Hypocrisy and God’s Reputation
Our pride convinces us that God needs us to hide our sins, so as to not to bring shame upon Him. But He calls us to bring it out into the light, denounce it, be ashamed of it so that by His mercy our shame might be turned into the uplifted face of those who have received forgiveness. So then, we ought to be swift to confess our sins, so that by God’s grace we might be kept from presumptuous sins in order that we might not give way to great transgressions.
Hypocrisy is one of the most hated sins. There are Pride parades, Pro-Choice rallies, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and anxiety support groups. But you’ll have a hard time recruiting folks to show support for “Hypocrites Rights.”
Hypocrisy is, of course, claiming to hold up some virtue or set of virtues while secretly violating those virtues. Some examples come to mind. The pro-life politician who is exposed for making his mistress get an abortion.The Pastor using tithe dollars for secret trips to Vegas. The Instagram trad-wife whose perfectly curated online image doesn’t match her real life image of laziness in homemaking and bitter snappiness in mothering. All such hypocrites will soon find their secrets out in the open, and their hidden sins made public, and God will judge it.
But amongst Christians there is a silly but dangerous temptation when it comes to hypocrisy. We know how we ought to live and the standards we ought to uphold. And if we have sinned in some arena we are tempted to think we must protect God’s reputation by not confessing our sin, bringing it into the light, and making things right.
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Advocates, Not Merely Adherents: Lay-of–the Land Observations and Challenges for Complementarians
Written by Jason K. Allen |
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
We are called to be advocates, not just affirmers. We are called to be articulators, not just adherents. Compromise usually begins with silence. It ends with disavowal. And we must have an ear for the silence. Yes, each of us will have different ministry passions or commitments. But we must keep before us an ever-present awareness that these issues are being threatened by the day, in our families and in our churches, and we must be those who are willing to confidently and cheerfully speak and advocate to these great truths, especially as codified in the Danvers and Nashville Statements. Silence often is deafening.My first encounter with the Danvers Statement and CBMW was in the late 1990s. I was a young man in college, and I was at my church, a rather large Southern Baptist church, and I was talking to a staff member in his office, and I saw on his bookshelf a big, thick, blue book that said Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. There were two names on it: Wayne Grudem and John Piper. I had heard the latter name, not the former. But I had never heard of the topics to which that book was addressing. And I asked the staff member, “What is this book about?” And he said, “Well, it’s about complementarianism,” and I responded, “What in the world is that?” And he began to unpack it just a little bit to me that summer afternoon, and I stood there really mystified by the whole reality. I grew up in a conservative home and a conservative church, and I knew that generally, men were supposed to lead in the home, and in the church, and that women were not to preach, but little more than that.
As a college student in the late 1990s, the whole topic struck me as an awkward anachronism, a doctrinal hot potato, an angular, often inconvenient truth to which we were to hold. But I sensed then that men and ministers both would speak of these things only when necessary, and then do so only uncomfortably. And when it was necessary to speak to them, it would usually be with some glib, throwaway line along the lines that, “When we got married, I told my wife I would make all the major decisions, but in 30 years of marriage, there has never been a major decision!” That was my encounter and my understanding of complementarianism in the late 1990s.
Then you move into the early 2000s, and a huge surge of awareness — thanks to CBMW primarily — took place. The TNIV pushback even had leading voices arguing for a return to the phrase and the concept of “biblical patriarchy,” a call to recover that term. That concept and the room seemed set. And it seemed as though this renewal of Reformed theology, the New Calvinism, that complementarianism was really part and parcel of that movement. Yet over the past five to ten years, it seems to me that we have had a swing of momentum: self-inflicted wounds; moral failings by leaders; crudeness and rudeness on social media and other places; militant egalitarianism that is always on the hunt for a complementarian to shoot down. All of this and more presents those of us who are complementarians with significant challenges.
Then we come to my own denomination — speaking of challenges — the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In recent years, the issue has become fever pitch. It really burst just a few years ago when Beth Moore tweeted in the lead-up to Mother’s Day that she would be preaching. And that set off a conflagration. Then, of course, more recently, Rick Warren announced an exegetical breakthrough, not just permitting women to preach and to lead in the church, but necessitating they do so.
Before us now is the Law Amendment that many of you have heard about, and read about — an admittedly blunt instrument, but seemingly a necessary one. And some of those opposed to it are making the argument that sounds something like this: “This is a red herring in our convention, because only a handful of churches are in danger of being afoul of the BF&M 2000. But if we adopt it, we will alienate an intolerably high number of churches that would then be outside of the BF&M 2000.” Well, which is it? We are a free church denomination, and we understand that swapping inconsistent nomenclature is part of that cooperation. We seek to find reasons to work together, not to come apart. But our response should be to educate, not to excuse, to reaffirm and rearticulate, not to shrug off, not to say things like, “On the one hand, these issues are rooted in the created order, but as long as we do not violate it too often, then it is no big deal.”
Four Observations on the Lay of the Land
In what follows, I will make four observations as I see the lay of the land, and then bring six words of challenge to card-carrying complementarians.America Is Spiraling into Greater Darkness than Any of Us Fully Realize
I was in the United Kingdom recently for our acquisition of a Spurgeon collection at MBTS. I was in the London area in a car with a minister from there. We were at a red light, and to the left of the light was a large building with a sign. On the sign was a man — clearly a man with large muscles and a beard, exuding masculinity in every way by the muscles and the facial hair — wearing lingerie. The minister said to me, “You know, Jason, America has exported that to us.” It struck me at that moment not only was he right, but he was tragically so, because until very recently we were on the receiving end of such exports: Europe sent us their nonsense. Now we are sending ours to them. We used to be the arsenal of democracy. We used to export virtue. Now we are the arsenal of hedonism, exporting perversion.
The Greatest Threat to Complementarianism Is Not That We Fail to Persuade the Culture, but That We Fail to Persuade Our Own Families and Churches
In the lead-up to America’s interest in World War II, FDR famously observed that to be the President in these times required that the President be the Educator in Chief. And for us in the room who love our sons, daughters, spouses, congregations, and extended family, my great concern is not so much that the culture will not hear and heed, but that our own loved ones and our own churches are not hearing from us, and thus not heeding accordingly the clear teachings of Scripture.
There Is No Mushy Middle
Stop trying to find the mushy middle. If you want to see people looking for it, you do not have to attend a feminist conference these days. You just have to attend ETS. But there is, in the final analysis, no mushy middle. That phrase first hit me over a decade ago when I had just moved to Kansas City.
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Evangelicalism in the 1970s and 80s—Scripture’s Inerrancy and Errant Evangelicals (Part 1)
More than a decade before Newsweek declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelicals,” the coalition of conservative Protestants had already begun to break apart…Evangelicals were engaged in a Battle for the Bible.
Few periods of the last century were more destructive, realigning, reshaping, and redefining of Evangelicalism than the decade and a half beginning in the mid-1970s. The evangelical coalition was taut and threadbare, in danger of tearing asunder by scholars who disputed a fundamental of the Christian faith, Scripture’s inerrancy. Ironically, the ripping occurred the same year that Evangelicalism unexpectedly received national acclaim linked to a presidential election.
Arising from this period were two closely correlated questions: (1) Who are the Evangelicals? (2) What do Evangelicals believe concerning the authority and truthfulness of Holy Scripture? Both questions were thrust upon Evangelicalism in 1976, the year that Newsweek deemed the “Year of the Evangelical.” In what follows, I will show that 1976, while seemingly a high water mark for Evangelicalism, actually exposed serious fractures which proved beyond repair, despite valiant efforts by leading evangelical scholars. Many who abandoned the foundational evangelical belief in the inerrancy of Scripture took the evangelical label with them and expanded it to allow for their belief in “limited inerrancy.” They published numerous essays and books challenging the long-held belief that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. The battle was on; would Evangelicalism survive?
1976: A Pivotal Year for God’s Word
In America’s bicentennial, Jimmy Carter ran for United States president as self-professed “born again” Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, The incumbent, Gerald Ford, a reserved Episcopalian, professed the same. At that time, Episcopalian and Southern Baptist leaders identified their denominations as distinct if not separate from America’s evangelicals. With the presidential election only a week away, these distinctions were too intricate for Newsweek’s editors to acknowledge or comprehend when they designated 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical” (October 25, 1976). For example, Carter’s praise for Paul Tillich, a Neo-Orthodox theologian from whom evangelical scholars stood aloof, did not temper Newsweek’s equating Carter, the Southern Baptist, with Evangelicals.
Harold Lindsell, also a Southern Baptist, took a vastly different posture toward the SBC leadership than Carter, who identified with them. Lindsell published The Battle for the Bible in 1976 and by June it was already in its third printing. Formerly Lindsell was a faculty member at Northern Baptist and Fuller Seminaries and Wheaton College before he succeeded Carl F. H. Henry as editor of Christianity Today (1968–78). So, when Lindsell wrote his book he did so as the editor of a major Christian magazine, not as an academic. Thus, he appealed not to scholars but to “evangelical lay people in the pews who may not be aware of the central issue that faces them, their denominations, and their institutions.”[1] What distressed him was stated at the outset, as he regards
…biblical inerrancy to be the most important theological topic of this age. A great battle rages about it among people called evangelicals. I did not start the battle and wish it were not essential to discuss it. The only way to avoid it would be to remain silent. And silence on this matter would be a grave sin.[2]
Of his own denomination, he notes, “Probably 90 percent of the people in the pews believe in biblical infallibility.”[3] His concern is with the academic institutions: “Among faculty members of Southern Baptist colleges and seminaries where do you find articulate spokesmen who come out in favor of inerrancy? The silence is deafening!”[4] He laments that as academics “retreat from inerrancy,” denominations abandon vital ministries and displace them with “socio-political-economic concerns.”[5]
Lindsell’s principal distress was over Fuller Seminary’s revising of the doctrine of inerrancy by endorsing their own coinage, “limited inerrancy.” He also called attention to an ethical issue; Fuller Seminary administrators publicly portrayed the seminary as holding to its founding doctrinal affirmation, which included Scripture’s infallibility, even after some of its faculty “ceased to believe in an infallible Bible.”[6] They contended that Scripture’s inerrancy is restricted to matters of Christian faith and practice with allowance for errors in matters concerning the observable world, geography, history, and science.[7]
It is significant, then, that Harold J. Ockenga, first President of Fuller Seminary (1947–54) and still serving on the seminary’s board, launched the initial volley from Lindsell’s arsenal by writing the foreword. Ockenga drew attention to Fuller Seminary, sharing Lindsell’s concern that Scripture’s “inerrancy is the watershed of modern theological controversy” because “those who give up an authoritative, dependable, authentic, trustworthy, and infallible Scripture must ultimately yield the right to use of the name ‘evangelical.’”
This is Lindsell’s burden when he makes his final appeal:
It is my conviction that a host of those evangelicals who no longer hold to inerrancy are still relatively evangelical. I do not for one moment concede, however, that in a technical sense anyone can claim the evangelical badge once he has abandoned inerrancy…It is true that a man can be a Christian without believing in inerrancy. But it is also true that down the road lie serious pitfalls into which such a denial leads. And even if this generation can forego inerrancy and remain more or less evangelical, history tells us that those who come after this generation will not do so…I do not look for or expect a time in history as we know it when the whole professing church will believe either in inerrancy or the major doctrines of the Christian faith. There will always be wheat and tares growing together until the angels begin their task of reaping the harvest at the end of the age.[8]
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Following Jesus’ Teaching on the Importance of Moses
Creation arguments can also be used to soften the ‘hard soil’ of evolutionary dogma—or to hold helpful discussions with a fellow Christian whose thoughts might be affected by (unnecessary and potentially faith-damaging) compromise with secular science. In either case, it is very important that we do this with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).
An atheist once declared: “I will believe in God if He turns my red house into a blue one”. He went to sleep that night as usual, but the next morning when he went outside, he noticed that the red paint on the outside of his house was now a deep blue colour.
In such an imagined scenario, what do you think would most likely happen next? I believe (and will seek to justify it from the Bible) that the atheist would probably not shout ‘Hallelujah!’ in newfound faith. Instead, he would most likely declare how amazing it was to see how the environment, cosmic radiation, chemical pollutants in the atmosphere, and perhaps some unknown natural process had effected this transformation in the chemistry of the paint.
If it achieved wide publicity, a multidisciplinary research team might even be assembled to study this unusual situation, perhaps leading to the publishing of scientific papers proposing a number of alternative theories. All of these, of course, would be restricted to purely naturalistic explanations.
The Rich Man and Abraham
Compare this with Jesus’ lesson about the rich man who after death finds himself facing the terrible torments of the underworld (Luke 16:19–31). He sees Abraham who is in the place of bliss, at the other side of an insurmountable gap separating these two very different regions. He asks Abraham to send someone from the dead to warn his brothers so that they can avoid that dreadful destination.
However, Abraham responds, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” But the rich man counters, saying that “if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!” Abraham replies, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.”
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