Of course not. The innocent are innocent and the guilty are guilty. The function of a fair trial with due process is to labor to ensure that no one confuses the innocent and the guilty. What we intend to communicate with that expression, “innocent until proven guilty” is that we are not to treat people, on the basis of a mere accusation, as guilty. We are not to treat people as guilty until their guilt has been properly established.
That we are not to do so, however, doesn’t mean that we don’t do so. Too many of us find an accusation sufficient evidence to reach a verdict of guilty. It’s not. Some years ago a well respected scholar publicly labeled me as a believer in Federal Vision. He was kind enough to footnote his accusation. If you read the footnote, however, you would have found this- I had published several men who later became embroiled in the controversy in Tabletalk magazine. Never mind that not a one of these men were published by me after Federal Vision became a thing. Also included in the citation were these words, “his writings.” That is, my embrace of Federal Vision theology was found in my writings. Not this writing. Not that writing. Nothing a person could actually look up. Just “his writings.” Fifteen years ago I publicly put out this challenge- show me anything I have ever written or spoken that is pro-Federal Vision. The challenge still stands.
My point, however, has nothing to do with Federal Vision. To this day people are strongly warned against having anything to do with me because of this. The false accuser has gone on to his reward. The narrative continues to impact my life. I’m not, however, guilty. I was not given due process. I was lynched. My guilt continues to be assumed, despite having neither a trial nor the beginning of due process. Again, this isn’t about me, but about due process and why it matters. Because people’s lives are ruined when guilt is assigned apart from due process.
Few of us, however, are in a position to manage the process of a trial. We don’t sit as judges in any kind of formal sense. What then can we do? We can maintain the principle. That is, we can keep from concluding someone is guilty who has not yet been given due process. That may mean holding off on judgment against someone who is guilty. It may mean keeping from convicting the innocent.
Which are the two reasons due process matters. It is bad enough when due process failures cast shadows on the innocent. It also, however, gives cover to the guilty. The guilty can point out their own failure to receive due process and in so doing avoid being determined to be guilty.
Truth be told, there is one ultimate reason to practice due process. Because the Judge of Heaven and Earth commands it, and will rightly judge those who make judgments before all the facts are known.
Everybody talks about the problem of tribalism, but nobody seems to do anything about it. I aim to try. I wish to begin, however, by identifying some of the members of my tribe. Some you may have heard of. My tribe includes Dr. Anthony Bradley, college professor and contributor at the Acton Institute. It also includes Robert E. Lee, former head of the army of the Confederate States of America. John Nelson Darby, along with Charles Scofield, W.A. Criswell, and Tommy Ice are with me. As are John Gerstner, Ken Gentry, Gary DeMar and Gary North. Sam Storms and Wayne Grudem are in my tribe, right beside John MacArthur and BB Warfield. My tribe includes Russell Moore, David Platt, Tim Keller, Ed Litton and John Piper. Also in my tribe are Doug Wilson, Al Mohler, Eric Metaxes, J. Gresham Machen, and David Bahnsen.
My tribe includes multiple men who had multiple wives, all while serving the living God. Some of them were adulterers and murderers. Some abused alcohol for a time, and some drugs. Some abused their station and their standing. Jim Bakker is in my tribe, as is Jimmy Swaggart. Jerry Falwell, Senior and Junior. My tribe includes Tullian Tchividjian, James MacDonald, King David, Peter, Gordon MacDonald, and me. I have some bad news for you as well. If you rest in Christ alone, you are in the same tribe.
Truth be told it’s not bad news but good. The tribe we are a part of is united by one simple truth, that Jesus died for our sins. Which happily means that whatever sins we have, whether those sins include embracing the wrong ideology, suffering from cultural blind spots, selfishness, goofy hermeneutics, intellectual pride, sexual sin, whatever my own sins and the sins of my brothers and sisters, they are covered by the same blood of the same Lamb.
When we begrudgingly admit that those in other “tribes” within the body of Christ will be in heaven we not only exhibit a foolish pride in thinking ourselves better, but we wickedly diminish the work of Christ. We are not called to tolerate those for whom Jesus gave Himself. He doesn’t tolerate those for whom He died who are wrong about CRT, gun control, charismatic gifts, eschatology. He loves them, fully, completely, immutably, just like us. He commands of us that we do the same.
That means leaving behind the snark. That means weeping for what we perceive to be their errors, rather than laughing at them. That means mourning with them when they go through hardship. That means speaking of them and to them gently. When, in the end, we enjoy our last and unending reunion, not a one of us will stop and wonder, “How did he get here?” We’ll be too busy rejoicing in the grace that allows us to be there. May God grant us mercy to see the mercy He has granted the whole of our tribe.
The Christian is engaged in a three-front war. The Bible, replete with martial language, bears this out. The great evil trinity against which we fight is the world, the flesh, and the Devil. In our day we have made friends with the world, and we have reduced our flesh down to a few psychological crossed wires. We have lost sight of these two battlefields precisely because we have lost sight of the third. In other words, we miss that we are at war with the world and our flesh because the Devil has defeated us in battle — we have forgotten that he exists.
C.S. Lewis, in the preface to his great work The Screwtape Letters, posits this nugget of wisdom: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” As wise as Lewis and this particular quote may be, I do have a quibble. No doubt the Devil is able to accomplish a great deal of mischief among those who see him as some sort of evil god, those with a morbid interest in him and his minions. That said, I would suggest that he is able to cause far greater damage among those who give him no thought at all. That is to say, both the materialist and the magician are bad, but the materialist is worse.”
We have much the same problem within the Christian subculture, and for much the same reasons. On one side of the spectrum is the extreme wing of the charismatic movement. These folks claim to see a demon behind every bush. They don’t catch colds; they are under attack by the sniffle demon. They don’t have wandering eyes, but are at war with the lust demon. Sometimes those in this camp are looking for demons behind every bush, because they can prove quite useful for excusing our sin — as Flip Wilson used to say, “The Devil made me do it.”
On the other side of the spectrum are those we do indeed believe in the demonic realm. The Bible, after all, talks about such things. But these folks tend to believe that demons exited the human stage at the same time the apostles did. Demons exist, we are willing to confess, but they have been sitting on the celestial sidelines since the apostolic age. What drives this, I’m afraid, is less a careful exegetical study of the matter, and more an embracing of the modernist worldview. We look down our noses at our brothers who pay attention to the spiritual realm not because we find such to be unbiblical, but because we find it unsophisticated. We think Martin Luther’s habit of shouting at the Devil, of throwing his ink well at him, is a sign that Martin was on the psychological brink, when perhaps we ought instead to conclude that he exhibited here the same wisdom that led him to declare, “Here I stand!” It may be that Luther mined the truth that our God is a mighty fortress from the same source where he discerned that this world is with devils filled, namely, the Bible.
That we rarely give the Devil a thought, let alone his due, ought to confirm for us this important spiritual reality — that the Devil is sitting on our shoulder, whispering folly into our ears. He is active not only in the dark corners of Africa, but in the dark corners of our hearts and minds. If we would seek first the kingdom of God, we will have to come to grips with the reality that he is trying to stop us.
His forces, we ought also to remember, are not only arrayed in the political and cultural battlefields. He does not have his hand in the Democratic National Committee only, nor does he work his magic only in Hollywood. He is also about the business of growing in us his diabolical fruit. He is at work when we are filled with envy, malice, fear, selfishness. He is waging war when he encourages us to spend our energies not pursuing the kingdom, but pursuing personal peace and affluence. He is practicing his dark magic when he encourages us to defend not the honor of Christ, but our own reputation and dignity. He is at work in the details of our lives, how we speak to our children, how we listen to our spouse. And sadly, he is winning great victories.
The war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman is not the exact same thing as the culture war. They intersect, but they are not one. Instead, the war between the seed and the serpent is the same thing as our war with the world, the flesh, and the Devil. May God give us the grace to win great victories in the little battles we fight each day. May He grant us the eyes to see the epoch-changing battles in our very ordinary lives.
When I was a boy and my grades weren’t quite up to snuff I was given to committing the false dilemma fallacy. My parents would grumble, and I would explain, “But I’m not so interested in acquiring knowledge. It’s wisdom I want.” Which is teenager for, “I don’t want to study, and I’ve found a pious sounding way to hide that fact.” My father wisely pointed out not just that acquiring knowledge doesn’t keep you from acquiring wisdom, but that in fact knowledge is necessary for wisdom. You can have knowledge without wisdom, but you can’t have wisdom without knowledge.
Knowledge, rightly understood, is knowing what is. Wisdom is knowing what to do about it. The two then are tightly bound together. Indeed one could argue that it is our folly that makes us so stupid. Romans 1 tells us that we know there is a God to whom we will give an account. But we don’t like what we know, so we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. We become fools. That reality trickles down to more mundane matters. We know we should not spend more than we have, but we want more than we can afford. Wisdom says to stick with the numbers. Folly tosses them aside.
Wisdom is the ability to act on what our minds know. Folly is doing what we want, being lead by our emotions. Remember the strange case of the moral outrage at Chik-Fil-A. The head of the company affirmed that the company supports marriage, and suddenly there was a firestorm. Boycotts were constructed, counter buy-cotts were called for and worst of all the mayors of Boston and Chicago vowed to use licensing and zoning to keep Chik-Fil-A out of their “fair” cities because of their passion for diversity, inclusiveness and square dealing. Or the common outcry we hear when some poor soul actually believes he and his targets are just evolved accidents and starts shooting. In both instances, people are upset. That’s a fact. Something must be done. Well, we don’t know if its wisdom or not until we know what will be done. What knowledge tells us is marriage is between one man and one woman. What wisdom tells us is that nothing can change that.
It should not surprise us when the world falls into folly. Such is what defines them. The Bible, after all, isn’t kidding when it tells us “The fool says in his heart there is no God” (Psalm 14:1). What concerns me is how worldly the church is in mimicking the same kind of folly. When our orthodoxy is challenged we do not defend it, but get upset, hurt, put out. When our orthopraxy is challenged we do much the same. We, as Christians, are to feel strongly. But we are to feel wisely, in accordance with the truth. What matters is what is, not what we wish was. We don’t think but feel that our feelings are their own justification, and that reality must adjust to them. And if it won’t, well then, we’ll pout, stew, grouse, grumble and hold the world hostage until we get our way.
God is true. Every man is a liar. Which is why we need to stop listening to our hearts, and start listening to the One who indwells them.
When we celebrate the Reformation, we would be wise to take the bad with the good. Or at least we ought to be on our guard. We rejoice in the recovery of sola Scriptura. We rejoice as well in the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. But we ought to be able to see the danger rearing its ugly head. When we put the two together, as we should, we tiptoe close to what my friend Keith Mathison calls “solo Scriptura.” Here a body believes that they alone, with the Bible in their hands, are the ultimate authority. “What need have I,” the solo Scripturist affirms, “of the church, or of the gifts to the church, like teachers? Me and my Bible can go it alone.” The danger is real, and we are to this day reaping the whirlwind of every wind of doctrine.
The Scripture is, of course, our only final authority. And we are all a part of the royal priesthood. The fruit of this, however, ought not to be an army of little popes, but a family working together. Some are called to serve as pastors/shepherds/elders. Some are called to serve as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. It is all too common, and a sad holdout of Rome that we think the former are engaged in spiritual matters while the latter are working for themselves. No one, however, when they have no water, forgets that the plumber is a servant and a blessing. It has been said that there is no such thing as Christian plumbing. Perhaps not. There is, however, plumbing like a Christian. There are plumbers who exercise dominion to the glory of Jesus.
We are all about the business of Reformation. The priesthood of all believers doesn’t make ministers out of cobblers. Instead it affirms the ministry of cobblers. We all have work to do, and all our work, if it is honest work, is kingdom building work. The Bible commends diligence, honesty, integrity not because there are natural graces but because they are the work of the Spirit of the living God.
The Reformation reminded us of our calling. And so we are called to remember the Reformation, and give thanks to the One who gave it to us. We, all of us, labor in the Lord’s vineyard, because every square inch of the created order is His vineyard. Every day. Every labor. Every place. Every believer. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and work hard in it.
