“At least he’s in a better place”

These are words often repeated after death has ended the physical suffering and mental anguish of someone who has endured much for an all-too-long period of time. Loved ones, having witnessed horrific suffering, feel relief that the ordeal is finally over for their parent or sibling or friend or whomever. “Well, at least she’s in a better place.”

That may be true, and then again, it may not be. As one who has presided over many funerals and graveside services, I neither preach someone into heaven nor into hell. I believe in the reality of both, but the eternal Judge determines that deceased person’s fate.

We must not be glib about eternity. Our loved one may be in a better place, but he is in the presence of God only because he is God’s child, having turned from his sin and believed on the crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. The person in that better place than this fallen world is there only because Christ bore his sin upon the cross, taking the wrath of the thrice-holy God for the repentant one’s sin and pronouncing the believer righteous.

For our sake he [God the Father] made him [God the Son] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV).

Otherwise, that loved one will languish in hell for eternity, separated from God and from all hope. This reality, though pooh-poohed by atheists and “Christian” liberals alike, will not fade away like a bad dream simply because one believes it unthinkable that a loving God, if indeed there is a God, would cast anyone into hell. Jesus himself spoke without ambiguity.

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41, ESV).

A better place? I sincerely hope so, but it isn’t so just because we wish it. May our loved ones know the only One who will receive them unto that better place, in his presence, for eternity.

Random thoughts about politics and such

The following started off as a response to some posts in an off-topic thread on the Logos Bible Software Forum, but I decided to put it here instead. (By the way, the new Logos Bible Software 4 is worth checking out!)

• Sarah Palin has been stereotyped by much of our news media (opinion writers masquerading as journalists) in the same way that Dan Quayle was. That, on the surface, she did poorly in early interviews may have been as much of the McCain handlers’ fault as hers. Put a microphone in front of any of us and we’ll say some pretty stupid stuff that can get constantly replayed by those who disagree with our basic positions.

• Do those who believe that a display of superior intelligence is essential for the vice presidency honestly consider Joe Biden to be one so endowed? Really? For every Palin gaffe, I’ll give you a Biden.
• Why does Barack Obama come off as one possessing superior intelligence? We can throw in some jaw-dropping Obama responses, too, with our Biden gaffes, but they don’t get much play in our “news” media. Obama is super cool and gives a wonderful speech from the always-present teleprompter. He bounces down steps without touching the handrail. Cool is often confused for intelligence.
• Frankly, I think Palin and Biden and Obama and McCain and George W. Bush are decently intelligent people.
• Most of the news media in the U.S. are quite liberal on the political spectrum. Those who champion their causes (pro-choice on abortion, homosexual rights, etc.) are portrayed as wonderful, intelligent leaders. Those who do not are portrayed as doofuses. Reagan was denigrated by our press, as most conservatives are. Carter, Clinton, and Obama are portrayed as deep thinkers.
• The word “evangelical” has lost almost all sense of meaning so as to have become essentially useless. When folks call Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen are viewed as evangelicals, we need a replacement term for evangelical.
• Nations often get the leaders they deserve. We Americans so thrive on celebrities and entertainment that we have elected a man to the presidency because of what he has portrayed himself to be, not what he has proven himself to be. Where has Mr. Obama really shown himself to be capable of leading a nation? Did he excel in college and law school? He did become editor of the Harvard Law Review, but that position’s going to the student with the highest grades was changed in the 1970’s. What about after law school? Our president has shown himself capable of being elected to office, from editor of the HLR to Illinois state senator to less than three years as a U.S. senator to now president of the U.S. We’ll have to wait to see what really comes of it, but no one that I’ve read has been particularly impressed with what he did as either a state senator or U.S. senator.
• Citizens in other nations often cast aspersions upon the U.S., but they have their issues, not so dissimilar to those of the U.S. They’ve got their poverty and discrimination. Admittedly, a lot of the evidence put forth is anecdotal. Much, but certainly not all, of the poverty in our country is a result of bad choices. I’ve been in homes of people who seemed quite destitute to find them with a cable television package that I could not justify for my own home. Drugs and out-of-wedlock births greatly contribute to poverty. And yes, the leaders of other nations are also often portrayed in a quite uncomplimentary light.
• God is sovereign over the affairs of men. Even in a representative democracy, God ultimately chooses who leads. And yet we as believers are to be involved in the process, attempting to understand the issues at stake and how those seeking to be elected will deal with those problems.

Do we really believe what we say we believe?

We Southern Baptists say that the Bible is without error, that it is God’s authority over our lives, and that it is sufficient for leading us to God and rightly ordering our lives. I wonder, though, if we really believe what we say we believe.

It seems that we have our belief system that we profess and we have our “but’s” that we live. We say we believe that God created all things, but it looks really dumb to believe he did it in six twenty-four-hour days. We say we believe that men should lovingly lead their wives and that wives should lovingly follow that lead, but we engage in the best (worst?) of the battle of the sexes when our partner is not treating us according to our satisfaction. We say we believe in the church government taught in the Scriptures but many of our churches have deacons acting as though they were elders or, even worse, a church council acting as an elder board. We claim that church membership is to be taken seriously, but Southern Baptist Convention churches have millions of members who rarely, if ever, attend corporate worship in the church where their name persists in being on the roll.

We say we believe a lot of things, but our actions reveal what we really believe. Maybe that’s the reason denominational leaders are constantly trying to devise new means to renew our churches. Perhaps a more effective strategy would be to repent of our sin of violating our professed beliefs with our unbiblical actions and really become submissive to the teaching of the Word of God.

Confusing cool for intelligence

As Barack Obama came to national attention as the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, many were caught up in the aura of the Illinois state senator. He had a presence about him, an ability to deliver his speech, the way he held his head–all of these would draw great crowds at campaign stops and would eventually catapult him into Presidency of the United States.

The one almost universal description of candidate Obama, and now President Obama, has been that he is intelligent. He is widely considered to be more intelligent than almost anyone else in politics, indeed more intelligent than any other man elected to lead this nation. He just has that aura about him.

And I think that helps explain a great deal this fawning over President Obama–his aura. I am really not convinced that he is particularly intelligent. I do not mean he is ignorant, and I certainly do not denigrate him as so many did the younger President Bush. There simply is little hard evidence to support the commonly-held position that he is possessed of lofty intelligence. As far as I know, his grade point averages at Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard have not been released. (I recognize that one’s GPA alone does not signify intelligence, but the media made a great deal of President George W. Bush’s GPA.) As President, Mr. Obama has not really done anything that is widely considered brilliant, while he has made some noticeable gaffes that seem to be fairly overlooked by the national media.

I have to ask: What is there about President Obama which brings about this almost universal acclaim of intelligence? In a word, I think it is the “cool” factor. The President is a cool dude. He bounces down the stairs without touching the handrail. His chin is up while he makes a speech. He looks pretty good with a basketball. He just looks cool.

In America, where a large portion of our citizenry swoons over celebrities, there is great difficulty in distinguishing between intelligence and cool. We fawn over actors who are attractive and can play the part of a character before the cameras. We yawn at the scholar backed by serious research who says something that will actually impact the way we live. We are willingly led by what appears to be than by what actually is (cf. John 7:24). We cannot tell the difference between intelligence and cool.

Free download book from Christian Audio: Desiring God

November’s free audio download from Christian Audio is Desiring God by John Piper. In a cultural Christianity that too often sees God as a means to an end, we need to understand that God is the end, and in him alone is true joy.

Insert NOV2009 into the coupon code in order to receive the book free. Enjoy!

Ignorant deacons and unfaithful pastors

There is really no easy way to say this, but the state of far too many of our Southern Baptist Churches is poor. One has to look no further than the deacons who serve as de facto elders in many churches.

Those coming from other denominations may be unaware of the leadership model commonly found in Baptist churches. In these churches, the deacons function as ruling elders. They are the authority in the church, superseded only by congregational vote. Instead of a plurality of elders having oversight of the church in teaching and administration, most SBC churches (and most other Baptist denominations as well) have deacons functioning in that role. (Even more egregious than this model is the one that has a church council operating as ruling elders, but that is for another discussion.)

Usually these deacons are nominated and voted upon by the congregation. Business sense and popularity are often the criteria for getting elected. Spiritual requirements found in 1 Timothy 3:8-13 are seldom acknowledged. These deacons typically have little awareness of the Scriptures, no knowledge of church history, no understanding of why they are Baptists other than immersion as the mode of baptism, and yet have authority over the church. When someone in the church has a complaint about the pastor, these deacons confront the pastor to change in order to keep peace in the church. Heaven forbid that a disgruntled church member offended because his sin is confronted through the preaching of the Word should leave and take his money with him. At all costs, the budget must be met!

But why do we have this situation? The blame cannot help but be placed upon pastors who have been more concerned with keeping their positions than being faithful to the Scriptures. Pastors have before remarked about some particular doctrine with this: “I believe that, but I can’t preach it in my church. They won’t stand for it.” Didn’t the apostle Paul warn us of this very thing?

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:1-4, ESV)

So now we have church after church led by deacons who possess little understanding of the Scriptures and yet determine whether the church’s pastor stays or goes. Too often they are more concerned about the budget and attendance than with sound doctrine and godly living. Have our churches ever been in a more deplorable condition? I doubt it. May God have mercy on the pastor who seeks to be faithful to the Scriptures in such churches. Unless God intervenes, he will find himself either without employment or with a drastically-reduced congregation (as well as reduced compensation). And often his antagonist will be some curmudgeon retired pastor who has remained as a member of the congregation, the very cause for the congregation’s wretched spiritual condition! (I have in mind a church in which this has recently occurred.)

May God be pleased to change the hearts of our people to be submissive to his Scriptures, to seek to glorify him in all things, and to rejoice in having pastors who preach the whole counsel of God.

If your church is seeking a pastor, let me introduce you to a friend

Dr. Ross Layne is a godly pastor in Lavonia, Georgia, who without reservation preaches the gospel of Christ. Ross received his Ph.D. in systematic theology from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and served as pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Lavonia, Georgia, for five years.

Check out Ross’s blog, Captivated by Christ. In a day when few Baptist churches are interested in the biblical gospel and few pastors dare preach it, Ross is a happy exception. I commend him highly. Ross can be reached at rosslayne at ymail dot com (yes, replace the “at” and “dot” with their respective symbols ;-)).

A Recipe for Apostasy: The Customer Is Always Right

During the past century or so, the concept of pragmatism has become the guiding force behind how conservative churches function and how the gathered church worships. According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, pragmatism is “a practical approach to problems and affairs.” Philosophically, pragmatism is “an American movement in philosophy founded by C. S. Peirce and William James and marked by the doctrines that the meaning of conceptions is to be sought in their practical bearings, that the function of thought is to guide action, and that truth is preeminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief.”

Basically, pragmatism boils down to doing what works, doing what produces the desired results. The April 25, 1912, issue of The Christian Index, the weekly paper of the Georgia Baptist Convention, editorialized: “‘What can it accomplish?’ is the question that meets every man today who presents to the world for its consideration either some new invention, or some new theory of social, civil or political activity; or some religious belief and practice.” That which applied to individuals also applied to organizations: “‘What are you accomplishing for the betterment of men and of society?’ is the question which every organization of men has to meet and answer. And the higher the claim of such organization the more searching the investigation that then will make into the results it is achieving.” Obviously, then, those churches which were producing tangible results were the ones which had satisfactorily answered the question. For support, the work of the Salvation Army was presented: “Some years ago, the Salvation Army began its operations, and by its strange, biazarre [sic] methods, shocked the sensibilities of the thoughtful. It had to run the gauntlet of suspicion, ridicule, contempt, and misrepresentation. But it stood the test. It has done a great work where no one else was working. In the parlance of the day, it has ‘made good;’ and now men of every creed and nation recognize it as a great power for good. Its officers get a hearing anywhere and purses open to its pleas that remain closed to those of regular churches.”

Neither the doctrine nor the methods of the Salvation Army were examined for biblical faithfulness. The criterion for approving the Salvation Army’s methods was that they had “made good.” The Index found support in the words of Jesus: “‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ is as true of churches and denominations as it is of individuals.”

Whatever works, whatever gets the most persons to the worship “service,” whatever appeals to the populace so we can get out our message—these are the concepts which have been directing much of the work of evangelical churches for over a century. In the twenty-first century we find churches following the latest fads to attract a following. Pastors wearing suits are out; pastors preaching in jeans and untucked shirts are in. Reverent worship is out; high-powered bands are in. The use of discretion in sermons is out; explicit talk about sex is in.

Many of these churches teach doctrine which we would endorse, and yet there seems to be danger lurking. When a church appeals to outsiders through a “hip” pastor and a certain style of music and the use of coarse speech, that church is on the slippery slope to compromising its message. It may not happen in the first generation, but the next generation will discover that people are turned off by concepts such as personal holiness, judgment and hell, the wrath of God, and the inability of humans to come to Christ in their own power. After the hip wears off, the message will come under attack. The apostle Paul’s warning in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 will come into play: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

Evangelicalism: lurching from one fad to another

Evangelicalism rarely displays its desire to be relevant and attract the masses, regardless of credal statements to the contrary, with its longing to find the next great thing that “works,” that gets the crowd. A few years ago, some decided it was time to “diversify” their worship “services” (events?) by having services according to style of music and order of worship. Out of that arose the now common-place offerings of a contemporary service and a traditional service in many churches. One mega-church took the idea to its logical conclusion by offering several services at the same time on its campus with a different style of music in each venue to satisfy different tastes. The pastor preached to all the gatherings via telecast.

The now latest and greatest idea seems to be for the pastor to dress like “everyman.” Neckties and suits are out; untucked shirts and jeans are in. I viewed a video the other day of an immensely popular pastor in the now-required (if you’re going to be “cool”) untucked shirt and jeans. Taking it another step in the “cool” direction, the pastor’s jeans looked as though he had worn them for several days.

Someone will doubtlessly protest the drift of this post. “Clothes don’t matter. Why does a minister need to wear a suit? Neckties are just dumb.” To be fair, I’m no great fan of neckties! However, if clothes do not matter, why is the new fashion of the day untucked shirts and jeans? It seems that clothes do matter to those wanting to be cool.

I contend that what pastors wear to worship does matter, and the appeal should not be the appearance of “cool.” Worship is serious business. Believers have gathered in the presence of Almighty God. The atmosphere is not kick back in the recliner and let’s hang out.

Would the pastor decked out in his untucked shirt and well-worn jeans wear the same clothing to an invitation to the Oval Office? Why do television news anchors wear coats and ties when relaying the news of the day? Clothing implies the degree of seriousness with which one undertakes certain duties.

Does an evangelical minister have to wear a coat and tie? In our culture, such attire indicates a degree of the importance of the task at hand. In other cultures, one would “dress up” differently. And even in our own culture, though I may not insist on a coat and tie, I think when we come for corporate worship, we should wear our best, especially those conducting worship.

I realize that my viewpoint is not the popular one and will be misconstrued. To be clear, I’m not saying that an evangelical minister who wears a coat and tie will be more serious about worship and preach a more orthodox sermon than his untucked shirt/jeans wearing counterpart. Some of the “cool” guys are preaching some really good, expository sermons. Wearing proper clothing does not ensure that one worships “in spirit and in truth,” and wearing jeans does not mean that one is not worshiping rightly.

What I am saying is that our never-satisfied quest to be deemed relevant and appealing to the masses undermines the business about which we gather–the worship of the thrice-holy, sovereign God. I think I’ll skip this fad.

One’s Reputation and the Gospel

Proverbs 22:1 reminds us, “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.” Character matters. How a Christian lives, particularly among unbelievers, is an issue of no little concern.

Think about how a person handles his finances. That person is building a reputation among unbelievers. Let’s say that a Christian has gotten into some financial difficulties through foolish spending. He sees the problems he has created and works to overcome them. He sees his debt as a matter to be resolved, so he cuts back on his spending, perhaps drastically so, and pays his creditors. He will build a reputation as an honest person who sees his mistakes and accepts responsibility for them.

On the other hand, let’s say that this Christian sees his debts as a non-issue in the overall scheme of things. When told that he needs to contact his creditors and work out a plan to pay his debts, he responds with, “It’s not that important. They have already soaked me so much with interest charges that they made enough to cover what I owe. They’ll eventually write it off.” Not only is that person a thief, he is providing evidence that he may actually not be a true Christian if he does not repent of such an evil attitude (“The wicked borrows but does not pay back” [Psalm 37:21a]). Unfortunately, there are some men who serve as pastors of Baptist churches who have that very attitude.

The Bible instructs us “to be ready for every good work” (Titus 3:1). We often think that good works are spiritual duties, but good works encompasses all deeds which a Christian should do as he lives in this fallen world. Christians should benefit their fellow citizens whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Paul insists that Christians are to be consciously engaged in performing good works among their fellow citizens: “The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people” (Titus 3:8).

Unfortunately, we too often think that such works are to be attention-getting endeavors, perhaps leading a food drive or building a house for someone in need. News of the deed is published in the local newspaper, “to the glory of God,” of course! While there is certainly nothing wrong with such deeds, we need to recognize that it is the relatively simple deeds that really glorify God. Returning to our earlier illustration, one’s personal finances ranks up there in importance.

Why is that? Why is how we handle our money so important? Money serves as a universal language and a universal concern. For instance, money is at the forefront of why elections are won or lost. We saw that with the infamous behavior of President Clinton and the infamous public response to it. Because Mr. Clinton was credited with the relative prosperity that the United States was enjoying during the 1990’s, his sexual sin proved no serious long-term threat to his popularity.

Those who are careless with their personal finances—who exhibit unconcern about outstanding bills and obligations and complain about what they cannot afford while heedlessly spending money on non-essentials—inhibit the spread of the gospel, regardless of all their talk of personal evangelism.

How we handle money may seem boringly “unspiritual,” but it is a part of the essential “good works” in our lives among unbelievers. May we adorn the gospel of Christ by being good stewards, by paying our debts on time, by living frugally, and by exhibiting generosity.