidly. There is an enormous infrastructure of cultural religion in America, churches, parachurch ministries, seminaries, schools, etc. that will keep chugging along by inertia but even as the outside of the evangelical house shows signs of weathering, the inside is rotting away at a precipitous pace.

This is one of my favorite lines from the article, because it really gets at an area where I think we have done the poorest job…

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

I love the way he puts it, that we have spent billions trying to teach our young people and they know nothing about their faith other than the way it makes them feel. Future generations of Christian kids are being sent into the world to engage in the culture war but they have no idea what the underlying Gospel is. I am not arguing, far from it, that we should not teach our children to engage societal wrongs where they appear in places like abortion and “gay marriage”, but that we need a fundamental reordering of priorities: Gospel first, orthodox theology and doctrine second and then, and only then, how that relates to the culture. We have created a legion of kids who will stand up and say that God says abortion is wrong but cannot articulate who God is or why His Word is trustworthy.

One of the conclusions that Mr. Spencer came to that I found to be way off base had to do with who will “benefit” from this decline.

Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

I am not sure where he is getting his numbers, but the Roman Catholic church is shutting down parishes left and right, their “priests” are aging rapidly with no one to fill in behind them (a recent article I quoted on the new “Archbishop” of New York spoke of how excited the Archdiocese of Milwaukee was to have ordained six priests last year. Six.) and frankly in my view Catholicism is decades ahead of where Protestantism is today in terms of decline, lack of doctrinal fidelity and culturification (that isn’t a word, but it describes a church becoming more of a cultural expression than a faith expression). The same numbers that show Protestant, evangelical churches declining also show massive declines in the number of people even willing to identify themselves as Catholic and I would hazard a guess that there are far more people willing to identify themselves as Catholics who haven’t been involved in the church for years than there are Baptists who would be willing to do the same.

Perhaps his most poignant statement comes near the conclusion of the article:

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

Amen to that. Not just in the house church movement part but also in the more general desire for a more vital and vibrant fellowship. The quest for bigger buildings, more staff, more programs, the latest and the greatest gadgets and fads, the hand-wringing over giving and budgets, etc. has emasculated the church for far too long. Money changes everything and in the Gospel ministry the impact is almost always a negative. While I again would disagree with much of what Michael Spencer has said in the past and I don’t subscribe wholesale to everything he wrote here, this article being published in the Christian Science Monitor has taken this conversation to a new level. His article is the latest and one of the most public declarations of what has been rumbling among evangelicals for some time. Beyond being provocative for the sake of being provocative (which I don’t believe at all was his intent), what I hope it really does is generate conversation among Christians. Most of those who are most entrenched in the “culture wars”, those heavily invested in the institutional status quo and others who are trying to reform the church by maintaining the basic structure we currently have with minor tinkering, i.e. the people who most need to be engaged in this conversation, probably will not be involved. It is in local churches and among bloggers and individual Christians where this conversation will take hold.

I think it is hard to deny what Michael Spencer says; the coming evangelical collapse is at our doorstep and is mere generations away. The downgrade controversy in England faced by Spurgeon preceded a general collapse of evangelicalism on that island, and like England we are living out the fruits of what men like J. Gresham Machen warned used about almost 100 years ago in “Christianity and Liberalism”. The decline of America is sparing no corner of our national identity, including the institution of evangelicalism. Perhaps from the grave of American evangelicalism we will see the proclamation of the Gospel spring forth with renewed vigor and boldness, freed from the quicksand of the very institutions that were designed to bolster it. Rather than bemoaning the death of American evangelicalism, let us pray for the a renewed proclamation of the Gospel, for a return to simple, Biblical and genuine fellowship among Christians and a clearly defined Christian witness in a lost and dying world.

Great quote from David Wells

From his new book, The Courage to be Protestant...

"What is of first importance to the church is not that it learn to mimic the culture but that it learn to think God's thoughts after him. The people of God are here on earth to learn how to recenter him, as it were, to see him in the place that he actually occupies, to worship him accordingly, and to live before him day after day."

(David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant, 2008, p. 98)

Absolutely right on the money! Every page of this book is a revelation, not of something new that I didn't know before but in the succinct and penetrating way that Wells describes it. This book is a worthy successor to the old classic by Machen, Christianity and Liberalism.