“I am sure the devil has no greater delight than to know that preachers consort with his purpose of elevating the world above the Word. As long as anything appears more agreeable and palatable than the feast of grace set forth in Scripture, you forfeit the ordained means of grace and threaten to fill the church with mere professors and not true Christians.”
–Benjamin Keach
Quoted by Tom Nettles in The Baptists, Volume 1, Beginnings in Britain (Mentor, 2005).
In a previous post, I presented my perspective on how moral beliefs operate in a republican, federal system of government: If New Hampshire wants to recognize “gay marriage,” perhaps it should be able to. But Alabama, if it does not, should not be forced to go along with the nefarious nuptials simply because it, too, is one of these United States.
Some might respond that permitting New Hampshire to violate God’s law regarding marriage and sexuality is being disobedient, or giving in to decadent cultural forces.
But consider how federalism has operated with respect to abortion.
Many years ago the U.S. Supreme Court decided that abortion, in certain circumstances, should be legal. This interpretation of law is considered binding on all the States. (There is considerable weight to the legal opinion that such decisions violate the Constitution’s grant of power to the central government.)
Since that time, sentiment regarding abortion in the seat of central power, Washington D.C., has been intractable. Those who abhorred abortion and lamented the Supreme Court’s decision used the federalist system to their advantage, seeking instead to change public opinion in individual States. In the process, citizens in many States have modified their view of abortion, and their States have severely restricted its legality.
The result of this approach is that public opinion is now decidedly different than it was in 1973. Recent surveys suggest that the number of abortions is at an all-time low, and that for the first time in many years a majority of Americans oppose unrestricted abortion.
Homosexual advocates have been using the same tactic for years, and are seeing the benefits.
So, federalism is a two-edged sword for Christians: opponents of decency and morality can seek to change public opinion and law just as we can. Yet federalism is decidedly better than the alternative. If all such decisions were made in Washington, so that the installation of a new administration or new congressional class changed such fundamental issues for the entire nation every two or four years, change would be constant and radical. The federal system, by contrast, requires that wholesale change be both slow and difficult.
(The appearances of “crises” such as occurred in the Depression, the current economic situation, and the Swine flu “pandemic” are frequently used to circumvent the federalist preference for slow and deliberate change.)
Alexis de Toqueville recognized the ingenuity of the U.S. system of government in that each branch of the central government served as a check against the unrestrained power of the other. In addition, the States serve to check the rampant power of the central government. The Federalist Papers sees the need for checks as stemming in the fallen nature of man. If all men were angels (holy and righteous), the Papers argues, we would not need any checks on government.
At present, the kingdom of Christ rules in the hearts of men, not in the halls of Congress. Until the Lord returns to fully consummate the inaugurated kingdom, federalism is perhaps the best we can do.
>Well, things would be strange, indeed. One would expect that the Mad Hatter would rush in at any moment, Alice would take a pill and grow into a giant, and the Queen of Hearts would recite her all-too-familiar mantra, “Off with his head.”
And headless I should be, if I were to merely enter a beauty contest, much less be crowned something or other.
I thought I would escape comment on Carrie Prejean – Miss California, and runner-up in the Miss USA pageant – but with ongoing revelations of the “windy day” photos from earlier in her career, the story just keeps on going, like a risqué Energizer Bunny®.
Most everyone should be familiar by now with the question that the contestant judge – Perez Hilton – asked Prejean about “gay marriage.” Another state had decided to permit it, so what did she think? Prejean indicated that she was pleased that our civic arrangements permit people choose to engage in such rites, but that her rearing taught her that God desired marriage to be between one woman and one man. Prejean did fairly well, I thought, for a 21-year-old. (How has she responded since then to the fawning Christian community and the ‘windy day’ photos? Not so much.)
So, I wondered what I would have said to such a question. At the age of 21, I probably would have said something coarse and completely unbiblical. So, I rejected what would have been the indiscretions of my youth and wondered what I would have said now.
Put aside, if possible, the image you might be having of a 41-year-old male beauty contestant, “drummer extraordinaire” or not.
You must know that I am an ardent traditionalist, in the sense that I believe God designed and gave to us the marriage relationship, and that any given marriage should be between one man and one woman. Given recent scientific developments and medical advances (see Al Mohler’s article about gender confusion), I should probably say that marriage should be between one-who-has-always-been-a-man and one-who-has-always-been-a-woman, not in the man-trapped-in-a-woman’s-body sense, but in the Garden of Eden sense, fig leaves and all.
I am, also, an ardent federalist, not in the sense that all power should be concentrated in a central government (as in ‘the Feds’), but in the 10th Amendment sense that these United States retain power not explicitly granted by the Constitution to the government in Washington, D.C. (see, e.g., the Federalist Society and the Tenth Amendment Center). Local groups of citizens (the States) are better able to reflect their moral consensus than bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. If, for example, my fellow citizens in Alabama decided to permit ‘gay marriage,’ and if I felt strongly enough about it, I should be able to move to Arizona, where they don’t. The beauty of the U.S. system is that not all States are required to do and believe the same things.
(Some years back a couple of law school friends and I were discussing a federal judge’s ruling that Alabama must remove the Ten Commandments display from the State Courthouse. They simply accepted – as undisputed historical truth – that the central government could order a State what to do with its own property. When I suggested that the Alabama governor ignore the order, they were incredulous. This attitude that the central government is sovereign over all issues is part of the cause for many of our problems today.)
So, my response to Perez Hilton’s question might have gone something like this:
“The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom I serve in the Lord Jesus Christ, gave mankind the institution of marriage as a gift to enjoy and as the means by which we populate the earth, and he instructed us that it is to be between one man and one woman. However, the United States is not the kingdom of Christ, and the citizens of the several States should be free to determine this issue as their respective faiths and consciences dictate.
“My hope would be that as God draws men to himself, prompting them to repent of sin and turn to righteousness in Christ, that my fellow citizens would determine this issue in a way that glorifies God.”
Come to think of it, if I gave this answer, Perez Hilton might have said nasty things about me, too, and someone would have inevitably dredged up some “windy day” photos of me.
People go to great lengths in attempting to deal with the grief associated with death.
The cliché is the parents of a young child who keep his room perfectly preserved as a memorial. Such memorials are becoming increasingly public. We’ve all seen the makeshift crosses on the side of the road, indicating that somebody’s loved one died. Some announce the lifespan of a deceased friend or family member with decals emblazoned on their car windows.
Certainly we do the same thing with headstones, grave markers and even crypts in the local cemetery. But there, all the dead are assembled together, a macabre collection of memories available to whomever wants to take note at their own leisure. Roadside crosses and automobile obituaries are just the opposite: as we go to work, to church, to recreate we are compelled to take note. Whereas cemeteries are mass testimonials to the universal grip of death, roadside and mobile memorials single out one particular death, as if it – in contrast to the life that preceded it – was somehow unique.
Perhaps most indicative of an unhealthy relationship with death is the cemetery accoutrements I saw recently: a finely carved marble park bench matching the headstone it faced. A park bench in a cemetery is as useful, as they say, as a screen door on a submarine.
But all of these devices – roadside crosses, automobile obituaries, bedroom shrines, cemetery benches and even the pedestrian headstone – reveal the longing we all have to somehow remain in contact with those who have died. It reveals an inherent understanding that physical death is not final.
Yet instead of provoking us to cling to whatever wisp of reality remains of the dead, this understanding should encourage us to consider our own destination, to ensure our own post-material reality, when those who survive us have erected roadside markers, or drive around with car obituaries, or place park benches before headstones emblazoned with our names.
I frequently lament that much of what passes for worship in church services, of what substitutes for prayer by believers, of what masquerades as preaching in our pulpits must be seriously devoid of whatever fueled the New Testament examples of those things.
I also frequently lament that all the ‘great ideas’ that come across my synapses get taken by others before I can broadcast them. To wit, I thought about a preaching series on the significance of the gospel long before David Platt ever preached it (see the Church at Brook Hills sermon archives). Now, if I preach what I originally intended, people might think that I took it from him. This is, I am painfully aware, a mini-lesson in humility, and how the body of Christ should work together when credit is not at issue.
But chalk up yet another pre-empting at the hands of no less a figure than J.I. Packer, who said this about power:
“First Corinthians 12-14 is a passage of Scripture which makes painful reading for thoughtful evangelical believers. … These chapters make painful reading because, whatever evils they confront in us, they do at least show us a local church in which the Holy Spirit was working in power. So reading the passage makes one painfully aware of the impoverishment, inertia, dryness and deadness of so many churches at the present time.
“If our only reaction to these chapters is to preen ourselves and feel glad because our churches are free from Corinthian disorders, we are fools indeed and ought to think again. I fear that many of our churches today are orderly because they are asleep. And in many cases I fear it is the sleep of death. It is no great thing, is it, to have perfect order in a cemetery?”
(J.I. Packer, Serving the People of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer, Volume 2, Paternoster, 1988, p10.)
The Alabama Baptist and other media outlets associated with the Southern Baptist Convention are frequently dominated by stories of efforts to curtail gambling and alcohol use. Any why not? Wasting the family’s grocery money at the slot machines and driving drunk hurt everyone. But should those things dominate both our discussions and our energies and become what the SBC is known for?
Who among us would not be able to recount the efforts of our own church, or that of people we know, to keep liquor stores a suitable distance away from church property and retain a ‘sanctified zone’ for our pious goings-on? Otherwise ambivalent Christians can be counted on to mount the proverbial holy crusade to keep the pool hall across the street from getting a liquor license.
Why does sanctimony seem so appealing?
“Sanctimony” is a bit strong, you say? The April 2 issue of The Alabama Baptist carries the story of a Prattville church that successfully ‘halted’ the lease of state property – located down the street from the church and its school – to a liquor store (click here for a blog article about it). The Minister of Administration for East Memorial Baptist Church, Bryan Easley, gave the rather revealing reason the congregation was so interested in maintaining its ‘sanctified zone’: “None of us wanted to drive by a liquor store on our way to church and school and home.”
What?
The church was not faced with an issue of its congregants needing to navigate through besotted heathen stumbling around the streets, spilling alcohol and obscenities all over children innocently skipping their way to Vacation Bible School. It was not faced with the problem of drunken revelers sleeping off their partying in church doorways, vomiting on the lawn, or engaging in promiscuity behind the church sign emblazoned with the message “Sign Broken – Message Inside.” (What if our hypothetical hung-over drunkards wanted to hear that message, and proceeded inside to partake?)
Instead, the minister did not want to drive by the store.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, that the minister and his congregation wanted to avoid other things:
“None of us wanted to drive by a prostitute on our way to church and school and home.”
“None of us wanted to drive by a drug addict on our way to church and school and home.”
“None of us wanted to drive by a mugging on our way to church and school and home.”
“None of us wanted to drive by a gambler on our way to church and school and home.”
“None of us wanted to drive by a homeless man on our way to church and school and home.”
Besides – none of us? On the way to church, school and home? What if they merely saw a liquor store ad in the Yellow Pages as they looked for a fried chicken place that delivers? (See the link to the Sam Rainer article below for the not-so-inside joke.)
Several thoughts come to mind, most of which I am not able to transcribe verbatim, for I would imagine that many who deem themselves followers of Christ and don’t want to drive by a liquor store would also proudly proclaim that neither do they want to “internet surf by someone speaking sternly to fellow believers.”
First, let us be clear about the biblical teaching on alcohol. It is NOT forbidden. The biblical prohibition is against drunkenness. The biblical prohibition against causing others to stumble is NOT an absolute mandate to avoid drinking – or anything else, for that matter – but an indication that when a believer KNOWS that his behavior causes another to stumble, he should be willing to lay aside that otherwise permissible behavior for the sake of his stumbling brother. Sinful behavior, by contrast, is always wrong, whether or not it causes another to stumble. It is perfectly acceptable for believers to choose not to drink at all, either for personal preference or to avoid the possibility that another might be caused to stumble. It is NOT permissible for that believer, having so decided, to consider others of different opinions as less pious or less faithful.
D.A. Carson has reportedly quipped “If I’m called to preach the gospel among a lot of people who are cultural teetotalers, I’ll give up alcohol for the sake of the gospel. But if they start saying, ‘You cannot be a Christian and drink alcohol,’ I’ll reply, ‘Pass the port’.”
Second, this sentiment reveals a disturbing mindset about which sins we choose to rail against. We have no problem railing against VICES – those things that all those unrepentant heathen or backslidden believers are doing to degrade society. But poll those congregations that spend enormous energy mounting petition drives against gambling and alcohol, and count how many of their sermons in the past twelve months have railed against gluttony, greed, anger, envy, divorce or lust. We rail against the behavior of others while molly-coddling the sin that corrupts the heart.
Third, this sentiment reveals a disturbing mindset about corporate worship. Not only do we want to be left alone to worship God together, but we also want everyone who doesn’t to quit reminding us that they aren’t, and about the condition from which God called each and every one of us. We create a ‘sanctified zone’ around our church buildings to keep the ‘sinners’ – and any evidence that there are any – a safe distance away. Does the very sight of someone sinning – viewed from the protective cocoon of our late-model automobiles – keep us from worship? Does the very knowledge that someone remains lost outside the church walls keep us from worship? Perhaps our true discomfort comes when we consider that perhaps that knowledge should compel us to do something other than roll up our car window or sign a petition.
It should come as no surprise to members of Southern Baptist congregations that we are known as being ‘legalists,’ and hypocrites, to boot. (Sam Rainer talks about an informal poll on this subject taken by his dad, Thom Rainer, on his blog.)
Last, there is inherent in this attitude a presumption that to be Christian you cannot be even close proximity to certain types of sin (I’m still pondering how the mere existence of liquor, sitting in unopened bottles on shelves in a closed store, constitutes sin to be so studiously avoided…or how Jesus himself would have passed current ministerial muster). There is no thought at all given to why it is only gambling and alcohol that must be safely quarantined, and not all those other sins that stem from our creaturely pride.
Instead of faithfully doing our part as believers to herald the kingdom of Christ – characterized by humility, forgiveness, grace and redemption – we are instead engaging in the ancient lie that we can create our own tee-totaling, electronic-bingo-boycotting, man-made empire.
So, for those who maintain that we can’t drive by a liquor store and remain Christian: ‘Pass the port’.
My Presbyterian pastor friend has quipped to me that Baptists make the best Presbyterians. This is possibly because of all the repressed Baptist interest in alcohol and cigars that blossoms in Presbyterian environs. He reminds me of an old joke that illustrates this:
Q: What do you call a Baptist in the liquor store?
A: Nothing, because he wouldn’t acknowledge that you saw him there, anyway.
And yes, it is possible to be an unapologetic Southern Baptist and have Presbyterian friends.
Much proverbial ink has been spilled regarding “Baptist distinctives,” “Baptist Identity,” “Landmarkism,” “Great Commission Resurgence,” and so forth. (I say “proverbial” because I haven’t touched a paper magazine or newspaper in ages, and the phrase “much digitally encoded data has been transmitted through human/digital interface devices” doesn’t quite have quite the same literary ring). It all seems to boil down to what makes Baptists Baptist, rather than Presbyterian, Methodist or traveling snake oil salesmen.
I noticed a good way to address this question when someone asked me why I was attending a Southern Baptist seminary. He was also planning to go to seminary, and was torn between some of the premier Reformed/Presbyterian schools and some of the Reformed-leaning SBC schools. He asked why I wouldn’t feel more at home theologically attending a Reformed/Presbyterian school. After thinking about it for a minute, I answered in a way that clarified and revealed my view on Baptist distinctive, from the perspective of a prospective pastor.
In my understanding of Presbyterian polity and theology, two issues would keep me from preaching in one of their churches. First, I could not in good conscience baptize infants. I believe that Scripture plainly teaches that baptism is for those who have professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which infants cannot do. Second, as a pastor in a Presbyterian church, I could not opt out of that practice. That is, Presbyterian polity is, well, Presbyterian, in the sense that a group of people outside the local church governs theological definition and practice. The local congregation could not decide to stop baptizing infants and remain a “Presbyterian” church.
On the contrary, even a Reformed/Calvinist pastor trained in Southern Baptist Convention schools might disagree with the predominant view on certain theological issues, but could find an SBC congregation compatible with his views. For instance, a pastor might believe that the altar call – other than following explicitly evangelistic sermons – was inappropriate. He might believe it inappropriate to admit members on a “vote” immediately following their request to join on a Sunday morning. He might believe that God is sovereign over all aspects of salvation, while believers remain responsible to proclaim the gospel (Calvinism). He might believe that the church should have both deacons and elders. He might believe that the church should practice the discipline of members. He might NOT believe in a pre-mil, mid-trib Rapture.
On all those points such a pastor would be marching to the beat of a drummer much different than and rarely heard in the majority of Baptist churches. But the SBC won’t dictate (at least thus far) that he cannot pastor ANY Southern Baptist church that wanted to call him. He might not be invited to all the premier SBC conferences, but he would still be able to shepherd a flock in accord with his calling as a minister of the gospel. This particular distinctive sometimes goes by other names, such as local church autonomy, and is manifested in the recent controversy surrounding the decision of the Georgia SBC church to call a woman as its pastor. (This incident provides an interesting example of how the concept of church discipline and accountability are not simply intra-congregational matters, but also apply in an inter-congregational setting – but that is another post).
So, under this “prospective pastor” analysis, the distinctive Baptist elements come to two: believer’s baptism and congregational authority. But these both presume and flow from something logically prior: the authority of Scripture. One’s standing on the subject of baptism (believers or infants) and the mode of baptism (immersion or sprinkling) should be dictated by what Scripture teaches. Similarly, one’s position regarding the local congregation’s authority should flow Scripture. So the functional authority of Scripture is a foundational distinctive for Baptists not similarly crucial to the faith and practice of other denominations. This leaves us with three Baptist distinctives: authority of Scripture, believer’s baptism, and congregational authority.
Some might include other things as distinctive, such as our position on the Lord’s Supper, missions, cooperation with other Baptists, and cultural engagement. But there doesn’t seem to be consensus even among Baptists about what is a proper “Baptist” position on these matters. Instead, if a church rejects the functional authority of Scripture, or rejects believer’s baptism by immersion, or rejects congregational authority in favor of some Episcopal or Presbyterian governmental form, it ceases to be Baptist.