The thrust of seculariztion is not to destroy religion but to make it irrelevant.^[1] The individual's faith is to be a private matter that has no bearing on public actions. This is a shaky position though. In fact, it is impossible to maintain. Once faith, any faith, is purely private, then the implication is that faith is devoid of objective truth and irrelevant. Religious people then are irrelevant as well, because they cling to something that "society" has deemed passe and untrue.

This played out in a startling at a UCLA student government meeting:

It seemed like routine business for the student council at the University of California, Los Angeles: confirming the nomination of Rachel Beyda, a second-year economics major who wants to be a lawyer someday, to the council’s Judicial Board.

Until it came time for questions.

“Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,” Fabienne Roth, a member of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, began, looking at Ms. Beyda at the other end of the room, “how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”

For the next 40 minutes, after Ms. Beyda was dispatched from the room, the council tangled in a debate about whether her faith and affiliation with Jewish organizations, including her sorority and Hillel, a popular student group, meant she would be biased in dealing with sensitive governance questions that come before the board, which is the campus equivalent of the Supreme Court.^[2]

Unbelievable.

This, I believe, was spoken at the Berlin Congress:

Let us never forget that we who stand in the historic stream of Christianity really believe that false doctrine, at those critical points where false doctrine is heresy, is not a small thing. If we do not make clear by word and practice our position for truth as truth and against false doctrine, we are building a wall between the next generation and the gospel. And twenty years from now, men will point their finger back at us and say of us, this is the result of the flow of history.

Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla–the people who develop the web browser Firefox, was forced to step down today. What did he do? Well, he advocated traditional marriage and gave money to organizations that pushed it in recent California referendums. I don't know his background or spiritual beliefs, but I do know that he paid a high price for sticking with his convictions.

Make no mistake, those holding the position that marriage can only be between one man and one woman are on the outs. We are not only in the minority, but we are becoming a pariah. We will not be tolerated.

What does this mean for us? I don't know, but we must believe the Bible and follow Jesus regardless of the cost.

Update (2014-04-03 6:11pm): I have to include this thought from Andrew Sullivan, a noted writer who is himself homosexual:

If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

Sullivan's whole article.

Watch this seven minute video explaining the situation that a Christian florist in Washington has found herself in after refusing to provide flowers to a same-sex "marriage" ceremony.

She doesn't not seem to be uncharitable or ungracious–merely principled. I appreciated her attitude and view on the situation.

As gospel-believeing and Bible-believing Christianity becomes a disdained minority, we must learn the proper way to function. It will not be through fighting, anger, and harsh words. By the way, it won't be through compromise either.

The Barronelle Stutzman Story

Update (2014-03-13 - 12:35 PM): Yikes, I forgot to include my sources. The video was linked to by Denny Burk.

Letters from ex-evangelical, ex-fundamentalists, ex-whatever-is-traditional are always popular. In light of the changing culture on marriage, a particularly interesting one was posted on The American Conservative last week. The letter writer begins with a fair statement that sets the tone for the rest of the piece:

My leaving was much more about what the gay rights issues revealed about that faith than it was about the actual issue of gays and their right to marry.

The author then paints a fair representation of a generic, mainstream, Gospel believing church. It was not filled with bitterness like so many other accounts. But that doesn't mean that it was accurate. The writer reveals his opinion about his childhood church with this line:

Instead of an intellectual tradition, it is a church built on emotion. Every sermon is a revival stump speech about the evils of the world and the need for salvation.

I know what some of you are thinking. My church doesn't overemphasize emotion. He couldn't be talking about us. Well, he is. The author goes on clearly to lambast preaching the Bible without the context of 2000 years of church history. He wanted historical theology. He doesn't care how expositional you or your pastor is. He wants more. He wants Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Pope John Paul II, Bavnick, Kuyper, and Barth.

Next time, we will think about what his church could have done differently in reaching. Then we will look at his comments regarding homosexuality and young people. He has a unique perspective that we must consider. Some accurate; some inaccurate. Before then though, we have to come to terms with this 'ex'-Christian.

Biblical Standard

Let's not mess around here. There are lessons to be learned from the writer's situation, but the Bible is clear here:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
-1 John 2:19

This isn't an issue of backsliding and returning to the Lord later. This individual has repudiated the Gospel and the Word of God. We will see next time that maybe the writer could have been reached with Gospel in a more effective way than their church tried, but don't forget, they needed and still need to be saved. Leaving gospel-believing churches and embracing a modern worldview shouldn't be surprising when they never were saved to begin with.

Too often we have let those who don't believe the Bible set the agenda for the conversation. The Bible reveals how the world really is. The Bible sets the framework. We let those who reject the grace of God and reject Jesus tell us what is wrong with the truth that God has revealed.

The problem is not that the Bible makes an exclusive claim regarding Jesus being the only way to God. The problem is not that the Bible does not endorse a multiple choice approach to interpretation (though to be fair, some passages are harder than others). The problem is not that the Bible is antiquated and out of touch with modern society.

It has always been out of touch with human society, because we are the problem.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
-Jeremiah 17:9

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
-Romans 3:10-12

Churches are communities. At least, they are supposed to be. Every community has a something that ties the members together. In a neighborhood, it is geographical location. Before the internet, that was just about the prerequisite to every community. Relationships could traverse distances through phone calls or letters, but those relationships were always 1-to-1, not a group. The internet has changed this somewhat. Now no matter how obscure your interest you can find people somewhere in the world that share it.

The church is a local community. To be clear, each church is an individual community. Yes, churches of like faith ought cooperate in the work of the ministry. Yes, one day there will be but one church as we are all gathered together in the presence of the Lord (Hebrews 12:22-23). Until that day, our focus is centered on our local congregation.

I fear that we often confuse what draws us together in a church as a community of believers. It ought be Jesus Christ. Yet too often we allow other issues and interests to rise to such a level that we raise the bar of entry. This plays itself out in a hundred different ways from "politely" ignoring to outright disrespect those who don't fit the mold. The country bumpkin may be ostracized for being backwards in an upscale urban or suburban congregation, while city slicker is mocked in the rural church. North and South. Rich and poor. Ethnicity. Education. The list can go on and on.

Christ must be the central focus of our life and our church life. We can have hobbies and interests, but they must pale in comparison to him. We must be willing to be uncomfortable to reach those that need Christ. We must be willing to step out of our comfort zone to help those grow who love Jesus but are different than us.

Tomorrow: how has this cost our churches many of our young people as we live in an increasingly hostile world.

Denny Burk made some excellent points about the situation at the Grammys. What I appreciated most about his approach is that he did not just deal with the surface shock value. That's obvious. Burk centers on the one point that Macklemore got right:

What struck me about the performance, however, was not what Macklemore got wrong but the one thing that he got ironically right. In one line from “same love,” Macklemore says this:

Whatever god you believe in
We come from the same one

This statement is profoundly true, although Macklemore is probably not aware of its true implication. We all really do come from one creator God.

He drives it home in his concluding paragraph:

In the wake of the Grammys, the big question is not what you thought of Macklemore. The big question is which God you will believe in. The false god of “same love,” or the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? Which one will you choose?

Macklemore acknowledged a fundamental principle that flies in the face of what modern relativism holds. Belief does not change reality. Sincerity is not enough.

Read the whole thing here.

David Murray writes a short post linking to an incredible video:

For me, the high point of the video occurs around 2.55 where Sagan seems to experience and express Psalm 8 humility: “It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”

However, I was especially stunned by his desperate words around the 2.20 mark: ”In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

I've rarely read or heard anything more poignant than Sagan's words. The famous astronomer, astrophysicist, and cosmologist understood so well communicated our insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe. Yet, God created man in His image and, though marred by the fall, we all bear that image including Carl Sagan. Sagan knows that there must be purpose. He begs for us to lead lives of significance and concern for one another.

But without a Creator, Redeemer, Savior, his pleas have no foundation. A man of extreme science makes a leap to moralism that has no underpinnings without the God of the Bible. The world needs Jesus. The world cries out for Jesus. Our lives as Christian must be dedicated to telling all we can about Him whom they hope exist. They need to know that He does.

Jesus maintained the tension of present pain and future glory without falling into our trite sayings (see last post). It is humbling to read how Christ approached life. We all err when it comes to the balance between truth and love. My natural state is to emphasize truth and come across as heartless or dispassionate. Others exhibit so much heart that they seem to disregard all truth. Christ did neither.

Jesus, the Word, was and is love. Notice John's phrasing in I John 4:8:

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

Again in verse 16 of the same chapter:

And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

He does not say that God is loving. He is love. I have not done a thorough study of this yet, but this distinction is significant. The only other case of this usage that I have found is uniquely connected. Christ, the friend of sinners, pulled no punches when it came to truth. He maintained the tension which makes sense considering that the Spirit of God is truth (I John 5:6) and is also the Spirit of Christ. (I Pet. 1:11 and Rom. 8:9)(See #1.)

Jesus not only maintained the tension between truth and love, but He demonstrated the cost of sin in His preaching (and of course supremely on the cross), while reminding us of a brighter day when all things would be made new. It is this unchecked honesty that is so beautiful. He never belittles one who is suffering. He does not cast aside the downtrodden. Nor does He excuse sin. He does not assume a pleasantly perfect Christian life, but He presents one that is difficult, costly, and often filled with pain. Yet He promises to not only be with us in the dark nights, but because of what He did so many years ago, He is going to fix everything.

We must be just as honest about the world and the truth about life as Jesus was.

See part one.
See part two.

1. I did not include John 14:6, because Christ is speaking about His role and relationship between us and the Father, not His eternal and unchanging nature.

Most of us fall into a routine of using trite sayings to answer difficult situations. They are often true--at least partly so--, but we miss the pathos of life in recycling something we saw in a church bulletin or heard a special speaker say. We should not be afraid to weep with those who weep. Feel the deep pain and brokenness that has entered the world through sin. Christ was not afraid to when He wept at Lazarus' graveside. He showed a visceral, yet not carnal anger at the high cost of sin and the despair of unbelief.(see #1 below)

It is in that honest acknowledgement of pain that the glory of the Gospel then breaks through as sunrise. Jesus did not die just to get me out of hell–while that is wonderful. His sacrifice was to fix everything. His death, burial, and resurrection secure not just a home in heaven but meaning. The hurt that I go through is not for nothing. Christ will use it for my good and His glory. And He will fix it.

See part one.

1. John 11 relates the circumstances of Lazarus' death and resurrection. The word groaned directly relates to anger in its 1st century use. I plan some day to look at that passage in more detail.

This is a brilliant piece that recognizes that life is more complicated than we generally think. We make more excuses for sin than we realize. We compartmentalize our failings into an explainable category while we attack others for the morally equivalent failing.

Read the whole post here, but I couldn't help but post Tim Challies' conclusion:

The second glance logic assumes that we are going through life in a morally-neutral or morally-upright posture so that there is really no connection between the first glance and the second. The reality is, though, that the second glance has often already been decided long before the first.

Life hurts. Yet we try to deny this fact. Not outright denials, but in hushed undertones. Christian art often is rightly panned for being cloy or trite. It is all too commonly a sickeningly sweet look at life the way it never was. We use cute clichés, or even look at someone suffering, and much like the 1st century Jewish culture, wonder what on earth did they do to deserve all that. The secular world is no better. Secular art regularly exceeds all bounds of decency. It looks for answers in all the wrong places. It asks the wrong questions. And often, it just avoids the tough questions that undermine its own position. We can either live in the absurd (we'll look at that in a later post), or we can peer at the world through the Christian worldview that alone can make sense of the suffering and grant hope.

The secular world sees pain. There is no doubt about that. It is a part of the human condition. Politics, art, literature, and popular media all try to answer two questions:

1. The why--why does it exist?
2. The how--how do we stop or alleviate it?

In government, those on the left attribute our problems to too little government and too many abuses by the privileged. Those of the right see that there is too much government and not enough freedom for the individual in general and the entrepreneur specifically. Who is right? While I assuredly lean one direction, both misread society. The liberal progressive sees people as children needing a strong state to protect and direct. The libertarian conservative eyes government with deep suspicion and trusts people with responsibility. Both fail to take into account the Christian concepts of individual liberty, total depravity, and common grace.

I thought this was good and encouraging. First, I didn't know Jim Elliot had a brother. Second, this is a great look at being consistent and letting God handle the results. I thought the conclusion was great:

In the kingdom of God, there is a great need for streaking meteors, but most of us won’t be that. We will instead be faint stars—husbands and fathers, wives and mothers. We will be accountants and teachers, business people, and students. We will go through life, day after day, doing very much the same thing tomorrow that we did today.

The important thing for us to remember is that we are needed. There is a great need for people willing to chase the little donkeys of life, not because it’s exciting but because they believe in the constant presence and purpose of God. There is a great need for people willing to stand in the midst of the boring, convinced that there is no such thing as ordinary when you follow an extraordinary God.

Rise and stand. Then tomorrow, do it again.

Read the whole interview here.