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The Problem of Church Squatters (Part Two)

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Today I’d like to share with you my reply to the distressed lady whose letter I posted in part one of this series on the problem of church squatters. If you have not read the previous post, please take a look at it before you read my reply.

Reply to a Distressed Lady

Dear Sister:

Forgive my delay in replying. I wanted to think carefully about what to say. I am not facing the problem you describe, and as you pointed out, I cannot simply tell you what to do. But I offer my thoughts in hope that they will help you discern the Lord’s will.

First, I want to write about my reactions as I read your letter.

Sadness, Anger, and Joy

I read your letter with a mixture of sadness, anger, and joy. I was overjoyed that you have not been deceived by clever arguments or intimidated by the self-confident majority into giving up Scripture’s clear teaching and the church’s traditional doctrine on marriage, family, and sex. You do not need me to teach you anything on this subject. I will simply say: Be confident. You are right.

I was saddened to hear that your church home has been invaded and occupied by squatters and deceived into abandoning clear apostolic teaching. Many believers know that affirming and celebrating LGBTQ+ relationships is wrong, but I’m not sure everyone realizes how wide it opens the doors to other evils. It rejects the created order and, therefore, denies the wisdom of the Creator (Romans 1:18-32). The distinction and complementarity of male and female are so obvious and basic that to erase them you must deny the very existence of a divinely intended created order. Created human nature becomes a realm of raw material to be reshaped according to human desires. The heavens can no longer declare the glory of God. The moral law possesses no authority to forbid idolatry, lying, murder, adultery, and theft. Not only must affirming- and celebrating-churches ignore the natural moral law, they must ignore Scripture’s moral teaching; for Scripture affirms all the elements of the moral law, intensifies them, and sets them into relation to Jesus Christ (On this theme, see J. Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide.) For these new Gnostics, God becomes utterly irrelevant to the moral life. They substitute human subjectivity and autonomy in the place of natural and divine law. The inner self becomes an idol and the true object of worship.

I am angered by your elders’ and pastors’ efforts to justify this decision from Scripture, thereby compounding immorality with heresy. Their interpretations of Scripture are so implausible that I find it difficult to accept that they believe them. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone offer these new interpretations in what seemed to me a sincere spirit of obedience (For my analysis of these arguments, see my book The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living). It’s always part of an effort to evade the force of Scripture’s teaching. Squatters by their actions show themselves to be thieves and liars. And that makes me angry.

What to Do?

Churches are always mixed bodies of saints and sinners. In almost any church you visit, it is likely that there are secret unbelievers and immoral people sitting in the audience. Those traditions that attempt to purge the church of every sinner tend to do more harm than good by their heavy-handed interrogations. They forget Jesus’s parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). If you attempt to pull up all the weeds you will damage the wheat. Wait until the end and the Lord will separate the two. You don’t need to leave a church just because it contains secret fornicators, idolaters, and doubters. There are no pure churches.

No church possesses and teaches perfect doctrine. For 2,000 years, the church has conducted internal debates about worship, food, predestination, the atonement, the sacraments, church offices, and many others. You don’t need to separate from a church with which you disagree on a point of doctrine as long as that doctrine does not contradict the gospel or the Christian way of life. Scripture is unambiguous about many things but not all. How do the sacraments work? What does Scripture mean by election and predestination? Should the church organize itself in a presbyterian or episcopal or congregational way? Churches that claim to teach the whole doctrinal truth and nothing but the truth often engage in fights, purges, and divisions. You must follow your conscience.

However, when a local church or a denomination comes to be led by people who teach heresy, things become more complicated. Though your church affirms and celebrates LGBTQ+ relationships, apparently it tolerates you and others who disagree. So, you are not being forced to choose between violating your conscience or giving up your membership. You will have to examine your conscience before God.

In examining your conscience, I don’t think there is one set of questions you should ask. Our consciences have a way of speaking to us even when we don’t ask questions of them. They can warn us not to rationalize our lack of courage or ignore our hypocrisy or justify our sloth. They can counsel us against being used by the heretics to minimize the seriousness of their errors.

Another often overlooked factor comes to mind. If you are not a leader, a teacher of the faith, or in contemporary terms, an influencer, you may have less of a responsibility to break from your church even if it teaches a heretical doctrine, that is if there are some redeeming aspects to the church. Remember Abraham’s discussion with God about how many good people it would take to save Sodom from destruction (Genesis 18). If by staying you do not contribute to the spiritual downfall of others, you may not bear the guilt of the false doctrine taught by your church. You have to think about that.

For me, however, things are very different. I could not remain in attendance and fellowship with the church you describe. Because I have a responsibility to be a teacher of God’s people and have done so for over 50 years, my continued presence would tend to minimize the seriousness of its heresy. Perhaps my silence could even be used to justify it.

I have not told you what you should do. But I hope these thoughts will help you gain perspective. Above all, examine your conscience in prayer before God. May God give you courage to do what is right and the peace to live with your decision.

In Christ,

Ron Highfield

The Problem of Church Squatters (Part One)

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The following letter is a composite of concerns that many different individuals have shared with me over the past few years. I believe it expresses the feelings of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of faithful Christians. I was provoked into writing this post by a note from a lady who happened to read something I had written. The letter below incorporates the concerns voiced in her letter but the wording is my own.

Letter from a Distressed Lady

“Dear Professor Highfield:

I am writing to ask for your prayers and your advice. As you know, my husband (now deceased) and I have been members of First Avenue Church for over 60 years. We joined as a young couple, and now I am old and widowed. We served this church in the teaching ministry, the finance ministry, the hospitality ministry, and many others. We attended every service and generously supported the work financially. We weathered every storm and never once seriously considered leaving. All of this to say, I am not one to leave a church over a minor disagreement with the leadership or a personal offence. But something has happened that has placed me in a very distressing situation that must be resolved one way or another.

A year ago, the leadership of our church—a board of men and women elders—decided that our congregation will officially and publicly celebrate LGBTQ+ identities and relationships as equal morally and spiritually to marriage between male and female. The church had been moving in this direction for many years. First there was silence in the church’s public teaching. Then there arose low key advocacy by some individuals and small factions. They faced no strong push back from the leadership. As a next step some aggressive advocates of LGBTQ+ identities and relationships aspired to and were appointed to the leadership team. Soon—I hardly know how it happened—the leaders and the pastors announced that our church was now an LGBTQ+ affirming church.

A minority of us, mostly older, asked the elders and pastors how they could justify this change when it so clearly contradicts the explicit teaching of the Bible. They assured us—quite condescendingly I thought—that the Bible did not really condemn modern forms of loving LGBTQ+ relationships; it condemns only violent and abusive relationships. We objected that we had been reading the Bible all of our lives and have never noticed any ambiguity in its teaching about sexual relationships and marriage. The elders and the pastors replied that lately the consensus of the best Bible scholars supported the new interpretation. With this retort, we realized that no objection would induce the church elders and ministers to reconsider their decision.

I am now an old lady. I don’t have the will or energy to fight. I feel that the church I loved for 60 years (my home!) has been invaded by squatters. They entered uninvited, made themselves at home, took charge, and before we could do anything to stop them, they changed the locks and forged new deeds.

What should I do? Am I wrong to stay to facilitate the good activities of First Avenue? Or, by staying am I giving tacit approval to its heresy? Should the faithful abandon such churches to their fate of decline and certain death? Should I take a stand and witness boldly to the truth? On the other hand, there still remain a few older members to whom I minister. They don’t support the changes but stay because their roots are so deep in that community and leaving would be so traumatic. And I have some longtime friends sympathetic to the changes who would be hurt if I left because of my disagreement with them. Would it be right to leave them?

What should I do? I realize that you can’t simply tell me what to do. But at least I need some perspective. Please reply.

Sincerely,

A Distressed Lady

Next Time: My reply to the distressed lady.

Why the Plausibility of Unbelief?

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A question that has haunted me for years is this: why do modern people feel that God is absent from their daily experience of the world and themselves? In much of my reading over the last decades I’ve looked for an answer to this question. I recently read an excellent book that directly addresses this issue: Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age (2023). Minich attempts to explain why, in contrast to premodern people, moderns don’t sense God’s presence in the world. Perhaps I will review this book in the future. It is not an easy read!

In the course of making his argument, Minich quotes a section from Max Weber’s 1917 essay “Science as a Vocation.” In that section, Weber addresses the subject of the difference between how modern people experience nature and their own lives and how premodern people experienced them. He focuses on two experiences: (1) whereas premodern people experienced nature as mysterious and active, we expect everything to be rational and mechanical; (2) whereas premodern people as they approached death after a long life could feel fulfilled and satisfied, many modern people feel like they are missing out on future goods. Death seems arbitrary and meaningless. Listen to the great German sociologist:

Weber on the Disenchantment of Nature

“Scientific progress is … the process of intellectualization which we have been undergoing for thousands of years.

“Let us first clarify what this intellectualist rationalization, created by science and by scientifically oriented technology, means practically. Does it mean that we, today, for instance, everyone sitting in this hall, have a greater knowledge of the conditions of life under which we exist than has an American Indian or a Hottentot? Hardly. Unless he is a physicist, one who rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened to get into motion. And he does not need to know. He is satisfied that he may ‘count’ on the behavior of the streetcar, and he orients his conduct according to this expectation … The savage knows what he does in order to get his daily food and which institutions serve him in this pursuit. The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not, therefore, indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives. It means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one but wished one could learn it at any time. Hence, it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform the service. This above all is what intellectualization means.

“Now, [concerning] this process of disenchantment, which has continued to exist in Occidental culture for millennia, and, in general, this ‘progress,’ to which science belongs as a link and motive force…do they have any meanings that go beyond the purely practical and technical? You will find this question raised in the most principled form in the works of Leo Tolstoi. He came to raise the question in a peculiar way. All his broodings increasingly revolved around the problem of whether or not death is a meaningful phenomenon. And his answer was: for civilized man death has no meaning. It has none because the individual life of civilized man, placed into an infinite ‘ progress,’ according to its own immanent meaning should never come to an end; for there is always a further step ahead of one who stands in the march of progress. And no man who comes to die stands upon the peak which lies in infinity. Abraham, or some peasant of the past, died ‘ old and satiated with life ‘ because he stood in the organic cycle of life; because his life, in terms of its meaning and on the eve of his days, had given to him what life had to offer; because for him there remained no puzzles he might wish to solve; and therefore he could have had ‘enough’ of life. Whereas civilized man, placed in the midst of the continuous enrichment of culture by ideas, knowledge, and problems, may become ‘tired of life’ but not ‘satiated with life.’ He catches only the most minute part of what the life of the spirit brings forth ever anew, and what he seizes is always something provisional and not definitive, and therefore death for him is a meaningless occurrence. And because death is meaningless, civilized life as such is meaningless; by its very ‘progressiveness’ it gives death the imprint of meaninglessness.”

Thoughts on Disenchantment

Concerning the first issue, disenchantment of nature, modern people tend to treat nature as we treat our own technology. Because our creations come from the human mind—even if not my mind—we believe we could understand them if we tried. No human creation is utterly alien and mysterious. We have been seduced by a superficial understanding of natural science into thinking nature is simply a highly complex machine rather than a deep mystery. Given time, we could understand it as clearly as we see through our own creations.

Concerning the second issue, the meaninglessness of death, I get it. Sometimes I feel something like what Abraham may have felt. I have passed through many stages of life already and, as I grow older, I feel content that this life will be enough. At other times, I feel as though I’ve only tasted a little bit of what may come to be in the future after centuries of technological progress. Hence, I feel sadness at my insignificance and therefore meaninglessness.

Perhaps we moderns cannot fully re-enchant and recover the magic and glory of nature. But I believe that discovering why we moderns don’t often experience a divine presence in nature and our lives is the first step in the process of recovering our sense of God’s presence. The second step is to return to nature with new eyes viewing it not as a machine but a living work of art and a theater of divine beauty. Others include rediscovering the meaning divine providence and omnipresence and learning to worship.

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 5)

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In part four of our series on Christianity and the Social Order we explored how Christians will by their existence and day-to-day activities indirectly influence this order. In part five we will pursue the question of whether or not, given the inner nature of Christian faith, some public policies are to be preferred over others. This issue needs to be clarified before we can address the legitimacy of Christians attempting to influence the social and political order directly.

An Introductory Reminder

Many Christians take for granted their right and duty, guided by their faith, to exert through political means a moral influence on the social world in which they live. The only debatable issues are what policies, parties, and candidates are most likely to shepherd society to be more like the kingdom of God envisioned by Jesus. They vote, make campaign contributions, place political stickers on their cars, and run for office—all without asking themselves whether Jesus’s moral teachings warrant or even permit their efforts. I designed this series to examine this unexamined presumption.

Christian Preferences for Public Policies

Believers live in many different forms of political order. It is possible to be a Christian in any of them. My question here is this: beginning with the inherent nature and logic of the Christian faith, are certain public policies to be preferred over others? We are not yet ready to ask whether or not Christians—as individuals or as the institutional church in reliance on Jesus’s teaching—may attempt to influence the state to institutionalize their preferred policies.

The Kingdom of God

Christianity envisions a perfect community, which serves as the ideal by which it measures all other communities, including the church. Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). For Christianity, the ideal society involves universal justice, peace, unity and love of neighbor and love of God grounded in unanimous acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as Lord. Paul explains that the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus aims at Christ’s universal lordship:

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11).

Christians long for the coming kingdom and would prefer that it come sooner rather than later. However, I can detect no reason to think that Jesus or the early church expected the kingdom of God to be realized in its fulness through ordinary political means—war and legislation. It will be God’s work and will arrive only at the end of history when God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Christians should of course prefer that all people freely embrace the values of the kingdom, and in living as light in the world and preaching the gospel, they work toward this end. Given the nature of the kingdom, however, Christians should know better than to attempt to establish the kingdom by political means.

State Church

It seems to me that no Christian should want the state to establish Christianity as the official state religion. Many evils flow from such arrangements: religious persecution, widespread hypocrisy, and the politicization of doctrine. But I think the most basic Christian arguments against church establishment are that the individual act of faith must be free and Christian behavior must arise from sincere love. Legal coercion or worldly advantage are destructive of faith and love.

State Persecution

I don’t see how a Christian could prefer to live under a state that is actively hostile to Christianity. We are called to endure persecution if we must, but we are not obligated to seek it. Surely it is better from a Christian point of view to live in a situation where we can believe and practice our faith freely and share it with others without fear of state persecution.

Freedom of Belief and Practice

The logic of Christianity supports neither coercing people to practice Christianity nor persecuting them for doing so. It seems rather that Christians should rejoice to live within a society where one is free to practice Christianity, some other religion, or none at all.

Next: May Christians argue in the public sphere of a secular state for their preferred public policies? If so, how?

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 4)

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In the first three parts of this series, I argued that Jesus and his apostles addressed their moral teaching to individual believers, not to institutions. I examined three different ways people attempt to apply this moral teaching to the social/political order and pronounced them all failures. Does Jesus’s moral teaching, then, have no relevance to the order and conduct of society? Must Christians keep to themselves and “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60)? Or, is there a way Christians can participate in political society without distorting Jesus’s moral teaching?

No Easy Task

I acknowledge that this is a difficult and controversial subject. I have no illusions that I can resolve issues that have been debated since the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. Additionally, Christians find themselves living in vastly different societies in every country and among every people in the world. I cannot presume to understand their situation well enough to answer their questions. They must think through their own situations. My thought is stamped with the fact that I was born in the United States of America and have lived there my whole life. The best I can do is methodically think through the question, given my experience. Perhaps I can shed a little light even for those who live in other nations.

Indirect Influence

Unavoidable

The first thing on which to get clear is that Christians cannot avoid having some influence on the society in which they live. To live in a society, we will have to participate in the market place and the workplace. We will relate to the state, at least passively, by abiding by laws and regulations, paying taxes, and many other ways. We will interact with family, neighbors, fellow workers, store clerks, doctors, and many others. As those shaped by the moral teachings of Jesus—if we truly are his disciples—even our ordinary interactions with people will witness to our faith. People will notice our “good lives” and perhaps ask why we live this way (1 Peter 2:12). And some may awaken to the moral law written on their hearts long buried by social corruption.

Good Works

We will exert influence not only by being law-abiding, peace-loving and helpful people but by doing good things beyond what we must. Jesus explained to his disciples:

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16).

From the beginning, Christians have engaged in ministries to the poor, widows and orphans, founded hospitals, build schools, helped with famine relief, and braved plague-ridden cities to care for the dying. Christians don’t do these things to exert social and political influence; yet by displaying true virtue they gradually, indirectly transformed the moral ideals of whole cultures.  And these moral ideals gradually influenced the laws, order, and policies of nations.

Evangelism

Jesus imposed on his disciples a mandate for evangelism. Jesus said,

 All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:18-20).

As is obvious from these words, evangelism combines the call to believe the good news, to be incorporated into the church and to adopt the way of life Jesus had taught his disciples. Evangelism speaks a message to the world: repent, believe, receive baptism and learn how to live as a disciple of Jesus. Even though the evangelistic message is not a direct attempt to influence social policy or the individual morality of the general public, it may have an indirect influence toward those ends. The evangelist aims to convert people to Jesus Christ and won’t be satisfied with “making the world a better place.” Nevertheless, the good news of Jesus and the call to a life of high morals may indirectly have this effect.

Next: In part five, we will ask if some political orders, systems of laws and social policies are more compatible with Christian faith, morality and practice than others. If so, can a serious disciple of Jesus actively seek to bring about the order most compatible with Christianity?

Jesus and the Politicians

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In the previous instalment I argued that Jesus and Paul did not address their moral teachings to institutions, such as the state, corporations, professions, or clubs. Only individuals can obey Jesus’s moral commands. On what grounds, then, do advocates invoke Jesus’s moral teachings to justify their public policy proposals? And what are their motivations for wanting Jesus’s support?

I think these strategies fall into three categories.

Thoughtless Clichés

Some politicians, social media junkies, and political pundits quote the teachings of Jesus, the apostles or the prophets without any attempt to justify using them in contexts and for purposes alien to their original settings. Examples are abundant: one often hears Jesus’s words “Do not judge, or you will be judged” (Matthew 7:1) quoted to deflect criticism of immoral acts. Or, it is argued that we should support a universal right to government funded healthcare because Jesus said that God “has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18; quoting Isaiah 61:1-2). Again, should not government act as a counterweight to the rich and powerful and take the side of the poor, because, in the language of liberation theology, “God is always on the side of the poor”?  Jesus’s words are often quoted as proof of this liberationist thesis:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort (Luke 6:20-24).

And James says,

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? (James 2:5-6).

Misapplication of the Old Testament

Another group, composed of Christian socialists and Black “prophetic” preachers on the left and so-called “Christian nationalists” on the right apply the Old Testament’s moral and social teachings to the United States of America and other Western democracies to very different ends. But neither left nor right take into account that the Old Testament law was given to the ancient people of Israel, which was a theocratic state governed by a specific covenant with God. The covenant laws—religious as well as moral—were binding on all the people within the realm. In contrast, the New Covenant announced by Jesus (Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25) is based on faith and obedience to Jesus, not on national or ethnic identity. This community is the new covenant people of God; it is not a political entity with sovereignty over all people within its borders—Christians, atheists, moral and immoral. To apply the OT laws given to ancient Israel or the moral instruction given in the NT to the disciples of Jesus to the United States (or other modern states) without due consideration for the differences is a misuse of Scripture and a case of flawed ethical reasoning. The United States of America is neither the Old Covenant nor the New Covenant people of God.

Academic Abstraction and Transposition

In my experience, most academic Christian ethicists understand that the moral teaching of the Bible should not be applied to modern societies uncritically. They are well aware that OT moral teaching was addressed to the ancient covenant people and the NT moral teaching speaks directly to Christians only. Moreover, they understand the point I made in the previous essay in this series, that is, that Jesus’s and the apostles’ moral teaching asserts a strict unity between the inner condition of the soul and external behavior. Good works without love are worthless (1 Corinthians 13). And one who claims to love but does nothing to help others is a liar (1 John 4:20).

The United States of America and other modern states concern themselves for the most part with external behaviors that significantly affect the peace, security and general welfare of society. They do not make policy based on the moral teaching of First Corinthians 13. Jesus said the greatest command is to love God with all your being and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40). No state has ever enshrined these teachings in law—not even in Calvin’s Geneva, Cromwell’s England or John Knox’s Scotland—nor could they be policed if they were. Additionally, modern states find it prudent to allow some external behaviors to be practiced that are clearly taught to be immoral by Jesus and the apostles. How, then, do Christian ethicists develop a Christian political/social ethics for a society that is religiously diverse and contains significant numbers of atheists, agnostics, nihilists, libertines, Marxists, anarchists, and others?

Admittedly, there are a variety of ways Christian thinkers go about developing “Christian” social ethics. But all of them have one strategy in common. They all abstract principles or rules they judge to underlie the moral teaching of the Bible, remove them from their original setting in ancient Israel or the early Christian community and transpose them into a modern secular setting. As one example, as a graduate student in a course in theological ethics I studied the ethics of Reinhold Niebuhr. In his book An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), Niebuhr argues that the Christian ideal of agape love (First Corinthians 13!) cannot be realized even in the life of an individual, much less in political society. But accepting universal love as a moral ideal can inspire us to work toward the closest approximation possible in this world, that is justice. Hence Niebuhr’s theory of ethics is called “Christian Realism.” But is “Christian Realism” Christian in any meaningful sense? The abstract concept of justice as “giving to everyone their due” (Aristotle) is common coinage in all the great ethical systems. What do we gain by calling it an “approximation” of Christian love? How can you have Christian ethics without faith, hope and love, that is, without Christ? Something else is going on, but I won’t take the time here to pursue that issue. I will just say this: Niebuhr’s Christian ethics resembles Roosevelt’s New Deal socialism more than it does Jesus’s radical discipleship ethics.

Liberation theologies—Latin American, Black, Feminist—are also examples of this third type of distortion of Jesus’s and the Apostles’ moral teaching. Liberation theologies latch on to the biblical theme of liberation exemplified most dramatically by God’s liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery in the Exodus and taken up in the NT as liberation from sin, death and the devil. Political liberation becomes the total focus of this theology. Liberation theologians adopt the persona of Moses when he said to Pharoah, “Let my people go.” But of course, modern states are neither ancient Egypt nor unfaithful Israel. And liberation theologians are neither Moses nor Amos. Something else is going on here also. I will just say this: Just as Niebuhr channeled Roosevelt’s New Deal socialism, liberation theologians have more in common with Karl Marx’s utopian communism than with Jesus and Paul.

Next: You may be left with some questions: Do Jesus’s moral teachings have nothing to say to political society? May Christians not bring their faith and moral convictions into public policy discussions? Are there ways to bring our faith to bear on the great issues of the day while avoiding the three mistakes I just outlined? In future essays I hope to address these questions.

Christian Ethics is for Christians!

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In this essay we continue our study of Christian ethics in which we attempt to reclaim Christian moral teaching from political opportunists. In the previous essay I listed five ethical principles that do double duty as conclusions and guiding principles of this series. Today we will address the first two:

  • Jesus and the apostles address their moral teaching to individual persons; not a single line is addressed to an institution.
  • The only entity capable of moral dispositions and actions is the individual human person.

I assume that most of my readers are familiar with the full range of the New Testament. Given this assumption, I will not take the space to document every instance of moral teaching in the NT. Nevertheless, in preparation for this essay I reread the four gospels and the letters of Paul just to make sure that my memory served me correctly.

Jesus

Jesus teaches his disciples about many things: the character of God and providence, the coming kingdom of God, and sincere religious practice. Included in his teaching are what I am calling moral teachings, that is, how we ought to act. The Sermon on the Mount serves as a convenient summary of Jesus’s moral teaching. Among the moral imperatives in that section of Matthew are:

  • Don’t get angry or insult your neighbor.
  • Don’t harbor lust.
  • Don’t divorce.
  • Don’t swear an oath.
  • Don’t take revenge.
  • Love your enemies.
  • Don’t worry. Trust God.
  • Don’t love money.
  • Don’t judge others.

Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus teaches his disciples to:

  • Forgive others.
  • Love their neighbors.
  • Purify their hearts from all hypocrisy.
  • Be humble and serve others.
  • Don’t seek honor from others.

Perhaps no other statement expresses the heart of Jesus’s moral teaching better than Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This command comes at the end of the section wherein Jesus insists, against the universal human inclination, that we ought to love our enemies. The moral actions Jesus commands can arise only out of a character assimilated to the character of God.

Paul

Paul’s writings deal centrally with the necessity in the first decades of the church of clarifying how trust in Jesus as the crucified and risen Messiah and Lord relate to the Law and how Jewish and Gentile believers can be united in one body. But Paul unmistakably continues to teach his converts—especially gentile converts—the moral vision embodied in the Law and the prophets as interpreted by Jesus. We can see this fusion clearly in Romans 13-15, Galatians 5, Ephesians 4 and 5, Philippians 2, and Colossians 3. But I am especially struck, however, by 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul, like Jesus, connects outward actions to the most intimate depths of the heart. God wants our souls! If we fail here, we “gain nothing” (v. 3).

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

This description reminds me of Jesus’s statement in Matthew 5:48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In 13:10, Paul even uses the same word “perfect” or teleios to describe the state in which everything is as it should be.

The Individual Christian

In my rereading of the NT, I could not find a single moral imperative addressed to the state as it existed in that day (the Roman Empire) or any hypothetical state. There are no moral instructions about justice or love or mercy directed to public or private institutions composed of nonbelievers or a mixture of believers and nonbelievers. The NT does not read like Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Politics or Grotius or Hobbes or Locke or Rousseau or Hegel or Rawls. Nothing resembling public policy advocacy can be found. When the NT speaks to the world, it says “Repent and believe the gospel.” And even then, it speaks only to individuals, for only individuals can repent or believe. Moral instruction follows conversion.

Indeed, the NT speaks about the church as an institution but only in descriptive terms. When Jesus or Paul or John presents moral instruction to the church it is always addressed to the community not as an abstract institution but as individuals of one mind and heart.

When you consider Jesus’s and Paul’s inextricable linkage of moral action with the depths of the inner person, it becomes clear why the NT addresses its moral teaching to individual persons only. Institutions don’t have hearts. They can’t believe. They can’t love.

Why, then, do so many clergy, politicians, intellectuals, and others, quote Jesus and the apostles as if their moral teaching could be applied directly to the political order or organizations composed of atheists, adherents of other religions, and nominal Christians? Can this practice be justified?

Next Time we will examine three ways people apply Jesus’s and the apostles’ teaching to public institutions and attempt to justify particular public policies.

Pearls, Pigs and Politics: Reclaiming Christian Ethics

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6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces” (Matt 7:6).

 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory… 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:7-14).

A New Series

Today we begin a new series. I think I know the general direction and the destination, but I don’t know the exact route. I am guided by the conviction that much of what passes as Christian moral teaching today is really political ideology in religious disguise. That is to say, instead of helping individual believers understand how they ought to live as disciples of Jesus in an idolatrous culture, teachers focus on social/political issues and invoke the teaching of Jesus—and selectively the Old Testament and apostolic teaching—to support particular public policies. Instead of speaking of faith, hope and love, they instruct us about social justice. Instead of calling us to personal responsibility and repentance, they blame the social order for our sins and sufferings and call for political change. In short, they prefer to change the world than change themselves.

In this series I want to challenge this social/political distortion of the gospel and return Christian ethics to its proper subject: the individual person’s character and actions in relation to God and neighbor.

Ethical Principles

Below are some principles that will guide our discussion. I will have to unpack and defend them, but for now I want to assert them for your contemplation.

  • The only entity capable of moral dispositions and actions is the individual human person.
  • Jesus and the apostles address their moral teaching to individual persons; not a single line is addressed to an institution.
  • Christian moral teaching presumes the unity and inseparability of our highest religious duty (to love God) and our highest moral duty (to love neighbor); loving God takes priority.
  • Christian moral teaching demands that the dispositions of the soul and external actions dwell in harmony in the good and right.
  • The believing church—understood as a community of persons not as an institution—should endeavor to embody the perfect community of the Kingdom of God in this world.

The Journey

I hope you will walk along with me as we explore this subject. I am afraid I will have to kick a few sacred cows, step on a few toes, and deflate a few delusions along the way. But my goal is to discern and explain the way of life taught by Jesus and his apostles.

The Wicked Bible

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In 1631, a London printer reprinted the King James Bible. Unfortunately, the typesetters made the glaring mistake that gave the Bible its name. Instead of reading “Thou shall not commit adultery” the seventh commandment reads “Thou shalt commit adultery” (Ex 20:14). In today’s essay, we will examine, not an unfortunate typo, but a determined strategy of interpretation that intentionally leaves out many “shalt nots.”

In the previous seven parts of this study, I described the scientific, philosophical and theological developments that made plausible the thesis that LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living are consistent with the moral and religious teachings of the Bible. I am not addressing non-believers; they don’t care what the Bible says. Nor am I speaking to progressive Christians; they reduce biblical authority to a mousey “me too” to the spirit of the times. I am writing to Christians who say that they accept the Bible’s authority for faith and morality but argue that the church can affirm LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living without compromising this stance.

In my recent book The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living (Los Angeles: Keledei Publications, 2024), I analyzed and critiqued a book by Karen Keen: Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships (Eerdmans, 2018). In this book, Keen defends a thesis of the kind I am most concerned for my audience to understand and reject, that is, biblical moral teaching is consistent with LGBTQ+ affirmation.

Keen, along with other authors who defend the same thesis, begins with the tacit admission that, according to a plain reading of the biblical texts and the near universal consensus of the Jewish community and the church for more than 3000 years, the Bible appears unequivocally to condemn same-sex sexual activity. See Genesis 19:1-11; Lev 18:21-24; 20:13; 1 Cor 6:9-10; 1 Tim 1:8-11; and Rom 1:22-28.

In speaking to an audience that believes in the authority of the Bible and reads the Bible within the traditional church, Keen begins with the disadvantage of having the burden of proof. How can she hope to convince this audience of the affirming view? Clearly, she must (1) convince them that the “plain” meaning of the texts is not so plain as they first thought, and (2) if possible, she needs to shift the burden of proof from the affirming to the traditional side. Her book sets about to achieve both of these objectives.

As I come back to her book two years after I wrote my reply, I can now place her argument into the larger framework I’ve developed in this series. In sum, to achieve objective (1), she makes use of the kind of modern historical criticism I discussed in the previous essay under the rubric “Historical Study that Rejects Authority.” As you will see below, her interpretive strategy focuses our attention, not on the texts themselves, but on something behind the texts, that is, on the unspoken motives or aims of biblical moral rules. She moves from the objectivity of the text to possibilities about which we can only speculate. To achieve objective (2), she makes use of the view of reality that Galileo, Descartes, and Locke first proposed and Rousseau, the Romantics, Nietzsche, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir developed to their logical ends, that is, that human beings possess no created or natural, self-revealing essence, identity, or self. Individuals choose and construct who they become. Though Keen does not appeal directly to this postmodern idea, she invokes the private, internal experience of gay and lesbian people as a moral authority that must be respected—an idea that would have made no sense before modernity. Though Keen deals with gay and lesbian issues only, her arguments apply equally to the transgender experience as well.

In the first chapter (“The Plan”) of my book, I outlined the complete argument of her book along with its conclusion. On a macro level, the success of her argument depends on our acceptance of three interpretive principles and acknowledgement of three experiential facts. They are as follows:

 Interpretive Principle #1

The Bible’s positive moral teachings provide a vision of justice, goodness, and peace; they are intended to promote human flourishing.

Interpretive Principle #2

The Bible’s moral prohibitions are intended to forbid things that cause harm to human beings and the rest of creation.

Interpretive Principle #3

To apply the Bible’s moral teachings appropriately, we must deliberate about whether or not applying a biblical rule to a situation prevents harm and promotes human flourishing. Applications that harm people must be rejected.

Experienced-based Fact #1

Gay people do not choose to be gay, and the overwhelming majority cannot change their orientation.

Experienced-based Fact #2

Faithful, loving gay relationships do not cause harm to those involved or to the human community. To the contrary, they can display all the fruits of the Spirit listed in Scripture.

Experienced-based Fact #3

A large majority of gay people do not have the gift of celibacy and find that state deeply painful.

Conclusion

Because covenanted same-sex relationships embody justice, goodness, and human flourishing, do not cause harm to the people in the relationship or the human community, and unwanted celibacy causes great unhappiness to gay people, faithful deliberation must conclude that the Bible allows covenanted same-sex relationships.

The Wicked Bible

The chapters Keen devotes to defending the three interpretive principles aim at achieving objective (1), that is, creating doubts about the traditional interpretation of the anti-gay texts. The chapters that narrate the three experiential facts aim at shifting the burden of proof from the traditional interpretation to the affirming interpretation. Apart from the developments I explored in parts one through seven in this series—Galileo, Locke, and biblical criticism—Keen’s arguments make no sense at all. I can’t imagine anyone even thinking of them.

Such interpreters as Keen read the Bible’s “shalt not” as “it depends.” The Holy Bible becomes The Wicked Bible without changing a word.

The Devil is Always in the Details (of the Method)

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This is the sixth in our series of essays examining how the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 19), came to be taken seriously by millions of otherwise intelligent people. In this essay I will offer further critique of the historical critical method of biblical study, focusing on the four scientific/critical principles of interpretation listed in part five.

The Principles of Historical Criticism Examined

In the previous essay, I listed four general principles of the historical critical method of Bible study. Biblical scholars derived them from the new empirical/mechanical science and the rationalistic enlightenment inspired by this revolution. The pioneers of the enlightenment—Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Locke—appealed to the stunning advances made possible by the new empirical method as setting a new paradigm for progress in all areas of knowledge. We must, they contended, reject tradition, faith, authority, and common sense, as reliable ways of attaining knowledge and rely instead on our own examination of truth and fact claims. Applying enlightenment principles to the Bible demands that (1) we treat the Bible just as we treat other books, (2) in our biblical studies we rid ourselves of all dogmatic presuppositions, such as those about divine inspiration or the authority of the creeds, (3) we interpret the biblical texts within their ancient cultural, religious, and literary horizons, (4) we must not take fact or truth claims within the biblical texts at face value but must examine them and accept them only to the extent that they are supported by historical evidence.

I titled my previous essay (#5) “How Experts Stole the Bible.” These four principles justify my choosing such a dramatic title. Taken separately or together they wrest the Bible from the arms of the church and place it in the hands of individuals to be used as a quarry from which to gather materials to build their private philosophies or religions. The secular university declares itself the true interpreter of the Bible and the moral conscience of the culture—in direct and self-conscious opposition to the church. Let’s examine each principle separately.

1. Read the Bible Just Like Other Books*

There is, of course, some truth and common sense in this principle. The Bible is written in ordinary human languages with grammatical and syntactical and semantic features that characterize all literature. Its ideas are connected by logical relations and its narratives flow in ways common to literature of its type. The church has rarely disputed this. But the church has never understood the Bible to be in all ways just like other books! It is Holy Scripture! In the early centuries, martyrs surrendered their lives rather than turn over the Scriptures to the pagan authorities. In the Bible, the church hears the word of God speaking through the prophets and incarnate in Jesus Christ. The church gathered and preserved these writings because they contained the apostolic witness to the Word of God, which according to John, “we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). The church never has, does not at present, should not, and never will read the Bible just like other books! And any institution that does so cannot be the church.

2. Responsible Bible Students Must Rid Themselves of All Faith Presuppositions

The second principle of modern biblical criticism also possesses superficial plausibility, which evaporates when examined. The church looks to the Scriptures as its canon (its rule or normative standard). Of course, the church should always be open to deepening and sharpening its faith by its continual reading of Scripture. But the early church received the apostolic writings as authoritative already having an understanding of the faith received from the apostles, memorized and stated concisely in what they called “the rule of faith.”** The church has been reading the Scriptures for over 1900 years. And it keeps on hearing its “rule of faith” confirmed by every reading. The church does not read Scripture as if it had never read it before. It reads it as a community that reaches back in time, not as isolated individuals. Each generation is taught how to read Scripture and what to expect from that reading. Reading the Scriptures without presuppositions is not only impossible; it is also self-deceptive.

3. Interpret the Bible within its Ancient Cultural, Religious, and Literary Horizons.

The third principle, too, contains much truth and much danger. In general, modern people are more aware of the historical distance between the ancient world and contemporary culture than were those, for example, living in the Middle Ages. This awareness can help us hear in those ancient texts what their first readers heard and avoid reading modern ideas and customs back into those ancient texts. It can also warn us not to take the changing customs of dress and diet as binding for all times. However, there is a tendency in modern thought toward what is called “historicism,” which is the belief that we must interpret ancient texts as locked within the ideological limits of their day. Applied to the Bible, critics account for the origin of all its ideas by borrowings from the cultural, religious, and philosophical systems contemporary with it. Historicism excludes miracles, divine revelation, inspiration, and universally applicable moral and religious truth. On historicist principles Jesus must have believed in demon possession, the coming kingdom of God, the resurrection of the dead, etc., because these were the common religious beliefs of his day.

4. Never Take the Biblical Texts at Face Value

More than the others, this principle embodies the enlightenment demand that would-be rational thinkers think for themselves and examine every proposed belief, weighing its credibility in terms of the evidence that supports it. Whereas the early church received the scriptures as a precious legacy and passes them on to each new generation to be read in faith with a view to obedience, modern biblical critics assert the right—indeed the obligation— to question the early church’s judgment at every point and relitigate every sentence. And yet, the process by which the earliest church received and passed on its knowledge of Jesus and the apostolic witness is largely lost to us, except what we have in the canonical New Testament. The process cannot be recovered. But the church of the 1st through the 4th centuries assures us that the end result of the process—the New Testament—is true to Jesus and the apostolic witness. Either we trust it or we don’t.

But modern historians claim to have developed criteria by which to reexamine every detail of the New Testament and judge its historical veracity. They speak with such confidence about “what really happened” you wonder whether they may have mastered the science of time travel! However, the more you read historical critical reconstructions of New Testament history, the more you realize that it’s all speculation and guesswork based on modern notions of what is psychologically plausible, metaphysically possible, and morally and politically desirable. Moreover, scholars reach wildly different conclusions even when they use the same methods. Apart from respect for the canonical texts as they are written, there are no objective standards for interpretation.

*You might be interested in a recent article by James A. Thompson, “Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Higher Critic,” 67. #4 (2025). Restoration Quarterly. Thompson addresses the first principle: read the Bible like any other book.

**See the excellent study by the renowned church historian Everett Ferguson: The Rule of Faith: A Guide (Cascade, 2015).

Next Time: We will see how progressive Christian interpreters use the historical critical method to find justification in the New Testament for acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living.