Homophobes...for Jesus?!

It’s been a big year in our country for laws concerning homosexuality, whether one connotes good or bad things with that “big.” On June 25, New York became the sixth state in the U.S. to legalize same-sex marriage. New York is the most populous state to have done so so far, and as the third most populous state in the country, I think it speaks volumes about where our country is right now and where it will be in the not so distant future. Then on September 20, former President Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was repealed after almost 18 years as a law, effectively ending the ban on homosexuals to serve in the military.

As Christians, where do we fit in the midst of all this? How should we respond when we are forced to confront this reality that is becoming more and more accepted in our culture and not something we can really turn a blind eye to anymore?

Legality vs. Morality

A distinction must be made from the get-go. There are two topics at hand, and they differ vastly in their areas of relevance and the conclusions we make for them.

1. Homosexuality in itself, and its moral standing.

2. Homosexual marriage, and its legal standing.

We mustn’t get these two confused. These are often bundled up into one topic of discussion, but we must stay prudent that one does not hide itself behind the other. One deals with the question “Is homosexuality ethical?”, the other “Should homosexual marriage be legal?” Arguments for morality are very different from arguments for legality. Oftentimes a pro-gay marriage person will make the argument that “Sexual attraction is not something one has control over.” They are secretly hijacking and swindling the conversation when they use this argument in favor of gay marriage. Such an argument deals with the first category, homosexuality in itself, not homosexual marriage. (Just because you can and maybe even feel like doing something doesn't mean you should.)

There is also a third topic I will address at the end of the post, which I think is a VERY important topic, though this one concerns Christians, not homosexuals.

3. How are Christians to relate to homosexuals and people who know/are friends with homosexuals?

I initially only planned to write about the third topic for this post, however I think I need to briefly dip into the other two topics in order to provide foundation for my arguments. You can't leave questions unanswered and issues untouched if you want to make a compelling argument.

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Homosexuality as sexual immorality

Let’s first take a look at homosexuality in itself and what the Bible has to say about it, which almost every Christian is going to be acutely familiar with.

According to the Bible, homosexuality is an abomination to the Lord (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13). Any Christian who says it’s not is contradicting the Bible and is therefore speaking heresy. Christians know that the reason that ONLY heterosexual intercourse can produce offspring is because this is how it was created to be by God in the beginning. Sex is not just for pleasure, though it is also not just for procreation. It is also to share intimacy with another person (of the opposite sex, by biological design), intimacy that can only truly exist through unbreached faithfulness to one another, ‘til death do part. The family is the core unit of society instituted by God and one of the most important reasons He created the sexes as He did.

But while being immoral, should homosexuality be illegal? No. It is good that some sins, such as murder and rape, will always be legislated as being illegal, so that the dire consequences will stay many people’s hands from committing these heinous sins. However, not all sins will be legislated as such, and part of that is just the free will given to us by our Creator to be used for good or for ill. We should legislate against sins that harm others against their will; we shouldn't legislate against sins that people have consented to doing and that have consequences for no one other than themselves. Homosexuals should also be given the freedom to live together. Again, it is sinful and an abomination, but they have been given the free will to do it if they please, just as Adam and Eve were given the free will to eat the fruit in the garden.

But what about homosexual MARRIAGE? Ah, now we are onto a different issue. Homosexual partnership is not necessarily something we should object to being legal. Homosexual partnerships fall under the category of sexual immorality, just like premarital relations, infidelity, prostitution, pornography, transgenders and bestiality do. These are different types of the same poison, perversions of the sexuality we were designed for. Nevertheless, if people choose to do these things of their own volition, we must allow them to (though we can certainly lovingly plead with them not to!), and they will be held accountable and judged for these sins on the last day.

But homosexual marriage is something we absolutely cannot tolerate and must take a stand against. Why? Because to use the same term, the same union, that is used for heterosexual couples as for homosexual couples causes something very immoral to happen: homosexual marriage is being equated with heterosexual marriage. The two then become recognized as equal. Our children will be taught that other than being able to procreate themselves, heterosexual marriages are no different than homosexual marriages. This is an abomination of the highest degree. It is nothing other than pure blasphemy, taking the holy things of God and injecting them with the things of the world. It is, in a sense, worse than rejecting those things altogether.

If you choose to live a life of sin, I will beg you to repent and save your soul, but in the end I must stay silent (when it comes to the laws of this country) and respect your free will as a citizen of the United States and as another human being. But when you disfigure and maim a union created by the fingertips of God Himself and turn it into heresy, then, then will I not stay silent. Then will I raise hell and be dragged away until my knuckles bleed.

I recently chatted with someone who was partially disowned by some of her friends because she was friends with a homosexual. This brings me to my third and final topic, how we as Christians should relate to homosexuals.

Two-faced mockery and sanctimony

Sadly, I have come across people (Christians, even more sadly) who will make jokes about homosexuality and treat the subject as a very light and trivial matter when in a private setting. However, they will suddenly turn into sanctimonious examples of all that is good and holy when the discussion about and interaction with homosexuality becomes real and serious. With the same mouth, they jest about homosexuality as if it means nothing, and then they condemn it and curse it as if it is the fecal matter of humanity. Hypocritical? Grievously so. Not only that, is either of these two diametrically opposed reactions to homosexuality right in the first place?

On the same token, what about using the word "gay" as a synonym for "stupid," should we let that fly? In the spirit of the Golden Rule, let's ask ourselves: would we want others to use a word that we closely associate with our identity as a derogatory term? Would we feel like hearing about the love of Jesus after hearing the word used in that way?

Is the alternative to accepting homosexuals treating them like scum? I don’t believe so. If we ever wonder whether something is acceptable to God and can be done in a matter that pleases him, try putting the words “for Jesus” after the action and see if it seems theologically fit. Treating people like scum for Jesus? I don’t think we can make a good defense for that one.

Love your heterosexual neighbor as yourself.
Mark 12:31

Whoops, I’m sorry! I accidentally pulled this verse from the 21st century Christian’s translation, not my version of choice. Let me see if I can find it in a version slightly more true to the original text.

Love your neighbor as yourself.
Mark 12:31

Much better. There is not a single modifier in front of the word “neighbor,” so we cannot pick and choose who of our neighbors we are going to love. From this second-most important of all commandments given to us by Jesus, we can draw a lot of conclusions.

Q: Should we treat all other people as human beings?
A: Yes. We wish to be treated as human beings (not scum), so we should treat others this way as well, even if we vehemently disagree with their lifestyles.

My father left my mom and brothers and me seven years ago, moved to a new city and state where no one knew of his past and has gone on living his life as if his choice to divorce my mom was only a minor inconvenience. I couldn't be more adamantly opposed to his sinful and fraudulent "Christian" lifestyle, and yet I still continue to show love to him and to be his friend, both because he is my father and because there is no excuse to not love someone.

Q: Should we respect all human beings?
A: Yes. Can you love someone without respecting them? I don’t mean respecting them as in accepting their sin and justifying it as okay, but rather respecting them as individuals made in the image of God, individuals who, however sinful and fallen they may be, are just like you.

Now this doesn’t say anything about the hierarchy of respect in our lives, because obviously we give varying levels of respect to different people depending on whether they believe the same things as we do. This will be discussed below. However, I think we can safely make the ubiquitous statement that every single human being who walks the planet deserves a level of respect as a person made in the image of the holy God of heaven and earth. They are not scum, because if we treat them like scum, we are treating God’s creation (and indirectly, Him) as scum.

Q: Should we joke about others for the sake of our own amusement?
A: In most situations, no. There is a world of difference between jesting and mocking. There is nothing wrong with poking fun at someone, so long as you’re not hurting their feelings and they’re able to get a good laugh out of it themselves. In my mind I can see the disciples joking around with each other about fishing and tax collecting and their other various backgrounds prior to becoming disciples because after all, they were human, and it's inhuman not to enjoy a good round of laughter. However, mocking someone is wrong. Always. If you believe a person is flawed mentally, morally or spiritually, and still you laugh at their expense, odds are you’re mocking them. This is not something the people of God should be doing under any circumstances. Ever.

A hierarchy of friends and influence

Is it okay to befriend homosexuals?

“No!” is the kneejerk resounding cry of much of modern day Christianity. But upon closer inspection, what would Jesus do? Would He befriend homosexuals? Let me ask a more poignant question: is there anyone Jesus would NOT befriend?

We can learn a lot from Jesus’ life here on earth. Jesus had His closest circle of friends, the 12 disciples, but He certainly never turned anyone away. He ate with tax collectors (Mark 2:15-17), He talked with prostitutes (Luke 7:36-50), He approached people possessed by demons who were naked and probably very unsightly (Luke 8:26-33). Even those with leprosy (Luke 17:11-19), whom the rest of the world had ostracized and rejected, He sought out and healed. He was the ultimate Befriender of sinners, and never did He play the holier-than-thou Christian card (at least in the Pharisaical sense). Are we to then aspire to be enemies of sinners in the name of this very same Man, the Son of God? Or rather, should we be enemies of the sin that is in them?

By the way, if you take nothing else away from this post, I highly recommend you look up Luke 7:36-50. Read it over several times. Isn't the response many modern Christians have to homosexuals cut from the same cloth as the Pharisee's response to the prostitute in verse 39?

A homosexual should not be one of our closest friends as Christians. Our closest friends should be the ones who we want to morally rub off on us (because they will) and therefore should be people who believe the same things we do, at least the most important things. (Major on the majors, minor on the minors as my pastor always says. You don’t have to cut them off from your closest circle of friends because they do/don’t believe in speaking in tongues, that’s a minor.) However, do we not have different tiers of friends in our lives? We have our acquaintances, our buddies, and then our second family. While homosexuals should not be our closest friends, can they be our friends at all?

It is okay for Christians to have non-Christian friends. At my workplace, other than one other guy to my knowledge, I am the only Christian. That does not stop me from being friends with my coworkers. I work on projects with them, I shoot the breeze with them and sometimes I hang with them outside of work. Recently I went with three of the younger guys to take a tour of Coors brewery on a Friday afternoon (and yes, I had a beer there). I will diverge from them and hold up a halting hand if they want to go to a strip joint or something like that, and I will not allow myself to spend inordinate amounts of time with them because they do not have the same beliefs and values that I do. Nevertheless, to an allowable extent, they are my friends.

If we don’t befriend people, how can we reach them with the love of Christ? If we never allow ourselves to interact with them, how can we love them? (see Matthew 5:14-16 and 9:12-13) I’m not saying we should necessarily go out and try to locate homosexuals to be friends with (we probably shouldn’t), but if we happen to find ourselves in a situation with a homosexual, is it okay to befriend them in a way that does not forfeit our morals and standards? Looking to the ultimate role model, Jesus, I think we can assuredly answer with a “yes.”

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another except for homosexuals.
John 13:35

Darn it, I keep quoting from the oft-used but Biblically deviant 21st century Christian’s translation. Here’s the correct passage.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John 13:35

Once again, no modifiers on “one another.” We must extend love to everyone. Everyone.

Conclusion: razing the un-Christlike Christian response to homosexuals

“You are the scum of the earth, the kind of stuff I scrape off of the bottom of my shoe, and I will not even bring myself to acknowledge your existence. I will sever bonds with anyone who has any kind of relationship with you. Oh but Jesus loves you! Believe in Him!”

Anything wrong with this picture? Love cannot be shown and felt through hatred. To love people as Jesus did, we must start where He started: treating all other people as human beings with souls of immeasurable worth in the eyes of our Father, not scum. We skew and obscure the loving heart of God in our lives when we are so degrading and hateful toward other people. Hate the sin, not the sinner. However don’t just not hate the sinner, and don’t be indifferent to the sinner, love the sinner. The greatest witness you can show to someone who does not believe in God is to show them undeserving love, from one sinner to another.

On September 14, I saw the awesome hardcore band Blindside in concert. Just about a quarter of the way into the concert, I unavoidably had to face a reality about two members of the small crowd that night: they were lesbians. Not only that, but they were pretty proud of their right to be, you could tell. Now, one way I could have responded to them would have been to treat them with utter disdain, shirking away in disgust as if they had leprosy and holding my pristine, untainted Christian nose high up in the air. I chose to respond to them like I would anyone else in the crowd: I didn't pay them special attention because I was there to see the band, not fluff my Christian ego. If they had initiated a conversation with me, I would've chatted to them in the same manner I would have with anybody else. These are LIVING, BREATHING, DYING SOULS, not bugs to be squashed underneath the cross-shaped treads of our unblemished, white Christian sneakers. Do I disagree with them on the morality of being lesbians? Absolutely. Do I then justify treating them like they're carriers of small pox? Absolutely not.

In one of the most powerful lyrics I have ever come across in a song, Anberlin (who I'll actually be seeing tomorrow night) dares to challenge the hypocritically hateful, rejecting followers of the most loving, accepting Man to ever walk the face of the earth.

You made his faith disappear
More like a magician and less like a man of the cloth
We're not questioning God
Just those He chose to carry on His cross.
-Anberlin, (*Fin)

Jesus loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8), and He commanded us to love others as He did (John 13:34). We have to love other sinners. The wayward ones, the seemingly hopeless ones, the morally degenerate ones. We have to love them all. We can't love people from an arm's length or with a ten-foot pole. Let's stop this cliquish nonsense, for we are no different than the Pharisees. Christianity is not a members-only club for the spiritually elite, it is a ministry for the lost and damned. And any attempt at ministry is impotent if we relegate ourselves to the sidelines, neglecting the lost until they have their act together and we deem them acceptable enough, when in reality we should be loving them so that we can show them the remedy for getting their act together.

Sometimes an outside perspective says it all.

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Is God a Broncos fan?

Alright, I don’t want to be a tightwad obsessing over minutia, but I encountered an interesting idea yesterday that I thought was worth posting about. It’s one of those things that operates so subtly that we are unaware of its presence, even though it has the potential to snowball into something that has a meaningful impact on our beliefs about life, the world and God.

Yesterday was the Broncos’ second game of the season, against the Cincinnati Bengals. Watching the Broncos play is a revered pastime for many Denverites, for the boys in orange and blue represent our city and make us proud (when they’re actually playing well). The game ended with the Broncos narrowly avoiding a comeback by the Bengals as they were driving down the field to score a winning field goal with just under 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Nevertheless, the Broncos stood their ground and stopped them on 4th down. After the game wrapped up and a round of high fives was exchanged, a friend I had watched the game with added an interesting piece of commentary: “That was the Lord’s mercy.”

I don’t want to come across as an insolent jerk looking down from my high and mighty pedestal. That is the last thing in the world I hope to accomplish with this post, so please, call me on it if you notice me beginning to scuttle down that path. My aim is not to discuss this occasion or individual specifically but the underlying assumptions and what their ultimate implications are in a more serious situation. Anytime you make a declarative sentence with ‘God’ in it, you are making a theological statement. And any theological statement will reveal something about our beliefs. Kinda scary! I know I make statements flippantly that are very theologically unsound. Gotta keep control of that tongue of mine, and the heart whose abundance from which it speaks.

If you’ve lived in Denver long enough, you’ve most likely seen this bumper sticker at one time or another:

Now, a lot of people are not going to take this bumper sticker seriously. The notion that God created sunsets in the beginning with the Denver Broncos in mind is absurd and usually does not even need to be pointed out. It is a joke, one to be enjoyed for what it is worth. And yet, do some people not secretly believe this? If God is pulling strings for the Broncos to secure a win, wouldn’t that make Him a Broncos fan?

As innocent and harmless as it may seem, this bumper sticker actually symbolizes a spiritual problem that affects the faith of many Christians and would-be Christians: seeing what they want to see in God, forcing Him into the cookie cutter of their liking. The important shortcoming illustrated in this example, something we all can and do fall victim to, is this: molding God around our life, instead of molding our life around God.

In our day and age, believing in God is like a buffet. You can pick and choose what parts and how much of them go into the god (lowercase 'g') you believe in. He is completely customizable. In our nation, God has become "Americanized" as a big ol' buddy who wants us to live a good suburban life in a nice house with a white picket fence, five honor roll students for children and a shelf full of golfing trophies from every competition we've ever participated in.

This can be a serious, serious problem, because it ultimately results in false theology. In its most extreme form, it is known as postmodernism, a worldview in which you construct beliefs about the world that fit your own personal preferences on how you want it to be. Oprah has helped spearhead this movement in her church that doesn’t believe in heaven or hell, sin, or salvation by faith in Jesus Christ alone. The staple postmodernist adage is “That may be true for you, but not for me.” The question is, “What would you like to believe?” It should be, “What is true, regardless of how you feel about it?” If we're not careful, God's desires begin to look conspicuously like our own, because we are casting our own earthen images onto Him.

A proposed method for soundness of belief

If I were to write a book on how to be as reasonably and logically sound as possible, I would construct a method something like the following:

1. Doubt the “givens.”
2. Play devil’s advocate for the alternative(s).
3. Argue back to the cause.
4. Discard the errors.
5. Revise the belief.

This method will reveal what unreasonable assumptions we’re making in our hearts and will illuminate what our actual arguments are for the subject at hand (and sometimes, they’re not pretty!). There is no reason not to try out such a method on our beliefs, because it will either prove them (in which case you can then present a defense for them) or disprove them (in which case you can clean house for beliefs that shouldn’t be there). In either case, you will gain strength in your beliefs and solidarity, solidarity that doesn’t come from leaving things unquestioned and believing them with unyielding narrow-mindedness.

The first step can be the hardest one for people to take: doubt the “givens” you’ve been taught and have come to believe with an iron fist. The ones that you’ve always left unquestioned, the ones that you think need no defense, the ones that you regard as untouchable and absolute truths, doubt them. If they are really true, you will be able to argue back to them with a sound, Biblical argument. If they are not true, you will reveal something that doesn’t truly have a solid basis and is not something you should be believing. Never be afraid to ask questions, because a question you are unable to give a solid answer to reveals a weakness in your worldview (of course, we can’t answer every question because we are finite, tainted creatures). It’s a win-win situation either way, nobody loses unless you refuse to try it.

The second step is also another hump to get over, playing the devil’s advocate for alternate worldviews and belief systems. Why should we do this? Because we often write off opposing viewpoints as being absurd and wrong before we’ve ever considered their “selling points,” the reasons why people choose to believe them just as strongly as we choose to believe our own beliefs. Calvinism answers its own set of questions about theology, while Arminianism answers a different set. Likewise, each has its area of difficulty in reconciling itself with other truths from the Bible. Some people who are brought up in one or the other never get to hear a good argument for the other, just a crass, mutilated one that has been selectively censored to portray only its weaknesses. They have been indoctrinated and have never paused to reflect, truly reflect, on the explanatory power the other has to offer. I personally believe you should not write off a belief as wrong until you have tried to see it through your own eyes so that you know exactly what you’re not believing. Otherwise, as ugly as this word is, you’ve succumbed to bigotry. Most bigots don’t know they’re bigots, because they think they’re just too right to even consider for a second that they might be wrong.

A wrong temper of mind about another soul will end in the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One carnal judgment, and the end of it is hell in you. Drag it to the light at once and say - "My God, I have been guilty there." If you don't, hardness will come all through. The penalty of sin is confirmation in sin. It is not only God who punishes for sin; sin confirms itself in the sinner and gives back full pay. No struggling nor praying will enable you to stop doing some things, and the penalty of sin is that gradually you get used to it and do not know that it is sin. No power save the incoming of the Holy Ghost can alter the inherent consequences of sin.
-Oswald Chambers

The next three steps come much more easily because by this point, everything has been made bare and laid out in the open. That which is ridiculous and/or unjustified will be pruned. That which withstands the test and remains true will now be held with greater conviction. Argue back to your original cause (if you still can), discard the errors you once held and revise the belief in light of the belief “audit.” You now have something of almost immeasurable value: you not only believe something, you know why you believe it, and it is not just a ‘why’ but a good ‘why.’

Preferences from "the man upstairs"

That was a lengthy aside, now back to the original topic. This is not a very serious topic compared to what we can believe (abortion, euthanasia, etc.), nevertheless a fault is a fault and paves the way for other faults. Let’s take the statement “It was the Lord’s mercy” about the Broncos’ win and put it through the scrutiny of the method.

1. Doubt the givens.

The given is “God is a Broncos fan,” not much more to say about it. Pretty clear-cut, although there is an even deeper given which operates even more subtly: “God cares about football to begin with!” Hmm, does God really care about where the pigskin falls? When Jerry Jones tries to “make a deal with the man upstairs” for his Cowboys to win another Super Bowl, is God really going to give ear to that “prayer?”

2. Play devil’s advocate for the alternative(s).

In view of the bumper sticker, are there any other teams that have orange as one of their colors? Ahh there are. The Cleveland Browns and (coincidentally) the Cincinnati Bengals. This puts God’s loyalty to the Broncos in jeopardy!

Also consider this, that the same scenario is almost surely playing out in the opposing team’s city: a family of Christians is watching the game and believes God is going to help their team win, because it is their team. Huh. Who is right? Is God going to have mercy on your team or mine?

3. Argue back to the cause.

At this point, we don’t really still have a solid case for the original statement. If anything, we’ve proved it to be faulty and wrong. Is there a verse from the Bible we can consult? Yes, there is.

For God shows no partiality.
Romans 2:11

Succinct and to the point. God does not take sides apart from upholding goodness. He loves what is good and hates what is evil (Psalm 97:10-11), but other than that, we really can’t make any theological statements about God’s preferences because He shows no partiality. Does He prefer the Broncos over the Bengals? If the Broncos are less immoral than the Bengals, then yes, He prefers their moral conduct, but that still says nothing about His preference for the winner of a football game between the two.

4. Discard the errors.

In this case, the entire statement is the error. It does not just contain an error in the fruit, it contains an error in the root. It is not erroneous that the Broncos are God’s preferred football team, it is erroneous that God prefers a football team to begin with. The Bible is filled with verses that reveal the heart of God: His heart for the poor (Luke 6:20), His heart for the widowed and the fatherless (Psalm 68:5), His heart for the lost (2 Peter 3:9), and His heart for His own people (2 Timothy 4:8). Nowhere do we read anything that can lead us to believe He cares about the outcome of a football game (caring meaning showing partiality). God cares about people’s lives and their eternal souls. He wants them, above all, to know they are loved and to be in a relationship with Him and walk in His ways.

5. Revise the belief.

What is left after the pruning? An entirely new belief: God does not care about the outcome of football games. He does not intervene in order to show His partiality for this or that team. He has much more important things on His mind.

Conclusion: remember God for Who He really is

It is easy to carelessly make casual statements like "God is a Broncos fan" or "God, please help the Broncos win." I myself am guilty of praying the second of those two in the past. But we need to be watchful of our lips and hearts, because false theology cheapens true theology (at least to us and others it does, but not in actual worth). Prayer for the Broncos cheapens prayer for one's mother who has cancer, because in one, the prayer is a desperate cry for healing, whereas in the other, it is wishful thinking for a leisurely pastime. Mercy for letting the Broncos win cheapens mercy that pardons sin, because in one, the mercy is tearing the person from the grip of spiritual death, and in the other, it is helping a bunch of guys wearing orange pants to get a pigskin down a field.

Who is God? What are the desires of His heart? What does He care most about? What breaks His heart? What fills His heart with joy? What does He want from us? How does He want us to live our lives?

While these all seem like easy questions from Christianity 101, we need to check our answers to them every so often. Sloppy theology is a bad habit, and if we're not careful we will sneakily transform God into who we wish He was, not who He truly is. If we've ever forgotten what the heart of God loves and hates and cherishes and abhors, we have access to the greatest resource on the matter this side of heaven: the Bible. All we have to do is pick it up, and we get a glimpse, more than a glimpse, into the heart of our Creator, Savior, Redeemer, Friend.

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me

Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity.
-Brooke Fraser, Hosanna

God does not change. He is the same today as He was yesterday and as He will be tomorrow, and He will stay the same regardless of our misconstruings of His character. Let us pray, then, that our imperfect vision would become ever more corrected with each passing day, that we may see Him as He is in actuality and praise Him for His wondrous deeds.

Christian music, an exposé.

Wow...it is 8:09 and I still haven’t eaten dinner. Writing is a leech...once you get into it and get wrapped up in it, you don’t want to stop until you’re done.

Of the plethora of objects/roles/actions in life to which the adjective “Christian” may be placed before in an attempt to sanctify or redeem the entity into something more holy, there is one that looms above all the rest, evoking various emotions from various people: from closed-mindedness to annoyance to flat-out embarrassment.

Christian music.

Some people love it. Some people hate it. Some people will listen to nothing but it. Some people will listen to everything but it. Where do I fall? Once again the maxim from a former post rings true: shades of gray, not black or white. The seesaw balances somewhere in the middle, rather than touching the ground.

May I pose an interesting observation, which actually applies to a lot more areas in life than just music. Many times, when a cult has been formed in favor of something by a certain group of people, and another group of people is not so peachy about said cult and really dislikes their fanatical zeal, they may (contradictably) form a counter-cult that is just as fanatically zealous, only in exact opposition to the original cult. Funny how we do this. “You’re being too closed-minded, so I’m going to be closed-minded in retaliation to your closed-mindedness.”

This post was inspired largely by my youngest brother, who, while he embraced Christian music with open arms just 3 years ago, decided to completely disown it as a whole at a certain time in 2009.

Before I say anything further, I will summarize everything I am about to say below, my own personal beliefs. And know that when I repeatedly say "we," I am not really referring to all Christians but the extremist minority when it comes to Christian music (who sadly, most believe represent all Christians because they are so extreme and loud about their beliefs). I just think it is a good habit to say "we" instead of "you" as a precaution to falling into pride and elitism (it all starts with pointing fingers).

I believe that “Christian” and “secular” music DO NOT EXIST, because everyone draws the line in a different location at where one ends and the other begins. “Christian” music was an endeavour that started out with a good heart and mission, but over the years things have gone horribly wrong, and for many people it has caused more harm (legalism, judgmentalism, musical closed-mindedness) than good. Nevertheless, as Martin Luther once said, we fall off one side of the horse only to get up back on it and fall off the other side. Some people reject Christian music with just as much fervor as they accepted it at an earlier time in their life. Once again, the dividing line has caused more harm than good.

The positive-encouraging syndrome

Many people who are raised in a Christian family will be introduced to Christian music at a young age. Before they are old enough to drive they may be taken to a Christian bookstore when their parents are shopping, at which they will scout out the music and familiarize themselves with it. Their parents will always play a CCM station like K-Love while they are driving somewhere in their car. Their young friends at church may discuss which bands they’re into, and soon enough a small cult mentality may have formed in which Christian music is the only music that effectively exists, rife with the “positive-encouraging” syndrome.

Fast-forward 5 years. The young posse has now grown up. One by one, slowly but surely, they have begun to ditch the music they used to listen to and have embraced “secular” music almost entirely. Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. I myself personally hate how the word “secular” slithers off some people’s tongues as if they’re imitating the serpent in the Garden of Eden and trying to convince me that secular music leads us down the wide road to destruction. There is a simple reality that any open-minded person realizes: there are some “secular” bands that have no equivalent “Christian” counterparts! Jimmy Eat World is one such band for me. There is no replacing them, they are who they are. I’ve gotta have the real deal.

It is GOOD for young people to shake off the I-can’t-listen-to-secular-music-no-matter-how-good-it-is-musically-because-it’s-evil mentality. It’s not Biblical. BUT! It is also not good for young people to accept an equally ridiculous I-can’t-listen-to-Christian-music-because-it’s-lame-and-I’m-a-musical-connoisseur type mentality. It’s okay to look back at your early Christian life and see little legalistic sins you’re now mature enough to be ashamed of (such as listening to only Christian music and judging others who don't), but to cast Christian music off completely in order to distance yourself from that past foolishness and give yourself a cool, mature reputation is not okay. It’s just as legalistic.

But the question lingers, a very very important question. WHAT THE HECK IS CHRISTIAN MUSIC? It’s a definition that apparently all Christians are supposed to know innately, but when it comes time to actually define it, a universally accepted definition cannot be arrived upon! I don’t know about you, but things that have no definition have no place in my mindset, because things with no definition are just that: meaningless. An objective framework built on a subjective foundation is still subjective.

Years ago I was a regular forum member on JesusfreakHideout.com. This is a great website for tracking and keeping up with bands/artists who are signed to records labels run by Christians (notice I did not say “Christian labels” but “labels run by Christians”) and other bands/artists who are not signed to such labels but whose members have professed to be Christians. However, you cannot post on their message boards without quickly coming across the legalistic mindset with regards to music. ONLY Christian music is allowed to be discussed. A secular song posted in a “What are you listening to?” thread will be deleted upon first sight by a moderator. Some Christians engage the world with their Christianity, while other Christians cordone themselves off in a “Christian bubble.” A quick visit to JfH’s message boards always makes me feel claustrophobically confined in a small, airtight religious bubble that seals off the rest of the world like Truman Burbank’s world in the movie The Truman Show. Nobody talks about what exists beyond the walls, so it comes to effectively not exist in their minds.

Now, is there anything wrong with limiting the conversation on a forum to a certain designation of music? Not at all, at least in a balanced, respectable manner. It is good for forums to establish a central theme for their topics, otherwise there may be an information overload of anything and everything, and the original purpose of a forum will be defeated: bringing people of a common interest together for discussion. You find a forum that is for your specific interest, and you post there, whether that interest be knitting, Greek mythology, or beagles.

But once again I must raise a questioning cry: what on earth is Christian music? Let’s take some stabs at a definition.

"Christian music" definition attempts

Perhaps it is artists who create worship music and whose lyrics are always about God and our relationship with Him. These are songs that connect you with God, causing you to remember His character and what He’s done for you. These songs produce thankfulness, awe, joy, faith and peace in your heart. I can accept such a definition for “Christian music”. However, everyone knows that Christian music is not just relegated to this small sect. There are bands who do not always sing songs of praise, and yet their music is deemed “Christian.” Relient K’s newest album consists almost entirely of breakup songs, and yet JfH and others would still label it “Christian.”

Perhaps it is artists who are signed to a “Christian” record label. (Ugh I hate using “Christian” as an adjective. Who decided a noun and a rarely used adjective could become a common-as-all-get-out adjective used for anything? Shame on you.) Tooth & Nail is the behemoth of Christian record labels, complete with all of its subsidiaries (BEC, Solid State, etc.). Again, this can’t be true, because bands such as Lifehouse, Anberlin, Red, Relient K, and Switchfoot are not currently signed to such labels and are still listed as Christian bands. (Lifehouse is the most important band in that list in light of this discussion, since they have never been signed to a Christian label for a day of their lives.) And the word “currently” in the preceding sentence brings up an even more perplexing conundrum. What happens when a band leaves a Christian label? Does that band lose their “faith” and commit apostasy? Did Anberlin cease to be a Christian band after Cities, if they were ever a Christian band to begin with? We are just beginning to see exactly how ridiculous and legalistic this false dichotomy is.

Perhaps it is artists who profess to be Christians. What about bands such as The Classic Crime, in which at least one member is not a Christian? Is it majority rules or should such a band correctly be called 60% Christian? Wow, 60% Christian. Maybe we need to create a database with pie charts showing how Christian every band is? Then we run into the same brick wall: we have to define what percentage is enough to be a Christian band. We keep chasing absolutes and ending up in the whims and fancies of our own minds.

Perhaps it is artists who wish to be labeled as “Christian artists.” Nope. Mute Math is a band (an awesome one at that) who got quite upset when Warner Bros. Records decided to market them as a Christian band on their Christian sub-label Word Records. Mute Math eventually sued Warner for advertising them in a way that they never agreed to, which they believed would close many doors on the audience they would be able to reach with their music (understandable). The ethics of this decision of theirs as Christians (filing a lawsuit) is an entirely different discussion, but for the present discussion, it will suffice to say Mute Math won their lawsuit. Their self-titled album was re-released solely on Warner’s “secular” parent label. And yet, visit JfH and surprise surprise, you will see (much to Mute Math’s chagrin), Mute Math is still listed as a Christian band.

The lead singer of Mute Math used to be in the Christian band Earthsuit, so perhaps it is that once you are a member of a Christian band any future bands you are in will also be Christian bands. I don’t want to even humor that one because it’s so incredibly (pardon my unscholarly language here, not that I always use scholarly language in my posts) stupid.

Edit: As of my visit on August 30, while Mute Math's albums are still listed on JfH, the band is no longer listed in the artist database (I know they were listed several weeks ago, with their band pic being the one in front of a large tree). Could be coincidence, but makes me wonder if someone from there read this post!

Being a Christian band, whatever the heck that might possibly entail, is something you can’t even decide for yourself. It is decided for you, and you cannot shake it no matter what you say or do. I suppose it is a lot like having a royal heritage: there’s nothing biologically or noticeably different about you, you just have a blood that people have deemed to be royal.

Granted, in a topic posted 4 years ago on JfH, a moderator did write this:

Please feel free to check our Artist Database first as a starting point. We are by no means the "final authority" on the subject, nor do we profile every Christian artist, but it is a good place to start.

Sadly there is an underlying assumption in that confession that most people will not recognize they’re accepting, namely that a final authority DOES exist on the subject (and therefore Christian music definitively exists). Nevertheless, read what is said later on:

Sorry, but this thread is to ask and answer about specific bands being Christian (and yes, for the sake of the discussion and this website, bands can be "Christian").

Whoa, for the sake of this discussion and this website bands can be Christian? What about in reality?!? For the sake of a discussion, solipsism is a rational point of view. If you’ve never bored/excited yourself with a small dose of philosophy (whatever the case might be for you), solipsism is the belief that the only absolute truth that exists is that you yourself are alive. You may be hallucinating the entire world around you, or you may just be dreaming it all up. That is something you can never prove is false. Therefore the only thing you can accept with full certainty is that you yourself exist. Everyone and everything else you know may be figments of your imagination. But of course, it is very self-evident and apparent to our very nature that the world we are living in exists, as well as other beings. Sorry for the philosophical tangent, but hopefully I’ve made my point. For the sake of discussion, ridiculous points of view can seem credible. That doesn’t mean anything about how true they actually are.

What I hear from that second excerpt from JfH is this: “We don’t all agree that bands can be Christian, but we will make judgments and enforce rules to keep the discussion only about Christian bands.” Kind of contradictory, eh? Especially in a Christian context, where there are absolutes. It’s like me saying that pelicans don’t exist, but I’d like to tell you all about the reality and anatomy of pelicans and how to capture one if you see one. It’s a useless conversation, to try to talk absolutely about non-absolutes. You might as well be teaching a college course about Star Trek or Lady Gaga. (Which, sadly enough, both exist. Though Lady Gaga does exist, so that course isn’t non-absolute, it’s just sad.)

Let me make the most important point first.

1. There are two distinct functions of music. One is spiritual, and one is purely for entertainment. BOTH have places in the lives of the people of God.

All Christians should agree on the first function, worshipping God.

Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Psalm 150:3-5

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Colossians 3:16

Music is a very important way for us to bridge the supernatural gap between us and our wonderful King. There is something unearthly about music, indescribable, in how it invokes emotion from our hearts. Never do we mean something so deeply as when we sing it. Why else have men written love songs to their ladies over the millennia? When we sing to God, our hearts are professing one big “Amen” to everything we’re singing. We are singing to our first Love Who has captured our hearts with His beauty and grace. Worship does not consist only of singing and making music, far from it. But music is a form of worship that we cannot afford to ignore or give up, because it is something that is built into our very nature and therefore something that has the most potential to be used for communion with God.

However, this is not the only function of music, just as a microphone may be used for preaching or for performing stand-up comedy. The other function is art and entertainment. Art and entertainment are also built into human nature and something that we know very well. Expressing our creativity, making others laugh, admiring a great work of art, letting our feelings out. All of these are peculiarities that make us human and separate us from the animals and are often best tapped into through the use of art and entertainment. As I said in my last post on physical beauty, everything in creation tells us something about our Creator. The reason we love art and music and being entertained by them is because there is love in our Creator, in Whose image we were made, for these things as well. So we should be able to conclude that being entertained by music is a different function, though not an inherently heathen or sinful one.

I would imagine that 99% of Christians who listen to nothing but Christian music watch (gasp) secular movies. That is inconsistent. If you're going to be okay with one form of "secular" entertainment, you can't shoot down another for not being positive or encouraging enough. The question at stake is a philosophical, ethical one. "Is entertainment without spirituality sinful?" The answer to that question will tell us in what ways we can and can't judge Christians who are musicians.

We bring in many unnecessary and unBiblical problems when we try to cross these two categories or reduce everything into the first category. Does all music need to be worship music and serve the first function? Is it okay for Christians who possess talent and interest in music to pursue non-worship music? Not everyone is called to be a Chris Tomlin or a Matt Redman. Do we really believe we should force all Christians to be worship artists, even if they do not really have a knack or blessing for it? No wonder people don’t want to be labeled as Christian artists! They know that the second they are, the judgment comes crashing down on their heads!

Let me bring in an important example, Mat Kearney. Mat Kearney released his debut album Bullet in 2004 on Inpop records, a Christian record label. The album caught the eye of much larger labels and music big shots, and Kearney was eventually signed to Columbia Records, with which he has released 3 albums. Not once has Kearney professed to be a Christian artist.

But look at this post from a user at, where else, JesusfreakHideout. The language use referred to is the word “hell,” used in three songs on his newest album.

While I don't have any problem with Kearney's language use, I do question how his spiritual journey's going. It seems much too common for a Christian artist to start making it in the secular scene and soon after, God's nowhere to be found in that artist's lyrics (that said, all the more credit should go to Christian bands who persist in their obvious Christian message, even after making it in the secular airwaves - e.g., Flyleaf, NEEDTOBREATHE, Switchfoot, etc).

It is not fair to make allegations against someone for not filling the shoes of a role we ourselves decided to place them in. Kearney was referred to and held to the standards of "Christian artist," something he never claimed to be. If I were a musician, I don't think I would ever claim to be a Christian artist, because I know that I'd be walking a tightrope from then on, with people like the one above poring over my lyrics and then casting judgments on me.

Hear the levelheaded response from another user:

Why question someone's faith and the things that are "in his heart" on the basis of song lyrics?

I doubt that Mat Kearney is trying to reach anyone. You shouldn't expect that from an artist (who is a Christian) if he or she doesn't feel the need to. Music might be a ministry for some, but for most it is not.. thank goodness.

Poor Mat! His faith is being judged because of his music and lyrics! People like the first user are slapping his wrists like a nun with a ruler saying “Bad Mat, bad Christian.” How terrible for him to be judged this way! That makes me angry and sad at the same time. Christian non-musicians aren’t required to write music to God, so why is it demanded that Christian musicians do? Yes, worship music is a wonderful blessing and we should never deny that. But not every Christian musician is able to create that specific type of music, and we should NOT judge their faith by the music they make, so long as their music/lyrics are not dishonoring to God!

One of the most life-changing books I’ve ever read is called Creation Regained by Albert Wolters. (He's quite a smart and literate fellow, as you will see below. The quote I post from him actually only consists of three sentences, two of them being 92 and 86 words long.) In it Wolters talks about how before the Fall, everything was good. Sin was the introduction and source of evil. (Duh, you’re thinking.) Therefore, why do we now, after the Fall, act like everything that is not inherently spiritual is evil? A “secular” song, not containing sinful lyrics, would have been good before the Fall. And guess what? It’s good after the Fall. Wolters discusses the “cultural mandate” in Genesis 1:28, in which we are commanded by God to “be fruitful...and subdue the earth.” He goes on to say:

We are called to participate in the ongoing creational work of God, to be God’s helper in executing to the end the blueprint for his masterpiece. . . .

If we fail to see this, if we conceive of the historical differentiation that has led to such institutions as the school and the business enterprise, and such developments as urbanization and the mass media, as being basically outside the scope of creational reality and its responsible management by the human race, we will be tempted to look upon these and similar matters as fundamentally alien to God’s purposes in the world and will tend to brand them as being inherently “secular,” either in a religiously neutral or an outright negative sense. . . .

However, if we see that human history and the unfolding of culture and society are integral to creation and its development, that they are not outside God’s plans for the cosmos, despite the sinful aberrations, but rather were built in from the beginning, were part of the blueprint that we never understood before, then we will be much more open to the positive possibilities for service to God in such areas as politics and the film arts, computer technology and business administration, developmental economics and skydiving.
-Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, pg. 44-45

To me, this was life-changing to read. It’s something I should’ve known already, but I didn’t. The areas of life I used to consider “secular” I now know are not, for they were created by the hand of the One Who is good in everything He does. When you manage a business, you are fulfilling the cultural mandate, subduing the earth, and glorifying God. When you cater a lunch for an event, you are fulfilling the cultural mandate, subduing the earth, and glorifying God. When you mop floors as a janitor, you are fulfilling the cultural mandate, subduing the earth, and glorifying God. It relieved so many perplexities in my soul to learn this! No more do I just consider ministers and missionaries as having jobs that glorify God. Yes, their jobs are very important and they have a special level of responsibility in shepherding the people of God in light and truth, but they’re not the only ones who glorify God through their work. IT administrators glorify God in their work. Photographers glorify God in their work. Engineers glorify God in their work. Each one of us is able to display the glory of God through some aspect of creation. Yes, we should use those things to praise Him and lead others towards Him. But there are many, many jobs that do not have a spiritual connection at first glance, but spiritual doings would never be possible without them! How can you be missionaries to a foreign country without transportation and the people who make transportation happen? If everyone were ministers, there would be no pilots or flight attendants. Pilots and flight attendants do their part in subduing creation and bringing glory to God.

The fact of the matter is this: people are Christians or non-Christians. Things are not. I remember a dissenter on JfH back in the day who challenged the idea of Christian music by stating that his toothbrush was neither Christian or non-Christian, but merely a toothbrush. While I do not remember the guy's screen name, the "Christian toothbrush" has stuck with me to this day. One of the few times in which I believe the word Christian may acceptably be applied as an adjective is when it is used to define the actions and attitudes of a person, such as in Christian living, Christian beliefs, or Christian morals. These words may have the word Christian placed before them, because Christianity in its truest form provides definitions for each of these areas. Now, a t-shirt can’t be Christian. A t-shirt is an inanimate object. Even if it were animate, it wouldn’t have a soul. Something that doesn’t have a soul doesn’t have the possibility of having a relationship with God. A t-shirt may promote Christianity or it may mock it, but then again it’s not the shirt that’s Christian or non-Christian, it’s the shirt’s message. A message is something that can be Christian or non-Christian, because it is inextricably tied to human beings and their doings. Only people can be Christians (noun) and their characteristics Christian (adjective). The sacred-secular split is entirely manmade, as my pastor once wisely said.

2. We hold musicians to a higher (or rather more legalistic) standard than everyone else.

Do we demand that our garbage men be “Christian garbage men?” Or that our electricians be “Christian electricians?” Or that our roofers be “Christian roofers?” No! What would those fictitious positions even entail? Would the electricians wire every circuit in the shapes of the words “Jesus saves?” Would the Christian roofers only use cross-shaped shingles? It becomes so ridiculous when you think about it. We are okay with them being garbage men, electricians, and roofers who are Christians, who live like Christ with their lives as they do their jobs. And yet, for musicians, we demand more of them. They must be Christian musicians, and must do their jobs in a way that fits into our little Christian-ized box. While it isn’t required of me that the sentences I write in an engineering report at work be “Christian sentences,” Mat Kearney’s lyrics must be “Christian lyrics.” The Christian world can be so judgmental with a standard that doesn’t even apply to everyone, and therefore is probably not a righteous standard.

Why stifle someone’s outward expressions and talent and stuff them into somewhere they don’t fit? That would be like telling all authors who are Christians that their books must have a spiritual message. That would be stifling a lot of God-given creativity and juices! And the result would be a lot of forced hands and books that aren’t genuinely written, possibly cliché and lifeless in content. I am glad that we have authors who are Christians and write spiritual books, and I am glad that we have authors who are Christians and write novels. They both glorify God, but in different ways and through different abilities. Please, PLEASE, let’s stop trying to force the second function into becoming subsumed by the first one. We do ourselves no favors by trying to resist what is part of our nature, given by God, and in the end it only leads to confusion and restlessness of heart.

Conclusion: stop casting lightning bolts of judgment

As we saw earlier in my post, an exact definition of Christian music cannot even be agreed upon. The line is thick that divides Christian music from secular music, and most of us would say there is no line, just a gradient blending the two. If no dividing line exists, how can any separation exist? Sure, there is music that we know is dishonoring to God, that is sexually immoral, vulgar, full of angst, etc. There is also music that God's people use to commune with Him and praise Him, worship music. But what about everything in-between? To make sweeping statements is quick but will result in a faulty view on the matter. To make a careful examination will be lengthy and require a lot of time (as you have seen) but will be much more balanced and therefore less full of false judgments.

There are no such things as Christian musicians, but musicians who are Christians. Musicians who are Christians perform the duties of their jobs just like plumbers who are Christians. They do it to the best of their ability, without sin as much as possible, with lovingkindness and gentleness like Jesus had. They have a personal relationship with Jesus that you cannot (and should not) judge the measure of by the content of their job. Yes, by the way they do their job, but not the content of their job. Otherwise we will be telling the plumber his pipes can only carry holy water. We can't look at their resumes to gauge their spiritual maturity, for their true state of heart is just that, in their heart and therefore hidden from our eyes. Keep your eyes on your own two feet, and know that a person's salvation and standing is ultimately between them and God.

Music serves two functions, and one of them is just entertainment. Watching the virtuoso violinist furiously conquer a melody with so many notes the sheet music he's reading from is almost entirely black, hearing a harpist perform a celestial tune at a wedding reception, listening to your little brother play his first piece at a piano recital. All of these are music used for entertainment, but that does not make them sinful. It is merely different from worship music in the way it glorifies God, but alas, we are so quick to declare difference as decadence.

To the pure, all things are pure...
Titus 1:15

That which is undefiled by sin, God looks upon it and honorably decrees, "It is good." That which has been defiled by sin, God looks upon it and declares, "I can impart redemption and make it good again." Encompassed by one of these two categories, nothing is truly secular.

The Ugly Face of Beauty

Working in the real world and having your own place sure make it harder to blog...especially if you like to write about deep subjects that require long, prolix posts to dig into. It’s been a long time since my last post. I was very pleasantly surprised to not be disowned by many people for that post. (Woohoo!) There are only two, actually, who seem to have severed all bonds with me. That means that most everyone who disagrees with me let me have my opinion and not let it affect our relationship. That’s the way it ought to be. :) Anyways, it’s time to whip out a topic that’s been churning in the ol’ noggin’ for months now, slowly cookin’ away like a roast in a Crock-Pot.

There is an age-old question lurking in the back of every guy’s mind, one that most Christian guys will not even acknowledge is there, let alone attempt to answer. For me, even mentioning this question makes me uncomfortable, and I want to move on to the next topic or suddenly start making idle chitchat about the lovely weather we’ve been having in Denver (even though this summer the weather consisted mainly of monsoon rains for several weeks on end).

The question is this. “Does physical attraction matter in a girl?” Of course, the way in which questions are posed often limits the range of answers that can be given to satisfy them. This is a logical fallacy, a trap, called “plurium interragationum,” known in layman’s terms as a trick question. Notice that the way I phrased the question allows only two possible answers: yes and no. If you answer yes, you are deemed by many as a shallow and superficial person. If instead you answer no, you’re left standing there scratching your head, because physical attraction is an innate, fundamental trait of human nature given to us by our Creator: women desire to be recognized as beautiful, and men desire to be the recognizers of that beauty. To deny this is to deny reality, a facet of human existence that is self-evident. Sometimes it can be hard to know what exactly to believe, but when something contradicts what is self-evident, that belief must be rejected.

Let’s try rephrasing the question. “How much, or to what degree does physical attraction matter?” Now we’re talking, or talking it out, rather. An unhelpful yes-no question has been opened up for discussion, and an honest answer can be sought. This is not an easy question to answer, but like all important questions, we must seek to answer it as best as we can. This is my best shot.

On the one side of the fence we have the world in all of its superficiality. The world, through the use of media, tells us what it thinks we ought to look like. Men are dashingly handsome and women are stunningly beautiful. Never are they overweight, but always fit as a fiddle. They have no blemishes in their complexions. Men will have ripped abs and women a perfect hourglass figure. In Hollywood, people get numerous plastic surgery procedures done on themselves to keep themselves in accordance with these “beautiful” standards, and fake has become the new definition of most real to many. People, especially women in the eyes of men, get reduced to mere objects that are nice to look at (yes I used “that” instead of “who” as the relative pronoun for effect).

On the other side of the fence we have certain people, regardless of religious background, who will tell you that physical attraction does not matter at all. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” they’ll tell you. They try to convince themselves and others that paying any attention at all to beauty makes you a shallow person. Such people are few and far between, but when you run into them you always remember it, because you feel horrible about yourself afterwards. If you’re a guy, you go home and set a resolution for yourself for the future: you will disregard physical attraction completely from now on. How long does that last? Until the next time you see a pretty girl. Again, disregarding physical attraction completely goes against the way we’re wired, our DNA.

As with most things in life, the correct answer does not lie on the extreme ends of the spectrum but somewhere in between, a shade of gray. Finding that shade of gray is very difficult and time-consuming, and as faulty, sinful human beings we can’t even be 100% sure we’re right when we find it. Although just because we know imperfectly does not mean we give up knowing and thinking altogether. We were given minds to think as our Heavenly Father thinks, to the best of our (limited) ability.

A very well-known Scripture verse on this topic comes from I Samuel, chapter 16. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” In a very direct manner, we are told what God cherishes most: our hearts. And what God cherishes is what is best, because God is the epicenter of all that is good. But notice what the verse has established: the heart is more important than the outward appearance. It outranks it. But does this mean that the outward appearance doesn’t matter at all, or that it is bad and something to be cast away? Ahhh it does not.

Let’s jump over to Song of Solomon. If ever you wanted to find a missive in the Bible where the physical beauty we identify by nature is presented, this is it. All throughout the book, he is gushing over his lover’s appearance; only one chapter does not refer to her as beautiful, and in several instances in the other chapters it is “most beautiful among women.” In chapter 7 he compliments her feet, thighs, navel, breasts, neck, eyes, head, and even her belly and nose. This chapter makes me breathe a sigh of relief. Beauty is NOT something we necessarily need to shun and abstain from admiring! From this we know that there is a way for beauty to be handled rightly, that we don’t necessarily need to become ascetics and reduce God and all of His world to colorless, drab monotony like nuns in black robes.

But what is this balance? It seems to be sitting on a razor edge.

Do I believe in love at first sight? Absolutely not, because love is not sight. Love at first encounter, however, is something I’m willing to accept. Deep down I know that love goes beyond appearance, and what matters most is who people are and what they live for. We are told, again by Solomon, in Proverbs 31 that “charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.” Gosh, how many guys have experienced this? Every one of us. We’ve all come across a girl who is outwardly very attractive, but even just a quick glimpse at her personality and character reveals a person that we might not even wish to have as a friend, let alone as our wife. I want to be accepted and loved for who I am, regardless of how I look, and I know from the Golden Rule that that is exactly the way I should treat others, especially women since I’m a heterosexual male.

But while physical attraction must take a back seat to character and inner attraction, it is not completely nullified. I myself dream of having a wife who is, in every respect, through and through, without remission, DROP DEAD gorgeous. When she walks into the room, even without makeup on and her hair all frizzled after she’s just woken up, I want my breath to be taken away. Literally. I want to be in awe every time I see her and never lose that sense of awe. I want to be unarmed with my knees weakening upon mere sight of her.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with dreams like this. After all, the reason we appreciate beauty at all is because 1) beauty exists (it was created from the mind of God, and any creation reflects some quality of its creator) and 2) our faculty to appreciate beauty exists (it was created so that the beauty could be enjoyed, otherwise the beauty goes unnoticed without beholders to behold it). We’re not misfiring on all cylinders when we notice physical beauty.

But how important is it that my wife be drop dead gorgeous? This is where I must talk to my mind and slap some sense into it. I wish for a drop dead gorgeous wife, but that quality is expendable. It doesn’t break any deals. Love is not diminished in any way in its absence. Who she is, and therefore my love for her, is not affected by how she looks. Sure, her face will come into my mind every time I hear her name, but that’s just because we put faces to names. We can’t really visualize someone’s soul, who they are inwardly, so the best we can do is to picture their face.

It saddens me when I realize how many girls I write off simply because of how they look. Conversely, I will notice an attractive girl and think to myself, “man, I wish she could be my wife.” What do I know about her? Nothing other than how she looks! I know just as much about her as I do about the girl next to her, but I’m only paying her attention because I admire how she looks. That’s me being shallow. Yes, I wish to have a beautiful wife, but I can’t let that overtake my discretion and become mandatory. If I can’t even tell someone what type of personality she has (i.e. I’ve never spoken to her or even been around her), how can I say I like her? I know nothing about her. I only like her image. Even if I do know her, I may still only be interested in her because of her image.

That’s a realization I think a lot of guys need to come to and accept. The first time you meet your future wife, the first thought that goes through your head may not be “man she’s pretty.” She may just be average-looking. But that’s okay, and you need to accept that. I need to accept that. Because while you wait around endlessly for that girl whose appearance meets your standards (your ill-imposed, unreasonable standards), you may be missing some great, great girls, who while they are not over-the-top beautiful on the outside, are inwardly as beautiful as they come. And when you fall in love, beautiful becomes redefined. Beauty becomes not so much “what” but “who.” You stop describing beauty by components (eyes, face, clothing) and define it by identity (character, personality, faith). As long as it has something to do with “her,” it’s beautiful to you. It’s beautiful the way she smiles with bubbling joy, or dances to her favorite song, or prays to God from the bottom of her heart, expressing her love for Him. The world may never recognize her as beautiful, whether they see these things in her or not, but does that really matter? We shouldn’t accept their standard anyway, so we really can’t give two hoots about what they think.

So unfortunately the answer to the question is not a sentence long, or even a paragraph long. The full answer would probably take a chapter to flesh out, possibly even a book.

In any case let me try to summarize it:

1. Outward beauty is not meaningless.

On the contrary, everything in creation gives us some insight into the character of God. It serves some purpose and, with the right disposition of heart and mind, is a good thing.

2. It is okay to appreciate outward beauty, as long as it is not done in a sinful, excessive manner.

Shallowness is not synonymous with recognizing beauty, but it is its own separate response that proceeds it.

3. It is not okay to award beauty the gold medal of highest importance.

We must fight the current and go against the grain of the skin-deep, plastic-minded fixations of the world we live in that we are bombarded with every day.

4. Like many things in life, sin occurs not simply when an action is present (admiration of beauty), but when that action is taken out of its proper order and placed above something truly more important (loving people for who they are).

It would take a long dissertation to argue for and I’m no theologian, but I propose that the following statement about sin is true: it never introduces anything new, it only rearranges the order of levels of importance. As long as everything is in the right order and receives the correct amount of our devotion, we are not sinning.

My challenge to guys is this. Keep on appreciating girls’ beauty, but loosen your grip on it when it comes to your future wife. Don’t morph into someone you’re not around beautiful girls and be all charming and benevolent but then suddenly turn into a cold, lifeless brick wall when a less attractive girl is around. If your eyes are open too much, blind them some, though you needn’t blind them completely.

Keep the eyes of your heart open enough to acknowledge and appreciate beauty as something carved from the fingers of God, but closed enough that they do not become covetous over an inferior beauty that is in some cases deceitful and vain, and in all cases fleeting and fading away.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Unity does not mean uniformity. It means diversity coming together.
-Bryan Sederwall, Denver Church

Alright. I feel like I’m playing with fire this post...but really, I shouldn’t. Since when did the truth become dangerous fire? If the truth damages, it isn’t the revelation of that truth that caused the damage, but the content of the truth itself. Therefore the fix comes by changing the content of that truth so that it is no longer true (creating a new truth), not from hiding that truth from view and stuffing it to the bottom of the barrel. I will take the truth at any cost, and I think others should, too. Again, if something is true, hiding it is the worst possible course of action, because then you are adding deception on top of a pernicious truth.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
-Albert Einstein

The first reaction to truth is hatred.
-Tertullian

Be still because what I'm about to say is the truth.
-Relient K

I am going to discuss my feelings and observations (3 of them) about Sovereign Grace Ministries that I have acquired in the past year. I hope my words are spoken with unwavering boldness and conviction but not with the very self-righteousness I am calling attention to. But very importantly, I want to start off by clearly defining what I am not.

I am not making statements that apply to every Sovereign Grace church and every Sovereign Grace member. My statements are generally characteristic of SGM at large, but that does not mean that everyone fits into this mold. Nevertheless, my deductions about SGM are from looking at the ministry at large, and therefore the problems I see are tied into the leadership, doctrines and practices.

I am not anti-Sovereign Grace. Not in any sense. It should not be reduced to an ultimatum where either I think Sovereign Grace is perfectly perfect or it is perfectly imperfect. There are flaws that I and many others have seen in Sovereign Grace Ministries that those in SGM are blinded to seeing themselves (like a fish in water, trying to define something that’s not wet). However, I am not bitter against SGM and am not out to prove that they’re the worst group of churches out there, a position taken by many a blogger on sites such as sgmsurvivors.com and sgmrefuge.com. No. Sovereign Grace is a group of churches filled with sincere people who do love the Lord and strive to keep the gospel central. There are many things I respect about them. However, there are flaws and shortcomings in their practices, some of which are breeding grounds for immense self-righteousness. I really hope you can defeat this stubbornness of opinion in your own heart if it exists: just because I have convictions against some of what Sovereign Grace does, does not mean I am against the entire ministry. However, I cannot with a good conscious bend myself over backwards to ignore my convictions. I don’t believe that is even Biblical.

Two more important things I would like to get out: 1) If you attend a Sovereign Grace church, please know that this does not change my opinion and outlook on you or your spiritual maturity. Chances are, I respect you greatly and have a lot to glean from you in a conversation. I am only pointing out what I have been led to believe as wrong in your group of churches, just as I know that the church I attend and I myself have areas that I am blind to and need others to point out. 2) If you disagree with me, that's fine. But please, disagree with me on the basis of reason and discernment, not on the basis of bias. Please don't just shoot my observations down just because you don't like them. I know your church may be very near and dear to your heart, but you can't award your church the medal of being immaculate. It is susceptible to error and sin. (To modify a quote, the church that believes it is perfect has already shown itself to be imperfect by claiming perfection. I think Spurgeon said it but I can't seem to find it.)

As you will later see in this post, I do not think Sovereign Grace is perfect by any means. If you attend a Sovereign Grace church, you probably don’t either. However, you may only assent to that general statement, but when the specifics are brought up about where it is imperfect, you may fall into denial. This can be proven further if I would ask you to provide me with three areas in which Sovereign Grace is imperfect. Taking it even further, I could ask you if you believed that Sovereign Grace is susceptible to falling into corrupted practices and doctrines. Lastly, I could ask you whether, if Sovereign Grace had fallen into corrupted practices and doctrines, the entire church body could be oblivious to it because they are so immersed in the Sovereign Grace culture. If you answered no even to that last question, then I think you have a very favorably biased opinion of SGM. You think SGM is perfect (practically, even if you wouldn’t deliberately vocalize it) and is not capable of sins on a broad scale, even though this is contrary to the heavy weight on indwelling sin that SGM stresses.

If there is one thing I have learned in the past year, it’s that anybody is susceptible to any sin. Look at the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11. David was a man after God’s own heart. Nobody in all the land of Israel could have conceived that he would have sinned so grievously by murdering Uriah and fornicating with Bathsheba. I am so glad this chapter is in the Bible. It is so easy to fall into thinking that once I become a Christian, I am not susceptible to committing such impending sins. I like to think that if I got married, I would be faithful to my wife. We would enjoy happy marriage all our days and I would never beat her. I would never leave her and my children. I would never, given a position of power, adjudicate the extermination of 6 million people. By God’s grace, I could keep myself from doing those things. But apart from Him, there is no guarantee. That’s a hard truth to accept. It may make some people frightened of me, that I have said I am susceptible to those sins. But I am admitting my susceptibility to those things not because I wish to do them, but because I wish very much not to do them. I myself am susceptible to murder, sexual immorality, rape, etc. It is at the very moment that I proclaim myself insusceptible to these sins that the devil has an entryway in to tempt me to commit those very sins, for sin is crouching at the door (Genesis 4:7). Sovereign Grace speaks more about self-righteousness than any other church I’ve been to. And yet, while at first glance it seems like this focused intensity should lend them greater victory over self-righteousness, it has actually (I believe) led to greater conquer by it.

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.
-Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda

On January 24, 2010, one year ago today, I left Sovereign Grace for personal reasons, nothing to do with the church itself. However, being on the outside has given me a critical perspective of the ministry that I believe is impossible to attain from the inside. (Indeed, correct self assessment is nearly impossible to attain. It’s like how the way we hear our own voice is different than it actually sounds.)

Many people who attend a Sovereign Grace church have done so for many years and were saved since they had started attending. I myself attended the same Sovereign Grace church for 11 years (we attended 2 other Sovereign Grace churches in El Paso, Texas and Fairfax, Virginia before that) and was saved at the Celebration conference in 2001. It is often hard for these people to remember what churches “on the outside” are like. They often have a skewed opinion of non-SGM churches that is a direct result of what I believe to be the biggest wrongdoing of SGM.

1. Sovereign Grace Ministries is, intentionally or unintentionally, elitist in nature (or at least a breeding ground for elitism).

Ask anybody in Sovereign Grace how much they love their church and they will reply, “I couldn’t be happier.” Nothing wrong with that! Praise God that they have found a church family that they can call home and serve the Lord with. However, they may also add on some of the following statements. “I would never move to a city that did not have a Sovereign Grace church.” “I could never go back to attending any church that’s not Sovereign Grace.” Now, I don’t want to make light of the fact that it’s difficult to find a good church that is not theologically off the mark. (Some churches don’t even mention the word sin. My dad’s church in Albuquerque put on a worship session that was more like a concert, and the pastor “preached” jokes more like he was a comedian.) Many people may have had bad experiences in other churches where the theology was so messed up that they were hindered from ever having a true relationship with God. I don’t want to make light of that fact. It is so difficult to fight the battles of life when you’re not in a good church, because when your soul starts going hungry, everything else goes with it. However, notice how the statements above are begging, BEGGING for elitist attitudes. Sovereign Grace is the only church you would attend? So you mean Sovereign Grace is the only type of church that God is 100% working in? It’s His favorite? The door is swung wide open, and elitism is just a step away from entering it.

It’s subtle and it’s small, but this tiny seed of elitism, when watered, can grow into a giant, flourishing tree. Many people in Sovereign Grace will, unknowingly, begin to look down on every non-SGM church. I know I did, and I know my former former pastor’s family did too. My family used to live 5 minutes away from them, so we would see them pretty frequently. One time we were riding with them in their old purple van (may it rest in peace) past a church that had one of those lettered church signs in front. “Gee, I wonder what it’s going to say today” one of the pastor’s children said in contempt. We all chuckled in agreement. “Poor, lost, wandering souls! When will they see the light and come to Sovereign Grace?” Those are the kinds of thoughts that were going through our heads. And looking back, what did those signs say? I remember one said: “What will guide your life: TV guide or the Word?” I remember laughing about this!! No, it’s not speckled with SGMish words like “grace” and “justification” and “propitiation.” But how is the message in any way spiritually impotent? We live in a media-satiated culture, but the Bible should light your path, not the television, is all it’s saying. Is that really that bad? Is it really worth making fun of because it isn’t “Breathe grace” or “Keep the main thing the main thing?” The fact is, it’s not unBiblical. It’s unSGM. And it is a very common practice for SGMers to confuse the two.

For SGMers, if they don’t see anything right off the bat that is wrong with another church, they will search to find something. It has to be there. All other churches are inferior to Sovereign Grace. A common one is that “Their worship songs aren’t doctrinally sound.” What does that even mean? They’re singing about Allah, or they’re not heavily mentioning what vile sinners we all are in every single song like SGM does? I remember how much I used to shake my head at songs such as Friend Of God by Israel Houghton. “What a pathetic excuse for a worship song,” I used to think. “Where’s the gospel in it? Why aren’t they singing about the blood of Jesus?” I shiver inside knowing that I used to think like this. We recently sang this song at my current church, Denver United, and it was an amazing experience. Our worship leader, Austin Pyle, loves God with all of his heart. He radiates Jesus like a star. He led us in this song, and my heart burst for joy by the end, reminded how I used to be an enemy of God, but now I am His friend. It is more of a miracle than I often given it credit that I am a friend of God. How is this not glorifying to God, celebrating that we are His friends? Why is it inferior just because it does not follow the formula of Sovereign Grace worship music? Where in the Bible does it say that worship songs must use theological words and present the Fall and Redemption in every single song? Yes songs about the gospel are wonderful, but why is a simple love song to God not enough? Is not a relationship supposed to be personal, not ritualistic? (Muslims pray the same thing everyday to Allah, so it’s not surprising that Allah is not a personal god. There’s no room for pouring out your heart; you stick to the code.) If Israel Houghton wrote the song Friend Of God from his heart for his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, how dare I look down on him because he doesn’t fit the SGM code.

You see, the problem with Sovereign Grace is not that they have convictions about how to do things. That’s part of being human. All churches have different convictions about how to do things. The pitfall of Sovereign Grace is that they believe that the way they do things is the only way to do them. That is the fruit of elitism. One of the biggest reasons I love Denver United is that they are so open (not unBiblically so) to many ways of doing things. We sing hymns, and we sing more upbeat, modern songs. Some people dance, while others were raised Baptist and just stand there during worship. Some songs are wordy, while others are very simple. The main point is that judgmental attitudes are cast out of the room. We are here to worship God. Let’s not judge what other people are doing, and say that only those raising their hands are really worshipping God. Let’s not condescendingly look down on the worship leader because he uses a song that does not mention the cross in it. Let’s not let our attention be so focused on how things are not going the way they would’ve in a Sovereign Grace church. Let’s worship God, as His people. We have come together to sing love songs to our Savior and let nothing else get in the way. That is the attitude of the church I attend, and that is why I love it so.

One thing that should be done in Sovereign Grace churches is that opinions put forth in the pulpit should be clearly, publicly designated as opinions, otherwise they become doctrines in the minds of the congregation. Several things that really achieved “doctrinal” status in Sovereign Grace over the years are homeschooling, girls going to college and courting. There was a point many years ago when you were expected to homeschool your children if you were a parent, not go to college if you were a girl and court if you were able to be in a relationship (which, according to Brent Detwiler and also taught as doctrine and not as opinion, is only if you’re in a position to have children). Those were givens. They were things you’d do if you were really a Christian. There is wisdom in each of those things, but they are not virtuous in themselves. It’s how and why they are practiced. Some people have come to their senses and relaxed up on these some over the years, but others still hold strong. I remember how lowly I used to think of people who dated, even if those people were sincere Christians. I used to think lowly of my cousins for dating, even though I had NO idea of what their relationships even looked like! How legalistic! The reason? I had been fed the idea that dating was inherently sinful and debasing to God. That thought had overtaken me, even though there’s no Biblical backing for it, and I had not even realized it. As I said before, many people have come to their senses about the whole courting obsession thing and actually allowed their kids to date. (I would have bet a million dollars five years ago that my former former pastor would never ever let any of his children date under any circumstances. His convictions have changed since, and thankfully I didn’t make that bet.) Nevertheless, there is a very important insight here into the functionality of Sovereign Grace: opinions become doctrines, and nobody realizes it. This is serious stuff. Look up Jesus' words in Mark 7:7 about those who "teach as doctrines the commandments of men." Since it is not kept in check, it happens all too easily, and suddenly you've come to believe that Peter was talking about Covenant Life Church in Matthew 16:18.

Of the five members of my former former pastor's family (who I love very much and now attend church with, save one), three of them have expressed to me at different times that they have been convicted so much about self-righteousness since leaving Sovereign Grace, and I'm sure the other two would offer similar sentiments. Even his wife expressed her sorrow that she had been so self-righteous in her thinking when it came to what were good churches. Yes, even the pastor's wife was not immune to getting her ankle entangled by the cords of Sovereign Grace elitism. Even the pastor's wife glided above the surface of prideful self-perception, never once having her spiritual conscience shake her awake to uncover what lied beneath. My point here is not to speak against her; she was only following the rites and rituals of Sovereign Grace as she was taught to do. She is a wonderful, sweet lady, and I love her so. My point here is to show how deeply the silent propaganda of Sovereign Grace elitism sinks down, even into those in positions of leadership and authority. Even they are numbed to the goodness of God outside Sovereign Grace and confined to everything that has CJ's stamp of approval on it. Therefore, this is a very dangerous problem. This is a problem that the leadership of Sovereign Grace do not and may never notice, because the problem is infused into their own thinking. (I have a hunch that if Tomczak were still around Sovereign Grace would be unrecognizable to what it is today. But then again, maybe that's why CJ pushed him out.) They are blind to it. Their minds operate on the idea that Sovereign Grace, while maybe not the perfect church, is the church that does things least imperfectly. Therefore, anyone who finds an error in Sovereign Grace is erring themselves. They are the ones who have yet to be enlightened to the powers of the Sovereign Grace way of life.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-Lord Acton

It is sad, but many who were saved in a Sovereign Grace church believe (sometimes involuntarily) that God could’ve only saved them in a Sovereign Grace church. There is a sort of second conversion, as it were. First, you are dead in sin. Then, you give your life to Jesus at a non-SGM church. Finally, and most triumphantly, you give your life to Jesus (really this time) at a holy, sacrosanct SGM church. There are many individuals/couples/families who give testimonies like this to Sovereign Grace congregations. There is almost as much emphasis placed on their coming to Sovereign Grace as there is on their salvation. The idea begins to grow that churches "on the outside" are all corrupt, and Sovereign Grace churches are the only good churches. Again, I don’t want to discount the fact that it’s very hard to find a good church. But believing that God can only work in a SGM church, or that He works His will most in a SGM church, is straight up elitism, and is the greatest problem in SGM.

Just recently, my church, Denver United, merged with another Denver church, named just that, Denver Church. The pastor of Denver Church, Bryan Sederwall (quoted at the beginning of this post), gave a message on January 9, 2011. He spoke from Psalm 133, a psalm of just 3 verses but quite a lot to offer. In the first verse, the Psalmist talks of brothers dwelling in unity and how good of a thing it is. Now, what would most likely come to the minds of a Sovereign Grace congregation if Psalm 133:1 was read aloud on a Sunday morning? Most likely, Sovereign Grace brothers dwelling together in Sovereign Grace unity. Unity to them is uniformity and, since Sovereign Grace is in the right, conformity to the Sovereign Grace movement. This is what many of their minds and souls have come to believe: when the Bible talks about the people of God, they immediately picture Sovereign Grace churches, Sovereign Grace churchgoers and their children and Sovereign Grace pastors. They do not picture many churches of different sizes and shapes, they picture one type of church only: their own. To them, the people of God and the people of Sovereign Grace are one and the same. This is, tragically, NOT what the Psalmist (and therefore God) intended to say in Psalm 133. It is very far from it. Just the opposite, he was intending to boldly proclaim unity across diversity among the people of God. The people of God is not a clique. It is a nondiscriminatory melange of people of all different vocational, racial, ethnic and (yes, also on the list) church backgrounds united together by one thing: Jesus. Denver United warmly accepted Denver Church into their church family with open arms and truly lived out their name of being united. This is not how it would've gone down in a Sovereign Grace church, where the Sovereign Grace pastor would've stood there, arms crossed and tapping his foot until the pastor of the other church conceded to turn his church into a Sovereign Grace church.

This is very important: if something is not spelled out clearly in the Bible, such as what kind of music to sing during worship or whether you should preach from 2 verses during a message or a large chunk of text, you must remain humble about the fact that you could be wrong. You are a fallible person, not the infallible God. Yes, live by your convictions, but live in humility that your convictions could be wrong. There are other people just as sincere as you in the faith that have different convictions than you do. How dare you judge them to be in the wrong? You are not the Judge of all the earth. I am not saying Sovereign Grace should stop doing what they’re doing. Absolutely not. They have sought God and been convicted to do certain things in their services, and that’s absolutely fine. If we believe nothing, we cease to function. We must have convictions and follow them. What I am calling SGM out for is their elitist attitude, bred in nearly every churchgoer beneath the surface. Sovereign Grace, you are not the only church God is working in and through. You are not the only church that does it right. And you are not as humble as you profess to be. Until you realize that and seek God’s help to change, you will remain elitist in nature.

Onto the second greatest problem I see in Sovereign Grace.

2. Sovereign Grace is un-evangelical, in nearly every regard.

Evangelism is not something Sovereign Grace does (at least on a church scale). Indeed, it is something they push aside outside of their spiritual conscience. Jesus’ last words before He left earth were His commission to us to make disciples of all nations. And yet, Sovereign Grace is a group of churches that never performs any outreach and never teaches their members to do so, either. What you get is a group of people who are too timid to preach the gospel even to their next door neighbor. They may do this by simply ignoring the verses about evangelizing. They may do this by twisting doctrines and saying “God will use someone else. He will accomplish His will and my not choosing to evangelize won’t stop Him.” Or they may do this by telling themselves “Not everyone is called to evangelize. I’m just not brave enough. Sorry, God.” To put it succinctly, and probably get a bunch of SGMers mad at me, the bottom line is this: You’ve been saved by God, you’re incredibly grateful to Him and indebted to Him in a way you cannot repay and you love Him with all of your heart, but it’s just too far of a stretch to evangelize for Him.

My pastor, Rob Brendle, has an incredible heart for the lost. “This church is not mainly for us,” he reminds us Sunday after Sunday. “It is for the lost.” Rob has a huge heart for the lost, and when I hear him speak, I hear Jesus in his words. He is not just concerned about polishing his congregation. Yes, he is concerned about spiritual growth; we went through a series called Grow from Colossians last year. But he has an incredible heart for the lost. And while there are many things I respect about Sovereign Grace leaders, you will not find this passion in them. They are very spiritual without being evangelical. It is all about what God can do in the saved, not how God can save the unsaved. If someone walks into a Sovereign Grace church’s doors, then the church will minister to that person and share the gospel with him/her. But there is no going out into the world to preach to the lost. There is no “getting your feet wet” to get to the spiritually dying, even though that is what Jesus did. Sovereign Grace is all about the saved, not the sinners, even though Jesus said He left heaven not for the saved, but sinners (Mark 2:17).

“Now wait a minute! My Sovereign Grace church prays for the lost!” That’s good. Prayer is indispensable. We should never do anything in our lives without prayer to God for help. But is prayer to replace other actions? Think about it. If you’re looking for a job (as I am), do you pray for a job, but then sit at home and do nothing? No! You pray and then look for a job. The prayer is what makes your searching fruitful (in whatever God’s will is), but it doesn’t replace it. This is quite a sad excuse. Imagine the person you love the most is dying in a hospital bed. There is medicine to cure him/her located in a city 400 miles away, but there is a shipment of medicine that has a 50% chance of being shipped in tomorrow. He/she will be dead by tomorrow night, just enough time for you to go to the city and get the medicine and return. Do you take your chances and wait for the shipment? No! You ensure your loved one’s well being and drive through the night to get the medicine. You realize that while God could use the shipment, He may not and you don’t know His mind. He could also use your driving to the city to get the medicine. You don’t get so caught up in fatalistic thinking that you become immobile. You realize that because God is sovereign, you can be mobile and He will bless it, however He chooses. Prayer should not produce inactivity. On the contrary, prayer should spur us onto activity. It is what enables us: God, in His power, aiding us. To say you pray for the lost and that’s enough is just a diversion from your true heart. There may be several roots of this thinking, one which I will mention later in point 3.

I’ve read that Christianity spread so well in the early centuries because the earliest Christians were so loving and embracing. People were touched by them, and God used that to open them up to accept the gospel. Contrast that to a SGM church, where the church is loving inside the church walls, but right outside there are people dying, both physically and spiritually. There is no direct, intentional outreach in SGM to the spiritually dead. To put it as a metaphor, the gospel is a vaccine, and we are the syringes. Syringes were made to transfer vaccines to dying people (I do not mean to say that God must use us to save people, but that is the main way He does so). SGM instead is concerned with endlessly polishing the syringes, while the vaccine tubes lie in their cases unused. It is all about making the syringes sparkle and shine, while the dead are dying on the doorstep just outside. Sovereign Grace churches are for Sovereign Grace churchgoers, not the lost.

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.
Proverbs 11:25

Open the Psalms. Read about how God can help you in trials. Open the Synoptic Gospels. Read about Jesus’ teachings and what we can learn from Him. Open Paul’s writings. Read about justification by faith alone and gradual sanctification. But make sure you stay away from passages about sharing to the lost. Quickly assent to the truth in Matthew 5:15 about hiding your light under a basket, then move on to something about how God can care for YOU. Again, there’s nothing wrong with reading about your relationship with God. We should always be growing in God and learning more about Him, seeking Him when we are depressed or stricken with trials, calling out to Him for more grace! But if this is all we do, then we are missing out on a huge part of why we were saved. We were not saved to just sit comfortably in our chairs on Sunday mornings sipping our Starbucks while people are going to hell all across the world. Really, if you’re not broken for the lost going to hell, how truly grateful are you that you yourself were saved?

This is the Sovereign Grace culture: you go to church and sing songs mostly by Bob Kauflin, Mark Altrogge, Steve & Vikki Cook, Pat Sczebel, and others, being constantly grateful that you sing songs that are actually pleasing to God (compared to all the blind wanderers in the world, stumbling in the dark in their folly). You hear a message by your pastor, being constantly grateful that you are hearing a message that is actually pleasing to God. You attend various Sovereign Grace meetings, being constantly grateful that you are spending time with people who actually know what’s pleasing to God. You buy the latest book by a Sovereign Grace author, being constantly grateful that you are reading a book that is actually pleasing to God. You attend the next big Sovereign Grace conference, and get so refreshed and filled up with God and encouraged and stirred up and provoked by everything that happens there, all actually pleasing to God. You do all this, while never casting the slightest thought or glance to those in the darkness, who desperately need a Savior. You are as shiny and gleaming as can be, like a trophy, and you must not be defiled. Therefore, you do not attend to the spiritually sick and dying, lest you become infected (even though, as my pastor wonderfully says, we are supposed to infect them, because God is greater than the one in the world!).

We are, by nature, receivers. Even if we have a desire to learn God’s Word, we still listen from a default, self-centered mindset that is always asking, “What can I get out of this?” But as we have seen, this is unBiblical Christianity. What if we changed the question whenever we gathered to learn God’s Word? What if we began to think, “What if I listen to His Word, so that I am equipped to teach this Word to others?” This changes everything. . . . God’s Word is no longer just being heard in a building. It is being multiplied through a community. It is multiplying because the people of God are no longer listening as if His Word is intended to stop with them. They are now living as if God’s Word is intended to spread through them. . . . Exciting things happen when the people of God believe the Word of God is worth spending their life to teach to others. . . . Whereas disinfecting Christians involves isolating them and teaching them to be good, discipling Christians involves propelling Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of others. . . . A community of Christians, each multiplying the gospel by going, baptizing and teaching in the context where they live everyday: is anything else, according to the Bible, even considered a church?
-David Platt

Onto problem number 3, which is a root of the first two.

3. Sovereign Grace is hyper-Calvinistic in their doctrines, meaning that they take Calvin’s teachings far beyond what they originally meant.

Calvin once said that half of all funds in a church should be given to minister to the poor. I don’t need to explain how SGM digresses from that one. Yes, SGM plants churches in other countries. That’s good. But what about other outreaches? What about reaching out to people on the streets of Gaithersburg, San Diego, Denver, wherever? What about reaching out to people who would otherwise never come to church? What about meeting their physical needs with love to open up their hearts to spiritual needs? What about feeding the poor, like Jesus mentions so often in the New Testament? This is not the teaching of Calvin’s that SGM takes to the extreme, however.

When God displays His power through mean and secondary causes, that power of His is never to be separated from those means or inferior causes. It is the excess of a drunkard to say, “God has decreed all that is to come to pass, and that must come to pass; therefore, to interpose any care or study, or endeavour of ours, is superfluous and vain”. But since God prescribes to us what we ought to do, and wills that we should be the instruments of the operation of His power, let us ever deem it unlawful in us to sunder those things which He hath joined together.
-John Calvin

Need I say more? If Calvin were alive today he would not be a Calvinist by SGM standards! He is not so incredibly fatalistic that he lets the providence of God overtake Him in a disastrous way and kill his passion for the lost. “God’s will will not be moved, so it doesn’t change anything if I do nothing” was not a thought that went through Calvin’s mind. He said that it is because God is in control that we can have success in anything. Our passion for God should spur us onto action! Because even though God’s will will not be thwarted, our love for Him causes us to want to be a part of it! We don’t want to sit around lazily and let others do His work. We want to be a part of it! We want to share the good news so that some will hear and be saved!

I am a Calvinist, but not overly so. God is responsible for my salvation. I could not have been saved without Him. It is His opening my eyes that made it possible for me to be saved. I am not good apart from Him. He loved me first and drew me first. Then I chose Him. We are jointly responsible, but my role is minute both in significance and impact compared to His. Sovereign Grace will disagree even on the last sentence. I couldn’t have chosen Him, because that means there’s good in me, more good than in those who didn’t choose Him! But what are the implications of such a doctrine? If we don’t choose Him, then He makes us choose Him apart from our will. It is a kneejerk reaction. He reaches inside us and causes us to choose Him. That doesn’t paint a good picture of God. That means that we are robots, swaying whichever way in the wind that God blows it, with no free will. I am only a Christian because God overrode my free will and programmed me to choose Him. Those who are not saved did not have their free will overridden by Him. Therefore, God plays favorites. (or He chooses randomly, not much better)

You see, I am not trying to claim any righteousness in my action of choosing God. Look at all the disclaimers I said above! God is the first cause of my salvation. He choose to keep me alive instead of cast me into hell. Then He drew me by His Spirit. Then He opened my eyes. After all this, enabled by His Spirit’s grace, I chose Him. That was the secondary cause, enabled only by the first cause. God is the empowerment of my choice; without His grace I cannot make the choice. Say I am a man drowning, and a lifesaver is thrown to me (the gospel). I can choose to grab ahold of it, but that still doesn’t save me. I still have to be pulled in. The power of someone pulling me in saves me. My grabbing is only a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient to save me. It does not become focused on what I did (grabbing the lifesaver) unless we choose to focus our attention there. I did one little thing, but God made it all happen. He deserves the glory. I only did what I did because He changed me. But denying what I did leads to fatalism, making us all automatons.

This doctrine, I believe, is one thing that leads to the elitism of SGM. “God chose to work in us, but not others.” “God chose to reveal the truth to us, but not others.” “God led me to a Sovereign Grace church, therefore it must be the best (nevermind that He led other people elsewhere).” How can you believe all those statements without believing that there must be something special in you that made God choose you? Even if you profess that you are not worthy, the logical conclusion that may undetectably operate is that you were worthy (or very lucky). Under this guise, you don’t need to do anything. Doing anything might even interfere with God’s work! Leave the lost alone. If God wants to save them, He will strike them with a lightning bolt and suddenly they will know the gospel. No use sacrificing your comfort to talk to one of them, it could be awkward!

I am very aware that this all applies to myself, as well. I could fall into elitism against Sovereign Grace. I don’t want to do that. Woe to the hypocrites, as Jesus declared! (Matthew 23) I must proceed forward, learning from the past, so that I do not come to see Denver United as the perfect church. It is not. I love it to death. But God works in a variety of ways. He works in different kinds of churches and different kinds of people in different ways. Rob is one of them, and I love him so. He has become one of my heroes in the past year, and is one of the most respectable men of God I can name in the Denver area. But He is still fallen. He is fallible. What he or his church does is not the only way to do things. He is one of many, and I open my arms wide to the others that God uses.

Sovereign Grace let their guard down against elitism (self-righteousness), and it crept in, surreptitiously. Sin has blinded them to its presence, and it would take a great work of God in order for the blinders to be removed. Nothing is impossible with God, though do not be deceived: it all starts with humility.