It is surely possible to adopt too fatalistic a view of the future. One can waltz right into utter destruction while singing Que Sera Sera, whatever will be will be with all the panache of Doris Day and end up just as dead as she is. We would be wise to remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 4:17, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Embracing the glorious truth that He has numbered our days and that nothing can change His plan should not lead us to treat safety as foolishness.
That said, one can also fall off the other side of the horse. There’s something deeply invigorating about a good scare, something life affirming about believing death is hot on our trail. The public response to the coronavirus tells us a great deal more about dangers to our mental health than dangers to our physical health. I don’t pretend to know exactly how dangerous this headline grabbing chunk of sky falling is. I do believe it is safe to say that we are much more safe than many think we are.
Why then all the breathlessness? Partly, I suppose, it comes from a genuine fear that we’re all going to die. Given that such is true, however, we are all in fact going to die, I think it’s less about fear we’re going to die and more about fear we’re not really living. When virtually every news outlet is circling around such a story (and let’s not forget all those duds that have come and gone in the past- I’m looking at you H1N1, Ebola, and Swine) it is doing so to get us to tune in. The worldwide web and the ripping off the mask of objectivity has turned every news source into WSCB, We’re Scary Click Bait.
I am, to a fault, drama averse. I’m no Chicken Little screaming “The sky is falling!” when it is not. No, I’m Ostrich Big, burying my head in the sand whispering, “The sky is not falling” when it is. That said, even an ostrich gets it right from time to time. The sky is not falling. Death is coming for all of us, all in God’s appointed time. He calls us to be good stewards of all He has given us, including our bodies, our health. Wash your hands. Sneeze like Dracula. But in the midst of that let us never forget that He has washed our feet, and that like Dracula, we will rise, not in the dark of night, but in the light of His coming again. Let us remember that the WHO and the CDC are made up of mere men. Let us remember that while Corona may or may not get us, the Crown will have everyone of us, sheep and goats, bending our knees and confessing that He is Lord, to the glory of the Father. That He reigns doesn’t mean the Coronavirus won’t make the Black Plague look like a bout of the chicken pox. It might. But if it does, it will because He reigns, because He has determined such is what is best for us and for His glory. And if it doesn’t, it will be because He reigns, because He has determined such is what is best for us and for His glory. Some trust in presidents, and some trust in doctors, but we trust in the name of our Lord.
Thesis 16- We must practice wisdom in judging what are minor and what are major issues in the church.
Whenever we find disagreement, there is more often than not at least two levels of disagreement. First, there is the issue itself. I may believe that the Pittsburgh Steelers are the greatest professional football team ever, while you may mistakenly believe otherwise. The other disagreement, however, is over the relative importance of the issue itself. The strength of my conviction is often matched by my conviction of its importance. You on the other hand may find the matter to be of supreme indifference.
Consider the cliché we use to describe the propensity of believers to squabble and divide. Christians, we are told, have been known to split churches over the color of the carpet. On the other hand, we are likewise known for our credulity. Several years ago I read an article in an evangelical magazine celebrating the rapprochement between two different Pentecostal denominations. The petty issue they were happily putting behind them? The doctrine of the trinity. One “denomination” denied the Trinity; the other was merely betraying it. But at least they were learning to get along.
Christians are not, on this side of glory, going to be able to agree on everything. What we have to learn is to distinguish between the varying levels of importance of the things we disagree about. Jesus said to the Pharisees “you tithe your mint and your cumin, but you neglect the weightier matters of the law, like justice and mercy.” Here Jesus speaks against a common evangelical misunderstanding. Wanting to affirm that breaking any law of God makes us lawbreakers, wanting to affirm that all sin is at root cosmic treason, wanting to affirm that hating our brother unjustly is a violation of the commandment against murder, we make the mistake of believing that all sins are equally grievious. This error in turn encourages us to believe either that no sin is worth separating over or that all sins require us to separate.
When Jesus affirmed that some matters were weightier than others, He did not give us a flow chart listing the relative seriousness of all sins. He instead calls us to wisdom. We are called to discern which sins are those which love covers a multitude of. We must discern which sins call us to separate from others. But there is at least one other category. We must recognize that some issues call us to vigorous debate, followed by warm fellowship with those with whom we disagree. Most of the theses we’re covering fall into this broad third category.
That men of good will can disagree on some issues does not mean that they are not issues. That men of ill will can part company over some issues does not mean they are issues. One thing, however, that we can all agree on- that we need wisdom to discern and that God is the source of that wisdom. May He be pleased to bless us with that wisdom in all our churches.
It might be a sound argument as to why He ought not to love us that we find this question surprising. It is because of our sin, our pride, our egos that we think ourselves worthy of His love, as if we are owed such. The truth is we are by nature rebels against His reign, would-be dei-cides, dead in our trespasses and sins.
To rightly answer the question we first must ask whom we mean by “us.” It is true enough that us can include all men everywhere. God does have a universal love for all mankind. Why? I would suggest it is because of the remains of His image in us. In ourselves, apart from His grace in bestowing on us His image, we are but dust and rebellion. But even the reprobate are not in themselves; they bear the image of God. On the other hand we need to remember that this love God has for all men, what we call the love of benevolence, does not preclude His righteous hatred of these same men. That God loves us all does not mean that He cannot hate some of us. Esau is but one example.
If, however, we look at God’s love for the elect, we still must make another distinction. The elect are divided at least this way- between those who have not yet come to faith and those who have. I acknowledge that God transcends time and that makes the following point a bit sticky. But of those who are elect, but who have not yet been blessed with the gift of regeneration, we could say that God has a love for them grounded in compassion for them, a benevolent pity. Without regeneration we are still in our sins, still in a sense under His judgment. But the very act of regeneration is an act of love, a rescuing of us in our rebellion. We are not worthy of His love, but He casts His love upon us out of His infinite compassion for us.
When we have been regenerated, however, we trust in the finished work of Christ. Our sins are covered by His blood, and His righteousness becomes ours. We are now no longer in ourselves, but are in Him. And in Him, we are loved as His own. We are now so much more than merely forgiven, more than merely the object of His sympathy. We are now the objects of His delight. He rejoices over us, even as a father delights over and rejoices in his own child. We are now the olive plants about His table (Psalm 128). We are the apple of His eye.
Just as those outside the kingdom foolishly assume a kind of love of God over them that they don’t enjoy, too often those inside the kingdom foolishly miss the depth of the love of God over them that we do enjoy. He does not merely tolerate us. He is not merely loving toward us. Rather He has made us His children, and in His joy over us, is about the business of remaking us into the image of His Son (). Rejoice, give thanks, rest. He loves you.
The hard driving forces of individualism do not yet stand astride the culture like a colossus. We have divided our homes into mini-apartment complexes, and our churches into age and gender segregated shopping malls. We break the ties that bind any time we find them the least bit binding. We live by ourselves and for ourselves. None of which has yet undone the truth that we are an incurably communal people.
Sociologists have argued for decades, for instance, that children in the inner-city, coming out of unstable homes, often without fathers, naturally gravitate toward the pseudo-family that is gang life. Even the mob mimics the contours of the family. The Casa Nostra, after all, means “Our House.”
One need not, however, live in the context of a criminal subculture in order to see faux families at work, to see the parade and charade of ritual togetherness. One can see it driving into Ligonier. Ligonier, before it was the name of a ministry, was (and still is) the name of a small town in western Pennsylvania, the town where I grew up. As you come down into the valley from the south, you see, as you would in most small towns, a sign of welcome. The sign welcomes you to town, but the welcome comes not from all its citizens, but from its leading “families.” That is, there on the sign you will see the logos for Ruritan, and the Knights of Columbus, for the Rotary Club and the Masonic Lodge.
I’m no expert on these civic organizations. I’ve never joined one nor visited one. Rumor has it, however, that quite apart from the service to the communities, separate from the business deals that are made there, there are sundry rituals and secrets that bind the members together. Which makes perfect sense. For these organizations invariably become not just pseudo-families, but pseudo-churches. They take on the shape of the one great organization wherein communities are served and dominion is exercised, the church of Jesus Christ.
We ought not, because of the obvious similarities, be ashamed of our practices. We do not greet one another with a secret handshake, but with the kiss. We do not wear funny hats, but crowns of gold. And the ritual that binds us together is as plain as it is powerful. There is no great power in bread. There is no great mystery surrounding wine. But Jesus, He is a different matter altogether. There is not just power and mystery, but power and glory.
The Lord’s Supper is a rite, a ritual, a form, and a raging storm of power. Of course there is the power to remind us of our sin. The body wasn’t broken by a car accident. The blood was not shed because of a mishandled kitchen knife. No, we come to the table knowing that we crucified Him. We broke the body, as our sin shed the blood. The very act of eating and drinking the destruction our sin has wrought will penetrate our hearts far better than the most cogent lecture on the doctrine of total depravity.
But there is greater power. For the Table not only tells us of our sin, but tells us of His forgiveness. It is, after all, the Table of the Lord. He invites us there that we might enjoy table fellowship with Him. We enter into His forgiveness, and His peace, as He lays out before us a table in the presence of His enemies. He bids us to rest not just in Him, but with Him.
When we affirm the power of conviction, when we affirm the power of connection with Him, we still, however miss the Body. For the glory isn’t merely that we commune with Jesus, but that as we commune with Jesus, we commune with each other. The Lord’s Table has the power to make of bickering, back-biting and squabbling siblings the very body of Christ. Just as hundreds of grains of wheat join together to form a single loaf, so too hundreds of grains of wheat join together to form the body of Christ, the very bread of life. The Lord doesn’t set His table for one, nor for two, but for the teeming multitudes that are His. The Table opens our eyes not just to see Him, but to see Him in our brothers and sisters, that we might love them as we are called.
It all, of course, ties together. When the table reminds us of our own sin, it helps us look past the sins of our brothers. And when the table shows us the glory of the Son, we set aside seeking our own glory and so love our brothers better. When we enter into the power of the Table to make of us one, then suddenly the formulaic copies of the world around us lose their appeal. Who needs funny hats and secret handshakes, when Jesus, the one we crucified, when Jesus, the one He raised from the dead, when Jesus, the one who is the express image of the glory of the Father, comes and feeds His bride? May He purify us that we might love Him, and so better love His body, the church.
There’s a new genre in town. We still have love stories, science fiction stories, crime stories. We also still have conversion stories, testimonies about God’s grace in our lives. What is new is the yang to that yin, testimonies of turning one’s back on God’s grace, on leaving the faith.
Like a rom-com starring an action hero, deconversion stories have something for everyone. For the unbeliever you have the blessing of encouragement, of having someone writing about how they came to be on your team. For the believer you have the emotional pull of watching someone else’s spiritual train wreck. And the author gets kudos from all sides for honesty and bravery.
Sadly, such stories are not honest. Honestly they are just sad. And bravery left town a long time ago. What believers need is the bravery to look straight into the heart of the sadness, and call the lost to come home. The hard truth is that at that moment of rejection we don’t and can’t know if we are dealing with the one sheep that has wandered off, or with a wolf that has just removed his wool suit. Either way, our calling is to repent, believe the gospel and to call such deconverts to repent and believe the gospel.
What we don’t repent for is what we are accused of. Usually deconversion stories include tales of mean-spirited judgers who have the heart of Scrooge and the sexual ethic of Queen Victoria. Deconversion stories often amount to little more than, “I had to choose between my sexual partner and Jesus. I choose the former.” Or, “I had to choose between my friends who engage in sex outside of marriage and Jesus. I choose the former.” The accusation against us is that we make the Christian faith not just about does and don’ts, but that our don’ts all have to do with taking our pants off. It’s not that Christians have made sexual purity the defining quality of our faith. It’s that the world has made sexual license the defining quality of their faith. It’s just about impossible to construct a syncretistic god out of one God who says, “No sex outside of marriage” and another who says, “Do what thou wilt.”
No, we repent not for being too cold, too hard, too judge-y but for being too warm, too soft, too accommodating. We repent for hanging with the same spirit that led them astray, that spirit that wants us to value the approval of the world above the truth of the Word. We do, however, believe in the gospel, and its power to save. We recognize that power because we’ve seen it save a wretch like me. If Jesus could redeem someone as wicked as me, surely he could redeem someone whose false conversion didn’t take. If Jesus can chase me down when I have, having already been redeemed, washed, forgiven, indwelt, willfully wandered off He can surely find a sheep that has wandered into a pigsty.
Do not commiserate with the deconverts as they grumble against your brothers and sisters. Don’t try to connect in your disdain for others. Connect in your joint disdain for yourselves. They, whether they were never genuinely converted, or are sheep that are lost, are carrying the weight of their own sin. Tell them about Jesus, about the cross, about the Father’s love, about forgiveness, about His promise to never leave us or forsake us. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
