There is only one rabbit worth chasing: God himself. He is the only rabbit who can be caught and, at the same time, remain elusive. In Christ, you can catch God.[i] And yet, because he is infinite, you will never really catch him. Once you’ve tasted the true presence of God, you should know that nothing else will ever satisfy the way he can.

Bob Buford tells a story about dog races in his book Finishing Well that rattled my heart when I first read it and continues to shake me:
“One of my favorite stories is about the dog races in Florida. They train these dogs to chase an electric rabbit, and one night the rabbit broke down, and the dogs caught it. But they didn’t know what to do with it. They were just leaping around, yelping and biting one another, totally confused about what was happening. I think that’s a picture of what happens to all sorts of people who catch the rabbit in their life. Whether its wealth or fame or beauty or a bigger house or whatever, the prize isn’t what they thought it would be. And when they finally get it, they don’t know what to do with their lives.”
What rabbits have you caught in your life? I’ve caught a lot of rabbits in my life. And, like the dogs, they usually hang lifeless in my jaws once caught.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
The coming months will be fascinating, and I suspect rather depressing, to watch. When it comes to abortion, especially after Dobbs, Christians face a choice of social respectability or religious fidelity. And the Christian commentariat already seems divided on which way to go.

The Dobbs decision has revealed fault lines in American Christianity. These fault lines lay just below the surface for a long while, but are now clearly exposed. As long as abortion was legal by Supreme Court decree, it was possible to identify as pro-life but keep that commitment at the level of theory; one could hold pro-life views but not be perceived as a threat. All that has now changed. To identify as pro-life post-Dobbs is not simply to hold an opinion many regard as wrong; it is to be part of an act of political and social “oppression.” And predictably, many Christians are feeling the need to “nuance” their relationship to the overturning of Roe.
The National Catholic Reporter has excelled itself in this regard. The strangest argument in its pages was made by Fr. Thomas Reese. He studiously avoided any expression of gratitude for the decision, and said it is a result of America’s domination by big corporations. The response of big business to Dobbs would seem to indicate his case is, to put it charitably, a little overstated.
Then, in an article attributed to “editorial staff,” the Reporter revealed the real reason for its nuance about Dobbs: Donald Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who made it possible, and Trump was “arguably the most corrupt and morally degenerate president in history.” That claim may or may not be true—the competition for the title is a little stronger than the Reporter acknowledges—but the argument is specious at best. As to the article’s later assertion that “women will die without Roe’s protection,” one wonders whether the editorial staff of this prominent Catholic magazine are as familiar with their own church’s teaching on life and personhood as they are with Twitter (which has clearly had a baneful effect on otherwise intelligent people’s ability to construct an argument). It would seem not. By the standards of Catholic teaching, women have been dying by the millions for decades thanks to Roe.
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This time the fight is not as much over Scripture’s inerrancy as it is over its sufficiency. The question is whether Scripture ought to be regarded as a comprehensive guide for the Christian life, the place where our inquiry starts and ends; or is it instead a mere touchpoint to be reinterpreted and mediated through the thick lenses of contemporary sensibilities? Conservative evangelicals claim to believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. But that belief is too often held in only a theoretical way. Many Baptist leaders these days actually appear embarrassed by how the Bible applies to our modern debates.

Southern Baptists, like most conservative evangelicals, are distinguished by the things we say we believe about the Scriptures. We call ourselves “People of the Book.” That old-time phrase carries with it certain theological commitments, but it also describes our inclinations. When presented with pressing questions, our first instinct is, we say, to open our Bibles. To go to the Book.
This certainly proved to be the case during the major twentieth-century rift in American Protestantism. Southern Baptists emerged squarely on the conservative side of the fight between theological liberalism and orthodoxy, one that was fought primarily on the battleground of whether Scripture is inerrant. Almost entirely alone among the major denominations, Southern Baptists waged a successful campaign in the 1970s and ’80s to beat back the liberal theological incursions into their institutions. Thus, America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), with all its 180-year history, 47,000 churches, and 14 million members, remains conservative and evangelical to this day. At least in theory.
However, a new rift is developing within the SBC, as it is in other conservative evangelical denominations. This time the fight is not as much over Scripture’s inerrancy as it is over its sufficiency. The question is whether Scripture ought to be regarded as a comprehensive guide for the Christian life, the place where our inquiry starts and ends; or is it instead a mere touchpoint to be reinterpreted and mediated through the thick lenses of contemporary sensibilities? Conservative evangelicals claim to believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. But that belief is too often held in only a theoretical way. Many Baptist leaders these days actually appear embarrassed by how the Bible applies to our modern debates.
A genuine, practical commitment to sufficiency regards Scripture as providing a sufficient basis for living a godly Christian life, both for an individual and for ordering and ruling the life of the church. A corollary of this belief is that Scripture’s meaning is plain and accessible to any Christian.
The idea that Scripture is sufficient should function as an anchor for us during times of cultural convulsion. Ordinary believers should be hearing from their pastors and Christian leaders that, come what may and despite what the world says, they can be confident that we have in the Scriptures a clear word from God on how we should live. As a result, we can know what the right and good paths are, even if those paths put us significantly out of step with broader social mores.
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