2 Thessalonians 3

I am not one that feels comfortable with building an entire doctrine of separation as it is fleshed-out by many in the fundamentalist orb with the 2 Thessalonians 3 text alone, but I think that it is just as imaginative, if not creatively blind, to limit Paul’s instruction to the lazy man as so many are inclined to do in their effort to debunk the fundamentalist argument.

If, as some insist, 2 Thessalonians 3 gives us insight into what we are supposed to do toward the lazy person exclusively, then what does 1 Corinthians 5:1-5 teach us about dealing with anybody in sin except for the rare occasion when a church is faced with the problem of a man having an incestuous relationship with his stepmother?

If anything, one could argue reasonably that the 2 Thessalonians passage is a classic lesser-to-greater argument. Of the many sins that one can commit, belligerent laziness is relatively benign compared to some gross sins. If this is what we are supposed to do toward the idle, it seems at least reasonable that some kind of withdrawal from the belligerently erroneous would be justified.

Back to 1 Corinthians 5. Paul obviously did not intend for his instruction to be limited to an incestuous relationship with a stepmom. In chapter five he gives two lists, and as is typical with Paul, they are illustrative and not exhaustive.

“I wrote to you,” says Paul, “not to keep company with sexually immoral people. For I certainly did not mean with the

1. sexually immoral people of this world, or with the

2. coveteous, or

3. extortioners, or

4. idolaters, [four sins] since then you would need to have to go out of this world. But now I have written to you not to keep comapny with anyone named a brother, who is

1. sexually immoral,

2. or covetous, or

3. an idolater, or

4. a reviler, or

5. a drunkard, or

6. an extortioner [six things] — not even to eat with such a person” (1 Corinthians 5:9-11).

Well, Paul, who does “such a person” define? The first list or the second list? Because there are going to be certain people in the year 2008 that will refuse to apply anything in this chapter to any sin that is not specifically listed by you. And you, Paul, have confused all of us by giving TWO lists!

The way we read the Bible we’re going to apply 2 Thessalonians only to a “lazy person.” We’ll ignore the fact that the weight of the NT decries the evils of false teachers, the importance of doctrine, and the abomination of those who will change doctrine; and we’ll simply close our eyes to the force of logic that compels us to acknowledge the fact that a Christian who does not withdraw from those kinds of people is himself in disobedience.

That 2 Thessalonians applies to more than just the lazy person seems reasonable to me, and that is before one even begins to explore the possibilities of what Paul is speaking about when he uses the word “tradition.”

I challenge my friends on the evangelical side to give me something better than, “Well, that passage only applies to the idle person.”

I Think I’m Disappointed with John MacArthur. I hope Not.

I can’t understand John MacArthur.

Why is he speaking at the Billy Graham Training Center’s Pastors’ Institute?

I would like to post at length about this in the near future, but I want to be quite clear about several issues:

Unless John MacArthur is planning on going in like the unknown prophet that approached the altar at Bethel to rebuke that entirely compromised organization, the organization of a man that he just recently denounced for apostasizing, then my respect for him has been diminished.

Not my gratitude. My respect. I will always be grateful for him. But these kinds of speaking engagements do not increase my respect for John. They diminish it. At some point, it’s fair to hope for explanation. I don’t think John is obligated to explain, I just think it would be nice.

It smells of either naive evangelicalism or reckless schmoozing; naive because fifty years of evangelicalism has proven that you don’t cozy up to determined ecumenicalists and succeed in changing them, and reckless because MacArthur seems to dismiss the effect his associations will have on a whole new generation of people who are ready to take a strong stand for the gospel.

The genius of the failed New Evangelicalism of the 1950s (remember, they don’t perceive of themselves as failures) was to hitch its wagon to every star in evangelicalism, right or left, in order to draw into its ever-extending orb of influence the thousands of followers that came in the wake of their bedazzled leaders. And no-one could do it better than Billy Graham. How brilliant of the BGEA to schedule one of the foremost leaders of conservative evangelicalism who is so strong, so outspoken, and so conservative that he even has referred to himself as a fundamentalist. How genius to do it literally one week before the increasingly head-turning conference on the gospel, the “Together for the Gospel Conference,” where more and more conservative and fundamentalist leaders are finding a brotherhood around the uniqueness of the Gospel.

The BGEA, always alert to the times, says, “Hey! We like John MacArthur too!” And thousands of soft-headed evangelicals and spineless fundamentalists say, “Well, you must be ‘together for the gospel’ with us!”

What evangelicals have failed to realize for over fifty years now is that anybody will say they’re together for the gospel — anybody — as long as its where all the action is. Opposition never presents itself first as opposition. It always presents itself as cooperative.

Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard heard that they descendants of the captivity were building the house of the Lord God of Israel, they came to Zerubabbel and the heads of the fathers’ houses, and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we seek your God as you do and we have sacrificed to Him. . .Ezra 4:1-2 (emphasis added).

Hey, John, why don’t you come on over to the Cove and talk to us about “Christ alone.” We know that gets your motor running and, hey, we love Jesus too, John! Yes, Sir! Like one of our friends in Pilgrim’s Progress said, ”Tis true we somewhat differ in religion from those of the stricter sort, yet but in two small points: First, we never strive against wind and tide. Secondly, we are always most zealous when religion goes in his silver slippers; we love much to walk with him in the street if the sun shines and the people applaud him.’ And, well, you know it sure seems like thousands of people are really applauding whatever is happening over the hills there in Louisville.

Why do you go to a pastors’ retreat hosted by Byends of Fairspeech? Especially when you have gone on the record as approving the conclusion of Ian Murray’s “Evangelicalism Divided” and at the last “Together for the Gospel Conference” publicly rebuked Billy Graham? Could it be that the BGEA is attempting to massage the one most likely to point them out at the next Together for the Gospel Conference? How slick of the BGEA to cordially invite the very man, and the only man, who was the clearest at the last T4G about the need to articulate a separatistic stance toward those who were compromising key elements of the Gospel.

Sometimes the best answer to an invitation to cooperate is Zerubabbel’s answer: “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to the Lord our God” (Ezra 4:3).

I’m sure the JMac camp will have a rationale to offer to their fundamentalist fan base in order to assure us that they really are the separatists that have figured it all out. Their blogging machinery will explain this if enough people ask, but I think that it is naive to think that speaking at the BGEA Pastors’ Institute is as profitable for the Gospel as declining to speak there.

In the meantime, three observations:

1. The “emerging middle” of Gospel will continue to evolve, but the leadership of this development will not be the old guard of either side. John MacArthur is a has-been on the evangelical side of the middle just like most institutional fundamentalist leaders on the fundamentalist side have already shown themselves to be. And this, by the way, goes for Piper and others of his generation as well. I don’t mean to imply that they won’t be greatly used or that their influence will diminish. I hope not. But I do mean that they have yet to show any understanding of how to embrace the sweeping changes in their side of the emerging middle that is finding a key component of Gospel expression to be separatistic. Which leads to my second point….

2. The evangelical side of the “middle” is beginning to understand, appreciate, and embrace the logic of secondary separation; not as it has been abused and mishandled by so many fundamentalists, but as it is rationally explained in the real-life actuality of daily ministry. In other words, I know a lot of conservative evangelicals that would be just as burned as I am that John MacArthur is speaking at the BGEA Pastors’ Institute. The successes of some Evangelical teachers has resulted in devotion for the doctrines they revived.

God’s truths are humble and they wait in line, often one at at time, to be revealed to dull men. But they generally go in a prescribed and logical order. The truth about how one gets to heaven (soteriology) is usually revealed to men before the truth of the importance of going to church (ecclesiology). Sometimes these truths make their impact one generation at a time. God’s truths are not only humble; they are patient. Therefore, my third point:

3. American Evangelicalism was given by God excellent Bible teachers like R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, and John Piper. This generation of leaders gave to a small part of the compromised and dying evangelicalism that had bought the New Evangelical dream a biblical soteriology. God used this generation of leaders to restore sound thinking on the doctrine of salvation.

A younger group of leaders followed in the steps of these excellent teachers with another emphasis that naturally followed the recovered soteriology: ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. This is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the collection of speakers at the last T4G conference. There, four younger men (Dever, Mahaney, Mohler, and Duncan) invited some of their “heroes” to speak. The great contribution of those younger men to evangelicalism has been in the area of the church. Just consider their works.

This is natural. Martin Luther was used by God to recover the biblical doctrine of soteriology. Once people are saved, however, they need to congregate. It was Calvin (and then later the divines of the English Reformation) as well as some great Anabaptists who advanced the doctrine of the church on the foundation of justification by faith.

This discussion is wonderful, especially for fundamentalists who have little teaching in the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ, who have been taught to abhor unity, and shun anyone who was outside of their sect. But the “church” discussion is not finished. It is still in its embryonic shape. For when the church is discussed it is then necessary to discuss who’s in and who’s out. And when that discussion has begun in earnest, the logic of biblical separation will once again have to be addressed. Thus, two questions haunt me:

1. Will history repeat itself and separatists fail to articulate a biblical rationale for separation that is accompanied by a bold expression of commitment and love for the unity that is already given to all those who are in Christ Jesus?

2. Will history repeat itself and evangelicals continue to shun the obvious teachings of Scripture that the false teachers are to be avoided and alienated and the obvious logic that calls for a separation from those who refuse to separate from them?

If today’s younger pastors cannot answer these challenges with their own convictions, they are doomed to repeat the last fifty years. And it has to be our generation that addresses these particular challenges. So far it seems apparent that most of the current leaders in Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism are hopelessly locked in yesterday’s discussion: on the one hand, a shrinking group of separatists huddle together in their denomination-like sub-culture while, on the other hand, a shrinking group of strong evangelicals refuse to acknowledge the fact that you really can’t be serious about the gospel if you’re going to hobnob with those who have squandered it.

Venues are significant. I cannot say that John MacArthur is sinning to go to the Pastors’ Institute. I just cannot see why and I really hope for a good explanation. But I do know that prophets are used by God wherever He sends them. Prophets usually went to venues uninvited. They just popped in, pointed their finger, and left. If they were invited, they often preached in such a way that secured for them the assurance that they would never be invited again. God’s prophets understood that deluded people would only perceive their presence as affirmation unless they spoke in such a way that was so clear they couldn’t escape the meaning.

Will MacArthur’s visit be affirming to the BGEA? Of course. Unless, of course, John gets prophetic as he is sometimes known to do.

If God has written Ichabod over the door of a house, John, why enter it unless you’re going there to preach in such a way that you will be absolutely sure that you are never invited again?

If possible, I’ll order the recording just to see.

Al Mohler on Torture

“In the end, I must side with McCain, but not without further moral clarifications.” ~ Al Mohler

I told a friend that I think it is immoral of our country to codify and legalize torture, but that I would not necessarily be opposed to the notion of its use in war. I felt uncomfortable with that apparent contradiction, but I felt (and strongly feel) that legalizing/codifying torture is opening a pandora’s box of potential evil. Naturally, I am pleased to quote Mohler in my defense. Some people are aghast that I should have concurred with McCain and liberals on the matter of torture. Sometimes liberals are right. And Republicans are still, as Democrats, always sinners. Thus, I said in my last post on this subject that a code/law virtually empowers potentially very evil people.

Al Mohler essentially says the same thing. The way I put it in my last post was that the codifying of torture could possibly eventuate in a horrible experience for Christians who would then not even have the law, as Paul did at times, to defend them. Mohler is right: “institutionalizing torture under such a procedure would almost surely lead to a continual renegotiation of the rules and constant flexing of the definitions.” That’s my point exactly.

Mohler, of course, says it much better than I could ever dream of. He says, “hello,” with more effectiveness than I do. While I don’t agree with some nuances of Mohler’s argument. In the main, he is right (I think) to give McCain’s view on torture more time than many Bushies are prepared to do.

Some salient quotes from the article:

Instead, I would suggest that Senator McCain is correct in arguing that a categorical ban should be adopted as state policy for the U.S., its military, and its agents. At the same time, I would admit that such a policy, like others, has limitations that, under extreme circumstances, may be transcended by other moral claims. The key point is this� at all times and in all cases the use of torture is understood to be morally suspect in the extreme, and generally unjustified.

__________________________

This appears to be neither practical nor prudent, for the circumstances in which such a use of coercion might be conceived would often not allow time for such a warrant to be issued. The War on Terror is not fought on convenient terms. Furthermore, institutionalizing torture under such a procedure would almost surely lead to a continual renegotiation of the rules and constant flexing of the definitions.(emphasis mine)

___________________________

Yet, in fighting this war it is inevitable that we will look down and find dirty hands, even in doing what we would all agree is a lamentable necessity. What we must not do is compound the problem of dirty hands by adopting dirty rules.

How Come Christians Don’t Discuss the Ethic of Torture?

My anger toward Republicans and the Bush Administration only continues to intensify. My frustration with American Christians who have become so political that they practically perceive Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the Bush Administration as a trusted brotherhood increases as America continues to relinquish its nobility on the altar of political expediency and personal safety.

Today President Bush did our country another disservice.

Waterboarding is torture. It is not merely “simulated” drowning. It is, in fact, a monitored drowning where the victim involuntarily gags and swallows large amounts of water. In the AP picture on the left protesters are demonstrating on a volunteer what waterboarding feels like. (It can be done in such a way that water does not actually enter the nose and mouth, but the effect is so terrifying and the psychological impact so intense that convulsive gagging is involuntary.) It is so dangerous that doctors must be present to determine whether a person has entered the final drowning spiral. John McCain and most everybody is right about this. It’s been called torture for hundreds of years.

President Bush, his ambitious neo-cons, and their army of speechless evangelical lemmings are wrong.

One expert says,

Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets. (source)

I do not see anywhere in the Christian world-view a place for torture. God’s warriors always struck their enemies. A decisive blow. God’s warriors never, as far as I can tell, resorted to the debasing of human life and dignity to accomplish their purposes. God’s warriors simply accept the fact that sometimes there are things only God can do.

I cannot think of an instance in Scripture where God’s warriors ever tortured their enemies. Joshua rolled a stone over the cave where the five kings had fled, but that was to incarcerate them until he could properly execute them. He hanged their bodies only after they were dead.

Even the decision of the armies of Israel to cut off the big toes and the thumbs of Adoni-bezek appears to me not to be for torture, but for justice. An eye for an eye so to speak. But what the people of Israel did is not necessarily the right standard. Nonetheless, in the main God’s people killed outright their enemies. Pagans gouged out eyes, castrated, and tortured. God’s people killed with a sudden strike. Then, if necessary, hacked them in pieces. For didactic purposes.

God’s people have always honored the dignity of people. Even enemies.

It continues to amaze me that Christians in America are so naive that they never suspect that some of the very laws they are glibly tolerating today in the spirit of red, white, and blue could very well one day be used against Christians as enemies of the state. Other countries already perceive Christian witness as psychological terror.

Is there any Christian who is going to be proud of his country if government authorized officials are waterboarding him, forcing him to gag and swallow water, in order to get the confession they want?

Are we so stupid as to trust human nature with torture? Does anyone really believe that the so-called “controlled environments” are really that controlled? Does Abu Graib not ring a bell? And if you should be a proponent of such torture, at what moment — at what split-second — does “justified” torture become gratuitous, masochistic gratification at the sight of kinetic physical torture? Even troops who have fought in combat say that they know when, in the heat of battle, they cross an invisible line, crossing over from killing to murder. Something happens in the heart. Something happens when it is too easy. Something happens when one has unchallenged power.

Our soldiers that endured waterboarding in Vietnam seem to be persuaded that it is torture. The Navy Seals used it to train their men in counter-interrogation techniques but abandoned it because it was too brutal. Hurting morale. But President Bush says it is “one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror.”

I for one am an American Christian that is not so American that I am not repulsed by the slide to barbarity that I simply do not speak out because the President is a Republican that just so happens to be a better option than a Democrat. Some tools, Mr. President, are not to be judged purely on the basis of whether or not they work. Some tools are not allowed. And if it is right for us to use, it is right for our enemies to use as well.

Laws are made because we are suspicious of human nature. Even our own. If we are empowering a few men in a dark room to determine when or not torture is expedient we are stupidly placing the reputation and dignity of an entire nation in the hands of a few characters. Characters that may have all the moral fiber of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who were not on a remote island in a closed room, but in a “controlled-environment” with soldiers of varying ranks and authority all around. Their evil sadism and masochism was unfettered by normal military and prison protocol. Imagine giving them a license to torture.

Mr. President, some things are more important than national security. National morality is one of those things.

7

“Seven years. . . seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”

It’s her golden birthday today. She turns seven on the seventh.

For seven years now my wife and I have praised God for closing her womb. For seven years now we have been rejoicing over the many years of barrenness that preceded March 7, 2001. For seven years we have been blessing God for our infertility. For seven years we have been relishing the fruit of our affliction. Our daughter is our Ephraim: “God has made us fruitful in the land of our affliction.”

On our children’s birthdays we think of precious barren couples and fervently hope that they will be strengthened by our story. A Mother’s Day never passes that this pastor does not publicly pray for the barren woman.

For seven years we have become more perplexed than ever why we should have been chosen to be so blessed. “Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest” (Psalm 65:4). We will never be able to comprehend why, of all the barren women in the world, God chose to make this verse Jennie’s testimony:

“He maketh the barren woman to keep house; and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the Lord” (Psalm 113:9).

A birthday is a praise day for Jennie and me. It’s a remembrance day.

This happy day is tinged only by the sad reality that many couples silently suffer barrenness and that thousands of babies needlessly die by the hand of the abortionist. Our joy is dampened only by the fact that so many people still think that adoption is only Plan B, failing to see that it may be God has designed it to be Plan A for their most unexpected happiness.

The following is a piece I wrote for a National Sanctify of Life Day and published on my blog some time ago. It’s the story of when we first held our daughter seven years ago today.

Lamentation – The Timelessness of Pain

This AP picture was moving to me. It was taken in 2008 at the funeral of 8 seminary students killed in Israel this week, but it could just have well have been taken when “a voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted because they were no more” (Matthew 2:18).

It was taken today, but it could have been taken when Jeremiah penned the words, “She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies” (Lamentations 1:2).

The photo is contemporary, but it could have been taken two thousand years ago when Jesus of Nazareth, bearing His cross to Golgotha, turned to weeping women and said,

Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:27-31).

A couple mourns. The clothing seen in this picture is clothing that might have been worn two thousand years ago. The timelessness of pain was digitally captured.

When will Rachel rejoice? When will she wipe away her tears and no longer wail, “Blessed are the breasts that never nursed”? Or will Rachel always weep?

They say pictures are worth a thousand words. I say that some pictures are worth a thousand sober questions.

The Book of Hymns

*What follows is a part one of a two-part rationale prepared for my church to remind it why we have purchased hymnals and why I have selected the particular hymnal that we will be introducing to our assembly in the next few weeks. Part Two will eventually be posted