As Christians, we follow the Lord Jesus Christ, who, for the joy set before Him, endured the most wanton and senseless violence in order to bring about the most tremendous peace. As soldiers of the Living Christ, let us shine as lights in this dark and decaying world.

To the Church
Dear Christian,
As I write to you this day, my heart is filled with tremendous grief and sadness over the events that have transpired in Nashville, Tennessee. On Monday morning, a mentally ill biological woman, who identified as a transgender male, shot her way inside The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school in East Tennessee, firing indiscriminate rounds at both helpless children and adults before being gunned down by local police officers. In fourteen horrifying minutes, 6 innocent people were brutally killed, including three little ones aged nine and 3 adults in their sixties. One of the children who tragically perished was the daughter of Chad Scruggs, who serves as lead pastor over Covenant Presbyterian Church, the church that founded the school.
During such awful instances of darkness, we must remember we are children of the light. We are living examples of Christ to all who are perishing. How we respond to tragedies like this will say much about how we think, believe, and cherish the Gospel. Thus, as we pray for the victims, let us also pray for the victimizers. As we pray for affected families, let us diligently pray for the shooter’s family. And as we are bombarded with all sorts of opinions on this subject, let us be slow to speak, quick to listen, and ready to pattern our response in accordance with Scripture.
With that, I would like to consider how a Christian is supposed to respond to awful tragedies such as this.
This Memes War
Whether you like it or not, you will be inundated in the coming days with a cacophony of “hot-takes” from trolls on Twitter, rants by activists and personalities on social media, biased coverage by the news, and shots fired from both sides of the Left / Right culture war. You will also see this situation entirely weaponized by gun control activists, the news trying to play up the perpetrator’s victim status, and the trans community crying out for justice and days of vengeance, as we have seen in Virginia. Yesterday and today, instead of seeing an empathetic president consoling a wounded nation or addressing the victims, we saw a depraved dottering dolt making inappropriate jokes about what flavor of ice cream he stacks in his fridge before blaming republicans for this incident of gun violence. (Sadly, this was not the only occasion our dunderhead-in-chief quipped sardonically when doing so was both vile and inappropriate). Perhaps you also saw the despicable and insensitive meme posted by Arizona press secretary, Jocelyn Berry, depicting a woman holding two handguns in a threatening pose, captioned: “Us when we see transphobes.” Or maybe you saw any number of shameless responses on the vast interwebs, such as I have found here.
This Means War
From such a smattering of debased opinions, I believe it is obvious that we are in a war. But let me be unequivocally clear here, we are not in the Left / Right “culture war” that has captivated this nation for decades. We are not on the left; we are not on the right; we are on the side of Christ. When the pundits, politicians, and the ideological left blame Christians and gun laws for this attack, we must not respond with the equal and opposite fury displayed among activists on the right. As Christians, we must respond as Christians and not as activists! We are citizens of heaven, not paupers, in this pitiful and polarized political war game.
We have been called to war, but not that one. Instead, the battle that we have been called into is a war – first and foremost – against the flesh (Romans 8:13). We are to be killing that which is wicked and depraved in us, mortifying it by the Spirit so that we may live. As Christians, we do not begin a plank-eyed campaign against a horde of sawdusty sinners without first pointing the lens of Biblical truth upon our own hearts and our own soul. We must make war through repentance, not hollow pharisaism.
But, this does not mean we have nothing to say. In fact, the Bible does call us to a kind of warfare with the world. According to Scripture, for the love of God and the redemption of the planet, we are called to expose the damnable misdeeds of darkness (Ephesians 5:5-13) and to call out pagan philosophies such as transgenderism with the light of the Gospel of Christ (Colossians 2:8; Jude 3). We are to be salt, which preserves the decaying world. We are to be light in the midst of a crooked people, which means exposing and chasing away the darkness (Matthew 5:13-16; Philippians 2:14-15) And if we do that work faithfully, meeting mistruth with love (Ephesians 4:15), we fully understand that the world will still hate us because it first hated Christ (John 15:18). No matter how the world views us, we labor on until every nation has been discipled according to the vision and Biblical standards of Christ (Matthew 28:18-20).
It is also a battle fought against the demonic principalities and satanic powers who wage war against the plain truth of God (Ephesians 6:12). We must remember that the transgender community is not our enemy. Likewise, the LGBTQLMNOP activists are not our foe. We do not wage our warfare against them but for them! We wage a spiritual war against spiritual opponents with unique non-violent weapons that will advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ and take back dominion for our King in a world that is hopelessly lost and dead (Ephesians 6:13-17).
The Christians’ warfare brings life and light to the world, not death and hot-takes, which brings us to an apropos passage for such a time as this. In light of the events that occurred in Nashville, and whenever the next grisly evil is unleashed upon the world, may the words of Romans 12:14-21 become our guide on how to respond to the world, the flesh, and the devil, with uniquely and poignantly Christian warfare. This is our battle guide:
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
The founders insisted that our rights are derived from God. If our rights are derived merely from state diktat then they can be taken away by the state under any pretext (or none at all). It is obviously the case that our rights can be taken from us even when we acknowledge that they come from God. Someone or some group may be powerful enough to deny us the freedom to speak openly, the freedom to peaceably assemble, and any other freedom we are granted in our Constitution. Such actions, however, would be obvious usurpations of rights the founders insisted were intrinsic to the human condition because they were granted by God, not men.

Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla recently said on MSNBC that Christian Nationalists (as a small subset of Christians) are the only people in America who have ever believed their political rights are granted by God. Her claim was rightly met with widespread ridicule and refutation. I have no way of knowing whether Przybyla’s words are as ignorant as they seem or rather whether they represent an open and unembarrassed rejection of America’s founding principles. One fellow traveler of Przybyla’s came to her defense with the assertion that if our rights are derived from God then they are at the mercy of anyone claiming to speak for God. Przybyla signaled that this was her main point as well. This inclines me to believe that Przybyla spoke of what she desires for our nation.
Any elementary school child knows (or at least once knew) the absurdity of the claim that the founders didn’t believe our rights come from God. The obvious example people have pointed to is the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This was a notion acknowledged by virtually everyone at America’s founding. Consider a few examples (taken from Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of America’s Founding, p. 85-86):
The 1765 Massachusetts Assembly Resolves on the Stamp Act: “That there are certain essential rights of the British constitution of government, which are founded in the law of God and nature, and are the common rights of mankind.” 
Alexander Hamilton: “[T]here is a supreme intelligence who rules the world, and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures. . . . This is what is called the law of nature. . . . Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind.” 
James Wilson: “[P]roperly speaking, there is only one general source of superiotiy and obligation. God is our creator: in him we live, and move, and have our being. . . . [H]e, as master of his own work, can prescribe to it whatever rules to him shall seem meet. . . . This is the true source of all authority.”
Even John Locke argued similarly when he grounded the right to revolution against tyrants in his Second Treatise on Government in “the common refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence.” Unless such a refuge existed in God’s moral law and the natural rights derived from it, Locke insisted elsewhere, man “could have no law but his own will, no end but himself.
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The Law Amendment simply clarifies what our Constitution already calls for—close identification with the BF&M. Messengers have already proved their commitment to hold the line on the BF&M’s teaching on female pastors.

If you had told me ten years ago that female pastors would become an item of contention again in the Southern Baptist Convention, I probably would not have believed you. It was not very long ago that most of us were under the impression that the issue had been settled by the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 (BF&M), which says that the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. Nevertheless, here we are in 2024, and the issue is before us again.
The surprising thing this go round is that the debate appears to be an intra-complementarian conflagration as both sides at least claim to affirm the BF&M. Nevertheless, a profound difference exists among us about the propriety of cooperation with churches who have female pastors. To put it very bluntly, you have one set of complementarians who do not wish to cooperate with churches that have female pastors, and another set that do.
Enter Rob Collingsworth, who recently penned an essay for The Baptist Review arguing that Southern Baptists ought to be willing to cooperate with at least some churches that employ female pastors. For this reason, he is keen to persuade Southern Baptists to vote against the Law Amendment at our annual meeting this June in Indianapolis. If passed, the Law Amendment would clarify what the SBC Constitution already says—that cooperating churches should closely identify with the BF&M’s teaching about qualifications for pastors. Collingsworth believes that it would be bad for the Southern Baptist Convention to alienate churches who have female pastors but who would otherwise wish to contribute to our cooperative efforts. And for Collingsworth, the Law Amendment would alienate many such churches.
He gives five reasons for opposing the Law Amendment, each of which I believe to be problematic.
1. Should the SBC Cooperate with Churches that Employ Female Pastors?
First, he believes the SBC should be willing to cooperate with churches that give women the title pastor. As long as those female pastors don’t actually do the work of pastors, why should we split hairs over the title pastor? After all, the term pastor is “semantically challenged,” and we ought to recognize that some female pastors are nevertheless aligned with the “spirit” of the Bible’s teaching, if not the letter.
Collingsworth fails to recognize that the problem we are facing isn’t merely with churches that are confused about titles. I can think of two prominent examples right off the top of my head. One of the churches represented on the SBC’s Cooperation Committee employs a female executive pastor who preaches from time to time on Sunday mornings. Another church represented on the Cooperation Committee employs a variety of female pastors and has a senior pastor who publicly disagrees with the BF&M’s teaching about a male-only pastorate and who has publicly opposed the SBC’s removal of Saddleback. Neither of these situations represents mere confusion over nomenclature, but something far more substantive. Collingsworth doesn’t really explain the real scope of the problem right now in at least some cooperating churches. Voting down the Law Amendment would likely exacerbate that confusion, and yet that’s precisely what Collingsworth urges Southern Baptists to do.
2. Would the Law Amendment Exclude Churches that Subscribe to the Baptist Faith and Message?
Second, Collingsworth argues that the Law Amendment would exclude churches that hold to the BF&M. For him, while egalitarian churches with female pastors should be excluded from friendly cooperation, “complementarian” churches with female pastors should not. If churches are willing to give their money to a convention that does not share their views, why should the SBC refuse to cooperate with them?
The reason is because cooperating churches send messengers to the annual meeting. Messengers at the annual meeting vote on what the policies and priorities of the convention will be. How long will the SBC affirm the Bible’s teaching about a male-only pastorate if messengers increasingly disagree with what our confession says about a male-only pastorate? Cooperation is not merely about collecting money. It’s about messengers determining what our mission and priorities will be in our efforts to reach the nations for Christ. Do we want those messengers to agree with what our confession says about qualified male pastors? I think we do, and the Law Amendment helps to clarify our intention in this regard. Voting it down would send the opposite message.
3. Is the Law Amendment Out of Step with SBC History?
Third, Collingsworth argues that the Law Amendment would be out of step with how our Convention has operated for most of its history. The SBC was formed in 1849 but did not adopt the BF&M until 1925. And even then, it did not require cooperating churches to agree with the BF&M. It only required them to send in contributions. It wasn’t until 2015 that the convention adopted a requirement that cooperating churches “closely identify” with the BF&M. Nevertheless, Collingsworth contends that “closely identifies” allows for churches to contradict what the BF&M says on any given point, including what the BF&M says about the qualifications for pastors. He says that the chair of the SBC Executive Committee that proposed the “closely identifies” language confirmed to him privately that this is the case.
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