“That is the God for me!” by John Stott

On Weddings and Conscience: Are Christians Hypocrites?

— Sunday, February 23rd, 2014 —

Today Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt wrote an article for the Daily Beast accusing conservative Christians of hypocrisy and unchristian behavior for suggesting that some persons’ consciences won’t allow them to use their creative gifts to help celebrate same-sex weddings. Since I was a key example of this hypocrisy, I’ll respond to that charge.

At issue is a response I made, reposted this week over at the Gospel Coalition, helping a Christian wedding photographer think through whether he ought to work for a same-sex wedding. In the photographer’s question, he grapples with the question of how his conscience ought to play in this decision not only as it relates to weddings of people who, for all he knows, might be involved in all sorts of unbiblical behavior. Powers and Merritt suggest if he refuses to photograph one “unbiblical wedding,” he ought to “refuse to photograph them all.”

As a matter of fact, they say, to do anything else is to be “seen as a hypocrite” and to “heap shame on the gospel.” More specifically, they point to my advice that the photographer doesn’t have a moral obligation to ferret out the circumstances behind every wedding he shoots. I am telling him, they say, to do something “wrong” as long as he doesn’t investigate the background. “Apparently, ignorance is bliss.”

This sort of sarcastic response could just as easily apply to the biblical text at the root of our conversation: the Apostle Paul’s teaching on the conscience in the context of the marketplace in Corinth. Paul tells the believers there that they have no obligation to investigate whether the meat set before them was sacrificed to idols. If something’s put before you, Paul says, eat it to the glory of God, no questions asked.

But, the Spirit says through the Apostle, if the food is advertised as sacrificed to idols, abstain from it for the sake of the consciences around you (1 Cor. 8:7-9). I suppose the first-century Daily Beast could have sarcastically dismissed this with “ignorance is bliss.”

The article quotes me telling the photographer that he need not investigate the background of every wedding he performs, but they do not quote the next sentence: “But when there is an obvious deviation from the biblical reality, sacrifice the business for the conscience, your own and those of the ones in your orbit who would be confused.”

Here’s why this matters. The photographer has, in most cases, no ability or authority to find out the sorts of things a pastor or church elders would about a marrying couple. Most evangelical Christians, this one included, believe there are circumstances in which it is biblically moral for a divorced person to remarry. And all Christians—regardless of what we think about a church’s responsibility—think that marriages between otherwise qualified unbelieving men and women are good things, grounded in a creation ordinance.

It’s possible, of course, that the man and woman who’ve contracted with a wedding singer are just marrying to get a green card. It’s possible that they don’t plan to be faithful to one another. It’s possible that she’s already married to three other men. It’s possible that their love is just a reality show stunt. Or, to take us back to Corinth, it’s possible the blushing bride is the groom’s ex-stepmother. But unless the photographer has a reason to think this, he needn’t hire a private investigator or ask for birth certificates and court papers to make sure it’s not.

In the case of a same-sex marriage, the marriage is obviously wrong, in every case. There are no circumstances in which a man and a man or a woman and a woman can be morally involved in a sexual union (I have no reason to assume that Powers and Merritt disagree with apostolic Christianity on this point. If so, they should make that clear).

Now, the question at hand was one of pastoral counsel. How should a Christian think about his own decision about whether to use his creative gifts in a way that might, he believes, celebrate something he believes will result in eternal harm to others. I recognize there are some blurry lines at some of these points. But what isn’t blurry is the question of state coercion.

It’s of no harm to anyone else if Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt (both of whom I love) think me to be a hypocrite. It’s fine for the Daily Beast to ridicule the sexual ethic of the historic Christian church, represented confessionally across the divide of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy. It’s quite another thing for the state to coerce persons through fines and penalties and licenses to use their creative gifts to support weddings they believe to be sinful.

That’s broader than just homosexuality. I don’t want wedding singers forced to use their lyrics and voices to tell us how great it is that Herod and Herodias or Henry VIII and fill-in-the-blank wife’s name are soul-mates.

This article maintains that there are no circumstances in which the Bible “calls Christians to deny services to people who are engaging in behavior they believe violates the teachings of Christianity regarding marriage.” Really?

Does that apply only to the morality of marriage? Should a Christian (or Muslim or Orthodox Jewish or feminist New Age) web designer be compelled to develop a site platform for a legal pornography company?

Now, again, we might debate the best ways to see to it that consciences are protected by law and in the courts. But acting as though those concerned about such things are the reincarnation of Jim Crow is unworthy of this discussion. Moreover, the implications for conscience protection are broad and long-lasting. This isn’t just a tit-for-tat Internet discussion. The lives and livelihoods of real people are on the line, all because they won’t render unto Caesar (or to Mammon) that which they believe belongs to God.

And we might disagree about what sort of pastoral counsel should be given as a Christian seeks to live out his or her life in the marketplace, but in order to do so we’ll have to deal with what the Bible teaches about our responsibility both to love our neighbors and to testify to what we believe to be true: That they, and we, will face a God who has revealed himself in our consciences and in the Scriptures. We might disagree on whether or when to bake the cake, but surely we ought to agree that it’s worth at least asking the question of whether and when the icing on the cake might imply, “Hath God said . . .?” (Gen. 3:1)

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 23rd, 2014 at 8:29 pm and is filedunder Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments Feed feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

“I no longer believe this is so”

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:15 AM PST

“As I have thought perhaps more quietly than in previous days, it has seemed to me that in the past there has been a fallacy in my thinking.  That fallacy is simply this: that insofar as we are so abundantly right (as we are concerning the Biblical position), therefore it would certainly follow of a necessity that God’s rich blessing would rest upon us as individuals and as a movement.  I no longer believe this is so. . . .

What does all this mean to me?  I am not sure, except that it brings me increasingly to my knees – to ask that the Holy Spirit may have His way in my life; that I may not think just of justification and then the glories of Heaven (with merely a battle for separation between).  [But that I may also think of] all the wonders of the present aspect of my salvation, and that they may be real to me in my life and ministry.  What a wonderful Lord we have, and how glorious it is to indeed have God as our Father, and to be united with Christ, and to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  Oh, would to God that our ministry could be under His full direction, and in His power without reservation.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, personal correspondence, 26 October 1951.

None Like Christ, None Like Christ, None Like Christ

Posted: 23 Dec 2013 05:00 PM PST

John Brown of Haddington (1722-1787):

If I never write to you more, let these be my last words:

There is none like Christ-none like Christ-none like Christ. . . .

There is no learning nor knowledge like the knowledge of Christ.

No life like Christ living in the heart by faith.

No work like the service, the spiritual service of Christ,

No reward like the free-graces wages of Christ.

No riches nor wealth like “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

No rest, no comfort, like the rest, the consolation of Christ;

No pleasure like the pleasure of fellowship with Christ.

Little as I know of Christ, and it is my sin and shame that I know so little of him, I would not exchange the learning of one hour’s fellowship with Christ for all the liberal learning in ten thousand universities, during ten thousand ages, even though angels were to be my teachers.

Cited in Joel Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality, 220-21.

The two Jacks: Contrasting takes on C.S. Lewis and JFK’s

public and private faiths

Justin Taylor and Joe Rigney | Nov 18, 2013 | 1 Comment

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C.S. Lewis photo courtesy C.S. Lewis Foundation/Public Domain

(RNS) In November of 1963, C. S. “Jack” Lewis knew he was dying. The Irish-born literary scholar, children’s author, and Christian apologist had come out of a coma in July, only to be diagnosed with end-stage renal failure. He retired from his post at Cambridge University, choosing to die at home in the Kilns, where he lived with his brother, Major Warren (“Warnie”) Lewis.

On Friday, Nov. 22, he retired to his bedroom after lunch. At 4:30 p.m. GMT he took some tea. An hour and a half later, Warnie heard a crash and discovered Jack unconscious. Within three or four minutes, he was dead, exactly one week shy of his 65th birthday.

A few minutes later (11:39 a.m. CST), Air Force One touched down at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, as a motorcade prepared to take President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, along with their entourage, to the Dallas Business and Trade Mart. But the motorcade never arrived at its destination.

After the president suffered mortal gunshot wounds to the head at 12:30 p.m., his limousine rerouted to Parkland Memorial Hospital where the 46-year-old president was dead upon arrival.

It is no surprise that the death of the Irish-American Jack — the leader of the free world in his prime, tragically murdered in public view — overshadowed the quiet death of the Anglo-Irish Jack, a man who never held public office and who only had a few people at his funeral, but whose fame and fans continue to increase 50 years hence.

Given that both men had to navigate the tension between private faith and the public square, it is fitting on the 50th anniversary of their deaths, which falls Friday (Nov. 22), to compare and contrast their approaches.

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President and Mrs. Kennedy arrive at Love Field in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Photo by Cecil Stoughton, courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Lewis had become a devout Christian in his early thirties, so much so that a friend once referred to him as “the most thoroughly converted man I ever knew.” But he did not believe in theocracy, calling it “the worst of all possible governments.” Lewis did not blame the tyranny of religious fanatics for their religion, but rather for their hubris and pride.

For Lewis, the fundamental issue was not the content of a leader’s beliefs, but his humility and orientation to power and authority. He wrote, “The higher the pretensions of our rulers are, the more meddlesome and impertinent their rule is likely to be.”

While Lewis was playing offense against this ultimate undermining of true religion, Kennedy had to play defense. He was, of course, our first (and thus far only) Roman Catholic president. The novelty of a Catholic seeking the president in a historically “Protestant” country required that he offer reassurance that his religious convictions were compartmentalized from public positions.

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” he told a group of Protestant ministers, “where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”

Kennedy insisted that his religious views are “his own private affair” and that no one should vote against him (or for him, for that matter) simply because of his affiliation with the Catholic Church. Kennedy wanted Jefferson’s wall of separation to be high and impenetrable, but he wanted both sides to know their place.

But what of Kennedy’s claim that his religious views are his own private affair? Today, of course, the idyllic picture of Camelot and the Kennedy family has been marred by subsequent revelations and allegations of sexual indiscretions and adulterous liaisons in his private life. While the extent of his infidelity may never be known with precision, virtually no one disputes that his personal life was marked by extensive unfaithfulness to his marriage vows. Thus, whatever was exerting influence on Kennedy’s personal sexual behavior, it was not the ancient values of Christian morality.

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(1960) President-elect John F. Kennedy discusses refugee problems with Dean Francis B Sayre, Jr., of Washington Cathedral (Episcopal) and chairman of the U.S. Committee for Refugees. The 30-minute meeting was held at Mr. Kennedy’s Georgetown home. Religion News Service file photo

Lewis would have been deeply suspicious of a politician like Kennedy who once said, “Our problems are man-made; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.” Lewis may have agreed that all of our problems are man-made (with some assistance from a darker power). However, Lewis would insist that precisely because our problems are man-made, the ultimate solution must lie outside of ourselves, in the Creator God who made us and sent his Son to deliver us from all evil, whether political or personal.

It is this good news that ultimately arrested Lewis’ own slide into debauchery and bleakness as a young man. Christianity was not wish fulfillment for Lewis, something he had been preconditioned to receive. Rather, he described himself as “the most reluctant convert of all time,” coming to Christianity “kicking and screaming.” But he had been confronted with the truth of the Christian gospel and could not turn away. And it is this same gospel that confronts each of us as individuals with its demand to surrender, to bow the knee, to lose our life, and then offers us deliverance from all of our pettiness and pretensions, our envy and debauchery, our pride and deceit.

And so, on the 50th anniversary of their deaths, we would do well to consider what the beliefs and actions of these two Jacks have to offer us — for good and for ill, both in terms of our politics and our own private lives.

(Joe Rigney is assistant professor of theology and Christian worldview at Bethlehem College and Seminary and the author of Live Like a Narnian. Justin Taylor is senior vice president and publisher for books at Crossway and the co-author of The Final Days of Jesus.)

To the congregation of Lifespring Church,

As has been discussed, we as a church have some decisions to make concerning the future of owning the building we currently worship and fellowship in.  Discussions have led to one conclusion thus far, WE NEED TO PRAY.

Pastor Eric and the Transitional Shepherding Team are asking YOU to pray.  Pray to the Lord for His council.   Offer Him a hallowed worship.  Come to Him humbly, asking for His direction, offering obedience, recognizing His sovereign plan is greater than we ourselves could ever come up with.

We dare not ask God to bless us in OUR plans, but rather be blessed in following Gods plan.  In doing so, God is glorified!

Please pray for Pastor Eric, TST, and Mike Hyland as we look at all angles in this proposal.  Pray for unity.  Pray for us that through the Spirit of Jesus Christ, which dwells in us, we recognize Gods leading.

Do not be fixed on Pro’s or Con’s or the What If’s, simply focus on Gods supremacy, His outpouring of wisdom. 

“Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom.  Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”  Proverbs 4:7

We also invite all to pray every Sunday at 9:00am, Fireside Room.

Thank You,

Shane Plemel

Transitional Shepherd