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.

Christopher Hitchens Might Be in Heaven

— Friday, December 16th, 2011 —

Christopher Hitchens, the world’s most famously caustic atheist, is now dead.

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.

(Image Credit)

Eschatology Reading Lists

— Friday, December 9th, 2011 —

This coming semester I’ll be teaching two courses on eschatology at Southern Seminary. Several folks beyond students at the seminary have asked me via email and Twitter what books I assign for these, so I decided I would post these reading lists for each of my courses here.

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)

Worry, Anxiety, and the Kingdom of Christ

— Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 —

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.

(Image Credit)

Women, Stop Submitting to Men

— Monday, December 5th, 2011 —

Those of us who hold to so-called “traditional gender roles” are often assumed to believe that women should submit to men. This isn’t true.

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.

Jesus Has AIDS

— Thursday, December 1st, 2011 —

Jesus has AIDS.

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.

(Image Credit)

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

Family Tensions and the Holidays

— Monday, November 21st, 2011 —

We tend to idealize holidays, but human depravity doesn’t go into hibernation between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. One thing that will hit most Christians, sooner or later, are tensions within extended families at holiday time.

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.

(Image Credit)

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

What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t

— Thursday, November 17th, 2011 —

The most difficult math problem in the universe, it turns out, is 70 x 7. Perhaps the hardest thing to do in the Christian life is to forgive someone who has hurt you, often badly. But Jesus says the alternative to forgiving one’s enemies is hell.

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.

Christian Ethics Final Exam, Fall 2011

— Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 —

Every year my Christian ethics class at Southern Seminary ends with a final examination that amounts to answering a hypothetical question. The point is not to get to any particular answer, but to see how they get to where they get. Do they have the tools to think through ethical decisions with wisdom and discernment. Here is this year’s question. How would you answer it? Note: if you’re in the class, you may not read the comments to this post until after you’ve turned your exam in.

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.

Image Credit.