Written by Robert A. J. Gagnon |
Monday, February 5, 2024
Begg ignores the scriptural counsel regarding stumbling others, in addition to ignoring scriptural counsel against being present at an event at which God forbids attendance. The Christian attending the “gay” or “trans” so-called wedding would need to notify publicly all present at the gathering, not just the family member getting married, that he or she regards the wedding as an unholy alliance abhorrent to God. This fits Paul’s description at the end of 1 Cor 10 of what to do when a believer is at the home of an unbeliever and the host announces that the meat being served is “sacred sacrificial meat” coming from the temple. One must stop eating, for the sake both of Gentile unbelievers who might construe from your eating that you honor the god, and for the sake of any “weak” Christians or non-Christian Jews at the table whose conscience indicates that the eating of idol meat constitutes idol worship.

Rev. Alistair Begg has doubled down on his recommendation to a grandmother that she attend her grandchild’s “gay” or “trans” wedding (so long as the grandchild getting “married” knows of her disagreement).* “They want me to repent? … I’m not ready to repent of this. I don’t have to.”
*Note that in the Sept. broadcast he referred to a grandmother’s “grandson”; here he refers to a grandmother’s “granddaughter.” Which is it?
1. Begg’s Ad Hominem Attack of Critics
While completely (and I mean completely) ignoring the array of scriptural arguments against his position, Begg compares all his critics to Pharisaic “separatists” who refuse to eat with sinners or have any association with them at all. He likens them to the self-righteous older brother who doesn’t understand grace in the parable of the prodigal (lost) son, and to the priest and Levite who pass by the man lying half-dead by the side of the road in the parable of the good Samaritan.
Yet none of his chief critics from the academy are advocating complete separation from those engaged in serial, unrepentant egregious sin. In my chapter on Jesus in *The Bible and Homosexual Practice* I talk at length about Jesus’ positive example of an aggressive outreach to the lost. But there is no line (straight or crooked) from that example provided by Jesus to what Begg is recommending.
He attacks all those who criticize him as the “product of American fundamentalism,” which he distinguishes proudly from his own pedigree as a “product of British evangelicalism.” Unlike them, “I come from a world in which it is possible for people to grasp the fact that there are actually nuances in things.” He does all this in a fatherly voice, but the ad hominem content is quite offensive, and it is designed to distract from the fact that it is ironically Begg himself who cannot see the nuances of Jesus’ ministry.
2. Begg’s Ironic Lack of Nuance in Describing Jesus’ Outreach to Sinners
What kind of nuance am I talking about? The failure to recognize that there is a world of difference between Jesus fraternizing with sexual sinners and exploitative tax collectors who expressed interest in his message, on the one hand, and Jesus attending a ritual celebration either of a tax collectors’ economic exploitation or of a sexual sinner’s grossly immoral and unnatural sexual union, who express no interest in his message, on the other hand.
There is no way that Jesus would have attended such ritualized celebrations of abominations to God, or encouraged his followers to do so, irrespective of whether his disciples alerted those to whom the ritual was directed of their disapproval. That Begg is incapable of such a nuanced scriptural understanding is certainly concerning.
3. Begg’s Misapplication of the Parable of the Prodigal Son
Begg’s proof text in his radio talk for justifying his advice to go to a “gay” or “trans” wedding was Luke 15, with a focus on the parable of the prodigal (lost) son. Begg appears confused in his application of this text. The older son refused to attend a celebration of the younger brother’s penitent return from a dissolute and immoral life. That was the problem with the older brother, not that refused to a attend a ritual celebration of a permanent commitment to a dissolute and immoral life. There is a huge difference between the two types of celebration (here again, nuance). 
Moreover, while the father ran out to greet his returning penitent son (return in Jewish and Christian thought is a metaphor for repentance), he certainly wouldn’t have attended a ritual celebration memorializing his son’s commitment to continue to live lifelong in wastefulness and immorality.
A better text that Begg might have chosen than the lost son parable is the Aqedah (“Binding”) of Isaac in Genesis 22, where God taught Abraham not to make an idol even of his “only son,” the son of the promise. We can’t make holding on to a family member who is memorializing what the writers of Scripture (and Jesus) deem to be egregious immorality the most important thing, even if we couch it in terms of staying in evangelistic contact.
4. Begg’s Narrow, Myopic Perspective
Begg says about the advice that he gave the grandmother: “All I was thinking about was, How can I help this grandmother not lose her granddaughter?”
He should have been thinking other things, like:
How can I help this grandmother not to offend God by being present at such a ritual celebration of an evil that God finds particularly detestable? How can I prevent her from violating the united witness and counsel of Scripture?
How can I persuade her, by her actions, not to speak affirmation to behavior that can get her grandchild excluded from God’s kingdom? Am I recommending that she do something that will stumble others by her actions, leading them to affirm such immorality?
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Written by A.J. Melnick |
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Harvard today is at a crossroads.  What it does next will impact the rest of American higher education, the nation, and the world in many ways. President Bacow has announced that he is stepping down in June.  A presidential search committee is looking for a successor.  Much is at stake.

Harvard University has consistently ranked #1 in many global assessments of the world’s top universities. For generations it has sought—with the aid of a massive endowment—to be ‘the best in the world’ in as many fields as possible. Former Harvard College Dean Harry R. Lewis once noted that Harvard ”holds, in the public imagination, a distinctive pre-eminence.” True, but Harvard today has lost its way.
When Lewis was dean he said he once had had some difficulty in finding a university mission statement. He needed one in order to certify Harvard’s participation in the N.C.A.A. intercollegiate athletic program. “It turned out,” he wrote at the time, “that for 360 years Harvard College had never had a mission statement.” Lewis finally settled on Harvard’s Charter of 1650, a fundamental document in which Harvard committed itself “to the education of the English and Indian youth of this country, in knowledge and godliness….”
Even though Harvard long ago jettisoned the “godliness” portion of that document, the Charter of 1650 is more or less still in legal force today. Nevertheless, modern secular Harvard has always tried to keep its Puritan legacy at arm’s length. This was exemplified in 2017, when the university even held a contest to erase the Puritans from the former 1836 alma mater, “Fair Harvard,” expunging the words, “Till the stock of the Puritans die.”
Earlier, in 2007, the university barely acknowledged the 400th anniversary of the 1607 birth of its namesake, John Harvard, who willed half his fortune and library of around 400 volumes to the young college. We don’t know much about John Harvard (the famous statue in Harvard Yard is merely a representation). But one thing we do know is that he was a strong Christian. Given the titles in his library, we also know that he had a strong intellectual bent. He was clearly a man of vision and generosity. The university might at least have celebrated those qualities. But about all that Harvard University could officially muster at the time to mark the 400th anniversary of John Harvard’s birth was a display of copies of his books (all of John Harvard’s original library was lost in a fire in 1764), except for a 1634 edition of a book by John Downame, appropriately titled, The Christian Warfare against the Devil, World and Flesh.
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Is the word defined by the “winsomer” or the “winsomee”? And Christians, well-meaning Christians, who want to be viewed as winsome in the public square, and are reading through their notes carefully before they go up to the public podium, are finding that their problem is not in their delivery, it’s not in their word choice, it’s not even in their body language. No, it’s in their actual beliefs. The problem is that the Christian perspective on marriage is viewed as hateful. And our winsomeness is being viewed as a mask, a get-out-of-jail-free card for ideas that should be banged up in solitary confinement.
 
So here’s me choosing my Christian Word Of The Year.
Drum roll please, “The Christian word of the year is WINSOME!” Taa-dah!
That’s right, winsome! It’s everywhere you look at the moment. So please step forward “winsome” and take a bow. You’ve been over-used, over-realised, under-appreciated, over-stated, undered and overed, and whatever else can happen to a poor old lonesome winsome word in these topsy turvy times.
The big take away for 2022 is how Christians can engage in the public square in a way that is winsome. And if that is even possible. And of course the big question: Is winsome a strategy or a stance? We haven’t decided yet. We haven’t decided what winsome actually means. Does it mean speaking the truth in love? And when we’re told that certain truths that Christians hold can’t be loving in the first place, then we’re being told that we’re masking hate in love language. Where does winsome land in all of that?
As the culture wars roll on, (and on and on) and Christians find themselves in the firing line on ethical matters, is winsome is our ticket out of this? That’s a great question to ask, if only we could decide what winsome actually looks like.
So exhibit A was a great article I read in the New York Times last week by an orthodox Anglican priest in the US, Tish Harrison Warren, who called for respect from both sides of the marriage debate in the US. It was a thoughtful piece from a woman who is very clear about her view that marriage is between a man and a woman, God ordained, and unchangeable in bedrock definition irrespective of government intervention.
Yet at the same time she explored that because the law of the land has changed the definition of marriage legally, then both sides in this issue must find a way to get along with living side by side and respect each other’s differences. Without that ability then it’s going to be tricky to live in the same nation, let alone suburb, with those we deeply disagree with.
She told the story of her gay friend and his “husband” and her hope that he would support her religious school’s right to promote its view of marriage without fear of funding loss, just as she recognised but did not agree with him. He laughed and said, yes. I thought it was a useful article given the times we live in.
Tish Harrison Warren seems an impressive woman. As an egalitarian in the church she even recognises and affirms complementarians and refuses the trope (sadly even found increasingly among brothers and sisters in Christ) that it’s simply a mask for patriarchy. She states this:
Pluralism is not the same as relativism — we don’t have to pretend that there is no right or wrong or that beliefs don’t matter. It is instead a commitment to form a society where individuals and groups who hold profoundly different and mutually opposed beliefs are welcome at the table of public life. It is rooted in love of neighbour and asks us to extend the same freedoms to others that we ourselves want to enjoy. Without a commitment to pluralism, we are left with a society that either forces conformity or splinters and falls apart.
It was a totally winsome article from a woman who holds to a biblical orthodox view of marriage, but who is not looking for some sort of Christian nationalism that will enforce that view on everyone else. She’s nothing if not a realist. And nothing if not winsome.
And what was the response in the comments section of The New York Times? She was shredded. Absolutely shredded. Here I was thinking, “Wow, that’s the type of response we should be able to articulate, and that’s the way we should articulate it” and the general tenor of the comments was along the lines of “bigot, hypocrite, liar, abuser”, etc, etc, etc, including “equivalent of Jim Crow racist”.
Now granted it is The New York Times, which wouldn’t recognised a Hunter Biden laptop if it tripped over it. But winsome went right to the source, with a piece that was as Winsome McWinsomeface as you could get, and still the vast bulk of well over one thousand comments were in the “shred” category.
Which is all a way of saying, if we’re going to have a conversation around winsome (and something tells me it may well be word of the year for Christians in 2023, cos this debate is only getting started), then we’d better have a clear understanding of what we mean by winsome. And by that I mean determining who gets to define whether we are being winsome or not.
That’s the point isn’t it? Is the word defined by the “winsomer” or the “winsomee”? And Christians, well-meaning Christians, who want to be viewed as winsome in the public square, and are reading through their notes carefully before they go up to the public podium, are finding that their problem is not in their delivery, it’s not in their word choice, it’s not even in their body language. No, it’s in their actual beliefs.
The problem is that the Christian perspective on marriage is viewed as hateful. And our winsomeness is being viewed as a mask, a get-out-of-jail-free card for ideas that should be banged up in solitary confinement. That’s the problem right there. And the more words you say, words like “love”, “tolerance”, “acceptance”, “pluralism” are simply seen as special pleading. They are being used by the losers in the culture war to try and carve out a city of refuge to which they can flee for safety.
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