Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2012, could you have predicted where we would be on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2022? Some surely foresaw a number of our present sorrows. But who could have foreseen Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown, and Charlottesville, and Confederate-monument debates, and Trump, and national-anthem kneeling, and George Floyd, and the outrage of 2020 — to name just a few of many tragedies and controversies? And who could have imagined that the events of these ten years would so severely tear the fabric of our Reformed world?

Even by 2017, John Piper could mourn the “improbable constellation of [racial] sorrows” unknown in 2012. The last five years have only added to the improbable constellation, splintering a once-unified Reformed evangelicalism into groups that often struggle not only to partner with one another but even to understand each other.

And that struggle to even understand touches on one of the many dysfunctions beneath our divisions: in our thinking and talking about race in recent years, many of us have failed to engage the issues and one another Christianly. Many conversations, especially online, have savored less of Solomonic wisdom and more of political savvy (no matter how apolitical we may feel otherwise). Too easily, many of us have adopted and advocated for positions not because we have thought through them carefully, prayerfully, with open Bibles and in thoughtful dialogue with Christians who think differently, but simply because these positions are not what the other side holds (whoever the other side may be).

The dysfunction would be easier to brush aside if it characterized only the most extreme among us, the most militantly “woke” and most virulently “anti-woke.” But too often, such a dynamic has characterized my own thought and talk. Even those who generally strive for patience and fair-mindedness are falling into these ditches. With a topic as fraught as race in the American church, almost everyone has an “other side,” a group whose thoughts and sentiments feel not only troublesome but threatening — and therefore a group we struggle to hear, much less learn from.

Healing such dysfunctional engagement would not heal all our divisions, not by a long shot. But it may soften our various prejudices, nurture deeper understanding, and (on the micro scale if not the macro) lead us toward a less fragile unity. Or, if nothing else, we may simply become better at talking when the temperature rises over other tense issues.

Talking in the Boxing Ring

In many ways, the deck of the last decade was stacked against Christian habits of thought and talk. Even as we faced the constellation of sorrows, information overload accelerated, social media colonized public discourse, and our society’s typical partisanship seemed to swallow steroids. Often, the context of our conversations has felt less like a living room and more like a boxing ring. And it’s hard to engage as Christians when the rules of the game are punch or be punched.

Many of us have learned to think and talk on the surface of things. Once, a phrase like systemic racism offered an invitation to ask, “What do you mean by that?” and then consider whether the description fits biblical and experiential reality. But our communicative climate rarely encourages such engagement. Now, systemic racism has become a badge for a particular team — one that, depending on your side, either cannot be questioned or cannot be considered. The phrase (and more like it) no longer spurs thought, but replaces thought. Meanwhile, we fall deeper into our own silos, less able to hear truths that might counterbalance our perspectives. We learn to parrot whatever voices are loudest or most immediately persuasive, and parroting, by nature, inevitably leads to partisanship and polarization.

The danger for many Christians is not that we will disown manifest biblical concerns, but that we will so underemphasize some biblical concerns (that is, the other side’s) that they become functionally denied in our theology and practice. Where we now stand, some of us don’t want to talk anymore about God’s care for the oppressed (Exodus 22:21–24; Psalm 103:6); others no longer want to discuss the necessity of due process (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16). Some are nervous about acknowledging the prejudice that power can bring (Deuteronomy 16:18–20); others are wary of admitting the fallibility of wounded feelings (Proverbs 18:17). Some are slower to condemn American slavery and Jim Crow (1 Timothy 1:10; James 2:1–7); others are slower to denounce the unjustly disproportionate black-abortion rate (Psalm 139:13–16).

In each case, however, the balance and emphasis of Scripture is no longer setting our theological and ethical agenda. The other side is.

Four Postures for Christian Conversation

On one level, we cannot help but think and talk from our subjective perspectives. But by God’s grace, we can avoid thinking and talking more like political people than Christian people. We can unlearn the reflexes and rhetoric of the city of man. And to that end, we can pursue four Christian postures for thinking and talking about race (or any contentious subject), adapted from the framework creation-fall-redemption-restoration.

Embodied

To be human is to be wonderfully and inescapably embodied, a creature among creatures in God’s physical world. Most of our communication technologies, however, treat us as an avatar among avatars in man’s ethereal world. And much of the time, an avatar thinks and talks differently from a creature.

Martin Luther King, looking upon Southern segregation, once observed, “Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they do not know each other; they do not know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated” (Free at Last?, 68).

Today, of course, we actually can communicate in real time while separated. But to King, our technological talk would hardly look like the kind of communication he had in mind — the kind that erases ignorance, eases fears, and melts hatred. To him, our social media platforms may seem more like anti-communication technologies.

When we take our complex racial conversations onto social media, we take them into an environment that forces three-dimensional topics into a two-dimensional mold, that rewards slander and belligerence, and that (contrary to James’s counsel) teaches us to be slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to anger (James 1:19). Image-bearers become little more than “mouthpieces of positions we want to eradicate,” as Alan Jacobs puts it (How to Think, 98). And eradicate we try.

I know proximity is a buzzword in some circles. Even still, nothing has mitigated my own tendency toward unthinking aversion of “the other side” more than looking some of the other side in the face. Something changes when your ideological opponents are no longer two-dimensional representatives of a barbarous idea, but instead living, feeling, speaking beings — and perhaps even friends.

Fallen

The doctrine of the fall has not experienced the same neglect that the doctrine of creation has in recent years. Few doctrines have been so universally emphasized, even among non-Christians, than the fall of humanity. But too often, the emphasis has landed on the fall of other humans, of those humans over there.

“A pattern of hurling blame usually reveals more of our own fallenness than of the people we accuse.”

Ironically, a pattern of hurling blame usually reveals more of our own fallenness than of the people we accuse. Few instincts are less Christian and more devilish than turning the blade of God’s word against everyone’s sins but our own (Zechariah 3:1; Revelation 12:10). The doctrine of the fall, rightly grasped, does not put a spotlight in our hand so we can expose the sins of others; it reveals the spotlight in God’s hand, exposing us all (Hebrews 4:13).

Of course, to say “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23) is not to say all have sinned in the same way or to the same degree. And so, in conversations about race, we need not assume the same kind or same level of guilt on all sides. Some of us have more reason than others to suspect ourselves.

But all of us have some reason to suspect ourselves. Given all that God has said about sin, it would be astonishing indeed if anyone in these conversations had nothing to learn and, from time to time, no fault to confess. God’s regenerating work does not make fallen people flawless people. Therefore, we exercise not false humility but biblical realism when we enter most conversations assuming we don’t see everything clearly and that this other human, ideological opponent or not, has some truth to shine on us.

Redeemed

If the fall means we should expect to find our ignorance and sin exposed in conversations about race, redemption means we can. Those who wear the robe of righteousness can bear to see the stains beneath (Isaiah 61:10). Those who hear God’s pardoning voice can handle his reproofs (Hebrews 12:5–6). Those forgiven of much can go ahead and weep their repentance in public (Luke 7:36–50). If the fall compels us to suspect ourselves, redemption frees us to reveal ourselves: we are unafraid to be seen as the sinners we are.

“Every Christian conversation about race happens beside the spilled blood, torn flesh, and cursed cross of Jesus.”

We can easily feel like conversations about race happen beside the cliff edge of condemnation, with an admission of fault casting us over. But no: every Christian conversation about race happens beside the spilled blood, torn flesh, and cursed cross of Jesus (Ephesians 2:13–16). And all our guilt casts us onto him who preached peace to Jew and Gentile, privileged and oppressed, and whose gospel speaks a stronger word than all our racial sins (Ephesians 2:17–18).

Many of us would do well to briefly pause during tense interactions and remind ourselves of Psalm 130:4: “With you there is forgiveness.” With God there is forgiveness, even when there is none with man. A new humility may come from embracing such a promise. And humility has a way of opening doors for understanding that self-righteousness never can.

United

Through redemption, Jesus has united us — to himself, first and foremost, but also to all others in him, no matter how differently they understand race in America. And so, whatever team or tribe we affiliate with for practical purposes, let it never be forgotten that our true team and tribe reaches far as redemption is found.

What might happen if we began to identify more deeply with the whole church of Jesus Christ than with our particular pew? We might renounce the old Corinthian folly of finishing the sentence “I follow . . .” with any name other than Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:4). We might recover the true sense of the word prophetic and gain courage to reprove our own friends. We might find new freedom in pursuit of truth, knowing that a genuine win for “the other side” is a win for us all. We might live up to our identity as sons of a peacemaking Father (Matthew 5:9).

Joining the Needlessly Divided

The road of racial harmony still stretches far ahead of us — in our friendships and churches, in our denominations and broader networks. And if the last ten years have taught us anything, they have taught us that no one can really know where we’ll be a decade from now. But oh that John Wesley’s praise for John Newton might rest upon many in that day:

You appear to be designed by Divine Providence for an healer of breaches, a reconciler of honest but prejudiced men, and an uniter (happy work!) of the children of God that are needlessly divided from each other.

Such healers of breaches will not arise from the knee-jerk opposition that has become so common. They will carry the hope that “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) forms a stronger tie than the unity of political party, cultural similarity, or any ideological kinship. They will arise from the ground of Christian thought and Christian talk — embodied, fallen, redeemed, united.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15297244/what-do-the-lives-of-teachers-tell-us

A persistent critique of Reformation theology is that a high view of God’s sovereignty reduces evangelistic zeal. While the criticism is often misguided, the danger is not historically unprecedented. Church history bears witness to unbiblical understandings of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. In the eighteenth century, one such view choked the life out of many Reformed Baptist and Congregational churches in England.

One courageous book, however, not only reversed the decline, but it also provided the foundation for the most consequential Protestant missions movement in history. And it has an important word for the church today.

Doctrinal Distortion

As heirs of the Reformed tradition, English Baptists and Congregationalists affirmed God’s sovereign power in salvation — that, in accordance with his great love, God irresistibly draws those whom he unconditionally chooses into persevering faith. Apart from any human initiative, God works an unmerited, merciful, transformative act of regeneration that brings about faith. The Reformers underscored what the Scriptures taught: salvation is all of God, “for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).

By the late eighteenth century, however, some Calvinistic ministers, in their zeal to protect this doctrine, had disfigured it.

“Fuller never forgot the fear and hopelessness he felt in the pew when Jesus was right there to be offered.”

Since unbelievers are incapable of turning to Christ without divine action, they reasoned, it would be unbiblical to urge them through preaching to do so. Preaching the gospel to a mixed audience of believers and nonbelievers would effectively give assurance of God’s promises to both the elect and the non-elect. Those who did so would also be claiming divine authority and usurping the role of the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, they argued, pastors must only declare the work of Christ as simple fact in preaching — to call men to repentance and faith was theologically erroneous and pastorally dangerous.

This hardened position, known as High Calvinism, almost ensured that nonbelievers were never invited to put their faith in Jesus. Under this gospel-less preaching, pastors made no urgent appeal to trust in Christ. High Calvinist churches withered. Personal evangelism ceased. Sinners were left with conviction of sin but no clear remedy.

Any Poor Sinner

Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) was one of those hopeless sinners. Fuller grew up on a farm in the rugged marshlands northeast of Cambridge and attended a small Baptist congregation in Soham. As the evangelical awakening transformed churches across the English countryside, Fuller’s church and its High Calvinist pastor John Eve seemed immune to its effect. Pastor Eve, Fuller wrote, “had little or nothing to say to the unconverted.” While George Whitefield and John Wesley were pleading with sinners to repent and trust in Jesus, Eve made no gospel call. “I never considered myself as any way concerned in what I heard from the pulpit,” Fuller later wrote.1 Aware of his own sinful condition, teenaged Fuller was caught in anguished speculation, desperately looking for a sign of his election rather than looking away from himself to Christ.

This lasted for years. “I was not then aware that any poor sinner had a warrant to believe in Christ for the salvation of his soul,” Fuller later reflected, “but supposed that there must be some kind of qualification to entitle him [to be saved]. Yet, I was aware that I had no qualifications.”2 The breakthrough finally came when Fuller recognized that salvation was to be found in trusting in Christ, not in a subjective perception of his own fitness.

I must — I will — yes, I will trust my soul, my sinful soul in his hands. . . . I was determined to cast myself upon Christ . . . and as the eye of my mind was more and more fixed upon him, my guilt and fears were gradually and insensibly removed.3

Fuller later reflected that, though he had finally found peace in Christ, “I reckon I should have found it sooner” had not the High Calvinist’s bar blocked the way. He never forgot the fear and hopelessness he felt in the pew when Jesus was right there to be offered. And as Fuller grew in his understanding of the Scriptures, he saw the deadly flaws of High Calvinism with even greater clarity.

The Gospel Worthy

Fuller became pastor of the church in Soham in 1775 and three years later began openly calling his hearers to faith in Christ. Many in the Soham congregation were unhappy, but Fuller pressed on — even turning down an opportunity to pastor a larger congregation in another community. The opposition in Soham, however, was not fruitless. Fuller mined the Scriptures and, stirred by conversation with new friends in the local pastoral association, began writing an extended response to the High Calvinist scheme.

In 1781, he was called as pastor of the Baptist congregation in Kettering. The personal confession of faith he presented to his new congregation reflects the thinking that would soon upend High Calvinism:

I believe it is the duty of every minister of Christ plainly and faithfully to preach the gospel to all who will hear it; and, as I believe the inability of men to spiritual things to be wholly of the moral and, therefore, of the criminal kind (and that it is their duty to love the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust in him for salvation, though they do not); I, therefore, believe free and solemn addresses, invitations, calls, and warnings to them to be not only consistent but directly adapted as means in the hand of the Spirit of God to bring them to Christ. I consider it as a part of my duty which I could not omit without being guilty of the blood of souls.4

With the encouragement of friends, in 1785 Fuller published the argument behind his conclusions. The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, or the Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ hammers home a central point: because God’s nature and purposes have been revealed ultimately in Jesus Christ, every human being is obligated to respond in repentance and faith.5

Six Reasons to Plead

Fuller’s argument rests on six propositions. First, unconverted sinners are clearly and repeatedly invited, exhorted, and commanded to trust in Christ for salvation. This is the teaching of both the New Testament (John 5:23; 6:39; 12:36) and the Old (Psalm 2:11–12; Isaiah 55:1–7). “Faith in Jesus Christ,” Fuller writes, “is constantly held up as the duty of all to whom the gospel is preached.”6

Second, every human being is obligated to receive what God reveals. “It is allowed by all except the grossest Antinomians [High Calvinists],” Fuller argues, “that every man is obliged to love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength — and this notwithstanding the depravity of his nature.” This is the witness of God’s self-revelation in creation, in the law, and “in the highest and most glorious display of himself” in the incarnation.7

Third, the gospel, though a message of pure grace, requires the obedient response of faith. Fuller illustrates this proposition by observing that the goodness of God “virtually [effectively] requires a return of gratitude. It deserves it and the law of God formally requires it on his behalf. Thus, it is with the gospel, which is the greatest overflew of Divine goodness that was ever witnessed.”8

Fourth, lack of faith is an odious sin that the Scriptures ascribe to human depravity. In light of God’s self-revelation, sinners’ willful ignorance, pride, dishonesty, or aversion of heart are evidences of unbelief, not excuses for it. The Spirit of Christ has been sent into the world for the very purpose of convicting the world of unbelief, which would be unnecessary “if faith were not a duty” (John 16:8–9).9

“‘The Gospel Worthy’ unleashed a tsunami of evangelical Calvinism.”

Fifth, God has threatened and inflicted the most awful punishments on sinners for their not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. “It is here taken for granted that nothing but sin can be the cause of God’s inflicting punishment,” Fuller writes, “and nothing can be sin which is not a breach of duty.”10 Unbelief is, itself, a sin “which greatly aggravates our guilt and which, if persisted in, gives the finishing stroke to our destruction.”11

Sixth, the Bible requires certain spiritual exercises of all mankind, which are represented as their duty. If persons are required to love, fear, and glorify God, then repentance and faith are also required. Even though these exercises are brought about by the Spirit of Christ, the obligation remains. Man’s obedience to the truth and God’s gift of faith by grace are the same thing seen from different perspectives.12

If these propositions are valid, Fuller concludes, “love to Christ is the duty of everyone to whom the gospel is preached.”13 The work of Christian ministry, then, is to “hold up the free grace of God through Jesus Christ as the only way of a sinner’s salvation.” “If this not be the leading theme of our ministrations,” Fuller warns, “we had better be anything than preachers. ‘Woe unto us if we preach not the gospel!’”14

Duty to Make It Known

The repercussions of his argument are incalculable. From a historical perspective, Fuller so dismantled High Calvinism that no serious case for it has since arisen. Even more importantly, The Gospel Worthy unleashed a tsunami of evangelical Calvinism. If it is the duty of sinners to repent and believe in Christ, as the Scriptures teach, then it is also the urgent duty of Christians to present the claims of Christ to their neighbors and the nations. Pastors reengaged their calling as evangelists. New organizations were launched to multiply itinerant preaching.15 Ordinary Christians, grasping the implications of the gospel more fully, lifted their eyes to the horizon and saw fields white for harvest.

For William Carey (1761–1834), Fuller’s argument was foundational. “If it be the duty of all men where the gospel comes to believe unto salvation,” Carey told a friend after reading Fuller’s book, “then it is the duty of those who are entrusted with the gospel to make it known among all nations for the obedience of faith.”16 Several years later, in his famous Enquiry, Carey wrote that deficient understandings of the gospel were the reason “multitudes sit at ease and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow sinners who, to this day, are lost in ignorance and idolatry.”17 Since Christians are those “whose truest interest lies in the exaltation of the Messiah’s kingdom,” Carey concluded, “let every one, then, in his station consider himself as bound to act with all his might and in every possible way for God.”18

Such were not mere words. Four months after publishing them, Carey, Fuller, their friend John Ryland (1753–1826), and several others joined to form the Baptist Missionary Society. Carey became their first missionary, departing for India in 1793. Ryland supported London Congregationalists in starting the London Missionary Society (1795) and the Anglicans in launching the Church Missionary Society (1799). Reaching the shores of America, this wave of evangelical Calvinism then spawned the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1810) and the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination (1814), the precursor to the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest missionary-sending organization in the world.

Jesus Is Worthy

Fuller’s The Gospel Worthy also holds a word for us. A high view of God’s sovereignty does not diminish evangelism and missions. Rather, it produces the opposite effect. Because the gospel is worthy of all acceptation, because all who hear it are duty bound to respond in faith, and because the Spirit ultimately brings about obedience to the truth, we can have the confidence and the courage to proclaim the gospel to our neighbors and among the nations. Jesus is worthy of all worship. His glory, our joy, and the good of all peoples “call loudly for every possible exertion to introduce the gospel among them.”19