Archives for September 2006

Well, we had an unusual week this week. In our Thru the NT series I am handing out study guides on Sunday for the next week’s chronological Bible reading. The messages I preach on those passages will come on the following Wednesday and Sunday. So my study guides are a week ahead of my preaching.

I decided this week to go ahead and write my messages early in the week, then do the study guide for the following week. It was quite an interesting process since I wasn’t writing the sermons with a deadline looming. I think I took a little longer than I expected to write the messages, but I managed to finish them all by Thursday. Then it was Thursday evening and all day Friday to study and prepare the Study Guides. Amazingly, I was all done by 4:30 pm on Friday. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I think this is the first time in 21 years of ministry that I have had both Friday and Saturday evenings really free. I played a game with my wife and two kids Saturday night, but I was so discombobulated from my new luxury of being able to play a game on Saturday night that I lost. (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!)

Well, to the messages. We are just beginning the Lord’s ministry, so message #1 was Elijah that Should Come, the ministry of John the Baptist, from the synoptic texts: Mk 1.1-11, Mt 3.1-17, Lk 3.1-22. The proposition of the message was this: The answer to the despair of the world is found in the singular focus of John the Baptist’s ministry: preparation for the coming of God’s beloved Son. The world in which John the Baptist began to minister was a corrupt cynical oppressive world, especially for the Jews who would not go along with the Roman policy of tolerance to other religions. John began his preaching in AD 27, “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” (Lk 3.1). (Tiberius began to reign in AD 14, but he was co-regent with Augustus – his step father and father-in-law – from AD 12, hence the date.)

John’s preaching had two themes: Repent – someone’s coming. His preaching caused a sensation, and drew large crowds of the serious, the curious, the official, and the cynical. But they came. And many of them turned to God, including Roman soldiers. But John’s aim was to turn men to the one who was coming, the one whom he knew the moment he approached, and then had confirmed by the sign of the dove and the voice of God from heaven.

John lived in a despairing world (not unlike our own) and pointed men to the only answer to despair: Jesus Christ.

Message #2 was Tempted Like as We Are, on the temptation of the Lord, Mk 1.12-13, Mt 4.1-11, Lk 4.1-13. The central idea of the message was this: The keys to victory in temptation is walking in the Spirit and employment of the Word. We find this approach modelled by our Lord. He experienced the empowering of the Spirit and approval of God at the Baptism, then ‘immediately’ the Spirit ‘drave’ him into the wilderness(Mk 1.1). Luke tells us he was ‘full of the Holy Ghost’ [an interesting phrase only used by Luke on six occasions] and both Matthew and Luke say he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. The whole episode was purposeful and preparatory for the ministry to come. I observed that this was probably the last time on earth that the Lord experienced any meaningful solitude. After this, he would always be surrounded by people. In the temptation, the Spirit filled and prepared Lord withstood the temptations by the Word of God, blazing the trail for us to follow. Temptation can be overcome, we need to be spirit filled and employ the Word in our defense.

The afternoon message covered the rejection at Nazareth, the calling of the fishermen to full time training, the casting out of a demon on the Sabbath, the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law that afternoon, the healing of many who came after the Sabbath ended that evening [how late did he stay up?], then finally the Lord stealing away ‘a great while before day’ (Mk 1.35) for prayer. On Peter’s discovery of him, he simply says, I must go from here to preach elsewhere. The message was entitled Ministering In His Own City from Mk 1.14-39, Mt 4.12-25, 8.14-17, Lk 4.14-44. The proposition was: The first lesson of discipleship is that the beginning of discipleship lies in genuine faith in Christ.

Through all these experiences we see contrasted sincerity and insincerity. The insincerity comes from those who are following Christ for what they can get out of him or for simply the sensation of seeing miracles. The sincerity comes from the disciples. They have known Christ now for about 6 months (see John 1.19-4.54). They are with him off and on in this period, but they believe in him. They see him rejected in Nazareth, see him heal the nobleman’s son [from Capernaum] in Cana, and then shortly thereafter is the marvelous catch of fish in Lk 5. Simon realizes he is in the presence of something much mightier than himself and begs the Lord, “depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” The Lord tells him not to fear. The next day (as I see it) he comes and makes the call recorded in Matthew and Mark to leave their nets and follow him. Of course, they do. They are the sincere followers, but they still don’t understand his mission.

As the many in Capernaum throng the house that Sabbath night, the disciples are impressed. They are still expecting the Messiah to take charge and to create a new order, with Israel in charge of the world. When the crowd is up early, the next morning, they think this is a good thing. Let’s get busy and ‘catch the wave’, keep the momentum going. The Lord says, in effect, ‘No, I am not interested in the crowd. I came to say something to Israel, and I’m going to say it.’ So this is the first lesson of discipleship: The first lesson of discipleship is that the beginning of discipleship lies in genuine faith in Christ. In other words, don’t be impressed with a lot of superficial commitments. Look for those who are genuine, who are sincere.

All in all, another great day in the Lord’s house. We have a big week ahead of us. Next Sunday will see us whip through the Sermon on the Mount in two messages! Can it be done??? We’ll see.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

I appreciate the two comments given to my last post. I agree that it would be good to have a solid biblical theology of ministering mercy. I doubt that I will be the one to write it!

Nevertheless, we do need to at least talk about the subject a good bit more. Fundamentalism is facing challenges of attrition today. Some are attempting to woo young fundamentalists to a new position. Some young fundamentalists are asking questions of fundamentalism that they think are new and probing (not realizing that they are the same questions that have been asked of fundamentalism for at least the last sixty years). The questions do need to be addressed, to some extent at least.

One of the areas where fundamentalism is being challenged is this topic of social responsibility. The charge is that funcamentalism has abandoned social responsibility. Whether this charge is true or not, I think most (all?) fundamentalists would agree that any Christian heart should be moved with compassion for those who are in dire need. We should care. But what should we do?

In our city, we have a number of people who live on the street. Some do so out of rebellion (mostly runaways), some are mentally deficient and our laws say they cannot be institutionalized against their will, some are hopelessly addicted to drugs and irresponsible living. Some Christians have attempted to minister to them. One of them is called the Mustard Seed Street Church, it is connected with the Baptist Union of Western Canada [a liberal group, although I have a conservative cousin who pastors one of their churches]. I met the pastor of this group after preaching a funeral for one of our older ladies. They have a food bank that is fairly well supported by our community (not just the Christians). They provide ‘back to school’ hampers for underprivileged children, a Christmas dinner, and have recently added a center to help addicts recover from their addictions (at a farm in a community about 45 minutes to an hour from town. In a recent newsletter, the pastor said about the ministry of the farm, “We are a Christian organization but the Christ-experience only comes by invitation and not force.”

I don’t offer this information to critique it, but as an example of what Christians are typically doing in the social responsibility area. I imagine most major cities have one or two ministries like this. Some of the things they do are surely helpful in some ways. The addiction recovery center is probably a vital ministry, although I am not sure what kind of Christian faith the “Christ-experience” (optional) will produce.

When it gets right down to it, when we think of responsibility to help the poor, this kind of ministry is usually what is meant. There are other avenues of social action (often far away) like disaster relief, the world AIDS crisis, famine in xxx country, etc. There are ministries like the crisis pregnancy centres. But when it gets right down to personal involvement in the needs of the local community, the ministry will take a form something like the Mustard Seed. Such a ministry, even if run by thoroughly orthodox believers, is frustrating, difficult, very very costly, and occasionally witnesses small signs of victory.

When you read the complaints of some against fundamentalism for our supposed lack of compassion, the question that lurks in my mind first is this: What are the complainers doing? What ministry of social concern are they personally involved with? Or are they just complaining? Second, what are they suggesting we should change? Should we join in support of existing programs, along with the feel-good liberals (and make no mistake, the leaders of the Mustard Seed are liberals)? Should we attempt to open ‘competing’ ministries?

These kinds of complaints, it seems to me, are what were behind the complaints of the new evangelicals as articulated by Harold Ockenga. I offer the quote from Sidwell that I offered before:

“Third, Ockenga also issued a ‘summons to social involvement’ and a ‘new emphasis upon the application of the gospel to the sociological, political, and economic areas of life.'”
Mark Sidwell, The Dividing Line, p. 117-118

While I am not accusing all of the complainants against fundamentalism of being closet new-evangelicals, I think some (perhaps many) of them are. Their complaints are political, not religious. They want to re-order the ‘polis’ of fundamentalism and remake it to fit a new paradigm. They don’t realize, I think, that the paradigm isn’t new anymore and that the emphasis on social do-goodism can and will become an all consuming effort that eventually loses the gospel in the process.

With all of that said, we do need to do what we can to help those whom the Lord puts before us and need help. It will be frustrating, costly, and often fail. But we should do what we can. And we should attempt to devise means that are truly centered in the gospel, that truly lift people beyond the ruts that they are in (usually by a series of bad personal choices).

I am going to do some reading on this, I put a couple of books on hold at our public Library. (One by Marvin Olasky, no less, in the liberal Victoria public library! I’m surprised.) I will write more on this later. There are more things to be said, even without the research. With any luck, the research will give further fruitful ideas for discussion.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

We fundies in our insular little blog world have had a bit of discussion regarding social responsibility recently. You can catch some of the discussion at My Two Cents, and additional posts on Pensees and Paleoevangelical.

I think that perhaps the argument we are having among ourselves is somewhat affected by not carefully defining terms. When I say “social action”, does it mean the same thing as Bob Bixby means? I am not altogether sure that it does.

In thinking about this, I did a little skimming in The Fundamentals this evening. There might be some oblique references to a social agenda of some kind in the chapters on missions, though they were not explicit enough to warrant a quote. Other than those chapters, I cannot find much reference to the issue in that source. I think I’ll have to do some digging amongst the older fundies writings to see if they address such issues at all.

The next thing I did was to look up the Wikipedia entry on the Social Gospel. Here is their definition:

The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Social Gospel principles continue to inspire newer movements such as Christians Against Poverty. The movement applies Christian principles to social problems, especially poverty, liquor, drugs, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, poor schools, and the danger of war. Theologically, the Social Gospel leaders were overwhelmingly post-millennialist. That is they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort. For the most part, they rejected pre-millennialist theology (which was predominant in the Southern United States), according to which the Second Coming of Christ was imminent, and Christians should devote their energies to preparing for it rather than addressing the issue of social evils. Their millennial views are very similar to those shared by Christian Reconstructionists, except that Social Gospel leaders are predominently liberal politically and religiously (in contrast to the Reconstructionists, who tend to hold politically liberatarian and religiously fundamentalist views).

The Canadian Encyclopedia (an effort by a noted Canadian socialist) has this entry:

The Social Gospel is an attempt to apply Christianity to the collective ills of an industrializing society, and was a major force in Canadian religious, social and political life from the 1890s through the 1930s. It drew its unusual strength from the remarkable expansion of Protestant, especially EVANGELICAL, churches in the latter part of the 19th century. For several decades the prevalent expression of evangelical nationalism, the Social Gospel was equally a secularizing force in its readiness to adopt such contemporary ideas as liberal progressivism, reform Darwinism, biblical criticism and philosophical idealism as vehicles for its message of social salvation. It developed, however, a distinctive spirituality elevating social involvement to a religious significance expressed in prayers, hymns, poems and novels of “social awakening.” Its central belief was that God was at work in social change, creating moral order and social justice. It held an optimistic view of human nature and entertained high prospects for social reform. Leaders reworked such traditional Christian doctrines as sin, atonement, salvation and the Kingdom of God to emphasize a social content relevant to an increasingly collective society.

Well, I could quote more sites, but you can do the Google search yourself. These are probably already too long! And perhaps they are not precise enough…

But just a few thoughts on this:

1. The Social Gospel had its impetus from socialism which found a ready and willing market for its ideas in churches that were dispensing with orthodoxy and embracing religious liberalism.
2. The Social Gospel, as I understand it, became a substitute for the real Gospel in the ‘ministries’ of the mainline ‘churches’. They saw the church’s mission to champion the cause of the working man, especially against the evils of capitalism.
3. In Canada, this found its expression in the politics of Tommy Douglas and the CCF political party, later the NDP (New Democratic Party, which I like to say is neither new nor democratic and they are such a bunch of sourpusses, it isn’t much of a party, either.) These are the folks that brought us universal health care. [A great system as long as you don’t get sick.]
4. The problem with the social action of the Social Gospelers is that in general they have succeeded only in perpetuating the problems rather than empowering the individuals they are supposed to help. We see this expressed in all kinds of ways in the liberal welfare state, where the mainline churches have often joined hands with secular socialists to achieve social ends.

Since the Social Gospel is inextricably linked with religious liberalism on the one hand, and socialism on the other, I can understand why fundamentalists have resisted any support of its aims in any way.

In the new-evangelical compromise of the 1950s, one of the pillars of New Evangelicalism was to change the approach of the evangelical church to social problems.

“Third, Ockenga also issued a ‘summons to social involvement’ and a ‘new emphasis upon the application of the gospel to the sociological, political, and economic areas of life.’”
Mark Sidwell, The Dividing Line, p. 117-118

Well, given the history of the relationship between Fundamentalists and the (New) Evangelicals, it isn’t hard to see why fundamentalists have tended to resist this point of view as well.

Some are arguing today that Fundamentalists have separated themselves out from any social involvement, that they have gone too far. Yet others will point out that Fundamentalists have run Rescue Missions, Crisis Pregnancy Centres, homes for drug-addicted teens and adults, schools for the handicapped, and many other efforts devoted to meeting social needs, with a gospel-centered approach. (By gospel-centered, I mean that when we engage in such activities, our goal is to reach the inner man with the gospel and to help with the particular social problems individuals might have, and not the other way around.)

In fact I believe that the charge against Fundamentalism is baseless. Fundamentalists may not have the numbers or the resources (overall) that other larger Christian groups have, but their efforts do exist and are attempting to impact their communities for good.

In general, there are some things that I would consider acceptable social action, and others that I wouldn’t endorse. These are my opinions only, I am not coming to hard and fast dogmatic conclusions.

• Activities that promote the ideas of socialism and leftist political agendas are unacceptable.
• Activities that primarily involve the handout of cash or some sort of direct or indirect financial assistance to poverty stricken people without an incentive for personal initiative is not acceptable. “A hand up, not a hand out” as they say.
• A philosophy of social action that exalts the social action as the end rather than a means is unacceptable. We don’t do good to feel good, we do good to genuinely help.
• Disaster relief and emergency aid are one thing, ongoing welfare is another.
• Churches and Christian individuals should be most involved in efforts that reach men at their deepest points of need. Although I generally don’t think the church has a ministry responsibility for social action, I don’t have a problem with churches being involved in gospel-centered mission works such as I mentioned earlier.

Well, those are just a few thoughts for today. The whole topic is rather large and impossible to write a comprehensive philosophy without a great deal of study. Since we are having this conversation rather consistently, I suggest that someone is going to have to do some heavy lifting in the study of this topic to help settle the questions that keep coming up.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3