Begg Digs a Deeper Hole
Written by Robert A. J. Gagnon |
Monday, February 5, 2024
Begg ignores the scriptural counsel regarding stumbling others, in addition to ignoring scriptural counsel against being present at an event at which God forbids attendance. The Christian attending the “gay” or “trans” so-called wedding would need to notify publicly all present at the gathering, not just the family member getting married, that he or she regards the wedding as an unholy alliance abhorrent to God. This fits Paul’s description at the end of 1 Cor 10 of what to do when a believer is at the home of an unbeliever and the host announces that the meat being served is “sacred sacrificial meat” coming from the temple. One must stop eating, for the sake both of Gentile unbelievers who might construe from your eating that you honor the god, and for the sake of any “weak” Christians or non-Christian Jews at the table whose conscience indicates that the eating of idol meat constitutes idol worship.
Rev. Alistair Begg has doubled down on his recommendation to a grandmother that she attend her grandchild’s “gay” or “trans” wedding (so long as the grandchild getting “married” knows of her disagreement).* “They want me to repent? … I’m not ready to repent of this. I don’t have to.”
*Note that in the Sept. broadcast he referred to a grandmother’s “grandson”; here he refers to a grandmother’s “granddaughter.” Which is it?
1. Begg’s Ad Hominem Attack of Critics
While completely (and I mean completely) ignoring the array of scriptural arguments against his position, Begg compares all his critics to Pharisaic “separatists” who refuse to eat with sinners or have any association with them at all. He likens them to the self-righteous older brother who doesn’t understand grace in the parable of the prodigal (lost) son, and to the priest and Levite who pass by the man lying half-dead by the side of the road in the parable of the good Samaritan.
Yet none of his chief critics from the academy are advocating complete separation from those engaged in serial, unrepentant egregious sin. In my chapter on Jesus in *The Bible and Homosexual Practice* I talk at length about Jesus’ positive example of an aggressive outreach to the lost. But there is no line (straight or crooked) from that example provided by Jesus to what Begg is recommending.
He attacks all those who criticize him as the “product of American fundamentalism,” which he distinguishes proudly from his own pedigree as a “product of British evangelicalism.” Unlike them, “I come from a world in which it is possible for people to grasp the fact that there are actually nuances in things.” He does all this in a fatherly voice, but the ad hominem content is quite offensive, and it is designed to distract from the fact that it is ironically Begg himself who cannot see the nuances of Jesus’ ministry.
2. Begg’s Ironic Lack of Nuance in Describing Jesus’ Outreach to Sinners
What kind of nuance am I talking about? The failure to recognize that there is a world of difference between Jesus fraternizing with sexual sinners and exploitative tax collectors who expressed interest in his message, on the one hand, and Jesus attending a ritual celebration either of a tax collectors’ economic exploitation or of a sexual sinner’s grossly immoral and unnatural sexual union, who express no interest in his message, on the other hand.
There is no way that Jesus would have attended such ritualized celebrations of abominations to God, or encouraged his followers to do so, irrespective of whether his disciples alerted those to whom the ritual was directed of their disapproval. That Begg is incapable of such a nuanced scriptural understanding is certainly concerning.
3. Begg’s Misapplication of the Parable of the Prodigal Son
Begg’s proof text in his radio talk for justifying his advice to go to a “gay” or “trans” wedding was Luke 15, with a focus on the parable of the prodigal (lost) son. Begg appears confused in his application of this text. The older son refused to attend a celebration of the younger brother’s penitent return from a dissolute and immoral life. That was the problem with the older brother, not that refused to a attend a ritual celebration of a permanent commitment to a dissolute and immoral life. There is a huge difference between the two types of celebration (here again, nuance).
Moreover, while the father ran out to greet his returning penitent son (return in Jewish and Christian thought is a metaphor for repentance), he certainly wouldn’t have attended a ritual celebration memorializing his son’s commitment to continue to live lifelong in wastefulness and immorality.
A better text that Begg might have chosen than the lost son parable is the Aqedah (“Binding”) of Isaac in Genesis 22, where God taught Abraham not to make an idol even of his “only son,” the son of the promise. We can’t make holding on to a family member who is memorializing what the writers of Scripture (and Jesus) deem to be egregious immorality the most important thing, even if we couch it in terms of staying in evangelistic contact.
4. Begg’s Narrow, Myopic Perspective
Begg says about the advice that he gave the grandmother: “All I was thinking about was, How can I help this grandmother not lose her granddaughter?”
He should have been thinking other things, like:
How can I help this grandmother not to offend God by being present at such a ritual celebration of an evil that God finds particularly detestable? How can I prevent her from violating the united witness and counsel of Scripture?
How can I persuade her, by her actions, not to speak affirmation to behavior that can get her grandchild excluded from God’s kingdom? Am I recommending that she do something that will stumble others by her actions, leading them to affirm such immorality?
-
Romans 1 and Atheism
Atheists do not spend all their time and energy hating on and railing against flying spaghetti monsters for the simple reason that they know there are no such things. But they DO know that God exists, and they hate him for it. If God exists, then they cannot be god.
Yes they actually do hate God:
Having just penned another piece on the war against God, I of course got the usual angry atheists writing in with their fists flying. They hate it when you dare challenge their derelict worldview. And they always go on about how they do not really hate God. Yeah right.
Of course they hate God. Their entire life screams out this hatred. And it is no wonder: when they are told that they are NOT the centre of the universe, but only the one real and living God is, that incenses them. That outrages them. Atheists hate it when you point out the truth that there can be only one true God. And the reasons are obvious:
They want to be king, not subject.They want to rule, not be ruled.They want to give orders, not take orders.They want to call the shots, not be told what to do.They want to determine what is true and false, not God.They want to determine what is right and wrong, not God.They want to be independent, not dependent.They want to do their own will, not God’s will.They want to live like the devil, not God.They want to rule in hell, not serve in heaven.
Scripture of course often speaks about atheists. Twice in the Psalter for example they are called “fools” because they refuse to recognise God (Ps. 14:1 and 53:1). Rejecting their creator—and judge—is the height of foolishness. And this is a deliberate, defiant rejection of God. D. A. Carson, commenting on Psalm 14:1, puts it this way:
The word rendered ‘fool’ is in Hebrew a term of moral opprobrium suggesting perversity, churlish and aggressive perversity…The Bible’s view is that in the last analysis atheism is less the product of misguided searching, a kind of intellectual mistake, than a defiant and stubborn rebellion…The fact that atheism is not widely seen that way is itself an index of our depravity. In fact, the best-informed atheists commonly acknowledge the connection between morality and belief, between immorality and unbelief. There is a famous passage in Huxley that acknowledges that one of the driving forces behind atheistic naturalism is the desire to tear away any sort of moral condemnation of otherwise condemned behavior. In a passage scarcely less famous, Michael Foucault, one of the theoreticians behind postmodernism, frankly acknowledges that it became important for him to destroy traditional notions of truth and morality, because he wished to justify his own sexual conduct. A few years ago, Foucault died of AIDS.
But the classic text on the atheist mindset and value system is found in Romans 1:18-32. It reads:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Read MoreRelated Posts:
-
A God I Could Love
In the Son of God, we do not see a haughty God, reluctant to be kind. We see one who comes in saving grace while we were still sinners. In him we see a glory so different from our needy and selfish applause-seeking. We see a God of superabundant self-giving. We see a God unspotted in every way: a fountain of overflowing goodness. In him — and in him alone — we see a God who is beautiful, who wins our hearts.
It is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate.
As a child, I used to have an almost physical reaction to the word God. To me, it was a sharp-edged word that cut through all others. When it was spoken, I felt both searched and unsettled. Now, I knew enough to understand why the uttering of that word should make me feel searched. God, I realized, was high and holy; I was not.
But why was I unsettled? That question would pester me for years. It wasn’t merely that God transcended me. It wasn’t only his dazzling perfection. I had only the dimmest appreciation of those realities. What I couldn’t quite express at the time was that God in his glory was not then beautiful to me. His holiness troubled me, not just because it exposed me, but because I did not clearly see him as good.
And so, I found myself interested in heaven, interested in salvation, even interested in Jesus, but not attracted to God. I longed to escape hell and go to heaven, but God’s presence was not the inducement. Quite the opposite: I would have been far more comfortable with a Godless paradise. At the same time, I loved the idea of justification by faith alone, but couldn’t quite believe it — for, quite simply, God did not strike me as being that kind.
Rescued from the Unsmiling God
I have always been an avid bibliophile, and as a teenager I began to be drawn especially to the writings of the Reformers and Puritans. And one soon stood out to me: Richard Sibbes.
The way Sibbes described the tenderness, benevolence, and sheer loveliness of Jesus was utterly enthralling. And I knew he was right. Yet it didn’t compute. How could the Son of God be so beautiful when God was not? It could only be, I dimly reasoned, that the kindness of the Son was but window dressing. Jesus was the lovely facade behind which lurked a more saturnine being: an unsmiling God, thinner on compassion and kindness.
Perhaps it was unsurprising then that I soon found myself surrounded by books about the Arians, that fourth-century group who held that the Son was a different being from the Father. Then I met Athanasius. Where the other writers struck me as dull, he had a twinkle in his eye and a mind that saw with a clarity none of the others had.
Read More -
Of What Value are Miracles?
First, he claimed that the Bible was written in a style to excite and inspire human imagination, not to persuade the intellect. Second, a proper reading of Scripture requires peeling back the layers of phrases and metaphors. In other words, the Bible did not record miracles but reported events robed in hyperbole and exaggeration. The seeds of Spinoza’s doubts later blossomed in nineteenth-century liberal interpretations of the Scriptures. Some New Testament scholars claimed, for example, that Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand was no miracle. Rather, Jesus stood before an opening of a cave, which was concealed by His long, flowing robe. His disciples then fed loaves of bread through the sleeves of His robe. The feeding was no miracle but rather a sleight of hand—a well-intentioned ruse meant to inspire selflessness.
In his Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza argued that the will of God is synonymous with the laws of nature. On the other hand, a miracle is a violation of the law of nature. God’s will is unbreakable; therefore, miracles are impossible. Some philosophers, such as David Hume, simply dismissed miracles because of disbelief. Hume maintained that the testimony of Christ’s resurrection, for example, was likely false. Such testimony was therefore invalid for establishing the historicity of the resurrection. In the present, New Testament scholars such as Bart Ehrman make similar claims. Ehrman defines a miracle as improbable. Historians, however, can establish only what probably occurred in the past. Thus, a historian can never ascertain the historicity of a miracle. Regardless of the variations, the simple truth behind the rejections of miracles is unbelief—a rejection of God’s Word.
