Black pastors take heat for not viewing same-sex marriage as civil rights matter By Marc Fisher
29 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Gospel Coalition Tags: Baptist, Howard University, Judeo-Christian, Martin O'Malley, Maryland, Maryland House of Delegates, Same-sex marriage, Thomas
All of a sudden, they are bigots and haters — they who stood tall against discrimination, who marched and sat in, who knew better than most the pain of being told they were less than others.
They are black men, successful ministers, leaders of their community. But with Maryland poised to become the eighth state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage, they hear people — politicians, activists, even members of their own congregations — telling them they are on the wrong side of history, and that’s not where they usually live.
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Nathaniel Thomas spent decades as an administrator in Howard University’s student affairs office, counseling young people not only about their course work but also about their personal quests for justice. He came to the ministry at the dawn of middle age, eager to help people, and especially fellow black men, discover in the word of God a path out of despair.
Over the past couple of years, as Thomas and dozens of other black clergymen in Prince George’s County have stood on the front line of the campaign against same-sex marriage, he has come to see the revolution at hand — in his view, a rebellion against religion and tradition — as an assault on the sustainability of the black family.
Which is why Thomas and his friend Reynold Carr, director of the Prince George’s Baptist Association, are gearing up for the next battle, a statewide ballot referendum in November to challenge the legalization of same-sex marriage, which the state House of Delegates approved last Friday. The state Senate passed a measure Thursday evening; Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) said he will sign the bill. The pastors are not predicting victory in a referendum, but they think they stand a better chance among voters than politicians.
“This is a cultural war, a cultural shift, and those who are in rebellion have decided to portray us as bigots and prejudiced,” says Thomas, pastor of Forestville New Redeemer Baptist Church, a trim, pale-brick building across from a storage facility on a dead-end road just inside the Beltway near Pennsylvania Avenue.
He knows that some gay activists are incredulous that black ministers could oppose a civil rights initiative. “ ‘How dare a black preacher take this position,’ they say, ‘because you’ve felt this pain,’ and I have,” he says. Over the decades, he has marched for voting and housing rights and fought for equal protection for blacks.
But Thomas and the 77 other Baptist ministers in the association do not see same-sex marriage as a civil rights matter. Rather, they say, it is a question of Scripture, of whether a country based on Judeo-Christian principles will honor what’s written in Romans or decide to make secular decisions about what’s right. In Maryland, as in California and New York, opinion polls have shown that although a majority of white voters support recognition of same-sex marriage, a majority of blacks oppose it, often on religious grounds.
Thomas, 61, says a couple of young women in his church told him that maybe it’s not so bad to allow two women to join together because, in many cases, men are not in the home.
His booming voice softens: “We do have a flat tire in our community when it comes to marriage and men in the household. But do we flatten the other three tires to move forward, or do we work on fixing the flat tire? Do we give up on the lack of strong black men leading our households and justify another change in our social structure?”
Thomas has seen sermons by a few fellow preachers railing against homosexuals, calling their behavior “disgusting” and egging on congregants who shout catcalls at the mention of gay sex.
Not long ago, Thomas says, a young gay man came to him and said, “Look, I can’t help being how I am.” The minister embraced the man.
“We are all sinners,” Thomas says. “Christ never turned anyone away. People come to us all the time with issues, some with a stealing demon, some with urges and desires. But love doesn’t mean you go along to get along. I counsel them by showing them God’s word; some receive the word, and some reject it.”
Thomas’s friend Carr, who spent 22 years leading Kent Baptist Church in Landover before taking over the Pastors Association, steps into his office in a modest house on Princess Garden Parkway in Lanham and retrieves a black leather-bound Bible.
“Sin is rebellion against God and his standards,” Carr, 67, says in the soft, lilting island tones of his native Trinidad. He opens the book to Romans 1:27.
Thomas, a mound of a man who is more given to florid language, takes the book and starts reading about “men with men working that which is unseemly,” but he does not stop at admonitions against homosexuality. Read on, he says, and he does, into a litany of other “unrighteous” behaviors — “fornication, wickedness, covetousness.”
“So it is all of us who are listed here — not just homosexuals, but every one of us,” Thomas says. “We all got some stuff.”
The battle over same-sex marriage, for Thomas and Carr, is not so much about homosexuality as about a growing belief that biblical principles should not be the basis for governing.
“Take the word ‘marriage’ out of this bill, and we’re pretty much in agreement,” Thomas says. “Everyone should have full legal rights and would have them with civil unions. You wouldn’t see me down there protesting against civil unions. The state is the state, and the church is the church. I understand that. But put the word ‘marriage’ in there, and now you’re redefining something that is in the Bible and in our principles as one man and one woman. Why do you need to use a biblical word in a civil situation?”
Thomas sees the bill as a blueprint the state will use to require churches that run day-care centers or schools to teach something they don’t believe in. “Now, if the marriage law protected churches from lawsuits by people who might say, ‘You discriminated against me because you wouldn’t marry me,’ that would begin to put folks at ease,” he says.
Maryland’s marriage bill would prohibit any lawsuit against religious entities or clergy based on a refusal to perform a wedding.
O’Malley and some other Democratic governors, such as New York’s Andrew M. Cuomo, have pressed the issue, in part because they see public opinion moving swiftly in the direction of same-sex marriage and because they believe it is this generation’s civil rights issue.
But where the governors’ supporters see a pleasing blend of principle and political savvy, the pastors see a toxic mix of cynicism and antagonism toward religion.
Over and over, the ministers return to the image that some supporters of same-sex marriage have painted of the church as hater. “There is not one of us who doesn’t have persons in our family with that lifestyle,” Thomas says. “And I tell them, ‘You are still mine.’ ” His voice cracks; he halts for a moment. “You are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. No, I will not discriminate against him. We are a people of mercy. But the state may not tell me that I must sanction his behavior, just as I may not sanction behavior of the adulterer or the liar.”
The next battle, the marker the pastors intend to throw down in a statewide vote on same-sex marriage, will be over whether Democratic politicians can still take for granted the votes of black churchgoers and others in the community who stand in opposition.
“It’s really believers against nonbelievers. If it goes the other way, well, I’m a citizen and a taxpayer, and I have to live by what the people decide. People on the street say, ‘Y’all church, y’all reverends are wrong because you’re trying to stop people’s rights.’ No, the only thing we’re asking is don’t use the word marriage — one word.”
Don’t Assume BY Kevin DeYoung
28 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Gospel Coalition Tags: Chapters and verses of the Bible, Church discipline, God, Gospel, Gospel of Matthew, Jesus, Matthew, Matthew 7:1
It may be the best known Bible verse in our culture: “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1).
As one of our society’s most popular verses, it is also one of the most misunderstood. Too many people, non-Christian and Christian, take Jesus’ words to be a blanket rejection of all moral evaluation. But given that Jesus alludes to his opponents as dogs and pigs five verses later, it’s safe to think Jesus wasn’t condemning every kind of judgment. We see from the rest of the Gospel that Matthew 7:1 is not inconsistent with strong criticisms, negative statements, church discipline, and warnings about hell. Judgmentalism is not the same as making ethical and doctrinal demands or believing others to be wrong.
And yet, after all the necessary qualifications, we must not mute this important command. As sinners, we are apt to assume the worst about people. We are eager to find favorable comparisons that make ourselves look good at the expense of others. We are quick to size people up and think we have them figured them out. But I have learned over the years–both as the giver and receiver of judgmental assumptions–that it’s best not to assume.
Don’t assume you know all the facts after hearing one side of the story.
Don’t assume the person is guilty just because strong charges are made against him.
Don’t assume you understand a blogger’s heart after reading one post.
Don’t assume that famous author, preacher, athlete, politician, or local celebrity won’t read what you write and don’t assume they won’t care what you say.
Don’t assume the divorced person is to blame for the divorce.
Don’t assume the single mom isn’t following Jesus.
Don’t assume the guy from the Mission is less of a man or less of a Christian.
Don’t assume the pastor looking for work is a bad pastor.
Don’t assume the church that struggles or fails is a bad church.
Don’t assume you’d be a better mom.
Don’t assume bad kids are the result of bad parents.
Don’t assume your parents are clueless.
Don’t assume everyone should drop everything to attend to your needs, and don’t assume no one will.
Don’t assume the rich are ungenerous.
Don’t assume the poor are lazy.
Don’t assume you know what they are all like after meeting one or two of their kind.
Don’t assume you should read between the lines.
Don’t assume you have interpreted the emotions of the email correctly.
Don’t assume everyone has forgotten about you.
Don’t assume they meant to leave you off the list.
Don’t assume everyone else has a charmed life.
Don’t assume a bad day makes her a bad friend.
Don’t assume the repentance isn’t genuine.
Don’t assume the forgiveness isn’t sincere.
Don’t assume God can’t change you.
Don’t assume God can’t love you.
Don’t assume God can’t love them.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/02/28/dont-assume/
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Forty-Year-Old Light on How to Translate “Son of God” for Muslims
28 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
Forty-Year-Old Light on How to Translate “Son of God” for Muslims.
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Ecclesiology for Kids by Gloria Furman
27 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Gospel Coalition Tags: Bible, Chili pepper, Ecclesiology, God, Greek language, Jesu, Lord, United States
I want to find ways to discuss spiritual things with my kids in the mundane moments of life.
But so often I find myself sucked into the mundane and I miss the moment.
“Eat your lunch. Stay in your seat. Take that out of your ear. Take that out of her ear. Take that out of his ear. Ladies and gentleman, no more monkey business. Eat your lunch.” I sound like a ringmaster at a three-ring circus sometimes.
At the end of the day I wonder about the moments I missed to tell them about who God is and how the Bible is not about them and raise their sights to see the activity of the Lord in their lives. Then I cling to the gospel and remember God’s grace is sufficient for me in my weakness, praying that he would give me more opportunities.
Explaining the concept of franchising was one of those opportunities.
“They have Chili’s in America, too?!” my oldest daughter was baffled last summer when she saw the familiar red chili pepper logo as we drove around the States.
“My sweet, precious third-culture child,” I started, “Chili’s is from here. Chili’s goes where anyone is willing to franchise it.” And I explained what franchising is.
“Is church like a franchise?” she followed-up. What a good question! We talked about how franchising is similar to and yet different from church planting. But that’s another funny story for another day.
Back to the big word in the title of this post– Ecclesiology is a theological term that means the study of the church. It comes from a Greek word used to describe the church in the first century. The gist of it is the church is made up of people– not bricks, branches, mud, cement, marble, or wood.
One way to start talking about ecclesiology with your kids is to introduce them to this very simple concept– the church is made up of people. Those people, to be specific, are God’s adopted children who were once prodigal but have now been given all the rights of sons and daughters in the Father’s family through the sacrifice of the “true and better older brother” Jesus Christ.
Tell your kids the church is not a physical building, but a people built by God’s own hands who he is gathering together as a show of his glory. Remind them when you ride in the car, tube, taxi, mutatu, bus, bajaj, subway, or whichever transport you use on your way to gather corporately with your local church.
Just the brief explanation, “We’re going to worship together with the church,” helps remind your kids of the purpose and nature of the church.
This little sentence has helped our family a lot because our local church meets in hotel ballrooms that are attached to shopping malls. This comes with all kinds of interesting questions. My kids know that when they walk out of the ballroom they can go down the escalator to the food court. Walk a little further and there’s Chili’s.
Back to the car ride where my oldest daughter noticed the franchised Chili’s in the States. She looked out the window and asked, “So where does the church meet that eats at this Chili’s?” 
http://www.domestickingdom.com/2012/02/26/ecclesiology-for-kids/
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Always Mardi Gras and Never Easterby Russell D Moore
21 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Gospel Coalition Tags: Baptist, Catholic, Evangelicalism, Jesus, Mardi Gras, Mary, New Orleans, Protestant Reformation
There’s nothing quite as bleak as a city street the morning after Mardi Gras. The steam of the humidity rises silently over asphalt riddled with forgotten doubloons, broken bottles, littered cigarettes, used condoms, clotted blood, and mangled vomit. This sight was, for some of the convictional Evangelicals in my hometown, a parable of what was wrong with Roman Catholicism. I wasn’t so sure.
I am a product of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” By that I don’t mean the 1994 statement of cultural co-belligerency led by Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus. I mean that since my father was the son of a Southern Baptist preacher and my mother was a Roman Catholic, I am, quite literally, the product of an Evangelical and a Catholic, together. Half my family was Southern Baptist and the other half Roman Catholic, and my family divide perfectly summed up the larger community around us.
Biloxi, my quirky little strip of home on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, was discovered by the French, and supplemented in that heritage with an influx of immigrants drawn to work in the seafood industry. “Vuyovich,” “Stanovich,” and “Nguyen” were as common of names on my class roles as “Smith” and “Jones.” This meant that my hometown was an outpost of a Catholic majority situated right at the bottom of the Bible Belt of the old Confederacy.
Being situated just over the state line from the Big Easy, we were more New Orleans than Tupelo, and I lived in the worlds of both southern Evangelicalism and southern European Catholicism. I could see the best side of either and the dark sides of both. I saw Catholic casino-night fundraisers and contentious Baptist business meetings, and neither seemed to look much like the Book of Acts.
When it came to the ecclesial divide between the Catholics and Evangelicals all around me, I was sure there must be some big differences that resulted in something as historic as the Protestant Reformation. But I never heard the names of any of the Reformers in my Baptist Sunday school, let alone the so-called solas at the heart of the sixteenth-century controversies. We were told that Catholics didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus and that they paid too much attention to Mary, but neither of those things seemed to describe my devout Catholic relatives.
Day to day, the differences between the Catholics and the Evangelicals were less theological than cultural. To my friends and me, they seemed to amount to little more than who had a black spot on his forehead once a year, and whose parents drank beer right out in the open. For the grown-ups—or at least for the grown-ups outside my mixed-together family—these differences seemed to matter a lot. And they could be summed up in Mardi Gras.
Those who grew up outside the orbit of New Orleans probably think of the holiday simply in terms of the debauchery they’ve seen on television, but the broadcast carnality (although certainly part of it) doesn’t tell the whole story. I loved (and love) Mardi Gras, although I used to feel guilty about that. What I saw of Mardi Gras were the traditions and rituals—king cakes and parades and candy and days off school—rather than the full Bourbon Street experience.
Drunkenness and immorality are, of course, indefensible in a Christian ordering of the world, but at its most innocent level, Mardi Gras is a dramatic presentation of some important biblical themes. It is rooted in, among other things, God’s provision for the prophet Elijah who, like Jesus, went out into the wilderness to fast for forty days. Before the prophet went out, the angels gave him “a cake baked on hot stones,” and he survived his fasting on the strength of that sustenance (1 Kings 19:6–8). Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday,” is the day before Ash Wednesday, the onset of Lent, the forty days of fasting rooted in Jesus’ time without food in the wilderness.
Some of the older Baptists at my church hated the whole idea of Mardi Gras, and saw this party as a kind of blasphemy that exposed everything they rejected about the culturally acclimated Catholicism all around them. “Those Catholics,” I remember hearing one neo-Puritan critic lament, “They just go out and get as drunk as they want to, they eat until they vomit. They’re just getting it all out of their system before they have to get all somber and holy for Lent.”
I could see his point. I never saw any of my devout Catholic friends or family behaving that way. But it made sense to me that gorging and getting drunk the day before Lent probably wasn’t what the Lord meant when he said to “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”
As the years have gone by, though, I’m realizing that perhaps the naysayers pegged something accurately about some of the Catholicism around me. But I’m convinced they missed the truth that we Baptists had a Mardi Gras, too. The Mardi Gras of Protestantism didn’t celebrate the day on just a yearly calendar, though, but, much more importantly, on the calendar of a lifespan.
The typical cycle went something like this. You were born, and reared up in Sunday school until you were old enough to raise your hand when the teacher asked who believed in Jesus and wanted to go to heaven. At that point, you were baptized—usually long before the first pimple of puberty—and shortly thereafter, you had your first spaghetti-dinner fundraiser to raise money to go to summer youth camp. And then, sometime between the ages of 15 and 20, you’d go completely wild.
Our view of the “College and Career” Sunday school class was somewhat like our view of Purgatory. It might be there, technically, but there was no one in it. After a few years of carnality, you’d settle down, start having kids, and then be back in church, just in time to get those kids into Sunday school, and start the cycle all over again. If you didn’t get divorced or indicted, you’d be chairman of deacons or head of the women’s missionary auxiliary by the time your own kids were going completely wild. It was just kind of expected. You were going to get things out of your system before you settled down. But you know, I never could find that in the Book of Acts, either.
I never really went through the wild stage. But years later, having externally lived a fairly upstanding life, I found myself envying a Christian leader as he gave his “testimony.” This man described his life of mind-blowing drugs, manic sex, and nonstop partying in such detail that, before I knew it, I was wistfully thinking: “Wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds? All that, and heaven too.” I’d embraced the dark side of Mardi Gras, in my own mind. As much as I thought I was superior to both the drunken partiers on the streets and the dour cranks condemning the revelry, I had internalized the hidden hedonism of it all. I was under the lordship of Christ, but, if only for that moment, wishing for the lordship of my own fallen appetite.
Flannery O’Connor believed her insight into the human condition came, at least partially, from being a Catholic in the Protestant South. Seeing humanity, in all its glory and grotesquery, in the “Christ-haunted” region equipped her to recognize freakishness when she saw it. In a somewhat similar way, I think my story as an Evangelical child in a Catholic place that was itself engulfed in a larger Evangelical region immunized me from what surely would have been a temptation to either lionize or demonize my own tradition, and to look at an alien Catholicism as either an ecclesial utopia or the Whore of Babylon.
My life in the Catholic Bible Belt, though, taught me to love both those who pass out tracts and those who say the rosary. I never had to give up the Virgin Mary for Lottie Moon (the missionary saint of the Southern Baptists). But I also recognize in both traditions a temptation, a temptation that is rooted not in the particularities of the communions but in the soul-sickness of fallen humanity.
Do many Catholics follow their appetites and “sin that grace may abound,” hoping that confession and the last rites will even it all out before God? Sure. And do many Evangelicals do the same, hoping that a repeated prayer or an altar-call response will deliver them in the Day of Judgment? Yes. Both paths lead to the same place: to hell.
The fact that both our traditions wrestle with this temptation ought to signal to us the power of the first stage of Satanism. In the beginning, the Tempter led our ancestors astray with the promise of food (Gen. 3). In the desert, he provoked grumbling in the fathers because of their longing for food. And in the Judean wilderness, he sought to entrap Jesus with the growling of his stomach. It is easy to substitute the satisfaction of our urges and drives for the way of Christ, and we can easily find religious rituals to build around our doing so. It is easy to become one of those for whom the belly is god (Phil. 3:19).
This is the reason why self-control is a fruit of the Spirit rather than an achievement of the flesh (Gal. 5:23). We want what we want. But the discipline of God teaches us, slowly, to put old appetites to death and to whet new ones. Through the Spirit, we learn to crucify “the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). That’s hard. It usually means hunger or economic want or sexual frustration or familial longing.
But through it we learn to see that life is about more than acquisition—whether acquisition of possessions or sexual sensations or pleasant memories. A cross-shaped Christianity might leave behind those seeking a civil religious cover for their wild Bacchus worship or their rigid Stoic legalism. But it might prompt a world gorged on riotous living to seek the more permanent things instead.
On the morning after Carnival, it’s easy to feel the queasiness of stomach, the pounding of the hangover, or the throbbing of the conscience. It’s much harder to feel the futility of a whole life lived under the tyranny of the appetites. That’s especially true when, as with most of us, we see the sovereignty of our appetites as “normal.” We live among a people, let’s be honest, whose stomachs are full but who are vomiting it all up, with an Esau-like disgust. We live in a culture of craving that is never satisfied, in a world where it is always Mardi Gras and never Easter.
http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/02/21/always-mardi-gras-and-never-easter/
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Did You See It? by John Starke
19 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Gospel Coalition Tags: Baptism, Bible, Christian, Christian theology, God, holyspirit, Jesus, Luke
There are passages in the Bible that should cause Christians to be especially glad. Many of them are ones that cause us to rejoice in God’s grace or be comforted by His shepherd-like care. But there are also moments where God decides to show the nature of who He is more clearly than other parts of Scripture; where God pulls back the clouds, so to speak, to give a glimpse of who He is for our joy.
One of those moments is Luke 3:21-22:
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Now there are plenty of moments in the Bible where people recognize Jesus for who He is and call Him Lord or even the Son of God. But notice here that this is God identifying who Jesus is. “You are my beloved Son.” And the Holy Spirit descends upon the Son.
Now we shouldn’t rush over passages like these too quickly. This isn’t simply a passage where Jesus gets baptized, as if He’s just graduated from high school and the Father shows up to say something nice. There’s something wonderful here that every Christian should stop and notice.
You see, Christians believe in one God. But God is not simply an ultimate personality or one great man, but God is actually three persons. He’s not three gods, but one God in three persons; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And what’s unusual—but wonderful—about this passage is that all three persons are on active display here. The Father speaks, the Holy Spirit descends, and the Son is baptized and identified. These moments in Scripture are not as common and we should not rush past them.
Let me try to give a picture of what I mean. In the Spring, as you walk through a park the grass is green, the flowers are blooming, and the trees are getting their color back, but for good portions of the Spring season, it’s cloudy and rainy. You don’t quite see the beauty that’s really, truly there. But when the sun comes out and shines on everything, you see the gush of color. You see Spring! You see the green! And when those moments come, you pause and you take in all that is exposed.
In the same way, as you read the Bible, God is always there, showing himself—never fully, but truly. But there are moments in Scripture, like Luke 3:21-22, where God shows us a greater picture—a clearer picture—of who He is. He sheds light on what is not always seen clearly. And when we see it, we should pause.
This is our God—The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
http://www.biblemesh.com/blog/2012/02/17/did-you-see-it/
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The Intolerance of Tolerance D. A. Carson
15 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Gospel Coalition Tags: Catholic, Christ, Christian, D. A. Carson, God, Gospel Coalition, New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Many leading institutions today boast of “tolerance” as their most cherished virtue. College campuses, courts of law, and businesses educate their employees and us about the need for tolerance—religious, sexual, ideological, and otherwise. However, recent developments have exposed the darker side to this tolerance. What many tout as tolerance ends up intolerant of Christian teaching.
In his new book The Intolerance of Tolerance, D. A. Carson, research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and president of The Gospel Coalition, addresses these trends and gives historical, theological, and biblical insight into the challenges for Christians trying to faithfully preach Christ in a world so intolerant of his claims.
Earlier this week Carson answered a few questions concerning the cultural challenge of intolerance and how Christians might labor to be winsome and persuasive.
—————————
Tolerance is highly valued in Western culture. What intolerance do you see on the contemporary scene that masquerades as tolerance?
It is easy to amass hundreds of examples. In the name of tolerance authorities have sometimes tried to shut down Christian groups on university campuses (which sounds pretty intolerant) on the ground that because these groups allow only confessing Christians to be officers, they are not acceptably tolerant—and their intolerance cannot be tolerated. Several states have told Catholic adoption services that they must close because they refuse to place children in the homes of practicing homosexual couples. Thus by being tolerant of homosexuality these authorities become intolerant of Catholics and their convictions (even though no children are harmed by the Catholic charities, since there are many other agencies).
How do you seek to persuade someone who prides himself on tolerance to see things from a different perspective?
A great deal depends on how much time I am allotted! In short responses, the intolerance intrinsic to such “tolerance” needs to be exposed, graciously but firmly, for what it is: hypocritical intolerance. If there is more time, one might sketch in the shape of a civil society, and make clear something of the history of tolerance. And for those who are willing to engage in still more extended discussion, one might work away at an array of related issues: the proper roles and limitations of the state, the nature of oppression, the relation between church and state—even the fact that Christians will gladly put up with persecution and death rather than be silenced on some issues in the name of “tolerance.”
How does what you call the old tolerance differ from the new?
The old tolerance presupposed another system of thought already in place—Christianity, communism, Naziism, Buddhism, secularism—whatever. The issue then became how much deviation from that system could be tolerated before coercive force is applied. To the extent that one allowed deviation, one was tolerant; correspondingly, where one judges that deviation has gone too far (e.g., almost everyone agrees, even today, that pedophilia goes beyond the pale), then coercive force—in short, intolerance—is a virtue. It was quite possible to disagree strongly with what a person was saying, but still tolerate the opinion that was perceived to be aberrant, on the ground that it was better for society to allow such opinions than to coerce silence from those articulating them.
But invariably, tolerance has its limits. The new tolerance (1) tends to insist that those who merely disagree with others, at least in several spheres, are intolerant, even if no coercive force is applied; (2) tends to make such tolerance the supreme good, independently of surrounding systems of thought; and (3) tends to be remarkably blind in regard to its own intolerant condemnation of everyone who disagrees with its own definition of tolerance. The result is that in many domains, in many discussions, the question is rarely “Is this true?” but “Is anyone offended?” Rigorous discussion of content soon shuts down; truth is demoted; various forms of class warfare are encouraged; in some domains it becomes wrong (supreme irony) to say that anyone is wrong.
Why should Christians care about intolerance if our neighbors still tolerate our private worship?
The lordship of Christ extends everywhere—to morality, aesthetics, social interaction, the rights and limitations of the state, and much more. Secularism thinks it is idealogically neutral, and that those who disagree with it are intolerant, and should therefore keep their opinions to the purely private sphere—but as popular as this view is, it is demonstrably silly and blind to its silliness. Thoughtful Christians will want to speak up in more arenas than that of private worship. The alternative is loss of freedom, and ultimately persecution—all in the name of tolerance.
Most of your career has been spent in New Testament studies. Yet you’ve written major books on cultural challenges, such as The Gagging of God, Christ and Culture Revisited, and now The Intolerance of Tolerance. How do these two disciplines cross paths?
In Scripture, the centrality and glory of God extend beyond the private lives of the community of the faithful to embrace the entire world, the entire universe—and therefore certainly the cultures in which we live. There are cultural commentators who are more insightful than I, and there are biblical commentators who know more than I, but God seems to have given me a heart and mind to show how thinking your way through Scripture has a bearing on broad cultural issues that garner too little attention from expositors. But I try not to forget that I am first and foremost a pastor-theologian, a preacher and teacher of God’s most holy Word.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/book-reviews/interview/the_intolerance_of_tolerance
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Humble Yourself…Or Else
15 Feb 2012 2 Comments
in The Gospel Coalition Tags: Bible, Christian, Church planting, Epistle to the Philippians, God, Humility, Jesus, Pride
There are some things that just don’t go together no matter how hard you try.
Oil and vinegar. Argyle and plaid. Dwight and Jim.
And there are some things that should go together and still often don’t.
Engines once disassembled. The government and careful spending. Church planters and humility.
Now before you stop reading and try to convince yourself that you actually are humble, instead, let’s just all agree that none of us really are humble. And let’s just confess together that church planters are actually some of the least humble people we know.
It has been suggested by some that that it just “comes with the territory.” It takes a lot of initiative (some call this insanity) to start something from nothing, see it survive, thrive and then reproduce itself. While this may be true, we should never use this as an excuse to justify what the Bible calls sin. In fact, the Bible has quite a lot to say about pride and it’s destructive capabilities. Here are just a few verses:
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. —Proverbs 16:5
Before destruction a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor. —Proverbs 18:12
But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” —James 4:6
Strong words and warnings, aren’t they? And in light of the fact that church planting has enough inherent difficulties without adding “God opposing us” to the list. But when seek to lift up our own name or the name of our church instead of the name of Jesus, that is just what we are in danger of. And, in His kindness, God may pull the rug out from under us to get us back on our knees.
But what if this didn’t have to be the case?
What if we sought to live our lives in such a way that it wouldn’t have the failure of our health, our plant, or our marriage to get our attention?
Here are some tips that can help us move in the right direction.
1. Take the Bible seriously.
As these verses show, humility is not a special command for a select few super Christians, but for all of us. Meditating on the Scriptures listed above and studying those in the Bible whose pride took them down in the Scriptures will go a long way in rightly helping us to address this sin. In addition, considering the damage our pride does to our churches, our families, ourselves and our intimacy with God can also help.
2. Look to and lean on Jesus.
Though the humility of Jesus is seen throughout the Scriptures, it is no more clearly on display than in Philippians 2. In this passage, we can marvel at the example of Jesus and exalt Jesus for what He has done in the Cross. As we do these things, it will cultivate our dependence upon Him and encourage us to deal with our pride in a Gospel way.
3. Enlist others in our struggle against pride.
Due to the nature of the beast, pride is not something we should fight alone. In my struggle, my wife and my elders are my greatest allies in the battle. They see me lead, watch my interactions with others and hear the overflow of my heart in daily life. Do you have similar people in your life?
Pride can do great damage to us, our families and our churches. But by God’s grace and the help of some trusted friends, we can learn to humble ourselves so that God doesn’t have to and save ourselves and our churches a lot of heartache.
http://cp4us.org/2012/02/15/humble-yourself-or-else/
