Written by Samuel D. James |
Saturday, January 1, 2022
This is how I want to view the church of Jesus: wicked and compromised, but loved, and purified, and destined for greatness. I think this should be reflected in everything we do for and inside the church: our stand for truth and justice, as well as our newsletters. For those who spend a lot of time looking at the church’s failures, look at them the way Jesus would look at your own. For those who spend time looking at the church’s glory, don’t forget the sin he died to save it from, that still so easily entangles.

The past few years of my spiritual life have brought two distinct, intersecting truths to the surface of my consciousness. First, the answer to shame, insecurity, and fear in my own individual heart is the gospel, because the gospel not only confirms my real guilt but assures me that this guilt has been dealt with in love, forever. Second, the answer to my suspicion, cynicism, and even hatred toward those I perceive as my enemies is also the gospel, because the gospel tells me that those people are as loved as I am, and withholding from others the grace that was given to me is a sign that I myself have not experienced deep enough forgiveness.
When I translate the gospel into thinking about truth, culture, and the church, what I get is a profound sense that being a Christian is a disadvantage in the rat race to “win” social or political power. The gospel is a disadvantage because it tells me that I’m a sinner, and I cannot genuinely believe that I am a sinner while at the same time marketing myself or my ideas as the cure-all for the world’s ills. It’s a disadvantage also because the experience of the gospel makes certain worldly strategies unthinkable. In secular politics, I am supposed to crush my opponent with every tool available to me, even if it means stretching the truth or doing to him what I would not want done to me. The Bible says that my willingness to do that is evidence against my genuinely knowing Jesus. Disadvantage.
The thing about the gospel is that it moves so quickly from how we are treated by God to how we treat others. It’s horribly inconvenient. But it gets worse: the Bible tells us that if we refuse to treat others the way we believe God has treated us in Christ, it will turn out in the end that we actually were not treated by God the way we thought we were. The grace we will have thought we received will turn out to be a mirage. The most famous prayer in the history of the world features one of the strongest threats in Scripture:  “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)
Why does Jesus say this? Why is there a seeming condition on his offer of forgiveness for our sins? Why is the condition forgiving others? I think one answer must be that forgiving people who sin against us is one of the primary ways we remember who we really are. To forgive the person who hurts us is to tell ourselves again, “I am the one who trespassed against God. God forgave me, and I am not a better sinner than this person who has trespassed against me.” Remember that Jesus said he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Mark 2:17). The ones who are saved are the ones who, by mercy, hear that call. To withhold forgiveness is to stop our ears.

This tension is exemplified by a tense exchange between two men whom I admire. David French is a superb writer and an unusually compelling journalist. In the recent past, particularly since the election of Donald Trump, David’s writing has increasingly focused on the moral failures of a plurality of conservative American evangelicals. The failures of the predominantly white, evangelical church clearly occupy much of David’s attention and concern, and this comes through in his forceful and frequently blunt criticisms of it.
Kevin DeYoung is a Presbyterian pastor. He is also a wonderfully gifted writer and an excellent theologian. This week, Kevin expressed dismay at David’s criticisms of wide swaths of white evangelicalism.
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God designed men for sexual union with women, and vice versa, and no other options exist…Really, we only need the words “male” and “female” to describe the patterns of sexual desire and behavior that befit the created structures of our human bodies. What the sexual revolution calls “heterosexuality” is what God calls manhood and womanhood.

“Heterosexuality” and “homosexuality” are familiar terms, with apparently simple meanings. However, they often carry unbiblical implications, so Christians should avoid using these terms, or at least use them carefully, to ensure that we speak truthfully, clearly, and consistently.
To see what I mean, consider the root word “sexuality.” This word can refer to at least three distinct, yet closely related, things:

Actual sexual practices, or patterns of such.
Qualities related to sexual practices, such as identity, desire, lifestyle, fashion, and manners.
People who engage in these practices or adopt these related qualities.

These shades of meaning are present in the more specific terms “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality.”
Homosexuality
“Homosexuality” refers to practices, qualities, or people characterized by sexual desire for someone of the same sex. It describes a type of sexual behavior, as well as qualities related to such behaviors and people who engage in them. The advantage of using this term is that it is more objective than the euphemism “gay,” and more specific than terms like “LGBTQ+.”
Still, we must be careful to distinguish between homosexual practices, related qualities, and homosexual people. When these three are conflated, misleading or confusing statements may ensue. For example, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 describe homosexual practices as abominations, not homosexual people.
Heterosexuality
On first glance, the meaning of “heterosexuality” is obvious: it is the opposite of “homosexuality.” It refers to practices, related qualities, or people marked by a desire for the opposite sex.
“Heterosexual” and its less formal synonym “straight” can be useful to describe patterns of sexual desire and behavior approved by God. We have all been designed for sexual union with someone of the opposite sex, and not with anyone of the same sex.
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Singh believed that people in different environments had different questions, most of which had not been addressed in the Western church. In fact, his voice as a native of India added weight to Duff’s efforts to present missions as an integral part of the church and to raise consciousness about their concerns. For a long time after this conference, many Scottish missionaries continued to uphold Duff’s and Singh’s vision.

Only one representative from Asia appeared in 1860 at the overwhelmingly British Conference on Missions in Liverpool. It was Behari Lal Singh, who had become a Christian under the guidance of the Scottish missionary Alexander Duff. By then, Singh had been serving in the Scottish Reformed Church for almost twenty years.
While grateful for all the service and sacrifices of foreign missionaries in India, Singh humbly submitted his suggestion that they should give more room and better training to Indian converts, allowing them to evangelize their own country.
He gave the example of translations. Until then, he said, “the plan of translating the Bible had been conducted as though foreign missionaries were the only successful or competent translators.” Wasn’t it time for the foreigners who had so commendably “expended their time, strength, talents, and accomplishments in the work of translation” to spend now “their time and strength in raising an effective native agency to translate the Bible with far greater purity and precision than it had ever been done before?”[1]
He also suggested that native converts be given better education so they could confidently explain Christianity to learned Hindus and Muslims. At that time, most missionaries were only given a minimal education. Because of the scarcity of workers, most of them didn’t have to attend a seminary or undergo serious studies. The assumption was that they would be speaking to uneducated people in so-called third-world countries.
But missionaries to India often discovered that the common people referred their religious decisions to the highly-educated Brahmins. While the Brahmins represented a small percentage of the population, they were held in high esteem, and few people would venture to embrace Christianity without their approval.
Not everyone at the Liverpool Conference shared Singh’s views. Many thought that higher education was unnecessary and a poor investment of time and money. In case anyone thought that he was moved by personal money interests, he clarified that he taught for free for the first two years in the mission and, “if it would concede to the welfare of the native churches, he was willing to surrender anything.”[2]
Providing high education and reaching the influential classes had already been Duff’s vision from the start. With the help of the Hindu reformer Ram Mohun Roy, Duff had been accepted by the Hindu community and had been able to bring the gospel to many young Brahmins who were dissatisfied with traditional Hinduism. Until then, many of these young people had found a confirmation of their objections in Western atheistic Enlightenment literature. That is, until they understood the radical message of the gospel.
Duff, who was probably the most renowned missionary at that time after William Carey, raised money to endow a missionary chair at New College, Edinburgh to prepare missionaries to face the new questions raised by people who lived in different cultures and environments. The goal was to give missionaries a thorough knowledge of the history, geography, languages, literature, and beliefs of different countries. He served there as the first professor.
Moved by Christian Example
Singh was one of the young men who learned under Duff’s teaching ministry. It was Singh’s father, eager to give his sons a thorough knowledge of the English language, to send Singh and his brother to Duff’s school in Calcutta.
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