Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning. Well, we’ve talked briefly about lament on the podcast, particularly about whether or not we can get angry with God. We addressed that back in APJ 931. Since that episode aired, an episode that compares godly lament with ungodly lament, several more questions have come in on this. Here’s one example, a most recent version, from a listener named Bryan. “Dear Pastor John, thank you for the podcast. I’m wondering if we can be honestly angry at God for things that happen to our lives? Or is such a response out of the question?” Pastor John, what would you say to Bryan?

Let me try to interpret Bryan’s question so that I can try to answer what I think he’s really asking. He says, “Can we be honestly angry at God?” I’m not sure what he means by honestly because I don’t know what a dishonest anger at God would be. I think he means by “honestly angry” really angry, truly angry. The other word that I wonder about is the word can. Can we be truly angry with God? I think he means, “Should we be?” — or, “Is it morally permissible or right to be?” And when he asks, “Is it out of the question?” I think he means, “Is it so wrong that we should avoid it at all costs?”

So the question I’ll try to answer is this: Is it ever virtuous, or righteous, or godly, or innocent, or even morally neutral to experience, to feel — I’m not talking about what you say, I’m talking about what you feel — heartfelt anger at God, whatever the reason? That’s my question.

Doubly Out of Place

The short answer is no, never. It is never right, never good, never virtuous, never merely neutral to feel anger at God — never. Now, Paul imagines a situation where a man sees God as something he doesn’t like. He doesn’t approve of the way God is acting, and this man expresses this in very forceful terms of resistance to God’s ways. It’s described in Romans 9:18–20 like this:

So then [God] has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”

“It is never right, never good, never virtuous, never merely neutral to feel anger at God — never.”

So here’s a situation where a human being watches God’s action and does not like what he sees. And Paul doesn’t say it makes him angry. He says that it makes him question God: “Who can resist your will? Why do you still find fault? Why have you made me like this?” And Paul responds to this kind of questioning of God with, “Who do you think you are, O man, to get in God’s face about the way he acts?” That’s a pretty strong rebuke.

So if Paul says that the mere words of questioning God are so out of place, what would he say if those questioning words were enforced with strong emotion and anger? He would say, “They’re doubly out of place. It’s not right for a creature to call into question his Maker — and doubly wrong for a creature to back that up with the force of an emotional no to God.”

Now, don’t confuse this with humbly trying to understand the perplexing ways of the one you trust. Oh my goodness, that’s worth a lifetime, right? That’s all I do. At least, I try to be humble and say, “God, I want to understand. I want to understand as much as you reveal in your word. Grant me eyes to see.” It’s not wrong to ask God questions.

Like Mary, when the Lord said to her, “You’re going to have a baby, Mary, while you’re a virgin.” And Mary bows and said, “I’m your handmaid. But how can this be?” (see Luke 2:31, 34, 38). God did not get upset with that question. That was a good question, a how question. A humble longing to understand is not a bad thing. But it’s always wrong to question God as though he were in the wrong.

Responding to Objections

As I’ve thought now about why Christians who believe the Bible might think otherwise (and evidently they do), I’ve tried to get inside their heads and see some possible ways that they’re thinking. So, let me respond to a few of those.

Moral Weight of Emotions

First, maybe some people think that since anger is not a decision of the will, but rather an emotion that arises spontaneously out of the heart, maybe it doesn’t have the same rightness or wrongness that a decision of the will would have. But that’s not what the Bible teaches about emotions.

Emotions are not morally neutral. Many emotions are forbidden by God, and other emotions are commanded by God. We’re told not to fear (Matthew 10:28) and not to be anxious (Matthew 6:25). We’re told to put away bitterness (Ephesians 4:31). We’re told to abstain from desires of the flesh (1 Peter 2:11). We’re told to love God (Matthew 22:37), and delight in God (Psalm 37:4), and find pleasure in God’s presence (Psalm 100:1–2), and praise God (Psalm 67:3), and be thankful to God (Psalm 107:8), and rejoice in all his works (Psalm 92:4). So it’s simply not true that emotions are morally neutral. They’re not morally neutral. They are morally significant.

A good tree bears good fruit; a bad tree bears bad fruit. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and out of the abundance of the heart the emotions flow (Luke 6:43–45). So, whether anger at God is right or wrong, it cannot be settled simply by saying it’s an emotion.

Avoiding Hypocrisy

Second, I wonder if people who think that anger with God is morally good or neutral are confusing the approval of anger with the approval of honesty and authenticity. In other words, I wonder if, in refusing to disapprove of anger at God, what they are really disapproving of is hypocrisy, of feeling anger and not expressing it. I wonder if they really do assume lots of people are angry at God, and people like Piper are cultivating class-A hypocrites by telling people it’s wrong to express it. So, maybe some of the people who say it’s okay to be angry at God are really on a crusade to help people who are angry at God be honest and say they are.

Now, my take on this is that if you are angry with God, there is absolutely no point in hiding it from him. You can’t. You may as well tell him that you’re angry. The telling is not the problem. I’m not on a crusade to shut people’s mouths; I’m on a crusade to change people’s hearts. The feeling of the anger is the problem, not the mouth. So don’t add sin to sin: don’t add the sin of hypocrisy to the sin of anger. The battle is not with your mouth; it’s with your heart.

Anger and Love

Third, I wonder, since it’s possible to be angry at someone that we love very much (a spouse, a child, God), it seems to some people that, therefore, we can be angry with God while still loving him, and it must not then be bad. But that doesn’t follow does it? It may still be a sin to be angry with God even though we love him. Because anger toward God is not what flows from loving God.

Caring for the Grieving

Fourth, I wonder if some pastorally sensitive people (I think this one probably is very prominent) are very reluctant to disapprove of anger at God because they know that if they do, they may be heaping guilt on people who are already experiencing the pain of a huge loss, which has made them angry at God in the first place.

“It is a pastoral failure of nerve or failure of wisdom if we think we have to condone sin in order to bring comfort.”

Now, in my experience of dealing with hundreds of people in times of great loss over the last fifty years, God in his wisdom has always provided a way to minister to people’s true need and true pain without compromising the truth. It is a pastoral failure of nerve or failure of wisdom if we think we have to condone sin in order to bring comfort. There’s always a better way.

Never Blameworthy

And finally, number five, I wonder if people who approve of anger at God have really thought through what anger at a person is. It is strong, emotionally laden disapproval. That’s what anger is: strong, emotional disapproval. God does something; we assess it; we disapprove of it; we oppose it emotionally; we resist. Anger is the counterpart in the heart to the indictment of God in the head. Our minds judge God to be in the wrong, and our emotions say this with anger.

And my response is that God always acts justly. He always acts wisely. He always acts with love toward his people. He never wrongs anyone. He is never blameworthy. He is always pure, and holy, and righteous, and good. He is infinitely worthy of our trust, and our love, and our admiration, and our delight. And when we don’t understand his ways, we put our hands on our mouths and kiss the rod and say with Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33).

Find your legs. Each new morning presents us with the fresh opportunity — and need — to do so.

First, of course, we need to find our literal, physical legs as we get out of bed. We’ve been laying down for hours, dead to the world and void of conscious movement. Now, as we roll out of bed, we hope to find them. Conditioned by habit (and clouded by grogginess), we may not realize how significant, and sometimes difficult, these first steps can be.

Then, less obviously, though more importantly, is the need each morning to find our figurative legs. Who am I? What am I doing here? Why did I get up, other than for coffee, breakfast, or a walk to the bathroom? What am I waking up to — to some good use of another priceless day of human life, to some calling from God to bless others and add value to the world?

In other words, as I rise to stand for the day — to get the bearings in my soul — what am I standing on? What gives me footing? How do I find my legs?

Warnings for All Who Lead

Long before Israel had a king, the nation’s first and greatest prophet left specific and perhaps surprising instructions for him, including where and how he would “find his legs” each day as the leader of God’s people.

In Deuteronomy 17:14–20, Moses describes a concession God would make one day, setting a human king over his people. As he does, he warns such kings about the dangers of “excessive silver and gold,” “many wives,” and “many horses” — that is, money, sex, and power (Deuteronomy 17:16–17). Moses gives a specific reason for these cautions: “lest his heart turn away.” This is where the point of departure will be, humanly speaking, for regimes and generations to come: the heart of the king.

As goes his heart, so goes the leader, and so goes the nation. Will he heed the siren calls around him, the subtle temptations to the compromises of acclaim and special privilege? Will he take advantage of his willing and submissive servants who are eager to give him benefit of the doubt? Will he slowly construct his own reality around him that serves his own private comforts rather than the holy interests of the people?

The battle lines will first be drawn in the king’s own heart. Which explains why Moses’s next instructions turn where they do, unexpected and perhaps peripheral as they may seem to some.

Keys to the Leader’s Heart

What the prophet says next is all the more striking because it’s issued generations before the nation would have its first king. When a new king ascends to the throne in Israel — with all the pomp and circumstance that will doubtless accompany such a coronation — as his first act, he is to take out a quill and write word for word, with in his own hand, his own copy of God’s law, and “read in it all the days of his life.”

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18–20)

Note the emphasis on his heart. God’s plan for his leaders so that their hearts not turn away, is that their hearts be formed and fed daily by God’s word. Consider, then, three aspects of this simple yet profound plan, which is just as relevant for Christian leaders and churches today.

1. The Book Shapes the King

This book, copied long hand by the king himself, is no journal. The new king is not recording his own feelings or preferences or decrees — not in this book. Rather, he is copying the book of God’s law — an objective, fixed text, not open to edits and adjustments. This hand-copied book then is to be reviewed and approved by the priests, to confirm that no changes have been introduced or anything omitted.

“The king doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the king.”

In other words, the king doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the king. However great he may be in the sight of his people, the king fundamentally does not shape the world (or even his own kingdom) through his words, but he is being shaped by God through God’s words.

2. The Book Keeps the King

God also designs that this book will keep the king, as he is bombarded by the world of privileges and temptations leadership can bring. As the king keeps the words of God in the book, the book will keep the king — that is, keep him from turning aside to the right or left, turning from the fear of God to fear of man, from faithfulness to God to the pursuit of his own private, sinful pleasures.

In shaping the king’s heart, the book keeps him from the subtle daily migrations away from God, which all sinners experience. Which is why Moses twice mentions the inner man, “the heart.” The unseen heart of the king will come, in time, into expression in his life and the nation’s. Self-humbling before God and his word will give rise to a whole trajectory of thoughts, feelings, words, and actions; pride, another. And the greater the king, the greater the effects, for good or ill.

3. The Book Calls Each Morning

Finally, the king’s hand-copied, priest-approved book, Moses says, “shall be with him . . . all the days of his life.” With him, that is, nearby, constantly within reach. Having completed this great hand-copying project, he is not to store the book away for future reference, but make it functional, accessible, active in his reign — increasingly in him through countless hours lingering over it.

“The kind of reading that does God’s keeping is the kind of reading that feels like steeping.”

This Book is designed to be read daily. And not the sort of reading to which the pace and pixels of our modern lives have accustomed us: fast-break, hurried, distracted reading, with words coming out of the head almost as quickly as they went in. Rather, the kind of reading God intends for his servant is meditative — slow, unhurried, enjoyable, feeding on the text, at the pace of the text, rather than the pace of the world. Pondering God’s words. Rolling them around in the mind long enough to get a sense of them on the heart. The kind of reading that does God’s keeping is the kind of reading that feels like steeping.

Such daily meditation makes us, over time, the kind of person — with a shaped, kept, and fed heart — who can approve what is excellent (Philippians 1:10; Romans 2:18) and discern what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2), even in the complex, confusing challenges of life and leadership.

Day and Night, Today and Tomorrow

Such daily meditation on the words of God is what God so memorably expects of Joshua as he becomes Israel’s new leader in Moses’s place:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. (Joshua 1:8)

So too, generations later, when Israel finally had its king, the first psalm celebrated where the godly king would find his sense and wisdom to rule: “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). And not only the king, but every man of God: “Blessed is the man . . .” (Psalm 1:1).

So too, when the ultimate man, David’s great heir, came among us, his shaping and keeping and wisdom to live and lead grew out of regular feeding in the Bible. In the words of Sinclair Ferguson, “Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture did not come de caelo (‘from heaven’) during the period of his public ministry; it was grounded no doubt on his early education, but nourished by long years of personal meditation” (The Holy Spirit, 44).

His Father had appointed means for his stability in his truly human life. And it was not some extraordinary means or special trick. It was the same great and modest, amazing and ordinary daily means heralded by Moses, tested by Joshua, embraced by David, and imitable by the godly today: daily meditation on the very words of God.

Eat Like a King

How do you find your legs each day? However many you lead, whether as pastor, as father, as mother, as friend, as boss — whether in business, at church, in the home, in the community — how do you get your bearings on the shifting deck of life? Where do you find the stability you need to lead well for the long haul, including today?

Give your first and most formative moments to feeding on the word of God. Let his voice be the first you hear each day. Let him feed and keep you like he fed and kept the godliest of kings.

What’s the most unusual holiday tradition in your family? One of the more unusual ones in mine is to eat haggis for breakfast the day after Christmas. As if the culinary onslaught the day before wasn’t enough, here we are, barely minutes into the morning, ingesting offal, suet, and oats (with a fried egg on top).

It may not be a common tradition, but it is a telling one. It’s one of the few tangible reminders that my family has Scottish roots. At some point in the early twentieth century, the family made its way down from north of the border, and ever since we’ve all found ourselves being born in southeast England. It wasn’t a decision I was involved in, obviously. And given the choice, I’d probably have preferred to grow up around the rugged hills of Galloway with a lilting Scottish accent.

The fact is, much of our lives is shaped by decisions made by our forebears. The choices of previous family members have determined many details of our lives even before we’ve begun deciding anything. It’s not always comfortable to think about (we prefer to think we are masters of our own lives), but it’s incontrovertibly true. We find our lives to be, in many ways, the product of other people’s choices.

And what’s true of our physical family is also true of our spiritual family. One of my Scottish forebears made a decision, and ever since, successive generations have been born rooting for the wrong side when watching Braveheart. And one of my spiritual forebears made a decision that has meant we all were born very far from home.

Corruption in the Family Tree

The apostle Paul summarizes the defining moment this way:

Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)

The first part describes what happened historically: through one man disobeying God, sin entered what had been a pristine world. The second part helps us see what was happening theologically: all of us sinned. Paul is not just saying that Adam kicked off a trend, like that ice-bucket challenge a few years back, where someone started it off and eventually everyone ended up doing it. No, Paul is saying something more profound and tragic:

By the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners. (Romans 5:19)

By Adam’s act, all of us are constituted sinners. His sin made us sinners. Not just in status, but in our very nature. We’re not born neutral, and then discover sin and consequently become sinners. We’re born sinners, and that’s why we sin. We can’t do otherwise. This is the doctrine of original sin, and it often gets bad press.

Gift of Original Sin?

The doctrine of original sin goes against so much of our instinctive Western individualism. It can feel unfair. But just as my eating fried sheep’s offal every late December is tangible evidence of my family background, so too the propensity of all of us to sin is evidence of where we come from. Original sin might be a hard doctrine to accept, but it’s one of the easiest to prove. There are around 7.7 billion pieces of evidence for it walking around the planet today.

“Original sin might be a hard doctrine to accept, but it’s one of the easiest to prove.”

If, however, we deeply accept what the Bible tells us, the doctrine can transform us for the better. Most importantly, we will cherish what Christ has done for us all the more. This is Paul’s purpose in Romans 5 — to show how Adam’s actions are a photonegative of Christ’s. We were in Adam, made sinners through what he did. But by God’s grace we are now in Christ, made righteous through what he has done.

When I first became a Christian, I was barely aware of how deeply rooted sin was in my life. The more I’ve come to appreciate this, the more I’ve realized just how much Jesus achieved on the cross.

Seeing Others Through Adam

But original sin hasn’t just deepened my appreciation for the cross; it’s changed how I see other people. Properly understood, it should make us more compassionate. The very part of this we often find difficult — our helplessness through Adam — can soften our hearts to one another.

Adam’s sin makes all who succeed him sinners by nature. The presence of sin in our lives is inevitable. We can’t help it. It doesn’t mean we’re not responsible, or that there aren’t consequences for our sin, or that God isn’t right to condemn and punish it, but it shows just how helpless we all are apart from Christ. We’re sinners and can’t be otherwise. When we see another lost person sin, we’re watching them be the only thing they know how to be. It doesn’t make it less wrong, but it makes it all the more understandable. We can’t snap ourselves out of this. We can only be reborn out of it.

This shapes how we see all of humanity, even at its ugliest. It explains the world to us, showing us how even with unprecedented wealth, education, and technology, we can’t seem to get our act together as a species. We may be cleverer, healthier, and cleaner, but we’re not better. We see the ongoing pattern of sin, that inherent Adamness, repeating itself in each new generation. No human advances will get us out of this.

This doesn’t mean we don’t do what we can to encourage social reform or pursue justice. God’s common grace means there are ways we can restrain aspects of our sinfulness. We rejoice over efforts to abolish trafficking, racial discrimination, and abortion. But we do so knowing the deeper issue hasn’t been resolved: sin is native to us, and sinners are going to sin.

How Original Sin Warms a Heart

How does original sin make us more compassionate? We see opportunities in nearly every area of life. For instance, parents, this doctrine teaches us that your child’s sinfulness isn’t just the result of your imperfections as a parent. Even if, somehow, you’d made all the right parenting choices at every moment along the way, your child would still be a sinner.

“The doctrine of original sin makes the gospel all the more urgent, and all the more precious.”

I’m not a parent, but I encounter plenty of sinners. A pushy driver cuts me up in busy traffic: fine — it’s just a sinner being a sinner; no need to get upset. My wallet gets stolen: I’ll cancel my cards and make whatever arrangements need to be made, but I’ll also pray for the thief — he or she needs the new heart only Jesus can give. I meet someone with highly complex issues that has made him or her hard work to be around — I’ll do what I can to understand what’s going on under the surface, but I can feel assured that I already know what’s most deeply needed.

Every person I meet, no matter how different from me culturally or ethnically or economically — this lens of original sin helps me to understand what that person most needs deep down. However bewildering another culture may be to me, the underlying superstructure of the human heart is the same. Our birth certificates may state that we were born in London or Peshawar or Madrid or São Paulo. But spiritually, we’re all born in Adam.

The best-raised child will still be fallen. The most advanced human civilization will be no less sinful than the least. It makes the gospel all the more urgent, and all the more precious. Every human I set eyes on today (including the one in the mirror) has the same ultimate need and helplessness. By nature, we’re all descendants of Adam, whatever is on the menu for our post-Christmas breakfast.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15595258/does-god-or-satan-send-affliction

When Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us,” he uses the same word twice: blessed (Ephesians 1:3). A moment’s thought, however, shows that God blesses us altogether differently than how we bless God.

When God blesses us, he takes the initiative, doing the kind of mighty acts that Paul recites in the next dozen verses: electing, redeeming, forgiving, adopting, sealing, and lavishing grace on us. When we bless God, we praise him in response. It’s a beautifully appropriate response, but just because it’s the same verb doesn’t make it the same act. The deep reason that we can never bless God the way he blesses us is that God is already blessed. God is blessed with perfect, plenary, personal blessedness.

The blessedness of God is a classic Christian doctrine, and one that we could stand to hear more about in our time. It gives us big thoughts to think about God in three domains: God’s relation to the world, God’s essential perfections, and God’s experience of his own life. Consider these three domains as concentric circles. We can think our way in toward the inner circle from a starting point in the outer circle, at the outskirts of God’s ways.

Outer Circle: God and Creation

To recognize that God is already blessed before we bless him is to realize something utterly fundamental about God’s relation to the entire world of creatures: God is self-sufficient. If God had never created anything whatsoever, he would still be fully himself, with no unmet needs waiting to be fulfilled by anything outside of his own divine life.

When God freely and graciously created, he did not change from being unsatisfied and unglorified to suddenly being fulfilled and having a purpose. The benefit that accrues from creation, the blessing it brings, is entirely a blessing toward creatures. Furthermore, God continues to be self-sufficient and fully realized within his own life even once creation has come into being. Since God minus the world would still be God, then God plus the world is also still God.

Seventeenth-century lay theologian Edward Leigh (1602–1671) said it well: “God is blessed essentially, primarily, originally, of himself such, and not by the help of any other thing” (Body of Divinity, 200). The word blessedness opens up a vision of God as infinitely transcending all incompleteness. The word alone marks a vast doctrine.

Our point of departure in this essay was the way Ephesians 1:3 runs in two directions with the word blessed, but the Greek word used there is eulogetos, whose roots mean “speaking well of.” The actual key vocabulary word for blessedness in the ancient world and in the Greek New Testament is makarios: it is the same word Jesus uses about people in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), but Paul applies it directly to God in 1 Timothy 1:11 and 6:15. Praising God (eulogetos) lifts up our minds to recognize his own state of blessedness (makarios).

“God is so perfectly complete and fulfilled that he is exalted above all neediness and greediness.”

God is so perfectly complete and fulfilled that he is exalted above all neediness and greediness. He works toward us in grace and love because, in the ultimate sense, there is nothing in it for him. He does not need to make use of us to increase or improve his blessedness, since it is already fully actual within the divine life, without reference to us. God alone has unborrowed blessedness. Creatures borrow blessedness and live off the largesse of God.

You may notice a tension in this doctrine, as it seems to start out by sternly warning us about God’s absolute self-sufficiency, as if carefully distancing God from entanglements. But as the doctrine unfolds in our understanding, it shows itself to be the source of God’s deepest involvement with creatures. We hear whispers of this beautiful doctrine of the blessed God in old hymns: “God from whom all blessings flow,” “fount of every blessing,” and so on. The theological tension is fruitful; unless God is blessed without us, we could never be blessed in him. What may seem like an imposing doctrine of an austere and faraway God is in fact the foundation of “the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11).

Inner Circle: God’s Perfections

In addition to helping us think rightly about God’s relation to the world, divine blessedness helps us rightly estimate all those perfections of God that we call divine attributes. Blessedness is a divine perfection, but it has a special status among the perfections. At least one theologian (A.H. Strong) reckoned it to be not so much a divine attribute itself as a description of what it means for God to have all of the divine attributes.

“Unless God is blessed without us, we could never be blessed in him.”

Whatever we decide about how to categorize divine blessedness, the point is that it is a doctrine that sums up all the other divine attributes. If you take all that it means to be God, his goodness and mercy and truth and faithfulness and beauty and steadfastness and patience and wisdom, and consider them simultaneously as God’s own inmost possession, you get the doctrine of divine blessedness.

Of course, it’s not as if we assemble God by adding together perfections, but our thoughts do need to run through the course of his perfections and accumulate them mentally before our mind’s eye in their primal unity. When we do that (no small task!), we can consider them as they shine outwardly and as they resonate inwardly. When we consider them as shining forth from God, we call it glory: another very special divine perfection. But when we consider them as being perfectly enjoyed by God in absolute divine self-possession, we call it blessedness.

To put it briefly, we can think of the word blessed as the answer to the question, “What is it like to be God?” To the extent that creatures can give any meaningful answer to that question, even on the basis of God’s self-revelation, we can answer that to be God is to be happy. Here, certainly in English but probably in all creaturely language, we crash into the problem of a word like happy not carrying the weight we need it to. God possesses whatever we should call the absolutely solid and real thing that happiness and joy are just a shadow of.

It is good news that God has blessedness, and that God is blessed. He is sufficient, self-sufficient, all-sufficient; never waiting on something outside of the divine life to make the divine life complete; always enjoying all the perfections of being himself, and knowing he has them, and loving to have them: God is blessed.

Inmost Circle: Blessed Trinity

With this insight, we come to the inmost circle of the three domains of blessedness. The perfect God who creates without need or greed, the one God in the plenitude of his attributes, is the triune God whose eternal life is characterized by ineffable joy and mutual glorification among three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Divine blessedness and triunity have a special relation to each other. In previous generations, theologians who took the time to write very large treatments of Christian doctrine would usually say everything they could about God’s nature first, and then turn to the doctrine of the Trinity to consider each of the three persons who possess this one divine nature they had just discussed. Often, they would reserve the doctrine of blessedness to be the very last thing they said about the one God, before turning on the very next page to the Trinity. We see this strikingly in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, and great Protestant theologians like Amandus Polanus and Petrus van Mastricht do the same in their systems. Something deeper is at stake here than just how to organize the table of contents in a big theology book!

Why does the doctrine of blessedness gravitate toward the doctrine of the Trinity like this? Partly because of the summative character of blessedness, the way it bundles all the divine attributes and considers them with reference to God having them. But partly because, once we cross the line into trying to speak about the fullness and perfection of God’s joy, we find ourselves reverently following the lines of revelation into the innermost chamber of God’s identity. That identity is the eternal reality of the living God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Vast Happiness

One possible reason we don’t often hear about divine blessedness these days may be that it is such a vast and comprehensive doctrine that it is hard to talk about. God’s blessedness has one foot in the highly exalted “big God” theology that some people have recently been calling classical theism. The doctrine keeps company with great themes like aseity, simplicity, and the attributes that start with the prefix omni-. It is a high and exalted doctrine.

But the doctrine’s other foot is very near to us, and makes close contact with human happiness. We must maintain constant awareness that we are speaking analogically about the ineffable, and we always need to remain reverent in what we say. But the fact is that God is happy, and the sovereign joy of the indestructibly blessed God is good news.

Audio Transcript

Happy Friday, everyone. I mentioned last year, back in APJ 1720, that in our emails, the most asked-about chapter of the Bible is Romans 9. It’s not even close, and understandably so: the chapter raises a truckload of theology questions. And within that chapter, Romans 9:22 is the most mentioned text, the most asked-about verse in our entire inbox, because that verse raises the difficult but necessary topic of predestination and double predestination, or reprobation — the divine design of “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (Romans 9:22). It is a sobering text raising many questions — relevant and important questions.

We’re not in that text, but we are back to the theme of double predestination through a different text, in a question from a listener named Josh. “Dear Pastor John, thank you for all the resources for people like me, seeking Bible answers. I have a question about 1 Timothy 2:4, and how it, when read in context, pertains to the doctrine of double predestination. To me, double predestination seems a logical result of the doctrine of predestination. This verse seems to refute it. How do double predestination and this verse hold up together? Also, if addressing 1 Peter 2:8 would be applicable, I would appreciate that as well. My understanding of one verse contradicts my understanding of the other. I know the Bible is cohesive, but I’m unsure how to reconcile these texts.”

Yes, the Bible is cohesive, it is coherent, it has integrity — and that’s a good assumption to start with. First Timothy 2:4 has been perceived for centuries as a problem, not just for double predestination, but for any predestination or any unconditional election of who will be saved.

So, let me say a word about double predestination (since it’s brought up in the question) and then show how I think 1 Timothy 2:4 is not a contradiction of predestination or double predestination.

Some Predestined to Believe

Predestination refers to God’s appointing the final destiny of a person before creation. So, for example, Ephesians 1:4–5 says, “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” So God assigns, or destines, the elect for adoption; that’s the destiny. He plans for his chosen ones before creation. Hence, the term pre-destined — destined beforehand for adoption.

These predestined ones always correspond in real life with those whom Jesus calls to himself and those who believe on Jesus and are justified by faith. And we know that the predestined and the believers always correspond because of Romans 8:30, which says, “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified.” And we know that justification is by faith and no other way. So those are believers. Those whom he called he brought to faith and justified, and those whom he justified he glorified.

“Human beings are morally accountable, even though they do not have ultimate self-determination.”

So, the predestined ones and those who are justified by faith in Jesus are always the same group. Because God not only predestines, but he also calls people to himself, and brings them to faith, and justifies them, and finally glorifies them. There are no predestined ones who do not believe, and there are no believers who are not predestined. God is sovereign in the whole process of salvation — beginning to end, eternity to eternity, in every aspect of it.

Some Destined to Disobey

Now, the term double predestination is used to refer to the fact that if God destines some for salvation and adoption, then he passes over others, so that their destiny is judgment and not salvation. Now, some people think we should not call this passing over a second predestination, since the Bible does not speak of it that way. And I would agree that we at least shouldn’t make a focus out of what the Bible does not make a focus.

But in fact, while not using the word predestined for unbelievers who perish, the Bible does refer to the reality of it. And it’s not just a logical deduction. Sometimes this gets a bad rap because they say, “There you go applying your crusty, wooden, cold logic, which the Bible doesn’t do.” Well, forget that. We’re not talking about a logical deduction here — we’re talking about texts.

For example, consider these three texts. First Peter 2:8, the one that was mentioned, refers to those who “stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” Romans 9:22 refers to those whom God “endured with much patience” — namely, “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.” Proverbs 16:4 says, “The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.”

Now, each of those texts needs careful attention and true interpretation. But my effort over the years has yielded the fact that I think they do in fact teach that God plans the destiny of each person, whether judgment or salvation. And that, of course, is very controversial. But it’s also very important.

I mean, think of it. It’s not marginal. Think of what it says about the sovereignty of God either way, or about the nature of saving grace and its power — its sovereign effectiveness. Think about the implications for prayer and evangelism and assurance and so many other things. This is not a marginal issue, as though you could just shunt that aside and say, “We’ll just talk about other things.”

‘Free Will’ or Sovereign Grace?

Now, the primary objection to this biblical teaching of predestination — whether you call it single or double — is that it seems to result in people being punished when they are not morally accountable. So this seems to be unjust. It seems unjust to people and unjust in God. The alternative view says that God does not decide anyone’s destiny before they exercise their ultimately self-determining free will.

The assumption of this alternative view is that a person cannot be morally accountable unless each one has ultimate self-determination — which is usually called “free will,” but “[ultimate self-determination” is the crucial definition. The text that most often is appealed to for this view (which is not my view, I’m not in favor of this) is 1 Timothy 2:4, which Josh specifically asked about. It says God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Then the inference by those who read it is drawn from this verse that God cannot choose only some to be saved because he desires all to be saved.

Now the problem is this: both interpretations admit that God prioritizes something above his desire for all to be saved — because not all are saved. Something restrains God from saving all. And one view says that what restrains God is that he prioritizes ultimate human self-determination above saving all. Better to have some perish than that all should be deprived of ultimate self-determination (usually called “free will”).

The other view (this would be my view) says that what restrains God from saving all is that he prioritizes the glory of the freedom of his sovereign grace above saving all. Better that some perish than that the freedom and greatness of God’s grace be diminished.

God Grants Repentance

So the question is, Which of these two explanations is the biblical explanation of why God doesn’t save everybody? Is it God’s commitment to ultimate human self-determination? Or is it God’s commitment to his own freedom and the glory of his predestining grace?

Now, that’s a massive question. But let me give one pointer from inside Paul’s letters to Timothy. I’m very, very jealous here not to be controlled by a system. I know that whatever view you have, it is very easy to be controlled by other truths besides the text you’re dealing with, rather than looking in the context to see what it really means. So, I want to stick with these — what are called the Pastoral Letters of Paul. Let’s just take 1 and 2 Timothy and show how close the language is between 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Timothy 2:25.

So in 2 Timothy 2:24–25, Paul uses language like this. And what’s close about it is the phrase “coming to a knowledge of the truth” in both texts. But here’s what he says:

The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

That’s the same phrase as in 1 Timothy 2:4. Now, what seems clear to me from this verse is that Paul does not believe in ultimate human self-determination when it comes to the all-important act of repentance. In this verse, repentance does not ultimately depend on human self-determination; it depends on the free gift of God to a person in the bondage of sin and Satan. “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:25).

“Human beings are morally accountable, even though they do not have ultimate self-determination.”

Therefore, within these two letters of Paul to Timothy, he shows that what keeps God from doing what he at one level desires to do — namely, save all — is not his commitment to ultimate human self-determination. No one is saved unless God grants repentance. Repentance is not the product of ultimate human self-determination. It’s a gift of God.

Predestined and Accountable

Here’s the paradox — not a contradiction, a paradox. Lots of people try to make this out to be a logical contradiction. It’s not. It runs through the whole Bible. Human beings are morally accountable, even though they do not have ultimate self-determination. There is no injustice with God (Romans 9:14). No one is punished who does not truly deserve to be punished. And the measure of the punishment is always in righteous proportion to the measure of the evil. Though God predestines who will be saved and who will not be saved, no one comes into judgment who does not deserve judgment.

This is not a logical contradiction, which so many try to make it out to be. It is a mystery. I don’t think the Bible makes plain how both of these truths — God’s sovereignty and man’s accountability — are in perfect compatibility. But the whole Bible testifies to both truths. They are compatible. The Bible teaches the truth of both. And they are profoundly important to embrace for the good of our souls, and for the integrity of God’s word, and for the health of the church, and for the advancement of God’s mission, and for the glory of God’s grace.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15591797/god-destined-your-afflictions-dont-be-shaken

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Tyrannosaurus Rex these days — and Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Velociraptor. I’ve also made the acquaintance of some less-familiar figures, like the long-necked, small-brained Diplodocus and the head-crested Parasaurolophus (which actually rolls off the tongue once you get the hang of it).

I’m no paleontologist or museum curator. I haven’t seen the latest installment of the Jurassic saga. I’m just dad to a 2-year-old boy. And like so many young boys, he reads, plays, and roars dinosaur.

Over the last months, his dino shirts and books (and figures and stickers) have dug up old fascinations, mostly buried since The Land Before Time and a book of Brontosauruses I thumbed through as a kid. They’ve also unearthed some new questions, especially as I try to help my son trace God’s design in the dinosaurs.

If the heavens declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1), and his wondrous works proclaim his praise (Psalm 104:24), then surely these long-extinct giant reptiles say something spectacular about him. But what?

These Old Bones?

What we tell our children about dinosaurs will be shaped, of course, by whether we think they roamed the earth millions of years ago or relatively recently. Both perspectives have biblical merit; both also have their difficulties. I have my own leanings on the question, as most of us do, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to sidestep that matter entirely.

I won’t mind much whether my son embraces a young-earth or old-earth view of creation; I will mind greatly whether he sees dinosaurs (and all the earth) in relation to the God who made them. And the most important lessons dinosaurs teach, it seems to me, have little to do with the age of their bones. Whether they lived in the Mesozoic Era or the days of Noah, much remains the same: Many were fierce. Many were fantastical. And many were absolutely enormous.

What then can we learn from such incredible creatures? Among other lessons, consider three.

Trust the God of Wisdom

Steve Brusatte’s popular 2018 book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs tells an absorbing history of the dinosaurs’ reign. Unfortunately, it also represents and reinforces the popular view that dinosaurs have nothing to do with God. Naturalistic evolution plays the deity in Brusatte’s telling — a blind and brainless force somehow endowed with tremendous foresight: “evolution created” beasts like the behemoth sauropods (108); “evolution assembled all of the pieces [and] put them together in the right order” (117); T. Rex and his ilk were “incredible feats of evolution” (225).

The naturalistic worldview may be relatively new; the underlying impulse on display here, however, is anything but. God’s people have always needed to confess God’s handiwork over against popular myths. In the ancient world, Israel’s Canaanite neighbors considered the tannînîm (fearsome sea creatures, sometimes translated as “serpents,” “dragons,” or “monsters”) to represent “the powers of chaos confronting Baal in the beginning” (Derek Kidner, Genesis, 54). Moses, meanwhile, writes in Genesis 1:21 that “God created the great sea creatures [tannînîm].” The Canaanites can say what they want. We know that even the monsters are God’s masterpieces.

In similar fashion, God’s final speech in Job takes a massive land animal, Behemoth, and a fierce water beast, Leviathan (another monster of Canaanite lore), and describes them as God’s creatures: “Behold, Behemoth, which I made” (Job 40:15); “Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Job 41:11). Nor need we wonder if God would say the same of dinosaurs. Many scholars identify Behemoth and Leviathan with the hippopotamus and crocodile, but the poetic descriptions take on monstrous proportions. Behemoth and Leviathan could easily be mistaken for a sauropod or tyrannosaur.

“Divine wisdom adorns every creature, down to their very bones.”

Children growing up in a naturalistic age need to hear, often and joyously, the psalmist’s creation creed: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24). Divine wisdom adorns every creature, down to their very bones. In the first place, then, dinosaurs invite us to name and trust their true Maker.

Fear the God of Power

Imagine the largest of elephants, seven tons of flesh and bone spread from trunk to tail. Now imagine, if you can, a creature seven times this elephant’s weight and three or four times its length, lumbering across the land with a towering neck, barrel belly, and tree-trunk tail. You now have some faint sense of Argentinosaurus, probably the largest land animal ever discovered.

Now consider another creature, far smaller than Argentinosaurus, but also far more ferocious. At the same tonnage as our elephant (yet ten feet longer), he romps around on thighs thick with muscle, his massive head holding a jaw that snaps with six tons of pressure — literally car-crushing in its force. You now have some dim idea of T. Rex, probably the fiercest land animal ever discovered.

Now picture yourself standing before such beasts. We would be right to say of them, as God says of Leviathan, “None is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.” And we would be right to draw the corresponding conclusion: “Who then is he who can stand before me?” (Job 41:10).

Dinosaurs ought to make us tremble — but not mainly before dinosaurs. Like a hurricane, they preach the power of the living God, the very God in whom we live and move and have our being, and before whom one day we will stand. As Matthew Henry says of Behemoth, so we might say of every dinosaur:

Consider whether thou art able to contend with him who made that beast and gave him all the power he has, and whether it is not thy wisdom rather to submit to him and make thy peace with him. (An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, 223)

God made every tooth in T. Rex’s mouth; he added every ton to Argentinosaurus’s frame. Though dead, their bones still speak, and teach us not only to trust their Maker’s wisdom, but also to fear his power.

Praise the God of Wonders

In Christ, however, the most fearsome displays of God’s power become occasions for praise. Faith transfigures the terrifying into awe-inspiring: thunder becomes the voice of God (Psalm 29:3), the vast cosmos his finger-work (Psalm 8:3), the raging sea a pavement for our Lord (Matthew 14:25), the fiercest beast a glint of his glory.

The children of God know how to look at Leviathan (and, by extension, dinosaurs) and see not only his beastliness, but his “goodly frame” (Job 41:12). They can sit inside his footprint and worship the God of wonders (Psalm 104:31–32). They can trace his scales and, like King David beneath lightning, cry, “Glory!” (Psalm 29:9).

Psalm 104 gives a good sense of what dinosaur-inspired praise might sound like. Here, the psalmist marvels not only at the gentle beauty of God’s creation — flowing streams and singing birds — but also at its harder edges: the young lions roaring for prey and, strikingly, even Leviathan himself sporting in sea (Psalm 104:21, 26). Some may hold the bones of long-lost species and see only “a meaningless swarm of life,” Derek Kidner writes. But the psalmist teaches us to see them “as giving some inkling of the Creator’s wealth, and the range and precision of his thought” (Psalms 73–150, 405).

“Rightly held, the fossils of these ancient beasts are tuning forks for songs of praise.”

Paleontology allows us to sing Psalm 104 with a cast of characters perhaps unimagined by the psalmist, but long enjoyed by God and long awaiting our discovery. Rightly held, the fossils of these ancient beasts are tuning forks for songs of praise.

Evangelical Chisels

In the century before the first dinosaur discoveries (around 1820), pastor and nature lover James Hervey (1714–1758) responded to the new, Newtonian science of his day by saying, “We should always view the visible System, with an Evangelical Telescope . . . and with an Evangelical Microscope” (The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism, 150). Study the stars if you’d like: chart their courses; measure their distances. Study too the cells: mark their features; describe their functions. Yet study both as the handiwork of God.

In an age of dinosaur discoveries, we might add to Hervey’s evangelical telescope and microscope an evangelical chisel. Study the dinosaurs: learn their names; consider their age; read a few dozen children’s books about them. Yet don’t neglect the even larger lessons they teach.

My son’s dinosaur-mania may fade. But in the meantime, we’ll be tracing the wisdom of God in his Ankylosaurus figure, and the power of God on his T. Rex T-shirt, and the praise of God in his 2-year-old roar.

“Intersectionality, sweetheart.”

That’s how I answered a question from my then 9-year-old daughter. She asked me what I was reading about. As it seems like many pastors were busy doing in 2020, I had retired for the evening to my chair to ponder one of our many social challenges. The rest of our brief conversation went like this:

“What is intersectionality?”“I’ll teach you about it when you’re older.”“Why not now? Is it a scary idea?”“Yes, it is.”

I’m not the first dad to be faced with a decision like that. Corrie Ten Boom once asked her father, “What is sexism?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked her to pick up his traveling case, filled with gear for his work on watches. “It’s too heavy,” she said. “Yes,” he replied, “and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you” (The Hiding Place, 42).

What Is Intersectionality?

I am carrying a growing list of thoughts and theories about the world for my children. Intersectionality has been one of them. Some days, this knowledge feels quite heavy.

Intersectionality began as a way for legal scholars to recognize a phenomenon. An individual can be discriminated against as a woman and as a minority at the same time. Simple enough. But the picture is more complicated than that, as I was learning.

Intersectionality emerges from the worldview of critical theory that views all human relationships through the lens of power dynamics. In this worldview, the story of humanity is that of a grand struggle for liberation from oppression. Intersectionality makes three assumptions: first, that every human interaction is characterized by an oppressor-oppressed relationship; second, that this oppression can be traced along impersonal group-identity markers such as skin color and sex, even weight and age; and third, we know oppressor groups from oppressed groups by disparities, which are always the result of discrimination. Each combination of intersecting traits represents a unique victim group. Only by elevating the voices of these victims while silencing “privileged” oppressors can we tear down the structures that hold humanity captive.

How Intersectionality Oppresses

The Scriptures are emphatic: sin is pervasive and oppression is real. No individual or group is exempt. Sin can even be systemic. But intersectionality presumes that we can sort out oppressed people and oppressors by mere demographic details. No surprise, the fruit of this false worldview not only undermines the gospel but also advances its own oppression.

My family feels that oppression in a unique way.

That day I declined to explain intersectionality to my daughter, and she skipped off to play with Legos. But her perfect 9-year-old question — “Is intersectionality scary?” — has stuck with me. Why didn’t I want to tell her about intersectionality? What was I scared of? Sitting in that chair, the subtle but socially corrosive power of the intersectional worldview was palpable to me. I don’t think I was scared for her. But I was sad for her and for all my children. My whole family has skin in this game that’s being played on us. Insight into how that is a reality for our family will be instructive for anyone living in our intersectional age.

So, let me introduce you to my family.

Test Case for Intersectionality?

Kristi and I were married in 2003, and today we are a family of seven. No two of our kids are alike.

Our oldest two, a boy and a girl, are 13. We call them “the twins.” My oldest son is a ferocious reader with an interest in history. He’s not into sports, but he can school you in Greek mythology and dominate you with the yo-yo. My oldest daughter is a nurturer. She will feel your feelings before you do. Her sensitivity is a strength with typical challenges that come from sensing what others are thinking. She’s also a budding artist.

Then, there’s our 11-year-old daughter. She’s by far the most imaginative. No one can play as she does, and no one can get us laughing at the dinner table as she can. She has all the marks of a typical youngest child, which was her badge of honor until the two babies were born. In 2019 God gave us a little girl who has an amazing poker face and a little boy who is all smiles.

I see all this and more when I look at my kids. Just like any parent. Each child has a unique profile of strengths and difficulties, interests and insecurities, birth-order traits and unique potential.

So, what makes our family a unique test case for the impact of intersectionality? All but one of our children came to us by adoption.

Wait, Who Are We?

If you stand my kids in order of age and then squint, you’ll see a beautiful shade of color that moves from dark to light. The oldest two are from Ethiopia. They’re four months apart. Our middle child is from Jackson, Mississippi, probably of Haitian descent. Our baby girl is older than her brother by six months. She’s from Atlanta, Georgia, part Cherokee, part African origin, and part Caucasian. The youngest and only biological child is a white male. He is as pale as mom and dad, with blood that goes back to Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. We’re America under one roof. You can see where this is going.

When my daughter asked me that question about intersectionality, to whom was she talking? A white man? To whom was I talking? A young black girl in America? What is our relationship, exactly? Am I her colonizer? Is she my victim? Are we guilty of murder or of cultural genocide, having killed her ethnic heritage? We’ve been told this by academic journals and our social media feeds.

Should my brown-skinned children hold a grievance against my white-skinned son? Does my part-Cherokee daughter have a trump card over all of us? When my white son figures out that he holds no moral authority, should he search out and hold the atrocities of his siblings’ ancestors against them?

No, no, and no.

Compassion or Cruelty?

Oppression is a reality, and people can be exploited and despised on the basis of skin color. We need to say this. Though the ideology I’m addressing is parasitic and destructive, we must not overlook the history of racism in America. Some, to be sure, wrongly make racist oppression the main thing about America. Nevertheless, we must remember our own country’s history in appropriate ways.

“Oppression is a reality, and people can be exploited and despised on the basis of skin color. We need to say this.”

In recent years, however, sincere but vague and misguided feelings of compassion on account of that history have undermined a proper remembrance and growth. People we love have come to view the world through the lens of oppression — seeing “white people” as villains and “black people” as victims. Though they wouldn’t put it that way, this perspective is evident when they comfortably mock white people as ignorant and out of touch and respectfully, even reverently, speak about black people as an enlightened class due to their lived experience. For some, seeking absolution for sins they didn’t commit is a way to deal with false guilt; for others, accepting responsibility, even if they are uneasy about doing so, is a means to avoid cancellation. No doubt, it is a means to power for some who feel powerless and a means to innocence for others who feel guilty by association with America’s past. In the midst of these are opportunists of every kind.

We can assume the best concerning many well-meaning friends. People can be sincere and decent in their intentions even if there are sinister designs behind these ideas. But none of this has felt compassionate to our family. It is false compassion when others tell my kids — over and over — that their neighbors are secretly afraid of them, that police officers are at war with them, and that their teachers don’t believe in them. Cruel is a better term for it.

It’s cruel to tell children that their future will be determined by the moral improvement of intractably racist people.

It’s cruel to tell my children that they can make it in life as long as others hold them to lower standards.

It’s cruel to tell my children that potential employers won’t hire them because of their skin color. It is equally cruel — and equally racist, it seems to me — for businesses to treat my children as particularly valuable hires because of the color of their skin. Implicit in this are two conflicting and crushing messages: no one wants you because of your skin, but we want you because of your skin. At its best, it’s a misguided attempt to right historic wrongs that short-circuits a natural process of development. At its worst, it’s a self-serving attempt to avoid the charge of racism that treats real people as pawns. Either way, these practices send a subtle message that undermines the dignity and confidence of my children as they face the future.

Discerning adults may reject this intersectional framework but then downplay its impact. I can appreciate that spirit. But my children are at impressionable and tender ages, and they are the battlefield targets of this teaching. If our family took these ideas seriously — as serious proponents intend — they would suffocate our love, steal our joy, and destroy my family. Intersectionality brings the division of mother against child and son against father in very different ways than Christ does.

It has been a while since my daughter asked me that question. Since then, I’ve come to realize that our family is not only a good test case for the impact of bad ideas, but also a good testing ground for a more biblical and beautiful way of seeing one another. That’s one reason we are talking about intersectionality now. How is that going for us? How am I protecting my family at the intersection of race in America? If an intersection got us into this mess, maybe an intersection can get us out.

Right of Way

New drivers tend to avoid busy intersections for fear of hurting someone or getting hurt. They are not being unreasonable. Yet a simple rule keeps everyone safe: yield to the car that arrived first. Instead of yielding to an ideology that just recently arrived on the scene, we give the right of way to God’s word, spanning all the way back to Genesis and the beginning. Understanding right-of-way protects us from confusion and collision.

Thinking further on this analogy, this occurred to me: if right-of-way protects us at a driving intersection, perhaps it can help us at the intersection of our many differences. Perhaps the best way to protect my family against the group-identity framework of intersectionality is to do what we have always done with them: to tell them who they are. My children are individuals, yes. They also belong to various groups. But the way forward at this intersection is to get these aspects of their identity in the right order.

I want three identities especially fixed in the minds of my kids. These are not the only important facts about them, but these are the especially objective and therefore orienting facts about them.

‘You are made in God’s image.’

It’s this basic truth that helped me understand the first reason I didn’t want to tell my daughter about intersectionality: by fixing our eyes on color, intersectionality reduces the resolution of our shared humanity. That is, it takes out the detail. It focuses our attention on incidentals, not essentials. It settles for what we can know about a person when we squint.

I can remember being asked as a new adoptive father, “Are you going to teach your children about where they’re from?” Of course. How could we not? Why would we not want to? But there is more. I want to go back further than their country or state of origin. Our children came to our family from various places and peoples, but all those people go back to our common ancestor, to one man named Adam (Acts 17:26). Adam understood this when he named his wife Eve, “because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). In Adam, we share a common origin and divine purpose for humanity.

Intersectionality must assume some basis for human dignity in order to ground its appeal to justice. But without moorings in a transcendent worldview, it fixes our attention on our differences, judging differences as disparities. We may certainly assume the best of many who hold this worldview — namely, that they promote our differences to protect persons from hostility. Some disparities, to be sure, represent difficult and sad realities that should concern us all. But a relentless focus on differences — and especially superficial distinctions — undermines not only a proper understanding and productive response to real problems, but also the deepest truth that holds humanity, and my family, together.

Intersectionality dehumanizes my family when it prioritizes our skin color over our basic humanity. That’s why, in our home, we prioritize our common humanity. This stands in stark contrast to what we see and hear when we step outside our home — from the wall of books at Target, to an advertisement before the movie, to the messages on jerseys of our favorite basketball team — the world tells my children, “You are Black” or “You are White.” That might not be a problem except that these categories — impersonal colors as they are — come preloaded with an ideology that tells them what team they are on, where they come from, what they are to think, and how they are to relate with the rest of their family.

Instead, we say, “You are a person made in the glorious image of God,” and after that, “You are a man,” or “You are a woman.”

‘You are Hunters.’

That’s our last name, Hunter. Sometimes we’ve been asked what we know about our children’s “real parents.” We have never taken offense to this question. We know what they mean. But it has thrown us off balance when someone asks that question in front of our children. That’s because the second most important truth our children need to grasp is that they are indeed our children. After the fact of their humanity, the priority is their human family.

In fact, on reflection, this way of talking to our kids is the second reason I didn’t answer my daughter that night: taken seriously, intersectionality would make us foreigners first, family second. This is its intention, and not just for families like ours.

There’s a reason why the Bible teaches us about the origin of marriage and moms and dads by the second chapter of Genesis (Genesis 2:24), and why the apostle Paul prayed to the Father, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14–15). Family is a basic source of meaning for us all. But intersectional thinking undermines all of this for a family like ours. It teaches my children that they are not truly at home among family. It teaches my children that the primary sphere of belonging is that of a group identity assigned by skin color or some other victimhood status.

Intersectionality aggravates our already fragile relationships owing to sin by leading my children to hold the deepest motives of their parents and siblings in suspicion. Intersectionality teaches my kids that people who are white, like mom and dad, brought them into our family for wicked — even if unconsciously sinister — purposes. Intersectionality teaches my children that racism is as alive as ever, albeit in a covert way, underneath the surface of our interactions as a family. At worst, intersectionality stokes the fires of racism in their own hearts against the people who love them most.

Simply put, intersectionality hurts my family by prioritizing the color of our skin over our family name. That’s why, in our home, we make a big deal about being Hunters. We come from a line of morticians, creative inventors, brilliant managers, war heroes, and yes, so we imagine, hunters. Inside our home we are real brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. This is what we see in the mirror, and it’s who we talk to across the dinner table. Adoption is not an asterisk to this picture. It’s a part of our family history.

‘You are Americans.’

Even if I couldn’t articulate it that first night, I hesitated to tell my daughter about intersectionality because of the concentric circles of personhood and interaction. The first reason was personal, having to do with whom she sees in the mirror. The second reason was familial, having to do with whom we sit across from at the dinner table. A third reason is social, having to do with our interactions with people in our community and country: intersectionality alienates my children from their neighbors by discounting the value of our shared citizenship as Americans.

Citizenship can be a neglected grace. When Paul picks up the image with reference to our heavenly citizenship, he draws on our experience of earthly citizenship as those who belong to nations (Philippians 3:20). Earthly citizenship is a reality, and, though a fleeting one, a good reality.

It is true that, considering eternity, our earthly citizenship is relativized when we become Christians, but it’s not reduced to nothing. Paul was not only comfortable in his Roman citizenship but claimed it when he was persecuted, arresting the attention of the authorities hundreds of miles from Rome (Acts 22:22–29). Paul’s citizenship meant something for him and for everyone else. Everyone in the room knew it.

It seems virtuous in some circles these days to be cynical about America. There are aspects of our country (past and present) that are heinous. Decent Americans agree. But that’s at least an indication of one of America’s strengths: honest self-criticism. We’re not unique for having a history of slavery, but we are unique for our literature on that history. That’s because our nation was born suspicious of humanity. The very structure of our government reflects that creaturely humility. The ideas that define America are humble, even if the humans who penned them were sinners.

No, our American citizenship is not the final ground of our interactions with one another or our neighbors. That belongs to our shared humanity and, for Christians, our new humanity. Nevertheless, our American citizenship is a meaningful category and a way for my children to understand who they are and where they are when they walk into a room.

Intersectionality hurts my family by prioritizing the color of our skin over our earthly citizenship. That’s why, in our home, we remind one another of our earthly citizenship. We are Greenvillians, we are Carolinians, and we are Americans. There’s no place we’d rather be as a mixed-ethnicity family. We are surrounded by all kinds of people, including many who do not look like us but who nevertheless share the same nationality, a nationality rooted not in ethnicity but in an idea held in common and expressed in our nation’s founding documents. This includes our gymnastics teacher, the cashier at the grocery store, and the neighbors we meet on our evening walk. We teach our children to embrace a healthy solidarity as those who share a common citizenship.

Is color of any importance? Yes, color is beautiful! So are the stories that our colors represent. Our colors are not only beautiful, but they also raise good questions. Yet intersectional thinking isn’t interested in our answers — only its answers. And that’s why it’s scary. It is perniciously reductive. In the name of promoting color and diversity, intersectional thinking mutes our voices and mangles our actual stories. Worst of all, it attempts to steal the sense of belonging my children know, need, and should cherish as image-bearers, as Hunters, and as Americans.

But of course, there is more to say.

We Are Christians

My children will remain siblings, but if they take the logic of intersectionality seriously, I don’t see how they can remain honest friends. They will forge their righteous standing on each other’s backs. They will use one another in the pursuit of their own power or innocence, just like our fellow Americans are doing around us. Intersectionality displaces the gospel, making Christ’s atoning sacrifice unnecessary for some and never enough for others. In its place, its logic demands never-ending penance to appease the unappeasable grievances of whole classes of people. Like a parasite, it feeds on our grievances and our guilt, real and perceived.

“Intersectionality displaces the gospel, making Christ’s atoning sacrifice unnecessary for some and never enough for others.”

I don’t see how love can breathe in that air. I want my children to take on the identity that puts into proper perspective every other human difference, to say with their parents, “We are Christians.” That’s why, in our home, we tell our children: “You are sinners in need of grace.”

And that’s why we go to church on Sunday.

A newcomer to our church recently commented, “I noticed your church is mostly white. What are you guys doing about that?” One sister in our church who is from Colombia would have laughed had she heard that. She raves about our “beautiful mix.” This brother, however, was born in America, where majority culture is inherently problematic — even shameful — when it looks “mostly white.” Questions like this entice pastors to apologize or, alternatively, boast in the ethnic diversity of their churches. It’s a reason why a church’s ethnic makeup is increasingly the first question asked or the first credential offered when some pastors meet. At its worst, it’s a worldly obsession with looks and approval. That doesn’t make a family like mine feel more welcome. It makes us feel needed for all the wrong reasons.

Candidly, for a moment I felt ashamed of our church. That shame did not come from the Spirit of Christ. That was the spirit of the age enticing me to objectify Christ’s precious bride. But I’m grateful that I didn’t speak out of that shame. I was direct:

Everyone is talking about color these days. We talk about Christ. What would he have us do? He would have us obey all that he commanded. Which means we go to all the nations and would be glad if they came to us. When that proves hard, we welcome one another as Christ welcomed us. We show hospitality to everyone, the high-resolution kind that is interested in everything about every person. And we show partiality to no one, not for membership or discipline, not for leadership or a smile. We think this kind of simple obedience to Christ is the way forward.

Would that put him off? To my delight, he was strangely refreshed. This brother was from a place where a church’s color palette was a first indicator of faithfulness. In that moment, he needed discipleship in the truth, and our church needed protection from error.

Safest Intersection in Town

We love our church. For my family, it’s the safest intersection in town.

Why? Because there is a Lamb on the throne in the middle (Revelation 5:9–14). The blood of that Lamb tells us that we are fellow sinners, all of us, but also forgiven sinners and fellow citizens, members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19). His blood is both necessary and enough. It tells us that the line between the just and the unjust does not run horizontally between humans but vertically between all of humanity and our God. Yet by the blood of this Lamb we are made just. This throne tells us that we are a people under the authority of a righteous king with all the power, one who uses that power to love his people (Ephesians 1:20–23; 3:18–19). It’s the love of this king that compels us to love one another in deep and personal ways (Ephesians 4:1–6). In this love we see the Father advancing his cause to “unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10). It is here at church that we find an identity more fundamental and precious than our nation, our family, and even our shared humanity. In baptism and the Lord’s Supper we see the death — the tearing down — of sin and the making of a new humanity in Christ.

It’s also at church that the world can see the beginnings of a truly better world to come, with all of its manifold beauty. In that day, Christ will be surrounded by men and women from every tribe and language and nation. That kind of diversity, I take it, is beautiful to him in this age when it shows up within faithful churches, but also between faithful churches united in his worship. Our church’s ethnolinguistic profile is downstream from many factors: history, geography, socioeconomics, our faith tradition, and my own education and accent as the preacher. We’re not here to preserve our church’s unique flavor — we are comfortable in our own skin and happy to be stretched. But neither are we ashamed of our unique cultural expression, and that’s important to say these days. Despite what the world may say, at this intersection, Jesus gets the right-of-way. He controls the traffic, and he has accepted us.

Intersectionality taps into the human longing for a better world. At church, our family tastes something of the world as it will be.

What I Want My Children to Know

That guest to our church asked a question that was on his mind. In the summer of 2020, my daughter asked the question that was on her mind. I’m glad she did. In my reading that evening, I was coming to see that intersectionality is not merely a legal tool, but an ideological weapon. And where it is wielded, it divides and destroys. I want her to understand this.

That’s why we’re talking about intersectionality now. It’s a burden of knowledge our children will need to carry for themselves. But they’re not scared about it, and I’m not sad for them. That’s because, at this intersection, Christ carries our burdens for us, and nothing is too heavy for him.

Audio Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the podcast on this Wednesday. So “the passions of the flesh . . . wage war against [our souls].” That’s 1 Peter 2:11. That’s what we looked at in-depth with Pastor John on Monday. The desires of the flesh draw away from the all-satisfying fullness of Christ.

That’s a huge point, and I want to return to that text and to that verse and to the verse after it, because in them we encounter the two greatest questions faced by the universe. No joke. The universe’s two greatest questions are answered here in 1 Peter 2:11–12. There Peter wrote,

Beloved [writing to Christians], I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

These two verses answer the two most gigantic issues faced by the universe. To make the claim and defend it, here’s Pastor John in a 1994 sermon.

In those two verses, two issues are seen to be massively important. In fact, I would say they are the two most important issues in the world, in the universe. They are the two issues that the whole Bible deals with throughout. And one of the ways that we know that we are aliens and exiles and strangers, like verse 11 says, is that the world, by and large, does not think that they are important issues. If the world did, the newspaper would look different, television would look different, radio would sound different, university classes would sound different, advertising would be different, business would be different. But by and large, these two issues, which the Bible treats as the most important issues in the world, are non-issues in our world. This makes aliens out of us who get our bearings from the Bible.

The two issues are these: the salvation of the human soul and the glory of the name of God. Or to put it another way, the two big issues in the Bible and in the world are these: How do you save the soul so that it’s not destroyed? And how do you glorify God so that he’s not belittled? Those are the two huge issues in these two verses. Let’s get that before we even talk about any details.

Salvation of the Soul

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). The issue here is whether the soul is going to be so fought against that it dies, that it is lost. There are anti-soul forces in the world. The world, by and large, doesn’t even think about its soul. But this text says that there’s a war going on, and there are desires in the world that are waging war, trying to bring my soul to ruin. And if it succeeds, if the anti-soul forces win, my soul is lost. And if my soul is lost, everything is lost, and there is no recovery.

Remember what Jesus said? “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37). Which means, if the soul has been lost, there’s no negotiating anymore. If the soul is lost, you don’t buy it back — it’s gone. If anti-soul forces win, they win. It’s over. Jesus said so in Luke 16, when he was talking about the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich man went to Hades and Lazarus went to Abraham’s lap. And they were granted for a moment to see and commune in word. And the man in Hades said, “Just send him over with a drop of water. I am in torment in these flames.” And Abraham said, “There is a gulf here that is so big, so wide, so deep, that God has ordained nobody crosses either way, ever” (see Luke 16:19–31).

It’s over. That’s an awesome reality. This is a reality that has to do with everybody. It has to do with everybody forever, and it has to do with everybody forever in huge ways that have to do with hell and heaven. And yet, there’s no column in the newspaper, there’s no public-service announcement on the radio, there’s no sound bite on television, there’s no values-clarification course at the university or in our schools, there’s no government agency, there’s not even a welfare pamphlet that gives one hint as to how to fight for our souls.

“Our world is passionately committed to the inconsequential.”

The biggest issue that our souls face is a non-issue in the world, which is why you’re an alien and a stranger. They, the world order, teach us how to fight AIDS and how to fight mosquitoes and sunstroke and drunk driving and pollen and depression and rape and fire and theft and cholesterol and dandelions. But they don’t teach us how to fight for our soul. Our world — you must get this — is passionately committed to the inconsequential. One of these days that will not be the case. The eyes of the world will be opened, and our obliviousness to what will then be seen to be so obvious will so stun the world that we will have no explanation for the way we lived in America. How the eternal condition of the human soul could be a non-issue will be absolutely inexplicable. It will boggle the mind as we stand before our Judge. We are aliens.

That’s the first great issue. “How shall the soul of man be saved and not destroyed forever and ever?” That is a big issue.

Glory of God

Here’s the second one. “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12). The first issue is how the soul shall not be lost. The second issue is how God shall not be belittled. Or to make it positive: how the soul shall be saved, and now, how God shall be glorified.

The salvation of the soul and the glory of God are the two biggest issues in the universe. And they’re non-issues for most people in America. This text says, “The goal of all human behavior is to be the glory of God.” Isn’t that an incredibly sweeping statement? The goal of all your behavior, from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night, is to draw attention to God. That’s the significance of human life. The positive significance of human life consists in our capacity to deflect attention from ourselves to God. That’s the meaning of human life as God intended it to be.

“If we don’t live for God’s glory, we become simply a little echo of a God-neglecting culture.”

You see that. I’m not making that up. That’s right here. “Keep your conduct honorable so that the Gentiles might glorify God” (see 1 Peter 2:12). Live, conduct yourselves, act, behave with a mind that asks, “How can I direct their attention to God by the way I live?” That’s what life is for. We live in order to get attention for God. If we don’t — if we don’t live for God’s glory — we become simply a little echo of a God-neglecting culture. We fit in so well to this world that we can’t direct anybody’s attention out of the world, which is where God is.

I just have the feeling that we’re so afraid of being Amish: dressing wrong, riding a horse-drawn carriage, being anti-modern, or getting the wrong tie, or not having a tan. We’re so afraid of not being in step that we blend in too well so that nobody’s saying, “Wow — look at God” anymore. And it’s because of the church.