Having spent the better part of thirty years trying to decide whether to cling to the title “evangelical” on the basis of its historical meaning or to drop the title like a bad habit due to the many bad habits of evangelicals, I’ve come to recognize that labels are sticky things. I remember, when attending the Cambridge meeting of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, asking a friend, “Why can’t we just tell the world, ‘There’s nobody here but us fundamentalists.’” Behind me as I type is a painting of J. Gresham Machen, a giant of the faith who worked side by side with fundamentalists against theological liberalism in the early parts of the 20th century. I literally look up to the man. He is a high hero to me. He didn’t mind being grouped with fundamentalists, especially by those who denied the fundamentals. There are qualities of fundamentalists that I desperately wish described evangelicals. They have always been courageous, disinterested in the approval of men, all in on the authority of God’s Word. So why not just embrace the term?
Ironically, because I don’t want to be tarred with their weaknesses. While fundamentalism’s fundamental identity is wrapped up in their laudable commitment to the fundamentals, the next most easily identifiable marker is their propensity to practice what is called “second degree separation.” If evangelicals are too quick to call unbelievers believers, fundamentalists are too quick to call believers unbelievers.
Second degree separation works this way. It isn’t enough for the fundamentalist that a person rejects wrong ideas and the people who hold them. One must also reject persons who reject wrong ideas but not the people who hold them. If, for instance, John Stott embraces annihilationism I, along with the fundamentalists would object, disagree, tell the learned Dr. Stott, “What gives?” If, however, I continue to treat Dr. Stott as a brother not only does that make me a bad guy to fundamentalists, despite my agreement with them and disagreement with Dr. Stott on the issue, but ultimately also means that anyone not treating me like a bad guy is also a bad guy.
Here’s a real-life example. Just recently my dear wife posted something on social media encouraging me that we together are blessed to make known His name, to fight the good fight against the devil and his minions. A comment came quickly from an evangelical who, wisely, apparently has a great passion against the New Apostolic Reformation and the Word of Faith movements. Which led her to say that my wife’s words were the same words those aberrant groups would use. Which is true enough. I pointed out, however, that those nefarious purveyors of goofy ideas have also been known to say this- “Praise the Lord.” Which doesn’t make me, or my wife, or anyone, guilty of NAR or WOF errors when we too say “Praise the Lord.”
A fundamentalist is someone who is so busy looking for bad guys and bad ideas that they miss out on good ideas from good guys because of guilt by association. That’s a quality I can do without, though I face the same temptation. Affirming the fundamentals is something we all need to do better. Practicing second degree separation is something we all need to put behind us.
Reality TV may be TV but it never has been real. As a culture we’ve moved from idealized presentations of what is best about us through wholesome sitcoms like Andy Griffith and Father Knows Best, through more “realistic” social commentary sitcoms like All in the Family and MASH only to find it cheaper to take real people and give them the Trueman treatment. Put people on a deserted island, or in a diet or cooking contest or in a rehab program and let the cameras roll.
Just as video is said to have killed the radio star, so it may one day be argued the internet killed television. Our commonplace phones now carry with them better cameras than network news shows had just a few decades ago. Our laptops have stronger editing capabilities than those newtworks enjoyed those same few decades ago. And social media has invited us all to star in our own production of “This is My Life.”
The trouble is that while the presentations we make of ourselves on facebook or tiktoc or Instagram of whatever the app du jour is are not real, the people behind them are all too real. We may be playing a part, but the part is us. When Archie Bunker’s mouth committed macroaggression against George Jefferson, neither Carroll O’Conner nor Sherman Hemsley were wounded. No actual human was harmed in the creation of the humor, or the social commentary.
When all our world’s a stage, however, and we merely players on it, sound and fury harms real people. When the lines we give ourselves wound the other players, the blood is not stage magic. When we play Judge Wapner, convening our own personal court for public consumption, there are no rules of evidence, no penalties for perjury, no right to face our accusers.
I know my little “show” on the vast wasteland that is the internet signifies nothing. To adopt the wisdom of William F. Buckley, this conservative, when it comes to the internet, stands athwart digress yelling “Stop!” at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
Our problem belongs to us all. It is not just the other side, whether the other side is unbelievers, democrats or believers who think believers can be democrats. We all, on every side of every aisle, tune in, popcorn in hand, while real people have their lives dragged through the shameful mud that Jesus washed from us. We’re fools enough to think we don’t do it to be entertained but to fight on the side of the angels. The angels, however, are busy calling us all to peace on earth and good will to men.
A comic once made the astute observation that we are never “stuck in traffic.” Instead, we are traffic. In the same way, we don’t tune out the noise because we are the noise. Even my noise is the noise. The RC Sproul Jr. Show has been on the air for decades now. Long enough for me to not wish it on my worst enemy. Please, if you want to encourage the downtrodden, do it in private. If you want to challenge the Philistines, do it in private. If you want to grow in grace and wisdom, seek, as much as is possible with you, to live in peace and quietness with all men.
We are a litigious people. We not only like to sue one another, we like to avoid being sued, and having to sue. That is, we hire lawyers not only to write up contracts, but to help enforce contracts. Handshakes and verbal agreements have gone the way of the nickel cup of coffee. (And be careful with that coffee now. It just might be hot, and you wouldn’t want anyone to sue.) As a culture we can barely even agree to disagree.
On the other hand, we are likewise a licentious people. We want our pleasures, and we want them now, and nothing, we seem to believe, ought to stand in our way. We have our rights, and by rights, we will have them. Contracts, the saying goes, are made to be broken.
It is a strange marriage in a given culture. The great English novelist, Anthony Burgess, in his great work, A Clockwork Orange, speculated that cultures are doomed to alternate between two extremes of the pendulum. Sometimes a culture embraces a Pelagian view of man, what Burgess called the “Pel phase.” Here man is seen as basically good, and all restraints are inherently bad. This romantic notion, however, soon loses its romance, as sinful men without restraint begin to, well, sin. Their sin grows bolder and bolder until the culture reacts, and enters into the “Aug phase,” named for Augustine. Here man is looked at as fundamentally sinful, and restraints are all the rage. The state, in seeking to restrain sin, soon enters into sin, becoming ever more oppressive itself. Soon enough the people tire of a heavy handed state, and the pendulum swings back the other way.
His analysis, a case could be made, reflects similar thinking on the issue of the Trinity. Some cultures tend more toward the one, and exhibit a uniformitarianism, often manifested as totalitarianism. Other cultures tend toward the three, (or the many) and, as T.S. Elliot put it, the center cannot hold. Culture simply disintegrates in a fog of variety. The solution here is, of course, the Trinity, where the one and the many come together in peace. But what of the shift from a permissive culture to a repressive one and back again?
The answer here is covenant. Just as the Trinity brings together the one and the many, so covenant binds together (or marries, if you will) the legal and the familial. Covenant does not merely reduce down to contract, for such misses the inherent grace therein. God did not create Adam and Eve as tabula rasa (blank slates), placing them in a neutral realm and then waiting to see which way they would go. Instead, He blessed them with life and a garden. He put them in a paradise they did not earn, and He walked with them in the cool of the evening. This relationship, however, wasn’t some sort of anything-goes, if-it-feels-good-it-must-be-good relationship. Yes, God loved them. Yes, He blessed them. But He established that love and the boundaries by which it might be protected by making covenant. It is in this context, in the context of a loving father in relationship with His children, that God first establishes covenant with man.
Covenants, rightly understood, then, are not merely contracts, the legal forms of legal relationships. Neither are they formless sentimental feelings that bring people together as long as those feelings last. Instead, they are both. In covenant we have real obligation. Real promises are made, and real sanctions handed down when those promises are broken. But underlying all of that is grace, love, and relationship.
This is why Paul speaks of our heavenly Father this way, “It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). God did not wink at our sin because He loved us. Instead, because He loved us, He punished our sin in His Son on the cross. He wanted to justify us because He loves us. He did it justly by punishing His only begotten Son.
Grasping covenant is not only necessary for understanding the Word of God, but it is our only hope, culturally speaking, to escape the pendulum of which Burgess wrote. It was in fact our understanding of covenant that birthed the freest nation the world has ever known. It is no accident that the British, during the time of the Revolutionary War, referred to it as “the Presbyterian war.” We are a nation founded on the principle of covenant, beginning even before the Revolution with the Mayflower Compact.
A nation built upon covenant is a nation that recognizes the sinfulness of man, and so wishes not only to restrain the sinful impulses of the individual but also to restrain the sinfulness of men who have power in the state. As Lord Acton observed: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” To restrain the state we need checks and balances. We need covenant keepers in office. And we will have these things only when we in the church learn to keep covenant among ourselves. We will have faithful politicians when we are faithful to our Shepherd. The nation will be free again when God’s people are once again subject to their High King, and when God’s people rejoice in their Great Husband, even Jesus our Lord.
I don’t know. This text seems to settle the matter- “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD,” Leviticus 19:28. The anti-tattoo party is likely to pitch their tent here, perhaps wisely so. The pro-tattoo party, however, will object that this is either a. in the Old Testament and therefore invalid or b. ceremonial law, and therefore invalid. I have little respect for the first objection as it divides the Word of God. It is true enough that the God we serve has changed His law on occasion. It is also true, however, that He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. If an Old Testament law not being repeated in the New Testament means it is no longer binding then that perversion known as bestiality must be acceptable for the Christian.
When then of the second objection? Is this law merely ceremonial law, that which has been fulfilled in Christ? Would submitting to this law be incipient Judaizing, a going back to the shadows of the Old Covenant? Maybe. The distinctions theologians make about the law of God, dividing the Old Testament civil law (that law imposed on and by the state) from the ceremonial law (that law touching on religious ceremonies and concepts of cleanness and uncleanness) and both from the moral law (that law which simply tells us what we are required to do, such as the first commandment) are valuable and play an important part in sound biblical interpretation. Trouble is, our Bible’s do not come color-coded, wherein God inerrantly reveals to us what law falls into which category.
Scholars argue that this text is tied to certain cultic practices of the surrounding nations. But that doesn’t solve the dilemma. That is, God may have forbidden His people to get tattoos so they would be set apart from their neighbors (making it more a ceremonial law as we are now set apart by Christ). Or He may have forbidden it because there is some kind of inherent connection between marking our bodies and false worship (in which case it would be moral.)
Without a firm answer my counsel has been two-fold. First I would want to do as deep and honest as possible an assessment of my own motives. This is rather more serious than a mere, “Am I doing this for the dead? Heck no, since I don’t even know what that means.” We have to ask what, if any subtext comes with a tattoo. Am I trying to look cool, and what does that say about my security in Christ? Am I trying to look rebellious? What does that say about my submission to godly authority?
I am not confident that I could answer these questions with sufficient insight into my own motives, which then brings me to the second part of my counsel. While not at all suggesting that such an argument ought to bind the conscience of another, I would encourage, if asked, a Pascal’s Wager approach to the question. He, you will remember, argued about the Christian faith as a whole, that if you accept the faith, and it turns out to be false, it will cost you little. If, however, you don’t accept the faith and it turns out to be true, you’ll regret your choice eternally. (I understand there are serious problems with Pascal’s Wager, but I note it only to illustrate a similar point.) How then does this apply? One thing we know about the Bible- it does not require me to get a tattoo. It may forbid me to get one. Given that reality, and my own uncertainty, why would I want to get one?
This counsel is intended for those considering getting a tattoo. It is not intended as an attack, insult or judgment against those who have gotten tattoos. At the end of the day I’d have to conclude that this is simply a matter of conscience, and no one is bound by my conscience.
In the great war launched in Genesis 3 between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent there are two other great battles. On one side of the battlefield stands the enemy. The seed of the serpent hate God, would kill Him if they could. They hate His people, and all that they stand for. But they have a battle waging inside themselves because, for all their sin, all their fallenness and depravity they still bear the remains of the image of God. Their great dilemma is that because they are made in God’s image they want to live in a world that makes sense, that is understandable, and coherent. Because, however, the objective reality is that they are under God’s wrath, they must construct a world with no God, or at least, no judgment. It is impossible, irrational.
The other great battle is the mirror of this one. We are the seed of the woman, reborn, remade, reflecting the image of the Son, the express image of His glory. But we still sin. We have an old man with which to do battle. We want to serve God, to manifest His reign, to become like Jesus. But, we also want to be loved, to be respected, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, to be normal. Which weakness the devil is rather adept at exploiting.
Consider, as an example, politics. Because Jesus is our King, because He has set us free, we don’t, generally speaking, want bloated government. Because we aspire to honesty, we want a government of law, that will stay within its Constitutional bounds. Because we honor our fathers in the faith who labored through such issues with great care, we understand that just war is defensive war. Trouble is, the broader culture has veered so far from these basic ideals that to espouse them is not to be considered wrong, but to be considered unsophisticated, ignorant, crazy, unreasonable.
And so we retreat. We back down. We begin to scout out a new line of defense. We move leftward. Oh we’re careful to steer clear of the convictions of the seed of the serpent. We don’t go over to the dark side. We just get close enough that they won’t laugh at us. We do all that we can to maintain loyalty to Christ, while looking sane to the world. And we fail.
We cannot defend spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives for this strategic objective, but object to doing the same for that strategic objective. Abortions, all of them, even the ones that hide our shame, keep the numbers down among the underprivileged, or take down the human result of rape or incest are unconstitutional, unbiblical and indefensible. We cannot support candidates or legislation that seek to slow, limit, regulate murder.
My point, ultimately, isn’t about politics, but about our unbelief, our fear. We are willing to confess Christ before men, as long as the Christ we confess is palatable, normal, reasonable. We are willing to be Abraham’s kin, as long as we can pitch our tents close to Sodom. I fear, however, that while we think we are Lots, the truth is we are Lost. We live in a post-Christian west. It will become Christian again not when we can gently reason the world back home, but when we are again willing to be fed to the beasts in their stadia. Our faith is eminently rational. It is not in the least reasonable.
