Of course not. There’s nothing wrong with anyone being wealthy. The Bible, while it includes any number of warnings about the dangers that come with wealth, likewise presents wealth as a blessing. While the possession of wealth is by no means a sin, there are certainly sinful ways of acquiring wealth and sinful responses to having wealth. Some of those can happen with pastors.
While he certainly was no pastor, Bagwan Rajneesh was a cultic guru who lived a lavish lifestyle on the backs of his deluded donors. His acolytes worked 16 hour days while he collected a fleet of Rolls-Royce cars. It’s possible for pastors to take advantage of their own flock in a similar way. Elders are worthy of double honor; the worker is worthy of his wages; we don’t muzzle the ox while he is threshing the grain. Yea and amen. I’d argue that in the vast majority of churches the greater problem is a failure to sufficiently provide for the pastor. There could be, however, some where the pastor is living rather high on the hog from the church’s budget.
One of the challenges, however, is that “high on the hog” is rather subjective. Some, driven by envy, grumble at anything beyond poverty for pastors. Some, driven by pride, actually want the world to see their pastor living well. And some pastors, driven by greed, see the church as their personal piggy bank. One key, however, to easing this is for decisions on pay to be made by the elders of the church, not by the pastor himself. Often in Presbyterian churches the pastor’s provision must be approved by the presbytery. This should help the parishioners to not make the mistake of thinking their tithes make them stockholders, and the pastor their employee.
Often envy turns up when a pastor is wealthy, but not as a result of his provision from the church. Whether it is writing books that sell well, or investing prudently, or even inheriting wealth, any of these might create a significant gap in wealth between a pastor and his congregation. This should never be a problem. Earning money in the market place is a good thing. As is receiving an inheritance.
What can be a problem, however, is the prideful display of wealth. While I would never suggest that those who have been blessed financially must not be able to have nice things, I would suggest that often what we think are “nice things” are really “things that show off my wealth.” The wealthy ought to be modest, not intentionally drawing attention to their wealth nor boasting in it. This applies not just to the pastor, but to all believers.
The wealthiest man I knew growing up owned multiple multi-million dollar businesses across several states. He was also one of the most humble man I ever knew. He lived in a normal suburban neighborhood. He drove a beautiful Mercedes, but it was 13 years old. He had a vacation home on a lake but never spoke of it. He was comfortable, generous and never sought the spotlight. He was wealthy because God blessed him. Who could ever grumble about that?
I suspect that most times someone raises an alarm about a pastor’s wealth, the envy of the one raising the alarm should be the real concern. I think all of us, wherever God has us, would do well to embrace modesty with respect to all that He has given us.
I’m figuratively afraid that many people literally do not know what literally means. Many of those wrong on its meaning think it’s some means of intensifying. “I could drink an ocean” means “I’m thirsty.” “I could literally drink an ocean” is literally false but typically is intended to communicate “I’m very, very thirsty,” which could certainly be true.
There is, however, a whole other branch of people who don’t understand what the word means- those who, for whatever, reason, want to affirm they believe the Bible but who literally don’t believe the Bible. They say, “I believe the Bible is God’s Word, but you can’t take it literally.” Here literally means, “as if it were true” or, to put it another way, “as if it were God’s Word.”
Can we take the Bible literally? That depends on what literally literally means. If it means, “as true” not only can we do so but we would be foolish not to. If it means intensifying our belief, so that saying, “I literally believe the Bible is true” once again we’d be foolish not to. What literally literally means, however, is “in the literary form it is intended.” That is, to understand the Bible literally is to understand it as it was written. We treat the differing genres the Bible uses in light of those genres. Metaphors we understand as metaphors. Historical accounts we understand as historical accounts. Commands we understand as commands. To interpret metaphors as history is not to interpret literally but to fail to do so. When Jesus says, “I am the door” (John 10:7) we’d be misunderstanding Him if we thought His body included hinges.
When, however, God says “For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person nor covetous man who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Ephesians 5:5) and someone says we should not take this “literally” then they are literally guilty of the next verse, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (5:6). The world, and the church is filled with people who are willing to tip their hat to the Word of God, to seek to borrow from its credibility, until it steps on their toes. Suddenly it becomes an old book that’s been translated a million times that shouldn’t be taken literally.
We must not let people set up camp in this make believe world. With both firmness and gentleness our call is prophetic, to call on such to choose this day what they will believe. Either God’s Word is God’s Word or Baal’s word is God’s word. We must also flee ourselves from such folly. We mustn’t nuance away the parts of the Bible that expose our sins, nor the sins of those we fear might be offended. To do such is literally to be a fool. To stand on God’s Word is figuratively to build your house upon the Rock.
I am a Calvinist. No, better to say that I am a rabid Calvinist. I am the son of a Calvinist. My spiritual grandfather was the Calvinist’s Calvinist, John Gerstner. When I consider my own theological education, I divide it into three equal parts. First, I was raised by R.C. Sproul. Calvinism not only runs in our blood, but it gave the savor to our soup. It was the spice in our stew. The ghost of John Calvin haunted my home, and for that I give thanks. Second, I studied theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. There, all my professors were required to affirm their commitment to Calvinism as a prerequisite for their employment. Third, as a boy, with the able aid of my pastor, I studied The Westminster Shorter Catechism for Study Groups, by G. I. Williamson. It was there that the pieces fell into place.
When I was in high school, while others were souping up their cars or lining up their dates for Saturday night, I was in my room, reading Calvinists. Yet, if I am honest and consider those men who have most shaped my own thinking, right after my father and John Gerstner, there stands “Jack,” C.S. Lewis. How could such a fervent Calvinist be shaped by someone from the other side?
One might expect that the answer would be Mere Christianity. In that important work from Lewis he lays out the importance of not appending sundry appellations to our Christianity. We ought not be vegetarian-Christians or Libertarian-Christians. We ought instead to be Christians. It’s a sound enough point, as long as we understand the wisdom of Spurgeon, that Calvinism isn’t the icing on the cake of Christianity, but is the substance of it. Still, this isn’t why Lewis, despite not being a Calvinist, has had such a profound influence on me. Truth be told, and while I am loathe to cause this great man to spin in his grave, I love Lewis, despite the painfully obvious truth that he was not a Calvinist, because I am a Calvinist.
The great thing about Calvinism, rightly understood, is not its emphasis on the sovereignty of God. That instead is but a symptom of a previous commitment. Calvinism, as a system, emphasizes the gap between God and man. It is a system of thought that affirms that God is God and that we are merely men. It is a system that seeks always to awaken as many people as possible to the holiness of God.
Somehow, some way, Lewis, escaped becoming a Calvinist, while his life’s work was committed to this great, fundamental Calvinist truth, that God is God and that we are not. The center of his theology was not the sovereignty of God. It was instead, perhaps slightly more at the center of reality, the wonder of God.
Lewis builds an entire world around the wonder of God in his Chronicles of Narnia. There we discover that Aslan is not a tame lion, that he has not only consumed little girls but has consumed whole cities of children. There we witness creation as it truly was, not a marvelous feat of modernist engineering, but the fruit of beauty, the result of a song. There we come to discern the relationship of life on earth, as it is in heaven, as the Pevensies move further up and further in, at the “beginning” of the story.
We are taught the transcendence of God in The Abolition of Man. There we learn, long before any of us were even aware of post-modernism, that the great evil at work behind this world view is false — beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; rather, it is the manifestation of the very character of God. In That Hideous Strength, the final chapter of the Space Trilogy, we see the battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman as it really is, a battle between officious pettiness masquerading as world-changing power and humble service as the true linchpin of human history.
We find the same principle at work in The Great Divorce, an allegorical tale of the intersection of heaven and hell. There we discover the soft reality that reality is more solid, more substantial than the folly of the world around us. We discern, as we do in The Screwtape Letters, the foolishness of folly, and why and how we always seem to fall for it.
In the end the message is simple enough — God is God, and we are not. We will not enter the kingdom of God until we learn to do so not as theological scientists, but as children. The secret of spiritual maturity, according to Jesus, is learning to be like children. When we come to Narnia, therefore, we do not come as more sophisticated versions of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, but as more jaded versions, who must learn from our spiritual betters — children.
Lewis was not a Calvinist, though by God’s grace he is one now. He was instead a grown child who can lead us into the maturity of childhood. He was gifted by God to gift us in this way — he teaches us to be as children, that we might enter into the kingdom of God. He reminds us that God is God and that we are not. He reminds us that our response to this truth ought not to be mere theological speculation, but mere Christianity — crying out to our Father to have mercy on us, miserable sinners, and rejoicing that He has done so in Christ. He reminds us that this is how we move further up and further in.
Perhaps. It is virtually impossible to have too low a view of ourselves by ourselves. We, all of us who are human, do indeed bear the image of God. Even that, however, is ultimately extrinsic to us. The imago, we need to understand isn’t essential to us in a sense, but is added to us. By ourselves, apart from His grace, we are but dust and rebellion. In His grace, however, He has imposed upon us, stamped upon us, His image. We humans thus have worth, dignity and value, though these are ultimately from without rather than within.
In affirming the total depravity of all men we still affirm that we could always be worse. Total depravity speaks to two lines of our wickedness. First, it affirms the breadth of our sin. There is no part of us untouched by sin. The ravages of the fall are not contained within our wills, and sealed off from our minds. All that we are is depraved. Second, this sin nature leaves us totally unable, in ourselves, to will any good, including the good of repenting and believing. Left to ourselves we will never embrace the work of Christ. Where total depravity stops short is in this- we affirm total depravity in denying utter depravity. We could be worse. The restraining hand of God’s common grace leaves us less wicked than we might otherwise be.
We who believe, of course, came to believe because God the Holy Spirit came to us, unbidden, removed our hearts of stone and gave us new life, a heart of flesh. Out of that prior change we repent and believe, trusting in the finished work of Christ for us. And we are, from there forward, indwelt by the Holy Spirit who is about the business of helping us to grow in grace and wisdom. Is this the place where we Calvinists have too low a view of ourselves?
I would suggest not. First, we can lose sight of the good news, that not only are our sins forgiven, but we are being cleansed from all unrighteousness (James 1:9). We are getting better, which is a wonder and a delight not to be overlooked or diminished. But it is vital even in celebrating our growth in grace, even in affirming the synergistic nature of our sanctification, that we not lose sight of the power of all of this. It starts in the Alpha and ends in the Omega- every good and perfect gift. Second, our improvement needs to be put in perspective. From one vantage point it is shocking and amazing, something to be deeply celebrated. We are made new. It is the spiritual equivalent of landing a man on the moon- awe-inspiring, world changing. But from the eternal vantage point, all our growth is but a few faltering baby steps. We may have landed on the moon but the distance between where we are and where we have to go is the gap between the moon and the sun, of a solar system in a distant galaxy.
We who are called saints, who have been adopted of the Father and loved with an everlasting love, who have been and are being remade have much to give thanks for. We in turn, despite all this, have much to repent for. But in all we have much to rejoice over, for He who has begun a good work in us will carry it through to the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6).
Why, I have to wonder, is the slaughter of the unborn so low on the radar of so many evangelicals? Why do we get our dander up over racism or human trafficking, but not so much over abortion?
Before I seek to offer my perspective on those questions, let’s make one obvious thing perfectly clear. Human trafficking is wicked, vile, nauseating evil. So is racism. It is not my intention to weigh the relative demerits of these wrongs, but rather to explore the disparity in our outrage and involvement.
I suggest two reasons. First, abortion is near, human trafficking far. Now I’m not denying that human trafficking happens here in these United States, or that the murder of the unborn doesn’t happen overseas. The nearness of which I speak is more social than geographic. Evangelicals are far more likely to have procured an abortion (one in six abortions in the US are procured by a professing evangelical) or have a friend who has done so than they are to have been enslaved in prostitution or know someone who has. You might think that the more distant the outrage the less, rather than the more, we would be outraged. The trouble is, because we are sinners, our outrage exists more for ourselves than for the suffering. When the outrage is distant I can feel angry, morally superior, and never have to actually do anything. Distant outrage is the path of least resistance. My dander and self-esteem climb at the same pace.
Which brings us to the second reason. We have no neighbors that stand up for racism or sex trafficking. Indeed they are the ones most loudly objecting to racism and sex trafficking. We are surrounded, however, by neighbors who believe abortion is a virtual sacrament, a holy act of feminine liberation. Moloch is the God our neighbors worship, and they don’t take kindly to us when we speak ill of him. Because racism and sex trafficking truly are evils from a Christian perspective, choosing them as our causis belli doesn’t require us to betray our Lord. And it allows us to stand shoulder to shoulder with our unbelieving neighbors.
In short, with abortion we might be called to action, to do the unpleasant work of actually ministering to our neighbors by calling them to repentance, by going to spiritual war with them. We might have to get involved with the abortion vulnerable, in our neighborhoods and on our campuses. With abortion, in turn, we face the unpleasant prospect of being rejected by our neighbors, thought uncouth, backwards, fundamentalists, even mean spirited.
Fighting the scourge of abortion begins with tearing down our own high places- our worship of comfort and acceptance. Fighting abortion requires us not to look at a news report and judge but to look in the mirror and repent. Lord, give us the grace to love You and to be hated by the world. For the least of these, Your brothers.
