Echoes in Eternity

"I was trying to mold God into what I wanted Him to be - which is so arrogant - instead of submitting myself to Him and allowing Him to mold me into the person He created me to be." - Kathy Ireland

Recently, I've been thinking about how comfortable a Christian should be with their doctrine. I don't mean how confident he should feel. I believe Christians should feel a reasonable level of confidence in their doctrine as long as it is solidly and historically built on Scripture and they are willing to reconsider it if given Biblical warrant. What I mean is this: is it a good thing to be personally comfortable with your theological beliefs? Or, should your doctrine make you squirm sometimes? I would say yes. A Christian should not be perfectly untroubled in their natural self with some of the ideas of God shown in Scripture. But rather than undermine our confidence in them, it should strengthen us to know that it isn't of our own longings that we come to them. If a belief is counter-intuitive to what one would expect or hope to see in Scripture, then in most cases it's all the more likely to be true.

Of course, all of this hinges on the doctrine of human depravity. If our flesh is not sinful and rebellious and our moral compasses are not utterly broken, then doctrinal discomfort may be a warning sign rather than a confirmation. But, if we are morally destitute and spiritually dead on our own, then it would make sense that we would have a natural inclination to wince at certain doctrines. As John Calvin himself said about the doctrine of election, "I confess that this decree must frighten us."

In another sense, however, we should be comfortable with our theology. After all, Paul says something similar in 1 Corinthians 1:18-24. For those stuck in their sinful flesh, they will understandably find the Gospel and related doctrine foolish. But to those who are saved and have the Spirit of God, it will be wisdom surpassing all wisdom.

This thought was brought to bear just this morning as I read a letter written to Brian McLaren which he then posted on his blog.

[R]ather than accept the idea that Christ is so violent that He feels compelled by His own internal moral character of punitive justice to punish sinners by torturing and tormenting them ... literally without end, I would reject Christ's authority in this matter altogether by assuming the theologically liberal view that He made an outright error in the accuracy and validity and veracity of His teaching in this matter. This is justified by asserting that Christ was also human and could and did make mistakes in His teaching because in becoming human, one of His divine attributes that He gave up was His omniscience and infallibly [sic]. This is referred to as the Kenosis theory of the Incarnation based on the passage where it says Christ "emptied" Himself in the incarnation. I can not be a Christian [if] I must believe that I must believe that hell is literally never ending suffering for people who are kept in existence, alive and conscious of their torment literally forever. Even it means that Christ will condemn ME to hell for believing as I do, I find it impossible to believe such a morally repulsive and repugnant doctrine. THIS WOULD INDEED MEAN GOD IS MORE VIOLENT THAN ANY HUMAN COULD EVER BE AND TURN GOD IN TO A MALEVOLENT BEING WHO IS FUNDAMENTALLY HOSTILE TO HUMAN BEINGS WHO ACTUALLY HATES US.

Clearly, the author views himself as the ultimate authority on all things moral. And as such, he thinks that his doctrines must make him comfortable. Unwittingly, he has given himself over to idolatry, fashioning a god that looks remarkably like himself and subverting Genesis 1:27. It is not for the clay to become the potter.

"The real future, as I see it, isn't an intramural conversation among Evangelicals (as many think), or even among Western Christians (as others think), but rather an expanding conversation among progressive evangelicals, missional mainline Protestants, progressive Catholics, and postcolonial Christians from around the world. Its future may or may not still use words like emergent, emerging, etc., but the cat is out of the bag. Deep questions are being raised, and when that happens, you can take two predictions to the bank, one of them being that you can't get the questions back in the bag, and the second being that some people will try.

The latter will say, "I was OK when we were talking about making church more up-to-date, culturally relevant, and successful (i.e. large), but when we start asking deeper questions - about theology and justice, for example - I'm checking out." Now I've never been against making the church more up-to-date, culturally relevant, and effective, as beset as that project is with dangers, toils, and snares. (The obvious alternative - keeping the church out-of-date and culturally irrelevant and ineffective - has its problems too.) But I've repeatedly laid my cards on the table: I don't think the problems in the Christian religion are cosmetic. I think we have some deep issues to deal with - issues of theology, justice, narrative, and identity." - Brian McLaren

So not only does McLaren think that traditional theologically conservative evangelicals aren't part of the solution but merely the problem, he also thinks the problem with Christianity is its foundation, rather than some of its fruit (or some of its members) and the methods involved. And here I thought he wanted a conversation with us. Instead, he admits that he only wants to talk in his own personal echo chamber where no one seriously questions his "progressive" form of Christianity. Didn't the whole Emerging Church movement grow around the premise that the problem with evangelical Christianity was that it had no room for dissenting questions or views?

The other sad thing I note is that he continually thinks he's original, like he is asking questions that no one has ever asked (or answered). Either he's intellectually dishonest or a solid seminary (or just an honest study of church history in general) would have done him a world of good. Probably a little of each.

Brian McLaren has rightly been excommunicated by Christians for his latest heretical piece of garbage. He responds to the negative reaction to his book with a piece on the Huffington Post. He explains the reaction from Bible-believing Christians this way:

[Christians'] consciences are in conflict with their beloved religious authority figures on several key issues -- ten of which I raise in my book -- but they continue to press the punishment button when instructed to do so.
...
I'm a Christian. I love God, Jesus, the Bible, prayer, worship, serving others -- the whole package. But when my conscience tells me that I'm hurting people by complying with religious conventions, I don't keep pressing the button. I start asking questions. That's why I wrote my book, and that's why I'm willing to get into trouble for it.

So, basically Christians who speak out against him are not authentic nor do they actually believe that he's wrong, but they are just listening to their leaders (or are one of those power-hungry leaders themselves) rather than their consciences. He represents the conscience of all Christians, apparently. That's not condescending at all.

He has declared war on the Church, so war it is. Not one faithful Church should allow him inside their doors, not one faithful Christian should waste another breath debating him (not that he ever is willing to debate, since debate is sooo modernistic). As Jesus said, he should be treated as a first century Jew would treat a tax collector or Gentile... avoid him and the idolatry he promotes. It's no coincidence that those idols are the environment, homosexuality, slander, Palestinian terrorism, etc. When God turns you over to a debased mind like Paul speaks of in Romans 1, He usually sends you all the way. He doesn't just confuse your conscience like a magnet does a compass. He takes your moral compass and shatters it. Reject Him and He doesn't just say "ah, okay, have a nice life." He REJECTS you.

Pray for McLaren, but don't eat with him.

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross. - H. Richard Niebuhr defines theological liberalism

As some of you likely already know, Brian McLaren, the leader of the Emergent Church movement (at least, what's left of it), released his new book, A New Kind of Christianity, this week. Formerly, McLaren has made a living from asking questions without giving any real answers. All that changed with this book. As Tim Challies put it, McLaren "appears to love Jesus but hate God... In this book we finally see where McLaren's journey has taken him; it has taken him into outright, rank, unapologetic apostasy. He hates God. Period."

Several Christian leaders have offered reviews and thoughts about the book, but I found Kevin DeYoung's the most penetrating of all. You can read it all here. DeYoung's closing words summarize McLaren's heterodoxy perfectly.

The message of McLarenism is pretty simple: God is love and wants everyone to be kind and inclusive and care for the poor and the environment. This is what Jesus was like, and we should be like Jesus. This is, of course, not wrong in so far as it goes. The Liberal/McLaren emphasis on the kingdom is right, their concern for the “other” is right, much of their ethics is right. But McLarenism, like liberalism, cannot be right. It has its emphases all out of proportion, its right statements thrown out of whack by all that is missing. In McLarenism there is no original sin, no wrath, no hell, no creation-fall-redemption, no definite future, no second coming that I can see, no clear statement on the deity of Christ, no mention of vicarious substitution or God’s holiness or divine sovereignty, no ethical demands except as they relate to being kind to others, no God-offendedness, no doctrine of justification, no unchanging apostolic deposit of truth, no absolute submission to the word of God, nary a mention of faith and worship, no doctrine of regeneration, no evangelistic impulse to save the lost, and nothing about God’s passion for his glory. This is surely a lot to leave out.

McLaren’s Christianity is not new and certainly not improved. I don’t believe you can even call it Christianity. It is liberalism dressed up for the 21st century. We can only hope this wave of liberalism fades as dramatically as did the last.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! - Isaiah 5:20

I rarely mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since there is little new under the sun in regards to that topic, but this made my blood boil just a little. Brian McLaren pretends to be "generous" toward those he disagrees with (if you can get him to be honest about his disagreement, that is), but then he goes on "fact-finding" missions to Israel and only talks to those stuck in the same echo chamber as himself.

McLaren learned that Palestinians do not want a “two-state solution” but instead desire to “live in peace with Israelis” and want “Jews, Muslims, and Christians to learn to live together as neighbors.”

Really?!?! I suggest that next time McLaren visits Israel, he should visit the widow of Danny Haran and mother of Einat and Yael. She can tell him what happened to her family at the hands of those peace-loving Palestinians.

We live in a time where obvious evil is rare. Then again, evil has almost always been subtle. Few people recognize evil for what it is when it's occurring. Slavery, Nazi Germany, Soviet communism, abortion-on-demand, etc. "World opinion" supported all of those before it denounced them (it still hasn't quite done so with abortion). So it's easy to get lackadaisical about fighting evil when it isn't readily apparent. But that is actually when it is most important to fight evil. In hindsight, everyone agrees that the Rwandan genocide was terrible, but how many spoke up against the daily hatred of Tutsis going out over the radio waves in the months and years prior to the 1994 genocide? A few prophetic voices would have gone a long way then. Likewise, we need to stand up against false teachers and evil prophets like McLaren before we find that through our silence, we have aided and abetted the destruction of Israel and the murders of thousands of innocents.

As the late Richard Weaver would say, ideas have consequences.