Moore to the Point
By Russell D. Moore. Russell D. Moore serves as the teaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. In addition, Dr. Moore is the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Find sermons and other resources to help Christians engage the culture from a biblical worldview at www.russellmoore.com.

What Maurice Sendak Can Teach the Church

— Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 —

Maurice Sendak, who just died, doesn’t seem, at first glance, to have much to teach Christians. After all, he was an atheist with a cynical outlook and a foul mouth. But underneath all of that, I think, Sendak saw something of the fallen glory of the universe we followers of Jesus sometimes ignore.

Sendak’s most famous work, of course, is his children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. It’s about a boy named Max, who is sent to his room for telling his mother he’ll eat her up. My sons love this story. Whenever I read it, they start shifting around in their seats as they hear about his room becoming a forest, about his encountering scary, teeth-baring “wild things.”

My boys aren’t unusual. I loved that story as much as they did, when I was their age. And when I talk to people about my age, I find that this book struck, and strikes, a particular resonance with at least two generations of American children, no matter what their racial, social, economic, or religious backgrounds.

Sendak said that the “wild things” originated with his fear and loathing of his grownup extended family, trying to hug and kiss him and “eat him up.” But I think there’s more to it than that, more that causes this story to persist.

If, as both ancient and contemporary wisdom tells us, stories exist to help us categorize our fears and aspirations, then “wild” children’s stories remind us of what we see everywhere in human art, from cave paintings to country music to the Cannes Film Festival. We’re afraid of the wildness “out there” in the scary universe around us. Whether we fear saber-toothed tigers or Wall Street collapse or malaria or our parent’s impending divorce, there are frightening, threatening forces out there that seem outside our control.

But Sendak also, at least in his artistic imagination, also recognized something the Christian revelation tells us clearly. Worse than what’s “out there” is the uncontrollable “wildness” inside of us, those passions and desires and rages and longings and sorrows within our psyches that seem to be even scarier because they’re so hidden, so close, and so much at the core of who we are. The wildness within us doesn’t seem to end, either. It just morphs throughout the life-cycle from toddler-age tantrums to teenage hormones to midlife crises to, well, sometimes, a lonely, cynical elderly person facing death.

The kind of story Sendak intuited is part of a larger fabric, the knowledge that the wildness both out there and in here needs to be governed. The wildness needs to be reined in, and reigned in. We need a king, and we need to be part of a kingdom. After all, Max only gains power over his “wild things” when he gains self-control, control that comes with his being named “king of all of the wild things”

I don’t know what happened in Sendak’s life in those moments before death. But I hope maybe, just maybe, he found that One who alone was able to do what Sendak imagined for that little boy in his story: to look wildness right in the eye, and to become king over it with a word. The Word came into the world, and the wildness did not overcome it.

At the end of the Wild Things, the book puts the rambunctious here right back in his own room after the journey is over. It’s the same room his mother had sent him off to, for his wildness, without his supper. But after his time with the wild things, he finds his supper waiting for him. “And it was still hot,” the book concludes.

At the time the book was published, the psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim said the scary nature of the story wasn’t found with the wild things at all. It was found in the “time out” in the room itself. Being sent to one’s room alone, and without food, he argued, represents desertion, the worst threat a child can face. And maybe that’s what Sendak feared the worst.

Those are the fears addressed by the gospel. Like children frightened by wild things, we retreat backward into the “spirit of slavery” and so “fall back into fear” (Rom. 8:15). The gospel, though, reminds us, all life long, that we have one who has gone ahead “as a forerunner” (Heb. 6:20). We hear a voice telling us to be “strong and courageous” for “I will not leave you or forsake you” (Josh. 1:5), no matter how wild you feel inside. He’s the only one with the authority to tell the devils who accuse us to “be gone.”

Maurice Sendak plumbed our ancient problem. I can only hope that, somewhere in those final moments, he saw the demon-crushing cross of Jesus. I hope he saw the one who went out beyond the gates of Jerusalem, to where the wild things are, and became king of all the wild things, forever.

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Mothers Day and the Infertile

— Monday, May 7th, 2012 —

Mother’s Day is a particularly sensitive time in many congregations, and pastors and church leaders often don’t even know it. This is true even in congregations that don’t focus the entire service around the event as if it were a feast day on the church’s liturgical calendar. Infertile women, and often their husbands, are still often grieving in the shadows.

It is good and right to honor mothers. The Bible calls us to do so. Jesus does so with his own mother. We must recognize though that many infertile women find this day almost unbearable. This is not because these women are (necessarily) bitter or covetous or envious. The day is simply a reminder of unfulfilled longings, longings that are good.

Some pastors, commendably, mention in their sermons and prayers on this day those who want to be mothers but who have not had their prayers answered. Some recognize those who are mothers not to children, but to the rest of the congregation as they disciple spiritual daughters in the faith. This is more than a “shout-out” to those who don’t have children. It is a call to the congregation to rejoice in those who “mother” the church with wisdom, and it’s a call to the church to remember those who long desperately to hear “Mama” directed at them.

What if pastors and church leaders were to set aside a day for prayer for children for the infertile?

In too many churches ministry to infertile couples is relegated to support groups that meet in the church basement during the week, under cover of darkness. Now it’s true that infertile couples need each other. The time of prayer and counsel with people in similar circumstances can be helfpul.

But this alone can contribute to the sense of isolation and even shame experienced by those hurting in this way. Moreover, if the only time one talks about infertility is in a room with those who are currently infertile, one is probably going to frame the situation in rather hopeless terms.

In fact, almost every congregation is filled with previously infertile people, including lots and lots who were told by medical professionals that they would never have children! Most of those (most of us, I should say) who fit into that category don’t really talk about it much because they simply don’t think of themselves in those terms. The baby or babies are here, and the pain of the infertility has subsided. Infertile couples need to see others who were once where they are, but who have been granted the blessing they seek.

What if, at the end of a service, the pastor called any person or couple who wanted prayer for children to come forward and then asked others in the congregation to gather around them and pray? Not every person grappling with infertility will do this publicly, and that’s all right. But many will. And even those too embarrassed to come forward will be encouraged by a church willing to pray for those hurting this way. The pastor could pray for God’s gift of children for these couples, either through biological procreation or through adoption, whichever the Lord should desire in each case.

Regardless of how you do it, remember the infertile as the world around us celebrates motherhood. The Proverbs 31 woman needs our attention, but the 1 Samuel 1 woman does too.

This was originally posted on May 5, 2011.

Dialogue on Evangelical Issues

— Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 —

T4G 2012: Dinner and Dialogue Panel from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago, a conference, Together for the Gospel, met here in Louisville taking up the theme of “The Underestimated Gospel.” In conjunction with that, some colleagues and I taught a class on the issues under discussion. Part of that was the opportunity to have some friends, old and new, that I admire and enjoy join me for a conversation.

In this video, I’m joined by J.D. Greear, pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, NC; Joshua Harris, pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD; Carl Trueman, professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia; Matt Pinson, president of the Free Will Baptist Bible College in Nashville; and Jefferson Bethke, poet-artist whose video on “Jesus vs. Religion” rocked the world last year.

In this conversation, we talk about some broad themes of what the challenges are facing evangelical Christianity, and what the future looks like.

We discuss, for instance, why Matt Pinson, as an Arminian theologian, finds both promise and peril in the “Young, Restless, Reformed” movement, and what he wishes Calvinists knew about real Arminianism (instead of the semi-Pelagian caricature). Carl and J.D. go at it over whether the NT allows for multi-site churches. Jefferson Bethke explains what he learned about ministry from being castigated by some evangelical leaders he admired (and being gently discipled by others).

I hope you enjoy hearing these brothers talk from the heart. I love and respect each one of them and am glad to co-labor with them for the kingdom.

What Augustine’s Baptism Can Teach Our Churches

— Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 —

I just finished reading a remarkable little book, Font of Life: Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism, by Garry Wills (Oxford University Press). I’ll admit that I started the book with a bit of misplaced Baptist triumphalism, and ended it with a bit of a chastened longing.

First, for my confession of bravado. Wills, a liberal Catholic, spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the baptistry in Milan where Augustine was baptized, and the means by which the man from Africa and others were baptized into the Christian faith. The baptistry, now known to scholars, was a pool, and the candidates were, Wills offers nonchalantly, immersed fully into the water.

I say nonchalantly because, of course, Wills as a Roman Catholic isn’t trying to defend infant baptism or sprinkling or any such thing, and because there’s really no dispute about immersion as an ancient pattern of baptism. The Roman church has never denied such a thing, and Luther and Calvin (among many others) acknowledged it. They simply dispute that immersion is of the essence of baptism and thus normative for believers in all places and at all times. That debate goes on, and will for the foreseeable future.

But, as a Southern Baptist, there’s something genetic in me that wants to see Augustine’s immersion, claim him as one of ours, sign him up for Centrifuge, and so on.

Once that spell was lifted, though, I found myself rejoicing in the care with which Ambrose took in preparing candidates for baptism. Wills, pooling together the primary sources, demonstrates the Bishop’s exhaustive preparatory training of his candidates for baptism. This wasn’t a “new members’ class” or some set of hurdles to jump. Instead, Ambrose initiated them into the secrets of the faith as they moved toward the baptistry. Ambrose expected the candidates to memorize the Creed, not to show that they “meant business” but in order to show that they were now entrusted with a glorious mystery of the faith, expected to preserve this for the next generation.

Moreover, Ambrose took the moment of baptism as itself a teaching exercise, showing how in baptism the whole of redemptive history centers on Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. He showed them the typological themes of redemption through judgment in the Flood, in the Red Sea Exodus, in the crossing of Jordan, and, of course, in the baptism of the Lord Jesus himself. This way of reading the Bible, Wills argues, formed the core of Augustine’s own method of biblical interpretation. He learned it, Wills contends, not in a classroom but in a baptistry.

In a day when, at least in my circles, baptism has become reduced to merely the person’s individual testimony, we ought to recover the drama of baptism as placing us in the story of Christ, a story told ahead of time in countless canonical life-stories and told, in the water, in our own life-story: death, burial, and resurrection as we are joined to the life of Another. And, of this Other, the voice of God himself once thundered over his wet head (and, yes I would argue, his entirely wet body, but, again, that’s another debate): “You are my beloved Son, and with you I am well-pleased.”

For years, I’ve urged people to properly interpret the Scripture the way the prophets and apostles do: first in light of Christ, and only then applied to those who are found in him. I wonder whether we miss this first in the baptismal waters, even before we miss it in our Sunday School classes and Lord’s Day sermons.

Wills argues that Augustine kept Ambrose’s biblical typology, but altered baptism to a more sacerdotal, and less pedagogical, matter, in light of his controversies with the Pelagians and the Donatists. That’s highly debatable and questionable. But, even apart from that, I wonder if even we Baptists ought to reflect on that pool in Milan and give thanks to God for giving us the perilous, watery drama of baptism. And, as we do so, we ought to protect this gift, this sign of the kingdom, for future generations.

The gospel speaks, yes. The gospel sings. But the gospel splashes too.

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Join Me for Beignets and Baptists

— Wednesday, April 25th, 2012 —

In a few weeks, I’ll be down in my old stomping grounds of New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Each year in advance of my convention’s annual meeting, I teach a class in tandem with the event. In year’s past, folks have had to come to Louisville for the lectures, and then travel to wherever the meeting convenes.

This year, though, I’ve decided to have the whole class in New Orleans. I think it’ll be great fun, and I’d love for any of you students to come join me. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll read together and talk about some important issues in Baptist history and denominational cooperation and we’ll attend together all the sessions of the convention, thinking through actions and resolutions and the like, how they fit in Baptist history, and what they mean for the Baptist future.

While we’re there, if weather permits, we’ll take a quick walking tour around Jackson Square. Then, I’ll point out some important places, and all the while I’ll be lecturing on the banks of the Mississippi River on the denomination and the ins and outs of its annual meeting.

It’ll be like a gumbo of a discussion, lots of things to mull over, and, hey, if you don’t like okra, there’s always some stuff in there you will.

After, as many as want to, we’ll go have coffee and beignets at the Cafe Du Monde, which is (as we’ll see) itself a significant site in Baptist history. I can’t promise that my mother will fry shrimp for us, although I can always ask.

You don’t have to be a Southern Seminary student to take the class. I’m glad to have folks from other places with us.

I hope you’ll be able to join us!

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez.

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Beyond a Trickle-Down Liturgy

— Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 —

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of trickle-down liturgy. What I mean by that is music that is designed and marketed somewhere, makes it on Christian radio or other media, and then becomes familiar enough that people start singing it in church.

Now, to be sure, there’s a place for that. But a lot of the “industry’s” best stuff just all seems to sound the same. And it seems to say the same thing, over and over again.

But Christian music doesn’t belong to an “industry,” and it ought not to come only from far-away experts, focus-grouping lyrics and tunes. Music is an act of spiritual warfare, a sign that King Jesus has defeated the enemy powers and is gifting his church.

That’s the reason that, so often, the best and most evocative music in the history of the church is that that springs from the embedded and organic life of people in church community together. That’s true whether we’re speaking of canonical Psalms or revival-time gospel songs or the best of Christian hip-hop. And it’s why I’ve always loved the “outlaws” of Christian music: folks like Michael Card and Rich Mullins, who are in the world of Christian music but who don’t quite obey all its rules.

That’s also why I’m so excited about God is doing through Sojourn Music. It’s a very contemporary form of hymnody that springs from the real worship of real people in a real place, in covenant together. And, due to technology, we can all benefit from this gifting.

I’m really excited today that Kristen Gilles’s free worship album The Whole Big Story, recorded with the Sojourn Music band, is available. Here you’ll find excellent musicians, singing about weighty topics, ranging from Christology to eschatology to the Christian’s experience in this time between the times.

I especially like the song “Rising Tide,” which will not surprise those who know me, given it’s gritty, twangy sort of feel.

Listen to this album and let me know what you think. And then, if God’s so gifted you, write a song or two!

Weddings, Funerals, and Unbelievers

— Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 —

Every community has “that guy,” the minister of the gospel who thinks he is called by God to be a Justice of the Peace, officiating as a kind chaplain at the weddings of whoever asks.

Last week, The Gospel Coalition ran an article of mine on whether a minister should officiate at weddings of unbelievers. I said, and say, “no.” Marriage is a creation ordinance, given to all people, yes. But the church has authority to bless and sanctify only what the church has the authority to discipline and hold accountable. Here is a longer version of the original post, from here at this site.

Since the post has run, I’ve received several questions from folks asking whether a minister should officiate at funerals of unbelievers, to that I say yes, and you can read this article to find out why this isn’t the same thing as officiating at the weddings of unbelievers.

Meditations from Jefferson’s Grave

— Monday, April 9th, 2012 —

Last week I stood at the grave of Thomas Jefferson, and wondered. I was in Charlottesville to speak at the University Mr. Jefferson founded, and made my way up to his homeplace Monticello. Standing at his grave, I was prompted to give thanks for his life and legacy.

After all, if it weren’t for Jefferson and his majestic Declaration of Independence, there might not even be a United States of America, and certainly not a country quite like it is now. If it weren’t for Jefferson (and the Baptists), would I have grown up in some cold, dead, state-established Anglican church instead of the vibrancy of a free church in a free state? And, of course, if President Jefferson hadn’t purchased the Louisiana Territory, I would have grown up some place other than America.

But, much more than that, standing at Jefferson’s grave prompted me to realize that Jefferson is, well, in a grave. The Enlightenment ideals that gave this brilliant thinker a right understanding of natural rights led him to idolize human cerebral capacity. Jefferson’s anti-supernaturalism is seen in visual form in his famous Bible, with the miraculous parts cut out, most significantly the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I love Jefferson for standing up against King George, but not for standing up against King Jesus.

And yet, two hundred years later, belief in the resurrection of Jesus persists. Just days after I was at this hero’s grave, Christians from all over the world, despite all this science and all this progress and all this technology, confessed what the earliest believers in the catacombs of Rome cried out: “Christ is risen indeed.”

Thomas Jefferson is still dead. I thank God for him, but standing at his grave reminds me how limited even his legacy can be, in the grand scheme of trillions of years of cosmic time. It also reminds me of the contrast with a Middle Eastern day-laborer whose monument isn’t a house or a temple made with hands, or even a simple grave-marker. It’s instead a borrowed tomb that isn’t filled anymore.

That empty tomb is, itself, a declaration of independence. By raising Jesus from the dead, God declared him (and all who are in him) to be free from death, free from the curse, free from Satan’s accusation. I suppose you could say that Jesus was endowed by his Father with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… except that these blessings don’t end in a graveyard.

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How the Resurrection Undoes Our Need to Be Proven Right

— Friday, April 6th, 2012 —

As Jesus drowned in his own blood, the spectators yelled words quite similar to those of Satan in the wilderness: “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (Mk. 15:32).

But Jesus didn’t jump down. He didn’t ascend to the skies. He just writhed there.

The bloated corpse of Jesus hit the ground as he was pulled off that stake, spattering warm blood and water on the faces of the crowd.

That night, the religious leaders probably read Deuteronomy 21 to their families, warning them about the curse of God on those who are “hanged on a tree.” Fathers probably told their sons, “Watch out that you don’t ever wind up like him.”

Those Roman soldiers probably went home and washed the blood of Jesus from under their fingernails and played with their children in front of the fire before dozing off. This was just one more insurrectionist they had pulled off a cross, one in a line of them dotting the roadside. And this one (what was his name? Joshua?) was just decaying meat now, no threat to the Empire at all.

The corpse of Jesus just lay there in the silence of that cave. By all appearances it had been tested and tried, and found wanting.

If you had been there to pull open his bruised eyelids, matted there together with mottled blood, you would have looked into blank holes. If you had lifted his arm, you would have felt no resistance. You would have heard only the thud as it hit the table when you let it go. You might have walked away from that morbid scene muttering to yourself, “The wages of sin is death.”

But sometime before dawn on Sunday morning, a spike-torn hand twitched. A blood-crusted eyelid opened. The breath of God came blowing down into that cave, and a new creation flashed into reality.

God was not simply delivering Jesus (and with him all of us) from death. He was also vindicating him (and with him all of us). By resurrecting Jesus from the dead, God was affirming what he had said over the Jordan waters. He was declaring Jesus “to be the Son of God in power” (Rom. 1:4).

This was done, the Bible says, by “the Spirit of holiness.” This is the same Spirit who rested on Jesus at his baptism “like a dove” (Matt. 3:16). I wonder if, as the dovish Spirit alighted on him in the water and in the tomb,  Jesus might have thought of the words of the Psalm the Devil would quote in the wilderness: “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge” (Ps. 91:4).

With that kind of rescue, who needs to be proven right in any other way?

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Note: The following post is an excerpt from Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011).