When Williams insists, “your cheatin’ heart will tell on you” he says something very true about the conscience that God has placed inside every human being.

Part of the fabric that God has designed to point men and women to the gospel is this conscience, which testifies to the individual what they know to be true about God, about sin, about judgment and obedience. And while this conscience is individual, on the Last Day this same conscience will bear witness to every human being’s deeds in the flesh. If you have a conscience, one day at judgment your heart “will tell on you.”

In terms of this song, Hank Williams may not be right in the short term. The cheatin’ heart of the woman he loved may not tell on her in this life. But ultimately, her heart will tell on her, and so will yours. So in this week’s episode we’ll talk about this conscience, and how Jesus answers the accusing heart.

Today I launched a new semester of my Doctrine of the Last Things class, with the showing of a clip from the movie The Planet of the Apes.

The clip my students watched was in the closing moments of the 1968 film, as Charlton Heston is fleeing a civilization in which gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutangs rule over non-verbal, animal-like human beings. Up to this point, Heston’s character assumes he’s on another planet, one that has evolved differently from life on earth. The final scene though tells the shocking truth.

Heston sees the Statue of Liberty in ruins, up to her torso in mud and sand. It’s then that he realizes he hasn’t traveled through space, but through time. He sees the wreckage of a civilization lost.

Contrast the ending of the 1968 film with the ending of the 2001 remake. In a similar attempt at a twist climax, the protagonist (this time, Mark Wahlberg) escapes the ape planet in his space ship, crash-landing in Washington D.C., skipping across the mall past the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool, to land right in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

Like Heston, Wahlberg is horrified by a national monument gone awry. In his case, it’s the Lincoln Memorial—with Lincoln’s face a chimpanzee. Wahlberg learns to his terror he hasn’t escaped at all.

And then, of course, there’s the most recent Planet of the Apes film, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), starring James Franco. In this version, the apes are genetically mutated by a well-meaning scientist seeking a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease. The hyper-intelligent apes escape, begin reproducing and lash back against their human perfecters. Again, the closing scene is meant to be chilling—the redwood trees of northern California filled with primates staring out over the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay.

All three of these movies, I insisted to my students, are about the intersection of eschatology with contemporary fears.

In the 1968 version, the era is worried about nuclear holocaust, as the U.S. and the Soviet Union are engaged in a high-stakes Cold War. By the remake in 2001, society’s fears focus on the more imperceptible threats of domestic and international terrorism, and of the loss of society from within. The 2011 film focuses on the fear of a future in which our technological prowess and our good intentions turn on us.

All three present a dystopian future in which our worst apprehensions are realized. That’s an eschatology, and a dark one.

The same point could be made with virtually every film and art genre. In the background or in the foreground, there’s a purpose, a goal, that’s either hopeful or tragic. Even in the realm of romantic dramas, there’s either a utopian goal (the “happily ever after”) or a dystopian end (the tragedy of love lost). But, whatever the genre, we have to live in light of the future.

As I went around the room with my students, I asked what their home churches had taught about the ultimate things: heaven, hell, kingdom, and so on. Most of them said their churches were reluctant to say much at all, beyond generalities. Many of their churches, it seems, were fearful to talk much about eschatology to keep from indulging in those speculative end-times enthusiasts we’ve all encountered.

But eschatology and discipleship in the church is kind of like sex education in the home. Just because you don’t talk about sex with your kids doesn’t mean they will grow up ignorant of sex. It means they’ll hear about sex from somewhere else.

Just because you don’t preach and teach about the Christian vision of the future, that doesn’t mean your church is void of eschatology. It means your church is picking up an eschatology from somewhere else, sometimes from the local cineplex.

A Christian vision of the future proves the dystopian movies to be right, in some sense. There’s a fire being kindled somewhere, and not even the Statue of Liberty can withstand it. But, after that, there’s the kind of new creation that makes everything new.

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On a more typical day-a day in which the question of such illness would have been a more abstract reality-I doubt there would have been anything less than consensus. Of course, these future pastors would have asserted, Jesus assumed everything about human nature, except for sin.

But this wasn’t an abstract question. These students were still reeling not just from the discomfort of the stomach flu, but also from its indignity. They had been wracked with vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and chills. They still smarted from the sense of having no control over the most disgusting of bodily functions.

So when I asked this question, these ministers of the gospel hesitated. The stomach virus wasn’t just awful; it was undignified. And thinking of Jesus in relation to the most foul and embarrassing aspects of bodily existence seemed to them to be just on the verge of disrespectful, if not blasphemous.

Why is it so hard for us to imagine Jesus vomiting?

The answer to this question has to do, first of all, with the one-dimensional picture of Jesus so many of us have been taught, or have assumed. Many of us see Jesus either as the ghostly friend in the corner of our hearts, promising us heaven and guiding us through difficulty, or we see him simply in terms of his sovereignty and power, in terms of his distance from us. No matter how orthodox our doctrine, we all tend to think of Jesus as a strange and ghostly figure.

But the bridging of this distance is precisely at the heart of the scandal of the gospel itself. It just doesn’t seem right to us to imagine Jesus feverish or vomiting or crying in a feeding trough or studying to learn his Hebrew. From the very beginning of the Christian era, those who sought to redefine the gospel argued that it doesn’t seem right to think of Jesus as really flesh and bone, filled with blood and intestines and urine. It doesn’t seem right to think of Jesus as growing in wisdom and knowledge, as Luke tells us he did. Somehow such things seem to us to detract from his deity, from his dignity.

But that’s just the point.

The very beginning of the Christ story itself tells us that part of the sign of the Messiah is that he is wrapped in cloths (Lk. 2:12). Why do you wrap cloths around a baby? For the same reason you might diaper your infant, or wrap her up in a blanket. The point is to keep the baby warm, and to keep him dry from waste. From the very beginning Jesus is one of us, sharing with us a human nervous system, a human digestive system, and as we’ll see every aspect of human nature.

It didn’t seem right to the world to imagine the only begotten of the Father twisting in pain on a crucifixion stake, screaming as he drowned in his own blood. This was humiliating, undignified. That’s just the point. Jesus joined us in our humiliation, our indignity.  In this Jesus is, the Scripture tells us, not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb. 2:11).

I thought intensely about this as I was asked to read, and write a foreword, for my friend Patrick Henry Reardon’s new book on the humanity of the Lord Christ, The Jesus We Missed: The Surprising Truth About the Humanity of Christ (Thomas Nelson). This is the best contemporary treatment of this subject I’ve ever seen.

This book prompted me to think and to ponder. But, more than that, this book prompted me to pray and to worship, to see the Jesus it is so easy for me to forget: the Jesus who was really and truly one of us, so that we might be, with him, the heirs of the Father and the children of God. The one who took on every aspect of our flesh and blood in order to redeem us from the power of the devil (Heb. 2:14-15).

Reflecting on the humanity of Jesus always drives me to see what I’ve missed in my own humanity. Too often, we’re tempted to excuse our own bitterness, our rage, our lust, our envy, our factiousness as “only human.” The mystery of Christ shows us that such things aren’t human at all, but satanic. We define humanity in light of our brother, in light of the alpha and omega point of humanity-Jesus of Nazareth.

Reflecting on our Lord’s humanity can drive you to the Jesus you might have forgotten or, might never have seen. It can also propel you with longing-for the day spike-scabbed hands wipe away your tears as you hear a northern Galilean accent introduce himself as your Lord, as your King, but also as your brother.

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A couple of months ago, I posted a question about an ethical dilemma a recently engaged woman is facing. She just found out that her spouse to-be has had “ongoing struggles with pornography.” She isn’t sure what to do, or how to make sure the issue is sufficiently addressed. You gave your thoughts on the issue, and here are mine.

Dear Engaged and Confused,

Far too many women are watching “The Notebook” or “Twilight” for indicators on what kind of man they should marry. Instead, you probably should watch “The Wolf Man.”

Have you ever seen any of those old werewolf movies? You know, those in which the terrified man, dripping with sweat, chains himself in the basement and says to his friends, “Whatever you do, no matter what I say or how I beg, don’t let me ought of there.” He sees the full-moon coming and he’s taking action to protect everyone against himself.

In a very real sense, that’s what the Christian life is about. We all have points of vulnerability, areas of susceptibility to sin and self-destruction. There are beings afoot in the universe who watch these points and who know how to collaborate with our biology and our environment to slaughter us.

Wisdom means knowing where those weak points are, recognizing deception for what it is, and warring against ourselves in order to maintain fidelity to Christ and to those God has given us.

What worries me about your situation is not that your potential husband has a weakness for pornography, but that you are just now finding out about it. That tells me he either doesn’t see it as the marriage-engulfing horror that it is, or that he has been too paralyzed with shame.

What you need is not a sinless man. You need a man deeply aware of his sin and of his potential for further sin. You need a man who can see just how capable he is of destroying himself and your family. And you need a man with the wisdom to, as Jesus put it, gouge out whatever is dragging him under to self-destruction.

This means a man who knows how to subvert himself. I’d want to know who in his life knows about the porn and how they, with him, are working to see to it that he can’t transgress without exposure. I’d want to know from him how he plans to see to it that he can’t hide this temptation from you, after the marriage.

It may mean that the nature of his temptation means that you two shouldn’t have computer in the house. It might mean that you have immediate transcription of all his Internet activity. It might be all sorts of obstacles that he’s placing in his way. The point is that, in order to love you,  he must fight (Eph. 5:25; Jn. 10), and part of that fight will be against himself.

Pornography is a universal temptation precisely because it does exactly what the satanic powers wish to do. It lashes out at the Trinitarian nature of reality, a loving communion of persons, replacing it with a masturbatory Unitarianism.

And pornography strikes out against the picture of Christ and his church by disrupting the one-flesh union, leaving couples like our prehistoric ancestors, hiding from one another and from God in the darkness of shame.

And pornography rages, as Satan always does, against Incarnation (1 Jn. 4:2-3), replacing flesh-to-flesh intimacy with the illusion of fleshless intimacy.

There’s not a guarantee that you can keep your marriage from infidelity, either digital or carnal, but you can make sure the man you’re following into it knows the stakes, knows how to repent, and knows the meaning of fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil all the way to a cross.

In short, find a man who knows what his “full moon” is, what it is that drives him to vulnerability to his beastly self. Find a man who knows how to subvert himself, and how to ask others to help.

You won’t find a silver bullet for all of this, but you just might find a gospel-clinging wolf man.

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When most people think of Carl Henry, they tend to think of his magnum opus, the six-volume “God, Revelation, and Authority,” which dealt with the major philosophical and theological challenges to Christian theism and the biblical canon. Some remember his work as a pioneer, along with Billy Graham, in the explosion of the post-World War II evangelical movement. From his place as a founding faculty member at Fuller Seminary to his role as first editor of “Christianity Today” and beyond, Henry was the intellectual godfather of the cause. But, in my view, “Uneasy Conscience” is what matters most for us these days.

Just after World War II, Henry, then a young rising star in the Christian firmament, issued a jarring manifesto calling for a theologically-informed and socially-engaged evangelicalism. Henry warned that American Christianity, on the Right and on the Left, was headed for irrelevance, toward being the equivalent of a wilderness cult. His agenda wasn’t simply an updating of style and presentation (although he had written a book on church publicity). The issues at root were about misguided views on the kingdom of God.

He was right. And he still is.

Henry was concerned about two fronts: detached fundamentalism and social gospel liberalism. The liberals, Henry insisted, had replaced the gospel with a political program. Instead of seeing the primary mission of the church in terms of God’s reconciling work in Christ to forgive sins, the liberals were busy grinding out policy papers on nuclear policy. Liberals saw the kingdom as a program for public righteousness, often enacted legislatively.

At the other extreme, though, Henry warned, conservatives over-reacted to the social gospel. They spoke of the kingdom of God, but acted as though it were wholly future. These conservatives embraced an otherworldly vision of salvation, that was mostly about getting souls to heaven at death. They held to an inordinately spiritual vision of the church, in which the church’s mission was about merely “spiritual” matters such as evangelism and addressing personal morality.

By severing social concerns from the gospel, the conservatives had, Henry warned, conceded these issues to liberal Protestants and, ultimately, to their more radical successors. Neither side, Henry argued, understood the “already” and “not yet” tension of the kingdom of God, a tension that was about more than how we view the last things. It is about also how we see salvation and the church.

In 1947, an evangelical consensus on the kingdom seemed impossible. After all, the coalition of conservative Protestants was united around the “fundamentals” of biblical inerrancy, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, personal regeneration, and so forth. But these evangelicals often couldn’t agree about how such questions even as whether the Sermon on the Mount applies to believers today or only to Israel in a future millennial kingdom.

Remarkably, that has changed. In the years since, evangelical theology has embraced, at near universal consensus levels, a vision of the kingdom that is both “already and not yet.” The kingdom understandings that previously kept fundamentalists isolated have now been corrected by a more biblical portrait of the church, and the cosmic scope of salvation. This provides the basis for a renewed and biblically informed evangelical public theology. While the theory has developed in positive ways, though, Henry’s primary issue remains. Without a holistic vision of the kingdom of God, evangelicals will continue to split up the gospel in ways that can make Jesus unrecognizable to the culture around us. While there are few arguments these days about whether the Lord’s Prayer applies to the church age or whether the church is “Plan B” in the purposes of God, other, similar confusions remain.

On the one hand, the tactics of the old social gospel liberals have been inherited, ironically enough, by the Religious Right. Once again, in many quarters, a political program has replaced the gospel. Just listen to Christian talk radio for an hour and see where the emphasis is.

On the other hand, there is still a growing body of Christians who speak as though the kingdom is either wholly future or wholly spiritual. Look at the ongoing efforts to divide concern for evangelism from a concern for justice, the mission of the church in caring for people’s souls from caring for their bodies. There are rarely prophecy charts involved anymore, but it is, at heart, the same old dispensationalist hermeneutic involved, seeking to “rightly divide” the parts of Jesus’ ministry that apply to us now from those that will only apply later.  In some cases, there is outright suspicion about “kingdom talk” at all, for fear that “kingdom” is a stalking horse for doing away with the gospel.

When evangelicals contrast the “gospel” with the “kingdom,” we are right back at Scofield, without even knowing it. And, as in Henry’s day, this means that concern for poverty, family stability, homelessness, orphan care, racial reconciliation, and a host of other concerns will then be filled in by those who deny the central truths of the gospel. And that’s a shame.

Henry’s “Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism” is perhaps the most important evangelical book of the twentieth-century. It is just as relevant as it was in 1947, and should be read again by all those with a serious commitment to applying a kingdom vision to every aspect of life. The kingdom Jesus inaugurated spoke to the whole person, to spiritual lostness, to physical sickness, to material poverty, to the need for community. A church that joins Jesus in preaching the kingdom will too. We need that reminder every generation, perhaps especially now. The evangelical conscience is, after all, still uneasy after all these years.

(Originally posted at Q Ideas)

As the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision approaches, most Christians recognize, and rightly so, the loss of millions of unborn human lives. What we often forget is the second casualty of an abortion culture: the consciences of countless men and women.

Too often, pastors and church leaders assume that, when talking about abortion, their invisible debating partner is the “pro-choice” television commentator or politician. Not so. Many of the people endangered by the abortion culture aren’t even pro-choice.

In your congregation this Sunday, and in the neighborhoods around you right now, there are women vulnerable to abortionist propaganda, not because they reject the church but because they’re afraid they ‘ll lose the church. Pregnant young women are scared they will scandalize church people when they start to show, so they keep it secret. Parents are fearful their pregnant daughter, or their son’s pregnant girlfriend, will prompt the rest of the congregation to see them as bad families.

As they keep all of this secret from the Body of Christ, many of them fall prey to the false gospel of the abortion clinic. “We can take care of this for you,” these people say. “And it will all go away.”

Moreover, there are thousands of men and women in our churches who have aborted their children, or urged the abortion of their grandchildren. Bearing the shame of this, they keep it secret. And in the concealment, the satanic powers accuse them: “We know who you are; you’re a murderer, like us.”

Every time pastors and church leaders speak, they are speaking, at least potentially, to these men and women, the aborting and the abortionists. Many of these people don’t argue that the “fetus” is a “person.” Their consciences testify to that, and they’re either tortured by this or violently trying to sear over that persistent internal message.

The answer, for the church, is to preach the gospel to the conscience.

For many evangelicals, to “preach the gospel” seems to be obvious and ineffective because they think this means to, by rote, prompt people to accept Jesus and go to heaven. But the gospel speaks right where the abortion culture is in slavery, to the conscience.

For one thing, those guilty of this silent atrocity often don’t think we’re talking to them. For some, the demonic structures have helped them to conceal this secret, and to convince them the safest thing to do is to try to forget it altogether. Others are so burdened down by guilt, they really don’t believe they are included in the “whosoever will” of our gospel invitations.

Speak directly to these people. To the woman who has had the abortion. To the man who has paid for an abortion. To the health care worker who has profited off of tearing apart the bodies of the young and the consciences of their parents.

Speak clearly of the horror of judgement to come. Confirm what every accusing conscience already knows: clinic privacy laws cannot keep all this from being exposed at the tribunal of Christ. When the Light shines, there’s not enough darkness in which to hide and cringe.

But don’t stop there.

Proclaim just as openly that judgment has fallen on the quivering body of a crucified Jesus—accused by Satan, indicted by the Law, enveloped by the curse.

An abortion culture knows that hell exists, and they know judgment waits (Rom 2:14-16). Agree with them, but point them to the truth that God is not simply willing to forgive them. Show them how in Christ God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:26).

The woman who has had the abortion needs to know that, if she is hidden in Christ, God does not see her as “that woman who had the abortion.” He hasn’t been subverted from sending her to hell because she found a gospel “loophole.” In Christ, she’s already been to hell.

And, in the resurrected Christ, God has already told her what he thinks of her: “You are my beloved child and in you I am well-pleased.”

The consciences around us don’t believe what they’re telling themselves. They’re scared and accused. Shine the light in the eyes of their consciences. Prophetically. All for justice, legally and culturally, for the unborn. But don’t stop there.

After all, the spirit of murder doesn’t start or end in the abortion clinic (Matt. 5:21, 15:19; Jn. 8:44; Acts 9:1; Rom. 1:29; Jn. 3:15). And the blood of Christ has cleansed the consciences of rebels like all of us.

Warn of hell, but offer mercy. Offer that mercy not only at the Judgment Seat of Christ, but in the small groups and hallways of your church.

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Several of us were lamenting the miserable shape of the church, about so much doctrinal vacuity, vapid preaching, non-existent discipleship. We asked Dr. Henry if he saw any hope in the coming generation of evangelicals.

And I will never forget his reply.

“Why, you speak as though Christianity were genetic,” he said. “Of course, there is hope for the next generation of evangelicals. But the leaders of the next generation might not be coming from the current evangelical establishment. They are probably still pagans.”

“Who knew that Saul of Tarsus was to be the great apostle to the Gentiles?” he asked us. “Who knew that God would raise up a C.S. Lewis, a Charles Colson? They were unbelievers who, once saved by the grace of God, were mighty warriors for the faith.”

Of course, the same principle applied to Henry himself. Who knew that God would raise up a newspaperman from a nominally Lutheran family to defend the Scriptures for generations of conservative evangelicals?

The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might be a misogynist, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist right now. The next Billy Graham might be passed out drunk in a fraternity house right now. The next Charles Spurgeon might be making posters for a Gay Pride March right now. The next Mother Teresa might be managing an abortion clinic right now.

But the Spirit of God can turn all that around. And seems to delight to do so. The new birth doesn’t just transform lives, creating repentance and faith; it also provides new leadership to the church, and fulfills Jesus’ promise to gift his church with everything needed for her onward march through space and time (Eph. 4:8-16).

After all, while Phillip was leading the Ethiopian eunuch to Christ, Saul of Tarsus was still a murderer.

Most of the church in any generation comes along through the slow, patient discipleship of the next generation. But just to keep us from thinking Christianity is evolutionary and “natural” (or, to use Dr. Henry’s term “genetic”), Jesus shocks his church with leadership that seems to come like a Big Bang out of nowhere.

Whenever I’m tempted to despair about the shape of American Christianity, I’m reminded that Jesus never promised the triumph of the American church; he promised the triumph of the church. Most of the church, in heaven and on earth, isn’t American. Maybe the hope of the American church is right now in Nigeria or Laos or Indonesia.

Jesus will be King, and his church will flourish. And he’ll do it in the way he chooses, by exalting the humble and humbling the exalted, and by transforming cowards and thieves and murderers into the cornerstones of his New City.

So relax.

And, be kind to that atheist in front of you on the highway, the one who just shot you an obscene gesture. He might be the one who evangelizes your grandchildren.

To Taylor Eugene Moore,

You certainly made last Sunday memorable.

I was just about to preach when I noticed your mother wasn’t in her normal pew at our church. I slipped out during the offering and found her in the foyer. She told me she was in labor, but planned to wait until I preached to let me know. I thought that was insane, asked our minister of music to preach, and whisked your mother away to the hospital. A few hours later, you were here.

As you grow older, you’ll notice that your four brothers all have biblical names: Benjamin, Timothy, Samuel, Jonah. You won’t find your name in the Bible, but, still, it’s really important to us. You were named for former United States Congressman Gene Taylor of the great State of Mississippi, a man for whom your Dad used to work a long time ago. There are all sorts of reasons we chose that name.

For one thing, you probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him. I was working on Gene’s 1992 re-election campaign when my cousin suggested I pursue a high school senior named Maria Hanna (I was only three years older so it’s not as creepy as it sounds). I thought I was too busy, but the congressman thought otherwise. He liked her, and goaded me along to ask her out. I did, from our campaign headquarters in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi.

My courtship with your mother took place in a whirlwind of campaign events as I stumped with Gene through VFW halls and seafood festivals and county fairs all over south Mississippi. Gene was re-elected (63 percent of the vote) and your mother and I married. The congressman was right about her, more than I could have ever predicted.

But, more importantly, your name is about something we thought was true about you.

Early on in your unborn life, a doctor told us he thought you would have Down Syndrome. He turned out to be wrong, but we didn’t know that until you were born. Sadly, you probably won’t meet a lot of kids with Down Syndrome because so few of them ever make it to birth these days, so you might not even understand what that is.

When the doctor told us this, your mother and I looked at each other and knew right away that you would be a gift: Down Syndrome or not. Your worth and your value wouldn’t be in whether or not this age saw you as having “power” or “success,” but instead based on your bearing the image of the God who made you and who loves you.

Now, this is all bound up in what your mother and I believe about the gospel. We believe that the kingdom long promised came to us in a Son who took on human nature, was executed in weakness, and was raised by the power of God. He has put together a reign made up of people who don’t meet this world’s expectations of what it means to “count.”

But that basic Christian conviction crystallized for me, in a unique way, while working with Gene Taylor. He consistently and holistically believed that human dignity matters, matters for the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the unborn.

We were part of a political party with a great old heritage of “standing up for the little guy,” but that often lost its way in doing so: on slavery, on Jim Crow, and, ultimately, on legal protection for the unborn.

A generation ago, people from our state were “pro-choice” on whether states could oppress people because of the color of their skin. A man named Hubert Humphrey famously said there could be no state’s right to dismantle human rights. There’s a long fall from that to today, when candidates for national office pledge allegiance to Planned Parenthood in doing the same thing to people based on their stage of development.

I hope, by the time you read this, that you don’t “get” that, any more than I could “get” separate water fountains for black and white people. I hope, by the time you read this, that there are two pro-life parties, though I fear it might be two “pro-choice” parties instead.

I remember some folks offering Gene a lot of money to change positions on that awful injustice called “abortion.” Gene said, “Well, I’m not going to do that and, if I did, I’d go into this campaign with a lot of money but my wife wouldn’t vote for me, and she would be right not to.”

I left politics a long time ago for something I think is more important: preaching the kingdom of God. But I’m still shaped in all sorts of ways by Gene Taylor. He didn’t fit into easy categories of ideology, and he never sold out his conscience. He just did what he thought was right and didn’t care how “eclectic” that made him. I’ve tried to be the same way.

Last year, your mother and I went (and you, too, in the womb) back to our hometown to see your namesake lose his re-election campaign. But I was proud to see him, all the way to the end, saying the same things he said from the start of our little grassroots effort back in 1989, “liberty and justice for all, including the unborn.”

I suppose I would always have been pro-life, because that’s how I was raised and I’m part of a tribe of evangelicals that haven’t lost the commitment to that, at least as it pertains to abortion. But I think my time with that Roman Catholic Blue Dog congressman taught me to cherish human dignity in a way I never would have if it had just been part of some checklist of ideas. For him, it wasn’t just that taking life was wrong; I knew that. There was something though about the exuberance with which he talked about all life as gift.

And that’s what your life is.

You don’t have Down Syndrome, that’s true. The doctor was wrong, just like the doctors were wrong when they told us we’d never have children.

But maybe some day you’ll have something else. Maybe you’ll get sick or get hurt, or maybe you’ll wander away from what your mother and I will try to teach you. You’ll still be loved, and you’ll still have a place to come home to. You’re accepted for life.

You interrupted our Sunday, but you haven’t interrupted our lives. Every time we call your name, Taylor Eugene, we’ll remember one important place we learned how true that is.

I played a cow in my first-grade Christmas pageant, and I had more lines than the kid who played Joseph. He was a prop, or so it seemed, for Mary, the plastic doll in the manger, and the rest of us. We were just following the script. There’s rarely much room in the inn of the contemporary Christian imagination for Joseph, especially among conservative Protestants like me. His only role, it seems, is an usher—to get Mary to the stable in Bethlehem in the first place and then to get her back to the Temple in Jerusalem in order to find the wandering 12-year-old Jesus.

But there’s much more to the Joseph figure.

Real Father

When we talk about Joseph at all, we spend most of our time talking about what he was not. We believe (rightly) with the apostles that Jesus was conceived in a virgin’s womb. Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father; not a trace of Joseph’s sperm was involved in the formation of the embryo Christ. No amount of Joseph’s DNA could be found in the dried blood of Jesus peeled from the wood of Golgotha’s cross. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit completely apart from the will or exertion of any man.

That noted, though, we need to be careful that we don’t reduce Joseph simply to a truthful first-century Bill Clinton: “He did not have sexual relations with that woman.” There’s much more to be said. Joseph is not Jesus’ biological father, but he is his real father. In his adoption of Jesus, Joseph is rightly identified by the Spirit speak­ing through the Scriptures as Jesus’ father (Luke 2:41, 48).

Jesus would have said “Abba” first to Joseph. Jesus’ obedience to his father and mother, obedience essential to his law-keeping on our behalf, is directed toward Joseph (Luke 2:51). Jesus does not share Joseph’s bloodline, but he claims him as his father, obeying Joseph perfectly and even following in his voca­tion. When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, he cites the words of Deuteronomy to counter “the flaming darts of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16). Think about it for a moment—Jesus almost certainly learned those Hebrew Scriptures from Joseph as he listened to him at the woodworking table or stood beside him in the synagogue.

Difficult Deed

Our contemporary cartoonish, two-dimensional picture of Joseph too easily ignores how difficult it was for him to do what he did. Imagine for a minute that one of the teenagers in your church were to stand up behind the pulpit to give her testimony. She’s eight months pregnant and unmarried. After a few minutes of talking about God’s working in her life and about how excited she is to be a mother, she starts talking about how thankful she is that she’s remained sexually pure, kept all the “True Love Waits” commitments she made in her youth group Bible study. You’d immediately conclude that the girl’s either delusional or lying.

When contemporary biblical revisionists scoff at the virgin birth of Jesus and other miracles, they often tell us we’re now beyond such “myths” since we live in a post-Enlightenment, scientifically progressive information age. What such critics miss is the fact that virgin conceptions have always seemed ridiculous. People in first-century Palestine knew how babies were conceived. The implausibility of the whole thing is evident in the biblical text itself. When Mary tells Joseph she is pregnant, his first reaction isn’t a cheery “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” No, he assumes what any of us would conclude was going on, and he sets out to end their betrothal.

But then God enters the scene.

When God speaks in a dream to Joseph about the identity of Jesus, Joseph, like everyone else who follows Christ, recognizes the voice and goes forward (Matt. 1:21-24). Joseph’s adoption and protection of Jesus is simply the outworking of that belief.

Same Faith

In believing God, Joseph probably walked away from his reputation. The wags in his hometown would probably always whisper about how “poor Joseph was hoodwinked by that girl” or how “old Joseph got himself in trouble with that girl.” As the stakes grew higher, Joseph certainly sacrificed his economic security. In first-century Galilee, after all, one doesn’t simply move to Egypt, the way one might today decide to move to New York or London. Joseph surrendered a household economy, a vocation probably built up over generations, handed down to him, one would suppose, by his father.

Again, Joseph was unique in one sense. None of us will ever be called to be father to God. But in another very real sense, Joseph’s faith was exactly the same as ours. The letter of James, for instance, speaks of the definition of faith in this way: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (1:27). James is the one who tells us further that faith is not mere intellectual belief, the faith of demons (2:19), but is instead a faith that works.

James shows us that Abraham’s belief is seen in his offering up Isaac, knowing God would keep his promise and raise him from the dead (2:21-23). We know Rahab has faith not simply because she raises her hand in agreement with the Hebrew spies but because in hiding them from the enemy she is showing she trusts God to save her (2:25). James tells us that genuine faith shelters the orphan.

What gives even more weight to these words is the identity of the human author. This letter is written by James of the Jerusalem church, the brother of our Lord Jesus. How much of this “pure and undefiled religion” did James see first in the life of his own earthly father? Did the image of Joseph linger in James’s mind as he inscribed the words of an orphan-protecting, living faith?

It’s a shame that Joseph is so neglected in our thoughts and affections, even at Christmastime. If we pay attention to him, though, we just might see a model for a new generation of Christians. We might see how to live as the presence of Christ in a culture of death. We might see how to image a protective Father, how to preach a life-affirming gospel, even in a culture captivated by the spirit of Herod.

This post originally appeared at The Gospel Coalition Blog on December 15, 2011, under the title, “Father to God, Model for Us.”

In addition, this will be the last broadcast of “The Cross and the Jukebox” of 2011. But we will be back in early January with more conversation about roots, music, and religion.

Hitchens expected this moment, of course, but he anticipated, wrongly, a blackness, a going out of consciousness forever. Many Christians today are sadly remarking on what it is like for Christopher Hitchens to be now opening his eyes in hell.

We might be wrong.

The Christian impulse here is exactly right. After all, Jesus and his apostles assured us that there is no salvation apart from union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, a union entered into by faith. And Hitchens not only rejected that gospel, he ridiculed it, along with the very notion of anything beyond the natural order. The Christian Scriptures are clear: there is a narrow window in which we must be saved, the time of this present life, and after this there is only judgment (2 Cor. 6:1-2; Heb. 9:27).

But I’m not sure Christopher Hitchens is in hell right now. It’s not because I believe there’s a “second chance” after death for salvation (I don’t). It’s not because I don’t believe in hell or in God’s judgment (I do). It’s because of a sermon I heard years ago that haunts me to this day, reminding me of the sometimes surprising persistence of the gospel.

Fifteen or so years ago, I heard an old Welsh pastor preach on Jesus’ encounter with the thieves on the cross. The preacher paused to speculate about whether the penitent thief might have had any God-fearing friends or family members. If so, he said, they probably would never have known about the terrorist’s final act, his appeal to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk. 23:42). They never would have heard Jesus pronounce, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43).

These believing family members and friends would have assumed, all their lives, that this robber was in hell, especially dying as he did under the visible judgment of God (Deut. 21:22-23). They would have been shocked to meet this man in the kingdom of God. “We thought you were in hell,” they might have said, as they danced around him in the heavenly places.

That sermon changed everything for me about the way I preach funerals for unbelievers. Now, deathbed conversions are very rare. Typically, a conscience is so seared by then, so given over to the darkening of the mind, that the gospel rarely is heard. We shouldn’t count on last-second repentance.

But, however rarely, it does happen, and who knows? Perhaps you have relatives who, in the last seconds of breath, breathed out a silent prayer of repentance and faith. You might be as surprised as the thief’s believing cohort.

And, who knows? Christopher Hitchens heard the gospel enough, often while debating believers. Maybe the seed of the Word might have embedded in his heart somewhere and maybe, just maybe, it broke through sometime in the night, as he gasped for last breath.

Christopher Hitchens was a blasphemer, true enough, and a nasty character. Aren’t we all, in our different ways. Christ Jesus came for nasty characters like us. And the same blood of Jesus that can deliver us from wrath could do the same for Hitchens had he, if he, at any point, embraced it. It’s not likely, but it’s possible, and, if he did, then Christopher Hitchens’s past atheism would be no barrier to communion with God. It would be, like my sin, crucified with Christ, buried, and remembered no more.

I don’t know about Christopher Hitchens, about what happened in those last moments, but I do know that, if he had embraced it, the gospel would be enough for him. I know that because it’s enough for me, and I’m as deserving of hell as he is.

Hell is real and judgment is certain. The gospel comes with a warning that it will one day be too late. But, as long as there is breath, it is not yet too late. Perhaps Christopher Hitchens, like so many before him, persisted in his rebellion to the horror of the very end. But maybe not. Maybe he stopped his polemics and cried out, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

I don’t know. But I do know that the gospel offers forgiveness and mercy right to the edge of death’s door. And I know that the kingdom of God is made up of ex-thieves, and ex-murderers, and ex-atheists like us.

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Doctoral Seminar

• Alan F. Segal, Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (Doubleday, 2004)
• Charles E. Hill, Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity, 2^nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2001)
• Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (Catholic University of America, 2003)
• N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3, Christian Origins and the Question of God (Fortress, 2003)
• Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: Divine Drama (Westminster/John Knox, 2002)
• Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Harvard University Press, 1994)
• Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Fortress, 1996)

Masters-Level Course

Required Reading

• Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994)
• George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974)
• C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (HarperOne, 2001)
• Richard J. Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002)
• N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Hope of the Church (HarperOne, 2008)

Fiction (Students pick one of these to read)

• Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid’s Tale (Anchor, 1998) [Feminist Apocalyptic]
• Edward Abbey, Good News (Plume, 1980) [Secular Environmental Apocalyptic]
• Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind: A Novel of Earth’s Last Days (Tyndale House, 1996) [Dispensational Evangelical Apocalyptic]
• C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (HarperTrophy, 1994) [Mere Christian Apocalyptic]
• Michael O’Brien, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse (Ignatius, 1998) [Roman Catholic Apocalyptic]
• Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1971) [Southern Literary Catholic Apocalyptic]

Recommended Reading

• Gregory A. Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997)
• Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1992)
• Robert G. Clouse, The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1977)
• Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Hendrickson, 2003)
• Russell D. Moore, The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004)
• Jeffrey Burton Russell, Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven and How We Can Regain It (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Jerry L. Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford University Press, 2002)

The song “If We Make It through December” is a sad reflection on that reality, written from the perspective of a father worried about his standing as provider at Christmastime. I think “If We Make It through December” actually has more to do with the Christmas stories of people in our communities and in our churches than, say, “Jingle Bells” does. I also think it has more to do with the Christmas Story too. Joseph of Nazareth faced the same gut-wrenching crisis that the man in Haggard’s does. In adopting Jesus and marrying Jesus’ Blessed Mother, Joseph plunged himself into economic peril. In this episode of the Cross and the Jukebox, we’ll look at what this means for us and for the families to whom we hope to be the presence of Christ.

I was a teenage Satanist. No, I’ve never stood in a pentagram of blood and I’ve never joined a coven. The signs of my Satanism are yellow highlights in an old King James Bible my grandmother gave me when I was twelve. I looked through that Bible not long ago, and I could almost immediately identify by every highlighted text what was going on in my life at the time.

The highlight over “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13) was there because I worried that I’d never pass geometry. I passed, barely, but, despite the presence of Christ, I still can’t tell you the difference between a trapezoid and a polygon. Plus, I misunderstood that verse, which speaks of contentment in all circumstances (including a Mississippi public school math classroom) rather than a “you can do it” encouragement.

When I see the highlight over the verse “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that I will do” (Jn. 14:13), I know that then I was praying for God to cause that girl in my homeroom class to pay attention to me. I would ask for this and then I would repeat the clause “in Jesus’ name…in Jesus’ name…in Jesus’ name” as though this would bind God to his promise. He didn’t grant me this, and, man, am I glad.

The highlight over 1 Samuel 16:7 (”Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature…for the Lord seeth not as man seeth, but the Lord looketh on the heart”) was because I was then, and am now, a little cricket of a man, and I was hoping to grow tall enough if not to be considered for the basketball team then at least to be taller than that girl in homeroom. That didn’t happen either.

Now there is nothing wrong with praying through the Bible, of course. And there’s nothing wrong with asking for God to resolve those things that worry you. That’s what Jesus commands us to do. But those highlights remind me how dominated my life was at that time by worry and anxiety.

I was not at all what anyone would consider proud or arrogant (at least I don’t think so, but that may just be my pride and arrogance keeping me from seeing it). But at the root of all my worry was a form of hubris and lust for power. Yes, I was praying, but my prayers were simply a cap on all my worrying. And my worrying was about keeping my little kingdoms secure and within my grasp. When they weren’t I was agitated, if not outraged.

I write all that as though it were past tense.

If I could see the highlights in my own spinning mind, my own worried psyche, I’d find that I haven’t really grown (spiritually as well as physically) as much since then as I’d like to think.

Sometimes Satan’s pull to pride in our lives isn’t so much what we’re basking in as what we’re worrying about. Our anxiety often reveals a refusal to trust God’s fatherly providence. And, whenever we start ignoring that, there’s always a devil along to adopt us, to promise us bread instead of stones, fish instead of snakes. We don’t recognize the reptilian voice, but we look into our future, or into our Bibles, and wonder nonetheless, “Has God really said?”

Jesus though was free from the devil worship of worry and anxiety. He understood his Father’s care for him, and that exaltation would come along at “the proper time” (1 Pet. 5:6), a time not of his choosing.

Jesus tells us that even by looking at the natural world, the ecosystem of birds and plants and fields, we can see an icon of God’s inheritance for us. “Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these,” he says (Matt. 6:29).

We don’t need to grasp for power or glory or security. God is freely preparing us for all this. Because of this, we are free to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33).

I’m pulled to worry right now. You probably are, too. Stop and pray; fall back in your Father’s power and wisdom, and recognize that behind that anxiety there’s something with a forked tongue.

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Indeed, a primary problem in our culture and in our churches isn’t that women aren’t submissive enough to men, but instead that they are far too submissive.

First of all, it just isn’t so that women are called to submit while men are not. In Scripture, every creature is called to submit, often in different ways and at different times. Children are to submit to their parents, although this is certainly a different sort of submission than that envisioned for marriage. Church members are to submit to faithful pastors (Heb. 13:17). All of us are to submit to the governing authorities (Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-17). Of course, we are all to submit, as creatures, to our God (Jas. 4:7).

And, yes, wives are called to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22; 1 Pet. 3:1-6). But that’s just the point. In the Bible, it is not that women, generally, are to submit to men, generally. Instead, “wives” are to submit “to your own husbands” (1 Pet. 3:1).

Too often in our culture, women and girls are pressured to submit to men, as a category. This is the reason so many women, even feminist women, are consumed with what men, in general, think of them. This is the reason a woman’s value in our society, too often, is defined in terms of sexual attractiveness and availability. Is it any wonder that so many of our girls and women are destroyed by a predatory patriarchy that demeans the dignity and glory of what it means to be a woman?

Submitting to men in general renders it impossible to submit to one’s “own husband.” Submission to one’s husband means faithfulness to him, and to him alone, which means saying “no” to other suitors.

Submission to a right authority always means a corresponding refusal to submit to a false authority. Eve’s submission to the Serpent’s word meant she refused to submit to God’s. On the other hand, Mary’s submission to God’s word about the child within her meant she refused to submit to Herod’s. God repeatedly charges his Bride, the people of Israel, with a refusal to submit to him because they have submitted to the advances of other lovers. The freedom of the gospel means, the apostle tells us, that we “do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).

Despite the promise of female empowerment in the present age, the sexual revolution has given us the reverse. Is it really an advance for women that the average high-school male has seen images of women sexually exploited and humiliated on the Internet? Is it really empowerment to have more and more women economically at the mercy of men who freely abandon them and their children, often with little legal recourse?

Is this really a “pro-woman” culture when restaurant chains enable men to pay to ogle women in tight T-shirts while they gobble down chicken wings? How likely is it that a woman with the attractiveness of Henry Kissinger will obtain power or celebrity status in American culture? What about the girl in your community pressured to perform oral sex on a boyfriend, what is this but a patriarchy brutal enough for a Bronze Age warlord?

In the church it is little better. Too many of our girls and young women are tyrannized by the expectation to look a certain way, to weigh a certain amount, in order to gain the attention of “guys.”

Additionally, too many predatory men have crept in among us, all too willing to exploit young women by pretending to be “spiritual leaders” (2 Tim. 3:1-9; 2 Pet. 2). Do not be deceived: a man who will use spiritual categories for carnal purposes is a man who cannot be trusted with fidelity, with provision, with protection, with the fatherhood of children. The same is true for a man who will not guard the moral sanctity of a woman not, or not yet, his wife.

We have empowered this pagan patriarchy. Fathers assume their responsibility to daughters in this regard starts and stops in walking a bride down an aisle at the end of the process. Pastors refuse to identify and call out spiritually impostors before it’s too late. And through it all we expect our girls and women to be submissive to men in general, rather than to one man in particular.

Women, sexual and emotional purity means a refusal to submit to “men,” in order to submit to your own husband, even one whose name and face you do not yet know. Your closeness with your husband, present or future, means a distance from every man who isn’t, or who possibly might not be, him.

Your beauty is found not in external (and fleeting) youth and “attractiveness” but in the “hidden person of the heart” which “in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Pet. 3:3-4). And it will be beautiful in the sight of a man who is propelled by the Spirit of this God.

Sisters, you owe no submission to Hollywood or to Madison Avenue, or to those who listen to them. Your worth and dignity cannot be defined by them. Stop comparing yourselves to supermodels and porn stars. Stop loathing your body, or your age. Stop feeling inferior to vaporous glamor. You are beautiful.

Sisters, there is no biblical category for “boyfriend” or “lover,” and you owe such designation no submission. In fact, to be submissive to your future husband you must stand back and evaluate, with rigid scrutiny, “Is this the one who is to come, or is there another?” That requires an emotional and physical distance until there is a lifelong covenant made, until you stand before one who is your “own husband.”

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as unto the Lord. Yes and Amen. But, women, stop submitting to men.

Just reading that in the type in front of you probably has some of you angry. Let me help you see why that is, and, in so doing, why caring for those with AIDS is part of the gospel mandate given to us in the Great Commission.

The statement that Jesus has AIDS startles some of you because you know it not to be true. Jesus, after all, is the exalted son of the living God. He has defeated death in the garden tomb, and defeated it finally. Jesus isn’t weak or dying or infected; he’s triumphant and resurrected.

Yes.

Yes, but, what we’re often likely to miss is that Jesus has identified himself with the suffering of this world, an identification that continues on through his church. Yes, Jesus finishes his suffering at the cross, but he also speaks of himself as being “persecuted” by Saul of Tarsus, as Saul comes after his church in Damascus (Acts 9:4).

Through the Spirit of Christ, we “groan” with him at the suffering of a universe still under the curse (Rom. 8:23,26). This curse manifests itself, as in billions of other ways, in bodies turned against themselves by immune systems gone awry.

That’s why the church is to suffer, continually, with Christ as we take his presence into the darkness of a fallen creation. The Apostle Paul says, then, “I rejoice then in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24).

Some of Jesus’ church has AIDS. Some of them are languishing in hospitals right down the street from you. Some of them are orphaned by the disease in Africa. All of them are suffering with an intensity few of us can imagine.

Some of you are angered by the statement I typed above because you think somehow it implicates Jesus. After all, AIDS is a shameful disease, one most often spread through sexual promiscuity or illicit drug use.

Yes.

Yes, but those are the very kinds of people Jesus consistently identified himself with as he walked the hillsides of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, announcing the kingdom of God. Can one be more sexually promiscuous than the prostitutes Jesus ate with? Can one be more marginalized from society than a woman dripping with blood, blood that would have made anyone who touched her unclean (Luke 8:40-48)? Jesus touched her, and took her uncleanness on himself.

AIDS is scandalous, sure. But not nearly as scandalous as a cross.

At the crucifixion stake, Jesus identifies himself with a sinful world (including the scandal of my sin). He was seen to be cursed by God (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13). This is why it seemed so reasonable to the shouting crowds to curse him as a false Messiah, because only those rejected by God would ever be hanged on a tree. And that’s why the apostle Paul had to repeatedly insist that he was not “ashamed” of the cross. At Golgotha, Jesus became sin (though he never knew it himself) by bearing the sins of the world (2 Cor 5:21). Now that’s scandalous.

Moreover, some of you are angry because you believe that the statement I typed above is an affront to the dignity of the ruler of the universe. He doesn’t have some immune deficiency disease; he’s ruling from the right hand of God.

Yes.

Yes, but we cannot see Jesus only in his Head but also in his Body, also in his identification with those he calls “the least of these, my brothers” (Matt. 25:40). Jesus isn’t right now hungry, is he? He isn’t naked, is he? He isn’t thirsty, is he? He isn’t in jail, is he? Well, yes, he is…in the nakedness, hunger, thirstiness, and imprisonment of his suffering brothers and sisters around the world.

When we stand in judgment, we’ll stand, Jesus tells us, accountable for how we recognized him in the trauma of those who don’t seem to bear the glory of Christ at all right now. We see Jesus now, by faith, in the sufferings of the crack baby, the meth addict, the AIDS orphan, the hospitalized prodigal who sees his ruin in the wires running from his veins.

I wonder how many of us will hear the words from our Galilean emperor, “I had AIDS and you weren’t afraid to come near me.”

And so, if we love Jesus, our churches should be more aware of the cries of the curse, including the curse of AIDS, than the culture around us. Our congregations should welcome the AIDS-infected, and we shouldn’t be afraid to hug them as we would hug our Christ. Our congregations should be on the forefront of missions to AIDS-ravaged regions of the world. Our families should be willing to welcome those orphaned by this global scourge.

Through it all, we should be insistent in gospel proclamation. To those whose blood has become their own enemy, we should announce blood they know not of, the blood of One who can cleanse them of all unrighteousness, just as it cleansed us (1 Jn. 1:7); the blood of One who is forever immune to sin and death and hell (Jn. 6:53-56).

Jesus loves the world, and the world has AIDS. Jesus identifies himself with the least of these, and many of them have AIDS. Jesus calls us to recognize him in the depths of suffering, and there’s AIDS there too.

Jesus has AIDS.

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A version of this article originally ran on December 1, 2009.

Haggard has since repudiated the central message of this song, but I don’t think this song relates merely to the events of the 1960s, about what was going on in America at that time. Instead, I think “Okie from Muskogee” can teach us about our so-called “culture wars,” and what it means to have a kind of pride born of a “persecution complex”—but not the kind of persecution that comes along with believing in the gospel.

Often the people against whom we protest aren’t those who really threaten us at all. Often the people against whom we rage are the ones for whom we are to have pity. A kind of “Okie from Muskogee” mentality, in the end, is not far from any one of us. But the gospel calls us to something else altogether.

Some of you will be visiting family members who are contemptuous of the Christian faith and downright hostile to the whole thing.

Others are empty nest couples who now have sons- or daughters-in-law to get adjusted to, maybe even grandchildren who are being reared, well, not exactly the way the grandparents would do it. Still others are young couples who are figuring out how to keep from offending family members who are watching the calendar, to see which side of the family gets more time on the ledger. And others are new parents, trying to figure out how to parent their child when it’s Mammonpalooza at Aunt Judie’s house this year.

And, of course, there’s just always the kind of thing that happens when sinful people come into contact with one another. Somebody asks “When is the baby due?” to an unpregnant woman or somebody blasts your favorite political figure or…well, you know.

Here are a few quick thoughts on what followers of Jesus ought to remember, especially if you’ve got a difficult extended family situation.

1.) Peace. Yes, Jesus tells us that his gospel brings a sword of division, and that sometimes this splits up families (Matt. 10:34-37). But there’s a difference between gospel division and carnal division (see 1 Cor. 1, e.g.). The Spirit brings peace (Gal. 5:22), and the sons of God are peacemakers (Matt. 5:9). Since that’s so, we ought to “strive for peace with everyone” (Heb. 12:14).

Often, the divisiveness that happens at extended family dinner tables is not because an unbelieving family member decides to persecute a Christian. It’s instead because a Christian decides to go ahead and sort the wheat from the weeds right now, rather than waiting for Judgment Day (Matt. 13:29-30). Yes, the gospel exposes sin, but the gospel does so strategically, in order to point to Christ. Antagonizing unbelievers at a family dinner table because they think or feel like unbelievers isn’t the way of Christ.

Some Christians think their belligerence is actually a sign of holiness. They leave the Christmas table saying, “See, if you’re not being opposed, then you’re not with Christ!” Sometimes, of course, divisions must come. But think of the qualifications Jesus gives for his church’s pastors. They must not be “quarrelsome” and they must be “well thought of by outsiders” (1 Tim. 3:3,7). That’s in the same list as not being a heretic or a drunk.

Your presence should be one of peace and tranquility. The gospel you believe ought to be what disrupts. There’s a big difference.

2.) Honor. The Scripture tells us to fear God, to obey the king, and to honor (notice this) everyone (1 Pet. 2:17). If your parents are high-priests in the Church of Satan, they are still your parents. If cousin Betty V. does Jello shots in her car, just to take the edge off the cocaine, well, she still bears the imprint of the God you adore.

You cannot do the will of God by opposing the will of God. That is, you can’t evangelize by dishonoring father and mother, or by disrespecting the image-bearers of God. Pray for God to show you the ways those in your life are worthy of honor, and teach your children to follow you in showing respect and gratitude.

3.) Humility. Part of the reason some Christians have such difficulty with unbelieving or nominally believing extended family members is right at this point. They see differences over Jesus as being of the same kind (just of a different degree) as our differences over, say, the war in Afghanistan or the future of Sarah Palin or the Saints’ winning streak this year.

Often the frustration comes not because of how much Christians love their family members as much as how much these Christians want to be right. Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann and the perpetual outrage machine on TV may value the last word, but we can’t.

Jesus never, not once, seeks to prove he is right, and he was accused of being everything from a wino to a demoniac. He rejects Satan’s temptation to force a visible vindication, waiting instead for God to vindicate him at the empty tomb.

Often Christians veer toward Satanism at holiday time because we, deep down, pride ourselves on knowing the truth of the gospel. The rage you feel when Uncle Happy says why “many roads lead to God” might be more about the fact that you want to be right than that you want him to be resurrected.

Plus, we often forget just how it is that we came to be in Christ in the first place. This wasn’t some act of brilliance, like being accepted into Harvard or some exertion of the will, like learning to put a Rubik’s cube together in 20 seconds. “What do you have that you did not receive,” the Apostle Paul asks us, “And if you received it, then why do you boast as though you didn’t receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:6-7)

Satan wants to destroy you through his primal flaw, pride (1 Pet. 5:7-9; 1 Tim. 3:6). He doesn’t care if that pride comes through looking around the family table and figuring out how much more money you make than your second cousin-in-law or whether it comes by your looking around the table and saying, “Thank you Lord that I am not like these publicans.” The end result is the same (Prov. 29:23).

Unless you’re in an exceptionally sanctified family, you’re going to see failing marriages, parenting crises, and a thousand other shards of the curse. If your response is to puff up as you look at your own situation, there’s a Satanist at your family gathering, and you’re it.

4.) Maturity. The Scripture tells us that if we follow Jesus we’ll follow the path he took: that’s through temptation, to suffering, and ultimately to glory. Often we think these testings are big, monumental things, but they rarely are.

God will allow you to be tested. He’ll refine you, bring you to the fullness of maturity in Christ. He probably won’t do it by your fighting lions before the emperor or standing with a John 3:16 sign before a tank in the streets of Beijing. More likely, it will be through those seemingly little places of temptation—like whether you’ll love the belching brother-in-law at the other end of the table who wants to talk about how the Cubans killed JFK and how to make $100,000 a year selling herbal laxatives on the Internet.

Some of the tensions Christians face at holiday time have nothing to do with outside oppression as much as internal immaturity on the part of the Christians themselves.

I’ve had young men who tell me they feel treated like children when they go home to see their extended families. Their parents or parents-in-law are dictating to them where to go, when, and for how much time. Their parents or parent-in-law are hijacking the rearing of their children (”Oh, come on! He can watch Die Harder! Don’t be so strict!”). Some of these men just give in, and then seethe in frustration.

Sometimes that’s because the extended family is particularly obstinate. But sometimes the extended family treats the young man like a child because that’s how he acts the rest of the year. Don’t live financially and emotionally dependent on your parents or in-laws, passively dithering in your decisions about your family’s future, and then expect them to see you as the head of your house.

Be a man (if you are one). Make decisions (including decisions about where, and for how long, you’ll spend the holidays). Teach and discipline your children.Your extended family might not like it at first, but they’ll come to respect the fact that you’re leaving and cleaving, taking responsibility for that which has been entrusted to you.

5.) Perspective. Remember that you’ll give an account at the resurrection for every idle (that means seemingly tiny, insignificant, unmemorable) thought, word, and deed. At the Judgment Seat of the Lord Christ, you’ll be responsible for living out the gospel in every arena to which the Spirit has led you… including Aunt Flossie’s dining room table.

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A version of this article originally ran on December 20, 2009.

One of the reasons this is hard for us is because we too often assume forgiving a trespasser means allowing an injustice to stand. This attitude betrays a defective eschatology. At our Lord’s arrest (Matt. 26:47-54), Jesus told Peter to put his sword back into his sheath not because Jesus didn’t believe in punishing evildoers (think Armageddon). Jesus told Peter he could have an armada of angelic warriors at his side (and one day he will). But judgment was not yet, and Peter wasn’t judge.

That’s the point.

When we forgive, we are confessing that vengeance is God’s (Rom. 12:19). We don’t need to exact justice from a fellow believer because justice has already fallen at the cross. We don’t need to exact vengeance from an unbeliever because we know the sin against us will be judged in hell or, more hopefully, when the offender unites himself to the One who is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:2).

A prisoner of war who forgives his captor or a terminated pastor who forgives a predatory congregation, these people are not overlooking sin. Nor are they saying that what happened is “okay” or that the relationships involved are back to “normal” (whatever that is). Instead they are confessing that judgment is coming and they can trust the One who will be seated on that throne.

You don’t have to store up bitterness, and you don’t have to find ways of retaliation for what’s been done to you. You can trust a God who is just. If you won’t forgive, if you refuse to rest in God’s judgment without seeking to retaliate, it doesn’t matter what your evangelistic tracts and prophecy charts say. When it comes to the gospel and the to the end times, you’re just another liberal.

You find yourself far away from this ethics class, twenty years from now in your ministry, serving a church in south Florida. Pablo is a man you met, with his wife Hannah, after they attended a small-group Bible study in the home of a family in your church. Both of them, after hearing you explain the gospel, were convicted of sin and, after several weeks of conversation, both announced they were ready to confess Jesus as Lord and to follow him in baptism.

Before the baptism, though, Pablo approaches you to say that he’s not sure he meets the requirements for Christian baptism. He’s not sure he’s a repentant sinner. He sees himself as guilty, he is sorry for his sins against God and others, and he wants the forgiveness that comes through Jesus’ bloody cross, the new life that comes from Jesus’ empty tomb.

But there’s something that kindles fear in him.

Pablo tells you he is an undocumented worker, what some would call an “illegal immigrant.” Years ago he left conditions in El Salvador that, due to famine there, led him to near starvation. Moreover, he worked, like others in his village, for a multinational plantation where he was physically beaten and sexually abused. There were no other options for him, as the only employers in the country were made up of similarly exploitative companies. He slipped into this country undetected and has since lived with an artificial Social Security number he purchased on the black market, enabling him to work in this country.

Pablo’s employer knows his immigration status, but operates with a “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy when it comes to such questions about his workers. Indeed, several outside financial consultants say that, without such labor, this employer’s business would be financially unfeasible and would have to close, since there is not a sufficient employee base among native-born Americans willing to work in such a job.

The employer is Tyler Rogers, also a member of your church, one of your most Christlike people in the congregation, and he teaches the Bible in a large Tuesday night small group. It was at his family’s house that you met Pablo and Hannah, since he had been sharing the gospel with them for months and inviting them to hear more through your church.

The United States immigration policy is, if anything, more restrictive than it was when you were in ethics class at Southern Seminary. No longer can a green card be obtained by marrying a U.S. citizen, so Pablo’s marriage to Hannah is irrelevant to his immigration status. According to current law, if Pablo turns himself in, or is caught, he will face immediate deportation to El Salvador, along with a penalty making him ineligible to apply to entrance to the United States for no less than ten years.

Moreover, returning to El Salvador and applying for immigration is a process that takes, in the best of scenarios, ten years from start to finish. An admission of illegal status, plus a return to El Salvador, would mean crushing poverty, possible starvation, and almost certain bodily harm in dangerous working conditions. It would also mean being separated from Hannah for ten to twenty years.

Pablo and Hannah have three children: an eleven year-old girl, a six year-old boy, and a two year-old girl. Hannah is also pregnant with their fourth child, due next Spring.

Pablo has, since arriving in the United States, been sending a portion of his paycheck back to El Salvador, to his elderly mother who is caring for Pablo’s nieces and nephews since Pablo’s brother was killed due to the unsafe working conditions in the factory and his brother’s wife abandoned the children. Without this money, Pablo fears the children, two of whom are babies, and his mother would starve to death.

Pablo wants to do what Jesus would have him to do, to be a godly man. What do you advise him to do? If you advise him to turn himself in or to return to El Salvador, how do you square that with the biblical mandate that one who “does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8)? Can you really, from that point forward, consider yourself “pro-family” or “pro-orphan” or even “pro-life”?

If you advise him to stay with his family, how is he keeping the biblical mandate to “obey the governing authorities” (Rom. 13:1)? How also is he avoiding the sin of bearing false witness, about himself and his legal status? Can you baptize Pablo? After all, is he really showing repentance from sin?

What do you do or say, if anything, about Tyler and his employment practices? If nothing, then why not?

How do you equip the congregation to understand how to deal with this situation, and what implications does it have for how you respond to the mission field where God has placed you, with a large and growing community of undocumented Latin American workers, many of whom need to hear and believe the gospel, and are watching how you respond to this family.

Walk through each step of ethical reflection, showing why you reject some options and why you embrace others. Ground your answer in Scripture, the gospel, the Christian tradition, natural law, and common grace. Think through the implications of your answer in each situation for unintended consequences, and show how those can be ethically resolved.

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First, I’d recommend this article co-written by my friends, Danny Akin and Albert Mohler, entitled, “The Salvation of the ‘Little Ones.’”

At the level of teaching and discipling young children, there are a couple of really good curricula that I think some of y’all may enjoy: Children Desiring God and Treasuring Christ Curriculum (material that, as I’ve written before, isn’t afraid of blood).

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Dylan, Thornbury says, “does a very good job listening in to where a society or a culture is, and standing alongside of it without representing any one political perspective.” Together we talk about how “The Times They Are a-Changin’” has something of a somber tone, a tone of judgment. We discuss how youth culture revolts against the status quo of the previous generation.

And Thornbury also gives his rationale as to why fans of “classic country music” should listen to Bob Dylan—who, I should add, was a good friend of Johnny Cash.

My sons will soon be awake, dressing for church, but by “church” they have very different mental images than those that shaped me. To me, a church still ought to smell like that one, like a mixture of new carpet and old lady. I still hear those Fanny Crosby gospel songs playing in my head, and I still can feel myself marching through the front doors, flag in hand, for the Vacation Bible School pledges, the closest thing we had to a liturgy or a calendar of the Christian year.

My sons don’t have any idea how big a deal this church is for me. They’ve visited but to them it was just one more church, except unusual in that Daddy wasn’t preaching. But to me it was everything. And to them, though they’ll probably never know it, it will mean everything too.

I sit down at night to read the Bible to them, and I guess they assume I just sprung into existence knowing and believing that ancient book. But I didn’t. I learned those King James memory verses there in Woolmarket’s Sunday school rooms. And there I learned to here in them the ring of truth. I pray with my sons at night and they probably assume I just always knew to do so. But it was there, at Woolmarket Baptist Church, from those people where I first heard prayers, sometimes standing over offering plates or sick lists. My sons hear me preach every week, but it was in that little pulpit that I preached my first sermon, six minutes, covering the whole canon, followed by a round of vomiting (mine, not, that I know of, the congregation’s, though I wouldn’t blame them).

My sons will go to church this morning, but the people at Woolmarket Baptist Church taught me to want to have a church to come home to.

In a very real sense, my boys are being reared by the church in which we are now members. But they’re also being reared by a church full of people they’d never recognize, many of whom are now dead.

Sometimes we tend to think of “church” generically as a synonym for Christians, some invisible blob of everyone who believes the same facts about Jesus or who follows the same principles from the first century. Yes, the church is the transnational, transgenerational Body of Christ, the redeemed of all of the ages. But the church expresses itself in this age in local, palpable gatherings of believers in covenant with one another.

I don’t idealize Woolmarket Baptist Church. There were not only those worship services and prayer gatherings; there were also business meetings that more closely resembled “Question Time” in the British House of Commons than anything from the New Testament, except when they resembled a round of mixed martial arts. But the churches at Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, and Antioch were riddled with carnality and hypocrisy too, as was the church at Jerusalem who is the mother of us all. Nonetheless, through it all, Jesus was there.

Spiritually speaking, my Father, the God of Jesus Christ, is perfect; my Mother, that local church, was not. But she loved me, and, in her own frail way, she told me the truth.

One day my children will, if the Lord wills, have children of their own. Their children will ask them, “Where did you come from?” I hope they take them to this big congregation in Louisville where they learned to see the gospel in visual form. But I hope too that they’ll take those children to see a little red brick church in coastal Mississippi. They don’t know a soul there, but that church helped raise them too.

Happy anniversary Woolmarket Baptist Church. This son rises up to call you blessed.

But the questions that Clapton asks in his song are not only related to children who have died. “Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?” is a question about which many people wonder—believers and unbelievers alike.

I think it’s a shame that the teaching in our churches has been so deficient that we have a kind of isolated, staring-into-a-bright-light concept of heaven. The Scriptures present something different, something better. The new creation, the Bible tells us, is exactly that—a creation, with relationships, with service, with love, a kind of resumption of the present, and all with King Jesus at the center.

The gospel is able to take even weak and momentary connections and make them mature, and ongoing, in kingdom come. And there will be no tears there (Rev. 21:4). In the meantime, our lives will be characterized by suffering, and weeping. And that ought to drive us to compassion, and love.

On that day, many years ago, I was a young kid walking alone under a starry sky in my hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi. I was grappling with who I was and what my life would mean. And there, looking up into the vault of space up there overhead, I trusted a Stranger in the Night to forgive me, and to take me wherever he wanted. The gospel wasn’t new to me, and the teachings of Jesus weren’t new to me. Years and years of Sunday school and Baptist Training Union and Vacation Bible Schools were all back there. But, somehow, I just knew at that moment that the central point of all those things was true: the gospel. It was as though I heard a voice.

The reason I write this is because my story isn’t at all typical of most Christians I know, and many kind of feel guilty about that. Many believe if they really have embraced the gospel, they ought to have a moment, a date, they can point to as the instant they passed from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

Sometimes our churches reinforce this misunderstanding. Preachers talk about assurance of salvation as though it were about remembering a past experience, and doing a mental autopsy on the sincerity of that. The people we allow to give “testimonies” in our churches and in our publications all seem to have a dramatic tale to tell.

That’s not what the gospel is about.

In our culture, we make a big-to-do about birthdays. Other cultures don’t. I could ask you right now, “When were you born” and you could probably tell me month, date, and year. But how do you know that? It’s because there were people there, usually your parents, who could tell you that information. You don’t remember emerging from the birth canal (and that’s probably a very good thing).

Other people, in other cultures at other times, don’t recognize dates but seasons. They might not know what day on the weekly calendar or what year in the solar calendar they were born. But do they then question whether they are alive? Of course not. How do you know if you were in fact born? You look to see if you’re alive…now.

It’s no accident that Jesus compares entrance into the kingdom of God to physical birth. There is a kind of helplessness that we experience in the biology and history of our births. No one can boast about an easy delivery. No one should feel guilty about prompting a Caesarean section. The important thing is that you’re here.

The same is true for the gospel. Some of you were brought to Christ suddenly and dramatically. Your past life as a prostitute or a drunk or a warlord gave way to a radically different direction as a disciple. In that, your situation is quite similar to the Apostle Paul’s. Others of you, though saved just as truly in some point in time, aren’t able to identify that time. Your memory is of a slow realization of the gospel, and you can’t necessarily pinpoint when you were converted in that time-frame. Your situation sounds more like that of Paul’s disciple Timothy. The point of the gospel isn’t celebrating an experience; it’s believing a Man who is your crucified, resurrected, reigning Life.

It’s important to mark dates as ways of prompting thanksgiving. If you know when you met Jesus, set up an Ebenezer of remembrance in your mind and be grateful. If not, be thankful for life in Christ and mark other dates when He showed himself real and faithful to you.

The crucial matter isn’t whether you remember when the Shepherd pulled you out of the thorn bushes. Maybe you were barely conscious. The critical thing is whether you hear His Voice, maybe somewhere out there in the dark in front of you, calling you forward, right now.

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2. They assume people’s problem is that they don’t know about judgment. But the Bible says they do. All of us have embedded within us a conscience that points us to the Day of Judgment (Rom 2:15-16). We have a “fearful expectation of judgment” (Heb 10:27). The problem is we block it out of our minds, diverting ourselves with other things. The problem isn’t that lost people don’t hate hell enough. It’s that they don’t love Christ. Hell is the Abyss they run into in their flight from him.

3. They abstract judgment from the love of God. I know most “Judgment Houses” present the gospel at the end. But in the Bible the good news doesn’t come at the end. The prodigal son leaves the father’s house, but the father is eager to receive him back (Luke 16:11-31). The awful news of God’s judgment is always intertwined in Scripture with the message of the gospel of a loving, merciful God. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

4. They abstract judgment from the glory of God. The prophet Isaiah doesn’t see that he’s “undone” first by the horror of judgment. He sees it in light of the glory of God’s presence (Isa 6:1-6). The Apostle John tells us the glory Isaiah saw was Jesus of Nazareth (12:41). When we preach Jesus, the glory of God breaks through (2 Cor 4:6). Some people recoil at that light; some people run to it (John 3:19-21).

5. It’s hard to cry at a Judgment House. But Jesus does when thinking about judgment (Matt 23:37). And so does the Apostle Paul, pleading with sinners to be saved (2 Cor 5:20). These evangelistic tools though are meant to take on the feel of a “haunted house,” a place of thrill-seeking and festivity. It’s hard to convey the gravity of the moment in such a way.

6. The Holy Spirit doesn’t usually like to work that way. Pop quiz: How many people do you know who came to know Christ through the witness of a friend? How many do you know who came to know Christ through faithful parents? How many are in Christ due to the week-to-week preaching of Christ in a local church? Probably a lot, right?

Okay, now answer this: How many people do you know who came to know Christ through a Halloween “Judgment House” or “Hell House”? If you know one, you’re outpacing me, and everyone I’ve ever talked to about this. The Holy Spirit tends to work through the preaching of Christ (Rom 10:17). That’s how he points the world to sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8).

7. They’re easier to pull off than talking to people. Can people be saved through Judgment Houses? Sure. I have a colleague who was saved at a Stryper heavy metal concert in the 1980s.  Are the intentions behind them good? Absolutely. If you have a Judgment House and it’s enabling you to share Christ, have at it with blessings on you.

But the fact remains that most lost people in your neighborhood are going to be saved the same way people have always been saved, by Christian people loving them enough to build relationships, invite them to church, share the gospel, and witness to Christ. The problem is that for many Christian’s that’s scarier than a haunted house.

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This commentary was originally posted on October 31, 2008.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” I argue that the central thrust of this song is the question of friendship. Friendship is an easy, ephemeral thing in contemporary American culture, in which “friends” are often made by clicking an icon. This song, though, shows both the risks and the glories of what it means to be friends.

We take a look at that glory and that tragedy in this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox.”

Your Skeleton is Safe: Signs of Hope in a Cross-Bearing Life from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

This sermon, “Your Skeleton is Safe: Signs of Hope in a Cross-Bearing Life” (John 19:16-36), was originally preached at Alumni Chapel at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on Thursday, August 25, 2011. You can find more sermons and other audio from Dr. Moore at our media page.