Let the Church Seek God's Honor, Not this World's Acclaim

An addendum to last Friday's theme
by Phil Johnson

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.—James 4:4

cripture forbids believers to imbibe the world's values (cf. 1 John 2:6; Romans 8:5-6; Matthew 6:19-21) or set their affections on things of the earth rather than on heavenly things (cf. Colossians 3:2; 1 John 2:15; Matthew 16:23). Christians do not belong to this world. We are not beholden to the world. We cannot legitimately court the world's admiration or approval. And it is wrong to think otherwise. Jesus told His disciples, "If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (John 15:9).

That truth is ignored or rejected by multitudes of 21^st-century evangelical Christians who wrongly believe that if the church does not first win the world's friendship and admiration, we have no hope of reaching anyone for Christ. Some of today's largest and most influential churches even take surveys to find out the desires and ambitions of unbelievers in their communities. Then they plan their Sunday services accordingly, putting on a performance that caters to what people say they desire.

Popular televangelists follow a cruder version of the same strategy, promising people health, prosperity, and riches in return for money. They are today's equivalent of the medieval indulgence-sellers. These religious charlatans make their appeal blatantly and directly to "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life"—the same carnal cravings that 1 John 2:16 says are "not of the Father but . . . of the world."

Churches are full of people who are sinfully obsessed with the whims and entertainments of this world. They are desperate to keep up with various worldly fads and secular celebrities. They wrongly believe that if they embrace the icons of pop culture, the world will also embrace them and therefore be more open to Christ. So they wear the badges of worldly fashions; they echo the key elements of worldly wisdom; and they immerse themselves in worldly amusements. They cultivate an unhealthy appetite for attention, popularity, and worldly approval, convincing themselves that this is a valid evangelistic strategy.

Even in the highest echelons of evangelical academia certain scholars seem driven by an unhealthy yearning for academic renown. They become so desperate to win the admiration of their counterparts in the secular academy that they willingly compromise the truth and sometimes even apostatize completely.

The wish to be noticed and admired by other people is itself a carnal, illegitimate lust. Jesus condemned the Pharisees because, "They [did] all their deeds to be seen by others" (Matthew 23:5). They made a show of public piety to give the impression they were holier than anyone else.

Like the Pharisees, today's stylish evangelicals fancy the praise and recognition of other people. But unlike the Pharisees, most of them want to be noticed for being hip, not holy.

It dishonors Christ when Christians try to fit into the fraternity of those who hate Him. Scripture is very clear about this: "Friendship with the world is enmity with God."

According to Jesus, the only business the Holy Spirit has with the world outside the church is to "convict [unbelievers] concerning sin and righteousness and judgment" (John 16:8). Those are precisely the themes that are typically omitted when churches become too interested in winning the world's approval.

The church must get back to preaching the gospel, remembering that the message of the cross, when faithfully preached, is by God's own design "a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:23-24). The gospel alone is "is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). Christians should not be ashamed to proclaim it.

It's true that if we are faithful, many in the world will view us with contempt as enemies—and we must be prepared for that. "Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you" (1 John 3:13). The world put Christ to death, and He said, "A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you" (John 15:20).

Furthermore, our Lord Himself didn't shy away in shame or retaliate in anger. Indeed, "to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. . . . When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly" (1 Peter 2:21-23).

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From 95 Theses for a New Reformation: For the Church on the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, edited by Aaron B. Hebbard (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 144-45.

Three Things as I Prepare to Leave on Vacation

by Phil Johnson

1. egarding the previous post, let me underscore my answer to an objection that keeps coming up. One of my critics on Twitter stated it as succinctly as anyone. He wrote, "Attraction and lust aren't the same thing. [Therefore] your proposition collapses entirely."
   
   I'm aware, of course, that the words attraction and lust have different shades of meaning. Not every attraction entails lust. Attraction is the action or capacity of eliciting interest, affection, sympathy, fascination, or some similar eager response. It's possible—even desirable—to be attracted to things that are altogether holy and good, or even morally neutral, without being guilty of lust.
   
   Lust is a sensuous appetite or desire that is inherently sinful—or one that leads to sin. To explain the idea of lust in the sense Scripture uses the word, it is any desire or affinity for something that God has forbidden. "All that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world" (1 John 2:16).
   
   In short, you cannot define lust without the idea of attraction. What distinguishes a neutral attraction from a sinful one is both the object of desire and the source of your inclination. To desire what God forbids is a sin, full stop. And such desires are "not from the father." This is never treated as an ambiguous or murky concept in Scripture.
   
   
2. On an entirely different topic, several people have already eagerly responded to my call for potential Pyroposts and/or regular contributors to this blog. I haven't had time to reply to any of them yet, so if you submitted something and haven't heard back from me, please don't read my lack of response as apathy or negativity—at least not yet. It's been a terribly busy week. I am trying to clear my desk and calendar. Friday night I'm taking the redeye to NYC with Darlene and our eldest granddaughter for a rare week of pure vacation. I intend to evaluate contributors' submissions when I return.
   
   The upside is that if you intend to submit an potential blogpost and haven't done so yet, you have at least a week of breathing room. And if you submitted but wish to revise your submission, you have time for that, too.

Here are some guidelines and caveats for potential contributors:
• I don't intend to furnish reviews or critiques of articles that are submitted for consideration. That would be too time consuming.
  
• If I decline to post your submission, it doesn't necessarily mean I didn't like it or didn't agree with you. There are lots of fine blogposts out there that just don't fit PyroManiacs tonally or stylistically.
  
• Our tone and styles have been so far-ranging, you may wonder what I'm looking for. Here's a list:
   

It needs to be something I would agree with entirely. It needs to be crisp and riveting, not turgid or lackluster. Specifically, it needs to have elements of wit, passion, controversy, or high interest. For the purposes of this blog, it's better to be provocative or even comical than tedious or pedantic. Above all, you need to demonstrate amazing writing ability and sharp verbal skills.

Suppose you write a discourse on the doctrine of eternal generation that is completely accurate. I like the topic. The doctrine is certainly an important one. And it's an issue that many people are ignorant of or misunderstand completely. The topic would seem to be good fodder for a Pyropost. Nevertheless, if your writing style is dry or merely academic, even if you explain the doctrine in a totally orthodox and biblical way, it's probably not going to be something I would post here. There are several sound, conservative blogs out there publishing that kind of thing. We want PyroManiacs to stand out, not blend in.

3. I do intend to start posting the weekly Spurgeon excerpts in a few weeks. Kerry Allen has offered to help supply material. I intend to take him up on it.

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Regarding "Sexual Orientation," Evil Desire, and the Question of Moral Neutrality

by Phil Johnson

ull disclosure: Here is the development that finally provoked my sense of consecrated indignation enough to motivate me to start blogging again:



It's the latest "evangelical" superconference. As you see, their own ad copy tells us they are devoted to "supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same-sex-attracted, and other LGBT Christians so they can experience the life-giving character of the historic Christian tradition." The conference is being organized and supported by a large cast of evangelical thought-leaders—including some people generally assumed to be sound and reliable spiritual guides.

Fred Butler blogged about it yesterday, and it'll save me some work if you read his assessment of the actual conference itself. (You may need a translator for the cornpone-and-pot-likker dialect he slips into occasionally, but the cardinal points he makes are unassailable.)

Anyway, I want to comment on the conference's underlying theory, because it strikes me as a Really Bad Idea (and a patently unbiblical opinion). Nevertheless, it seems to be gaining traction rapidly—even among many influential and hitherto trustworthy evangelical leaders. It's the notion that homosexual orientation is morally neutral. The claim being made is that gay desires are not really sinful unless they are acted upon. So a person can fully self-identify as lesbian, bi-sexual, gay, transsexual, gender-fluid, or otherwise "queer" and be a church member in good standing—as long as he, she, xe, (or whatever) remains celibate.

I first began to realize how widespread that idea has become in the evangelical community two years ago, when the following Tweet was posted from the official Twitter account of The Gospel Coalition (TGC):

"It's more masculine to be attracted to men yet obedient to God than attracted to women and disobedient to God."

I referred to TGC's Tweet as a "hazy, misleading sophism" and added, "Lusting for something sinful is not 'obedien[ce] to God.'" A long argument ensued, with several friends on my FaceBook page and lots of my Twitter followers expressing shock and surprise that I would hold an opinion so egregiously out of step with postmodern political correctness. The "proper" postmodern opinion was succinctly stated by an exasperated commenter on my FaceBook page: "Desires are neutral until they are used sinfully," he wrote.



I fear that idea is finding currency among leading evangelicals. But it is dead wrong and subversive to genuine holiness. Scripture is chock full of statements emphatically condemning evil desires—from the Tenth Commandment (Exodus 20:17) to Jesus' words about mental and visual lust in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:27-29). What, after all, is lust but raw, sinful desire?

Those who argue that LGBT "orientation" is morally neutral often point out that an unmarried heterosexual man's attraction to women isn't necessarily deemed sinful, assuming he remains celibate. Why, then, should we consider a celibate gay man's attraction wrong, as long as he doesn't act on it?

I'd like to suggest two replies to that. First, a celibate heterosexual's attraction to women might indeed be sinful, if, say, he is attracted only to married women or underage girls. It would likewise be sinful if he allowed his interest in a particular young woman to become a fixation that distorts his perception of reality. A perfectly innocent attraction can even become a sinful passion for the person who indulges in immoral fantasies. No sane and reasonable person would try to argue that heterosexual desires are always wholesome. Second (and this is pretty straightforward:) Scripture says inordinate affections are sinful and commands us to mortify them (Colossians 3:5). I didn't make that up.

But my Bible uses the expression "evil desire" in Colossians 3:5. How do I know if a desire is "evil"?

In short, Scripture teaches plainly that any desire is sinful if it entails a wish for what we cannot righteously have.

Far from "supporting, encouraging, and empowering" people beset with perverse sexual desires, Scripture repeatedly urges us to repent of all sinful desires—especially those wicked sexual passions that so easily entrap young minds (2 Timothy 2:22; 1 Peter 2:11). All of us—not just LBGTQ folk—are commanded to renounce and mortify every desire for anything God has forbidden. Those who think people with impure or sinful desires can wear their peculiar lusts as badges of group identity merely demonstrate that they haven't a clue what repentance means. Furthermore, to omit or purposely obscure the Bible's clear call to repentance is to show contempt to one's unbelieving neighbors.

Let me be clear: I, too, have friends and close neighbors who identify as LGBT, and I abominate the way some Christians seem to think it's OK to heap unbridled scorn, mockery, or insults on them. All our neighbors should be shown Christlike, loving compassion with the dignified respect that befits anyone who bears God's image.

But to encourage them in their sin or offer them the false comfort of approval for their sinful desires is a serious breach of the Second Great Commandment.

Let's not try to make any sin seem less wicked than it is.

I would not necessarily single out homosexuality as the chief example of abominable sin if our culture didn't constantly insist on treating homosexual desire as a privileged category. Sodomy is only one of several notoriously odious abominations, and Jesus expressly said the hard-hearted unbelief of those who have actually seen and know the truth is a worse sin than all the evils of Sodom (Matthew 11:24).

Furthermore, I'm happy to assert, emphatically, that any evil attraction is appallingly sinful, including that heterosexual tendency to want to click on clickbait when the link features a picture of some scantily-clad tart.

But this one class of sins (LGBT etc.) is the only one that demands special status and unconditional affirmation.

So perhaps the main point I want to make will perhaps be clearer if we consider one of the sexual perversions that hasn't yet successfully lobbied for social acceptance and special rights.

Here's a real-life example:

During my first year at Grace to You (1983), a man wrote our ministry looking for affirmation and encouragement. He wanted us to agree with his belief that mere attraction to a forbidden object is not inherently sinful. He gave a convincing testimony about his conversion from a life of sin and rebellion. He said he was now serving as an AWANA leader in his church. Then he got specific about what he was asking us to sanction.

He said he felt sexually drawn to "large farm animals." (Those were his exact words.)

I wrote back, citing Matthew 5:28, and told him it is our position that the desires he was describing are not morally neutral at all but a sinful perversion that he needed to repent of and vanquish through the means of grace. I'd give him the same answer today, even after reading reams of sophisticated evangelical reasoning trying to argue that "attraction" and "lust" are categorically different.

One other point needs to be made before I wrap this up.

People sometimes suggest that all sin is equally vile. That's simply not true. It's true that all sin is damnably wicked, but Jesus Himself made clear that some sins are worse than others (John 19:11; Luke 10:12-14). And Scripture clearly portrays certain sexual perversions (lesbianism and bestiality among them) as unusually and unnaturally perverse. (See, for example, Romans 1:26-28.)

All of this raises an important question: How far do the culturally-engaged evangelical trend-setters want to take the notion that mere attraction is morally neutral? I hope we'd be concerned about the sanctification of someone who insisted on self-identifying as a pederast living a celibate life. Or my cowboy correspondent who harbored a secret desire for a closer relationship with his livestock. Or people drawn to any number of kinky fetishes too perverse to even talk about (Ephesians 5:12).

Yes, all of us struggle with evil desires. That's part of our fallenness. Even Paul struggled with covetousness—evil desire (Romans 7:7-25). But Paul's whole point was that those desires (even if never acted on) are sins to be mortified, not prize ribbons to be worn as badges of one's identity.

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The Root of the Matter

by Phil Johnson



he issue underlying practically every popular evangelical trend we have ever decried here on PyroManiacs is the same moral defect that was the besetting sin of the Pharisees—namely, a craving for human applause. The current ranks of evangelical leadership are filled with men who care far too much about what the world thinks of them. The intellectually sophisticated among our Top Men tend to covet academic esteem, especially from unbelieving scholars. Those who are less—um, cerebrally endowed—just yearn to be admired for being über-cool. Between those two extremes are a legion of evangelical movers and shakers who think they can achieve both goals. Lately, they have sought to do this by cultivating a noisome air of political correctness.

Scripture could not be more clear about the value of this world's approval. Jesus said, "Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets" (Luke 6:26). And, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (John 15:18-19). And, "you will be hated by all for my name's sake" (Matthew 10:22). And, "Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets" (Luke 6:22-23).

It's a theme that runs throughout Scripture, starting with Cain's murderous contempt for his own brother's righteous offering, and finally summed up in 1 John 3:13 with this admonition from the Apostle of Love: "Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you."

Christians are expressly forbidden to embrace the world's values or seek its approval: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world--the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:15-17).

The world is of course our mission field, so we're commanded to love people (including our enemies) as God does (Matthew 5:44-45). But worldly values, entertainments, and ideologies are full of spiritual poison. The current evangelical infatuation with such things is tantamount to treason against God. That's what James was saying when he wrote, "You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4).

The notion that we must win the world's esteem before the gospel can do its work is, I'm convinced, a spiritually crippling error. But it's also the presupposition underlying most of the trends currently vying for widespread acceptance within the so-called evangelical movement. In reality, for three decades or longer the broad movement has been softening its commitment to (and in many cases totally abandoning) the two most important evangelical convictions—sola Scriptura and sola fide. Those cardinal biblical doctrines are now being replaced by secular dogmas: "wokeness," "social justice" (a liberal counterfeit, not biblical justice), critical race theory, gender fluidity, and an ever-increasing number of ideologies bred and popularized in secular academic circles.

That now includes the normalization of LGTBQ perversions by evangelicals who argue that illicit desires in and of themselves aren't really sin; they are morally neutral expressions of one's "sexual orientation." (More on this subject in the days to come.)

The "gospel-centered" movement that many of us were so enthusiastic for just one decade ago has gone with the drift. The Gospel Coalition has for some time now shown a pattern of embracing whatever new moral issue or political cause is currently popular in Western culture by arguing that this, too, is a legitimate "gospel issue." They are by no means alone in this. Everything from the latest Marvel movie to gun control legislation has been deemed a "gospel issue" by some savvy evangelical writer at one or more of the most heavily trafficked evangelical websites. But if everything is supposedly a gospel issue, the expression "gospel-centered" is rendered meaningless.

As I said in a Tweet earlier today, we must not abandon the focused simplicity of Luke 24:46-47 in favor of a social gospel that encompasses a large complex of racial, economic, and political issues. Every denomination, every educational institution, and every church that has ever made that error has seen a quick demise. I for one don't intend to watch in silence while the current generation repeats that mistake.

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Phil's Back

by Phil Johnson

t's been more than six years since I retired from the blogosphere. For half a decade, whenever someone would ask if I missed blogging, my honest answer was, "Not at all. Never even once." There wasn't a single moment in all those years when I thought, I wish I were still blogging so I could write something more than a Tweet about this issue. In my seven years of blogging, I had posted on practically every issue I really cared about. I ran out of opinions.

Some History
I began blogging in 2005 because I was concerned about my fellow evangelicals' blithe acceptance of the so-called Emerging Church Movement. It seemed as if every elite evangelical agency—from Christianity Today to the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC)—was foolishly hoping the Emergent Narrative would be The Next Big Thing. They were practically cheerleading for the movement! D. A. Carson was a rare voice of dissent, but his reply to the Emergent idea was (in my view) much too tepid to be an effective critique.

I had tried posting some opinions in the comments sections of a couple of popular blogs, but they made it clear they were not interested in dissenting views. One famous blog closed their comments completely when I tried joining their discussion. So on the last weekday of May 2005 I formally opened my own blog. My main goal was merely to articulate and catalogue my own misgivings about the drive to postmodernize evangelical Christianity. I had no expectation that anyone outside my circle of friends (and my Sunday school class) would be any more interested in my opinions than those blogs that had shooed me away when I commented.

My first real blogpost went live the day after Memorial Day that year. It was a poke at the "Young, Restless, Reformed" movement, though I wrote it a year and a half before Christianity Today and Collin Hansen gave that movement its name.

Right away, readership far exceeded what I anticipated. I immediately realized that I had inadvertently jumped into the deep end of the pool without any floaties.



PyroManiacS: The birth of the Group Blog
So six months in, I invited Dan Phillips and Frank Turk to partner with me in the effort. I'd never met either one of them before, but I'd read their comments on line, and I knew 1) that they shared my views about the folly of postmodernism, and 2) that they were gifted writers with minds full of verbal mischief, more than capable of the kind of critique I wanted to level against the Emergent movement. So we launched the team blog in January of 2006.

We wrote a lot of good, thoughtful posts attempting to provide Emergents with the "conversation" they were saying they wanted. But we quickly noticed a couple of surprising trends. First, the more purposefully rational and irenic our content, the less discussion our writing evoked. Second, no matter what we wrote or how we wrote it, there were swarms of smug postmoderns prepared to deconstruct our prose, pleading for every kind of "tolerance" other than tolerance of others' ideas, preaching love and kindness while eagerly spoiling for a fight with us.



The High-Water Mark
Frankly, making fun of postmodernism's foolish inconsistencies did far more good than trying to reason with postmoderns. Looking back, it seems to me that the Po-Motivators® may well have done more to open readers' eyes to the dangers of evangelical postmodernism than all the text we wrote combined. I'd hate to think those posters were the blog's high water mark, but it's true that the advent of the posters marked the turning point after which our postmodern critics dropped some of their trademark arrogance, and some of them actually left the Dark Side and joined the discussion we were having.

Anyway, the Emergent movement finally died, and we're thankful for that. When we knew the fad was well and truly over (that the popular movement phase had passed, anyway), blogging seemed less urgent and less appealing. I formally retired in 2012 on my 59th birthday, and most of the evangelical blogosphere breathed a deep, cosmic sigh of relief.

At the time, I remarked to anyone who raised the subject that although Emergent was dead and discredited as a movement, it had unleashed countless postmodern ideas and deconstructionist methodologies into the evangelical community, and these would bear some nasty fruit within a decade or less.

I see the fulfillment of that prophecy in a myriad of ways today—including the emboldening of Andy Stanley, the rise of a quasi-evangelical brand of Critical Race Theory, eroding definitions of "biblical inerrancy," evangelical waffling on the moral questions raised by people who classify their own "sexual orientation" as LGBTQ, evangelicals still craving academic recognition or popular esteem from worldly minded people, the recent drift of Russell Moore and the ERLC—and other related or similar issues.

So Here's the Thing . . .
I suddenly have the itch to write about some of these things. Not every day, of course, but from time to time—perhaps weekly or so. Dan Phillips is now blogging to a bigger audience at PJ Media, and Frank Turk is more determined than I to maintain his retirement from controversial social media. Still, I'd love to get occasional contributions from them—or from others, such as Darrell Harrison, Justin Peters, Josh Buice, or anyone else who shares both my passion for biblical Christianity and my contempt for every effort to make the evangelical movement more politically correct. Consider this an open invitation to submit articles you think might be of interest to my readers. If you write enough blogposts that fit, I'll give you a set of keys to the blog and make you an official PyroManiac.

Watch this space for my first actual issues-oriented re-entry into the blogosphere. If the Lord wills, I'll post it sometime next week.

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Against Mission Drift

by Phil Johnson

've been retired from blogging for nearly four years now, and I almost forgot how to get back in here. Very few things (or people) could have persuaded me to come back.

But I do sincerely love Thabiti Anyabwile, and after I poked at him in a Tweet, he directed some comments at his blog to me. He deserves a reply. So I'm back today for one post, and one post only. I'm not wishing to prolong a controversy. I strongly agree with the gist of Thabiti's remarks in the video excerpts I posted early Thursday morning. One of the logical corollaries of that excellent 2010 T4G message is that if brothers in Christ find themselves engaging in a prolonged, bitter controversy over something extraneous to the gospel, they have clearly gone off-message.

Moreover, as Thabiti rightly said in 2010, "The gospel addresses this irreducible minimum: that individuals must repent and believe" in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. To view Christian ministry in terms of "'winning the culture, engaging the culture, changing the culture' as ambiguous as it is, the language itself signifies that mission drift is already under way." All I really want to do is re-emphasize and reaffirm that point, which he made.

Also, full disclosure: I have a son who is a police officer who currently works nights in one of the most dangerous precincts of Los Angeles. My concerns about Thabiti's mission drift are undoubtedly magnified by my conviction that some of the rhetoric peppering his Twitter feed over the past two years aids and encourages a movement whose influence has put my son's life at significantly greater risk. Based on how the media, millennials, and most Internet forums have handled the issues of racism and police work, it seems fair to assume that the sector of society where my son must live and work is far more openly hostile to cops than to young black men, and Thabiti's post-Ferguson rhetoric hasn't helped. Thabiti and friends are not going to diminish the very real problem of racism or remedy the cancer of corrupt or criminal cops by portraying law enforcement itself as an evil institution and automatically assuming every police shooting is unjust. If anything, such rhetoric has widened a wedge in the church that (by Thabiti's own admission) should not be there at all.

Anyway here are a few of my thoughts in response to Thabiti's post. I'll reply to him directly:



Dear brother,

Thanks for your gracious feedback and your willingness to have this exchange with me. Without getting into a lengthy debate (which I'm sure would be unprofitable for both of us), I want to underscore just a few vital points in reply to your Thursday blogpost:

1. I'm no doctor. I'm not a veterinarian. I've never even swept the floors at CVS. I recently removed my own stitches, but I don't think that qualifies me to be called "Dr." Dr. Phil is a totally different guy, in every way you can possibly imagine. The only thing I have in common with him is our first name and our home town.
   
2. I'm not sure why you began your post by suggesting my Thursday morning Tweet was prompted by some mention of the word justice from you. I said nothing whatsoever about justice (which I strongly advocate, without excluding criminal justice). Nor did I say anything about social justice (which strikes me as one of those terms like agitator, having a controversial history and carrying a significant load of baggage). What actually did goad me to post excerpts from my favorite Anyabwile message was your tweet on Wednesday recommending an avowed socialist, secularist, and ardent supporter of abortion as the most suitable candidate for African American voters.
   
3. You write, "If I understand this correctly, I’m the one now suffering 'mission drift,' one swept so powerfully to the left that the Bible and gospel have lost its center in my ministry." Yes. That's precisely what I allege, using your excellent 2010 description of how we can tell "that mission drift is already under way."
   
4. I do realize, of course, that "'justice' and justice in [all] its [true] 'social' implications are biblical terms and ideas." Again, your use of the word "justice" had nothing to do with what or why I posted that video excerpt. But since you bring it up, let me make the point that Genesis 9:6; Romans 13:4; 2 Thessalonians 3:10; and Matthew 26:52 are just as surely tenets of biblical justice as Proverbs 31:8-9 and Jeremiah 5:28. The movement you have aligned yourself with has (to borrow your words) "a curious way of ignoring those texts and any application of them."
   
5. Trigger warning: In this paragraph I will defend some politically incorrect terminology. Regarding the word agitator, you are correct that I was totally unaware that this word brought to mind racist connotations for anyone. I think you should investigate the actual history of the word, or easier yet, Google it alongside the word "communist." You'll find its dominant polemical use in the 20th century was to describe fomenters of left-wing political passions. (The Russians even invented a very useful term, agitprop, combining "agitate" and "propaganda" to describe the literature and systems by which Soviet Communist officials disseminated their views.) Anyway, if certain black leaders have commonly been labeled "agitators," I suspect it has rather more to do with their political opinions than with their race. And in any case, let me assure you that my use of this term had nothing whatsoever to do with race and everything to do with the Tweet you posted Wednesday (and its follow-ups), which understandably gave the impression to many who follow your Twitter feed that you are now stumping for Bernie Sanders. (Apologies to anyone who may think the verb "stump" is a microaggression against amputees. I don't mean it that way.)
   
   
   
6. You have repeatedly declared your support for #BlackLivesMatter (and the protests they have organized). But you have done this in a way that systematically blurs a crucial distinction between the slogan and the movement that goes by that name.
   
7. I don't know of any Christians anywhere who (in your words) "can’t seem to bring themselves to even utter the phrase [or] to say publicly, in principle, 'Black lives matter.'" Together with all my Christian brothers and sisters, I affirm emphatically that Black lives do matter—including the lives of unborn black infants. Many of us also want to stress that #BlueLivesMatter, too. And though loud voices in the BlackLivesMatter movement have already dismissed this as a racist slogan: All lives matter. We must make that confession together as well, because it is an essential tenet of biblical justice. Every human soul is precious—and each one will give account to God. That's why the gospel matters more than any injustice that might be committed against us as believers. And Christians who link arms with angry pagans in civic protests that threaten to become riots are actually behaving unjustly, by the biblical standard. Those seem like necessary conclusions of the premises you set forth in that 2010 message.
   
8. Furthermore, what the organization calling itself BlackLivesMatter.com has done with that slogan is a gross corruption of the biblical concept of social justice. Specifically, their angry rhetoric and efforts to portray all law enforcement officers as emblems of institutionalized injustice puts every policeman (regardless of ethnicity) at greater risk.
   
9. You famously stated: "It’s tragic that the country’s biggest sin is racism and the Church’s biggest omission is racial justice." I don't think either part of that statement is true. Perhaps the country's most talked-about sin is racism. There are at least a hundred churches in my town, and on any given Sunday if you could sample them all, you'll hear countless lectures on prosperity, relationships, social ills, politics, or the latest charismatic prophecies—almost anything except Scripture. You're far more likely to hear a lecture on the evils of racism than a clear exposition of some biblical text. So I'd say the greatest omission in the church is clear and accurate teaching of the Word of God. But more to the point: in a nation where millions of unborn infants are slaughtered annually, it seems pretty clear to me that the worst sin against blacks in America isn't racism per se, but the murders of countless unarmed black babies. Statistics suggest that twice as many blacks are killed by abortion as by all other causes combined. I know you are opposed to abortion, Thabiti, and you've even compared it to the sin of slavery. When you originally wrote that "the country’s biggest sin is racism," I dismissed that rhetoric as hyperbole. But your recent comments in the context of this year's election do give the clear impression that for you, abortion simply doesn't rise to the same level of urgency as racism. You seem to be moving steadily that way since you began to get pushback after your comments in the wake of the Ferguson riots and your continued defense of the "Hands up, don't shoot" myth. It does seem to me that your moral scales have become imbalanced.
   
10. Finally, given the subject matter that consumes your blogposts and Tweets nowadays, I don't know how you can seriously claim there has been no shift in your thinking or teaching since 2010's T4G message.

I wholeheartedly agree with the comments I posted from Thabiti 2.010. If that seems like I'm taking a "shot" at you, forget me and just listen to what you yourself were saying in 2008-2010.

Collateral reading from Todd Pruitt on the blurring of lines between "Black lives do matter,: and #BlackLivesMatter: Black Lives Matter or black lives matter?

 

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IT'S COMING: Together Again, for the First Time

by Dan Phillips

Today, we snap aside the veil and show you what we've got ù so far. What could we possibly do that's never been done before?

It's the first Pyromaniacs conference! as you pretty much guessed.

Details are still being firmed up, and we'll let you know as matters are finalized, but This Is Where We're At Right Now:

Speakers:

Phil Johnson

Frank Turk

Dan Phillips

...and maybe a surprise guest speaker:

(We're also looking into some music)

Dates:

January 23-24, 2015

Place:

Houston, Texas

Working Theme:

Sufficient Fire

(The sufficiency of Scripture, ablaze)

What difference does it make when you really, truly believe that Scripture is sufficient? It makes all the difference. We'll show you.

A whole lot more should be available within the next month, Lord willing. But we did want to let you know the basics early, so those who want to come can start planning.

This is the first time we've all spoken at the same conference. But you know it isn't the first time we've been together.

Join us! Tell your friends.

 

...then hurry on out, y'all.

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ANNOUNCEMENT — from the "Well, It's About Time!" Department

by Dan Phillips

Fond of long introductions as I am not, I shall cut straight to the chase...or at least to its opening sequence:

Keep calendars and budgets clear for 
January 23-24, 2015

Price flights to 
Houston, Texas, USA, Earth

(Some) details to follow... Thursday.

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Strange Fire Conference #7: Phil Johnson

by Dan Phillips

I'll combine my comments on Phil's sessions, Is There a Baby in the Charismatic Bathwater? and Providence Is Remarkable.

Phil Johnson's voice is, to my mind, one of the sanest and most helpful on a host of issues related to Charismaticism.

Before I knew there was such a thing as a Phil Johnson, I had been in the movement for the first years of my Christian life, and I'd given it a lot of study and thought. I'd even written a book (as-yet unpublished) on the person, work and gifts of the Holy Spirit, which countered such branches of Charismaticism as existed by the 90s. I'd read every book I could get my hands on. Yet what I encountered in Phil's posts at the original Pyromaniac site expressed the most insightful thinking and lucid, incisive commentary I'd ever read. Phil's absolute classic, You're probably a cessationist, too, is a perfect example.

So I wasn't in any suspense as to whether the time invested in hearing Phil would be well-spent.

In the first session Phil responded at great length to Dr. Michael "I-Denounce-All-Aberrations-Though-I-Can't-Put-My-Finger-On-Any-Specific-Ones-Just-Now-I'm-Really-Busy" Brown, as well as to the rationale for all Charismatic leaders' blithe neglect concerning the chicanery and shenanigans with which the movement is riddled. In response to Charismatic leaders' unintentionally telling plea that they just don't have enough time to denounce all the false teachers in the movement, Phil appositely pointed to texts such as Titus 1:9. Turns out that denunciation of error is definitional for elders. In the Bible, that is. Go figure.

Phil also responded to the squawks about MacArthur's earlier observation that some Charismatics are guilty of blaspheming the Spirit. Phil observed that attributing to the Spirit words He hasn't said and deeds He hasn't done — the heart and soul of Charismaticism as to its distinctives — is blasphemy, and it is a sin. It is not the blasphemy against the Spirit of which Jesus spoke in Matthew 12:31, but it is blasphemy, and it does injure the name and majesty of the Third Person of the Trinity. That Charismatic leaders not only merrily tolerate and turn a blind eye to the constant flow, but indeed run cover and develop rationales for it, lowers hopes for locating a healthy infant in the bilge.

Phil noted the Charismatics' instant impulse to circle the wagons at even the most obvious criticisms, and asked "If you bristle at every critique of your movement, what is your proposal to keep from constantly accumulating filth in your bathtub?"

As an example of the patently obvious, Phil dwelt on the so-called Lakeland Revival, and its ringleader Todd Bentley. He detailed Bentley's love for violence, braggadocio, and outrageousness, to the exclusion of anything remotely Christlike or Gospel-fragrant. Phil alluded to this post, which sketched out the Biblical framework with which any Christian should approach any claim to revival.

Contrast that post with this post, published less than two weeks later by Charismatic obsessive Adrian Warnock. Trumpet blast? or dithering, fence-straddling equivocation? Which stance was warranted — nay, demanded — by Scripture? You judge, and do not forget as you hear Adrian and others crying over and lamenting the Strange Fire conference. That is a classic example of how the movement polices itself. In the sense of "not."

Does such dithering suggest a commitment to Scripture as sufficient? or to an unhealthy need to defend virtually any form of charismatic antics at virtually any cost — so long as it's done in the name of the Spirit?

Phil noted that there is monstrous potential for evil when one imagines that his imaginations are the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He also observed that the claim that God "told" me something when He in fact did not is itself a monstrous evil which leads to disaster, and which in fact was a death-penalty offense in Moses' time. Yet disgraced "prophet" Paul Cain was endorsed for years by Wayne Grudem, Sam Storms, and John Piper. In fact, John Piper still insists that Cain "really prophesied."

Then there's Mark Driscoll, who was broadly promoted by John Piper, and who attributes super-porn-o-vision powers to the Spirit of God in the most astonishingly irresponsible rant one can imagine from someone so prized by so many, and who ran cover for apparently unrepentant Charismatic modalist prosperity-gospel preacher T. D. Jakes. Indeed Charismatic leader Driscoll, who has frequently been spotlighted on high-traffic Reformed-type blogs, reportedly includes fellow-Charismatic Jakes among fundamentally-Christian tribal leaders.

Breathtaking. Not in a good way. It is as if Driscoll wanted to underscore the need for the alarm sounded by MacArthur, Johnson, and the others.

Phil's conclusion is that Charismaticism, as to its distinctives, has produced a century's worth of dreck and sludge, with nary a tot to be found.

In his talk on providence, Phil alluded to Driscoll's silly (and unintentionally revealing) linking of sufficientism with Deism, and the notion of some Charismatics that unless we posit God doing constant miracles, we see Him as distant from creation. Phil drew on the rich vein of revelation in Scripture about God's meticulous sovereignty and His daily control and oversight of absolutely all that happens (cf. Ps. 115:3; Eph. 1:11; Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3, etc.). He said that God directs our thoughts and our steps (cf. Prov. 16:1, 9; 20:24). There is (to say the least!) no need to imagine a non-Biblical category of semi-hemi-demi revelation to account for His doings.

Phil observed that Driscoll, despite an odd reputation for being some kind of Reformed pastor, betrays an appalling ignorance of the Reformed emphasis on the doctrine of providence and a failure to grasp what Scripture teaches about God's immanence. Phil used Matthew 10, with its assurance of God's control against the background of a perilous mission. He asked what comfort Romans 8:28 is, if we do not see God as actually working in all things.

Phil made the Biblical case that the miraculous is not central. The greatest prophet (according to Jesus) — John the Baptist — did no miracles. Biblical miracles were indubitable, overwhelming, defying any other honest explanation; they were outbursts of Divine power; and they attested God's prophetic messengers. They weren't finding a parking spot, or a normal pregnancy and delivery.

Can God put a thought into my head to get something done? Indeed; but when He does, it is a remarkable providence, not a prophecy. God uses everything providentially — including my sin! But a bad idea (or deed) isn't good nor fraught with divine authority just because God uses it for good.

God is nearer and more involved in our lives than most Charismatics believe and teach.

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First post
Second post
My overall summary report to CBC
Third post
Fourth post
Fifth post
Sixth post

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