Kevin DeYoung, Author at Refcast

The Church at Election Time

By Kevin DeYoung — 4 months ago

I believe Christians would do well to get informed and vote. And yet, I am hard pressed to find scriptural warrant for thinking Christians must vote as a matter of obedience to Christ. By conducting voter registration in the church we are communicating, “This is what Christians should do.” Voting is generally a good thing, but I have no biblical authority to say a Christian must vote (would we exercise church discipline on someone who didn’t?), nor do I think that voting is such a necessary expression of the fruit of the Spirit that it is the church’s responsibility to get people registered.

I have always been interested in politics. I studied religion and political science in college. I continue to read consistently in economics, sociology, politics, and current events. As a pastor, I hope the members of my church are well-informed and engaged in the political process. As Christians, we should take seriously our responsibility to be salt and light in a world that is often rotten and dark.
And yet, I believe pastors must be careful how they lead their churches in our politically polarized culture. I know there are good brothers and sisters who may disagree with these principles and their practical implications. But at the very least, pastors must disciple their leaders and their congregations in thinking through these matters wisely and theologically.
Let me mention two things I do as a pastor and three things I do not do.
As a pastor, I pray publicly for leaders and for controversial issues. We are commanded to pray for the governing authorities, whether we agree with them, like them, or trust them (1 Tim. 2:1-2). Likewise, I think it’s appropriate to include some current events in the weekly pastoral prayer. Over the past few years, I’ve included items related to Ferguson, Charlottesville, the police shootings in Dallas, the presidential election, gay marriage, Roe v. Wade, the anniversary of MLK’s assassination, and dozens of events that could be construed as “political.” I trust, however, that the prayers were not political in the worst sense of that word. I take pains to be sure that everything I pray for has scriptural warrant. During an election season, pastors should pray that God would work through the political process to give us godly leaders who are marked by ability, prudence, honesty, courage, humility, and compassion.
As a pastor, I speak to controversial issues as they arise from the text of Scripture. In preaching on Exodus 21, I talked about the history of slavery and the evils of it in our country. Later in the chapter I talked about the evil of abortion. In chapter 22, I talked about the biblical definition of justice. I also talked about the biblical understanding of the sojourner and how Christians are to love the stranger and the alien (and how this does not automatically translate into a given immigration policy). All of these touched on political topics. I didn’t mention a candidate, a political party, or advocate for any specific policy or legislation. I simply spoke to issues that were manifestly in the text. We cannot teach the whole counsel of God without venturing once in a while into difficult territory that may be unpopular in our cultural context.
As a pastor, I do not provide voter guides for the congregation. I know there are other pastors who advocate the practice, but in my experience even non-partisan voter guides are never completely non-partisan. In 2016 I saw a non-partisan voter guide from the Family Research Council and another one from Sojourners. Both guides were designed to inform Christians about the important issues facing us in the election and how to think about those issues from a Christian perspective. Not surprisingly, the two guides talked about very different issues and presented the Christian view in very different ways. Only a die-hard Republican could think the FRC guide was non-partisan. Only a die-hard Democrat could think the Sojourners guide was non-partisan.
Granted, other guides are less didactic and more informational. Many non-partisan guides ask the candidates a series of questions and then record where they stand on the key issues. But even here, the guides I’ve seen over the years all have a definite angle. If you have only 12 questions to ask the candidates, what you ask says a lot about what issues you think are important, and the wording of each question usually reflects certain priorities. In short, I don’t believe non-partisan voter guides are actually non-partisan.
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Holiness in an Age of Worldliness

By Kevin DeYoung — 4 months ago

The temptation to do whatever it takes to be prosperous is very strong. It is a kind of magic spell that beautiful Babylon puts over us. It’s like a potion that dulls our spiritual senses so we cannot fathom living any other way. Babylonian worldliness leads people to trust in their prosperity. It perpetuates the myth of security.

You would think that one thing every Christian would agree on is the need for personal and corporate holiness. After all, the Bible tells us repeatedly, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2; 20:7; 1 Peter 1:16). As God’s people, we must strive for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).
And yet, many Christians seem scarcely interested in holiness and little concerned by Scripture’s warnings for those who do not pursue holiness. It is easy to get Christians passionate about family matters, or cultural issues, or political concerns. But some Christians have actually argued that part of “knowing what time it is” in our cultural moment is recognizing that virtues like obedience, truth-telling and purity of speech are unnecessary obstacles to defeating our political enemies. More commonly, churches or pastors that lean hard into the Bible’s exhortation to holiness are likely to be called pietistic, legalistic and unloving.
We should not be surprised at these protestations. The world, the flesh and the devil have always hated holiness. How could they not? God is holy, and the unholy trinity (the world, the flesh and the devil) hates God. To be holy is to be like God, which means that a necessary step toward God is to flee the world.
In Revelation 18:1-4, John hears a voice from Heaven calling Christians to come out of Babylon. Here, Babylon does not refer to one literal/historical kingdom. Babylon is a composite picture of many kingdoms—Rome, Tyre, Sodom, Nineveh and Jerusalem. Babylon is manifest today in the corruption, idolatry and immorality in America, in Canada, in the United Kingdom and in every other country.
Babylon is the anti-church. She is the opposite of Christ’s pure, spotless bride. Babylon is corrupt society, fallen culture, decadent civilization. In a word, Babylon is worldliness. Wherever sin looks attractive, impressive and pervasive—and it seems that you cannot live without it—there is Babylon.
So how do we flee Babylon? It doesn’t mean we must leave our urban centers. There is often “Babylon” in the country as much as there is in the city. We come out of Babylon by not taking part in her sins (verse 4). Revelation 17 and 18 are a warning against spiritual adultery and compromise.
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“Judge Not”

By Kevin DeYoung — 5 months ago

Judge according to the Word of God, yes, but never indulge in self-righteous, hypocritical, hypercritical, prejudiced, merciless judgmentalism. That is never the way of Christ, and it should not be the way of Christians either.

Matthew 7:1 is one of the most needed and one of the most abused statements in the Bible. It is not uncommon to meet people who seem to know only three verses from the Bible: “Judge not” (Matt. 7:1), “God is love” (1 John 4:16), and “Let him who is without sin…be the first to throw a stone” (John 8:7). These people—professing Christians or not—are not really interested in understanding the Bible on its own terms. They are happy to sloganize the Scriptures if it suits their purposes.
Yet just because people can misuse a verse does not give us a reason to throw out that verse. The fact is that Matthew 7:1 is a necessary corrective that many Christians need to hear. If we can first clear away the false claims, we will be in a position to let Matthew 7:1 shape us as Jesus intended.
A Misused Command
So what does this verse not mean? First, “judge not” does not mean that we suspend the rule of law. God has ordained officers in the state (Rom. 13:1–2) and in the church (Matt. 18:15–17; 1 Cor. 5:9–13) to exercise judgment when the members of each institution fail to do what is right. We do not judge in the sense of exercising individual vigilante justice because we trust that God will exercise His justice through the proper authorities (Rom. 12:17–21).
Second, “judge not” does not mean that we turn off our brains. Elsewhere in Scripture, we are warned not to believe every spirit (1 John 4:1). We must be a discerning people, judging with right judgments (John 7:24). There is simply no way that we can read the Bible and conclude that godliness entails accepting everything all the time and affirming everyone no matter what. The same Jesus who preached about not judging also rebuked the church at Thyatira for tolerating false teachers and sexual immorality (Rev. 2:20).
Third, “judge not” does not mean that we suspend all moral distinctions. The Sermon on the Mount does not forbid theological and ethical evaluation. Jesus does not prohibit harsh criticism when necessary. Think about it: the Sermon on the Mount is full of moral judgment. Jesus calls people hypocrites (Matt. 7:5). He tells the people to beware of false prophets (v. 15). Just a few sentences after the command to “judge not,” Jesus expects us to understand (and discern) that some people are dogs and pigs (v. 6). It’s as if Jesus is saying, “I don’t want you to be censorious, but neither do I want you to be simpletons.”
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20 Biblical Motivations for Pursuing Holiness

By Kevin DeYoung — 6 months ago

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Reaching the Next Generation Is Easier and Harder Than You Think

By Kevin DeYoung — 6 months ago

So it’s easier in that you don’t have to have a PhD in cultural apologetics; and it’s harder, but also better, in that what God calls us to do is to love them, to speak the truth to the next generation, to be the sort of person whose life is marked by holiness. Second Peter says if you have these godly qualities in your life in increasing measure, you will not be ineffective or unfruitful.

The Easier Thing
It is true there’s an easier and a harder to reaching the next generation. Let me start with the easier. Sometimes we feel this burden that if we’re going to be effective as pastors, Christians, or parents that we need to have this cultural expertise. You need to know what Taylor Swift is singing about. In fact, my kids will just say, “Dad, please don’t ever mention Taylor Swift in a sermon. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Or at a more sophisticated level, we think we have to understand what’s being put out in The New Yorker or what exactly critical theory is. Those things do matter, and we need people—at least with some of it, not as much the pop culture end of things—who really can help us understand how we got here and how we dissect things.
But the fear is that we’ll be so tied up in knots thinking, I can’t possibly reach the next generation because I don’t understand how TikTok works. I don’t know what they’re into.
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Making Every Issue “Your Thing” Is Impossible

By Kevin DeYoung — 7 months ago

It’s interesting to think that the story wasn’t that the good Samaritan had to go into every town and locate all the people who might be sick or dying and then find a plan to alleviate all of those. Even Jesus, who could literally heal people just by a word or a touch, and yet it says in Mark 1 that he went to the other towns. He didn’t stay when everyone could have been healed if he would’ve just stayed there. So even Jesus understood that, as fully God and fully man, he had bodily human limitations. And in order to do what was his first priority, which was to preach the gospel, he had to go over to the next town.

Our Limited Capacities
I read an article a few years ago that had this phrase: “the infinite extensibility of guilt.” And the idea is that particularly in this digital age—where we can see millions or billions of people through their digital media and follow them on all the social media sites—we have access to people’s hopes, dreams, fears, pain, and suffering. And with that access comes this infinite extensibility of guilt that we feel. Should I be doing something with all of these problems—these intractable problems?
And it may sound pious to suggest that you ought to do something about all of them. But really it’s not, because it doesn’t allow for our own finitude. Only God is able to handle 8 billion people making requests to him. Only God is able to comprehend and handle an entire globe of joys and catastrophes and needs. The human psyche isn’t meant to bear that. And I know the danger is that you’re going to be the opposite of the good Samaritan and you’re not going to care for the needs that are around you. But even there, remember in the parable that Jesus refused to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” What was more important was to understand just what it means to be a neighbor. And what it means to be a neighbor is like the good Samaritan.
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‘Of the Civil Magistrate’: How Presbyterians Shifted on Church-State Relations

By Kevin DeYoung — 7 months ago

We live in a time where many voices across the political spectrum are questioning the wisdom of the democratic liberal order we’ve had in much of the West for the past 200 years. As Christians grieve what has been lost of their former cultural influence (and fear what lies ahead), there have been new discussions and new discoveries about what political arrangement can best serve our nation and our world. Some of these discussions have been more heat than light, but many have been welcome forays into a deeper understanding of political theology.

Abstract: In 1788, American Presbyterians meeting in Philadelphia approved a revised version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The most significant change to the original 1646 version concerned the doctrine of the civil magistrate in chapter 23. In the century and a half following the Westminster Assembly, many Presbyterians grew wary of granting coercive powers to the civil magistrate and were drawn to more robust notions of religious liberty. In revising the Westminster Confession, Presbyterians in America rejected an older, European model of church-state relations whereby the magistrate was obligated to suppress heresies, reform the church, and provide for church establishments. As new debates about the proper relationship between church and state continue to multiply, it’s important to recognize that the two versions of WCF 23:3 represent two different and irreconcilable views of the civil magistrate.

The version of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) used by most Presbyterians in America isn’t identical with the version approved by the Westminster Assembly in 1646. Most of the differences between the historic text and the text used by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) are small—a change related to marrying the relative of a deceased spouse, a softened stance toward swearing oaths, and the removal of a reference to the pope as the antichrist. The most substantial changes—really, the only substantial changes—have to do with the relationship between church and state.
When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America adopted the Westminster Standards in 1788, they amended the Standards in four places: WCF 20:4, 23:3, 31:3; Westminster Larger Catechism 109. The most significant change is in chapter 23, where the third article was almost completely rewritten, reflecting a new understanding of church and state that allowed for more toleration and gave much less power to the magistrate over the realm of religion.
The purpose of this article is to show what changed in the American revision of WCF 23:3 and why the changes were made. In exploring these changes, it’ll become clear the two versions of WCF 23:3, though overlapping in some areas, are, in significant ways, contradictory. In addition to examining the historical record, this article aims to make a point of contemporary relevance: that there’s more than one Reformed view of the civil magistrate and that those who want to subscribe to the Westminster Confession—either in general spirit or in an official capacity—should think carefully about which version they believe is correct.
A church officer in the OPC or PCA, for example, who subscribes without exception to his denomination’s version (the American version) of WCF 23:3 is implicitly rejecting the view that the civil magistrate has the duty to purify the church, to suppress heresies, and to call ecclesiastical synods. He is, instead, affirming a different view of the civil magistrate that does much more to restrict the magistrate’s power and gives members of the commonwealth much more freedom and liberty in the realm of religion (even to the point of practicing no religion at all).
In short, what the Westminster Assembly confessed in London about the civil magistrate in 1646 is not what American Presbyterians confessed in Philadelphia in 1788. The two versions of the Westminster Confession don’t say the same thing, and they cannot both be right.
1. What Didn’t Change
We can see what changed and what didn’t change by looking at a side-by-side comparison of the two versions of WCF 23:3. What’s bolded is the same in both versions (except moving from singular to plural); everything else was a change from 1646 to 1788.

Historic Text (1646)
Chapter XXIII
Of the Civil Magistrate
III. The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.

American Revision (1788)
Chapter 23
Of the Civil Magistrate
3. Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.

As we can see, the first sentence of the revised version is unchanged from the historic text up until the word “or.” The Westminster divines and their 18th-century American counterparts agreed that “civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments,” and that they mustn’t exercise “the power of the keys” in the courts of the church. The Confession rejected any species of Erastianism—named after the Swiss physician and theologian Thomas Erastus (1524–83)—that insisted on the state’s authority in ecclesiastical affairs. The Westminster divines may have thought the magistrate was afforded a power about religion (circa sacra), but he wasn’t to exercise power in religion (in sacris).
The Scottish commissioner George Gillespie figured prominently in this debate. True, the lore surrounding Gillespie’s role at the Assembly is sometimes more legend than fact. The 19th-century historian William Hetherington has Gillespie single-handedly vanquishing Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Thomas Coleman, and John Lightfoot; toppling John Selden in a single speech; and thoroughly demolishing Erastianism for all time with Aaron’s Rod Blossoming (1646).
At the same time, it’s true that Gillespie, the youngest member of the Assembly, was an intellectual prodigy and one of the most frequent speakers and most effective debaters. In print, Gillespie argued that while the civil and ecclesiastical powers agreed in many respects (e.g., both are from God, both must obey God’s commandments, both ought to be honored, both can issue censures and correction), they differed in “their causes, effects, objects, adjuncts, correlations, executions, and ultimate terminations.” As he wrote several pages later, “The Magistrate himself may not assume the administration of the keys, nor the dispensing of Church-censures; he can but punish the external man with external punishments.” In short, the church was to be the object of the magistrate’s care but not of his operation.
Gillespie’s views on the civil magistrate, if not entirely convincing to every member of the Assembly, represented the kind of two-kingdom thinking that had been dominant in Scotland for three-quarters of a century. In 1578, the General Assembly in Scotland approved a brief manual on church government called the Second Book of Discipline, what has since been called “the first explicit statement of Scottish Presbyterianism.” A central theme throughout the document is that the Kirk (i.e., the Church of Scotland) and the civil magistrate may work toward some of the same ends but “always without confounding the one jurisdiction with the other.”
The magistrate can only deal with external matters; he cannot make laws that demand affections or compel the conscience to believe certain things. Crucially, the Second Book of Discipline also stipulated that the “magistrate neither ought to preach, minister the sacraments, nor execute the censures of the kirk, nor yet prescribe any rule how it should be done.”
Unlike its neighbor to the south, Scotland insisted the head of the church and the head of the state weren’t the same. When Reformed and Presbyterian pastors make a declaration in the name of “Jesus Christ, the only King and Head of his Church,” they’re denying not only the authority of the pope but also the authority of any earthly monarch over the church.
The Westminster Confession stands in the same tradition, believing the civil realm and the ecclesiastical realm are both under God’s authority but with different officers, different responsibilities, and different aims. As Calvin put it, “Whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual Kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct.”
2. Civil Magistrate as Guardian and Avenger
Of course, “completely distinct” didn’t mean for Calvin, or for the Second Book of Discipline, or for Gillespie, or for the Westminster divines that the civil magistrate had no role to play in the establishment, defense, and promotion of true religion. On the contrary, they all believed the civil magistrate was responsible for enforcing both tables of the law. These responsibilities didn’t mean the state was ushering in Christ’s kingdom. That was the work of the gospel and the church. But the magistrate did have a responsibility to reform the church, to suppress false teaching, and to ensure the moral law was honored by all.
Until recently, most Reformed Christians, especially in America, would have quickly dismissed the historic text as tragically mistaken and embraced the 1788 revision as obviously correct. In recent years, however, as republican virtue has waned and as the democratic-liberal consensus has broken down, some Christians have wondered anew if the magisterial reformers and the confessional documents from the 16th and 17th centuries may have been right after all.
Stephen Wolfe, for example, has argued for a “Christian prince” in our day to do the following: “If the ministry degrades, he should reform it. He should correct the lazy and erring pastor but not perform the duties of pastor. He should protect the church from heretics and disturbers of ecclesiastical peace, ensuring tranquil spiritual administration.”
Wolfe insists the Christian prince “has the power to call synods in order to resolve doctrinal conflicts and to moderate the proceedings. Following the proceedings, he can confirm or deny their theological judgments; and in confirming them, they become the settled doctrine of the land.” According to Wolfe, the prince may look to pastors for theological advice as a father seeks advice from his son, but the prince “still retains his superiority.”
The Westminster divines thought about the relationship between church and state in the way most Reformed Christians did at the time: the civil magistrate has a duty to keep the church pure, to suppress blasphemies and heresies, to ensure the church’s worship and discipline are properly reformed, to maintain a settled church establishment, to call for church synods, and (like Constantine of old) to provide for them if necessary.
The Belgic Confession (1561), for example, declared that the “government’s task is not limited to caring for and watching over the public domain, but extends to upholding the sacred ministry, with a view to removing and destroying all idolatry and false worship of the Antichrist; to promoting the kingdom of Jesus Christ; and to furthering the preaching of the gospel everywhere; to the end that God may be honored and served by everyone, as he requires in his Word.”
Sixty years later, the Dutch theologians were still staying the same thing. The Synopsis of a Purer Theology—often called the Leiden Synopsis because it originated in 1624 as a series of disputations among faculty members at the University of Leiden—argued the civil magistrate’s duties fell into two broad categories: (1) the magistrate must make sure the civil laws are in agreement with the law of nature and with the recorded moral law; (2) the magistrate should establish and keep pure the worship of God in his region, reform what has become corrupt in the church, and “as far as he is able” go against heterodox teachers and those who block the way of progress of true religion.
While the Synopsis does espouse a basic two-kingdoms philosophy, it also argues for “the greatest possible harmony . . . between the two administrations, i.e., the political and ecclesiastical one.” The civil magistrate is lauded as nothing less than the “guardian and avenger of both tables of the Law.”
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Straight In His Face

By Kevin DeYoung — 7 months ago

When you see Christ as he is, for who he is, you will not be neutral. Your response will not be tepid. No one will equivocate or find some middle ground. You will either thrill to realize that this is the One you have loved and have longed to look upon, or you will hate to look on One so lovely when you’d rather be looking at yourself.

Then there came-at first from very off-sounds of wailing and then, from every direction, a rustling and a pattering and a sound of wings. It came nearer and nearer. Soon one could distinguish the scamper of little feet from the padding of big paws, and the clack-clack of light little hoofs from the thunder of great ones. And then one could see thousands of pairs of eyes gleaming. And at last, out of the shadow of the trees, racing up the hill for dear life, by thousands and by millions, came all kinds of creatures — Talking Beasts, Dwarfs, Satyrs, Fauns, Giants, Calormenes, men from Archenland, Monopods, and strange unearthly things from the remote islands or the unknown Western lands. And all these ran up to the doorway where Aslan stood.
The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. They all looked straight in his face, I don’t think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly – it was fear and hatred. . . .and all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow, which (as you have heard) streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the door, in on Aslan’s right (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle).
No matter what you think of him now, one day you will stand before Jesus. And on that day you will not see him as a little baby or as a dying man on a cross. He will stand before you as the glorious and exalted Son of Man. You will see the nail marks in his hands, but instead of a crown of thorns, a crown of glory will rest upon his brow. He will be more dazzling than you imagined, his splendor more radiant than you thought possible.
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How to Make Better, More Careful, More Persuasive Arguments

By Kevin DeYoung — 9 months ago

It’s not that we can’t ever generalize, lump people into groups, or argue from specific examples to broader themes, but if we mean to indict a whole group, we must show that the indictment is largely true of the whole group. Otherwise, we are just signaling to our in-group that we are against the correct out-group.

Of all the memorable statements uttered by Charles Spurgeon, this advice from Lectures to My Students has stuck in my head as much as anything the great preacher said or wrote:
The sensible minister will be particularly gentle in argument. He, above all men, should not make the mistake of fancying that there is force in temper, and power in speaking angrily….Try to avoid debating with people. State your opinion and let them state theirs. If you see that a stick is crooked, and you want people to see how crooked it is, lay a straight rod down beside it; that will be quite enough. But if you are drawn into controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words.
So many wise sentiments in these few sentences. We could talk about how “the Lord’s servant,” even as he rightly contends for the faith, “must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim. 2:24–25). We could talk about the folly of mistaking forcefulness for true spiritual power. We could talk about the wisdom of avoiding protracted debates, by stating your opinion and then moving on. All of that is pure gold.
But I want to focus on the last sentence in the paragraph above. I want to suggest two ways we can make our arguments harder, which in this case means better, more careful, and more persuasive.
First, we can make our arguments better by focusing on the what instead of the why.
Let’s suppose your church is divided over what kind of new flooring to get in the fellowship hall. One side wants to continue with carpet, but you are on the side that wants hardwood. You might argue that the hardwood costs less, or is easier to clean, or fits with the look and feel of the rest of the church. Those are what arguments. The other side might not agree with your reasons, but they are rational, objective arguments to consider.
But suppose you make the case for hardwood flooring in a different way. You insinuate that the only reason some people want carpet is because their grandparents own a carpet company, and they are hoping to get a financial windfall from the church’s decision. Or you suggest that the pro-carpet side has always tried to control the church, and this is about holding on to their power. Or you insist that non-Christians are repelled by carpet in the fellowship hall and that the pro-carpet side doesn’t care about reaching unbelievers with the gospel. These are all why arguments. In this second scenario, you are arguing that the other side is motivated by greed, by a love for power, and by an indifference toward evangelism.
We can see in this (hopefully) absurd example that why arguments can easily create more heat than light. This is not surprising because why arguments tend to be more personal, more ethically charged, and more difficult to prove. Of course, why arguments are not always wrong. Maybe the pro-carpet folks really are in cahoots with Big Carpet, maybe they really are a cabal of old-time powerbrokers, maybe they really are gospel-less infidels. Sometimes the why arguments are important arguments to make. But—and here’s the key—those things can’t just be asserted or insinuated. Arguments must be made. They can’t just be thrown out there because you’ve decided to connect the dots in one way, when those same dots could be connected in several other ways. If the pro-carpet ringleader has a grandparent in the carpet industry, he could be scheming for a kickback, or he could be trying to care for his aging grandparents, or it could be that he grew up familiar with all the benefits of carpet, or the connection could be a pure coincidence because the man hasn’t talked to his grandparents in years and they sell a different kind of carpet anyway.
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Amaze the Next Generation with God

By Kevin DeYoung — 9 months ago

As you try to reach the next generation for Christ, you can amaze them with your cleverness, your humor, or your looks. Or you can amaze them with God. I need a lot of things in my life. There are schedules and details and a long to-do list. I need food and water and shelter. I need sleep. I need more exercise, and I need to eat better. But this is my greatest need and yours: to know God, love God, delight in God, and make much of God.

Give Them God (Not Moralism)
I beg of you, don’t go after the next generation with mere moralism, either on the right (“don’t have sex, do go to church, share your faith, stay off drugs”) or on the left (“recycle, dig a well, feed the homeless, buy a wristband”). The gospel is a message not about what we need to do for God but about what God has done for us. So get them with the good news about who God is and what he has done for us.
Some of us, it seems, are almost scared to tell people about God. Perhaps because we don’t truly know him. Maybe because we prefer living in triviality. Or maybe because we don’t consider knowing God to be very helpful in real life. I have to fight against this unbelief in my own life. If only I would trust God that he is enough to win the hearts and minds of the next generation. It’s his work much more than it is mine or yours. So make him front and center. Don’t confuse platitudes with profundity. Don’t proclaim an unknown god, when we know who God is and what he is like (Acts 17:23). And don’t reduce God to your own level. If ever people were starving for a God the size of God, surely it is now.
Give them a God who is holy, independent, and unlike us—a God who is good, just, full of wrath, and full of mercy. Give them a God who is sovereign, powerful, tender, and true. Give them a God with edges. Give them an undiluted God who makes them feel cherished and safe, and small and uncomfortable too.
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