The Godly Duty Of Inducing Guilt (August 15, 2004)

It is necessary that sinners feel miserable in the presence of God and his saints.

In his book, What's So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey writes about a prostitute who came to visit a friend of his who works with down-and-outers in Chicago. The woman was "unable to buy food" for her two-year-old daughter. Through tears she explained that she had been renting out her toddler by the hour for kinky sex with perverts in order to get money for drugs. (She couldn't buy food, but she could sell her daughter to get high.) When Yancey's friend asked if she ever thought of going to church, she said, "Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse."

Yancey believes this woman's avoidance of church is an indictment of it. He writes, "What struck me about my friend's story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?"

What? Now wait just a minute. First of all, is it really accurate to say that "women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus"? Maybe a few exceptional ones did, but it is likely that the vast majority kept plying their trade, steering well clear of the Preacher who was so stern about sexual sin that he would equate mere lust with adultery. The woman caught in the act in John 8 did not "flee toward Jesus" - she was dragged unwillingly before him. (And - a point often missed - he never said it was wrong to stone her. That is, after all, what God had commanded. The problem, as Jesus pointed out, was that all the judges had disqualified themselves.) The five-husbanded fornicator in John 4 never fled toward Jesus - she only talked to him because he happened to strike up a conversation with her (a conversation where he quickly dug up the root of her iniquity). I think it is fair to say that the only prostitutes who fled toward Jesus were the ones who were willing to feel terrible in his presence, like the sinful woman in Luke 7 who cried enough tears on his feet to wash them clean.

Secondly, just what is wrong about "being made to feel worse" in church? The apostle Paul speaks of this not as a danger to be avoided but as a goal to be pursued! 1 Corinthians 14:24-25: "If an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" This is a good thing. A sinner in church should not feel warmed and blessed, but convicted and ashamed. In 2 Corinthians 7:8-9 Paul speaks of his joy over the results of his efforts to induce this shame: "Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it - I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while - yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us."

Sorrow as God intended does no harm. Our problem today is not that prostitutes might feel bad in our churches, but that sinners in general feel so good in them. When Isaiah (presumably a decent man by our standards) came into the presence of God, he cried, "Woe is me!" When righteous Job heard God, he said, "I despise myself." When Peter saw Jesus' power, he said, "Depart from me, I am a sinful man." When the tax collector approached the temple he said, "God be merciful to me, the sinner." When Paul the Persecutor saw Jesus, he refused food and water for three days.

But today we who speak for God wring our hands before the sinner and say, "I’m so sorry! Did I make you feel bad?"

I cannot for the life of me see how the Church in North America has "lost the gift" of attracting evildoers. What it has lost, rather, is the will to confront them, and the gracious courage to stir up godly guilt in them. God have mercy on us if unrepentant souls leave our worship services saying, "That was great! I just felt so uplifted today."

Which Sins Do You Choose To Confront? (July 25, 2004)

Last week I said that some sins are worse than others. This week I'm wondering why we are more willing to confront some sins than others. Is it because they are truly worse in the eyes of God, or because for some reason they rankle us more? Or perhaps because they are easier targets?

Leadership Journal records the responses of four evangelical pastors to the question, "What's the most important thing you want to say, pastorally, to a homosexual couple?" Disturbingly, none of the four even addressed the question, much less gave what I thought was the obvious answer: "Repent." I imagined these pastors standing with John the Baptist and shaking their heads in dismay as John tells Herod, "You cannot have your brother's wife." (How alienating! Now Herod will be offended! He’ll regard us as adulterophobes. How will he ever come to know how kind and loving and joyful we are if we tell him he has to repent? And who are we to judge a man who clearly was born with a promiscuous orientation?)

It interests me that we evangelical pastors are not nearly so wishy-washy about challenging sinners when the issue is dear to us and less politically sensitive. My favorite example is the oft-cited passage in the book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, where Pastor Jim Cymbala savages the sin of gossip. He tells new members:

I charge you that if you ever hear another member speak an unkind word of criticism or slander against anyone - myself, an usher, a choir member, or anyone else - that you stop that person in mid-sentence and say, "Excuse me - who hurt you? Who ignored you? Who slighted you? Was it Pastor Cymbala? Let's go to his office right now. He'll apologize to you, and then we'll pray together so God can restore peace to this body." But we won't let you talk critically about people who aren't present to defend themselves.

I'm serious about this. I want to help you resolve this kind of thing immediately. And know this: If you are ever the one doing the loose talking, we'll confront you.

I was deeply impressed with this quote when I first read it, and used it in a sermon. But now I'm wondering, does Cymbala take the same approach with other grave sins? (Maybe he does! Please understand I am not criticizing him at all. I’m just wondering.) If the sin were fornication rather than slander, would he urge members to confront the sinner on the spot? Imagine a pastor telling new members, "I charge you, if you ever hear another member say, 'I'm living with my fiancé,' you stop that person in mid-sentence and say, 'Excuse me? You're living in sin? Let's go to the pastor's office right now so you can repent.' I want you to resolve this thing immediately. And know this: If you are ever the one doing the cohabiting, we'll confront you."

Maybe that is exactly what he would say, and if so, I applaud his consistency. But what I'd like to know is just what is the set of sins concerning which it is our duty to stop the sinner cold and insist on immediate repentance. Abusing drugs? Having an abortion? Viewing pornography? Refusing to tithe? Getting drunk? Using a racial epithet?

Just wondering.

Are All Sins Equally Bad? (July 18, 2004)

I think one of the devil's favorite games is to get people to obliterate moral distinctions and lump unlike things together.

What spurred this thought is a comment I heard on WMBI by a Christian counselor who said, "We have many fat preachers condemning gays, but no gay preachers condemning gluttons." It's a line designed to get a laugh and provoke reflection over how shameful it is that we treat some sins as more damnworthy than others. Who are we to condemn homosexual sin while giving ourselves a free pass on overeating? The Bible says gluttony is wrong, but many of us are afflicted with this weakness, and so, like gays, we are all sinners in need of God's grace and his unconditional love that meets us where we are blah blah blah blah blah blah.

I am tired of these false moral equivalencies that trivialize perversion. It is true that everyone is a sinner and in need of God's grace. It is also true that a saint like Mother Theresa and a beast like David Berkowitz (Son of Sam killer) must both receive forgiveness through faith in Christ. But it is not true that all sins are the same. Gluttony and sodomy are not comparable, and it is not equally valid for a glutton to rebuke a sodomite as the other way around.

More times than I can count I have heard evangelicals utter the careless statement that "All sins are equally bad in God's eyes." No they aren't. Jesus explicitly denies this in his statement to Pontius Pilate, "He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin" (John 19:11). Only if sins differ in severity can one be regarded as "greater" than another. Likewise, when Jesus says that it will be "more tolerable" for Tyre and Sidon on judgment day than for Korazin and Bethsaida (Matthew 11:21-22), it is hard to see why Tyre and Sidon should get off easier unless somehow their sins were not as bad as those of the other cities.

With regard to gluttony and homosexual practice, it doesn’t take an Einstein to see from the Bible which sin is worse. The Old Testament does not prescribe the death penalty for eating too much, but it does for gay sex (Leviticus 20:13). The New Testament does not use pigging out as an example of a sin to which the wicked are "handed over," but it does so for homosexual indulgence (Romans 1:24-27). I don't see gluttony listed among the sins that keep people out of the kingdom of heaven. But gay practice listed there (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

And as for the social cost - my goodness. I have never met a woman who did not want to go on living just because her husband had gotten thick around the midsection. But just about any pastor can relate stories of poor, distraught, near-suicidal women who did not know what to do after their husbands had left them and the kids for another man. And though a fat guy may give himself a coronary before his time, at least he's not spewing a virus that has taken, and continues to take, tens of millions of lives.

Wisdom requires us to assign degrees of value to what is good and degrees of opprobrium to what it evil. To lump together all sin into one indistinguishable mass is intellectually lazy and biblically dishonest. A careless refusal to distinguish greater from lesser sin tends to mask true outrages, and gives false comfort to evildoers who ruin others' lives and imperil their own souls.

Some gifts are greater than others (1 Corinthians 12:31). Some expressions of love are greater than others (John 15:13). And yes, some sins are greater than others too.

Does Goodness Unite? (July 11, 2004)

Goodness is the great divider.

I thought about this theme when my son asked prayer for a friend whose parents are on the brink of separation. It is one of those cases where one partner is good and the other is evil. Here the husband is pleasant, mature and courteous, and the wife is foul-mouthed, hostile and (I think) under-medicated. She is insisting that he get out and leave her all the money.

Their troubled relationship illustrates what I have long regarded as a massive flaw in the marriage counseling industry: the assumption that, if you become a better husband or wife, it will make your spouse a kinder and better person too. This is not true. What is true (generally) is that if your spouse is already good, your goodness will delight him and make him better. If he is bad, your goodness will anger him and make him worse.

An under-appreciated teaching of Jesus is that his holy presence would generate discord rather than unity. He said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - a man's enemies will be the members of his own household" (Matthew 10:34-36). This division was not purposeful, but a simple matter of fact. People's inclinations toward good or evil would snowball in opposite directions as they met Christ. His goodness would divide them.

Rather than acknowledge this painful truth, it seems to me that much of the Christian community chooses instead to fear that others will disapprove of them. “If they don't like us, we must be doing something wrong. Worse, if they don't like us, they won't become Christians!” That may be so, but don't worry about it. Do what is right, do what is pleasing to God, and let people respond this way or that however they may. Certainly it is good to be loved, but the goal of inspiring other people's love must never be allowed to trump the goal of doing right. Nazis and pedophiles and terrorists (and even some spouses) will never like us no matter what we do - or they may offer to keep us in their good graces only if we sacrifice the holiness that they find displeasing. We can't do that. We must simply remember that goodness divides, and ever will divide, and we must never regret any goodness that has met with either cool indifference or hostile opposition.

Martyred missionary Jim Elliot said it well when he wrote in one of his journals, "Let me not be a milepost on a single road: make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me."

If You Loved (July 4, 2004)

In the movie Critical Care, a comatose old man is kept alive by artificial means as his daughters argue about disconnecting him. As the story develops and involves doctors, lawyers and hospital administrators, we see that this (possibly) brain-dead old man is a pawn in a game where millions of dollars are at stake.

He cannot communicate, and the only visible sign of life is that his fingers constantly tap the bars on the side of his bed. This activity is ascribed to random neural firing. But an aide, knowing that the man had served in the navy, wonders if he might be tapping out Morse code. Indeed, when he translates the taps into dots and dashes they signal, over and over again, the words, "If you love me."

The movie never tells us whether the message is a coincidence or the man's deliberate attempt to communicate. Most likely it is neither, but rather a message from God to all those involved the case. The movie makes the point that the actual decision whether or not to disconnect matters less than what is motivating the decision. “If you love me,“ and the sentence hangs there for others to complete. Let us assume that there is no money involved, no career at stake, no selfish emotions to indulge, no policy to follow. If you loved me - and that was the only thing you had to consider - well, then, what would you do? Disconnect or leave connected? If the answer is obvious, then do that.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes, "The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering about whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did." When you "act as if you did" you not only do the right thing, you find also (maybe) that your good work has pulled some affection along behind it. Lewis continues, "As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less."

Play this game with yourself. Pretend that you loved someone, and were motivated so purely by love that all your natural self-interest was magically snatched away. What would you do?

Let Us Help One Another To See Excellence (June 27, 2004)

If you ever rent the movie Amadeus, watch for the scenes where Salieri describes Mozart’s music. At one point Salieri tells a priest about a time when he looked at some sheet music Mozart had written. As the aged composer replays the notes in his head, he speaks with increasing rapture about the effect the music had on him. He says,

On the page it looked...nothing. The beginning: simple, almost comic. Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns. Like a rusty squeeze box. And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until...a clarinet took it over. Sweetened it into a phrase of such delight. This was no composition by a "performing monkey." This was a music I had never heard. Filled with such longing. Such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me I was hearing the voice of God.

What makes the scene so effective is that we hear the music as Salieri is describing it, and so we get to share his wonder. Without Salieri's commentary, we (or at least I) could not fully appreciate the glory of the music. But when he speaks of the oboe's unwavering note, and the clarinet's "sweetened phrase of such delight," we ourselves feel just how they convey that unfulfillable longing, and we agree that Mozart, despite himself, was inspired by God.

Praise excellence, especially when you have the gift of seeing it where others do not. When you give voice to your appreciation, you increase others' joy by enlarging their experience of what is good. My own experience of what is good has been enhanced by Bob Costas when he describes the brilliance of a Willie Mays' catch, or by Gary Wills when he traces the power of Lincoln’s phrasing in the Gettysburg Address, or by Michael Behe when he explains the complex design of a bacterial flagellum.

We ought to tell one another the things that we love, and why we love them, and how they fill us with wonder. Excellencies can lead the mind to contemplate God, for he is Father to all that is good and right and beautiful and sweet. Salieri was right: through Mozart's music we hear the voice of God. We can hear his voice in other things too, but need one another's help to detect it.

The Number 1 Rule For Being A Good Father (June 20, 2004)

Father's Day has just passed, and I ignored it in the pulpit - just as I ignore Mother's Day, Labor Day, Independence Day, Memorial Day, etc. in all my sermons. (It's a policy.) But I'm not against Father's Day, and I want to take this opportunity to tell you the number one rule for being a good father.

It is this: Love your wife. Be faithful, gracious and affectionate toward the mother of your children. Do all you can to provide your children with the most stable home environment possible. If you can't do that, then don't tell me how much you love your kids. Loving your kids demands sacrifice, and for many men the greatest sacrifice they will ever make is that of treating their wives with constant, faithful affection - especially those wives who are evil, bitter, cruel and dishonest.

I'm fed up with hearing of men who, though they have treated their wives shamefully, are nonetheless extolled as "good fathers." Some of these men even to presume to lecture us on fatherhood! A few days ago, I heard Pastor Gordon MacDonald on WMBI's Midday Connection responding to callers' questions about how to nurture their kids. MacDonald, as some of you know, cheated on his wife and had to resign his pastorate and the presidency of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Before the story of his adultery broke, when I was at Wheaton College, MacDonald bragged to a group of us pastors-in-training about how well he treated his wife and kids. (This was in September of ’81.) Now I see he still manages to refer favorably to his own parental example. Boy do I wish the evangelical community would tell him to shut up!

Two days ago I saw Jesse Jackson at a Southside Chicago Barbeque that celebrated fatherhood in the African-American community. How can he even show his face there, having sired a bastard himself just a few years ago?

This morning's newspapers relate sordid details from Senatorial candidate Jack Ryan's divorce proceedings. Ryan had sought to keep the records sealed "out of concern for his son." Baloney. What Ryan was trying to protect was his political career. Someone needs to tell Ryan that if he really loved his son, he would not have subjected the boy's mother to the degrading shame of sex club tours.

Let's get this straight: Men, just as your first duty to your wife is to love God, so your first duty to your children is to love your wife. Yes, I know there are extreme cases where it's impossible - I know three men who had to whisk their children away from demon wives just to protect the poor kids from abuse. But those are exceptions. The general rule is laid out in 1 Peter 3:7: "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the precious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers."

Not only your prayers will be hindered if you are inconsiderate to your wife. Your standing as a father will be diminished too. No man gains greater stature in the eyes of worthy children than he who, year after year, treats his children's mother with respect, courtesy, affection, and unfailing love.