Heil Succes!

It is amazing to me how much Americans are like the good Germans (98% to be exact) who rush in the reign of Adolph Hitler. German Christians were also swept up in the hysteria. I cannot help but see how the masses of American evangelicals are just as easily impressed by success “as the measure and justification of all things.” Thus, the larger a man’s church gets the more credible he becomes whether his ideas or opinions are worthy or not. Here’s how Bonhoeffer put it:

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of  Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity.  The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done. . . . With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum and the end justifies the means. . . . The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

A Hymn for the Elderly

There are three books essential for my own personal devotional walk: the Holy Bible, the Pilgrim’s Progress, and a good hymnbook. This past week I have enjoyed a hymn by Augustuss Toplady and the line “I muse on the years that are past” made me realize what a blessing this particular hymn would be for our elderly saints.

A Sov’reign Protector I have,

Unseen, yet forever at hand,

Unchangeably faithful to save,

Almighty to rule and command.

He smiles, and comforts about;

His grace as the dew shall descend;

And walls of salvation surround

The soul He delights to defend.

Inspirer and Hearer of prayer,

Thou Shepherd and Guardian of Thine,

My all to Thy covenant care

I sleeping and waking resign.

If Thou are my Shield and my Sun,

The night is no darkness to me;

And fast as my moments roll on,

They bring me but nearer to Thee.

Kind Author, and ground of my hope,

Thee, Thee, for my God I avow;

My glad Ebenezer set up,

And own Thou hast helped me till now.

I muse on the years that are past,

Wherein my defense Thou has proved;

Nor wilt Thou relinquish at last

A sinner so signally loved!

Why People Love Lin and Hate Tebow?

Jeremy Lin

Why do so many people love Jeremy Lin (for now) and hate Tim Tebow? Or, more specifically, why do the same people that hate Tim Tebow so vociferously love Linsanity?  Jeremy Lin, is also a devout Christian, but so far he’s not faced the acrimonious hate that Tim Tebow inspires. For that matter, other outspoken Christian professional athletes (i.e. Colt McCoy) are not catching the flak the Tebow does. The question is why?

I think I have an idea what a major factor may be, but lets admit all kinds of reasons people may not like Tim Tebow:

1. He played for the Florida Gators.
2. He’s a Denver Bronco.
3. He’s a rich boy (earned more than Aaron Rodgers this year).
4. They hate football.
5. He’s white.
6. He talks with a almost-feminine voice.
7. They’re sick of hearing about Tebow even before he started professional playing.
8. He’s a hunk.
9. They think he’s lucky.
10. They don’t like his throwing mechanics.
11. They think he’s getting opportunities that other guys don’t get.
12. They have a bias against lefties.
13. They don’t like religion.
14. He won’t date them.
15. In contrast to Lin, it seems like Tebow was groomed for the spotlight by his parents and handlers, giving the impression that he’s benefitting from culture wars. Whereas, Lin’s story strikes everyone as a pure Cinderella story.

Tim Tebow

It’s too soon to know what is going to happen with the amazing Jeremy Lin story. I am enjoying every moment of it, having never witnessed anything like it in my life. And I love the fact that Jeremy seems to have some more depth to his Christianity than what is immediately obvious in Tim. I don’t mean that disparagingly of Tim. I respect Tim Tebow a lot, but there is nothing on anything that I can find that shows much about what Tim actually believes, what he reads, etc. Jeremy Lin, on the other hand, reads Stott, Piper, and Mahaney. He has articulated a strong understanding of sovereignty, etc.

But all that misses what I think is the real reason for the hate on Tim Tebow. Indeed, he is one of the most loved and popular, but he’s also one of the most hated. I venture an answer:

Tim Tebow is one of the most hated athletes in America because he poked his finger in the eye of American immorality.

Americans embrace McCoy and Lin and their Christianity. After all, most Americans declare themselves to be Christian. But Tim Tebow, whether in naiveté or in bold deliberation, took his fame and said, “Abortion is wrong.” With his unashamed claim to virginity, he makes immoral Americans squirm because they hear him saying in unmistakable clarity: “Fornication is evil.”

Americans don’t like people who make them feel bad about themselves. We love Christian athletes. We just don’t want a Christian athlete making us feel ashamed because we don’t want to take the right position on abortion. We don’t want a Christian athlete making us feel bad about the fact that we have no morals. Even as Christians who believe as Tim does, we don’t want Christian athletes making us feel like we are cowards in our witness!

We Americans don’t mind that Tebow is a virgin. For that matter, we don’t care if Lin is. We just don’t want Tim saying so. Or Lin. Tim’s outspoken morality is intrusive to our immorality when he doggedly insists on bringing up his relationship to his Lord and Savior while we’re being entertained. We love darkness. We hate light. And light penetrates darkness by showing us that our works are evil. Much of the reaction to Tim proves John 3:20. And I wish Tim would wear that verse in his eye black:

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

I’m not saying that Lin must do as Tebow has done. Perhaps Tebow could have been more savvy and would do things differently if he could get another chance. Perhaps he’s ashamed that he hasn’t been more vocal! God calls each person to serve in a particular way. But I do think that we ought to avoid self-righteously frowning upon Tim Tebow for all the hate he’s inspired when it’s very possible that much of the hate is because he has courage that too many of us lack.

There are plenty of normal reasons to not like Tim. People love to hate athletes. However, some of the hate is clearly irrational and I think it is because Tim has scandalized the American conscience –not by doing something evil — but by being simply what was once more normal: moral and unashamed.

D.A. Carson on Matthew 18 and Public Rebuke

Matthew 18 is too often mis-used in public dialogue. I can’t say anything like D.A. Carson, so I offer here the link to his answer to the criticism that we should talk to a person privately before rebuking them publicly. Read the whole thing here.

There is a flavor of play-acting righteousness, of disproportionate indignation, behind the current round of “Gotcha!” games. If Person B charges Person A, who has written a book arguing for a revisionist understanding of the Bible, with serious error and possibly with heresy, it is no part of wisdom to “Tut-tut” the narrow-mindedness of Person B and smile condescendingly and dismissively over such judgmentalism. That may play well among those who think the greatest virtue in the world is tolerance, but surely it cannot be the honorable path for a Christian. Genuine heresy is a damnable thing, a horrible thing. It dishonors God and leads people astray. It misrepresents the gospel and entices people to believe untrue things and to act in reprehensible ways. Of course, Person B may be entirely mistaken. Perhaps the charge Person B is making is entirely misguided, even perverse. In that case, one should demonstrate the fact, not hide behind a procedural matter. And where Person B is advancing serious biblical argumentation, it should be evaluated, not dismissed with a procedural sleight-of-hand and a wrong-headed appeal to Matthew 18.

When Thinkers Are “Haters” and Brother James’ Tweet

There is nothing true about the following tweet from James MacDonald, but I’ll be called a hater for pointing it out.

I do not follow Brother James because I'm blocked!

“When rebuke is neccessary it should be private first and in the context of relationship – not from a stranger or apart from love.”

Really? In other words, James is telling all his followers, “Nobody can rebuke me or say anything negative about me unless they have a relationship with me and do it privately first.” If this isn’t an attempt to literally  invalidate any criticism that most people will hear, I don’t know what it is. Because it is certainly not true, and a wooden application of this maxim coming from on high is certainly capable of insulating Brother James from any kind of substantive rebuke. Popular people generally abhor publicity that they cannot control, and popular preachers often believe that their success hinges on their popularity. Thus, controlling criticism and labeling that which one cannot control as invalid is important to them.

James’ maxim invalidates most criticism against him since it’s hardly possible that even members of his church could get a private relationship/audience with James. I heard of one person that’s been there for more than a decade and has never met James personally which makes one wonder about the ultimate value of mega churches, but I digress.

James doesn’t know me or care about me. But here’s a public rebuke. And it is in Christian love: James, stop criticizing and rebuking how people criticize and rebuke you. Because your comments on criticism and rebuke, coming as they do, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism and rebuke toward you, give the impression that you are trying to invalidate every criticism that is not certified by you.

Have we come to the point where we are not allowed to critique a guy because he has a big church? Are we not permitted to openly rebuke a public figure? Are we really at the point in our Christian dialogue that thinkers are perceived as haters just because they won’t let a popular preacher get away with faulty logic or bad exegesis or doctrinal error?

Please, people. Quit drinking the kool-aid. This is the same kind of poppycock I heard from Jack Hyles when I was a teen. And even as a fan I could recognize what he was doing. He literally tried to intimidated anyone that brought up criticisms from him by formulating a protocol for dialogue, a code of conversation, which had no basis in reason or bible, but was clearly all about censuring critics and invalidating their criticism in the minds of his devoted followers. I remember him hammering into the minds of his people that they were never to believe a bad thing about a man of God. It was convenient, of course, because he was under scrutiny for a host of bad things.

The tricky thing about these codes of conversation that are handed down to us from powerful leaders is that there is always an element of truth in them, something that resonates with the Christian mind. Love believes what is good about people and we should obviously be aware of the fact that rumor-mongering is a vicious enemy of God’s servants. We should, in fact, verify things and follow up stories, looking for facts and pursuing clarity. With that in mind, Jack Hyles’ code of conversation that he gave to his loyal followers resonates with the Christian mind. But the net effect of this code was for his loyal followers to dismiss criticism and refuse to believe the facts about Jack Hyles, no matter what the evidence revealed. Since Hyles was preaching this code of conversation when he was in the heat of scrutiny, it had the very neat effect of intimidating anyone that dared to question him.

Similarly, James MacDonald is doing the same thing when he tweets his authoritative little maxim about rebuke. Doesn’t it resonate in the Christian mind that we should build relationships and privately rebuke, doing it in love? Of course. But the problem is that what James tweeted is not actually always true, and it simply does not apply to public, doctrinal controversy. The timing is so obvious and he, master at communication that he is, knows full well that this has the effect of intimidating analysis and shutting up critics or, at the very least, invalidating his critics in the minds of thousands of his followers who are uncomfortable with the controversy and just wish everything would go back to normal as quickly as possible.

This is so wrong, James.

When a man’s best defense is that the process of criticism was a violation of his code of conversation, thinking people everywhere start taking note. When a man starts sending out all kinds of messages that censure the criticism but doesn’t actually answer it, he’s become too big for his britches.

But is it actually true? Is rebuke only supposed to be privately and “in a relationship”? Obviously, it should be “in love,” but what is love and when is rebuke justified?

1 Timothy 5:20 actually calls for public rebuke of elders. Those who sin “rebuke publicly.” Elders are under a stricter judgment (James 3:1), and the nature of their ministry is public. It could be argued, of course, that this public rebuke in 1 Timothy 5:20 assumes a Matthew 18 procedure since elders are naturally a part of the local church and since Matthew 18 is a process given to the local church. This is reasonable, but it is still only an assumption.

Timothy had oversight of a number of elders and quite possibly was in scenarios where the Matthew 18 process was not applicable. Still, elders who continued in sin had to be rebuked publicly. Paul rebuked Peter publicly, but we don’t know that he met first with Peter in private. That would be assumption. That conflict appears to have happened in Antioch when Peter was visiting from Jerusalem. It wasn’t your average local church sin issue. James would have slapped Paul on the wrist for being a “fundamentalist.”

He and a host of contemporary Americans who were Peter’s fanboys would have taken Paul’s accusation to task, hyper-analyzing his tone, mood, language, timing, and delivering the coup de grâce that works so effectively with 21st century Americans but would appear childish to Peter and Paul: “That was not loving.” The Apostles actually believed the Old Testament proverb that “Open rebuke is better than secret love” (Proverbs 27:5). But they were just Apostles. And it’s a really good thing that James MacDonald was not David or Shimei would have died much sooner than he did. When David was at one of his lowest moments, Shimei threw dirt and stones at him and cursed him. I can just hear what James might’ve said:

Then Abishai the son of Zeruiah said to the king James, “Why should these dead dog blogger discernmentalists with the small churches curse my lord the king? Please, let me go over and take off his head!” And the king said, “You guys are my guys! You know my heart for ministry! Let’s have a video shoot of us talking about how much we love each other as soon as you go take the Shimei’s head off! He is so unloving and probably trying to ingratiate white guys  (although you guys are clearly NOT trying to ingratiate me!). Let’s do everything we can do to censure criticism of any kind. Always. We are, after all, the chosen ones.”

Well, an actual king who was really anointed and who really had the right to kill his critic, who was really getting insulted with accusations that were really erroneous behaved differently:

Then Abishai the son of Zeruiah said to the king, “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Please, let me go over and take off his head!” But the king said, “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? So let him curse, because the LORD has said to him, ‘Curse David.’ Who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?’” And David said to Abishai and all his servants, “See how my son who came from my own body seeks my life. How much more now may this Benjamite? Let him alone, and let him curse; for so the LORDhas ordered him. It may be that the LORD will look on my affliction, and that the LORD will repay me with good for his cursing this day.”

Now many people are asking James, “Why have you done so?”

We should answer some criticisms, indeed. But we should also think as David did that, perhaps, they are from the Lord and that eventually we will also be vindicated by the Lord. Isn’t it possible that the rebukes of other Christians are actually from Jesus Himself? Doesn’t Jesus say, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19)? If David could believe that Shimei, a loyalist of the house of Saul, David’s enemy, had possibly been “ordered by the Lord,” why is it a stretch of the imagination to think that Christian men might also be ordered by the Lord?

There are many illustrations in the Scriptures of rebukes taking place where there has not been a nurtured relationship and the initial encounter is the public rebuke! Why does James give himself a pass when many men in the covenanted people of God never assumed this insulated luxury for themselves? Answer: He gives himself the pass because thousands of contemporary Christians buy into sentimentalism and not into clear-headed biblical thinking.

James MacDonald would have been scandalized by Phinehas. That crazy discernmentalist went tearing into somebody’s tent and impaled a couple while they were having sex without even bothering to build a relationship with either one of them. Furthermore, sentimental Evangelicals would argue that a spear in one’s back is unloving. But Phinehas did love. He loved God and the people of God. And God seemed quite pleased with the action although he clearly went against conventional social mores in the procedure.

James would wag his finger at most of our Christian brothers and sisters who have gone before us who had a much more robust understanding of dialogue and thicker skin. Most of them did not have egos so fragile that they had to devise rhetorical tricks to shame people into silence and censure critics in order to patch up an insular bubble that preserved them from being affected by the dustups they kicked up.

Some of us decided a long time ago that we are not going to be governed by the sentimentalist’s interpretation of love. I love James MacDonald. I love all my brothers. I know it. God knows it. It doesn’t necessarily matter to me if they don’t know it. If they thought about it, they would. And we’ll have all eternity to smooth out ruffled feathers.

In the meantime it’d be wise to actually love rebuke.

Joe Fundy & James MacDonald (Round Two)

So, I deleted the first “Joe Fundy & James MacDonald.”

When a brother in my congregation confronts me and a sweet lady in our membership calls me to gently rebuke her pastor, I listen. Some people were unnecessarily hurt by the tone of that post and I was so blinded by my passion to be extremely clear and understood by particular demographic groups that I literally did not think of any names or people in those particular groups that could justly feel that I was speaking specifically about them.

The fact is I was thinking in the abstract about what I think is the conglomerate mindset of the hundreds of former fundamentalists that I have interacted with over the years who once were doggedly confident that they were in the right place and position and now, merely a few years later (and often much less) are equally doggedly confident that they are in the right group, albeit lightyears different than their former position.

If that offends people, so be it. It is they, not I, who have flipped from one position to the other in very short amount of time. And for the most part they have not done it out of deeply held doctrinal convictions; they just chafed under something they did not like. If the generalization does not apply specifically — in other words, if the shoe doesn’t fit — then don’t wear it. Although, sociologists regularly define Americans as out of shape and overweight, I don’t get offended. It’s partly true and partly not true of me specifically. It’s hard to be offended by something that is completely irrelevant to you. I am not offended by most insults that come my way because I know they’re not true. And I know God knows they’re not true.

However, I was clearly out of bounds to speak the way that I did, allowing my passion about Trinity, Church, and American Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism to mingle with my pride and overcome patience. Nothing vexes a guy with pride like a guy with pride and I quite enjoyed writing with excessive flair about MacDonald’s excessiveness. That was the fruit of my own sinfulness, and I repent of that. I hope that I will be forgiven. I actually do love everyone involved.

Here are some of the things I wish I had said:

1. While I am grieved by James MacDonald’s reckless pride (it takes one to know one) and cavalier attitude toward those who disagree with him (even to the point of promoting a video that castigates the motives of all black guys that disagreed with him in order to avoid the real issues), I have also benefitted from his ministry in various ways over the last ten years and I am a better Christian because of it. For that I am thankful. One of his messages is on a worn CD that I have listened to multiple times.
2. I really regret and am ashamed that I used the word ‘tripe’ to speak of his teaching. That certainly does not apply to MOST of what Jame’s teaches. I’m sorry for that.
3. While I most certainly wanted to be understood by everyone around here what demographic of fundamentalism and evangelicalism I was referring to (i.e. those who were in the fundamentalism represented by the flagship church, Bethel and those who are now under the ministries of mega-powered personalities without any real obvious accountability), I was regrettably too impatient to write measured qualifications and allowances for exceptions.
4. I wish I had made it more clear that I still think that the better choice between Harvest (and the kind of churches the movement promotes) and Bethel (the kind of fundamentalism it represents) is Harvest, and I fully recognize that will offend many people. I’m sorry. It is what it is. That’s what I think.
5. I wish I had acknowledged what I already knew: people get incensed by what offends them and not what offends others or, worse, what is doctrinally erroneous. Though James MacDonald has offended many in the last year, the people in my readership who feel the heat of my critique are incensed more at me because they are personally offended and only slightly (if at all) disturbed by what James has done on many occasions toward anyone that disagrees with him. Many of them were not offended when I wrote similarly about the fundamentalism they were leaving, and I am justified to think that their charges of my “unloving” tone lack real credibility when they have yet to express any consternation over James’ insults of Christians who are trying to defend 2000 year old doctrines. Who’s unloving? The fact is that my unloving tone was motivated by love. It does not justify the tone, but it fails to acknowledge who I am if it is assumed that anything but love has motivated me. I love the truth. And I love the people affected by teachers. I love them so much that I’m willing to risk offending them.
6. I should have made clear that I do not think that everyone that takes issue with James MacDonald should leave his church. They should just take issue! Actively. Members of any church should do as the members of my church have done and hold their pastor to accountability, refusing to be thoughtless cheerleaders. Members should be able to pick up the phone and ask their pastor personally for an explanation. It makes sense that sheep should be able to get in contact with the man they call “shepherd.” How this is done in a church with 12,000 members is beyond me, but that is not my problem. Nonetheless, it should be a problem that all 12,000 members ponder.

Therefore, I do not think that it is inappropriate to assume as I did in my previous post that — in the main — those who spent decades defending man-centeredness and poor ecclesiology in one sphere (fundamentalism) and suddenly changed when grievances, not doctrine, launched them into another sphere (mega-church under mega-personality) will not be the kind of members that do anything more than bury their head in the sand and defend their newest champion, getting defensive if their new group is critiqued even as they were defensive of the old group.

I do know, however, that there are many godly people with strong convictions who will be the exception to the majority and start asking questions, requiring accountability and explanations; and I am angered at myself that I would do anything that would discourage them. Furthermore, I hope to God that all of our intense discussion is done because we believe that the root desire all Christians share, fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists alike, is that the cause of Jesus Christ would be advanced.

We Nerds Are Sick of the Jocks (At Least I Hope So)

When will leaders get sick of mega-church pastors?  They are the Paris Hiltons and Kardashians of American evangelicalism and they are, in the main, very shallow and simplistic. It could be argued that the shallower and sillier they are, the larger the church. Thus, Joel Osteen ranks near the top. We’re all so afraid to just blow them off because we’ll be told that we’re just jealous of their large churches.That makes as much sense as saying that a man is an adulterer because he criticizes a man with a wife. We don’t covet their large churches because many of us don’t even think they have churches. Accusing us of coveting their large churches because we are fed up with their pushiness is more akin to accusing us of lusting a wasted hooker because we hate the pimp. It’s like thinking that a nerd’s scorn of a dumb jock’s ineptitude with anything requiring intelligence is really a suppressed anger for not getting on the ball team when, in fact, nerds could not care less if sports never existed.

We live in completely different spheres of thought about what is actually church. And that’s why it really rots that they dictate the conversation about church.

 Anyway, I’ve dropped a few lines on twitter that share my thoughts about the American fascination with the cook kids in the mega churches, thinking that I was alone in my vexation. Here’s a sample:

• After the shallow and juvenile tripe from Driscoll and MacDonald, adults speak: shar.es/fdsg7
• @La_Shawn He [Tebow after declining to preach at prosperity church] has more theological sense than some evangelical mega church pastors.
• Certain Celebrity pastors are the Kardashians of evangelicalism and all the groupies are atwitter about their latest attention grab.
• 1 lesson from ER: people with the money frame the discussion. Only in weak evangelicalism does your opinion have weight becuz you’re hot.
• When revival comes there will be an outbreak of new churches and revived old churches and a decrease of mega churches.
• Poor mega church pastors. Because they have always believed that numbers are proof of blessing, they now think they can never be wrong.
•  Got very helpful idea from a pastor with a church 1/3 the size of mine. Why do we think mega church pastors know more what’s relevant to us?

And I said this in the comment section of the previous post:

We normal guys out here who are unaffiliated and don’t have our umbilical cords attached to a celebrity preacher-man are getting sick and tired of being verbally spanked anytime we call it the way we see it. Just because we get shouted down by the guys who can put on extravagant Elephant Rooms in which the elephant is not actually discussed doesn’t mean we little people don’t know what we’re talking about. And we don’t like it when Driscoll and MacDonald can say what they want about anyone that disagrees with them, but when we respond in kind we’re told that we’re unloving fundamentalists. Even racists. We’re especially weary of the Kardashian-like drama imposed upon us by leaders who have both too much time and too much power to even remember what it’s like to be normal.

And then there’s this in the comment section from a pastor who recently divorced his church from the Harvest Bible Fellowship:

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of big-shot, mega-church, celebrity pastors who think they are the ones who get to decide who is worthy to be heard, and who isn’t.

Nice to know the sentiment is shared.