Written by Daniel P. Miller |
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Set your eyes on eternity. This is not a means of ignoring reality, but the only way of truly facing it. There is a day when all the pain you suffer from the presence of sin and Satan will vanish. Focus more on your future accounting before Christ than on those who fail you on earth. Above all, trust in the Lord who promises never to leave or forsake his children (Heb. 13:5). Local churches hurt people. Thankfully, the Lord of the church will one day wipe away every tear, including yours.

Dear Brother or Sister,
Local churches hurt people. People hurt people, of course, but since churches are people, churches have the capacity to inflict severe relational pain.
By God’s grace the reverse is also true. The local church is designed by Christ to function as a spring of encouragement and joy to its members. I hope that you have experienced the blessing of walking in fellowship with a body of believers that Jesus used, or is now using, to strengthen your faith and envelop you in covenantal love.
But despite Christ’s gracious provision, you may find yourself experiencing heartache in the context of a church for which Jesus died. Ironic, isn’t it? By grace alone the risen Christ is gathering out of the nations a people for his name (Acts 2:38–39). He forms us into a new humanity, uniting us to himself (Eph. 2:11–22; Gal. 2:20). We are adopted as his children and chosen as his holy bride (Rom. 8:14–17; Eph. 5:23–32; Rev. 19:6–8). He sovereignly places us in the body to complete one another (1 Cor. 12:12–27). How ironic, then, that relating to God’s people can result in such deep heartache.
Ironic, but not mysterious. The closer the human relationship, the more pain one suffers when that relationship falters. We routinely witness this in families. It’s why divorce, child rebellion, family feuds, neglect, and the like are such bitter heartaches. The closer the relationship, the greater the potential not only for joy but also for sorrow.
In the spiritual family of a local church, such heartache often stems from personal offense—one member wrongs another. At other times the problem is more corporate in nature—the departure of a leader, a change in policy, an altered ministry direction that seems to betray much of what you once loved about your church, and the like.
It’s not hard to identify the source of the pain we suffer in the context of a body of believers. It’s considerably harder to respond to that pain in God-honoring ways.
Don’t breeze past that “God-honoring” bit. Expressive Individualism programs us to feel our pain while avoiding hard questions about our responses to it. Hurt feelings are as natural as shivering from cold on a wintry day, we are assured by our therapeutic world. Therefore, how I feel about someone’s ill treatment of me or how I feel about a hurtful ministry change becomes not only my responsibility to own but everyone else’s obligation to affirm.
The Bible does not counsel us in this direction. Rather, it calls us to respond to such pain with a devotion to love others and glorify Christ in his church. This means that despite how terribly I may feel, Christ’s renown remains of supreme importance. Therefore my affections for his honor in the assembly must never fall below affections for my own. If they do I am likely to cause as much damage in the future as I’ve suffered in the past.
Our Redeemer is never surprised by sin, nor has he ever promised us a church that’s free of it. Every church family hurts people one way or another. What the Lord has done is to arm us with wise, Christ-honoring habits of response. While not an exhaustive list, consider the following disciplines.
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Adoption is an accomplishment of redemption. It is not an accomplishment of creation. The very act of adoption assumes we were previously in a state of alienation. Being born did not somehow put us in better standing with God. The scripture says: “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5); and, “we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3).

Justification is not the gospel in its entirety. It was not enough for God to only justify us in Christ. He has also insisted on adopting us in Christ: “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ,…” (Eph. 1:5). The final purpose of divine election has always been relational not merely judicial.
Think of it this way. In justification God comes to us as Judge. He removes our criminal status before Him by declaring us not guilty in Christ. But in adoption God comes to us not as Judge but as Father.
What then is adoption? “Adoption is an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory.” (Q. 74, Westminster Larger Catechism)
If justification is the act of God’s free grace which removes our condemnation, then adoption is the act of God’s free grace which removes our alienation.
In justification we receive the donation of righteousness. In adoption we receive the donation of family love: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).
As David Garner wisely said, a not guilty verdict by the Almighty Judge does not make a criminal a son. But adoption does. Adoption legally puts us in the bonds of the family where God obligates himself to be our forever Father. He will pity us, protect us, provide for us, even chasten us, indulge us, and keep a glorious inheritance for us, bringing us to it without fail.
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If you start with the oppressor-oppressed worldview and then add the proceduralism of the HR mindset, you end up with the modern organizational leader, exemplified by the elite university president. They don’t have the moral authority to lead or educate the “children without chests.” The best they can do is establish a new policy, such as “Calling for the killing of Jews violates the university’s code of conduct,” and then wait for HR to resolve the situation. Christians can offer a better way. We can be salt and light (Matt. 5:13–16) by committing to two related tasks—exemplifying moral leadership and making men and women “with chests,” that is, helping them develop the emotional heart needed to act morally and be fully human.

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?”
That was the question presented to the presidents of three elite universities—Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania—in a recent congressional hearing. Each of the three women took turns answering the question but their responses were the same: it would depend on the circumstances and conduct. None of them was willing to directly say students calling for genocide of Jewish people would violate their school’s code of conduct.
Most congressional hearings pass without much notice, but the backlash to this event was swift and angry. School alumni, politicians, and business leaders have called for the immediate resignation or expulsion of these university presidents. “Why has antisemitism exploded on campus and around the world?” asked Bill Ackman, a Harvard grad and billionaire hedge fund manager. “Because of leaders like Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth who believe genocide depends on the context.”
Rule by HR
How we should interpret speech often does depend on the context surrounding the speech. That principle applies not only to the speech of students on campuses but also to the speech of university presidents testifying before Congress.
What was their context? In a word, proceduralism. Proceduralism “justifies rules, decisions, or institutions by reference to a valid process, as opposed to their being morally correct according to a substantive account of justice or goodness.” As economics professor Tyler Cowen says, “Their entire testimony is ruled by their lawyers, by their fear that their universities might be sued, and their need to placate internal interest groups.” And as Katherine Boyle noted, “This is Rule by HR Department and it gets dark very fast.”
“Rule by HR Department” is an apt phrase to describe a type of proceduralism where an organization—a business, college, or even religious denomination—is excessively governed by its human resources (HR) policies and procedures to the point that these policies overshadow other considerations. While HR departments play a crucial role, an overemphasis on HR-style processes can lead an organization to forget the purpose is to serve people.
This was a problem for these university presidents, who seemed to have misunderstood why they were being called to testify. They thought their role was to justify their school’s “valid process.” They were being called before an HR proxy (the House Committee on Education and the Workforce) and proceeded to give the type of response one gives to HR in such situations: a defense of one’s actions based on compliance with written policies.
In that sense, from an HR mindset, their answers were likely to be legally and technically correct. What they overlooked, of course, were the people—their Jewish students who feel threatened and their students who are promoting genocide.
HR Mindset vs. Moral Leadership
In her clarification video, University of Pennsylvania president M. Elizabeth Magill talked about the mass genocide of Jews and said, “In my view, [a call for genocide] would be intimidation and harassment.” Yet instead of calling out the students who were making pro-genocide statements, she shifted back into HR mode. She said that because of signs of hate across college campuses and throughout the world, the university must “initiate a serious and careful look at [their] policies.”
While a policy change may be necessary, her response leaves the most pressing questions unaddressed: Why are there so many antisemites on your campus in the first place? Did they come as hateful freshmen, or were they radicalized at college? And how are students spending years at your school and yet still comfortable calling for genocide on campus?
It’s understandable why these university presidents were caught off guard. They were appointed to their positions to be administrators, to ensure the college complies with the rules, both the written policies of the school and the unwritten expectations of their students. Yet what they were being asked to do, perhaps for the first time in their careers, was to be moral leaders.
Moral leadership can be defined as the ability of a leader to attract others by virtuous character and lead them toward a specific objective based on commonly shared moral principles. For almost a century, such moral leadership hasn’t been a requirement in most organizations, whether in business, government, or academia. Indeed, aside from a few exceptions—such as pastor or football coach—it’s rarely the expected form for a leadership role. The most organizations expect today is for their leaders to adhere to the same basic standard of ethics as the people they lead.
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