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A Seeker-Driven Church Would Fire Jesus

By admin — 4 years ago

The seeker-driven church movement may have a formula for drawing a crowd but don’t for a second think it means they’re drawing people to Christ. Countless people are attracted to programs, entertainment, and even the casual nature of anything deemed “worship.”

I recently met a pastor in passing who offered me encouragement regarding our upcoming church plant. He pastors a massive church (several thousand) so he took the opportunity to overflow some of his wisdom in our direction.
After the brief conversation, I quickly realized that his methods weren’t exactly going to help me grow a church spiritually, but they would certainly help me launch a social club. Here are 4 of his heavy-hitting growth tactics:

Drop all churchy language. The Bible is old and dated. Try to use slang whenever you can.
Play golf with influencers more than you study. Preaching doesn’t matter, just use sermons from other preachers and focus on hanging out with people. Playing golf with influencers grows the church. Preaching isn’t that important.
Put sports on all the TVs around the church campus if you have one. Men will come to church and hang out for that.
Make children’s ministry a party. If the kids have fun everyone comes back.

In that list (which is not exaggerated), there are a few ideas that aren’t bad. Golf is a great chance to bond with brothers, we all want children to enjoy church, and some pastors would do well to explain things in simpler language. But, that’s not the driving motive behind advice like this. The goal of this advice is church growth. It’s pragmatism; the idea that if it works it must be good. Or in the church world: if it works it must be God. In this sphere of thinking the Bible is a footnote, Jesus is a good luck charm, and the church is a social gathering for suburb folks who dabble in soft moralism.
Is that what Jesus died for? Is that what discipleship is? Did He call His Church to turn on the playoffs to make His house more attractive?
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Netflix’s “Pray Away” Seethes with Contempt for Christianity

By admin — 4 years ago

Misunderstanding and mischaracterizing the Christian life is a favorite pastime of Hollywood…Faithful Christians are consistently portrayed as buffoons while, in this particular film, the ex-ex-gays are beacons of enlightenment.

Netflix’s latest original documentary, Pray Away—about the reparative therapy organization Exodus International—is yet another thinly veiled attack on Christianity by Hollywood. It’s not surprising that Netflix would seize on a false gospel to surreptitiously proffer a hit piece on Christianity in a lopsided tale of woe. Much of the media can hardly resist glomming on to extremes to further an agenda that denigrates Christians. What is surprising is how poorly made this doc is. Not only does it lack a cohesive and compelling narrative, but it attempts to throw any sort of anti-Christian spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
As someone who worked in Hollywood for decades, I’ve seen firsthand the contempt the entertainment industry has for Christianity. But only after I left my gay identity—in exchange for a new identity in Christ—did I realize the special resentment Hollywood reserves for converts like me. Pray Away is a case in point.
Celebrating Ex-Ex-Gay
The film opens on Jeffrey McCall, a former transsexual who had a powerful encounter with God and is now transformed by the gospel. The camera follows him on the streets of Georgia offering prayer to strangers. It’s clear the director capitalized on McCall’s lilting and effeminate Southern accent in an attempt to discredit him. Oh, those Bible-belt rubes and their quaint coming-to-Christ stories! But the focus on McCall is an odd choice and, as we see later, seems like a story from another film that somehow got mixed up in the editing room and mistakenly attached to this one.
The narrative inexplicably segues to former key leaders of Exodus International who have since come out as ex-ex-gay. Exodus was born in 1976 at a large conference in Anaheim, California, seeking to help homosexuals who wanted to rid themselves of unwanted same-sex attractions through a series of ad hoc and unscientific therapeutic methods. It’s no surprise these dubious methods failed. Attempts to “pray away the gay” all too often fail, leaving struggling folks not only mad at God or personally scarred but, far worse, in a state of apostasy. Tragically, the baby (the possibility of any change of affections) is usually thrown out with the bathwater (the problematic brand of “change” aimed at in conversion therapy).
Producer/director Kristine Stolakis seizes on the faulty science—and unbiblical theology—of conversion therapy to castigate anyone who would dare leave, or desire to leave, the LGBTQ community. The message is clear: if you are denying your sexual desires in order to follow Christ, you are just fooling yourself. Those desires are what define your identity, and to tamper with who you really are is dangerous and delusional.
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Repenting of Our Agnosticism

By admin — 4 years ago

Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
How often do we all conduct our lives as if we lived in some sort of closed universe not actively upheld and sustained by the God who is, who spoke everything into being?

For a few months I have been thinking about a phrase I first encountered in 1995 when I was teaching an introductory course in theology at Wheaton. We were using Alister McGrath’s reader as the primary text for the class and he quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) as saying that, in Modernity, we must learn to live “etsi Deus non daretur” (as if God is not a given).
Bonhoeffer was trying to figure out how to be a Modern person and affirm Christianity in some sense.
Contra at least one recent evangelical rendering of Bonhoeffer, which follows a trend that has existed for some time of treating him as though he were educated in Moody Bible College rather than in the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin, Bonhoeffer did not hold the historic Christian faith. He was a Modernist, i.e., he accepted as a given the Enlightenment critique of the historic Christian faith and understanding of the world. What does that mean? It means, as one of my undergraduate profs said in 1979: “In the 18th century God went to the corner for a beer and never came back.”
Bonhoeffer, like Karl Barth and others, was trying to figure out how to be a Modern (Enlightened) person and affirm Christianity in some sense. As I understand him, Bonhoeffer was a dialectical theologian. He was proposing a kind of “death of God” theology and affirming a kind of belief in God simultaneously. This is the sort of thing dialectical theologians do.
Are Christians living “Etsi Deus Non Daretur” (As if God is Not a Given)?
The phrase etsi Deus non daretur comes to us from Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). He was a great Dutch polymath. He made contributions in biblical studies, legal theory, theology, and politics. He was one of the major figures in Dutch cultural and political life in the 17th century. His treatise, On The Law of War and Peace is still a basic text in international relations. He was also a Remonstrant and suspected of being a Socinian, i.e., a rationalist who rejected the essential Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and the substitutionary atonement. This was perhaps because a number of Remonstrants did become Socinians so that the line between the two movements was blurred. It is also true, however, that Grotius wrote a treatise on the satisfaction of Christ to which the Socinian Crell responded. As I understand it, Grotius used the phrase etsi Deus non daretur to say that natural law would be in effect even if God were not assumed. Bonhoeffer took the phrase, mediated to him by German scholars such as Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and put it to use in a rather different context (WWII and the Holocaust) and to a rather different end.
What has been troubling me about this phrase is the way it seems to describe so much of Modern and Late Modern life. How often do we Christians go about life as if we were practical agnostics, as if God were not a given? A major impetus of Modernity, i.e., the Enlightenment movements that swept across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, was to reject the historic Christian understanding of the world, to assert the autonomy of the human intellect and will, and to relegate God to an unnecessary hypothesis. Evangelicals have adapted to Modernity (and Late Modernity) by adopting a God-of-the-gaps approach: whatever cannot be explained naturally they explain with the God hypothesis: the supposition that God exists.
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Randomness is Not a Scientific Explanation

By admin — 4 years ago

Randomness can never be a scientific explanation, since we can never know that something is random. At best, saying something is random is shorthand for “we don’t know.” So, when scientists state the origin of something in our universe is random, they do not know the origin.

It is common in the sciences to claim aspects of our universe are random:

In evolution, mutations are random.
In quantum physics, the wave collapse is random.
In biology, much of the genome is random.
In business theory, organizational ecologists state new ideas are random.

There is a general idea that everything new has its origins in randomness. This is because within our current philosophy of science, the two fundamental causes in our universe boil down to randomness and necessity. Since necessity never creates anything new, then by process of elimination the source of newness must be randomness. Similar to how the ancient Greeks believed the universe originated from chaos.
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Is All Work Equal? Yes and No

By admin — 4 years ago

Paul says every gift is essential for the church to be healthy. Thus, every gift has value. And that implies that every skill and every worker is valuable too. But Paul also says we differ in our functions. Yet there are “higher gifts” and believers rightly “desire” them (12:31). If God grants them, he expects us to use them. If the gift is service, we serve. If it is leadership, we lead “with zeal” (Rom. 12:6-8).

At this moment, two contradictory ideas about work compete for our attention. On one hand, economists say the desire to work is waning. People aren’t rushing to return to work after the disruptions of Covid. Specifically, employers can’t obtain laborers for entry level jobs. People would rather be unemployed than accept a job with low pay, poor benefits, and no prospects. Meanwhile, the church, and especially the faith and work movement, enthusiastically promotes the dignity and value of all labor. We cite Paul, who says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord” (Col. 3:23). In particular, Protestants refuse to call church work “sacred” and ordinary work “secular.” The faith and work movement cheers workers on saying, “All work is holy. Your work matters to God!”
Like all slogans, “All work is holy” must be refined. The idea that all work is holy doesn’t cover dishonest or illegal work. Pushing opioids is work, but it isn’t good work. Further, work can be lawful, yet almost meaningless. There is work that neither lasts long nor matters much. How important is it to sell lottery tickets? Cotton candy? Promotional T-shirts that can’t survive two journeys through a washing machine? It is unpopular but necessary to say it, but all work is not equal in every way.
First, let’s agree that all honest work has dignity. Second, every worker has equal value, whether they sweep floors or run major corporations. Third, both CEOs and cleaners can and should please God at work. In fact, the cleaner may well please God more, since a CEO can easily become impatient or selfish.
Nonetheless, certain positions have more strategic weight than others. The CEO has more impact on a corporation than the cleaning crew. A restaurant chain in my area recently declared bankruptcy due to a series of errors by corporate leadership. A little later, a Christian camping ministry escaped bankruptcy through a series of wise and sacrificial decisions. The labor force at both places was skillful and faithful. The restaurant enjoyed good food, loyal customers, and prices that were low enough to be acceptable but high enough to be profitable. The camp also had good food and programs, but the camp had better leaders in a time of crisis. Situations like these show how leaders have strategic influence. In short, all work can please God and every honest job has worth, but executives exert greater influence than security guards do – I say this as a former security guard.
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FDA Goes Warp Speed, Todd Friel Wears Pinwheels

By Ref Cast — 4 years ago

FDA Goes Warp Speed, Todd Friel Wears Pinwheels

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Your Church Needs To Reclaim a Culture of Care

By Ref Cast — 4 years ago

This article is written by Dale Johnson and is sponsored by The Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC). Dale is the author of The Church as a Culture of Care and Executive Director of ACBC. ACBC is hosting their Annual Conference O Church Arise: Reclaiming a Culture of Care this October in Charlotte, NC. (See below for a coupon code!)

Your church is God’s ordained center for care.
The post-fall world is filled with desperate and broken people, the very people God intends to care for through His church.
We see this pattern clearly in the early church. Sinners are confronted; sufferers are consoled. The power and presence of the Holy Spirit comforts and corrects God’s people. Believers are consistently reminded of the benefits of God’s Word and the fellowship of the saints to care for the weary, wounded, or wayward soul (2 Corinthians 1:3-7; 1 Thessalonians 4:18).
Within the fellowship of the church, ongoing discipleship draws men and women to walk more closely with Christ, and sacrificial kindness and grace can restore the suffering. The church is best positioned and equipped to bear the burden of soul care (Galatians 6:1-2).
Your church may not yet thrive in soul care, but all churches are called to be a culture of care.
I realize that churches are full of sinners, who can and do sin against each other. Far too many churches have a culture that has harbored or hidden the carnage of sin, instead of being a haven of restoration from sin’s destruction, failing to live out the charge of John 13:34-35.
But that doesn’t mean we should dismiss the necessity of the church. Instead, we need to repent and return to the purposes and design God established in order to see true restoration.
We need to hear the call of Christ to restore the brokenhearted back to the fullness of life abundant in Christ, who restores the soul (Ephesians 4:11-16, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
Your church offers the only true answer for the care of souls.
God has not given any other institution the responsibility to minister to the problems of life (Hebrews 13:17, Colossians 1:28). The Bible presents a comprehensive approach to soul care where Jesus is at the center of restoration (2 Timothy 4:1-5, James 5:13-16).
So many of the troubles we face in life are vexations of the soul as we wrestle with the realities of our own mortality, purpose, meaning, and value. God has given his church the responsibility to steward souls by providing context for our human experiences and hope for true restoration in Christ. The Bible explains our human experiences better than any human wisdom.
May we be found faithful to love as Christ, shepherd as Christ, care as Christ, and mend the brokenhearted as Christ, to the praise of his glory.
Your church can grow together in the pursuit of care.
ACBC is committed to calling and equipping the church to grow as a culture of care.
One way we do that is through our Annual Conference. There’s still time to get signed up for this year’s conference in person or online. Use code CHALLIES to save 10%.
We’re also offering a deeply discounted group rate and additional resources for churches with a group of 10 or more who will watch the conference together. Check out the Group Watch option.

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Evangelicalism’s Cultural Captivity

By Ref Cast — 4 years ago

Is truth dynamic or static? Does objective truth even matter anymore? Does a transcendent standard for interpreting reality still exist? Or is our relationship to reality so subjective that our “lived experience” is our only authoritative framework? Instead of living in a postmodern era of creative liberation, increasingly it seems that the globalized culture is plunging into a post-truth dark age. A problem with the popular culture’s disdain for objective truth and suspicion of all external authority is that it influences even how Christian scholarship seeks to answer society’s questions. To retain “influence” and “engage the culture” with a “brave prophetic voice,” some Christian leaders inevitably adapt their methods to appear accommodating and open-minded. Then, after they have surrendered authoritative proclamation for “robust conversation” and “winsome discourse,” their message slowly softens. They then find themselves neglecting or even abandoning core historical evangelical doctrines altogether. This is quickly becoming an obvious threat in the broader Christian world.
To the surprise of many, this tendency toward soft evangelicalism and cultural captivity has been quite common on the mission field for decades. Methods of hyper-contextualization have so universally permeated missions training and agencies that many missionaries consider the historical Christian doctrines to be impractical cargo to be jettisoned in the name of efficiency, effectiveness, political correctness, social acceptability, and cultural sensitivity. Because of this tendency to over-contextualize and minimize doctrine, the true gospel as the Holy Spirit has illumined it throughout the ages can fade into the background of other expressions and emphases of culturally nuanced gospels.
Preparation: Questions to Ask Your Target Culture
There are many questions to ask in pre-evangelism and in discipleship. For example, pre-evangelism questions should include topics such as these: creation (origins, ancestors, evidence of the curse, etc.), God (who, where, what, etc.), good/bad (examples, source, etc.), and death (where, why, what). The point is to create a tension in the unbeliever’s interpretation of reality and existence. We want them to doubt the source and authority of their belief and value system. Moreover, we need to ask them to define terms and explain what they mean. A useful concept to remember is that clarity is the enemy of error. Probing the person’s source, authority, and definition helps bring clarity to confusion and falsehood. Be sure to also ask these questions: What do you mean by that? Why do you believe that? How do you know? Who told you? How do they know?
We must expose that they don’t have all the answers and that even some of their answers are dissatisfying. But before immediately providing a brief gospel explanation, it is wiser to delay it and tell them that the Bible answers these questions. Inform the person you will provide teaching on a later date (with other interested locals) to explain what the Bible says about these questions. Consider these example questions in mind about the people in your target culture:

What are their good, true, and beautiful cultural value systems that seem to pattern the image of God? What are their virtues and vices? What is their conscious cultural orientation? What could be other cultural values and orientations through which they view reality but might not consciously realize?
How might you discern the transcendent themes they value most (honor, peace, freedom, strength, etc.)?
What is the solution they seek in life? How does that reveal their perceived problem?
What do they do to achieve that solution?
When do they know they have done enough? How?
Why do they believe this? Who or what is their authority?
In what ways and to what extent can you teach them about mankind’s original sin problem in Adam and its effects on all cultural value systems?
How can you help them see Christ as the Last Adam?
How can you guide them to understand Christ’s great exchange on the cross?
How can you help them understand repentance and faith alone in Jesus the Savior-King?

Listen for their “solutions” to repair and remedy what they perceive is not right in their lives. In so doing, you might be able to locate their solution (enough merit, enough loyalty, enough ritual, enough sincerity, etc.) to their perceived original problem (as they understand it according to their moral code). Listen for language of “enoughness.” Ask, “When do you know it’s enough?” Also, one way to identify the accepted idol of a culture is to probe what kind of speech and terminology they forbid. Every culture has blasphemy laws, and if you can discover what they consider blasphemous, you might be able to trace it to what they treasure most. They usually despise the words and ideas they forbid, so be careful not to unnecessarily give offense. The gospel is offensive, but we don’t want to be in our probing or behavior.

This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, E.D. Burns, The Transcultural Gospel: Jesus is Enough for Sinners in Cultures of Shame, Fear, Bondage, and Weakness (Cape Coral, FL: Founders, 2021). You can order the book here.

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How to Brave the News: Reading Headlines Through Psalms

By Ref Cast — 4 years ago

Two millennia ago, Paul visited Athens and found that its citizens and visitors “would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new” (Acts 17:21). For Paul, this was an opportunity to share his truly good news. But what are we to make of today’s constant rush of information, with far more news, arriving from far more places, than previous generations encountered?

“God keeps an infinite number of balls in the air, but most of us can handle just one or two.”

In 1985, when Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, the threat was that we would live frivolous lives and die laughing. Postman died in 2003, when 24/7 cable news channels were elbowing past the previous era of game shows and sitcoms. Since then, the torrent — augmented by Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook — has become a flood. Postman’s concern about escapism is still important, but here’s a question for the present: Will we die crying, or at least anxious?

News Through Psalms

One proposed solution is that we not pay attention to news. Maybe that way we can avoid the world-weariness evident in this April report on the Ozy news site: “Another day, another horror. A gunman shot eight people dead at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis late Thursday night before killing himself, the latest mass shooting to strike America.”

Just “another day, another horror”? Thankfully, the Bible offers a better approach to the constant stream of bad news coming at us today. Four psalms in particular have helped me wade into the brokenness of the news without drowning.

1. Don’t occupy yourself with news.

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother. (Psalm 131:1–2)

The “great and marvelous” things certainly include theological realities, but we can also apply those phrases to the news. The Bible does not tell us to avoid big news from some other part of the country or world. It tells us not to be “occupied” with it.

We can read the headlines without spending time dwelling on the details of incidents over which we have no control. God keeps an infinite number of balls in the air, but most of us can handle just one or two. We need to concentrate on what we must juggle, and not what will cause us to drop our specific responsibilities.

2. Realize where your only hope lies.

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. (Psalm 73:24–25)

Direction in this life, the hope and expectation of eternal life, and the conclusion: What other choice do we have? When sensational news makes it hard to be calm and quiet, it’s time to read the Bible and take comfort in God’s guidance, God’s promise, God’s uniqueness.

3. Keep up with God’s news above man’s.

How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep! The stupid man cannot know; the fool cannot understand this: that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever. (Psalm 92:5–7)

This teaching runs against contemporary wisdom. Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg became prominent for suggesting that “autonomous thinking” is the seventh and highest stage of human intellectual development. That’s making ourselves into God.

The highest stage is actually dependent thinking that recognizes our reliance on God. Long ago, Augustine said, “If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.” Today we might say that if we’re more desperate to keep up with the news than to keep up with the Bible, it’s not the gospel we trust, but our Facebook feed.

4. Observe the testimony of depravity.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. (Psalm 19:1–2)

In 2021, our 24/7 news services pour out speech but do not glorify God — and yet, we also learn something from news that shows the sinfulness of man. The Bible teaches that when man turns away from God, he acts like a beast, and that beastliness will show itself sometimes in awful crimes. We do not want to dwell on them, but if we ignore them, we’re ignoring evidence for the understanding of man’s sinfulness that is essential to Christianity — for if man without God is not beastly, then Christ’s sacrifice for us was unnecessary.

“Take comfort in God’s guidance, God’s promise, God’s uniqueness.”

Keeping these verses in mind can help us be conscious of the news but not burdened by amoral journalism that emphasizes all the sound and fury in the world and presents people’s lives as tales told by idiots, signifying nothing. The Bible is often sensational, as it wakes up the sleeping and reminds us of the nature of God and man. But amoral journalism is sensationalism that does not point us to God.

Comfort in Life and Death

We are little hobbits in this great big world, but we have a great opportunity to glorify God and enjoy him immediately. As John Piper notes, “Every joy that does not have God as its central gladness is a hollow joy and in the end will burst like a bubble.” In Christ, we can have great joy by discovering more of him in all things, however dark, and honoring him above all things, however great.

Most nights before we go to sleep, my wife or I say to each other the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism. It has a way of grounding us in realities far above the daily news cycle, and even far above the sorrows that sometimes strike our own lives. The question asks us for our only comfort in life and death. Here’s the answer:

That I am not my own but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins. He delivered me from all the power of the devil, and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head, yea, that all things must work together for my salvation, wherefore by his Holy Spirit he assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

That sensational promise summarizes brilliantly what the Bible teaches. We need to be less independent and more dependent on God, who has saved us. “Belong” means belong, “fully satisfied” means fully, “all the power of the devil” means all the power, “all things” working for our salvation means all things.

If we believe these promises and keep reminding ourselves of them, we can hear the news without being occupied by it. We can remember where our only hope lies. We can care more about God’s news than man’s. And we can look at depravity without being swallowed by it. In other words, we can stand upright in the Information Age.

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How Can I Honor My Parents If I Don’t Respect Them?

By Ref Cast — 4 years ago

Audio Transcript

I love and respect my own parents a lot. But not everyone is blessed with parents like mine. And so we have several related questions in the inbox from adults who are trying to figure out how to honor their parents. For many, this becomes more and more perplexing. As we grow into adulthood, we see our parents’ faults more clearly. And in the late-teen transition to adulthood, parental authority changes; it lessens. The relationship changes. It all leads to various questions, like this one: Can we honor our parents if we don’t respect them? The question was put in particularly clear and brief terms by one listener to the podcast, an anonymous twentysomething listener. “Pastor John, my question is rather simple: How can I honor my parents when I don’t respect them? Or does honoring them assume that you do respect them?” Pastor John, what would you say?

Yes, I don’t think there is a great difference between the terms honor and respect. Respect, I think, refers most often to our inner assessment of someone’s character or achievement, while honor more often refers to our various demonstrations toward them in words or behaviors that express our respect.

So, I think the real question is this: How do we honor or respect parents who, without any repentance, act in dishonorable and blameworthy ways? That’s the question. This is a very crucial question, not only because every Christian has to come to terms with the biblical command of Jesus in Matthew 19:19 to “honor your father and mother” — even though thousands of people have had parents who consistently acted in dishonorable and blameworthy ways — but it’s also a crucial question because the same issue faces all of us in regard to all people, because 1 Peter 2:17 says, “Honor everyone” — not just “honor your parents” but “honor all people” — “Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” And there are horrible people in the world who have done despicable things all their lives and have died viciously hating people and rejecting God and seemingly having nothing honorable about them.

Seven Grounds for Honor

Now, what I have found to be most helpful in thinking through this question about how to honor the dishonorable is to discover in the New Testament that there are at least seven overlapping warrants or reasons or grounds for honoring someone. And these different reasons or grounds for honoring people regularly call for different ways of honoring people. If we take all these into account, some of them will apply to honoring parents who have acted in disreputable or criminal ways — and we’re not going to twist any language to make that work. So, here they are — here are the seven overlapping warrants for honoring someone in the New Testament.

1. Image of God

First, there is honor that is owing to human beings simply because they are created in the image of God, and should be treated differently than the animals. For example:

With [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. (James 3:9–10)

“The sheer existence of a human being in the image of God should call forth from us a kind of honor.”

In other words, the sheer existence of a human being in the image of God, the likeness of God, should call forth from us a kind of honor. So, when my students used to ask me, “How do you honor a child molester, a rapist, a murderer, a leader of a genocide?” one answer that I gave was “You don’t shoot them like a stray ox that gored your neighbor” (Exodus 21:28–32). You give them a trial by jury, just because they are human and not animals. That’s a form of honor, even if the trial is followed by execution.

2. Natural Relationships

There is honor that is simply owing to natural relations as God has established them. And here I’m thinking about “honor your father and mother,” because it is a natural relation that God has established, and gains its honorableness from his ordering of things — not just from the quality of the parents. Or you could add to that the honor that is due to age. Leviticus 19:32: “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.”

3. God-Ordained Authority

There is the honor that comes with God-ordained authority. Now, that overlaps with the second point, but this one is not rooted in nature the way that one was. In the secular sphere, Peter says, “Honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:17). In church, Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:12, “Respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord.” In other words, there is a God-appointed authority in the world and a God-appointed authority in the church, and there is a kind of honor that we should show just by virtue of the roles of authority that God himself has appointed.

4. Valuable Labor

There is the honor that people should get because of the worth of their work. In 1 Thessalonians 5:13, Paul goes on to say that, in the church, we should “esteem [our leaders] very highly in love because of their work.” In other words, the work itself is valuable and worthy of our respect.

5. Servanthood

It’s interesting that Paul mingles love with honor there in 1 Thessalonians toward the church leaders who do their work well. Here’s verse 13 again: “Esteem [your leaders] very highly in love because of their work.” In other words, there is a kind of respect or an esteem or an honor that is drawn out of us by our love for those who serve us, not just from the quality of their work.

6. Weakness

There is an honor that should be drawn out toward weakness. Peter mentions this in the relationship between husbands and wives in 1 Peter 3:7: “Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel.” In other words, in Christ, the response toward weakness is not exploitation or mockery or abuse, but honor.

7. Christlike Grace

This may be the most important with regard to what is distinctly Christian. There’s a kind of honor that is freely bestowed without reference to any quality or position or reputation or virtue or rank or demerit in the person honored. In other words, there is a way of honoring that, as it were, doesn’t respond to honorableness but bestows it. It treats a person as though honorable, as though worthy of our service, because we give it to them.

Paul roots this way of honoring people in the very mind of Christ, and in his sacrificial incarnation and sacrifice on the cross.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. . . . Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant. (Philippians 2:3, 5–7)

“There is a way of honoring that, as it were, doesn’t respond to honorableness but bestows it.”

So, there is a kind of honoring that we freely and graciously bestow on the undeserving. We treat them better than they deserve. We assume the position toward them of servants. And thus, in a way, we exalt them as though they were worthy to be served, when, in fact, they’re not worthy to be served. And thus, we bestow a kind of free honor upon them, which is called grace, the way Christ did to us, the way his sacrifice pours out onto us — honor as though we were honorable when we’re not.

To Whom Honor Is Owed

None of those seven reasons for honoring people, and none of those ways of honoring people, commits us to the hypocrisy of thinking others are honorable when they are dishonorable or praiseworthy when they are blameworthy. The Bible does not ask us to live a lie.

So in summary,

some acts of honoring others are owing to the image of God,
some to natural human relations that God has appointed,
some to authority structures that God has put in place,
some to the worth of the work that others do,
some to the relationship of love that we have,
some to a person’s weakness, and
some is absolutely free, in order to display the freedom of the grace of God to others.

And among those seven, I would say at least four, and possibly as many as six, apply to parents who, at one level, have lived in dishonorable ways. And I’ll let you think through which of those apply to your situation.