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The Great Upheaval: Higher Education and Beyond

4/19/2022

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What’s the future of higher education? Will colleges survive? What’s happening to the academic institutions we know and love? Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt address these questions in The Great Upheaval: The Past, Present, and Future of Higher Education. For me, these aren’t abstract questions. I’ve been asking them a lot the last few years. From 1998 to 2021, I was constantly part of the academic world, first as an undergrad and grad student, then as an adjunct professor, and then as a full-time, tenured professor. But I knew something was wrong at my institution, a small Christian college. I’m not sure when the full weight of the change hit me, but perhaps it was the day I walked from my office on the third floor through the rest of our building and didn’t see a soul in the middle of the day. I walked past the second-floor library, the first-floor atrium, down the hallway toward the chapel, past the student life office, and around the cafeteria and the gym. No one. Not a person. Many institutions are experiencing numeric decline, but ours was swift and steep. We went from approximately 330 students when I came in 2008 to just under 200 in 2017, to around 90 in my last year in 2021. Certainly, our experience the last few years was a “great upheaval.”

​Although every institution’s struggle has unique components, it’s helpful to place that uniqueness within a wider history and context, which is why I found The Great Upheaval helpful and enlightening. In 2021, Jeff Fisher, Sarah Behm, and I left higher education to start The Foundry, a nonprofit ministry that provides biblical and practical training for leaders at every level. So I was also interested to see what trends or insights Levine and Van Pelt offered for people like us, who love teaching and learning, but have moved beyond the walls of traditional institutions. In today’s post, I’ll highlight two observations, and continue with more in a later post.
 
1. Our current model of college is very recent, a blip on the historical radar.  

 

The book is divided into three sections: a look back, a look sideways, and a look forward. In the first section, they survey the history of colleges and higher ed in the United States. They note that colleges and universities struggled to adapt to the changing world of the industrial revolution, and they chart the nearly 150-year process of adapting to the changes on technology and society, and the implications for schools. They note that industrial era schooling reflects industrial practices. There is a focus on putting all students through the same process. So this model of schooling looks at things like seat time and credit hours. Just like all cars on the assembly line go through the same process, so all students in the school go through the same process. This section highlighted that our current models of college are very recent. As someone born in 1980, my generation grew up with the expectation that everyone should go to college. But the current college model really only solidified in the 1960s and 70s, and it’s clearly on the decline again. The current models of college and the expectation that college should be a universal experience is a very short window historically. A massive shift has already begun in the broader culture. Colleges and universities that ignore it will only feel its effects sooner.
 
2. Higher education is way too expensive, and it’s not about to change.
 
In the second section, a look forward, they survey factors affecting the future of higher education. Due to a demographic sea change, colleges and universities in the Midwest and Northeast are more likely to have enrollment challenges than those in the South and West. Many small colleges will close. Even larger ones that fail to adapt will be at risk. Further, there are radical shifts in the broader culture taking place, including the swift transition to a knowledge economy and the digital revolution. A key factor in higher ed’s inability to adapt is its financial model.  
 
Higher ed is way too expensive. In my case, I’ve been focused on training people going into full-time ministry. That’s not a high-paying field. So when I hear about people who are $40, $60, or $80,000 in debt going into ministry, I get mad, quite frankly. My dad and both grandfathers were both pastors. Christian colleges (and churches that require college degrees) are condemning some ministry leaders to literally a lifetime of debt. And, unfortunately, the only changes to the current financial model are some slight tweaks, in most cases. The current model is broken, and it’s leaving students broke. As the authors say, “Higher education as a whole is unlikely and frankly unable financially to go beyond adopting marginal remedies—limiting its tuition increases, growing its financial aid budgets, and increasing its student discount rates, the difference between its official price and what students pay” (121). In other words, the best higher ed can do is tweaking a broken system. Levine and Van Pelt point out the oddity of how higher ed institutions budget, a “cost-plus” pricing model where they determine expenses before setting their prices, a model opposite of how most organizations and households budget. In the normal, non-higher-ed world, you generally look at how much revenue and/or money you have to spend, and then budget based on that income. On top of that unhelpful financial model, the authors point out that higher ed generally grows through addition rather than substitution, further driving up costs. Finally, college is an economic anomaly in that competition actually increases cost rather than driving it down. The race to add more buildings, more sports programs, better food service, and more state-of-the-art classrooms all increase costs rather than drive them down.   
 
I don’t know how to solve the systemic issues at play here. But I know what I can do: as someone who provides the teaching and training needed, I can construct a much less expensive alternative. Colleges and seminaries cost so much because students pay for much more than the actual learning: administrators, buildings, numerous staff positions (at our previous institution, the total expenses for faculty and library resources was something in the ballpark of 15% of the yearly budget). For a while I tried to shift the direction of my previous institution back toward ministry training and formation. But then Jeff, Sarah, and I began to ask: what if you built something where the actual teaching and learning (rather than buildings and bureaucrats) was the primary expense? It would be significantly less cost to the students and significantly more sustainable in the long run. We could provide the same training and equipping at a small fraction of the cost. Furthermore, rather than pinning the cost of an education on a young person at the beginning of adulthood, we could partner with churches, who clearly have a stake in raising up and equipping the next generation of leaders, to make Bible and ministry training much more financially sustainable. I’d seen this modeled in my Master’s program at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, which operated out of one floor on a building in downtown Toronto. What did they have to offer? Stellar teachers and a learning community. No rock walls, no athletic infrastructure, no frills. Just a community of learners committed to learning and growing together—imagine that! 
 
But I can also hear the obvious question: no frills, but no degrees. Isn't that a problem? Good question.
Next time I’ll dig into more observations from The Great Upheaval, including why degrees will matter less as we move ahead and why non-traditional organizations like The Foundry have a lot to be hopeful about looking ahead.  

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Think Little: Loving God and neighbor through education

9/3/2020

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What is education for? The following is a convocation address I gave in 2010 at Kuyper College. 

1. The Command

In its simplest, broadest form, you can sum up our calling as Christians with the two-fold command: love God and love your neighbor. This is good. I have no qualms with these commands. But there is a problem. The problem is similar to a problem that I’ve seen in some well-intentioned friends of mine: they have a big goal for their life, whether it is a specific career or a specific vision of what they want their life to be. But the problem is this: they can’t figure out for the life of them how to get there from here, how to get where they want to be from where they are. The problem with the love command, I think, is a little bit like this. Who among us, hearing this command, thinks it’s a bad idea? Nobody! But the devil is in the details, so to speak. So, given that I assume we all want to love God and love our neighbor better, how do we get there from here? It’s okay to think big (“I want to love people!”); but what does that look like in our day-to-day lives? Love has to take a concrete form, and to do that, I would suggest, we must train ourselves to think little.

2. Think little: The virtue of love acts in concrete ways; or, Christianity is boring

What is a virtue? Thomas Aquinas says that a virtue is “a good habit consonant with our nature.” A habit is something we initially have to choose to do but, the more we do it, the more it becomes second nature, our reflexive response to situations in life. The fruits of the Spirit, including love, are virtues, habits of living that we are called to develop in our life, based on the Spirit’s work and empowerment. A virtue is not just a good habit, but one “consonant with our nature.” The birds of the air and beasts of the field instinctively act in a way consonant with their nature. Humans alone are capable of choosing to act in a way that is “against our nature,” in a way that produces disharmony and disorder. So, when we talk about developing the virtues, we are talking about the conscious discipline of living in line with the way God created us to be: in communion with him and with the rest of his creation, including other human beings.
When we think about the virtue of love, it is crucial to note that this virtue manifests itself in the concrete, little details that make up everyday life. Consider the instruction God gives to Israel in the Torah. “Love” of God and neighbor is the broad umbrella of this instruction. But what does love look like in specific circumstances? One brief example will have to suffice.

Deuteronomy 22:1-4, 22:8: If you see your brother's ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but be sure to take it back to him. 2 If the brother does not live near you or if you do not know who he is, take it home with you and keep it until he comes looking for it. Then give it back to him. 3 Do the same if you find your brother's donkey or his cloak or anything he loses. Do not ignore it. If you see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help him get it to its feet. When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.

This stuff is wonderfully boring! It says, “God cares about the little things.” God cares about building codes, and the basic rules for lost and found. Elsewhere, we see that God is concerned about the schedule of wage payments, good treatment of animals and neighbors, about care for those with physical needs, about fairness in judgments, about gossiping, and the list goes on. The New Testament echoes this: 1 John 3:13-18. Love will show itself by providing food for those who need it, not just praying for them.

The point is that, as the British poet William Blake says, “He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.” This sounds easy, but it isn’t. The Russian novelist Dostoevsky has written: “One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it’s almost impossible.” It is impossible not simply because people are often difficult to love, but because it requires another virtue: courage.

3. The Christian life therefore requires courage to think little, be boring, and persevere in love.

Americans are in love with celebrity, heroes, and spectacle. This includes the culture of American Christianity. Superstar preachers and a Christianity based on the emotion generated by the latest and trendiest songs is nothing new; it’s deep in the DNA of the American Christianity. But, what we need, I submit, is a generation of anti-heroes. People who see the Gospel as something to be lived out in little ways. People who are committed to the flourishing and shalom of their neighborhoods, their cities, their schools, their local churches, their spouses (if called to marriage), their kids, the land that by God’s grace brings forth their nourishment. This takes courage.

Why? Because both Christian and non-Christian culture alike encourage you to see this as boring. Countless movies and books in our age begin with the premise of the marriage or the person who is “stuck in a rut.” In other words, they have developed certain habits over time, rituals of life, that need to be broken. Now, it may be the case that some habits need to be broken, precisely because they are vices and not virtues. But “being in a rut” is not itself a problem if that rut is a virtuous one.
My life, for example, is largely stuck in a rut. It is not that exciting nor does it consist of grandiose acts. Here are some of the exciting things I get to do every day: Get up when I’m still tired. Fix my lunch at home. Drive to Kuyper. Check my email. Schedule meetings. Teach a class. Try to read something interesting. Eat lunch. Talk to various folks around Kuyper. Drive home. Put away the dishes in the dishwasher. Load the dishwasher. Vacuum. Play with Eliana. Read some books to Eliana and rock her to sleep. Rub my wife Sarah’s neck and shoulders. Chat with Sarah about our days as we try to stay awake. Go to sleep and do it all over again.

“I’ve just gotten in the habit of helping out in my youth group, week after week, year after year. I do my homework, I hang out with friends, I care for my family, I gather for corporate worship on Sundays and in chapel. I’m in a rut.” “I’ve just gotten in the habit of loading the dishwasher and picking up the house while my wife puts the baby to bed. We’re in a rut.” I would say: praise God—that is the pattern of love, fidelity, and care woven into the fabric of your life. Get into a kingdom rut and live there for the next five to six decades of your life. American sensationalism and faulty views of Christianity might say: there is something more! You’re missing your best life now, filled with excitement and pizzazz!

Wendell Berry, insightful as usual, says, “It may, in some ways, be easier to be Samson than to be a good husband or wife day after day for fifty years.” Berry is exactly right. To be a hero like Samson, you need a brief hit of courage through the adrenal gland. To be a good spouse, a good Christian, a good anti-hero requires that courage seep into your bones, pump through your veins, and animate your very soul. It is the courage to think little, to commit to the daily habits that make you “boring for Jesus.” The problem with Christianity today is not that there are too few Christians willing to be extraordinary for Jesus; it is that there are too few Christians willing to be ordinary for Jesus. Being ordinary for Jesus means that we are committed to the day-in, day-out tasks, rituals, and habits that add up to a lifetime of living in a kingdom rut, a kingdom that comes like leaven, slowing working through the whole bread.

4. Here again I credit Mr. Berry: Virtues are linked with virtuosity.

What is virtuosity? Virtuosity is a technical skill or fluency exhibited by an artist who knows their craft. For example, we often speak of a fine musician as a “virtuoso.” Why? In part because any craft, any art, any calling, requires time, effort, and repetition to become a master at it.

You are all called to become virtuosos in the vocation God has for you. For example, when we say that someone is a good pastor, a good social worker, a good youth worker, a good worship leader, a good educator, a good business person, a good writer, a good coach, what do we mean? We mean that someone has paid attention to the little details that comprise their big calling so that they can effectively love those they are called to serve.

When I was 14, I wanted to drive. That was my big goal. My dad agreed to let me drive his Chevy Luv, a stick shift, and the ugliest pickup known to humanity. It was yellow with orange and brown stripes down the side. I didn’t care; I just wanted to drive. But there’s a problem: you can’t just drive. You have to master at least 20 different skills at once. Buckle in, adjust your mirrors, clutch in, start, ease up on clutch, down on accelerator, listen to the engine, shift, check your mirrors, turn signal, shift down, turn just right, watch for other cars, watch for traffic lights, watch for stop signs, watch your speed limit, yield when turning left on green, stop but turn right on red, right lane except when passing, try to maintain speed without slowing down or speeding up, watch out for farm implements moving at various speeds, etc. You get the picture. When we say that someone is a good driver, we mean they have mastered the hundreds of little things that a driver has to do. That it has become a habit, a second nature, to just get in and drive. Now, sometimes I get home after work and think, I didn’t consciously choose to do any of those things that I once had to think very hard about every second I was driving.

Similarly, to fulfill your calling, you have to learn how to hundreds of things well and put those into practice. Here is where I up the ante: how do you learn to do those hundreds of things well? You do it in large part by listening to class lectures, by reading textbooks, by participating in class discussions, by writing papers, by journaling, by giving presentations, by doing internships and field ed, by working on group projects, by taking exams, by getting up at 6:30 so you can drive here for your Bib Interp class at 8 in the morning (or if you live in the dorms, you roll out of bed at 7:57 and sprint in). So you can say, “I just want to love people.” Good—then be sure you are out of bed and in class on time. This is how you get to the grand goal of loving others.

This is why everything is important: learning the in’s and out’s of English grammar, conjugating Greek verbs, understanding the practice of policy-writing for social work, knowing the broad contours of world and American history, understanding the history of worship in the Christian church, reading a novel that challenges some of your basic assumptions about life, writing a paper on the book of Leviticus, taking a bog walk. Every reading, every quiz, every exam, every paper, every group discussion, every presentation is an opportunity to prepare yourself to love well or to fail to love, because love is not a feeling. You can really want to love someone while simultaneously doing them great harm because you have not attended to the skill and craft of ministry.

For example, how do you minister to someone in the midst of tragedy? You combine your work from Relational Ministry, the problem of evil section in Intro to Philosophy, your discussion of providence in Doctrine, and Job in Wisdom Lit in that single moment. Your attention to detail and hard work in those courses may be the difference between uttering words of healing and comfort (or perhaps no words at all) or a bumbling and confused response at someone’s most vulnerable point in life. Little things matter. Little things add up to big things. As Jesus said, “Whoever is faithful with very little can be trusted with much. Whoever is dishonest with little will be dishonest with much.”

Note what I am not saying: I am not saying that your love for others and God directly corresponds to your GPA. But note what I am saying: your love for others and God can be measured by your faithfulness in little things because those little things are God’s method of using you to be a channel of blessing to Christ’s church and world. Your love for God and others is not measured simply by what goes on in praise chapel, but your faithfulness to God in the classroom. The problem with Israel’s worship was not that they didn’t mean it in the moment; they did. The problem was that they thought they could participate in the fancy, showy, big things, but let the little things go, like putting walls on their roofs or watching out for the neighbor’s animals.  

Fittingly, I want to close with a quote from Wendell Berry: “To use knowledge and tools in a particular place with good long-term results is not heroic. It is not a grand action visible for a long distance or a long time. It is a small action, but more complex and difficult, more skillful and responsible, more whole and enduring, than most grand actions. It comes of a willingness to devote oneself to work that perhaps only the eye of Heaven will see in its full intricacy and excellence. Perhaps the real work, like real prayer and real charity, must be done in secret.”

As we stand at the beginning of another school year, I exhort you to love God and love others by being strong and courageous enough to think little. 


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Polyamory, good things, and sin: A response to critics of my CT article

4/14/2020

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It seems like years ago, but it was only about six weeks ago that a number of scholars engaged the Christianity Today article that Preston Sprinkle and I wrote on polyamory. It has been critiqued a number of places and Preston responded before the coronavirus upended normal life. I appreciate Preston's response and wanted to offer up a few further thoughts and clarifications from my perspective.

I’d first encourage readers to read the longer pastoral paper on polyamory that I wrote as resource for The Center for Faith, Gender and Sexuality. You can download it for free here. To write that paper, I spent over a year researching in order to provide biblically-rooted analysis and pastorally-wise insight. Certain segments of the CT article come directly from that paper, and so it’s helpful to have that broader context. Several of the responses to the CT article were good reminders that our age values instant responses over thoughtful engagement, drawing lines for one’s tribe over listening to understand, and constant commentary without careful research. I hope that my response here can serve to further clarify rather than obscure what is at stake and give sound pastoral and theological wisdom that is focused on ministering to real people in real life.  

Before digging into the criticism, I want to note the difference that posture makes. Preston and I wrote our article, I would say, as missiologists trying to equip pastors who see themselves ministering in Babylon, not as culture warriors trying to reinforce to the faithful what we already believe. 

That being said, I’ll primarily address the points made by Owen Strachan, because his comments seem to be behind Al Mohler’s remarks, as well as those of a few other critics. In particular, Strachan took issue with a sentence in the article that stated: “We can acknowledge that many of the elements that draw people to polyamory—deep relationships, care for others, hospitality, and community—are good things.” According to Strachan, this claim is false and misleading because it states that people pursue polyamory for good reasons. As he puts it, “there are no ‘good things’ that draw us into sinful actions.” In a second blog post he wrote on the piece, he states that Preston and I claim that there are “good things in polyamorous interest.”

In response, I want to briefly note three things: 1) the need for a proper pastoral response to the complexity of polyamory, 2) the descriptive nature of the disputed sentence, and 3) the nature of sin from a biblical, Augustinian/Reformed perspective.

First, a key pastoral question is: how do we guide polyamorous people who genuinely want to repent. What precisely do they need to repent of? It’s important to have a clear answer to that question so that we can truly call people to repentance, but also to avoid calling people to repent of things that are not actually sins. That’s why I say, “Another important pastoral step is to distinguish elements of polyamory that are in violation of God’s will from elements that are simply culturally unfamiliar to us. When we want to lovingly call people to repentance, we should be precise about what needs repentance and what relationships or elements can and should be sanctified in Christ.” Now I can imagine Strachan or other critics pulling out their hair at this point. “Sin is sin is sin and sin can’t be sanctified!” I agree. Polyamory is sin. But what precisely about polyamory is sinful?

What I am afraid my critics don’t understand is the complexity and variety of polyamory. Strachan states, “If there are ‘good things’ in sexual actions the Bible calls depraved, there must be ‘good things’ in all sins.” For me, this is helpful, because I think Strachan seems to think that all partners in a polyamorous relationship are sexually active with another. But that’s not always the case.  

Let me give an example to illustrate the complexity and think through what repentance and good pastoral counsel looks like. Let’s suppose there’s a polyamorous V relationship between a man and two women whom we’ll call Jacob, Leah, and Rachel. In a V relationship, Jacob has a sexual and romantic relationship to both Leah and Rachel. Leah and Rachel, however, are not in a sexual or romantic relationship with one another. Let’s suppose that, for Leah and Rachel, their lives are deeply intertwined, and they are close emotionally and relationally. They live in the same house, together with Jacob, and they actually care deeply for one another to the point of considering themselves sisters.  Clearly, we’d say that the non-monogamous relationship as a whole doesn’t conform to God’s intentions for marriage, and so we would call Jacob, Leah, and Rachel to end the polyamorous relationship.

But in this situation, it’s important to be able to clarify precisely what is sinful about Leah and Rachel’s relationship with each other so that they can have good pastoral counsel on how to move forward. There is no sexual relationship between them that requires repentance. If Jacob chose to end his relationship with both women, would there be anything morally wrong about Leah and Rachel continuing to live together and share a household as friends and sisters in Christ? That would be a question of pastoral wisdom in each unique situation. Given their history, there may be reasons to think it would not be wise. But there may also be factors that could suggest that, if both are genuinely repentant, then sharing the same household would not be wrong and may even be beneficial. Certainly, to bind their conscience and say “this is unequivocally sinful” is not something you could say on the basis of Scripture. Again, depending on the maturity of the people involved, pastoral counsel might vary. But even as they give up polyamory, we could affirm that their deep relationship, care for each other, hospitality, and community are dimensions that could be sanctified in Christ, precisely because none of those things are identical with polyamory. As good pastors, we want to call people to genuinely repent of sin. But we also must avoid laying heavy burdens on peoples’ backs and calling them to repent of things that are not actually sinful.

Second, I want to briefly unpack that controversial sentence from another angle as well. This sentence was largely meant to be a descriptive claim about why polyamorous people themselves say they are drawn to polyamory. Before I started researching polyamory about 2 years ago, I didn’t know a whole lot about it. But in researching polyamory, I had a number of conversations with people who shared a bit about their own life or those of polyamorous friends and family members. I dug into some of the key texts on polyamory, including The Polyamorists Next Door by Elisabeth Sheff and Polyamory in the 21st Century by Deborah Anapol, as well as numerous journal and popular-level articles. In this research, I had some of my own assumptions challenged. What I heard, particularly in the extensive research done by Sheff and Anapol, was that people in polyamorous relationships were drawn to polyamory by things like deep relationships, care for others, hospitality, and community. In light of that, I think the sentence critiqued by Strachan certainly holds as a descriptive claim: the actual data of interviews and engagement with polyamorous people reveals that they are drawn to polyamory by deep relationships, care for others, hospitality, and community. It would be hard, on the face of it, to object to the fact that these things draw people to polyamory (for that is exactly what polyamorous people are self-reporting) or that those things—deep relationships, etc.—are inherently bad in themselves. This is not at all to deny the reality that our sinful, warped desires lead us into sinful actions and relationships. Obviously (or so I thought). But a proper biblical ontology should lead us to recognize that sin is the distortion of the good, which leads us to the final point.

Third and finally, Strachan objects primarily to the final part of the sentence: that some of the things (deep relationships, etc.) that draw people to polyamory are “good things.” Before discussing this further, I have to apologize to the reader—Strachan and I are not precise in this theological discussion! For starters, I constructed the original sentence in the context of pastoral guidance in a popular-level article rather than a scholastic-level discussion of the theology of sin. I can see how different people could read our sentence in different ways. He’s also not clear, though, repeatedly asking whether there’s any good thing “in” a number of different sinful actions. “In” in what sense? It’s not clear.

Nevertheless, I’ll try to clear up my own view of sin. My claim was meant to be in line with Scripture, as expressed in the Augustinian/Reformed tradition: sin is disordered love. It is a distortion, a twisting of the good. A biblical, Augustinian view of sin involves sees sin as loving something good in the wrong way, context, proportion, or manner. So, for example, the common idolatry of self, which we call pride, takes something that is good (my own life, survival, well-being, etc.) and exalts it to the supreme good. Greed takes something good (economic ability and security for myself and family) and turns it into the supreme driving force behind what I do. A proper understanding of sin recognizes that sin is a disordered love of something good. Sin is when I replace God with some other created good, a good which is truly good, even if my own desire for it is disordered/sinful. As my friend Laurie Krieg likes to say, sin is what happens when we try to get the good needs of our heart met in ways that don’t satisfy us and don’t glorify God.

So when we identify a sin (“lust,” “greed,” “pride”), we’re not saying sex, money, or self-care (even self-love) is inherently evil. In fact, a proper ontology recognizes that these are created goods that are foundationally good. I love the way G. K. Chesterton puts it: “That ‘God looked on all things and saw that they were good’ contains a subtlety which the popular pessimist (Baptist?) cannot follow, or is too hasty to notice. It is the thesis that there are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things [that is, objects or things themselves] but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions” (Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas, p. 33). Again, sin is the distortion and twisting of the good. This means that, in dissecting sin, we’re looking for how something good has been twisted and distorted.

At first, I thought that Strachan himself was making this same point in one of his blogs critiquing us. There he states, “Sin is the hijacking interruption of a good thing, the full corruption of a good thing, the temporal (or patterned) displacement of a good thing.” I took this to be his formulation of the biblical, Augustinian tradition. But that’s exactly what I took our article to be claiming, which is why his response left me confused. I was saying that polyamory is a distortion of the good, that polyamory is a corruption (evil desire and action) of a genuinely good desire we have for deep relationships, care, hospitality, and community.

But then I read that sentence again: “the hijacking interruption of a good thing, the full corruption of a good thing, the displacement (absence?) of a good thing [does he mean ‘thing’ as physical object, action, relationship, desire? It’s not clear].” I’m not quite sure what he means. From an Augustinian perspective, I’m not sure the “full corruption of a good thing” is possible, since by definition what exists has some level of goodness merely by being. Even Satan is the twisting of a good creature, a goodness that, because he still exists, can’t be fully eradicated. If by ‘thing,’ Strachan means an act or desire, then he's certainly correct that a specific act that is objectively sinful is fully wrong and an evil desire is itself fully wrong.  

So when Strachan says, “Sin is not a part of a good thing,” I find this too vague to properly know how to respond or critique it. I will do my best to read the chapter in his own book he’s referencing, because I’d love to know how he seems to come so close to the Augustinian/Reformed view of sin but not quite holding to it. 

But this is where I find Strachan’s own account confusing. Earlier in the same paragraph, he claims, “It may sound well and good to say that ‘good things’ are found in our sinful pursuits. It may even seem this way in our individual experience. But it is not true. As Christians, we sin not when we follow good desires, but when we grant evil desires power.” Agreed. However, h
e claims that we are saying that “the desire for community, togetherness, and romance can drive us into polyamorous practice.”  Perhaps Strachan read our article too hastily to recognize that we never said that those in polyamorous relationships were simply following good desires and ended up in polyamory. But that’s not what we claimed. Rather, in the context of talking about repentance and pastoral guidance, we said that (some of) the objects of their desire (deep relationships, etc.) were genuinely good things, good things which are distorted in polyamory. 

Strachan is right to hold that there are certain objective acts and desires that are wrong. Indeed, the examples of sin he gives, primarily forms of murder and sexual assault, are all objectively wrong. No amount of ‘good intention’ can make them right. The same holds true for polyamory, and in particular the sexual sin involved in polyamory. Marriage and sex are meant to image God’s faithful, exclusive covenant love and polyamory certainly doesn’t do that. 

So the theological and moral claim we’re making in the CT article is not that polyamory is good; it’s that, like all sin, it involves taking something good (deep relationships, etc.) and distorting it because of our disordered desire. This in no way justifies or excuses sin. Against Strachan’s claim, we are not claiming that sin is ‘sanctifiable.’ But people are sanctifiable. Our disordered love can be redeemed and reordered by Christ. Redemption involves repenting of our disordered love and finding that our deepest desires and genuine fulfillment can only be found in Christ. In Christ, our longing for deep relationships, care for others, hospitality, and community can be put in their proper place through repentance and living by the Spirit. In doing so, we give proper glory to God and find true satisfaction and fulfillment for our restless hearts. That’s a very good thing, indeed. 
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A Psalm for the End of the Semester

12/12/2019

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​I’m tired. Students are tired. I love learning and teaching, the invigorating plunge into big questions, deep thoughts, and engaging conversation. But do that for three months straight, and it’s exhausting.
 
So when I happened on Psalm 131 the other day, it hit me in a new way.
 
1 My heart is not proud, Lord,
    my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
    or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted myself,
    I am like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child I am content.
3 Israel, put your hope in the Lord
    both now and forevermore.
 
This psalm ministered to my soul because it reminded me that, at the end of wrestling with “great matters” and “things too wonderful for me,” I can rest. The mental and spiritual exhaustion of tackling hard questions of biblical interpretation, the philosophical implications of our secular age, and the church’s call to embrace, display, and proclaim God’s kingdom are all important—and overwhelming.
 
At the end of the semester, Christian college students and professors alike can rest in the presence of God, as a child rests in their mother’s arms. We don’t need to fix the church, fix the world, solve all the problems, answer all the questions. We can rest because we have hope, a hope that is not rooted in our ability or strength but in the Lord.
 
I sometimes tell my philosophy students that the end goal of philosophy is worship. Perhaps it’s also true that the end goal of all our learning is sleep, resting peacefully and hopefully in the One who mothers and comforts us with the promise of his unfailing presence and love. 
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Why spiritually healthy pastors must be quitters

8/28/2019

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If a pastor is spiritually mature, they should be able to quit their job as pastor at any time.
 
Now, it might seem counterintuitive to say this. After all, if someone has received a high calling from God, shouldn’t they stick with that position/job/calling no matter what? Doesn’t quitting = abandoning your call?
 
Let me explain a little bit about what led me to this conclusion. I’ve been reflecting on this based on two different stories, one from the world of sports and the other from church circles. This past weekend, Andrew Luck, a premier quarterback at the top of his game, announced his retirement, shocking the NFL world.

At the same time, Tullian Tchividjian, grandson of Billy Graham and a former pastor who has been stripped of his preaching credentials and fired from two churches for adultery and sexual immorality, announced that he is now starting an independent church.  And Tchividjian is certainly not the only high-profile pastor who has left a church due to some form of sin and misconduct (sexual, financial, or otherwise), only to start up another church free from any accountability or oversight.
 
Here are four reasons why I think pastors should be able to quit their job/position at any time.  
 
1. If I recognize that the work is ultimately God’s, I will be able to quit at any time. 

If someone cannot quit their job as pastor, there is a good chance that they may be placing too much weight on their own shoulders. We work, but the Spirit of God ultimately produces fruit. We must minister with passion and commitment, but if we cannot step back, it shows that we are not just fulfilling our role but that we are trying to take over God’s.
 
2. If I recognize that my role is to empower and equip the body for the work, not do all the work myself, I will be able to quit at any time. 

Too many pastors (and too many congregations) assume that the pastor is paid to do the work of the church. That is not biblical. The pastor’s job is to equip, edify, and empower the body to do the work of the church. The pastor is a crucial piece in the life of the body, but certainly not the only piece. If a pastor leaves and a church falls apart (a scenario that happens all too often), it usually reveals that both the pastor and the church had an unbiblical view of the pastor’s role.
 
3. If I have incorporated a Sabbath rhythm into my way of life, I will be able to quit at any time. 

A Sabbath way of life recognizes that we all have limits and that we are called to work from a place of resting in God. Pastors without a Sabbath rhythm are pastors who perpetually overestimate what God is calling them to do. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, these pastors take responsibility for what was never theirs in the first place, attempting to do God’s work without acknowledging God as Creator and Sustainer. The weekly rhythm of Sabbath rest reminds us, in part, that we are finite creatures, dependent on God to sustain us. There are too many pastors who preach the sufficiency of God’s grace but are practical Pelagians when it comes to their life and ministry.
 
4. If I find my identity in Jesus Christ, I will be able to quit at any time. 

I believe that the real reason so many pastors can’t walk away—even when they are spiritually and morally disqualified—is because their ministry is not about what they can give or Who they proclaim but about what they get out of ministry.

There is power in being a pastor.

There is affirmation in being a pastor.

There is visibility and identity in being a pastor.

If you are not resting in the identity that comes from Jesus and that alone, you will look to pastoral ministry to find that identity and to get the deepest needs of your heart met. The restlessness and perpetual ministry motion of these would-be pastors only confirm Augustine’s insight: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

On the other hand, being able to quit, as I see it, can only come from having an identity that is grounded in being beloved by Jesus. This is the freedom that comes from truly getting the gospel, not just intellectually but in the deepest parts of my soul. For pastors, then, my challenge is this: ask the Spirit to help you grasp the love of Jesus (Eph. 3:14-21), so much so that you could walk away from the position, power, and influence, and be fine with it.
 
Be able to quit. Only then can your ministry truly begin. 

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Instead of purity culture, a theology of the body

7/31/2019

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For too many Christians, Joshua Harris, Focus on the Family, and the purity culture of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s is all they know of a Christian sexual ethic. It’s become clear in a variety of ways that vision is not sustainable or livable—and not really biblical. So what should shape our sexual ethic? A robust theology of the body that is biblically rooted, theologically astute, and practically sustainable. Here are a few essentials of a theology of the body.

1. The goodness of the body

God created bodies. God created sex. God created marriage. God created singleness. The body and sex are not, in and of themselves, evil, shameful, or sinful. Rather, our bodies and sexuality point to the fact that we are wired for communion and intimacy. We are wired for beauty, to be drawn out beyond ourselves. Good sexual desire can be perverted, but we dare not identify the body or sex with sin itself, or we will warp both the biblical narrative and ourselves. 

2. The meaning of sex and marriage

Marriage is not the opportunity merely to gratify your sexual desire through your spouse. Rather, in marriage, I promise to give myself wholly, faithfully, and exclusively to my spouse, not just in our sexual relationship, but in all of life. Sexual union then is the physical symbol and consummation of those vows. In sexual union, I give my body completely to my spouse as a sign and seal of the fact that I give myself as a whole person to them. This covenantal view of marriage and sex is a far cry from the contractual language of purity culture. Often, the language and posture of purity culture (especially toward young men) is that you are entering into a kind of contractual exchange—you will love and care for your wife and, in return, she’ll do what it takes to keep you happy sexually. That’s a far cry from the self-giving, covenantal love of Jesus.

Furthermore, whereas purity culture has an idealistic view of sex—“just wait till you’re married, and we guarantee amazing, mind-blowing sex!”—a theology of the body demythologizes this view. Like anything in marriage, sex takes work, intentionality, vulnerability, and care. This is no sex prosperity gospel. Like marriage as a whole, the sexual dimension of our marriages may go through seasons of better or worse. Rather than holding out false promises, we must emphasize both the realistic difficulty and the immense blessing of the sexual dimension of marriage. 

3. The meaning of singleness

“True love waits.” But what if God’s intention was not that people just wait around for the perfect spouse. The Bible doesn’t idolize marriage, sex, or family. The “true love waits” posture assumes that single people should just repress/ignore their sexuality until marriage. But Scripture calls us to recognize that the ultimate destiny of our sexuality—our orientation to beauty and the ultimate meaning of our bodies—is that we are called to communion with Father, Son, and Spirit and to communion with our sisters and brothers in the body of Christ. This is not something that single Christians miss out on. In fact, Scripture suggests that those who are unmarried have a greater opportunity to do this in a way that married Christians may not. Though the purity culture lens looks at singleness as a waiting game, a theology of the body recognizes that single people can and do often embody the self-giving love of our single Savior in a whole host of ways that point to the deepest meaning of our sexuality and embodiment. 

4. Chastity vs. purity

Though it might sound medieval to our ears, the concept of ‘chastity’ is preferable to ‘purity.’ Chastity is the ability to see and know yourself and others as an integrated body-soul unity and to treat others as such. The opposite of chastity is lust, which is when I make sexual desire all about self-gratification. As Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung puts it, lust reduces sex to “a party for one.” Rather than calling us out of ourselves to love and give, lust constantly asks: what can I get out of this person? Worse, what it actually does is ignores the personhood of someone and turns them into an object for my own gratification. In other words, lust is the ultimate dehumanizer.

The remedy for lust, then, is not merely better porn-filtering software or more accountability. The remedy is a heart that learns to see people as God sees them: image bearers worthy of respect and dignity, not as objects to be used for my own sexual ends. Whereas purity culture focuses on behavior modification, chastity emphasizes Spirit-empowered heart transformation.  

5. The reality of the gospel

Much of purity culture is wrapped up in finding our identity as people who have achieved “purity” through our works. The gospel is the good news that Jesus saves us while we are still sinners. Purity culture produces either prideful Pharisees or shamed “sinners.” This is not the gospel and identifying it with the gospel ultimately drives people away from Christ. It’s just as damaging to those who ‘succeed’ in remaining “pure” as it is to those who stumble.

The natural and ultimate end of purity culture is divorce, precisely because it assumes that we sustain ourselves and our relationships through our own strength and not by daily reliance on Jesus and his Spirit to do a work in us that we cannot do ourselves. So the deepest problem with purity culture is not merely that it is misleading about sex and marriage but that it belies the way that much of conservative evangelical Christianity doesn’t actually get the gospel. A theology of the body, by contrast, understands that it is only by truly understanding Christ’s body—and God’s grace made manifest there—that we understand our own bodies. By grace we are saved. By grace we allow God’s grace, faithfulness, and self-giving love to be made manifest in our bodies on a daily basis, so that others may see and know him.  

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A Brief Reply to the Commission on Theology

6/6/2019

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I am thankful for the Commission on Theology’s work in reviewing the Great Lakes Catechism on Marriage and Sexuality. Their brief paper on it can be found on pp. 283-285 of this year’s General Synod Workbook.
 
Before briefly addressing that paper, let me first say that it is significant to note what is not said. They do not say that the overall theology of marriage and sexuality presented in the GLC is unbiblical or out of line with the historic stance of RCA and Reformed churches in general. In other words, the Commission seems to largely agree with the theological content of the document, even if they raise some valid questions and ultimately decline to receive it as a “catechism.” Because of their apparent agreement with the overall content of the GLC, my remarks below should be understood as an intramural discussion between people who share the same framework of Scripture and theology, but who may have some points of differences on the details. A representative from the Commission did contact me after this paper was written to communicate the details to me, for which I am thankful. After reflecting more on the paper, here are a few of my thoughts on the paper.
 
First, the paper criticizes the use of the term “creation order” because it could suggest an authority independent of Scripture. Thus, the Commission is concerned that this term could suggest an appeal to natural theology, reason, or experience apart from Scripture. They say, “Given the reality of sin and its devastating effects on creation and human reason, it seems hard to imagine that we could ever ascertain the purposes of God in sexuality or marriage by seeking them in the ‘creation order’ outside of the witness of Scripture” (284).
 
To be honest, I found this a bit puzzling because Q1 of the GLC reads “We see in Scripture that God created us male and female as part of the creation order…” Far from asserting that creation order is something we can just read clearly apart from Scripture, the point of Q1 is precisely the same point that the Commission is trying to make: Scripture itself must be the lens through which we read our experience. Furthermore, Q3 is entirely devoted to the kind of natural theology that looks at our experience or reason apart from Scripture. For my part, I don’t think the catechism would lose much by just deleting “as part of the creation order” and just read: “God created us male and female.” But I also think that, in context of both Q1 and Q3, it’s abundantly clear that the GLC is not in any way claiming to draw on a creation order “outside of the witness of Scripture.”
 
The paper also notes that the term “creation order” has been misused. I agree. But so have many other terms in the GLC, including “God.” Abuse doesn’t nullify proper use, and I’d argue that there is a creation order (ontology) knowable through the lens of Scripture (epistemology).
 
Second, the paper takes issue with some of the verses in footnotes. To be honest, I thought about not using footnotes at all. I should clarify that rarely do I think you can support a theological claim simply by pointing to one single verse of Scripture. The verses footnoted were not meant to indicate that one could sustain the claims of each line or section solely by reference to that verse. Instead, the verses were meant as biblical texts that speak in some way to the matter at hand. In that sense, I think I agree with the Commission’s assessment that “the Scriptures given do not always bear the weight of the answers offered.” Particularly when it comes to matters of marriage and sexuality, the orthodox biblical and theological position involves a synthesis of a wide variety of biblical texts in order to see the canonical coherence on these matters. So perhaps this was just a matter of different, unstated expectations about how those verses were functioning in the Catechism.  
 
I’d be curious as to the Commission’s view on whether the biblical footnotes in the Heidelberg Catechism “bear the weight of the answers offered” in every case. As I’ve used that document in the past, I’ve sometimes scratched my head a bit at the references given.
 
Third, the Commission asks for more development on theological anthropology, the meaning of gender, and the body. This is probably true. There’s a lot more that could be said on these matters, but the Catechism was working with a limited scope. Does the GLC fail to place the body in the story of God and redemption, though? I don’t think so, although I could be wrong. Q12-15 are devoted to placing sex and bodies within the broader scope of marriage and personhood, and showing how those in fact are visible signs that point to the mystery of the gospel: Christ and the church. Q14 in particular shows how sexual union and the covenant of marriage are a sign and symbol of the gospel.
 
Could more be said here? Certainly. The Commission’s comments have made me think about further questions and answers that could be included, and I’m thankful for that.
 
Fourth, the Commission asserts, following T. F. Torrance’s definition of “catechism,” that the document doesn’t rise to the standard of being a catechism in this technical sense because it does not “aim to give a comprehensive exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the context of the whole Counsel of God and the whole life of the people of God.” The Commission therefore recommends that this document not be given the title “catechism.” What’s not clear to me is whether the Commission’s more technical definition is spelled out anywhere in the RCA Standards or Polity, or if the assumption is that Torrance’s definition is normative for all Reformed folks everywhere.
 
To me, this is more a matter of terminology than of substance. It seems as though the Commission is employing a more technical sense of the word “catechism,” whereas I am simply using it to refer to a series of questions and answers. In other words, I labeled it a catechism because of its form, but they want to use the term “catechism” only for certain documents whose content meets a certain standard. I’d argue that part of the goal of the GLC is to place sexuality, singleness, and marriage within the context of the gospel, though that could be spelled out more clearly.
 
I guess part of the question is whether the Commission’s more technical usage or my more everyday usage of the term ‘catechism’ communicates what is meant to be communicated. Up until the CoT’s paper, I’d never had anyone in the RCA claim that the GLC wasn’t actually a catechism. Perhaps that means that the vast majority of people are uninformed on the technical definition of a catechism. In any case, it shows that the actual usage of the term “catechism” is largely understood to be about the form of the document, not the content.
 
For my part, I understand the GLC to be a kind of addendum to the Heidelberg Catechism Q108 and 109. My goal was not to give a “comprehensive exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ” in part because the Heidelberg Catechism already does that. I’m sure there are ways to foreground the Gospel more clearly in the GLC, but I see the questions of marriage, singleness, and sexuality as questions of what it means to practically live out the gospel in a specific area of our lives. In that sense, everything in the GLC assumes and builds on the gospel even if it doesn’t give a comprehensive exposition of the gospel.
 
I want to thank the Commission on Theology again for the time and effort that they put into engaging the Great Lakes Catechism. As I said above, I’m encouraged by the fact that they seem to agree with Scripture’s teaching on marriage and sexuality and they seem to affirm the RCA’s historical stance on this matter. Whatever differences remain seem to be differences of emphasis, assumptions, and terminology rather than of substance. 

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Aristotle and Abortion

1/31/2019

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Aristotle's thought gives Christians important tools to explain their objection to abortion in philosophical terms. Recent legislation by New York and Virginia has people focused on abortion again. The legal issues are certainly important, but beneath the legal questions, there lies a deeper philosophical question that divides those who support abortion and those who are against it: exactly what is the unborn baby and exactly what kind of change happens at birth?

These questions—of something’s basic essence and of the nature of permanence and change—are as old as the pre-Socratic philosophers, all of whom grappled with how to understand reality and change. Dilemmas regarding permanence and change were addressed by Aristotle, whose philosophy is useful to pro-life Christians today who are trying to articulate how something stays the same (human person) through the process of change (birth). I want to briefly outline how Aristotelian philosophy equips Christians in philosophical discussions surrounding abortion.

In his Categories, Aristotle recognizes (in a less infamous fashion than President Bill Clinton) that the word “is” can be used in a variety of ways. In the summer, I might say “I am hot” or, when attending a crowded event, I might call out to my kids, “I’m over here!” Or I might say something like “That man is Aaron” or “Aaron is a man.” Aristotle recognized that the last two examples were getting at something permanent and enduring, which he called “essence” or “substance.” In contrast, the first two examples were true in the moment they were spoken—I really was quite warm, and I really was at that location at that time—but they were not enduring characteristics that describe the essence of who I am. For Aristotle, these unenduring characteristics were termed “accidents,” not because they happened when they weren’t supposed to (as in a “car accident”) but as a way to label things that could change but would not change the essence of what something is. Examples of these kinds of things are plentiful: my height, weight, age, geographical location, posture, temporary actions, and temporary states (like being hot or cold). These may change, but the kind of thing I am (a human being; what Aristotle calls “secondary substance”) and my being an individual (a particular human being; what Aristotle calls “primary substance”) do not change.

In the midst of all this philosophical jargon, I want to be clear that this distinction can be grasped by almost anyone. Even my kids get the basic Aristotelian distinction between substance and accidents, because a classic dad joke is premised on them. So when my daughter says, “Dad, I’m hungry,” and I respond, “Oh, hi Hungry! Nice to meet you!” I’m intentionally swapping out an accident for her primary substance (her name, which points to her individuality). She gets mildly annoyed with me, but she gets the joke, because even young children grasp this distinction that is so basic to language and ontology. This helps us see that Aristotle isn’t inventing these categories of substance and accidents; he’s merely observing and categorizing them.

Aristotle also distinguishes between two kinds of change, that which we call “life” and that which is not living. In his work De Anima (in the Latin, you can see the distinction we make between “animate” and “inanimate” objects), Aristotle outlines three kinds of life, nutritive (plants), perceptive (animals), and rational (humans). Inanimate objects change when acted on from outside, as when a rock is smoothed when water runs over it. Animate objects change because they have something internal that produces change, as when a tree grows because it is nourished by water and soil. For Aristotle, life entails a potential for growth and change that is driven internally, whereas non-living things have potential for change only insofar as something acts on them externally. Importantly, even though something living grows and changes, it does not change substantially only accidentally. By virtue of being a living thing, it is what it is through change and growth.

So how does this help us as we think about abortion and the status of unborn children? It gives us some basic philosophical tools to describe what many Christians hold implicitly about what kind of change birth is, and what kind of ontological status an unborn baby has. Most importantly, what happens at birth is not a substantial change. Birth is, in Aristotelian terms, an accidental change, a shift in location and type of dependency, but not a substantial change. It is certainly a change in location, from inside the womb to outside. And it is a change in relationship to the body of the mother, from being dependent in one form (especially nourishment through the umbilical cord) to being dependent in another form (breast milk and all kinds of daily necessities).

Sometimes proponents of abortion make too much of this dependency. It’s certainly true that a baby born prior to 24 weeks has little chance of surviving outside the womb (much later if there is not access to neonatal technology). But that doesn’t justify abortion. If it did, it would also justify the killing of most infants and toddlers, few if any of whom are able to survive independently outside the womb either. Furthermore, all life is dependent on what is outside itself to survive, so that objection—the baby is dependent on the mother—doesn’t sufficiently recognize the dependent nature of all life.

In contrast to birth, however, abortion is a substantial change, for both the actuality of the baby and its potentiality are fundamentally altered. The fact that an unborn baby has the potential to be a fully grown, mature human being underscores the fact that it already is a human being. Through intervention, however, he or she ceases to be alive. In Aristotelian terms, a synonym for “substantial change” for living beings is “death.”
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So what is an unborn baby? A human being. And what kind of change happens at birth? A change that is accidental, not substantial. A change that does not alter the fundamental nature of the human being born. Aristotle thus provides useful tools to explain philosophically why, as rational and spiritual animals, it is immoral for us to take the life of unborn babies. Their difference from us is merely one of location, not of substance. 

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Does the RCA need another confession?

1/29/2019

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Does the RCA need a new confession? The RCA has been engaging the Great Lakes Catechism on Marriage and Sexuality in a variety of ways this year, in part because there were some classes who overtured General Synod last year to adopt it as part of the RCA’s Standards of Unity or to begin the process of studying it.
 
On the question of whether the RCA needs a new confession in this area, I find Dirk Naudé’s discussion of the characteristics of a confession helpful. In his book Neither Calendar Nor Clock: Perspectives on the Belhar Confession (Eerdmans, 2010), he discusses the characteristics of a confession. I list them here in outline form:
 
1. A confession witnesses to the revelation of God in Scripture 

       a. “Reformed creeds derive their authority from their correspondence to Scripture, as Scripture is both the basis of the creed’s certainty and its judge” (85).​

        b.“The temptation yielded to by modern Protestantism is to grant to history, or ‘significant historical events,’ a character of revelation not fundamentally… different from the Bible.” (85) 

2.  A confession gives insight into God’s revelation for the moment​   
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        a. A “here and now” confession relevant to the questions and issues confronting our time and place. 

3. A confession is a spontaneous statement. 

        a. Prompted by the Holy Spirit.

        b. Doxology: honors God by confessing the truth.

        c. 
Historically conditioned by the issues of its time: it is part of the church’s battle against “theological lies and half-truths” (93). 

4. A confession is formulated by a concrete Christian community within a geographically limited area.​

        a. Confessions grow out of particular communities of faith—bottom up, rather than top down. 

5. A confession expresses an important aspect of the will of God.

        a. It will address matters of doctrine and life. 
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        b. Unity: “Confession of the true doctrine is exactly aimed at restoring the unity of faith already broken by the half-truths!” (98, emphasis added)

6. A confession addresses both insiders and outsiders.

        a. Purpose: “to reply to a counterdoctrine that already has public status” (99).

        b. A missionary activity: those who are not Christians are surrounded by a Christianity that has fallen into error. 

7. The act of confession:​

        a. Is against yourself first—where are we guilty?

        b. Is a fairly substantial redefinition of self-understanding and identity.

        c. Requires a link to catechesis, liturgy, and interchurch dialogue.

        d. Will involve witness and service to the world. 
 
As I think about this outline in light of the RCA’s current discussion on marriage and sexuality, three points stand out.
 
First, point 1b helpfully crystallizes that what’s at stake is the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. Most of the arguments for same-sex marriage that I have heard in the RCA, whether at the level of the Classis, Regional Synod, or General Synod, have not been careful appeals to Scripture but appeals to ‘experience’ or ‘human nature’ or ‘maximizing freedom and ending oppression’ or ‘being on the right side of history.’ Part of what these appeals share in common is that they, for one reason or another, set aside Scripture as the final authoritative Word. If two parties don’t share the same basis of ultimate appeal, they cannot be said to be unified in any clear and functional way. Even when the appeal does attempt to appeal to Scripture, as in the case of James Brownson, his arguments fall short at the end of the day (see my article in Trinity Journal 38 (2017), summarized in PowerPoint form here). William Loader, the foremost Bible scholar on ancient sexuality and himself an affirming theologian, even argues that the Bible itself cannot be interpreted in such a way as to affirm same-sex marriage (Loader is affirming in part because he consciously sets aside the authority and sufficiency of Scripture here; I believe Brownson's unwillingness to do this is part of what skews his reading of history and ancient sexuality.).
 
Second, point 5b helpfully addresses the question of unity. Those within the RCA who affirm and practice same-sex marriage often appeal to unity above all. Naudé helpfully reminds us that unity has to be centered around biblical doctrine. That is, unity stems in part from having Standards of Unity. The source of disunity in the RCA are the half-truths about human nature, marriage, and human sexuality that have been circulating for decades now by those committed to altering the church’s stance on marriage. However, those on the more conservative-leaning side of the RCA have often purveyed, implicitly or explicitly, less than biblical views of the body, marriage, and sexuality, which is why the Catechism seeks (in line with 7a above) to address more broadly the ways in which we are all guilty of adopting a less-than-biblical view of marriage and sexuality.
 
Finally, point 6 helpfully reminds us that drawing clear lines is something that is essential for both discipleship and evangelism. People need to know what it means to take up their cross and follow Jesus. I think it’s fair to say that in the RCA there are people with radically different ideas of what it means to follow Jesus, perhaps to the extent that there is not even a unified view of who Jesus is. A confession, then, is not aimed at dividing but at uniting us around what should unite us—Jesus, the true and living Word, who has revealed who he is and who we are to be in Scripture, the living and active Word used by the Spirit to convict, edify, admonish, and grow the church so that we may be more and more conformed to the image of Jesus for the glory of God’s holy name. 

Based on Naudé’s helpful criteria, then, I would say the answer to the original question is yes. 
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Pray for one another

1/1/2019

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One of the most important things we can do as Christians is pray for one another. But we often don't know how to pray. So here are seven things that you should pray for your fellow Christians. I've challenged my church family to pray for one other member/family per day. If you'd like to use this list to do something similar in your church, here's a document you can adapt and use in your own context.

1. Pray that we would truly know the love of Jesus and be filled with that love.

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:18-20)

2. Pray that the Spirit would open our eyes to know him better and worship him continually.

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” (Eph. 1:17-19)

3. Pray that the Spirit would strengthen us to bear fruit and live a life of thanksgiving.

“We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.” (Col. 1:9-12)

4. Pray that we would receive comfort from God in our trials, and that we would offer comfort to those going through trials.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-4)

5.   Pray that we will serve and use our gifts for the building up of the body.

“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” (1 Cor. 12:7)

6.    Pray that we will boldly tell others the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28:19-20)

7. Pray that we will live a life of prayer, in constant awareness of God and in constant dependence on God.

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess. 5:16-18)
“Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” (Eph. 6:18)

 
As the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us, prayer is the most important part of a grateful life (Q&A 116). We need to constantly be asking God for his empowering grace and working of his Spirit in us, and thanking him for the way he continually pours out good gifts upon us. ​
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    About the blog

    My thoughts on how following Jesus calls us to go with the grain of the universe and against the grain of the world. I love the Bible, theology, and philosophy and how they intersect with just about anything else. 

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