When My Iranian Friend Took Mohler’s Parking Spot
Written by A.W. Workman |
Saturday, January 7, 2023
Reza arrived, looking relieved and a little winded. We all had a good laugh as he described what happened. “I just followed the address on the GPS and it took me right there! I didn’t know that was the president’s special spot!” “But Reza, why did you run from the campus police?” “I’m a Middle-Easterner and an Iranian! When the police are coming after us, we have learned to run!” To be fair, Reza’s father had been imprisoned in Iran and Reza had himself to flee the country while still in high school.
The year before I got married was the only time I lived on campus at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary during my studies there. Two single men from my church had an opening for a roommate, and it proved to be a great opportunity for fellowship as well as saving some money for marriage.
At the time, a group of us were attempting to get a Bible study going among Iranian refugees in Louisville. My roommates agreed that we could host the first one. The only problem was that the individual buildings on campus didn’t have separate addresses. This meant that we could only give the main campus address to our Iranian friends for them to navigate their way there. The plan was for them to call us once they arrived somewhere on campus and for us to direct them to our hall.
I was excited for this Bible study to begin, and while we waited I prepped some chai in the coffee maker and fried up some chicken. Soon, a couple of the attendees arrived. We waited to get started until another new friend, Reza*, had arrived. He seemed to be taking longer than he should. Maybe he had gotten lost?
My cell phone rang from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is campus po-lees,” began the thick Kentucky accent. “Are you A.W.?”
“I am. Is everything OK?” I replied, suddenly nervous.
“Well… I got an Eye-rain-eeun here who says he’s comin’ to your place, but I caught him parkin’ in the president’s parking spot.”
I bit my lip so as not to laugh. Anyone who’s been around SBTS knows that the campus police and staff are very serious about guarding Dr. Mohler’s official spaces, parking or otherwise.
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We are Merely Jars of Clay
We are always works in progress. And lest some believers take umbrage at those two things that I just said (that we are still sinners, and we must resist a theology of perfectionism), let me simply point out how the Apostle Paul looked at this matter. The longer he lived as a Christian, the more he saw himself as being worse of a sinner.
Christians know what my title refers to – it comes from 2 Corinthians 4:5-7: “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”
The good that we do and the ministry wins that we have occur because of Christ in us, not because we are such great shakes. Here I want to look at this from two vantage points. One, I will look at one famous Christian leader, and two, I will look further at what Scripture says about sin and the believer.
One Notable Christian Leader
A little while ago I wrote about pastor’s kids and missionary kids, and I spoke about the sad reality that children of Christian leaders can and do go off the rails. I also said that at times the parents themselves may have been at fault to some extent.
I mentioned the daughter of Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse, and how she suffered because she saw so little of her own father who was so very busy in Christian ministry the world over for over 25 years. He had done terrific things for Christ and the Kingdom, but his family was often neglected and hurt in the process. See the article here: billmuehlenberg.com/2022/06/21/on-rebellious-pks-and-related-concerns/
As I said in that piece: “Part of the problem is that back in those earlier days, the standard list of priorities for Christians went like this: God, ministry, family. In more recent times many have realised that a much more biblical list of priorities goes like this: God, family, ministry.”
I want to look a bit further at the book. It is Man of Vision by Marilee Pierce Dunker (Authentic media, 2005). It is a bittersweet volume, extolling all the great things he had done, and his tremendous commitment to Christ. But he also had his issues, including bouts with depression and a bad temper.
And on top of that, as mentioned, he was simply away from home for so much of the time – usually 10 months a year. Indeed, the constant travel and activity and ministry was just not sustainable – physically, emotionally, spiritually. Says Marilee: “Years of eighteen-hour days, sleep caught on planes, unsanitary food, and eternal jet lag had begun to take their toll on my father.”
So many people became Christians because of his hard work, and so many were nourished physically as well as spiritually, but that did not mean his own life was fully in order. This was so very tough on his family, and even resulted in estrangement from his family. At one point he even filed for divorce. In fact, it was so bad that one of his daughters took her own life at age 27.
But the idea was to put God before all else. Writes Marilee:
How many times I heard Daddy quote Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children … he cannot be my disciple.” Daddy understood that Scripture to mean that he was obliged to put his ministry and the needs of the world before his own family. He used to say, “I’ve made an agreement with God that I’ll take care of His helpless little lambs overseas if He’ll take care of mine at home.” It surely sounded sensible enough, and Daddy sincerely believed he was right. Unfortunately, future events would prove that this was Daddy’s agreement, not God’s.
And one more quote:
My father had an unusual ability to “weep with those who weep,” and he was driven relentlessly to do something about the intolerable pain and despair he saw….”
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Is the Bible the Word of God and Does it Have Authority?
Sacred Scripture is the voice of God in the world. It is authoritative in that it has the right to command because its author is God Himself. God’s people walk the difficult, narrow path, which takes them to meet their Saviour face-to-face in eternity, by submitting their thoughts and moral standards to God’s Word. Many Reformers lost their lives because they labored to get the printed Word of God into the hands of their people. In our day we take the Word of God for granted and, as we said earlier, many so-called Christian leaders today actually denigrate it in the eyes of those they lead.
12 There is a way which seems right to a man,But its end is the way of death. Proverbs 14:12 (LSB)
Several yeas ago I posted “Is there a war going on between God and His forces on one side and Satan and his forces on the other?” In that post I mentioned a link sent to me by a friend to a post on another blog called The Emergent Village. On that blog I could not help noticing a link to another post by another writer there titled “The Bible is NOT the WORD OF GOD: a polemic against Christendom“. What that fellow had to say is the centerpiece of “Christian Liberalism.” Denying The Bible as the Word of God, a gift from God to His people is the first step into apostasy. Once that step is taken all other truths are no longer held as absolute.
Without that God-given anchor into His absolute truth all else is up for grabs. Those like the fellow who wrote that article and those who agree with him are those who also have a problem with what Orthodox Christianity holds as the gospel, the sovereignty of God, election, the exclusivity of genuine discipleship, et cetera. Because of this “liberalism” they also force a man-centered perspective on God’s Word in one form or another. These same people lean towards a form of Christianity that is almost all experiential. Since their view of how the gospel works and how God works with Man is wrongly focused and the Word of God contains clear teachings about the sovereignty of God, these people conceive of their entire “Christian” paradigm from a philosophical and existential base rather than on the authority of Sacred Scripture. They have to do this since they deny that what we call Sacred Scripture has any authority.
The Christian principle of the authority of Sacred Scripture is centered on the truth that God is its author and He has given it to direct the belief and behavior of His people. Instead of conceiving of God, His ways, and our conduct from a man-made, philosophical base, these understandings should be measured, tested, corrected, and enlarged according to God’s Word. The sad state of the 21st Century Church did not come from God’s people diligently adhering to this principle. No, the man-focused free-for-all we see all around us now with the doctrines of demons being preached from pulpits of very large churches, is the product of this principle being largely and deliberately ignored.
The main reason this has taken place is that the church leadership has been deceived with the lie that God’s word does not have the right to command. Part of this delusion came from the philosophies of men, which teach that there is no absolute truth. When these leaders threw off the yoke of adhering to God’s Word as the ultimate authority they instead took on the yoke of the social gospel as they gleefully proclaimed the mantra of liberal theology, which is that Christianity is all about the person rather than all about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit-their glory, their honor, not the glorification of Man.
My brethren, God has chosen to exercise His rule over us through His written Word, which is the embodiment of His truth and wisdom. Sacred Scripture is the instrument of Christ’s lordship over the Church. We see a working example of this principle in Revelation 2 & 3, which are the seven letters to the seven churches.
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Race, Homosexuality and Historical Confusion
Written by S. Donald Fortson III |
Monday, December 12, 2022
What actually happened in the 19th-century American South was a bowing to social pressure to re-interpret the Bible in ways that supported race-based slavery. As a society, the South viewed itself as suffering injustice at the hands of a self-righteous North. This cultural ethos put enormous pressure on all southern Christians to conform to the norms of their culture. A similar pattern is being observed in American churches today that are succumbing to cultural demands to re-interpret the Bible to support homosexuality. The hermeneutical twists used to discredit the clear teaching of Holy Scripture on homosexuality is evidence of a desperate frenzy to re-interpret Christianity in order to make it palatable to the homosexual community.One approach of gay-affirming scholarship has been to claim the church has modified its interpretations over the centuries. This includes not only change in views and practice from the Old Testament to the New Testament but also modifications in Biblical interpretation during the Christian centuries. Presbyterian theologian Jack Rogers asserts, “Christian people for centuries assumed that their Bibles condoned slavery and the subordination of women to men. Yet, over time and often reluctantly, people came to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading to accept people of African origin and women as full and equal members of the church … the Holy Spirit is once again working to change our church – making us restless, challenging us to give up culturally conditioned prejudices against people of homosexual orientation.” (1)
This supposed parallel between Christians in the past using the Bible to justify slavery and the contemporary Church using Scripture to condemn homosexuality is both misleading and confused in its account of church history. Historically, there is no connection between Christian attitudes towards slavery and homosexuality. But, there does appear to be a historical resemblance between present-day attempts to re-interpret the Bible to support homosexuality and past misuse of the Bible in order to prop up race-based slavery. In both cases Biblical teaching has been co-opted to support a politically-popular position enabling Christians to comfortably fit into the cultural values of their times.
Slavery was a reality of life in the ancient Mediterranean world including the Greco-Roman period when Christianity emerged. It was regulated in Old Testament Israel and within the New Testament community. In ancient cultures persons were forced into lifelong servitude as spoils of war or became slaves due to debts that had to be repaid. Ancient slavery was not limited to one’s racial identity nor did it always involve kidnapping to force people into servitude. Slaves were bought and sold in the ancient world.
Christ’s apostles attempted to regulate slavery among believers according to ethical principles consistent with Christian faith. The apostles gave no explicit directives for all Christians to immediately free slaves, however, the implications of the Christian message pointed to the equality of all men and women before God. The book of Philemon bears witness to the continuing reality of slavery among converts to Christianity. Paul exhorted believing slave owner Philemon to treat his slave Onesimus, who was also a convert, as a Christian brother (Philemon:1:16). To the church at Colossae, Paul wrote, “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven.” (Col. 4:1). These were radical ideas for the first-century Roman world. One observes these same themes in the writings of the Church Fathers who continued to challenge the slave-holding Christian empire to live out the gospel implications of equality of all human beings. (2)
The New Testament unmistakably affirms the essential equality of all men and women, “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God by faith” (Gal. 3:26). Due to this new reality, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3:28). Part of the apostolic ministry was to break down old existing relational barriers among Christians and one such barrier was master/slave relations which now must reflect the new reality of oneness in Christ. The New Testament also reaffirmed the Old Testament prohibition of man-stealing and selling (Ex.21:16). In the list of those who live “contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God” one finds these sinners: “murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers.” (1 Tim. 1:10). It is ironic that some want to support homosexuality with appeals to Biblical support for slavery when this text in fact places them side by side as sinful.
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(1) Jack Rogers, Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church. 2nd edition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009), 58. Methodist New Testament scholar Richard Hays rejects this theory of coupling homosexuality, subordination of women and slavery. Hays observes: “Though only a few Biblical texts speak of homoerotic activity, all of them express unqualified disapproval. In this respect, the issue of homosexuality differs significantly from matters such as slavery or the subordination of women, concerning which the Bible contains internal tensions and counterposed witnesses.” Richard B. Hays, “Awaiting the Redemption of our Bodies” in Homosexuality in the Church, ed. Jeffrey S. Siker (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 9,10. See also chapter 16 “Homosexuality” in Hays’ book: The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (NY: Harper Collins, 1996).
(2) For a brief survey of the Church Fathers on slavery, see Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery as a Moral Problem in the Early Church and Today. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011); her discussion of St. Basil’s opposition to Christian slave holding is particularly noteworthy. See also Glancy’s New Testament study, Slavery and Early Christianity (NY: Oxford University Press, 2002).
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