The Truth War
Page 17
It is too late now if you missed any of those trends. To use the language of the movement, they are all so five minutes ago. If your church is not already experimenting with Emerging-style worship, candles, postmodern liturgy, and the like (or—better yet—anticipating the next major trend), then you are clearly not in a very stylish church.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that all those trends are equally bad. Some of them are not necessarily bad at all. For example, there can be great benefit in teaching a congregation how to respond to something like The Da Vinci Code. But contemporary evangelicals have been conditioned to anticipate and follow every fad with an almost mindless herd mentality. They sometimes seem to move from fad to fad with an uninhibited and undiscerning eagerness that does leave them exposed to things that may well be spiritually lethal. In fact, the question of whether the latest trend is dangerous or not is not a welcome question in most evangelical circles anymore. Whatever happens to be popular at the moment is what drives the whole evangelical agenda.
That mentality is precisely what Paul warned against in Ephesians 4:14. It has left evangelical Christians dangerously exposed to trickery, deceitfulness, and unsound doctrine. It has also left them completely unequipped to practice any degree of true biblical discernment.
The sad truth is that the larger part of the evangelical movement is already so badly compromised that sound doctrine has almost become a nonissue.
The mad pursuit of nondoctrinal “relevancy.” Even at the very heart of the evangelical mainstream, where you might expect to find some commitment to biblical doctrine and at least a measure of concern about defending the faith, what you find instead is a movement utterly dominated by people whose first concern is to try to keep in step with the times in order to be “relevant.”
Sound doctrine? Too arcane for the average churchgoer. Biblical exposition? That alienates the “unchurched.” Clear preaching on sin and redemption? Let’s be careful not to subvert the self-esteem of hurting people. The Great Commission? Our most effective strategy has been making the church service into a massive Super Bowl party. Serious discipleship? Sure. There’s a great series of group studies based on I Love Lucy episodes. Let’s work our way through that. Worship where God is recognized as high and lifted up? Get real. We need to reach people on the level where they are.
Evangelicals and their leaders have doggedly pursued that same course for several decades now—in spite of many clear biblical instructions that warn us not to be so childish (in addition to Ephesians 4:14, see also 1 Corinthians 14:20; 2 Timothy 4:3–4; Hebrews 5:12–14).
What’s the heart of the problem? It boils down to this: Much of the evangelical movement has forgotten who is Lord over the church. They have either abandoned or downright rejected their true Head and given His rightful place to evangelical pollsters and church-growth gurus.
USURPING THE CHURCH’S TRUE HEAD
Jude’s initial description of apostates in the early church culminates in this statement: “[They] deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). Of all the many doctrinal flaws in their system that Jude might have called attention to, this is the one that heads his list and sums up all the others. The false teachers’ absolute rejection of Christ’s authority was the root and the real motive for their apostasy in the first place. They resented the lordship of Christ and disowned Him as their true Master because they had rebellious hearts and wanted the authority for themselves.
THE FALSE TEACHERS’
ABSOLUTE REJECTION
OF CHRIST’S AUTHORITY
WAS THE ROOT AND THE
REAL MOTIVE FOR THEIR
APOSTASY IN THE FIRST
PLACE. THEY RESENTED
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST
AND DISOWNED HIM AS
THEIR TRUE MASTER
BECAUSE THEY HAD
REBELLIOUS HEARTS AND
WANTED THE AUTHORITY
FOR THEMSELVES.
Jude stresses that the major reasons for their rebellion are immorality, greed, and lust. These sins are characteristic of virtually all false teachers. (They “turn the grace of our God into lewdness” [v. 4]; they have “given themselves over to sexual immorality” [v. 7]; they “defile the flesh” [v. 8]; and they “run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit” [v. 11].) Again, this is a reminder that the root cause of false doctrine is nearly always immorality or sinful lust rather than ignorance or misunderstanding. The person who wants to indulge his or her own evil desires and self-will must reject Christ’s authority.
However, to mask their evil motives, most false teachers also deliberately keep their rebellion against Christ’s authority covert—usually under the disguise of some sort of religiosity. As we have seen from the start, the false teachers Jude was dealing with could not have penetrated the church secretly unless they had somehow kept their utter contempt for Christ’s lordship clandestine. They no doubt professed to know God and recognize the lordship of Christ, but in their works they denied Him (Titus 1:16).
Even today most false teachers operate that way. They give lip service to Christ but have no true love for Him. They call Him “Lord, Lord,” but they don’t do what He commands (Luke 6:46). They disguise themselves with the appearance of spirituality, artificial piety, and cordiality. But look closely at any apostate, and you will see someone who despises divine authority.
It is no wonder, then, that evangelicalism’s recent flirtations with apostasy have always involved some kind of effort to oust Christ from His rightful place as Lord over the church. Most of these involve indirect or subtle assaults on Christ’s lordship, but every one of them may nonetheless be used to mask a heart that seeks to turn God’s grace into lewdness while utterly denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 4).
“Seeker-sensitive” methodologies. As churches have tailored their Sunday services to suit the tastes of “seekers,” for example, there is less and less emphasis on edifying the saints and more and more stress on entertaining unbelievers. Drama, music, comedy, and even forms of vaudeville have often replaced preaching in the order of service. That strips Christ of His headship over the church by removing His Word from its rightful place and thereby silencing His rule in the life of His people. In effect, it surrenders the headship of the church to unchurched seekers.
Furthermore, any time a preacher squelches or softens a hard truth of Scripture to make the message more palatable, that preacher has suppressed Christ’s true message and thereby usurped His rightful authority as Lord over the church.
No-lordship theology. In previous books, I have critiqued a popular system of theology that argues that every reference to the lordship of Christ should be omitted from the gospel message.2 According to this view, surrender to Christ’s lordship is an optional matter, relevant only after someone has been a Christian for some time. The gospel is therefore reduced to an invitation to believe in Jesus as Savior, while carefully omitting any reference to His authority as Lord. Gone from the message are Christ’s call to discipleship, all His hard demands about cross-bearing and self-denial (Matthew 16:24; Mark 10:21; et al.), and His admonition to count the cost of following Him (Luke 14:26–33). The no-lordship “gospel” meticulously avoids calling sinners to repentance too.
No-lordship doctrine rose to popularity in the mid-twentieth century and was almost unchallenged as the dominant system of theology in American evangelicalism for several decades. The no-lordship message has filled the church with people lacking spiritual fruit and absent every other vital evidence of living faith—who nonetheless are convinced they are authentic Christians.
In fact, according to no-lordship doctrine, someone who lives an utterly debauched lifestyle should nevertheless be embraced as a true Christian if he or she ever once professed faith in Christ. These so-called “carnal Christians” are regularly given strong reassurances that their salvation is secure no matter how long or how egregiously they rebel against Christ’s authority. Of course, that completely el
iminates the meaningful exercise of church discipline. It also effectively unseats Christ from His rightful place of authority over the church.
In fact, it is hard to think of a more direct or more deliberate way to attack the rightful lordship of Christ over His church.
Accommodations to political correctness. Evangelicals willing to bend biblical truth to make Christianity seem more politically correct are in effect denying Christ as the true Head of the church. For example, Scripture expressly forbids women to teach men or have authority over them in the church (1 Timothy 2:12). Many evangelicals have chosen to ignore that principle or tried desperately to explain it away. Some even go so far as to write it off as an uninspired, misogynistic expression of the apostle Paul’s personal opinion.
CHRIST’S HEADSHIP IN THE
CHURCH IS LIKEWISE BEING
CHALLENGED BY THOSE IN
THE EMERGING CHURCH
MOVEMENT WHO HAVE
SUGGESTED THAT SCRIPTURE
IS SIMPLY NOT CLEAR ENOUGH
TO ALLOW US TO PREACH ITS
TRUTH WITH ANY DEGREE OF
CLARITY, CERTAINTY, OR
CONVICTION.
Thus we have seen an influx of women into pastoral and teaching roles, even in evangelical circles. Many evangelical seminaries are now aggressively recruiting women for pastoral training programs. Numerous once-conservative evangelical churches are ordaining women as elders, encouraging them to teach adult classes filled with men, and even appointing them to pastoral and preaching roles.
Such feminism has gnostic roots. It is an opinion that was universally rejected by mainstream Christianity until the current generation, when it was proposed mainly as a politically correct way to respond to the secular feminists’ charge that Christianity is too male dominated and therefore outmoded. The rapid acceptance of “evangelical” feminism is a measure of how many in the church are determined at all costs to bend Scripture to make it fit worldly opinion.
The same kind of mentality drives Bible translators who have revamped the language of Scripture itself to make gender references as nonspecific as possible, in an effort to make the Bible seem “inclusive” enough to satisfy postmodern standards.
POSTMODERNISM’S ANGST ABOUT CERTAINTY.
Christ’s headship in the church is likewise being challenged by those in the Emerging Church movement who have suggested that Scripture is simply not clear enough to allow us to preach its truth with any degree of clarity, certainty, or conviction. Most would never come right out and deny that the Bible is the Word of God, but they accomplish exactly the same thing when they insist that no one has any right to say for sure what the Bible means.
Brian McLaren epitomizes this mentality in the introduction to his book A New Kind of Christian:
I drive my car and listen to the Christian radio station, something my wife always tells me I should stop doing (“because it only gets you upset”). There I hear preacher after preacher be so absolutely sure of his bombproof answers and his foolproof biblical interpretations. . . . And the more sure he seems, the less I find myself wanting to be a Christian, because on this side of the microphone, antennas, and speaker, life isn’t that simple, answers aren’t that clear, and nothing is that sure.3
Thus “evangelical” postmodernism has transformed doubt, uncertainty, and qualms about practically every teaching of Scripture into high virtue. Strong convictions plainly stated are invariably labeled “arrogance” by those who favor postmodern dialogue.
Now, obviously, we cannot righteously be dogmatic about every peripheral belief or matter of personal preference. Virtually no one believes every opinion is worth fighting about. Scripture draws the line with ample clarity: we’re commanded to defend the faith once delivered to the saints; but we’re forbidden to pick fights with one another over secondary issues (Romans 14:1).
Some are now suggesting, however, that humility requires everyone to refrain from treating any truth as incontrovertible. Instead, we are supposed to put everything back on the table and “admit that our past and current formulations may have been limited or distorted.”4
This approach has been referred to by some as “a hermeneutic of humility”—as if it is inherently too prideful for any preacher to think he knows what God said about anything. Of course, such a denial of all certainty has nothing to do with true humility. It is actually an arrogant form of unbelief, rooted in an impudent refusal to acknowledge that God has been sufficiently clear in His self-revelation to His creatures. It is actually a blasphemous form of arrogance, and when it governs even how someone handles the Word of God, it becomes yet another expression of evil rebellion against Christ’s authority.
Christ has spoken in the Bible, and He holds us responsible to understand, interpret, obey, and teach what He said—as opposed to deconstructing everything the Bible says. Notice that Christ repeatedly rebuked the Pharisees for twisting Scripture, disobeying it, setting it aside with their traditions, and generally ignoring its plain meaning. Not once did He ever excuse the Pharisees’ hypocrisy and false religion by apologizing for any lack of clarity in the Old Testament.
Jesus held not only the Pharisees but also the common people responsible for knowing and understanding the Scriptures. “Have you not read . . . ?” was a common rebuke to those who challenged His teaching but did not know or understand the Scriptures as they should have (Matthew 12:3, 5; 19:4; 22:31; Mark 12:26). He addressed the disciples on the road to Emmaus as “foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe” because of their ignorance about the Old Testament’s messianic promises (Luke 24:25). The problem lay not in any lack of clarity on Scripture’s part but in their own sluggish faith.
The apostle Paul, whose writings are most under debate by scholars today, wrote virtually all his epistles for the common man, not for scholars and intellectuals. Those addressed to churches were written to predominantly Gentile churches, whose understanding of the Old Testament was limited. He nevertheless expected them to understand what he wrote (Ephesians 3:3–5), and he held them responsible for heeding his instruction (1 Timothy 3:14–15).
Paul and Christ both consistently made the case that it is every Christian’s duty to study and interpret Scripture rightly (2 Timothy 2:15). “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Matthew 11:15; 13:9, 16; Mark 4:9).
Even the book of Revelation, arguably one of the most difficult sections of Scripture to interpret, isn’t too hard for a typical lay reader to understand sufficiently and profit from. Hence it begins with this blessing: “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near” (Revelation 1:3).
Protestant Christianity has always affirmed the perspicuity of Scripture. That means we believe God has spoken distinctly in His Word. Not everything in the Bible is equally clear, of course (2 Peter 3:16). But God’s Word is plain enough for the average reader to know and understand everything necessary for a saving knowledge of Christ. Scripture is also sufficiently clear to enable us to obey the Great Commission, which expressly requires us to teach others “all things” that Christ has commanded (Matthew 28:18–20).
Two thousand years of accumulated Christian scholarship has been basically consistent on all the major issues: The Bible is the authoritative Word of God, containing every spiritual truth essential to God’s glory, our salvation, faith, and eternal life. Scripture tells us that all humanity fell in Adam, and our sin is a perfect bondage from which we cannot extricate ourselves. Jesus is God incarnate, having taken on human flesh to pay the price of sin and redeem believing men and women from sin’s bondage. Salvation is by grace through faith, and not a result of any works we do. Christ is the only Savior for the whole world, and apart from faith in Him, there is no hope of redemption for any sinner. So the gospel message needs to be carried to the uttermost parts of the earth. True Christians have always been in full agreement on all those vital points of biblical truth.
As a matter of fa
ct, the postmodernized notion that everything should be perpetually up for discussion and nothing is ever really sure or settled is a plain and simple denial of both the perspicuity of Scripture and the unanimous testimony of the people of God throughout redemptive history. In one sense, the contemporary denial of the Bible’s clarity represents a regression to medieval thinking, when the papal hierarchy insisted that the Bible is too unclear for laypeople to interpret it for themselves. (This belief led to much fierce persecution against those who worked to translate the Bible into common languages.)
In another sense, however, the postmodern denial of Scripture’s clarity is even worse than the darkness of medieval religious superstition, because postmodernism in effect says no one can reliably understand what the Bible means. Postmodernism leaves people permanently in the dark about practically everything.
That, too, is a denial of Christ’s lordship over the church. How could He exercise headship over His church if His own people could never truly know what He meant by what He said? Jesus Himself settled the question of whether His truth is sufficiently clear in John 10:27–28, when He said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.”
Other theological fads and novelties. Dozens of other challenges to Christ’s headship over the church are currently percolating in the wider evangelical movement. Some impugn Christ’s lordship by their faulty doctrine. Open theism, for example, suggests that God doesn’t know the future infallibly. That diminishes the truth of divine sovereignty and thereby undermines the whole basis of Christ’s lordship.