Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts

22 May 2015

All about that coffee, 'bout that coffee (no tea)

by Dan Phillips

It started Monday morning when I checked in through Facebook, and received a witty reply:


That put an idea in my mind, and the rest, as they say... well, you know what they say. For you who don't do Twitter or were doing something else (like ministry), here's highlights — and, like SHST, I'll be adding updates probably until about noon Texas time:

Actually, this does it better:
(To be clear: this Michael Brown, not the Ferguson Michael Brown)
...and finally...
UPDATES

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Posted by DJP on Friday, May 22, 2015

19 November 2014

Pitting Holiness against Holiness

by The Late Frank Turk

As most of you know, I spent most of my childhood reading comic books in the peace and quiet of my room.  On one of those days, my youngest brother came in looking for some affection from his older brother who had his head in a comic book, and the lad innocently asked, "Frank: Who would win in a fight - the Hulk, or Captain America?"

Now: of course Cap would win in a fight, but that is not the point of this brief blog post.  The point is to look with some bewilderment at the question "Which is better: Justification or Sanctification?"

Some of you right now are recognizing that this post is reworked from another one which can't be found anymore on the internet, but I thought the matter was good enough to bring it back from oblivion.  Why? Because the point of theology is not to pit holinesss against holiness to see which one will win -- or whether one or the other is made less for its lack of victory.

Paul, to avoid that sort of untoward dismay, put it this way to good Timothy: "As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm."  In Paul's view, it was not a question of whether justification was better than sanctification: rather, it was that justification created sanctification, and those who were teaching and doing otherwise were jangling in vain.

Of course Jesus comes first; of course we are nothing but sinful wretches without him; of course good works do not save us and we have no confidence in them for that.  But for us to say that the good works are therefore not "better" than that which makes them possible seems to forget that we are justified for the sake of doing good works, or as Paul also said, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

When my brother asked me if a Gamma-Ray mutant could smash the Sentinel of Liberty, he was asking me a question to show how much he knew about something I definitely loved.  He was trying to connect with me over something which should be some common ground -- and at 5 years old, he didn't realize it wasn't the smashing which we both enjoyed most of all.  There's something like that going on here.  I think those of us who are in various stages of reformed intoxication ought to be careful of it. We should be much more worried that we have idolized one kind of holiness in such a way that it has dismantled and buried another kind of holiness which God says is part of the total package.  It leads us to say things like, "my sanctification is more imaged than real," which is an explicit denial of WCF XVI.2 and XVI.3 -- not to mention the letter of James and the last half of the letter to the Galatians.

While we may affectionately ask the question which is "better" in order to establish our bona fides amongst ourselves, the truth is that somehow the thing which ought to be caused is the way we do the things God expects us to do -- and it causes the ordinary grace God has ordained in this world which shows the lost who God really is.

We certainly have an invisible and invincible holiness, but if it doesn't cause a holiness which the world sees and is conflicted over -- that is, one with a beauty it cannot deny, but also it cannot resist hating -- what kind of holiness is that?

This brings to mind another personal anecdote.  When my son was a baby, he was of course the most precious and fantastic child ever born (until his sister was born, at which time I was overcome by the number of perfect children God had given me and my wife) -- but he was also quite perplexed by vocabulary.  For example, every kind of non-vegetable was called "chicken".  And in this state of minimalistic linguistic development, he was frequently out of words for what he meant to say or what he wanted to say -- so much so that he quickly mastered one phrase with gusto: "I! CAN'T! DO! IT!"

This occurred to me recently as he went on a ministry trip with his youth pastor and some of his guys to the local juvenile detention center to share the Gospel with some of the fellows there.  As we debriefed on the way home, my dear lad was telling me of this young fellow he spoke with who said he accepted Jesus, but wasn't sure that he was ready to turn away from sin.  This young fellow confided to my son, "I guess I just have to do better."

My boy had been waiting for more than 15 years to say this to a person for a theological reason, and he was quite proud to tell me that his response to this incarcerated fellow was, "But you! can't! do it!"

Which, of course, sounds a lot like reformed theology -- or at least one kind of reformed theology.  Of course nobody over here affirms that we do anything for justification, or denies that even the regeneration necessary to receive justification is God's work.  But sometimes (as we visited above) we get it in our heads that because we cannot earn justification, justification is better than sanctification, and that somehow being holy ought to cause us to be unburdened by actually being holy.  Because that fellow in prison thought that his participation in the holiness God gives to those who are in Christ is optional, or some kind of hobby, he sounds suspiciously like someone who says something like, "I am so thankful for my right standing with God because, after all, my sanctification is more imagined than real. But my justification is more real than imagined."

Compare that to Spurgeon's recent tweet in the same vein:


Spurgeon doesn't say his sanctification is mostly imaginary: he says that sin becomes more obvious and our grief over it increases as we draw nearer to God.  Paul, the greatest of sinners (he says), doesn't for a moment doubt he is not yet perfect -- but he also doesn't see that as a ground for saying that his justification is somehow better than his sanctification (or vice versa).  It seems to me that the same fellow who wrote 1Tim 1:15 also wrote 1Cor 11:1a.  For Paul, it's not a question of which is better -- one adorns the other, and one causes or draws out the other.  They are both necessary, and one is not a Christian without both.

So as my boy and I discussed this fellow in prison who is not ready to "try harder," we didn't discuss the fantastic irony and religious metaphor he found.  We discussed the idea that while we don't do a thing to be saved by God -- the saving is all of God -- saved people have something right now to show for this salvation.  We aren't pitting an eternal decree of holiness against an immediate inclination toward holy deeds, or shouldn't be anyway.  We are glorifying God, and enjoying him for ever, starting right now.








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Posted by FX Turk on Wednesday, November 19, 2014

03 September 2014

Insanely good deal on Frame's Systematic Theology

by Dan Phillips

I'm currently reading through and enjoying Frame's systematic theology.

The Kindle edition is currently on-sale at Westminster Books for $1.99. That's an insanely good price, and I had to share it with you.

As you were.

2 Kings 7:9... sorta...

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Posted by DJP on Wednesday, September 03, 2014

27 August 2014

Theology vs. Racism - a primer

by The Late Frank Turk

In 2008, Thabiti Anyabwile spoke for about 66 minutes on the theological problem of using "race" as away to see our differences, and someone ought to review those 66 minutes as soon as possible.  I'm embedding that talk here, unabridged, for your edification.  Also: so that person who ought to review it can find it easily.

We have an obligation to minimize us and maximize Christ.  It is to be displayed in the local church.



6 problems that are not immediately apparent to us when we trade in race:

1. The abuse of people and scripture in the name of "race". The category causes us to treat God's word and other people with the wrong assumptions.
2. It's a short walk from positing "race" to practicing racism.  It leans to into racism.  It assumes that I love people (only) like me.
3. It hinders meaningful engagement with others. It is inherently Ad-Hominem, against the man.  Ethnicity is permeable and subject to change; race is non-negotiable and an impasse.
4. It undermines the authority of Scripture. Race (as biology) denies that Scripture defines us and establishes our identity.
5. It causes us to resist the Holy Spirit.  It creates a barrier to sanctification and illumination.
6. It undermines the Gospel.  If we deny our common ground in Adam, how can we ever find our unity in Christ?

Our fundamental objective is not to build ethnic shrines.  Our project in Christ is to be living monuments to the living image of Christ.









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Posted by FX Turk on Wednesday, August 27, 2014

07 January 2014

C. S. Lewis on Hell: really deep, oft-quoted, really wrong

by Dan Phillips

Love reading C. S. Lewis. Always have. Doesn't mean I think he's always right.

For instance, take one of Lewis' most oft-quoted observations on Hell:
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.
This is quoted and re-quoted all over the place. I just read it again, in Ortlund's little book that treats parts of Proverbs (48). Why do we like this Lewis quotation so much?

Well, I think we like it because its binary, and many of us like binary. In fact, I suppose I could say there are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who like binary, and those who don't.

Sorry. Anyway.

That Bible is certainly binary on most things that matter: two wisdoms, two ways, two ends. This Lewis quotation is like that: "only two kinds of people." We like that. And we like that Lewis exalts the Lordship of God, makes clear that knowing God, belonging to God, necessarily involves an embrace of His will.

I daresay many people really, really like this snippet because it makes Hell seem less objectionable. It takes the heat (no pun intended) off us — and off God — and puts it all on the lost. "They're in Hell because they want to be," we say, echoing Lewis. Oh. Well then, that's not so bad, is it? We thought of Hell as a place God threw people, screaming and wailing and miserable. Terrified, not wanting to be there. But heck (again, no pun), if they want to be there anyway...

Yes, well, except that's just the thing. They don't want to be there. There is no evidence whatever that they want to be in Hell. This quotation, at least as commonly used, is mostly fudging, and mostly balderdash.

Nobody wants to be in Hell! Look at the actual folks who are sent there. Look at the folks in Matthew 7:22f. Are they thinking, "Oh, terrific, what a relief; we were afraid we'd have to go to Heaven and, you know, that would really suck"? Heavens (again, no pun), no! Every last one of them wanted to be in Heaven, expected to be in Heaven! Jesus' pronouncement was unexpected and unwelcome.

What of those in Matthew 25:41ff.? Again, not a one hears what he expects to hear. Every one expected to hear an "Attaboy! Come on in!" from the Lord. His pronouncement of doom is a shock.

What of the lost in Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30 and so forth? Do these sound like folks who are being sent where they want to go? Do they sound happy, satisfied? Weeping? Gnashing their teeth? Are those happy sounds?

The image of God actually saying, "Oh well, look; I'd just as soon you come be in My Heaven; but if this is what you really want, if you insist, here you go: you can go over there and be rid of Me" may work in the short run. We don't have to explain the justice of God sending people to Hell. He's hardly even doing it. They're doing it to themselves. "They're there because they want to be," we say, and we feel done.

Except, again, it just isn't Biblical.

First, God doesn't say "Thy will be done," to the thwarting of His will of decree. Ever. To anybody. Check Psalm 115:3, Proverbs 16:4, Daniel 4:35, and Ephesians 1:11, for starters. God says "My will be done."

Second, if God did say "Thy will be done," none would ever be saved. We hate God, we flee God, we want nothing to do with God or His law (Rom 3:11-12, 18; 8:7). We are saved because God sovereignly, supernaturally transforms our will (Ephesians 2:1-10). If He did not, all would be lost.

Third, God does this transforming work in the hearts of some men, not all (Matthew 22:14; 2 Thess. 3:2)

Fourth, Hell isn't where you go to get away from God. There is no getting away from God (Ps. 139). That in part is what makes Hell Hell: eternal existence under the unrelenting wrath and displeasure and judgment of God. However, it is the ultimate, ultimately-failed destination in the flight from God.

Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, what sinful men actually want is not to be allowed to go to Hell. What men actually want is for God to go to Hell. Men actually want to do their will (this much Lewis has right), and they want to get away with it. They want no interference and no negative consequences. God represents both. Leaving a binary situation of two choices:
  1. We must repent and bow the knee to God; or
  2. God must be eliminated.
And which one does your Bible tell us is the choice of fallen man, left to ourselves?

Lewis' thoughts could be used with adjustment, I suppose. If I were to reword him to make it more Biblical, it might go like this:
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "My will be done, despite your will." All that are in Hell, are there because they rebel against God. Without rebellion against God there would be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. Our problem is that none of us seeks those things, so long as we keep trying to be God instead of seeking Him. And none of us does seek Him — until God in sovereign grace transforms us.
What puzzles me is how many Reformed types who know their Bibles continue to use Lewis, without a bit of reworking.

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Posted by DJP on Tuesday, January 07, 2014

06 November 2013

A word about J. I. Packer on Charismatics

by Dan Phillips

A brief aside from the series on the Strange Fire conference:

J. I. Packer provides a perfect example of exactly what John MacArthur, everyone else, and I have pointed out for years.

Packer is a man who earned a good name for himself by some excellent works such as his introduction to Owen's Death of Death in the Death of Christ, such as Knowing God, such as Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and such as Fundamentalism and the Word of God.

Then Packer took that good name and lent it to providing a lot of covering fire for the Charismatic movement in his book Keep in Step with the Spirit.

It is that book that is being triumphalistically quoted all over the blogosphere just now — by writers who, I would wager, to a man have no idea that they are perfectly illustrating the whole point of the Strange Fire conference.

I wonder how many of those quoting the book have read it, as I have. If they read it... do they really feel that this is a clear-minded, clear-eyed, rigorously Biblical treatment of the issues? I can't imagine how, unless their desire for a certain conclusion rules out their ability to discern — which, oops, was another major reason for the conference.

Let me just adduce one passage as an illustration of the sort of thinking one finds often in the book. It is one of many sallies Packer attempts at the issue of tongues. He does note (224) that
present-day tongues speaking, in which the mood is maintained but the mind is on vacation, cannot be confidently equated from any point of view with New Testament tongues.
Wow. That's quite a damning statement, is it not? Earlier (177), Packer had said:
The gift is regarded as mainly, though not entirely, for private devotional use. Subjectively, it is a matter of letting one's vocal chords run free as one lifts one's heart to God, and as with learning to swim, confidence in entrusting oneself to the medium (the water in the one case, babbling utterance in the other) has much to do with one's measure of success and enjoyment.
Now: Does that sound like a good thing to anyone whose thinking is formed by Biblical revelation? So isn't that a basis for sounding a sharp note of alarm, calling for Christians to disown the practice, and warning the faithful to keep far from it?

Not to Packer. Listen to this, again from page 224, and ask yourselves the ever-vital question: "What verse is he on?" —
...it does not seem inconceivable that the Spirit might prompt this relaxation of rational control at surface level in order to strengthen control at a deeper level. Wordless singing, loud perhaps, as we lie in the bath can help restore a sense of rational well-being to the frantic, and glossolalia might be the spiritual equivalent of that; it would be a Godsend if it were.
There y'go. Tongues: it's like loudly singing babble. In a bathtub. Ahhh, now there's a bumper-sticker for you.

In another place, Packer says "Even if (as I suspect, though cannot prove) today’s glossolalists do not speak such tongues as were spoken at Corinth, none should forbid them their practice..."

Now, roll that around in your mind for a bit. What is Packer saying, all told? It is this: What passes for speaking in tongues today is giving control of your mind over to a force you don't know or understand, and letting that force control your body. Now, mind: this isn't what the Bible describes. But hey — if it makes you feel good, you kids call it what you like, do what you feel like doing, and have a good time!


Could having written a hundred books like Knowing God make that a Biblically, pastorally responsible statement?

And this book is the big-name cover for Charismaticism?

There are many other problems with the Packer quotation that's being passed around. But just keep this post in mind every time you see the Packer quotation about how Charismaticism is surely of God brought out as heavy-duty big-name discussion-ending trump-card cover. It's not the conclusion of a very reassuringly-conducted study.

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Posted by DJP on Wednesday, November 06, 2013

27 August 2013

The gift of Parbar

by Dan Phillips

At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar.
(1 Chronicles 26:18 KJV)

Mm. Parbar. Deep stuff, eh? Oh yeah.

Back in the 70s and 80s, this was a chucklesome verse to many. Some claimed it as their life-verse. If I remember, it was the "motto" of the Christian satire magazine Wittenburg Door.

Why? Well, because nobody knew what "Parbar" meant. The translators of the KJV apparently didn't, so they just transliterated it. Same with the ASV, the NAS, and other versions.

So you could expect "Parbar" to come up in conversations among certain wags. After all, it was the ultimately wild-card. Nobody knew what it meant; so it could mean anything.

See where I'm going with this?

Remember when Mark Driscoll claimed the Holy Spirit was showing him pornographic footage? Note that he just tosses out, "This may be 'gift of discernment.'"

It may? On what exegetical grounds, pray? Mark doesn't share them. He just throws that out there, and then does what Charismatics must do: he tells select stories.

Now, lesser mortals such as you and I dursn't criticize this practice, because
  1. At one point there was something called "gift of discernment" (?);
  2. That was in the Bible (if he means 1 Cor. 12:10);
  3. Nobody's absolutely sure what that is; so...
  4. Maybe this is that!
  5. You don't want to criticize something in the Bible, right?
Driscoll knows he's had the experience, it's got to be valid, we should probably call it something... so let's spin the wheel and pick one of those gifts concerning which Chrysostom, writing just a few centuries after the (hel-lo?) close of the Canon said
This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. [John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XXIX]
Because, who knows? Could be!

But then again, really, since the whole point is that we've got this imperative (we must validate the Charismatic's experience and his special powers), then heck: why not call it the "gift of Parbar"? I mean, do you know it's not the gift of Parbar? Well, do you? Of course you don't.

So there you go!

See, that's where the modern inventors of Charismaticism/"continuationism" went wrong. Parham and his poor dupes were originally seeking the Biblical gift of tongues. That is, they expected to be able to speak in unlearned human languages supernaturally. And when they started babbling and gobbling, they were convinced it had to be that, that Biblical gift, that falsifiable gift with defined contours and edges. So they went off to mission fields, expecting to be understood by the Chinese... but, yeah, you know how that went. Natives shrugged and, in effect, made little circular gestures by their temples. Incomprehensible babble.

So here's where the first-gen errorists went afield. They were sure their experience was valid (Charismaticism 101), so then took some large hammers and saws to the Bible, and eventually changed the interpretation of what "tongues" meant from, well, what it meant, to what they were doing. They took a well-understood gift and invented something that gave cover to their experience.

Never should have done it.

Should have just just said they got the "gift of Parbar."

See?

Same thing for all their other redefinitions. If they wanted some holy status for their errant feelings and hunches and "leadings," they should never have assaulted the well-known and well-defined Biblical phenomenon of prophecy, and embarrassed themselves by trying to redefine it to suit their experiences. If they were unwilling to call a hunch a hunch and take responsibility for it, just call it "the gift of Parbar."

Same with these bizarre little clairvoyant parlor-tricks, called (with zero exegetical support) "word of wisdom" and "word of knowledge" — they could be just subcategories of the multifaceted and glorious "gift of Parbar." Who knows? Who can disprove it?

I know some of you are seething, but if you've been here any time at all you know: we have this discussion every time we talk about Da Gifts. Every time we're trying to talk God's Word, someone is sure to ask, "So, what about when X happens? or when Y happened in 1843? How do you explain that, huh?" As if this is what really should consume the Christian, because we already have so well mastered all that actually-in-the-Bible stuff.

So look, here's my modest proposal: If we aren't going to start with sound exegesis of the Bible and be content with that... well then, I've got my answer:

Got to be the gift of Parbar.

Hey. It's as Biblical as all the other stuff. Every bit as Biblical.

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Posted by DJP on Tuesday, August 27, 2013

12 October 2012

I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY! (1 of 6)

by Frank Turk

Before I write this post, let me tell you a story.  And before I tell you a story, let me tell you something else.  A few weeks ago I wrote a dainty little post which did the political math for you regarding the upcoming Presidential election in the US, and that very day it was said that now, since Phil is gone, the blog has jumped the shark.

Look: this has never been one of those Christian-in-name-only blogs, one of those alleged "GodBlogs," where the name of Jesus is a cuss word and not the name of a good and great savior.  We have spent years talking about the theological issues which ought to inform our every-day lives.  And most of our readers?  They're not pastors.  So if we can talk about everything from modesty to how to respond to immoral people who think you ought to call their immorality a virtue (excluding, of course, eschatology), Politics is going to come up.

In that, I realize what makes this distasteful to many of you (the ones who aren't Mennonites, anyway)(Mennonites with Computers reading blogs being my favorite onion of irony ever) is that, at the end of the discussion, this looks like I'm telling you (and if you follow his other blogging and tweeting, DJP as well) that I will be voting for Mitt Romney for President.  The reason for that is simple: whatever I want to call it to make myself feel better about it, of course that's what I'm doing.  If he is not the next President of the United States, Barack Obama will be -- and it will be his second term, which means Mr. Obama has nothing to lose.  So here's the thing: even if President Obama's no worse than he was in the last 4 years, that's plenty of reason not to give him a second chance.  In the worst possible case, it is by a long shot better to choose the devil we know from Massachusetts than the Devil who needs to go back to Chicago. Or Honolulu.  Or wherever it is he's going to build his Presidential Library.

So I'll just say it: the several posts going up today all effectively tell you that I am voting for Mitt Romney for President.  If you stop reading there, you deserve what befalls you -- including any missives which you have deleted from the comments.

Dan and I have agreed that it's worth-while to address these questions once only, and get them out of the way.  Some will have the comments open; some will not.  Do with them what you will.  I expect that the response to these post will cause me to close the comments early anyway, so get your licks in while you can.









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Posted by FX Turk on Friday, October 12, 2012

10 August 2012

Moral Imperatives

by Frank Turk

As a lead, Friday is usually "Best of Phil" day, and I have changed it up on you this week because someone on the internet is wrong, and of course my office is holding all my calls until the matter is resolved.  "Best of Phil" will return next week.   BTW, if you are an able-bodied Blogger user and you wanted to join the unpaid and over-worked TeamPyro staff for a thankless job of reviewing the Phil Johnson Archives to provide us with a weekly "Best of" post using an anonymous account and receive no recognition for it, please contact me at frank@iturk.com.

SERIOUSLY.

Also:
[1] Adult theme.  Homeschool families are warned and should act appropriately
[2] Pack a lunch.  This goes way of the 1200-word guideline for posting here.  Again.


I was alerted to this story earlier this week by a concerned reader, and it's one of those stories where all manner of addled thinking comes to the surface from everyone on the spectrum of lifestyle blogging -- from the secular liberals and conservatives to the panoply of Christian bloggers in the weird polygon of ideas bounded by points produced by mixing the adjectives "conservative," "liberal," "radical," "progressive," "traditional," "biblical," and "missional," with the proper noun "Christian."

Let's start here: praising or condemning any private letter without considering context or source is, I think, probably of limited value.  Most people don't write private letters with any thought that they will be shared publicly -- let alone shared on a global platform -- and there ought to be some kind of  filter we have in place to read anything written in that mode.

The other thing we ought to put in place before discussing this is a very simple question: "What must a parent do when his child is trapping himself in a mistake (willful or otherwise)?"  The question is not really changed up a lot when the child is an adult child.  It may actually be a more-important question when the child is an adult because dealing with an adult trapped in a mistake is, in all cases, dealing with a person who is removing all the means at his own disposal frankly to recognize his own ways of destroying himself.  A child can be restrained from destroying himself; an adult will simply do it and be destroyed unless he does what any reasonable adult would do -- and take good advice at face value.  I think it's utterly unquestionable that a loving parent will give the best advice he knows how to give.

But this assumes something which, I think will not be assumed in this discussion: declaring and embracing homosexuality as a lifestyle is a self-destructive mistake.  You know: embracing the homosexual lifestyle is not dangerous because it is likely to make you a target of violent hate crime.  It's true enough that a homosexual is 10 times as likely to be a victim of a hate crime in the United States as the average citizen, but let's unpack that.  According to the FBI, the last year they have a uniform crime report for is 2009.  In that report, in the general population the likelihood of being a victim of a hate crime is 0.2 per 10,000 citizens; being a LGBT victim of a hate crime occurred at a rate of 2 per 10,000 citizens -- which, the be fair, is 10 times as likely, but still not a raging epidemic of violence.  You're five times more likely to be the victim of a fatal traffic accident than you are to be the victim of a LGBT hate-motivated hate crime if you are a homosexual.

But think about this: the CDC reports that when we observe all reported cases of STDs in the United States, 63% of primary and secondary cases of Syphillis occur in the LGBT community.  If that population is, as they say they are, 10% of the population, that means it is 15 times more likely to contract Syphillis in a LGBT lifestyle than it is in the general public.  If the LGBT population is more realistically 3% of the population, it means that the LGBT community is 55 times more likely to contract Syphillis than the average person in the general population.  That's not to mention the problem of AIDS at all.  This isn't happening because there is hate against the LGBT community: this is happening because of how that community conducts itself towards its own members.

So when a father wants to discuss this matter with his son, who is coming out with his confession of his situation, a father ought to be cut some slack if he is deeply and grievously concerned about his son's safety from a strictly secular and humanitarian standpoint.  He ought to be excused if he sees the confession more as a resignation from "inner turmoil" to "active danger" so terrible that in some sense, he wants to give up all hope and protect the rest of his family from the consequences.

But then, from a Christian standpoint, there is a problem greater than self-harm: there is the problem of sin.  A Christian father talks to his son about sin -- not just from an accusatory place as if, as a father, one has arrived at the dizzying heights of human sanctification, but from the place as (one hopes) a battle-scarred soldier in the war against sin in one's own life.  A father, it seems to me, confesses his own sins against his own son when they are apparent to him -- and seeks forgiveness.  So when a Christian father has to talk to his own son about this young fellow's sin, it is not as an impeccable jurist with nothing on the books against himself, but as a known felon who is, at least, confessed as guilty of his crimes -- and working to seek the solution to sin in his own life before seeking to apply it to the unsuspecting lives of others.

They say that you can't "live the Gospel," or "obey the Gospel" (in spite of, for example, 1 Pet 4:17), but you can, in fact, live as if the Gospel is completely true.  It has necessary consequences -- and if you are caught up in all the things you cannot do which Christ must do, you will overlook all the things which you must do if the Gospel is true, and is for you.  For example: living as if we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So to be uncontroversial for a moment, let's imagine that my son came to me and said, "Dad, I have something to tell you, and it's not going to be something you want to hear.  I know something about myself which has always been a part of me, and I just am tired of trying to deny it: I'm a heterosexual, and I'm going to live a heterosexual lifestyle and follow all those desires because that's who God created me to be.  I have to be honest with myself and I can't fight it any longer."



What should my reaction be?  Maybe I could say this: "Son: you are who you are.  Wear the right PPE, keep off the drugs, and make sure you do what makes you happy."

But listen: that's frankly moral malfeasance.   That's ignoring all the things frankly-wrong with embracing physical urges as moral imperatives.  If you said that to a 12-year-old, you would be brought up on charges for fostering delinquency; if you say that to a 25-year-old, you are giving a grown man license to ruin his life and the lives of others.

Before you go on, put my view of it to the test: watch any two episodes of the Maury Povich show (which, unbelievably, is still in new-episode syndication).  Tell me that the version of heterosexuality represented there is just fine -- just what two consenting adults ought to be proud to do.  If that is a totally-acceptable moral way of living, then don't bother to read the rest of this post.  If that way of living is morally-sound either my post here is utterly false, or else you have no way to understand what it is saying.  In either case it will be of no use to you.

My view of it, then, is that somehow the topic of sex is, in anyone's view of it, governed by some set of principles which are not utterly dictated by the reprehensible slogan, "The heart wants what it wants," and all its more-repugnant cognates.  What makes Will Ferrell's oafish lout characters tenable at all is that everyone knows it is utterly and patently obscene to behave that way -- and their failure to see themselves clearly is what makes them laughable (if not actually funny).

But if this is true, what should a father do for his son who has to confess that he must live that lifestyle because that's who God created him to be?  I would say that, in the first place, a letter is not at all adequate.  It would take 10,000 more words to say that in a way which would convict you, but I'll settle for this: you can't mail in your paternal responsibilities to the next generation any more than you can mail in your duties as a husband or even an employee for a decent company.

That said, if it were a letter to be sent, or you wanted to round up your thoughts before sitting down with this young fellow, maybe something like this would work for starters:
Dear Son,

You've made a confession to me that you do not expect me to receive well, and I admit that what you have said has wounded me, because it is not what I wanted for you. In fact, it is not what I still want for you, which is only the best personally, mentally, and spiritually. While it took some sort of single-mindedness on your part to admit this to me, I think it was difficult in part because you knew it would hurt me. I am not going to lie to you: I am, in fact, hurt.

What puzzles me is that you want me to accept this for you and from you when you know I don't think this is what's best for you. I can accept that this is what you want for yourself, and that it seems good to you right now, and that in some sense you cannot help yourself but feel this way. But let's face it: there are many things we know we want which are not even good for us, let alone right or worthwhile.

Since you have made your confession about your situation, let me confess mine: I have never really been a good man at all. I could make a list here of all the times I have failed you, and your mother, and your siblings, and my employer, and the elders at church, and so on -- but I'll bet you can make that list also. You may remember some things I have forgotten, and I'll simply stipulate to the entire exercise. I want you to know that I know I am not a good man, and I come to this problem we now face as a man who, at the end of the day, can't advise you from the moral high ground.

I can only advise you, my son, as a man who has spent his life utterly at the mercy of Jesus Christ.

You know: in some sense, I feel like I love you, so it's easy for me to have done things for you all our life together like buy you clothes and give you a house to live in and feed you and play games with you. But let's face it: every day has not been a day full of duckies and puppies of paternal love overflowing from me to you. Some days I was angry at you, or tired of your shenanigans, or just tired from work and marriage, and I didn't feel loving toward you -- I just felt sort of numb, or worse: burdened by you because you were a handful (as any human being is). In those moments, I was what I know I am, and I didn't want to do what I knew otherwise was right. The difference between those moments and this moment, with you, is that in those moments, I knew that my feelings and urges and dissatisfaction were wrong, and did not justify failing to do the right thing.

Having said that, let me make a confession: there were a lot of those days. That's not because you were especially bad, but because I am. And when I knew my own sin, my own weakness, my own unwillingness to do what I would do if I were full of emotions to point me in a direction that looks so good to other people, I knew that I needed a savior for more than just some kind of final victory: I needed him for a victory today, minute by minute, to become a person grateful for what he has done for me. In some way, I had to remember that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

So I didn't just accept that Jesus loved me, or even that he died for me -- as if that kind of story really means anything except as a spectacle anyone could watch in a movie. I accepted that his obedience made out of love, which caused him to want to die on a cross for a person like me, was so that I would know how to obey when I was personally out of love, and out of strength, and out of patience, and all that was left was the way I felt when I felt like I wasn't made to do any of this stuff.

Now: so what? What does that have to do with your confession that this is who you really are? It is my answer back to you, which I think somehow you do not expect: this is also who I really am. The difference between you and me is that I think I need to be saved from it, and you think you do not need to be saved, but rather accepted, so that other people's acceptance of your problem is substituted for real redemption and real resolution.

I love you. I want what is best for you. What you are committing to right now is not it. I am willing, after all these years, to die for you, or die with you, in pursuit of putting the sinful things we both face here and now to death. But I cannot tell you that your decision today is the right decision, and I can't tell you that your confession is anything but a resignation to do what is right in your own eyes in spite of what you know to be true about the moral and spiritual order of the world. We both have a problem -- and it is the same problem. Thank God, we both have a solution, and it is the same solution. Please do not toss out the solution, because it is the only one for you. I am praying for you, and will pray for you, and until you accept the solution, I am also weeping for you.

With love in spite of disappointment,

Dad.
Now, consider it: if that makes any sense at all, what ought we to then say to our son who, frankly, changes only one word in that confession?  What if his confession is that he is lazy?  Or full of rage?  or what if he says he wants to be a liar?

Why would we think that we would respond in any way to those things except in this way?

Now in utter seriousness: if the sin is homosexuality, and that is just like all the other sins we would ache over if our son or daughter was convinced it was simply "who they were," why would we not address it just like this -- like the source of death which Christ died to overcome?

Do we not believe the Gospel?  If not: OK, but lets cut the malarkey with the conferences and books and websites and projects with the "G" word in the title.  But if so, let's get ourselves together on this subject.  Let's Gospel Up.  Let's get serious about the reasons we need the Gospel so that we can get serious about expressing it to our friends and children who need it as much as we do.








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44 comments
Posted by FX Turk on Friday, August 10, 2012

01 August 2012

Our Bad Taste

by Frank Turk

Louis Berkhof says that the Goodness of God is one of three primary moral attributes of God – the other two being God’s Holiness, and God’s Righteousness.  Just to get the smart person quotient satisfied early, here’s specifically what Berkhof says in his Systematic Theology:
We speak of something as good when it answers in all parts to the ideal. Hence in our ascription of goodness to God the fundamental idea is that He is in every way all that He as God should be, and therefore answers perfectly to the ideal expressed in the word "God." He is good in the metaphysical sense of the word, absolute perfection and perfect bliss in Himself.   …

But since God is good in Himself, He is also good for His creatures, and may therefore be called the fountain of all good, and is so represented in a variety of ways throughout the Bible. …

All the good things which the creatures enjoy in the present and expect in the future, flow to them out of this inexhaustible fountain. And not only that, but God is also the highest good for all His creatures, though in different degrees and according to the measure in which they answer to the purpose of their existence. (Systematic Theology, 70)
That’s quite a mouthful.

It’s obvious that Berkhof is working hard to be as precise as possible to make his point as clear as possible, but the Psalmist takes a different approach.  The psalmist here tells us where our hope lies.  And let’s be clear: the Psalmist, in Psalm 34, is hopeful.  The Psalmist is somehow aligned with the Presbyterians who wrote the Westminster Catechism 3000 years later.  When they asked the question, “What is the chief and highest end of man?”  They responded, “Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”

TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD IS GOOD, he proclaims.  He is actually a little more emphatic than that, because the Pslamist doesn’t just say “the Lord” here in proper reverence: he says instead, “TASTE AND SEE THAT JEHOVAH IS GOOD!” “TASTE AND SEE THAT YAH-WEH IS GOOD!”  That is: this is not God-in-Theory. This is not a system of understanding an ineffable and incomprehensible God.  This is the God of Joshua, the God of Moses, and Joseph, and Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham, and Noah.  This is God who called Samuel by name and gave him explicit instruction to anoint David the King of Israel.  This is God in Person, God in Fact, The God who has a living history of making promises, and keeping them.

And that’s the Psalmist’s trope here: Somehow, we have a God who is as real as a delicious meal.  Somehow, we have to get our mouth ready to receive him.  That’s actually what John Calvin says about this Psalm: “the Psalmist indirectly reproves men for their dullness in not perceiving the goodness of God, which ought to be to them more than a matter of simple knowledge. By the word taste he at once shows that they are without taste; … He, therefore, calls upon them to stir up their senses, and to bring a palate endued with some capacity of tasting, that God’s goodness may become known to them.”

Without overstating it, the Psalmist is saying that God is REAL – and that the primary way we know God is REAL is that He is knowably Good.

This is actually our problem, isn’t it?  This is actually the problem that we as people face all the time.  We have lousy taste.  I’m not talking about the way we dress, or the colors we paint our homes or the way we decorate them, or even the kinds of jokes we tell.  I’m talking about keeping our sensibilities on what God intends for this world.  And when bad things happen – things which are inexplicably bad, things which, let’s face it, one Sunday school lesson cannot possibly explain – our bad taste tends to take over.

We forget the broad ways in which the fact that God is Good which must anchor us.









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15 comments
Posted by FX Turk on Wednesday, August 01, 2012

25 July 2012

Not Baby Talk

by Frank Turk

One of the first prayers many of us either learned as children, or taught our own children, is a very simple prayer at mealtime: “God is Great, God is Good.  Let us thank him for our Food.  Amen.”  We do this, I suspect, because we want to teach our children to pray – we want them to understand what is being said when we pray so that it’s not just magic, so that prayer for them is not something they can’t understand.  We want them to know that they can talk to God and understand that He is listening.

I think that it’s a good idea.  In some sense, I wish someone was doing that for us at every stage of our lives so that we can somehow remember that God is listening to our prayers.  I’m afraid that what happens is that as we grow in wisdom and stature and knowledge, eventually we become our own reformed-type people, we get to the book of Romans, and we get overwhelmed by the general Greatness of God – so much so that when we get to Romans 8:26 and we hear the apostle tell us that we don’t even know how to pray, we somehow “grow up” past the place where a prayer like “God is Great, God is Good, let us Thank Him,” sounds like baby-talk.  It sounds like something we have grown up past.

But then we have a week this like last week, where the real world intrudes on our systematically-precise faith.  It’s a week where everyone in his right mind has to ask the question: “If this is the state of the world, how can God be even on-duty – let alone be Good?”  I don’t know where you live or work, but this question came up this week as I talked to the people I know.  The events of the world, the real dreadful tragedies of the world, made this a relevant question this week.  And it made writing a Sunday School lesson about the attributes of God a lot less academic than I expected it would be.

We are studying the attributes of God this summer in this class, and there is quite a list of things guys like Tozer and Pink and Berkhof tell us about the qualities of God.

When we consider this God we are talking about from the Bible, we’re talking about the Omnipotent God whose very words speak the created order into being.

He’s the Transcendent God, the Holy God who is utterly unlike us.

He is the Self-existent God and the immutable God who does not need us for anything, and who has no needs to speak of, and who never changes.

He is the Omniscient God who knows everything, and cannot be taught anything – he’s never surprised or somehow set back on his heels so that he has to resort to Plan “B”.

He is an utterly just and righteous God who cannot abide sin and must punish the guilty.

They say that some attributes of God are incommunicable and some are communicable – that is, some are virtues which God alone possesses, and others are traits or virtues which we can emulate even though we will never get them perfectly right.  And they say that all of these attributes, which are somehow distinct, are also not at all discrete – so you can’t really talk about God’s Just character, for example, without talking about His Long-Suffering.  You can’t talk about his Omniscience without talking about this Immutability, and so on.

But in some sense, then, our expectations of God might be to hope that, at best, he ignores us.   Because when we compare ourselves to Him, He might mean a lot of trouble for us.

Asking God for help could be like being the Tin Man asking Oz the Great and Powerful for help –

Me:  um, God?  May I have a new heart please?

GOD: YOU DARE TO COME TO ME FOR A HEART, DO YOU? YOU CLINKING, CLANKING, CLATTERING COLLECTION OF CALIGINOUS JUNK!

And he’d be right to say that to us – or to say nothing at all to us, to simply leave us to our disobedience, to our trouble, to our ultimate destination of whatever it is he might have decided it to be.

So what hope do we have in this world if the only person or authority who can help me that has all power, all knowledge, and who never changes?  Shouldn’t I only expect him to treat me like the not-much-of-nothin’ that I am?

But one attribute, it seems to me, is the category without which God cannot be God.  And it’s the one which we, sadly, somehow see as the preschool attribute of God – the one we hand over to children because they cannot mistake it or break it.  I'm talking about the Goodness of God.

I'll be talking more about it in the coming weeks.










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25 comments
Posted by FX Turk on Wednesday, July 25, 2012

08 June 2012

Briefly: Baptists

by Frank Turk

Dan is doing pastorly things today, and Phil always has his hands full, so that leaves either me or Pecadillo to fill the bandwidth today.  Since he fights crime for a living, I guess it has to be me.

On the heels of the dust-up over at the Southern Baptist Convention, someone recently quipped that being a baptist (small "b" intended) is about ecclesiology and not about soteriology, which at its core is true enough.  However, I think a lot of our non-baptist friends would be quick to point out that this is prolly a pretty narrow view of what happens when you adopt a credobaptist view of baptism vs. a paedobaptist view of baptism.  For example, you don't find a lot of Presbyterian street preachers or Lutheran missionaries.

But that said, I think the very-narrow distinction proffered there misses the point of the complaint leveled by the "traditional" complainers.  The fellows who want the 50-year-old populist theology replete with the ol' convention songs are not concerned with being small-"b" baptists: they are concerned about being, as they see it, Southern Baptists®.  If we recognize that, the rest of their complaints and angry eyebrows make a lot more sense.  They don't want to accidentally be Presbyterians or Lutherans or Methodists (which is ironic, given the kind of theology they are sending up the flag pole).

At the end of the day, they are standing up for a kind of Christian culture.  There's something vaguely-admirable about that when we are in the decline of Western Civilization, even if it also vaguely resembles the kind of religion that had a closed magisterium and built giant cathedrals to really pack 'em in.








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43 comments
Posted by FX Turk on Friday, June 08, 2012
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