When God Gives the Order

I recently watched the movie 1917.  The storyline runs somewhat similar to Saving Private Ryan, to which it has been compared favorably.  It’s a different war with different uniforms and different accents, but the setting is the same continent and the dangers are similar.  I think it’s a good movie, worth watching at least once.  I’m going to describe a particular climactic scene late in the movie, so if you haven’t watched the movie yet, and think you might want to, I would suggest you stop reading this and come back after you’ve had the chance to watch it.

I don’t want to give away all of the story, so those who have seen the movie will notice that I am leaving lots of things out.  The scene I want to talk about is when the young British lance corporal (and you will have to forgive me, I know virtually nothing about military rank except that Sergeant Carter was higher in rank than Private Pyle and also that Sergeant Carter was lower in rank than Colonel Hogan) finally arrived at the destination of his mission.  He was to deliver a vital message to the commander of the 2nd battalion, a Colonel Mackenzie.  Colonel Mackenzie is only on for this one short scene, and as soon as I saw him, I thought, “Is that Benedict Cumberbatch?” and kept staring at him until I assured myself it was.  Anyway, Mackenzie was leading the 2nd battalion on an advance against the enemy, and Lance Corporal Schofield’s message was that they should stop the advance and pull back because the Germans had been luring them into this as a trap.

Mackenzie responds to Schofield first by questioning who he was.  Schofield didn’t outrank him.  What right did he have to even be standing there with them, let alone trying to tell them they were wrong?  His second response was that he has tried following the commands from higher-up before, many times, and has never seen any progress.  With his plan, they are beginning to see progress, unlike previous attempts where they have got started only to be called back.  But finally, he agrees to read the letter sent from the general, and the authority of the message and its sender are enough to force Mackenzie to relent.

So, what is it about this scene that has prompted me to write?  Immediately after watching it, the thought occurred to me - that’s how I do, that’s how we all do, when God interrupts our plans.  We make our plans, and some of those plans are rotten, tainted by sin, and will lead to disaster for us.  So God sends someone to try to talk us out of those plans, and we respond by saying, “Who are you?  You can’t judge me!”  Maybe that someone is our own conscience that we push away.  But God keeps trying.  And we tell God, “I’ve tried it Your way, and that doesn’t work.”  We look at the progress we’ve made with our plans, and think that is more of an indicator of future success than God’s old, timid plans.  And sometimes, we will finally see what God’s Word has to say about it.

So when God pushes back on your plans, how do you respond?  Are you really going to tell God that you’re smarter than Him?  Instead, see what God has to say about it in His Word.  Common sayings like “God wants me to be happy” or “I really feel God is calling me to this” or “Love is love” have no validity at all if they contradict with Scripture.  What they become at that point is a means of allowing you to directly disobey God.  That is what all sin is - directly disobeying our commander, an act of treason.

SBC 2021 (Part 3): Moore or Less

 A few weeks ago, I got sucked in to watching the current reboot of the old game show “To Tell the Truth.”  In one round, one of the three panelists trying to persuade the celebrities that he was the person being described told in the reveal that he used to work as an undercover law enforcement operative.  It had been a matter of life and death for him to know who was lying and who was telling the truth.  Then they went to the next round, but after the celebrities made their guesses, they brought back the undercover guy to get his guess and what clues gave away the imposters.  I was fascinated as he was right on the money.

Dr. Russell Moore has been the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) since 2013.  Dr. Moore tends to be a polarizing figure in SBC life - many people are fans and many others are definitely not.  Last month, he announced that he would be resigning from the ERLC.  Within days of this announcement and within only a couple of weeks of the SBC’s annual meeting, two letters written by Moore were “leaked.”  These letters were both highly critical of some other SBC leaders, one of which is a current candidate for the SBC presidency.  Those that Moore is accusing in his letters, primarily Mike Stone, have responded with flat denials.  Others have come along to corroborate Moore’s version.  This was then followed by those who expressed affirmation of Stone’s narrative as well as his character.

So who is telling the truth?  Honestly, I have no idea.  I wish I had the skills of the law enforcement operative.

There are those that have pointed out that the accusatory letter puts Moore in a precarious spot.  Moore makes allegations that Stone and others are actively working to cover up sexual abuse within the SBC.  If his accusations are true, then besides what he may have said internally within the ERLC, he would effectively be complicit in the cover-up.  In the months that this has supposedly been an issue, rather than standing up against evil deeds or making the issue publicly known, he sat on it and looked for his next job.  And if the accusations are not true, well, obviously that’s not an ethical position either.

So why was the letter released, then?  If you ignore the conundrum it puts Moore in, it actually carries a couple of big benefits for Moore.  First, for those inclined to be fans, he looks like a hero, championing the cause of the sexually abused.  This is a great way for him to enter into his next position, writing for Christianity Today.  And second, he gets to stick it to his political enemies on his way out the door.

SBC 2021 (Part 2): Race to Win

 The history of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) includes many accomplishments for the Kingdom of God.  But it also contains several things which stand in stark contrast to those accomplishments.  Chief among those stains on the SBC is the issue of racism.  Founded in a split over the question of slavery in the mid 1800’s, the SBC has time and again wrestled with the issue of race.  The SBC has officially apologized for its history with slavery and racism, yet forms of racism continue to rise up within the convention.

The SBC in general is anxious to shake off any hint of racism.  This is why, I believe, Resolution 9 was adopted at the annual meeting in 2019.  Resolution 9 was entitled “On Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality,” concepts that most of the people in attendance had very likely never heard of.  But they saw that this resolution seemed to have to do with fighting against racism, so it would be wrong to vote against it.  In the time since then, CRT has exploded, not just in Southern Baptist discussions, but in various avenues of public policy.  And many see the concepts of CRT to be anti-Biblical, and the wrong way to address racism.

However, there are those that see pushing back against CRT as a form of racism, an attempt to shut down what might be a useful tool in the fight against racism.

Dealing with Resolution 9 and with CRT in general will be delicate matters.  One wrong move can be all the impetus some need to leave the SBC, as intentions will be assumed instead of understood.

SBC 2021 (Part 1): Gender Again

The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is taking place this week in Nashville, and it looks to be a very active business meeting.  COVID prevented last year’s meeting, so we have two years’ worth of concerns, much of which has been unproductively battered around on social media, to try to settle in one way or another.  And the stakes may be high, as the votes may send one group or another out from under the SBC tent.

So what are the issues that loom darkly over the SBC?  There are several, and I’ll try to give some thoughts on the big ones.

Back in the late 1970’s, the SBC went through something called the Conservative Resurgence.  Recognizing that some leaders were moving the convention in a more liberal theological direction, an effort was begun and eventually accomplished to move things back to the right.  One of the liberal positions pushed back by the Conservative Resurgence was the idea of ordination of women.  In 2000, the SBC adopted a revision to its statement of beliefs known as the Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M), and one of the changes to that document was the statement that “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”  This statement is based on multiple passages, such as I Timothy 3:2 and I Timothy 2:12.  While the BF&M doesn’t specifically mention it, the latter text would also disqualify women from preaching or teaching to an audience that included men, such as a Sunday morning service.

Since the last annual meeting, it has been observed that there are multiple church plants that were invested in by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) that have women listed on their websites with a title of “pastor” or “co-pastor.”  Is NAMB not paying attention to the churches they are helping to start, or do they know and not care, or worse, desire to see this despite its contradiction to the BF&M?

One of the most prominent women teachers in Southern Baptist life has been Beth Moore.  Her beginnings are noble - a woman digging into Scripture to teach God’s truth to other women.  Along the way, some significant issues came up, and one of those was that she began to allow her audiences to include both male and female.  There were even times when she was asked to speak for the Sunday morning worship time.  While not technically violating the BF&M, it violated the underlying Scripture.  Just a few months ago, she had heard enough of people telling her she shouldn’t do that and took herself out of the SBC.

A little over a month ago, a megachurch within the SBC had what they called an “historic night” by ordaining three women as pastors.  The chuch is Saddleback Church in California, and its lead pastor is Rick Warren.

How the convention will respond to this issue is crucial - it will either be stopped or it will expand markedly.  There is no chance that it will stay at only what we see today.  This is a battle that we have already fought.  It seems strange to need to be fighting it again.

After Easter

 After Jesus was resurrected, hundreds of people saw firsthand evidence of it, and thousands more heard sufficient evidence of it, and believed in Jesus.  But many, many people did not believe, despite the evidence being available if they wanted to pursue it.  They chose not to pursue the evidence, and some immediately devised a story to contradict the evidence, claiming that the disciples had stolen the body.  Why would they do that?  Because they didn’t want anything to do with Jesus, even if He did exactly what He said He was going to do and even if He was exactly who He said He was.

Besides being a preacher, I am also an apologist.  And as an apologist, I see that the argument for Jesus’ resurrection is incredibly strong.  It is tempting to think, “If I keep presenting this information, with more evidence and more passionately, people will see the truth of it and come to Christ.”  But as I’ve been thinking about it, the issue isn’t apologetics.  It would change nothing to build a stronger case or present it more urgently.  People aren’t rejecting the truth of the argument.  Like the Pharisees on the day after Jesus was resurrected, they are rejecting Jesus.  The truth is irrelevant.  The cost of accepting the truth is the issue.

Jesus (of course) understood this.  He was a terrible salesman.  He urged people to count the cost, and made sure everyone understood there was no riding the fence.

It’s the day after Easter.  What will you do with Jesus?

I've Been Shot!

 It’s been a LONG time since I last wrote a blog post.  In fact, just a few days over ten years.  TEN years.  What all has happened in that ten years?  Lots of stuff.  The birth of my third child.  Graduation from seminary.

But for the past year, the big news has been COVID.  It has impacted so much - church, school, going out to eat, going to the grocery store.  For a little while we were using disinfecting wipes to pump our gas.

There is probably lots I could say about this pandemic.  And I may come back and say some of that.  But I’ll start off with this:  one week ago I got my shot.

My reaction was pretty mild.  That night I had chills, and the next day I had a bit of a headache and body aches, and was pretty exhausted.  But that was about it.  I’ve been a little extra tired all week, but I’m not sure I can blame that on the shot.

I thought a bit about the shot before getting it.  I wasn’t in any particular rush to get it, but at the same time, I wasn’t particularly afraid of getting it.

I don't consider myself very high risk.  I'm not around a lot of people most of the time.  And I'm in pretty good health - although COVID doesn't always make sense, occasionally sending young and healthy people to the hospital or worse, and occasionally having only the mildest of symptoms to those who don’t fall into the “young and healthy” category.   But thinking in terms of obvious risk, there are others who I would have loved to give my place in line because they are obviously more at risk than I am.  But it doesn't work that way.  So I took my place and got my shot.

I’m not concerned about the shot’s safety.  There was concern about how quickly the vaccines were developed.  But what we have is not just a result of one year's work, but of many years of studying similar viruses.  Also, Operation Warp Speed provided a lot of money to work with that is normally not available for this kind of thing, which allowed among other things more testing to be done simultaneously.  There is no reason to believe there is any sort of microchip in the vaccine shots.  Finally, based on what I've read, I had no reason to expect to have an allergic reaction to the vaccine, although some might need to be concerned about that.  In short, I think the shot is reasonably safe.

I'm not concerned about the shot ethically.  This gets sticky, and all the more so with the Johnson & Johnson shot that I had.  The main issue here is in the use of embryotic cells from aborted babies to develop and test the various vaccines.  It is frustrating that this kind of ethical question has to be raised at all, because there are options that do not involve the same ethical dilemma.  But all three of the current vaccines did use embryotic cells to various degrees.  Therefore, we have to concern ourselves with the question of is it morally right to utilize something that was created by the death of a baby?  This article can deal with the whole issue better than I can (ERLC | Explainer: COVID-19 raises concern about abortive fetal cells in medicine), but the TL;DR (that stands for “too long; didn’t read”) answer is that it is similar to receiving an organ donation from someone who was murdered.  Morally, we are not complicit in that murder.

I'm not concerned about the shot as a Christian.  I don't think getting the shot makes me a better Christian or more loving than someone who may choose not to get the shot.  Nor do I think it makes me a worse Christian, one who doesn't trust God enough (that would actually be presumption, along the lines of Jesus throwing Himself off the pinnacle of the temple because He trusts God to take care of Him).  And, I need to say this because I have seen it too many times, the shot is NOT the Mark of the Beast.  Nothing about this shot is preventing anyone from buying or selling.  But even if that comes up, if some crazy law comes along that you can’t enter Walmart without showing your vaccination card, that still does not make this the Mark of the Beast, because there is nothing about anyone or anything being worshipped involved with getting this shot.  You can get the shot and say, “Praise Jesus.”  

I do think the shot will allow me to see some things return to a more normal way sooner.  Things like seeing extended family, hugging folks at church, and grabbing lunch with someone.  Those days can’t come soon enough.