January 27, 2009: "Wait, Seriously?"
I received an eloquent, thoughtful and earnest response to last week's essay (January 20, "A Life Incongruent With Who You Are"), and thought that it merited a detailed reply. The response is in italics below; my reply in ordinary font.
Wait, seriously? How are these two things on anything close to the same level? Your description of "blayness" leads me to believe that you think people only value sexual relationships, and that in a moral vacuum, so would you.
I regret having led to you to believe that I think people only value sexual relationships. I really don't believe that. But as I re-read my essay, I realize you raise a good point. Nowhere in speaking of "attraction" do I make it plain that I was only considering physical attraction. The word "physical" just never made it to the page. But I was not denying the value of other attractions so much as I was simply not considering them. So let me say here that I do in fact acknowledge and celebrate - moral vacuum or no - many other kinds of attraction that enable and enliven a relationship. When I spoke, for example, of Farrah Fawcett Majors being more appealing to me when I was 11 than girls my own age, I was only referring to her body. For the really important things like friendship and conversation and fun and help and arguing and fighting and reconciling, even I, back then, would have much preferred my peers. Farrah would have bored me in all those things, even as I would have bored and annoyed her in every conceivable way.
I should clarify too that when I said that a man who stays faithful to his wife for 60 years is living in denial, I only meant the physical denial of his blayness. Presumably (unless the poor man is very unlucky), he would not also have to live in denial of his social, familial, companionable and other instincts.
This might come as a surprise, but most nonreligious people aren't hedonists because we believe that loving, committed relationships are more important than reckless sexuality.
No, no, it doesn't surprise me at all! The majority of people I've known all my life are nonreligious, and they aren't hedonists, and they indeed believe that loving, committed relationships are more important than reckless sexuality. What in the world did I say to make you think this would surprise me? For the record, I have known atheists who practiced a kind of self-denial so strong it struck me as ascetic and prudish, and I have known Christians who indulged their instincts for pleasure in ways that cruelly disregarded other people. My essay said nothing about religious versus non-religious people. The contrast was between decent and indulgent people. I believe the decent ones, religious or not, practice self-denial precisely because they value relationships over sexuality.
We evolved past the clubbing and dragging stage a long time ago.
I should hope so. But I probably have a more pessimistic, "Lord-of-the-Flies" view of human nature than you. So many seemingly respectable people, for example, have tortured or commanded the torture of other human beings that I'm no longer shocked at what people are capable of when they have the power to get away with it.
In this society, most "blay" people have to give up nothing, because for the most part we understand what the consequences of pursuing an abusive, misogynistic lifestyle would be, and we have little reservation about leaving that out as a possibility.
It is not quite clear to me why you say that "blay" people in this society have to give up nothing. Sure they do, if they want to be good husbands and fathers. By "blay" I mean promiscuously horny – having the desire to mate with many comely females. If a blay man wants to be a swinging bachelor, then you're right, he doesn't have to give up anything at all. I mentioned Hugh Hefner as an example. I suppose James Bond would be another. (After 45 years of his cinematic friskiness we are still speaking of "Bond girls" rather than "Mrs. Bond.") But at the altar, a blay man "forsakes all others" and commits to one and only in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, etc. I think that's giving something up. The man has to burn his black book, so to speak. Oh, and I think I disagree with you (if I understand you correctly) that a fully realized blay lifestyle is necessarily "abusive" and "misogynistic." Is Hugh Hefner an abusive misogynist? I suppose a case could be made that he is, but I myself wouldn't go that far. I just think he's really immoral.
Is it fair, then, to say that gay people have to give up something at the very core of their being, and, in the broader sense of love, the human experience, while heterosexuals give up something that they'd probably give up in the first place?
If I am mischaracterizing you, then I ask you to forgive me, but I think I understand you to say here that "gay" is at the very core of someone's being and "blay" is not. This I simply deny. I think they are both core characteristics. We may have to agree to disagree on that. I can only declare to you in good faith that, believe it or not, "blay" is at the core of my being. It is possible - I don't want to put words in your mouth, but let me do so this one time for the sake of a robust and delightfully contentious argument - that you might say, "Oh don't give me that crap! You chose to be blay!" I can only respond, "I swear to God I didn't. It's just the way I am. Oh, to be sure, I'm more than blay - I also value friendship, relationship, intimacy and kind words too - but I'm not less than blay. God help me, I do like lots and lots of hot bods."
As for the fairness of having to give up something at the core of your being - whether blayness or gayness or anything else - my simple position is that I don't have the authority to declare what is fair or unfair. Speaking as a Christian minister in a church tradition that regards the Bible as authoritative, I regard myself as analogous to a baseball umpire who has no power to judge whether the rules of the game are fair, but who simply calls balls and strikes according to the parameters of "ball" and "strike" as determined by a higher authority. To press the metaphor, if I call a strike on a ball that comes over the plate at the knees, and the batter complains, "This is unfair! That ball was unhittable for me!" I can only shrug and say, "Those are the rules. Perhaps a different sport would suit you?" My parishioners can testify that more than once I have said (concerning commandments unrelated to sexual behavior), "Here's what it says. If you don't like that and would rather not abide by it, no problem. Just pick a different religion. Biblical Christianity is not for you."
And don't get me started on equating loving behavior between consenting adults to cannibalism and pedophilia.
I won't start you on that; in fact, I'd like to stop you on that, because I have not, would not, and never will equate loving behavior between consenting adults to cannibalism and pedophilia. I suspect here you're just wielding a rhetorical blade for a passing slice, and I won't begrudge you that - but seriously, you didn't actually think I was equating these practices, did you? Be assured that what I was comparing was not substance and substance but characteristic and characteristic. It's a logical device as old as the hills and we all use it all the time, as in Luke 18:1-6, where Jesus compared God to an unjust judge. Even an absolute dunce recognizes immediately that God was not being equated with an unjust judge. The point of contact between the two touched only on the matter of their authority, and left billions of other things appropriately and obviously disparate. Likewise, the point of contact where I connected gayness, blayness, pedophilia, fraud-mongering and cannibalism was the matter of their all being "natural" inclinations unchosen by those who exhibited their tendencies. Far be it from me to equate them in other areas too.
In terms of inherent physical attraction, many of us may be blay, but we choose not to pursue that not out of some religiously ascetic sense of self-denial, but because we've found something better.
I agree wholeheartedly that a lasting, faithful relationship with one individual is indeed better than a promiscuous lifestyle, even for a person who is inherently blay. What I don't understand is why (as it seems to me) you present the motivations of "self-denial" and "because we've found something better" as exclusionary - as "not 'A' but rather 'B'." In my experience the motivations are overlapping and complementary - and few people are so naturally good that they don't have to knuckle down and practice elementary self-denial at some point. If a man said to me, "I never have to practice self-denial in my marriage! I am utterly faithful because I want to be, because I've found something so much better," I guess I'd say, "Well, I'm happy for you, bud. Really I am. But some of us poor schlubs at the bottom of the moral food chain do get tempted sometimes, and find that to remain faithful we just have to grind it out and religiously, ascetically deny ourselves the forbidden fruit."
The psychologist was bang on; between consenting adults, let people love who they want.
Two points: In principle, I basically agree that between consenting adults, let people love whom they want. Just as we should let people eat what they want and drink what they want. But if a person belongs to a Vegan Club or a Temperance Union, it is rather odd if he says, "I should be allowed to eat pork and drink vodka!" Well, yes, of course he can - but then he's not a vegetarian or a teetotaler, is he? The issue is not what is allowable to the public but what standards of behavior will govern those in voluntary association. As a Christian pastor, I tell people what behavior is commanded of those who choose to join the association of Bible-believing followers of Jesus Christ. I really don't expect those outside our association of believers to listen much to what we say or pay heed to these rules at all. I'm actually very surprised (and honored and pleased!) when they happen to listen in and offer a comment.
Secondly, I think that even those outside our "Christian Union" might want to qualify their conviction that, between consenting adults, people should be allowed to love whom they want. Suppose the one who says this is male, heterosexual, married. And suppose that his wife - whom he loves dearly, and to whom he has been faithful, and for whom he has sacrificed much - decides (by her free consent) that she wants to sleep with lots and lots of men who also freely consent to sleep with her. If the husband truly and vigorously believes that "Consenting adults should be allowed to love anyone they want," it is hard to see on what ground he could object to her behavior. But I think most men would object, and would be heartbroken by her unfaithfulness.
I sincerely hope that there are few like you, because if any of them happen to deconvert, they seem to no longer have any reason to live as decent human beings.
You have no idea how much I agree with your basic sentiment here! I myself have said many times that the scariest, most selfish, most chillingly evil people I know are the ones who used to be Christians! I have known moral atheists; I don't believe I have ever known a moral ex-Christian. You are absolutely right when you say "they seem to no longer have any reason to live as decent human beings." I have seen that with my own eyes, and have borne the sad consequences of it. I myself was abandoned after 20 years of marriage by someone who "deconverted" - and then I had to find a way to manage as a distraught, poor, lonely single dad. Listen, friend, though we may be poles apart, please do me the honor of praying or offering a wish to whatever god or force you believe in that I do not deconvert – for then, admittedly, there is no telling what wickedness I might be capable of.
But having said that, I assure you and all others that I will not deconvert. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, now and forevermore, and that is all there is to it.
Listen, if you are ever in Naperville, Illinois, look me up and I'll buy you a drink. For me it will have to be a Coke though, because – as you might guess - I'm a self-denying (and celibate) teetotaler.
God bless,
Paul Lundquist
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
January 20, 2009: "A Life Incongruent With Who You Are"
A psychologist wrote to the Chicago Tribune's "Dear Amy" advising her to be careful about dismissing suspicions that a prospective bridegroom was homosexual. He said that there were two cases in his family where women married men who turned out to be gay, and both marriages ended badly. In one case, the man knew he was gay but lived in self-denial; the other "found out" his sexual preference much later. Both men were married for years and had several children before they destroyed their families.
The psychologist believed it was wrong for these men to marry women in the first place, and maybe he was right. But then he concluded, "Being gay is really OK. However, trying to live a life that is incongruent with who you are does not work."
Really? It doesn't work? Sure it does. Or it can. Every decent man who has ever lived has struggled to live a life incongruent with who he was.
For example, most men - over 90 percent, I think - are inherently blay. (Don't look up "blay" in the dictionary: I've had to coin the term because I don't know a name for this condition.) A blay man is one who is not naturally attracted to one particular woman through the course of her life as she ages, changes, and loses the bloom of her youth. Instead, he is naturally and irreversibly attracted to multiple women who are roughly in the 18-30 year age range. Now, a blay man might manage to remain faithful to one woman through a 60-year marriage - but that is only because he chooses to live in denial. He puts up a false front, so to speak, and deliberately lives a life "incongruent with who he is." In his heart, he's flamingly blay whether he admits it or not.
A key feature of blayness is that it is simply "there" as one's built-in sexual orientation. No one chooses it. I know I didn't choose to be blay. Most men of my generation discovered we were blay when, around age 11, it became apparent that Farrah Fawcett Majors and Cheryl Tiegs were so much more appealing to us than the girls of our own age and acquaintance. Popular Islam acknowledges the existence of blay tendencies when it pictures heavenly bliss as the possession of a harem of 72 willing virgins. (Wow! 72. I don't think I'm that blay.)
There are men who, having the resources, live a life completely congruent with their blayness. Hugh Hefner is one example. He has never seen the point of denying himself. His attitude is one that we see reflected in many people who indulge their natural tendencies and can proudly say that they "are who they are." Bernie Madoff, for example, has lived a life that is very congruent with his greedy acquisitiveness. Father John Goeghan lived a life congruent with his rapacious pedophilia. Jeffrey Dahmer lived a life congruent with his natural tendency toward cannibalism.
These all are or were bad men. It is just nonsense to praise them for living lives of "authentic existence" in accordance with their true inner natures. All moral suasion, and all human decency, depend crucially on the conviction that it is possible, and, in many cases, desirable and necessary, to live one's life in utter denial of one's natural tendencies. In fact, that is the kind of denial that virtually all married men must practice - whether they are gay or blay or anything else.
If you are now living a life congruent with who you are, repent.
A psychologist wrote to the Chicago Tribune's "Dear Amy" advising her to be careful about dismissing suspicions that a prospective bridegroom was homosexual. He said that there were two cases in his family where women married men who turned out to be gay, and both marriages ended badly. In one case, the man knew he was gay but lived in self-denial; the other "found out" his sexual preference much later. Both men were married for years and had several children before they destroyed their families.
The psychologist believed it was wrong for these men to marry women in the first place, and maybe he was right. But then he concluded, "Being gay is really OK. However, trying to live a life that is incongruent with who you are does not work."
Really? It doesn't work? Sure it does. Or it can. Every decent man who has ever lived has struggled to live a life incongruent with who he was.
For example, most men - over 90 percent, I think - are inherently blay. (Don't look up "blay" in the dictionary: I've had to coin the term because I don't know a name for this condition.) A blay man is one who is not naturally attracted to one particular woman through the course of her life as she ages, changes, and loses the bloom of her youth. Instead, he is naturally and irreversibly attracted to multiple women who are roughly in the 18-30 year age range. Now, a blay man might manage to remain faithful to one woman through a 60-year marriage - but that is only because he chooses to live in denial. He puts up a false front, so to speak, and deliberately lives a life "incongruent with who he is." In his heart, he's flamingly blay whether he admits it or not.
A key feature of blayness is that it is simply "there" as one's built-in sexual orientation. No one chooses it. I know I didn't choose to be blay. Most men of my generation discovered we were blay when, around age 11, it became apparent that Farrah Fawcett Majors and Cheryl Tiegs were so much more appealing to us than the girls of our own age and acquaintance. Popular Islam acknowledges the existence of blay tendencies when it pictures heavenly bliss as the possession of a harem of 72 willing virgins. (Wow! 72. I don't think I'm that blay.)
There are men who, having the resources, live a life completely congruent with their blayness. Hugh Hefner is one example. He has never seen the point of denying himself. His attitude is one that we see reflected in many people who indulge their natural tendencies and can proudly say that they "are who they are." Bernie Madoff, for example, has lived a life that is very congruent with his greedy acquisitiveness. Father John Goeghan lived a life congruent with his rapacious pedophilia. Jeffrey Dahmer lived a life congruent with his natural tendency toward cannibalism.
These all are or were bad men. It is just nonsense to praise them for living lives of "authentic existence" in accordance with their true inner natures. All moral suasion, and all human decency, depend crucially on the conviction that it is possible, and, in many cases, desirable and necessary, to live one's life in utter denial of one's natural tendencies. In fact, that is the kind of denial that virtually all married men must practice - whether they are gay or blay or anything else.
If you are now living a life congruent with who you are, repent.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
January 13, 2009: My Surprising Take On Gay Marriage
I believe much of the evangelical church has made a mistake by publicly opposing the legalization of gay marriage.
Not because homosexual practice is acceptable for biblically minded Christians. It isn't. Leviticus 18:22 says that it is an abomination. Romans 1:26-27 calls it unnatural and indecent, worthy of punishment. And 1 Corinthians 6:9 mentions "male prostitutes and homosexual offenders" in a list of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. There isn't a smidgeon of ambiguity about the matter in either the Old or New Testaments. Homosexual practice is a sin just like adultery is a sin, or stealing, or refusing to work to support your family, or dishonoring your parents, or exploiting the weak, or greedily accumulating personal wealth, or worshiping idols, or getting drunk, or refusing to help the needy. Lots of different kinds of sins are condemned in the Bible, and same-gender erotic love is one of them. If you want to be a Christian, you can't have gay sex.
I acknowledge that I personally have lucked out in this matter. I don't do gay sex because I am not tempted to it, and find that it is no sacrifice at all to avoid it. But I am supremely unlucky in so many other ways because I am genetically, naturally conditioned to love a host of sins. There are plenty of things (oh God, why so many things?) where it really goes against my grain to be a Christian. This should not surprise me though, because Jesus gave fair warning that following him was hard: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).
Crosses are not easy to bear, and anyone who thinks it's a snap to be a Christian doesn't have a clue about the sacrifice involved. Upon becoming Christians, alcoholics must bear the daily discipline of sobriety. Kleptomaniacs must learn to pay for their goods. Cowards must stand their ground while enduring ridicule and opposition. Hostile borderline personalities must try to love. Lazy people must work. The greedy must give generously. Horny people must limit themselves to one sexual partner. Frigid people must bear the burden of pleasing a spouse. And homosexuals must say, "Oh well. Darn it. Good-bye to all that, I guess." They are not alone. I deny that anyone is so naturally holy that, in following Christ, she does not painfully have to part with some sin, or, even more painfully, embrace a virtue foreign to her personality.
So homosexual behavior is one of many things that is out-of-bounds for Christians. But does that mean that Christians should push for laws that govern the sexual behaviors, preferences and alliances of those outside our community of faith? Not at all. I believe St. Paul speaks to the issue when he writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?"
If we really wanted Christian morality to be the standard of public law we would hardly stop at homosexual behavior. In fact, we'd start with more mundane things like fornication and adultery. But have Christians anywhere put a proposition on a state-wide ballot that forbids unmarried people to sleep together? Do we put adulterers in prison? Do we seek legally to forbid the remarriage of a man who divorces his wife without biblical warrant? All these things and more would be written into public legislation if we sought to identify the Bible's guide for Christians with our nation's code for citizens. It seems to me that practicing homosexuals have a point in saying, "Why are you zealots for Proposition 8 picking on me and my partner when, by your own standards, there is plenty of unaddressed sexual sin in your midst, and furthermore, the reason you're bringing the laws of the state to bear on our particular practice is because you can, because, with our numbers relatively small, you happen to be able to form a vast majority coalition with those who find our actions detestable?" Anyway, that's what I would say if I were a Californian non-Christian in love with a guy.
A sin is not worse just because it is rare or odd. In my judgment, a man who deserts or cheats on his wife is more evil than a man who has a life-long, monogamous relationship with another man. The latter, at least, has not betrayed a sacred trust.
Evangelicals paid a terrible price in campaigning publicly for the passage of gay marriage bans like the one in California. They won a "victory" there by a margin of 52-48, but were any hearts changed in the process? No. Instead, antagonisms were enflamed, and lines of battle more sharply drawn. Now Christians have a harder time getting a hearing for the proclamation of the gospel and the exaltation of Jesus. People who might have listened to Rick Warren talk about Christ are instead busy protesting his invocation at Obama's inauguration. (Because he came out in favor of Proposition 8, you see). I myself, as an evangelical pastor, have been asked by those unfamiliar with Christianity about the issue of gay marriage when I'd so much rather they be asking me about the divinity of Christ and his resurrection!
I don't believe the issue of gay marriage is worth fighting over. If asked (or challenged) about it, my attitude would be to shrug and say, "Go ahead and marry a fellow homosexual. I won't stand in your way. But it is something I could never do - even if I were constructed differently, and even if it were my heart's most cherished desire. I'm a Christian. I have to sacrifice lots of things to follow Christ."
I believe much of the evangelical church has made a mistake by publicly opposing the legalization of gay marriage.
Not because homosexual practice is acceptable for biblically minded Christians. It isn't. Leviticus 18:22 says that it is an abomination. Romans 1:26-27 calls it unnatural and indecent, worthy of punishment. And 1 Corinthians 6:9 mentions "male prostitutes and homosexual offenders" in a list of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. There isn't a smidgeon of ambiguity about the matter in either the Old or New Testaments. Homosexual practice is a sin just like adultery is a sin, or stealing, or refusing to work to support your family, or dishonoring your parents, or exploiting the weak, or greedily accumulating personal wealth, or worshiping idols, or getting drunk, or refusing to help the needy. Lots of different kinds of sins are condemned in the Bible, and same-gender erotic love is one of them. If you want to be a Christian, you can't have gay sex.
I acknowledge that I personally have lucked out in this matter. I don't do gay sex because I am not tempted to it, and find that it is no sacrifice at all to avoid it. But I am supremely unlucky in so many other ways because I am genetically, naturally conditioned to love a host of sins. There are plenty of things (oh God, why so many things?) where it really goes against my grain to be a Christian. This should not surprise me though, because Jesus gave fair warning that following him was hard: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).
Crosses are not easy to bear, and anyone who thinks it's a snap to be a Christian doesn't have a clue about the sacrifice involved. Upon becoming Christians, alcoholics must bear the daily discipline of sobriety. Kleptomaniacs must learn to pay for their goods. Cowards must stand their ground while enduring ridicule and opposition. Hostile borderline personalities must try to love. Lazy people must work. The greedy must give generously. Horny people must limit themselves to one sexual partner. Frigid people must bear the burden of pleasing a spouse. And homosexuals must say, "Oh well. Darn it. Good-bye to all that, I guess." They are not alone. I deny that anyone is so naturally holy that, in following Christ, she does not painfully have to part with some sin, or, even more painfully, embrace a virtue foreign to her personality.
So homosexual behavior is one of many things that is out-of-bounds for Christians. But does that mean that Christians should push for laws that govern the sexual behaviors, preferences and alliances of those outside our community of faith? Not at all. I believe St. Paul speaks to the issue when he writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?"
If we really wanted Christian morality to be the standard of public law we would hardly stop at homosexual behavior. In fact, we'd start with more mundane things like fornication and adultery. But have Christians anywhere put a proposition on a state-wide ballot that forbids unmarried people to sleep together? Do we put adulterers in prison? Do we seek legally to forbid the remarriage of a man who divorces his wife without biblical warrant? All these things and more would be written into public legislation if we sought to identify the Bible's guide for Christians with our nation's code for citizens. It seems to me that practicing homosexuals have a point in saying, "Why are you zealots for Proposition 8 picking on me and my partner when, by your own standards, there is plenty of unaddressed sexual sin in your midst, and furthermore, the reason you're bringing the laws of the state to bear on our particular practice is because you can, because, with our numbers relatively small, you happen to be able to form a vast majority coalition with those who find our actions detestable?" Anyway, that's what I would say if I were a Californian non-Christian in love with a guy.
A sin is not worse just because it is rare or odd. In my judgment, a man who deserts or cheats on his wife is more evil than a man who has a life-long, monogamous relationship with another man. The latter, at least, has not betrayed a sacred trust.
Evangelicals paid a terrible price in campaigning publicly for the passage of gay marriage bans like the one in California. They won a "victory" there by a margin of 52-48, but were any hearts changed in the process? No. Instead, antagonisms were enflamed, and lines of battle more sharply drawn. Now Christians have a harder time getting a hearing for the proclamation of the gospel and the exaltation of Jesus. People who might have listened to Rick Warren talk about Christ are instead busy protesting his invocation at Obama's inauguration. (Because he came out in favor of Proposition 8, you see). I myself, as an evangelical pastor, have been asked by those unfamiliar with Christianity about the issue of gay marriage when I'd so much rather they be asking me about the divinity of Christ and his resurrection!
I don't believe the issue of gay marriage is worth fighting over. If asked (or challenged) about it, my attitude would be to shrug and say, "Go ahead and marry a fellow homosexual. I won't stand in your way. But it is something I could never do - even if I were constructed differently, and even if it were my heart's most cherished desire. I'm a Christian. I have to sacrifice lots of things to follow Christ."
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
January 6, 2009: "Is Yellow Round?" And The Question Of Eternal Security
The last two Sundays in a row I've been asked by different people whether a believer could lose his salvation. I have written on this subject before, and include below two essays from 2006 for reference' sake. I think I have something to add to that now.
I believe the question "Can a person lose his salvation?" is unanswerable. Not because only God knows the answer, and not because Scripture is ambiguous about it, but because the question itself is so ill-formed that it does not make sense.
I owe to C. S. Lewis the idea that some of our most basic questions will never yield answers, and that our deepened knowledge of God in the afterlife will not so much give us solutions to our questions as it will reveal why so many of them were impossible in the first place. In A Grief Observed, Lewis writes: “Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical questions - are like that.”
Exactly. If the question "Is yellow round?" were asked of you by a small child, what would you say? That yellow is a color and not a shape, that it is not the sort of thing that is round or square or triangular? But suppose he comes back with, "But the sun is yellow and it's round!" And you say yes, right, but the roundness of the sun is not a necessary feature of its yellowness. And he (precocious child) says, "Now you're just confusing me. All I want to know is whether or not yellow is round."
After having heard a thousand defenses of the doctrine of "once saved always saved" and (much more rarely) attacks on the same, I have now come to the conclusion that when we speak of the "possession" or "loss" of salvation we are perilously close to discussing something as meaningful as the shape of a color. Salvation is something God does to people who place enduring, living faith in Jesus Christ. It is not so much an object that we put in our pocket (like a wallet) and then debate about whether we can lose it or drop it or have it stolen from us. That is not to say that the metaphor of salvation-as-possession is wholly invalid. It is a useful and biblical metaphor, and has many good applications. But, like any metaphor, it has limits, and one of those limits is stretched and broken at the point where we begin talking about the possibility of losing it. Salvation can't be "lost" any more than yellow can be "round". In both discussions, if we do not qualify our terms, we will soon find that we are talking nonsense. Though "yellow" is neither round nor square, a yellow object like the sun is certainly very round. Likewise, though "salvation" is neither losable nor secure, a person who trusts in Christ with living, permanent faith is safe forever. He may rejoice in perfect hope, and never fear hell.
That is not to say that there is no such thing as apostasy, as I remind readers below with a couple old essays.
So You Received Jesus Into Your Heart? So Have Many Apostates (July 16, 2006)
Evil makes cynics of us.
I know it has made one of me in an area that can be nearly fatal to a preacher: conversion. I call people to faith in Christ. It is what I do, and I am convinced that I would be disobedient to do anything else.
So why don't I get all excited about "decisions for Christ"? Because experience keeps teaching me the fragile and untrustworthy nature of such decisions. I trust Jesus, but I do not necessarily trust the steadfastness of those who say they have received him.
Here's a short list of those who have eroded my faith in people's ability to persevere: Charles Templeton, evangelist colleague of Billy Graham, became an outspoken atheist. Roy Clements, once one of England's most respected evangelical ministers, is now living with a homosexual lover. The minister who conducted my wedding also left his wife and announced that he is gay. I know two Wycliffe missionaries - one of whom translated the New Testament into a Colombian indigenous language - who left their wives and the Lord. My Arhuaco Scripture co-translator (about whose faith I once wrote glowing tributes) walked away from Christ. My ex wife, who once dedicated her life to missionary service and who encouraged me to enter the pastoral ministry, is now a cold-blooded apostate.
And time would fail me to list all the people I know who once received Jesus but who now live such reprobate lives that no one would ever guess they were once people of faith.
I have been fooled so many times by so many people that I am forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I cannot tell who will persevere in the Lord and who will not. If Charles Templeton can fool Billy Graham, and Wycliffe missionaries can fool their colleagues in Colombia and Brazil, and Roy Clements can fool the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and my wife can fool me, then who can't be fooled by whom?
That which I have learned about the heart's inconstancy is what keeps me from saying to any new convert, "You have just been saved eternally - welcome to the family of God!" These words of encouragement are actually a prophecy that is both arrogant and naïve. Only God knows who will persevere and who will not. I know no one with access to that foreknowledge.
That is why I preach perseverance so much more than I do conversion. I don't care any more how you started - I care how you end up. Just as St. James said, "You believe that there is one God? Great - even the demons believe that," so I might say, "You received Jesus into your heart? Great - so did Larry Flynt." (The publisher of Hustler magazine was briefly "born again" in the '70s.) The mere decision to follow Christ really puts you on no better spiritual footing than that of Judas Iscariot. He decided to follow Christ too - for a while.
Excuse my cynicism. Of course I know there are legitimate conversions, and I know that I must not let grief over false brothers spoil my joy over true ones. But just as we must take our sufferings and let them make us patient, so we must take our disappointments and let them make us wise. Here is wisdom: something is begun, but nothing settled, when a man says, "I have received Christ." From that point forward we must preach perseverance both to him and to ourselves until on our deathbeds we can truthfully say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith." Then into God's hands we may commend our spirits.
Loss Of Salvation (September 24, 2006)
"Can someone lose his salvation?"
I was asked this the other day. I've been asked it before, and will be asked it again. It seemed good to write out a response.
I have come to believe that the key word in that question is the word "someone". Who exactly is the "someone" whose security of salvation we are questioning? Presumably "someone" here is understood to be "someone who believes in Jesus." But clarification is needed. Do we mean someone who believes in Jesus with living faith or dead faith? James distinguishes the two in James 2:14-17:
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
James says that faith without action is dead, and when he asks the rhetorical question, "Can such faith save him?" the answer is no. Even demons have dead faith, according to verse 19 of that chapter. And they're damned. (See Jude 6.)
So now the question is, "Can someone who believes in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?"
I have one more thing to clarify first. By "believe" do we mean believe permanently or temporarily? For example, when Paul told the Philippian jailer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31), suppose the jailer had asked, "How long do I have to believe before I can go back to my pagan religion?" Would Paul have given him a safe time period? Believe in Jesus a day or two, or a month, maybe 10 years - and that ought to do it? Or was it understood that the man was being called to permanent faith?
I don't think it is debatable that this, and all biblical invitations to believe in Christ, are invitations to believe in him permanently. What is debated, though, is whether it is possible to believe in him temporarily. Frankly it bothers me this is considered controversial, since Jesus spoke directly to the issue in Luke 8:13 in the parable of the sower and the seeds: "Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away." Any who think it is impossible to "believe for a while" are met with a Scriptural rebuke in the plain words of Christ.
Now I feel that the question we started with is answerable. "Can someone who believes permanently in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?" Absolutely not. All such people are children of God and eternally secure. Nothing can separate them from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35-39). They hear the voice of Jesus, follow him, receive from him eternal life, and nothing can take them out of his hand. (John 10:27-28).
The last two Sundays in a row I've been asked by different people whether a believer could lose his salvation. I have written on this subject before, and include below two essays from 2006 for reference' sake. I think I have something to add to that now.
I believe the question "Can a person lose his salvation?" is unanswerable. Not because only God knows the answer, and not because Scripture is ambiguous about it, but because the question itself is so ill-formed that it does not make sense.
I owe to C. S. Lewis the idea that some of our most basic questions will never yield answers, and that our deepened knowledge of God in the afterlife will not so much give us solutions to our questions as it will reveal why so many of them were impossible in the first place. In A Grief Observed, Lewis writes: “Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical questions - are like that.”
Exactly. If the question "Is yellow round?" were asked of you by a small child, what would you say? That yellow is a color and not a shape, that it is not the sort of thing that is round or square or triangular? But suppose he comes back with, "But the sun is yellow and it's round!" And you say yes, right, but the roundness of the sun is not a necessary feature of its yellowness. And he (precocious child) says, "Now you're just confusing me. All I want to know is whether or not yellow is round."
After having heard a thousand defenses of the doctrine of "once saved always saved" and (much more rarely) attacks on the same, I have now come to the conclusion that when we speak of the "possession" or "loss" of salvation we are perilously close to discussing something as meaningful as the shape of a color. Salvation is something God does to people who place enduring, living faith in Jesus Christ. It is not so much an object that we put in our pocket (like a wallet) and then debate about whether we can lose it or drop it or have it stolen from us. That is not to say that the metaphor of salvation-as-possession is wholly invalid. It is a useful and biblical metaphor, and has many good applications. But, like any metaphor, it has limits, and one of those limits is stretched and broken at the point where we begin talking about the possibility of losing it. Salvation can't be "lost" any more than yellow can be "round". In both discussions, if we do not qualify our terms, we will soon find that we are talking nonsense. Though "yellow" is neither round nor square, a yellow object like the sun is certainly very round. Likewise, though "salvation" is neither losable nor secure, a person who trusts in Christ with living, permanent faith is safe forever. He may rejoice in perfect hope, and never fear hell.
That is not to say that there is no such thing as apostasy, as I remind readers below with a couple old essays.
So You Received Jesus Into Your Heart? So Have Many Apostates (July 16, 2006)
Evil makes cynics of us.
I know it has made one of me in an area that can be nearly fatal to a preacher: conversion. I call people to faith in Christ. It is what I do, and I am convinced that I would be disobedient to do anything else.
So why don't I get all excited about "decisions for Christ"? Because experience keeps teaching me the fragile and untrustworthy nature of such decisions. I trust Jesus, but I do not necessarily trust the steadfastness of those who say they have received him.
Here's a short list of those who have eroded my faith in people's ability to persevere: Charles Templeton, evangelist colleague of Billy Graham, became an outspoken atheist. Roy Clements, once one of England's most respected evangelical ministers, is now living with a homosexual lover. The minister who conducted my wedding also left his wife and announced that he is gay. I know two Wycliffe missionaries - one of whom translated the New Testament into a Colombian indigenous language - who left their wives and the Lord. My Arhuaco Scripture co-translator (about whose faith I once wrote glowing tributes) walked away from Christ. My ex wife, who once dedicated her life to missionary service and who encouraged me to enter the pastoral ministry, is now a cold-blooded apostate.
And time would fail me to list all the people I know who once received Jesus but who now live such reprobate lives that no one would ever guess they were once people of faith.
I have been fooled so many times by so many people that I am forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I cannot tell who will persevere in the Lord and who will not. If Charles Templeton can fool Billy Graham, and Wycliffe missionaries can fool their colleagues in Colombia and Brazil, and Roy Clements can fool the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and my wife can fool me, then who can't be fooled by whom?
That which I have learned about the heart's inconstancy is what keeps me from saying to any new convert, "You have just been saved eternally - welcome to the family of God!" These words of encouragement are actually a prophecy that is both arrogant and naïve. Only God knows who will persevere and who will not. I know no one with access to that foreknowledge.
That is why I preach perseverance so much more than I do conversion. I don't care any more how you started - I care how you end up. Just as St. James said, "You believe that there is one God? Great - even the demons believe that," so I might say, "You received Jesus into your heart? Great - so did Larry Flynt." (The publisher of Hustler magazine was briefly "born again" in the '70s.) The mere decision to follow Christ really puts you on no better spiritual footing than that of Judas Iscariot. He decided to follow Christ too - for a while.
Excuse my cynicism. Of course I know there are legitimate conversions, and I know that I must not let grief over false brothers spoil my joy over true ones. But just as we must take our sufferings and let them make us patient, so we must take our disappointments and let them make us wise. Here is wisdom: something is begun, but nothing settled, when a man says, "I have received Christ." From that point forward we must preach perseverance both to him and to ourselves until on our deathbeds we can truthfully say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith." Then into God's hands we may commend our spirits.
Loss Of Salvation (September 24, 2006)
"Can someone lose his salvation?"
I was asked this the other day. I've been asked it before, and will be asked it again. It seemed good to write out a response.
I have come to believe that the key word in that question is the word "someone". Who exactly is the "someone" whose security of salvation we are questioning? Presumably "someone" here is understood to be "someone who believes in Jesus." But clarification is needed. Do we mean someone who believes in Jesus with living faith or dead faith? James distinguishes the two in James 2:14-17:
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
James says that faith without action is dead, and when he asks the rhetorical question, "Can such faith save him?" the answer is no. Even demons have dead faith, according to verse 19 of that chapter. And they're damned. (See Jude 6.)
So now the question is, "Can someone who believes in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?"
I have one more thing to clarify first. By "believe" do we mean believe permanently or temporarily? For example, when Paul told the Philippian jailer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31), suppose the jailer had asked, "How long do I have to believe before I can go back to my pagan religion?" Would Paul have given him a safe time period? Believe in Jesus a day or two, or a month, maybe 10 years - and that ought to do it? Or was it understood that the man was being called to permanent faith?
I don't think it is debatable that this, and all biblical invitations to believe in Christ, are invitations to believe in him permanently. What is debated, though, is whether it is possible to believe in him temporarily. Frankly it bothers me this is considered controversial, since Jesus spoke directly to the issue in Luke 8:13 in the parable of the sower and the seeds: "Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away." Any who think it is impossible to "believe for a while" are met with a Scriptural rebuke in the plain words of Christ.
Now I feel that the question we started with is answerable. "Can someone who believes permanently in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?" Absolutely not. All such people are children of God and eternally secure. Nothing can separate them from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35-39). They hear the voice of Jesus, follow him, receive from him eternal life, and nothing can take them out of his hand. (John 10:27-28).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)