Why I am very disappointed in Rick Warren….

After his insightful questions at the Saddleback forum, his decent worldview-illumining comments on Hannity and Colmes after it, and a few times when I’ve heard him speak some basic gospel tennants in his pulpit (albiet not as clearly and distinctly as I would have put it), I find these comments on the Way of the Master Radio very disturbing.

Make no mistake about it; that is Warren’s voice.  Also, those are not chopped comments.  He’s allowed to say his thought very very clearly and completely.  The radio comments from the host may be a bit brash and less gracious than I would have put it myself, but they say exactly what needs to be said. Exactly what needs to be said about Warren’s comments!  In fact, Warren’s comments are no less brash, and they are completely flawed.  He interprets texts allegorically!!!

After hearing this, I truly doubt I want to give Warren the time of day.  Very dangerous and unbiblical methodology and ministry philosophy. I really wanted to work next to him in the vineyard despite our differences, but now I think he might be in another vineyard.  Tragically, my suspicions have been confirmed.

John Piper gives some very insightful and biblical counterpoints which are completely refreshing.  Once again, I hope you will consider what you read my brothers and sisters.

Fathers Count and Family Matters

“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.” Psalm 78:4-7

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ’Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.’ Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:1-4

It is of most profound interest that the Lord calls Fathers to account about the teaching of their children. Mothers, of course, do this as well, but the Scriptures constantly give a heavy specific command to Fathers to be the primary teacher and instructor of the home.  This is of great importance when one considers recent statistics.

Even in the secular world, where such patriarchy is sneered at and despised, one finds it interesting that even they, with their post modern worldview, can not escape the eternal reality of a Father’s impact in the lives of his children.

In my education class this year, we are reading a book called, “The Act of Teaching.” In the second chapter, I found a shocking reminder of this inescapable truth.  The authors write:

“This brings us to the importance of having a father in the home.  ‘Children who grow up with fathers do far better…in every way we can measure than children who do not.  This holds true [regardless of race, class and income].  The simple truth is that fathers are irreplaceable in shaping the character of their children. (Blankenhom in Alexander; 2005).

Here are some supportive, sobering statistics.  Children in fatherless homes account for 71 percent of dropouts, 85 percent of kids with behavioral disorders, 63 percent of teen suicides, 70 percent of juveniles in detention centers, 85 percent of youths in prison, 75 percent of those in chemical abuse treatment centers, 80 percent of rapists, and 90 percent of homeless and runaways.  Whithead, a counselor at a juvenile detention center, challenges that ‘if you find a gang member who comes from a complete nuclear family, I’d like to meet him…I don’t think he exists’ (ibid.).  Cole adds, “Maturity does not come with age, but with the responsibility of one’s actions.  The lack of effective, functioning fathers is the root cause of America’s social, economic and spiritual crisis’ (ibid).” (The Act of Teaching, p. 30, 2008.)

This is absolutely fascinating to me.  Here we have a secularized textbook on education that cites studies and statistics that support an eternal truth of Fatherhood, namely, that fathers contribute to the stability of civilization.  I cannot help but re-type that last sentence:

“The lack of effective, functioning fathers is the root cause of America’s social, economic and spiritual crisis.”

I recall a prophetically articulated comment from my pastor at home: ‘The hope for America does not rest in any election.  The hope of America rests in the hands of fathers who hold fast to the gospel.’

It seems, indeed, that fathers are irreplaceable, and the family truly matters.  Asaph in Psalm 82:3 prays, “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute,” and I hope we will join with him.

Working with you to wave high the banner of God’s first institution and to stand firmly upon its truth,

Vince R.

Viewing “The Shack” through the Lense of Truth

Perhaps you have heard of the book The Shack by William Young.  Apparently, there are Christians who are going completely ga-ga about it.  Here’s how Eugene Peterson (the sole author of The Message) endorses it:

“When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!”

Really?! Are you really making that assertion, Mr. Peterson?  John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a cross-generational work of art because it contains cross-generational truth.  Does this book contain truth?

Here’s Jay Leno, exemplifying the pagan culture, giving it a shrugging endorsement:

I have never read it.  I might in the future.  But many men for whom I have great respect because of their godly, biblical, Christ-exalting committment have given it a big thumbs-down.

Dr. Russell Moore, for example, in one of the Albert Mohler programs during late July, said that he was about 100 pages into it, and he couldn’t help but think that he could spend his time much better than reading “this heresy.”

Tim Challies, a Christian Reviewer whom I respect has released his review of the book.

This person posts Challies’ defense of that review after receiving his responses from those who disagreed.

Lastly, Mark Driscoll let’s us know what he thinks about the book:

You know, I completely understand the argument that says that I have no right to endorse these critiques of a book of which I have not read.  Yet the idea remains: Could your time be spent better? Does it deliver what it promises? Does it deliver what it promises in a God-exalting, Christ-centered, biblically faithful way?

I guess that you will have to decide that, but I exhort you to understand how quickly Satan can use anything to turn your eyes from the truth.  I DO NOT give you a recommendation to read the book.  In fact, I will quickly say that I can give you a great onslaught of titles to read which I believe will serve you far better.

Nevertheless, I have read some reviews who have favored the book (swing a dead cat and you’ll hit a thumbs-up review for this book), and I am mostly amazed at many who loved it because of their intimate and personal identification with suffering.  That is the very subject which prompted the writing of the book, and also chronicles the book’s main subject.  (It’s Job without the four friends and the one true God.)

It’s just one man who faced tragedy speaking directly to a god called the God of Christianity inside a Shack.  USA Today gives us some insight here about that issue.

I am deeply moved to empathy by the way Mr. Young faced tragedy in his own life.  I am not distant or cold to that truth, yet I cannot say that I would be responding in love if I were, maybe as his pastor,  to respond to his situation in a way that compromises truth.  This is not love.  “Love…rejoices with the truth.”

The only way to minister to a weary soul facing tragedy is not through allegory or symbolism.  It’s through God’s revealed word which tells us this:

“For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Hebrews 2:18

“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16

The Lord is not distant from your suffering.  He’s been through it before, and his suffering was the worst there could be.  Most of all, by this suffering, we are brought near to God by grace through faith in Christ.

People like Mr. Young who face the tragic realities of a fallen world will do better for themselves if they find faithful loving pastors and teachers who stay true to Scripture and the one true God.  It is far better than any “fiction” because it is eternal truth that calls us to reconcile and fellowship intimately with the Most High God. That’s the lense through which we must view any suffering.

Working with you to consider carefully what you read,

Vince R.

“Don’t Waste Your Thesis; Make Much of Me”

As you might have noticed, I’ve not been as bloggingly productive these past few days, especially considering I’m on ‘vacation.’

I have six reasons for this:

1.) Writing a semester’s worth of Sunday School Curriculum

2.) Two sermons, Lord willing, to be preached August 17, 2008

3.) Time I want to spend with family.

4.) Cleaning and organizing the junk of the dwelling place.

5.) To avoid the usual physical slump found when one “goes home” for a break from college, I’ve been trying to make it to the track, listening to the New Attitude 2008 sermons for a second time during my crepuscular jogs.

6.) Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

All of these activities have put humble pursuits (the blog site, not the practice) on the backburner.  Except today.

The Only Picture from My Vacation in Knoxville

In my laborious, albiet fascinating, journey through Knoxville, Tennessee in McCarthy’s Suttree, I have learned three things:

1.) McCarthy is probably a earthy genius.

2.) McCarthy is probably insane, in an earthy way.

3.) I love the South.

So that is where my mind has been as of late, yet I am once again intrigued by the writer’s profound interjections for seemingly usual and common actions.  Check out how McCarthy turns a very simple action about closing a photo album into a beautiful poetic outpouring of moral decadence and God-forsaken hopelessness:

He closed the cover on this picture book of the afflicted.  A soft yellow dust bloomed.  Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark.  What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh.  This mawky worm-bent tabernacle. (130)

Why, Mr. McCarthy, are you so bleak?  What profound hopelessness have you seen that beckons such horrid cogitations and despairing insanities?

I ask these question for you to share in thinking with me.  I will not try to understand the man “Cormac McCarthy.” I will only engage his works.  Yet, as I go deeper into my reading of his novels, this being novel four, I am more intrigued by this conceptual motif of hopelessness and despair, a pervading air of the dark and the despondent.  This is southern gothic, and it is undoubtedly post-modern literature.  It has the characteristics.

My Weapon of Choice

How does biblical worldview engage the worldview presented in these novels?  Dare I go there in my thesis? I am beginning to think so, and I have only one weapon with which to dissect.  Will I be warmly received for my proposed examination? Even at a ‘Christian’ school, I really don’t think so.  Satan still slithers down the halls of our Christian schools.  Nevertheless, the Deity of deities has no dementia, and he has crushed that serpent’s head.

The Lord has given me an opportunity to write a thesis, and with it, he has clearly commanded: “Don’t Waste Your Thesis; Make Much of Me.”

Working with you to delve intelligently and biblically into the art of a hopeless culture that needs Christ,

Vince R.

McCarthy, Cormac. Suttree.  (New York: Vintage International, 1979).

Johnny Cash, the Gospel, and an Empire of Dirt

Dr. Russell Moore surmises one of many reasons why I really like this country artist.  In his article for the Henry Institute, Dr. Moore discusses the cross-culteral viscerality of Johnny Cash’s music.

Where contemporary country music often peppers Christianity (a quick reference to Sunday Meals and Jesus) with a host of other shallow references like beer, trucks, and lost love, Cash’s music deeply explores the pangs of death and the hope of Jesus.  While I would never assert that all of his music does this, his songs do always ‘feel’ black with a small light of conviction (often gospel conviction).  Of course, he was called ‘the man in black,’ but it is the poetry and weight with which he carried this persona (it was simply a persona) that communicates a profound understanding of pain, death and loneliness.  His characature was a reflection of his heart.

In his later days, this came through so vividly.  One can’t help but identify with a man suddenly finding himself alone and facing death asking–What is all worth it?  Has it all been real?

While others were doing commemorating performances of their past songs, Cash was singing about Revelation such as in ”When the Man Comes Around” or warning people that “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”

This was a man coming face to face with death and the weight of judgment.

Did Johnny Cash make it to heaven? I can’t say.  He professed Christ frequently, and he recorded some of my favorite southern gospel songs.  But was it all show? I hope not for his sake.

Here’s an excerpt from that article from Dr. Moore about Johnny Cash:

King Solomon never won a Grammy but, like Johnny Cash, he discovered the vanity of fame and finance as death approaches. The faith in American V is less like a celebrity testimony at a Billy Graham crusade and much more like the desperate faith of a crucified robber, sobbing as he drowns in his own blood: “Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42).

Here’s the song that echoes with a lonely man looking back at it all as an empire of dirt:

Hearing this song, I am reminded of John Piper’s echoing cry: “Don’t Waste Your Life.”  I recall the haunting story of a lonely man coming down to the front in his old age, bawling the words “I wasted it! I wasted it!

This morning I read Acts 20.  Verses 24 and 25 captured me.  Paul, addressing the Ephesian elders, is about to leave them, and he says:

But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.  And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

In the previous verses (22-23), Paul said he did not know what was going to happen to him, but he was sure by the Holy Spirit that imprisonment and affliction awaited him.  He was right.  Paul, for the sake of Christ’s gospel, was martyred.

I was close to tears much like those Ephesian elders who cared so deeply for him and what he did for them for the cause of the gospel.

I was shaken because I thought of my life.  Will I look back and think I wasted my life?  Can I stand with as much conviction as Paul in my farewell and share in his words.  He accounted his life of no value or as precious to himself for the sake of the gospel of the kingdom.  Will I?

Oh God, create that heart in me! Your gospel is just too powerful and your kingdom is just too glorious for silence and passivity.  May I not look back on my life as just an empire of dirt.

Working with you for the cause of Christ’s Gospel,

Vince R.

A “Pregnant Man,” Rampant Confusion, and the Only Answer

What's the Difference?

Over the twentieth century, the culture has produced alarmingly unnatural images and revisionist definitions of the identity of the sexes.  Only this year, it produced what many of you have heard as the ‘pregnant man.’  This is not a man.  This is a woman.  Men don’t get pregnant, but the culture would have the term ‘pregnant man’ printed across its billboards, in its magazine articles, and on its Internet websites.  The culture wants you to think that a ’pregnant man’ is truly a natural occurrence.

Friends, I think we can see from this that when there is no biblical worldview, confusion persists and truth is suppressed.  We must notice, first and foremost, that this wave of media-driven confusion and propagation speaks of the signs of the times.  It is people ‘deceiving and being deceived.’

Our enemy is not this woman who had an operation or her partner who I’m not even sure if it is a man or a woman, but it is Satan and his forces.  We do not war against flesh and blood.  We war against the principalities, the spiritual rulers of this present darkness.  They are actual persons who want lives to be ruined by belief in half-truths and lies about manhood and womanhood.

As such, the topic of my discussion is this confusion; it is a confusion about truth.  It is a confusion about what defines a man and what defines a woman.  The culture will not find truth in the way it is going.  The world and its wisdom is not the source of truth.

Jesus Christ is that truth, and he is that way.  Sorrowfully, I assert that the constant hatred that the culture has for people like me who will boldly say that men and women are different will not cease.  It will only get worse.  With a heavy heart, I truly hate what Satan is doing to those lost souls and most certainly what he will do to that poor baby, whose life will echo more and more confusion because her ‘parents’ are just as confused and blinded by the god of this age.

Satan wants confusion.  He wants disorder and anarchy.  He knows that God took disorder and anarchy and made it into the heavens and the earth.  God is the author of order, not the author of confusion.  He has clearly layed out in his word the definition and distinct purposes of men and women.  It all goes back to the created order of God, but sadly, the culture reflects the fall from that order more and more everyday.  Even more tragically, this fallen worldview has crept into our churches, and numerous Christians are just as confused about manhood and womanhood.

Recently, I heard news about a Christian friend, two years younger than I, who just got pregnant out of wedlock.  This is mostly tragic, not because of the sinful occurrence (which is tragic enough), but more so because of the failure of God’s people to help her understand biblical manhood and womanhood long before this happened. By God’s grace, his people will be there to support and love her in this hard and heavy time.  By God’s grace, the baby will be born and stand as testimony to the redemptive power of Jesus Christ in bringing my friend and her partner through this for his glory and for their good.  May they be saved or sanctified during this difficult time.

It is most sad to me that this topic is not being addressed in our pulpits.  Where it is being addressed, it is mostly ambiguous and curt.  “Don’t have sex until your married,” is the message that we hear.  But how to do that, how to keep a pure heart, how young men are to treat young women with respect and honor, work hard, display integrity, and take leadership, and how young women are to model modesty, support and be led by young men, and display virtuous femininity–these are not being taught. I believe that a pastor must be willing to lose his pulpit over this issue.  It is that important to Christian discipleship, Christian sanctification, Christian maturity, and most of all, the propagation of the gospel to a lost world that needs more of the ordered gospel and less of its own seemingly chaotic self.

Nevertheless, the condition of today’s young evangelical Christians reflects this lack of passionate biblical teaching and discipleship.  As a result, hearts are broken in many ways, and they continue to break up into adulthood, where their children will learn the same confusion. 

Mostly, this is due to young men who are more like little boys.  They are passive, uninterested, and predatory in their minds, viewing women as meat to be seduced rather than hearts to be earned.  They would rather wait patiently during the church services, content with the Lord’s work being done by someone else.  They are consumed with want of possessions (trucks and i-phones), want of comparison (viewing their muscles as more indicative of their character than their hearts), want of women (not with respect but with lust).  Chivalry is dying, and passivity is reigning strongly.  Manhood, for them, is not to be considered until marriage, and it is largely ignored before it.  They’ll play video games and watch funny you-tube sequences before they’ll study their Bibles and cultivate a life in the Word.  They would rather not think of fatherhood or leading a young woman spiritually.  ‘That is too hard, and I’m too young to think about that,’ one of them might say.  Yet for some reason, they think that on that day, when they’re married, they’ll be magically able to lead and protect and provide without any prior training or discipleship from their father’s or from older men in their church.  In fact, they despise any godly advice from their elders.  More so, these fathers and older men often don’t even know how to lead them themselves.  It is the fruit of Satan’s subtle work over many years.

On the other side of the gender, young women are more aggressive, in their words, in their actions and in their hearts.  They would be the ones to make the first move and take the initiative in almost all spheres of social life.  They would be the ones to entice young men with their bodies, wearing clothes that fifty years ago only a prostitute would wear.  They would be the ones to view marriage unbiblically, seeking fulfillment in their boyfriends rather than Jesus Christ, their God-friend.  They despise God’s intent for glad and nurturing motherhood, seeking rather to create a career, a name, and a paycheck.  Many view children as burdens and not as blessings.  Abortions, for this reason, are rampant, and corporations (I choose that word specifically) like Planned Parenthood would have them continue to think that way.  Feminism is killing our churches and ruining the lives of our young women.

In many larger metropolises, the public school system would have condoms and contraceptives in the hands of fifth graders, while the parents merely gawk, jaws dropped to the ground.  Or maybe they’re supportive of this usurpation of parental authority which is even sadder.  Parents may wonder just how raped their children’s minds truly are when their daughter has her first period at age eight or their son asks about a woman’s body at an age when, in my day, I was just enamored with my Star Wars action figures. 

Friends, I’m less concerned about lost people acting like lost people.  I’m more concerned because this is so rampant in our own pews.  Regenerate membership is a dirty idea today, and church discipline is a four-letter word.  This is tragic because those lost people just can’t seem to tell the difference between Christians and Agnostics, both of which are just as involved in pre-martial intimacy.

People will not like what I write in this essay.  My younger friends will call me a ‘twenty-year old fossil’ or a hyper-conservative hung-up male chauvinist because of what I say.  Older folks will say that I’m too young to know what I’m saying, and too inexperienced to have any authority to speak this way.  To them all I say, my only authority is God’s own word.

I’m okay with that now.  It once haunted me to consider what people would think of me because of these convictions for which I stand.  My social popularity is not what is at stake.  Rather, their souls are at stake.  This is because this issue, if you read my recent post on whether it’s 4th order doctrine or not, is so important.  It strikes at the core of a biblical understanding of marriage.  We don’t model this because it’s just tradition.  That is a sorry and pathetic reason to want to do marriage and gender roles like this.

The core issue here is that men and women are to relate in such a way that symbolizes the gospel.  A man must look up at his crucified savior with tears in his eyes and then turn to his wife and say, “That’s how I’m supposed to love you.”  A woman is to look at that same cross with tears in her eyes and then turn and look at her husband and say, “I will be there to support and love you the whole way up that Calvary hill.”

For you see, that is why the world hates the biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood.  They hate it because it mirrors the stumbling block of the gospel of God.   Are we preaching the gospel in our marriages and relationships?  That is the heart of the issue.  Is Christ being made much of in this? That is the goal of the entire institution of marriage.

Here is my thesis:  the only answer to the confusion of biblical manhood and womanhood is the gospel.

The once for all propositional truth of justification by faith in Christ alone is the answer to that scared and trembling young woman with that weight in her stomach as she sits in that cold waiting room at the clinic wondering if she’s doing the right thing.

The truth of penal substitutionary atonement is the answer to that facade of bravado as the young man sits next to that girl just as scared and confused and unable to understand what went wrong because now manhood means more than just seducing girls.

The truth of the resurrection with power is the answer to those comfortable young men who don’t know how to lead and so are just as content letting the girls do everything.

Because of an infantile understanding of Christ’s finished and complete work, all other spheres of life will grow weaker and weaker until understanding of truth has vanished and the church looks just like the world. 

God’s gospel will heal all wounds, will order all chaos, and will model servant leadership for young men, and glad submission for young women.

Go back to the old old story, Christians! That will set you rightly. It’s a biblical guarantee.

Working with you to cast down all confusion and to bow humbly before that old rugged cross,

Vince R.