So why then am I publicly disagreeing with him? Why get involved in this controversy? Why would I go out of my way to suggest that his recent blog posts on why Christians should support the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia as well as the plausibility problem, are not only wrong and naive, but potentially dangerous ways to think about these issues? Why would a young thirty-something nobody do such a thing? Of course part of it is the fact that the Day which we are told we should support is not just about fighting against discrimination and violence (although we absolutely should oppose civil discrimination and violence). It is, as the website says, "A worldwide celebration of sexual and gender diversities!" This is clearly beyond what any Christian can do. First Corinthians 10 tells us that:
18 Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? 19 What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? 20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons. 22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?
(1 Corinthians 10:18-22 NKJV)
Most of these internet blowups don't concern me so I stay away. It's not my fight. I believe this one is. As I stated above, Adrian Warnock is an influential voice in the broad Charismatic Calvinist stream. While I am not so endowed with such influence, I am a constituent member of that stream; and so for the honor of the Church and that of the Charismatic Calvinist movement, I feel like I should make my dissenting opinion known.
I think I can also speak to this as someone who is aware of the need to be compassionate and sensitive to the emotions that many people feel who experience same-sex attraction. I can count some people that I know personally who do. Some of them are practicing homosexuals, and some are Christians who still battle these attractions daily. Additionally, anyone who knows me well knows of my generally favorable stance toward the late Lonnie Frisbee, the hippie evangelist who ministered during the days of the Jesus Movement and who sadly died of complications resulting from AIDS in 1993.
One last word of introduction. In my mind, this really isn't ultimately about the homosexual movement or the related issues of same-sex attraction within Evangelicalism. What I hope to challenge are what I perceive to be some of the underlying assumptions in Adrian's article. To borrow terminology from the Protestant Reformation, the homosexual/transgender issue is the formal cause, but the material cause is much deeper. The material cause is the manifold ways Evangelicals think that if only the Church would just get its act together and support in some prophetic sense the same issues the larger culture does, the secular Western culture would finally take notice and begin to listen to what we have to say. As I hope to demonstrate, this attitude is wrong and I believe deadly and is found in a host of other issues not sexual in nature. However, I should say up front that it is not my intention to issue a point-by-point rebuttal. There are some good things in his two blog posts. Again, my only concern is that the underlying assumptions are off and have lead and will lead to very dangerous places spiritually.
I really don't know where this idea came from that the Church is somehow a sad, sorry bunch of mediocrities that are completely out of touch with the real world. Now I am sure that may be true somewhere, but I have rarely seen it. Much current evangelical thinking seems to lean to this idea that if we all could only get our heads out of our proverbial rear ends, we could somehow really begin to affect the world for Christ. But I believe this misses the mark substantially. That is just not what our Lord Jesus said would happen. The truth of the matter is, no matter how lovingly we preach, no matter how accepting we biblically can be, and no matter how much patience and compassion we show, the world will simply hate us:
Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake
(Matthew 24:9 NKJV)
I recognize that this passage likely had most direct relevance in the period just before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, but the principle remains.
18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. 21 But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.
(John 15:18-21 NKJV)
11 Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, 12 having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.
(1 Peter 2:11,12 NKJV)
This passage is particularly relevant since Peter tells us that even despite our good conduct, those in the world will speak against us a evildoers. But we still do good works, so that God will ultimately be glorified on the day of visitation, which I take to be the Day of Judgment. A similar statement from Peter later in his first epistle makes much the same point:
3 For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. 4 In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. 5 They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
(1 Peter 4:3-5 NKJV)
Hopefully this small section makes the point well. I am convinced that even if the world wasn't convinced that the Church hated LGBT people, they would just find some other reason to hate us. If they don't hate us for this, they will hate us for that, or at the very least consider as being uncool and archaic. This would be true even if we began to champion all the liberal social causes.
A second area of concern is Adrian's follow up article, which deals with what he calls the "plausibility problem." Adrian says this in this article:
"What Conservative Evangelical Christians believe the Bible says no longer seems plausible to outsiders. This is not just because of what Christians say, but also because of how it is said, and what church communities display to the world."
Now it very well may be true that the presentation is off. I am sure there are many places where that is indeed the case. There is nothing I can do about that. What concerns me though is that first sentence, that what evangelical Christians say is no longer plausible to the world. To be truthful, I can barely contain my incredulousness! I do not mean any disrespect, however I wonder when plausibility became a criterion for truth. Since when did it matter what the world thought about how "plausible" our message was? How "plausible" is it that an obscure Jewish carpenter, albeit one with supernatural powers, can die for the sins of the world (by crucifixion no less) and rise physically from the dead, fulfilling centuries of prophetic predictions? How "plausible" was it to the ancient, idol-worshipping pagans that surrounded Israel that there is only one God, who is invisible? How could it be "plausible" in a Europe used to centuries of sacraments, indulgences, pilgrimages, monasteries, popes and archbishops that justification is by faith alone? Presbyterian Carl Trueman, a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary is helpful here:
"...Some of the greatest preaching ever known was designed precisely not to communicate to the contemporary culture. Just check Isaiah's commission in Isaiah 6, and the use of that text in Jesus' ministry to see how not communicating in comprehensible categories as determined by the immediate culture is a critical sign of judgment on an idolatrous people.
(Carl Trueman, Fools Rush in Where Monkeys Fear to Tread, Kindle edition, location 1228)
As helpful as Trueman is, I think the Apostle Paul (inspired by the Holy Spirit) said it best:
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men....14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
(1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 2:14 NKJV)
Again, I don't wish to be disrespectful, though I have been forceful. I care very much for the honor of the Church and I have seen this kind of thinking over and over again. I believe it is high time to challenge it. I believe the right answer in this issue and others is to continue to love, continue to preach and teach, continue to suffer, continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and continue to do good works. These are all things that Christians throughout the ages have done. I, as a good Calvinist, will leave the saving to God. I am certain that Dr. Warnock would agree. Blessings in Christ Jesus.
