The language in 14:21 forbids mixing life and death. As a holy people set apart for worship at the tabernacle, the Israelites would approach the God of life. Outside Israel’s camp was the realm of death. Think about the logic of the language in 14:21. A young goat would need its mother’s milk for life. But the act of boiling is an act of death. To boil a young goat in its mother’s milk would be to cause the animal’s death with the very means that was designed to give it life!

Last week I discussed the unclean/clean food laws in Deuteronomy 14:1–21 (see “Eat This, Not That”), and today I want to zoom in on the final line of verse 21. Moses told the Israelites, “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Deut. 14:21).
Have you seen that prohibition before? Maybe you’ve read it elsewhere. It appears in Exodus 23:19 and Exodus 34:26.
The Location of the Prohibition
Think about the command’s placement in Deuteronomy 14:1–21. It’s at the very end. The command follows a series of food regulations about clean and unclean animals. In verse 4, Moses starts listing the animals that the Israelites may eat, and in this verse we read the word “goat.” At the end of the food regulations (14:3–21), we again read the word “goat.” But this time a particular procedure is being forbidden.
Putting it another way: throughout 14:3–21, there are clean and unclean animals, but the final statement in verse 21 is not about a procedure, a manner of preparation. The Israelites can eat goat, but they are forbidden from preparing it by boiling it in its mother’s milk.
A Forbidden Pagan Practice?
When you consult commentaries about the prohibition in Deuteronomy 14:21, Old Testament scholars will often say that the forbidden practice was something which was practiced by the Canaanites. In keeping with the divine summons to live holy lives in the promised land, the Israelites were to avoid idolatrous activities. Perhaps the procedure (identified in 14:21) was such an activity and needed to be avoided.
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Basham has named names and provided copious footnotes detailing public comments, tweets (or now “posts”), and other bits of the record. She goes after powerful and popular figures like Tim Keller, J.D. Greear, and Rick Warren. I really have no reason to believe, however, that any of it is done in bad faith, despite accusations to the contrary. I have every reason to believe that she cares about Christian witness and the translation of the faith into a faithful response to the challenges of the world. But as it stands, her critiques are not all that helpful in terms of calling American Christians into a posture that truly allows them to be a durable and sustainable force for the preservation of civilization.

In the introduction to Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis uses the image of a hall leading to various rooms to explain the relationship of the various Christian communions and traditions with one another and with the fundamental and indispensable commitments that define the contours of Christianity. The hall, according to Lewis, is the entryway to the faith defined by the ecumenical creeds. The rooms astride the hall represent the Anglicans, the Roman Catholics, and the Methodists. These rooms are where “there are fires and chairs and meals.” The hall, according to Lewis, “is a place to wait in … not a place to live in.”
That illustration is one that was probably quite tidy in a place with relative cultural and social homogeneity like England when Lewis made the observation. American Christianity has always been complex and more diverse in ways that are foreign to Europeans, especially the English. From its inception as a nation, America has lacked an established church, so unlicensed shamans and holy men and evangelists and cult leaders have thrived in the U.S. in ways that would be impossible in the Old World. As a result, Lewis’ hall, at least in America, has become a tent city. There are abandoned lean-tos, burned-out campfires, and assorted refuse scattered among tents that are often mistaken for rooms. There is not much order in the hall, and many of the campers appear not to know very much about why they are there, not to mention where any of the doors lead.
Enter now Megan Basham’s controversial book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. Basham’s work has landed in the tent city like a bomb, and the reactions to the book could not be more polarized. The book has elicited impassioned screeds that cannot be taken seriously, but equally unserious hagiographic tributes disguised as reviews. I am not, for the sake of this essay or otherwise, chasing Basham’s footnotes. I don’t have any basis to form an authoritative opinion as to whether she is a “real journalist.” All of that was taken up elsewhere at Religion & Liberty Online. What I do know is that she gives voice to many valid critiques of evangelicalism that are intuitively obvious to any honest observer—the political, social, and theological left has more influence in evangelicalism today than it did 20 or 30 years ago. And even those who most vociferously defend themselves cannot escape the fact that they did say the things she claims, even if they want to argue about context. Are there conspiracies? Maybe. Read the book and follow the footnotes. Are there bad-faith actors inside of evangelical churches and institutions? Almost certainly, but again—read the book and follow the footnotes.
My concern is that Basham has not really struck at the root of the problem with evangelicalism. In many ways, it is like a firefighter entering a burning home, only to be horrified that the plaid on the throw pillows clashes with the floral sofa. Those who are praised and the people who are critiqued in the book share more in common with one another in terms of their approach to ecclesiology, authority, and personal piety than they will ever admit. They just differ with regard to their postures toward and positions on social and political issues. In Basham’s defense, a definition of “evangelicalism” has proved to be elusive. This is because “evangelical” has morphed from being a descriptor of groups within Lewis’ various rooms to being a pseudo-tradition in itself that is squatting in the hall. It lacks the doctrinal or confessional substance to be itself a tradition. At best, “evangelical” is a label that describes the cultural character of a church rather than the content of anything that members believe. This includes worship styles and music, but also things like vocabulary and lingo. A church that calls a Sunday service a “mass” probably has little in common culturally with one that calls their service “The Gathering,” with the “t” stylized as a cross.
Irun the risk of oversimplification to make the claim that evangelicalism is the first expression of Christianity that is neither doctrinally nor ethnically driven. While other expressions of Christianity have been influenced by various aspects of modernism, evangelicalism itself is the modernist expression of Christianity. People moved from asking, “How do we respond to what we know to be true?” to asking, “How do we know what is true?” The shift from metaphysics to epistemology as the “first philosophy” that marks modernism has led to a lot of subjectivity in the interpretation of Scripture, theological method, and the dynamics of personal faith. The Christian “testimony” up until yesterday was “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”—along with the implicit or explicit acknowledgement that the confessor was part of the community awaiting his coming again. But starting today, that testimony is the recounting of a subjective experience unique to each person.
Please note: I am a fan of discerning the “plain meaning of Scripture,” but a “Jesus, me, and the Bible” approach to theology simply will not produce a durable, reliable, and consistent theology. The Christian faith is about conformity to Christlikeness in thought, word, and deed, and not inner peace, personal confirmation in our “heart of hearts,” or any other appeal to a subjective feeling or impression. Subjective feelings and impressions are subject to all types of influences, but the virtues that are defined by Christ’s example are stable and fixed.
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Christians have every right to appeal to the governing authorities to uphold their own standards of law and justice. Please don’t miss this point. We should. Can we ever appeal to them for our own advantage? Certainly. But Paul thought of others first, recognizing that they might be taken, by Jesus, for a time, to save a jailor and his family. If Paul thought appealing to his rights would be beneficial for the church, he would would use his rights to help them in the cause of the gospel. The point is that Paul strategically appealed to rights to use them for the advantage of others in hearing the gospel.

One of the crucial questions in our current moment of governmental overreaches has to do with how we understand our rights as Christians living in this world. Many of our current discussions evidence a great misunderstanding of our calling as believers in this world in times when the culture or governing authorities begin to oppose us. For some, if social media evidences at all the current trajectory of Christian thought, their sole purpose in our turbulent times seems to be to stand up for their rights against governmental overreach.
Little reflection appears to be given to the New Testament data in how the apostles thought when they faced the trampling of their rights in this world. There are, of course, rights that are afforded to the people by the constitutional laws of the governing authorities, but all Christians should recognize that the freedoms we have and the rights that we enjoy in this life are under God’s sovereign discretion.
We were told way back in the Old Testament that governing authorities have the propensity to trample rights and take from the people (I Sam. 8). But when someone becomes a Christian, there is a distinctive perspective one is to have in how rights are used in this world. When we came to Christ, we surrendered all of our rights to Christ who sovereignly governs our earthly lives for a much greater end than our own happiness. Christ may certainly give us to enjoy earthly rights in our time on this earth, or he may, in his providence, allow them to be taken from us for a cause that is much greater than us. The question is how the biblically inspired writers handled themselves when their rights were taken.
On the Loss of Rights
Of great importance to this question is something that is said in Hebrews 10:34: “For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Notice carefully how these believers were commended for their faith by joyfully accepting the confiscation of their earthly belongings. I confess, this is a hard statement for me to read. These early Christians were facing unlawful seizure of their property due to official actions by magistrates for the reason that they were Christians. Yet, they joyfully accepted such abuse?
We know that in A.D. 49, Christians faced expulsion from Rome and many had their properties seized. What is remarkable is that the inspired author praises their joyful reception of this seizure precisely because they lived by faith believing that they had “better and permanent possessions” to come in the new heavens and earth that was promised to them.
In this great chapter celebrating the faith of God’s people, often under persecution, these Christians are specifically commended for living as those who recognized that earthly possessions and rights are temporary in great contrast with, as Lane observes, “the permanent possessions Christians enjoy on the basis of their relationship to God through Christ.” These early Christians lived trusting in the promises of the future and were able under persecution to lay aside living for these earthly rights when they were unjustly taken precisely because that had a better perspective of their better inheritance that awaited them.
As I read the current discussions of some believers in our present time, one would gather that the great end for which many have come to live is to oppose the government for the sole retaining of earthly blessings and rights. Maybe Carl Trueman gets to the heart of the issue:
Surely it is time to become realistic. It is time to drop the cultural elitism that poses as significant Christian transformation of culture but only really panders to nothing more than middle class tastes and hobbies. It is time to look again at the New Testament’s teaching on the church as a sojourning people where here we have no lasting home.”
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