In our church-shopping, individualistic culture, we would be wise to take into consideration the warnings in Scripture against only doing what is right in our own eyes. There is great wisdom in learning from the spiritual giants of the past who wrestled down important theological issues far better than we are likely to do today.

Ever notice that we have become a nation of consumers? We love restaurants with giant menus that offer burgers and tacos, sushi and pasta, sandwiches and steaks. And we want that restaurant to be happy to reconfigure anything at our request without complaint. We want our phones to make musical playlists that play only the songs we thumbs-up and never expose us to the unfamiliar. We have come to expect that we have the right to only experience what we like.
This is also true in the church. We want a church that plays the music we like in the way that we like. We want a fellowship that is made up of people who look like us and have our same hobbies. We even want to b able to pick and choose which parts of the church’s doctrine we hold to and which we ignore.
There is a phrase in Scripture that has my attention: “right in his own eyes.” When you read that phrase, you probably think of the end of the book of Judges, though I recently ran across it in Deuteronomy.
You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes…—Deuteronomy 12:8 (See also Judges 17:6; 21:25; and Proverbs 12:15; 16:2; 21:2; 26:5; 26:12; 26:16; 28:11.)
As the Lord led his people, he repeatedly spoke of people doing what was right in their own, individual eyes. And every single time God talks about it, God condemns it—every time. In Deuteronomy and in Judges, the thought is that the nation was not to determine its worship or its morality by their own personal opinions. Instead, the people were to submit to the Lord’s word. In Proverbs, the common thread is that a man who is wise in his own eyes, a man who will not learn from others or receive counsel from others, is actually a fool.
Think well, dear Christian friend, about how well you receive counsel and wisdom from others. When you think of your theology, as an example, to whom do you submit? Are you picking and choosing doctrines based on your wisdom alone? Or are your thoughts actually shaped by the wisdom of others who have gone before you?
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As Warren begins the appeal process and the decision heads to the SBC’s convention floor, the question is not one of proper biblical hermeneutics regarding women pastors. When Warren and other egalitarians advocate for female pastors, their position is solidly based upon strong emotion rather than sound exegesis. The SBC’s current challenge is that it has been shaken by pragmatism and a leftward cultural drift. Furthermore, the denomination has gone through a number of ideological earthquakes. Will the next tsunami wave be too much to handle? 

On March 11, 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake rocked Japan. The center of the quake was said to have been in the North Pacific, 81 miles east of Sendai, the largest city in the Tōhoku area.
The Pacific Ocean is home to the largest seismic belt on the planet. Japan is accustomed to and prepared for earthquakes, much like its Pacific neighbor to the east, California. The rare tsunami accompanying an earthquake is often more damaging than the quake itself.
Those familiar with the region pay little attention to earthquakes. Due to their infrequency, many people ignore the warnings associated with tsunamis. Ignoring such warnings can have disastrous consequences, as more than 20,000 lives were lost on the Sendai coast.
For the past few years, many in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have disregarded numerous warnings of their own. Many in SBC leadership pay little attention to the cracks in the denomination’s core. The latest is Rick Warren’s decision to appeal the SBC’s decision to kick Saddleback Church out of the fellowship. This is a tsunami warning for the SBC. There are some in SBC circles who regard Warren’s commitment to installing three women pastors at Saddleback Church as a clear violation of Scripture and the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
The crucial question is: Will the SBC heed the most recent tsunami warning and stand on the high ground of Scripture, or will a tsunami wave of egalitarianism destroy its shores?
The Earthquake before the Tsunami: MLK 50 & Social Justice
Long before the terror of a 500-mile-per-hour tsunami wave traveling ashore, the Tōhoku area’s residents would have been wise to pay attention to the early warning signs of a tsunami—an earthquake. Likewise, recent history will attest that the SBC has endured numerous quakes that should have served as an early warning sign for what was coming.
The first seismic event to hit the SBC occurred in 2018 during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. The Gospel Coalition collaborated on a joint event with the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). The MLK 50: Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop event occurred in Memphis, Tennessee. Speakers included Charlie Dates, Jackie Hill-Perry, Eric Mason, and others.
Eric Mason, pastor of Epiphany Fellowship Church in Philadelphia and author of Woke Church, took to the podium. Mason reflected on what he believed to be a pivotal time in history. Connecting the historical racism of King’s day with the present-day experience of blacks within white evangelicalism, Mason told the audience,
Multiplicities of Negros ain’t feeling evangelicalism…. Whites have to assume … that because there is offense … you need to press into that particular offense and begin to educate yourself on … not having reductionistic ways in which you try to cause racial reconciliation, like through hiring non-qualified African-Americans to be the multi-ethnic engineers in your local churches…. And you know they’re not qualified because Blacks haven’t hired them.
Eric Mason, MLK 50 (10:46)
The audience filled the air with laughter and numerous “amens.” Mason continued,
And it works against unity when you hire somebody that we not feeling. And you’re wondering why multi-ethnicity isn’t happening at your church? It’s because you have a person that is black on the outside but angloid on the inside.
Eric Mason, MLK 50 (12:06)
Charlie Dates, once one of the SBCs most popular and celebrated preachers, used MLK 50 to connect King’s social gospel to the economic, political, and educational needs of today’s black communities. In Dates’ view, it’s our “white evangelical brothers and sisters” who bear the responsibility to repair disparities within black communities. Dates reserved his sermon’s homiletic punch for the conclusion of his message, and he could not have been more explicit when he said,
This is what has frustrated many black churches with our white evangelical brothers and sisters, those of you who have a firm grasp on orthodoxy, who understand the finer tenants of the gospel, who launch coalitions, who sustain commissions, and who produce curriculum and lobby with Congress. We have expected you to be our greatest allies in the struggle against injustice. We wanted you to tell your churches and your congregations that God was never pleased with segregation and the systems that segregation has created.… We wanted you to end the long night of systemic injustices. We wanted y’all to cry about the public school-to-prison pipeline.… And we wanted you to shout it from your pulpit.
Charlie Dates, MLK 50 (20:25)
With Mason and Dates framing the foundation of their ideas on the San Andreas fault line of King’s social gospel, each speaker charged white evangelicalism with being responsible for and obligated to fix the disparities experienced in black America.
The Village Church pastor of Fort Worth, Texas, Matt Chandler, would join the chorus of speakers, describing what his church was doing to promote black empowerment in the pulpit.
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Marriage and family life may be the arenas of human life where the ongoing work of sanctification plays out most vividly. They cannot make human beings holy, but they open the human heart to accept God’s grace and to understand it.  

Men despise religion…The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.~Blaise Pascal
Can Christian sexual ethics survive the sexual revolution? Churches everywhere trim in the face of the popularity of modern sexual mores. Most Protestant churches long ago abandoned proscriptions on contraception and divorce. Many have on abortion. They wink at cohabitation. They rarely complain that the state has usurped familial obligations like teaching about sexuality and caring for children or warn parishioners that public schools see themselves as ersatz parents instead of in loco parentis.
Into the breach steps John W. Kleinig, a Lutheran minister in Australia, theologian, and author of Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body, which accentuates the positive about Christian marriage. Christians, Kleinig worries “will not be heard and heeded by our critics” unless we lead with “a positive, rightly ordered vision of it in its beauty” rather than adopting a “self-righteous, censorious stance.” The Ten Commandment’s Thou-Shalt-Nots point to Shalls: leading with Shalls instead of Shall-Nots puts Christian marriage in the best light. We have reason to hope that the attractiveness of the family will reinforce the attractiveness of Christianity. Thus will good men wish Christianity to be true from the attractiveness of Christian marriage.
Equally important, the Shalls will explain to Christians themselves what they are doing and why. Modern ideologies leak into Christian churches in a thousand ways. One of them is through shaping how people understand family life. Believers get light from the “Modern American Sun” and the Light of the World. If believers follow the American Sun, they will think marriage is a prison, motherhood and fatherhood are limits on freedom, their body is their choice, or sex is merely a vehicle for personal pleasure. How should Christians think about these things?
Making Marriage Attractive Again
Neither marriage nor family life can really proceed without sacrificial love, so they provide a glimpse of heavenly love in a fallen world. To make marriage attractive again churches should emphasize making its attributes attractive. Protestant churches either misunderstand and misapply these attributes, or downplay them because of the power of the Modern American Sun. Kleinig highlights those unseen attributes.
Chastity
Sexual desire is especially corrupted. The who, how many, how, how often and with whom of sex are all subject to temptation. Against this, Kleinig preaches the “beauty of chastity.” Chastity does not simply mean “no sex” or “no sex before marriage.” It means the right ordering of sexual desire. Assume that a husband buys his wife sexy lingerie and orders her to put it on and act like a prostitute before sex. That is not chastity, though it respects, in sense, the bond between sex and marriage. Real chastity involves a man and a woman entering into an exclusive enduring sexual commitment to one another, where they love and serve one another instead of giving way to their lusts. Chastity means that sex finds a subordinate place within a larger communal relationship where husbands and wives share lives. That communal relationship is beautiful—it’s a “house of marriage,” as Kleinig sees it.
Fruitfulness
Marriage is transformative. It is not an alliance between separate individuals. It makes a community. Husbands are less apt to look at wives as sexual objects, as happens with fornicators. Wives are more likely to be satisfied with the man they have, instead of filing for divorce at the first whiff of marital conflict. Husbands and wives joined in communal marriage are more likely to be open to bringing new life into the world. Men and women stick it out not for fear of the consequences of not sticking it out, but rather because not sticking it out is unthinkable. The two have become one. Sex creates children and responsibilities for parents. This is when the two really become one. This leads Kleinig to a deep worry about contraception. “A married couple,” Kleinig writes, “who can have children but deliberately refuses to do so commits an unnatural, life-denying act of defiance that rejects the blessings God wishes to bestow on them and the whole human race.”
Enduring
The vision for marriage is one man, one woman, one time. What God has united let man not put asunder. In God’s eyes, the man and the woman of marriage are not separated. Re-marriage from the perspective of the church is not an option. This creates the proper disposition to the inevitable conflicts and rough-patches of married life. When marriage is enduring, the petty troubles appear petty. When endurance is optional, every breeze can blow it down. Built on God, marriage cannot be built on sand. And how beautiful it is to keep the main thing the main thing, as opposed to having an itchy trigger finger for divorce. Kleinig goes as far in the direction of demanding permanent marriage as any non-Catholic thinker I have seen.
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