Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Archives for February 2020

On discernment ministries

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I recently read a post by a pastor who, with a broad brush, condemned all “discernment ministries” as being unloving and promoting disunity in the church.

The concern is that such statements could be construed as saying that it is wrong to exercise discernment. Are we to take the position that anyone who claims his teaching is Biblical and can cite a few verses to support their teaching should be accepted? Are we to remove all theological boundaries as to what is in accord with Scripture?

I think the answer to both these questions is an emphatic “No!”. Note what the Apostle Paul tells his Philippian readers:

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Philippians 1:9-11 (ESV) (Emphasis Added)

How is it that we are encouraged by Paul to be discerning yet discernment is wrong and promotes disunity? The fact that we are to approve what is excellent implies that we need to reject what is not.

There are other instances of Scripture encouraging us to seek out the truth and reject teachings that do not align with Scripture. It is the responsibility of elders to fulfill this function and thus protect the church from error.

For example, Paul gives this instruction to Timothy:

“As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.”

1 Timothy 1:3-5 (ESV)

I think it would be difficult to build a case that it is acceptable for Timothy to confront wrong teaching but it is not acceptable for leaders today. If it is the right thing for Timothy to do, it is also the right thing for us to do.

I am not writing this as an endorsement of all that is on the internet with regard to discernment or “calling out” of church leaders. Too often statements are taken out of context and sensationalized to mean something that the original speaker did not intend.

Another error of “discernment ministries” is that they often use guilt by association. It is not right to condemn someone solely on the basis of who they hang out with. A cursory reading of the Gospels reveals that this was a favorite tactic of the Pharisees, who were rightly condemned for using it.

The third error of some discernment ministries is that they resort to ad hominem attacks rather than appropriately detailing how a particular teaching is contrary to Scripture. There is nothing wrong with challenging an idea but we should do it in a loving way and not attack the person.

While we should be careful before condemning anyone, when there is someone promoting error in the church, it needs to be addressed.

The confrontation should be done in a way that seeks restoration of the one who is in error. It should be done without contempt toward the person who is in error. But if bad theology is being taught, it is important to show why it is wrong. Such teaching needs to be addressed.

My last point is that true, Biblical, discernment seeks the best for everyone, even the one in error.

A Challenge from Os

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I was challenged by this paragraph and thought I would share it:

The faith-world of John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, John Jay, William Wilberforce, Hannah More, Lord Shaftsbury, Catherine Booth, Hudson Taylor, D. L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Oswald Chambers, Andrew Murray, Carl Henry, and John Stott is disapearing. In its place a new evangelicalism is arriving in which therapeutic self-concern overshadows knowing God, spirituality displaces theology, end-times escapism crowds out our day-to-day discipleship, marketing triumphs over mission, references to opinion polls outweigh reliance on biblical exposition, concerns for power and relevance are more obvious than concern for piety and faithfulness, talk of reinventing the church has replaced prayer for revival, and the charateristic evangelical passion for missionary enterprise is overpowered by the all-consuming drive to sustain the multiple business empires of the booming evangelical subculture.”

Os Guinness in Prophetic Untimeliness

Well said. There is much in this for church leaders to consider and discuss.

On Selective Denouncement

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The author of Hebrews says this about Jesus:

“You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

Hebrews 1:9, ESV

One thing we should keep in mind as church leaders is our tendency to be selective in the things we denounce. I have seen this tendency in myself and others and it has been a persistent problem for my entire church experience.

It is quite easy to find reasons to be angry about stuff that we don’t struggle with or stuff that we think we have straight in our own lives. We can fuss over our pet peeve and ignore some other things that God would like to see changed in us.

In my lifetime, I have heard angry rhetoric about the “culture war” and complaints about the erosion of morals in our country. While we may have a case that the sin we are condemning is truly condemned by God as revealed in the Bible, we also need to understand that our anger is not tempered, as it out to be, by the intensity of love that God has displayed through his Son Jesus.

The danger is that we can fail to admit to our own hard-heartedness and lack of love for those we denounce as sinners. When we do so our hypocrisy is on display for everyone to see, even if we fail to see it in ourselves.

We should constantly keep in mind Jesus’ parable about the log and the speck. My neighbor’s speck can only be confronted after the log is removed from my own eye. The trouble is that my log-eyedness is a chronic, not an acute, symptom of my sinful nature. So, I must admit that I have never been in a log-less state and am therefore unqualified to condemn anyone else.

Recognition of the logs in our own eyes should mediate the tendency to jump on the issue-of-the-day and keep us from being out of balance.

Yes, we should hate the things that God hates, but we don’t have the option of being selective in which ones we condemn.

Also, we are not in a good place if we do not at the same time love all the things that God loves. We don’t have the option of being selective in our loves either.

Perhaps this would be a good place to quote one of the most familiar of Bible verses:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 (ESV) (Empahsis Added)

Os Guinness on Progressivism

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I thought I would offer another quotation from Os Guinness because it hits on something that has been bothering me about much of the drive to grow very large churches. Mr. Guinness writes:

“For those who subscribe to ‘progressivism’ . . . progress by definition is good, always good, self-evidently good, unquestionably good. Reaction, by definition, is bad. The world is getting better and better. Whatever is is not only right but a great deal better than what was. And of course, whatever is next must be a great deal better still. The word ‘progress’ simlply makes it so and tells us so. We are not asked to think. We are not even given the opportunity or the criteria to judge for ourselves. If it’s progressive, by definition it must be good. If it’s reactionary, it obviously must be bad, and that’s the end of it. Discussion over.”

Os Guinness in Prophetic Untimeliness

We expect this type of thinking from political progressives, but unfortunately, this thinking has crept into the church.

In some churches, the words tradition or traditional are used in a pejorative sense. Anything that smacks of tradition is considered harmful to the desire to grow a large church. And since bigger is always better, tradition cannot be good.

In such churches the parable of new wine into old wineskins (Matthew 9:17) is reinterpreted to mean that old is automatically bad and new is automatically good. I will leave it for another post to present my thoughts on what this verse is really saying.

Using the mindset that new is automatically better, leaders can then find an excuse to ignore denominational boundaries and violate their oaths to follow constitutional guidelines. But every institution, including the church, has a process for its bylaws or constitution to be amended. The problem is that progressives are often unwilling to follow that process because it takes too much effort and takes too long.

I am not advocating a slavish adherence to tradition. Constitutions can be amended. Traditions can and should be reevaluated to determine if they are helpful in the current cultural context. But there is an appropriate process for these amendments and reevaluations to follow.

In the church, the why we do things should always be determined before the how we do things. In the church, the why should always be drawn from Scripture and not from a pragmatism that is based on increased attendance or increased contributions.

New is not always better.

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