Andy Stanley’s Version of Christianity
Stanley brushes aside what the Bible says about homosexuality as “clobber” verses, as if those texts somehow harm gay sinners. He even suggests that a change of theology is in order if churches can’t welcome gay people into their midst.
I just finished listening to Pastor Andy Stanley’s Sunday morning sermon to North Point Community Church. I have to say that it is one of the most subversively anti-Christian messages that I have ever heard. Stanley says at the outset that he is preaching the message as a response to Albert Mohler’s column in World magazine titled, “The Train Is Leaving the Station.” In that article, Mohler criticizes a North Point-hosted conference that features gay-affirming speakers.
Stanley never explicitly names Mohler in his message, but he does say at the outset that he does not hold to the same version of Christianity that Mohler holds to. The rest of Stanley’s message certainly bears that out. Indeed, the entire message is an apologia of sorts for North Point’s decision to host gay-affirming speakers and for North Point’s teaching on sexuality. Stanley writes,
“[Mohler] is actually accusing me of departing from his version of biblical Christianity. So I want to go on record and say, I have never subscribed to his version of biblical Christianity to begin with, so I’m not leaving anything. And if he were here he would say, ‘Well, Andy, I’ve never subscribed to your version of biblical Christianity.’ And that’s okay. We can agree to disagree, but this is so extraordinarily misleading. In my opinion, just my opinion, his version of biblical Christianity is the problem. His version, this version of biblical Christianity is why people are leaving Christianity unnecessarily. It’s the version that causes people to resist the Christian faith because they can’t find Jesus in the midst of all the other stuff and all the other theology and all the other complexity that gets blobbed on to the message.
Bottom line, that version of Christianity draws lines. And Jesus drew circles. He drew circles so large and included so many people in his circle that it consistently made religious leaders nervous.”
Stanley frames the message as if this imbroglio is merely a misunderstanding and that critics like Mohler just don’t get it. Stanley says that North Point didn’t host a bible or theology conference. Rather, it was a “pastoral” conference designed to restore the relationships of parents to their gay children. He further contends that North Point has not changed its teaching on sexuality. He says that North Point continues to teach that biblical marriage is the union of one man and one woman, and that sex outside of marriage is not God’s best. Sounds pretty Christian, right?
Well, not really. Actually, not at all. Stanley immediately follows that affirmation by saying that some gay Christians find this teaching too hard to follow. He says gay people at North Point know what the Bible says about marriage, but they choose to enter gay marriages anyway because they don’t want to spend their lives alone. They don’t want to live without love and a family, so they marry a same-sex partner and then just add that to following Jesus. Stanley says that North Point doesn’t draw “lines” to keep those people out of the church. Rather, they draw “circles” of inclusion so that they can remain at North Point as gay “married” couples. In Stanley’s words,
“[Gay Christians] choose a same sex marriage, not because they’re convinced it’s biblical. They read the same Bible we do. They chose to marry for the same reason many of us do, love, companionship and family.
And in the end, as was the case for all of us, and this is the important thing I want you to hear me say, it’s their decision. Our decision is to decide how we respond to their decision. Our decision as a group of local churches is how are we going to respond to their decisions? And we decided 28 years ago. We draw circles, we don’t draw lines. We draw big circles. If someone desires to follow Jesus, regardless of their starting point, regardless of their past, regardless of their current circumstances, our message is come and see and come sit with me. And this is not new. This is who we are. It’s who we’ve always been. And this is why I love our church and this is why I’m so extraordinarily proud of you. We aren’t condoning sin, we are restoring relationships, and we are literally saving lives.”
-
Making Excuses for Violent Tyrannies
It is not only conservatives who have noticed progressive hypocrisy. For years, European and American governments reflexively chanted the slogan “never again” and declared to the world that they would never let genocide of any sort or anti-Semitism go unchecked. But in the third decade of the 21st century, not even a century after the Final Solution and the mass murder of Jews, Western governments have sat idly by while Xi Jinping and China’s communist government set up what the Human Rights Foundation noted were very literally concentration camps in western China for the purpose of so-called reeducating Uyghurs.
In November, the municipal government of San Francisco, Calif., took to the streets to clean up the filthy mess that the city had become over the last half decade. Homeless men and women were shunted into shelters and syringes and human excrement were removed from the streets, but not for a visit from the president of the United States, or the British monarch, or for another major Western leader, but instead for the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. This is the man who has spent the better part of a half-decade openly engaging in genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in western China.
A week earlier a Jewish man had been clubbed to death by a pro-Hamas demonstrator in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Far from being isolated and disconnected events, San Francisco’s welcome of Xi Jinping and the death of a Jewish man on the streets of a California city are directly tied together. They are both evidence of the absolute hypocrisy of the Western world.
For years the slogan “never again” has been trotted out by progressives to ensure that the legacy of the Holocaust was remembered and that outright genocide and anti-Semitism would be finally removed from Western society.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Love and Respect: Rediscovering the Beauty of Biblical Marriage and Gender
In a culture that has lost its way on marriage and gender, one of the best ways we can display the Gospel is by embracing what Scripture teaches about them and living lives that display their beauty to the world. Christians need to take their cues from Scripture and perform the marriage and gender dance that God designed and prescribes so that the world will see the beauty of God’s design.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
-Ephesians 5:31-33, ESV
Recently, I observed how the American Church like the Jews of Malachi’s day has lost the fear of God and therefore has a cheapened view of Scripture that has led many American churches to deny what Scripture teaches about who God is, who we are, and how that impacts cultural issues. One area where this is especially evident is with marriage and gender. This obviously includes topics like homosexuality and transgenderism, but it also includes a cheapening of marriage in general through an acceptance of our culture’s understanding of no-fault divorce and casual approach to relationships. But even many churches that do not compromise in these areas struggle with how to interpret the Bible’s teachings on marriage and gender roles. Generations of feminism have made any view of distinct gender roles ugly to many American Christians, causing them to reject any interpretation of Scripture that would perpetuate what they see as negative historical norms. If these roles are a result of the Fall, we should seek to leave them behind as we labor to build the Kingdom of God. But if these roles are part of God’s good Creation before the Fall, we must not abandon them as ugly remnants of sinful patriarchal oppression but instead embrace them as part of God’s beautiful design of who we are that reflects who He is.
But first, I need to address the objection that I as a single man am in no position to write about the topic of marriage. It is true that I lack any experiential qualifications, but that matters little. Saying that only members of a certain demographic are qualified to speak about issues unique to that demographic is a form of ad hominem attack that has no place in healthy debate. In actuality, demographics have little to do with qualifications, and qualifications do not determine the validity of an argument. More importantly, I am writing about what Scripture clearly teaches, not my own opinions. It doesn’t matter what I say but what God says. With that, lets see what God has to say about marriage and gender, starting from the beginning.
Begin at the Beginning
Since the crucial question is whether or not the distinction between genders predated the Fall, we need to go back to the beginning. We know that all God made was very good (Genesis 1:31), so if we find evidence of the distinction between male and female there, then those distinctions must be very good too. Here is what we find in Genesis 1:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ”
-Genesis 1:26-27, ESV
From this passage, we see that God created mankind as male and female in His own image (verses 26 and 27). This means that the unity yet distinctness of the persons of the Trinity is reflected by the unity yet distinctness of men and women (more on that here). Reflecting the ontological equality within the Trinity, men and women are equal in dignity and value.[1] This is the basis for the high value of women in Christian cultures, and conversely the reason why non-Christian cultures often devalue and mistreat women.[2] But men and women are also fundamentally different reflecting the economic distinction with the Trinity. This passage also teaches us that God created mankind as male and female to accomplish a purpose: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it (verse 28), which is known as the Cultural Mandate. Just as the persons of the Trinity fulfill different roles, men and women image (reflect and represent) God by fulfilling their distinct roles in the Cultural Mandate. These differences do not change the equality of men and women in value and dignity.[3] But this equality is not substitutionary: you cannot substitute one for the other and get the same result. As I already covered when refuting transgenderism, since there are only three persons in the Trinity and they cannot become one another, there are only two genders: men and women, who cannot become one another. After the Fall, the distinctions between male and female are sometimes less obvious, but they are still there. So both the equality in value and distinction in roles of men and women are part of what God made as very good.
Which distinctions predated the Fall? For this, Genesis 2, gives more detail about how mankind was created on Day 6. This starts with God forming the man from the dust and breathing life into him (Genesis 2:7) before placing him in the Garden of Eden “to work and keep it” (verse 15), commanding him not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (verse 16). It is at that point that God declares (before sin) that something is not good: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). The man cannot keep the Garden or fulfill the Cultural Mandate without help, so God begins the process of creating a helper suitable for the man. As a quick but important side note, the term “helper” is often used of God (e.g. Exodus 18:4, Deuteronomy 33:26,29, Psalm 33:20, 115:9-10, Hosea 13:9), so it is not denigrating in the slightest.[4] God brings the animals to the man to name (Genesis 2:19-20a), both to show his authority over them and to prove to him that no animal existed that could provide the help he needed (Genesis 2:20b).[5] God then created the woman from the man’s rib (verses 21 and 22) and brought her to the man, thus instituting marriage as the lifelong union between one man and one woman (verse 24). Upon seeing the woman for the first time, the man immediately recognizes her as the perfect partner for him and joyously declares: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:23). From this, we can see that the man was created first and given both a mission and the authority to accomplish that mission. The woman was then created to help him in that mission, so gender roles are not some distortion of God’s very good creation but part of it.
The Distortion of the Fall
God’s very good design was greatly tarnished by the Fall in Genesis 3. I cover the Fall more generally elsewhere, but for now recall that the first sin goes far beyond a poor diet choice. Satan usurped the created order by addressing Eve rather than Adam (Genesis 3:1). As head of his family, Adam then failed to both reinforce right doctrine to Eve and protect her from spiritual assault, instead standing by passively as Eve was tempted (verse 6b). As far as we can tell, she engaged with Satan and then ate the fruit without looking to him for spiritual leadership (verses 2 to 6a). But Adam’s passivity indicates that he too was rebelling against God in his heart and waiting to see if any harm came to her before he ate. Therefore, he abandoned his calling to protect and provide for his wife, instead risking her well-being for his own pleasure. As a result, they both sinned and then both immediately realized that their ideal world had been shattered (verse 7).[6] God then calls out to Adam, showing that He still holds him responsible as head of his family. Adam tries to blame Eve (even blaming God in the process), and Eve then tries to blame Satan (verses 9 to 13).
Read More
Related Posts: -
Historic Selma Church Building Destroyed by Tornado
This was a building where former slaves had worshiped, where planning meetings were held in advance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s arrival for the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and where the church’s pastor served as a peacemaker in bringing blacks and whites together during the Civil Rights era.
–Civil rights landmark is a total loss–Three worshipers escape–Leaders say they will rebuild
(Selma, Alabama) There’s nothing left standing of the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church building except a portion of the basement. The wood-frame landmark that had been built for freed slaves to worship in, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had planned civil rights initiatives, and whose members had started a school, a hospital, and a YMCA when equal access to public services was still a dream—that landmark is dust.
In that building three people were studying the Bible and praying in a basement classroom on January 12, 2023 when a tornado struck.
Rev. Winston Williams, a supply preacher for the congregation for the past five years, had heard a forecast for severe weather but decided not to cancel the prayer meeting because a new couple had come the previous week, and he knew they would be there at 11:30 a.m. looking for him. Some members of the church decided not to leave their houses after hearing the forecast.
So it was just the three of them, and they opened the Bibles to the book of First John. Just after noon there was a sudden quiet that was quickly followed by a sound like a rushing train. Rev. Williams’ first impulse was to lead the group to a room he thought would be safer. “We tried to get into the room and couldn’t. The suction wouldn’t let me open the door.” It all happened fast, he said.
They hit the floor as the building rumbled. Dust circulated in the air, and papers flew around. But their senses didn’t fathom the gravity of the tornado’s impact.
Before long, they heard voices outside, and the sound of chain saws. They left the building and saw that the building above them had been flattened. “I was shocked when I went outside and saw the destruction.”
“At no time did I ever feel any fear or that I would die,” Williams said. “I put that to our confidence in Christ.”
The woman who had been in the church building injured her leg as she hit the floor, but otherwise the three were OK.
Rev. Williams’ next thought was for the children at the school next door—the school that the Reformed Presbyterian Church had founded to provide education for children of freed slaves. Later, Knox Academy became a public school and is now known as the School of Discovery. Williams said there were over 300 children in the building when the tornado struck.
He found the children all safe, but scared. Some cried. Three trees had been toppled, and large air conditioning units had been picked up by the storm, but the classrooms were intact. Williams and the other adults stayed with the children a long time until parents came for them.
Next Steps
“Our plan is to rebuild,” said George Evans, clerk of session for the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church and a former mayor of Selma. “We do not plan to call it quits.”
This was a building where former slaves had worshiped, where planning meetings were held in advance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s arrival for the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and where the church’s pastor served as a peacemaker in bringing blacks and whites together during the Civil Rights era.
Organized in 1875 as a place for freedmen to worship after the Civil War, the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church arose out of Knox Academy. That school eventually grew to over 600 students and trained many future leaders. The first principal was George Milton Elliott, first black pastor in the Reformed Presbyterian Church and first pastor of the Selma congregation. Nearby, a hospital was started by one of the church members to provide equal access to good medical care. The local YMCA grew from the boys’ club founded by Selma pastor Claude Brown and was eventually named for him.
Dr. King was present at some of the planning meetings in the church building. The building had also held the only planning meeting for a group of whites who went on the Selma-to-Montgomery march. The church was later honored for “courageous support of the voting rights struggle in the ’60s,” and a plaque was installed at the back of the auditorium. The plaque was recovered from the rubble. The church building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (https://www.ruralswalabama.org/attraction/reformed-presbyterian-church-selma-al/) .
Church members don’t say much about their past accomplishments or present ministry, preferring to live quiet lives for Christ. “We’ve always been a low-key church,” George Evans said.
Leaders have met once with the insurance company, and another meeting is scheduled next week to form an action plan. Some debris removal needs to be done before they can assess the full extent of the damage. When they do rebuild, they’ll have many guidelines to follow for a historic building.
Insurance will cover the depreciated value of the building, so there will be some costs to be borne by the church, as well as a lot of work. In the meantime, Selma University has offered its cafeteria space to the church for their services, and another Presbyterian church has offered its chapel for future services as needed.
There was no loss of life in Selma, and no member of Selma RP Church was injured or had dwellings damaged. George Evans is grateful for the mercy of God in that. Of course there is no way to replace, with lumber and nails, the unique history of the church building or to reproduce the courage and sacrifice to which the building was a testament.
Along with the collapse of the 145-year-old wood-frame church building, the manse next door received major damage, as well as Rev. Williams’ car.
When Williams left the school building and returned to the church basement to gather his belongings, he could look up and see nothing but air where a tall church structure had once stood. When he entered the area of the basement that had protected him and two others, he found the Bible he had been using still open to the same page in First John that they had been studying when the EF2 tornado blew through.
Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (reformedpresbyterian.org), a 230-year-old denomination that banned slaveholders from membership and that supported the Underground Railroad. That story, and where the Selma church fits into it, is told in the book A Candle Against the Dark.
In the next several days, an account will be set up for anyone wishing to donate online to the church. Information will also be available for anyone wanting to help in person once arrangements are made. Currently, checks for Selma relief can be sent to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, 7408 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15208.
Drew Gordon is editor of Reformed Presbyterian Witness. 412-805-4999PHOTOS AVAILABLE AT THIS LINK OR BY REQUEST
https://assets.adobe.com/public/95bf0061-a579-4e05-50c4-b04faf37ddfd
SelmaBasementRoom.jpg—Where Rev. Winston Williams and two others were meeting when the tornado struck (credit: George Evans)
SelmaChurchSide.jpg—Basement with church structure collapsed into it (credit: George Evans)
SelmaChurchAndManse.jpg—Original buildings, pre-tornado
SelmaInterior.jpg—Looking from the basement into the collapsed sanctuary (credit: George Evans)
SelmaManse.jpg—Showing the manse and Rev. Williams’ SUV (credit: George Evans)
SelmaPlaque.jpg—civil rights plaque mentioned in the article
HistoricGraduation.jpg—Knox Academy students on graduation day in the Selma RP church building (credit: Reformed Presbyterian Witness)
HistoricChurch.jpg—Old photo of the church when it had a steeple (credit: Reformed Presbyterian Witness)Related Posts:
