Theses on the Kindness of Christ

Posted on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 16 comments These affirmations and denials are intended by the session of Christ Church to provide a theological framework for the various mercy ministries operating under the authority of Christ Church, as well as any related teaching ministry connected to or supported by our church. We write with the average parishioner in mind, wanting to encourage active involvement in the mercy work of our church, and in such a way that simply shows us to be overflowing with gratitude as we live out the implications of what God has done for us. This statement on these issues represents the current position of the session as a session at the time of adoption. This is a working document, and we invite response and feedback. Individual elders may certainly differ with various elements of this statement, but the statement as a whole represents our corporate conviction. The Scripture texts cited are simply meant to show our work, and to demonstrate that we are seeking to develop this statement in submission to the teaching of Scripture. But agreement with this document does not require agreement with the citation of any particular verse or passage. In other words, the proof texts are intended to support this statement, but are not to be considered as a part of it. The statement addresses five broad, interrelated topics. Our statement begins with the problem, an unbelieving world under Mammon, and then moves to a treatment of the sacrificial violence that overthrew the violence of Mammons realm. Our statement then moves on to a treatment of the kingdom ethic that believers should embody throughout the course of their lives, first distinguishing sins from crimes, and then moving on to the twin headings of generosity and mercy. The elders do not intend for this statement to be used in a way that would stifle discussion about these issues in the congregation, or to discourage wide reading or thinking about them. Rather, we simply want the people who support our mercy ministries to know the results of our study and thought, and to know what we consider the scriptural foundation for our work to be. While we do hope to exercise leadership on these issues, we do not want such leadership to be interpreted in a restrictive way. Because we work closely with Trinity Reformed Church in our work of mercy ministry, these statements were developed in close consultation with their session of elders, and are approved by them as well. Mammon We affirm that we need to understand our relationship to material wealth in light of the biblical narrative of creation, fall, and redemption. God is the maker and sustainer of all material things, and He declared them all to be good (Gen. 1:31). There is no sin resident in things themselves. Nevertheless, as a result of our disobedience and fall in the Garden of Eden, the human race has become hopelessly and idolatrously entangled with the good things of this world, and so even as believers we must therefore constantly guard our hearts with regard to His good gifts. And last, we affirm that just as God did not write off this fallen world, neither should we. Because of the

redemption accomplished by Christ, we are laboring for the day when all things in heaven and earth are again reconciled, with our material possessions included. We deny that the fallenness of the world around us creates any necessary guilt as we receive blessings from God. Our place in the world is to function as the future of the new humanity, and we are therefore called to model a grateful use of the blessings that God bestows. The one who gives sacrificially does so to the Lord. The one who gives generously and remains a steward of the rest does so to the Lord. We affirm that our central duty with regard to our material goods is gratitude to the God who richly provides us with all things to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17). We know that God blesses covenantal faithfulness with abundance. He does this with nations in covenant with Him, filling their vats with wine (Dt. 7:13). He also does this with faithful believers in the midst of ungodly nations, as He did with Daniel in Babylon and Joseph in Egypt. So to fly from wealth as an evil in itself is a flight from maturity, and misses one of the central lessons we must learn, which is that of gratitude. We deny that this requires us in any way to explain away the many scriptural warnings about the seductiveness of wealth. If the Lord says that it is easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom (Matt. 19:24), we dont make the problem any easier by multiplying the number of camels. If Amos castigates those who oppress the poor and crush the needy (Amos 4:1), it is not our right to offer them false comfort. If James tells the rich to weep and wail, we do not want to be found telling them to cheer up (Jas. 5:1). If Paul tells us that a greedy man is not qualified for the eldership (1 Tim. 3:3), we dont want to maintain that holding to this requirement amounts to peering into hearts or judging motives. We affirm that mere possession of wealth is not synonymous with Mammon-worship. We define Mammon as money in its capacity as a false god, as a representative of the world, and the worldly way of conducting human affairs. Therefore, those Christians who are rich in this present world are instructed to keep their hope set on God, and not on false idols, and to be rich in good deeds (1 Tim. 6:17-19). So throughout the Bible, the basic antithesis is between the righteous and unrighteous, the elect and reprobate, the obedient and disobedient, the covenantkeeping and covenant-breaking. It is not between rich and poor, black or white, Jew or Gentile, male or female (Gal. 3:27-29). Even though these other divisions can be and have been the occasions of much sin, they are not themselves an expression of the essential division between sin and righteousness. We deny that faithfulness at this point is easy. The love of Mammon is a subtle sin, and so many believers have entangled themselves by speaking biblical truths while not understanding the remaining sinfulness of their own hearts. God does not mind His people having money, but does mind money having His people. This is completely true, and is a good summary of what is being set forth here, and yet it is the kind of truth that can be readily turned into a daub to heal the wound of the people lightly. It is too easy to say the right things and not really do them (Luke 6:46). The true sign that an individual is free from Mammon is true contentment (Phil. 4:12). Whether well-fed or hungry, a content man is established in Christ. Whether well-fed or hungry,

a discontent and driven man is always a slave. A godly man knows how to abound, and how to suffer want. We affirm that the service of Mammon is to be understood as occupying the very center of the system of the unbelieving world, and so we may define it as worldlinessthe lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). These three lusts summarize nicely the allure that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had for our first parentsit was good for food (Gen. 3:6), it was delightful to look upon (Gen. 3:6), and it promised to make men wise (Gen. 3:6). To serve Mammon is to love the things of this world with an inordinate affection and lust, that is, to love the things of the world in a way prohibited by God. Mammon is a fundamental idol, one that competes with God for our most basic allegiance. But you cannot serve both God and Mammon (Luke 16:13). One must give way to the other in the allegiance of our hearts. We deny that this means that believers must live in a way separated from all contact with the world of Mammon. Believers are called to learn how to possess and use the currency of Mammon rightly (Luke 6:9, 11). Wealth as such is never condemned in Scripture; it is only in the context of the very common failure to use the instruments of Mammon in the way Christ instructed that we find a scriptural condemnation. We affirm that that which bears Caesars image may be rendered to Caesar; that which has Washingtons picture on it may be mailed to Washington (Luke 20:25). But that which bears the image of God may not be rendered to anyone other than God Himself. One of the charges made against godless merchant empires is that they traffic in the souls of men (Rev. 18:13), buying and selling what they have no right to buy and sell. We deny that our payment of taxes places the kingdom of God under the authority of the kingdom of men. We pay taxes because God requires it of us (Rom. 13: 6-7), not simply because the magistrate requires it. We pay taxes, not because we are under bondage, but rather because as free men we are resolved not to stumble them (Matt. 17:24-27). We affirm that the tenacious hold that Mammon has on the unbelieving world is therefore the hold of an all-encompassing cultural/economic system. Such cultural/economic systems are far greater than their respective currencies, and also must be seen as including all the items available for purchase, as well as the deep-seated cultural attitudes that place a peculiar value on those things to be purchasedincluding sex, glamour, sleek cars, respect, delicacies, gold, guns, empires, computers, diamonds, and more. This is why economic rebellion against God (Ez. 16:49) cannot be separated or detached from homosexual rebellions (Jude 7), militaristic or imperialistic rebellions (Gen. 11:1-4), or luxurious and ostentatious rebellions (Amos 4:1; 2 Sam. 15:6). Mammon represents an idolatrous world and life view, and this is why disobedience in economics, sex, or war will never be separated. We deny that the law of God can be set at odds with itself. While there are greater and lesser sins (Gen. 18:20; 1 Sam. 2:17), to break the law at just one point is to be guilty of breaking the whole (Jas. 2:10). The worldly system of Mammon must therefore be opposed as a system; we must not allow ourselves to drift into piecemeal opposition. Arrogant materialism, sodomite marriages,

abortion mills, and jingoistic nationalism, are all different ways the disobedient culture of Mammon has for rejecting the lordship of Jesus Christ. When taking the field against an opposing football team, you play the entire team and not just the left tackle. You respond to all the plays they run, and not just some of them. As the church seeks to respond, we have to remember the principles of body life, wherein each member of the body performs the function assigned by God. Not every member is called to do every thing, but the church as a whole is called corporately to respond across the board. We affirm that that which triumphs over Mammon is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All that Mammon had to offer was offered to Jesus if He would just bow down to Satan (Matt. 4:8), but He refused, preferring rather to conquer those empires of Mammon through His death on the cross (Jn. 12:31), taking and possessing them for His own, by right of conquest. All the principalities, including that of Mammon, are therefore required to submit to Jesus Christ, and are in principle included in His reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth (Col. 1:16-20). Because Jesus is the Lord of all, the world, by refusing to bow to Him, is attempting a revolution against His lawful kingdom and rule. The true culture of humanity is therefore Christs, and the world of Mammon is an attempt at counter culture, one that is doomed to fail. We deny that Jesus refused the kingdoms offered to Him because He did not want them. Because Jesus conquered sin and death, the Father offered Him the nations for His inheritance, the ends of the earth for His possession (Ps. 2:8). His charge to us was to throw down the temples of Mammon in every city center and replace them with sanctuaries of the triune God (Matt. 28: 1820), in which money, a former god, comes to occupy a place together with us as a fellow servant. Summary: Believers must worship Christ alone and detest the worship of Mammon, while at the same time becoming adept in the use of Mammons instruments and tools, to the final and complete subversion of its rule and kingdom. Violence We affirm that the bloodshed of the cross reveals as nothing else could the antithesis between righteousness and unrighteousness. The ultimate revelation of the character of God in this fallen world was the holy wrath which He poured out upon our sin in the death of Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:24-25). In that death we see in Jesus the passive and obedient acceptance of that wrath (Phil. 2:8), the way of righteous peace, and the righteous outpouring of Gods hatred of sin, the way of righteous war (2 Cor. 5:21). We deny that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was ineffectual. This was a cruciform suffering that utterly defeated the principalities and powers (Col. 2:15), those who had held the world in bondage to their closed system of ungodly and bloodthirsty violence (2 Cor. 4:4), but who were now defeated. We affirm that as a result of this victory of the gospel, the world will gradually be restored to its Edenic state (Rev. 22:2), in which no one will hurt or destroy in all Gods holy mountain (Is. 11:9). This gradual restoration will culminate in the eucatastrophe of the last day, when Christ will come and destroy His last enemy, death. The goal of all human history is therefore to arrive

at that place of universal rest and peace, and believers are to strive to be the peacemakers who will be called the children of God (Matt. 5:9). We deny that the kingdom of God is extended in the same way that other earthly kingdoms are. The central driving force in bringing in Christs kingdom is the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ to the nations of men (Matt. 28:18-20), and the establishment and nurture of worshiping communities everywhere gathered around the Word and sacrament (Mal. 1:11; Matt 28:18-20; Heb. 12. 18-26). As such churches are established in every place, they become the living centers of obedient kingdom life as the members of their churches are equipped by the Church to occupy themselves in every lawful vocation in distinctively Christian ways (Eph. 4:12). We affirm that the biblical vision of the future is therefore ecclesio-centric, with the Church at the center of the kingdom, and not a pan-ecclesial vision, where the Church becomes the entire kingdom. The entire city of God may certainly be called Zion by synecdoche, because the worship at Zion is at the center of her identity. But we should not conclude from the fact that it may be called Zion that the Church proper becomes the entire city. There are many aspects of human life that do not fall directly under the auspices of the Church proper (considered as a liturgical, worshipping community)such as making love, making orange juice, or making war. Nevertheless, every aspect of human life will eventually come to be oriented rightly to the Church, to the right worship of God, and will be holiness to the Lord (Zech. 14:21). Every aspect of human life comes under the authority of the Church as the Church makes disciples, teaching Christians how they are to live throughout the course of their lives. The point of connection between the Church as the temple of the Kingdom and the Kingdom itself is brought about by the world submitting to the demands of discipleship (Is. 49:23). In that broader sense, the new humanity can and should be spoken of as the Church. We deny that this eschatological reality precludes believers from participation in unconverted or partially converted kingdoms. Until the day that the peace of the gospel finally works through the nations as leaven through the loaf, and Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, in the meantime it is appropriate and right for members of the Church, as they are called by God, to pursue vocations as civil magistrates, law enforcement officers, or military men (Rom. 16:23; Rom. 13:4; Matt. 8:10; Luke 3:14). They are to be salt and light in these stations in just the same way that Christians are called to be salt and light in every other lawful vocation (Matt. 5:13-16). Nevertheless, there are times when it comes about that the civil magistrates in command of some such vocations become so corrupt and godless that it may become unwise or even impossible for a believer to participate in such callings for a time. And while participation in such callings is honorable, believers must never make the mistake of thinking that the advancement of Gods kingdom depends in any fundamental way on the power of the sword (2 Cor. 10:4-5; Ps. 20:7). The kingdom we are building is already established in principle and not yet fully realized, and so believers in every vocation must remember to balance their affections and loyalties accordingly. We affirm that believers, as they discharge their responsibilities in vocations that are at times called upon to shed blood, must constantly remember that they answer to a standard higher than the interests of the nation they serve, even if (especially if) that nation is a professedly Christian one. As servants of God, they are responsible to fight in such a way that the blood they shed is

consistent with the biblical tenets of just war (Ps. 144:1), remembering that they are called to stand before the Lord with a clean conscience (1 Tim. 1:5). We affirm, in line with the Christian tradition, that a competent authority must declare war, the war declared must have a just cause, the force used must be proportionate, those deciding to declare war must have sought out all honorable and peaceful means of settling the dispute, and the goal of the war must be a just and equitable peace. We deny that we may keep our consciences clean by simply accepting what the magistrate says about the justice of his cause. As believers work through these issues, we have an obligation to discern the times in which we live, and to make all such determinations on the basis of a thoughtful study of the Scriptures and evaluation of the world around us (1 Chron. 12:32), and not on the basis of a mere acceptance of the propaganda of carnal men, whether for or against a particular conflict, or whether advanced or protested from the unbelieving left or the secular right (Dt. 8:3). In particular, we need to reject and testify against the implicit and explicit violence of a state that allows the wealthy to prey upon the poor through ungodly conquest, rapacious taxation, ungodly use of economic sanctions, inflating the currency, outlawing jobs for the poor through minimum wage laws, collusion between governments and corporations, or establishing millions of well-paid jobs ostensibly dedicated to relieving poverty. We affirm that if particular wars must be opposed, believers must labor to speak with a unified voice through the Church (Ps. 2:12), and base their opposition on the plain word of God (Prov. 16:12), and not on the basis of sentimentalism, inconvenience, just so conspiracy theories, or partisan interests. We deny that war is to be considered as a good in itself. Believers are never to delight in war for its own sake (Ps. 120:7), but are rather to delight in the righteousness that will result when the days of our warfare have been accomplished (Is. 40:2). The true Christian warrior is one who longs for the day when we shall study war no more (Is. 2:4), whether that warfare is spiritual (Eph. 6:12) or physical (Micah 4:3). We affirm that violence is universally condemned in Scripture, as that word violence is defined in Scripture. We deny that righteous bloodshed, under the authority of Christ, is violence. Summary: The gospel fights in this world as the champion of true peace, and all who love that gospel will understand the relationship of means and ends, and the slow, inexorable progress of the gospel through the centuries. Sins and Crimes We affirm the distinction between sins and crimes. A particular activity should be criminal if the Scriptures identify it as the sort of evil that should be forcibly stopped and punished by the magistrate. Theft is both a sin and a crime. Covetousness is a sin, to be judged by God at the last day. Refusal to outlaw covetousness is not to be considered as approval of it, but rather as men staying within their appointed bounds, knowing that they cannot see the heart. At the same time, the civil government does not have to be silent about the destructive nature of sin (as distinct

from crime). The magistrate is fully within his authority when he honors the righteous (Rom. 13: 3). We deny that this means that the Church should be silent when it comes to the sinful mistreatment of the poor by the powerful. Manipulation of the weak by the strong should be confronted as part of the prophetic ministry of the Church. Just as sexual lust should never be criminalized, but should still be rebuked from the pulpit, so also with legal mistreatment of the poor. Because such sin will eventually be brought before the highest court of all, the ministry of Christ should declare this reality beforehand. We affirm that oppression of the poor is a great evil (Jer. 5:19-31; Ez. 22), regardless of whether the perpetrator is in the public or private sector. If that oppression is carried off by means of fraud, deception, rigged monopolies, abusive employers, or a refusal to pay contracted wages, then the Church should be in the forefront of those disciplining her own members, and requiring the civil magistrate to do what God requiresto punish evil (Rom. 13: 1-6). We deny that the problem of private sector oppression can be solved by giving the state regulatory powers not granted to the magistrate anywhere in Scripture. When corporations, organized crime, or powerful individuals are abusing people, to respond by giving unscriptural authority to the magistrate usually gives the thieves more instruments to work with as they continue to abuse their victims. One thing worse than powerful corporations disregarding the law would be powerful corporations backed by a powerful state as they disregard the law. We affirm that the tradition of economic liberty under biblical law was one that developed in the Christian West, and that it developed because of the gospel. Because of widespread faith in the triune God of Scripture, a societal expectation developed that valued security for private property, fixed weights and measures, liberty in buying and selling, and liberty for laborers. This provided a basis for true liberty that overthrew the pagan concept of the command economy. We deny that economic liberty under biblical law can be sustained apart from a genuine, culturewide faith in Jesus Christ. Free markets are not our savior; Jesus Christ is. Private property is not our savior; Jesus Christ is. At the same time, when Jesus Christ saves us, the result is salvation that is intended to work its way throughout the entire culture. The fruits of salvation should never be looked to as though they were some kind of a savior, as secular capitalists have often done. The liberty we are defending is the kind of liberty that is the result of the Spirits work (Is. 61:1; Luke 4:18; 2 Cor. 3:17). Summary: When something is classified as a crime, then coercion and force are justified in dealing with it. In order to protect society from unlimited abuses, it is therefore necessary to classify as crimes only those practices which Scripture identifies as criminal. Generosity We affirm that true Christian generosity is an expression of Gods grace (2 Cor. 8:1-6). When we give materially to others as we ought, this is a clear indication that God has given His grace to us. Such grace may abound even in the midst of outward poverty, and indeed frequently thrives

in such poverty. True Christian giving is a metaphor of the gospel (2 Cor. 9:13). When men see this spirit of generosity alive, they equate it with our submission to the gospel of Christ. We deny that giving can be defined by predetermined amounts. True Christian giving, according to circumstance, is proportionate to the resources available (2 Cor. 8:10-12). The widows mite was evaluated on this basis (Mk. 12:42ff); we are not required to give what we do not have. In addition, Gods acceptance of proportional giving is calibrated to the presence of a willing mind in the giver. God loves a cheerful giver and without that willing mind, a man might give all his goods to the poor without love and have it be considered as nothing (1 Cor. 13: 3). We affirm that true Christian generosity is a work and gift of the Spirit (2 Cor. 8:7). As the Spirit works in us to cause us to abound in faith, or diligence, or love, or other fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), so also we should see abundance in this grace of generosity as functioning in the same way. The Spirit commands (Dt. 6:5), and the Spirit gives what He commands (Gal. 5:22). We deny that recipients of such spiritual gifts need not submit to accountability. We also affirm that donors should seek out accountability as well. True Christian giving submits to accountability gladly (2 Cor. 8:16-24). Judas discovered long ago that the poor are a gold mine (Jn. 12:4-6), and many have sought to imitate him since (1 Tim. 6:5). Resentment of financial accountability for those handling donations because the cause is worthy or because people are suffering while we drag this out demonstrates a lack of biblical understanding. We affirm that true Christian giving is to be inspired by and imitative of the death of Jesus on the cross (2 Cor. 8:8-9). True Christian generosity is sacrificial. The particular sacrifice may vary, but the attitude should not. Riches are to be seen as an opportunity to give wisely so that others who are poor might become rich. We deny that true generosity is ever wasted. The biblical giver loses money the way a farmer loses seed. True Christian giving embodies the principles of planting and harvesting (2 Cor. 9:611a). We give in order to receive, but only so that we might be able to give again. God loves a cheerful giver, and a proper cheerfulness arises from this understanding of how the world works. Those who give in faith are therefore putting seed in the ground to be blessed by God. Those who give foolishly or rashly are simply throwing seed away. We affirm that true Christian generosity helps to create a biblical equity (2 Cor. 8:13-15). When the Spirit is at work creating His kind of community, no one suffers in grinding want and no one gives way to arrogant wealth. This equity does not exclude great wealth, but it does exclude an arrogant or preening display of it, a wanton wastefulness in it, or a tight-fisted clutching of it. We deny that biblical equity resembles the same kind of leveling urged by secular egalitarianism. True Christian generosity strives to encourage others to greater levels of giving in a gracious and open way (2 Cor. 9:1-5). While comparison of giving levels can obviously be abused (Matt. 6:3), nevertheless there is to be enough openness in the body to be able to spur one another on to love and good works (Heb. 10:24).

We affirm that true Christian generosity promotes and cultivates thanksgiving to God (2 Cor. 9:11b-15), and thanksgiving in its turn promotes generosity. Feeling guilty for the material blessings that God has given to us is the antithesis of biblical generosity. Because we are so grateful for what we have received, this should quicken in us a fierce desire to share it with others. But if our wealth is a cancer to our souls, why should we want to spread it around? Gratitude exhibits a heart that gives an enormous amount. Guilt always gives just enough to make the guilt go away. We therefore reject every form of guilt manipulation. We deny that this means that there is no such thing as true guilt surrounding the use of money. But when men sin with their money, the call of the gospel is always to true repentanceand their repentance is not for the fact of the wealth, but rather for the way it was obtained. For example, a thief must repent of his stealing (Eph. 4:28), and must make restitution (Luke 19:8). Whores and dogs must not bring their earnings into the house of the Lord (Dt. 23:18). An employer who withholds wages from his workers must put it right (Jas. 5:4). The prophets had a great deal to say to those who obtained their wealth through fraud and abuse (e.g. Amos 5:12; 8:4, 6). Restitution in all such instances of financial wrong-doing is necessary, but such restitution is not generosity. So we mean simply that the mere fact of wealth as such does not incur guilt, but should nevertheless be a spur to grateful generosity. We affirm that our goal is to live before the Lord in such a way that a biblical equity prevails, and that none of our members feel the need to apply to secular and unbelieving sources of mercy work, such as food stamps, welfare, financial aid for poverty relief, (Dt. 15:4; Acts 4:34). We further affirm that our mercy work should not depend in any way on these outside sources of help. We deny that this means that we must have nothing to do with those who are involved in various forms of social work. We seek to coordinate our efforts with those who work in other such agencies, but do so in order to give, and not to receive. We do not want to receive any aid from unbelievers for what we are extending in the name of Jesus Christ (3 John 7). Summary: Christian generosity is one of the central ways that believers are called to imitate the life of the triune God, embodying the sacrifice of Jesus, giving as an overflow of love and gratitude, and never from a sense of resentment or guilt.

Mercy We affirm that the basis of our charity is to be our recognition of the mercy we have received from God (2 Cor. 4:1).We do not extend mercy because others have earned it and may demand it of us, but rather we extend it with the knowledge that we received it when we did not deserve it (Eph. 2:1-7). Freely we have received, freely we are to give (Matt. 10:8), and we are to give in this way without thought of repayment (Luke 14:12-13). We deny that men must earn their right to be shown charity. No one can disqualify himself from the realm of mercy ministry by rebellion or sin. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). Those who are merciful shall receive mercy (Matt. 5:7). In mercy we give nothing

but what was given to us. At the same time, rebellion and sin do distort a persons sense of what he needs to receive (Prov. 23:35). But we are called to give, as far as it is possible with us, what a person actually needs and not necessarily what he thinks he needs (Acts 3:6). We affirm that charity should extend equally to the deserving poor (1 Cor. 16:1) as well as to the undeserving poor (2 Thess. 3:10). Charity makes a distinction between them, but only in what is given, not in a willingness to give. The deserving poor receive, for example, gifts of money (1 Cor. 16:1), clothing (Matt. 25:38), food (Matt. 25:37), and shelter (Matt. 25:38). The undeserving poor receive accountability (Prov. 6:9), a work ethic (2 Thess. 3:12), and godly teaching (Eph. 4:28). The gleaning laws of the Old Testament recognize this distinction plainly. The poor are defined as those who are without, and these different categories exist because people go without different things. Some are without Christ, and are spiritually poor, while others are without food, and are physically poor. Some, in danger of starvation, are absolutely poor, while others in First World countries are relatively poor because they have an older car. Charity should be extended to all, but intelligent charity requires a knowledge of what it is they are going without. We deny that we live in a world of fixed or dwindling resources. The work of God in the world is a work that multiplies in the power of the Spirit. He multiplies disciples (Acts 6,1,7; 9:31), and He sees to it that the Word of God multiplies (Acts 12:24). In the same way, the blessing of God on a people will see mercy and all His graces multiplied (Jude 2), with the result that as we grow to be more and more like God, we will be growing rich in mercy (Eph. 2:4-10). Wealth under Gods blessing is not a zero-sum game, in which the size of the pie is fixed, resulting in a smaller piece for one man every time another man gets a bigger piece. God has created the world in such a way that His blessings grow and multiply, and the more we learn what charity means, the more those blessings will continue to grow (2 Cor. 9:10). This is another way of saying that the pie grows under the blessing of God. The mere fact of disparity in income levels does not mean that an injustice was done. We affirm that the tithe is the floor on which we stand (Luke 18:12), not a ceiling we vainly try to touch, or a ceiling we pride ourselves on having touched. The tithe is a rudimentary financial discipline (1 Cor. 9:14), which enables us to grow up into overflowing generosity (2 Cor. 8:2). A tithe of the increase is given as testimony to the realization that God is the God of all increase, and we are merely stewards of all that He owns and has entrusted to use for a time. As a result, the tithe represents and seals true liberation in Christ, although even this can be abused. There was a man who used to fast twice a week, and he tithed everything that came into his house, and yet he went home unjustified (Luke 18:12). Having given the tithe, we are privileged to give up offerings of our own volition. We deny that we may make common cause with those who deny the infallibility of Gods holy Word. Because we live in an egalitarian and sentimentalist age, we must take care never to allow our work of biblical mercy to be co-opted or confused with the jargon of collectivism, liberation theology, socialism or any other form of statism, with their carping appeals to justice in the face of what they think is oppression. To the extent that we find ourselves working for the same goals that unbelievers may have, whether they are of the right or the left politically, we must constantly keep the distinction between allies and cobelligerents in mind. Mercy is driven

by joy and gratitude (2 Cor. 9:7), never by envy or ressentiment (John 12:5; 1 Cor. 13:3). Our defense of property is driven by our commitment to Scripture (Ex. 20: 15, 17), and not by the fear that the haves project toward the have-nots. For us, the tithe, like the sabbath, represents rest. A tithing society would not be vexed by the problems represented by acute poverty. We affirm that mercy is extended face to face, individual by individual, and family by family (Luke 10:29). Recipients of true mercy have faces, and so the Church is to be involved in mercy ministry directly (Jas. 1:27), at a personal level. And at the macro-economic level, the Church is privileged to exercise influence by preaching the gospel powerfully, liberating men from their sins and lusts (Lev. 25:10; 2 Cor. 3:17), therefore establishing the foundation of a righteous economic order. Men who have been freed from their sins will create markets that are genuinely free, and they are the only ones who can do this. And markets that are genuinely free are markets that will generate the kind of wealth in which all may participate, obviating over time the need for ongoing mercy ministries or works of charity. Just as there will be no armies or navies in the latter days, so neither will there be flop houses and soup kitchens. We deny that there is any tension between faith and works, between true love and true doctrine, between the word and the deed. Sound works of mercy will always be accompanied by the soundness of the spoken and written Word. Summary: Mercy is given to all of us by God, and we are to demonstrate that we grasp what we have been given by extending it to others. This mercy is to be relational, economic, personal, and more. Call for Action As God has richly blessed us with salvation, and has added to this material prosperity, we pray that our response would be one of corresponding gratitude and imitative grace. We therefore encourage all of our people to engage themselves gladly in the work of the kingdom, extending the kindness of Christ to others, just as the Father has extended it to us in the power of the Spirit. Freely we have received, and so let us freely give (Matt. 10:8). Originally posted February 4, 2010.

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16 comments on Theses on the Kindness of Christ

1.

Vishwanath
July 23, 2013 at 8:28 am This is beautiful! Even breathtaking. I am reminded of what attracted me to this blog in the first place. God bless you, Mr. Wilson!

2.

Fredericka
July 23, 2013 at 1:04 pm "outlawing jobs for the poor through minimum wage laws" A statement like this really doesn't belong in a general church statement because it is tendentious. While some economists correlate any increase in the minimum wage with increasing unemployment, you know what they say, for every economist there is an equal and opposite economist. There is some possibility that the Bible sets the minimum wage as a living wage, because Deuteronomy 24:14-15 says, "Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee." "Setteth his heart:" 'heart' is 'nephesh,' life or soul, and so the Latin Vulgate has, "ex eo sustentat animam suam," thus the Douay, "But thou shalt pay him the price of his labour the same day, before the going down of the sun, because he is poor, and with it maintaineth his life. . ." If 'nephesh' is taken as 'life,' which is in fact a far more common translation, then a wage rate falling short of a living wage is here ruled out, because a lesser amount will not allow him to uphold his life, here stated as the goal.

3.

katecho
July 23, 2013 at 4:42 pm

Fredericka's living wage theory assumes full-time employment, rather than several parttime jobs under different employers. Perhaps Fredericka is arguing that employers should be required to pay a full-time livable wage, even for part-time work. Or perhaps the argument is that there should be no such thing as part-time jobs? However, the unintended consequences of Obamacare are already putting pressure to create more parttime rather than full-time positions.

4.

Mark Hanson
July 23, 2013 at 6:31 pm katecho, Still, it would seem from the scriptures Fredericka cites, that the day's wage for the day's work should be sufficient to support the worker (and his family??) for that day (hence payment in full at the end of the day). And of course you would pay him double on the day before Sabbath. In Jesus' day that amount was a denarius, but no one took part of it for taxes. In our day, what would the equivalent be? Pretty hard to say, but probably more than the $58 (before taxes) that the current federal minimum wage provides.

5.

Fredericka
July 23, 2013 at 6:51 pm Hi katecho, I'm not catching your drift. Why would you pay full-time wages for part-time work? And what does Obamacare have to do with the price of tea in China? I do think that, when you hear about people who work at Wal-Mart and receive food stamps, something is amiss; either eligibility is too broad, or these people are not receiving a living wage.

6.

Jonathan
July 23, 2013 at 10:08 pm

" In particular, we need to reject and testify against the implicit and explicit violence of a state that allows the wealthy to prey upon the poor through ungodly conquest, rapacious taxation, ungodly use of economic sanctions, inflating the currency, outlawing jobs for the poor through minimum wage laws, collusion between governments and corporations, or establishing millions of well-paid jobs ostensibly dedicated to relieving poverty." It's like the statement suddenly became a caricature of a right-wing ideology masquerading as religion for a moment.

7.

katecho
July 24, 2013 at 1:54 pm Mark Hanson wrote: katecho, Still, it would seem from the scriptures Fredericka cites, that the day's wage for the day's work should be sufficient to support the worker (and his family??) for that day (hence payment in full at the end of the day). No one objects to the blessedness of being able to pay at least a minimal living wage for a full day's work. However, there is no such mandate in the passage Fredericka referred to. We can't just read into the text what we wish to be there. There are several factors to consider. The context refers to the poor, who could be imagined to be hired for part time labor, or even on a one-day basis, by multiple employers. In that case no single employer would be responsible to pay full-time wages, or even know about the wages paid by other employers of that poor person. Some may not even be paying in coins, but in goods that the poor family would have to barter, or add value to, and sell. For example, if a poor person worked part of the day to acquire payment in the form of basket weaving material, then they might spend the rest of the day actually making the finished baskets that they are then able to sell to make a reasonable living. The part-time employer is not directly paying them a living wage in that case, but is paying in raw materials that the poor family improves to make a living wage. There are many other examples like this that don't fit our modern notion of 9-to-5, with health benefits and 2 weeks paid vacation. For example, if the poor are gleaning leftovers from the fields, then this also offsets some of a living wage that would otherwise be required. The principle that the Scripture text gives is that an employer can't delay the agreed payment when a poor person is clearly living day-to-day. Mark Hanson also wrote: And of course you would pay him double on the day before Sabbath. In Jesus' day that amount was a denarius, but no one took part of it for taxes. In our day, what would the

equivalent be? Pretty hard to say, but probably more than the $58 (before taxes) that the current federal minimum wage provides. I'm not sure what passage Mark is referring to regarding double-pay before the Sabbath, and although the Roman tax was officially only around 5% (not counting indirect taxes), there were most assuredly taxes and tax collectors in those days. Regarding the current federal minimum wage, Mark again seems to be assuming that it is intended to provide a living wage for a family. We should all hope that this is not the case, otherwise those employers who just want to hire some teenagers for the summer are going to have to reconsider. This is the problem with unintended consequences. One man's idea of a required minimum living wage can destroy jobs for those who may simply want to supplement their, or their family's, income.

8.

katecho
July 24, 2013 at 2:17 pm Fredericka wrote: I do think that, when you hear about people who work at Wal-Mart and receive food stamps, something is amiss; either eligibility is too broad, or these people are not receiving a living wage. God instructed His people to leave the edges of their fields unharvested, so that the poor could glean them. Would something be amiss if a poor person in those days was employed but still needed to supplement their low income with gleanings? Should they be turned away? Fredericka seems to be supposing that the only ones who might ever need to glean would be the utterly unemployed. We should question whether the State should be involved in usurping the role of the Church to provide food stamps, but the idea that even full-time "living wage" employed people might still need additional food assistance does not seem particularly amiss to me. Fredericka has not made the case. What if someone is poor because they are digging out of a pile of debts from misspent youth? What if they are now using their wages to pay down that debt and are taking advantage of food assistance so they can make faster progress? Living wage for one person is not the same as living wage for others. Fredericka doesn't know the stories behind everyone who works at Wal-Mart. What if someone has a health issue that requires more than an arbitrary "living wage" that the government might dictate? Is something amiss if they take advantage of food assistance from the Church to help offset?

The one-size-fits-all approach will never fit all, whether we are talking about employees or employers. This is why God provides a storehouse from His tribute tithes, and why He gave the principle of gleanings.

9.

Fredericka
July 24, 2013 at 5:28 pm "The context refers to the poor, who could be imagined to be hired for part time labor, or even on a one-day basis, by multiple employers. In that case no single employer would be responsible to pay full-time wages, or even know about the wages paid by other employers of that poor person." Hi katecho. It's difficult to see the problem here, it's a simple arithmetical transform, grade school math. You seem to suppose the 'cost-ofliving' information is available,-- for some reason,-- on a weekly or yearly basis, whereas the 'hours worked' information is counted in hours. So? Here's a hint, there are 365-1/4 days in a year and 52 weeks. The trick with the Jewish calendar is to realize there are a lot of days off, sabbaths, holidays; if memory serves, Josephus counts two days off for every new moon (first of the month). What makes you think this is an insoluble problem? We compute our minimum wage by the hour, without this throwing everyone into inextricable confusion. One can 'imagine' anything, but prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine, I suspect day labor worked. . .by the day, there being no quick and easy way to get from one job site to another. There would be more standardization than you suppose as far as hours and working conditions, because the Talmud, which does not use the 'living wage' standard but the 'custom of the province' standard (similar to our 'prevailing wage') assumes fairly uniform working conditions within a given region, contrary to your assumption: "MISHNAH. One who engages laborers and demands that they commence early or work late -- where local usage is not to commence early or work late; he may not compel them. . .Everything depends on local custom." (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Mezia, 83a.) There was more uniformity than you seem to suspect, because "The townspeople are also at liberty to fix weights and measures, prices, and wages, and to inflict penalties for the infringement of their rules." (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Bathra, Folio 8a.) Notice please, it said "and wages." This local 'prevailing wage' could be, according to one Rabbi, the lowest of the data points, but according to the consensus, the average: "R. Simeon B. Gamaliel said: It was unnecessary [to stipulate thus]: Everything depends on local custom. What does EVERYTHING add? It adds that which has been taught: If one engages a laborer, and stipulates, '[I will pay you] as one or two townspeople [are [paid],' he must remunerate him with the lowest wage [paid]: this is R. Joshua's view. But the Sages say: An average must be struck." (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezia 87a). So your assumption that these factors are altogether arbitrary and changeable is, frankly, made up. While the Talmud is uninspired, quoting the Talmud is certainly an improvement over just making stuff up.

The Talmud is late to be sure, but what period are we even talking about here? The references in Deuteronomy and Leviticus do not pertain especially to the Roman period. I'm taking them literally, because the problems you raise with so doing are imaginary and forced. One of the mystifying things in talking to you, katecho, is that you say things like, "Fredericka seems to be supposing that the only ones who might ever need to glean would be the utterly unemployed." To the contrary, I would suppose no such thing, indeed the problem of an intermittently employed day laborer who worked only some days is perfectly solved by these means. No one could reasonably expect the employer to pay him a year's maintenance for one day's work; but then he doesn't have to, does he?

10.

katecho
July 24, 2013 at 6:56 pm Fredericka wrote: We compute our minimum wage by the hour, without this throwing everyone into inextricable confusion. One can 'imagine' anything, but prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine, I suspect day labor worked. . .by the day, there being no quick and easy way to get from one job site to another. We predominantly have wristwatches and calculators and grade school math education in the U.S. too. These weren't givens in the time of Deuteronomy. It's nice to mandate that all labor be done in units of hours, but it simply wasn't the case then. There was a lot of haggling and bartering. Sometimes the guy who showed up late to work in the vineyard got paid the same as the guy who had worked all day. So if we are trying to draw a "minimum wage" principle from Deuteronomy, it needs to be one that would have been applicable then. Fredericka reasons that since they didn't have cars, then the poor must have only worked for one employer all day long. That's a completely unsupported assumption. Fredericka seems fixated on the modern 9-to-5 notion of labor. Not only did they not have combustion engines, but they didn't have punch clocks either. What if a poor woman did small cleaning jobs for about 3 to 5 random people in her neighborhood each day? What if she spent part of each day making and selling baskets? What if she also did sewing jobs and delivered the repaired garments every few days? Firstly, she wouldn't have needed a combustion engine, and she would most likely be transacting on a per task/item/sale, not by the hour. Does the neighborhood have to meet together to make sure they are paying her a living wage at the end of each hour/day/week/month/year? What if this same woman is laid up due to illness for a month? Does the neighborhood have to increase her per-item rates to make up the difference when she returns to work? They would if "living

wage" actually meant what it is alleged to mean. If the woman has to go on welfare anyway, then what was the point of a mandated "living wage" again? Fredericka didn't interact with my example of part time work in order to earn raw materials to produce finished goods. In that case, who pays the living wage rates? Fredericka's "living wage" theory would only be tenable if we assumed urban industrial labor standards and practices. Even then, once the government starts mandating a onesize-fits-all "living wage" rate, many teenagers who still live at home and are just looking for some supplemental summer income are suddenly out of a job. The "do-good-ers" rarely seem to care so much about the casualties of their tidy thinking. But if they try to, the result can become Talmudic in its untidy complexity.

11.

Fredericka
July 24, 2013 at 7:29 pm "Fredericka seems fixated on the modern 9-to-5 notion of labor." Hi katecho. Let's try again, and this time, please read the post you are responding to; I don't do all this typing just to exercise my fingers. According to the Talmud, working hours were standardized as to region, by the 'custom of the country.' Recall, "MISHNAH. One who engages laborers and demands that they commence early or work late -- where local usage is not to commence early or work late; he may not compel them. . .Everything depends on local custom." (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Mezia, 83a.) Notice, please, that the start and end times are standardized, according to "local custom." This particular example (which is in the Mishnah, the more primitive and authoritative part of the Talmud) goes into more detail, and I think it is instructive to see how detailed 'local custom' could be. If the 'custom of the country' required the employer to provide lunch, then that's what he had to do. A certain parsimonious gentleman hired laborers through his son: "It once happened that R. Johanan B. Mathia said to his son, 'Go out and engage laborers.' He went and agreed to supply them with food. But on his returning to his father, the latter said, my son, should you even prepare for them a banquet like Solomon's when in his glory, you cannot fulfill your undertaking, for they are children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But, before they start work, go out and tell them, '[I engage you] on condition that you have no claim upon me other than bread and pulse.' R. Simeon B. Gamaliel said it was unnecessary [to stipulate thus]; everything depends on local custom." (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Mezia 83a). Basically he is saying, don't even try it; if 'local custom' dictates the employer provide lunch, then he has to provide lunch just as 'local custom' dictates, no more and no less, the more economical spread is OK if it accords with 'local custom,' but not if it doesn't. The same is the case with working hours: "Gemara. Is it not obvious? -- It is necessary [to teach it] only when he [the employer] pays them a higher wage [than usual]: I might think that he can plead, 'I pay you a higher

wage in order that you may start earlier and work for me until nightfall;' we are therefore taught that they can reply, 'The higher remuneration is [only] for better work [but not longer hours].'" (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Mezia 83a). Your assumption that there is no standardization of working hours is simply wrong. If the employer pays them more, they MAY be willing to work longer hours; but they don't have to. What's so distasteful about reality and so enticing about making stuff up?

12.

Mark B. Hanson
July 25, 2013 at 9:31 am kaetcho, I think you misunderstood me a bit, trying to inject a bit of humor and all. My comment on double wages the day before the sabbath was of that sort (but didn't God do just that with manna in the wilderness?) Ah, must have been my lack of smileys... I don't think the current U.S. minimum wage is a living wage - my comment was to indicate that I thought the denarius a day was. I had another paragraph in my draft about that, but I left it out to avoid tl;dr syndrome. Nonetheless, there are people in the full-time workforce for whom that is the only wage available. Such people will often be working two or three jobs to keep their heads above water. The great difference between Israelite culture and ours is that "gleaning" is not provided for as part of the package in property ownership, and what gleaning is possible for the average person looks pretty much like dumpster diving. Picture a retelling of Ruth with her going through Boaz's trash heap. So some of the additional ways the poor in David's or Jesus' day had to make ends meet are mostly unavailable (and for many people, impossible) in ours. Thus the focus on the wage. But I will agree that increasing the minimum wage to a "living wage" (probably roughly double what it is now, depending on location) would in fact dry up entry-level jobs for the young, and "making ends meet" jobs for retired folks (which state I am not far from). Of course, the ObamaCare mandate is already driving the part-timing of American labor....

13.

Fredericka
July 26, 2013 at 12:45 pm "But I will agree that increasing the minimum wage to a "living wage" (probably roughly double what it is now, depending on location) would in fact dry up entry-level jobs for the young. . ." Mark, many young people today owe tens of thousands in student loans, and I imagine when they think about how they are going to pay these loans off on entrylevel wages, they just sit down and cry. I think if you lowered the minimum wage for people under the age of 21 to, say, three dollars an hour, you would indeed give a shot in the arm to youth employment, because if there are any so desperate to work for this amount, there would surely be employers happy to take advantage of the opportunity, which is not quite as lucrative as hiring Bangladeshis, but still good. So this would be a good news/bad news type of thing. The good news is, more young people have jobs; the bad news is, these jobs pay three dollars an hour. It would also not be good news to those over the age of 21 currently employed at McDonald's, because out they go. If you look back on the minimum wage in the 1950's and 1960's and compare it with today, unfortunately it has not kept pace with inflation.

14.

Jane Dunsworth
July 26, 2013 at 6:18 pm How are you folks putting in those paragraph dividers?

15.

katecho
July 26, 2013 at 6:32 pm Jane, I'm using empty "blockquote" HTML tags. When you go to write a reply, look just below the text box and there is a list of HTML tags that you can use. The cite administrator neglected to include the br and p tags, so the only thing similar is the blockquote tag (normally used when quoting blocks of text from others).

So when you want a paragraph break, enter blockquote/blockquote with no text in between the tags (and use actual greater-than and less-than symbols). Hope that helps. And I hope the administrator is listening.

In the Sunlight of Our Deliverance

Posted on Friday, July 26, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 34 comments One of things we should notice about the drive for social justice is that the theory of the thing contains a soteriological contradiction right at the heart of it. This is what I mean. In true evangelism, the unbeliever is being called from a state of condemnation into a state of no condemnation. This is why the message that accomplishes this is unambiguously good news Jesus was crucified and is risen, and the sinner who believes in Him is set free. This is a true evangel. But in the world of social justice, what is the task? What is the mission? It is precisely the reverse of this. It is to get the weak and oppressed from a condition where God identifies with them into a state where they come under His judgment. Advocates of missional social justice identify with the poor and they sneer at middle class values. But this is like a lifeguard identifying with the drowning and sneering at the beach. We are supposed to minister to the poor, but what does that mean? Does it include actually helping them, so that they are no longer poor? But if we do that, we are moving them out of the realm of Gods favor. If we deliver them out of poverty, we are setting them up for a visiting speaker a generation from now who will come to their church and say that God identifies with the poor and not with you. You used to have it good when you had it bad, but not any more. I have noted before that the poor are a cash cow for those who want to have a steady income based on helping the poor. But there are other factors in play as well. The guilty white social worker needs the poor to remain poor for emotional reasons as well. If they stopped being poor, they would stop needing him, and he would have to stop being patronizing. Moreover, they would cease being his friends, for they would have become middle class, the kind of person he has been trained to hold in contempt. They would have been successfully evangelized, which means that they now lie under condemnation. Therefore there is no justification for those who are in . . . who, exactly? But true mercy ministry is effective, which means that it actually shows mercy. It means that it works. It means that the grandchildren of the drug addict you helped out thirty years ago are now growing up in an intact home with two parents, are getting fed every day, are going to sleep warm every night, are receiving a good, Christian education, and so on. According to the theology of social justice, does God identify with them anymore? Nope they were delivered . . . into condemnation.

If the poor are not to be rejected by God, then, we have to keep them right where they are. So we have created a ministry for the permanent underclass, and a theology to keep them that way. This gives the bureaucrat dispensing the favors of the state a steady job, and it gives sob sister Christians an emotional security blanket (made out of people), who must not be allowed to turn into the middle class enemy. An entrepreneur who offers a poor man a job has more love in his little finger than the entire man has who creates a job for himself off of that same poor man. True capitalism not crapitalism, mind you, not crony capitalism is love. The sooner we learn that, the sooner we will grow up into love. I say all this knowing that the Bible is very clear that God does identify with the weak. He uses weak and feeble instruments to accomplish great things. But we err seriously when we make weakness an end in itself, instead of understanding it for what it is a left-handed way of getting to the victory. Be strong in grace (2 Tim. 2:1). Be strong in the Lord (Eph. 6:10). Be men, be strong (1 Cor. 16:13). These verses should no more be pitted against the many passages on the glory of weakness than the passages on weakness should be pitted against these. For when I am weak, that is when I am strong (2 Cor. 12:10). The argument is not that weakness is ethically better, and too bad it always loses. It is that weakness conquers. And when that weakness conquers, and the mighty have been thrown down from their high places, and the lowly have been lifted up, what then? When we were released from our captivity, we were like those who dream, and we stopped our mouths at the goodness of God. For the wicked were dispersed like smoke in a gale, and we lifted up our heads because of the redemption that came to us. And after we walked around in the sunlight of our deliverance for a few years, overflowing with gratitude, one day a man came to us, claiming to be a prophet. He said that we were deeply compromised, having accepted some gifts we had quite plainly accepted. How can we escape condemnation, living the way we were living? Blessed are the poor, he said, for they shall stay like that. Category: Money, Love, Desire | Tags: The Good of Affluence, Wealth and the Christian

With Laces Untied

Posted on Thursday, July 25, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 8 comments So lets begin our work on this tough topic by getting two obvious things on the table. The first obvious thing is that the apostle Paul teaches us that how a man behaves in his home is a predictor or indicator of how he will behave in the church. If you want a godly and competent leader in the church, then you need to look for a godly and competent leader in his home. The apostle couldnt make his point plainer.

For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? (1 Tim. 3:5) The word rendered rule here is proistemi, which means preside, rule, maintain. And the word used with regard to pastoral work is epimeleomai, which means to take care of, or provide for. This is a simple if, then statement. If a man does not know how to do x, then he will not be able to do y. We will examine what that connection is later, but it should suffice for the present to show that there is such a connection. We should refuse to call a pastor based on certain realities in his home, and we should do this as a matter of obedience to God. If a pastoral candidate were not very good at racketball, or was not a competent hunter, or had never been hang-gliding, we would not be within our rights to say that obedience required us to reject him. There would not be a connection between these activities and the possibility of him being a good pastor, and there is a connection between him being a good father and being . . . a good father. But the second obvious thing about this is that the world is a messy place, and that application of this qualification requires that we make judgment calls. Some of the judgment calls will be more difficult to make than others. This requirement is not like the requirement that our Constitution sets for the president being 35-years-old (Art. II). All you have to do to determine if the qualification is met is be able to count. Or to take an example from the Old Testament, the requirements for the priesthood were more objective and physical (Lev. 21:16-21), and therefore easier to check.. But what we must not do here is set these two obvious things at odds with each other. We must not assume that because there is a requirement that a man manage his household well, that there will never be difficulties in deciding what to do. Simplistic thinking is the badge of the legalist. But neither may we acknowledge that there will be hard cases, and conclude from this that the familial qualification is functionally meaningless. The requirement must be held as a real requirement meaning that certain men are kept out of office because of it, and they are men who otherwise would be ordained to office. So how do we balance these two things? There is a legal adage that says that hard or difficult cases make bad law. You should let the simple requirement drive the majority of your cases, and deal with your exceptional cases as they arise. There is another adage that says that the exception proves the rule, but this adage is almost universally misunderstood. The phrase is frequently taken as the exception somehow establishing the rule, with the word proves taken in the sense of what you do to get to a conclusion in an argument. But the proverb was developed when the word prove had the meaning of test. The exception tests the rule. Let me give you a made up example that will show how an exception can be made which tests, or honors, the rule, and then make up another example where it does nothing of the kind. Say the congregation is considering a pastoral candidate, and it comes out in the interview that when he was 19, shortly before he became a Christian, he was shacked up with a girl for six

months. She got pregnant and left him because she was a strident atheist and didnt like the spiritual direction he was taking. He has had no legal recourse, and his son from that union was brought up as an atheist, and is one screwed up kid. After your candidate was converted, he finished college, went to seminary, and met his current wife while studying for the ministry. They married, and have five lovely children, all of whom love God, love Jesus, love their parents, and love church. Now suppose you have another candidate, one who has five children, two of whom are sullen and disobedient. The other three might be okay, you think. But the two are bad attitudes with sneakers, laces untied. The pastoral candidate is the photo negative of the centurion in the gospels (Matt. 8:9). When the father saith come, the child goeth. When he saith go, the child cometh. When he says do this, the teen-ager doeth it not. In the first example, the exception tests the rule it makes you think hard about the rule, and it makes you see how the rule actually still applies. We are checking to see how this man manages the children he has, not how he was a father to a child he never had the opportunity to father. It is easy to see how the pastoral search committee could determine that his atheist son (whom he had met three times in his life) was not the kind of situation that the apostle Paul had in mind. With the children he has, the congregation can see how he rules in his household, and they can expect that he would take care of them on that basis. But in the second situation, you can immediately see that the two exceptions were not instances that tested the rule they were instances where the rule excluded the candidate. The bad things you saw in the household meant that if you called such a man, you should expect to see bad things in the church, bad things that were somehow related to his weakness in his home. So the requirement in 1 Tim. 3:5 is clear, but requires wisdom to apply. And the application of wisdom should never be treated as though it were relativism. Category: The Church | Tags: Elders of the Church, The Neglected Qualification

Same Sex Mirage

Posted on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 26 comments A number of writers, me included, have been warning that the slopes really are slippery, and that the admission of something as radical as same sex mirage into any part of our political life is to introduce it everywhere. And yet, it has been surprising to see how fast the whole thing is moving. It appears that the incline of the slippery slopes has steepened, and we are now picking up a goodish bit of speed. Within weeks of the Supreme Court debacle on SSM, a federal judge has now ordered Ohio to recognize a homosexual mirage contracted in Maryland. This shows that the federalist live and let live approach is a tactical sham. It is clearly all or nothing all states recognizing same sex mirage as a basic civil rights issue, or none of them doing so. All right then, none it is.

What homosexual activists have been doing is insist that we redefine marriage, while pretending that all they are doing is expanding the opportunities for marriage to additional others. The problem is that as soon as they abandon the understanding of marriage as a covenanted conjugal relationship of a man and a woman, they have no consistent stopping point. Some of them dont want a consistent stopping point, and others of them do but they still cant have one. The biological act that consummates a marriage is the only act capable of reproducing our race. When a traditional marriage is infertile, this is an act of providence (or disobedience). When a homosexual union is infertile, this is something that is true by definition. And this means that the possibility of fruitfulness is removed (of necessity) from the definition of marriage. But once you have done that, how are we to define it? Largely on the basis of inertia, some homosexuals (like Andrew Sullivan) want their (redefining) expansion of marriage to be limited to two people, to be romantic, to be sexual, etc. But why? They want to redefine, but not too much. But who is in charge of how much is too much? We may ask why two and only two. Lots of people in history (and in the present) have been polygamous. Why should it be romantic? Why cant marriage be like the sale of a mule? And why sexual? Who says that orgasm is an essential part of this? Liberals like uppity women in theory, on their bumper stickers, but detest them in real life. So here is a proposal for a couple of genuinely uppity women (who need to be sisters) living in a state that allows for same sex mirage. They need to get themselves down to the county courthouse and apply for a marriage license, letting the fact that they are sisters be known to the clerk. When they are denied, as they will be, they need to ask why. Because that would be incest, the reply will come. Their response should be two-fold. First, they should say, if we were going to be incestuous, why would that be any business of the state? Since we as a culture have abandoned the moral arguments, the reply would have to be pragmatic because of the possibility of birth defects. To which, the sisters should raise their eyebrows and inquire into how it is that a lesbian relationship could result in birth defects. After they have flummoxed the clerk in this way, the second part of their response should be to reassure that longsuffering personage, to make up for their first line of argument. They should go on to assure the clerk that they are not lesbians at all, there is absolutely nothing sexual or romantic about their relationship at all. There would be no incest. We are just sisters. And we want to be married. But marriage has to be sexual, the clerk would reply. Does it? they would answer. Well, yes, traditionally . . . Traditionally? Like we care about that anymore? In other words, once we have reduced the act of marriage to the act of choosing, and we have cast off all natural boundaries that would limit or constrict the content of such an act of choosing, we cannot rush in after the fact to constrict such acts of choosing. Two sisters can be married and their point of unity (as they have chosen it) will be their common love of knitting. Two fishing

buddies can get married, and their point of contact is their common love for brown trout. But I am using that word common too much. Too restrictive. Under the new tyranny of the raw act of choosing, nothing would prevent two people from marrying, one in Massachusetts and one in Washington, whose one thing they share in common is the fact that they have never met each other, never want to, and are resolved to never exchange any email whatsoever. One of Saul Alinskys great principles for radicals was that of making the enemy live up to his own rules. This really works when it is impossible to do so as it is in this case. So I think that somebodys Jane Austen reading group needs to get down to the courthouse and apply for a group license. Make them say no. Make them purvey some more of their hate. Category: Engaging the Culture | Tags: pomosexuality, Sex and Culture

Mammon Is Like Gravity

Posted on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 17 comments Many years ago, somewhere in the seventies, I was working for a Christian bookstore called Crossroads. One day we were visited by a young and zealous member of a group called the Children of God, and I vividly remember our conversation on the sidewalk outside the store. He asked if I had a job, a car, etc. I said that I did. He told me that I was not a real Christian because Jesus said that whoever did not give up absolutely everything could not be His disciple (Luke 14:33). Instead of arguing the exegesis with him, I reached over and tugged on his sweater (for he was clothed, contrary to what he had just said Jesus required), and asked, Whose is this? He was startled, not expecting any questions of that nature. I asked again. Who does this belong to? He said nothing because he didnt know what to say, and so I helped him out. I said, This belongs to Jesus, right? And He is letting you borrow it? Is that how it works? He was greatly relieved, and said yes, he was borrowing it. I said that was how it was with my job and my car. I was borrowing them from Jesus. I also remember that at one point in the conversation, he asked if we could give him a Bible. Crossroads was a Christian bookstore literature ministry, so I said sure thing. I went inside, got one for him, and brought it back out. But the Bible I brought him wasnt good enough. He asked if he could have a nice one, you know, leather-bound? And I dont think I have trusted people who glibly cite Luke 14:33 ever since. *** For you see, they are never (in my experience) citing that passage in order to explain why they have just given everything away to the poor. They are always citing it because they need for you to do something. Leather would be nice. ***

Mammon is like gravity, and can act across distances. You dont have to have it in your hands to be in the grip of it. It doesnt have to be in your hands for you to be in its hands. *** Wealth enables you to sit on top of the world (Dt. 8:18). Mammon enables the world to sit on top of you (Matt. 6:24). *** God doesnt mind His people having money at all. But He does mind money having His people. *** God also minds the previous two proverbs being used to justify Mammon having you by the throat. *** God also minds hatred of those two proverbs being used to justify Mammon having you by the throat. *** Some idols like Molech and Baal are idols we must never see again after we have repented. Other idols like your wife and your money must be loved rightly after repentance. *** Ordinary Christians are routinely upbraided for their lack of sacrificial generosity, when they are virtually the only ones paying the salaries of professional mercifiers. The mercifiers use heartrending pictures of the poor to induce donations, which are nice donations but not quite as much as Jesus demanded (Luke 14:33). These pictures of the poor are tulchans. A tulchan is a stuffed calfskin that induces a cow to let down its milk. Donors are the (very guilty) cows, the poor are the tulchan posters, and the mercifiers are the dairymen. America is such a gorgeous meadow. *** The downtrodden are a gold mine. *** And Judas wondered why that ostentatious ointment was not sold appropriately, and donated for the relief of the poor (John 12:4-5). For Judas had the mercy patter down, and he was the

treasurer, and used to skim as he deemed appropriate (John 12:6). And did we mention that Judas kept the bag (John 13:29)? *** A certain kind of mercy mindedness and embezzling are first cousins. *** I said mercy mindedness. I should have said mercy mouthiness. God loves mercy mindedness. *** Guilt-motivated giving will go just far enough to make the guilt go away, which usually runs about $20. Gratitude-motivated giving runs for a lifetime, and seeks nothing other than to spread the grace and goodness of God. *** Giving from gratitude feeds and nourishes the desire to give some more. Giving from guilt torments it. *** The blessing of the Lord makes us wealthy, and He adds no sorrow to it (Prov. 10:22). *** The sorrow is added by somebody else. Watch that man closely.

The Neglected Qualification

Posted on Monday, July 22, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 34 comments For various reasons, I need to begin an extended series of posts on the neglected qualification. The spiritual state of the preachers kids has long been proverbial, and not in a good way, and yet we continue to have the following in our Bibles. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife . . . One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) (1 Tim. 3:2,4-5). For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: If any be blameless, the husband of one

wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless . . . (Tit. 1:5-7). The majority of the Christian world has workarounds and explanations for these verses, while the minority that wants them to mean what they appear to mean, sometimes applies them in a wooden or legalistic fashion. While wanting to avoid both extremes, we still need to affirm that these words mean something, and that they apply sometime. I want to explore what that something might mean, and when that sometime might be. Let us throw all the difficult cases on the table right away. This is talking about making someone an elder, not talking about someone who has been an elder for thirty years already. We are not told what to do if the child of an elder sins significantly, but repents just as thoroughly, and is now walking with the Lord in the state penitentiary. We are not told if the passage applies to an elder whose five natural children are all faithful, but the crack cocaine baby they adopted when she was just a toddler has completely fallen away. Suppose the wayward child is the oldest, a stepson to the minister, and all his children are faithful. One of the reasons we need judicious and godly men to be our elders is that they must make decisions like this. And I grant that the right process for dealing with all such tangles is not easy, simplistic, or formulaic. I also grant that there are textual and broader theological issues. What about Jacobs children? They were kind of a mess, especially Levi destined for ministry. And then King David had a bunch of kids that we wouldnt exactly put on the cover of a homeschooling magazine. What about them? These guys can have kids that are a disaster zone, and they can write a bunch of the Bible, but if a man has a kid who is only one tenth that bad, he cant preach from that same Bible? Okay, I get it. But if we want reformation in our time and we should we need to return to the Bible, whether or not we are flattered by what we discover there. Our task should be to seek out what faithful obedience in this area might mean, what it might look like, and then to obey. This obedience is not just to be found at the individual or familial level. This is an area where the entire church needs to be involved in learning together, and coming together. Until we come to a consensus on how to draw this particular line, we will continue to be frustrated by a pandemonium of voices from every direction. Suppose we tentatively set a very straightforward standard. Suppose we said that if the child of an elder or minister is ever excommunicated, then the elder or minister in question will submit his resignation. And if there are extenuating circumstances as there will sometimes be, no doubt then the decision about any exceptions will be referred to presbytery, outside the context of the local church. We would be applying the wisdom of the Westminster theologians showed on the subject of divorce saying that in such tangles those most closely involved should not be judges in their own cases. Suppose we started with something like that? I want to argue for this kind of approach in the posts that follow, and I do want to cover the subject as thoroughly as I can. Because the subject is such an important one, I want to encourage debate and discussion in the comments, as well as suggestions for questions that need to be addressed in greater detail at some point. I will try to get to them all.

As has been said, obedience is the great opener of eyes. Drawing the line in the wrong place is preferable to refusing to draw it at all. Once we start doing something together when a child is excommunicated, we might be a position to deal with, say, high scandal repented of. As we begin to obey, the Lord may continue to give us more obedience. But in order to wade in from the shallow end of the pool, we do have to get into the pool in the first place. Category: The Church | Tags: elder qualification, Elders of the Church, The Neglected Qualification

Evolutions Alligatornado
Posted on Monday, July 22, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 41 comments Coynes next chapter is on the engine of evolution, which is to say, natural selection. One of his examples was one I was already familiar with, and since it is quite a fun one lets just go with it. There is a kind of roundworm that is a parasite to a species of ant in Central America. I will just give you the short form here. An infected ant has its normally black abdomen turn a bright red. The ant is made sluggish by the parasite, and his now red abdomen is made to stick straight up into the air, looking for all the world like an edible berry, at least to birds. In addition, the connection between the thorax and the abdomen is weakened, making it easier for a bird to pick that berry (p. 113). And while ants normally can produce a pheromone which warn the other ants of an attack, the pheromones in the infected ant are all shut down. Got all that? A bird comes down and scarfs the berry, which is full of roundworm eggs. Those eggs are passed on through in the bird droppings, which other ants think would be good to scavenge in order to get food for their larvae back home. Taken back to the ant colony, these roundworm eggs hatch inside the pupae, and the worms head on down to the abdomen to mate and produce more eggs, and make the abdomen red and berry-like. Now anyone who can read an account like this, while stipulating that it must be the result of natural processes flying blind, without laughing out loud, is simply not paying attention. It is staggering adaptations like this the many ways that parasites control their carriers, just to pass on the parasites genes that gets an evolutionists juices flowing (p. 113). That word staggering is right, and what we know about such processes is scarcely a fraction of what is actually going on. And it is going on everywhere. To his credit, Coyne admits how it looks. Everywhere we look in nature, we see animals that seem beautifully designed to fit their environment (p. 115). At the same time, he denies that natural selection is blind. He acknowledges that the chance mutations are blind, but argues that the filtering of such mutations by natural selection is manifestly not random (p. 119). The cards are shuffled by chance, but the invisible poker playing hand (natural selection) renders

everything reasonable and scientific. The only problem is that the hand is not attached to a head, but is pretty smart anyway. So this means my first point in response to all this is something that Coyne would cheerfully grant, and indeed says himself. But I want to say it stronger. All this means that the roundworm in our example does not know anything. It does not know that there is such a thing as an ant, or an abdomen, or a thorax, or a berry, or a bird, or bird droppings, or a roundworm. It is not doing anything. It is just propagating along, and then a mutation happens. Coyne acknowledges that most [mutations] are harmful or neutral (p. 118). He goes on to say that a few can turn out to be useful. The useful ones are the raw material for evolution (p. 118). The engine of evolution breaks down a lot, but it still drives everything everywhere. And this is where I need to jump ahead to another part of the chapter where Coyne interacts (very inadequately) with the ID argument of irreducible complexity, articulated most effectively in Michael Behes Darwins Black Box. Coynes one-sentence statement of irreducible complexity is accurate as far as it goes, which is not very far, but which after that gets really lame pretty rapidly. The first sentence below is his summary. IDers argue that such traits, involving many parts that must cooperate for that trait to function at all defy Darwinian explanation. Therefore, by default, they must have been designed by a supernatural agent. This is commonly called the God of the gaps argument, and it is an argument from ignorance (p. 137). Since the citation above concludes with the word ignorance, now would be a good time to point how that Coyne doesnt have the faintest idea of how his opponents arguments actually work. For a scholar to argue this way, with the banner of knowledge snapping smartly above his head, is simply disgraceful. Better an argument from ignorance than an argument in ignorance, thats the first thing. And second, Behes argument isnt an argument from ignorance. It is an argument from our knowledge of complex systems. Irreducible complexity is an argument which engages with the claims for natural selection, and does so at every step of the process. Take Behes simple illustration of a mousetrap. In order to build an evolutionary mousetrap, it is not sufficient to give yourself hundreds of thousands of years in which to wait patiently for the mousetrap to evolve and to then confer a staggering survival advantage all at once. The argument requires that each step of the process confer a significant survival advantage, all by itself. Coyne acknowledges the necessity of this, but then proceeds blithely on his way with his nose in the air. This is a serious argument, one which (in the details) Coyne just ignores. He is either ignoring it because he is ignorant in the old-fashioned way, or he is ignoring it because he knows that he has no answer to the argument, and decided to blow smoke instead. To take Behes mousetrap example, you cant have a mutation that gives you a small wooden platform, which catches the occasional mouse, thus conferring a slight survival advantage. The

wood platform wouldnt catch anything, and would just get the way. And no bird would mistake it for a berry. Then the next thing you cant have is a hundred thousand years of dragging around a small wooden platform, as you wait for the mutation that produces a spring that rests uselessly on that platform, doing nothing also, just like the platform, but somehow resulting in a few more mice being caught. No, the whole mousetrap must be there, completely assembled, in order to do anything helpful at all. It is an irreducibly complex system. Back to the roundworm. He doesnt know anything about this argument, so his mutations keep turning the ant abdomen into replicas of berries that birds detest, into camo-skin that hides the ants better than they were hidden before, and into little pebble replicas. When he finally hits on the red berry, yay, it was at the same time that another uncooperative mutation made the attack pheromone release in triple amounts, so that the other ants were in a state of constant vigilance. Not only that, but another mutation made the attachment of abdomen and thorax a super-strong one, and also made the ant particularly energetic, not sluggish, and yet another mutation made the red abdomen droop down between the ant legs where the birds couldnt see it. So then we had to wait for another one hundred thousand trips around the sun for the red berry thing to happen again, but this time with the pheromones shut off, and the abdomen attachment weakened, and the ants interested in hunting down roundworm eggs, which they came to believe were just the thing for their larvae. Not only that, but we have to explain whats in it for the ants. We can see at once that this exquisite system confers survival advantages on the roundworm. But why arent the ants mutating themselves a red berry hider? All you need is a hundred thousand years, and some ants still alive at the end of it. So then, in building this system, you are not just rolling one dice with fifty sides. You are rolling ten die at the same time, each one with fifty sides. And you are doing this, or something equivalent, on every third leaf in the jungle. Evolution advances, inexorably, on the strength of a Powerball winner every ten minutes. Whenever you are telling a fictional story, the one thing you must not lose is the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. One writing coach (a gent named Bickham) advises fiction writers to avoid dropping an alligator through the transom. You lose people when they say, Oh, for pitys sake! In the early years of evolutionary theory, there was an awful lot we didnt know about the staggering complexity of life forms, all the way up to the elephants and whales, and all the way down to flagellated bacteria. But now our scientific knowledge is advancing so rapidly that evolutionists, in order to keep telling us their just so story, have to drop an alligator through the transom on a more or less continual basis. It is raining alligators. Better yet, we have gotten to that tipping point of scientific knowledge has finally gotten its big break, and has been allowed to write the screenplay for Alligatornado. This chapter also has a section where Coyne argues from the success of animal breeders.

If artificial selection can produce such canine diversity so quickly, it becomes easier to accept that the lesser diversity of wild dogs arose by natural selection acting over a period of a thousand times longer (p. 126). I see. The fact that a farmer in Nebraska can grow a thousand acres of corn, all of it in straight rows, makes it easier to believe that this could eventually happen by itself, if only we give it enough time? The fact that something can happen when tended is an argument for not having to tend things? So one last thing, and I will leave this chapter be. If the Creator packaged the capacity for striking diversity within kinds (as He plainly did with the dog), how is the existence of a striking diversity an argument against God having done that? Category: Apologetics | Tags: Book Review, Evolution

What a Divided Jordan Signifies

Posted on Sunday, July 21, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 1 comment In 1 Kings 2, we have the fascinating story of Elijahs rapture into Heaven I think it could be helpful if we looked at this passage for some of the reasons why the third chapter of Hebrews treats the land of Canaan as a type, first, of the whole world, and second, of Heaven itself. The key is the dividing of the river Jordan. You should recall that the first time the Jordan was divided was when Joshua brought the people over, right near Jericho. Their invasion of Canaan through a divided Jordan typified the Christian church beginning the process of discipling all the nations. Now just before Elijah was caught up into Heaven, he came to Jericho. Immediately after this, he came to the Jordan, and caused it to divide so that he and Elisha could cross over (1 Kings 2:8). This they did, heading east out of the promised land. This indicated that Elijah was about to enter Canaan, following Joshua, and what he entered was Heaven. But then Elisha does it again on the return trip. A double spirit from Elijah rests upon him, and he causes the Jordan to divide again, going west into Canaan, just as Joshua had done centuries before (1 Kings 2:14). Elishas ministry is much broader, more internationally connected, than Elijahs had been. Elisha entered Canaan as a new Joshua and so Canaan also represents all the nations of men (Heb. 3:14-4:1). Centuries after this, John the Baptist appears, in the same place, dressed exactly as Elijah had been dressed (and probably Elisha also), and preached a baptism of repentance. But this new Elijah is not dividing the water so that the people of Israel could stay dry. Now he is getting the people wet (with the water of that same Jordan) so that the people would be divided. The New Testament is very clear that the baptism of John established a clear division or boundary within the Jewish people (Luke 7:30).

Before he divided the water for the people. Now he divides the people with the water. Canaan then is a type of a type. The promised land meant a promised world, and a promised world meant at promised Heaven.

In the Sunlight of Our Deliverance

Posted on Friday, July 26, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 34 comments One of things we should notice about the drive for social justice is that the theory of the thing contains a soteriological contradiction right at the heart of it. This is what I mean. In true evangelism, the unbeliever is being called from a state of condemnation into a state of no condemnation. This is why the message that accomplishes this is unambiguously good news Jesus was crucified and is risen, and the sinner who believes in Him is set free. This is a true evangel. But in the world of social justice, what is the task? What is the mission? It is precisely the reverse of this. It is to get the weak and oppressed from a condition where God identifies with them into a state where they come under His judgment. Advocates of missional social justice identify with the poor and they sneer at middle class values. But this is like a lifeguard identifying with the drowning and sneering at the beach. We are supposed to minister to the poor, but what does that mean? Does it include actually helping them, so that they are no longer poor? But if we do that, we are moving them out of the realm of Gods favor. If we deliver them out of poverty, we are setting them up for a visiting speaker a generation from now who will come to their church and say that God identifies with the poor and not with you. You used to have it good when you had it bad, but not any more. I have noted before that the poor are a cash cow for those who want to have a steady income based on helping the poor. But there are other factors in play as well. The guilty white social worker needs the poor to remain poor for emotional reasons as well. If they stopped being poor, they would stop needing him, and he would have to stop being patronizing. Moreover, they would cease being his friends, for they would have become middle class, the kind of person he has been trained to hold in contempt. They would have been successfully evangelized, which means that they now lie under condemnation. Therefore there is no justification for those who are in . . . who, exactly? But true mercy ministry is effective, which means that it actually shows mercy. It means that it works. It means that the grandchildren of the drug addict you helped out thirty years ago are now growing up in an intact home with two parents, are getting fed every day, are going to sleep warm every night, are receiving a good, Christian education, and so on. According to the theology of social justice, does God identify with them anymore? Nope they were delivered . . . into condemnation.

If the poor are not to be rejected by God, then, we have to keep them right where they are. So we have created a ministry for the permanent underclass, and a theology to keep them that way. This gives the bureaucrat dispensing the favors of the state a steady job, and it gives sob sister Christians an emotional security blanket (made out of people), who must not be allowed to turn into the middle class enemy. An entrepreneur who offers a poor man a job has more love in his little finger than the entire man has who creates a job for himself off of that same poor man. True capitalism not crapitalism, mind you, not crony capitalism is love. The sooner we learn that, the sooner we will grow up into love. I say all this knowing that the Bible is very clear that God does identify with the weak. He uses weak and feeble instruments to accomplish great things. But we err seriously when we make weakness an end in itself, instead of understanding it for what it is a left-handed way of getting to the victory. Be strong in grace (2 Tim. 2:1). Be strong in the Lord (Eph. 6:10). Be men, be strong (1 Cor. 16:13). These verses should no more be pitted against the many passages on the glory of weakness than the passages on weakness should be pitted against these. For when I am weak, that is when I am strong (2 Cor. 12:10). The argument is not that weakness is ethically better, and too bad it always loses. It is that weakness conquers. And when that weakness conquers, and the mighty have been thrown down from their high places, and the lowly have been lifted up, what then? When we were released from our captivity, we were like those who dream, and we stopped our mouths at the goodness of God. For the wicked were dispersed like smoke in a gale, and we lifted up our heads because of the redemption that came to us. And after we walked around in the sunlight of our deliverance for a few years, overflowing with gratitude, one day a man came to us, claiming to be a prophet. He said that we were deeply compromised, having accepted some gifts we had quite plainly accepted. How can we escape condemnation, living the way we were living? Blessed are the poor, he said, for they shall stay like that. Category: Money, Love, Desire | Tags: The Good of Affluence, Wealth and the Christian

With Laces Untied

Posted on Thursday, July 25, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 8 comments So lets begin our work on this tough topic by getting two obvious things on the table. The first obvious thing is that the apostle Paul teaches us that how a man behaves in his home is a predictor or indicator of how he will behave in the church. If you want a godly and competent leader in the church, then you need to look for a godly and competent leader in his home. The apostle couldnt make his point plainer.

For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? (1 Tim. 3:5) The word rendered rule here is proistemi, which means preside, rule, maintain. And the word used with regard to pastoral work is epimeleomai, which means to take care of, or provide for. This is a simple if, then statement. If a man does not know how to do x, then he will not be able to do y. We will examine what that connection is later, but it should suffice for the present to show that there is such a connection. We should refuse to call a pastor based on certain realities in his home, and we should do this as a matter of obedience to God. If a pastoral candidate were not very good at racketball, or was not a competent hunter, or had never been hang-gliding, we would not be within our rights to say that obedience required us to reject him. There would not be a connection between these activities and the possibility of him being a good pastor, and there is a connection between him being a good father and being . . . a good father. But the second obvious thing about this is that the world is a messy place, and that application of this qualification requires that we make judgment calls. Some of the judgment calls will be more difficult to make than others. This requirement is not like the requirement that our Constitution sets for the president being 35-years-old (Art. II). All you have to do to determine if the qualification is met is be able to count. Or to take an example from the Old Testament, the requirements for the priesthood were more objective and physical (Lev. 21:16-21), and therefore easier to check.. But what we must not do here is set these two obvious things at odds with each other. We must not assume that because there is a requirement that a man manage his household well, that there will never be difficulties in deciding what to do. Simplistic thinking is the badge of the legalist. But neither may we acknowledge that there will be hard cases, and conclude from this that the familial qualification is functionally meaningless. The requirement must be held as a real requirement meaning that certain men are kept out of office because of it, and they are men who otherwise would be ordained to office. So how do we balance these two things? There is a legal adage that says that hard or difficult cases make bad law. You should let the simple requirement drive the majority of your cases, and deal with your exceptional cases as they arise. There is another adage that says that the exception proves the rule, but this adage is almost universally misunderstood. The phrase is frequently taken as the exception somehow establishing the rule, with the word proves taken in the sense of what you do to get to a conclusion in an argument. But the proverb was developed when the word prove had the meaning of test. The exception tests the rule. Let me give you a made up example that will show how an exception can be made which tests, or honors, the rule, and then make up another example where it does nothing of the kind. Say the congregation is considering a pastoral candidate, and it comes out in the interview that when he was 19, shortly before he became a Christian, he was shacked up with a girl for six

months. She got pregnant and left him because she was a strident atheist and didnt like the spiritual direction he was taking. He has had no legal recourse, and his son from that union was brought up as an atheist, and is one screwed up kid. After your candidate was converted, he finished college, went to seminary, and met his current wife while studying for the ministry. They married, and have five lovely children, all of whom love God, love Jesus, love their parents, and love church. Now suppose you have another candidate, one who has five children, two of whom are sullen and disobedient. The other three might be okay, you think. But the two are bad attitudes with sneakers, laces untied. The pastoral candidate is the photo negative of the centurion in the gospels (Matt. 8:9). When the father saith come, the child goeth. When he saith go, the child cometh. When he says do this, the teen-ager doeth it not. In the first example, the exception tests the rule it makes you think hard about the rule, and it makes you see how the rule actually still applies. We are checking to see how this man manages the children he has, not how he was a father to a child he never had the opportunity to father. It is easy to see how the pastoral search committee could determine that his atheist son (whom he had met three times in his life) was not the kind of situation that the apostle Paul had in mind. With the children he has, the congregation can see how he rules in his household, and they can expect that he would take care of them on that basis. But in the second situation, you can immediately see that the two exceptions were not instances that tested the rule they were instances where the rule excluded the candidate. The bad things you saw in the household meant that if you called such a man, you should expect to see bad things in the church, bad things that were somehow related to his weakness in his home. So the requirement in 1 Tim. 3:5 is clear, but requires wisdom to apply. And the application of wisdom should never be treated as though it were relativism. Category: The Church | Tags: Elders of the Church, The Neglected Qualification

Same Sex Mirage

Posted on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 26 comments A number of writers, me included, have been warning that the slopes really are slippery, and that the admission of something as radical as same sex mirage into any part of our political life is to introduce it everywhere. And yet, it has been surprising to see how fast the whole thing is moving. It appears that the incline of the slippery slopes has steepened, and we are now picking up a goodish bit of speed. Within weeks of the Supreme Court debacle on SSM, a federal judge has now ordered Ohio to recognize a homosexual mirage contracted in Maryland.

This shows that the federalist live and let live approach is a tactical sham. It is clearly all or nothing all states recognizing same sex mirage as a basic civil rights issue, or none of them doing so. All right then, none it is. What homosexual activists have been doing is insist that we redefine marriage, while pretending that all they are doing is expanding the opportunities for marriage to additional others. The problem is that as soon as they abandon the understanding of marriage as a covenanted conjugal relationship of a man and a woman, they have no consistent stopping point. Some of them dont want a consistent stopping point, and others of them do but they still cant have one. The biological act that consummates a marriage is the only act capable of reproducing our race. When a traditional marriage is infertile, this is an act of providence (or disobedience). When a homosexual union is infertile, this is something that is true by definition. And this means that the possibility of fruitfulness is removed (of necessity) from the definition of marriage. But once you have done that, how are we to define it? Largely on the basis of inertia, some homosexuals (like Andrew Sullivan) want their (redefining) expansion of marriage to be limited to two people, to be romantic, to be sexual, etc. But why? They want to redefine, but not too much. But who is in charge of how much is too much? We may ask why two and only two. Lots of people in history (and in the present) have been polygamous. Why should it be romantic? Why cant marriage be like the sale of a mule? And why sexual? Who says that orgasm is an essential part of this? Liberals like uppity women in theory, on their bumper stickers, but detest them in real life. So here is a proposal for a couple of genuinely uppity women (who need to be sisters) living in a state that allows for same sex mirage. They need to get themselves down to the county courthouse and apply for a marriage license, letting the fact that they are sisters be known to the clerk. When they are denied, as they will be, they need to ask why. Because that would be incest, the reply will come. Their response should be two-fold. First, they should say, if we were going to be incestuous, why would that be any business of the state? Since we as a culture have abandoned the moral arguments, the reply would have to be pragmatic because of the possibility of birth defects. To which, the sisters should raise their eyebrows and inquire into how it is that a lesbian relationship could result in birth defects. After they have flummoxed the clerk in this way, the second part of their response should be to reassure that longsuffering personage, to make up for their first line of argument. They should go on to assure the clerk that they are not lesbians at all, there is absolutely nothing sexual or romantic about their relationship at all. There would be no incest. We are just sisters. And we want to be married. But marriage has to be sexual, the clerk would reply. Does it? they would answer. Well, yes, traditionally . . . Traditionally? Like we care about that anymore?

In other words, once we have reduced the act of marriage to the act of choosing, and we have cast off all natural boundaries that would limit or constrict the content of such an act of choosing, we cannot rush in after the fact to constrict such acts of choosing. Two sisters can be married and their point of unity (as they have chosen it) will be their common love of knitting. Two fishing buddies can get married, and their point of contact is their common love for brown trout. But I am using that word common too much. Too restrictive. Under the new tyranny of the raw act of choosing, nothing would prevent two people from marrying, one in Massachusetts and one in Washington, whose one thing they share in common is the fact that they have never met each other, never want to, and are resolved to never exchange any email whatsoever. One of Saul Alinskys great principles for radicals was that of making the enemy live up to his own rules. This really works when it is impossible to do so as it is in this case. So I think that somebodys Jane Austen reading group needs to get down to the courthouse and apply for a group license. Make them say no. Make them purvey some more of their hate. Category: Engaging the Culture | Tags: pomosexuality, Sex and Culture

Mammon Is Like Gravity

Posted on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 by Douglas Wilson 17 comments Many years ago, somewhere in the seventies, I was working for a Christian bookstore called Crossroads. One day we were visited by a young and zealous member of a group called the Children of God, and I vividly remember our conversation on the sidewalk outside the store. He asked if I had a job, a car, etc. I said that I did. He told me that I was not a real Christian because Jesus said that whoever did not give up absolutely everything could not be His disciple (Luke 14:33). Instead of arguing the exegesis with him, I reached over and tugged on his sweater (for he was clothed, contrary to what he had just said Jesus required), and asked, Whose is this? He was startled, not expecting any questions of that nature. I asked again. Who does this belong to? He said nothing because he didnt know what to say, and so I helped him out. I said, This belongs to Jesus, right? And He is letting you borrow it? Is that how it works? He was greatly relieved, and said yes, he was borrowing it. I said that was how it was with my job and my car. I was borrowing them from Jesus. I also remember that at one point in the conversation, he asked if we could give him a Bible. Crossroads was a Christian bookstore literature ministry, so I said sure thing. I went inside, got one for him, and brought it back out. But the Bible I brought him wasnt good enough. He asked if he could have a nice one, you know, leather-bound? And I dont think I have trusted people who glibly cite Luke 14:33 ever since. ***

For you see, they are never (in my experience) citing that passage in order to explain why they have just given everything away to the poor. They are always citing it because they need for you to do something. Leather would be nice. *** Mammon is like gravity, and can act across distances. You dont have to have it in your hands to be in the grip of it. It doesnt have to be in your hands for you to be in its hands. *** Wealth enables you to sit on top of the world (Dt. 8:18). Mammon enables the world to sit on top of you (Matt. 6:24). *** God doesnt mind His people having money at all. But He does mind money having His people. *** God also minds the previous two proverbs being used to justify Mammon having you by the throat. *** God also minds hatred of those two proverbs being used to justify Mammon having you by the throat. *** Some idols like Molech and Baal are idols we must never see again after we have repented. Other idols like your wife and your money must be loved rightly after repentance. *** Ordinary Christians are routinely upbraided for their lack of sacrificial generosity, when they are virtually the only ones paying the salaries of professional mercifiers. The mercifiers use heartrending pictures of the poor to induce donations, which are nice donations but not quite as much as Jesus demanded (Luke 14:33). These pictures of the poor are tulchans. A tulchan is a stuffed calfskin that induces a cow to let down its milk. Donors are the (very guilty) cows, the poor are the tulchan posters, and the mercifiers are the dairymen. America is such a gorgeous meadow. *** The downtrodden are a gold mine.

*** And Judas wondered why that ostentatious ointment was not sold appropriately, and donated for the relief of the poor (John 12:4-5). For Judas had the mercy patter down, and he was the treasurer, and used to skim as he deemed appropriate (John 12:6). And did we mention that Judas kept the bag (John 13:29)? *** A certain kind of mercy mindedness and embezzling are first cousins. *** I said mercy mindedness. I should have said mercy mouthiness. God loves mercy mindedness. *** Guilt-motivated giving will go just far enough to make the guilt go away, which usually runs about $20. Gratitude-motivated giving runs for a lifetime, and seeks nothing other than to spread the grace and goodness of God. *** Giving from gratitude feeds and nourishes the desire to give some more. Giving from guilt torments it. *** The blessing of the Lord makes us wealthy, and He adds no sorrow to it (Prov. 10:22). *** The sorrow is added by somebody else. Watch that man closely.