Well, it’s been two weeks since I’ve been home from T4G. The pollen count was up over the weekend, but thankfully God blessed my area with rain to wash most of it away. On Friday night after FFF, I actually *saw* myself grow slowly unable to breathe properly in the course of about 15 minutes standing outside….at night. I think I got ripped off with the $14.99 I spent for Zyrtech-D last night at CVS, but eh. Whatever.

On my way to T4G back on the 15th, I got a chance to do some heavy listening to some podcasts (9 hours will do that for ya), so I caught up on a LOT that I’ve been missing. One particular podcast that caught my ear, so to speak, was the current series by the White Horse Inn on Christless Christianity. Part of their discussion focused on the roots of liberalism in the late 1800’s, gnosticism in the ancient church and how they’ve not only made their way into the church today in mainline denominations, but also how their thoughts of many Christians today….even mostly orthodox ones.

Mark Dever and Al Mohler tied up the loose ends of my understanding and reinforced a lot of what Ken Jones, Rod Rosenbladt and Mike Horton were talking about with their talks at T4G. MacArthur said it a while ago:

The problem is we live in a time when the climate in the church is intolerant of that, when to be discriminating and discerning is not popular. The climate in the church today is actually intolerant toward discernment. It wants everyone to be loving. It wants to elevate love and unity and non-divisive attitudes, don’t say anything against a brother, don’t say anything that is divisive, everyone is entitled to what he wants to believe, let’s be loving, let’s be united. And as I told you last time, Satan knew we wouldn’t liberal theology so he sold us liberal hermeneutics which will eventually get us to their theology. Instead of interpreting the Bible on the basis of a historical grammatical contextual understanding of the text, we are developing a tolerance for every view in the name of love and unity and a non- divisive spirit. That is deadly poison to truth.

The liberal hermeneutical approach often places more of an emphasis on ‘deeds’ (what we do) and less of an emphasis on ‘creeds’, or things that should be believed. It places a greater value on things experienced rather than propositional truth….so that the latter becomes the definer of the former. I see it frequently in many charismatic/pentecostal circles (especially on the issue of ‘God spoke to me’).

But that’s another topic for later….. 16 bars to be precise….

I’d been dealing with (over on a message board) what seemed to be a steady ‘drift’ in the theological expressions of one person whom I once respected as a solid brother in the Lord. Nowadays, though, I have no idea if he really is in the Lord or not. I don’t judge either way on the exact state of his soul, for God may still yet knock him over the head and humble all that pride out of him (yes, there is much I am NOT saying here) so he can repent and turn from his errors, but all I can say is that his profession of faith seems shaky. Dude’s even been endorsing Mr. Paul-Didn’t-Say-That – N.T. Wright. How are you going to endorse a guy on the topic justification who says that Paul’s focus wasn’t how one gets right with God in the book of Galatians and Romans ?

He’s traveled down the road to liberalism and heresy that Horton, Mohler, Dever and others have outlined in their talks and speeches. Dever and Horton in particular – Dever with his talk on ways people try to ‘improve’ the gospel – specifically one of his points on how people ADD social justice to the gospel and/or proclaim it as a PART of the gospel message. It’s not just this guy that I’ve seen it in – I could probably fill two blogposts with quotes from other people on the same message board as well as from other message boards, interactions with believers and clergy from other churches, and so forth.

What happens, more often than not (as all parties pointed out) is that the gospel gets eclipsed by the need for taking care social issues and problems here and now. Things like the verdict in the Sean Bell case (fresh in the news) where the cops shot him 50+ times on his wedding day to feeding the hungry, providing activities for at risk youth. All of these things are items which I could happily and easily serve alongside the NAACP or other organization interested in righting the wrongs done in these areas or making up for the neglect done in these areas.

But none of these things are the gospel. Our primary mission in the world is not and never has been to re-organize the existing social structures. These things may come about as a result of people with renewed minds taking up the resources around them and becoming servants of those less fortunate or those who have been denied justice, but those implications of the gospel are not the gospel itself.

Those talks helped me to solidify a few things in regard to my position on BGLO’s (black greek letter organizations). Those who’ve known me for more than 7 years know that I’m a member of Phi Beta Sigma. Sigma is a good social and community service organization. I have (and continue to have) no problem linking up with it to do work in the community – whether it be through our mentoring program, voter registration drives, collecting money to help with cancer research or helping people to organize and run businesses.

Sigma’s focus is not religious.

That’s an important point in this whole thing. I have no problem walking and working alongside of a civic organization that shares convictions with me. The thing I keep in mind, though, is that they may share them for different reasons than I do. For example, there pro-life lesbian groups who believe that the current trend in research to find a ‘gay gene’ may actually backfire on them, since there will be parents who seek to abort their children based on them having or not having this ‘gay gene’ (if such a thing existed). While we are both on the same side of the issue in terms of the sanctity of human life, we approach it from different angles with different presuppositions and different value systems. Likewise, there are plenty of ‘conservatives’ who share my convictions regarding abortion and the sanctity of life that I could walk and work alongside of. Their reasons for being pro-life may even have a similar biblical basis as mine (Psalm 139). But some of these same people also hate the God of the Bible and are content with their own good works and self-righteousness. They may be ‘morally upright’, but still in need of a Savior just as much as the pagan Wiccan who doesn’t believe that a fetus is a life.

Now I mentioned earlier that my fraternity wasn’t a religious organization. That’s part of my determiner for whether or not I involve myself in a social cause with a particular group. If the group claims to be pro-life on strictly religious grounds (or even primarily on religious grounds), then my beliefs – at the core – need to match theirs.

That’s where I part ways with many who would link up with organizations that are so ‘ecumenical’ that they’ll claim to be doing kingdom work or work in the name of Jesus which is really not an ‘extension’ of the gospel, but rather simply, social work merged in with a faulty understanding of the gospel.

I’m a fan of truth in advertising. So when people present themselves as one thing…be truthful about it. Are your views orthodox ? Don’t act like they are when you know full and well they’ve been condemned and not any of them has had a permanent foothold in church history with anyone other than universally recognized schismatics and heretics.

Applied practically, I look at groups like The Sojourners, whose ‘about us’ link says that they are:

Rooted in the solid ground of prophetic biblical tradition, Sojourners is a progressive Christian voice that preaches not political correctness but compassion, community, and commitment. We refuse to separate personal faith from social justice, prayer from peacemaking, contemplation from action, or spirituality from politics.

Sojourners includes evangelicals, Catholics, Pentecostals and Protestants; liberals and conservatives; blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians; women and men; young and old. We are Christians who want to follow Jesus, but who also sojourn with others in different faith traditions and all those who are on a spiritual journey. We reach into traditional churches but also out to those who can’t fit into them. Together we seek to discover the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. We invite you to join, to connect, and to act. Welcome to the community.

I ask myself: can I legitimately walk alongside these people ? The doctrinal positions of all of them include those who would biblically be considered non-Christians (both the liberals AND those of other ‘faith traditions’). They call themselves a “committed group of Christians who believe in the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.” CHRISTIANS is the operative word here. We’ll hold certain things in common doctrinally if we are. But I don’t have ‘the gospel’ in common with an Open Theist and/or a Catholic. The OT has a fundamentally different ‘god’ than I do. Likewise, the Catholic (if he believes the Council of Trent) has a fundamentally different answer to the question of ‘how is a man made right with God?” Those issues necessarily make me NOT brothers with them and NOT in the same camp of faith as ‘Christians’. Spiritually, I am commanded to separate from such (2 Cor. 6:14-18). So I cannot co-labor with the Mormon, JW or Open Theist – not under the context of social work done from a spiritual perspective. We don’t share the same gospel or any basis for unity.

So Mark Dever really helped to put things in perspective regarding the issue of ‘what is the gospel’. There are also issues related to this – what does the authentic Christian life look like ? How does our faith impact our politics ? How should the local church go about serving the local community ?

All of these things are well and fine for future discussions. Believers definitely should pursue social justice and seek to serve the world, city and community around them. But these things should be as a result of believing the biblical gospel. And they should be done arm-in-arm with more believers who hold similar values. No problems with a sound Methodist Church and a PCA church working side-by-side. Both agree on the question of how a man is made right before God – grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone apart from works. Sure, the Methodists may have other details of the gospel a bit flipped, but at heart, every Christian (even the Wesleys, if you listen to their hymns) is a Calvinist.

That covers it for now on this one. I’ll be back to cover other implications as a result of the talks and interactions at T4G over the next few weeks