Hebrews 5: God Spoke
When God speaks to men He does so with power. Man may speak from a temporary place of power or authority but he has only limited ability to see it come to pass. When God speaks, he has no limitations, all comes to pass just as He said. There is power in the Word of God that is beyond all human Words.
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken unto us by His Son…
Hebrews 1:1
On December 8, 1941 radio stations around the world broadcast President Roosevelt’s speech to the United States Congress. Most of the world had been at war for over two years but the United States had maintained a quasi-neutral status. However, on December 7, 1941 the United States was bombed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor in a Sunday morning surprise attack. What would Roosevelt say to the American people and their congress reeling from the loss of thousands of sailors? What would he say to the watching world? Roosevelt closed his speech with these words, “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.” Congress acted, the sleeping giant was awakened, and the destruction of the second world war marched forward in ever increasing violence and destruction.
We understand something of the power of words. World leaders demonstrate the power behind their position by speaking, ordering, and directing. Parents demonstrate the same thing with their children. The Lord instituted this authority in parents and reminds children of it by telling them to honor their father and their mother and to obey them. Regarding government leaders He says, “let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.”
We also understand the limitations and weakness of words. How often when a politician speaks do you think, “just politics as usual…” or, “that person is all talk and no action,” or “she is all bark and no bite.” Martin Lloyd Jones said of some ministers he was critiquing, “their sermons were full of fire but no light.”
Unless the US Congress complied with Roosevelt’s request and the people with Congress’ declaration, the state of war would be meaningless. Unless children obey their parents it can seem the parent’s words fall on deaf ears. We can sometimes give too much credit to man’s words forgetting “the kings heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water He turns it (Proverbs 21:1).” Perhaps because of the limitations with men’s words we can make the error at times of thinking those limits exist in God’s Word. God’s Word however is not limited like man’s word.
Related Posts:
You Might also like
-
How Not to Be a Nebuchadnezzar
Let us live not as those puffed up with pride like Nebuchadnezzar, but as those who are aware of our great and powerful God, who is good and just and governs all things and loves us. Find your joy, peace, security, and significance in Christ Jesus, the Son of God.
You may remember Nebuchadnezzar for capturing young men from Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (commonly known by their names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; see Dan. 1:7) and later throwing three of them into the fiery furnace (Dan. 3:20).
Yet, Nebuchadnezzar also was the Babylonian king who had a unique encounter with the power of God and shared his firsthand story with us. We can benefit from his story. Nebuchadnezzar was the king who had it all, but God took it all from him to teach him not only the danger of pride but also that humility is the posture we all should have before a good God who governs all things, all peoples, and all circumstances.
Nebuchadnezzar took all the credit.
Nebuchadnezzar had issues with pride. He had accomplished a lot in his lifetime—including conquering many nations, building a powerful and feared kingdom, accumulating much wealth, and being a feared king and ruler. He thought very highly of himself and couldn’t see that all these things had been permitted by God and that he was still only a man of God’s creation and subject to God, the great king of the universe.
Instead of giving thanks to God, Nebuchadnezzar, in his pride, took all the credit: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30, emphasis added).
We have issues with pride.
While we do not rule vast nations and hold impressive wealth, we too can be guilty of self-aggrandizing pride, thinking we have accomplished good things through our hard work and not seeing God as the one who has enabled, strengthened, and blessed our work is pride.
We may think that we made our kids successful and upright, gained wealth because of our work ethic, or are financially safe because we did x, y, and z. And in all this we do not give God the glory that is due to him. We do not recognize that only through God’s blessing did any of our efforts yield good results.
God humbled Nebuchadnezzar.
In Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar learned that God truly is the one in control.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The SBC Isn’t Drifting, It’s Being Steered
The goddess of our age is beckoning us to open the door for all manner of vices. In the name of affirmation, empathy, and toleration of churches with female pastors, we are being manipulated to believe decisive, clear, courageous, and mature reaffirmation of the Baptist Faith & Message is “dismissive” of women. Adopting the Amendment in June 2024 allows Southern Baptists to address the theological, anthropological, and ecclesiological problem of female pastors decisively, for the good of all in our denomination.
Joe Rigney has written a most timely and needed book: Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety That Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the World. In this short, precise, and punchy offering, Rigney provides a sort of prescription regarding his diagnosis of “untethered empathy”(see here and here) and its awful effects on broader culture and evangelicalism.
My conclusion upon reading this book? Buy a handful of copies, keep one for yourself, and give the others to those in your immediate circle. We live in a rather unserious and incoherent world, and the sober-minded, glad-hearted, Christ-settled posture Rigney calls us to is just what the Good Doctor ordered for the fever of anxiety gripping our age.
In this article, I will take Rigney’s insights and apply them directly to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Rigney is self-admittedly building off the work of Edwin Friedman,[1] and highlights his five features of cultural breakdown. I will demonstrate how there is evidence of each of these features present in current SBC debates (particularly as it relates to our response to abuse and female pastors), and then offer a path forward for a sober-minded, stable, and ready response (and not reaction!) in Indianapolis at the SBC annual meeting this June. The value of Rigney’s work is that it helps readers like me, who may be mystified as to why professing conservative and complementarian influences in the SBC take a “complementarianism for me but not for thee” approach to adopting the Law Amendment. In other words, Rigney diagnoses the cultural pathologies which undergird a resistance to a robust confessionalism, namely, the effeminacy of untethered empathy.
The last couple of years, conservatives within the SBC have (rightly) warned of a “liberal drift.” But the big takeaway from Rigney’s book as I think about my denomination is that it is more accurate to say we in the SBC are being emotionally steered. Drift is a passive term that removes culpability or at least blames the leftward movement on passivity at the helm. It is more accurate to say that the SBC has allowed those who hate her to take the helm indirectly by emotional blackmail through God’s people tasked with leading the denomination. For more on this, see Mark Coppenger’s offering to this month’s Christ Over All theme.
How to Respond to Empathetic Drunkards
Rigney puts his finger on one of the more troubling trends within evangelicalism today. And that is how the world relies on professing Christians to get drunk on worldiness’s disordered passions and as a result, pressure fellow believers to pursue worldly ends (41–43). The world, the flesh, and the Devil are counting on Christians to forsake sober-mindedness, and this unholy trinity can then use these Christians to manipulate other believers. (On this point, Rigney’s exposition of Galatians 2 and Paul’s confrontation of Peter is brilliant, 81–84.)
What is true of groups can also play out on the individual level. Someone who is a conduit of emotions often becomes even more self-righteous than the original emoter. To give an example: Pastor Billy kindly exhorts one of his church members, Sally, to not lead a women’s Bible study using a prosperity preacher’s curriculum. Sally weeps profusely to another member, Larry, about pastor Billy’s “heavy-handedness” and “doctrinal hair-splitting.” Larry gets angry and resolves to publicly confront his pastor—all the while not realizing that he has been emotionally steered into the role of a lackey for worldliness. Rigney explains the dynamics at play in the parable, “Sometimes one person’s sadness elicits sadness in others. But other times, sadness in one person may draw out anger in another (either at them or at the third party who is responsible for their pain) . . . Untethered empathy puts other people’s passions in the driver’s seat” (43).
Rigney unpacks the two ways in which the world will attempt to steer believers through name-calling: “ugly labels for true things, and ugly labels for false things” (40). The former tactic is whenever the world labels Christians “bigoted” for something along the lines of affirming there are two genders, believing 2+2=4, or daring to suggest God calls men to be the head of the church and home.
The latter tactic is when the world calls believers an ugly term, “Misrepresenting our beliefs and then slap[ping] an ugly label on their misrepresentation” (41). This latter category is particularly significant, because by it the world exploits the (good) Christian desire to shine bright for the gospel. After all, it may seem kind of hard to shine bright when your reputation is tarnished. However, here we must remember that “the Pharisees called Jesus a drunkard and a glutton (which he wasn’t)” (41). The world (and worldly “Christians”) rely heavily on the notion that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”—believing that controversy surrounding an individual always points to that individual’s sin. But Christians can take heart, there was a lot of smoke around Christ, and He has overcome the world. The source of the smoke around His ministry was from the pit of hell, not Him, and so Rigney calls us to ensure that (like Jesus) we live above reproach, rendering such slander baseless (1 Pet. 3:16; 4:4). I think this concept is worth the price of Rigney’s book, because this is precisely how the SBC has been steered in dangerous doctrinal and cultural directions over the last decade or so. Rigney rightly calls for Christians to not be moved by ugly labels, but stabilized by God’s word.
It is significant to note how those who get drunk on other’s passions claim the moral high ground as they revile others. Oftentimes, those emotionally steering the SBC are fully convinced they are playing the role of hero, when in reality they are recklessly pressuring or endangering the entire denomination by projecting the guilt of one or some onto the whole body. Unsurprisingly, this tactic also carries with it the added benefit of raising their own stock as an “ally” in the eyes of the world’s disordered notion of justice. After all, “the world is watching” (if you ask empathetic drunkards in our midst). Instead, I would encourage myself and fellow SBC messengers to live coram deo—before the face of God. God is watching, and we ought prostrate ourselves before Him rather than preen before the world (Isa. 8:12–13).
So, what are Christians to do when emotional drunkards weaponize empathy to steer us? Rigney answers with the following strategy: (1) Take responsibility for your emotions. (2) Grow in self-awareness, and pay attention to what particular passions manipulate you. (3) Calibrate your standards by the word of God. (4) Increase your own tolerance for emotional pain and distress. (5) Be willing to be called ugly names. (6) Ensure the slanders are actually false. (7) Do not repay slander for slander. (8) Root all resistance to emotional sabotage in a sincere desire to please God (46–50).
Emotional Sabotage and the SBC
With the basic thesis of Rigney’s book in place, I will now turn to specific ways the SBC is being emotionally steered, and how we ought to respond in keeping with Rigney’s strategy above. As I mentioned earlier, I will do this in conjunction with Friedman’s five features of cultural breakdown Rigney cites. Features one and two (Reactivity and Herding) will be used to analyze how the SBC has reacted to sexual abuse, while three through five (Blame-Displacement, Quick-fix mentality, and Failure of nerve) provide moral clarity for dealing with the issue of female pastors and the proposed Law Amendment.
The SBC and Abuse
Friedman’s first two features of cultural breakdown (highlighted by Rigney) are as follows:
(1) Reactivity: “An unending cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another . . . Whether over-reactive and hysterical or passive-aggressive and checked-out, the common thread is that passions of the members govern and dictate both the mood of the body and its direction” (19).
(2) Herding: “A process where togetherness triumphs over individuality and everyone adapts to the least mature members of the community…The goal becomes ‘peace’ at all costs, otherwise known as appeasement . . . leaders . . . are expected to take responsibility not only for their own actions, but for the (re)actions of others. Disruptions by the immature will be accommodated; anyone who seeks to take a stand will be characterized as cruel, heartless, insensitive, unfeeling, uncooperative, selfish, and cold” (19–20).
These features of chronic anxiety are best seen in the SBC reaction to abuse. Regarding Reactivity, Mark Coppenger says the hard but necessary truth regarding the unfounded inflation of abuse cases in the SBC being wielded to move the convention to overreaction against our own polity. He writes, “We’ve been assured that the list [of sexual abusers] ‘only scratches the surface’ or is ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ . . . What we ‘extremists’ [an ugly label for false things] are saying is that the problem is not so great as to [emotionally] sabotage our polity, expose ourselves gratuitously to litigation, and divert untold millions of missions/ministry dollars in search of a cure for our dubious affliction.” We are being manipulated to believe there is a full-blown systemic abuse crisis in SBC churches, and this trojan horse has and is being used to emotionally steer some to act against SBC polity without warrant.
As Josh Abbotoy and Jon Whitehead point out, “[P]olitical operatives and demagogues are trying to steer the Convention away from Baptist solutions.” This is a prime example of what Rigney exposes when he says, “The world frequently counts on this (good) Christian impulse in order to steer Christians by means of other Christians . . . Such pressure is frequently harder to resist, since it comes, not from the unbelieving world directly, but from the world through God’s people” (41). Whitehead shows receipts for how this is currently happening in the SBC, citing a noted advocate and SBC critic who says, “If the SBC winds up needing to sell nearly all its assets for the sake of providing reparations and restitution to those it has so grievously harmed, then this would be for the good.”
Southern Baptist pastor Heath Lambert has written a tremendously insightful series of essays entitled “Four Facts about Sexual Abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.” Each essay is worth reading (which is why I share each of them below). As one reads through them, it becomes apparent that the kind of sobriety Lambert displays is precisely what Rigney calls us to. Lambert is clear-headed, stable, and ready to act, able to separate friend from foe and to respond to this difficult topic with the kind of joy that flows from someone who is approved before the Lord.
Seriously, take a few minutes to look through each of his essays.Abuse Is a Real Problem, but Is Not What We Were Told
Not Everyone Offering Help Is Our Friend
The Southern Baptist Convention Is a Powerful Force for Good
We Must Have Solutions That Understand the Way Our Convention Works.The responses to Lambert’s essays on X only illustrate the type of baseless charges that will be thrown at those who take a stand against appeasement. Just as Rigney reminds us when he speaks of Herding above: “anyone who seeks to take a stand will be characterized as cruel, heartless, insensitive, unfeeling, uncooperative, selfish, and cold.”
In the last essay, Lambert provides a clarion call to messengers heading into Indy:
It is important to know that the difference between the acceptance or rejection of any proposal has nothing to do with anyone’s commitment to ending abuse. The only people who like abuse are abusers. The difference between a proposal’s acceptance or rejection is how faithfully the proposal honors our cooperative partnership in the convention.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Why We Must Legislate Morality
Rather than aim for perfection, conservative energy would be better spent rebuilding the foundations of virtue. We need laws that, for instance, encourage marriage, discourage divorce, and promote community through friendship and civil associations. The benefits of rebuilding a healthy society are uncontroversial. Moral regulations must build upon this foundation rather than grate against it. In this way, conservatives can support incremental progress toward traditional morality while avoiding the twin dangers of judgmental moralism and amoral libertarianism.
Tim Keller recently critiqued evangelical Christians for not developing a political theology—that is, a theory of how to apply religious beliefs to public policy. He correctly points out that Christians do not want to penalize every sin. Specifically, most evangelicals want to penalize abortion but do not want to penalize idolatry (i.e. false religion). He writes: “Since we can’t simply say, ‘If the Bible says its sin it should be illegal’—how do we choose which morals to politically champion?” Keller aims to prevent Christians from dividing over politics by accepting that the political implications of Christianity are debatable. Keller’s piece provoked a response from several commentators, including Adam Carrington.
Keller’s challenge applies not only to Christianity but to ethical philosophies more generally. Should an action be illegal simply because it is wrong? If not, then which wrong actions should be illegal? Are there “harmless wrongs” that the state ought not to forbid?
In America, one often hears that the state shouldn’t “legislate morality,” or that people have a right to do anything so long as they aren’t “hurting anyone.” This position derives from John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle,” which holds that the state may only interfere with liberty to prevent non-consensual harm to other people. Live and let live!
This view, while popular, is wrong: the law may encourage virtuous actions and punish evil ones. As I have argued elsewhere, conservatism ought to abandon the liberal idea that the state exists solely to protect individual rights. Rather, individual rights derive from, and must remain rooted in, a framework of moral duties oriented toward natural human goods. Natural goods are not fleeting desires; rather, they are perceived by reason to be worthy of pursuit for their own sake because they enable humans to reach the best possible state according to their nature. If, then, rights are designed to facilitate the pursuit of natural goods, one cannot have a “right” to do wrong.
Nevertheless, drawing upon the natural law theories of Thomas Aquinas and Richard Hooker, I will argue that the state ought to refrain from punishing minor vices. Sometimes, people ought to have tacit “permission” to perform wrong actions, particularly those with minor social consequences. This view of the relationship between morality and law is attractive in that it encourages the promotion of virtue while preventing harsh intolerance. It acknowledges the reality of human sin without excusing or ignoring moral norms. It is idealistic without being unrealistic.
The Common Good Involves Virtue
Classic natural law thinkers hold that human law ultimately derives from natural law, which originates from God’s creative design and is known through reason. Thomas Aquinas argues that the natural law encompasses “everything to which a man is inclined according to his nature,” including virtue, since all people have a natural inclination to pursue virtue (Aquinas, Political Writings, 119). As the Anglican Richard Hooker–who followed Thomas rather closely–wrote in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, humans have a natural “desire” to become “more perfect,” i.e. to reach “an exquisite excellence of form” by “constantly and excellently doing whatever it is that their kind does” (62). They not only seek “continued existence,” both for themselves “individually” and for their species “through their offspring,” but above all aspire “to the greatest conformity with God by pursuing the knowledge of truth and growing in the exercise of virtue” (63).
Achieving basic goods, moreover, requires good political institutions. Hooker states that societies need laws “governing the order of their common life together,” which must be framed “for the sake of the common good” and for “the sake of public order” (82). Thus, as Aquinas likewise notes, “human laws should be adapted to the common good,” i.e. the collective flourishing of members in a political community, which is accomplished especially through natural goods such as life, peace, friendship, and the rearing and education of children (Aquinas, 138). Even supposedly private actions implicate the common good to the extent that they promote or hinder human flourishing.
In a chapter in Mere Christianity called “The Three Parts of Morality,” C.S. Lewis provides a good example of how virtue promotes the common good. He invokes the image of society as a naval convoy traveling through the ocean. There is a danger that the ships will either “drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage.” In order to avoid this, the individual ships must be in good shape; a ship with a faulty engine or steering mechanism will fall behind or veer wildly. The only way to keep the convoy safe is to ensure that each individual ship is seaworthy enough to stay in formation. Likewise, individual people who lack virtue are especially likely to harm others. So even “private” actions affect people’s ability to follow the rules and to lend society their aid.
If virtue serves the common good, then the promotion of virtue falls within the state’s legitimate powers. Hooker writes that “the course of politic[al] affairs cannot in any good sort go forward without fit instruments [i.e. citizens], and that which fitteth them be their virtues.” He argues for this reason that “pure and unstained religion ought to be the highest of all cares” for rulers inasmuch as religion is the best way to inculcate virtue among the citizenry. Whatever view of church-state relations we choose to adopt nowadays, Christian theorists traditionally perceived the inculcation of moral character to be a chief priority of good political communities. The same is true of non-virtuous or “vicious” acts, which may be proscribed. Hooker states that laws are not “properly devised” unless they “presume that man’s will is obstinate” and seek to “moderate his actions to prevent any hindrance to the common good” (82-83). This classic view follows Romans 13:1-7, which states that God instituted government to be a “terror” to people who do “evil” but to “praise” those who do “good.”
The Danger of Banning all Vices
Natural law theorists nevertheless believe that there should be practical limitations on laws that compel virtue or punish vice.
Read More
Related Posts: