“Unhitching” our doctrine from our pastoral care makes sense if the goal of the Church is simply to help people live better lives. Reducing the Church this way only elevates the self. Ministry, once unhitched from doctrine, devolves into idolatry. Like the golden calf worshiped in the time of the Exodus, it is possible to claim God’s name while losing all moral direction.   

For the last few weeks, all eyes, at least evangelical eyes, have been locked on Atlanta. When North Point Community Church announced the “Unconditional” conference, held this past weekend, many noted that two of the speakers were men “married” to other men. Many of the rest were on the record as “affirming” same-sex relationships, recognizing LGBTQ as legitimate categories of human identity, and describing their work as hoping to convert Christians to their ideas about sex, identity, and marriage. Would this conference mark Andy Stanley’s final departure from historic Christian teaching on human sexuality?  
Stanley, who is among America’s most prominent pastors, defended the conference and choice of speakers due to the focus of the event. In his Sunday sermon, he responded to the criticism, stating that this conference was not about the theology of human sexuality, or even about talking someone out of an LGBTQ identity. Rather, he said, it was aimed at “parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children;” in other words, parents who had already tried (and failed) to talk their children out of these identities and now only wished to stay in relationship with them.  
Even if the conference was intentionally designed to not address the questions of the morality of same-sex relationships and alternate sexual identities, as apologist and “Unconditional” conference attendee Alan Shlemon noted, it answered these questions “by virtue of who they platformed, their resources, their recommendations. It’s a confusing message at best, and at worst it’s … saying that homosexual sex would be permissible, (and) satisfying transgender ideations would be permissible. (To hear more of Shlemon’s perspective, watch his interview with fellow apologist professor Sean McDowell here.) 
On Sunday, Stanley maintained that the conference successfully met its stated goal without implying any kind of moral or theological shift. This is possible because of something Stanley has said both about this conference and about the overall work of the Church.
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The sentimental tolerance of our day suggests that relational harmony requires that truth be relative: what’s true for me need not be true for you. Only then can we get along. But biblical tolerance involves treating others charitably and respectfully even when we believe they are in error. Truth remains objective, absolute, and outside us. We can share meals, play sports, and study with non-Christians, honoring and being blessed by the imago Dei in them, while (as opportunity allows) vigorously refuting non-Christian beliefs (from materialism to amorphous spirituality) and winsomely presenting arguments for the Christian faith.

College represents a minefield of temptation for the Christian student. It is often the first time a young person raised in a godly home is under the direct, ongoing influence of both professors with secular agendas and classmates with immoral ambitions. Character-polluting influences can be readily discovered even at many Christian colleges, where freedom from Mom and Dad results in some experimenting with sin, perhaps manifesting an unconverted state.
But college also represents an incredible opportunity for unparalleled spiritual and intellectual growth. How can a Christian thrive at college instead of flirting with sin or rejecting his faith? First, by not negotiating Christian morality (Eph. 5:3–11). Befriending non-Christian or marginally Christian students need not include practicing activities that clearly displease God or defile your conscience. Second, by loving God with your mind—seeking to be the best student you can possibly be, given the measure of gifting with which you’ve been entrusted, fruitfully cultivating your God-given talents into skills that prepare you for the vocation with which you will serve the Lord after graduating. In the meantime, being a student is a vocation, and the work of a student is intrinsically good and a gift from God. Apply yourself in this season of preparation. Third, by seeking to grow in godliness within a community that provokes you to vigorously kill sin (Rom. 6:12–14; Heb. 12:1–2), to put away childishness, and to “expect great things from God and attempt great things for God” (William Carey). In short, college should be a launching pad into all that accompanies responsible Christian adulthood.
Christians in secular universities sometimes wonder to what extent they can learn from non-Christian professors. Not wanting to be conformed to the pattern of this world (Rom. 12:2a), they may minimize the value of academics, giving larger priority to Christian relationships and campus fellowship organizations. But if Daniel and Joseph are any indication, it is possible (and commendable) to excel in even hostile environments (Dan. 1:20; Gen. 39:2).
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Whoever you are, and whatever the depths and agony of your trials, God is hovering over you: he loves you, he is near to you, and he can rescue you. We see a living picture of his rescue unfold in the subsequent six days of creation. God does not stand aloof from the world in all its chaotic agony. His caring, brooding presence is very near, and he is at work.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. —Genesis 1:1-2

If we are going to get anything out of Genesis, then we must prepare ourselves.
Basil of Caesarea (330-79) said at the beginning of his Hexaemeron, a series of sermons on Genesis 1,

How earnestly the soul should prepare itself to receive such high lessons! How pure it should be from carnal affections, how unclouded by worldly disquietudes, how active and ardent in its researches, how eager to find in its surroundings an idea of God which may be worthy of Him!

And John Calvin (1509-64) said in his commentary on Genesis, “The world is a mirror in which we ought to behold God.” “If my readers sincerely wish to profit with me in meditating on the works of God, they must bring with them a sober, docile mild, and humble spirit.”
So remember that the author of these words, Moses, saw an appearance of God at the burning bush, and God spoke with him “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Exod. 33:11; cf. Num. 12:6-8). And don’t forget the power of these words, “which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).
The Hebrew word for “beginning” is ראשׁית (rēshīt), which may also mean “starting point” or “first,” and is closely related to ראשׁ (rōsh), which means “head.” The word God translates אלהים, Elōhīm, which may be the plural for אל (el), the generic word for god. The plural does not in itself teach the doctrine of the Trinity, that there is one God and three persons in the godhead, but is more likely a “plural of majesty.” God is not just god, he is GOD. Elōhīm. GOD! The very sound of this word, naming as it does the Creator of the universe, should fill us with awe, dread, and love.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Before there was an earth and atoms, life and light, time and tide, there was God. He is eternal, which does not mean that he is very old, but that he had no beginning. He always was, is, and will be. Many have mockingly asked, “What was God doing before he created the world?” In his Commentaries on Genesis, Calvin relates a humorous answer he had read to this question:

When a certain impure dog was in this manner pouring ridicule upon God, a pious man retorted that God had been at that time by no means inactive, because he had been preparing hell for the captious.

We cannot speak reasonably of what God was doing “before creation,” because before creation there was no time as we know it—there was no “before.” Certainly there was nothing that brought God himself into existence.
The Hebrew verb for create is ברא (bārā); it is only ever used with God as the subject. What did God create? The “heavens and the earth.” Heaven, שׁמים (shamayīm), also means sky. Earth, ארץ (erets), also means land and ground. These words do not have a special meaning in Genesis 1:1; but when put together like this, “heaven and earth,” that is, “sky and ground,” “everything that’s up and everything that’s down,” they emphasize that God made everything. Only God himself is not made.
There are no time indications in these first two verses. The earth (erets) was formless and empty. There is some lovely alliteration here in the original, the earth was תהו ובהו, tōhu va bōhu. These words are neither “good” nor “bad” but are exceedingly and perhaps unpleasantly bland. Tōhu can refer to a barren wasteland, “a barren and howling waste” (Deut. 32:10; also Job 6:18). It can refer to futility (1 Sam. 12:21) and meaninglessness (Isa. 29:21). Bōhu appears only three times in the Old Testament. Isaiah 34:11 describes how “God will stretch out over Edom the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of desolation,” and Jeremiah uses just the same phrase as Genesis 1:2: “I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty (tōhu va bōhu); and at the heavens, and their light was gone” (Jer. 4:23). We will return to Jeremiah’s hugely significant phrase in a moment.
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