Pope Bendedict XVI: A Co-belligerent Pope

Several years ago, I attended a conservative Presbyterian church as an associate member. This was a bit of a strange fit, since I was still a Baptist in my ecclesiological convictions. In my interview with the elders to become an associate of the church, they asked me if I took any exceptions with the Westminster Confession of Faith, the doctrinal standard of the Presbyterian Church in America. I had read through the confession in preparation for the interview and had come up with two things.

First, I told them that I did not believe in infant baptism but held to believer’s baptism. Surprisingly, that was okay with them! Second, I told them that I could not agree with the Confession’s statement that the Pope is the antichrist (WCF 25.6). To my mind then and now, that aspect of the Confession seemed a bit over-the-top and not born out by history or the Bible in any clear way. It certainly was not a hill that I was willing to die on, so I cited it as an objection. Surprisingly, again, this exception was okay with them too. It turned out that the Presbyterian Church in America had excised this portion of the Confession from the one that they were using at that time.

We Protestant evangelicals would all do well to excise this kind of blanket dismissal from our statements about the Pope. I think that Francis Schaeffer’s principle of “co-belligerency” still provides a useful model for how we as evangelicals relate to Roman Catholics in general and to the Pope in particular. Co-belligerence means that we evangelicals can stand together with Roman Catholics in our fight against the pervasive secularism that is overtaking western culture. We are united in our belligerence.

But unity in belligerence does not mean unity in confession. The historic theological differences that divide Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants still exist. Even though we Protestants still do not agree with Roman Catholics about issues such as the Apostolic succession of the Pope, the meaning of the sacraments, and the doctrine of Justification, this fact should not keep us from standing together against evils such as abortion and gay “marriage.”

A good example of this kind of co-belligerence occurred this week in a televised discussion about the senate filibustering of President Bush’s judicial appointments. Al Mohler appeared on the news program Scarborough Country on MSNBC and went to bat for a Catholic judge whose nomination is being filibustered because he is pro-life. Al Mohler is a reformed and Baptist in his theology and hardly sympathetic to Roman Catholicism on a number of issues (click here). Yet during the debate, he announced: “I‘m an evangelical Christian, but I‘m going to speak up on behalf of that man, who is a Roman Catholic, who holds to his church‘s teachings on abortion” (click here for transcript).

The posture that Francis Schaeffer, Al Mohler, and others advocate is not an ecumenism that ignores, minimizes, or compromises on the fundamental doctrines of Evangelical faith. Rather, it is what Timothy George called “an ecumenism of the trenches.”[1] That is, a united fight against the cultural onslaught. Al Mohler writes:

“Given the cultural disaster we face, and what is at stake, it simply makes sense for men and women who share basic worldview concerns to gather strength from each other, join hands and hearts, and enter the cultural fray. On this point, all but the most extreme separatists among us would agree.”[2]

Evangelicals should welcome the new Pope with a spirit of co-belligerence. While not compromising the “solas” of the Reformation, we can be thankful that there will be another voice in the public square opposing the downgrade of western culture. Pope Benedict XVI has taken public and outspoken stances against stem-cell research, abortion, homosexuality, relativism and more.[3] While we are not united with the Pope in our confession, we can stand with him in our belligerence.

For more on this controversial topic, I recommend the following article: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Standing Together, Standing Apart: Cultural Co-belligerence Without Theological Compromise.”

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[1]Quoted in R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Standing Together, Standing Apart: Cultural Co-belligerence Without Theological Compromise,” Touchstone July/August (2003).
[2]Ibid.
[3]For these reasons, his election has frustrated liberal Roman Catholics around the world (Ian Fisher, “German Cardinal Is Chosen as Pope,” New York Times, April 20, 2005).

Does God care about filibusters?

Sometimes I read things that are so pitifully erroneous that I feel compelled to set the record straight. This is one instance.

Recently Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D.-Ill., complained about Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist’s participation in a simulcast to religious conservatives. The simulcast will include pro-family leaders — such as James Dobson — who have portrayed Democrats as being “against people of faith” for blocking President Bush’s judicial nominations.

Durbin was not at all happy that Frist was participating in such an event. Durbin groused: “I cannot imagine that God — with everything he has or she[1] has to worry about — is going to take the time to debate the filibuster in heaven.”[2]

I will not deny the rhetorical effectiveness of Durbin’s statement. It appeals to peoples’ common sense that a transcendent God would hardly stoop to concern Himself with the mundane details of human existence — much less the jaded world of power politics. After all, isn’t God above all that? Aren’t there more important things in the universe than what happens in one small city located on the galactic speck known as planet earth? The reasoning goes something like this: “God doesn’t care about petty things such as politics, so why should we care what He thinks about our public policies?”

I think Durbin’s statement merely reflects another cynical attempt to remove God from the public square — in this case, from the give and take of political discourse. But the main problem with Durbin’s ill-informed words is that nearly every phrase is chocked full of biblical and theological error. In one fell swoop of misinformation, Durbin manages to turn the biblical portrait of God’s providence on its head. God’s Providence refers to His constant care and control over every aspect of His creation (Ephesians 1:11). And Sen. Durbin misses it.

For starters, Durbin’s “I-cannot-imagine” appeal to common sense gets his listeners off on the wrong foot in their reflections about God — as if what one “imagines” matters one whit in the determination of reality. We shouldn’t be surprised by kooky theological reflection when the source of it is the mere musing of a misguided muckraker. What really matters is not the god of Durbin’s or anyone else’s imagination, but the God who has revealed Himself in the written canon of Scripture. And it is to the Scriptures that we will have to look if we want to know what God thinks about anything.

Jesus taught about the Father’s stooping to be involved in the affairs of men: “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31). In other words, God is very much involved in the day-to-day mundane events of our lives.

When Jesus refers to falling “sparrows” and numbered “hairs,” He teaches that God’s providential concern extends to the smallest details of our existence, to what in our terms would be the molecular level of existence.[3] In other words, there is no aspect of our lives that is beneath God. All of life belongs to Him and only finds its proper meaning and purpose in relation to Him. This truth would of course include the mundane world of politics.

Durbin intimates that God has more important things to do than to “worry” about our politics. Yet God’s Providence in Scripture is not depicted as something that stresses God out. As if He can’t have anything else added to His plate because He’s already got too much to do (like preventing the universe from imploding). God’s meticulous providence does not cause Him worry. On the contrary, biblically speaking, our worry is relieved by our knowledge of His providence. In Matthew 10:30, it is this truth that is to be a comfort to disciples who suffer at the hands of evil governments. If God’s care over His creation extends even to the smallest animal, then it certainly extends to His people.

For Durbin to suggest that God doesn’t care about the judiciary that will decide whether abortion-on-demand will remain legal is to make a grave error indeed. If God cares about the sparrows, you can be sure He cares about the babies. Their justice will not tarry long as God Himself eventually will call to account their oppressors (Psalm 82:3, 8; 146:9), a fact I’m sure many pro-abortionists would like to ignore. And the pro-abortionists will cause many others to ignore this truth so long as God and our accountability to Him are banned from the public consciousness.

So let us not keep silent when dinky theology is substituted for substantive, sound statements about God. Remarks like Sen. Durbin’s may be clever, but they are not true.
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[1]A critique of Durbin’s dithering on the gender of God will have to wait for another time, but this issue in itself is important nonetheless.
[2]David D. Kirkpatrick and Carl Hulse, “Frist Accused of Exploiting Religion Issue,” New York Times, April 16, 2005. Accessed Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/politics/16judges.html.
[3]John Piper used this phrase in connection with this text, that the Lord’s Providence extends to the “molecular” level. He used it in a radio interview concerning the tsunami disaster.
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This article appeared in the Baptist Press on August 20, 2005.
http://www.bpnews.net/bpfeature.asp?ID=1803

The Veggie Tale Gospel vs. Teaching the Whole Counsel of God

I used to do the strangest thing during church services when I was a kid growing up in my home church of DeRidder, Louisiana. I made a regular habit of taking out the pew Bible during the sermon and reading the Old Testament stories that I thought were “cool.” I was fascinated by the biblical stories and their often stark portrayals of war, violence, and intrigue. I can remember reading about Amnon’s treachery against his half-sister Tamar (2 Samuel 13) and the 200 Philistine foreskins that David paid Saul so that he could become the king’s son-in-law (1 Samuel 18). Stories like these became my friends when I couldn’t get my little preteen brain to focus on the preacher’s sermon.

A conversation today with Dr. Russell D. Moore, guest lecturer at the Criswell College, reminded me of my childhood fascination with these stories. Dr. Moore explained how he thought the evangelical church in America tends to water down the blood and guts of the biblical story line. It’s not just the Veggie Tales who have transformed the blood-thirsty Ninevites into cute little creatures whose only sin is to slap each other around with cute little fish, but this kind of non-violent biblical revisionism happens every Sunday morning in children’s Sunday school classes in conservative churches all across America. As a result, most young boys grow up envisioning Jesus not as the warrior-King of the Gospels, but as the feminine looking “bearded lady” of the flannel graph. Dr. Moore argued that this trend reflects a feminization of the biblical story line that ultimately causes young boys to lose interest in the Gospel.

Dr. Moore has written a short essay on this topic titled, “Children’s Sunday School and the Battle for the Bible.” Dr. Moore is one of my favorite writers, and I regularly read his blog at http://www.henryinstitute.com/. Visit the website. Read it often. I’m certain he’ll become one of your favorites too.

“Children’s Sunday School and the Battle for the Bible” – by Dr. Russell D. Moore

Dr. Russell D. Moore is the Dean of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky. He also serves as executive director of The Henry Institute, a think-tank named after Carl F. H. Henry that is devoted to equipping churches and church leaders to engage the culture from a biblical worldview perspective.

Eulogy for My Uncle: Hoy Dickerson

My Uncle Hoy went home to be with the Lord last Thursday, April 7, 2005 (click here to read his obituary in the Dallas Morning News). It was very difficult for our family to say goodbye to him now, as we will greatly miss him. The following is the eulogy that I gave at his funeral service last Sunday. My prayer is that the hope of the resurrection will sustain all of us and help us to face life and death with courage.
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EULOGY FOR HOY DICKERSON
April 10, 2005

INTRODCTION
What do you say on an occasion like this? It’s always best at a time like this to do two things: to remember the deceased and to remember the Gospel.

I have my own remembrances of Uncle Hoy that I can tell. There are many stories. I have always loved Uncle Hoy’s sense of humor and impeccably timed practical jokes. I love the many ways that Uncle Hoy has found to torture my dad over the years. I will miss how he always liked to sneak up behind Dad and “goose” him. Even after all these years, Dad never got used to it. He would jump out of his skin every time Uncle Hoy got him.

The ultimate practical joke happened years ago when we lived in Fort Worth. Dad was connecting the gas line to the oven, and he lit a match and was passing it by the line to check for leaks. Just as dad held up the match to the line, Uncle Hoy snuck up and hit the side of oven as hard as he could. Dad nearly lost his lunch on that one. He also nearly threw Uncle Hoy through the window.

So we need to remember Uncle Hoy. But we also need to remember the Gospel. How do we speak the Gospel in a way that offers real comfort and hope and that does not sound like shallow, wishful thinking? How do we address our grief with the Gospel in a way that rings true with the way God made us?

I think we find ourselves caught between two temptations. There will be a temptation to paper over the very real grief with a sort of “praise God anyhow” kind of an attitude. The idea that Christians don’t cry because they have Jesus. Really spiritual people don’t let anything get to them. No matter what happens, no matter how profound the loss, if you’re really spiritual you will just put a plastic smile on your face, pretend like nothing’s wrong, and “praise God anyhow.”

The other temptation will be to let your emotions overrun you. It may seem that the love that you still feel for Uncle Hoy, the memories of your life with him, and the bitterness of having to say goodbye for now; it will seem that all of these things conspire against you to drag you to a dark place. So there can be the temptation to despair as the emotions run over you.

Yet you know and I know that neither one of these responses really rings true. On the one hand, the “praise God anyhow” response just seems to ignore the fact that you really did love Hoy and that it hurts to say goodbye. Just as we cannot pretend that the flame doesn’t hurt when we put our hand in the fire, we cannot pretend that it doesn’t make our hearts ache to see Uncle Hoy go. On the other hand, losing ourselves in a bottomless pit of despair won’t do either. So as we find ourselves tempted on the one hand to succumb to overwhelming grief and on the other hand to ignore it with a pretend “praise God anyhow” attitude, we desperately need a word from God to make a beginning of putting our broken hearts back together again.

And I want to say to you today that God gives us that. God’s word for us today is from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18: “13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

God tells us that we need to do two things according to this text. We need to grieve, and we need to have hope.

WE NEED TO GRIEVE (1 Thess 4:13a)
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13a).

Notice that it does not say, “Don’t grieve.” It just says, “Don’t grieve as if you have no hope.” In other words, there is a way to grieve and a way not to grieve. God is not telling us not to grieve. On the contrary He is telling us how to grieve. Don’t ever let anyone ever tell you that it’s wrong to cry. We need to cry.

In John 11:35 when Jesus learned of Lazarus’ death, the scripture says very plainly that “Jesus wept.” So if we want to be like Jesus in our loss, we have to cry. Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” This is a command. So we need to grieve. We need to have many tears.

But God tells us that He does not want our grieving to consist of tears only. He wants our grieving to be filled with hope. So . . .

WE NEED TO HAVE HOPE (1 Thess 4:13b-16)
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13b).

Don’t grieve “as do the rest,” means don’t grieve “as non-Christians” grieve. When they grieve, they have no hope. No expectation that anything good lies beyond the grave. When the non-Christian grieves his tears are bitter because there is nothing more to come. It truly is the last goodbye. But we don’t grieve that way. When the tears flow and the anguish of loss is at its worst, we still have the promises of the Gospel. God comes to you now in your grief, and He’s saying to you, “Remember the Gospel. It’s not over now, and it never will be. There is more to come.”

Because “14 if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.”

Paul addresses a group of Christians who had placed their faith in crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus. They had received the gospel at a time when it cost them dearly to believe. But they endured the persecution because they believed the word that Jesus had been risen from the grave and that he would come back again for his people. They had become discouraged because in spite of all their faith, the Lord chose to delay His coming, and the Thessalonian Christians were watching their brothers and sisters die. They were grieving because they thought their loved ones had missed it.

Paul’s response is just a reminder of the Gospel. “Just as Jesus died and rose again, in the same way God will resurrect from the dead those believers who die before Jesus comes back.”

Therefore, the way to address your tears is to believe that there is more to come:
“15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of [the] archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words”(1 Thessalonians 4:15-18).

I say to you, Aunt Judy, on the authority of the word of God, as surely as the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true, that there is more to come. You will have him back. You will have him back and then some. 1 Corinthians 6:14 says, “Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power.”

Jesus Christ went into a grave dead, and He walked out alive. His physical body was remade perfect and whole. Uncle Hoy will indeed get up out of the grave with his body remade perfect, whole, and complete. You will see him again with your own eyes in the resurrection, just as you will see Jesus with your own eyes. And it will be better then than it ever has been here. And thus you shall always be with the Lord.

Where is Uncle Hoy now? Jesus is seated at the right hand of God right now (Eph 1:20; Col 3:1), and all of those who have fallen asleep in Jesus are with him right now. This is why the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that he prefers “to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”

But even though Paul preferred to die and to be with Christ (Phil 1:23), he knew that there was more to come at the resurrection. Being apart from the body and at home with the Lord is not how he thinks he will always be. Because he says that he knows “14 that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus . . . 16 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. 17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:14, 16-18).

So right now, Uncle Hoy is with Jesus, in paradise, no tears, no pain, only joy increasing forever. And he knows now what you should know too. There is more to come.