Trevin Wax Posts – The Gospel Coalition https://www.thegospelcoalition.org The Gospel Coalition Wed, 26 Apr 2023 06:42:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 When There Are No Heroes https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/when-no-heroes/ Tue, 25 Apr 2023 04:10:09 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=550339 From monarchy to fascism to Axis to Allies to Communism to free markets. That’s the story of Romania, and it all took place in one century.]]>

I recently finished Paul Kenyon’s Children of the Night: The Strange and Epic Story of Modern Romania, a gripping historical overview of the tumultuous century experienced by the country my wife hails from, the place where I once made my home.

Children of the Night: The Strange and Epic Story of Modern Romania by Paul Kenyon

Consider this: within the span of one century—from 1900 to 2000—Romania went from celebrating a monarchy, to sliding into a nationalist dictatorship, to fighting in WWII on the side of Germany before switching to fight on the side of the Allies, to deposing the monarch and installing a Communist regime, ending in a revolution that brought the birth pangs of freedom. From monarchy to fascism to Axis to Allies to Communism to free markets. All in one century.

My wife’s grandfather was drafted into WWII as a soldier who fought on the side of Hitler, but once the country switched allegiance, so did he, spending the last part of the war fighting on the side of the Allies—all the while despising both the remains of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the designs of the nascent Soviet Union that would darken the country by closing the drapes of the Iron Curtain. Whenever the war would come up in conversation, my wife tells me, her grandfather’s gentle, elderly exterior would fade away and he’d begin to curse, bitter at the circumstances that led to his country’s humiliation.

Paul Kenyon’s historical look at Romania begins in a familiar place, with Vlad Țepeș, the medieval leader whose legal rigidity and terrible punishments led to peace in the land, but at the cost of human decency. “Vlad the Impaler” became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Gothic character Count Dracula, and Vlad’s residence (Bran Castle) the setting for Transylvanian horror.

From there, Kenyon’s narrative jumps forward to the 20th century, where he traces the arc of Romania’s history while featuring the personal stories and testimonies of ordinary people. In this way, the book never becomes a dry historical recitation of facts but instead helps the reader feel the promise and peril of the moment.

If there’s anyone who stands out as someone decent, whose leadership gave Romania its best opportunity at stability, it’s Queen Marie, the British-born granddaughter of Victoria, whose husband, Ferdinand, was the German-born King of Romania during WWI. Thanks to Marie’s tireless efforts in serving her people and advocating on their behalf, the territorial expansion known as Greater Romania came into existence.

Once Ferdinand is dead and Marie is only the Mother Queen, the country lurches toward the chaos of competing factions. No one is good. The evil of Corneliu Codreanu and his nationalistic zeal is cloaked in the spirituality of the Romanian Orthodox Church, until the drive for national pride and spiritual unity of the historic church are merged into a frightening picture of an evil “saint” whose cross joins with the swastika. At one point, the literal heart of the deceased Queen Marie is carried from one part of the country to another, in the same realm where Vlad Țepeș is said to be buried, as a way of tapping into the nation’s lifeblood.

By the time the Second World War arrives, Romania’s hatred of foreigners has snowballed into a vicious anti-Semitism that leads to complicity in the Holocaust. As Timothy Snyder points out in Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, European public opinion made it difficult to criticize the Soviet regime without seeming to endorse fascism, and vice versa. Hitler called all his enemies “Marxists,” and Stalin called all his  “fascists.”

Kenyon is wise to keep going back to ordinary people, victims of events beyond their control, so that you get a sense of what it would have been like to live through these times. As you read about the people with power, there’s nobody to root for. Never a good option.

You may long for a stronger monarchy to bring stability and courage to the country, but the embarrassment of King Carol II and his exploits at home and abroad put to rest the notion that a king could save the nation. You might admire the nationalistic zeal of Codreanu or Ion Antonescu, but then you’re confronted with the brutality, anti-Semitism, and string of high-profile assassinations. You may think the answer to fascism will be found in the oppressed, marginal movement of their archenemies—the young Communists—only to discover that, once in power, they were every bit as bad, if not worse, than the tyrants they displaced.

The biggest monster is saved for the latter part of the book—the rise of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his horrible wife, Elena, who managed to hoodwink the Americans and the British (or at least neutralize their human rights concerns) in exchange for seeking a measure of independence from the Soviets. Their dictatorship, which grew progressively worse as the years went by, turned the bad dream of Communist rule into a nightmare of the Securitate’s authoritarian tyranny.

Throughout Kenyon’s narrative, I couldn’t help but be reminded how fragile a gift is freedom. I pondered the ethical dilemmas faced by the common people at the time—the difficulty in distinguishing truth from propaganda, having to choose between fascists or Communists (or having to simply keep your head down once the “choice” was made for you), the swings from one form of evil to another, the rapidity with which the church can be co-opted by movements that express genuine concerns as a front for accomplishing evil aims, and the dissolution of character and statesmanship among the country’s leaders. I prayed God would preserve the United States in the future from this level of turmoil.

Romania is a different country today. In the years since I lived there, it has joined the European Union and there are signs of the nation recapturing the shimmer of its glorious past. Still, the wild history of this place once called “the breadbasket of Europe” surely stands as a striking example of a people caught between competing factions, where soundness of character is in short supply, and where the true church faces the ultimate price for remaining faithful.


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Truthful Witness and the Transgender Debate https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/truthful-witness-and-the-transgender-debate/ Thu, 20 Apr 2023 04:10:48 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=551663 Two approaches to today’s debates over transgender ideology, and why we shouldn’t pit conviction against compassion.]]>

We don’t get to pick our times; God does that.

We also don’t get to pick the challenges that confront the church in any given era. The culture determines the issues that require the church’s truthful witness.

We don’t have the luxury of choosing a narrow sliver of cultural space for faithful thinking and action. Jesus is Lord of all. Discipleship is never timeless. We’re to train up believers in understanding and living according to the unchanging truths of the faith, yes, but always in a way that equips them to resist the most prevalent falsehoods spreading over the world right now. Faithful Christian formation requires us to expose and counter the distortions and deceptions of our time.

A pastor friend of mine in the U.K. recently expressed astonishment at how many pastors in America never (or rarely) speak publicly about sex, gender, and identity. How can we expect the next generation to be biblically grounded if we don’t explain and expound Christian conviction about the goodness and givenness of our bodies, if we fail to offer clear and coherent answers from Scripture about the nature of humanity and our gendered selves?

What will this kind of engagement look like? How can leaders be faithful in addressing these issues?

In a recent segment about transgender controversies in Christianity Today’s podcast The Bulletin, Mike Cosper talked with Nicole Martin (chief impact officer at CT) and Madeleine Kearns, a staff writer at National Review who hails from the U.K. Their conversation juxtaposed two approaches to questions of gender and identity in the church today.

Convictional and Candid

Kearns comes at the issue directly, delineating between those who think the transgender movement is a wonderful idea that should be fully embraced and those who think we’ve turned a corner toward cultural insanity. Kearns makes clear her position: “I think this stuff is pretty insane and difficult to justify,” she says, and she mentions the various angles of debate including free speech, the purpose of medicine and treatment, the welfare of children, the safety of women-only spaces, and the legitimacy of gender-specific sports.

For Kearns, what matters most is conviction expressed candidly. Convictions about the nature and reality of biological sex will lead us to oppose certain cultural trends. In pushing for equality and against gender stereotypes, Kearns notes, some feminists in the late 20th century began to erase the reality of male/female differences (physically and socially), setting the stage for today’s debates. A decade ago, a libertarian posture toward adult transitions (“Be whatever you want to be”) seemed most prominent nationwide. Even conservatives thought it courteous and generous to adopt someone’s preferred pronouns.

But as transgender activism has become ever more demanding and aggressive, it’s now clear the bending of language serves an ideological purpose. “Compassion isn’t compassion unless it’s truthful,” Kearns says. And we mustn’t surrender plainspoken language that serves our argument about biological reality. Compassionate conversations matter, but apart from clearly stated convictions, there can be no conversation (which seems to be the goal of some transgender ideologues—to shut down any debate and shout down any dissent).

Conversational and Compassionate

In contrast, Nicole Martin says the goal right now shouldn’t be persuasion (at least not initially) but to make space for the conversation itself. Issues of identity are thorny. Martin sees the complexity in relating to a person who may “wrestle with a God-given identity, a selected identity, an identity that they feel very protective of.”

Like Kearns, Martin recognizes God’s gift of distinction and the need to honor our differences. Yet she thinks the church’s energy would be better directed elsewhere. The realization that some of the Christians involved in transgender debates weren’t at the forefront of rallying for women’s rights in the past makes her uneasy. She prefers to move from the transgender issue back to the women’s rights question more generally. And rather than taking a confrontational approach, she begins with our failures in Christian witness over the years, how “the church has silenced the voices of women” in ways that require reconciliation and healing.

Regarding sexuality and gender, Martin believes the church in the past has been better at expressing conviction than showing compassion. She realizes it’s impossible for Christians to try “sit in the middle on all issues” but notes how especially “sticky” it is to figure out how to address someone or continue a relationship with someone on the other side. In the end, she doesn’t answer Cosper’s question of what faithful witness looks like, claiming instead that “the question itself is exactly where we need to be.”

This Is Our Time

There’s plenty of overlap between Kearns and Martin here, but I’m struck by the differences in their outlooks and temperaments. Kearns focuses on convictions first and how to be direct and candid about them in conversation. Martin focuses on conversations first and the importance of showing compassion in expressing one’s convictions. Church leaders who align with Martin will have different priorities and make different choices than the ones who align with Kearns.

When it comes to this subject, I’m with Kearns. I don’t think Martin’s approach will be tenable in five (or even two) years. As is often said, you will be made to care. We may wish to change the subject, but what’s the point in discussing the failures of the church to women in the past if we’re unable to even define what a woman is in the present? And as much as we might yearn for constructive dialogue about these matters, it should be clear by now that gender activists aren’t looking for conversation. Their goal is conquest, a world in which the basic realities of human nature and existence are denied and all dissenters are viewed like the “savages” of Brave New World.

But even if the cultural opposition weren’t so fierce, I still think Kearns is right. We have a positive case to make on this issue. “The gospel should meet people at the point of their deepest confusion and at the height of their loftiest ideals,” writes Chris Brooks. What better place for the rescue of amazing grace than a world drowning in confusion, a society unmoored from embodied reality? The church offers an alternative society to this cultural dystopia because we see creation as a gift to be received, not a constraint to be cast off. That’s why, nearly a century ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote,

Christianity does appeal to a solid truth outside itself; to something which is in that sense external as well as eternal. It does declare that things are really there; or in other words that things are really things. In this Christianity is at one with common sense; but all religious history shows that this common sense perishes except where there is Christianity to preserve it.

The Questions Are Coming

The new gender ideology has reached into all kinds of spaces and raised all sorts of questions. Just ask pastors what they’re facing. Here’s a smattering of situations I’ve heard from church leaders in just the last month.

  • What’s the appropriate response of an elementary school kid in your church when the class throws a party celebrating another student’s newfound gender identity?
  • How does your church support the distraught parents of a highly online teenage girl who is threatening suicide if not allowed to medically block her physical development?
  • What’s your decision regarding a minor who identifies as trans and who wants to attend church camp?
  • How do you instruct young people on the Bible’s teaching of sex and gender while simultaneously warning them against the dehumanizing and hateful rhetoric often deployed toward those who identify as transgender?
  • How do you counsel the realtor whose livelihood is threatened because she defied a corporate order to post the transgender flag on her Facebook page? Or the church member whose job is in jeopardy because he won’t sign a statement affirming all of his company’s diversity, equality, and inclusion policies?

If we’re to truly make space for a conversation on these matters, the starting place must be our convictions about reality. All our choices must flow from those convictions. Strong convictions are the prerequisite for true conversations. And convictions and compassion aren’t in opposition. When the world is falling en masse for a bold and terrible lie, the most important and compassionate thing the church can do is uphold the courageous and irrepressible truth.


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The Family of God in a World Without Families https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/family-god-world-without-families/ Tue, 18 Apr 2023 04:10:55 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=548542 The strength of the church and the strength of the family often rise and fall together.]]>

For decades, Christians have worried about the weakening, shrinking, and decline of families. We’re in uncharted territory when large numbers of children no longer have siblings (and have fewer aunts, uncles, and cousins) or no longer live with both biological parents. Nearly 30 percent of households today consist of only one person.

In response to these trends, most pastors and church leaders devote their efforts to dealing with the fallout, looking for ways the church can strengthen families in crisis or mitigate the aftermath of family dissolution or better involve singles in ministry. The pastoral impulse to find avenues for the church to serve people in distress is vital.

But a bigger question often goes unasked: How does the decline of the family alter the way we understand the church? It’s not enough to ask how the church can address the breakdown of family relationships; we must also consider how these new challenges affect church relationships. Consider a few examples:

  • How do we understand what it means to have “brothers and sisters” in Christ in a world where more and more children are born and raised without siblings? (That’s a question I’ve asked in relation to China, where the economic and demographic fallout from the disastrous one-child policy has led to a world where siblings are the exception, not the norm.)
  • How do we continue to see the church as the family of God in a world where more and more people live in a household of one, especially in cities where in some congregations singles outnumber couples?
  • What’s the long-term effect of homes broken by divorce on how we view God as Father?
  • How does the perpetual unsettledness of mom’s or dad’s serial relationships affect a child’s understanding of God’s permanent covenant love?

No Easy Answers

These are challenging questions, in part because the situations and circumstances differ from person to person, family to family, and culture to culture. I don’t claim to have all the answers here, and I realize even asking these questions implies some family structures (husband and wife with marriage intact and the children born of their love) are closer to a universal standard. We run the risk of idealizing a particular arrangement as the norm in all places and times, when instead, for example, traditional societies often differ from the Western-style “nuclear family” by placing a higher value on the involvement of and expectations for the “extended” family.

Still, there’s no getting around these issues, because the Scriptures (1) regularly speak of the body of Christ in familial terms and (2) are shot through with marital and familial imagery. We’re right to consider how our understanding of the church is affected when long-standing family relationships (father and mother, child to parent, brother to brother) become less common.

Why Families Matter

When exceptions become the norm in family life—as family sizes get smaller and fewer children have brothers and sisters, as single-parenting becomes commonplace and divorce and remarriage expected—it becomes harder, not easier, for us to undergo the process of learning to live well in other spheres of life. Gregg Ten Elshof writes,

“Learn how to be a good daughter and you will know how to negotiate the dynamics of being a good employee. Learn to be a good father and you will know how to be a good supervisor. Learn to be a good younger sibling and you will know how to receive instruction from a teacher while maintaining a healthy degree of autonomy.”

Unfortunately, expressive individualism often leads us to consider a person in the abstract—isolated and separated from others. The individual is the fundamental unit of society, separated from our familial and relational context. But there’s no way to strip away relationships without stripping an important aspect of humanity away at the same time. No living tree is without roots. No living person is without ancestors. We are, in the end, relational beings.

G. K. Chesterton pointed out that the power of family life lies precisely in the fact we don’t choose our companions. We must learn to deal with people who are unlike us. To revolt against the family because it’s uncongenial is to revolt against mankind.

“Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world.”

Chesterton describes being born as “the supreme adventure,” walking into “a splendid and startling trap,” with father and mother lying in wait, an uncle there to surprise us, an aunt as a bolt out of the blue:

“When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made.”

The family is an adventure, full of promise and peril. Adventures can go well, leading to heroic displays of virtue, and adventures can go wrong, leading to deep pain and trauma. Family life is rarely easy, and that’s precisely why the family matters for understanding our place in the world and our future.

Family Life and the Church

The adventure of family life prepares us for the adventure of living well in other spheres. By learning to relate well to parents and siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents, we develop the skills necessary for making friends, loving our neighbors, respecting those in authority over us, and, most of all, being the family of God—the church. It’s harder to discover what loving the church looks like—“a fellowship of differents” as Scot McKnight describes God’s people—until we learn to love those in our immediate and extended family.

It’s possible, of course, to make too much of the family’s importance, perhaps by freezing a particular form of the nuclear family (father, mother, 2.5 kids) as essential to human flourishing. The New Testament strikes against both individualistic excess and kinship idolization. We mustn’t forget how Jesus relativized the priority of blood relations in some shocking ways. And the apostle Paul’s high view of singleness should keep us from dismissing or diminishing people whose situations and callings are different.

Still, we cannot understate the family’s formative power. When a society’s view and experience of the family shift, we should expect the church’s self-understanding to be affected too. Ten Elshof asks,

“What do you get when you invite folks steeped in the contemporary Western posture toward family to apply what they’re already doing in the context of family to their Christian communities—when you invite them to be extended family for one another? Perhaps you get an association of folks who think of themselves in largely autonomous and individualistic terms and who slide in and out of connection with different churches over the years depending on where their life’s pursuits, interests, and preferences take them.”

Ten Elshof’s point is that if we’re to see church as a family, even a surrogate family, we need the majority of people to have some sort of knowledge and experience in what it means to relate to family members. “You cannot extend what you’ve not yet acquired,” he writes. Apart from learning (from your own experience or from imitating those around you) what it means to be a brother or a sister, a son or a daughter, or a father or a mother, it’ll be more challenging to be the church and to relate well to our family members in Christ.

Family Life and Secularism

We need more pastors and church leaders wrestling with the question not only of how the church can serve people today but of how family situations today affect our view of the church. We should expect our understanding of the church to be altered in a culture where fewer and fewer people grow up with siblings, or with extended relatives around, or in stable homes. This matters for the church and for society.

I don’t have all the answers here, but I think part of the answer is at least asking the question, How does the widespread dissolution of traditional family expectations, due in large part to the prevailing assumptions of individualism, affect our ability to see the church as a family and to act accordingly?

Another question follows: How does the gospel renew and restore the people of God so those who’ve never experienced healthy family life are able to take their place among new brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, children and grandchildren in Christ?

Ten years ago, Mary Eberstadt proposed a new theory of secularization. Most assume marriage and childbearing decline in Western societies after they begin to secularize, but Eberstadt claimed the decline of marriage and childbearing speeds up and causes secularization. Religion and family are in a “double helix”—two threads circling endlessly around one another, rising and falling together, joined in the middle by important connections. Family formation influences religious belief. “Family illiteracy breeds religious illiteracy,” she writes.

Perhaps at least part of the reason there’s been so much focus on the family among Christians in recent decades is the instinct that the strength of the church and the strength of the family often rise and fall together. On this point, we’ve not been wrong.


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The Strangeness That Stands Out https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/strangeness-stands-out/ Thu, 13 Apr 2023 04:10:50 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=548681 If we give up essential truths of the Christian faith in order to be culturally relevant, we make ourselves eternally irrelevant. We make the church boring.]]>

“Keep Louisville Weird” was a bumper sticker I saw frequently the year my wife and I lived in Kentucky with our oldest son. The slogan pointed to something odd and eccentric about the city and its inhabitants; it reveled in the area’s strangeness and nonconformist impulse. Even if the campaign felt at times like it was trying too hard—as if it wanted to capture and brand the weirdness, to make it more consumable—I always liked the pride people took in the city’s personality.

Keeping a Strange Faith

The impulse to stand out, to stay strange, would serve the church well today. Too often, church leaders think the way to reach people or gain a hearing for Christianity today is to demonstrate our normalcy, to show that what we believe and how we live doesn’t fall too far afield from the mainstream. We can adapt the faith wherever necessary, especially in the area of ethics, where there seems to be a widening chasm between Christian and secular views of morality.

But Christianity’s strangeness is a feature, not a bug. Mystery is what draws us in. In a world that sees religion as just “being a good person” or a bit of spiritual inspiration for living your best life, we claim a crucified man from the first century got up out of his grave and is now King of the world, to whom everyone on earth owes allegiance.

Consider for a moment how foolish that must sound to the uninitiated. Foolish, but oddly compelling. Columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein says, “What I, as an outsider to Christianity, have always found most beautiful about it is how strange it is.”

Imagine visiting a church for the first time, with no background knowledge of anything the Bible teaches. You’d think it strange how much Christians sing about sacrifice, talk about God’s glory, or take comfort in the idea of being washed in the blood of a slaughtered animal. You’d find incredible the miracles described in the Bible. You’d raise one if not both eyebrows when you hear what Jesus teaches about money and possessions, sexuality and power. You’d marvel at the joy Christians feel at the thought of an execution stake where the worst torture takes place. Make no mistake: Christianity is strange.

I often chuckle at the following quote from classics translator, Sarah Ruden:

“Christianity arose when a small group of Jews became convinced that their leader, a poor and relatively uneducated man from the tiny town of Nazareth (a backwater of the backwater Galilee), whom the Romans had tortured to death as a troublemaker, had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, thus delivering mankind from sin and death—and that this was the point of all existence in the universe. As unscientific as it makes us seem, I and two billion-plus other people say, ‘of course.’”

For 2,000 years, people have been hearing this strange and exciting “good news”—the gospel—and have found their lives transformed as a result. And the desire for everyone in the world to experience God’s forgiveness and love motivates our obedience.

Peculiar People

Many people think the whole point of religion is to find a God who affirms the general direction of our lives and doesn’t say or do anything too unexpected, a God who doesn’t ask too much of us, a God who is easygoing and empty of all mystery. And there are many who believe the way for the church to grow is to show everyone just how “in step” we are with the culture around us. If we can just show everyone that we’re not so different, that we’re not so out of step with the times, then we’ll gather more people. We just need to show people how culturally relevant God is, how common, normal, and reasonable the gospel is, and people will join us.

There’s a place for offering rational reasons to believe in Christianity, of course. God wouldn’t have us check our minds at the door of the church. But let’s not forget it’s the strangeness of God that draws us to him. It’s not because God is just like us that we want to draw near but because he’s so different, so holy, so separate, so weird. And yet this God, in all his majesty, took on flesh. What could be more astounding than what J. I. Packer described as “the babyhood of God”?

It’s not what’s normal that attracts attention but what’s abnormal, what’s strange and fresh. If we give up essential truths of the Christian faith in order to be culturally relevant, we make ourselves eternally irrelevant. We make the church boring. The world needs a church that does more than offer an echo of our own times.

Are You Strange Enough?

I realize it’s possible to seek strangeness for its own sake, to revel in the peculiarities of the faith as if they’re just a fashion statement to help us stand out from our peers. This kind of weirdness becomes just another consumeristic brand that leaves the allegiance of our hearts untouched.

In contrast, the early church writings (like the Epistle of Diognetus) describe Christians in ways that stress their strangeness and their ordinary, commonplace goodness as citizens. What’s necessary is a mix of the commonplace and the strange; only then does Christianity both stand out and remain comprehensible to the modern world.

Still, I think the bigger challenge today is that we don’t stand out enough. And so we must ask some questions.

Is there enough strangeness in your life?

Is there enough in your life that would make you compelling to the people around you who don’t follow Jesus?

Is there anything different about your life that would attract attention? How you spend your money? How you spend your time? How you live morally? How you engage the world? How you forgive?

Standing out draws attention, not fitting in. Let’s keep Christianity weird.


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Anatomy of an Online Storm https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/anatomy-online-storm/ Tue, 11 Apr 2023 04:10:43 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=548661 Some thoughts on how and why online hurricanes take place, the social media dynamics of a storm, and how we might respond with wisdom.]]>

I’ve seen it happen enough now that I can read the signs of the sky. “Red sky at morning,” or something like that.

I’m referring to the development of a full-blown social media hurricane, with an organization or a person lying directly in the middle of the storm’s path. Helen Andrews reflects on the phenomenon as a “shame storm,” an apt metaphor. When a typhoon is heading your way, there’s virtually nothing you can do to prevent it, stop it, or blunt its force. The most you can do is cling to whatever piece of plywood you can and brace for impact, hoping something will be left standing when the maelstrom is over.

Storms pop up on more than one platform, but the warm tropical air of Twitter seems most conducive to their formation. My friend Chris Martin says someone is the main character every day on Twitter; the point of the game is to not be it. Unfortunately, for organizations and people with influence who do the increasingly dangerous work of thinking out loud and in public, everyone is vulnerable to criticism that cascades into canceling. Within hours or days, scattered showers can become a hurricane. Here’s how it happens.

Storm Starters

It starts with scattered showers and thunderstorms.

Any reputable organization is going to get rain. Doing something of substance will attract a fair share of criticism. My former boss Eric Geiger used to say, “You can’t have buzz without noise.” Others talk about how big ships leave a big wake. Leadership books tell us, “Criticism is the cost of influence.” This goes with the territory. Say something, expect disagreement. If you’re doing something of value, expect to have arrows shot in your direction; just be strategic about which arrows you want to take, and try to avoid unforced errors.

Showers and thunderstorms can be a good thing, helping people and organizations clarify their thinking. No one gets it right all the time. Good-faith critics perform a valuable service. But Tim Urban distinguishes between criticism culture (going after an idea) and cancel culture (going after the person). In criticism culture, the point is to subject bad ideas to rigorous debate as we all seek truth together. In cancel culture, the point is to punish and excommunicate the person who holds the bad ideas so the unclean presence is expelled.

“Storm starters” are convinced a particular person or organization is so wrong or harmful as to deserve online condemnation. They’ve moved beyond critique to cancellation. The best way to chip away at the credibility of the target is to start or intensify online thunderstorms, hoping the tempest will spill out of the teapot.

Tropical Depression Phase

Over time, if enough scattered critiques converge into a narrative (promoted by the storm starters), a tropical depression will develop—a bigger storm encompassing smaller storms. Stormy weather indicates trouble, to the point some outside observers begin to wonder, If there’s smoke, there must be fire.

Most organizations and influential people face tropical depressions on a regular basis. This is when the scattered criticisms (some true, some false) are numerous enough to form a coherent narrative that diminishes the organization or person’s credibility. Even good-faith critics begin to ask questions, wondering if some of the storm starters have a point. The chorus of concern grows louder and more frequent.

Wise leaders will surround themselves with trusted friends who act as “storm spotters” to give them perspective on controversies and help them discern whether an organization is facing a squall or if the storm’s intensity is bigger, thus requiring a different response. Without such perspective, it’s easy to respond in ways out of proportion to the size of the storm. In the tropical depression phase, sometimes the organization or person in question will act differently, perhaps by adjusting decisions to alleviate the concerns of good-faith critics or by pushing back publicly against the false narratives propounded by bad-faith critics.

Institutions and individuals are vulnerable to the beatdown of rain in a tropical depression. Australian church leader Mark Sayers points to the work of Edwin Friedman, who noticed how institutions play an important social role by absorbing anxiety. In a world with healthy, well-functioning institutions, there’s a built-in respect for individuals and institutions committed to passing on wisdom, conquering challenges, and centralizing important knowledge. But in our world today, many institutions are unhealthy, many more have been devalued, and some have disappeared. Widespread cultural anxiety is the result, and the flood of anxiety sweeps everyone into tribes.

“Decentralization leads to atomization, in which the individual is cut loose from traditional sources of relationship and identity, finding meaning only in the ‘atom’ of self. The atomization created by decentralization creates a new tribalization.” (84)

These are the atmospheric conditions for the slow-moving tropical depression that plagues institutions and individuals. The tribal impulse then leads to the next phase of the storm.

Tropical Storm Phase

Usually, something triggers the jump to a tropical storm. It may be a particular video, article, statement, controversial association, or a past position—whatever it is, the revelation seems to legitimize the concerns of critics in the tropical depression phase. The event becomes a topic of conversation, pressuring people who have ties to the person or the organization but haven’t felt any of the earlier depression’s effects to choose sides or to make clear their position.

The tropical storm’s growth is commensurate to its ability to draw other circles of influencers into its orbit. If you can tap into the energy that comes from a different online tribe or ecosystem, and if you can draw that energy into the storm, then the pressure on the organization or person gets ramped up considerably. Peer pressure begins to do its work.

The online tribe or the people in an adjacent ecosystem feel a moral obligation to join in the criticism (and may begin calling for cancellation) as a way of echoing the concerns of previous critics. The more tribes triggered, the bigger the storm becomes, to the point even good-faith actors, who may not be able to distinguish genuine problems from online manipulation or the dynamics of social media, are swept into the vortex.

Hurricane Phase

Once several storms become a megastorm, the tempest is no longer contained to the teapot of one or two social media platforms. The hurricane itself becomes the story, and the pressure increases exponentially for the organization or person in the direct line of the hurricane’s landfall.

By this time, people or organizations close to the direct hit begin to feel massive pressure. Friends flee the path of the hurricane by distancing themselves from the people or organizations in the eye of the storm. Or worse, they think the only way to survive is to become part of the storm, to add energy to the tempest to escape being a target of the hurricane’s fury.

This is when storm chasers show up. Just like bad weather is a ratings bonanza for cable news networks, an online hurricane provides an opportunity for people to weigh in with hot takes, podcast conversations, TikTok rants, and YouTube shows—breathlessly covering the controversy and raising their own profiles in the process. Social media platforms benefit from the buzz, with algorithms pointing more people to the pseudo-event. Storm chasers piggyback on the trending storm to build their brands. Others find the whole thing strangely compelling, watching the disaster unfold from the comfort of their smartphones before scrolling to some other spectacle.

During the hurricane, the storm’s intensity will include vitriolic personal attacks and the dehumanization of the storm’s target. It’s not that the person or entity in question is merely mistaken; they’re monstrous, irredeemably immoral, even disgusting. The viciousness of the hurricane undermines good-faith criticism and can sabotage any efforts at making reforms.

Hurricane intensity is assessed by wind speeds, and at least initially, it’s the wind that does the most damage. Online, most hurricanes make landfall and lose steam rather quickly. It’s the pressure from the wind, or the storm surge, that leaves people or organizations weaker than they were before, especially when the gales cause everyone in the path to bend to keep from breaking.

Human Nature and Online Storms

Social media dynamics are new in human history, but human nature is old. There’s much to learn from thinkers who watch and account for human behavior, from philosophers like René Girard and observers like Jonathan Haidt. Growing in our understanding of how these storm dynamics work is one way of approaching our use of social media with wisdom. It’s good to be aware of how the atmospheric dynamics of social media (we could call it “online climate change”!) lead to unusual behaviors—to canceling instead of critiquing, for example—because everyone acts differently when the barometric pressure changes and the storm is upon us.

Awareness, however, will not stop or prevent the hurricane. Over the years, I’ve been inside multiple organizations or close to people who have experienced online storms. I’ve never been in the direct path of a hurricane (probably only a tropical depression), but I assume if I continue to write and think out loud, my day is coming, whether it be next week or next year.

Prepare for the Next Storm

No matter when or where the next hurricane barrels through, I’m sure of this: we can decrease the intensity of these storms if (1) we resist being drawn into an online vortex full of perverse incentives and distorted dynamics, (2) we recognize “storm chasing” when it happens, and (3) people and organizations in the eye simply let the storm do its worst and then look to glean lessons and wisdom in the aftermath.

To the first point, I go back to Mark Sayers’s description of leadership as “a non-anxious presence.” Relying on Friedman, he writes,

“The fundamental principle was to remain present within the unhealthy environment while enduring the sabotage, backlash, and undermining that leaders inevitably face when trying to act as non-anxious presences in anxious social systems. As the leader faces this backlash, the great danger is that anxiety will rise within them, enveloping them and making them part of the problem rather than the solution. The leader would then have what Friedman labeled as a ‘Failure of Nerve.’ Therefore, leaders who wish to be a non-anxious presence must keep their nerve and push through the backlash, sabotage, betrayal from friends and colleagues, criticism, and emotional pain, and keep growing toward the higher vision in a non-anxious way.” (101)

To the second point, we should get better at seeing through opportunists who chase storms as a way of building their own brands and platforms. Keep your eyes open for the pattern, and you’ll see it (on all points of the spectrum) whenever there’s a storm.

To the third point, self-critique is good. But it’s rarely helpful to try it in the middle of the storm. The needed self-reflection should be part of the cleanup; that’s when we’re most likely to take away the appropriate lessons. It’s only after the storm—once the sun has returned and there’s a pleasant breeze instead of gale-force winds—that the weather is better suited for back-and-forth critique and good-faith disagreement, where we vigorously debate ideas instead of cancel people.

Storms require the presence of certain atmospheric conditions before they can expand from one level to the next. We can’t change the course or trajectory of storms on our own, but we can weaken their intensity and destruction if we grow in online wisdom regarding their development, if we choose instead to embody a non-anxious presence in a world of swirling anger and anxiety.


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The Shriveling of the American Soul https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/shriveling-american-soul/ Thu, 30 Mar 2023 04:10:05 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=549307 A distressing WSJ poll on plummeting American values shows us the power of sin but also an opportunity for the church.]]>

My favorite moment in How the Grinch Stole Christmas is when the heart of the Grinch, once described as “three sizes too small,” suddenly begins to grow. The Grinch discovers the capacity to give and receive love, and as a result, joy swells along with his heart.

These days, the reverse seems to be happening in the United States. Our hearts are shrinking and shriveling, drying up before our eyes.

‘Wall Street Journal’ Survey of Values

Just look at a recent Wall Street Journal poll. The core values that once stood out among Americans as being important—morals worthy of pursuit and emulation—have receded. Over the last quarter century, the importance we attach to patriotism, religious faith, having children, and caring about the community has plummeted.

In 1998, 70 percent of respondents said patriotism was very important and 62 percent said the same about religion. Today, it’s only 38 percent and 39 percent. Having children? A drop from 59 percent to 30 percent. What about community involvement? From 62 percent to 27 percent. (One outlier: the importance we assign to money has climbed to 43 percent from 31 percent.) The biggest declines in these values appear to have occurred in the last five years.

Source: WSJ/NORC poll of 1,019 adults conducted March 1–13, 2023; margin of error +/–4.1 pct. pts. Prior data from WSJ/NBC News telephone polls, most recently of 1,000 adults conducted Aug. 10–14, 2019; margin of error +/–3.1 pct. pts.

“These differences are so dramatic, it paints a new and surprising portrait of a changing America,” says Bill McInturff, a pollster who worked on a previous survey. Indeed.

Several people sent me this article shortly after it began making the rounds online—no one surprised, everyone troubled. Now, it’s possible the methodological differences (shift from phone to online) as well as the small sample size (1,000) has affected the results here. A similar survey from Gallup likely gives a fuller picture, at least on patriotism. Still, it’s a slide into “record lows” no matter the exact percentages.

Sin and the Inward Curve

Sociologists and political theorists will point to various causes for these declines. We could blame the economic downturn, the pandemic, church scandals, political polarization, institutional distrust, or the rise of social media. And surely any and all of these factors affect the American outlook.

But from a theological perspective, what we’re witnessing is both an expression and an effect of sin.

The Christian tradition going back to Augustine describes sin as a “curving in on oneself.” Sin shrivels the soul. When, in our pride and decadence, we turn from God to self, we alienate ourselves not only from our Maker but also from those made in his image. Martin Luther noted how the deceit and corruption of the human heart (Jer. 17:9) leads us to be “so curved in upon ourselves” that our self-interest causes us to turn even spiritual goods into a way of fulfilling selfish purposes.

Effects of Sin

Close-knit communities can protect themselves from any number of outside threats. But the internal distress that comes from the soul-shriveling, inward turn of sin—that’s much harder to fix.

What the WSJ poll reveals is a curved-in expression of sin and selfishness in several areas.

  • The loss of patriotism includes a loss of loyalty to anything beyond the self, a lack of gratitude for the good gifts that accompany one’s earthly citizenships, and a diminished love for one’s neighbors.
  • The loss of religion implies the disappearance of transcendence or significance beyond this present moment, of something that reaches beyond our earthly horizons.
  • The loss of community means we value the “freedom” that comes from being alone more than the mutual obligations that accompany deep and sustaining friendships.
  • The loss of children means we no longer look to the future, no longer able or willing to endure the distractions and burdens of raising and training the next generation.

The effect of sin is loneliness, which often compounds the problem, leading to a further shriveling of the soul into the cocoon of self-focus. Dietrich Bonhoeffer pointed out how sin’s power grows:

“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more attractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.”

We weren’t made to find and express ourselves, to think freedom comes from cutting ourselves off from others, as if our meaning and significance can be excavated from the deepest caverns of our hearts. We were made not to look in first but to look up to God and then around to others.

Church’s Chance

A misdirected, curved-in-upon-itself love leads to isolation, alienation, and loneliness. It stunts our humanity. It’s only when we’re drawn out of ourselves, giving away our lives in self-giving love, that we find joy in God and in others.

The WSJ survey reveals the challenges of our time. But the church can find in these dismal results an opportunity. A chance. A way to stand out and offer the world something better.

  • The church can cultivate loyalty that goes even beyond the goodness of patriotism (love for one’s fellow citizens and gratitude for earthly blessings) by helping us identify with all who pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ the Lord.
  • The church can cultivate a genuine concern for the community by helping us find satisfaction not in seeking to have all our needs met but in pouring ourselves out to meet the needs of others, in imitation of our Servant King.
  • The church can remind us of the goodness of creation and the glory of redemption, bursting through the immanent frame that would limit our vision only to temporal realities.
  • The church can foster in us a love for families and children, a desire to see the next generation carry forward the fire of God’s love and grace, adding to the number of those who confess the name of his Son.

The gospel of grace does more than simply enlarge a shriveled soul. The Spirit replaces a heart of stone with a heart of flesh. And as the Spirit works in us, we see our souls expand, our selfishness healed, our curved-in hearts turned inside out through the fullness and wholeness of loving God and neighbor.

The WSJ poll is depressing, but Christians can take heart. We have the solution in the power of the gospel and the witness of the church.


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Your Personality Test Doesn’t Give You a Pass on the Fruit of the Spirit https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/personality-test-fruit-spirit/ Tue, 28 Mar 2023 04:10:11 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=547428 Finding yourself isn’t the goal. Following Christ is what counts.]]>

I enjoy personality tests. Some are more helpful than others, but at their best, surveys tell you something about yourself and the people you live or work with. (I’ve discovered I’m an extrovert in a family of introverts, although the jury’s still out on our youngest!) I’m partial to the Myers-Briggs, but I’ve engaged in multiple tests over the years, at work and for fun.

The problem with personality tests, though, is we can sometimes dismiss or diminish clear biblical standards that don’t align with our self-perception.

A Christian’s Talk

Take, for instance, what James 1:19–20 says about a Christian’s talk and temperament:

My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. (CSB)

In our cultural context, it’s never been easier to speak and to be heard. The internet, social media . . . all these new technologies have made it possible for us to say more things publicly than in any other time in human history, to the point some cultural observers wonder out loud, Is this even good for us? Should we be taking in this much information or putting out so many words? Were humans ever intended to speak so much?

Everything in our world makes it easy to speak quickly. There’s nothing out there designed to help you learn to listen well. The way stuff is set up online, the way people climb the ladder socially or professionally, the way people debate—everything is set up for speech. Say something! But Proverbs 17:27–28 says,

The one who has knowledge restrains his words,
and one who keeps a cool head is a person of understanding.
Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps silent—
discerning, when he seals his lips. (CSB)

In other words, if you’re wise, you won’t talk as much. You’ll restrain your words. You won’t vent all your frustrations. You won’t say everything you feel.

Some will say, “Hey, I’m a talker! I’m just being real! That’s just my personality. I blurt things out. I just say stuff without thinking. It’s my Myers-Briggs. That’s my Enneagram number. Have you seen my StrengthsFinders? I’m just keeping it real.”

Sorry, but if you’re a Christian, that’s not what “keeping it real” means. James doesn’t say to be quick to listen and slow to speak unless you’re extroverted. Unless you’re talkative. Unless you have a big following on TikTok or Instagram. No, what he says goes for all of us.

A Christian’s Temperament

It’s not just our talk James mentions but also our temperament: “Slow to become angry.” The proverbs put talk and temperament together too: “The one who has knowledge restrains his words.” That’s talk. “One who keeps a cool head is a person of understanding.” That’s temperament.

Some of us may be prone to angry outbursts. Some of us may be prone to anger that shows up in seething, quiet resentment. Some of us may not find anger to be as big a challenge. We’re all different, yes. But make no mistake: a personality test doesn’t give you a pass on the fruit of the Spirit.

Right now, a lot of people think that if we just let loose, if we say what we feel all the time, if we tell people off, that’s going to fix it. Let me lash out on Twitter. Let me add a sick burn on a Facebook comment thread. The way we make a difference is by “shutting someone down” or “owning the libs” or whatever.

Of course, there is such a thing as righteous anger. James says slow to become angry, not never to become angry. But the temptation in our day is to baptize our anger as righteous, to justify sin in the name of justice. Samuel James writes, “Righteous people can become angry. Angry people have a very hard time being righteous.”

That’s why more than once in James 1, we’re warned about self-deception. It’s easy to think if we can just be mad enough, or if we can get people riled up, then that’s going to bring about righteousness in our lives or in society. According to James, that’s a trap. Human anger—sinful anger—doesn’t resolve our problems. It doesn’t bring about the righteousness of God.

Gregory the Great said, “Because a diseased mind has no control over its own judgment, it thinks that whatever anger suggests must be right.”

If we think our anger is usually or always righteous, we’re probably self-deceived. A diseased mind always finds an excuse for anger, assuming that anger is righteous when really we sound just like the world. We’re to be known for a different kind of talk and a different kind of temperament.

Defined by God

A personality test doesn’t define you. God does. And what’s beautiful about the biblical instruction regarding our talk and temperament is that this is one of the ways we reflect our Maker. Slow to become angry? That’s how God describes himself to Moses in Exodus 34:

The LORD—the LORD is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth. (CSB)

Becoming more like Christ doesn’t mean becoming less ourselves. We become our truest selves when we reflect him through our personalities. This is the paradox C. S Lewis pointed out: “It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.”

We should be less focused on the personality stereotype of a test or survey and more concerned that we showcase the glory and grace of God, no matter what our inclinations may be. These tests can help us see the unique ways we can bring glory to Christ, but in the end, finding myself isn’t the goal. Following Christ is what counts. That’s why we should seek to bring our personalities in line with the Spirit—so his fruit ripens in our lives in beautiful ways that exalt the Savior.


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What We’re Asking for When We Pray for Wisdom https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/asking-when-pray-wisdom/ Thu, 23 Mar 2023 04:10:00 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=547309 Why we need wisdom more than ever, and why prayer and practice matter for growing in discernment.]]>

A friend recently remarked that nearly every time I pray with my team or with others in partnership, I ask for wisdom. I hadn’t noticed the habit until he mentioned it. But he’s right. I’m constantly asking God for wisdom—for myself and for others.

Which got me thinking, Why do I pray this way? What exactly am I asking God for?

The Bible-minded run right to Solomon, which makes sense, since the king of Israel was affirmed by the Lord for desiring discernment. The Lord not only blessed Solomon with wisdom but also granted him the wealth and power he hadn’t requested.

The proverbs of Solomon link wisdom to the fear of the Lord, and in the New Testament, the brother of Jesus reminds us heavenly wisdom leads to good conduct and works done in gentleness (James 3:13). It is “pure, . . . peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without pretense” (v. 17, CSB).

Why We Need Wisdom Today

It’s not hard to see why we need wisdom these days. In his forthcoming book Digital Liturgies, Samuel James defines the essence of wisdom as “living in light of reality” and then shows how the online world can undermine wisdom by cutting us off from the world as it truly is:

“Because wisdom is a submission to God’s good and given reality, our immersion in computer and internet existence is a crisis of spiritual formation. Our digital environments dislocate us, training us to believe and feel and communicate in certain ways that our given, embodied, physical environments do not. The more immersive and ambient the technology, the more extreme this effect.”

We’re experiencing an epistemological crisis, wondering what’s true and how we know it to be so. Everything in our world pushes us away from cultivating habits that lead to wisdom and reflection. No wonder, then, we must pray for God to be generous with wisdom from above. We sense our need because we recognize not all the choices we make will be clear-cut or black-and-white or easily discernible decisions of faithfulness.

Patterns of Wisdom

In Uncommon Unity, Richard Lints says wisdom starts with realizing “God has made the world with certain patterns and that our flourishing rests in embracing those patterns and resisting the lure of running contrary to those patterns.” We must see things as they are. The wise don’t chafe against limitation or try to remake the world in humanity’s image. We’re to joyfully submit to the God-given patterns in creation and then seek faithfulness within finite constraints.

Of course, the acknowledgment of creational goodness must be held together with an understanding of the fall—the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Biblical wisdom is “able to distinguish between the goodness of the created order and the brokenness of the created order, neither naively accepting the brokenness nor becoming cynical about the loss of goodness in the world.”

We don’t simply accept the world as it is, shrugging off injustice or succumbing to fate. To be wise is to differentiate what’s good from what’s fallen, sometimes even in the same person or pattern—rarely relegating something to one category or another completely but recognizing the complexity of a broken world in need of redemption.

The wise are usually wise everywhere, no matter the differences on the surface. They’re able to distinguish between superficial cultural elements and deep-rooted differences. They can spot underlying unity when it exists, and they also identify foundational fault lines.

Prayer and Practice

Wisdom comes through prayer and practice. “It is a learned habit,” Lints writes, “but there is no mechanical means to acquire it. . . . It is confidently humble and able to glean insights from a variety of diverse sources.”

Unfortunately, too much that passes under the banner of “discernment” these days is a narrow focus on discerning what might be bad in something. A broader and fuller understanding of discernment enables us also to discern what’s good, without adopting an openness to everything in a person or position.

The irony of casting everyone into categories of “good” or “bad” is that you no longer need to practice discernment. You wave away anyone in the “bad” category or adopt uncritically whatever comes from the “good” category. True wisdom requires us to look for truth wherever it may be found, to sift everything through the Scriptures, and to celebrate God’s goodness when we see it refracted, even through broken or shattered image-bearers.

Perhaps the greatest area of need today is wisdom combined with patience. The wise don’t rush to judgment but recognize “when a fuller story is needed to fill out the account.” We need more cold takes instead of hot ones. The wise acknowledge the need to know how the past influences the present, and they seek to interpret someone’s words or actions in the context of their circumstances, trying to understand the narrative within which someone makes sense of the world.

Need of the Hour

In the end, we pray for wisdom because we have no hope of gaining wisdom on our own. Lints writes,

“We gain wisdom when we abandon hope in ourselves and learn the habits of being interwoven with others, and especially being accepted by the Lord of the universe because of this strange reality we call grace.”

Wisdom points us to the Lord, the One who gives generously and helps us better interpret our present circumstances and guide the people whom God has placed in our path.

So . . . with Solomon, and following the instruction of James, let’s keep praying for wisdom. Lord knows we need it today.


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What C. S. Lewis Got Wrong About the Cursing Psalms https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/cs-lewis-cursing-psalms/ Tue, 21 Mar 2023 04:10:49 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=547302 Trevor Laurence offers a better approach to the wrathful psalms and shows why they still matter for Christian prayer.]]>

C. S. Lewis got a lot of things right. He also got a few things wrong. And when Lewis was wrong, he was really wrong.

One of the places he was off was in how he viewed the imprecatory or “cursing” psalms, defined by Trevor Laurence as containing “a speech act that calls for, demands, requests, or expresses a wish for divine judgment and vengeance to befall an enemy, whether an individual or corporate entity.”

If you love the Psalter, and if you try the ancient Christian practice of praying through all 150 psalms every month (I have a Psalms in 30 Days prayer journey just for you!), you won’t get far before you run into prayers for God to enact justice, petitions for God to exact vengeance on the enemies of his people. Some of the psalms are primarily imprecatory in their nature, but a large number incorporate imprecatory elements—even the beloved Psalm 139 (“You have searched me and known me”), which, by the end, expresses hatred for God’s enemies. And then there’s the infamous ending to Psalm 137, which asks the Lord to dash the heads of enemy infants against the rocks.

Lewis thought these psalms “devilish,” naive, “diabolical,” given to “pettiness” and “vulgarity.” He believed their “vindictive hatred” to be contemptible—full of “festering, gloating, undisguised” passions that can in no way be “condoned or approved.” Lewis still managed to secure a pedagogical place for these ancient songs, but he ruled out of bounds for the Christian any imprecatory sentiments against human enemies.

No New Testament Shame

Christians with a high view of Scripture, who believe these psalms make up God’s inspired and inerrant Word to us, may still wonder what, if any, place these cursing psalms can have in corporate worship or personal devotion. Are they obsolete in some way? Superseded by New Testament grace? Should we still pray these psalms? If so, how?

Over the years, I’ve considered different ways of reframing or reinterpreting the imprecatory psalms, feeling the pinch of these petitions myself. But the biggest problem I run into is that I don’t see a smidge of embarrassment on behalf of Jesus or the apostles regarding these songs from Israel’s prayer book. What’s more, Jesus quotes from imprecatory psalms. It seems strange to claim that because of the coming of Christ, we should no longer sing or pray the very songs Christ had no trouble singing or praying. What’s more, the Bible ends with a book that includes petitions for God to destroy the wicked.

If I find my sentiments and sensibilities seem out of step with those of Jesus and the apostles, then I’m the one who must do the work of getting back into the world of imagination in which praying songs like this would make sense. And that’s where Trevor Laurence’s book Cursing with God is so helpful. It’s not an exaggeration to say this should become the evangelical’s go-to resource for understanding the imprecatory psalms and how to pray them. Laurence doesn’t just defend their use; he insists upon it:

“The psalms of wrath are not merely a permissible but indeed a necessary element in the church’s communion with God, prayers that carry an irreplaceable capacity to shape the body of Christ for healing, virtue, and witness in a world gone wrong.” (4)

What’s happening in these psalms? The petitioners are begging God to interrupt the assaults of the wicked, to vindicate the suffering righteous, and to keep his promise to enact judgment on all that would threaten the sacredness of God’s temple-kingdom.

World of the Psalms

To understand the what of the psalms, we must take our place in the same story. God created a good world as a cosmic temple for his presence. Humans were commissioned to exercise royal dominion and subdue the earth as a holy house for God. We were intended to be kings and priests who serve and guard this good world. Human beings failed at this task by disobeying God’s commandment, and yet God promised that one of Eve’s offspring would crush the head of the serpent.

The rest of the Old Testament tells the story of Israel as God’s son, a royal priesthood tasked with following God’s commands and purging evil from their midst, in anticipation of the day when “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD” (Num. 14:21). King David, as a representative of the people, was to prepare the people of God for the construction of the temple. Those who pray alongside David share the same concerns: for the glory of God’s name, the justice of God’s righteous rule, and the preservation of purity on behalf of the innocent.

Fast forward to the time of the church, and we now pray the psalms alongside Jesus, the Son of David, who alone is perfectly righteous. In him, his prayers become our prayers, and our prayers remain in line with the covenant promises of God.

“The church’s divinely granted office, a sharing in the royal priesthood of the Son of God to which she is united, invests her with the authority to protect God’s temple-kingdom in prayer.” (261)

Within the world of the psalms, imprecatory prayer is a means by which we, today, sing songs against the Evil One. Laurence describes it as a way of guarding the people of God and leaning forward to the day when the entire earth will be filled with his presence (and purged of evil). The cursing songs are a peaceful, petitionary participation in God’s promise to strike the seed of the serpent and restore the peace of the garden.

Praying While Waiting

Instead of seeing the imprecatory psalms as a problematic or outdated mode of praying, Laurence believes these are “the prayer-pangs of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (256). We pray against “violently unjust predators who prowl after and pounce upon the innocent” and “the unwarranted assaults of the wicked” that “terrorize the godly.”

The New Testament does shape our mode of praying these psalms, of course, as we no longer live in ancient Israel. And we can see how Jesus becomes the fulfillment of these prayers—both in assuming his role as the perfectly innocent king who receives vindication and in becoming the One cursed for our transgressions, bearing the weight of the world’s sin.

  • In and alongside Christ, we pray for God to enact justice, rather than take vengeance into our own hands.
  • We pray God would thwart the schemes of the wicked, with hopes he might exercise mercy and judgment by rescuing the evildoer from sin through repentance or by stopping the schemes that lead to injustice.
  • We pray against Satan and the spiritual forces that war against us, that seek to desecrate our earthly temples by leading us to unfaithfulness.
  • We even direct these prayers to our own sins, asking God to be ruthless in purging our hearts of all evil and temptation.

We pray the cursing prayers. They’re in the Psalter for a reason.

Praying for the Kingdom

Laurence claims we find an implicit commendation for imprecatory psalms in the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Every time we say, “Your kingdom come,” we’re pleading for the manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth. We want to see believers reflect the character of the kingdom, sinners converted to join the kingdom, and violent enemies interrupted from opposing the kingdom, as we await the day of Christ’s return.

C. S. Lewis was wrong on the imprecatory psalms, and yet every time he uttered the Lord’s Prayer, he was incorporating all the hopes and petitions of these wrathful songs, begging God to enact justice, keep his covenant, and bring about the fullness of Christ’s reign as King. And so, with the martyrs who even now cry out for vindication, we too say, “Come, Lord Jesus. Make new the world.”


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The Lost Boys of Anonymous Twitter https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/lost-boys-anonymous-twitter/ Thu, 16 Mar 2023 04:10:31 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=545656 Reflections on an online phenomenon and what it means for the church that seeks to reach and raise up young men.]]>

In person, he was kind, respectful, and upstanding. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the physique of this man approaching middle age. Unassuming. A friendly smile. A steady presence.

On Twitter, he was different. Under various aliases, he seethed and raged, lashing out at opponents real and imagined, uttering vile sentiments that crossed all sorts of lines. He enjoyed the rush of transgressing society’s few remaining taboos (namely, racism and misogyny), saying what no one else would say, and trolling the insufficiently “based” while calling out the cowards.

Perhaps you think I’m describing a scandal that erupted last fall, in which the headmaster of a classical Christian school was exposed as someone with a number of anonymous Twitter accounts full of sinful statements. In that case, the darkness of a troubled man who described himself as a “despairing man angry at the world” was exposed.

But this story might fit any number of men who frequent evangelical churches or are involved in evangelical institutions. In the past decade, anonymous accounts on Twitter have proliferated, often trafficking in outrageously racist or misogynistic statements under the cover of anonymity.

More than Trolls

It’s common for Twitter users to roll their eyes and say, “Don’t feed the trolls.” But the phenomenon I’m describing goes beyond trolling.

Many, if not most, trolls choose not to remain anonymous. Under their real names, they hound a few people with their contrarian takes, expressing themselves in unhealthy ways with no intention for civil dialogue or persuasive back and forth. They get a rise out of tweaking the people for whom they feel contempt. As an observer and participant on social media, I’ve encountered trollish behavior for years, from both the left and the right. (And make no mistake, trolls on the left can be just as annoying and ridiculous as those on the right.)

The kind of Anonymous Twitter I’m talking about goes beyond the typical troll. It doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone who may choose, perhaps for prudential reasons, to try out opinions under a pseudonym. The Anonymous Twitter accounts I have in mind mercilessly mock and bully anyone belonging to a despised tribe and then deploy over-the-top rhetoric that would be either personally embarrassing or professionally costly if their identities were known.

No wonder the account remains anonymous. Behind the veil, the user adopts a different persona and says the unsayable, transgressing the boundaries of genuine conversation while enjoying the thrill of nonconformity.

I’ve witnessed this long enough to wonder, What’s going on here, in the heart of someone who engages in this behavior? Why the appeal? What’s the goal?

Even more, how can the church respond? Surely the mission field includes the young men who find a measure of satisfaction in creating and sustaining these accounts. So where do we start, as missionaries with the heart of Christ, in understanding and responding to this phenomenon?

Younger Millennials and Anonymous Twitter

To dig deeper, we must consider younger millennials and Gen Zers growing up in a social-media-infused world. I say “younger millennials” because there seems to be a qualitative difference in the online mentality between older millennials like myself and those who were born 5 to 15 years after me.

I’m not a digital native. I was 19 before I opened my own email account, and I was in college overseas before I had a simple cellphone. The situation was different for many born after 1986 or 1990. Exploring the internet anonymously during the late 1990s involved conversing through message boards and forums. Expectations changed in the early 2000s, and once Facebook took off and Twitter arrived, the ability to craft online personas became easier and the practice more widespread.

Younger millennials have never known a world without the possibility of fashioning and crafting an “online identity.” It’s a crucial piece of how they imagine “being online.” Even when not anonymous, many a young man’s crucial years of “owning” his faith or political views for himself happened not in conversation or learning environments that required physical proximity but through online postings and comments. Social media gives young people a canvas on which to imagine and paint a picture of themselves. No doubt this marks a shift in how we perceive our “identities”—both online and in the real world.

Crafting Online Personas

Chris Bail’s important work on the distorting effects of social media shows we don’t just broadcast our opinions; we put on different costumes. We try out different identities. We make statements, gauge the reaction, recalibrate our next statements, watch how others respond, and eventually tailor our online presence as we consider ourselves in relation to our online community, according to the values we perceive among the people we most appreciate. Sentiments that receive affirmation from the people we care about or outrage the people we despise create a feedback loop that leads to greater polarization, as behavior that would be generally frowned upon in the real world gets applauded as “courageous” and “bold” online.

In a world with fewer and fewer boundaries, young people figuring out their identities find meaning and significance in policing tribal lines, often directing their most vicious statements toward people who are “closest” to their tribe—adjacent in some way and yet not fully in line. The most common target is the traitor, the betrayer, or the compromiser—the one who interacts with an opposing tribe, considers other perspectives, or entertains the possibility of a good point made by someone in the “despised” category.

Why does this take place? Because when your sense of identity is tied to your online portrait (and increasingly divorced from place, family, work, and church), you feel the urge to create and police boundaries so you can stabilize your own self-understanding. Anonymous Twitter accounts satisfy this urge, which is why so many fire missiles not at the opposing side but at the tribe-adjacent people no longer deemed “sound.”

True Aggression?

If Bail’s research is right, it helps explain why some men find the rush of transgressive postings irresistible. And note I say men, not women, because in my experience much of the aggression expressed in anonymous accounts comes from men.

But is it true aggression? Granted, that’s how the postings of an Anonymous Twitter account sound, but I’m not sure the rage is really heartfelt. Sometimes I wonder if the shocking statements come from a deadened, desensitized heart, as if the aggressive, vitriolic response is just a way of feeling something, anything—of trying to get the blood pumping again.

I’m not convinced the vile sentiments expressed in Anonymous Twitter are a true reflection of the person’s central identity. In a fractured and fragmented world online, nearly everyone’s identities can be seen as “in flux” in some way or another. And, because it’s never been easier to create an online persona that differs widely from who you are “in person” or who you are “in public” or at your job or church, it’s become more common for people to try on multiple identities and enjoy the feeling. It’s the split personality—digital version.

Is the author of the Anonymous Twitter account that spews racist and misogynist filth a covert racist and misogynist? Possibly. Probably. But always? Could it be this is someone who thrills at the transgression of boundaries without any perceived cost, much like a churchgoing young man harboring a secret porn addiction? Is the Anonymous Twitter user really filled with hatred toward ethnic minorities? Or is he playing “dress-up” — pretending to exhibit a bravado and twisted courage lacking in his real life?

Some of the anonymous accounts are so over the top in their campy racism and misogyny that it feels like the mirror image of the drag queen—the irreality of a person playing a part for a twisted culture of perversion. It’s a show. A performance. But the performer gets a kick out of it more than the audience.

Why Men?

I wouldn’t want anyone to assume my questions intend to excuse the behavior of Anonymous Twitter. These accounts are often abominable. But I do think it’s important to understand the phenomenon and why men, in particular, are tempted toward this behavior. Where does the appeal come from?

At some level, we must consider the flailing and fledgling missteps of manhood in our day. If you’re a minister of the gospel and you’re not asking why some men are gravitating toward books and podcasts promoting Stoicism, or the frank talk of Jordan Peterson, or the numerous “body-builder-training-types” on Instagram, or Andrew Tate (especially among teenage boys), you’re missing a major piece of a cultural puzzle right now. Men all around us are looking for a challenge, and they won’t take seriously a church that doesn’t call them to something.

If you look past what’s obviously non-Christian or appalling in many in these examples—if you can look past the lies to the deeper longings being addressed—you’ll see that much of what appears to be “calling out” for weakness is being received as a “calling up” to strength. Even if the supposed virtues are worldly and unbiblical or lack Christlike character, surely you can see that in a world that no longer regularly celebrates the contribution of men or manhood, the thirst for self-improvement and self-discipline is real and enduring.

Men need ways to channel healthy ambition, to channel the impulses to build and repair with heroic self-sacrifice and courage. And yet, too often we divvy up certain virtues (and even the fruit of the Spirit) into characteristically “masculine” or “feminine” categories, thus leaving us all impoverished and deformed in character. Or we go the other way and flatten out into “sameness” men and women’s expression of virtues and fruit of the Spirit, so we no longer recognize the distinctive ways in which women exhibit strength and valor or the distinctive ways men express kindness and gentleness.

All across the spectrum, you find commentators chattering away about the crisis of manhood in the wake of gender confusion, the denigration and disparagement of men traditionally involved in “men’s work,” and the quest for significance and identity among men who seem to be lost and demoralized in our strange new world. No wonder some young people prefer the “manhood pretenders” of Andrew Tate or the manners-defying conduct of being brash and abrasive. It’s about the fight!

This spasm of outrage we so often see online is connected to a lack of significance among young men and a lack of male meaning. Life hasn’t turned out as expected. The future looks bleak. And when some men feel something is wrong, they dull the pain through self-satisfaction, try to break out of the destructive cycle through excessive self-discipline, or are seduced by the promise of Anonymous Twitter, where they deploy guerrilla warfare tactics as foot soldiers for the “heroic” generals who wage war in public.

Some may defend their use of anonymity as protection against being “canceled” or as a fight for free speech. But the notion that all of us all of the time need a global platform on which to broadcast whatever opinion we have (and without consequences) only makes sense in a world with sentiments and sensibilities deeply formed by online culture. It’s far more likely that a man who engages in this behavior will succumb to social media’s perverse incentives and harm his soul than that his witty retorts will have an effect on society.

What’s more, the battle becomes a substitute for community, a way of compensating for offline relationships where in the past all sorts of far-flung thoughts were shared, discussed, refined, and corrected. Without face-to-face friendships, self-broadcasting steps into the void.

Online, you can adopt a “manly” and “macho” persona that drips with bravado and “courage” (never mind the question of how it’s possible to be courageous while remaining anonymous!). You can say things that shock and provoke. And even if no one reacts, you receive the thrill of transgressing the cultural boundary. You get the initial satisfaction of saying the awful thing, calling names, and belittling and bullying others, all as a mask for your own insecurity and inadequacy. You can appear strong, even as you struggle with your weight. Magnetic, even as you struggle in your marriage. Free, even as you feel trapped by a job that doesn’t give you the chance to build anything.

There’s also the adrenalin rush of treating Twitter like a video game—of seeing what content will fit the algorithm and win clout. You may not feel like you’re winning at life, but you can win at Twitter.

Reaching the Lost Boys

The church isn’t to blame for the sinful actions of men on social media. But the church cannot be blind to some of the reasons these sins are so seductive.

These aren’t real men but boys—lost boys who have returned to the middle-school locker room to brag about their exploits and assert their dominance, all from a desire to make a mark on the world in a way that hides their sense of inner powerlessness. It’s the tantrum of a little boy who despairs at a world that will not bend to his desires and who has given up the desire to master his urges and exhibit self-control.

And this is part of our mission field. The causes that lead some men to this kind of behavior are part of the environment in which we’re called to be faithful. The response to Anonymous Twitter is a church where men can know and be known, where an exhilarating vision—the mountaintop summit of Christlikeness—and a desire not for moral mediocrity but moral majesty through the power of the Spirit is God’s call on our lives. We inhabit a spiritual battlefield with epic stakes. Unless we grasp and promote a vision of men of substance, we’ll see more seduced by Neverland, where the lost boys never grow up but become the shadows of Anonymous Twitter.


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Why Read If You Forget Most Everything Anyway? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/why-read-forget-everything/ Tue, 14 Mar 2023 04:10:12 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=547041 A reflection on the books you read and forget—and why they still matter.]]>

You probably don’t have a photographic memory, able to quickly recall the precise words on a particular page of something you’ve read only once. Few are the readers with such a gift.

You may feel like you don’t even have a good nonphotographic memory. You can’t remember the names of main characters or the major plot points in the book of fiction you plowed through last summer on vacation. You can’t remember most, if any, of the principles in a Christian living book you read over the holidays, except for the main point (which you could pretty much glean from the title!). You can’t remember anything but the general topic of a book of accessible theology you studied with a church group in the fall.

If you can’t remember most of what you read, why even bother? Aren’t there better ways to use your time?

Power of the 1 Percent

In 1981, a young John Piper sought to encourage Sunday school teachers in his congregation who felt a sense of “quantitative hopelessness” when considering the one measly hour they get with children who watch countless hours of TV every week. Piper urged them not to overlook the value of a holy encounter, “the immeasurable moment” and the “lasting, transforming power of an insight.”

Piper used reading as an example: “I do not remember 99 percent of what I read,” he told them. “I don’t remember books whole.” He then went on to say,

It is sentences that change your life, not books. . . . What changes a life is a new glimpse into reality or truth, or some powerful challenge that comes to us, or some resolution of a long-standing dilemma that we’ve had. And most of those—the insight, the challenge, or the resolution—are usually embodied in a very short, little space. A paragraph or a sentence and whammo—it hits home, and we remember it, and it affects us for our whole life long.

Remembering everything you read isn’t the point. The power of a well-crafted sentence that wows the reader with insight is the blessing that, Piper says, makes the other 99 percent of reading worth suffering through. But I think we ought to also consider the effects of the other 99 percent of reading, even if you don’t come across a new insight that changes your life.

Power of the Other 99 Percent

Sometimes pastors feel discouraged when most of their congregation can’t remember the main points of Sunday’s sermon. But is remembering the outline the goal? Even if just one insight or statement or story stood out to a church member, doesn’t that make the sermon memorable?

Furthermore, should we think the parts of the sermon a church member doesn’t remember have no formative effect on the congregation? Surely the “forgettable” parts still matter. How the pastor treats the text—carefully explaining its meaning, adorning it with good illustrations, seeing it in light of the wider world of Christian teaching, driving toward an encounter with God—all these practices shape the listener in imperceptible ways.

The same is true for books you don’t remember. Austin Carty says “uploading information to our brains is not the main reason for reading,” and he turns to a brilliant analogy to make the point: the filters on your phone’s photo app. Older phones had only the image and nothing more, no other lens to see it through. But the variety of filters now available allow you to see the image in ways that draw out its richness. Carty writes,

“The point is this: The primary purpose of reading is not to be able to consciously recall what we have read; it’s to constantly keep refining the lens through which we see reality. Even though we don’t remember 90 percent of what we have read, it still gets inside of us—in ways we’re unaware of and at depths we don’t know we have. It still enriches our filter—even when we don’t realize it is happening.”

C. S. Lewis made a similar point about reading and how it expands our vision and understanding:

“Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. . . . The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others.”

This Is Why You Read

Remembering everything you read isn’t the point.

Yes, you can read with the hope of encountering one sentence that strikes you with insight and changes your life. But encountering all the other paragraphs and chapters that don’t stand out still shapes and forms your outlook, in ways you don’t see or fully comprehend.

The effects of reading go far beyond the details you remember or the sentences you highlight. Reading enhances your filter, giving you knowledge and insight that will reverberate in your mind in ways you can’t perceive, offering a measure of wisdom and breadth you wouldn’t otherwise have.

That’s why you read. And why even the books you can’t remember still matter.


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You Can’t Sever Orthodoxy from Ethics https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/cannot-sever-orthodoxy-ethics/ Thu, 09 Mar 2023 05:10:42 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=546871 When we confess the truth about Jesus—claiming he is Messiah and Lord—we are, by implication, submitting our lives to his rule. If the confession is true, allegiance follows.]]>

In debates over sexual ethics today, whenever longstanding positions are challenged, some say, “The creeds don’t speak to this.” Or “This issue is separate from our confession of faith.” Or “Theological affirmations are one thing, but ethical pronouncements are another.”

In The Thrill of Orthodoxy, I point out the ahistorical nature of this minimalist approach to the creeds, arguing instead for a robust look at the implications of what we confess, including ethics. The church fathers would find it strange to hear people pointing to the “silence” of the creeds as a license to implement massive revisions in morality. It’s impossible to completely sever orthodoxy from ethics.

Obeying Your Confession

But there’s additional biblical support for tying orthodoxy to ethics. The New Testament sometimes speaks of the gospel as something we “obey” (2 Thess. 1:8; 1 Pet. 4:17). And in 2 Corinthians 9:13, Paul praises the early believers for their generosity, describing their good deeds as “obedience to [their] confession in the gospel of Christ” (NET). The phrase can also be translated as “the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ” (NIV) or “your submission that comes from your confession” (ESV) or just “obedient confession of the gospel of Christ” (CSB).

Regardless of your translation choice, it’s clear that obedience and confession are linked. Generosity evidences the seriousness with which we take our confession of faith.

Now, we’d be overstating it to say “confession” in this passage refers to a “confession of faith”—something specific, similar to a later creed or doctrinal statement developed after years of debate and clarification. But the point still stands: confessing the truth of the gospel implies obedience. When we confess the truth about Jesus—claiming he is Messiah and Lord—we are, by implication, submitting our lives to his rule. If the confession is true, allegiance follows.

People of the Way

This is why recurring debates over whether or not we can trust Jesus as Savior without bowing to him as Lord are misguided. True faith is demonstrated not in mere assent to certain truths about Jesus but in personal trust that results in practical obedience.

We confess Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Don’t miss the implication. The truth of Christ is tied to a way of Christlike life. No wonder the early Christians were known as The Way (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22) and Peter described Christianity as “the way of truth” (2 Pet. 2:2). One of the earliest Christian catechisms was called “The Two Ways,” made up primarily of ethical instruction. Confessing the gospel prompts obedience and directs us to a certain kind of life. Doctrine and practice reinforce each other.

When we confess our faith in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, we acknowledge the handiwork of the Creator in rightly ordering his creation. When we confess our faith in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, we commit ourselves to his way. When we confess our faith in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, we rely on his illumination as we seek to bring our lives in line with holiness.

To confess Jesus Christ as Lord leads to action, a generous heart that extends into practice. Pure religion, James tells us, is to keep oneself unstained by the world and visit the fatherless and widows in their distress (James 1:27). Confession implies conduct. Charles Simeon urged “universal support” for good works that “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.”

On a similar note, Carl Henry wrote,

“Christian revelation unveils the fact that God and the good are inseparable considerations. . . . The good is God-formulated. Pure religion is ethical; biblical theism requires the love and service of one’s fellow-man as an essential expression of the service of God.”

Ethics of Generosity

The most heated controversies today revolve around sexual ethics. Can we claim to follow Christ and disregard or revise New Testament teaching on sexuality? Those who stand with the unchanging witness of the church say “Never.”

But the passages we just looked at should challenge us in other areas. We cannot consider orthodoxy as something separate from neighbor-love or the radical generosity required of believers. We shrink the ethical sphere if we try to exclude sexuality (as some revisionists do), but we also shrink the ethical sphere if we think of faithfulness almost exclusively in terms of sexuality when Paul linked confession to charity and James described pure and undefiled religion in a way that includes radical generosity.

So what does it mean to confess Jesus as Lord? Much more than merely stacking divine titles or uttering the right words about his identity. It implies our bending the knee to the majesty of the Name we confess and bringing our life in line with his truth.


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Why Praise Matters in Prayer https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/praise-matters-prayer/ Tue, 07 Mar 2023 05:10:18 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=545676 Praising God in our prayers declares the glory of God and distances us from him in ways that shape our hearts.]]>

If you’re like me, when you pray spontaneously, you push past the preliminaries and get right to your needs. “Lord, I need you for this. . . . Lord, can you help me with that?”

There’s nothing wrong with going right to your need. The urgent petition acknowledges your dependence on God. You’re not thinking of God correctly if you see him as a distant king with arms crossed because you’ve not yet bowed or curtsied your way into his presence. He may be king, but he’s also your father. And he delights in hearing and answering his children, whether or not you’ve followed the “proper protocol” in addressing his majesty.

That said, we shouldn’t overlook the power of praise in our prayers. There are good reasons why it’s best to begin our prayer times by magnifying and extolling the glory of God. Jesus himself gave us this pattern when he told us to pray first for the name of our Father to be hallowed (Matt. 6:9). Likewise, the psalms combine petition and praise, as the writer often bounces back and forth from singing praise and then asking for assistance.

Praise That Declares and Distances

J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom’s book Praying points out how praise is an important aspect of our prayer life, not simply because God delights in our praise as a fragrant offering but also because of what the act of praising God does for us. They say praise both “declares” and “distances.”

First, when we praise God, we declare who he is and the relationship we have with him. We don’t praise ourselves. We praise our Maker. So every time we praise God, we’re saying, through prayer and song, “You are God, and we are not.” Or, as the psalmist says it, “The LORD is God. He made us, and we are his” (Ps. 100:3).

Second, when we praise God, we distance ourselves from him even as (paradoxically) we enter his presence. Yes, there are times we’ll rush into the throne room to plead for assistance from our Father, but the regular act of bowing—of recognizing God’s majesty—drives home the reality that we stand in the presence of a King. Even when he’s close, we stand at a distance. By praising his majesty, we remind ourselves of how far he is above us.

Packer and Nystrom claim Psalm 95 as a classic example of this function of praise. The psalm celebrates the work of God in creation and then invites us to draw near to this God in humility.

The psalmist calls for a praise shaped by humility, so that we acknowledge even with our bodies our great distance from this almighty Creator God. . . . Come? Bow down? Kneel in reverent humility? To bow and to kneel are universal, time-honored gestures of acknowledging greatness in some form. Praise prayer acknowledges our dependence on the God who is great in power and wisdom, when we are neither. We approach him in prayer and thus draw near to him because he invites us to do that. But our mental attitude, our posture, our very words must ever declare the difference and distance between God and us.

Joy of Praise

We don’t praise God because he needs our affirmation. We praise God because he commands it for our own joy. C. S. Lewis made this point famously when he showed how praising something we enjoy not only expresses but completes the enjoyment. God’s desire for praise is not an act of selfish pride but of self-giving love.

We praise God because he’s worthy and because we receive the joy of basking in his greatness. When the King gives us an audience, we receive the benefit of his presence. It’s not in minimizing the distance of God’s glory and greatness that helps us feel his closeness but in feeling the awe and wonder of his presence with us even as he is so great a God. We’re thunderstruck not when we lower God to our level but when God condescends—comes near—while retaining all of his glorious Other-ness. Packer and Nystrom put it this way:

We declare his greatness to his face while on our knees, and in this act God bridges the distance between us and reveals himself to us. As we declare him to be very far above us, so we find him to be very close to us. He receives our praise; we receive his love. That is how praise prayer works.

I like how the hymn “Come, Thou Fount” asks God to “tune my heart to sing Thy grace.” It’s the “streams of mercy never ceasing” that “call for songs of loudest praise.” We ask God to tune our hearts and, in prayer, praising his majesty is one of the primary ways our heartstrings get retuned. We declare his God-ness and goodness, and we’re reminded of the distance between us and the God who draws near.

Don’t let your heart song get out of tune by rushing to petition. Make room in your prayers for resounding praise.


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Why I (Sometimes) Listen to Supreme Court Oral Arguments https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/listen-supreme-court-arguments/ Thu, 02 Mar 2023 05:10:21 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=544574 It’s one of the last places in society where you can find strong, civil debate on thorny questions.]]>

Maybe I’m just a legal nerd, but I enjoy listening on occasion to oral arguments before the Supreme Court.

The habit began with listening to Supreme Court cases in summary form on the Legal Docket segment every Monday on the podcast The World and Everything in It. (If you listen every Monday, you’ll get Mary Reichard’s coverage of every case heard by the Court each year. Start here!) Whenever a case piques my interest, I check out summaries from different perspectives on the SCOTUS blog, sometimes listen to commentary on the Advisory Opinions podcast, and every now and then download the oral arguments so I can listen in.

You might think only the cases that deal with abortion or religious liberty would interest me, but I find that’s not the case. I even enjoy the more obscure debates. Why the appeal?

Good Arguing

Even though I’m not a law student, nor do I have any legal experience, I’m intrigued by the discussion. The Supreme Court is one of the last places in society where you can find strong, civil debate on thorny questions. Where else do you find powerful points and counterpoints presented in civility by people at the top of their game? Where else do you hear arguments from people who know their cases inside and out and seek to persuade the justices so their position might prevail?

No case arrives at the Court unless there’s a split in the circuit courts. Only the most perplexing issues get debated, often with far-reaching implications for society. Listening to the arguments can help you develop a deeper understanding of the legal principles at play and the reasoning behind each side’s position.

Tough Calls and the Art of Persuasion

Many of the high-profile cases fall along philosophical lines (with the conservative-leaning justices on one side and the liberal-leaning justices on the other), but plenty of cases split in interesting ways. Not all outcomes follow the same pattern, especially when the issues involved aren’t at the center of culture-war politics.

Not long ago, I listened to the arguments over “fair use” laws, with Andy Warhol and Prince at the center of controversy. Both sides made a compelling case about what constitutes fair use, how to protect commentary on artistic works, and how we should define the transformation of art. The points and counterpoints were so strong I couldn’t help but be glad I’m not having to make the call!

I enjoy the back-and-forth of oral arguments because of the intellectual stimulation of hearing people make strong cases for their point of view, yet always doing so civilly and respectfully. It’s a masterclass in the art of persuasion. Listen long enough and you’ll start to notice the various strategies lawyers use to influence the Court: appealing to precedent, highlighting the broader implications of a ruling, and presenting compelling facts and evidence.

A World of Bad Debate

Unfortunately, it seems there are fewer and fewer places where one gets this kind of robust and respectful debate.

Jonathan Haidt has shown we rarely make judgments based solely on reason; usually, we make snap judgments and then look for rational justification for why we feel the way we feel.

Alasdair MacIntyre has described our society as enthralled by emotivism, defined as “the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.” No wonder it’s so rare to find good argumentation on Twitter or civil back-and-forth on Facebook—these are forums that confuse emoting with arguing and that devolve into endless quarrels.

Listening to Supreme Court oral arguments, especially cases I’ve only recently become aware of (or ones where I don’t have strong feelings about the outcome), can be a beneficial exercise because I feel the force of both a point and counterpoint. Listening to the justices and the questions they ask, the way they push and probe and press on the arguments, testing the weak points and providing pushback—it’s a terrific way of sharpening your mind, testing your assumptions and biases, and learning strong and weak ways of reasoning.

Points and Counterpoints

I love a good debate. It’s why I enjoy the point-counterpoint books put out by evangelical publishers. A recent example is Zondervan’s Christ in the Old Testament, which includes five views of how we should read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture in light of Christ. Reading that volume didn’t resolve all my questions and concerns about various interpretive approaches, but it did help me see some of the pitfalls and dangers in the debate. Even if my position lines up closest to just one of the contributors, my respect for the other positions went up because I can see what they’re trying to safeguard or protect, even if I may not think their approach is best.

We need more forums where robust debate can take place. That’s why I recommend occasionally listening to oral arguments—not because you need a crash course in legal disputes or a civics lesson in how our government works (although these are benefits), but because it’s a place where you encounter experts in the field making the strongest case they can and then responding as well as possible to the counterpoints that might arise. Look up some of the key legal terms you hear. Enjoy the satisfaction of legal jousting. Sharpen your mind and widen your perspective. It’s a mental workout you won’t regret.


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Should We Cancel Karl Barth, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/cancel-barth-luther-edwards/ Tue, 28 Feb 2023 05:02:00 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=544208 Clarifying and complicating the questions of sin, virtue, and sanctification in the lives of past theologians and what we can learn today.]]>

There are two tendencies right now in our society when it comes to highly regarded theologians from the past.

The first is hagiography—to crown heroes with halos and look at forefathers and mothers in the faith through a fuzzy lens that airbrushes their mistakes, sins, and evils, leaving the impression their insights and achievements outweigh any nitpicky “flaws” today’s historian might point out.

The second is the cancel-culture impulse to write off anyone from the past whose views or actions are now deemed “problematic” and wave away any appeal to what could be helpful or beneficial in their work because their sins discredit or cancel out any goodness or virtue.

Neither of these tendencies serves the church well. Neither reckons sufficiently with what the Bible teaches about the nature of humanity or the parasitical nature of sin’s intertwinement with goodness or the unevenness of sanctification. Both tendencies need a larger dose of complexity. The problem is, in a world that swings from simplistic hagiography to the quick rush to cancel heroes, we wind up treating theologians the same—either writing them off immediately and minimizing their contributions or embracing their contributions uncritically and minimizing their sin. We can do better.

We can either look down on past theologians for their sins or we can look deeper. Looking deeper requires us to consider different kinds of sin, how those sins might affect the outlook of the theologian, and what treasures we may still receive, with wisdom and discernment, from flawed forebears.

The Karl Barth Dilemma

It was a jarring experience for me a couple years ago to encounter Christiane Tietz’s extraordinary biography of Karl Barth at the same time as I was reading books on how most of the church fathers approached the task of theology.

Barth is perhaps the most influential Christian theologian of the last century, rivaled only by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). And yet as hidden aspects of Barth’s life have come into the light, we now know he lived in an adulterous relationship with his assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum, and even arranged his living conditions around this sin, to the detriment of his wife, Nelly. What’s worse, he made twisted and bizarre theological justifications for persisting in unfaithfulness.

Samuel Parkison recently tackled this dilemma head-on, asking how it even makes sense to say something like “It’s a shame he was an adulterous and unfaithful husband, but he sure was a great theologian and a gift to the church.” Parkison has read and agrees with the church fathers on the role of virtue in the life of a theologian, that “high-handed and habitual unfaithfulness” cannot help but negatively influence one’s theology. Gregory of Nazianzus claimed personal piety was essential to the task of theology; only the pure in heart can take in the brilliant brightness of God. Theology isn’t an abstract, purely academic exercise. Even Barth acknowledged this reality in a letter in which he wondered how his and Kirschbaum’s sinful “experience” might affect his theological ruminations.

Theologians and Purity of Heart

Should we require moral uprightness from scholars in the past? Is there anything we can learn from theologians whose lives frequently fell abominably short of biblical fidelity?

If instead of looking down on the past we look deeper, we can agree with the church fathers and uphold a high standard of an “ever-increasing purity of heart” among those who seek to plumb the depths of God’s mysteries. At the same time, we can consider how biography shapes theology and how theologizing is always in some way affected by sin.

The answer isn’t to cordon off issues of personal holiness as if we do theology as an Enlightenment systematician or scientist. Our character makes a difference in how we theologize, interpret Scripture, or make applications. The church fathers were right: we’re wise to pay attention to how the presence of persistent sin affects the way we think of God.

Right now, many believers shy away from considering how one’s theology is affected by sin, because this raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions regarding theologians from the past (especially those implicated in various forms of white supremacy). In reaction to a cancel-culture mentality that’s often too quick to dismiss our forebears in uncritical “all or nothing” terms, we might find it easier to slip into the Enlightenment mode of keeping academic study and personal piety separate than to heed the premodern church fathers on this matter.

This is the wrong move. No, I’m not advocating cancel culture for important theologians, not even Barth. Instead, we ought to think more carefully and critically about how the sins of influential theologians may have negatively affected their theological reasoning and conclusions. As historian David Steinmetz said, “The study of history gives the church freedom vis-à-vis its past: freedom to appropriate past wisdom, when it can, and overcome its faithlessness and sin, when it must.”

3 Types of Sinful Theologians

To this end, we should delineate between different types of sinfulness. Some Christians resist this idea, preferring to think of all sins as the same since any sin—large or small—separates us from God.

But the Christian tradition has always held some sins are “more heinous in the sight of God than others,” as the Westminster Larger Catechism says (Question 151).

Sins can be aggravated in circumstances when the sinful person is older and seen as an example, or when the sins are more directly blasphemous toward God, or when the sin breaks out of its conception in the heart and becomes a series of scandalous words and actions without repentance. The Catechism also mentions sins against nature, going against conscience, and the deliberate and presumptuous breaking of vows.

In light of this discussion, we see different variations of sin among past theologians.

1. Willful Rebellion

We start with Barth, who belongs to the category of theologians who persisted in willful sin knowing it to be sin. Paul Tillich would be in this category as well—a man whose extramarital exploits were renowned even in his day. These are the most egregious examples of sin, when a theologian engages in illicit activity in a habitual way and doesn’t appear interested in repentance or restoration.

2. Culpable Blindness

A second category would include pastors and theologians who in varying degrees were complicit in sins, evils, and injustices of their times. Their sin was the result of culpable blindness. Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic views and writings would fit here, as well as Jonathan Edwards’s defense of and involvement with slavery (even as he condemned the slave trade!). Ironically, in these cases, both Edwards and Luther would urge us not to remove or reduce their moral accountability. They would insist that even if they didn’t see their sin as such (and were, in this sense, spiritually blind), they were still culpable for that state of blindness because often there are truths the heart doesn’t want to see.

3. Sinful Struggle

A third category would include theologians whose lives were marked by sinful struggle, and yet they were known to be striving against sin, confessing their sin within the context of the church, and seeking to turn from sin even as they sometimes fell backward. We shouldn’t minimize sin in any form, as it always negatively affects our lives and the lives of those around us. But in this case, the desire of the theologian is to reject sin and be free from it. Read the confessions of some of the Puritan writers or, further back, Anselm or Augustine, and you see a striving for holiness amid the muck of this fallen world. Yes, sin remains. But the theologian seeks to grow in Christlikeness.

Complicating the Categories

I admit the categories I’ve supplied have several limitations. First, we tend to “freeze” a person at a particular point in time, when there can be movement away from or toward sin over time. Willful rebellion in one season can turn into sinful struggle in another, with sprouts of repentance breaking through the barren ground. On the other hand, culpable blindness can harden into willful rebellion, especially when there were those who called out a theologian for complicity in injustice.

Second, even if we agree willful rebellion is perhaps the most serious and egregious category, the effects of theologians in the culpable blindness category can be just as devastating and sometimes worse (think of the Nazi appeals to Luther in the years leading up to the Second World War, or later American theologians who continued the evil of slavery in the wake of Edwards). The third category, however, probably describes the majority of theologians—those who fall short of purity of heart and yet struggle against sin, in agreement with God and his Word.

Third, the sins we believe “instantly disqualifying” often depend not on the Scriptures but on how we read the Scriptures, as conditioned by our culture and times. (Consider why some African Christians believe getting a tattoo to be a more serious offense than adultery!) Many biblical characters—Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jonah—provide windows into both egregious sin and glorious salvation.

On occasion, some pastors and theologians, while not perfect, live in ways that beautifully match their theology. The ancient church often called them “saints,” and even in traditions without official “sainthood,” we recognize when the beauty and glory of a person’s life corresponds to their confession of faith and theological study. As a general rule, we have good reason to see as more trustworthy the theological musings of someone whose life is marked by godliness, both in the personal and public spheres.

Ask Deeper Questions

Treating theologians as “all or nothing” isn’t the way to go. It’s not wise to tar and feather past theologians or uncritically embrace them. Sinful forebears still have something to teach us.

The impulse on social media is to put everyone in quick and easy boxes so we know instantly who the “heroes” and “villains” are, but real life is gloriously complicated. Some of those we might call “villainous” had heroic traits of virtue, while those we might call “heroes” had villainous streaks of sin.

Instead, looking deeper requires us to carefully reckon with sin’s distorting effects in the theological outlook of past theologians. Onsi Kamel recommends we “look at the specific loci of thought and the particular sin, and then investigate in particular how the thought was noticeably impacted by the sin. And then discount or warn about or treat carefully those dimensions of thought.”

We should wonder . . .

How did Luther’s vicious anti-Semitism affect his approach to the Old Testament? Did his view of the Jews shape his sharp distinctions between law and gospel or his two-kingdoms approach to society?

How did Edwards’s slaveholding affect his understanding of mercy and justice? How did it alter the way he understood the Bible or his view of God? How did it shape his view of how society is to be ordered or his doctrine of humanity? Does the fact Edwards’s son became an ardent abolitionist complicate these questions?

How might Barth’s adultery have influenced his views on sin and grace? Did his willful rebellion and theological gymnastics diminish his understanding of God’s judgment? Did they play a part in some of his semi-universalistic musings?

Sanctification is often uneven, and I understand if this article complicates the issue and stirs up more questions than answers. That’s why we need more debate about past theologians, not less. More complexity, not simplistic answers. Truth isn’t served by hagiography or exalted biographical sketches that minimize the sins of theologians from the past. Neither is truth served by the impulse to see only the sins and not the signs of sanctification in the lives of influential thinkers.

We’re better off acknowledging the complexity of the human condition, recognizing where even the most respected theologians may have harbored sins or blindness that affected their theological vision, and then recommitting ourselves to seek the holiness without which we cannot see the God we long to study and adore.


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Who Are the Real Schismatics? A Look at the Church of England https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/real-schismatics-church-england/ Thu, 23 Feb 2023 05:00:00 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=545136 In debates over marriage and sexuality, let’s be clear where the division starts.]]>

Something momentous happened this week.

The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) announced they no longer recognize the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury as “first among equals.” What’s more, they say that in adopting “innovation in the liturgies of the Church and her pastoral practice” in order to bless same-sex sexual relationships, the Church of England has “departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles” and has thus “disqualified herself” from leading the Anglican Communion.

In choosing to move closer to the wishes of politicians and revisionist church leaders in the United Kingdom, the Church of England has signaled that her desire to stay as a “wife” to the state is greater than her desire to remain a “mother” to the worldwide Anglican Communion. Perhaps the fear of disestablishment and divorce from the state is greater than the fear of losing “the kids.”

But here’s what’s strange. If you read the headlines or peruse the news articles or listen to Church of England leaders who have promoted revisionist teaching, you get the impression it’s those pesky, stubborn African bishops who have chosen schism rather than “unity.” Everyone else just wants peace, to walk together in love. It’s the Global South that refuses to just “agree to disagree” and “maintain the bond of the unity.” It’s unfortunate, sad really—this schismatic impulse of those who pull away.

But this take is backward.

First of all, the Church of England and the other churches associated with the Anglican Communion that have adopted revisionist theologies in line with the sexual revolution make up a tiny proportion of the Anglicans who worship every Sunday around the world. The vast majority of today’s Anglicans are represented by the Global South and by theologically orthodox provinces. It’s not Africa that represents a small segment of the worldwide church breaking away; it’s the revisionists who are splintering off from the whole.

Second, bishops and priests in the Anglican Communion take vows to defend and promote official church teaching as expressed in the Thiry-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal and the Book of Homilies, and more recently, the Lambeth Resolution 1.10 in the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which preserves the traditional teaching of Scripture and the church related to marriage and sexuality.

What does it mean, then, for bishops to deliberately defy these teachings upheld by the worldwide Communion or to advocate for positions that go against what they vowed to teach? Who is schismatic? The bishops and priests who remain faithful to their vows to promote biblical teaching or those who change the practice and then expect everyone else to ignore, downplay, or be OK with such doctrinal deviations? Certainly it’s not the Global South but the bishops and priests who, against their vows, introduce errors and heterodoxy and then expect everyone else to accept it and remain in full communion.

Third, when a group of people is walking together down a path and several depart from the group and begin to take a different path, how does it make sense for those walking in a new direction to chastise the main group for their “divisiveness”? And yet that’s exactly what we see today. All the language about “walking together” obscures the reality that some have walked off. It’s as if those who walk away now wag the finger at the bigger group, saying, “Why don’t you want to walk together anymore?”

Once again, who is the schismatic? Who has changed here? Who has walked off? Not the vast majority of Anglicans across the world but the shrinking subset of predominantly white churches who have adapted their policies in line with the state’s institutionalization of the sexual revolution’s revision of marriage. It makes no sense to label as “schismatic” the bishops and churches that remain in line with every Christian in history until just decades ago.

Coverage of these disputes often seems to lay blame for schism at the feet of those who uphold Christianity’s historic sexual ethic instead of those who advocate for a sexual revisionism that would have been unfathomable to the generations of the Christians who came before us and, even today, shocks the consciences of the vast majority of Christians outside the West. Only in Western cultures do we call churches “affirming.” Outside the West, the term is “apostate.”

Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg’s analysis in the late 1990s was prescient:

Here lies the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to be bound by the authority of Scripture. Those who urge the church to change the norm of its teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism.

This is schism brought about by those whose “cheap grace” is employed as justification for sexual immorality—the sort of situation the brother of Jesus warned against (Jude 4), which means that defending the faith (Jude 3) in this context is about the church’s moral witness to the sexual ethic handed down by Jesus and the apostles.

This isn’t about fundamentalist division. It’s about faithfulness in doctrine and fidelity to Christ. Don’t blame faithful Christians who cannot “walk together” with those who walk away from the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”


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The Burning Question from Asbury Isn’t About Asbury https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/burning-question-asbury-awakening/ Mon, 20 Feb 2023 13:35:08 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=544936 The burning question from Asbury isn’t about Asbury; it’s about you.]]>

You’ve heard the news of spiritual awakening at Asbury University: an ordinary chapel turned into an ongoing service of praise and worship, confession of sin, and celebration of salvation, and has now garnered attention from all over the country and sparked similar stirrings of spiritual intensity in other colleges and universities.

Earlier this week when I saw clips from Cedarville University (where my son is a freshman) and heard of the evangelistic teams canvassing state universities in Ohio and Michigan, I couldn’t hold back the tears.

Is This Revival?

Asbury Theological Seminary president Timothy Tennent hesitates to call this “revival.” He writes, “Only if we see lasting transformation which shakes the comfortable foundations of the church and truly brings us all to a new and deeper place can we look back, in hindsight and say ‘yes, this has been a revival.’” Time will tell.

Yet there’s no doubt we’re witnessing something unusual, the intensification of God’s power demonstrated in Word and in worship, renewing hearts and lives.

It shouldn’t surprise us to see a work of God begin with college students. In 1802 at Yale College, a spiritual movement began with such power that more than a third of the student body professed faith in Christ. “The whole college was shaken,” wrote a freshman there. “It seemed for a time as if the whole mass of the students would press into the kingdom. It was the Lord’s doing, and marvelous in all eyes. Oh, what a blessed change!”

When Awakenings Happen

Whenever the Spirit of God gives God’s people a renewed sense of God’s presence—that compelling combination when we stand in awe of God’s majesty and feel overwhelmed by his love—we see multiple responses.

First, things get messy. When the Breath of God comes upon a place palpably, there are often unusual responses—whether intensified periods of prayer and praise, or immediate and accelerated works of God in healing (physically and spiritually), or a collapsing of one’s experience of time as a sense of eternity impinges upon the present. People respond with sincerity to the Lord’s moving, sometimes in unfeigned expressions of devotion that may seem theologically sloppy and yet issue from a pure-hearted love of God.

Second, revival-seekers always show up, and not all of them with pure motives. Hucksters arrive, seeking to bottle up the power and instrumentalize it for their own cause. Whenever the power of God is on display, some try to profit from that power. Just look at Simon the Sorcerer in the book of Acts.

Third, church people are often more critical and cynical than the world. Some are quick to sneer at the displays of emotion. They cross their arms and interrogate the events, analyze the theological precision of what’s said or sung, more worried about being “taken in” by a fraud than “taken up” by the Spirit. (Such was the case in first Great Awakening, with “old lights” and “new lights” dividing sharply over the source and results of the revivals.) Others who have been hurt by the church’s actions or inactions in the past or who have firsthand experience with imposters of spiritual manipulation remain skeptical.

Many questions arise in response to an awakening like the one at Asbury:

Is this real? How can we know if this is a genuine work of God?

What if some of the theology of some of the participants is off?

What if there’s spiritual manipulation going on?

How do I “test the spirits” in this case, from afar?

Is this just emotionalism spread by social media?

Isn’t God just as present wherever I am? What kind of fruit should we expect?

Burning Question

But I believe there’s a more pressing, burning question we should ask. It’s what Jesus posed to the paralytic waiting at the pool of Bethesda in John 5:

“Do you want to be healed?”

The burning question from Asbury isn’t about Asbury; it’s about you. It’s about your heart. It’s about your longing.

Jesus’s question to the paralytic seems absurd on the surface. After all, the man is sitting there hoping for a miracle, right? Of course, he wants to be healed!

And if Jesus were to ask if we want revival, I assume most of us would say something similar . . .

Can’t you see, Lord, that we’re faithful to give? That we pray? That we go to church every week?

Haven’t you heard how we sing every week?

Aren’t you aware of what we always say, that the only thing that will save our country or renew our church is a revival?!

Yet Jesus’s question hangs in the air:

“Do you really want this?”

Forget all the surface stuff we say about revival and our dependence on the Spirit.

It’s possible to say you want revival but deep down to not want the discomfort God’s presence might bring.

It’s possible to sing songs every Sunday asking for renewal while nursing grudges and bitterness you don’t want to be delivered from.

It’s possible to enjoy the division of the church, your theological tribalism, or the secret sins you harbor, or to take twisted comfort in your complacency—to become deadened to the church’s decline and apathetic regarding the future. The Spirit of God is not safe.

And so Jesus’s question remains: Do you want to be healed?

The paralytic comes up with all sorts of excuses for why healing is impossible. No one helps me. I can’t get down to the water. I’m all alone.

And we do the same. The church is too messed up. It’s impossible for God to work in that place! If revival were to happen, it wouldn’t look this way. If God were to move, he’d do it differently.

But the question remains: Do you want this? Does your heart leap at the thought? Do you want to be healed?

Thirst for God

“I do not understand Christian people who are not thrilled by the whole idea of revival,” Martyn Lloyd-Jones said.

I don’t either.

Whatever happens or doesn’t happen at the Asbury Awakening and beyond, may we be marked by a living thirst for a knowledge of the living God and an irrepressible desire to see him at work in power, doing whatever he and he alone can do—in us and through us. The thrill of orthodoxy results not in arms crossed but arms uplifted. And so we sing with Fanny Crosby, the little old blind woman whose song still resounds:

Savior, Savior,
Hear my humble cry;
While on others Thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.


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The Danger of Pursuing a Perfect Church https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/danger-pursuing-perfect-church/ Thu, 16 Feb 2023 05:10:56 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=542538 If Jesus didn’t withhold his touch from the leper, then why should we distance ourselves from churches filled with sinners on the road of sanctification?]]>

One of the most beautiful slogans to emerge from the Reformation is Martin Luther’s phrase simul justus et peccator, which means “at the same time righteous (justified) and sinner.” It’s a description of the believer who—because of the righteousness of Christ—is justified, even as the struggle against sin continues.

Some of us fail to recognize our lingering sins and selfishness—we think we’re farther along than we really are in our journey toward holiness. Others face the temptation to despair over our remaining imperfections—perpetually frustrated by the slowness of our progress, perhaps because we lack a sense of the magnitude of God’s love for us in Christ.

These challenges show up also in our view of the church. Some would minimize the church’s flaws and dismiss her lingering sin and selfishness, content to bask in self-righteous self-assessment. Others would harbor seething resentment toward the church, shocked to see the Bride of Christ manifesting so many sinful struggles and disillusioned when unrealistic expectations of churchly perfection go unmet.

Red Door of Welcome

A few years ago, a short video of Ray Ortlund made the rounds online as he welcomed his congregation to church one Sunday morning. He mentioned the significance of churches with a great red door through which all the sinful, weary, tired, and hungry are welcomed to the table of Jesus, the mighty Friend of Sinners. The way through that door is the narrow path of repentance and faith—a personal trust in the One who identified with his people through baptism, who went to the cross to remove our guilt and shame, and who now welcomes all who confess his name to join him at the table of forgiveness. “Welcome to church,” Ray said.

Repentance begins with a decisive shift, a turning around, a change of direction. Repentance continues with daily dying to self. A new way of life replaces the old. The initial change happens in an instant, but the road of repentance is a “long obedience” in a new direction. We recognize holiness to be a lifelong pursuit for Jesus’s followers. We don’t expect a sinless purity or a walk without stumbles and falls. The path of sanctification is long and arduous, like climbing a mountain—but because we ascend through the power of the Spirit, it becomes an exhilarating adventure toward the summit of Christlikeness.

Church of Sinful Saints

If we expect believers to be saints who still sin, why not expect the same for God’s people corporately? Shouldn’t we expect the church to manifest signs she’s simul justus et peccator? Too often, we hold the church to higher standards than we hold ourselves. And when churches stumble and fall, we recoil from and reject our family members in Christ.

If our holy God didn’t maintain a safe distance from human muck and misery, and if our spotless Savior didn’t withhold his touch from the leper, then why should we—especially if we’re becoming more like Christ—distance ourselves from churches filled with sinners on the road of sanctification? Why should we expect congregational life to be easy and sin-free?

No Perfect Church

There’s a joke often told about finding the perfect church. “Don’t join it!” we say. “The moment you do, it becomes imperfect.” It’s a funny reminder that it’s impossible to hold the church to a standard of perfection we ourselves don’t attain.

There’s comfort in knowing we’re all on a journey of Christlikeness and no one has “arrived.” It’s not because we lower the high standards we have for ourselves or for God’s people but because we recognize our frailty and fallenness and how easy it is to fall short of those standards. People always on the hunt for a better or more perfect church would be frightened if they came across one. Imagine being the only sinner in a church filled with perfectly righteous saints who never stumble. Imagine being the only one falling and flailing and getting back up again.

Sadly, that’s exactly how some believers feel. A sensitive conscience may make you think you’re the only one with problems. Everyone else here has their lives together! In a place where no one confesses sin to one another, where all stumbles are kept secret, it’s easy to erect a facade that the road to Christlikeness is easy. Only the foolish fall.

But this isn’t reality. We’re all, in varying degrees, a mess. And we’re all in various stages of having Jesus clean up that mess. We bear with one another not because others are easily bearable but because Christ bore with us and bore our sins in his body on the cross.

Church of Beggars

Holiness doesn’t lead us to separate from sinners in the sanctuary, just as holiness didn’t lead Jesus to withhold fellowship from repentant sinners. Holiness is at work whenever we bear with the faults and failures of others and when others bear with our sins as well. Just as God is holy and loving toward sinners, we are to be holy and loving toward sinners-turned-saints.

The church’s glory is most evident not in her programs, missionary activity, social assistance, or renewal projects but when she’s the most real, a beggar with outstretched arms, receiving the Word of grace and the Bread from heaven—tasting the gift of salvation and seeing the Lord is good. And then, wonder of wonders, Jesus makes this beggar his Bride.

Yes, we must pursue renewal and reform. Yes, we must seek to uproot evil and sow seeds of righteousness. Yes, we should remove the rot of sin and selfishness, lovingly discipline wayward members, and seek restoration after scandalous evil. After all, we want to see the church look more like the Savior. We want to become a beautiful Bride.

But true reform and renewal are ultimately constructive, not condemnatory. Our efforts in critiquing what’s wrong and beautifying what’s right must be done with a spirit of forbearance that seeks to build up, not tear down. We don’t stand apart from the church, castigating her for her failures. She is our mother. We’re one family—sons and daughters bought at the price of our older Brother’s blood.

So yes, let’s seek a more perfect church but not expect a perfected church. We are simul justus et peccator, until the day our glorification is complete.


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Why I Don’t Say ‘Passed Away’ When Someone Dies https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/passed-away-dies/ Tue, 14 Feb 2023 05:10:30 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=542181 ‘Passing away’ language doesn’t do justice to the power of our enemy or the promise of our hope.]]>

I hate death. It’s an enemy. A formidable foe. A blight on God’s good creation. A thief who steals our friends and loved ones.

Death is so awful it’s no wonder people often prefer to speak in euphemisms that shield us from its ugliness. This is why we talk about people “passing away” or inform others when someone has “passed.” We look for a gentler way of describing the reality, of saying someone has died. To speak of someone’s death or to describe someone as dead—it lands hard on the ears. It’s cold. Harsh. Borderline impolite.

There are Christian ways we soften the blow, when we talk about someone “graduating” to glory or “transitioning” to heaven or when we rebrand funerals as “homegoing celebrations.”

I get it. I don’t judge anyone who turns to these and other phrases when describing death. (One could even make a case for why some of these descriptions have theological warrant.)

But I won’t do it myself. When someone dies, they don’t just disappear into the mists. They don’t just “transition.” The body dies. There’s a corpse. Even when we smile through the tears when someone dies well—as a testament to the faithfulness of God—death remains an enemy. Yes, the soul is immediately with God, but there remains a wrenching loss, a wretchedness, because body and soul were never intended to be separated.

And so I usually choose to say someone “died” or speak of someone’s “death.” Why?

1. How the Bible Talks

The Old Testament genealogies tell us again and again about various men and women—they lived, and then they died (or, for kings, sometimes we’re told they “rested with their fathers”). Even if death claims a faithful believer at the end of a long illness and is a relief after terrible suffering, it’s still their death that’s “precious” in the eyes of the Lord (Ps. 116:15), not their passing.

The New Testament doesn’t shy away from death either. Yes, Jesus described Lazarus as having “fallen asleep,” but even then he followed up with plainer language: “Lazarus has died” (John 11:11, 14). When Paul describes departed saints as “those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thess. 4:14), he does so not out of politeness or the desire to comfort us by softening the blow but because he wants to emphasize the temporary state of death so we maintain unshakable hope in resurrection awakening.

2. Death Is an Enemy

Death is not a friend but an enemy. Death hurts. We mourn the loss of loved ones. I don’t want to shy away from words that communicate the shock and harshness of death because, no matter what we say, it’s horrible. There’s no way to really soften it. You can change your communication but you can’t enliven the corpse.

Yes, a follower of Jesus goes to “a better place.” But their “transition” or “graduation” or “homegoing” has happened through death, which is never less than a tragedy. Our friend is in heaven because our friend died.

Thankfully, when we die in Christ, we’re at once with the Lord. That’s why I do like and sometimes use the language of “going to be with Jesus” or “went to be with the Lord,” especially if I’m with a grieving family or church that needs, in that moment, an emphasis on our hope of eternal life with Christ. But even then, I use that language knowing the person is still dead and that their loved ones mourn the temporary separation. Even those who are now with Jesus long for the day of resurrection, when their souls will be clothed again with new bodies in a glorified state, beyond the reach of death’s clutches (2 Cor. 5).

3. Resurrection Victory

Speaking plainly about death gives us more opportunities to highlight the future hope of resurrection. The Bible tells us death is awful but also that love is stronger than death (Song 8:6). Do you feel the power of that promise? Love beats death.

When I look for softer ways to speak about death, I muffle the shouts and cheers of resurrection victory. But when I acknowledge how harsh and horrible death is, I get to wave my finger in the face of that tyrant and say, “O death, where is your sting!”

That’s why I’d rather say “death” and then stand defiant in resurrection hope. No matter how many times that foe robs us of our friends and loved ones, no matter how gaping the hole of our own future gravesite, we can look that ancient enemy in the face knowing the decisive battle has already been won—when the last enemy is defeated, death itself will be swallowed up by the grave (1 Cor. 15). In Adam, all die. In Christ, all will be made alive.

So remember, Jesus didn’t come to conquer a friend. He didn’t come to ease our “passing.” He came to conquer and overturn death forever. “Passing away” language doesn’t do justice to the power of our enemy or the promise of our hope.


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5 Challenges Facing the Church in the Western World https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/5-challenges-church-western-world/ Thu, 09 Feb 2023 05:10:19 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=541922 Here’s the opportunity to join a cohort with Trevin Wax leading conversations around five of the biggest challenges the church faces in our time.]]>

Earlier this week came the announcement of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. I’m honored to be one of the inaugural fellows for this Center, and I look forward to connecting with other scholars and leaders with a passion for defending and extending the gospel in a secular age.

As part of The Keller Center, I’m taking a cohort through an exploration of five of the biggest challenges facing the church in the Western world, helping us better understand our times and look for ways to see churches strengthened and the gospel advanced in the days ahead. You can join this cohort!

Over five weeks in March, we’ll look in greater detail at the elements of a “be true to yourself” mindset, the shrinking of Christianity into little more than a personal and privatized faith, the moral revolution that casts traditional Christian morality as harmful and repressive, the rise of intuitional spiritualities and pseudo-religions, and the fragmentation and polarization of our increasingly online world. This cohort will help you connect the dots, better understand people in your neighborhood and in your church, and offer ways of bearing gospel witness in the world to which we’ve been called.

  • March 2, 2023: The Challenge of Expressive Individualism. We’ll explore in greater detail the predominant worldview of our society and how the gospel provides a better vision for humanity.
  • March 9, 2023: The Challenge of Personalized Faith. We’ll explore the relegation of religion to morality and to personal and private expressions of spirituality, along with a challenge to proclaim the gospel as public truth.
  • March 16, 2023: The Challenge of Christian Morality. We’ll explore the implications of the sexual revolution and societal views of Christian teaching on sex and marriage, along with opportunities to minister in a world of sexual revolution refugees.
  • March 23, 2023: The Challenge of Pseudo-religions. We’ll explore the rise of the unaffiliated and the various pseudo-religions and intuitional spiritualities people are turning to as traditional religious adherence falls away, along with opportunities to bear gospel witness in a world of “do-it-yourself” spirituality.
  • March 30, 2023: The Challenge of Fragmentation. We’ll look at the rise of polarization and fragmentation due to social media and physical isolation, along with opportunities for the church to provide a thicker sense of Christlike community.

Each session will be about 90 minutes (8:30–10:00 p.m. EST), with 50 minutes or so of presentation and 40 minutes of dialogue and discussion.

If you’d like to join this cohort, see The Keller Center website for more details. I look forward to strengthening members of this cohort so we have a missionary encounter with the world we’re called to reach.


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5 Ways to Persevere Through a Hard Book https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/5-ways-persevere-hard-book/ Tue, 07 Feb 2023 05:10:56 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=537312 It’s possible to persevere through even the most challenging of books. Here’s how.]]>

“I gave up on that book.”

More than once I’ve heard this sentiment, sometimes expressed with a tinge of regret and shame, especially when it concerns a classic whose greatness everyone is expected to encounter and extol. I’ve heard it said of books widely revered—Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, Augustine’s Confessions, even Athanasius’s On the Incarnation. Many a theology reader has run up against the wall of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics or trudged through the molasses of the Puritan John Owen. People tell me they just can’t get through Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov even after multiple attempts, and I must confess my own failure in persevering through Tolstoy’s War and Peace and George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

Let me set your mind at ease. The first thing we must do is take these unfortunate and unmerited feelings of failure and shove them in a desk drawer and throw away the key. You’re not at fault, nor are you a failure for not liking a book.

I’m with Alan Jacobs, who begins his book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction with a chapter on reading at whim:

“Read what gives you delight—at least most of the time—and do so without shame. And even if you are that rare sort of person who is delighted chiefly by what some people call Great Books, don’t make them your steady intellectual diet, any more than than you would eat at the most elegant of restaurants every day.” (23)

If you feel the need to close a book that bores you, then by all means, put yourself out of your misery. Life is too short. Read what interests you. Read what gives you pleasure. Feel no guilt for devouring the latest detective story or historical tale, for rereading a devotional work that ministers to your soul, or for searching a theology book for perspective on a topic that intrigues you.

That said, I imagine my readers do want to tackle the hard books on occasion. You want to set aside the book that gives you instant delight so you can train your powers of concentration and focus on a book that has earned a reputation. I believe you’re right to have such a desire. Here’s Jacobs again:

“Some forms of intellectual labor are worth the trouble. In those times when Whim isn’t quite enough, times that will come to us all, we discover this. Such work strengthens our minds, makes us more capable of concentration, teaches us patience—and almost certainly a touch of humility as well, as we struggle to navigate the difficult (if elegant) terrain.” (50)

If that’s you—delighted to read whatever strikes your fancy, yet also determined to stretch your mind and grow in your deliberative powers—then I recommend you commit to persevering through some classic works. “Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers,” Jacobs says. “They are not readily encountered, easily assessed.” That’s one reason they’re great.

Here are five tips to help you persevere through the most demanding of books.

1. Don’t chain yourself to a hard book.

The worst mistake you can make is to pick up a large and difficult book and commit to forgoing all other books until the hard one is finished. Not only will this silly commitment make reading a drudgery, but you will also miss out on opportunities to find and read other good books during the time you’re trudging through the challenging one.

Treat regular books like your normal routine of walking around the neighborhood, and treat the difficult book like going to the gym to meet with a trainer. Make an appointment with the hard book. Decide on the best time to give yourself over to the mind-stretching routine—maybe once or twice or week, perhaps for 30 minutes at a time—and then keep your appointments. But don’t ever limit yourself to one hard book and then punish yourself daily until you’ve finished it.

2. Read the hard book with a different set of expectations.

Be patient. Don’t try to “get” everything the first time around. I remember finishing Chesterton’s Orthodoxy for the first time and feeling both exhilarated and exhausted, thinking, I didn’t understand even a quarter of this book, but what I did understand was gold!

You don’t have to follow every trail of a novelist’s tale in order to encounter and understand the characters. You don’t have to understand every page of a deep work of theology to still stretch your mind. Perseverance is the goal, and patience is required. If you don’t understand everything, focus on what you do understand, and remind yourself that a classic book deserves repeat readings.

3. Make use of helps and guides.

Teachers sometimes scoff at Cliffs Notes and similar helps through difficult or classic works. I scoff at their scoffing.

One of the best ways to encounter an older book is with a trusted guide who can give you context for what you’re about to read or help sum up the main contours of what you just finished reading. (This is what I sought to do in my annotated guide to Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.) Yes, too many summaries and annotations can get in the way of the text or supplant the author in some way, but for the most part, I don’t see any problem with relying on helps.

4. Divide a big book into smaller chunks.

If the classic you want to read is lengthy (say, the size of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, well over 1,200 pages in some editions), it’s a good idea to pace yourself so you won’t feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the book. If you want to finish in six months, you’ll need to finish 200 pages a month, or roughly 50 pages a week, or just 7 pages a day. Set the appointment for the book, whether daily, a couple times a week, or once a week, and then stick to it.

Eat the elephant one portion at a time. Don’t gorge yourself on a challenging book. Cut it up into smaller portions. No meat is inedible if you ration the chunks and work them into a rhythm.

5. Find a friend or group committed to the same book.

Reading alongside others by following a plan or engaging in periodic discussions will not only help you stay the course but also read in ways that anticipate conversation, thus cementing some of the book’s main themes or points in your mind much more easily. If you don’t have anyone close by who is interested in the same book, you can always find groups online willing to join together to read a classic and discuss it. Look for these opportunities.

In all, just remember: it is possible to persevere through even the most challenging of books. Be smart enough to know which books deserve your endurance, and then set a plan for the mental workout.


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Don’t Let Your Wrath Make You a Wraith https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/wrath-make-wraith/ Thu, 02 Feb 2023 05:10:44 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=537267 The frightening future for the unforgiving isn’t in encountering a ghost but in becoming a ghost yourself.]]>

Of all the spooky “bad guys” you find in novels and movies, I don’t think anyone can top the Ringwraiths in The Lord of the Rings, those hooded, shadowy figures of darkness and terror. They are the Nazgûl, mortal men who fell under the dominion of evil until they became “shadows under his great Shadow.”

I remember watching The Fellowship of the Ring in the theater, my heart beating out of my chest as Frodo and his fellow hobbits hid in the woods, with Ringwraiths on the hunt. The specter of a wraith frightens us, but scarier still is the possibility of becoming wraiths ourselves.

This is an insight I gleaned from Tim Keller’s newest book, Forgive, which makes a connection between anger and wraiths I’d never considered before.

Why Watch Yourself

Whenever you are wronged, you’re likely to pay attention to the wrongdoer. Look what they did to me! How could they say that? That’s a terrible person. What’s wrong with them? Why did they treat me this way? I didn’t deserve this!

But according to Jesus in Luke 17:3, this is precisely the moment you need to watch yourself. Hebrews 12:15 warns against the “root of bitterness” that might spring up.

When we’re wronged, Keller says, we will likely downplay the severity of our anger “to maintain our image of ourselves as good people” and to mask our remaining bitterness:

“‘I’ve forgiven,’ you say (meaning you aren’t actively seeking revenge), ‘but I can’t forget’ (meaning that you are rooting for the person’s downfall and that you are still filled with resentment).”

If we take seriously these commands to examine ourselves, we ought to assume the best about others and the worst about ourselves. In other words, Keller believes “we should assume that we are more resentful and less forgiving and more controlled by what people have done to us than we think we are.”

If you want to be a truly forgiving person, rather than assuming ulterior or bad motives in the person who hurt you, you should always assume you still have bitterness that needs to be rooted out of your heart. Only then will you do the hard work of digging out the roots of your selfishness so you can forgive deliberately and thoroughly.

From Wrath to Wraith

Here’s where Keller makes the connection to wraiths:

“Our English word wrath comes from the same Anglo-Saxon root as our word wreath. Wrath means to be twisted out of your normal shape by your anger. . . .And the same Anglo-Saxon word also gives us the now somewhat archaic word wraith. We don’t use it much anymore (unless you read The Lord of the Rings), but it’s an old word for a ghost, a spirit that can’t rest. Ghosts, according to legend, stay in the place where something was done to them, and they can’t get over it or stop reliving it. If you don’t deal with your wrath through forgiveness, wrath can make you a wraith, turning you slowly but surely into a restless spirit, into someone who’s controlled by the past, someone who’s haunted.”

The frightening future for the unforgiving isn’t in encountering a ghost but in becoming a ghost yourself, perpetually haunted by resentment and wrath until your humanity is diminished.

Grumbling Ghost

C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce is memorable for its portrayal of ghosts in the afterlife who relive certain events and repeat the same traits, haunted by their own selfishness until they lose their solidness.

One of the female phantoms, in response to a spirit beckoning her to the mountains, does nothing more than grumble. And in this, we see the danger: gratitude for one’s blessings is replaced by grumbling over one’s burdens until bitterness saps a person’s last remaining happiness. Wrath turns you into a wraith, until isolation, discontent, and utter misery become the marks of an unfulfilled existence. As Lewis wrote,

“Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others . . . but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine.”

True Forgiveness as the Antidote

The only antidote to this miserable existence is true forgiveness—choosing the harder path of rooting out bitterness rather than allowing the grumble of your spirit to grow until it chokes out your humanity.

Much of the resentment we see on display in the world showcases the “human anger [that] does not accomplish God’s righteousness” (James 1:20, CSB). This is why we must watch ourselves. Keller is realistic. Live long enough in a world where “canceling, ghosting, and insults are the norm” and yes, “you will experience snubs on a regular basis, and in some cases will experience real injustice.”

But the question remains: “How are you going to keep it all from turning you into a wraith controlled by the past?” Only through the undeserved forgiveness you receive from Christ, which you then extend to undeserving others.


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Ministry Is Tough: When Self-Care Becomes Self-Absorption https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/self-care-self-absorption/ Tue, 31 Jan 2023 05:10:20 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=540923 On wrongheaded assumptions about work and rest, and the generational shifts that make the conversation about self-care difficult.]]>

I saw a funny video recently that joked about the generational shift in how we view practices of self-care and therapy.

In the old days: “You’re in therapy? What’s wrong with you?”

Today: “You’re not in therapy? What’s wrong with you?”

Joking aside, there has been a significant shift in how we view issues of mental health. Some of these changes stem from scientific and psychological studies that shed light on how humans respond to conflict and trauma. Other changes are the result of cultural trends in a therapeutic society—what Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff describe as the “Great Untruths” of fragility (“What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker”) and emotional reasoning (“Always trust your feelings”).

Pastors and church leaders aren’t immune to these developments, and I wonder if in some cases the cultural shift toward self-care has led to a new set of wrong assumptions among those just entering ministry. If the generation before me assumed the need for overworking to the point that people had to insist on self-care and say “Stop and take care of yourself before you burn out,” I wonder if the generation behind me will assume the opposite. We’ll assume the need for self-care to the point that others may need to insist on hard and strenuous labor, even when it hurts.

Bridging Generations

I sometimes call myself a “senior citizen of the millennial generation,” as my birth year places me among the oldest of this cohort. I can feel the differences between me and the millennials born a decade later, because the cultural milieu changed quickly. The internet and online connectivity moved from the peripheral (remember dial-up?) to the center of connection and communication. And trends toward therapy and self-care sped up in the intervening years, especially with Generation Z.

I’ve watched pastors and church leaders just a few years older than me burn out or flame out—with sin or breakdown following stress, overwork, and the inability to withstand pressures and conflicts. For this reason, I’ll always champion the need to prioritize physical and spiritual health. The church needs healthy members, and especially pastors, to be models of a better way. Setting boundaries, implementing new habits, finding sustainable rhythms of work and rest, understanding one’s own body and mind, watching for warning signs of overextension—these actions are vital if we’re to sustain healthy families and churches.

In a world of constant churn and productivity, where we judge ourselves by our effectiveness and efficiency, we need this reminder. We need Sabbath. We need better habits. We need to tend to our souls. I could point to a slate of recent books that center on emotional health, Sabbath rest, family practices, mindful prayer, and eliminating hurry. I’ve read them. I like them. I recommend them.

But . . . Just as some might twist God’s calling and our work into overwork and over-exhaustion that fails to recognize our human finitude and limits, others might twist the gift of self-care into self-absorption, or even just laziness. We might fall for the idea that hard work in itself—whenever it’s difficult or painful or exhausting—is inherently damaging or is a sign something’s wrong.

Discomfort in Ministry

There’s a grind to pastoring, like there’s a grind to all sorts of other jobs. We’ll experience conflict, disagreement, and discomfort in the church because the church is full of people. Just look at the apostle Paul’s description of ministry. He talks about beating his body and bringing it into submission (1 Cor. 9:27), his hard work as an apostle (1 Cor. 15:10), his suffering on behalf of his people (Col. 1:24; 2 Cor. 11:24–29), and being “spent” (2 Cor. 12:15) as he strenuously contends with all his energy (Col. 1:29). He described himself as being “poured out as a drink offering” (Phil. 2:17).

Leadership will sometimes involve conflict. Not all conflict is abuse. Not all discomfort is trauma. Discomfort is ministry. There is no ministry—real ministry—without discomfort, at least at some level.

The only way to get through life without being disturbed is to be completely alone. Love requires disturbance. Ministry requires work—hard work. We live in a world of thorns and thistles, and no mindfulness app or meditation practice will remove all the effects of the fall. Some of us sin by overwork and some of us sin by underwork, but both are fallen responses to the good gift of labor. The answer to one sin is not a different sin.

Generational Assumptions

My sense is some of my middle-aged friends and colleagues in ministry harm themselves by too quickly dismissing the advocates of self-care, healthier habits, and more sustainable rhythms. But I fear that some of my younger friends and colleagues just starting out in ministry will harm themselves by holding to unrealistic expectations about the nature of work and self-fulfillment.

The recent push toward self-care is designed for men and women who assume the long hours, hard work, overextension, and burdens of ministry are just par for the course—an element of what it means to fulfill God’s calling on your life. But what happens when the assumptions are reversed? When the push toward self-care is heeded by people who assume they owe it to themselves and to the world around them to take care of themselves first and foremost, no matter how long or how much that takes, or how much the ministry struggles and suffers in the meantime?

This is when a good thing like self-care gets twisted into inordinate self-focus, to the point that our calling isn’t to the ministry with the care of self as an important element in how we seek spiritual health, but our calling is to ourselves with the ministry as an add-on.

The solution to one generation’s overwork is not the next generation’s underwork. The solution to one generation’s lack of self-care is not the next generation’s self-absorption. The ruthless elimination of hurry (a glorious aspiration) does not mean the ruthless elimination of discomfort in our work. (When someone new to ministry decides after a few months they’re nearing burnout and need a sabbatical, I’m tempted to say, “Burnout? You haven’t even burned!”)

So let’s be careful here. We shouldn’t assume the next generation is entering the workforce and ministry with the same assumptions as the previous generation. Unhealthy, imbalanced approaches that deserve critique and require alteration come in different forms. Let’s not assume one generation’s struggles apply to the next.


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Ivan Provorov and the Pressure to Punish LGBT+ Dissent https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/ivan-provorov-lgbt-dissent/ Thu, 26 Jan 2023 05:10:26 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=541554 Unless everyone everywhere pretends there’s no substantial difference between male-female marriage and same-sex relationships, the spell is broken. The charade doesn’t work.]]>

Earlier this month, controversy erupted over the decision of an Eastern Orthodox Christian hockey player. Alone among his teammates, Ivan Provorov chose not to wear a Pride-themed jersey during warmups. When asked why he didn’t express support for LGBT+ causes in this way, Provorov said he respected “everybody’s choices” but that he’d chosen to “be true to himself” and “his religion.”

Provorov’s comments didn’t prevent the onslaught of criticism. Even his coach was confronted and asked why he wouldn’t change the lineup that night. The subtext was shared by many others: Surely you will punish this player. There must be consequences! One commentator broke down in tears on air—overcome, I suppose, by the unthinkable horror that someone somewhere who occupies a place in polite society dissents from sexual revolution ideology.

Place of Dissent

Thirty years ago, social pressures like this were fodder for comedy, as seen in the Seinfeld episode where Kramer refuses to wear a ribbon in support of AIDS victims and gets bullied and beat up for failing to fall in line.

Today, dissenters face pressure to abandon their position, unless the cause is seen as courageous. When NFL players took a knee during the national anthem a few years ago, many of the same people excoriating Provorov defended the players’ right to silent protest. Over time, peer pressure flipped the other way, to the point where some players stood out by going against their teams and choosing not to kneel.

There’s much we could say about the politicization of sports and double standards. We could look at the demise of the “live and let live” mindset once promised by advocates of same-sex marriage. We could look more closely at Ivan Provorov’s defense and how he turned to the language of expressive individualism and “being true to himself” to explain his position.

But what intrigues me most about this most recent dustup is why there’s so much pressure on everyone to affirm the self-conception or sexuality of someone else.

Why Dissent Must Be Quashed

Why are these battles so heated? Why do so many in our society demand everyone show their support for LGBT+ causes? Why the insistence on preferred pronouns? Why the expectation there will be “consequences” for someone who, out of religious conviction, respectfully dissents from the prevailing view?

It’s because the only way the LGBT+ cause makes headway long-term is if dissent is quashed. The whole movement is built on a magnificent lie—the idea that gender distinctions are irrelevant to marriage and sexuality. Repeat the lie enough—through the tautology of “love is love” or singing along with Macklemore’s “Same Love”—and you may begin to think there’s no substantial difference when it comes to sex between a man and a woman and sex between a man and a man.

But slogans and songs don’t eliminate the truth.

The truth is simple: male and female bodies are designed for sexual union that leads to procreation. Say “love is love” all you want, but only one kind of lovemaking carries the potential of bringing another person into the world. Only one kind of coupling results in children.

Design of Sex

Nature discriminates. It doesn’t matter how “in love” a couple may be. When a man goes to bed with a man or a woman with a woman, the result is intrinsically sterile. There’s no possibility of children.

But, some might say, what about heterosexual couples who can’t have children? Are we saying their love doesn’t matter? Of course not. But this objection reiterates the reality of sexual difference and bolsters my point. Why do we see infertility as a tragedy? Precisely because we expect and desire children as the fruit of a man and woman who come together in love. It’s because the design of this coupling is oriented toward new life that we grieve when children don’t come.

Today, the design of sexuality is the grand truth that must be suppressed, because the moment we acknowledge or highlight the differences, we may begin to wonder if there are rational, natural reasons why we might see these couplings as, well, different. And that would lead us to treat relationships with a natural ordering toward children as (gasp) different, which would then take us back to the primary reason why every society in human history up until a few decades ago saw marriage as exclusively male-female.

Pressures of Conformity

Questions and debates about sex and marriage have a storied history. We could look at the many reasons why same-sex marriage makes sense to people today in a way our great-grandparents would have never understood. We could trace the trajectory of marriage’s diminishment, the obscuring of marriage’s public function and societal responsibilities, or the contraceptive mindset that severs sex from its intended aim.

But all that is merely background to my main point: Christians will continue to face mounting pressure to signal our support for LGBT+ causes, to say “love is love,” to display the Pride flag—whatever pinch of incense will satisfy today’s Caesars. Why? Because unless everyone everywhere pretends there’s no substantial difference between male-female marriage and same-sex relationships, the spell is broken. The charade doesn’t work. It’s why the wars over pronouns and bathrooms are so heated. Unless we all play along, the jig is up.

Ivan Provorov’s dissent exposes the lie at the heart of the sexual revolution. And let’s face it: now that transgender theories are mainstream, we’ve moved beyond the question of morality. At the center of controversy today is the question of nature and the meaning of embodied reality. Why is there such pressure to fall in line? Because unless we all act like gender difference is superficial and irrelevant, the ancient view of marriage will persist and the newly invented view of marriage will be seen as the imposter it is.


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Lesson for the Church from the Barnes & Noble Turnaround https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/lesson-church-barnes-noble-turnaround/ Tue, 24 Jan 2023 05:10:26 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=539149 Come what may, there’s no substitute for love.]]>

Few analysts expected brick-and-mortar bookstores to survive, much less thrive, in the 2020s. If you were placing bets a few years ago, you’d think digital would be the way to go: Facebook, Netflix, Crypto, or Tesla.

But as Ted Gioia points out, digital media is struggling while Barnes & Noble, a 136-year-old book retailer, has begun to grow again. Success has come through “embracing the most antiquated technology of them all: the printed book.” Not only is Barnes & Noble profitable and growing, but they’re also opening new stores, including in places where Amazon tried (and failed) physical bookstores.

Bookstore’s Decline

What’s surprising about this news is the state of the company just a few years ago. Gioia writes,

“Even after its leading bricks-and-mortar competitor Borders shut down in 2011, B&N still couldn’t find a winning strategy. By 2018 the company was in total collapse. Barnes & Noble lost $18 million that year, and fired 1,800 full time employees—in essence shifting almost all store operations to part time staff. Around that same time, the company fired its CEO due to sexual harassment claims. Every indicator was miserable. Same-store sales were down. Online sales were down. The share price was down more than 80%. And here’s what happened to its big digital initiative, the Nook eBook reader—a decline of more than 90%.”

Amazon appeared triumphant, having slayed Borders. All that was left for Barnes & Noble was, well, the bookstore, which had shifted its floorspace to toys, calendars, and cards—and coffee shops. So what happened? Gioia points to the leadership of James Daunt, who stepped in as CEO:

“It’s amazing how much difference a new boss can make. I’ve seen that firsthand so many times. I now have a rule of thumb: There is no substitute for good decisions at the top—and no remedy for stupid ones. It’s really that simple. When the CEO makes foolish blunders, all the wisdom and hard work of everyone else in the company is insufficient to compensate. You only fix these problems by starting at the top.”

Turnaround Begins

Before coming to Barnes & Noble, Daunt was a key figure in turning around Waterstones, one of my favorite bookstores in Britain. Bookselling was in his blood. Gioia describes the single bookstore Daunt ran in London when was 26, a store he turned into “a showplace for books.”

Daunt didn’t follow the rules. He moved away from heavy discounts because he didn’t think books were overpriced. He didn’t give away (and thus devalue) books. He empowered people working in the stores. Most surprisingly, he rejected the common practice of accepting promotional money from publishers in exchange for prominent placement in the store, whether or not readers were interested in those books. He refused to “dumb-down the store offerings,” so he could “create an environment that’s intellectually satisfying—and not in a snobbish way, but in the sense of feeding your mind.”

Superpower of Love

But here’s the main takeaway from Gioia’s analysis, what he says is James Daunt’s “super power”: the man loves books.

“If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema. But this kind of love is rare nowadays.”

Gioia grieves the loss of love among people in creative work, alongside the loss of confidence in the “redemptive power” of books. Once that love is lost, he writes, leaders “put their faith in something else” or they make decisions based on cash flow and other projections.

It’s too simple to say love for books is the primary reason for the Barnes & Noble turnaround, but surely we can acknowledge a key element in these recent wins was the decision to put “books and readers first, and everything else second.” Gioia writes,

“Even if you can’t teach this kind of love, you know it when you see it. There are people who are passionate about these things. They believe in them with ardor and devotion. You can find them and hire these people—and those are the individuals you can trust.”

Reminder for the Church

Passion. Ardor. Devotion. Love.

There’s a lesson here for those of us who mourn the decline of church membership or grieve the reality of falling attendance numbers at churches across the country.

Surveying the cultural trends, we might be tempted to put our faith in something else, to focus our attention not on the Word and the sacraments but on extraneous things—our coffee, our music, or our programming. Over time, pastors in the fields of labor lose any sense of being a leader in worship and become managers of religious dispensaries, as if they oversee a supermarket of spiritual goods and services.

Life can go on under these “dumbed down” circumstances, and churches may see attendance rise, but at what cost? At what point is the central purpose of the church lost, edged out by crowd-pleasing trinkets, just as Barnes & Noble had become, in the words of their CEO, “crucifyingly boring,” having lost confidence in the primary reason for its existence?

Come what may, there’s no substitute for love. Loving God. Loving to worship God. Loving to worship God with his people. Loving to hear God’s Word and to feast on his goodness at the table.

God forbid we lose the fire of love and hand down religious formulas that no longer burn within our hearts.

Pastors, we are not baristas. We are not managers, marketers, or speech makers. We are worshipers. And unless we’re filled with ardor and devotion for our task of leading our congregations into an encounter with the living God, our churches will never become an oasis of God-adoration in a parched and weary land of false worship.

There’s a lesson in the Barnes & Noble turnaround. Remember your first love. And don’t lose sight of your ultimate purpose.


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Reconstructing Faith: A Time for Rebuilding https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/reconstructing-faith-a-time-for-rebuilding/ Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=540731 A look back at the first season of a podcast dedicated to renewing and restoring the witness of the church to the power of the gospel.]]>

The first season of Reconstructing Faith is now complete. The season finale features Ajith Fernando, Jen Wilkin, and Tim Keller—three servants of the church with insight into how we might see renewal in the days ahead.

One of my goals in working on this podcast was to provide listeners with perspective: to connect us to the global church and the church throughout history, so we can draw from fresh resources as we seek to renew the church in our day. I’ve tried to highlight constructive voices who want to see the church strengthened and built up. We’ve included discussion guides for pastors and church leaders walking with members through the subjects addressed in these episodes.

I love the church. I want to see her renewed and refreshed and healthy again. I know we’ve experienced a season of humiliation and pain, in which the Lord has seen fit to expose our sins and failures. But tragedies and disasters have a way of clearing the mind of clutter and focusing the heart. So let’s clear the debris and focus on what’s central, and let’s prepare for the adventure of reconstruction and repair.

’Mid toil and tribulation,And tumult of her war,She waits the consummationOf peace forevermore;Till, with the vision glorious,Her longing eyes are blest,And the great church victoriousShall be the church at rest.


Episode 1: The Church’s Credibility Crisis

When we see leaders fall by the wayside because of either life or doctrine, the pain cuts in many directions all at once, with a lot of hurt left in the wake. The long-term effect of this kind of failure is a diminishing of the credibility of the church. Will God fail because of human weakness? No. But the church’s failures can become obstacles in the path of those who don’t yet know God or can cause believers to stumble in their faith. The spiritual fallout can be devastating. In the first episode, we tackle a problem that has been decades in the making.


Episode 2: Renewing the Church

We’ve experienced a wave of terrible revelations about the condition of the church in the past decade. So much has come to light. And like homes that didn’t get the attention they needed after a flood, there’s rot, for sure. There’s mold in the house. Rotting floors. Sin has seeped in, and it’s left a watermark. And even after the floodwaters are gone—after the church split, after the abuser is exposed, after the deconversion—the effects of all that remain. The rot is strong. But thankfully, so is the foundation. In this episode, we discuss how we can be the generation that roots out the rot to start the process of rebuilding.


Episode 3: The Water is Toxic

Social media primes us to see our life as a stage, a performing of an identity for our online community. These practices form and encourage negative character traits that lead us away from the kind of wholeness God desires for us. We get lonelier and more isolated, finding online communities that don’t ask much of us, often at the expense of flesh-and-blood neighbors and church members. Social media makes it harder to be a follower of Jesus, to be whole, an integrated person. The water is toxic, and we feel trapped. In this episode, we discuss how we can be purifying agents in the toxic waters of social media.


Episode 4: I Kissed Chastity Hello

What if we can acknowledge with clarity some of the problems of purity culture while also rediscovering and fortifying the foundational Christian teaching about chastity? What if we can remove the rot and uphold the foundations, as a way of standing apart from the world for the good of the world? We need to distinguish what the Bible teaches by getting out of our culture and looking at the church through history (including the excesses and flaws there) as well as the church around the world (where the question of sexual ethics is a nonnegotiable). In this episode, we wrestle with the best way to articulate and apply a Christian sexual ethic in our day.


Episode 5: The Authority Question

We can’t talk about renewing the church in our generation if we don’t put the question of abusive leadership on the table. But discussing leadership raises an even bigger question: one of authority and how it’s to be exercised. There’s no easy task in front of us. The problem is multifaceted: Shepherds who, for one reason or another, abuse their authority, lording their power and domineering the sheep. And shepherds who respond by failing to lead, abandoning the proper sphere of influence they’ve been given. What will it take for future church leaders to look like Jesus and reject the sinful scrambling for power? And what will it take for pastors to stand firm, to not abandon the sphere of influence they’ve been given but to lead with boldness and courage, reflecting the wise rule of the Creator who called them to ministry? In this episode, we discuss how to rebuild the culture of leadership in the church to showcase healthy examples of authority and power.


Episode 6: Reckoning with Race

In the past decade, many Christians have wrestled afresh with questions about racial injustice, racial disparities, racial prejudice and discrimination, and what racial reconciliation can and should look like in the church. There’s no avoiding this challenge. And if we truly believe God gets glory when we reflect the beautiful diversity of his kingdom, we can’t opt out. Are we up for the task of letting theology, not politics, drive the discussion among Christians regarding race? Can we avoid the pitfalls of secular ideologies and religious denialism as we take this path? In this episode, we examine the road to racial equality and racial unity within the church.


Episode 7: Can Anything Good Come from D.C.?

If you’re active and involved in your church, you’ve probably noticed that things have gotten more tense regarding politics in recent years, and unless your church is monolithic in its political views, you’ve probably seen some division and debate. You want to apply your faith to your political involvement, yet you also want to avoid getting co-opted by partisan alliances. In this episode, I offer some suggestions as to how better think through the relationship of Christians to political life.


Episode 8: The Stain

The stain of sexual abuse is one of the biggest reasons the church faces a crisis of credibility today. There’s mold in the house of the Lord. And with righteous anger and determination, we’ve got to say: this rot must be removed. In this episode, there’s a challenge to the church to respond in ways that bring healing and restoration out of a place of deep contrition and repentance.


Episode 9: The Silent Scandal

So far in this podcast, we’ve looked at various ways the church’s credibility has been harmed by a lack of consistency between our beliefs and our behaviors. These are the big issues that make headlines, that draw attention, that spark conversation. But what if there’s a problem so prevalent, so pervasive, so all-encompassing that we have a hard time even seeing it? What if a church filled with Christians quietly devoted to the American Dream is the silent scandal of the church? In this episode, we explore how the church can adopt disciplines that mold and shape hearts that chase a bigger dream—the dream of God’s kingdom, announced by Jesus himself.


Episode 10: The Credible Apologist

We’ve seen that there’s rot in the house of the Lord. Some of the rooms are dilapidated. In need of reconstruction and repair. It’s good to remind ourselves that the ultimate goal of addressing these challenges is not so we can reconstruct a healthier house, a more enduring edifice, for ourselves only. It’s so we can beckon others toward the light, toward wholeness, toward the salvation found only in Christ. In this episode, we consider the legacy of C. S. Lewis (including a tour of Lewis’s home in Oxford) and how the task of rebuilding the witness of the church is intertwined with the task of apologetics and evangelism.


Episode 11: Your Questions Answered

In this series, we’ve been addressing the church’s credibility crisis, reflecting on the challenges of today while learning from church history and the church around the world. In this special episode, we address some of the questions listeners have sent in.


Episode 12: It’s Time to Rebuild

As you look at the church today, you may ache for the church. But maybe you ache because you love . . . You love the church and know she can be better than this. And you love Jesus and know he deserves a Bride whose beauty showcases his. As we bring this season to a close, I talk with Tim Keller, Ajith Fernando, and Jen Wilkin about how we might see renewal in the days ahead.


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Clint Clifton: Tribute to a Colleague and Friend https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/clint-clifton-tribute-to-a-colleague-and-friend/ Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:29:30 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=540278 Grief and gratitude in reflecting on a friendship with Clint Clifton, a church planting leader who died suddenly at the age of 43.]]>

I knew I was going to like working with Clint Clifton.

The first time we met, I could see that behind his unassuming demeanor was a brilliant mind and good-natured spirit. A longtime employee at the North American Mission Board, Clint not only planted churches but planted churches that have since planted more churches. A church-planting grandfather, so to speak, and he was just 43 years old.

Clint moved onto my team as senior director of resource and research strategy in the late summer of 2021. In the months that followed, he became a pillar (truly) of a newly-formed research and resources team as we relaunched NewChurches.com and the New Churches podcast, and as we developed multiple projects designed to strengthen pastors and planters.

Clint was driven yet easygoing, polite yet forthright, constantly candid with his feedback and opinion, yet always motivated by a desire for excellence. He built on his many years of experience working closely with pastors and planters in order to hone his instinct for how best to serve them in the trenches of ministry. He was entrepreneurial. He was passionate. He was flexible. Always quick to change course when something wasn’t working, willing to support the mission no matter who got the credit, and ready to take responsibility if he ever dropped the ball (in spite of his brilliant strategic mind, or maybe because of it, he knew he wasn’t best at keeping track of all the details!).

There wasn’t a hint of showiness with Clint Clifton. There was no facade. He was who he was. Settled and comfortable in knowing what his gifts and passions were and how best to deploy them. He confided in me when he felt certain aspects of his job were stretching him, and yet he loved new opportunities and developing new skills. He’d say, “This is harder than I thought it would be” and at the same time, “Don’t make it easier. I want to grow and get better.”

Clint usually opened our meetings in prayer by saying “Jesus, we love you,” as if to make sure, no matter what was going on or what challenges our team was facing, it was love for Jesus that motivates all the activity and planning. And it was love for Jesus that propelled Clint into multiple avenues of action—fostering and adopting, loving his wife and five kids, networking with church leaders, and showing hospitality to people in need.

Working with Clint gave me a front-row seat to someone constantly listening and learning from pastors and planters—and then pouring wisdom back into them through mentoring, podcasting, speaking, and writing. Just last week, our team was together in Alpharetta fellowshipping, praying, planning, and strategizing. I got to see him in action on Wednesday, as he poured into leaders in training. One was his oldest son, Noah.

On Wednesday night, we enjoyed Tex Mex while talking about the future and laughing about some of our past experiences (both of us were veterans of Cracker Barrel). Thursday was full of meetings—brainstorming in the morning, and then in the afternoon laying out key components of a strategy for resourcing pastors. We walked out of headquarters together that afternoon and parted ways in the parking lot.

The next day, I had to break the news to each member of our team, that Clint didn’t make it home. First shock, then sadness. And so now, I’m pushing back the tears to say something fitting for a great colleague who became a good friend. And I ache for his wife, Jennifer, and their children, and for his church family, all devastated by this unfathomable loss of a good man in the prime of life.

It makes sense that Clint’s church (Pillar Church of Dumfries, VA) has set up a memorial fund that will assist in future church planting. There was no cause closer to his heart. The man was a genius, with an encyclopedic knowledge of church dynamics and a palpable passion for seeing the kingdom extended through the multiplication of healthy churches. Continuing that work is the best way to honor his legacy.

As I reflect on my friendship with Clint Clifton and the joy and expertise he brought to our team, I feel a mix of grief and gratitude. Grief at losing him suddenly, but gratitude for God crossing our paths and giving me the privilege of working alongside this man. But most of all, there’s the tearful thanksgiving in knowing that, even if it wasn’t in the way we expected Thursday evening, he did make it Home.

Until we meet again, my friend… “Jesus, we love you.”

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Chinese House Churches ‘Crazy for the Gospel’ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/chinese-house-churches-gospel/ Thu, 12 Jan 2023 05:10:40 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=537250 Inspiration and insight from a new collection of essays and pastoral writings from a prominent pastor now imprisoned in China.]]>

One of the most remarkable books to appear in recent days is Faithful Disobedience, a collection of writings from leaders in the Chinese house church movement—most notably pastor Wang Yi, who has been in prison since 2018.

When you hear about “house churches,” you may imagine 15 people gathering secretly in someone’s home. But in China, the house church refers more to a movement than a location. These churches and their leaders follow a path set by earlier heroes (such as Watchman Nee and Wang Mingdao) who courageously resisted taking part in the government-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement. House churches today often boast several hundred members, and their activities are known to the public and the authorities. Many of the fastest growing can be found in China’s cities. What sets apart the house church is that it’s unregistered—“non-sanctioned” by the government.

Early Rain Covenant Church has been one of China’s most prominent house churches. In December 2018, the pastor, Wang Yi, was imprisoned, Early Rain was raided, and more than 100 of its members were arrested.

Faithful Disobedience isn’t the story of China’s tragic crackdown on Early Rain and other churches. It’s a collection of essays, pastoral letters, and conference talks that give you a glimpse of the theological perspective of this church and its pastor before the hammer fell. And this is the first time these resources have been made available in English.

The mission of Early Rain Covenant Church was expressed in October 2018, just two months before the fateful arrests were made: “Christ is Lord. Grace is King.” And the path to carry out the mission? “Bear the cross. Keep the faith” (201). Nothing sums up better the main themes of the book.

1. Christ is Lord.

Jesus is Lord, and God’s kingdom is spreading. Christians humbly and obediently submit to the government authorities wherever possible, as Christ has commanded, but they draw the line at allowing the government to interfere with the inner life of the church or her public witness in fulfilling her mandate.

In 2015, Wang Yi wrote,

“God’s kingdom is already here in China, it cannot be denied by the power of the sword because his kingdom is brought forth by the only begotten Son of God, our Savior Lord Jesus Christ, who brought forth this kingdom on the cross through his own death under the power of the sword.” (114)

Although Wang Yi’s church is Reformed, his insistence on the separation of church and state resembles the legacy of the Baptists. He pulls no punches in describing the eternal consequences that await those who hinder the church’s freedom to serve her Lord:

“The church’s religious freedom to proclaim the gospel and worship our God is given to us by Christ himself. Any infringement or stripping of such freedom is the evil act of the antichrist and will not be spared from the fury of hell fire and God’s righteous anger.” (115)

Taking the mantle of a prophet who thunders with clear lines of distinction, Wang Yi excoriates the churches that belong to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, declaring their nationalistic “autonomy” to be a disastrous denial of the church’s catholicity. Furthermore, their willingness to sing patriotic songs in church or listen to patriotic speeches constitutes a denial of the supranational lordship of Christ. Once a church falls prey to this kind of nationalistic sentiment, it has succumbed to Satan’s scheme to turn the true church into a fake one.

Although Wang Yi distinguishes between these churches and the sincere believers who may still attend them, he makes clear the dividing line between the true church and the church with the spirit of the antichrist:

“Once the church capitulated to the flesh in holy doctrines, holy offices, and the holy sacraments, once it began to depend on earthly powers and submit to politics, then the church gave up her worship to idols. The church has lost her beautiful and glorious nature as Christ’s bride, which is her holiness; and she will become a whore and no longer a church of our Lord.” (121)

2. Grace is king.

These harsh indictments of compromise frequently run right into gushing displays of grace. The house churches emphasize the cross of Jesus Christ for the salvation of sinners and also the grace that flows to and through Christians today. The pastoral letters urge Christians to treat government authorities with respect, and even honor, especially those who are simply cogs in the evil machinery of Chinese repression.

Grace makes the church fearless. “No matter what our reaction,” Wang Yi writes, “once fear has spread, any reaction based on fear is not one driven by love” (175). The stark contrast between the true church and the antichrist, or the lordship of Christ and the idolatrous seizing of ultimate power by the Chinese government, in no way minimizes the Christian responsibility to love one’s enemies, to return evil with good.

Fear and resentment, anger over injustice—these are not the motivations for Christian obedience. Love must be the driver. That’s why Wang Yi urges his fellow believers to treat even their captors with kindness. And the church that fights for freedom does so not because believers seek benefits for themselves but because religious liberty will benefit the government and the rest of the country. In other words, Wang Yi’s motivation for pursuing religious liberty is to bless the nation through the spread of God’s kingdom, not to acquire the personal privilege of churchly comfort.

3. Bear the cross.

What is the path to fulfilling this mission? Suffering. In “20 Ways Persecution is God’s Way to Shepherd Us,” Wang Yi exhorts his readers,

“Test yourself to see if you are crazy for the gospel. When you are threatened with death for the gospel, you find out for whom you really live. When faced with the risk of job loss, you know for whom you really work. When you may lose fortune and position for the sake of the gospel, you find out whether you are crazy for money or crazy for the gospel.” (176)

What are we “crazy” for? The idols of comfort and status and prestige vie for supremacy in our hearts, driving us to do seemingly crazy things to attain them. Yi envisions a church that’s unexplainable apart from the power of the gospel, where people act in ways that seem “crazy” to the world because they’ve devoted their all to Christ’s kingdom.

4. Keep the faith.

The ever-present temptation for the house church is to look for ways to compromise with the world or to give in to the unjust demands of the authorities by aligning with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. But it isn’t the role of the state to enforce the precepts of Christianity:

“Once the church falls into the trap of being ruled by emotions, depending on power, or yielding to politics on matters of doctrine, priesthood, or sacraments, they have worshiped a false god.” (27)

Likewise, Sun Yi urges believers to keep the faith and focus on the church’s primary mission, which cannot be hijacked by political aims:

“An organization cannot be called a church if it does not make Jesus’ Great Commission its primary objective but rather makes the religious policy of the ruling party and the state its primary objective.” (60)

All the writers warn against seeking to use the church as a means to worldly approval, a temptation to which not even church leaders are immune: “There is no one more wicked and adulterous in the world than the preacher who has not divorced from this world” (141).

God of Tomorrow

Faithful Disobedience is a challenging book to read. Some of the essays are academic. Others are pastoral or devotional in nature. There are historical accounts of the development of the house churches, as well as clearly articulated principles that promote the supremacy of Christ over nationalistic idolatry.

The editors seem uneasy at times with the bold language of Wang Yi and his fellow writers, especially their willingness to paint black-and-white lines and call out the spirit of the antichrist. But their eternal, on-the-spiritual-battlefield language is closer to what we find in the New Testament than what passes muster in polite evangelical circles.

In the end, I’m most inspired by what Wang Yi wrote in a letter that was to be given to his wife whenever he would be arrested:

“I am still a missionary, and you are still a minister’s wife. The gospel was our life yesterday and it will be our life tomorrow. This is because the One who called us is the God of yesterday and the God of tomorrow.”


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Wednesday Addams and the Return of Black-and-White Morality https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/wednesday-addams-black-white-morality/ Tue, 10 Jan 2023 05:10:38 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=537224 A new development in Hollywood: moral relativists are the villains, moral absolutists are the heroes, and the latter fight for control in recounting history.]]>

Over Christmas break, I had the chance to watch the newest adaptation of a classic-TV-family: Netflix’s Wednesday, a series that centers on the adolescent girl in the eccentric Addams Family. If you liked the original show, the movie, or the various pop culture adaptations that keep the Addams Family in the American psyche, you’ll probably enjoy this new series.

But I suspect even audiences unfamiliar with the source material will appreciate Wednesday. The series might appeal to fans of Harry Potter for the way it incorporates elements of the boarding school culture of Hogwarts. Filmed in Romania, Wednesday’s eerie Transylvanian castles and scenery add a distinctive feel. And the show’s dark humor and offbeat pacing ensure the scary or gruesome moments never overwhelm what is essentially a lighthearted mystery story.

Also on display? Clear allusions to recent debates about how to tell history, if and when we should erect statues that honor flawed people in our past, and whether a moral reckoning is always a matter of right vs. wrong or should include shades of gray.

Celebrating the Outcast

In a culture steeped in the strange stew of expressive individualism (“You be you no matter what!”) and identity politics (“You’re defined by characteristics associated with your group”), it’s not a shock to see the world of Wednesday divided in two ways. First, there are the “normies” and the “outcasts.” The town of Jericho is full of normal people (think “Muggles” from the Harry Potter world), while the school for “outcasts” is full of weirdos with magical gifts. Of course, the outcasts are, in general, cool, and normies are, in general, oppressive.

But secondly, there are groups among the outcasts, each defined by a set of magical characteristics. We see interactions between individuals of these groups (they’re all “outcasts,” of course), but it’s clear there are certain expectations and elements of cultural peer pressure that align with one’s identity as a member of a tribe. And so, Wednesday provides a fascinating look at a culture of “just be yourself” expressive individualism and “don’t betray your group” identity politics.

Black and White vs. Shades of Gray

There’s an illuminating conversation in the third episode between Wednesday and the school’s principal, Larissa Weems. Even though both are outcasts, the principal wants to make nice with the normies and create better civil relations. But Wednesday balks at Weems’s attempt to whitewash the past and ignore the town’s egregious treatment of outcasts in the days of old. (In flashbacks, we meet clearly caricatured versions of the New England Puritans—totalitarian leaders with an irrational hatred of anyone who departs from the norm, enjoying witch hunts and thundering denunciations of all that’s evil. A scene in the present day shows the destruction of a statue of the town’s evil forefather.)

“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,” Wednesday says.

Principal Weems wants to look for common ground—to find opportunities to reach beyond the hardened categories of “normie” and “outcast.” She sees the opportunity to rewrite the rules and create a better future.

But Wednesday insists nothing has really changed since the past. “They still hate us,” she says. “Only now they sugarcoat it with platitudes and smiles.”

And when Weems claims that “the world isn’t always black and white” and “there are shades of gray,” Wednesday pushes back. “Maybe for you,” she says. “But it’s either they write our story or we do. You can’t have it both ways.”

It’s clear that Wednesday doesn’t equate “fighting for the truth” with recounting the past in all its complexity. Rather, it means adopting the right narrative related to the past. In other words, the way forward is neither by charitably reckoning with the good and evil of a town’s ancestors nor by attempting to understand the successes and failures of previous generations and place them in context. The future belongs to the moral absolutist who insists on one version of the story winning over another.

From Moral Relativism to Moral Absolutism

Watching Wednesday, I was struck by how quickly Hollywood seems to have moved from a celebration of moral relativism to a passion for moral absolutism. Many of the movies from 20 or 30 years ago decried a black-and-white way of looking at the world. Think of the subversiveness of Pleasantville or the moral relativism in American Beauty. Some of the most lauded films deliberately obscured moral issues, celebrated the erasure of boundaries, or demolished anything resembling a black-and-white moral standard. The characters who held to moral absolutes were cast as either the benighted relics of an earlier day or the villains whose commitment to moral truth led to violence.

Fast forward to today, and a show like Wednesday doesn’t portray the moral relativist as a hero standing up against the moral absolutist villain. Instead, the hero champions a competing vision of moral absolutism.

Wednesday Addams, who at one point declares her unbelief in God and the afterlife, sees the world in zero-sum terms: the “outcast narrative” must win. There can be no view of the ancient normies as anything other than totally and terribly evil, which, ironically is exactly how the ancient normies themselves perceived the ancient outcasts.

Gray is gone. So is any Solzhenitsyn-inspired sentiment of “the line of good and evil dividing every human heart.” All that’s left is power. And, of course, the story. And without God and the moral law, or any eternal standard by which to judge the behavior of people past or present, all we have is “good and evil” determined not by eternal moral law but by who controls the narrative.


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Don’t Let the Culture War Steal Your Joy https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/dont-let-culture-war-steal-joy/ Thu, 05 Jan 2023 05:10:45 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=537046 What’s the point of battling Mordor if you’ve lost the joy of the Shire?]]>

There’s a worrisome quality in many of today’s would-be prophets—writers and pundits who foresee only doom for the future of civilization, who seem perpetually distressed by the desecration of the church’s witness (whether by external pressures or internal rot).

I don’t take issue with the plausibility of the dire scenarios they predict. I often share their diagnoses and agree with their warnings. Apart from the church acting as salt in a manner that slows down societal decay, and apart from a God-sent revival that arrests and redirects our cultural decline, we are indeed on the path toward some kind of dystopia. Meanwhile, the humiliating revelations of hypocrisy and injustice in the church prove how frail and compromised God’s people can be.

When you look at the state of the world and the state of the church, you might think, There’s nothing to smile about. And yet there’s always something to smile about. We believe in the sovereign goodness of God. We believe in the lordship of Jesus Christ. We believe in the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit who blows where he wishes. As the apostle Paul showed us even in his prison writings, there’s a joy in God more powerful than circumstances.

Loss of Joy

The worrisome quality I find in much of today’s cultural commentary is the absence of joy. It’s as if our souls have shriveled until all that remains is a sense of hopelessness, a quiet resignation that assumes the church cannot thrive in this strange new world.

There’s a place, of course, for Jeremiahs—those who weep over the spiritual state of the city, who mourn its desolation. “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, and alas, there’s much in our world to mourn. “There are such things as Christian tears,” John Stott wrote, “and too few of us ever weep them.”

But so much of today’s punditry seems marked not by the weeping that lasts for a night and the joy that comes in the morning, but by resentment, and by anger toward injustice that begins as righteous before succumbing to sinful impulses—an indignation that no longer knows the tears of Jeremiah or the unstoppable joy of Paul.

And so, when we survey the landscape of the church and culture, we must make sure to keep in sight the opportunities that accompany today’s challenges.

Hope for the Future

Consider the church. As painful as this season of humiliation may be, we must acknowledge this is the road to humility. Perhaps when some of the societal privileges we’ve taken for granted are stripped away or when the trappings of worldly status and prestige disappear, we’ll find ourselves in a place of desperate dependence on the only One with true spiritual power.

Humbled, we drop to our knees in prayerful, quiet desperation. The renewal of the church will be known not by leaders with celebrity and fame but by faithful service in the vineyard of the Lord, by men and women marked by the shovel of service rather than the scepter of status. And after the storms of humiliation blow through, the garden of humility will be refreshed by the sun, and the flowers of renewed dependence on God will blossom again.

Consider the culture. We can endlessly decry the developments of a society careening toward insanity and injustice. But it’ll take more than talk to do the hard work of rebuilding in the aftermath of severe societal decay. It will require sentiments stronger than resentment and anger. We’ll need the power of joy and hope.

In previous eras of societal disarray when the church gave witness to the gospel, our forefathers and mothers in the faith were marked not by their sober assessment of the situation, ever somber and solemn, as if the grim business at hand made impossible the grin of faith. They were known for faith in their God-given purpose, for ebullient hope no matter the circumstances and for their love directed even to the people they opposed.

Gladness Stronger than Resentment

The church must often stand against the world for the good of the world. Some things we must oppose. But it’s the church’s irrepressible joyfulness—the smile of confidence in God’s good providence—that stands out in a world of dour debates and sour dispositions. That sense of deep-rooted gladness must be present at the dinner table, in our neighborhoods, and in our church services.

Resentment will not heal an ailing society; it only adds salt to the wound. The world needs the church to embody serious joy, a rock-ribbed assurance that the truth has set us free in a world that falls for falsehood.

So the next time you read the headlines, listen to podcasts, and take in the latest developments that portend trouble for the church ahead, don’t shake your head and succumb to helplessness. You may not be able to pull levers that bring about change all over the country, but you can shape the culture of your home and the culture of your church family—and you can be a source of joy that spills out into the culture of your neighborhood, for the good of your city. What’s the point of battling Mordor if you’ve lost the joy of the Shire?

Yes, let’s equip the next generation for the challenges ahead. Let’s prepare them to be seen as the “savages” in Brave New World, whose commitment to eternal truths will cost them the acclaim of polite society and institutional elites. Let’s not sugarcoat the present or close our eyes to the challenges of the future.

But above all, teach them to smile. Give them a cheerful confidence and ground them in a happiness worth spreading. Remind them that truth is ultimately irrepressible, and come what may, as Sam told Frodo, “It’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”


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C. S. Lewis and Mrs. Moore: Relationship of Sin or Sanctification? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/c-s-lewis-and-mrs-moore-a-relationship-of-sin-or-sanctification/ Tue, 03 Jan 2023 05:10:56 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=537042 Reflections on C. S. Lewis’s most mysterious relationship and the mysterious providence of God.]]>

The mysterious Mrs. Moore.

Every biographer of C. S. Lewis must face “the Mrs. Moore question” and decide what to make of the relationship the beloved writer had with a woman more than 25 years his senior who remained a major part of his life from the time he returned from the trenches of the Great War until her death in 1951. Mrs. Moore was the mother of Lewis’s friend, Paddy, and before they went to the front, the young men promised each other that if one were to die, the other would look after his friend’s family members. Paddy was killed. And Lewis kept his word.

After the war, Lewis (known as Jack to his family and friends) formed a household of sorts, moving in with Paddy’s sister, Maureen, and Paddy’s mother, Janie, a woman who was estranged and separated from her husband. For more than 10 years, the newly formed “family” bounced around to various houses in Oxford before finally settling in 1930 at The Kilns.

Early biographies (Carpenter, Sayer, and Hooper and Green) described the relationship between Lewis and Mrs. Moore as purely platonic, driven by grief and longing—with Moore fulfilling a maternal role in the place of the mother Lewis lost to cancer and Lewis becoming a surrogate son for a woman grieving a boy lost to war. More recently, Harry Poe has aligned with this view, pointing out how difficult it would have been to carry on an affair in a household that was so open, with maids and neighbors constantly coming and going (The Making of C. S. Lewis, 206–9).

Most later biographies of Lewis conclude there was a sexual relationship between the two during the 1920s, before Lewis’s conversion (Wilson, Jacobs, McGrath, and Zaleski). And even some of the earlier biographers (Sayer and Hooper) changed their position later in life, acknowledging the likelihood of a sexual element after assessing the situation and its many peculiarities.

Why, for example, did Lewis keep his living arrangements a secret from his father?

When Lewis visited his father in Ireland, why did Mrs. Moore feel the need to conceal their correspondence by sending him letters through a friend?

Why was Lewis’s brother Warnie appalled at the “freakishness” of the arrangement (Sayer, 131, King, 58-59)? And why did he express relief in 1919 at the news that Mrs. Moore was still married and therefore “can’t marry Jacks,” unless the implication was that Lewis would have married Mrs. Moore if it were possible (Zaleski, 90, King, 59)?

In 2021, more evidence came to light, as it was revealed that Owen Barfield (a fellow Inkling author) had confirmed to Walter Hooper (Lewis’s literary advisor) that Lewis admitted to having engaged in a sexual relationship with Mrs. Moore before his conversion.

Whatever happened during the 1920s, by the time Lewis converted to Christianity (and after Jack and Warnie moved with Janie and Maureen Moore into The Kilns) the door was shut—not only figuratively but literally—to an ongoing sexual relationship. Mrs. Moore’s room upstairs may have been next to Jack’s, but the door between the rooms was locked. Lewis even installed a metal staircase so he could enter his room from the outside. Yes, for more than 20 years, C. S. Lewis had to walk out of the house and around to the side to enter his bedroom.

(I recently spent a couple weeks at The Kilns, and the warden explained how, after Mrs. Moore died in 1951, her room became Lewis’s study. The door that would ensure easy passage from his study to his bedroom had been shut and locked for so long that Lewis no longer had a key, and even after a locksmith was called, the story goes, the wooden door was so warped after 20 years of being closed, it still wouldn’t open. It had to be replaced. When Lewis shut a door, the door remained shut!)

What intrigues me most about Mrs. Moore isn’t the salaciousness of a possible sexual relationship but rather how the later years of Mrs. Moore influenced Lewis’s character and writing.

Whatever illicit love might have been in the 1920s, by the 1930s and especially the 1940s, the relationship was marked by Mrs. Moore’s growing cantankerousness. Friends who visited The Kilns during this period (such as George Sayer) described her as a good conversationalist who loved receiving guests at the home. And no doubt, Mrs. Moore extended Lewis’s social circle beyond the cloistered walls of Oxford University. “She was generous and taught me to be generous,” Lewis told Sayer. “If it were not for her, I should know little or nothing about ordinary domestic life as lived by most people. . . . I was brought down to earth and made to work with my hands” (Sayer, 135).

That’s a characteristically Lewisian way of putting a positive spin on Mrs. Moore’s influence. His brother Warnie portrayed her as intensely selfish, domineering, and demanding, a constant drain on Lewis’s energy and time through his “restricting and distracting servitude” to her every whim (Sayer, 165, King, 85-88).

“It fills me with both admiration and irritation to see how completely the whole of J’s life is subordinated to hers—financially, socially, recreationally: the pity of it is that on his selflessness her selfishness fattens.” (King, 87)

Lewis wrote in 1947 that his time was taken up with “duties as a nurse and a domestic servant” (Jacobs, xiv). Mrs. Moore constantly called for his assistance and had him always walking her dog (McGrath, 245). Even Sayer acknowledged she became “autocratic and difficult” (Sayer, 301).

In short, The Kilns was not a haven of harmony and rest for Lewis during his most prolific years of writing. He was a Christian apologist, growing in knowledge and pursuing holiness, yet saddled with an increasingly difficult elderly woman whose words and attitude were thorns in his side.

Lewis never wrote negatively about Mrs. Moore, unless she’s the inspiration for the motherly figure who shows up as a source of temptation in The Screwtape Letters (never satisfied, a “positive terror to hostesses and servants”) or unless Lewis had her in mind when, in his imaginative vision of the afterlife, The Great Divorce, he described a woman who goes on grumbling forever until she becomes nothing more than “a grumble.” (Warnie kept a record of some of the maddening, unwittingly hilarious statements and dialogue characteristic of Mrs. Moore at The Kilns, a selection of which can be found in Don King’s new biography of Lewis’s brother, 124–28.)

Shortly after Mrs. Moore died, Lewis wrote in a letter,

“I have lived most of [my private life] in a house which was hardly ever at peace for 24 hours among senseless wranglings, lyings, back bitings, follies and scares. I never went home without a feeling of terror as to what appalling situation might have developed in my absence. Only now that it is over do I begin to realize quite how bad it was.” (Collected Letters, Vol. 3, 107–8)

The transformation of C. S. Lewis—from an arrogant, lustful young man in his teens and 20s to the warm and selfless sage of spiritual insight—is most evident in his letters. Walter Hooper described him as the most thoroughly converted man he ever met, Christlike through and through (C. S. Lewis and His Circle, 199). And surely this is one reason his works have endured; they come from someone whose piety and goodness are palpable, from a man who truly sought to become a “little Christ”—as he described in Mere Christianity should be the goal of all Christians.

And so I wonder . . .

Would we have received the same level of spiritual insight and passion of C. S. Lewis in his sanctified later years apart from the purifying fires of trial brought about by Mrs. Moore?

Would the warmth and humanity so characteristic of Lewis shine through in his works if he’d only known an easy life as a bachelor don?

If Lewis had never endured life with a woman whose presence became more a burden than a blessing, would he have been as perceptive and insightful regarding human nature, different types of temptation, and the victory of holiness over lingering sin and selfishness?

Had Lewis enjoyed a charmed life in The Kilns, surrounded only and ever by the people whose company he preferred, absent any tension or disharmony, would he have become the man whose work still radiates with goodness and truth even today?

It’s impossible to resolve or answer these kinds of questions definitively. But more than wondering about the “mysterious Mrs. Moore,” I find it tantalizing to consider the mysterious providence of God in the life of C. S. Lewis, who turned the relationship that once provided an occasion for sin into the occasion for his sanctification.


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My Favorite Reads of 2022 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/favorite-reads-2022/ Thu, 01 Dec 2022 05:10:07 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=533662 A list of the books I most enjoyed reading in 2022, with one honorable mention.]]>

At the close of every year, I share a list of the books I most enjoyed reading during the calendar year. There’s usually a mix of theology, cultural analysis, biography, and fiction. Here’s hoping a few of this year’s favorite reads will make their way on to your Christmas wish list or provide some good gift ideas.

Here are my picks for 2022.

#1. EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE
by Daniel Nayeri

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What is this book? Can we classify it as Young Adult, like they do in the bookstores? I guess so, since it’s told through the eyes of a 12-year-old protagonist. But it’s for anyone who loves brilliant characterizations and engaging storytelling. Is it true? Yes, true as memoirs go. But it weaves Persian tall tales and folklore throughout the narrative. Is it funny or sad? Yes. Is it a Christian book? Pervasively so at the worldview level, though it’s not about Christianity. (And yet it has one of the most moving explanations of conversion I’ve ever come across.) Simply put, this book is unforgettable. Read it and you’ll understand why.

#2. BIBLICAL CRITICAL THEORY
How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture
by Christopher Watkin

When I read through the glowing endorsements on the back cover of this book, my only regret was I couldn’t make it through the 600-plus pages of this tome in time to add my own. All the accolades are deserved. Christopher Watkin has done an incredible job of bringing insights from sociology, history, philosophy, and theology into conversation with the Scriptures as the ultimate authority. He demonstrates the power of the Christian story, how it subverts and exposes the lies in our world while fulfilling the deepest aspirations of humans made in God’s image. Following the cues of Augustine in The City of God, Watkin seeks to “out-narrate” the culture. He accomplishes the task with Chestertonian wit and verve and with reliance on the great theological traditions of Christianity. I plan to read this book again from cover to cover in 2023.

 

#3. CHRIST OUR SALVATION
Expositions and Proclamations
by John Webster

I spent a month reading one sermon a day from the late John Webster and was thoroughly edified by the insights in this marvelous collection. The description is right: “John Webster explores the various contours of the salvation accomplished for us in Christ and displays for preachers a model of theological exegesis that understands that the gospel is the heart of holy Scripture. . . . A feast of ‘theological’ theology for Christian proclamation.”

 

#4. THE GENESIS OF GENDER
A Christian Theory
by Abigail Favale

One of the best and most thought-provoking books of the year. It’s written by a woman who was firmly entrenched in contemporary theories of gender and taught gender studies in a university setting. She has since converted to Christianity (Catholicism, in fact, which leads to some oddities in her assessments and biblical interpretations here and there), and her insights into the contradictory arguments and warnings about harmful effects are not to be missed. Unflinching yet charitable—it’s one of only a handful of books I would tell church leaders is a “must read” this year.

 

#5. TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES
by Thomas Hardy (with annotations and introduction from Karen Swallow Prior)

The latest in Karen Swallow Prior’s beautiful cloth-over-board editions of classic literature is Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I asked my Twitter followers if I should prioritize The Scarlet Letter or Tess, and I got pointed to Tess. Wow! What a book! I’ll be thinking about these characters, the storyline, and the injustice of it all for a long time. Prior’s edition includes a thorough introduction to Thomas Hardy and his context, an overview of the work (without any spoilers for first-time readers), and the full original text, as well as footnotes and reflection questions throughout to help the reader attain a fuller grasp of Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

 

#6. THE RIGHT
The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism
by Matthew Continetti

Light bulbs went off for me as I read this sweeping account of movement conservatism from 100 years ago to today. It helped me understand what kind of conservative I am, why I’m sometimes uneasy with other networks that associate with the right politically, and why national populist movements have cultural sway. It’s a deeply researched book that manages to be a page-turner.

 

#7. THE GOD OF THE GARDEN
Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom
by Andrew Peterson

Andrew Peterson is one of my favorite singer-songwriters. He’s also beloved for his four-book Wingfeather Saga. If he keeps writing books like this one—a combination of reflection and memoir—he’s going to be known and loved for his nonfiction also. I loved this book. It’s about trees, about life and beauty and calling. It’s about lost love, lost innocence, nostalgia, hopes and fears. It revels in the beauty of creation and opens your eyes to the wonders around you. Best of all, it captures that feeling of what Chesterton described as “being homesick at home.”

 

#8. BEYOND RACIAL DIVISION
A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism

by George Yancey

George Yancey is one of my go-to authors when it comes to issues related to racial injustice and racial reconciliation in the culture and the church. He understands scriptural teaching about human dignity and depravity, which helps him to avoid some of the common pitfalls on both the right and the left in addressing racism, whether in the form of personal prejudice or its structural manifestations. He knows that most “colorblind” and “antiracist” proposals lead to dead ends. I hope his proposal for mutual accountability gains traction.

 

#9. THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII
by Alison Weir

The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509–47) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. There’s so much in this saga that you’d think it was too wild a tale to possibly be true. Alison Weir is a terrific storyteller, offering context and description so as to heighten the drama surrounding each of the six women who reigned as queens of England. She draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life.

 

#10. SEASONS OF SORROW
The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God
by Tim Challies

My friend Tim Challies has written this book, a chronicle of a year-long journey following the sudden and unexpected death of his son, Nick, at age 20. This is one of the most moving accounts of grief I’ve ever encountered. Slowly, carefully, vulnerably, honestly, Tim gives us the privilege of peering into his heart as he processes this unspeakable pain with his wife and daughters. He’s expressing grief here, mixed with faith and hope, an unshakable confidence in the glory and sovereignty of God, while acknowledging the hurt, disappointment, and unfulfilled longings that wash over us on this side of heaven. This is a book not to be missed.

HONORABLE MENTION

BENEDICT XVI: A LIFE (VOLUMES 1 & 2)
by Peter Seewald

On a whim, I picked up the two-volume biography of Benedict XVI by Peter Seewald and plowed through it over the holidays. Joseph Ratzinger has led a very interesting life. I’d heard about his early years and his conscription into the German army, but I’d never considered the effect of those early experiences on his outlook and on his development as a theologian, with influence already felt at the Second Vatican Council. Seewald is a masterful storyteller who offers just enough detail to put you in the scene without allowing the pace to slacken. He simplifies some of the deeper theological concepts and debates and keeps the focus on the major events of Benedict’s life, culminating in the pope’s surprising decision to retire.


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My Recent Stay at The Kilns in Oxford https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/my-recent-stay-at-the-kilns-in-oxford/ Thu, 17 Nov 2022 05:07:04 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=533476 A few pictures from my recent stay at the home of C.S. Lewis.]]>

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to spend a couple weeks in the UK, primarily in and around Oxford. I was a scholar-in-residence at The Kilns, the former home of C.S. Lewis. This house is a special place with a storied history, and it was a joy to stay there.

I spent two days at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, delivering guest lectures on “Cultural Challenges and Opportunities for Gospel Advance in the Western World” on November 3. I also spoke at a conference in Leeds on C.S. Lewis, held by the Thinking Faith Network (which was started several decades ago with the help of John Stott).

During my stay, I was able to meet with various scholars, pastors, and authors, including N.T. Wright, Michael Ward, Alister McGrath, Krish Kandiah, Vaughan Roberts, Justin Brierley, Francis Spufford, and my friend Thomas West. Two unexpected highlights were getting some time with Aiden Mackey (the self-made scholar who was friends with G.K. Chesterton’s secretary and who recently just turned 100) and David Hanson (who heard C.S. Lewis lecture at Cambridge one summer in the late 1950’s).

Below, I am sharing ten pictures from my stay—for the enjoyment of all the fellow Anglophiles and fans of C.S. Lewis. I wish I could share them all.

Morning at The Kilns, the home of C.S. Lewis from 1930-1963.
I stayed in the room that once belonged to Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham. It’s the corner room downstairs. One of the windows you can see straight ahead. Directly above me, up that metal staircase, is the bedroom that belonged to Lewis.
This is the view from my favorite reading nook in the house, the back corner of The Common Room—the place where Lewis received guests, spent time reading and responding to correspondence.
A church planter friend of mine in London, Thomas West, spent a day with me at The Kilns as we worked on a counter-catechesis project. We did most of our work there in The Common Room, where I would occasionally sit (when not pacing!).
On a Sunday evening, Justin Brierley (host of Premier’s Unbelievable podcast) dropped by with New Testament scholar and apologist Justin Bass, and Krish Kandiah and his friend Teo. I gave them a tour of The Kilns, and Krish snapped this picture in the library.
Behind The Kins is the C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve. There’s a beautiful pond, as well as walking paths (some of which were created by Lewis himself). This is the view from a brick semi-circle seating area, where Lewis would look out over the water.
Another area of interest in the Nature Reserve: here is a peek into the bomb shelter Lewis made when England was under threat of bombardment from the Nazis.
Lewis never drove a car. He often walked the nearly four miles from The Kilns into Oxford, following various streets and walking paths. I took the bus most of the time I was in Oxford, but I chose to walk into town once, so I could experience the beauty of the surroundings. I wasn’t disappointed.
I enjoyed my time at Wycliffe Hall, where I delivered guest lectures all day November 3 on cultural challenges and opportunities facing the church in the West in the 21st century.
I took the train into London for one day of sightseeing. The highlight was my visit to the church where John Newton (the slave-trader convert who gave us “Amazing Grace”) once pastored. I stepped into his pulpit and gave thanks for this man whose words still resound today.

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The Body Is Bigger Than You Think https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/body-bigger-you-think/ Thu, 27 Oct 2022 04:10:50 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=530392 Three reasons we need to recover a sense of the bigness of the Body of Christ.]]>

One of the best things that could happen to the rank-and-file churchgoing Christian is to get a better sense of the bigness of the Body of Christ. The Church is bigger than your church. The kingdom is bigger than your denomination. God’s people are all over the world, united by a shared love for Jesus and confession of his lordship.

Encountering the Body of Christ

Encountering the bigness of the Body is something I saw happen to my parents as I was growing up. I started out in an independent fundamentalist church and Christian school. I learned a lot of Bible there. I heard a lot of fiery preaching. The people loved Jesus, and they loved me. I’m grateful for them.

Still, the impression you’d get from the preaching and teaching in that church was that the Body of Christ is small. Nearly everyone else was compromised in some way, including the Baptists of a different variety down the street. Compromised because of contemporary worship. Compromised because of the Bible translations they might use. Compromised because of their views of the end times. Compromised because of their dress code.

When I was in elementary school, my dad got involved in local politics, and he encountered Christians from across the city who worshiped in different churches, yet he found them to be enthralled with Jesus Christ. We visited different types of churches during that time, getting a taste for the variety in our city, from the charismatics who all prayed at the same time to the historic black church downtown to the orderly beauty of the more liturgical traditions. When my parents began visiting a Southern Baptist church plant (which we eventually joined), they’d already realized something: the Body is bigger than we thought.

Fast forward a few years, and my father and I went on a mission trip to Romania, where we worshiped with believers who had just come out of the grip of Communist dictatorship. Even across the language barrier, the different worship style, and the cultural norms in cities and villages, we recognized the Body is bigger than we thought.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of visiting multiple countries, benefiting from the wisdom of believers in Canada, the U.K., Eastern Europe. A few years ago, my wife and I traveled to South Korea to help launch The Gospel Project there. In just a few days, I’ll be headed to Oxford and Yorkshire. In teaching courses on ministry and mission over the years, I’m often searching for insight from books and leaders from the Global South. I’m constantly wowed by the bigness of the Body of Christ.

Why We Need the Global Church

Why do we need to recover a sense of the bigness of the Body? Three reasons.

First, so we won’t fall prey to thinking all the issues and controversies facing a sliver of churches in one country or region are definitive for all the world. It’s easy to castigate believers who differ on various issues if you’re consumed by whatever gets the most attention in one slice of time and place. A sense of the bigness of the Body helps you put squabbles in perspective.

Second, recognizing the bigness of the Body helps us understand where the essential boundaries are, and it ties us to a creedal core. Often in the West, people assume bucking the Church’s teaching on a fundamental doctrine makes us “broader” or “bigger” than the Church. The truth is the reverse. When you move away from scriptural teaching on a particular topic, it is you who’s resisting the bigness and broadness of the Church’s global witness. To reject a key Christian doctrine in the name of “broadness” is to confine yourself to the narrowness of schism. Those who move away from what churches all over the globe have always and everywhere confessed don’t grow bigger; they shrink into slivers and splinters.

Third, recognizing the bigness of the Body keeps us from thinking we alone are faithful. There’s an ironic kind of pride that forms when we convince ourselves we’re the last ones. The bigness of the Body reminds us we’re not alone. Not when we look at the church through the ages. Not when we look at the church around the world. No matter what may happen to the church in one era or one country, there’s an indissoluble bond between faithful Christians of all ages and places. The global church helps us guard against the idea that “we alone are left.”

Common Confession of Christ

In The Thrill of Orthodoxy, I put it this way: “The beating heart of orthodoxy is not a personal adventure of self-discovery, a patching together of our preferred versions of the Christian faith. It’s the connection to saints in various cultures and climates, with different languages and traditions, all united by a common confession in Jesus Christ, the king.”

Yes, Christians have divided into various traditions and denominations, but despite the outward differences, every true believer in Christ is connected by “mystic sweet communion” to all the Christians who have gone before and to all true Christians around the world today. The beating heart of orthodoxy joins us to confessors across space and time. We say, “I believe,” and we know we share a commonality with millions of people who have found the same treasure, who recite the same words, who believe the same concepts and trust the same Savior. The Body is big.


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‘The Thrill of Orthodoxy’ Now Available https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/the-thrill-of-orthodoxy-now-available/ Tue, 25 Oct 2022 04:10:33 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=530405 At long last, my new book is now available everywhere books are sold, published by InterVarsity Press. Here’s how you can help launch the book.]]>

At long last, my new book The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith is now available everywhere books are sold, published by InterVarsity Press.

Every generation faces the temptation to wander from orthodoxy—to seek out the jolt that comes with false teaching and to drift with cultural currents. And so every generation must be awakened again to the thrill of orthodoxy and experience the astonishment that comes from stumbling afresh upon the electrifying paradoxes at the heart of the Christian faith.

In this book, I want to turn the tables on those who believe Christian teaching is narrow and outdated. Returning to the church’s creeds, we look at what orthodoxy is and why we can have proper confidence in it, and we look at the most common ways we can stray from it. By showing how heresies are always actually narrower than orthodoxy—taking one aspect of the truth and wielding it as a weapon against other aspects—I want to beckon believers away from the road to compromise that ultimately proves bland and boring and toward the straight path, where true adventure can be found.

How You Can Help

You can help me launch this book well by leaving a review on Amazon or other retailer sites sometime within the next month. It can be short or long, but every review helps others discover the book and makes them more likely to give it a try. These reviews are vitally important for a book launching well. You can also help by posting about the book on social media over the next few weeks. Thank you for helping get the word out!

Endorsements

I’ve been blessed to see this book endorsed by a number of scholars and colleagues. I thank them for these hearty recommendations.

Timothy George, distinguished professor at Beeson Divinity School and general editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture:

“The orthodox Christian faith is more than just a set of beliefs or a code of behavior. In this wonderful book, Trevin Wax calls us to pilgrimage and adventure, a journey toward that city with God-laid foundations, a place called home. A great gift to the church in the best tradition of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis!”

Carolyn Weber, author of Surprised by Oxford:

“What bursts forth when Chesterton, Lewis, Sayers, and Tozer all meet together in one place? Trevin Wax’s masterpiece The Thrill of Orthodoxy! With wise enthusiasm, Wax shows the weary, world-worn, or simply disinterested pilgrim how right belief has laid a path through the darkness into bright adventure ahead. Conforming our souls to the holy proves the most wildly nonconformist and yet fulfilling thing we can do. Read here why ‘adventure’ starts with ‘advent.’ For indeed, as Wax reminds us, by trusting the true yet unplumbable mysteries of God, yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!”

Michael F. Bird, academic dean and lecturer in New Testament at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia:

“Trevin Wax shows that traditional orthodox Christianity might not be as glossy and glamorous as Christianity gone worldly, but it is ancient, majestic, global, and glorious. It is a tried and tested alternative to the faddish and fragmentary fakes that masquerade as Christianity in some places. Trevin is not pushing dry doctrine but passing on fresh fire that is thousands of years old.”

Ivan Mesa, editorial director, The Gospel Coalition:

“As the culture has become decadent, the church in the modern West has often followed suit, dull to the things of God and often worked up about pursuits that in the end are ‘wood, hay or straw’ (1 Cor. 3:12). Like the Corinthian church of old, we’ve become fleshly in our divisions and fixated on peripheral squabbles. If we’re honest, we’ve become bored by the things ‘of first importance’ (1 Cor. 15:3)—we lose sight of the gospel and forget God. In The Thrill of Orthodoxy, Trevin Wax argues that the church faces her biggest challenge not when new errors start to win but when old truths fail to wow. With Chestertonian wit, joy, and incisiveness, he invites us into the great adventure of orthodoxy. If you’re wavering in your faith or seeking a renewed wonder in the Christian life, then let Wax be your guide.”

Matthew Y. Emerson, dean of theology, arts, and humanities at Oklahoma Baptist University and author of He Descended to the Dead:

“In a culture where most believe that truth is relative and words like orthodoxy evoke yawns and eye rolls, Trevin Wax gives a clarion call back to the historic Christian faith as taught in Scripture and summarized in the three ecumenical creeds. Trevin shows that it is actually Christian orthodoxy that is thrilling, not the individualized backwaters of relativistic heresy. This is a needed book for the new believer and mature Christian alike.”

Katie McCoy, director of women’s ministry for Texas Baptists:

The Thrill of Orthodoxy is an evangelical road map out of the greatest dangers facing the church today: the aimlessness of doctrinal deconstruction and the emptiness of religious fundamentalism, the despair of cultural retreat and the lure of political power, the impulse to detract from Christianity’s gospel of grace, and the temptation to dismiss Christianity’s moral claims. The foundations of the faith ‘once for all delivered to the saints’ are but a generation away from erosion among those who presuppose orthodoxy. Trevin beckons us back to the consuming wonder of discovering this treasure of truth.”

Marvin Olasky, senior fellow, Discovery Institute:

“Trevin Wax shows that ‘orthodox thrill’ is not an oxymoron. He explains with clear metaphors why Christian doctrine is important: imagine ‘a football field where no one measured the yards.’ He proposes neither cultural retreat nor accommodation and shows why pitting ‘love’ against doctrine or deeds against creeds is folly. The Thrill of Orthodoxy is an excellent overview for all who want their churches to be both hospitals for sinners and schools for saints.”

Justin S. Holcomb, seminary professor, Episcopal minister, and author of Know the Creeds and Councils:

“Obviously, we’re not the first Christians. Nor did our generation invent Christian thought. We are the recipients of a long line of Christians’ insights, mistakes, and ways of speaking about God and the Christian faith. Trevin celebrates the treasures of the Christian faith and sound doctrine. Being dazzled by the old truths is the best means to deepen our understanding of the Christian faith, increase our dependence on God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and Holy Scriptures, fuel our worship of God, increase our love for each other, and motivate mission to the world.”

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The Tune of Jesus Is Still Beautiful https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/tune-jesus-still-beautiful/ Thu, 20 Oct 2022 04:10:33 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=530378 When Christians sing the melody of the gospel horribly off-key, the answer isn’t to change the song.]]>

“The tune of Jesus is still beautiful even if Christians have sung out of tune.” I love that line from Australian church leader and historian John Dickson, who was one of the guests featured in the second episode of my podcast Reconstructing Faith.

“The composition is beautiful: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who mistreat you—which isn’t just an arbitrary ethic. It’s the whole arc of Jesus’ life history, the very logic of the Christian faith.”

Jesus Christ Is Sung

This analogy of Christianity as a melody to be played or a song to be sung resonates with me. I point to it in The Thrill of Orthodoxy. It’s not a new analogy—it has an ancient pedigree—but we need it in this moment.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius wrote,

“In your unanimity and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung. Now you must join the chorus, each of you, so that being in harmonious unanimity, taking your pitch from God you may sing in unity, in one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, so that he may also hear and may recognize you through your good actions, being members of his Son.”

In the church’s love, Jesus Christ is sung.

How are we doing with that?

Bungling the Tune

When we look to the past, we see how Christians have often drifted toward beliefs and actions that fail to do justice to the melody handed down by the apostles, whether it was the jarring dissonance of warriors committing atrocities in the name of Christ or the ostentatious displays of wealth and favoritism so clearly out of line with the instructions of our Savior.

But “Christians behaving badly is the minority report,” Dickson says (and shows in his book Bullies and Saints). “I would say in most centuries of the church, most Christians sang the tune recognizably.” Even today, when pastors or church leaders sin in ways that scandalize the church, the majority of Christians are shocked and disappointed, perhaps even more so than people in the world. Why? Because “they are singing the tune, they are bumbling their way along, trying to believe the gospel and trust the gospel, and they’re let down spectacularly.”

No matter the era, you’ll find some Christians mangling the melody and others singing it beautifully. At times, you may be stunned to hear a Christian leader sing one verse flawlessly while botching the next entirely. We’re a bungling bunch of believers, after all. None of us will get all the notes right all the time, and it may be that we sound more like an untrained children’s choir trying to stay on key than the choristers of Westminster Abbey. But humility keeps drawing us back to the song as we seek to honor the melody.

Thankfully, we have the Spirit’s guidance as we sing the gospel’s melody. Basil the Great wrote,

“It is impossible to maintain a life of holiness without the Spirit. It would be easier for an army to continue its maneuvers without a general, or for a choir to sing on key without its director.”

Back to the Melody

When the church is rocked by scandal and riddled by sin, when there’s rot in the house and renovation that becomes necessary, the answer isn’t to destroy the building. When Christians sing the melody of the gospel horribly off-key, the answer isn’t to change the song.

You can take a song and remix it, remaster it, or adjust its tempo, as singers sometimes do when they cover the songs of others. But if you change too many things about the song, you wind up with a different melody altogether. You cannot reconsider, revisit, redefine, revise, or rework the faith forever and still be committed to the faith. Remixing and remastering and rearranging an old song can bring out the beauty of the original, with flourishes and instruments that add a new effect. But once you no longer submit to the melody—once you change the lyrics or alter the tune—you lose the original song.

When the church is plagued by sin and scandal, the process of renewal can only begin when, as John Dickson says, Christians go back to the Gospels and the New Testament and read the Word of God afresh and suddenly realize, “We don’t look like this!” And God stirs up those embers until they spark into flame, seizing the hearts of believers determined to recapture the essence of Christianity and display its beauty in our churches. That’s when we seek out the melody again and sing the tune so as to exalt the Savior who gave it to us.

Near the end of Calvin Miller’s classic book The Singer, the earliest singers of the song given by the Troubadour are freed and commissioned to spread the music into all the world:

“The Song is all that matters.
It may be you will have to sing it
where the crowd will shout you
down and demand your legs or life. . . .
Some will hate you for the song you love.
They will seek to stop your singing.
But no matter how they treat you,
remember that I suffered everything
before you. . . .

“Again the Singer lifted up his
bearded head and sang, ‘In the
beginning was the song of love . . .’
And through the trees the Madman’s
strong sound voice sang back, ‘And
here’s the new redeeming melody, the
only song that can set Terra free.’”


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Will We Be Solid or Will We Be Ghosts? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/be-solid-or-ghosts/ Tue, 18 Oct 2022 04:10:47 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=529299 A reflection on becoming people of substance in a world designed for shadows, inspired by C. S. Lewis’s classic ‘The Great Divorce.’]]>

Next month, I’ll be delivering lectures in Oxford and at a conference in Yorkshire, and during my two weeks in the U.K., I’ll be staying at The Kilns, the home of C. S. Lewis for more than 30 years. In preparation for this trip, I’ve been revisiting some of Lewis’s classic works, including The Great Divorce, which paints a dream-like picture of the afterlife through a series of encounters with people just outside of heaven.

Lewis imagines the “solid people” who are already enjoying heaven’s glories in contrast to “the ghosts” who inhabit a purgatorial realm. The ghosts, in their current state, cannot take in heaven’s light. They’re shadows of humanity, transparent and superficial in contrast to what’s solid and substantive in the high countries. In Lewis’s vision, the solid people are stand-ins for true humanity—what God has always intended us to become. They are solid because they are selfless. The ghosts are shadows because they cannot see past themselves.

A World Designed for Ghosts

In reflecting on The Great Divorce’s vision of the afterlife as an extension of this present era, I’m struck by the question of whether we as people are growing more and more selflessly solid or becoming more and more selfishly shadowy.

We live in an era tailor-made for superficiality, for ghost-like transparency. Day after day, we scroll through endless updates, follow all the latest political controversies on social media, jump to games on our smartphones, chuckle at sitcoms or the latest TikTok video—never aware that as time goes on, our souls are shrinking. None of these actions is inherently bad. (I enjoy Wordle every morning, I listen to podcasts about politics, and I include a classic TV clip in my Tuesday email newsletter!)

But we should be on alert: the currents of culture will tug at us until slowly, almost imperceptibly, we lose the capacity to stand in awe of God, to feel the weight of glory, and to encounter profound and eternal truths. Everything is pushing us toward superficiality, toward the banalities of entertainment or the rush of breaking news. There’s no cultural push toward wisdom and reflection, toward those activities and practices that would make us more substantial, more solid.

Cultivate Substance

Every now and then, an old acquaintance will offer to take me to lunch, and usually they’ll ask about publishing books or starting a blog or building a social media platform. Almost always, they’re looking for tips and suggestions, the secrets to capturing attention and finding an audience.

I’m afraid I disappoint them. I talk about the importance of meditation on God’s Word, of daily rhythms of prayer, of reading old books that stretch the mind and fill the heart, of pursuing conversations with close friends who call you into greater depths of discipleship. I redirect the discussion away from building a platform and to building your self—as a person—so you become someone of substance.

At the end of the day, who cares how many followers you amass if you’re a ghost being followed by thousands of other ghosts?

Who cares how many people read your blog post, watch your video, or buy your book if the result is the continual trivialization of God and the shriveling of the soul?

Who cares how many people read your words if there’s no weight to them? If they’re as light and airy and fleeting as all the other words that pour from social media all day long?

Who cares how many people are wowed by your personality if you’re constitutionally incapable of being wowed by God, stunned by the glories of salvation, awestruck at the beauty of the triune God who has saved you?

Beauty of Substance

Substance matters in a world of shadows.

The challenge of pursuing solidness and substance is that we must go against the grain. We face headwinds in structuring our lives and conversations toward this goal. What’s more, ghosts are perplexed by solid people, unable to understand or articulate what makes them tick or how selfless habits could bring happiness. They recoil at this strange way of life, preferring the trinkets of triviality to heavy gold inherited by the solid people.

Even in the church, too often the congregation prefers the temporal to the eternal, the fleeting fads of our time over the enduring pillars of orthodoxy. Thus the first sentence of The Thrill of Orthodoxy: “The church faces her biggest challenge not when new errors start to win but when old truths no longer wow.”

I hope nothing I’ve said here implies I’ve “arrived” somehow at a place of substance. Far from it. The Lord knows how easily my self-centeredness wins in the moment I should be Spirit-directed. We’re all still ghosts right now, at some level, but hopefully we are—in the words of N. T. Wright about our future glorified state—“shadows of our future selves.”

This is my hope, my aspiration as a Christian who believes in God’s promise to remake and renew me. I want to lean into that future version of who he promises I will be. The path is open toward a life of substance: through feasting on his Word, giving myself to him in prayer, loving my family and neighbors, enjoying fellowship in his family, and receiving his bread at the table.

Watch your life. Don’t succumb to the shadowy ghost-like traits of superficiality. Look to the mountains, see the solid people, trust God for that future, and rise above this world of trifles.


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Why Orthodoxy Matters in a Day of Intuitional Spiritualities https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/orthodoxy-intuitional-spiritualities/ Thu, 13 Oct 2022 04:10:34 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=529266 As institutional religion declines, intuitional spiritualities rise. Here’s why the church should proclaim authentic Christianity in a world of personalized pseudo-religious identities. ]]>

New research from Pew shows rapidly rising numbers of the religiously unaffiliated in the United States, and scholars forecast various scenarios for the religious landscape in the future. An underreported aspect about those who check “none” on a religious survey is this: many who don’t belong to an organized religion or consider themselves members of a church, mosque, or synagogue still believe in God, see themselves as “spiritual,” and pray or engage in other spiritual practices.

Don’t assume the rise of the unaffiliated means the rise of secularism, as if atheists and agnostics will now become the norm in the United States. On the contrary, the rise of the unaffiliated points to another phenomenon: the rise of people who seek out spirituality in multiple ways and through multiple avenues. They’re unaffiliated with an already established religion, but they may be forging a spiritual path of their own. And this path is radically personalized.

Intuitional, Remixed Spiritualities

In her book Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton describes the increasing number of people she describes as religiously “remixed.” It’s a shift from institutional religion to intuitional religion:

A religion of emotive intuition, of aestheticized and commodified experience, of self-creation and self-improvement, and yes, selfies. A religion for a new generation . . . raised to think of themselves both as capitalist consumers and as content creators. A religion decoupled from institutions, from creeds, from metaphysical truth-claims about God or the universe of the Way Things Are, but that still seeks—in various and varying ways—to provide us with the pillars of what religion always has: meaning, purpose, community, ritual.

You may not realize it yet, but this description of the religiously unaffiliated is also true of many people in established religious communities. I’m talking about a kind of spiritual fluidity—where many churchgoing Christians believe things that are fundamentally incompatible with orthodox Christian doctrine.

It wasn’t too long ago that a Christian woman I know, someone who believes the Bible and rarely misses a Sunday service, was talking about the spirit of her grandmother in a bird and a butterfly! A church leader gently corrected some of the theology, but still, I’m no longer surprised when men and women who sit under faithful Christian teaching mix and match doctrines and practices from various sources as they work out their own beliefs. The result is, as Burton points out,

The more individualized our religious identities become, the more willing we are to mix and match ideas and practices outside our primary religious affiliation. . . . Each of these intuitional religions is, at its core, a religion of the self. . . . Our desire for personal authenticity and experiential fulfillment takes precedent over our willingness to build coherent ideological systems and functional, sustainable institutions.

Explosion of Pseudoreligions

What does this mean for the church today? Christianity’s “competition” is not primarily other religions or cults—not institutions, but pseudoreligions of the intuitional variety.

Take the gospel of wellness, for example, and the explosion of communities united around working out. Or the options available for people who need new lotions, potions, meditation apps, or whatever is necessary for self-care. Think about the language of energy, toxins, positivity. Even if most of this stuff isn’t built on true science, people are adopting practices or purchasing products or joining communities that have been reenchanted in some way. The battle isn’t about good and evil in the world as much as it’s about pursuing what’s good for you and avoiding what’s bad for you.

We could also point to the resurgence of New Age thought, Wiccan spirituality, and even the pseudoreligious communities adopted by people who base their identity in their sexuality (complete with a “conversion testimony” of sorts in the ritual of “coming out” as well as joining a family in the “LGBT+ community,” etc.). Burton mentions the “religion of social justice” that replicates the cornerstones of traditional religion (meaning, purpose, and community) in a narrative of good versus evil. Others have noted how political involvement functions for many people as a religious substitute, a pseudoreligion of sorts.

Authentic Christianity

Some pastors and church leaders will be tempted to reach the intuitionally spiritual by appealing to their well-formed sense of personal authenticity. But this approach implies Christianity is just another therapeutic source of well-being, not the public truth about the world. What we need are heralds focused more on a different kind of authenticity: the authentic Christian gospel. And authentic Christianity isn’t something we invent; it’s something we discover.

This is the adventure I describe in The Thrill of Orthodoxy. We hear a lot these days about “speaking your truth” or “living your truth,” as if the word “truth” is now just a synonym for “perspective” or “experience.” Surely we should make room for sharing our perspectives and recounting our experiences. But if our tendency is to adorn “truth” with adjectives like my and your, and never the, we’re fundamentally violating the very definition of “truth” to begin with.

A Truth Bigger than Your Heart

Today, many put religion in the category of self-discovery and self-expression, so all our seeking and finding takes place within the caverns of our heart, where we dig down to our deepest desires, incorporate religious beliefs and spiritual practices that resonate with our needs, and then construct an inspirational identity that suits us. When it comes to religion, just like everything else, there’s your truth and my truth.

The church must point to a greater adventure: exploring something beyond the depths of one’s own heart. The greater adventure comes when you find something beyond the realm of my perspective and your experience—truths we didn’t invent or adapt to suit ourselves but truths we discovered, to which we adapt. We must lift up the beauty of orthodoxy and authentic Christianity in a world of intuitional, personalized spiritualities.


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The Silent Sin That Kills Christian Love https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/silent-sin-kills-love/ Tue, 11 Oct 2022 04:10:00 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=529260 Why is contempt a big deal right now? Because it’s lucrative. It works.]]>

“One of my biggest tasks as a pastor right now is to challenge my people and keep them from contempt.”

That’s what a pastor told me earlier this year, a man serving his church faithfully in the Deep South. He loves Jesus and he loves his congregation, and that’s why he’s on guard these days against something he called the “silent spiritual killer”—a sin that hinders Christian witness and destroys Christian love.

It’s the sin of contempt, of looking at the person across the aisle from you and thinking, The world would be better without you in it. It’s more than disagreement; it’s disgust, rooted in the inability to see the image of God in your opponent. It’s the attitude Jesus warned about in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21–22).

Power of Contempt

Why is contempt a big deal right now? Because it’s lucrative. It works.

In politics, being united by disdain and contempt for the other side is what mobilizes your own. An inspiring vision is one way of rallying a base, yes, but a much faster and easier approach is to unite around a common despising of the other side. And culturally these days, with tribal forces at work, going public with contemptuous words toward the opposition is how you prove your purity and loyalty.

John Newton warned about this attitude hundreds of years ago: “Whatever it be that makes us trust in ourselves that we are comparatively wise or good, so as to treat those with contempt who do not subscribe to our doctrines, or follow our party, is a proof and fruit of a self-righteous spirit.”

Everywhere we turn we find avenues for inflaming that self-righteous spirit. Contempt for MAGA or for the woke, the “forty-nine percent” or the “basket of deplorables”—politicians frequently resort to sneering disdain as a sign of their ideological purity. Cable news channels feed the beast with segments designed to attract eyeballs and lead to outrage.

The Church in an Age of Contempt

The church isn’t immune to these cultural forces. Like it or not, we live in a world where contempt is excused or sometimes expected. Even worse, sometimes church leaders are tempted to justify or further inflame feelings of contempt as a strategy for showing the congregation they’re on the right side. As long as it’s clear who you’re supposed to love and who you’re supposed to hate, everything goes smoothly.

But contempt is the silent killer of Christian charity. It has no place in the heart of a follower of Jesus. It kills the passion of seeing others converted and replaces evangelistic zeal with the quest for zero-sum victories, smackdowns, and “destroying”—such that the zealousness to win over someone becomes the zealousness to win.

A. W. Tozer wrote,

“Contempt for a human being is an affront to God almost as grave as idolatry, for while idolatry is disrespect for God Himself, contempt is disrespect for the being He made in His own image. Contempt says of a man, ‘Raca! This fellow is of no worth. I attach to his person no value whatsoever.’ The man guilty of thus appraising a human being is thoroughly bad.”

My pastor friend was right to recognize the signs of contempt in his congregation and to gently but firmly push back against the tendency to allow hatred to well up in the human heart. He is doing the Lord’s work.

Fighting Contempt

A striking feature of nearly every book I’ve read about the leaders and foot soldiers in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and ’60s was how much and how often they fought against contempt. They knew the power of hatred because they’d felt it from their neighbors, and when the signs of reciprocal hatred showed up in their hearts, they worked to root out those feelings and replace them with love. This is one of the ways they overcame, not merely in political or cultural victories but through the determination to treat with dignity the very people who would deny such dignity to them.

Dark impulses that from a worldly perspective seem justifiable are off-limits to those who follow in the steps of a crucified Lord. When your King responds to sneers and mockery by breathing out forgiveness . . . when your Lord tells you to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you and then does so, in fulfillment of his own law of love . . . when your Savior, stripped of dignity and pinned up on a cross like an insect, refuses to dehumanize the dehumanizers . . . how can you harbor contempt in your heart?

Here is Tozer again:

“Religion that is not purified by penitence, humility and love, will lead to a feeling of contempt for the irreligious and the morally degraded. And since contempt implies a judgment of no worth made against a human brother, the contemptuous man comes under the displeasure of God and proves himself to lie in danger of hell fire.”

Perhaps the test of faithfulness in a day of moral degradation will be our love for people across chasms of difference. Faithfulness isn’t in showy displays that we hate all the right people. Faithfulness isn’t in adopting a contemptuous posture toward the current president or the former one. The way of the cross rejects the path of sneers and jeers, whether in the form of elite condescension or populist passion.

We must not call a noisy gong “boldness” or a clanging cymbal “courage.” Instead, we must stand out from such worldliness and cultivate the church as an oasis of quiet kindness, a respite from the sin Jesus says will lead us to hell.


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The Church’s Credibility Crisis https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/the-churchs-credibility-crisis/ Fri, 07 Oct 2022 04:22:35 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=529305 The first episode of my new podcast “Reconstructing Faith” is now available: “The Church’s Credibility Crisis”]]>

The first episode of my new podcast, Reconstructing Faith, is now available. It deals with the church’s credibility crisis.

When we see leaders fall by the wayside either because of life or doctrine, the pain cuts in many directions all at once, with a lot of hurt left in the wake. The long-term effect of this kind of failure is a diminishing of the credibility of the church. Will God fail because of human weakness? No. But the church’s failures can become obstacles in the path of those who don’t yet know God or can cause believers to stumble in their faith. The spiritual fallout can be devastating.

In this episode, we address questions like:

  • What has gone wrong?
  • Should we care about what the world thinks of the church?
  • Are many of these problems just overblown?
  • What will it look like for us to begin the restoration and renewal process for our churches?

In weeks to come, we’ll examine the phenomenon of “deconstruction” and “deconversion,” the toxicity of social media, sex abuse in the church, chastity and “purity culture,” abuses of pastoral authority, and the American Dream, as well as current conversations about race and how Christians should engage in politics.

You can also find a discussion guide, in case you want to listen with friends and colleagues and have some conversations about this week’s episode.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey and consider what you can contribute to the task of restoring and rebuilding the church’s witness so the world would experience the majesty of Jesus. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, including AppleGoogleStitcher, and Spotify.

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Love Your Unorthodox Neighbor https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/loving-unorthodox/ Thu, 06 Oct 2022 04:10:52 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=528611 It’s a sign of an impoverished imagination if we think we must either approve whatever our loved ones decide or turn our backs and abandon our relationships.]]>

It’s hard for some to stomach the drawing of clear, bold lines of demarcation in matters of Christian doctrine because declaring what’s orthodox means ruling out what’s heretical. Standing on truth means opposing falsehood. And once you draw lines, you imply some people fall outside the boundaries.

In a world infected by postmodern cynicism, making distinctions of “who’s in” and “who’s out” gets attributed to the selfish quest for power and domination. Religion is a matter of the heart. Who can tell you if you’re orthodox or not? It’s your truth, right? Anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to control you!

In The Thrill of Orthodoxy, I show how foreign this sensibility was to the apostles. It’s clear from the New Testament writings they didn’t believe the way forward was to blur the lines, or to make fuzzy the edges, but to insist on sharper clarity out of love for the truth. They promoted “sound” or “healthy” doctrine because they cared for the church. Theological errors damage health and lead to detrimental effects. Heretical doctrine is poison; it kills. It is loveless to pretend otherwise.

Today, we labor under the false pressure of thinking lines must be erased if all are to be loved. The way we extend love is by pretending our beliefs and practices are of no ultimate importance. Walk this path and you eventually extend the boundaries of Christianity so far it becomes impossible to define. In the name of love, openness, and inclusivity, we don’t expand Christianity but dissolve it. We remove load-bearing walls from the house, watch it collapse, and call it progress.

Loving the Other

This approach to doctrine is attractive because we’ve fallen for the notion that love requires agreement or approval. It’s hard to imagine we might love—deeply love—people with whom our disagreements are fundamental. We assume we must shift the foundations if we’re to love someone, when instead a better understanding of foundational Christian truth shifts us into a posture of love across chasms of difference.

Most often, this plays out in the area of sexual ethics. What do you do if a close friend abandons a spouse for an illicit relationship? Or your brother moves in with his girlfriend and scoffs at your “old-fashioned” notion of “living in sin”? Or your daughter comes out as gay and rejects the biblical and historic Christian teaching on sex and marriage?

It’s a sign of an impoverished imagination if we think we must either approve whatever our loved ones decide or turn our backs and abandon our relationships. Reject this false choice.

For those who remain committed to orthodoxy in these matters, we must take a closer look at the foundations of our faith. On the one side, we see the implacable, unchanging stance of the Scriptures and the church—a ruthless opposition toward sin in whatever form it takes, not out of hatred or disdain but love for the one most affected by that sin. On the other side, we serve a Savior with arms outstretched, the ever-loving, ever-wooing God whose heart bleeds for sinners in need of grace. The orthodox line is stark: an eternal “no” to sin, matched by abounding love from a God whose kindness leads sinners to repentance.

Love with the Light On

As a teenager, I recall seeing a television interview with Billy Graham where the host asked him about homosexuality and made the question personal: “What if your son told you he was gay?”

Graham’s response? “I’d love him even more.”

I don’t know if Graham meant that his heart would beat with compassion for a son who shared his inner struggle at that level of vulnerability or if he was implying a son in that situation would need even more love, not less, if there was any hope of calling him back to a future of holiness. Whatever the case, there’s not a whiff of the sentiment too often true of religious parents: “I’d kick him out of the house and never talk to him again!”

Graham’s posture seems to me fundamentally correct. There’s no wavering on the question of sin, but also no wavering on the calling to a love that wills the good of the other. If a daughter ventures out into the far country, the response of our Father is to leave the porch light on and the door unlocked, to survey the horizon, looking, hoping for the silhouette of his daughter to reappear, anticipating the moment when—instead of chiding or chastising—the father can race down the street to shower her with kisses.

This kind of love upends all worldly expectations. Orthodox love extends into the far country.

We go wrong whenever we assume that “orthodox” and “unorthodox” are categories for “those we love” and “those we despise (or barely tolerate).” If we take our stand on Christian orthodoxy, we’re bound to follow Jesus’s command to love our neighbors, even our enemies.

Yes, there are lines. The sword of truth divides mother from daughter and brother from sister. Our devotion to Jesus separates us from the world with bold, distinct lines. But that same devotion to Jesus calls for a love that crosses those lines. The same orthodoxy that rejects falsehood requires us to love the one deceived.

Like the apostle Paul, we’ll mourn the Demas types who walk away from the faith “out of love for this world,” and like the apostle Paul, we cultivate a love that “hopes all things.” We entrust our loved ones to the care of a merciful and just God whose redemptive plan will collect our tears of grief and turn them into rivers of mercy that carve out new canyons of beauty that testify to his grace.


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Beware the New Seeker Sensitivity https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/beware-seeker-sensitivity/ Tue, 04 Oct 2022 04:10:29 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=527726 The ‘felt need’ of many seekers is a church that clearly delineates ‘us vs. them,’ giving cover to the contempt they feel for neighbors who vote differently than they do.]]>

For decades now, I’ve heard pastors, preachers, and theologians preach against “seeker sensitivity” as a ministry philosophy. They’ve warned about using “felt needs” as a method of attracting people to church because that’s just a way to satisfy the “itching ears” the apostle Paul foretold.

It’s ironic, then, to see some of the same voices become known as much for their political punditry as their gospel proclamation. There’s a different kind of “seeker sensitivity” at work here, and I want to encourage church leaders to avoid it. We need pastors to resist the siren call of our age and give themselves over anew to the glorious call of heralding the gospel and preaching the Word, no matter what political categories get crossed.

New Church Growth Strategy

It used to be that people would “church shop” based on the felt needs of their musical preference or preaching style. Nowadays, in my experience, people are more likely to change churches due to the political preferences of their pastors.

A new church growth tactic for preachers is to play to the crowd who cheers you on as you take a “strong stand” or “own the libs” or “join the battle” for the soul of the country. The “felt need” of many seekers is a church that clearly delineates “us vs. them,” giving cover to the contempt they feel for neighbors who vote differently than they do. They prefer sermons that fit comfortably within a political framework and “rally the troops.”

In a time when people self-select into congregations of like-minded individuals, I fear that by never preaching in a way that calls out this mindset (or worse, by actively catering to it), pastors and theologians—no matter how conservative they may be theologically—have become, in their own way, “seeker sensitive.” Pastors who once said we should “just preach the gospel” and not confuse spiritual solutions with social concerns now give great attention to social concerns that make headlines on cable news. The leaders who told us we should keep the ministry and mission of the church narrow so that justice issues don’t supplant the cross of Christ now offer opinions on all sorts of political questions.

Politics and Morality

Political punditry from the pulpit isn’t new, of course. Many mainline churches have focused on left-leaning politics for decades. (You are much more likely to hear a blatantly political sermon in a church that leans to the left than to the right. So, please note my caution cuts both ways.) Since the rise of the Religious Right, many evangelical churches have done the same with politics on the right.

Moral issues have, of course, always been the purview of the church. Wherever the Bible speaks to an issue of righteous living—whether murder, adultery, theft, or love for neighbor—the preacher ought to speak too. We cannot (and shouldn’t try to) establish a clear divide between morality and politics because public policy is always based on a moral vision. And that’s where it gets tricky.

It’s easy to conflate the clarity of the Bible’s moral vision with the specifics of supporting a candidate or pushing a public-policy priority. Instead, Christian liberty requires that individual Christians are free to wisely discern—and sometimes disagree about—how best to apply moral principles to political action.

I’m not saying Christians should stay out of politics or that pastors and leaders should remain silent on moral issues of public importance. I’m also not saying Christians should stay silent or “above the fray,” as if there’s a moral equivalency between the two parties in the United States right now. The world desperately needs the church to speak boldly and prophetically where the Bible is clear. Earlier this year, I wrote about how we should go beyond “faithful presence” in our ambitions and seek to be a “truthful witness” in a world of falsehood.

But pastors should work hard to resist the pull into the whirlpool of all-politics-all-the-time. Even a pastor who keeps his preaching gospel-focused can undermine that noble emphasis if all week long he tweets, posts, blogs, and talks incessantly about the latest news from DC. Congregation members who follow an all-politics-all-the-time pastor will likely conclude the next election is the most pressing spiritual issue of the day.

Real Stumbling Block

In the past, seeker-sensitive ministry philosophies sometimes shaved off the harder edges of the Christian faith and removed the stumbling block of essential Christian teachings (such as our belief in the exclusivity of Christ for salvation, the reality of hell, etc.).

The new seeker sensitivity has morphed into something that attracts people already consumed by politics, who breathlessly await the latest developments in DC and want the church to sprinkle spirituality and gospel legitimacy on earthly political tactics. One way to satisfy “itching ears” is by preaching hard against political opponents, turning the Bible into a means of scoring political points.

As we survey the mission field of North America, we seek to avoid setting up a stumbling block other than the gospel itself or the essentials of the Christian faith. When the stumbling block becomes political decision making or the tribal signals of “woke” or “based” slapped onto churches by people who seem un­able to interpret any stance except through the lens of politics, we dilute our power as an embassy of the everlasting kingdom of God.

Anxiety and Orthodoxy

Unless Christians are caught up in the great drama of redemption—the narrative of the world as told by the Scriptures and summed up in orthodox creeds and confessions—we’ll get swept up into the dramatic tension of our political parties, the starts and stops of various social causes.

Once you lose sight of the great drama, the earthly stakes of little dramas are raised. Suddenly, all our partisan debates have heightened significance. Every day is another battle between heroes and villains. No longer are we aware of the powers and principalities on the spiritual battlefield that put our earthly squabbles in perspective. Now, our neighbors become our enemies, and we battle against flesh and blood. Because we lack eternal perspective, every election becomes the “most important in our lifetime,” a struggle of life and death.

So much for the “non-anxious presence” urged by Australian church leader Mark Sayers! Today, the anxiety is the attraction. Every election is a precipice. Freedom always hangs in the balance. The gospel is at stake.

And this is how the drama of our political processes supplants the dogma of Christian teaching, edging the cross from the center of our proclamation and giving us a theology of glory instead of the cruciform path of Jesus.

Let God Speak

This is why the church needs to recapture the thrill of orthodoxy. All week long, content comes at us from a cacophony of voices. World leaders, political pundits, novelists, sportscasters and journalists, infotainment sites and shows, celebrities and social media stars—everyone has something to say. But on the first day of the week, the day we celebrate the resurrection, someone stands up with an ancient book to deliver a message designed to cut through a noisy world of constant chatter. You’ve heard what everyone else says. Now listen to what God says. What follows should be an otherworldly message with God at the center.

But too often, the person who rises with that Book delivers a message that blends in well with the advice and punditry you can get anywhere else, riffing on the week’s news or delivering commentary on recent events as if the primary purpose of our faith is to rally a voting bloc.

If our message has become little more than “make the world a better place” by voting this way or that, Christian proclamation has become wildly misdirected, no matter how many doctrines we say we believe. Unless our focus is on God, who he is and what he has done, unless our message centers on Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, unless our dependence is on the Spirit who sweeps through the sanctuary and does his work in the hearts of people, we lose the thrill of orthodoxy and become little more than an arm of a political movement.

Beware the new seeker sensitivity.


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Introducing the ‘Reconstructing Faith’ Podcast https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/reconstructing-faith-podcast/ Thu, 29 Sep 2022 04:10:55 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=527659 Trevin Wax introduces a new podcast addressing the church’s credibility crisis—leaning on church history and the global church to meet challenges today.]]>

Looking at what’s taken place over the last 20 years, you don’t have to be a theologian or sociologist to recognize the church isn’t healthy.

There are sex abuse scandals rocking virtually every denomination, even churches not connected to a denomination. There’s a lot of questioning or wrestling with—or even abandoning—fundamental Christian doctrines and ethical and moral stances. We’ve got examples of toxic leadership poisoning churches. The number of well-known, respected Christian leaders being discredited by falling into some kind of sin—it’s been like dominoes the past decade. And then there are the questions of what faithfulness looks like in politics and how we discern truth from error in a world of social media battles.

Internal threats of heresy and compromise. External threats from government—the pressure to change our beliefs. There are social issues like race relations, where the church has a messy history that many would prefer to ignore.

If the evangelical movement is about renewal and reconciliation, shouldn’t we, of all people, be in the thick of the action as emissaries of a loving God who sees us all as beloved image-bearers?

It’s hard to find one sphere of the church across the board right now where we’d all say, “Yep, that’s really healthy and that’s going good.” All this stuff is killing is our witness.

In the years to come, as we survey the apocalyptic destruction left in the wake of God’s decision to humble and expose our sins, as we recommit ourselves to removing rot wherever we see it (in our own lives as well as in the church), we will be called on to build. To reconstruct. To restore.

That’s why I’m excited to introduce my new podcast: Reconstructing Faith.

For 12 episodes, beginning next Thursday, October 6, we’ll be addressing the church’s credibility crisis, reflecting on the challenges of today while learning from church history and the church around the world. We’ll examine the phenomenon of “deconstruction” and “deconversion,” the toxicity of social media, sex abuse in the church, chastity and “purity culture,” abuses of pastoral authority, and the American Dream, as well as current conversations about race and how Christians should engage in politics.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey and consider what you can contribute to the task of restoring and rebuilding the church’s witness so the world would experience the majesty of Jesus. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple, Google, Stitcher, and Spotify.


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Progressive Views on Sexuality Will Ultimately Fail https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/progressive-narrative-sexuality/ Tue, 27 Sep 2022 04:10:46 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=527421 It’s easy to think the church is falling fast to revisionism on this issue, but only if your view is narrowly tailored to the American or Western European context.]]>

Earlier this year, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) surprised nearly everyone, not just outsiders. The denomination, which many believed had been drifting away from the authority of Scripture, corrected course and made clear the church’s conviction on sexual ethics.

The CRC’s clarification went even further than some observers expected. The group voted, as a clear majority, to make its position nonnegotiable. The traditional view of marriage and sexuality is the standard of the church’s teaching. There’s to be no deviation, which goes for institutions like Calvin University, even if some professors there seem to have moved toward the revisionist view of sexuality.

Trend in Institutions

The CRC is not the only denomination to tighten its doctrinal standards around sexuality rather than loosen them.

  • The Global Methodist Church is in the process of breaking up with the United Methodist Church and will provide a worldwide home for Wesleyans who wish to maintain a faithful witness to God’s Word in the days ahead.
  • The Anglican Communion is mired in conflict between a fast-shrinking, largely white, and increasingly elderly contingent that advocates for same-sex marriage and a fast-growing, largely black and brown, and increasingly young community of believers located in the global South that shuns the revisionist agenda. Several years ago, the Communion censured the American wing. Meanwhile, orthodox Anglicans around the world are finding new and creative ways of connection and partnership.
  • The Presbyterian Church of America recently released a lengthy, brilliantly crafted document that reaffirms a biblical view of sex and marriage, even going so far as to provide avenues for evangelists and apologists to make a case for this position in an era shaped by the sexual revolution.

It’s not just denominations. Organizations have been tightening up their standards and clarifying their adherence to the biblical position.

  • The CCCU (Council for Christian Colleges and Universities) added a statement about Christian distinctives and advocacy, which clarified their adherence to a biblical sexual ethic as a “core Christian commitment.”
  • InterVarsity Christian Fellowship conducted a four-year process of study and then reiterated the organization’s stance through a nine-part curriculum for all employees.
  • Fuller Seminary, Wheaton College, and Christianity Today have also, in recent years, reaffirmed their commitment to the historic view of marriage.

Powerful Pull of Progressivism’s Narrative

Still, the pull of progressivism’s narrative on this issue is remarkably powerful, giving the impression that the revisionist position is inevitable. It captures the imagination with its vision of moral “progress.” It’s only a matter of time before everyone agrees with the new view of sex and marriage! Get on board or get left behind. This is where the train of history is going.

On the day the CRC news came out, a pastor friend asked me if there was a growing tribe of “quietly affirming” churches and denominations across the country. Don’t miss the irony. The news article was about a denomination recommitting to biblical authority, and yet the notion of “progress” in the revisionist narrative was so strong that this pastor still wondered if everything is moving away from traditional Christianity, even when the evidence showed the opposite.

Protestant evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox, and virtually every other church outside of a subset of shrinking churches in the West believe marriage touches foundational anthropological doctrines and will never be simply something we can “agree to disagree” on.

Still, the press surrounding the progressive position can make orthodox Christians feel defeated, deflated, and doomed—as if they’re in the minority now as far as churchgoing Christians are concerned, as if there’s no stopping the runaway revisionist train.

This narrative is powerful but false.

Worldwide and Historic Church

The truth is, we’ll likely see more churches and denominations adopt the revisionist view of sexuality, but over time, the bankruptcy of this position will be evident. The churches and denominations that have gone in this direction have cratered. Marriage is a load-bearing wall in the house. You can’t tear it down and keep the roof up. Marriage is a picture of the gospel. It’s central.

In The Thrill of Orthodoxy, I counter those who argue that marriage and sexuality aren’t matters of orthodoxy because they aren’t explicitly spelled out in the creeds. Neither is infanticide. Neither is theft. Neither is the command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Neither is a whole host of issues connected to Christianity’s moral vision. And yet few would argue that these and other unique and powerful elements of Christianity’s testimony are “optional,” to be taken or left depending upon societal preference. We must not think we can take shelter under a minimalist interpretation of the creeds so as to get out from under the Scriptures.

Still, some wonder: Will strong cultural winds lead to a growing tribe of churches that remain orthodox in their doctrinal stance though “affirming in practice”?

Possibly, but only for a time. At some point, a church has to decide whether to perform same-sex marriages. The halfway house can’t hold. You’ll go one way or another. And once you decide to become “affirming,” you become “apostate” to the vast majority of Christians in the rest of the world.

It’s easy to think the church is falling fast to revisionism on this issue, but only if your view is narrowly tailored to the American or Western European context. The question looks very different from the perspective of the worldwide church, as well as the church throughout history. When you adopt an innovation that would horrify basically every Christian theologian and leader and layperson in the past 2,000 years, the burden of proof is on you, not them.

The imaginative pull of the revisionist narrative on “the right side of history” is strong. But it’s imaginary. All that matters in the end is Jesus, and the words he said will never pass away.


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Don’t Let ‘Discernment’ Give Doctrine a Bad Name https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/discernment-doctrine-bad-name/ Thu, 22 Sep 2022 04:10:16 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=526649 The fact that some Christians are wrong to see dangers everywhere doesn’t mean we should think there aren’t dangers anywhere.]]>

I get frustrated sometimes by the lack of discernment I see from people who fly the “discernment” banner.

Isn’t the whole point of discernment to be able to discern truth from error? To see clearly what is good and right as opposed to what is bad and wrong?

But those quick to champion discernment often place everyone into camps of “safe” or “dangerous.” And ironically, once you’ve got everyone properly placed and labeled, there’s really no need for discernment anymore. Just avoid the “bad” and embrace the “good.” The result is tribal factions that compete with the Corinthian church for the trophy of divisiveness.

Real Discernment Beyond Labels

Real discernment must go beyond all-or-nothing labels. Real discernment requires us to recognize truth wherever it may be found.

You cannot benefit from the riches of church history, for example, unless you’re willing to glean the gold from forefathers and mothers in the faith who, at times, were in the wrong, sometimes egregiously so. And even today, real discernment also requires you to acknowledge error and falsehood, even when it comes from someone you usually revere as trustworthy and credible.

Real Discernment and Christian Freedom

Real discernment must also distinguish between serious deviations in doctrine and the kinds of ongoing disagreements over how best to apply Scripture in our day when no clear command has been given us. Much of the infighting in churches today arises from disagreement over questions of wisdom and prudence—the best way to respond to a crisis, or how to put into practice a political principle, or the posture to adopt toward the world we want to reach. True discernment is marked by restraint, uttering “Thus says the Lord” only in those areas in which the Scriptures clearly lay out a principle and path. Otherwise, we eviscerate Christian freedom and bind the consciences of believers without Christ’s authority.

I don’t want to imply that real discernment will shut down debate, appealing always to the virtue of “agreeing to disagree.” By all means, bring arguments (not quarrels). Make a case. Seek to persuade. Just remember, if you share the same commitment to Christian orthodoxy or belong to the same church and confess all the truth about Christ, you must put your political and pragmatic differences in perspective and work hard to not walk away from a brother and sister in Christ who sees our responsibility in this moment differently than you do.

Real Discernment and the Essentials

Real discernment must also recognize the difference between doctrines “of first importance” (1 Cor. 15) and important though secondary positions where Bible-believing Christians disagree. These second-tier doctrines do matter, as they often connect to first-order issues. But real discernment doesn’t conflate these issues and then turn to inflammatory and alarmist rhetoric.

This is where what often passes for “discernment” goes awry. Christians sometimes overreact to a perceived drift in doctrine. Setting up alarm bells to ring at the slightest possible misstep can turn us into hypercritical, overly alarmist Christians quick to pounce on any possible error. To assume the worst of a brother in Christ, or to be ever suspicious that anyone with whom you have doctrinal disagreement must be a wolf in disguise, is to fall prey to a self-righteous spirit and a tunnel vision that keeps us from seeing real dangers around us.

Even worse, such efforts at rooting out any possible error we see in others can lead us to assume the place for confrontation is in the barracks with our brothers and sisters rather than on the battlefield, where our proclamation of the gospel poses a threat to the powers and principalities of this world. Not everyone who claims the gift of “discernment” is truly discerning, especially those who fashion themselves as doctrinal police, ready to pounce on anyone for the slightest perceptible error.

And yet, labels do matter when it comes to orthodoxy and heresy. Don’t get so used to rolling your eyes at those who cry wolf so often that you start to think there aren’t any wolves. Alexander and Athanasius were right about Arius and Arianism. Augustine was right about Pelagius. The fact that some are wrong to see dangers everywhere doesn’t mean we should think there aren’t dangers anywhere.

Doctrine Matters

You cannot read the New Testament, especially the pastoral letters, without noting the stress the apostles placed on maintaining sound doctrine. But I’ve seen it happen: in order to avoid the excesses of those who fly the banner of “discernment,” some Christians lose the desire to stand up and speak out for orthodoxy when it’s truly in danger of being lost. It’s possible to go silent when speaking up for the truth is required.

My burden in writing The Thrill of Orthodoxy was to help believers recapture the wonder of Christian theology and the preciousness of biblical truth. I want to see the church grow in discernment—true discernment. That’s why we must lean on the global church for help in discerning what has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all” from differences among Christians in different regions and denominations. And we must lean on the church throughout history so we know when to issue anathemas and excommunications and when to put other heated debates in perspective.

Theology isn’t an arduous task of arranging irrelevant details. It’s an invitation into greater knowledge of this Jesus who has saved us. Jesus himself said that eternal life is to know God and the One he has sent. Real discernment means learning to speak in ways worthy of his majesty so we can describe his excellencies to others.


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The Distressing State of Evangelicals and Theology https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/distressing-state-evangelicals-theology/ Tue, 20 Sep 2022 04:10:13 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=527127 What a new survey shows us about evangelical views on theological doctrines and ethical issues.]]>

A. W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. . . . Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.”

That statement reminds of me of the late R. C. Sproul, who was fond of saying that everyone—whether they realize it or not—is a theologian. That is, everyone has some view of who God is and what he’s like, or a view of humanity, our history and future, and the ultimate questions of life.

The State of Theology

We may all be theologians, but that doesn’t mean we’re good ones. Since 2014, the State of Theology survey, a partnership between Ligonier and LifeWay Research, has been taking the theological temperature of Americans. The newest results were released earlier this week. There’s a lot to explore. You can look at the views of Americans in general or break down the results by categories.

Most interesting to me is the state of evangelical views on theology and doctrine. These statistics stand out because this survey doesn’t include just anyone who identifies as “evangelical.” To be classified this way, the respondent must strongly agree that the Bible is the highest authority for faith, Jesus’s death is the only sacrifice that removes our sin, faith in Christ alone is the only way to receive salvation, and it’s personally important to encourage non-Christians to trust in Christ as Savior. The respondent who lines up with those four affirmations gets counted as “evangelical” whether they embrace the label or not.

What Evangelicals Believe

When you pose a series of theological and ethical questions to those who, based on their beliefs, would likely be placed in the historic evangelical category (theologically, not politically), you expect to see encouraging responses, and this is the case in certain areas. Ninety-one percent of evangelicals believe abortion is a sin, for example. Also, 94 percent of evangelicals say sex outside of traditional marriage is a sin.

But there’s a lot of confusion in these answers, and even if you quibble with the wording on some of the questions (there could be various shades of meaning in the mind of the respondent), that doesn’t remove the problem of glaring errors in evangelical views of theology.

If more and more Americans believe “religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth,” an increasing number of evangelicals aren’t far behind (38 perecent). People are prone to view religion as helpful and beneficial for its moral or therapeutic benefits but not really about the truth of God and the world. Religion gets relegated to the realm of values, not historical events and facts about the way the world actually is. No wonder, then, that even with an emphasis on the responsibility to tell others about Jesus, a majority of evangelicals in 2022 (56 percent) answered a question about religious pluralism in the affirmative, saying “God accepts the worship of all religions.”

A couple eye-popping stats show that evangelicals are terribly wrong on doctrines of central importance. Two-thirds believe that humans are born in a state of innocence, not sin. The one doctrine of Christianity that G. K. Chesterton quipped could be “empirically proven” is denied outright by most evangelicals. Even worse, the number of evangelicals who say Jesus is just a good teacher but not God in the flesh jumped from 30 percent to 43 percent in this survey.

Theology and the Study of God

Answers like this make my heart hurt. We’re not talking about arcane doctrines that don’t have significance for daily life. The word “theology” means “the study of God.” Can there be any greater subject than this?

This is the burden of my book The Thrill of Orthodoxy. I believe theology involves an encounter with the most beautiful, most awe-inspiring, most worthy One. We think about him, read about him, praise him, implore him, commune with him—the one true God, the only One whose glories give us joy as we behold and ponder their number. I want more Christians to encounter this God in all his glory.

To those who shrug off the results of a survey like this, or who say it doesn’t matter how Christians think as long as they do good to their neighbors, I’d say this: theological precision matters when it’s a matter of love. Diligence in defining doctrine requires the effort of better describing the God who created us, the God in whom we confess our faith, the God who has revealed himself in the Scriptures and whom the church has described in the creeds. The details matter because we want him and love him.

If theology is the study of God, then Christian theology is the study of God as he has revealed himself in Christ. The heart of our faith is not a series of theological propositions or a list of ethical positions (as important as those are), but a Person. “Behold the man!” Pilate said as he stood next to the thorn-crowned Jesus. All Christian theology is a response to that command, an attempt to answer Christ’s own question to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”

If we’re going to turn around the results we see in surveys like this, we must help Christians understand that theology isn’t an arduous task of arranging irrelevant details. It’s an invitation into greater knowledge of this Jesus who has saved us. We care about the details of doctrine because we love the God those doctrines describe.


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Shia LaBeouf and the Church as Sales Pitch https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/shia-labeouf-church-sales-pitch/ Thu, 15 Sep 2022 04:10:45 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=526466 Three takeaways from a recent conversation with actor Shia LeBeouf on his conversion to Catholicism and distaste for church services that feel like a sales pitch.]]>

In preparing for the lead role in a movie about Padre Pio (an Italian Franciscan friar later canonized as a saint), the actor Shia LaBeouf, best known for Transformers, lived for a time in a monastery, submitted to several spiritual mentors, and then converted to Catholicism. His recent conversation with Bishop Robert Barron goes in many directions—acting philosophy and techniques, the opposition Pio faced from the Catholic Church of his day, and the appeal of the Christian faith in the 21st century.

A couple comments from this interview made headlines. LaBeouf talked about his surprise at how wrong the commonplace image of Jesus is: a man “soft, fragile, all-loving, all-listening but no ferocity.” The Jesus of the New Testament is vastly more compelling as a prophet and king.

Appeal of the Ancient

LaBeouf also revealed that Mel Gibson had introduced him to the Latin Mass—the traditional form of the Catholic liturgy, now observed only in certain places and circumstances (and recently limited further by Pope Francis). To LaBeouf, the Latin Mass felt like being let in on “a secret,” a mysterious experience more powerful than the ordinary rites in English where, he lamented, he felt like someone was “trying to sell [him] on an idea.” He thought the preaching seemed too casual: “[A call to] let your hair down right before you’re asking me to fully believe that we’re about to walk through the death of Christ.”

What’s interesting is how LaBeouf explains his attraction to the traditional form of the Mass—it’s not about the recipient. The focus isn’t on the worshiper. It’s simply there. It must be encountered on its own terms, and its incomprehensible language is part of its appeal because it leaves the worshiper with a sense of the sacred. “I can’t argue the word,” he says, “because I don’t know what the word means, so I’m just left with this feeling.”

The Church Trying to ‘Sell Me Something’

There’s much to unpack in this interview: What should we make of celebrity conversion stories? What are the theological differences between Catholicism and Protestantism on the Lord’s Supper? Why do we insist on the supreme authority of God’s Word over church tradition?

We could also look at how people in our day often search for a feeling of transcendence, where the specifics of doctrine or “the words” aren’t as important as the experience of something sacred, something that breaks through what Charles Taylor calls “the buffered self.” In LaBeouf’s case, this desire seems to have led to a full-blown embrace of Catholicism, but for many others, the result is a life where the individual remains in control, in pursuit of “personal authenticity,” with religious experience sprinkled on top, appreciated for the way it adds a transcendent dimension to a life lived, largely, without God.

Instead of going in these directions, I want to zero in on the statement LaBeouf makes about the Latin Mass and his distaste for worship services where it feels like the church leaders are trying to sell him something. LaBeouf is attracted to something that deliberately and distinctively does not cater to his whims or desires. He finds the Latin Mass appealing precisely because it’s not what we evangelicals might call “seeker sensitive.”

3 Takeaways

What can we learn from this conversation?

First, we shouldn’t underestimate the power of immersion into the Christian community. Yes, we need to be equipped as evangelists who can share the gospel with people in everyday conversations. Otherwise we’d miss people who would never step over the threshold into a church. But the church, when gathered to worship the King of kings, is a demonstration and display of the power of the gospel. To usher people into this alternative community, to experience the otherworldliness of our worship and the hearing of the Word—there is no substitute for the community of faith in the evangelistic process. Invite people in. Invite people often.

Second, there’s a difference between seeker-comprehensible and seeker-driven. I think LaBeouf has competing desires that get a bit muddled here. On the one hand, he’s turned off by services that seem overly focused on the seeker, on the individual’s experience, or by services where it feels like the leader is just trying to sell you on an idea. He finds appealing the service that doesn’t cater to the tastes or whims of the worshiper.

On the other hand, he goes so far as to prefer an incomprehensible language so he can focus on the feeling. Which, in a weird way, can become its own version of catering to a whim. This is a sticking point not only between pre– and post–Vatican II Catholics but also going back to the days of the Reformation. Luther, Calvin, Tyndale—they were right to stress the need for Christian truth to be presented in the vernacular.

The feeling is not the goal; the encounter with the Living God is what we’re after, and the feelings may (or may not) follow from that. And so, as evangelical Protestants, we must insist: the presentation of the Word must be comprehensible—yes, even to the seeker in our midst—while not driven by the felt needs of the seeker. LaBeouf is right to revolt against a service that’s centered on man rather than on God. But in preferring the incomprehensible so that he captures a feeling, there’s the possibility he’s turning the Latin Mass back into something man-centered, as it delivers a feeling and meets a need because of its austerity.

Third, we shouldn’t underestimate the power of Christian teaching in its essentials, and we must not downplay the significance of Christian doctrine. This is the heart behind my book The Thrill of Orthodoxy. (By the way, if you’d like early access, please consider joining the launch team.) Orthodoxy is real and massive. It is there. It’s a force to be reckoned with. It creates feelings and experiences precisely because it’s not about our feelings and experiences. It’s about God.

For this reason, our worship shouldn’t shy away from the weird. If there is nothing otherworldly in our worship, why are we even there?

In the interview, Barron acknowledges that preaching in the Catholic Church took a wrong turn in previous decades, as priests often prioritized sharing individual religious experiences over explaining the text of Scripture. Instead, Barron says, “the Bible is much more interesting than [his] experience”—the goal isn’t to fit the Bible into our lives but to see our lives swept up into the story of the Bible. There’s a lesson there for Protestant preaching too.

The great adventure is not in adapting the Christian faith to better suit the needs of people but in adapting people who better fit the Christian faith. And this posture of submission is the outworking of humility that makes possible the adventure of discovering truth. Comprehensible to seekers, yes. Driven by human desire, no. The radically God-centered view at the heart of our faith is, in the end, not a barrier to evangelism; it’s what conversion is all about.


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Invitation to Join the Launch Team for ‘The Thrill of Orthodoxy’ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/an-invitation-to-join-the-launch-team-for-the-thrill-of-orthodoxy/ Tue, 13 Sep 2022 04:10:48 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=526244 Join the launch team to receive early access to Trevin Wax’s new book ‘The Thrill of Orthodoxy.’]]>

We’re in a season right now where some people give words like “doctrine” and “theology” a bad name because of an inability to differentiate between what’s essential and what Christians have historically disagreed on. At the same time, some people downplay doctrine altogether, wanting us just to focus on what we do or how we live as Christians. They think we need to adapt and accommodate Christianity to better fit the times.

My new book The Thrill of Orthodoxy (available October 25) turns the tables on those who believe Christian teaching is narrow and outdated. We’re going back to the historic creeds. We’re looking at what orthodoxy is and why it matters, and why we should have confidence in it. We’re looking at heresies and errors that are not broad and inclusive but narrow and boring.

Christian theology is an adventure, and I want to reawaken your sense of wonder!

Why Join the Launch Team?

Loyal readers, you can make a big difference in how this book launches.

By joining the launch team, you get access to a digital version of the book a month before anyone else does, giving you the chance to read it ahead of time. You also get access to a private Facebook group where you can interact with me and other team members, discussing (maybe even debating!) some of the concepts in the book. You’ll also be invited to a Zoom call in October, where I’ll be hosting a conversation about the book.

Here’s what launch team members agree to: you preorder the book and agree to leave a review during the book’s launch. That’s it.

Here’s why that matters.

By preordering the book, you help retailers take note of the demand for this book, and this increases the likelihood that they’ll push and promote it more visibly, so that others discover it too.

By agreeing to leave a review on Amazon or other retailer sites within the first 10 days of the book’s launch, you help others discover the book and make them more likely to give it a try. These reviews are vitally important for a book launching well.

I hope you sign up to join us and enjoy being part of the team!

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Lord, Help Me See the Ways to Die Today https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/see-ways-die-today/ Thu, 08 Sep 2022 04:10:29 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=526035 A prayer for self-denial the Lord is sure to answer.]]>

If it weren’t for the addition of a single word in Luke’s account of Jesus telling his disciples to pick up their cross and follow him, it’s possible we would think our Lord referred to a one-time, no-turning-back decision to deny oneself and die, whether it be (literally) a martyr’s death, or (figuratively) the moment we’re saved as we die to our old nature and follow Christ.

For some, this death to self does become evident in literal cross-bearing. Most of the disciples and many believers throughout history have fulfilled this command in this way.

But that word daily in Luke 9:23 removes the call to costly discipleship from the realm of choices grand and spectacular, making sure we realize self-denial and cross-bearing impinge on our day-to-day choices.

“If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me,” Jesus says.

The vision of taking up a cross every day means the way of Jesus is one of suffering on the path the glory. The vision of self-denial is one of transformation and joy that can only be had by allowing God to strip us of everything sinful as he frees us to become the person he’s always intended.

A Prayer to Die

A few months ago, I began asking the Lord every morning to give me chances that day to die to myself, and for the Spirit to help me recognize those opportunities. He has never failed to answer this prayer. Not once. Every time I’ve asked him to show me opportunities to die to myself, he’s come through. Annoyingly so. On occasion, I’ve thought it might be best to stop praying this prayer, as I grew tired of the spiritual discomfort.

What has been most illuminating about praying this way is how mundane some of the daily choices are. The opportunities to take up one’s cross seem almost pitifully small. Surely there are bigger and more impressive examples of cross-bearing and self-denial than the mere willingness to be inconvenienced, or the decision to set aside something I want to do for the sake of what someone else requires in the moment, or the choice to forgo something I desire and think I deserve so as to serve someone else.

The chances to deny oneself and pick up one’s cross every day seem so tiny, which must be one reason I’ve so often overlooked them. In times past, I would make a series of small selfish decisions every day, and because I saw them as small, I minimized their selfish roots. I would react to interruption and inconvenience with ambivalence at best or frustration and resentment at worst, or I would demand my way so as to fulfill “small” wants and “insignificant” desires, assuming in these cases that some grandiose gesture of self-denial wouldn’t matter because the selfishness in my “needs” was so minimal (if I even recognized the selfishness).

And yet it’s the small decisions of daily life that make us what we are. The Spirit uses those seemingly insignificant daily decisions to transform us more into the image of Christ. Likewise, it’s the small decisions, the daily acts of selfishness that, combined over a lifetime, turn us into little beasts.

A house can fall because of an earthquake, but it can also collapse after years of being eaten away by termites, the little creatures you think are tiny and insignificant until the full extent of their power affects the structure.

The Selfishness of Selflessness

I also experienced a strange and ironic turning of selflessness back into selfishness. I noticed how the call to self-denial can in itself be twisted into a method of self-magnification. Almost immediately, as I began recognizing the daily opportunities to deny myself and pick up my cross, I felt a twinge of pride in setting aside my own interests for the sake of others. I’m on the path to self-denial. This is what it looks like to follow Jesus.

And that little turn is one of Satan’s most ingenious schemes, to twist the call to self-denial into an occasion for self-righteousness, to deceive us into applauding how we’ve dethroned the self when instead we’re seated on the throne with a firmer grip than ever before.

The prayer to find ways to die every day can in itself turn into inordinate self-focus if not directed Godward. It is Jesus I’m following, and he is the One who must have my attention. My focus isn’t to be on myself as the follower. Neither should I look for ways to feel better about myself as the self-denier or crossbearer. It is looking to the glory to come, standing in awe of the One who has called us and who promises to sustain us, trusting in magnificent grace that saves and transforms—that must be the reason for daily death.

Death to Life

We die daily because we believe there is joy on the other side of the cross, life on the other side of this tomb. We must bury the old self every day because, like a zombie, it keeps wanting to return and claim its territory, when Christ has already dealt that old nature its mortal wound and promises one day to eradicate every selfish stain and free us for everlasting happiness.

And so, the prayer to die daily is just another way of saying, “Lord, help me to see the opportunities to follow you.” We wish to submit ourselves to the death of certain ambitions and attitudes, to kill off our sinfulness and selfishness, to mortify all wrongheaded desires and decisions, and to rise every day in the Spirit, awakened to the majesty of a Savior who promises nothing else than glory. Try it yourself. Lord, help me see the ways you’d have me die today. I guarantee he’ll answer that prayer.


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Sharing Your Testimony Is Not Enough https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/testimony-not-enough/ Tue, 06 Sep 2022 04:10:47 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=525748 ‘Just share your testimony! No one can argue with that.’ Exactly. Which is why that’s insufficient.]]>

If sharing the gospel sounds like we’re saying, “Come to Jesus for a better life,” we’re doing it wrong.

In a day when religion is appreciated for its moral or therapeutic benefits, someone will hear us telling them about Jesus and presume we’re trying to sell them a version of personal, privatized spirituality. One good option among many. Even when that’s not what we say, that’s what people hear.

Just Share Your Testimony?

“Sharing your testimony” doesn’t avoid the problem; it sometimes makes the challenge more difficult.

I once heard someone recommend a method of evangelism that relied solely on the personal testimony. “No one can argue with your testimony!” he said.

Exactly. That’s why it’s insufficient.

If you talk to your neighbor about what Jesus means to you and how being a Christian has made your life better, how will you respond when your neighbor smiles and says, “I’m so glad Jesus has made your life better. Here’s a mindfulness app that’s given me peace . . .” or “I’ve been trying out some teachings of Buddhism”? You’ll be left in the backyard sputtering something about how following Jesus is better than going after Buddhism, but you’ve given away any objective ground to judge between competing spiritualities.

Resurrection at the Center

Evangelism is not delivering a message of personal, privatized spirituality; it’s declaring a public truth that has ramifications for all of life: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Yes, we can find similarities with other faiths, and from a sociological perspective, we see that various religions, alternative spiritualities, and wellness rituals may have salutary effects on a person’s well-being.

But the gospel is not good advice, a new ethic, or another option for spiritual improvement. It is news. Because of the resurrection, the gospel cannot be squeezed into the same category as other spiritualities.

We must not domesticate the gospel by making the explosive news of a crucified and risen Savior all about moral and ethical improvement, societal cohesion, or practical benefits for daily life. But often, interreligious dialogue gives the impression that Christianity is a moral plan for being kind to one’s neighbors, taking care of the planet, or bettering one’s spiritual side, with the sort of self-improvement or community building you’d expect from a public television infomercial.

In contrast, the resurrection of Jesus Christ must be the starting point for all Christian reflection. To shrink the good news into good advice diminishes our witness. Missionary theologian Lesslie Newbigin put it this way:

“There can be no true evangelism except that which announces what is not only good news but true news. It is a very serious matter when the gospel is marketed primarily as a panacea for personal or public ills. We believe that it is indeed for the healing of the nations, but it cannot be this if it is not true.”

Where the Testimony Fits

Personal testimonies can be powerful. Paul appealed to his experience when testifying to his uniqueness as an apostle. The Samaritan woman ran into town and told of her conversation with Jesus. The man born blind, after being healed by Jesus, went and told everyone what had happened to him.

We should work, however, to make sure our testimonies undergird and support the public truth of the gospel and don’t replace it. What Jesus has done for me should always be connected to what Jesus has done, period.

This is a point made in Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri’s remarkable memoir of being a refugee from Iran. Nayeri tries to explain the reasons for his mother’s conversion from Islam to Christianity, from being “such a fierce Muslim that she marched for the Revolution, who studied the Quran the way very few people do” to being a Christian. “Not just a regular one,” he says, “who keeps it in their pocket. She fell in love.”

When people ask him why his mom converted, he replies,

I don’t have an answer. . . .

How can you explain why you believe anything? So I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her and she says, ‘Because it’s true.’

Why else would she believe it?

It’s true and it’s more valuable than seven million dollars in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and ten years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home . . . and even maybe your life.

My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise.

If you believe it’s true, that there is a God and He wants you to believe in Him and He sent His Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side. . . . 

There’s no middle. . . .

She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. . . .

And she’s poor now.

People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places people hate refugees. . . . And she’ll tell you—it’s worth it. Jesus is better. . . .

It’s true.

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. This whole story hinges on it.

He’s Real

“Come to Jesus and find fulfillment and freedom,” we say. Yes. But that fulfillment and freedom comes from real historical events. And the definitions of fulfillment and freedom are forever shaped by who God is and what he has done.

The role of personal experience in testifying to the work of Christ should be seen as further evidence of the power of the gospel. It is not the gospel itself, but it testifies to its power. That’s why, no matter how much happiness we’ve found in Christ, when asked in the final instance why we believe we must always and ever say, like Nayeri’s mother, “Because Jesus is better . . . and the gospel is true.”


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Who Will We Be? The Question Before the ‘How’ of Political Engagement https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/who-political-engagement/ Thu, 01 Sep 2022 04:10:20 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=525575 ‘How should we engage?’ is an important question. But first we should ask ‘Who are we?’ and ‘What are we becoming?’]]>

It’s clear one of the big questions facing Christians and church leaders today is “How should we engage in politics?”

That question connects to other challenges related to public theology, the church’s relationship to the state, the legitimacy or failure of pluralism and liberal democracy, and the definition of religious liberty. On the last point, many believers wonder what Christian faithfulness looks like in a world where the levers of legislative and cultural power in government and business are wielded against those who adhere to traditional views of sex, gender, and marriage.

I’ve read the back-and-forth between groups grappling with the best way to engage in politics. The questions remind me of Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live?, a book and video series that appeared in an earlier season of cultural upheaval. Schaeffer wanted Christians to understand their cultural moment and find a faithful way forward. In our era, we’re confronted with new questions about the posture we should adopt:

Is it time for a more vocal, more muscular, clearly partisan approach to enshrining Christian morals in society?

What are the demands of justice when ideologies lead to the defacement of the human body in the name of “progress” and “inclusivity”?

Is it enough to carve out exemptions for Christians who claim conscience rights against being conscripted into life-ending procedures for the elderly or the unborn or into surgeries that diminish the dignity of the human body’s natural use and purpose? Or should we use persuasion and power to go further?

“How should we then live?” and “How should we engage?”—these are vital questions that deserve discussion.

Bigger Question

And yet, the more I’ve reflected on current debates, the more I’ve come to see that there is an even bigger, more vital question: “Who will we be?”

In terms of focus, the question of identity—“who we are”—must precede the question of function—“how we live.” Unless we develop Spirit-filled character and virtue, as those who claim the name of Jesus Christ and seek his way, we’re bound to stumble in our engagement. Who we are, in some measure, determines the path of engagement, the way we live as salt and light in a fallen world.

I’m less worried about the right way to engage, and I’m more concerned about the right heart of the engager.

Lately, when someone asks me about how best to engage in debate on Facebook or how best to be a truthful witness on Twitter, I respond less with the “dos and don’ts” of social media etiquette or the good, bad, and best practices. Instead, I turn to questions of personal devotion, to prayer, to church membership, and what one’s Bible reading is like.

Who Are You Becoming?

“Who are you?” is the bigger question, and there’s a second just like it: “Who do you want to become?”

Apart from a vision for who we are and what we’re becoming, we will be blind to the adverse effects that engaging politically could have on our souls. We’ll deceive ourselves, thinking we’re fighting the good fight, engaging in online battles, patting ourselves on the back for our righteous stances, our sick burns that “own” the opposition, while inside we shrink into brittle, shallow, hollowed-out ghosts, following every wave of political controversy, as our methods of engagement change us in ways we don’t anticipate.

To be calm in a time of turbulence, to be single-minded in a season of instability, to retain perspective in a moment of hysteria, to be a steady ship in choppy seas, to be at peace in a world of anxiety—this kind of leadership will not come from arriving at the “right” answer to the question of how best to engage politically. It will only come about as part of an ongoing process of developing our souls and disciplining our desires and discerning faithfulness in a world gone crazy. It will require a deep and abiding presence in the Word of God and in prayer for our world. Meditation, not scrolling. Deep reading, not scanning. Careful attention, not distraction. It will require the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way, as Schaeffer famously preached.

I fear that far too many of us have a profound awareness of what’s happening on Twitter but a superficial understanding of God’s eternal Word.

Not the Microwave

The incentives of our times push against the inward soul-work necessary to be a thoughtful (literally “full of thought”) and wise presence in a world of clanging cymbals around every controversy.

The microwave impresses us because it’s fast. You can warm up a Hot Pocket for dinner, but you can’t enjoy a microwavable roast. Which is why now, just as in the past, we who follow Jesus must prioritize the crockpot and the oven. In a world of Hot-Pocket hot takes that emphasize instant wins and immediate results, the savory feast stands out—food impossible to enjoy apart from time and attention, as the fruits of holiness seep into our souls, forming us into the image of the Christ we’re called to represent.

When we do engage in the public arena, when we do speak up and speak out on various issues—as indeed we must, if we’re to be faithful to the gospel in this moment—we must do so in ways that stand out from our neighbors, and perhaps even from fellow church members. We must display wisdom that comes through in our carefulness, our love, our discernment, and, yes, our restraint. We must exhibit a calm that shows up in our demeanor, a joyfulness amid conflict, a boldness matched by graciousness.

We don’t need more soldiers running haphazardly through minefields, whacking aimlessly at every potential obstacle; we need the gift of steady warriors who know this battle is not against flesh and blood, who can discern the lasting from the ephemeral, who see dangers coming from multiple directions, and who maintain a core of conviction and kindness and of substance in a world of shallowness.

How should we engage? First ask the question, “Who will we be?”


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Some Personal Announcements Before Signing Off https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/some-personal-announcements-before-signing-off/ Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:10:31 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=510282 News about a podcast I am developing, my next book, and future teaching opportunities at Oxford and at Cedarville University.]]>

For many years now, I’ve found summer to be the best time to step away from publishing columns, scrolling social media, and interacting online. I make the most of the month of July to clear my head, consider what shape my work and ministry should take in the days ahead, and make headway on various projects.

This summer is bittersweet: our oldest son heads off to college in just a few weeks, and frankly, the thought of him packing up and moving away fills me with a mix of joy and trepidation, not to mention bewilderment at how quickly the past eighteen years, often filled with what seemed like interminably long days, have rushed by.

We are returning now from a wonderful trip to the UK to visit family, and among the many educational and fun family outings we enjoyed, I was able to spend a good chunk of my birthday at Top Meadow, once the home of G. K. Chesterton. (The picture above shows me standing in the doorway next to Chesterton’s study, taken from the view of the garden.)

As is my usual practice, I do not plan to publish any columns in the month of July, but will wait until August or September to resume posting. I recently completed a nine-part series on the Neo-religious Right and the return of the culture war sensibility, and I’d like to give some further thought to this subject and the responses it has generated.

Before signing off for the summer, though, I’d like to bring you up to speed on several things I am very excited about.

Guest Lecturing at Oxford This Fall as a C.S. Lewis Scholar in Residence

First off, I will spend some time in Oxford this fall, where I will be guest lecturing. I’ll be sharing more details about this in the days to come.

On a related note, I have been accepted into the C. S. Lewis’ Foundation’s scholar-in-residence program, which will give me the opportunity to stay at the Kilns (Lewis’ home in Headington) during my sojourn in Oxford. I couldn’t be more excited at the honor of lecturing at Oxford and the privilege of spending time reading and writing in the home of one of my literary heroes.

Cedarville University Visiting Professor

Secondly, I will be traveling more often to Cedarville University in the days ahead, now as a visiting professor. For the past few years, I’ve told people that one of my favorite places in the world to preach is at chapel at Cedarville. I love the students—their passion for the Scriptures, for growing in Christ, for reaching their world for Jesus. I am excited about the opportunity to spend more time on campus in the years to come and to pour into students through classes, talks, and sermons. The plan is for me to be on campus twice a year—teaching and mentoring students, while engaging with the faculty.

New Resources and a New Podcast

My day-to-day joy right now is leading a newly-formed Resources team at the North American Mission Board. It is an honor to serve with men and women who love Jesus, care for his church, and want to see planters and pastors equipped for ministry.

Since my work at NAMB started, we’ve launched New Churches—a site that includes articles, free eBooks, free video courses, and a growing podcast. Among the video courses we’ve released is Using Online Conversations for Good with my friend Dan Darling, Church Planting Masterclass, and more recently, Sending Church Masterclass, with accessible and powerful clips from practitioners on the front lines of leading their congregations to develop a sending mindset. We are also looking to improve and grow NAMB’s apologetics presence online, as well as considering new ways to aid pastors in their development of preaching skills. I’m proud of the work this team has done so far, and I’m excited about the work that lies ahead.

One of the new projects coming is a podcast which will address the credibility crisis facing evangelical churches today. The approaches to renewing the church we see on display often prove problematic. Conservatives who want to protect the church sometimes end up defending rot. Progressives who want to purge the church sometimes end up blowing up the pillars of truth. The way forward requires the careful work of removing the rot from the church while fortifying the foundations. To accomplish this task, we must be able to discern the difference between what is foundational and what is cultural, and this discernment requires the perspective of (1) church history and (2) the worldwide church. In this podcast, I want to lean on my experience as a cross-cultural missionary, my connection to the global church, and my studies in church history and missiology to help Christians embrace this season of rebuilding and reconstructing.

The Thrill of Orthodoxy

And that brings me to a project now years in the making, my next book—The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faithscheduled for release in October, published by InterVarsity Press, with a foreword from Kevin Vanhoozer.

The Thrill of Orthodoxy is devoted to the beauty of sound doctrine, the wonders of our theological inheritance, and the breadth and depth of the church, as opposed to the narrowness of error and heresy. The main point is that the church drifts not when new errors start to win, but when old truths no longer wow. The goal of the book is to show how the ancient truths still thrill the heart, and I lift up the Scriptures and the pivotal players in the first millennium of the church to do so.

I will have more to share about this book as the release date gets closer. For now, I just ask this: if you benefit from my columns, please preorder a copy for yourself and one to give away this Christmas. This is the best way you can say “thank you” to a writer like me.

Blessing

So, as I sign off for the rest of this summer, here is my prayer: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:13).


If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

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5 Quick Takes for New Culture Wars https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/quick-takes-new-culture-wars/ Thu, 16 Jun 2022 04:10:25 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=484378 A potpourri of additional thoughts that may aid us in a time when we need truthful witness in the public square.]]>

This is the last in a series on the rise of the neo–Religious Right, in which I’ve sought to explain and describe some of the historical and contemporary features of this movement, as well as some cautions and concerns I have for younger evangelicals going forward. (A full list of the previous columns is provided below.) In this final installment, I’d like to offer a potpourri of additional thoughts that may aid us in a time when we need truthful witness in the public square.

1. Don’t overestimate the power of politics.

First, let’s make sure that in all the talk about culture warring and culture engaging we do not prioritize the political sphere of life to the exclusion of other important parts of the good life. Government is important, but it is not god. As gospel-centered evangelicals, we must “dethrone” politics. We must value the political sphere but put it in its proper place. Indeed, politics is not ultimate. This recognition is essential for truthful witness in the public square.

In this way, let’s make sure we don’t so focus on Washington, DC, and the drama glowing on our social media apps that we forget our callings. We are called to be members of communities, and we must serve those communities and be exemplary citizens. We are called to marriages and families, and we must cultivate healthy relationships within them. We are called to local churches, and we must exercise faithful and meaningful membership. We are called to workplaces (located in various spheres of culture like business, education, science, technology, art, law, politics, or hospitality), and we must fulfill our vocations in ways that honor Christ.

In other words, we must not shy away from truthful witness in the political sphere, but our political witness must not outmatch or be overshadowed by our witness in all these other spheres, and the impact of these other areas should not be underestimated.

2. Play the political “long game.”

It can take years for political change to happen. I’m reading the new book from Matthew Continetti, The Right, which traces the modern conservative movement from its origins a century ago to the present. One of the takeaways is just how much time it takes for ideas to move forward in society, and how networks and think tanks and finding the right messenger are all vital in seeing political change take place.

Amid today’s culture wars, we must beware the temptation to compromise our convictions in order to attain a short-term win for our chosen political party. We can so convince ourselves that now is the crucial moment, and this is the most important election in our lifetime (something I’ve heard every four years my entire life) that we hand over our birthright for a mess of pottage. Political parties and leaders must earn their keep, and be willing to accept our constructive criticisms, if they wish for our full support. Political parties should be made aware that they cannot expect our full-throated approval or our vote simply because of their party affiliation.

3. Stand out by being unflinchingly fair-minded.

Truthful witness requires truthfulness, so we must avoid the temptation to cast our political opponents in the worst possible light. When we criticize the ideas of someone on the other side of a political issue, it’s important to find the common ground or basis for that criticism, to show that we may agree on the same concerns but differ when it comes to solutions. Often, this makes it possible to affirm our opponents’ aims, even while forcefully opposing their proposals. (This doesn’t always work, as in some cases, there’s even difference on what aims we should pursue. But most of the time, simply differentiating between aims and solutions and recognizing the good intentions of an opponent would bring a healthy new atmosphere to our politics.)

Unfortunately, instead of being fair, it’s all too common for culture warriors to find the moronic or terrible things the worst actors on the other side of the aisle have said—to go “nut-picking” and then react to that craziness. Over time, you give the impression that whatever badness you see in the nutcases is just part and parcel of anyone on that side, and then you fail the second commandment because, while you want to be distinguished from the crazies on your side, you purposefully tar people on the other side with all their party’s worst examples.

4. Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

As Christians, we can easily be duped into thinking that those who give us time and attention really care about the same things we care about. Most of the time, this is not the case. You’re fooling yourself if, for example, you think the Republican Party today is going to be some kind of bulwark against the excesses of the sexual revolution, or that the Democrats seek to implement policies that will end up “reducing abortion.”

Whether or not we decide to adopt a “winsome” approach, we should above all seek to be wise, and part of wisdom is in recognizing the incentives for political parties to colonize the church for their own gain. Partisanship has its place for people called to serve in the public square, but we are first and foremost members of a kingdom that spans the globe, rather than card carriers for the agendas of donkeys or elephants.

5. Keep the open hand and closed fist.

Finally, consider Os Guinness’s description of the early church’s two approaches to making a defense for the Christian faith: persuasoria (the way of the “open hand,” which involves creativity, finding common ground, winsomeness, etc.) and dissuasoria (the way of the “closed fist,” which involves tough-minded defenses of Christianity, tearing down ideological strongholds, etc.). God’s people must use both approaches simultaneously.

In recent conversations online, it seems that Christians have been reacting in ways that emphasize either one or the other, rather than holding them both together. Some believe the previous generation has been too open-handed and too reticent to slam the fist, and perhaps that critique is appropriate, at least on some issues. But the response must ever and always seek to find that proper way of standing against the world for the good of the world, holding together both elements of truthful witness, in dialogue and debate with brothers and sisters across the country and around the world.

So, in everything, let’s give space and grace to believers who may approach some of these matters in different ways. We’re in uncharted territory as we head into an increasingly post-Christian environment. Assume the best of your brothers and sisters trying to figure out what faithfulness looks like. And trust that God is going to make the most of all our bungling attempts at truthful witness, that he will fulfill his plan and build his church. Negative world or not, no weapon formed against his people will stand.


This is the ninth column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

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Truthful Witness in the Public Square https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/truthful-witness-public-square/ Tue, 14 Jun 2022 04:10:02 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=484369 Discipleship requires teaching on how best to speak the truth in a world of lies.]]>

James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World advocated a model of culture engagement he called a “faithful presence”—a position he set against some other methods on display, seen in both the culture-warring and the culture-engaging strategies of evangelicals during the 1990s and early 2000s. Today, many younger evangelicals consider “faithful presence” insufficient for political engagement.

What we need is something more akin to truthful witness, with the accent less on presence and more on proclamation and action. When the world gets loud on a certain subject and the church goes quiet (even if out of a well-intentioned desire to avoid giving offense), the next generation gets indoctrinated into another worldview and hears no counterpoint. Truthful witness means the church must speak the truth—boldly, compassionately, and without qualification—with full confidence that doing so will be for the good of the world we oppose.

To put it another way, we cannot compartmentalize the Christian faith, as if following Jesus does not transform our perspective regarding the various spheres of life, including politics. Discipleship requires teaching on how best to speak the truth in a world of lies, to promote life in a culture of death, to lift up the goodness of the created order in a world full of people who negate the natural law and harm humanity through their errant and destructive understanding of human freedom and identity.

At the end of the day, we don’t want merely to engage the culture but to change it. In the words of Chesterton, we don’t want a church that moves with the world but one that will move the world.

So what does truthful witness look like? In the previous seven columns, we’ve looked at the rise of the neo–Religious Right and the challenges and opportunities of this cultural moment. Today, I offer three suggestions for younger evangelicals who seek a truthful witness to the kingdom of God while living in Babylon.

1. Always be on guard against political idolatry.

Political idolatry shows up in two ways. First, we make an idol of politics when we treat this sphere of life with messianic hope and fervor. We expect too much from fallen and flawed government systems or rising politicians, and then the idol always lets us down.

Second, as David Koyzis has shown, every modern political ideology tends to deify—or idolize—some aspect of the created order. Christians who engage in the political realm must be most influenced and shaped by the scriptural storyline so we can challenge the prevailing patterns of thought on display in our parties and leaders today. Truthful witness requires nothing less.

Along these lines, we must recognize there will be no cookie-cutter approach to the church’s engagement in this era. We fool ourselves if we expect leaders to align on all the same strategies.

Yes, we must help Christians think biblically about the world and then respond to political challenges with truth and grace (and that will require us to teach on areas of moral concern often connected to hotly contested public policy debates). But the last thing we want to see is more churches falling into the left-leaning activism of the mainline (which so often has led to the social gospel supplanting the proclamation of the cross), or the newly inspired MAGA-type churches who attract hundreds or thousands because of pastors who regale them with in-your-face preaching on vaccines, masks, and those “demonic Democrats.”

Political idolatry always destroys the church, and the Evil One can make use of any variation, even if the cause is righteous.

2. Consider areas of competence and calling.

To provide space for evangelicals to engage differently in the public square, we must acknowledge differences in competency and calling. Not everyone will interact the same way.

Something I appreciate about John Piper is his reticence to weigh in on particular policy proposals, in part because, as he says, I don’t know enough about the complexities of that subject to be helpful. He worries that pastors today are expected to be public policy experts, which can easily conflict with the calling to pastor a local church and preach the Word.

Many Christians expect their pastors to act as pundits, to hold increasingly strident views on any number of issues that animate people in the congregation. But a pastor should reserve his “Thus says the Lord” for areas where moral issues are clearly laid out in Scripture, and his “This is the Christian way” for those areas of longstanding agreement within the broader Christian tradition as to the best and most appropriate ethical stance to take.

If it’s true that we are heading into a “negative world” in which the hostility toward Christian morality will increase, then what we need now, especially now, are pastors who stay closer than ever to the Scriptures, who are circumspect in their use of social media—who make clear the difference between airing their own opinions and the moment when they step before their congregation to say, “Hear the Word of the Lord.” The Word draws and repels. The last thing a pastor should want is for his political punditry to detract from (or be confused with!) the message he has been divinely commissioned to deliver.

But the question of competency and calling applies also to those in the congregation called to truthful witness in the public square. These believers need to be equipped for their task, much the way a pastor and church will pour into their congregation’s artists, businesspeople, nonprofit workers, and schoolteachers.

In this case, a Christian who is called to public service should not seek to be “balanced” at all times in what he or she says. Partisanship is not a dirty word but an unavoidable element of political engagement in our day. A politician can and must speak more directly to issues of competence and calling. If a political strategist is working for a GOP lawmaker, for example, we wouldn’t expect to hear public criticism of that representative or the institutions that support that campaign.

Political alliances do not require selling out the faith. Truthful witness can and must occur in the various spheres of life, politics included.

3. We need all types.

The beauty of truthful witness is that it is a community affair. We need each other—with various gifts and skills—if our witness is to be full and robust.

It’s foolish to expect any one individual—pastor or politician—to embody the essence of truthful witness in the public square. We need the whole body of Christ for this task, each person playing a role. Some people may be temperamentally inclined toward peacemaking in the political realm, and therefore less devoted to critiquing or calling out the people or policies he disagrees with. Others may have reforming impulses, always improving policies and working toward party clarity and cohesion. Some believers have a prophetic edge, a gift for telling people how to think and what to do practically, in the moment, while others are more like loyal foot soldiers, making up the mass required for party allegiance.

We don’t want everyone doing everything. We want everyone doing something, and that something should be within a person’s sphere of competency and calling.

Unfortunately, we are still figuring out how to deal with social media (and how it deals with us!), and this new phenomenon often puts a strain on leaders with different gifts, pressuring all of us to move out of our areas of competence and calling. Most of the time, calling out another Christian on Twitter for a posture or position you don’t like isn’t courageous, especially if your followers expect you to “go after” that kind of person anyway. Too often, social media imagines the world as a gigantic coliseum in which Twitter personalities duke it out for the cheering of their fans. Let’s not confuse social media dustups, which happen in a small part of the online world, with actual change or public witness.

And that leads me to a final thought, to be shared in the next column, about the need for us to “play the long game” politically by not letting our fervor for today’s cultural battles overheat our thought process and drive us toward compromising the truthful witness that must endure, whether it be politically plausible or not.


This is the eighth column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

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Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/encouragement-caution-culture-warriors/ Thu, 09 Jun 2022 04:10:01 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=484357 Counsel for younger evangelicals who are enthusiastic about the return of the culture-war mentality as a mode of public engagement.]]>

What should Christian public engagement look like as we move forward in this era? So far in this series, I’ve laid out some of the challenges facing traditional Christianity, and why it’s no surprise that some on the right claim a more combative posture is necessary for pushing back against harmful ideologies and practices in society.

Some Christians seem to believe that confrontational or combative approaches to public theology are inherently sub-Christian. This is not the case. Christianity has a long history of people willing to speak truth to power, to call into question the reigning ideologies of the day in the name of Christ the King.

Too often, the negative label of “culture-warring Christians” gets applied solely to Christians who oppose ideologies common on the left. When left-leaning Christians call out politicians or pastors who support sinful beliefs or behaviors common to the right, they get described as “prophetic” and “courageous.” This is unfair. Culture warring requires two sides, and one can be a left-wing culture warrior just as easily as a right-wing one.

But, speaking of being “prophetic,” sometimes, we think courage and boldness consist in bloviating bluster, “destroying” the opposition, “owning the libs,” or mocking the “nutcases” we find on the other side of the aisle. No. It takes little courage to be bold in opposing those whom your closest friends, family members, or online followers would expect you to oppose. What takes courage is to police your own side, to call out the problems not only in “the culture” but in your particular subculture, to buck the consensus of your own tribe and go against the people whose favor you usually enjoy. Compromise always involves capitulation, but capitulation can happen in more than one direction.

It seems likely that we will see a return to something akin to the older culture-war mentality among younger evangelicals in the years to come. Rather than rule that option out of bounds, I think it better to offer some encouragement and caution for younger evangelicals who are enthusiastic about this mode of public engagement.

The Reality of Christian Warfare

First, let’s dispense with the idea that warfare has no place in Christianity. I remember restraining my laughter when, 15 years ago or so, progressive Christians were protesting the “unbiblical” martial imagery of many Christians and churches. In taking aim at conservatives, they were shooting the Bible.

The language of spiritual warfare is pervasive in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus blessed the peacemakers and called us to turn the other cheek, and yet he said he came to bring division, not unity. His was the sword that separated son from father, and daughter from mother. The apostle Paul used martial imagery, as did the other apostles. We are on a spiritual battlefield. The response to such circumstances is for the church to be, dare I say, militant. Downplaying the stakes fails to do justice to the Bible itself.

In this battle, Christianity is “on offense”—not in a way that implies we should seek to be offensive, to take it as a badge of honor when others are offended. No, to speak of Christianity “on offense” is simply another way of describing the image Jesus gave us when he said that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. Jesus’s statement imagines the church moving outward, plundering hell, and pushing back the forces of darkness. Passivity has no place in the Great Commission.

The Danger of Misidentifying the Enemy

But the danger for Christians who apply the New Testament’s warfare motifs to political engagement is that we can easily misidentify the enemy. The apostle Paul makes clear we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. It’s the church moving forward into battle against the powers and principalities that hold people captive—against the evil forces that wreak havoc in our world, the supernatural realities the Bible describes as present and persistent.

We must distinguish the serpent from his prey. This is why we seek to convert our opponents, not own or destroy them. We seek their rescue, not their ruin. As we’ve seen, “winsomeness” is not a strategy for cultural engagement, as if we could win cultural arguments simply by being “nice,” but lest we forget, we are deeply invested in winning over our opponents. As Augustine taught, we stand against the world for the good of the world.

The challenge for culture engagers is that we downplay the against—we become so focused on working for the good of the world that we adopt a conciliatory, affirmative posture that never runs into a hard line of antithesis, and thus we avoid any adversarial stance toward the world. The challenge for culture warriors is that we get so wrapped up in the drama of standing against what’s wrong that we are seized by contempt and resentment, and we forget who we are fighting for. In the Scriptural imagination, our fight is for our opponents, or at very least, for the people who will be harmed by what our opponents propose.

Culture engagers can easily neglect the reality of the spiritual warfare and eternal stakes. But culture warriors can lose sight of that spiritual battlefield, just in a different way—by reducing the cosmic picture of powers and principalities to temporary, earthly policies and positions (and the people who hold them). Jesus is clear: even if our neighbors become our enemies, we are to love our enemies, pray for them, and do good to them. This is the Christian way. Contempt must be killed.

No wonder we need the armor of God. An army that stays behind its walls has little need for that kind of protection. Paul’s metaphor assumes Christians will take a public and firm stand in the world so we can battle in ways unlike the world, as shining warriors who pierce the darkness, whose victory is always cross-shaped because Christ’s soldiers must be known for self-giving love.

The Hollowing Out of the Soul

Another caution for culture warriors is the possibility of fortifying the outer facade of Christian faithfulness while being hollowed out on the inside. Despite my concerns with Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option, I appreciate his insight that we cannot offer to the world what we do not possess. We cannot reach a culture if we have not built a culture of our own.

When the apostle Peter wrote a letter of encouragement and exhortation to Christians in distress—believers who lived on the margins of society, maligned and falsely accused, some imprisoned and a handful martyred—he reminded them of their status as “strangers and temporary residents” and then called them “to abstain from fleshly desires that war against you” (1 Pet. 2:11, CSB). Peter’s focus wasn’t on the battle being waged against them by unbelieving authorities; he started with the daily struggle going on in their hearts. In other words, Peter appeared less concerned about what unbelievers might do to the Christians physically than about what sin would do them spiritually.

Here’s the lesson for us: by focusing all our attention on the external threats to Christianity, we can miss the real and persisting internal threats that wreck our witness. Yes, transgender ideology may be an external threat to the religious freedom of Christian organizations, but surely pornography use in our congregations is the more pervasive and widespread tragedy of our day.

One can pin the decline of church membership and attendance in the past 50 years to cultural trends that make it more difficult to be a Christian, but this view would only make sense of some of the decline. The internal rot in our churches has contributed as much to our decline as any outward government pressure. The internal challenges we face are just as deadly as the external threats. Don’t miss the frightening prospect of Christians who might win a culture war and lose their souls.

The Danger of Friendly Fire

I must point out one more challenge for the neo–Religious Right to consider: the possibility of friendly fire. Anyone who has been in war before knows that one of the common dangers is friendly fire—to be wounded or killed by someone on your own side. The fog of war makes it easy for allies to be treated as enemies.

Culture wars are impossible without friendly fire and casualties among allies. And I fear we are already witnessing this development among those who push for a return to the culture-war mentality. We shoot our brothers and sisters.

Often, casualties from friendly fire do not occur because of differences in doctrine, but because of questions of wisdom and discernment. Because some churches and leaders adopt a different approach to cultural engagement, we may doubt their doctrinal soundness, ascribe pernicious motives to them, or label them compromisers or cowards.

It is far too easy for Christians, devoted to a righteous cause, to turn their attention from the battlefield to the barracks and seek to weed out anyone who doesn’t fight for the cause in the same way. Like the disciples ready to call down fire from heaven on a village, many who get caught up in the culture war too quickly call down fire on their brothers and sisters who may view and interpret the situation differently.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to cultural engagement. Christians with a different political calculus, with various regional sensibilities, temperaments, or experiences, may choose different courses of action. Debate over the best course of action is good and necessary. But culture warriors and culture engagers alike must be careful not to criticize unfairly or demean brothers and sisters whose different choices are not out of line with confessional faithfulness but flow from prudential judgments about how best to be faithful in the public square.

In the next column, I want to explore this idea further. Different parts of the body may have different roles to play. The local church is the most important among Christian associations but it’s by no means the only one. In the various spheres of culture, we need organizations and informal networks of people to operate in their strengths, and they need to mutually reinforce one another’s work. We need the whole body of Christ, with different congregations with different skills and gifts and passions, doing whatever it takes to serve Christ faithfully and show the world the beauty of the gospel.


This is the seventh column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

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Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/contextualize-tim-keller/ Tue, 07 Jun 2022 04:10:24 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=483826 A willingness to rethink and critique aspects of Tim Keller’s model of contextualization is the application of his approach, not its rejection.]]>

A few weeks ago, I began a series on the rise of the neo–Religious Right, starting off with (1) a brief history of the culture war, (2) the tendency to tear apart conviction from civility, (3) a closer look at the idea that we now inhabit a “negative world,” (4) why this feels like a blast from the past to me, and (5) the need to change the lens so as to complicate the “negative world” framework.

In the columns to come, I will get a little more prescriptive regarding how to engage in public life in fruitful and faithful ways, but there’s one more element I’d like to discuss first: pastor Tim Keller and his approach to culture.

James Wood’s Critique of Tim Keller

James Wood’s “How I Evolved on Tim Keller” is the best representative of constructive critique of Keller’s evangelistically front-facing “third way approach” to political engagement. “The evangelistic desire to minimize offense to gain a hearing for the gospel can obscure what our political moment requires,” Wood writes.

Wood agrees with Aaron Renn’s assessment of the church now inhabiting the “negative world,” in which society has turned decisively against Christianity’s moral vision. Keller’s strategy worked for the “neutral” but not for the “negative” world, and his pursuit of a “third way” often keeps him “above the fray”—unwilling to get his hands dirty in the rough and tumble world of politics, where pragmatic choices and concessions must take place. (Those who disagree with Wood’s assessment have pointed out that Manhattan at the turn of the century was already “negative,” not just “neutral,” toward Christianity. Those of us who serve in other parts of the country have heard Keller warn, for years, that many of the cultural assumptions of Manhattan are on their way to us.)

In his follow-up, “This Article Is Not About Tim Keller,” Wood clarifies his appreciation for Keller and focuses his critique on how the Keller framework is “appropriated by his disciples,” leading to the impression that, in a noble attempt to avoid tribalism, too many Christian leaders imply a moral equivalency between political options. 

“We need a good dose of Christian realism, I propose. Or, to put it in Bonhoefferian terms, we need to be more attuned to the ‘concrete’ circumstances in which we find ourselves and seek to understand what ‘responsible’ action looks like therein.” 

I placed the second article from Wood in my weekly “Trevin’s Seven” list of links for my newsletter subscribers—not because I agreed with it all, but because I believe it’s good for Christians to look for new ways forward in this cultural moment. What’s more, my interest in and openness to this sort of conversation is because of Tim Keller’s influence on my thinking, not in spite of it.

So, I hope this column will be given fair consideration and evaluation by two types of people: (1) those who now mock and deride Tim Keller as representative of an outdated, old-fashioned (perhaps even closet-progressive!) approach to culture, and (2) those who believe Tim Keller is sacrosanct, above and beyond critique, so that anyone who questions aspects of his public theology must be driven by hate, fear, or unrighteousness.

Justification and Defensiveness

First, if there’s anything Tim Keller has emphasized in his decades of ministry, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ and, particularly, the transformative power of being justified by faith alone.

When the truth of our being declared righteous because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ seeps into our hearts, we’re no longer as apt to react defensively and self-righteously when criticized. We expect others to reveal the lingering flaws in our character and outlook. We’re not to look down on others, and whenever we do succumb to snobbery, we seek the Lord’s forgiveness and pray his grace will flow through us to others. A disciple of Keller who sneers at people whose political calculus or public posture may differ betrays the emphasis Keller himself puts on grace and its power.

Examining Ministry Models

Second, all ministry models wind up being inspected, altered, and sometimes rejected by leaders in subsequent generations.

Keller himself has written about various models of ministry and has critiqued the excesses he sees in different ministry philosophies. All ministry models have strengths and weaknesses, and no one is better than Keller at pointing them out. Nobody’s model of ministry is above critique.

Therefore, we should not be surprised when Keller’s own way of approaching politics and culture receives criticism from younger evangelicals. It’s the upholding of one method to the exclusion of the insights from all others that Keller warns against, which means the last thing people should assume is that Keller has written “the last word” on these matters and now his way is to be enshrined as the only faithful approach in our day.

Contextualization and Ministry

Third, Keller emphasizes the importance of contextualization and the need to adapt our posture, approach, and practices in response to a community’s needs. He writes,

“Contextualization is not—as is often argued—“giving people what they want to hear.” Rather, it is giving people the Bible’s answers, which they may not at all want to hear, to questions about life that people in their particular time and place are asking, in language and forms they can comprehend, and through appeals and arguments with force they can feel, even if they reject them.”

A couple years ago, I was in a group that spent a couple hours with Tim discussing topics like apologetics, the need for catechesis, and culture shifts and ministry responses. Near the end of our time together, he surprised us by saying he doesn’t think his past preaching is a great model of what we’d been talking about all day. The next generation will need to do something different than what he did, he told us.

To be clear, Tim wasn’t expressing regret for how he’d preached. What he meant was this: what will be needed in the next generation is preaching that doesn’t just model his method or approach but that takes into consideration the new cultural moment and responds in all the ways we’ve been discussing. In other words, contextualization, not just mimicry! 

A Time to Build

Fourth, younger evangelicals will serve the church well if, in looking forward, we don’t cut ourselves off from faithful men and women who have gone before us. Instead, we ought to see our work as building upon their insights, sometimes going beyond their work, and sometimes altering aspects that no longer fit the cultural moment.

Too much of today’s discourse leads to an all-or-nothing approach in which any theologian, writer, leader, pastor, or politician is put in the “good” or “bad” category. This reductionist approach impoverishes us. If we refuse to learn from any pastor or theologian—no matter how personally devout, biblically rooted, or theologically beneficial—who doesn’t line up exactly with the latest theological position or political proposal, we reject the way of wisdom.

In a world dominated by social media flame-throwing, it’s easy to build a platform by tearing down the good work others have constructed. I am often disappointed to see pastors or seminary students online dripping with disdain and contempt toward their “ignorant” or “evil” opponents. Keller has been on the receiving end of this derision, yes, but some who claim Keller as a model treat their opponents in the same way Keller gets treated. This kind of all-or-nothing approach damages our witness and blocks our way forward.

Seasons of Church Life

Finally, a close reading of Tim Keller allows for various conversations about the best political posture, depending on the “season” the church finds herself in. Here’s how Keller describes the seasons:

  • Winter describes a church that is not only in a hostile relationship to a pre-Christian culture but is gaining little traction; seeing little distinctive, vital Christian life and community; and seeing no evangelistic fruit. In many cultures today, the church is embattled and spiritually weak.
  • Spring is a situation in which the church is embattled, even persecuted, by a pre-Christian culture, but it is growing (e.g., the church in China).
  • Summer is what Niebuhr described as an “allied church,” where the church is highly regarded by the public and where we find so many Christians in the centers of cultural production that Christians feel at home in the culture.
  • Autumn is where we find ourselves in the West today, becoming increasingly marginalized in a post-Christian culture and looking for new ways to both strengthen our distinctiveness and reach out winsomely.

He concludes,

“We should inhabit the model that fits our convictions, whose ‘tool kit’ best fits our gifts. Once we know our model, we should be able, depending on the cultural seasons and context, to use tools from the other kits.”

In other words, Keller himself is open to various churches and individuals seeking to best apply their gifts to the current moment.

Be Open to Critique

One of the things I most appreciate about Tim Keller is the way he listens to people who disagree with him.

In a recent episode of Mere Fidelity, Keller claimed that Christianity is not a religion that fits easily into ideological categories. It’s not a middle road but a “patchwork of extremes.” And yet, the search for a “third way” on every issue, something Keller often does, comes from a peacemaking impulse that is as much temperamental as theological. “Sometimes I overdo it,” he admitted.

That self-awareness—the sensibility to recognize that God is at work in many ministry models and through many types of people—comes from a confidence grounded in Christ’s righteousness, unwavering faith in God’s sovereignty, and trust that the Spirit will bring fruit from the faithful preaching of the Word. Whatever parts of Tim Keller’s methods and model survive the next 50 years, I pray those characteristics of openness and curiosity will be evident.


This is the sixth column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

]]>
We Need to Complicate the Negative World https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/complicate-negative-world/ Thu, 02 Jun 2022 04:10:41 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=481705 Change the lens from sexuality to anthropology, and it becomes much harder to make the case that pre-1994 the culture was inclined toward a ‘positive’ view of true Christianity.]]>

Anyone effective at persuading other people understands that the way we choose to frame a discussion, establish categories, or create labels carries an inordinate influence on setting the terms of the debate. That’s why it’s vital to interrogate not only the surface disagreements but also the underlying framework if you’re going to find any amount of meaningful consensus.

A few weeks ago, I began a series on the rise of the neo–Religious Right, starting off with (1) a brief history of the culture war, (2) the tendency to tear apart conviction from civility, and then (3) a closer look at the idea that we now inhabit a “negative world” and (4) why this feels like a blast from the past to me. I’ve been interacting with Aaron Renn’s account of recent evangelical history:

  • Before 1994, we lived in the “positive world” where the culture had a positive view of Christianity.
  • From 1994 to 2014, we lived in the “neutral world,” where the culture was neither positive nor negative toward Christianity.
  • Since 2014, the cultural landscape has shifted and Christian morality is seen as reprehensible, so we must find new strategies for living faithfully in a world that opposes true Christianity.

In the previous column, I pointed out the powerful impact of imagining oneself in the “negative world,” because this was how I saw myself and my church back in the early 1990s when Renn says we still lived in the “positive world.”

The Shift on Sexuality

Today, I want to point out another feature of Renn’s taxonomy that deserves attention: the underlying narrow scope of controversy that supports his perspective.

Renn points to a cultural shift that took place nearly a decade ago (which, incidentally, Tim Keller and Stephen McAlpine also note). If you’re tracking cultural norms surrounding morality and sexuality, then Renn is right: before 1994, most of society had a largely positive view of Christianity’s teaching on marriage, family, and sexuality (even if cracks showed up from the 1950s on, as the birth control pill severed sex from procreation, setting the stage for a radically revised view of sex—not to mention the loosening of laws related to divorce, etc.).

Of course, we Christians in the 1990s who saw ourselves as a besieged remnant in a godless culture would have said we were in the “negative” and not just the “neutral” world already. (It was 1996 when the Southern Baptist Convention boycotted Disney for their subversion of traditional family values!) Not to belabor the point I made in the last column, but it deserves repeating: the self-perception of living in the “negative world”—whether it’s truly accurate or not—has tremendous power on the psyche and posture of churchgoers.

But who can deny that societal opinion has turned decisively against Christian views of sexuality and marriage in the past decade? Renn’s taxonomy captures a movement from positive to neutral to negative on this issue. And that movement comes with massive implications. Carl Trueman can trace the philosophical ride that started centuries ago, but no one can dispute the rapid shift in the last 20 years on issues such as same-sex marriage and transgender ideology. The metaphysical implications go well beyond bathroom battles. Even if you pinpoint the dates differently than Renn does, on this issue, his taxonomy makes sense.

Change the Lens

But there’s the catch. Sexuality is one (very important) issue of Christian concern. But the best way to test a framework proposed as a general way for seeing the world is to change the lens so you look at it with another issue in mind.

What happens when we change the issue from the norms of morality and sexuality to societal views of racial justice? One could make the case that, on this issue, we’ve moved the other way—from negative to neutral to positive, where society now favors a view more favorable to biblical Christianity: that all human beings, regardless of ethnicity, are worthy of respect and dignity and equal protection under the law. This doesn’t mean there’s no longer work to be done in this area, nor does it discount the challenges that recent essentialist views of race pose to a biblical worldview. But certainly we can agree that the cultural pressures on this matter have shifted considerably in the past 60 years.

Picture a faithful minister of Jesus Christ holding to a deeply Christian view of humanity and equality in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s. Would he have described himself as living in a “positive world”? This was a time when white ministers were beaten, and sometimes killed, for their witness to biblical truth and their defense of black brothers and sisters who faced injustice and brutality. This was an era in which black ministers saw their homes and churches bombed and their neighbors lynched.

For 200 years prior to the Civil Rights Movement, Christians who understood the biblical vision of human beings marked by the image of God and who sought to live according to the “pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ” stood with heroes like Frederick Douglass against the “corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity” all over the country. And they paid a price for faithfulness during that era. This was a negative world toward true Christianity. Baptists in Montgomery, Alabama, warned the great English preacher, Charles Spurgeon, that if he “should ever show himself in these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its way around his eloquent throat.”

Change the lens from sexuality to anthropology, and it becomes much harder to make the case that pre-1994 the culture was inclined toward a “positive” view of true Christianity. Which is why I doubt many brothers and sisters from the Black Church tradition would find the positive/neutral/negative taxonomy helpful.

Always Negative and Positive

I acknowledge that Renn captures something of the shift in societal views of sexuality, and the implications are indeed massive: we hear of professors being denied tenure, businesspeople afraid to share their views, the encroachment of DEI initiatives that leave Christians concerned for their jobs, Christian schools under fire for teaching basic biblical truths, and more. Nothing I’ve said denies these challenges are real and likely to increase in the days ahead. John Stonestreet of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview has said we need a “theology of losing our jobs,” and he’s right. Taking the Christian stand is costly.

But my point is this: taking a stand for true Christianity has always been costly. Christian ministers lost their jobs in the 1960s for doing nothing more than allowing African Americans to attend worship! In some way or another, we’ve been in the negative world since the time of the New Testament, but the form of that hostility toward the faith changes depending on the place and the era. And the opportunities—where society smiles on aspects of Christianity—change too. We live in positive, neutral, and negative worlds simultaneously, depending on the issue.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens, and John Piper says that line is “true at every point in the history of a God-ruled, sin-pervaded world.” In 1859, the year Dickens first wrote those words, God was doing mighty things in China and Northern Ireland, where religious awakenings were taking place. Charles Spurgeon was one of the world’s greatest preachers, and George Müller’s orphanages showed Christian compassion to the least fortunate. But 1859 was also the year Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which undermined the uniqueness of humanity as made in God’s image. It was the year John Stuart Mill wrote an influential essay that weighed moral decisions and valued people based on their usefulness to society.

So, what do we say about our times? How do we put all of this together—things that seem like progress and things that seem like decline? “Don’t assume any specific historical trajectory of good or evil is fixed and unchangeable,” Piper cautions. “God evidently loves to do his surprising work in hard and unlikely times.” That’s good counsel because it gets to the heart of our faith. The gospel shows God doing the most amazing things in the most unlikely times.

The problem with letting the “negative world” frame occupy an outsize part of your imagination is that it chains you to a too-narrow scope of seeing the world and then limits the possibilities you can see. We must beware of both the myth of progress and the myth of decline. “The world is what the saints and the prophets saw it was; it is not merely getting better or merely getting worse,” wrote G. K. Chesterton. “There is one thing that the world does; it wobbles.”

In the next column, we’ll get back to the rise of the neo–Religious Right and the return of the culture war. I don’t have a political program or a particular proposal to put forward, but I want to lean on some past experience to provide a few cautions and (hopefully) some wise counsel as we discern potential ways forward for faithful witness in this era.


This is the fifth column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

]]>
Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/grow-up-negative-world/ Tue, 31 May 2022 04:10:50 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=481583 Why I’m skeptical of claims that we’ve just now entered a period of hostility toward Christianity.]]>

Is it true our society has made a decisive transition with regard to Christianity? Have we left behind a cultural world that was largely positive toward Christianity and entered a cultural world that is profoundly negative toward Christianity? And if so, should we allow this cultural shift to be the lens through which we view the relationship between ourselves, as committed Christians, and the surrounding culture?

This move from positive to negative is explored by Aaron Renn in his widely read essay for First Things, which I first engaged in my previous column, the third in my series on the rise of the neo–Religious Right. The first two columns in the series cover its history and lineage and the tendency to split conviction from civility.

By way of reminder, Renn’s taxonomy goes like this: American culture was largely positive toward Christianity until 1994, then was neutral toward Christianity for two decades, but since 2014 it has turned negative toward Christianity. I noted that Tim Keller points to that same time for a cultural shift, as does Australian leader Stephen McAlpine.

Aaron Renn’s taxonomy works well as a conversation starter because (1) it’s hard to deny the rapid cultural shift of the past 10 years and (2) Renn’s framing implies a prescriptive element. It suggests that previous ways of engaging the culture are now outdated, perhaps suitable for previous eras but no longer relevant.

But Renn’s essay does not provide a prescription such as a new strategy or fresh tactics; instead it offers a description of this cultural moment so that evangelicals will be motivated to carve out a new path forward. Indeed, Renn believes too many are still living in the past, assuming the world is still positive or neutral to them. He writes,

“Rather than extend existing strategies forward into the future, evangelicals could, and should, grapple seriously with what it means for them to live in the negative world. What strategies should be employed for this era? Unlike previous eras, the negative world necessitates a variety of approaches to match the diversity of situations in which American Christians find themselves. Finding a path forward will probably require trial and error and a new set of leaders with different skills and sensibilities.”

Today, I want to point out some limitations of this way of framing things, because I believe the moment in which we find ourselves is more complicated than Renn’s framing and the proposals likely to follow. In the next column, we’ll look at what I consider to be the most glaring weakness in this approach.

Is the Negative World New?

First, we need to ask whether the year 2014 is a good marker. Is the existential “feel” of living in a world hostile to Christianity this recent?

As someone who grew up in a household committed to the aims and goals of the religious right, I thought we were in the negative world as far back as the early 1990s, even before Renn claims we shifted from positive to neutral. The Carman song I mentioned in the first post in this series was from 1992—it chronicled America’s slide into godlessness and claimed the only way for the country to survive the decade was to turn back to God in a revival.

If I could go back to tell my adolescent self, Actually, you’re still in a world positive toward your faith, but the culture is about to change to just being neutral to Christianity, I’m convinced I’d be laughed at by my former self, and by my family too. Like most evangelicals at the time, we were convinced we lived in the negative world. And I grew up in the Bible Belt!

This is why I remain skeptical of taxonomies like the one from Renn—not because they don’t have merit (they almost always do), but because they’re almost always too tidy, and they’re usually connected to some sort of proposal intended to mobilize a voter bloc. Political engagement becomes the most important lever for effecting social change. (To be clear, Renn’s essay does not do this, but many of the responders leaning on his work do.)

Perhaps the air of urgency was imaginary and those dire circumstances we feared in the early 1990s were overstated, and Renn is right—we were fooled into thinking the world was negative toward us when in reality, we were only reacting to the change from positive to neutral. But, as a way of imagining the world and our place in it, living in negative world was deeply formative for our manner of cultural engagement and how we saw the church fulfilling her mission. (When I was 13 and 14, I wrote a series of short stories about Christians in 2050 being driven from America because of persecution.)

What’s more, it took travel to other parts of the world, where I interacted with people who’d experienced political suppression and genuine persecution, to open my eyes to a wider array of Christian concerns, many of which I’d conveniently ignored or neglected when my focus was on electoral victories. For the most part, I still agree with my adolescent self on principles and policies, but my range of Christian concern has expanded and my expectations for cultural change through politics have been chastened.

So, even while I recognize the shifts in cultural sentiment in the past 10 years that Renn, Keller, and McAlpine point out, I’m hesitant to adopt the “negative world” framing because, whatever its merits, I’ve seen easily how it can narrow our scope of concern and warp our reading of Scripture.

The Question of Taking Cues

“But,” you might say, “culture engagers who try to stay ‘above the fray’ in politics can have warped readings of Scripture too, right?” Absolutely. And that brings me to my second point: we all tend to take cues from people we’re trying to reach.

Renn’s essay critiques culture engagers for adopting strategies that “take cues” from the secular elite consensus. In order to attract secular elites or celebrities to their churches, many of the culture-engaging pastors who resist the old-guard religious right are known for “punching right and coddling left.” In other words, you want to reach the secular and the elite, and the way you do so is by sharing a sense of disdain toward other classes or segments of people who don’t deserve or receive cultural favor.

The culture engagers, feeling the pressure of the elite consensus, look for ways to “synchronize” their views wherever possible, and race and immigration become the two most obvious touchpoints. “Their rhetoric in these areas is increasingly strident and ­ever more aligned with secular political positions,” Renn writes.

“Meanwhile, they have further softened their stance and rhetoric on flashpoint social issues. They talk often about being holistically pro-life and less about the child in the womb. While holding to ­traditional teachings on sexuality, they tend to speak less about Christianity’s moral prohibitions and more about how the church should be a welcoming place for ‘sexual minorities,’ emphasizing the church’s past failures in this regard.”

I don’t doubt this pressure exists and that some culture engagers may, even unintentionally, “synchronize” their positions when they can. The younger culture warriors are right to put their finger on this temptation.

That said, the culture-warring populist response can wind up doing the very same thing, but in the opposite direction. Punch left and coddle right. If you’re trying to reach a segment of the population that often feels forgotten—a people united in their disdain for “the left” or “the elites”—you will feel the pressure to synchronize your concerns with right-wing podcasters and conservative talk show hosts. Your prioritization of concerns will shift toward the people whose favor you care about most, and in this case, fighting racial injustice or echoing the Bible’s instruction about caring for the immigrant and stranger will likely not score as high on your list. Culture warriors are not immune to the temptation to soft-pedal the biblical commands in certain areas, so as not to offend the sensibilities of people in their community.

I included an example of this tendency in my book The Multi-Directional Leader. A pastor on the West Coast planned to mention the evil of abortion during a time of public prayer and received pushback by members of his staff, who worried some visitors might be offended. He found it interesting that in previous prayer times, no one had questioned his stance on issues related to a Christian’s care for immigrants or our country’s racial injustice. Meanwhile, a pastor in the Deep South experiences the opposite. Church members expect the pastor to pray for the end of abortion, but grow nervous when prayers focus on the less fortunate, the immigrant, or victims of racial discrimination. (Maybe he’s woke?!)

The way we imagine our place in the world and the world’s posture toward us will affect our witness. And adopting uncritically the view that we’re in a “negative world” can lead us to sidestep volatile issues, to compromise the breadth of the gospel’s challenge to the culture by narrowing the scope of Scripture. A view of the church’s mission only focused on “seeking the peace of Babylon” will likely lead to naivete at how much we are formed by the culture. But a view of the church’s mission focused primarily on defiance or regaining dominance will lead to tunnel focus and a reductionist mission as well.

In the next column, I’ll point out a factor that complicates the view that we are living in the “negative world.”


This is the fourth column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

]]>
Navigating the (New?) Negative World https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/navigating-negative-world/ Thu, 26 May 2022 04:10:38 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=480956 Aaron Renn, Tim Keller, and Stephen McAlpine all point to the early to mid-2010s as marking a shift of cultural hostility toward Christians in the public square. What were the galvanizing issues?]]>

Cultural analyst Aaron Renn marks 2014 as the year when the ground shifted under our feet, and we moved from being a society with a posture largely “neutral” to “negative” toward Christianity. Renn is not alone in this evaluation. Australian pastor and public theologian Stephen McAlpine identifies this as the time period “when you became the bad guy.”

Many younger evangelicals now express a sense of disorientation—recognizing that the ground beneath us has shifted—and conclude that we can no longer rely on the strategies of our culture-warring grandparents or culture-engaging parents as we meet the challenges of this new era.

Last week, I traced the line from the culture warriors of the 1980s and 1990s to the countermovement of “culture engagers,” and then to the rise of a neo–Religious Right. A few days ago, I followed up with a column exploring why many on the right urge a more confrontational and combative approach to politics, rejecting aspirational descriptors like “winsome” and “thoughtful.”

3 Worlds of Evangelicalism

Today, I want to begin with the taxonomy Aaron Renn provides in his essay in First Things, “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism.” He describes three distinct stages within the story of American secularization:

  • The Positive World (pre-1994) was when society retained a mostly positive view of Christianity, and thus being an upstanding member of a faith community brought social benefits. Christian moral norms pervaded society.
  • The Neutral World (1994–2014) was when society took a neutral stance toward Christianity, neither privileging nor disfavoring the faith. One could be religious (or not) without losing social status. Christian moral norms retained a residual effect.
  • The Negative World (2014–present) describes the present state of society and its negative view of Christianity. To be a traditional Christian is detrimental, not beneficial, to your status. Christian morality is seen as harmful, repressive, and threatening to the public good.

Changing Atmosphere Since 2014

For 30 years or so, many evangelical leaders either dismissed or sneered at the excesses of the old religious right’s quest for power in the 1980s and 1990s. But now, a younger generation is saying “OK boomer” to the pastors who sought out a non-partisan, apolitical approach to cultural engagement. “That’s not going to work,” they say. “The world is growing more and more hostile to people of faith. The rules have changed.”

Since 2014, Renn claims, the winds have shifted considerably in our society and now blow against traditional Christianity. Stephen McAlpine points to the same time period when locating our culture’s move from “dispassionate disinterest” in Christianity to “hostile interest.” Take, for example, higher education; the hostility toward Christianity present in the university framework 30 or 40 years ago has now become mainstream thinking, so it’s commonly understood that “Christianity is the problem in the culture that we need to slough off and find a new direction in a post-Christian West that will lead us to the liberty that Christianity promised but couldn’t deliver.”

Fast forward to today, and it’s no wonder many believe any hope of winning over others through “winsomeness” is a futile political strategy. It’s time to be shrewd as serpents. The neo–Religious Right types don’t care about appearing “winsome” before the “cultural elites”; they want to win political battles.

For some in this camp, the goal is to preserve space for Christians to live according to their convictions. For others, it’s to see the Christian vision of morality become dominant again. In either case, the best way to love our neighbors in this moment is not to stay “above the fray,” focused primarily on pastoral approaches to surviving in Babylon, but to promote political programs that will aid the common good and end unjust laws. Public theology, then, must counter head-on people who are deeply deceived and actively harmed by the pernicious ideologies they espouse.

2 Galvanizing Issues

Two of these ideologies stand out, and both have gained significant traction since 2014: (1) an essentialist view of racial identity, resulting in heightened identity politics, and (2) neo-gnostic theories about gender and sexuality that disparage social norms, create confusion (resulting in depression and despair among adolescents), and demand treatment through medical interventions that damage healthy bodies.

(On this point, many Christians believe these trendy “gender affirmation” treatments will one day be repudiated at the same level that we now reject the lobotomies and electric shock therapies embraced by previous generations. In other words, these (perhaps) well-intentioned but deeply misguided and harmful gender “solutions” are driven more by groupthink than real science or psychology.)

I highlight the transgender conversation here because it is the best example of rapid social change, and because it represents the leading edge of religious liberty’s erosion. To be clear, the concern is not primarily directed at people who experience gender dysphoria. (Even the most vocal opponents of new gender theories advocate compassion toward adolescents in genuine distress over their bodily reality.) The challenge we face is a culture that seeks to enshrine the central tenets of this trendy ideology into permanent civil law, suppress pushback by labeling dissenters as bigots, and foster a culture in which dysphoria is more likely to occur, not less.

Loss of the Umbrella

Renn says the ground shifted in 2014. Interestingly, that was also the year when Tim Keller (often considered one of the primary examples of the culture engagers) explained why Christians suddenly felt the change in atmosphere. We’ve always had devout and secular people, he said, but the people in the “mushy middle” who once leaned toward nominal Christianity now lean toward secularism.

So what’s happening is the roof has come off for the devout. The devout had a kind of a shelter, an umbrella. . . . You had the devout, you had the secular, and you had that middle ground that made it hard to speak disrespectfully of traditional values. That middle ground [is now more likely to identify with the secular than with the religious]. . . . And so . . . the devout suddenly realize that they are out there, that the umbrella is gone, and they are taking a lot of flak for their views, just public flak.

Keller used the White House’s controversy over inviting Louie Giglio to pray at the 2012 inauguration as an example of the kind of flak conservative Christians were receiving. “It was enormously discouraging,” he said, as it implied traditional Christians “don’t even have a right to be in the public square.”

In sum, Aaron Renn’s taxonomy of positive/neutral/negative worlds—much like Tim Keller’s umbrella analogy and Stephen McAlpine’s book Being the Bad Guyswields significant explanatory power for why Christians are feeling and reacting in particular ways in this moment. But there’s been a divergence between culture engagers and culture warriors on how best to respond to that shift in the atmosphere.

In 2014, most evangelicals saw the changing cultural consensus as ominous and believed we should do whatever we can to carve out space for Christian freedom (a quasi–Benedict Option perhaps). The election of Donald Trump in 2016 opened up new possibilities and avenues for cultural engagement, offering hope that perhaps this negative world could be not only resisted quietly but confronted outright and turned back. And that has led to an increasing divergence of views as to how evangelicals should meet this moment.

In the next column, I want to return to Aaron Renn’s taxonomy and interrogate it a little more, because a wider frame complicates the picture and may enlarge the imaginative possibilities for moving forward.


This is the third column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

]]>
The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/tearing-apart-convictional-civility/ Tue, 24 May 2022 04:10:37 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=480239 How did “winsome” and “thoughtful” become trigger words for some on the right? Here we take a closer look at two approaches to faithful living in Babylon.]]>

Something has changed in the air of evangelicalism in recent years. Once-aspirational words like “winsome” and “thoughtful” or descriptors like “nuanced” and “kind” now trigger an attitude of dismissiveness and sneering from many on the right.

For some, these words describe a mindset too focused on currying favor with the world. It’s too accommodating to engage in this way with the “cultural elites” whose leftward politics wreak havoc in society. The “winsome” may have good intentions, according to this view, but their attitude and actions demonstrate an extraordinary naïveté in relation to politics and cultural change.

How did we get to the point where some Christians spurn civility? In my previous column, I offered a brief look at the rise of a “neo–Religious Right” and explained why some younger evangelicals thirst for a more confrontational approach to engaging the culture. Today, I want to dig a little deeper into the reasons why some have repudiated a more evangelistically front-facing, pastoral posture to culture change and now call for a more combative, political approach.

Winsomeness Doesn’t Win

Why do words like “nuance” and “winsome” receive sneers from some on the right today? Because the strategies these descriptors represent are seen by many as having failed. Society is changing quickly, and not favorably toward Christianity.

Christians have experienced a rapid shift in which traditional Christianity has been downgraded from respectable to reprehensible. For example, in 2008, Rick Warren prayed at President Obama’s inauguration. Just four years later, Louie Giglio—who shares roughly the same theological framework and approach—was deemed too controversial to do the same. When prominent, well-regarded pastors, such as Max Lucado and Tim Keller, are seen as hateful and bigoted (with Keller even having an award rescinded), how can anyone be so naive to think that “thoughtfulness” or “winsomeness” can earn the right to a hearing?

Younger evangelicals recognize instinctively that no amount of goodwill or winsomeness will create warm feelings among those who claim Christian moral teaching is repressive and harmful. Christians don’t win a hearing by “playing nice.” And so, we’re told, the need of the hour is to be forthright, bold, and confrontational. The culture war is upon us, and we need to stand up and fight.

2 Approaches to Life in Babylon

Although we can spot similarities, we shouldn’t assume younger evangelicals are picking up the same playbook as the old religious right. Unlike our parents and grandparents, most of us agree that we’re in Babylon, not Israel. The difference is in how best to live as exiles in Babylon.

For a generation now, many evangelicals have assumed we’re a moral minority living in a world that is, if not hostile, at least barely tolerant of our views. Over the years, the prophet Jeremiah’s letter to the Babylonian exiles (Jer. 29) has been the go-to text for helping us live faithfully in these times.

“Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Find wives for yourselves, and have sons and daughters. . . . Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.” (vv. 5–7, CSB)

In other words, remember, Christian, that you are not “at home.” Your task is to live faithfully, to increase in number, and to pursue the well-being of Babylon, praying to the Lord on behalf of the city while you seek its flourishing. That’s the way many evangelical pastors and leaders engaged this cultural moment.

But there’s another way of looking at how to be faithful in Babylon—and it requires us not merely to pursue the well-being of the city, but to expose its idolatrous, tyrannical facade. After all, that’s what Augustine did in The City of God. That’s why you find an increasing number of younger evangelicals saying it’s time to be like Daniel—to stand in the window and pray publicly, no matter what earthly rules we transgress or tyrants we cross. To be like the captives who refused the king’s meat. To defy the command to bow to the statue.

Pulling Apart Conviction and Civility

Rightly understood, these two postures do not have to be in conflict.

The confrontational types would say defiance is precisely the way we pursue the well-being of the city, and the winsome types would say there’s no better example of convictional kindness than the attitude on display in Daniel and his friends. And both sides make a good point. This is what David Dockery calls convictional civility, and it’s what we should all aspire to, whether you think the emphasis today should be placed on civility or on conviction in terms of your posture.

Unfortunately, what happens (often online) is that the kindness aspect of convictional civility gets reframed as “weakness” and “accommodation,” or the convictional aspect gets viewed as “hateful” or “mean-spirited.” The result is a pulling apart of two camps—a vicious polarization—so that conviction and kindness get pitted against one another. Those who emphasize the need to be civil and peaceable begin to shy away from stating with boldness their convictions (so as not to appear like those mean-spirited jerks) and those who emphasize the need for boldness and confrontation move away from kindness and respect (so as not to appear wishy-washy or convictionless). Each camp then cheers on the worst impulses of its side.

What happens next? Well, just as it’s easy for those who emphasize civility to slide into relativism or compromise, it’s possible for those who emphasize confrontation to move from an attitude of respectful defiance to a posture of ill-will or a quest for dominance. In such an instance, the goal is no longer faithfulness in refusing to bend the knee but instead taking control of the levers of power in order to coerce or “defeat” our “enemies.” It assumes the political landscape is ground zero for cultural change and Christians must win at all costs. There are reasons why this road is attractive right now, and we’ll look more closely at this trend in future columns.

A Few Takeaways

I do not have simple answers as to how to extricate ourselves from this mess, but there are several takeaways I hope we can all acknowledge.

First, winsomeness is not a political strategy. We do not seek to be kind and gentle merely as a strategy for winning over our neighbors to our point of view. We seek these characteristics because our Lord commands and exemplifies them. Kindness is a fruit of the spirit.

Secondly, in different seasons of cultural change, the church can and should shift its public posture. We fool ourselves if we think that only one of the typical postures (Christ “above” culture, or Christ “against” culture) will fit all times and circumstances.

Third, some Christians may be temperamentally inclined to a particular posture, while others may be more gifted in displaying different virtues necessary for faithfulness. We should not insist on a cookie-cutter approach to cultural engagement. The idea of a one-size-fits-all approach in the United States of America is ridiculous; we live in a country with various cultures and subcultures. We should listen to and learn from leaders who may demonstrate different approaches depending on their context.

Fourth, we should all be conscious of different avenues toward compromise. It’s true that the greater danger for “winsome” and “thoughtful” pastors might be to compromise Christian convictions out of desire to win favor with left-leaning cultural influencers and political activists. It’s also true that the danger of “confrontational” and “combative” pastors and leaders will be to compromise Christian convictions and characteristics out of a desire to curry favor with right-leaning “culture warriors”—to dismiss or downplay common Christian decency or disregard our Lord’s commands so as to look like a “fighter” and garner the respect of others in the political battle. No one is immune to the temptation to win the favor of the world; the question is, Which group’s favor would be more likely to cause you to compromise your convictions, and in what way? 

Next up, we’ll look at Aaron Renn’s “Three Worlds of Evangelicalism,” which seeks to describe the changing cultural moment and why younger evangelicals are responding differently than previous generations.


This is the second column in an ongoing series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

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The Return of the Culture War https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/return-culture-war/ Thu, 19 May 2022 04:10:42 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=479714 We are witnessing the rise of a neo–Religious Right. How did we get here? A brief history.]]>

Here’s something you often hear people say as they get older: “I remember the last time that was popular.” Fashions once considered outdated come back in style. Movements arise and subside, and then surge again. A benefit of age is the wisdom and perspective you bring to the current moment. History doesn’t always repeat itself or move in predictable cyclical patterns, but the more you study it and the longer you live, the more you see how the present and the past rhyme.

I must be getting older, because ever since I turned 40 last year, I’ve said several times, “I remember the last time that was popular.” Most recently, I’ve been saying that about online debates over the proper posture for Christians seeking to engage the culture in this era. I see the resurgence of a neo–Religious Right—a return of the culture war mentality among many younger evangelicals who believe the need of the hour is for the church to jump into the fray of hardball politics and be bolder and louder in opposing leftward trends that are harmful for society.

I say “neo–Religious Right” because it’s not exactly the return of the Jerry Falwell era, and there are some crucial differences that set today’s thirst for culture warring apart from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation. We’ll get to some of those distinctions soon.

My History with the Religious Right

But this resurgence has piqued my interest because I came of age in the 1990s. My parents were part of the religious right. They followed state and national politics closely and got involved in local elections, with my father serving two terms on the city council. I remember the night of the 1994 midterms and the Gingrich-led “Contract with America.” In those crucial years of adolescence, Rush was on the radio, Jerry Falwell was sending out videos replete with right-wing talking points and conspiracy theories, Southern Baptists were boycotting Disney because of the company’s leftist agenda, men were gathering in Washington, DC, for Promise Keepers, and the character flaws of Bill Clinton were on full display (and worthy of our disgust).

Fighting for the soul of the country—the culture war mentality—was the demonstration of faithfulness. Churches were asleep, and Christians apathetic. It was time to wake up. The moment was urgent. As Carman sang in 1992, “The only way this nation can even hope to last this decade is to put God in America again!”

Historians debate the zenith of the religious right. Was it in the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan and the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment? The 1990s when Bill Clinton was impeached? Or the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, when voters made clear their disapproval of same-sex marriage? Whatever the case, the “moral majority” exerted considerable influence on politics and culture during these decades.

An Apolitical Counterpoint

At the same time as many pastors and church leaders sought to bring their convictions into the public square, a countermovement was taking place, most notably in the rise of megachurches and the “church growth movement.” Evangelism was front and center for these congregations. Emphasizing politics made it harder to reach people with varying philosophical and political commitments. Political posturing was divisive and counterproductive; even worse, it distracted from the church’s main mission of winning people to Jesus.

Another countermovement also existed—the religious left, though it was never as large or influential as the religious right. Leaders in this group often chastised white evangelicals for their political idolatry, but too often the religious left was just a mirror image of the kind of engagement they so despised—the only difference being the political priorities and positions aligned with the left rather than the right. As the Emerging Church movement got going in the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of the leaders who distanced themselves from the political postures of the right wound up walking in lockstep with partisans on the left.

By the time the Emerging Church conversation was at its height and evangelicals were cheering the Iraq War, I was a student at an evangelical university in Eastern Europe. My perspective on American politics had shifted considerably—not away from an underlying conservative political philosophy (which I continue to espouse), but due to my encounters with global Christianity, a wider range of reading, familiarity with different churches seeking to be faithful in various contexts, and seeing the American culture wars from the outside. Much of the attention the American church devoted to politics seemed wildly misplaced and misguided, out of step with churches in many other parts of the world.

So, I gravitated toward stronger distinctions that would help the church maintain its priority on discipleship and evangelism: (1) distinguishing between the church as an institution and Christians as individual believers and (2) prioritizing the mission of the church over the implications of Christians living out their faith. I tried to understand the cultural and historical reasons why many black Christians and white Christians who share confessional unity could be so divided on political priorities. I lamented the intrusion of political debates into every sphere of life.

Gospel Centrality and Mission

The gospel-centered movement that arose in the late 2000s and into the 2010s was, in part, an answer to the Emerging Church movement, whose aversion to institutions and authority prevented it from building structures that could sustain its growth. Look at the foundational documents for The Gospel Coalition (written in 2006) and you get a glimpse of the challenges facing the church during that era, including postmodernism’s effects on how we interpret Scripture.

The gospel-centered movement was also an answer to the prevalence of church growth philosophy. Leaders decried overly pragmatic approaches in the church, shared concerns about the decline of serious doctrinal instruction, and sought to reestablish the priority of the gospel itself as the unifying force for evangelicalism and the renewal of the church.

Gospel centrality, by nature of its spotlight on the fundamental message of Christianity, cut against the focus of many religious right–influenced churches. Political disagreements remained, but they were demoted. The excesses of the moral majority’s approach to politics were on display, and younger pastors turned away from that combative posture (although sometimes replacing cultural combat with intramural theological combativeness—commonly regarded as “cage-stage Calvinism”).

Synergy showed up in the gospel-centered movement and the missional conversations at the time because both rejected the politicizing of the church so often seen in the religious right as well as the leftward theological drift of the Emerging Church and religious left. This alliance made sense because the gospel and mission naturally go together, as the good news we spread is about the missionary heart of a God who seeks and saves the lost.

From Israel to Babylon

During this time, the old guard of the religious right appeared as more of a caricature of its former glory, with increasingly bizarre viewpoints put forth by gray heads with unmerited cultural confidence. For many younger pastors, the whole idea of “taking back” the country from godless forces felt like a lost cause. If older evangelicals thought of America as a type of Israel—a country chosen by God for special purposes in the world, younger evangelicals saw the country as a type of Babylon—a place where the true church will, for the foreseeable future, be a “moral minority,” prophetic from the margins.

The Israel/Babylon motif has shaped recent generational approaches to political involvement. The old religious right, in thinking of America as a type of Israel, reacted to current events as a betrayal of Christian heritage and prioritized politics as the mechanism for effecting change in society. Younger evangelicals, in thinking of America as Babylon, reacted to current events with a sense of resignation and prioritized pastoral help and counsel in a rapidly secularizing society.

But then, in the span of less than a decade, a series of convulsions reshaped the landscape. The Supreme Court decision redefining marriage for all 50 states in 2015, the rapid loss of political will to enact conscience protections and ensure religious liberty, and then the surprising victory of Donald Trump in 2016 (brought about by a resurgent religious right and widespread white evangelical support) changed the environment. The push for acceptance of gender theories that require a certain suspension of disbelief (not to mention the suppression of speech defining reality) only exacerbated the tensions.

Faithful in Babylon

The Israel/Babylon motif doesn’t capture the concerns of this current moment. The neo–Religious Right agrees with younger evangelicals that we’re in Babylon. The debate is about how the church should respond to this environment. What does faithfulness in Babylon look like?

The earlier sense of resignation, of being passive in the face of rapid political change, has come under fire from many younger pastors and leaders who believe this cultural moment calls for a rejection of the excesses of old religious right and the apolitical “above the fray” response so often on display among the leaders of the church growth and gospel-centered movements. You cannot focus on discipleship, they say, without dealing with politics because faithfulness in the public square is a part of discipleship. Overreacting to the religious right’s problems has led to a widespread failure in addressing political questions in discipleship, creating a void that leaves the church vulnerable to all kinds of false ideologies.

History is rhyming again, and so we’re witnessing the rise of a neo–Religious Right that seeks to recapture something of that movement’s focus on political priorities while connecting political thought to Christian discipleship. In forthcoming columns, I want to give some attention to this new development and then offer suggestions for how these resurgent culture-warring sensibilities can be properly channeled so as to result in a stronger church, without the collateral damage often associated with these kinds of battles. More to come.


This is the first column in a series. If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.

1. The Return of the Culture War
2. The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
3. Navigating the (New?) Negative World
4. Didn’t I Grow Up in the Negative World?
5. We Need to Complicate the Negative World
6. Let’s Contextualize Tim Keller
7. Encouragement and Caution for Culture Warriors
8. Truthful Witness in the Public Square
9. Five Quick Takes for New Culture Wars

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Marks of a Good and Faithful Theologian https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/marks-good-faithful-theologian/ Tue, 17 May 2022 04:10:57 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=475433 A reflection on what makes for a “responsible theologian” and what faithful theologizing looks like, for the glory of God and the good of the church.]]>

In the foreword to Camden Bucey’s recent contribution to the Great Thinkers series (on Karl Rahner), Chris Castaldo offers a description of faithful theologizing in service to the church and for the glory of God:

A responsible theologian exhibits faith that seeks understanding, guided by the illumination of the Spirit—a faith that demonstrates the interrelationship of all truth. Without allowing doctrine to sit in abstract isolation from the whole, the good theologian is called to set his ideas within the full body of Christian thought, examining their veracity against the ultimate source of authority, the inspired text of Scripture. Furthermore, theology must never be an entrepreneurial endeavor; rather, it is undertaken on the shoulders of the two-millennia-strong Christian community. Finally, the theologian always understands his calling as worship.

I’d like to point out some key components of this marvelous description.

Begin with Faith

The journey starts with faith. Faith is not the end of the theologian’s work, but the beginning—the foundation and first principle upon which the search for further understanding can take place.

Trust the Spirit

The theologian’s undertaking is not a singular search. The illuminating guidance of the Spirit matters as we pore over the sacred Scriptures. We look to him for wisdom.

Acknowledge All Truth

The theologian integrates the revealed truth of Scripture with the truths we discover in the world. The categories of general revelation and special revelation matter here: we take God’s special revelation as the basis for further reflection while acknowledging that “all truth is God’s truth,” and thus we are open to whatever we might discover in nature and society as a result of common grace.

Keep the Big Picture in Mind

Castaldo warns against theologizing that abstracts doctrine from the Story in which it makes sense. It’s not merely the championing of a doctrine that makes a faithful theologian, but the ability to incorporate a doctrine into the larger body of theology, recognizing its place, understanding its importance, but ever and always connected to the rest of the story.

Respect Tradition

Our ultimate source of authority is the inspired and inerrant Word of God. The reformational understanding of sola scriptura is not that Scripture is the only authority we consider, but that it’s the supreme authority by which all lesser authorities must be judged.

For this reason, we do not despise or reject “little t” tradition, nor do we take lightly the creeds and confessions we’ve inherited. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. Even if the Scriptures remain the ultimate source of authority and thus stand over the Christian tradition, we adopt a posture of respect and deference to our forefathers and mothers in the faith.

Don’t Look for Novelty

Theology is not “an entrepreneurial endeavor.” Instead, we should resemble Thomas Oden, who once said he wanted his tombstone to read, “He made no new contribution to theology.” Perhaps that’s an overstatement, as faithful theologians often uncover insights that feel fresh and new as we deepen our understanding of the treasures of the gospel and restate and apply old truths in new settings. Still, Oden’s general posture is the right one: don’t be swayed by novelty or the desire to tear down the work of others and build your own in its place, but dig deeper into whatever has stood the test of time.

Read Widely

Castaldo encourages theologians to avoid the “echo chamber” that often makes it impossible to hear anything other than a single voice.

When our faith seeks understanding in the same predictable and finite place (the same authors, journals, and conversation partners) without ever listening to outside voices, we unwittingly find ourselves in a doctrinal echo chamber—the kind of “bubble trouble” that impoverishes theological reflection.

Read and reflect outside your tradition so you learn to celebrate truth wherever it may be found, to carefully discern truth from falsehood in even our most beloved heroes, and to follow truth wherever it leads.

Make Worship the Goal

The most important aspect of this definition comes at the end: the theologian must always understand the task of theology as worship. We do our work to the glory of God and we serve the church in order that others might glorify him also. Faithful theologizing is doxological through and through.

It’s why, in of his most theologically profound letters, the apostle Paul breaks out into worshipful adoration of God for salvation. It’s why Augustine’s theological treatises are issued from the heart of the one who wrote Confessions, a chronicle of life and theological reflection offered up as a prayer to the Almighty. It’s why Anselm’s most profound works include prayers like these:

O my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. . . . Teach me to seek you. I cannot seek you unless you teach me or find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking. Let me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you.

There’s an unquenchable thirst, an insatiable longing, at the heart of great theology—a desire for union with God. Perhaps this is one reason that one of today’s oft-neglected books (Song of Songs) was commonly seen as the capstone of the Old Testament by many of our forebears—not because of its picture of human marriage but because of its pointing to something divine.

In this sense, one of the greatest contributions of the theologian is to awaken the senses of his readers, to make what is unfamiliar understandable and what is familiar strangely fresh. And keeping in mind the worshipful goal of theology means we should seek to cultivate virtue and obedience so that our lives reflect the holiness of which we speak. In all of this, may the Spirit guide us into truth so that at the end of all our theologizing, we hear the words of our Savior, “Well done.”


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Your Money Will Trick You   https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/money-trick/ Thu, 12 May 2022 04:10:32 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=475115 Rarely do we sound the alarming note of Jesus and the apostles when it comes to accumulating wealth.]]>

In the church today, it’s common to interpret biblical teaching on sin in a way that shies away from specifics so we are able to walk away unscathed.

We walk through the sin lists of Scripture and quietly check off each one, thinking, Not guilty. In some cases, we grow accustomed to hearing the warnings of Scripture, falling prey to a familiarity with the words that keeps us from feeling their full force. Worst of all, we read about sin in Scripture and think about others who struggle, never letting those unflattering adjectives (“greedy,” “lustful,” “hot-tempered,” “foolish”) come too close to our self-perception. Too often, we think of sins as actions we perform and miss the subtle ways we sin in our attitudes or develop sinful patterns of the heart.

The New Testament on Money

The best example, I think, is the way many Christians in America interpret and apply the clear and consistent teaching of the New Testament on the desire for and acquisition of wealth. Here’s how we rationalize:

Making money is a good thing, right? Spending money is neutral, right, as long as it’s not on something immoral or unjust? Therefore, as long as I’m honest in how I make and spend money, and as long as I’m sincerely seeking to steward my wealth well, the warnings about wealth don’t really apply to me. Sure, there are “greedy” people out there—rubbing their hands together with gleeful anticipation of acquiring more wealth and surpassing others in stature—but that’s not me! 

Having adopted this mindset, when we read the account of a man asking Jesus to intervene in an inheritance dispute with his brother and hear Jesus’s command to “watch out and be on guard against all greed” (Luke 12:15, CSB), we may hope greedy and covetous people take note, but we don’t see any imminent danger for our own spiritual lives.

But the inability to hear, truly hear, the seriousness of Jesus’s warning is a problem. And it’s dangerous. It reflects our obliviousness to the spiritual jeopardy the accumulation of riches brings to the human soul.

Mammon on the Move

Jesus says “Watch out!” and “Be on guard” as if there’s a silent, stealthy enemy creeping up on an unsuspecting person, ready to pounce. We like to think of wealth and possessions as inanimate objects, helpful to us if we use them correctly, but basically neutral. And so, in our churches, we warn against the abuse or misuse of wealth, and we teach on good stewardship so we can maximize and increase our wealth. But rarely do we sound the alarming note of Jesus and the apostles in this matter.

Preachers in the United States sometimes come under fire for tiptoeing around sensitive subjects, failing to boldly and courageously take on respectable sins in our society, most notably those related to sexual behavior. But even those who trumpet the warnings of Scripture toward the sexually immoral rarely sound anything like Jesus when he uttered sharp and shocking words to the rich. Again and again in the Gospels, Christ warned about the mortal danger that accompanies the accumulation of more and more possessions. The rest of the New Testament includes similar warnings, as did the great theologians and preachers of the ancient church.

A leader in the third century, Cyprian, spoke of riches as a potential impediment to growth in godliness, seeing possessions as holding people in “chains which shackled their courage and choked their faith and hampered their judgment and throttled their souls.”

Exhorting his congregation, he asked, “How can those who are tethered to their inheritance be following Christ? They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves.”

Contrast the urgency of this kind of sermon with commonplace teaching in churches today, which rarely includes warnings about the dangers of wealth and focuses instead on maximizing financial gain. The ancient preachers didn’t recommend small tweaks to our financial outlook or offer investment advice so we can manage our money well. They called for a radical overhaul of how we think of money and possessions in the first place. Why? Because Jesus himself warned about the snare of riches—and because the state of our souls is at stake.

Money Lies

In his parable of the sower, Jesus tells us the seed that was sown among thorns and thistles is choked out, in part, by the “deceitfulness of wealth” (Matt. 13:22). In other words, money lies. Jesus implies that wealth takes an active, sinister role in deceiving the human heart.

When Jesus told us we cannot serve both God and money, he used “Mammon,” the personification of possessions, to get the point across, much like we might say today, “The Almighty Dollar.” But don’t miss what’s going on here. The focus isn’t on how we use money (whether responsibly or not, honestly or not). The focus is on the power of Mammon and the subtle, demonic force it exerts on people.

Hazard to Your Health

Everywhere we turn in the Scriptures, we see big flashing lights saying, “Money can be hazardous to your health!” Which means that every time we see an unexpected source of income or a burgeoning bank account, or receive that hoped-for raise, we should acknowledge the increase of wealth as simultaneously helpful and harmful.

The ease with which we spend money can warp our priorities and reshape our hearts until we begin looking at everything and (worse) everyone in the world in terms of value and worth to us. One way that money changes us, writes Andy Crouch, is that “it allows us to get things done, often by means of other people, without the entanglements of friendship.” Mammon does its work by isolating us from others or by putting us in community with others who size us up based on what we can offer, or by mastering our hearts and deceiving our minds. Crouch writes,

“God wishes to put all things into the service of people and ultimately to bring forth the flourishing of creation through the flourishing of people. Mammon wants to put all people into the service of things and ultimately to bring about the exploitation of all of creation.”

Our money lies to us, constantly. Whenever we see our accumulation of assets or the increasing dollars in our account, Mammon whispers: I am your security. I am your hope. I make the good life possible.

Meanwhile, Jesus is shouting, “It’s a lie! One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). And the apostle Paul echoes the Savior: “It’s a trap! If you want to be rich, you fall into temptation . . . and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Tim. 6:9).

So, next time you read one of these warnings, or hear a sermon on wealth, or find yourself thinking about money, wishing for a salary increase, or trying to make ends meet, pause. Don’t rush. Listen carefully, so that the warnings of Jesus and the apostles speak louder than the deafening roar of the Mammon monster that grips the society we inhabit.


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Christianity Is (Beautifully) Strange https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/beautiful-strangeness-christianity/ Tue, 10 May 2022 04:10:29 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=473289 A ‘New York Times’ columnist reflects as an outsider on why liberal democracy may need a resurgence of Christianity.]]>

Ezra Klein, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, has commented on Matthew Rose’s A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right, a recent book that claims liberalism (the shared assumptions of human dignity, universal rights, individualism, and democracy) is on the decline, in part due to the rise of anti-liberal sentiments among far-right philosophers and politicians.

This new form of anti-liberal critique is multicultural, celebrating cultural difference, seeking to preserve the uniqueness of various peoples, and rejecting sentimental, globalist pieties. Some of these critics of liberalism find Christianity to blame, at least in part, for the current malaise.

The Strange Appeal of Christianity

As Klein reads the right-wing critics of the liberal order, he finds himself stirred by the accomplishments of a democratic republic—“a marvel of imagination and ambition,” an ideology that helps humanity adopt new forms of social organization, even if this requires an “untethering” from tribal “hierarchies.”

Klein then writes about the anti-liberal critique of Christianity, describing the counterintuitive appeal:

Christianity, too, gleams with a light it often lacks in today’s politics, and even in its pews: Here is a religion that insists on the dignity of all people and centers the poor and the marginalized. [The anti-liberals] fear Christianity because they fear it cannot be tamed; even when the leaders they admire try to subvert it for their own purposes, it infects their societies with a latent egalitarianism, setting a trap that will inevitably be sprung.

The critics are right to fear the Christian faith cannot be tamed, no matter how many politicians on both the right and left and everywhere in between seek to harness the power of the church and instrumentalize the gospel for ideological purposes. The latent “egalitarianism” of which Klein speaks—this deep and abiding belief in the value and dignity of every human being—always serves as an irritant in societies that easily drift toward the self-justifying tendencies of the question posed to Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” as if to narrow the circumference of concern. The early Christians widened that circle, which is why true Christianity cannot ever rest comfortably in a society that enshrines racial superiority into law or refuses to extend rights and protections to the weak and powerless, including our preborn neighbor in the womb.

A Better Relationship to Time

Klein acknowledges the need for those who appreciate the benefits of living in the liberal order to find a healthier relationship to time and the past.

Liberalism needs a healthier relationship to time. Can the past become a foreign country without those who still live there being turned into foreigners in their own land? If the future is to be unmapped, then how do we persuade those who fear it, or mistrust us, to agree to venture into its wilds?

Klein is onto something here, but one of his assumptions is off. He is right to note that the liberal order often leads to a warped view of the past, one that constantly confronts us with the failures and deficiencies of previous generations, as if we alone are morally enlightened. That’s why we must find a way to bring along those who feel left behind” or “left out” of what he assumes (but never states) is the march of moral progress.

I appreciate this concern for those who haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon of “progress,” but the condescension inherent in the framing demonstrates intellectual captivity to the Enlightenment view of progress. We are shedding the silly superstitions of the past and moving forward to a more tolerant and just society. This is what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery,” and it resists Chesterton’s description of the “democracy of the dead,” the willingness to give votes not only to the “oligarchy” of those who happen to be alive but also to those who have gone before.

And here, Christianity has yet another trap to be sprung: the message of the resurrection upends all other calendars and eschatologies. You cannot fit Christianity comfortably into the vision of “moral and intellectual progress” at the core of the Enlightenment experiment. Its vision of the future is altogether different.

Beauty and Strangeness

Still, Klein recognizes the need for Christianity to be part of the renewing the liberal order:

What I, as an outsider to Christianity, have always found most beautiful about it is how strange it is. Here is a worldview built on a foundation of universal sin and insufficiency, an equality that bleeds out of the recognition that we are all broken, rather than that we must all be great. I’ve always envied the practice of confession, not least for its recognition that there will always be more to confess and so there must always be more opportunities to be forgiven.

A profound description of the beauty and strangeness of Christianity. Klein is right to see the emphasis on universal sin and insufficiency, and he’s right to desire the equality that bleeds out of the recognition that we are all broken.

And yet Christianity is stranger and more beautiful still. It’s not the moral vision but the historical truth that lies at the heart of the faith—the forgiveness that bleeds out from a man who truly was crucified and laid to rest in a tomb, and who got up on the third day. The foundation is not sin and insufficiency, but grace and salvation.

There’s a reason why liberal democracies have risen first and foremost in places suffused with Christian assumptions and presuppositions (see Tom Holland’s Dominion for an overview) and why the attempts to build nations in the Middle East and elsewhere have run into significant headwinds. Our liberal democracy takes for granted Christian assumptions.

The more our society veers away from those assumptions, the harder it becomes to sustain the liberal project. We are, as Os Guinness has said, “a cut-flower civilization.” We’ve cut ourselves off from the roots of truth, dignity, freedom, and equality, hoping that the fumes of our Christian heritage will sustain a new secular order without the moral and metaphysical underpinnings that gave rise to this worldview in the first place. It won’t work.

Liberal democracies, long-term, need the basics of Christian anthropology if they’re to survive. But Christianity does not need liberal democracy in order to flourish. And so, whatever may happen in the next century, I can rest assured that the church will still be around, surviving and thriving in whatever environments it is placed, planting new traps that will spring and surprise.


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A Church of Suspicious Minds https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/church-suspicious-minds/ Thu, 05 May 2022 04:10:38 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=474940 We chastise the world for looking at everything through the lens of suspicion, and then we turn around and do the same in our churches and call it faithfulness.]]>

“We can’t go on together,” sang Elvis in 1969, “with suspicious minds.” It’s a song that laments the breakdown of trust, resulting in the corrosion of a romantic relationship.

More than 50 years on, these words could apply to the American experiment, with increasing levels of distrust toward government officials, media and news outlets, and the “experts” in various fields. Some of this suspicion is justified, as is often the case when trust is violated, and when people see the rules for discourse and debate applied unfairly. A healthy dose of skepticism toward top-down approaches in business and government is necessary for a free people’s flourishing.

What’s more, we’re living through one of the most disastrous periods in American history if you’re looking for reasons to trust in institutions and their leaders. Glaring failures in leadership—waving off criticism by appealing to one’s credentials— lead people to react with suspicion, and understandably so.

Suspicion in the World and the Church

But suspicion takes a wrong turn when we filter everything and everyone through the lens of distrust, always on a quest to discover an ulterior motive. This is one of postmodernism’s most pernicious effects—a hermeneutic of suspicion that claims every proposal or position is just a power play in disguise. Even deeds that appear altruistic must be tainted somehow by the lust for power.

Once suspicion pervades a society, the slightest disagreements—even among people who generally share the same beliefs—get interpreted as signs of betrayal. Seeds of doubt are sown into every interaction, and often it’s the people closest to you who become the subject of your suspicions. After all, you’ve written off the people opposed to your beliefs as the “villains.” You expect your opponents to act the fool; it’s when someone close to you doesn’t toe the party line, or asks uncomfortable questions, or pushes back on something you feel strongly about that you raise an eyebrow and wonder: Are they really with us? Or are they a villain in disguise?

The worldliness of succumbing to suspicion—assuming nefarious intentions behind every position—should not show up in the church. But alas, we too often fail in this area.

Consider how some of the fiercest debates today, as opposed to 10 years ago, are not between “progressive” and “conservative” Christians, but between varying shades of Christians in those respective camps. Brothers and sisters who attend the same kinds of churches, agree to the same confessional commitments, and share the same general outlook on life turn and devour each other over differences in political priorities, or disagreements over the wisdom of particular policies, or the way we should view certain politicians, authors, or theologians.

Suspicion and Race

Let’s take just one example: recent flare-ups in the church regarding how best to oppose racial discrimination and achieve racial reconciliation.

One of the more insidious recommendations to come from Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility is her push to shift the question away from “Did something racist take place?” to “How did racism manifest itself in this situation?” This move is pernicious because it leads to the fundamental, unquestionable assumption that racism is ever and always present, and it puts an intolerable weight on common human interactions. If you assume the presence of racism, whether intentional or unintentional, underneath every uncomfortable exchange between people of different ethnicities, you’ll inevitably find some way to connect nearly every possible slight, disagreement, or hurt feeling to racism. Behold, the postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion applied to race!

Ironically, we see the same impulse on the other side of debates over race, with this hermeneutic of suspicion still reigning supreme, just applied in the opposite direction. It’s the assumption that Critical Race Theory has infected and pervaded most evangelical churches and denominations, so that now the mere mention of race, or the acknowledgment of systemic injustice, or saying things that Martin Luther King or Frederick Douglass or preachers in the Black church have said for generations (well before the rise of CRT in legal circles) are enough to raise suspicions and cause people to assume, You must be one of the woke! It’s the mirror image of Diangelo’s toxicity: if you assume the infiltration of an ill-defined CRT is everywhere present, you’ll find ways to connect dots and write people off, including those who are closest to you theologically.

To be clear, there really is such a thing as racism, and it is to be rejected. And yes, the worldview that gave birth to and stems from Critical Race Theory has steered some writers and thinkers away from biblical Christianity. It’s natural for those who have previously been on the receiving end of racist attitudes and actions to assume that racism may play a role in various encounters. And it’s right for those who have watched with dismay as once-orthodox believers slide into apostasy to seek to hold others accountable to prevent them from succumbing to the same fate.

But there’s a difference between prudence and paranoia, between discernment and distrust, between sensibleness and suspicion.

Suspicion breeds suspicion. Cynicism gives birth to cynicism. The more you suspect others, the more reasons you find to justify your suspicion.

“It would be better to be deceived a hundred times,” Charles Spurgeon told his students, “than to live a life of suspicion.”

Love Hopes All Things

In far too many cases, the church of Jesus Christ looks too much like the world in how we suspect the worst of those closest to us, pounce on perceived deviations from whatever we’ve concluded is the “party line,” and then find ways to make every new interaction more evidence for the narrative we’ve constructed. We chastise the world for looking at everything through the lens of suspicion, and then we turn around and do the same in our churches and call it faithfulness.

Suspicion is not wisdom, so let’s not confuse it with discernment. We don’t begin with the assumption of guilt and then look for evidence; we begin with love and assume the best—bearing with one another, pursuing the truth together, carefully listening to discover what someone means by the words they use, and sharing fellowship as we proclaim and promote the essential elements of the Christian faith.

Love hopes all things (1 Cor. 13:7). Love assumes the best. Love refrains from hasty judgments. Love does not turn every disagreement into a debate, nor every debate into division. Love refuses to assume the worst motives. Love bears all things, hopes all things, and believes all things. Love does not mean closing our eyes to real wrongs or acquiescing to naivete. At times trust will be broken and must be rebuilt, but even here, we know it’s to our glory to overlook an offense (Prov. 19:11), and our posture remains one of forgiveness and reconciliation.

In a world of suspicion, let’s make sure the saints of God stand out.


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What Prevents Tears of Gratitude for Grace? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/tears-gratitude-grace/ Tue, 03 May 2022 04:10:35 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=473417 What dries up the heart and keeps us from feeling and experiencing the marvelous, matchless grace of God?]]>

Every now and then, a song brings me to tears.

Sometimes it’s an older song that stirs the heart in a new way. I’ve never been able to sing the last verse of Isaac Watts’s hymn, “There Is a Fountain,” because I’m too moved by that image of my “poor lisping, stammering tongue” lying “silent in the grave” before rising again to sing a “nobler, sweeter song” of Christ and his “power to save.”

Songs about the cross and resurrection strike that chord, such as the vision at the end of “O Praise the Name (Anástasis)” of resurrection hope when our gaze will be fixated on the Savior. Andrew Peterson’s “Well Done, Good and Faithful” builds on a Watts hymn and imagines the Father affirming the Son’s sacrificial work; I blubber every Easter season when I hear it. Other songs do the trick too, even simple ones like Steven Curtis Chapman’s “My Redeemer is Faithful and True” or Fernando Ortega’s “Give Me Jesus.”

Most recently, “I Am Your Beloved” by Jonathan David Helser and Melissa Helser had this effect on me. The first verse lays out the accusations and lies of the Evil One directed toward the believer, before resting in the truth that in the gospel God has claimed us for his own:

I am Your beloved
You have bought me with Your blood
And on Your hand
You’ve written out my name.
I am Your beloved
One the Father loves
Mercy has defeated all my shame.

The song reflects on how the believer’s heart has been redefined by the redemption supplied by God. And then the line that wrecks me:

The One who knows me best
Is the One who loves me most.

The song finishes with the image of the father in the parable of the prodigal son: “hear the feet of the father running” like a “stampede of grace” that results in “mercy I never earned, grace I never deserved, coming to bring me home again.”

It’s magnificent. To turn to the words of another hymn, this is “grace that is greater than all our sin.”

Self-Righteous, Self-Sufficient

But for all the times when glorious gospel truth has me fumbling for a Kleenex, there many times when I sing about amazing grace with dry eyes and a lukewarm heart. This has me wondering, What dries up the heart and keeps us from feeling and experiencing the marvelous, matchless grace of God? What keeps the tear ducts blocked?

For starters, there’s the posture of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son: the self-righteous, self-sufficient one who remains “close” to the father, at least in terms of proximity, while his heart is far from home. The consummate rule-follower believes deep down that the only possible reason God would love us is because we’ve done something to deserve salvation.

This assumption can manifest itself in many ways, even among those who talk about grace all the time. The self-justifying tendencies of the human heart can lead us to stand on a pedestal of Christian teaching about grace and then look down on others who’ve not arrived at our level of doctrinal understanding or theological precision.

But we cannot weep before the majestic grace of God if we’re still searching for scraps of self-sufficiency. Tears of gratitude will never fall from eyes looking down on others, only from eyes looking up to God’s grace.

Sin-Redefining, Self-Validating

But there’s a second posture that keeps us from marveling at the grace of God: the desire to validate ourselves by doing away with sin.

The New Testament’s insistence on our need for redemption humbles us. But redefining sin removes the need for humility, leaving us affirmed in our natural state.

For many today, the problem isn’t the disease of sin, but those who’d diagnose the disease. So, instead of a father running to us with a heart overflowing with forgiveness and healing mercy, we want a father who runs to affirm us and tell us all is well, that what we’ve done either wasn’t that bad or wasn’t bad at all. We want a God to provide a spiritual presence, a transcendent dimension for the life we’ve chosen to live. God becomes the approver of our own self-validation.

This second posture is also rooted in self-righteousness, but it masks itself in false mercy. For some, sin is not that big a deal because God is merciful and it’s his job to forgive. For others, our focus on brokenness and suffering outstrips any notion of sin as transgression or treason against God. God’s mercy and help are there to make us whole, but this “wholeness” must ultimately be defined by every individual.

The first and greatest commandment is “Be true to yourself.” The second is like it: “Affirm whatever self your neighbor decides to be true to.” In this way, we rid ourselves of vice, not through forgiveness, but through redefining vices as virtues, as part of our authentic selves.

And so, the father runs to the repentant son, not to shower him with undeserved grace, but to follow him to the pigsty, where he insists the son’s rebellion was a bold and courageous act of independence, and the diet of pig food is really a feast for the self-actualized.

This posture strips us of the power to weep at grace. Sin is waved, not washed, away. To deny or minimize your sinfulness is to sever the root of gratitude for undeserved favor. Make favor deserved, a reward that showcases your innate worth and value and goodness, and you’ve gutted grace of everything that makes it amazing.

Grace Amazing

In both cases, whether it’s the elder brother who won’t lower himself to join the feast, or the younger brother who won’t come to his senses because he wants to be “free” to choose the pigsty, self-righteousness blocks tears of gratitude.

Only Jesus gives us grace that meets us in our darkest hour, grace that plumbs the depths of our cavernous hearts, grace that transforms the heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

Undeserved favor strips us of self-righteousness and shows up our paltry attempts at self-validation. Submit to that humble stripping away of all our pride, and then we can bask in the grace that makes us sing louder, shout for joy, and weep with gratitude. That’s the grace we see in the running feet of the father.


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The Return of Caedmon’s Call . . . and Feeling Conflicted https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/return-caedmons-call/ Thu, 28 Apr 2022 04:10:14 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=474031 Many fans of Caedmon’s Call are excited about their plans to rerecord their first major album. But the public deconversion of Derek Webb has left some feeling conflicted.]]>

Caedmon’s Call will carry on. This year marks the 25th anniversary of their self-titled album, and the acoustic band that specialized in thoughtful lyrics and singable melodies has announced a Kickstarter campaign to raise support for rerecording those early songs. (The album is out of print and not available on streaming platforms.)

My History with Caedmon’s Call

I bought the Caedmon’s Call CD in the summer of 1997. I was 16, and it showed up in a bin at Tower Records. Although a bit pricey for me at the time (I was just starting to earn cash on my own, McDonald’s being my first job), the album had “Lead of Love” at the top of the track list, an acoustic-driven song I enjoyed when played on the radio. I hoped I’d like the other songs, too. (You see, kids, this took place in the days before you could stream or purchase just the song or two you liked from a band. If you wanted a song, you had to drop $17–18 and hope there were more like it on the rest of the CD!)

Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed. Over the summer of 1997 and into the fall, I listened to that album enough to scratch it up. I fell in love with “Hope to Carry On,” which renewed my appreciation for Rich Mullins, whose death that September shocked me, just days after losing my best friend and next-door neighbor to suicide.

Music ministered to me during this season. I knew the lyrics by heart, feeling the songwriters’ sense of spiritual angst and watching as they probed into deeper theological issues related to sin, salvation, and sovereignty. Songs like “This World” captured the feeling of living in a society with “nothing for me” and “everything”—“all that I could want and nothing that I need.” The album’s closer, “Coming Home,” expressed the frustration and exhilaration of seeking to live for Jesus while stumbling in obedience:

You say You want a living sacrifice
Well I am a burnt offering
Crawling off the altar and back into the fire
And with my smoke-filled lungs
I cry out for freedom
While locking and chaining myself
To my rotting desires.

The next album, 40 Acres, was released in 1999. By that time, I was a senior in high school and a devoted fan. I remember visiting different colleges, listening to the album with headphones—those words and melodies pressing into my adolescent mind. I marveled at the sovereignty of God in making good of our messes, and then looked up the word “ineffable” (from “There You Go”). I felt the longing and loneliness in “Table for Two.” And I was puzzled by a theology that would lead a singer to offer thanks for being “incapable of doing any good on my own.”

The contemporary Christian music scene in the late 1990s was at its high-water mark of creativity . . . and in the deepest pools of kitsch—at the same time. But Caedmon’s Call combined earnestness and profundity in a way that charmed you and brought you into a deeper conversation. Listening to a Caedmon’s Call album made you want to lean in, to ask the big questions, to mourn your sin and marvel at God.

Sixteen hundred years ago, Augustine remarked on how we pray and sing our way into the faith. There’s no question that Caedmon’s Call prepared the way for me to arrive at a richer and fuller understanding of theology by raising big questions and singing big praises to God for his sovereignty in salvation. I know people my age who became part of the “young, restless, reformed” movement, and who credit the influence of Caedmon’s Call’s music in their theological development.

Derek Webb and Deconstruction

C. S. Lewis once commented on how the apologist for Christianity is never more susceptible to doubt than when he or she has just successfully argued for the Christian position. In that moment, the faith seems to rest on the strength of the argument, which for the apologist suddenly seems “no stronger than that weak pillar.”

Derek Webb was an artistic apologist for Reformed theology in his work with Caedmon’s and then in his solo albums. But several years before “deconstruction” became a topic of conversation, Derek publicly renounced his Christian convictions. Today, he doesn’t consider himself a believer, although he holds open the possibility that being an atheist in regard to the Christian God doesn’t mean he’ll remain an atheist related to any and every God. He sometimes revisits his old songs, and he’s connected to a church (albeit one that falls outside of historic Christian orthodoxy in both theology and ethics).

And now, Derek is part of the Caedmon’s Call reunion and Kickstarter campaign. It would be impossible to do this project without him, as his voice and lyrics were so prominent on the album they hope to rerecord.

But Derek’s presence has left some Caedmon’s Call fans conflicted about this new campaign.

Should Christians support a reunion effort by contributing funds to a group with a member who no longer holds to the faith? Can Christians enjoy a concert with someone “standing up for nothing”? Should we in good conscience support unbelievers singing Christian songs?

Now, I could point to numerous examples of common grace in which Christians enjoy Christmas music or gospel albums performed by singers who show no evidence of saving faith. But I get it—the Derek Webb departure feels different, more personal. It still stings. We are always more inclined to show grace toward people making their way into the great city than those who have left it (and cursed it on their way out).

Hope to Carry On

It’s not my place to tell people if they should be excited about the Caedmon’s Call reunion or reject the campaign. That’s for the individual to consider and discern. All I’ll say is this: Love hopes all things.

Whether you get involved or skip the new album and concert, don’t miss the opportunity to pray for these band members as they renew their friendships.

What if the beautiful truths once expressed by Derek Webb became a boomerang of grace back to his heart? What if the albums that helped a generation of young people sing their way into Big-God theology became the catalyst for a wanderer to sing his way back into orthodoxy?

Naïve, you say. Improbable, you think. Perhaps. But isn’t every conversion improbable, a miracle of grace? At the very least, we can hope and pray that God in his gracious sovereignty might say over Derek Webb: “He must and shall go free.”


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Reading as a Portal to Other Worlds https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/reading-portal-other-worlds/ Tue, 26 Apr 2022 04:10:51 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=467755 How reading shaped the mind of C. S. Lewis, and how reading well and widely can shape us too.]]>

Last week, I mourned the double literacy loss (biblical literacy and general literacy) that marks many young people today and the disappearance of careful, sustained contemplation of and engagement with written texts—new and old. Though I recommended we rethink some strategies for impressing the Word upon believers who rarely (if ever) read books, this doesn’t mean I’m giving up my attempts to encourage young people to read.

On the contrary.

I’ve told my kids multiple times over the years, “You see all these books on the shelves? Every book is a world. Every book is a landscape. Every book has its own beginning and end, tone and feel, voice and story. Are you bored right now? Hop into one of these worlds you can open up with your hands.”

My hope is that Christians will be more inclined than our neighbors to cultivate the virtues that deep and intentional reading demands of us. I agree with Karen Swallow Prior:

“There is something in the very form of reading—the shape of the action itself—that tends toward virtue. The attentiveness necessary for deep reading (the kind of reading we practice in reading literary works as opposed to skimming news stories or reading instructions) requires patience. The skills of interpretation and evaluation require prudence. Even the simple decision to set aside time to read in a world rife with so many other choices competing for our attention requires a kind of temperance.”

Time Travel to Other Worlds

In his marvelous new book, The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind, Jason Baxter claims we’ve understated the impact of Lewis’s devotion to ancient literature. Lewis was a novelist, an apologist, a poet, yes. But before all that, he was an antiquarian, a man “who devoted much—indeed, most—of his life to breathing in the thoughts and feelings of distant ages, and reconstructing them in his teaching and writing” (4).

Lewis believed the power of reading old books and great literature was in the capacity to enter into a text, to carefully study the way the words are used, to feel the atmosphere and get disoriented by the differences we find when we go back in time, yet also to be drawn to the similarities of human nature, no matter the era.

If we’re to follow Lewis’s example of reading literature, Baxter says, it won’t be an attempt to extract good moral lessons and correct opinions, but to experience something more liberating, more capacious, more generous. Literature is the ability to fix our “inner eye.” It’s an act of looking.

2 Reasons to Read Well

Baxter offers two of Lewis’s reasons for reading well and widely. On the negative side, it’s so we can avoid the mistakes of our era. That’s the point Lewis made in Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces:

“A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours form the press and the microphone of his own age.”

Twenty years later, in An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis offered a positive reason as well: reading widely leads to an “extension of our being.”

“Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.”

This is the point that General James Mattis made in a widely shared email about reading several years ago. If you don’t read, you remain “functionally illiterate,” not to mention “incompetent.” Why? “Because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”

Baxter sums up the benefit this way:

“Literature, then, creates worlds of imaginative atmosphere, with vision and weather and smell, an atmosphere we would suffocate without, and that enlarges our being when we read well. The reader, by breathing in, living in its habitat, fixing the eye of his or her heart, becomes ‘another self,’ is ‘aggrandized,’ ‘healed,’ ‘enlarged’—in short, the reader ‘transcends’ the limitations of their merely historical and local condition, without annihilating their individuality.” (44)

Lewis claimed that in reading great literature he could “become a thousand men” yet remain himself. Reading makes it possible to transcend oneself and yet still be oneself.

Revisiting Worlds

To receive the full benefit of deep reading across the world and through time, we must on occasion return to favorite books more than once, to enter the narrative once more, or to feel again the force of the argument. Lewis writes:

“An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. . . . We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties.”

I know from experience that it’s the books I’ve read more than three times, sometimes with many years in between, that I feel have become part of me. Every time I journey to Narnia, or read The Screwtape Letters, or meet again the Karamazov brothers, or start off the year with a different translation of Augustine’s Confessions, I’m revisiting a land with which I’m familiar, allowing the texts from great minds to subtly form and shape my own.

For this reason, repetitive readings of the Gospels, the Psalms, and other Scriptures remain vital. It’s not because we don’t know them that we read, but because we do, and in some strange way, repeat readings open us up for the text to search and know us. Since the depths of God’s Word are inexhaustible, we never slake our thirst for the truths we find therein.

Literacy loss is unfortunate, but in this area, as in others, Christians can stand out. We can let the “clean sea breeze of the centuries” blow through our minds as we encounter and learn from our ancestors—what Chesterton labeled “the democracy of the dead.” Reading is one way we expand our imaginations and enlarge our hearts. There’s a bigger world in a book than in a smartphone, if only we have the patience and attention to experience it.


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Christianity and America’s ‘Cold Civil War’ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/cold-civil-war/ Thu, 21 Apr 2022 04:10:33 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=467590 Jim Belcher’s newest book proposes a way of restoring the vital center of American unity. The book’s aims are good, but the framing is frustrating.]]>

If there’s a bright spot in the darkness of an era marked by increased polarization, it’s the opportunity for fresh ways of thinking about contemporary challenges. Renewed imaginations can help us break through some of the stale scaffolding of thought we’ve relied upon for far too long.

Cold Civil War

Jim Belcher’s new book arises out of his passion for the American project and his desire to see the church be part of the solution for curing American ills.

In Cold Civil War: Overcoming Polarization, Discovering Unity, and Healing the Nation, he urges evangelicals to recapture the importance of “public philosophy”—to supplement special revelation with general revelation. Our lack of a unified social teaching and our unfamiliarity with the natural law tradition leaves us without the tools to faithfully respond to current challenges. If the church is to have a part in restoring the American covenant and helping the country rediscover the genius of the founders, Belcher says, we must recover the vital center” that has kept our democratic republic together for more than 200 years.

Cold Civil War relies on a quadrant to show where different groups, on both the right and the left, move away from the center, in the categories of “freedom” or “order.” Belcher pushes back against those who advocate a religiously neutral “godless” constitution as well as those who assume the American founding was so irrevocably flawed as to demand a new grounding. He takes issue with libertarianism and the alt-right, as well as with those who push critical race theory and cheer for open borders. The enemy of American freedom, as he sees it, is the alignment of “ruling elites” who collude and conspire to establish an “oligarchic narrative” with aspirations that chip away at middle-class values.

Belcher believes the solution must come from recognizing that special revelation (the truth of Scripture) is the “grounding under—that is, supporting—the grounding of general revelation discovered through the ‘right reason’ of nature and history, culture and creed.” We not only need to recover the brilliant insights that make up the unique vision of the American project, but we also need to rebuild the culture that sustains and amplifies civic responsibility. For this reason, we need to press pause on immigration and work to assimilate those within our borders, so that the American experiment of a common heritage and common traditions can continue.

Insightful Analysis

I’m intrigued by Belcher’s proposal. At times, the work shimmers with insight. I’m sympathetic to any call for evangelicals to engage better with natural law, and I believe our churches would be stronger if interacted more regularly with Catholic social teaching. I also appreciate Belcher’s reliance on Alexis de Tocqueville.

Belcher’s willingness to interact with multiple perspectives reveals commonalities between people on opposite sides of certain issues. For example, some on the left who claim America was fatally wounded from the start because of its racism and slavery wind up resembling their opponents, like Rod Dreher and Patrick Deneen, who believe the poison pill was present in John Locke’s liberalism. In both cases, the founding is fatally flawed, and the project isn’t worth salvaging. A new foundational order is required.

Uneven Work

But Belcher, in trying to cover such a vast amount of material, doesn’t always put his best foot forward. The book interacts with hefty scholars such as Michael Sandel, Robert Bellah, Leo Strauss, and James Davison Hunter, while also relying (favorably) on analysis from Tucker Carlson and the occasional discernment blogger. I understand the desire to write for a wide audience and therefore to include the perspectives of scholars and pundits (such as Ann Coulter), even when disagreeing with them. But the result is an uneven work that frequently makes sweeping claims without evidence.

Is it true that among evangelicals the term “missional” arose to replace “postmodernism” when the latter got pushback, and that the missional conversation was why “books on justice began to appear” (88)? Or are we to simply accept, without demonstrable evidence, the anecdotal view of Bob Woodson, who claims mayors of major cities are intentionally inciting racial animosity in order to “cover their money-making schemes” and “increase their control and wealth and political power” (98)?

I do not believe that all the concerns raised in this book are the result of intentional scheming by a powerful oligarchy. Yes, it’s likely that many of the conditions decried in the book are compounded by some of the policies of the “ruling class,” but it’s another step to assume malicious intent or conspiracy to actively harm the poor so as to solidify control or remain in power. At times, the book lends itself to an assumption of motive in a way that detracts from the bigger message Belcher wants to get across: we must renew the center of American life.

Frustrating Frame

I agree with Belcher’s aim to renew the center of the American project, but his framing frustrates me. He asks:

“If we are going to get back to a new vital center, we need to return to the important place that Christianity once played for generations in reviving and sustaining the democratic project. . . . How could religion, and more particularly, historic Christianity, so important for the renewal of the external covenant (the new vital center) . . . (1) speak to universal values . . . and (2) avoid being politicized?”

Belcher does his best to answer that question, and you may (like I did) appreciate some of his suggestions.

But the framing bothers me because it seems to place Christianity in a support role, as if it plays a utilitarian purpose as an instrument for the renewal of the American project. Now, in his defense, Belcher would likely say that Christianity’s aid in renewing the American center is the way we love our neighbors and work for their flourishing. And so there’s a place for considering that question.

Still, to appeal to “religion” in general and “Christianity” in particular as instrumental in this civic renewal seems to get things backward. I’m not interested, first and foremost, in how Christianity can renew the American project, but in how the American context provides space for faithful Christians to fulfill the Great Commission as the church renews herself around the vital center of the gospel and locks arms with believers wherever they may be found. That is the project that matters most.

The word “missional” is not code for postmodernism or social justice; it’s a picture of the outward-oriented vision of a missionary God whose purposes for his people far outweigh his plans for any one nation.

Yes, Christians have a role to play as salt and light, and yes, I pray we’ll preserve what’s best in the American experiment, but our biggest influence as salt and light won’t come about by Christians reconceiving their faith along the lines of its usefulness to the national project. Rather, it will come by regaining a zeal for orthodoxy and orthopraxy that stands out among “religions” in general because of how closely tied we remain to the moral vision for the world we find in the teachings of Jesus and his atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The church’s greatest contribution to the renewal of the vital center of the American experiment will come not from allowing the faith to become instrumentalized for a national project, but by her own renewal of the vital center of the Christian faith and its Great Commission manifestation.


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Bible Reading in an Age of Double Literacy Loss https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/bible-reading-literacy-loss/ Tue, 19 Apr 2022 04:10:58 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=467347 Fewer young people read books or the Bible. What does Scripture-based discipleship look like in a world of double literacy loss?]]>

Book reading is on the decline. Fewer people read books these days, and those who do read less often than before.

Yes, literacy rates in the United States are high (roughly 88 percent). And sales of hardcover books have grown in recent years, while e-book sales remain steady. But many of these books are meant to be gifts, a decoration for a table or shelf. Americans love books for how they look; they spruce up the room where we devote our spare time to Netflix.

In Reader, Come Home, Maryanne Wolf explores the science of the “reading brain” and what might happen to our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we spend more and more time with digital devices.

As a writer, it’s disheartening to think that the vast majority of the books published every year will attract merely a handful of readers. I just submitted a manuscript to a publisher for my next book, a work that emphasizes the importance of theological orthodoxy and makes a case for doctrine in a world (and church) where the details of dogma are often dismissed as irrelevant and unimportant. As I labored over each phrase and sentence, I couldn’t help but wonder, How many people will actually read these words?

Then there’s the question of what the decline of reading means for the most important book of all, the Bible.

Loss of Biblical Literacy

Brad East recently said Christians who want to steward and share the Scriptures with the next generation face a big challenge: “a double loss of literacy.”

First, biblical literacy is on the decline. On a recent visit to the Museum of the Bible with my daughter, we experienced “Washington Revelations,” a video attraction that “flies” you all around our capital city, showing you many of the Scriptural references engraved in famous buildings and monuments. Beyond the markings on monuments, you also find allusions to Scripture in our historical records, presidential speeches, and cultural artifacts. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton quotes George Washington’s vision of everyone under their own vine and fig tree, an image that comes from three Old Testament references (1 Kings 4:25; Mic. 4:4; Zech. 3:10).

A cursory knowledge of the Bible—its main features and themes, its important quotes and stories—was once a feature of ordinary American life. Not anymore. Brad claims that even his students who grew up in church often find unfamiliar the Bible they believe.

Loss of Literacy in General

Biblical literacy? That’s a loss. But the bigger challenge is the loss of literacy in general. East writes:

“Teenagers and twentysomethings today, by and large, are not . . . readers of books. They read endlessly, as a matter of fact, but their reading takes place in 5–15 second chunks of time on a glowing device, before the next image or swipe or alert restarts the clock. Minds trained on this from a young age simply lack the stamina, not to mention the desire, to read for pleasure for sustained stretches of time.”

And so, East says, we should revise our expectation that as a part of discipleship every Christian will develop a new habit that he or she has never engaged in (spending hours in “deliberate demanding literary study” or “consistent deep private reading”). If 80 percent of American families didn’t buy or read a book last year, should we be surprised when most Christians don’t spend significant time reading Scripture alone? And if individual Bible reading and personal study is not the primary way the next generation of believers engages with God’s Word, what might Scripture-focused discipleship look like?

Now, I do wonder if East is a bit too pessimistic in assuming this double literacy loss is a foregone conclusion. Granted, he’s on the front lines with college students, and he sees habits of thought and trends in this area up close. But I don’t want to abandon the hope (and neither does he) that at least some young people will be “super-readers, masters of the sacred page, the way our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers were.” It’s true the ambient culture that produced that level of attention and devotion has disappeared, but I hope Christian colleges and universities might stem the tide by creating an environment where the cultivation of such habits can flourish. What if, in the years ahead, one of the distinguishing marks of Christian young people was that they read?

Word-Saturated Churches

Still, I echo East’s suggestions for how we might renew our vision for reading Scripture as part of the life of the church. It reminds me of Jonathan Leeman’s book The Word-Centered Church, first published under the title Reverberation, which includes a similar vision:

“The ‘ministry of the Word’ . . . begins in the pulpit, but then it must continue through the life of the church as God’s Word becomes absolutely central in the lives of members and bounces back and forth to one another. The Word reverberates or bounces around, as in a canyon.”

This reverberation matters, especially if daily private Bible reading and serious study become less common (no matter how much we encourage it).

Let’s remember: the development of a morning “quiet time” of individual Scripture reading, though a wonderful blessing, is a recent phenomenon. Only in the past few hundred years is it the case that (1) Christians have been literate enough to read Scripture on their own and (2) Christians have access to a personal copy of the Bible. In earlier eras, Christians learned Scripture through memorization, through the hearing of Scripture in church services, and through repetition and prayer and song.

The Question for Church Leaders

So, pastors and song leaders, ask yourself: If you knew the only engagement most of your people will have with the Bible this week will be the Scriptures you steward in the Sunday service, how might that influence your choices?

Does it change the way you read the Bible? The length of your Bible readings? The psalms you recite? Does it change the songs you pick, so you look past the radio hits for songs and hymns that are drenched in Scriptural quotes and echoes? Does it change your sermon, so you ensure you’re exposing your congregation to the Word from the beginning to the end of your teaching? Does it change your view of Bible study in smaller groups and Sunday School classes?

If you’re the chef and people have joined the table ready to eat, and if you know that throughout the week, most of your people are merely snacking on bite-sized portions of God’s Word (if that!) via an app or brief devotional, then Sunday is the feast. Give them steak, not cotton candy. This is the time for protein.

The Challenge Before Us

I don’t think we should do away with high expectations or refrain from exhorting believers to personal Bible study. Over the years, I’ve devoted significant energy to the development of a curriculum that helps people read and understand the Bible. I’ve sat on the translation committee for the Christian Standard Bible. I’ve developed devotional resources for private use with the goal of getting us more and more into the Bible so that the Bible will get more and more into us. I pray God will use all these tools for the development of his people.

But Brad is right about the challenge ahead. If the next generation is more likely to resemble (at least functionally) previous generations of believers who didn’t regularly engage with the Bible personally, then we do well to ensure that the next generation, like those past, hear God’s Word in gathered worship and learn the basics of the Bible in community with trusted teachers, through catechesis and classes, through memorization and songs that echo biblical truth.

This isn’t the time to chastise young people for not reading enough. However much we might grieve the double literacy loss, scolding will not solve it. It’s also not the time to dumb down worship services as an accommodation to literacy loss. That path would reduce Scriptural exposure even more.

Instead, we need renewed imaginations as we retrieve ideas from past church leaders who brought the Scriptures to people and as we look for new ways of increasing Scriptural exposure and engagement in an era of double literacy loss.


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We Should Talk About Disney https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/lets-talk-about-disney/ Tue, 12 Apr 2022 04:10:28 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=468810 The message of many Disney films, even the most wholesome and family-friendly ones, are in some places antithetical to a biblical view of the world.]]>

The Walt Disney Company has hopped into a heap of controversy, prompted at first by the company’s official opposition of a Florida bill, and now amplified by testimony from anonymous employees about the organization’s chilling effect on political and social conservatives as well as jaw-dropping videos of Disney creatives acknowledging their desire to insert “queerness” and LGBT+ storylines wherever they can in Disney movies.

In response, some have called for boycotts. (The Southern Baptists were ahead of the curve on this, passing a resolution in 1996 that called for a multiyear boycott. That protest petered out around the time Disney partnered with Walden to release the first Narnia movie in 2005.) Others seek to pressure the company to step back from tarnishing its reputation as the world’s biggest and most beloved provider of family-friendly entertainment.

The Difference with Disney

Recently, a growing number of companies have aligned publicly with agendas on the political left, often at the behest of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officers and HR departments. Some commentators now label this phenomenon “woke capitalism,” and conservatives worry about the results when both big government and big business unite around new and contested ideologies about gender and sexuality.

But the Disney trouble is different. In this case, it’s not about your Whopper with rainbow-colored wrapping, or the propriety of Pepsi taking a position on a particular piece of legislation. In those cases, the product from the organizations remains the same. Consumers may roll their eyes at the leftward virtue signaling or the TV commercials, but the Oreo remains the Oreo.

Disney is different. The insertion of an ideological perspective related to gender and sexuality affects the product. The creatives on video are forthright: they want to use the Disney name and its cultural cachet to push views of sexuality into entertainment for children.

Now, I’m old enough to recall the often comical claims that Disney artists have long been inserting subliminal messages into their films. (A moment with leaves in The Lion King led some viewers to see the word “SEX,” when the artists, instead, had given a nod to the special effects team by spelling “SFX”). I’m not surprised at these conspiracy theories. After all, Disney is the largest entertainment company in the world, and its vault of endearing family films is massive. People have long wondered if a business this big might misuse its power.

But the most recent dustup takes us beyond conspiracy theories about subliminal messaging. The messaging is overt, and there’s no conspiracy because the plans are out there for anyone to see.

Beyond a Boycott?

How should Christians think about Disney products in light of some employees looking for ways to inculcate transgender ideologies and “queerness”?

A boycott of Disney would be challenging, simply because of the size of the behemoth. We’re talking ABC, ESPN, Touchstone, Marvel, Lucasfilm, A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime, Pixar, Hulu, Vice, and Core Publishing. And that’s just a start.

Another way forward would be to keep up the public pressure on Disney to avoid tainting their future artistic endeavors. Preachiness damages art, and ideological agendas limit the company’s reach.

When I lived in Romania, I remember asking about the literature and films produced during the Communist era, when so much of the literary world was subjected to ideological conformity. Romanians preferred to look to the poets and writers who preceded the Iron Curtain; they felt little affection for the “art” manufactured for ideological purposes from the 1940s to ’80s.

The subjection of creativity to ideological propaganda, where the primary goal is the inculcation of a political or social agenda, sounds the death knell of beauty. (This goes for Christian films as well. When the primary goal is getting across your sermon, you may entertain those already convinced, but you’ll rarely move others with your art.)

So, for the sake of Disney’s own artistic desires, and for the sake of their desire to entertain audiences all around the world, including countries that refuse many Western insanities, the company should put an end to the idea of instrumentalizing its art for a political purpose.

More Conversations, More Discernment

For Christian parents, we should recognize that no secular company, no matter how family-friendly, is truly a friend to biblical values.

You may think we’ve come a long way from The Little Mermaid, but the distance between the late 1980s and today is closer than you realize. The expressive individualist outlook on life (“the purpose of life is to look inward to discover and express your truest self”) is everywhere evident in the films from the ’80s and ’90s and has only grown in influence in subsequent years. The great Disney anthems, “Part of Your World,” “Reflection,” and “Let It Go,” continue that tradition. In these earlier cases, however, Disney wasn’t pushing a political agenda onto American youth, but merely reflecting and compounding the expressive individualist impulses already present in society.

The messages of many Disney films, even the most wholesome and family-friendly ones, are in some places antithetical to a biblical view of the world. The subversion won’t start with a potential same-sex kiss in a Pixar movie. It’s already there, and it goes way back.

We’ve got to stop thinking of family entertainment as “safe” merely by counting the number of cusswords or asking whether the movie contains overt displays of sexuality and violence. When our focus remains on the surface, we underestimate the more powerful and persuasive aspects of art. Plenty of films rated G and PG promote messages that counter biblical teaching.

So where does this leave us? With a call to discernment.

It’s not only the overt aspects of gender ideology that we ought to be looking for when we watch Disney movies, but also the subtle aspects of the expressive individualist philosophy that undergirds the sexual revolution. That is where the real and most urgent battle is fought.

The belief that happiness will be yours if only you look deep inside, follow your heart, chase your dreams, and oppose anyone who would stifle your truest self—that’s the narrative storyline for most children’s films today. I wrote Rethink Your Self so that people who have no interest in philosophy could still learn to spot that way of looking at life, and then see how it contrasts with the biblical view of looking up before looking in.

So, whatever conversations happen internally at Disney about their future programming, let’s make sure that thousands more conversations happen in our families about their current and past programs, appreciating what’s right and beautiful in their portfolio and recognizing what’s wrong and harmful. Whenever you turn on the TV, make sure you don’t turn off your mind.


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Quick Guide to Christian Denominations https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/quick-guide-christian-denominations/ Thu, 07 Apr 2022 04:10:15 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=466177 A summary of the major Christian traditions and denominations in the United States, featuring theological distinctives and famous figures.]]>

Our oldest son recently asked us some good questions about different kinds of churches.

  • What’s the difference between the Methodists and Presbyterians?
  • What about Lutherans and Catholics and Anglicans?
  • Baptists are Protestants, right?
  • Are Episcopalians the same as Anglicans?

In our conversation, I fielded a number of questions like this and helped him distinguish the three major branches of the Christian church and the distinctives of some of the subbranches.

In case it’s helpful to you as well, here’s a quick guide to Christian groups that differ by name, polity, and doctrines. I plan to update this guide in the weeks to come, so feel free to let me know what changes or improvements you’d suggest.

THE THREE BIG BRANCHES


EASTERN ORTHODOX

Name: The Eastern Orthodox churches are often just called “orthodox” or described by nationality or geography, such as the Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox, or Antiochian Orthodox.

History: In 1054, the Eastern and Western churches divided over the inclusion of a new phrase in the Nicene Creed (the Western churches said the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son), but there were many cultural, political, and ecclesiastical reasons for the split. Ecumenical overtures between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics have seen a measure of success in recent times.

What Church Is Like: The Eastern Orthodox Churches place a high priority on the particulars of liturgical worship (called The Divine Liturgy). Sanctuaries include various icons for veneration. The Orthodox believe there is a place for praying to saints and to Mary. A worship service engages all the senses, with incense, chanting, Scripture-reading, and a homily, culminating with the celebration of the Eucharist.

Polity: Bishops, following in the succession of the apostles, appoint male priests (also known as elders or presbyters) to pastor the people. Deacons serve the material needs of the congregation and play a key role in liturgical life. Synods (teams of bishops) lead the church, not a single bishop or pope.

Distinctives:

  • The Orthodox hold to a high view of tradition as the proper means for understanding Scripture, but without the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.
  • The Orthodox canon of Scripture includes the intertestamental books found in the Roman Catholic canon, with several additions: 1 Ezra, 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, a prayer of Manasseh in Chronicles, and additions to the book of Daniel.
  • Celibacy is the norm for bishops, but both married and unmarried men can be priests.
  • Doctrinal emphases on the incarnation and the resurrection.
  • Within Orthodox theology, theosis (or deification, union with God) is stressed as the ultimate point of salvation.

Famous Figures: Patriarch Photius, Vladimir Lossky, Alexander Schmemann, Kallistos Ware, John Behr, Hank Hanegraaff.


ROMAN CATHOLIC

Name: Roman Catholic churches are often just called “Catholic,” which means “universal” or “all-encompassing.” The “Roman” refers to the primacy placed on the pope, or bishop of Rome.

History: Before the split between East and West in 1054, there were seven ecumenical councils accepted by most churches in the world as correctly defining Scriptural teaching on the nature of the triune God and the divinity of Jesus Christ. Augustine of Hippo is the most influential theologian in the Western tradition. The Western church (Roman Catholics) continued to develop theologically in the years following the division with the East, with historical figures such as Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, and Francis of Assisi leading schools and movements. Disputes over the papacy, theology, and various practices prompted the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. Here is a brief essay on Roman Catholic theology.

What Church Is Like: The Roman Catholic Church places a high priority on the particulars of liturgical worship. Sanctuaries include various statues and images for veneration. Catholics believe there is precedent for praying to saints and to Mary. A worship service engages all the senses, with incense, singing, Scripture reading, and a homily, culminating with the celebration of the Eucharist.

Polity: Authority rests with the bishops who follow in the succession of the apostles. Bishops are helped by male priests (also known as elders or presbyters) to pastor the people. Deacons serve the material needs of the congregation. The pope, the bishop of Rome, is the key human authority over the church, who is infallible when speaking ex cathedra (from the full seat of authority on issues of faith or morals).

Distinctives:

  • There are seven sacraments (means of grace): baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, marriage, and ordination.
  • The Roman Catholic Church has developed a specific view of the Eucharist (“transubstantiation”), which describes the bread and wine as being changed at consecration—in substance (though not outward form)—into the physical body and blood of Christ.
  • The Roman Catholic canon contains intertestamental books not included in the Protestant canon: Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, and additions to Esther.
  • Celibacy is the rule for all bishops and priests (with a few exceptions).
  • Doctrinal emphasis on the atonement.
  • Within Catholic theology, justification is seen as encompassing the whole of salvation, whereby the righteousness of Christ is infused into the believer, which aids a person in doing good works.

Famous Figures: Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Erasmus, Teresa de Avila, Blaise Pascal, Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, Dorothy Day, Robert Barron. 


THE PROTESTANT TRADITION

Here’s where we will devote most of our attention, as many denominations stem from the Reformational branch.

History: During the Reformation in the 1500s, Protestants leaders such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli opposed corruption in the medieval Catholic Church and sought to correct what they believed to be aberrant, extrabiblical theological positions that did not align with Scripture or with Augustine and other church fathers.

Themes: The Reformation tradition is often summed up by five solas (the Latin word for “alone”):

  • Scripture Alone: The Bible is the supreme and final authority, not the magisterium or traditions of the Catholic Church.
  • Christ Alone: Sinners are justified in God’s sight only on the basis of Christ’s finished work on the cross and through his resurrection.
  • Faith Alone: God’s pardon to sinners is granted to and received by faith alone, apart from works.
  • Grace Alone: All of salvation, from beginning to end, is only by the grace of God.
  • To the Glory of God Alone: God alone receives glory for our salvation.

The Anglican Communion

Name: The Anglican Communion is the third-largest international Christian family of churches, with congregations in more than 165 countries.

History: As part of the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534. The expansion of Anglicanism coincided with the spread of the British Empire in subsequent centuries. The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) define the Reformational beliefs of the Church of England. Here is a brief essay on Anglican theology.

What Is Church Like: Services are formal, following a liturgical pattern and valuing historic traditions, culminating in the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The Book of Common Prayer guides Anglican worship services and personal devotion. Some churches include statues and paintings, incense and candles, while others do not.

Polity: Anglicanism resembles Catholicism in organizational structure, with an archbishop presiding over other bishops, who preside over priests and deacons in local congregations. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and symbolic head, as a first among equals.

Distinctives:

  • The Book of Common Prayer has been used for centuries and is acknowledged as a tie that binds the Communion together liturgically.
  • There are two sacraments (means of grace): baptism and the Eucharist. The other five Catholic sacraments are seen as important religious rites.
  • Anglicans believe that Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper but reject the Roman Catholic view of transubstantiation. Some Anglicans believe that a specific change in the elements takes place at the moment of consecration, but official Anglican teaching holds that there is no change to the elements: the presence of Christ is present in the heart of the one who partakes through faith.
  • The Protestant canon contains 66 books. Although not recognized as inspired, the intertestamental literature is recommended reading for historical and devotional purposes.
  • Bishops and priests can be married, and many provinces in the Anglican Communion ordain women as priests and bishops. Many provinces and dioceses do not.
  • Anglicans often adopt a posture of via media (or middle/moderate path), originally due to early Reformers navigating between Lutheranism and Calvinism.

Famous Figures: Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, C. S. Lewis, J. I. Packer, John Stott, N. T. Wright, Fleming Rutledge.

Sub-Groups:

  • The Episcopal Church (USA) is a mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, known in many cases for its theologically and politically liberal positions. It is currently under censure for “a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching” by the rest of the Anglican Communion regarding marriage and sexuality.
  • The Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) has developed in response to recent controversies over sexuality within Episcopal churches.

Lutheranism

Name:Lutheran” started as a negative title for those criticizing Martin Luther’s teaching, but Martin Luther later agreed it was an acceptable title only because it identified one who was teaching the truth of the gospel.

History: Lutheranism finds its first expression in its namesake, Martin Luther, who taught in Wittenberg, Germany, in the early 1500s. Initially viewing his teachings as a reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church, he was later excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of his teachings. Philip Melanchthon continued his teachings in Germany, and it expanded into Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Lutheranism spread to America initially through Swedish immigrants in the 17th century. Here is a brief essay on Lutheran theology.

What Church Is Like: Lutheran churches are more liturgical than some of the other Protestant denominations, with the pastor wearing vestments and leading in a set order of worship like the one followed in The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. This includes confessions and absolution, offertory, sermon or homily, recitation of the creed (normally the Nicene Creed), and other prayers.

Polity: Lutheran Churches can vary between a more episcopal form of government and a more congregational form of government. Lutheran churches in America tend to be more congregational, though with some authority given to synods at different levels.

Distinctives:

  • Many of the distinctive of Protestantism started as doctrines taught by Martin Luther (see Protestant distinctives mentioned above) including justification by faith alone.
  • The Book of Concord contains the key historic confessions of the Lutheran tradition.
  • Luther emphasized the need to read Scripture through the lens of the law/gospel distinction. The law condemns the conscience through the law’s commands and our inability to keep it perfectly, while the gospel consoles the conscience through the promise of forgiveness if a person receives Christ’s righteousness by faith (justification).
  • Luther and the Lutheran Tradition have taught the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper in contrast to the Roman Catholic teaching of transubstantiation and John Calvin’s spiritual-presence view.
  • Luther developed Augustine’s two kingdoms doctrine. God ordained two kingdoms on earth, the temporal and the spiritual kingdom. They are guided by different principles and must not be confused. Civil law guides the temporal kingdom, while the Word of God guides the spiritual kingdom. Christians will find that they have responsibilities in both kingdoms.

Famous Figures: Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Philipp Jakob Spener, Carl Braaten, Robert Jenson, Robert Kolb, Timothy Wengert, Harold Senkbeil.

Related Groups:

  • There are three main denominations of Lutherans in America: the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS; est. 1847); the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS; est. 1850); and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA, est. 1988).
  • The oldest Lutheran denomination, the LCMS, represents a more conservative theological approach to Lutheranism.
  • The ELCA started as a merger with the American Lutheran Church (est. 1930) and the Lutheran Church in America (est. 1962). It represents a more liberal version of Lutheranism on theology and social issues.
  • The WELS is more conservative like the LCMS and is the smallest of the three main Lutheran denominations in America.

Presbyterianism

Name: The word “Presbyterian” comes from the Greek word for “elder” (presbuteros).

History: During the Reformation, churches influenced by the French theologian John Calvin and/or the work of Scottish priest John Knox came to agree on particular doctrinal issues related to salvation and the sovereignty of God, while also developing different ecclesiastical districts (presbyteries). Two streams flowed from Geneva, the city where Calvin ministered. The Presbyterian stream is known for the Westminster Confession of Faith (1640s), which summarizes the distinctive beliefs of this branch of Protestantism. The Continental stream (Dutch and German) is known for the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort. Here is a brief essay on Presbyterian theology.

What Church Is Like: Presbyterian services tend to be more formal, following a liturgical pattern and placing emphasis on the preaching of God’s Word. Some churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper every week, while most do not. Presbyterian sanctuaries tend to be more austere than those of Anglicans, Catholics, and Orthodox.

Polity: Local congregations are governed by teams of elders (teaching and ruling elders), who take part in a larger assembly of elders (presbyteries), which take part in an even larger assembly (synod or a general assembly).

Distinctives:

  • Presbyterians believe in the spiritual presence of Christ at the Lord’s Table, as the Spirit lifts us up to Christ when partaking of the elements.
  • Presbyterians hold to a Calvinist view of salvation: humans left in their natural state are totally unable to come to faith apart from the grace of God, exercised through God’s unconditional election to salvation of only those for whom Christ died and to whom God calls and then preserves in faith, evidenced in a transformed life.
  • Like all the other denominations we’ve looked at so far, Presbyterians practice baptism through sprinkling, and they see the baptism of infants as the New Testament sign of the covenant, similar to circumcision in the Old Testament.
  • Presbyterian elders can be married, and some Presbyterian denominations ordain women as pastors.

Famous Figures: B. B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, J. Vernon McGee, James Montgomery Boice, R. C. Sproul, Eugene Peterson, Tim Keller.

Related Groups:

  • The Presbyterian Church (USA) is a mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, known in many cases for its theologically and politically liberal positions.
  • The Presbyterian Church of America launched in 1973 as a more conservative counterpart to the PC(USA).
  • The Evangelical Presbyterian Church launched in 1981 as a more conservative counterpart to the PC(USA), though allowing freedom across congregations to ordain women or come to different conclusions on the charismatic movement.
  • The Reformed Church in America is a mainline Reformed Protestant denomination in Canada and the United States.

Methodism

Name: “Methodists” started as a derogatory term to describe the Holy Club, started around 1729 by Oxford students John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. The term was used to describe their focus on how Christians should live holy lives.

History: Several groups in the Wesleyan tradition trace their roots back to John Wesley and his teachings. Wesley initially served as a priest and missionary with the Church of England to the American colonies in the 1700s. Methodism spread rapidly through the American Colonies due to the evangelistic efforts of ministers and laypeople. Wesley named his successors in 1784, which created Methodist groups as a separate legal group from the Church of England. The final break between the Methodist Church and the Church of England occurred in 1797 after several failed attempts to bring the two groups together. Here is a brief essay on Methodist theology.

What Church Is Like: While they may not follow a scripted model for reciting various prayers, Methodist churches still follow a common and consistent structure to their worship. One common order includes a musical prelude, singing at various points, Scripture readings from the Revised Lectionary, congregational prayer, a sermon, offering, benediction, and musical postlude.

Polity: The Methodist system follows the polity of connexionalism, which teaches the importance of connection among believers at various levels. Methodism uses conferences at different levels composed of both elected laypeople and ordained ministers to govern the needs and concerns of local churches up through the entire denomination.

Distinctives:

  • The most prominent denomination in America, the United Methodist Church, acknowledges the Confession of Faith from the Evangelical United Brethren Church along with the early Christian creeds and key writings of John Wesley as foundational statements of doctrine.
  • Wesley taught the Arminian view of the human will. Through “prevenient grace,” God shows grace to all humans by repairing their will, which was damaged by the fall, to freely receive or reject Christ. In this way, human choice is still an act of God’s grace.
  • Wesley taught that a Christian could become fully mature (sometimes called entire sanctification or Christian perfection). While Christians would not become fully sinless in this life, they could become fully mature in Christ, wholly devoted to loving God and neighbor.

Famous Figures: John and Charles Wesley, Richard Allen, E. Stanley Jones, Albert Outler, Thomas Oden, Richard Hays, Joel Green.

Related Groups:


Baptists

Name: “Baptist” comes from the Greek term baptizō, meaning “to baptize.”

History: Baptists originally started in the early 1600s as a separatist movement from the Church of England. Two streams of Baptists appeared early on in England: the General Baptists, who leaned more Arminian in their views of grace, sin, and salvation, and the Particular Baptists, who were more Calvinistic in their understanding of these doctrines. Due to increasing persecution by the Church of England, Baptists began to flee England for the American colonies where they also were persecuted. Baptist churches continued to grow as the U.S. enshrined religious liberty into its newly formed constitution and has branched out into many American denominations. Here is a brief essay on Baptist theology.

What Church Is Like: Baptists can have a variety of worship practices, but most commonly, Baptists will worship through singing, prayer, receiving tithes and offerings, listening to the Word preached, and giving a time for response. New believers may be baptized during or at the end of the service, while the Lord’s Supper may be celebrated as well. Baptist churches differ on how frequently they should observe the Lord’s Supper.

Polity: Baptist churches believe that Christ is the head of the church and that Christ guides every local church through the Spirit living within the members of each church. While Baptists may voluntarily join associations, each individual church is autonomous. Most Baptist churches are congregation-ruled, but some are led by single pastors while others are led by a plurality of elders, selected by church members.

Distinctives:

  • Baptists in general teach the autonomy of the local church, that each local church should govern its own affairs.
  • Baptists reject infant baptism and believe a person must make a profession of faith before being baptized (believer’s baptism).
  • Relatedly, Baptists stress the importance of regenerate church membership, that someone must not be included into membership of a local church without professing to be a Christian.
  • Early American Baptists emphasized the importance of religious liberty for all faiths based on their belief that genuine decisions to follow Christ cannot be coerced.

Famous Figures: Thomas Helwys, John Leland, John Gill, Andrew Fuller, John Bunyan, William Carey, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lottie Moon, Martin Luther King Jr., Carl F. H. Henry, Billy Graham, David Dockery, Timothy George, Millard Erickson.

Related Groups:

  • Converge is a Baptist denomination, once known as the Baptist General Conference (until 2008) and then Converge Worldwide (until 2015). Its heritage traces back to Swedish Baptists in the 19th century.
  • The Southern Baptist Convention split from northern Baptists (now American Baptists) in 1845 and is one of the largest religious groups in America. It is conservative theologically and socially.
  • The National Baptist Convention is an African American Baptist denomination that merged in 1895 from three separate conventions.
  • The American Baptist Convention is the new name (est. in 1950) for the Northern Baptist Convention (formally created in 1907), which traces its heritage most directly to the split between Northern and Southern Baptists in 1845.
  • Cooperative Baptist Fellowship split from the more conservative Southern Baptist Convention in 1991. It tends to be more moderate to liberal theologically and socially than the SBC.
  • Free Will Baptists are a more Arminian strand of Baptists that trace their heritage back to Baptist churches started in the colonies in New Durham, New Hampshire, and Chowan, North Carolina.

Evangelical Free Church

Name: The term “evangelical” signifies associations of churches that trace their heritage to the birth of evangelicalism in the modern era, while “free” identifies it as part of the “free church” heritage that sought to separate church doctrine and practice from government control.

History: In 1950 the Swedish Evangelical Free Church and the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Free Church Association merged to form the Evangelical Free Church of America. Both groups were started by immigrants in the 1880s.

What Church Is Like: Worship services are much more in line with Baptist churches than high church liturgies like Roman Catholic and Anglican.

Polity: Evangelical Free churches follow a congregational model of church governance.

Distinctives:

  • The Evangelical Free Church of America allows for some diversity of belief in doctrine within the confines of their statement of faith. For instance, they have pastors and congregations that lean more toward a Calvinist understanding of salvation and others that lean more toward an Arminian understanding of salvation.
  • Based on a 2018 doctrinal survey, a majority of churches associated with the Evangelical Free Church of America practice elder-led congregational rule.
  • In 2019, the Evangelical Free Church of America removed “premillennial” from its statement of faith on the end times, confirming it was a nonessential belief in the denomination.

Famous Figures: C. T. Dyrness, L. J. Pedersen, Walter Kaiser Jr., Grant Osborne, D. A. Carson, Fred Sanders, Chuck Swindoll.

Related Groups:

  • The Evangelical Free Church of America’s headquarters is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has 1,600 churches in association based upon the EFCA Statement of Faith.
  • Evangelical Free Church of Canada (est. 1917) is based in Langley, British Columbia, and has over 140 churches across Canada.

Restorationist Movement

Name: The name “restorationist” refers to the focus on recovering the pure faith of the early church as described in the New Testament.

History: Sometimes referred to as the Stone-Campbell movement, the Restorationist movement started in the Second Great Awakening and focuses on restoring the local churches in their faith and practices to what the Bible teaches in the New Testament.

What Church Is Like: Many Churches of Christ do not use musical instruments since these aren’t mentioned in the New Testament, singing unaccompanied by music (a cappella). Some, however, do include musical instruments in worship. The Lord’s Supper is observed every Sunday.

Polity: Churches of Christ are independent congregations with elders, deacons, and ministers leading the congregation.

Distinctives:

  • Baptism by immersion is essential to salvation.
  • The New Testament alone is the guide for worship.
  • Many within the tradition are against formalizing beliefs in creeds and confessions, even if they agree with many key teachings of the Christian faith.

Famous Figures: Barton W. Stone, Alexander Campbell, Max Lucado, Kyle Idleman.

Related Groups:

  • The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is the mainline denomination within this movement.
  • Southern congregations called Churches of Christ split from the Disciples of Christ after the Civil War, over using instruments in worship among other reasons.
  • Another group called Christian Churches/Churches of Christ began to separate in 1926 from the Disciples of Christ for several reasons including their concern over theological liberalism in the Disciples of Christ denomination. This strand is more broadly evangelical than the other two strands (for example, Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky).

Pentecostal and Charismatic Traditions

Name: The term “pentecostal” highlights the focus on the coming of the Spirit in Acts 2 at Pentecost. “Charismatic” derives from the Greek word charisma, which means “gift” and most relevantly refers to the gifts given by the Spirit (see Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 12).

History: Pentecostal themes can be traced back to early-19th-century movements like the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition and the Higher Life movements. However, the two most prominent events identified as the beginning of modern Pentecostalism are revivals in the early 1900s: one at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, and another at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. Here is a brief essay on Pentecostal theology.

What Church Is Like: While Pentecostal churches will share some common church practices like singing, preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and receiving offerings, these churches may include times for giving prophecies along with those who speak in tongues and interpret them.

Polity: Pentecostal churches are congregationalists. They may be independent congregations or local congregations that associate with other like-minded churches (“cooperative fellowships”). However, the Charismatic movement will adapt to the specific church polity of its denomination.

Distinctives:

  • Pentecostals tend to follow the Wesleyan tradition, though some versions may hold to a more Calvinistic view of salvation.
  • Due to its rapid growth in the Global South (South America, Africa, and Asia), Pentecostalism is one of the most ethnically diverse Christian traditions in the modern era.
  • One key distinctive of Pentecostals is the doctrine of baptism in the Holy Spirit that occurs after conversion. A person who has already been born again should seek to receive empowerment by the Spirit for ministry.
  • Pentecostals believe all the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in Paul’s letters continue, including the miraculous gifts like healings and speaking in tongues.
  • Pentecostals can tend to downplay reason and tradition while focusing on Scripture and experience when doing theology.

Famous Figures: Charles Fox Parham, William Seymour, Aimee Semple McPherson, J. Rodman Williams, Gordon Fee, Amos Yong.

Related Groups: Pentecostalism has grown rapidly and adapted to its environment, so not all can be listed in such a brief guide. Here are a few representative groups.


Non-Denominational Churches

Name: The name identifies that the church has no affiliation with any specific Christian denomination.

History: In the 20th century, more and more churches began to identify as “independent” or “non-denominational,” with no historic ties to other denominations.

What Church Is Like: Non-denominational churches tend to be more low church in their worship like Baptist and Evangelical Free churches, though a non-denominational church can have as much or as little liturgy as the individual church decides. Most non-denominational churches are more like Baptists than other denominations.

Polity: Non-denominational churches will be congregational since they have no commitment to any specific denomination.

Distinctives:

  • Non-denominational churches have no connection to any denomination, although they may partner with like-minded churches on various mission projects.
  • Based on the first distinctive, non-denominational churches will be congregational in their form of government.
  • Since they are truly independent, non-denominational churches can freely write their doctrinal statements and church practices, though they tend to be broadly evangelical and Baptistic in their main beliefs.

Famous Figures: Gene Getz, Tony Evans, Francis Chan.

Related Groups:

  • Fellowship Bible Churches (founded by Gene Getz) started as a movement of churches that emphasized Bible teaching, fellowship, and outreach as key components of the church. Not all churches with this name are associated with the movement.

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Don’t Overlook the Value of Cultural Apologetics https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/value-cultural-apologetics/ Tue, 05 Apr 2022 04:10:31 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=465052 If apologetics is about making arguments to defend Christian truth, cultural apologetics is about making arguments that showcase the beauty and goodness of Christianity.]]>

A new way of defending the Christian faith has arisen in recent years, or better said, a new take on an old way: “cultural apologetics.” My friend Collin Hansen recently taught a course on this topic at Beeson Divinity School. Paul Gould has written a book with this title, in which he offers this definition:

The work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying.” 

This broadens the definition given by Ken Myers of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, who distinguishes traditional from cultural apologetics:

Traditional apologetics is concerned with making arguments to defend Christian truth claims, and has often addressed challenges to Christian belief coming from philosophical and other more intellectual sources. The term “cultural apologetics” has been used to refer to systematic efforts to advance the plausibility of Christian claims in light of the messages communicated through dominant cultural institutions, including films, popular music, literature, art, and the mass media. So while traditional apologists would critique the challenges to the Christian faith advanced in the writings of certain philosophers, cultural apologists might look instead at the sound bite philosophies embedded in the lyrics of popular songs, the plots of popular movies, or even the slogans in advertising.”

Engaging in cultural apologetics begins with a particular posture toward the world. The missionary theologian Lesslie Newbigin urged Christians toward a “missionary encounter” between the gospel and whatever culture we’re trying to reach.

To make inroads in a culture, we must be comprehensible. We must understand the ways in which the gospel fulfills the deepest longings of people and the ways in which the gospel exposes the lies people believe. Often, these two aspects are connected. For example, when the longing for transcendence—for a relationship with God—gets misdirected, we are most prone to fall for falsehoods.

Cultural apologetics is about discovering what makes people in a culture “tick.” Why do they believe what they believe? What is plausible in this society? What is their view of the good life? You discern these sensibilities in films, in TV series, in books, songs, musicals, even YouTube tutorials. This manner of apologetics examines the culture and then looks for ways to bring the truth of the gospel to bear, into a missionary encounter with that culture.

If apologetics is about making arguments to defend Christian truth, cultural apologetics is about making arguments that showcase the beauty and goodness of Christianity, using cultural touchpoints as an opportunity for gospel witness. It’s a precursor to evangelism. It sets the stage so that the beauty of the gospel can be accentuated.

Tim Keller: Cultural Apologist

Tim Keller engages in both traditional and cultural apologetics. His work brings together pastoral experience and serious and sustained reflection on culture—on the trends and currents of thoughts that influence how people in a society think, feel, and behave.

Throughout church history, you can find apologists trained to answer rational arguments raised against Christianity, men like Justin Martyr. You also find pastors who knew the Scriptures and the people they shepherded, men like Richard Baxter or Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

Tim Keller combines both pastoral sensibility and cultural awareness. With Keller, you see what it means to be an exegete of the culture, not just the Scriptures. But that exegesis of the culture is always in service of explaining the Scriptures, of making the application of Christian teaching more incisive, more compelling, more carefully tuned to the idols of our time.

This approach of combining pastoral sensibility with cultural awareness reminds me of Ambrose of Milan and other pastor-apologists through the ages, whose sermons and writings shed the light of the gospel on the concerns of the times.

Risks for Cultural Apologists

No form of apologetics comes without dangers. The risk in prioritizing cultural apologetics is that the culture part can dwarf the apologetic part. By so emphasizing study of the culture or the society you’re called to reach, you find yourself underdeveloped in studying the Scriptures. You can lose sight of the reason you’re engaging in the task in the first place: to foster a missionary encounter with others. And not just an encounter or dialogue, but a gospel-shaped missionary moment where, yes, you find areas of common ground on which to build, but then tackle the areas of conflict, where the offense of the gospel must remain.

Another risk in prioritizing cultural apologetics is that you so focus on understanding the people you’re trying to reach that you tailor the presentation of Christianity only to the needs and questions they already have. You try to fit Christianity into another framework of thought, showing how it answers and fulfills the longings people have.

As a starting point, this is fine. I’ve heard it said that we’re to listen carefully for the questions being asked in each generation and then show how the gospel answers those questions. That’s good, but it doesn’t go far enough. Faithfulness to the gospel means that we don’t merely answer the questions people in the culture are asking, but that we also raise questions that people in the culture should be asking, but aren’t. The gospel upends all earthly and cultural scripts and frameworks, at least at some level. The gospel presses different questions. The risk with cultural apologetics could be that the cultural trends and questions drive everything, and the challenge that Christianity poses to the world gets muted.

Hope for the Future

I’m heartened by the rise of cultural apologetics as a supplement to more traditional methods of making a case for Christianity. Showcasing both the truth of Christian teaching and its goodness helps demonstrate the relevance of our faith in answering universal human longings.

With eyes open to the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, I pray God raises up a generation who knows how to apply the truth of the gospel to the longings of the human heart.


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Why ‘Consent’ Isn’t Enough for a Sexual Ethic https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/consent-not-enough/ Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:59:39 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=463871 A growing number of secular commentators recommend we reexamine our society’s norms surrounding sexuality.]]>

Perusing various magazines and news sites in recent months, I’ve noticed a growing number of commentators who recommend we reexamine our society’s norms surrounding sexuality. Casual sexual encounters bring more misery than happiness, they say, and “consent” isn’t a high enough standard to bring about sexual fulfillment and freedom.

The Problem of Being Cool About Sex

Consider an article from Helen Lewis in the Atlantic last year, “The Problem with Being Cool about Sex.” Lewis claims that the new generation of feminists hasn’t reconciled “what we should want with what we do want.”

Pornography has saturated the lives of young people and colored an entire generation’s expectations of what sex should be. “If two or more adults consent to it, whatever it is, no one else is entitled to an opinion,” or so goes the commonsense thinking about sexual encounters. The problem, Lewis writes, is that the sexual revolution’s promises haven’t panned out.

“Our enlightened values—less stigma regarding unwed mothers, the acceptance of homosexuality, greater economic freedom for women, the availability of contraception, and the embrace of consent culture—haven’t translated into anything like a paradise of guilt-free fun.”

The sexual revolution isn’t working. The utopia promised by blowing up old moral strictures hasn’t arrived. What’s more, in some cases the situation seems worse.

“Our language still lacks the words to describe the many varieties of bad sex that do not rise to the criminal standard of rape or assault,” Lewis writes, and then mentions an Oxford professor surprised to find students riveted by arguments that claim porn debases and objectifies women. Even men say that porn makes it difficult to imagine sex as something loving and mutual rather than an act more inclined to domination and submission.

The cultural scripts we’ve inherited stir up conversations about sex that expose the confusion over its purpose, its meaning, its significance:

“Is sex most usefully thought of as a physical need, like breathing; as a human right, like freedom of speech; as a spiritual connection that takes on full meaning only if it’s part of a relationship; or even . . . like ‘bungee jumping, an adrenalizing physical feat’? Can rules made by believers in one of these frameworks be applied to those operating under another?”

Lewis’s response is to assume there’s no simple or sustainable answer to this question. We should adjust our expectations until we realize that the promised utopia of sexual freedom and fulfillment will not arrive:

“No, tomorrow sex will not be good again. As long as some people have more money, options, and power than others do; as long as reproductive labor falls more heavily on one half of the population; as long as cruelty, shame, and guilt are part of the human experience; as long as other people remain mysterious to us—and as long as our own desires remain mysterious too—sex will not be good, not all the time.”

She concludes with this killer line, which sums up a truth about fallen humanity that could be lifted straight from Augustine, Aquinas, or even the apostle Paul: “We will never simply want the things we should.”

Consent Is Not Enough

A more recent column, by Christine Emba, showed up in the Washington Post: “Consent is Not Enough. We Need a New Sexual Ethic.” The problem, Emba says, is that “young Americans are engaging in sexual encounters they don’t really want for reasons they don’t fully agree with.” Like Lewis, she attributes this “depressing state of affairs” to a culture “turbocharged by pornography, which has mainstreamed ever more extreme sexual acts,” as well as dating apps that lead one to expect new partners are readily available.

The outcome of the sexual revolution, in which getting consent is the only moral stipulation, freed from the bonds of marriage or commitment to a relationship, is “a world in which young people are both liberated and miserable.” The experience of sex, for many, is “sad, unsettling, even traumatic.” Emba writes:

“Even when it goes well, sex is complicated. It involves our bodies, minds and emotions, our connections to each other and our deepest selves. Despite the (many, and popular) arguments that it’s only a physical act, it is clear to almost anyone who has had it that sex has vast consequences, some of which can last long after an encounter ends.”

The answer to this malaise can’t be “consent” as the only rule.

“An overreliance on consent as the sole solution might actually worsen the malaise that so many people feel: If you’re playing by the rules and everything still feels awful, what are you supposed to conclude?”

Emba even begins to question whether there are some “sexual practices” that “eroticize dehumanization and degradation.” Are these practices ethically valid, even if consent is obtained?

“Nonconsensual sex is always wrong, full stop. But that doesn’t mean consensual sex is always right. Even sex that is agreed to can be harmful to an individual, their partner or to society at large.”

In other words, maybe there is a right and wrong when it comes to sexual activity. What would a better sexual ethic look like? The responses Emba discovers come from words like “listening,” “care,” “mutual responsibility,” and “love.” That last word she defines by Thomas Aquinas as “willing the good of the other.”

A Better Way

As believers, we realize these articles still seem far from the Christian ethic that reserves sex for the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. But we can learn something from these complaints about the inadequacy of “consent” and from the world’s bemoaning of pornography’s effects. We can reach out with love and mercy toward our neighbors, many of whom have been hurt and disappointed by the outworking of a “consent is all that matters” sexual ethic. And perhaps we would do well to reflect on how the pornification of society has affected marriage relationships too, even in the church.

Neither Lewis nor Emba appear to be so radically rethinking sexual norms that they’d entertain the Christian sexual ethic. But these are baby steps, important ones, that indicate a sense of angst and anxiety underneath the commonsense cultural ethos surrounding sex. The church has an opportunity to offer a better way here, but only if our lives match our teaching.


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Yes, God Uses One-Directional Leaders https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/one-directional-leaders/ Tue, 29 Mar 2022 04:10:49 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=463858 God has a purpose even for the “extremist” who focuses attention on a particular point of theology and doctrine. ]]>

“Was Martin Luther a multi-directional leader?”

That question, put to me by Collin Hansen last year, made me pause. Can we say that Luther, the firebrand theologian whose work launched the Reformation, was “multi-directional” in the way my book describes—aware of dangers coming at the flock from multiple sides of the field, willing to hold tightly to multiple truths in their fullness?

On some issues, perhaps.

Luther opposed the errors of the medieval Catholic church, but he also recognized the anarchist dead end of the radical Anabaptist movement. Still, there’s little resemblance between Luther and a model multi-directional leader like John Stott, especially when considering Luther’s temperament, his rhetoric, and his laser-like focus on justification by faith alone (to the point where he questioned whether James’s epistle belonged in the canon of Scripture!).

Was Luther an extremist? A one-directional leader in most matters? It appears so. And yet, we Protestants recognize that Luther’s extremism on a matter of central importance was used by God. Even the one-directional leader plays a role in the sovereign purposes of God.

God at Work

I don’t find it fruitful to expend too much energy worrying about the state of the evangelical movement in the United States, or even the fractured state of many churches today. Yes, I grieve the wounds and battle scars inflicted by brothers and sisters who sin in the way they treat each other. But in these cases, it’s the sins—pride, anger, lovelessness—that distress me. I don’t have a hand-wringing sense of despair when I think about the present state or the future.

In a recent episode of Mere Fidelity, Tim Keller was asked if “moderation”— seeking to find a position between extremes—could sometimes be a problem rather than a solution. Aren’t there times when you look to two extremes and, instead of looking for something in between, must say, “This extreme is the correct position”?

Keller acknowledged the point, saying that Christianity is not a religion that fits easily into ideological categories. It’s not a middle road but a “patchwork of extremes.” The search for a “third way” on every issue, something Keller is known and sometimes criticized for, comes from a peacemaking impulse that is as much temperamental as theological. “Sometimes I overdo it,” he admitted.

The next question follows: Does God makes use of leaders who don’t display that peacemaking tendency, the “extremists” who may sound various alarms about compromise or launch into tirades against an aberrant theological position? To put it another way: Does God use one-directional leaders too?

The answer, of course, is yes. Keller points to two pairs of theologians to make the point: Luther and Calvin, and Kuyper and Bavinck. Calvin was much more of a synthesizer than the iconoclastic Luther. Bavinck carefully weighed opposing views, sought to bring people together, and set forth a constructive theology intended to capture the breadth and depth of the Christian position. Kuyper butted heads with many leaders in his day, jumped into the rough and tumble of politics, and adopted a few theological positions that were idiosyncratic.

The one-directional leader—the “extremist”—worries that the multi-directional leader who stays aware of threats from various parts of the field isn’t sufficiently hard-line. The desire to always be listening and careful makes the synthesizer susceptible to compromise. On the other hand, multi-directional leaders worry that the iconoclastic, fiery “one-directional” types often do more harm than good to the church, leaving behind unnecessary fractures and division.

Effects of Sin

The problem here is sin. Sin affects both styles of leadership but in different ways.

Even though I make the case for multi-directional leadership—backing up this perspective with examples from Scripture and church history, and even though peacemaking is a command of Christ, I do recognize that sin can infect this posture of leadership by leading to the wrong kind of synthesis. Cowardice can mask itself as carefulness.

On the other hand, the “extreme” one-directional leader may be right on the point in question and yet infected by a pugnacious and contentious spirit, falling prey to the sin of self-importance, caustic words, and a vengeful outlook that more closely resembles the Accuser than the fruit of the Spirit.

God Uses All Kinds of People

The good news is, God is in control of history. He uses all types of people to accomplish his purposes. History is messy. “An extremist type personality might be necessary to get certain things going,” Keller acknowledged, pointing to Soren Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom as a case in point.

I’ve been reading slowly through Kierkegaard’s Provocations over the last few months. He makes statements I find profoundly exaggerated and yet strangely helpful, leading me to think, It may be necessary for someone to say something this extreme in order to see the truth for what it is. Splashing cold water in someone’s face does tend to wake a person, even if that shouldn’t be our everyday experience.

God can use someone’s overcorrection, even an exaggerated focus on a particular doctrine or contention, as part of his bigger plan for the church. A decade ago, when people in my family of churches were debating the intricacies of Calvinism, I wondered if God might, by the very means of those disagreements—the back-and-forth between opposing sides—keep our movement from slipping into errors that squash evangelism, whether by sliding into inclusivism on the one hand or Hyper-Calvinism on the other.

I believe multi-directional leadership to be a wise and biblical way of assessing threats and multi-faceted dangers to the church, and yet I recognize God can use leaders who focus inordinate passion in one direction. Sometimes God uses one-directional leaders to help the church, overall, remain multi-directional!

Different theologians and church traditions put forth their insights vigorously, all with a degree of passionate extremism. Some evangelicals engage the theological task looking for what’s either totally true or totally in error. But much of our theological study should instead be seen more as a balancing of emphases—a tapestry where different threads throughout Christian history and theologians with varying degrees of insight into important subjects are woven together to help us better glimpse the whole. It’s because some theologians are unbalanced that the church can stay steady. So, don’t fret. God knows what he’s doing.


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Don’t Miss the Main Point of Bible Study https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/main-point-bible-study/ Thu, 24 Mar 2022 04:10:20 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=461441 Remember the point of reading the Bible and studying theology.]]>

Psalm 105:4 was a favorite verse of Augustine. He cited it four times in his work on the Trinity. “Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his face always” (CSB).

For this reason, Robert Louis Wilken chose Seeking the Face of God as the subtitle for his book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. Wilken believed this phrase, more than any other passage in the Bible, captured the spirit of early Christian pastors and theologians.

Revisiting Wilken’s work and the legacy left by the early Christians, I couldn’t help but wonder why it’s so easy for those who study the Bible or engage in the task of theological reflection to dismiss or downplay the desire to seek the face of God.

Ways We Approach the Bible

We can’t help but be shaped, at least in some measure, by Enlightenment rationalism and the tools of modernity.

We come to the biblical text and the task of theology with presuppositions about what we are to find in the sacred Scriptures, and our assumptions shape the goal and purpose for our study. Someone might think that our personal devotion should be cordoned off from our theological study; otherwise, we’d fail to be “objective” in the task.

And so, we approach the biblical text looking for our next sermon outline, or we study theology in hopes of passing the exam, or we peruse journals and book reviews so we can stay on top of current conversations in the academy.

Perhaps most Christians read the Bible to glean a little insight and inspiration for the day ahead, a morsel of wisdom to strengthen us in the life we’ve already chosen for ourselves.

How many of us consciously open the Scriptures or engage in the work of theology as a way of seeking the face of God himself?

Education and Exultation

On my shelf sits a commentary on the Gospel of Mark written by a solid, well-respected evangelical scholar, renowned for his work over decades of study. The bulk of it deals with questions of redaction criticism, textual variants, and the like—important issues to grapple with, certainly helpful for scholars who specialize in those fields. But somehow, lost in all the study, Mark’s portrait of Jesus receives little elaboration. Mark’s purpose in showing us Jesus seemed to run counter to the commentary, which focuses on everything else.

I heard John Piper once express his frustration with many commentaries: they rarely break out into song and worship. Education rarely connects to exultation. He writes,

“If education does not lead to exultation in God, it fails. If seeing glory doesn’t lead to savoring God, it fails. If thinking truth doesn’t lead to feeling love, it fails. Education, knowledge, sight, thought—they are all for exultation in God. And if they don’t produce it, they are not what they were created to be.”

To Know and Love Christ

Travel back to the time of the Puritans and the Reformation theologians, or go back further to the early church fathers and the writings of Augustine—yes, you’ll find head-scratching aspects of biblical exegesis, and yes, you’ll see these scholars engage the thought and philosophy of their times, sometimes poorly and sometimes well. But you’ll also feel how palpable their desire was to better understand the mystery of Christ, to honor and receive the treasure of the gospel, and to bask in its glory personally and corporately, hoping to shine as witnesses for the outside world.

The task of Christian theology isn’t one of invention or establishment; it’s about discovery and explanation. We’ve stumbled across something real, and as we behold with awe the wonders of this reality we seek to expound on it faithfully, trusting that what we’ve seen will change us. “We are changed into the one we see,” said Gregory the Great.

Wilken describes the task of early Christians:

“They wished not only to understand and express the dazzling truth they had seen in Christ, by thinking and writing they sought to know God more intimately and love him more ardently. The intellectual task was a spiritual undertaking.”

Seeking the God of the Scriptures

This desire for God, a hunger to know him and love him and adore him, pervades the early Christian writings. This desire propelled them deeper into the Scriptures. “For now treat the Scripture of God as the face of God,” wrote Augustine. “Melt in its presence.”

Augustine as the consummate pastor-theologian studied for the sake of his own soul and then sought to pass on the food he received. “I nourish you with what nourishes me,” he said. “I offer to you what I live on myself.”

Seeking the face of God helps protect us from pride, from seeing the Bible as a book to be mastered, or from assuming we have the last word on all things biblical or theological, as if it were possible to put an end to study. Augustine told his readers:

“Whenever you are as certain about something as I am go forward with me; whenever you hesitate, seek with me; whenever you discover that you have gone wrong come back to me; or if I have gone wrong, call me back to you. In this way we will travel along the street of love together as we make our way toward him of whom it is said, ‘Seek his face always.’”

At the end of his work on the Trinity, Augustine admitted he had argued and toiled in his pursuit of seeking God intellectually, but that work prompts further prayer:

“Give me the strength to seek you. . . . When we do attain to you, there will be an end to these many things which we say and do not attain, and you will remain one, yet all in all, and we shall say one thing praising you in unison, even ourselves also being made one in you.”

So, open your Bible, pick up a book of theology, and remember the ultimate goal: union with the one who has saved us. “Seek his face always.”


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Let the Global Church Give You Perspective https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/global-church-perspective/ Tue, 22 Mar 2022 04:10:05 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=459640 The global church puts many political squabbles in perspective.]]>

“Stay connected to the global church if you want to hold on to orthodoxy . . . and if you want to hold on to your sanity.”

That’s the counsel I gave a gathering of Evangelical Free Church pastors and church leaders in the Midwest recently. The question had been raised: How do we deal with the divisions in the church? And the follow-up: How do we focus on the essentials of the faith when so many debates make political agreement essential?

You may have seen the statistics. A majority in the United States today would be more upset to see a son or daughter marry someone from another political party than from another religion. That survey displays not only the decline of religious affiliation as a mark of significance for Americans, but also the rise of politics as a quasi-religious identity.

Recent surveys show some Muslims self-identify as “evangelical,” most likely because they embrace the political meaning of that label.

Consider also the toxic stew of social media, the rampant slandering and tribalistic spin online. Then add a dash of end-times urgency to every election cycle and season.

The conditions are set for people to leave the church because they disagree with brothers and sisters on political priorities, or vaccines, or masks, or the best way to fight racial injustice, etc. One pastor lamented his struggle to maintain friendships with pastors who agree on the essentials of the faith but seem driven now to part ways over lesser issues. “Everything is essential now,” he told me.

The Global Church

Which brings me back to the global church. One of the best ways to maintain sound doctrine and gain perspective on some of our society’s most heated debates is to stay in close contact with Christians in other parts of the world. Cultural quirks and theological distinctions will help you discern what’s essential and where Christians can “agree to disagree.”

Here are two examples from the several years I spent as a student doing mission work in Romania.

The Rapture

First, I was shocked to discover that hardly anyone there had heard of “the rapture.” The dispensational premillennial view of eschatology, which became something of the default position in the latter part of the 20th century among conservative evangelicals, was virtually unheard of in many parts of the world (although I know a handful of Romanians now that espouse that view).

As a teenager, I had assumed the dispensational perspective on eschatology—in its broad contours, if not all the details you’d read about in Left Behind—was the Christian position. It was orthodoxy. Anything else was serious error, or at least suspect. Fellowship with faithful Christians outside of the U.S. revealed that what I thought was a non-negotiable aspect of theological fidelity was not an essential of the Christian faith.

One’s eschatology is important, of course (I wrote an entire book called Eschatological Discipleship!), but the specifics of how Christ’s return will play out is something Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians have long disagreed about and will continue to. My encounter with the global church helped me put end-times debates into perspective.

Capital Punishment

Another example was a matter of ethical wisdom: capital punishment. As a teenager, I assumed the Christian position was to support capital punishment, and that only radically aberrant Christians would stand against it. But I met many Christians in Europe who affirmed the principle biblically but not the practice politically. They were leery of government officials having such authority when it can be so easily abused and unjustly applied (coming out of a Communist dictatorship surely had something to do with this). I discovered they grounded their resistance in the same doctrine (the imago Dei) I believed to be the biblical support for the practice (Gen. 9:6).

To be clear, in these cases, someone is right and someone is wrong. I’m not saying that all the end-times views are equal, and I’m not downplaying the significance of capital punishment. I’m putting these debates in perspective. Faithful Christians disagree on these points, and we can have robust debate without it affecting our fellowship or unity in Christ.

Christianity Is Big

I could multiply the examples. Get to know Christians in other parts of the world and you’ll be surprised to see some taking more conservative positions than you do, to the point they may appear legalistic to American eyes, and then you’ll find Christians whose political affiliations seem “leftist” when you try to squeeze them into America’s two-party system. Why is this the case? Because Christianity is bigger than the political frameworks of any one country.

The response is not to throw your hands up and say, “We’ll never know what’s really true.” It’s not to become apolitical. I’m a National Review–type political conservative in most areas, but I don’t raise my political calculus to the level of “orthodoxy” when it comes to the Christian faith.

Instead, I recognize that many people who submit to the authority of God’s Word have disagreements over the wisest ways to interpret and apply it in different cultural contexts. I may think universal health care is a bad idea for the United States from the standpoint of wisdom and prudence, but I realize many brothers and sisters around the world come to the opposite conclusion when they seek to apply their Christian convictions in the public square.

A Bigger Perspective

The global church puts many squabbles in perspective. Too many of us have been discipled by political pundits to the point we confuse the non-negotiable, unchanging, and foundational truths of Christianity with any number of other matters. We begin to think that even the slightest deviation from a partisan political perspective is a surefire sign that someone can’t be trusted in any area of doctrine or practice. Everything is a slippery slope to apostasy. If you’re patriotic, you must be a Christian nationalist. If you believe in systemic injustice, you must be a woke social justice warrior. This is ridiculous, and the global church exposes such silliness. What’s more, churches in other parts of the world, when in contact with us, are better able to see their own blind spots and areas of capitulation to cultural expectations.

Everyone loves that phrase: “in the essentials, unity; in the nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” But that only works if you know the difference between essentials and nonessentials. That’s why I tell people to stay connected to the church around the world. Nothing puts our squabbles in perspective and aids our discernment of what is most important than reading the Bible alongside our worldwide family of faith.


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Could ‘Mutual Accountability’ Bring Evangelicals Together? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/mutual-accountability/ Thu, 17 Mar 2022 04:10:10 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=458355 Could a new proposal to finding solutions help divided evangelical churches and institutions move past tired debates and stalemates?]]>

A frustrating element of evangelical discourse these days is how quickly people talk past each other. We see it all the time. Brothers and sisters who hold foundational beliefs in common react to disagreement on secondary issues with shock, then consternation. Tribes form around different emphases and perspectives until trajectories develop, unity breaks down, and we’re all the worse for it. It’s the kind of drift that happens in families when husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, and parents and their grown children—often with the best of intentions—talk past each other, misinterpret the signals of connection, and build walls around the heart.

Often when I read articles online or see people I know and respect interact on social media, I get discouraged by the seeming inability of people to recognize good points being made on different sides of an issue. No one seems to hear—really hear—people with a different perspective. And, due to lack of trust and newfound tribal impulses, online speech loses its orientation toward persuasion and devolves into a performance designed to rally one’s base. Condescension replaces communication. We’re satisfied with quarreling and have given up on good argumentation.

Mutual Accountability Model

I picked up George Yancey’s Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism a few weeks ago. I’ve long appreciated Yancey’s contributions to discussions about race, as well as his scholarship in other areas, such as the political and theological impulses of progressive and conservative Christians. In his new book, Yancey says the choice between “colorblindness” and “antiracism” is false. He proposes, instead, a “mutual accountability approach” to racial alienation, a method that depends on active listening and the desire to find solutions that serve the interests of everyone, not just one group.

There’s much to commend about this proposal when it comes to racial division, but I was struck by how so much of what he writes could apply to other areas of disunity. Many churches are facing conflict of one type or another. Nearly every denomination I can think of has been roiled by disunity at some level. We’re mired in debates over political priorities, the application of biblical principles, the meaning of confessional statements, and the best way to be faithful on mission in these times.

Yancey’s vision is relational. When people arrive at a crossroads—hurt, angry, and divided—the best approach is to come together without predetermined outcomes, to make space for true and meaningful conversations.

Active Listening and Ownership

The key to success through this kind of meeting is the ability and willingness of all participants to engage in active listening. Yancey explains:

“Active listening is listening for understanding, not argument. Too often when we discuss a controversial issue, we listen only so we can make a counterargument against the speaker. . . . Active listening is an important way to build win-win solutions since we are trying not to win an argument but to understand the other person’s perspective. The key to active listening is to put the attitudes and perceptions of the person into our own words in such a way that they agree with what we are saying.” (40–41)

Another important factor for mutual accountability is that everyone takes part in the solution. No voice is ignored. Everyone is at the table and can take some level of ownership in the outcome.

“If I want to find solutions that serve the interests of everyone, I must listen to everyone. I consider their interests and perspectives and allow them to articulate those interests and perspectives in their own words. Instead of coming to my own conclusions and rationalizing why my solutions are best for everyone, I am obligated to gain the input of others so that their concerns are heard and incorporated into any path we take in our efforts.” (34–35)

Relational Persuasion

The point of these conversations is “moral suasion,” Yancey says. It’s not about power—forcing one ideology, perspective, or solution on a group—but about cultivating relationships that lead to better listening and engagement.

“Real moral suasion requires that we build rapport with those we want to persuade. It means we accurately understand their point of view. We also learn to admit when they are correct and become willing to find areas of agreement. In other words, real moral suasion is about relationship building, not brow beating. Moral suasion, done properly, unites us. By making us want to identify with and care for each other. It makes us want to work with others to find out what is good for them. Real moral suasion builds community.” (39)

This is one reason I’m happy to write a column at The Gospel Coalition. I don’t agree with all the writers or articles here, but there’s substantive agreement on the gospel and the essentials of Christianity, which provides the common ground for fruitful conversations on points of difference.

Leadership of John Stott

This mutual accountability proposal reminds me of John Stott’s work in bringing together disparate groups and factions from across the wide and wild world of evangelicalism. “I’m a great believer in small, private, international, representative consultations in which we’re prepared to listen to one another,” he once said.

Stott often found creative solutions and, in a number of areas, steered a path for evangelicals because he listened carefully when certain positions or postures provoked strong reactions from critics. When people were suddenly up in arms about a particular point of doctrine or practice, Stott would ask, “Why did they feel this so strongly?”

Instead of instantly dismissing their concerns as invalid or overstated, he sought to discern what these critics believed was in danger of being lost. “What is it that they want to safeguard?” he would ask. “The extraordinary thing was that in many cases you find that you want to safeguard it too. And then you reach the point of creative development or creative solutions.”

The Problem

I don’t know if there’s any chance of mutual accountability working on a large scale, in part because I’m not sure we’ve developed the kind of character on which such methods and meetings would depend. The bigger question for me is not, “Why don’t we do this?” but “Would we even be able to do this?”

Have our hearts and minds closed to such an approach? That’s the bigger question for me. Do we have the Stott-like character traits necessary—humility, wisdom, kindness, discernment, patience—to make this happen? If not, the bigger challenge we face is not one of division, but of discipleship.


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Fear Is the Wrong Motivator Against Doctrinal Drift https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/fear-doctrinal-drift/ Tue, 15 Mar 2022 04:10:49 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=458230 Adopting a fear-based posture is the wrong way to avoid drift.]]>

“I’m more afraid of sliding into liberalism than being called ‘fundamentalist,’” a colleague once told me. “If I go too far to the right, at least I’ll still believe the essentials. If I go too far to the left, I’ll lose Christianity altogether.”

I’ve heard sentiments like these from Christians over the years, often applied to different issues, whether it’s fear of the social gospel (“Better to have a too-narrow conception of the church’s mission than to make everything the mission and lose the gospel!”) or fear of egalitarianism (“We may slide toward feminism if we start to prioritize and promote women in non-pastoral leadership roles”). The old joke in my former fundamentalist circles made light of fear-based principles: “We’re against sex before marriage; it might lead to dancing.”

But the motivating power of fear doesn’t just affect those on the right. Some are so afraid to be seen as “too conservative” or “fundamentalist” that they shy away from taking bold biblical stances—reaffirming central matters of Christian conviction when those views are unpopular. On guard against whatever might lead to the appearance of a legalistic spirit, they go quiet on matters of first importance, fearful they might draw the line too sharply and then be lumped in with “mean Christians.”

Warnings Against Drift

The Bible warns against drift, but drift can go in more than one direction. “We must pay attention all the more to what we have heard,” we read in Hebrews 2:1 (CSB), “so that we will not drift away.” Some of the early Christians drifted toward the dilution of the grace of God in salvation (Gal. 1) while others used grace as a license for immorality (Jude 3–4). Doctrinal drift is real, and there are various ways to shipwreck your faith (1 Tim. 1:19). The apostles commanded us to keep the faith and maintain sound doctrine.

History also reveals the reality of doctrinal drift and its impact. It’s true that over time, some of the churches most involved in outreach have seen gospel proclamation swallowed up in social ministry. Likewise, we can find churches and movements whose focus on holding tightly to a few key doctrines led to an insular mindset, resulting in complicity with social injustice. In my own church tradition, you can trace the decline of General Baptists, who emphasized the universality of the atonement and drifted into universalism. You can also find Particular Baptists, who stressed limited atonement and became missionary-thwarting Hyper-Calvinists.

Drift is real. It happens. We see it in Scripture and in church history.

Framework of Fear

But I don’t believe the framework of fear makes much sense in determining our theological outlook. Should fear be the primary motivator for the positions I take?

  • If my big fear is becoming legalistic, I’ll be less likely to stress the commands of Jesus and more likely to slip into antinomianism.
  • If my main concern is becoming a “social gospel liberal,” I’ll be less likely to look for ways to serve the disadvantaged or protest injustice and more likely to slip into an inward-facing quietism.
  • If I’m afraid I might overlook or excuse racism in the church, I may go quiet about unbiblical ideologies that seem, on the surface, to support the cause of justice. But if my big fear is Critical Race Theory, I may slow down in doing the hard work of cultivating racial repentance and reconciliation.

The fear of one error often leads to another. Slippery slopes go more than one way. And being on guard against a danger on one side can leave you vulnerable to problems on another.

Faith, Not Fear

Adopting a fear-based posture is the wrong way to avoid drift. How, then, should we respond to the danger? With faith, not fear.

The apostle Jude called us to build ourselves up in holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. “Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting expectantly for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life,” he wrote (Jude 21, CSB). But the same apostle opened his letter by describing his readers as “called, loved by God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1, CSB). By faith, we are to “keep ourselves in the love of God,” and by faith, we rest assured that we are loved by the Father and “kept” for and by Jesus Christ. We need not fear the danger of drift, even as we’re called to resist it.

Pursuit of Faithfulness

“I’d rather be too legalistic than too liberal,” someone says. Why even put it that way? Why choose between legalism and licentiousness? These false choices, rooted in fear, keep us from looking at the Scriptures and adopting a posture that relies on God to guide our steps as we seek to move forward in faith.

It’s faithfulness we’re after. At the end of our ministry, when we look back at our lives, we don’t want to answer for why our church did so little for the disadvantaged by saying, “Well, at least we didn’t adopt the social gospel.” We don’t want to answer for why we went silent on core Christian convictions by saying, “Well, at least no one could accuse us of being fundamentalist.” We don’t want the answer to disobedience in one area to be our fear of drift toward another.

Yes, we must keep our eyes open. Be aware of pitfalls you see in history. Recognize the temptations most attractive to your personality so you’d know which direction you’d most likely go astray. Heed the warnings of Scripture, and keep a close watch on your life and doctrine (1 Tim. 4:16). But do all of this with feet grounded not in fear, but in faith. With a mind committed not to fretfulness, but to faithfulness. With a heart ever-earnest to follow all of Jesus’s teaching, no matter what artificial lines and categories get crossed.

We rely on the power of the Spirit and the grace of Jesus as we lean into the cultural winds, resist the schemes of the devil, and fight the sins that remain in our hearts. It’s faith in the outcome that motivates us, not fear of defeat. We know the One in whom we have believed. The Savior stands near us and steadies us.

Walk with your eyes wide open. But don’t be afraid.


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Gen Z Enters the Ministry: 3 Big Challenges https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/gen-z-ministry-challenges/ Thu, 10 Mar 2022 05:10:56 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=457509 Three challenges evident among Gen Z students preparing for the ministry.]]>

Looking over the landscape of Gen Z, whose leading edge includes men and women now turning 25, we find reasons to celebrate. There’s a zeal among many young believers to make a difference in the world, to find and cultivate community, to share the gospel, and to pursue justice and show mercy. In every generation, strengths and weaknesses show up, and we do well to consider both the opportunities and the challenges of being faithful in our time.

Not long ago, I sat down with a professor I’ve long admired, a man who has trained future pastors and church leaders for decades. Curious to get his take on culture shifts and the next generation, I asked him how an incoming class of 20-somethings today differed from 15 or 20 years ago.

What’s the difference between older millennials preparing for ministry (my generation) and Gen Z? I asked him. He paused for a moment and then offered three general impressions. Pornography, gender confusion, and the weight given to one’s opinion. Those were three differences that stood out, and as our conversation continued, I felt a heavier burden to commit to pray for the next generation of church leaders.

Devastation of Pornography

Porn is the biggest difference, and it’s not even close, the professor told me. At first, I was taken aback. It was already a big problem when I was a student, I thought. But then he clarified: it’s not that pornography has just now become a problem, but that we’re dealing with a generation of young people who, in many cases, were exposed to pornography as children. Adolescent minds have been formed (or deformed) by consistent access to pornography available on the phone. Most students, he told me, have some sort of baggage related to pornography, or are fighting the addictive impulse of this habitual sin, or are dealing with the fallout from the mind-warping aspects of viewing so much sexual distortion.

Our society and (too often) our churches have failed to grapple with the long-term ramifications of this kind of porn use. Pop stars like Billie Eilish say viewing porn as a child “destroyed [her] brain.Time featured a cover story on men whose porn use has wrecked their relationships. Even many in the secular world understand we’re dealing with a serious issue. The impact on future church leaders is significant.

Gender Confusion

One effect of pornography exposure at early ages—the online initiation into a variety of sexual experiences—is how it messes with one’s self-understanding and view of gender. When the professor mentioned gender confusion, he wasn’t talking about the decline of “masculinity” in terms of stereotypical machismo; he meant the loss of wonder and awe at God’s beautiful design of male and female difference, as well as the devastation wrought by pornography as to what seems “attractive” or “repulsive.”

Recent surveys show an increasing percentage of young people who identify as LGBT+, which indicates that the fluidity of sexual attraction has become a commonplace cultural phenomenon, surely influenced, at least in part, by the ubiquity of pornography. Other surveys show a loss of appetite for sexual encounters, to the point some writers worry now about a “sex recession,” also due in part to the prevalence of porn.

The effect on future church leaders is confusion over sexuality and gender, not about what the Bible teaches necessarily, but at a deeper level: a loss of a sense of manhood and womanhood—what it means to honor God in our maleness and femaleness in a day when gender distinctions are in some cases flattened and in other cases heightened.

Weight of Opinions

The third difference is one I attribute to the rise and influence of social media. Many young people today have grown up in an environment where broadcasting their opinions is expected. Any one person’s opinion carries as much weight or validity as another’s.

The classroom gets interesting when so many students enter the room already convinced their assumptions regarding theology, preaching, ministry practice, and the like are correct, chafing against the expectation they’d accept an expert’s authority, no matter how time-tested or experienced the person in authority might be. Yes, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but social media has distorted the weight we assign these viewpoints so that nearly everyone assumes their perspective is just as valid as someone else’s. This is a sign of the “death of expertise.”

Fifteen years ago, students would come into the room committed to the views of their favorite preacher or theologian, and class debates and discussions would take place by appealing to different authorities. Today, students are less likely to appeal to any outside authority at all, other than their own experience. That’s one of the effects of social media: everyone is a broadcaster, and the incentives for reason and persuasion are overcome by the incentives for attention-grabbing rhetoric, no matter how uneducated.

Praying for Gen Z Ministry

These three differences can be traced back, at least at some level, to the introduction of the iPhone. The phone made it easier than ever to access pornography. The phone’s cultural impact amplified the notion that one can create and change one’s persona, leading to a malleable or plastic vision of the self, a trend with ramifications related to gender and sexuality, yes, but also to a host of other issues. The phone gives us an exaggerated view of the worth and weight of our opinions.

Hearing from this professor, I’m committed to praying even more for the future pastors and church leaders coming up in the generation right behind us. Every generation faces challenges and opportunities, and the next one will be no exception. These ministry leaders will need us to encourage and celebrate what’s good in what they bring to the church and to share our wisdom and experience in avoiding potential pitfalls. Through it all, we pray we grow in faithfulness and conviction so we can serve a world in need of God’s truth, expressed in our words and embodied in our lives.


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Do Christians Need Maintenance or Mission? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/maintenance-mission/ Tue, 08 Mar 2022 05:10:32 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=455733 Am I off base when I contrast the “maintenance” of the church with the “mission” of the church?]]>

Am I off base when I contrast the “maintenance” of the church with the “mission” of the church?

In a recent column about the post-COVID malaise in many churches, I warned about two dangers: (1) prioritizing the maintenance of the church over the mission (losing a focus on outreach in our attempt to hold on to what we have) and (2) prioritizing the mission of the church over our relationship with Jesus (getting so focused on activity that we forget the centrality of worship).

Some Friendly Pushback

A pastor who subscribes to my email newsletter and who has served local churches for several decades reacted strongly to the way I pitted “maintenance” against “mission.” For years, he has seen denominational leaders contrast the church as a mission outpost and the church as an institution focused on its own maintenance—a “holy huddle” that leads people to “sit, soak, and sour.” He’s convinced this framing is problematic.

Yes, it’s possible for the church to turn inward and lose a sense of mission. But what happens when the church, in the name of outreach, becomes so broad that all depth gets lost, weakening the church’s witness in challenging times? Don’t mission-focused churches face the danger of turning the sermon into little more than a commercial for the “next big thing” the church leaders dream up for their congregation? What happens when shepherding the sheep takes a back seat to promoting church expansion and multiplication, when marketing the church supplants maintaining church health?

Throughout the week, church members are catechized by the world, he reminded me. Maintenance is not our big problem. According to Acts 20, Ephesians 4, and the pastoral epistles, maintaining the health of the church is one of the pastor’s primary jobs. Christians face pressures in the workplace, in school, and in the neighborhood; the temptation to compromise our convictions gets stronger all the time. Many believers gather for worship feeling beaten down by what they’ve encountered all week. They need sustenance, or “maintenance,” not a scolding for how they’ve failed at being “on mission.”

Defining Our Terms

I’m always glad to get feedback and, yes, even pushback on my columns. I never intend what I write to be considered “the last word” on something. It’s a joy to engage in good conversations with thoughtful readers, whether they compliment or critique my stances.

In this case, I wonder if this pastor and I have defined “maintenance” and “mission” in different ways. In our email correspondence, he distinguished between a view of mission that focuses on “how we can build our church” and a view of maintenance that focuses on “how we can build our people.” Church people do not exist to carry out the strategic initiatives of church leaders, he said. In contrast, shepherds are there to serve the sheep.

I’m grateful for this pushback, because it offers me the chance to be clearer in what I am and am not saying about maintenance and mission.

Mission

When I speak of the mission of the church, I refer to the outward impulse that derives from the upward gaze; that is, we encounter the God of the gospel and in response we seek to spread his name and fame. Worship results in evangelism and mission. I don’t see mission as a particular church’s “vision statement” and certainly not as a pastor’s intent to “see how much we can expand and grow our church numerically.” Growth might be a by-product of this outward impulse, but it’s not the primary focus.

Maintenance

When I talk about the danger of “maintenance” replacing “mission,” I’m not referring to spiritual disciplines, strong biblical preaching, or any other activity designed to strengthen and deepen the faith of the flock. Over the years—from my work on The Gospel Project, various Bible studies and tools, the Psalms in 30 Days prayer journey, and a forthcoming book that emphasizes the beauty and necessity of Christian doctrine—I’ve consistently sought to marry depth and breadth. We cannot, must not, choose one over the other.

No, my concern about “maintenance” is when we adopt a posture that loses the adventure of the Great Commission. It’s when we redefine the success of the church as “merely holding on to what we have,” rather than seeing the church on offense, ramming the gates of hell in order to plunder its captives. It’s the inward turn that imagines our safety in the barracks matters more than our activity on the battlefield.

Upward Gaze

My pastor friend is right to critique church leaders who, in the name of evangelism and outreach, make everything about church growth and ignore the real and substantive needs of the sheep in remaining faithful when out in the workplace or the world. But the solution to twisting “mission” in this way doesn’t require an inward turn that focuses primarily or solely on church health.

The solution is, again, to prioritize our Maker over the mission. It’s the upward gaze. It’s learning to love and adore God, and thus be renewed and refreshed in him, the One who saves us and sends us.

Strong trees can spread their branches because they have deep roots. Depth and breadth go together. The right kind of “maintenance” isn’t the fearful posture that recasts faithfulness as the ability to not lose any more ground. The right kind of maintenance is the daily and weekly reception of God’s Word as our food so we have the energy and strength to remain active in love and good deeds. The right kind of maintenance is the checkup for our car, not so we can keep it pristine in the garage, but so that it holds up on a journey to a destination.

In short, a strong no to “mission” that becomes just another attempt by church leaders to build large churches to extend their own influence. And no to “maintenance” that imagines we can be faithful if we’re never fruitful. Yes to a view of mission that derives from our encounter with a sending God. And yes to a view of maintenance that builds us up so we can overflow with love for God and neighbor.


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Let Trevin Wax Be Your Guide Through Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/guide-chesterton-orthodoxy/ Tue, 01 Mar 2022 05:10:31 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=455255 A new, beautifully designed edition of G. K. Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’ features guided reading and annotations from Trevin Wax.]]>

Where should we start when considering Gilbert Keith Chesterton?

I struggle to describe him, beyond the general description of “writer.” He wrote works of philosophy, apologetics, history, art and literary criticism, poetry, travelogues, novels, plays, detective stories, and thousands of essays. All in all, more than 15 million words in his lifetime. Where to start?

With Orthodoxy, of course. This is the best entry point into Chesterton’s work, especially if you’re most interested in Chesterton’s role as an apologist for the Christian faith. And today, I’m excited to announce the details of a new, beautifully designed edition of this classic book that incorporates my annotations, guided reading tips, and chapter summaries.

How Orthodoxy Came About 

G. K. Chesterton’s parents were nominally religious, baptizing Chesterton as an Anglican although they held to Unitarian beliefs. Once Chesterton emerged from a period of pessimism in the late 1890s, his philosophy of life became increasingly visible in his writing. In the early 1900s, he took part in a long-running debate over religion with Robert Blatchford of The Clarion. The debate focused primarily on theism over against determinism; he did not delve into the particulars of the Christian creed.

In 1905, Heretics was released—a book that featured Chesterton interacting with many of the leading thinkers of his day. Heretics caused a stir, and one of the book’s reviewers issued a challenge: the writer claimed he would consider his own philosophy of life only if Chesterton was willing to disclose his. Chesterton had critiqued contemporary philosophies, but he hadn’t yet done the work of revealing his own. Orthodoxy was the book that came as a result, in 1908, when Chesterton was just 34 years old. It has never gone out of print.

I Can Help You Read Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy is not an easy book. One of the reasons it can be difficult is because of the historical and temporal distance between us and Chesterton. Unlike his initial readers, we’re not familiar with many of the people and places he mentions. But the biggest reason that Orthodoxy can be a challenge is that you are reading “one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed,” according to Étienne Gilson, the renowned Thomist scholar. Orthodoxy is a workout for the mind. You will walk away feeling worn out as well as invigorated. If at first you feel more of the former than the latter, you’re not alone.

The good news is, there’s no reason why Orthodoxy has to be harder to read than it should be. I’ve done what I can to lessen the more challenging aspects of this book.

Paragraph Breaks and Headings

For example, in line with the custom of the day, Chesterton wrote in lengthy paragraphs, sometimes spanning one or two pages. In order to enhance readability, I have inserted paragraph breaks and headings so that the flow of Chesterton’s argument becomes easier to discern. I have also updated the spelling in a number of instances.

Annotations

Throughout the text, I’ve added annotations that give more detail on the people, events, and Scriptural references Chesterton mentions. I sought to be more comprehensive than sparing in order to make the book more accessible to readers of all levels and backgrounds. My goal is to get you reading Chesterton without feeling so overwhelmed by his general knowledge and expertise that you give up.

As a side note, if you were to read articles or books on just the people Chesterton mentions in this book, you’d get a crash course in England’s history as well as the leading philosophies just before and after the turn of the 20th century. In this way, reading Chesterton is like entering a new world, or better said, it’s entering our world with a trustworthy guide whose knowledge covers the terrain of history, philosophy, and theology.

Introductory Remarks

My introductory comments for each chapter are designed to help you understand the lay of the land, so you can discern the pathways of Chesterton’s brilliant mind and be able to follow the argument. I leave a few “memorable parts to look for” at the outset as well, so that you’ll keep your eyes open for the most notable areas of Orthodoxy.

Chapter Summaries

At the end of each chapter, I summarize what Chesterton has said, in order to make it easier to move forward to the next chapter and not forget what has gone before.

Reflection and Discussion Questions

Like any exercise routine or mountain climbing endeavor, you’re better off enlisting a partner or two than trying on your own. For this reason, I’ve included discussion questions at the end of each chapter, so as to facilitate good conversation around the central aspects of Chesterton’s work.

Impact of Orthodoxy 

C. S. Lewis loved Orthodoxy. “In reading Chesterton . . . I did not know what I was letting myself in for,” he wrote. “I had never heard of him and had no idea of what he stood for, nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me.” Lewis considered Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man to be “the very best popular defense of the full Christian position I know.”

H. L. Mencken, a public intellectual who vehemently opposed Christianity, acknowledged Orthodoxy was “the best argument for Christianity I have ever read—and I have gone through, I suppose, fully a hundred.”

Orthodoxy feels at times like a cross between looking for golden nuggets in a dense jungle and whirling around on a roller coaster. Enjoy the ride. Keep the treasure. You can find this new edition with my annotations and guided reading wherever books are sold: Amazon, Lifeway, ChristianBook, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, IndieBound, and more.


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Putin, the West, and the Myth of Progress https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/putin-the-west-and-the-false-eschatology-of-progress/ Mon, 28 Feb 2022 21:35:52 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=456966 The myth of inevitable progress will not stop tyranny.]]>

Stunned by the decision of Vladimir Putin to exert Russian force against a neighbor nation, politicians and pundits have been searching for the words to describe this act of aggression. “I thought we lived in a world that said no to that kind of activity,” sputtered John Kerry. Other comments expressed similar bewilderment. Putin’s mindset is “medieval.” Russia’s actions appear “backward,” or “primitive,” out of step with “the times.”

President Biden, reaching for inspiration reminiscent of President George W. Bush and others, described “liberty, democracy, and human dignity” as “forces far more powerful than fear and oppression.” These are the values that will endure, never to be extinguished by tyrants or erased by enemies, he said.

Eschatology of the Enlightenment

In the befuddled responses to the invasion of Ukraine as well as the soaring rhetoric of Western leaders who believe freedom will prevail, we see on display the eschatology of the Enlightenment: the idea that the world, since the Age of Reason, has been moving along an upward trajectory of human development, both technological and moral, with better and freer days ahead.

But this is a myth. It always has been.

Why do so many leaders speak as though they could simply will a better future into existence, as if the calendar itself might help push against “medieval” mindsets and ensure our journey toward more sophisticated and civilized heights? Because of the Enlightenment’s unshakable faith in progress.

This commonplace view of progress spills out in everyday discourse, relating to various moral and ethical quandaries of our day. When people say, “Now that we live in the 21st century” or “I can’t believe this happens in our day and age,” they are implicitly endorsing the Enlightenment view of history and assuming that everyone else endorses it also. (Otherwise, how does appealing to the calendar make sense, unless one shares a similar view of the past, present, and future and what constitutes progress?)

Enlightenment and ‘Whiggery’

Immanuel Kant believed that progressing in enlightenment is a staple of human nature and that humanity’s “proper destiny” is to see progress take place. This confidence in progress as humanity’s destiny requires a warped view of the past.

Once you relegate the past to darkness and position yourself as leading humanity into the light, you tend to distort aspects of history that don’t fit your vision of where the world is headed. And that’s exactly what Enlightenment-era historians did. They “looked into the past as into a mirror and extracted from their history the past they could use,” writes Peter Gay. The abuses of Enlightenment historians became so common and prevalent that the term whiggery was adopted to describe extreme accounts of historical revisionism.

Of course, the only way whiggery works is by screening out the counterpoints. And when it comes to the inevitable trajectory toward “progress,” the Enlightenment runs into many challenges.

  • Leaders all over the world in the early 1900s believed technological advance would lead to a new era of peace and prosperity, when instead they were about to witness the bloodiest century in human history.
  • The Prague Spring—the 1968 uprising and protest against totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia—was a wonder to behold, until the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact members invaded the country and suppressed the reforms. It would be two more decades before freedom would dawn in Eastern Europe.
  • The brave stand of students at Tiananmen Square still inspires us today, but the event has been memory-holed in China, where oppression of the Uyghurs continues today, and where leaders have multiplied threats to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Whiggery hasn’t gone away. Self-serving historical revisionism was also a powerful tool wielded by Communist revolutionaries in Romania in the late 1940s, with historians enlisted to show how the dictatorial regime was the culmination of earlier strivings toward progress and justice. And today, Vladimir Putin is doing revisionist history of his own as a justification for his invasion.

Enlightenment Eschatology Shaken

As Christians, our response to revisionist Russian history shouldn’t be to counter with Enlightenment eschatology, a view of progress that owes more to Kant and Hegel than to Jesus and Paul.

World events like the attacks on September 11, or the rise of ISIS, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should instead raise questions about our society’s uncritical adoption of Enlightenment eschatology. The world is not on an inevitable climb toward progress, however we define it.

No, the Bible gives us a different view of history and the future. We are not on an upward climb toward a utopia of freedom and democratic norms. We find ourselves in a world given to wars and rumors of wars, a spiritual battlefield where the gospel goes forward, upending all rival views of history and the future with the spectacular claim that Christ has risen and is coming again. No matter what we see taking place across the world, we move forward with faith, hope, and love in God’s promises for the church. We proclaim Christ, make disciples, and serve the nations, all with an eye to the day he will come again to judge the living and the dead. That is our destiny, not Hegel’s spirit of the age.

There’s one thing the world does, wrote G. K. Chesterton nearly a century ago. It wobbles. And living in this wobbly world, Christian hope takes on a distinctive shape. We remain rooted in God and his promises. Therefore, we can be confident, trusting not in our own efforts to bring about a particular vision of the future but in God to restore his creation and put the world to rights.


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What Persevering Love Makes Possible for Broken Relationships https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/persevering-love/ Thu, 24 Feb 2022 05:10:51 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=454049 As long as love remains, even a one-sided love, the possibility for restoration remains.]]>

A couple of years ago, I was talking with a friend who had a falling out with his pastor. They followed Jesus side by side for years; they shared memories of ministry experience; they watched each other’s families be established and begin to grow. But not everything about the relationship was healthy. In the end, sin brought destruction to multiple spheres of the pastor’s life. He left the ministry and cut ties with my friend.

These former friends needed a season of relational distance. They had each been hurt in different ways. A fog of sadness settled over their memories. Walls were built. Wounds needed mending. I recognized the need for my friend to maintain appropriate boundaries, and yet I expressed hope that their story was unfinished. Perhaps one day, like He did for the apostle Paul and John Mark (Acts 15:37; Col. 4:10), God would bring about repentance, forgiveness, and restoration so that certain aspects of their friendship would be restored.

Love Hopes All Things

One of the ways that love “hopes all things” is by persevering in relationship when all seems lost, by stretching out your arms toward someone else, even when their arms are crossed or their back is turned.

Persevering love doesn’t seek to control or bully or manipulate. Such love casts aside any attempt to remake someone into another person’s preferred image. The goal is not to exert pressure or force transformation.

No, persevering love is patient, holding out hope that the relationship will continue because love is present. Love is still there, at least in the heart of the one who perseveres in love, even if affection has vanished in the heart of the one who has turned away.

As long as love remains, even a one-sided love, the possibility for restoration remains.

Love Prevents the Total Break

Not long ago, I posted some reflections from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard on how love is necessary for us to see—really see—another person’s goodness. Another point Kierkegaard makes in his spiritual writings: the one who truly loves never falls away from love.

“It takes two to love,” we say, except this isn’t true. Even if a prodigal child rejects a parent’s love, even if a spouse or friend or boss or coworker becomes estranged, and even if the wounds pile up and the hurts lead someone to close their heart, love can remain. One of the two can choose to abide.

By persevering, the one who loves can keep the break in a relationship from becoming total. The one who abides in love can keep the break from becoming permanent.

“By abiding, the one who loves transcends the power of the past. He transforms the break into a possible new relationship, a future possibility. The lover who abides belongs to the future, to the eternal. From the angle of the future, the break is not really a break, but rather a possibility. But the powers of the eternal are needed for this. The lover must abide in love, otherwise the heartache of the past still has the power to keep alive the break.”

Hyphen of Hurt or Hope

Kierkegaard uses the analogy of a compound word. When you see a first word and then a hyphen, but then don’t see the second word, you realize something is missing. The word is incomplete. The word is waiting to be finished.

The one who perseveres in love recognizes the break that has occurred. The hyphen of hurt is there, and it has brought about a painful breach of trust or a sense of separation.

But to the one who abides in love, the hyphen of hurt is also a hyphen of hope. It indicates that the relationship has not been forever severed. The word awaits completion. The relationship awaits restoration.

The perseverance of love doesn’t require us to close our eyes to the past. We don’t deny the hurt or the pain or ignore the relational breakdown. We merely hold onto hope that an irrevocable break has not taken place.

Faith in Future Conversation

Any good conversation includes moments of silence—when talking ceases—for seconds or minutes. Your son or daughter may cut all ties and say they’ll never speak to you again, but as long as you remain in love, the solemn silence can be transformed into quiet hope—that even if years pass without a word, the conversation is not over. The one who loves remains willing to pick up the discussion again, no matter how long it takes.

The father of the prodigal son remained in love. Why else would he have waited, scanning the horizon of his village, if not because his love persevered? The years of his son’s silence and squandering were not the end of the story, and because the father remained in love, he awaited with eager anticipation the moment the conversation would continue, the blessed day he would shower his son with kisses and clothe him in his finest robe.

“Put the past out of the way,” Kierkegaard writes. “Drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love. Then the end is the beginning and there is no break!”

As long as we abide in love, the book remains open, the sentence a fragment, the last chapter unfinished. Love abides.


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A Word from Solomon About Social Media https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/solomon-social-media/ Tue, 22 Feb 2022 05:10:02 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=452742 A call to discernment in a time when it’s never been easier to feed on foolishness.]]>

Read the proverbs and you can’t help but be struck by how many focus on the power of the tongue. Hardly a chapter flies by without some comparison of the lips of the righteous and the words of the wicked.

In this era of constant connectivity, where it’s never been easier to spout off our opinions and to take part in all manner of debate, this proverb stands out to me: “A discerning mind seeks knowledge, but the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness” (Prov. 15:14, CSB).

Input, Not Just Output

At first glance, this proverb isn’t about what we say. It’s about input—what we take in—at least as much as it is about output, what we express. What do we feed on? What is our intake?

“The mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart,” Jesus tells us (Matt. 12:34, CSB). Which leads to the question, not what are we saying, but what are we seeking? If you want to get control of your tongue, look at what’s filling your heart. What we take in matters if we want to follow biblical instruction and grow in wisdom.

Reading vs. Scrolling

Perhaps a 21st-century paraphrase of this proverb would go like this: A discerning mind reads books, but the mouth of fools feeds on Twitter. Or maybe not. After all, there are glimmers of wisdom on social media, and there are reams of printed paper devoted to foolishness. Reading books won’t keep you from being a fool. It all depends on what books you’re reading.

Yet still, I wonder if—in a time when rapidity is rewarded, when the hot take is, well, hot, and the temptations toward outrage are baked into the algorithms of comments sections and Twitter streams—prioritizing books over Facebook is a better starting point for the seeking of wisdom. Surely we’re more likely to discover knowledge, insight, and understanding through the quiet and careful reading of a book than through the impressions created by endless scrolling.

Talking vs. Posting

Another starting point in our quest for wisdom would be to prioritize people over avatars. To interact face-to-face in conversation with other human beings.

The discerning mind is more likely to find knowledge through personal conversation, through sifting the strengths and weaknesses of someone else’s position. Unless you can think of several good reasons why someone holds an opposing viewpoint and unless you can articulate those reasons clearly, you’ve not really engaged with another perspective. “When we do not know, or when we do not know enough,” T. S. Eliot wrote, “we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.” When debates turn into nothing more than emotional outbursts, solid arguments devolve into shallow quarrels.

Dupes or Devils

I’ve read comments recently about Christian leaders who have taken various stances on issues of common concern in the past couple of years. Often the sentiments are slanted to make it seem like there are only two possible responses: either these Christians are dupes or devils. Dupes, because they’ve fallen for such a stupid position. Or devils, because they know their position is wrong and are colluding with evil forces to trick their followers.

Of course, I come to the end of these takedowns and think: There’s another option. Maybe this person is neither a dupe nor a devil, but you just happen to disagree. Perhaps he’s made a mistake. Maybe he’s been unwise. It’s possible he’s lacked prudence. Or maybe he’s right and you’re wrong.

Unfortunately, we tend to assume that anyone on the other side of an issue is either stupid or evil. And it’s much harder to love your neighbor if you think he’s dumb or devilish.

Weighing Opinions vs. Waving Off

What we should seek instead is to discern what is right and true and good in positions we don’t hold, looking to see what aims we might share even if we disagree on the way to get there. We should try to articulate as fairly as possible our opponent’s position, however weak we may conclude it to be.

This effort requires us to learn to listen, to consider, and to weigh opinions. At some point, you’ll reconsider something you once believed. It’s possible you believed the right thing for the wrong reason, or that you believed the wrong thing for the right reason. And the only way you’ll know is by weighing opposing perspectives, not waving them off in a flurry of online invective.

I decided several years ago to forgo Twitter debates because (1) I never saw persuasion taking place and (2) my followers and my interlocutors followers reveled in our debates, as if we were gladiators in a coliseum performing for a crowd. No thanks. I’m interested in real conversations about real issues of pressing concern, and Twitter trivializes those debates.

Thinking Work

Seeking knowledge—the development of a discerning mind—is hard work. It’s easier to blast others in a comments section, or watch with glee as others screech, than to do the patient work of considering an argument, usually found in a book that demands more of your time than the quick glance at your phone in the grocery checkout line.

“There is a kind of work which any man can do, but from which many men shrink, generally because it is very hard work, sometimes because they fear it will lead them whither they do not wish to go. It is called thinking.” That’s Chesterton. He was right then, and he’s right now.

So, what we are feeding our mouths and minds: folly or wisdom? If you want to find websites and social media accounts that tell you what you want to hear every day, presenting everyone in simplistic categories of “good guys” or “bad guys,” you’ll feed on foolishness. The discerning seek knowledge. And most of the time, they don’t find it on Twitter.


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The Remedy for the Church’s Post-COVID Malaise https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/post-covid-malaise/ Thu, 17 Feb 2022 05:10:44 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=451385 Beware of two dangers in response to the church’s post-COVID malaise.]]>

I saw a pastor refer recently to the challenge of “COVID malaise” in the church today. Our spiritual muscles have atrophied. Drawn away from once-weekly (and often more-than-once-a-week) gatherings, we’ve grown accustomed to sporadic church attendance. Many believers who used to serve in various church and community programs have disengaged, reducing the volunteer force. Restaurants and businesses have “Now Hiring” signs in their windows; many churches would like to put up signs of their own, “We need volunteers. Help wanted.”

It’s been almost two years since COVID altered our lives. I hear pastors and church leaders talk about surviving the pandemic spiritually and emotionally, and then enduring the fallout in their congregations. Many harbor grave concerns about ministry right now and about the long-term sustainability of those who have been tasked with leading the church.

My students at Wheaton last fall, many of whom pastor large churches, expressed a sense of disappointment and disillusionment. “The chaos of the last two years burned away all the chaff of our programs, vision statements, and attendance numbers, and we were left staring face-to-face with the core essence of the discipleship we’d been doing . . . and it wasn’t pretty,” one said. Another lamented: “I thought the resurrection would’ve made more of a difference than it did.”

Add to this stressful stew the ingredients of politicization, debates over health measures, the reality of racial injustice, and a dash of social media slander, and it’s no wonder so many pastors feel they’re barely hanging on. In response, many congregations are focused these days on sustainability, hoping just to hold on to what they have, concerned about the church’s slow and steady decline, and wondering when we’ll officially be on the “other side” of this crisis in order to rebuild for the future.

In response to cultural and spiritual malaise, two dangers present themselves.

Maintenance over Mission 

The first is that the church would begin to prioritize maintenance over the mission. We develop into a “holy huddle” where our focus is on the barracks and no longer on the battlefield. We picture ourselves as soldiers having survived a heavy bombardment and the goal has become, Don’t lose any more ground. Launching a new initiative or moving forward—those elements of the mission don’t occupy our minds.

The danger here, of course, is this: when maintenance replaces mission, the church moves backward. We turn inward. It’s like surviving an illness and then defining “success” as recovering enough to make it back to what we were like before we were sick, but without a greater vision of what we might do with restored health.

Weary pastors worry that their church members have lost sight of the mission. And more than a few church leaders worry they too may be slipping into maintenance mode. I’m too tired to focus on the mission, I just don’t want to lose any more people.

To the weary pastor who reads these words and feels the burden: be encouraged. The game is not lost. The battle is not over. You’re still here. You’re still walking with Jesus. God’s call remains. The mission will move forward, and you and your church will be a part of God’s work.

But beware of the second danger, which is even more subtle than the first.

Mission over Our Maker

If the first danger is that we prioritize maintenance over the mission, the second is that we prioritize mission over our Maker. Mark Galli diagnosed this ailment a few years ago when he warned of a pervasive problem among evangelicals—becoming so busy in efforts aimed at doing good in the world that we forget God.

In a series of blog posts I engaged in extensive interaction with Galli about the strengths and weaknesses of his diagnosis, and I took issue with his criticism of a “missional” understanding of the church. But despite my disagreement with Mark over the missional movement, I echo his primary concern: the work of ministry can supplant our pursuit of God himself. Our service can get in the way of our relationship.

When we prioritize the mission of the church over learning to love and adore our Maker, we engage in more and more efforts at growing the congregation, serving the community, and “furthering the kingdom,” while running the risk of making God a means to some other end.

“God wants worshipers before workers,” wrote A. W. Tozer. “Indeed the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the lost art of worship.”

Desperate for Jesus

Yes, it’s important to rediscover the mission of the church and devote ourselves to evangelism and missions. Surely this is a vital step in countering the post-COVID malaise that shrinks our vision to mere maintenance of what we have. But the mission isn’t the ultimate answer. The solution to the “maintenance over mission” problem is the pursuit of our Maker—of coming to know him, love him, adore him, worship him, revere him more. It’s to find in him the strength we need in a time of weariness, to recapture a vision of his heart for us as his children, to follow him as our Shepherd and trust his good intentions.

And what better place to rediscover the unfailing, unflagging strength of the Lord than in the valleys of suffering? What better time to experience Jesus as our all in all than in a season when we feel we have nothing left to give? Chuck Swindoll once said, “The scary thing about ministry is that you can learn to do it.”

Perhaps it’s here, when we’ve come to the end of ourselves, when all the old measures for monitoring “how we’re doing”—those Bs of bodies, buildings, budgets, and baptisms—have been altered by the pandemic, that we’re most ready to hear afresh the gospel and to taste again the goodness of the One who called us into his service.

The answer to a church focused merely on maintenance is not ultimately a reminder of the Great Commission but an encounter with the Great Commissioner.


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To See Someone, Love Someone https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/see-someone-love-someone/ Tue, 15 Feb 2022 05:10:44 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=450379 Love affects what you see. More than you realize.]]>

“Simon, do you see this woman?”

That question from Jesus to Simon the Pharisee pierces me every time I read it (Luke 7:44). At one level, it doesn’t make sense. Of course Simon sees the woman! He’s scandalized by what he sees her doing.

But Jesus’s question goes deeper. It’s not about physical sight. It’s not even about insight into the reason for her actions. Jesus invites Simon to see deeper than before, to see beyond the outer expression to the inner person. And the only way to see someone with that level of depth and profundity is to love them first.

Loving the Unlikable

It’s far too easy for us to settle for something less than true Christian love. At times we think our obligation is to love someone despite whatever we find wrong or corrupt in them. The way to love someone, we think, is to look past their flaws. Look for what’s good in your spouse, your child, or your neighbor. If we can look past their problems and see their heart, then we can begin to love them the way Christ commands.

This approach may help us tolerate another person, or even develop an affinity for someone else. But it falls short of Christian love.

Why? Because it’s impossible to see past the flaws to the heart of another individual without love. In other words, love is the prerequisite for sight. It takes the heart to see a heart. We don’t look past one’s flaws in order to find what’s good so we can love; we love first, so we can see what’s good.

Artistry of Love

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard employs the analogy of an artist who travels the world, searching in vain to find something worth painting. Imperfection is everywhere. Every face has a flaw. To achieve greatness, the artist thinks, it’s vital to find something great to be painted.

Contrast that artist with another. Imagine a painter who doesn’t need to travel the world, but who discovers close to home, in a tiny village, the beauty and glory of ordinary faces, with all their imperfections and flawed features. This is the great artist, Kierkegaard concludes, because it’s only the second artist who can see and savor and then express the glory before one’s eyes. It’s the second artist who sees and helps others see.

“The task is not to find the lovable object, but to find the object before you lovable—whether given or chosen—and to be able to continue finding this one lovable, no matter how that person changes. To love is to love the person one sees.”

Only this kind of love opens our eyes to see another human being. Only this love expresses the patience and forbearance necessary for sustaining relationships.

Jesus didn’t wait for Peter to become a different person before offering his love. It was the Savior’s love for weak, waffling Peter that transformed him into the bold preacher we see at Pentecost.

Seeing, Really Seeing

Can a Christian walk away from another and choose not to love?

What if a person’s negative traits outweigh the positive?

What if a neighbor acts selfishly? What if a spouse turns a cold shoulder? What if a child rebels?

Some would say, Look past the flaws and see their strengths! Admire their good qualities, so you can maintain your love when it’s hard.

But this is not Christian love, to seek out only what’s good in order to love another person. Here’s Kierkegaard’s startling response:

“If this is how you see the person, then you really do not see him; you merely see unworthiness, imperfection, and admit thereby that when you loved him you did not really see him but saw only his excellence and perfections. True love is a matter of loving the very person you see.

“The emphasis is not on loving the perfections, but on loving the person you see, no matter what perfections or imperfections that person might possess. He who loves the perfections he sees in a person does not see the person, and thus does not truly love, for such a person ceases to love as soon as the perfections cease. But even when the most distressing changes occur, the person does not thereby cease to be.

“Love does not vault into heaven, for it comes from heaven and with heaven. It steps down and thereby accomplishes loving the same person throughout all his changes, good or bad, because it sees the same person in all his changes. Human love is always flying after the beloved’s perfections. Christian love, however, loves despite imperfections and weaknesses. In every change love remains with him, loving the person it sees.”

This is the difference between human and divine love, between worldly love and Christian love. “We humans always look upward for the perfect object,” Kierkegaard writes, “but in Christ love looks down to earth and loves the person it sees.”

To grow in Christian love, to develop a vision of loving even our enemies, we must bask in the love of Christ for us, who loved us just as he found us, with all our imperfections and weaknesses. He loved us “even while we were still sinners.” Like the father of the prodigal son, he continued to love us even as we ran from him.

Only this kind of love enables you to see—to really see—the person before you, just as Jesus saw deeper into the heart of the woman who anointed his feet, while Simon’s sight stayed on the surface.

“Love the person you see and see the person you love.”


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If There Wasn’t a Sermon About It, Does Your Pastor Even Care? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/does-pastor-care/ Thu, 10 Feb 2022 05:10:12 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=447088 Christians may share the same convictions and yet differ on the tactics to best achieve their aims.]]>

In 2005, while still a student in Romania, I remember watching with interest a debate that erupted among evangelicals in North America over “Justice Sunday.” Two organizations (Family Research Council Action and Focus on the Family Action) sought to mobilize conservative Christians to put pressure on the Senate to stop filibustering President George W. Bush’s nominees to the Federal Judiciary. At the time, conservative evangelicals were (rightly) concerned that qualified candidates were being opposed because of their religious beliefs or judicial philosophy. Two more “Justice Sunday” events followed, the last taking place just before the Senate hearings for soon-to-be Justice Samuel Alito.

What intrigued me was the back-and-forth online between pastors who felt pressure to devote their services to discussion about the Federal Judiciary. Politically aware church members encouraged (and in some cases demanded) their pastors to join the fight. Some pastors advertised the event; others addressed the topic in their preaching. But for most, the Sunday came and went, with churches following their normal pattern of worship and preaching.

I thought about “Justice Sunday” recently because of the questions many faithful pastors have these days about when to speak, and on what subjects, and how best to engage in cultural disputes or political questions. Social media has increased the pressure to speak and advocate, as we have faster and easier connection to various opinions on a wide range of issues.

Shifting the Frame

The pressure on pastors is compounded by a political phenomenon that now affects the church.

A common maneuver in politics is to shift the frame of a discussion so that you put more pressure on your fellow party members. For example, calling for the defunding of police suddenly makes those advocating “mere” police reform out to be “moderate” or not as “serious.” Another example: if members are committed to a bill that will cost $1 trillion (a massive amount!), a few members will soon commit to a $2 trillion bill, making the $1 trillion types out to be “squishes” who won’t go for the gold.

I don’t know if there’s a name for this in politics, but it’s common, and it has a long history. In reading up on the 1960 election between Nixon and Kennedy, I was struck by how large the crisis over Cuba loomed at the end of their four debates. Even though both candidates were serious about the threat of Communism, Nixon—going against his persona as a hawk—skillfully shifted the frame so as to make himself seem coolheaded and Kennedy to be a warmonger. Par for the course in political engagement!

Shifting the Frame in Church Debates

Unfortunately, this tactic takes place in church discussions as well, and it increases the pressure on pastors to go against their often well-developed instincts and to allow others to set the agenda for their ministry.

For example, congregants influenced by various Christian political action committees may urge church leaders to trumpet from the pulpit certain positions on a regular basis. This happens on the right and the left, just with different issues. The flip side of these calls for action is a wrongheaded assumption: A pastor who isn’t speaking out on what’s happening in the government or the culture must not care or must lack courage!

Of course, it’s possible that some pastors refrain from preaching certain parts of Scripture because of how controversial they are. The Bible’s take on the sanctity of life, the goodness of gender, God’s design for sexuality, the Christian’s responsibility to those in poverty, the truth of the imago Dei that confronts racial injustice, and the requirement to show hospitality to “the foreigner” among us—well, let’s just admit there’s enough there to anger partisans on either side of the aisle. And it’s certainly possible for pastors to lack the courage to preach on matters they know won’t go over well with their constituency.

But to assume that not engaging a cultural issue in a particular way means one doesn’t care or lacks a spine is worldly. It smells more of political wrangling than prophetic truth. It risks turning the pastor into a pundit and the pulpit into a political platform.

For example, picketing abortion clinics is an important tactic by many committed to the pro-life movement. I’ve picketed clinics myself. But it would be wrong to call every church to have a picketing ministry and then infer that if they don’t fight for life in this way, they lack courage or commitment to the pro-life cause.

Give Room for Pastoral Wisdom

Remember this: Christians may share the same convictions and yet differ on the tactics to best achieve their aims. Pastors may agree with other pastors on any number of political and theological issues and yet decide to engage these topics differently in preaching, teaching, and hands-on ministry.

What we must resist, especially as our discourse seems more and more shaped by worldly tactics of political polarization, is this insidious inference—that if you don’t engage this issue in this way, or follow the lead of this political action committee, or take orders from a famous Christian leader, then you’re failing to “take a stand,” or you’re not “truly committed to Scripture.”

It’s insidious because it creates division in the church where there doesn’t need to be.

It’s insidious because it binds the consciences of pastors who seek to lead faithfully (and who rightly resist bandwagons).

It’s insidious because it puts pressure on pastors to send signals to their peers that they’re “solid” and “committed” to a cause when they’d do better to focus on the congregation before them, for whom they’ll give an account.

Shifting the frame and slandering opponents may be common practice in politics, but God help us if such behavior becomes commonplace in the church.


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There’s No Such Thing as a Post-truth World https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/no-post-truth-world/ Tue, 08 Feb 2022 05:10:14 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=447076 There is no such thing as a “post-truth world” or a “post-truth society.” There are only those who ignore the truth and those who seek to bring themselves in line with it.]]>

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year was “post-truth,” because that’s when the word began showing up in multiple articles about political movements in the United States and Europe. The official definition reads: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

In a post-truth world, feelings trump facts, and personal subjectivity matters more than objective reality. Six years later, we’re swimming in post-truth cultural waters and trying, with increasing difficulty, to hold society together when even basic agreements over the nature of truth and reality become contested.

Truth-Resisters

The paradox of fallen humanity is that we both love and hate the truth. We long for the truth, as beggars hungry for something of substance, even while we despise the truth, as mini-tyrants who chafe at any notion there might be someone or something that exerts authority over us. Our longing for truth leads to the easy embrace of lies.

Why do we resist the truth? Because deep in our souls is the desire to be the masters of our own destiny, and truth too often gets in the way. Truth stands outside and above us. Truth doesn’t bow the knee to our preferences, no matter what Orwellian language we adopt, euphemisms we deploy, or pronouns we insist upon.

As John Webster wrote:

“The truth about the world is something over against us, something that we cannot subdue. Truth cannot be commanded; instead, it commands us. It forces us to acknowledge that the world and we within the world are what they are, independent of us. Truth blocks invention; when we reach the truth, we reach the limits of our wills. And it’s because truth is that kind of barrier against us that we have to find ways of circumventing it. We have to flee from the truth.”

In today’s world, we see two common strategies for fleeing from the truth.

Strategy #1: Relativize the Truth

One way we circumvent the truth is by relativizing it based on our experiences. That’s why we hear a lot these days about “speaking your truth” or “living your truth,” as if the word “truth” is now just a synonym for “perspective” or “experience.”

Yes, we should make room for sharing our perspectives and recounting our experiences. But if our tendency is to adorn “truth” with adjectives like my and your, and never the, we’re violating the very definition of “truth” to begin with. “Truth” is what’s right regardless of time, situation, or circumstance. It’s as valid for the young as it is for the old, for today as it is for yesterday.

Furthermore, when we think about truth in exclusively personal terms, we miss the adventure of seeking and finding something beyond the depths of our heart. The greater adventure comes when you find something beyond the realm of my perspective and your experience—truths we didn’t invent or adapt to suit ourselves, but truths we discovered, to which we adapt.

Strategy #2: Spin the Truth

A second way of fleeing from the truth is by massaging the truth until it no longer poses a threat to the way we want to live.

And so, we turn the truth to our own ends, instrumentalizing it for our purposes. We spin words until the truth serves our own kingdom-building projects.

In a social media–dominated world, image is everything. Perception is reality, we say, except that it isn’t. And the more we replace substance with show, the more vulnerable we are to the lie that truth can be massaged and managed, safely kept at a distance from our day-to-day choices.

Christ the Truth

Christianity rejects any attempt to relativize or spin the truth, just as it rejects any proposal that would reduce truth to a law, an image, a proposition, or some objective force in nature without reference to God. Christianity confronts us with a Person, the One who claims to be the Truth, not just one truth of many, but the living embodiment of the truth we seek, the One who is the foundation for all other truth.

In a world full of illusions, under the sway of the Evil One—the father of lies—the Son of God witnesses to the truth. He unmasks all human pretension, sounds the death knell for hypocrisy, and exposes the forces of destruction that wreak havoc and spoil God’s good world. His words shock. His voice awakens. He comes to save sinners who, in varying ways, are both deceivers and deceived. The Son does not bear false witness, but by the power of the Spirit displays the glories of his Father.

Jesus of Nazareth is the Truth who gives life. And this Savior speaks and has spoken through the Word that bears testimony to his identity. “Sanctify them in the truth,” he prayed for his disciples; “your word is truth” (John 17:17). This is the truth that sets us free.

Bear Witness to the Truth

To carry the name of Christ is to bear witness to the truth in a world bent on believing lies.

  • We bear witness to the beauty of the imago Dei in every human being, no matter their ethnicity, age, country of origin, or social status.
  • We bear witness to the sacredness of all human life, including growing life enclosed in a woman’s womb.
  • We bear witness to the goodness of the created order, opposing the wanton destruction of God’s good earth just as we stand against philosophies and ideologies that do harm to male and female bodies under the guise of “inclusivity” or “freedom.”
  • We bear witness to the truth when we call political parties to account for their pretensions and falsehoods, no matter how noble their causes might be.
  • We bear witness to the truth when we submit our scholarship to the beauty and authority of God as the author of Scripture, even when it’d be easy to wriggle out of the Bible’s difficult commands and become, in the words of Kierkegaard, “kissing Judases”—followers who betray Christ with an interpretation.
  • We bear witness to the truth when we seek to sort truth from error—refraining from slandering brothers and sisters in Christ and from spreading falsehoods like fire through our lips in conversation or our fingers online.

No Post-truth World

Bearing witness to the truth can be exhausting in a world that piles lie upon lie. But Alexandyr Solzenhitsyn was right: One word of truth outweighs the entire world.

Falsehoods will fall. Reality will resurge.

The Oxford Dictionaries may have made “post-truth” the word of the year in 2016, but there’s no such thing as a “post-truth world” or a “post-truth society.” There are only those who ignore the truth and those who seek to bring themselves in line with it. And so, more than ever, we must pray for the grace to bear witness to the truth of Christ with the love of Christ, with faithful hope in an outcome secured by the Savior whose heel crushed the father of lies.


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How Nooks and Spaces Can Help You Read More . . . and Better https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/how-nooks-and-spaces-help-you-read-more-and-better/ Thu, 03 Feb 2022 05:10:13 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=447000 The where of reading matters almost as much as the when.]]>

How do you read so much?

What suggestions do you have for increasing reading speed and comprehension?

How do you decide what books to read?

These questions come at me on occasion, usually from newsletter subscribers who enjoy each week’s “From My Book Stack” feature or from people who visit our home and notice our front room “library” when you enter the house. I’ve shared tips on reading in the past, but there’s one aspect of the reading life that deserves more attention.

Tony Reinke on Reading

Tony Reinke is one of my favorite friends to read on reading. His first book, Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books, addressed the topic well, with an eye to God’s glory and plenty of practical counsel for making the most of the books we own and the time we have. What’s more, he and I share a love for Chesterton and, for a season, we made our way through the more than 1,000 essays the great Gilbert wrote over a 30-year span.

Speaking at Colorado Christian University recently, Tony shared 23 lessons about reading. The transcript is worth your time, and his first piece of advice is indispensable: “Read daily in the gaps”—squeeze in moments of reading all throughout the day.

But I want to focus on his second lesson—“Redeem each environment”—which describes the importance of reading spaces. We don’t just carve out time for reading, but space—physical locations for particular books.

The Nudge to Read More

This focus on space matters for a reason Tony doesn’t mention but I find important. Books can be a prompt, or what Richard Thaler describes as a nudge—“any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.” Leave your guitar out in the open rather than in a closet, and you’re more likely to work on that new song you’ve been learning. Put a healthy mix of nuts in the drawer next to your workspace rather than a bag of Reese’s Pieces, and you’ll eat healthier when you mindlessly go for a snack.

Nudges work for reading in different spaces. The where of reading matters almost as much as the when.

Tony and I share a few habits in common (the desk, the airplane, etc.), but he and I differ as well. (I only write, never read, in a coffee shop.) Here are some nooks I’ve found for reading different kinds of books, so you can see how I figure space into my reading habits. I realize that not everyone has the same rhythm of life, set of responsibilities, or time or space for reading, and that’s okay. But almost all of us could read more than we do. So, as you peek into my reading life, take what works for you and disregard whatever doesn’t.

The Desk (Morning and Night)

In our bedroom by the window is a small desk. That’s where first thing in the morning I read the Scriptures and pray, and it’s where I return for midday and evening prayer. My reading guide—Psalms in 30 Days or my Bible or devotional—sits prominently there, a reminder that this is holy space, devoted to hearing from the Lord.

The Desk (Midday)

I return to the desk around lunchtime or later to spend 20 minutes or so reading a section from a bigger book of theology. My goal is that over the course of several months, I slowly work my way through heavy books that demand sustained attention. Right now, on Monday, it’s Augustine’s The City of God; on Tuesday, the works of Anselm; on Wednesday, Herman Bavinck; Thursday goes to the second volume in Katherine Sonderegger’s systematic theology; and Fridays are always for Chesterton. Weekends are for catching up in case I miss a day or two. When I finish a volume, I switch to another big book. I’m planning to spend time with Aquinas after I finish Anselm, and work through more of John Chrysostom or Gregory of Nazianzus after The City of God.

Desk reading is devotional in the morning and evening, and heady during that half-hour dive into a big, bulky work worth studying.

The Bathroom

Magazines work best here. Shorter articles. Interesting book reviews. News stories and commentaries. No need for more detail!

The Exercise Machine

I do most of my Kindle reading while on the exercise machine for a half hour in the afternoon. By that time, I’m mentally spent, so I unwind with historical nonfiction, or perhaps a novel, or books on the Christian life. The goal is to keep the digital pages turning through books that are both informative and enjoyable.

The Library Chair

We have two chairs in our “library,” and I always have a book or two on the table between them. Whenever I’ve got a few moments in between other responsibilities, that’s where I go to work through another chapter of a novel or a business book. I pick up where I left off and gobble up some goodness in a short amount of time. I tend to leave two or three books in that space, so when I’ve got a few minutes between helping kids with school assignments or helping out around the house, I can push forward with my reading.

The Nightstand

The key for reading right before bed, whether with the lamp or on Kindle, is to find something interesting enough to keep you from drifting off. I look for something beneficial to close the day with wisdom as I devote the night to the Lord. Tony’s nightstand looks different than mine, as he has a big stack to choose from.

“These are books that I read in the thirty minutes before I fall asleep, and each of the books can be read in short chunks. These are not books I intend to read from cover to cover, but only to read a few parts of. I replace the stack of books every couple of months.”

Hotel Reading

I’ve made it a habit not to turn on the TV in the hotel room. Unless there’s a major news story breaking, I prefer the quiet, and if and when I have downtime after the day’s activities, I make progress through a book of theology or cultural analysis—something that demands more attention than usual and is amenable to a quiet room for contemplation.

Airplane Reading

The Kindle works for reading in the airport or on the airplane. I also enjoy a magazine or two during takeoff and landing, and if I have room in my bag, I throw in a brief book on some topic of interest. Once I can let down that tray table, out comes the book and pencil and I take full advantage of not having a WiFi connection for the duration of the flight. Uninterrupted time for reading and thinking, sitting 30,000 feet in the sky.

Finding Space

You don’t need a big house to make space for reading. Whether it’s the kitchen table, your nightstand, a favorite chair or couch—find the nooks that work best for reading, and prompt yourself to feed your mind throughout the day.


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This Is Sacred Space. Please Turn Off Your Phones. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/this-is-sacred-space-please-turn-off-your-phones/ Tue, 01 Feb 2022 05:10:55 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=446532 If the cinema has set the expectation of “silencing cell phones,” then the church should also be a place of resistance to constant connection.]]>

A good way to get the side-eye these days is to pull out your phone at the theater. If it beeps or rings, people will shake their heads. If the soft glow of the small screen proves too irresistible, moviegoers will silently judge your inability to focus for a couple of hours on the massive screen in front of you.

The point of choosing the cinema over the laptop or your streaming video service at home is the chance to enter a world without distraction. That’s the magic of the theater. Only there is it possible to experience a film at such a level of intensity. To get the most out of a movie, you devote your full attention.

Theater of Resistance

In a review of last summer’s blockbuster Dune, Samuel James makes the case for the theater as a place of resistance to the colonization of the phone into every sphere of life. He writes,

“It’s important to understand just how rare physical spaces that cultivate serious focus and attentiveness are becoming. . . . In a world where mental overload and constant distraction are accepted as given and even promoted as ‘productive,’ the cinema stands almost alone as an institution of resistance, an assembly where people are taught early and often that it can be a virtue to not know everything that’s ‘going on’ outside and to lose oneself in something transcendent.”

The irony in Samuel’s take is that the cinema remains a digital experience. It’s the exchange of one screen for another. You commit your attention to the marvels presented digitally in front of you instead of the digital device in your pocket.

But I’m struck by his comment that the cinema stands “almost alone” as an institution of resistance. It’s one of the last places where we hop out of the world of constant news stories and lose ourselves in something “transcendent.”

Should these words not also describe the church? Does the church stand next to the cinema as a counterspace to the dominant digital culture?

Cinemas and Churches

On one level, the comparison doesn’t work. Churches may have screens, but the point isn’t supposed to be the “show”—whether it be the worship team or the preacher. Yes, churches are often designed with a resemblance to theaters (and we can discuss and debate what church architecture communicates), but no matter what your church looks like on the inside, the goal isn’t entertainment—the feeling of escape into an imaginative world of transcendence.

No, the transcendence of a Christian worship service is not an escape from the real world, but the entry into a realer world than what we’ve seen all week. It’s here that we brush up against heavenly realities. It’s here we’re confronted with time-tested truth. As we hear the Word of God preached and as we approach the Lord’s Table, we’re ushered toward a thin space where we encounter the One who summons us to worship and promises his presence.

What role does the phone play in this environment? Yes, you can read your Bible on your phone as the pastor begins the sermon. You can send a text of encouragement to a fellow believer. You can take notes on your phone for reference later. But the pull of the phone toward multitasking—that urge to check Twitter or Instagram, or scroll past the incessant notifications that still arrive even when your phone is silenced—makes it nearly impossible to give undivided attention to God.

Psychological Cocktail

In her book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age, Felicia Wu Song describes well the psychological impact of our constant connection online:

“When the mobile, social and infinitely novel aspects of the contemporary digital experience are mixed together, the result is a psychological cocktail of pleasures, anxieties, and felt expectations.” (21–22)

Pleasures—the dopamine rush we get from news and updates or leveling up in our games.

Anxieties—the ever-filling inbox or the images of others that haunt our happiness and make us question our worth.

Felt expectations—the need to be always “on” and “available,” as if our jobs are in jeopardy if we cannot be reached, or the desire to prove ourselves in a myriad of ways.

Case for Total Abstinence

What would it look like if our churches set the cultural expectation of total abstinence from the phone’s “psychological cocktail”? What if we saw our sanctuaries as places of refuge from such distraction, a “counterspace,” or as Song puts it, a “counterliturgy”?

“The church itself needs to wholly embrace the radical witness of being embodied and embedded with presence in a digitally saturated world.”

At church, our most precious gift is our presence. Being there—physically—encourages others. Focusing our attention on God and his Word refreshes our souls. And if we find it natural to silence our phones at the theater so we can maximize our focus on a movie’s storyline, why would we treat less seriously the true Story of our world, as it’s rehearsed every week through the rhythms of worship in our congregation?

What if we set a new expectation? To silence our phones and put away our devices. Better yet, to leave them in the car. To make a statement to ourselves and to the world around us that for the next hour, we’re unavailable. That our worth and value and happiness don’t depend on proving ourselves at work or through constant connection. Surely we can refrain for an hour from “checking in.” We can give undivided attention to our Creator and Redeemer and to the gospel, described by J. I. Packer as “the biggest thing that ever was.”

The cinema shouldn’t stand alone as a place for contemplation and attention. The church should stand right along with it.


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Get More Creative. Watch The Beatles in Action. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/4-takeaways-on-creativity-from-the-beatles-get-back/ Thu, 27 Jan 2022 05:10:36 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=445584 Lessons and learnings from watching the world’s most popular band at work.]]>

I discovered the Beatles later than most. Aside from the 1 CD I bought in 2000 (which, incidentally, was the best seller of 2000 and 2001 and is the top-selling album of the 21st century so far), I had little familiarity with their story or songs. So, I did what any music fan (or obsessive nerd) does: I purchased a 1,000+ page biography of the band by Bob Spitz and the official Apple collection of all their CDs, and then proceeded to work my way through the text while listening to every album as it appeared chronologically. By the end, I was astonished at the leaps and bounds this group made—with their creative reinventions and catalog of iconic songs—within a short six-year span of time.

Peter Jackson’s Get Back, an eight-hour documentary on the Beatles on Disney+, is a gift to the megafans. It offers us the chance to be a fly on the wall, to sit in on the sessions for some of the Beatles’s final songs, to watch their interactions and their playfulness, to observe the dynamics of these dynamos in action.

More than that, it offers anyone—Beatles fan or not—the chance to see the birth of new music. Perhaps you saw that extraordinary clip of Paul jamming away for a couple of minutes on his guitar, and the chill-inducing moment when the first sounds of “Get Back” begin to emerge, and a melody presents itself, as if out of thin air.

I’m not much of a musician, as much as I might love singing and playing my guitar. But as a writer and speaker, I know what it’s like to be tasked with creating something that didn’t exist before. If you’re in a role or enjoy hobbies that require you to be creative in some way, I hope you’ll find a few takeaways in my reflections on this documentary.

1. Don’t settle too early.

At one point, Paul continues to refine a song, to the chagrin of those who think it’s already fine. It’s already “together,” he’s told, to which he replies, “It’s together until you think you can do it better.” In other words, Yes it’s fine, but what if it can be great?

The lesson? Keep improving your craft. Don’t settle too early. The host of This American Life, Ira Glass, has a famous quote on creativity and “the gap”:

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. . . . It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. . . . It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Fight your way through. It’s together, yes, until you think you can do it better. Keep up the work.

2. Return to past sources of inspiration.

Many times in Get Back when the band seems to be in a rut or not sure what to work on next, we see them return to songs they’ve sung and played before. They play some of their old tunes, or they return to the earlier days of rock and roll and play some of their favorites. While looking for inspiration, they return to the well, to draw from artists and melodies that inspired them in the past.

The lesson? When you feel stuck, go back to what you love, those sources of earlier inspiration. As a writer, when I’m gearing up for a writing weekend or working on a new project, I return to a few books that inspire me because of how well-written they are. Find whatever lights the fire.

3. Expect boredom during ‘the grind.’

Even fans of the Beatles admitted that Get Back dragged at times, in part because the creative process often is a grind. At times, it’s boring, not inspiring. But that’s an indispensable part of the journey. You’ve got to put the time in. Don’t wait for inspiration; work for inspiration. When you feel like you’ve got something—a little idea, a taste of something good, a point that needs to be made—you keep playing with it and arranging it in different forms until you find it feels right.

I mentioned above the astonishing moment when the riff and melody for “Get Back” first comes into existence. But that’s just the beginning. Over the next few days, the song takes shape. It gets plied and molded every which way, with different lyrics and sounds, as the band tests it and determines what it’s supposed to sound like. Our jaws drop in awe at the birth of the melody, but it’s the boring “grinding” aspect of trying out variations that made it iconic.

4. Alternate between isolation and community.

Get Back is about collaboration: we see Paul and John make each other’s songs better; we see George get help on “Something,” or Ringo bring up “Octopus’s Garden,” or Paul ask someone about the right word for “The Long and Winding Road.” We see the collaboration and the beauty of it (especially when Billy Preston arrives, and his talent and exuberance greatly enhance these sessions).

But what we don’t see also matters. We don’t see the birth of “Let It Be” or “The Long and Winding Road,” because those songs didn’t originate during a collaborative session. Paul worked on them on his own and then brought them to the group for improvement.

This alternation between isolation and community was a key takeaway from Get Back. Brainstorming, collaborative sessions may give you some inspiration, but at some point, you’ve got to be on your own, doing the deep work of creative thinking in isolation.

To all the poets and writers and artists out there, I hope these four takeaways about creativity from Get Back aid you in your craft. Keep up the good work, and remember, it’s work.


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‘Gotcha’ Sermon Clips Are Bad for the Church https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/gotcha-sermon-excerpts-are-bad-for-the-church/ Tue, 25 Jan 2022 05:10:09 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=445574 I just don’t see how the ministry of the church is strengthened by showcasing bad examples of preaching on social media.]]>

Fifteen years ago, an outlandish sermon clip made the rounds on YouTube. It was a shock-jock independent pastor ranting in front of a tiny congregation about modern Bible translations. It was comical, unnerving, and cringe-inducing. And I shared it on my blog.

I was new to blogging, and around that time I asked an older, wiser pastor to speak into my writing. He asked a pointed question: “Who is edified by that sermon video?” And then he encouraged me to resist the urge to share something just because it was outrageous, entertaining, or a cautionary tale of how not to preach.

Sermons and Sermon Clips

I thought about that conversation recently, as it predated Twitter and Instagram and the prevalence of sermon clips that now circulate far and wide.

In the past decade or so, more and more churches have begun posting video and audio of previous sermons. For the past 500 years, sermons were spread mainly in the form of pamphlets and books. A century ago, radio stations began broadcasting sermons around the world. For decades, prominent pastors had “tape ministries,” but now most pastors are expected to have both video and audio of their preaching available, and the pandemic sped up the move toward livestreaming.

There have been outliers, of course. Martyn Lloyd-Jones believed people experience a sermon differently when they hear it with a congregation and see the preacher in person. The power of the preaching moment itself cannot be replicated via the screen or speaker.

Today, not only are sermon podcasts and videos made available online, but sermon clips circulate on various social media platforms. Justin Taylor describes some of these as “gospel moments,” whether they show Alistair Begg preaching about the thief on the cross entering heaven or Matt Chandler’s powerful illustration that says “Jesus wants the rose!” Just a minute or two of gospel gold.

Weaponized Sermon Clips 

But there’s a flip side to the sharing of “gospel moments.” Many sermon clips go viral because of how bad they are. We gawk at examples of sloppy or heretical preaching.

Social media accounts now feature the most outlandish moments from preachers or teachers who belong to another “camp” or “tribe.” Some of these point the spotlight on “crazy fundamentalists” while others root out the “most woke”—in either case we’re introduced to preachers who seem determined to live up to the worst caricatures. At times, we see clips from charismatic megachurch pastors delivering inspirational drivel rather than sound biblical teaching. The intended reaction, it appears, is to name and shame the “bad preacher” and to shake one’s head in pity or disgust.

Even worse, in many cases, sermon excerpts become ammunition for ongoing battles. Each clip becomes another piece of evidence that the evangelical church is quickly becoming “woke,” or that evangelicals are becoming “white nationalists.” Even well-known and respected pastors with many years of ministry experience, men like John MacArthur and David Platt, are subject to the forces of this online dissemination. MacArthur becomes an example of being “anti-religious-liberty” and David Platt an example of “wokeism”—all because things they’ve said, perhaps sloppily, have been weaponized against them to cast doubt on the rest of their Bible teaching.

Weaker Pulpit 

I don’t believe the widespread sharing of bad moments in preaching will make the pulpit stronger. The weaponization of preaching clips as ammunition in intramural warfare isn’t a healthy and life-giving development.

Anyone who seeks to rightly handle the Word knows the feeling the inadequacy in preaching and teaching. I look back to sermons of mine from just a few years ago and find points I would make differently, analogies I’d cut, and things about the Trinity that—while not heretical—are sloppier than they should’ve been. The more I’ve grown in my skills as a preacher and thinker and theologian, the sharper (I hope) my messages have become.

I shudder for the 20-something just learning to preach, knowing that any potential misstep, bad analogy, or aberrant theological point could be taken from a sermon and broadcast to thousands of people as an example of “what not to do.” How paralyzing for the young preacher with a lifetime of learning ahead!

The church has endured bad and sloppy preaching through the centuries. You don’t have to look hard to find cringe-inducing moments in the sermons of Augustine, Chrysostom, or Luther. I suppose one could start an Instagram account that excerpts these terrible moments from the church fathers (perhaps highlighting antisemitic tendencies, or strange hermeneutical leaps, or their view of women, etc.), but does this build up the church?

Does It Edify?

I can hear the howls of protest from some of my pastor friends who share bad or bizarre clips on a regular basis: We’re protecting the pulpit! We’re instructing our people so they don’t fall for this kind of bad preaching! We care about doctrine, and when we see such slipshod preaching, it’s good to point it out.

I get that. And I want to believe the best about people who share and comment on outlandish sermon clips. I too care about doctrine. I care about avoiding analogies that confuse more than clarify. I’m not opposed to using social media to talk about good versus bad preaching, or to bring up examples that should be reconsidered.

Yes, we can (and sometimes should) have substantive disagreements with sermons. We shouldn’t cover up Luther’s antisemitic writings but recoil in horror at those sentiments and how they were used, sometimes verbatim, by Hitler hundreds of years later. It’s good to engage with preachers and sermons, illuminating where they’ve gone wrong in the past, and where people may be off base even in the present.

But surely there’s a difference between careful, instructive engagement and a social media-driven “gotcha” clip that stirs the mob mentality.

Does the sharing of bad sermon clips really help our people in the way we like to think it does?

Is it possible that this phenomenon trains people to be ever on the lookout for sloppy moments in preaching? To be good critics more than good listeners? To approach the pulpit with the eye of the cynic rather than the mind of the Berean?

Do “gotcha” sermon clips build up the church and honor the gravity of what happens in the moment of preaching? Or do they risk reducing a pastor to a bad moment, reinforcing a stereotype that may be unfair or false, when considered in isolation from the rest of his ministry?

I just don’t see how the ministry of the church is strengthened by showcasing bad examples of preaching on social media. For that reason, I don’t want to be a part of it.

Whenever these clips come across my feed, I’m committing instead to pray that God will give grace and discernment to pastors as they seek to divide rightly his Word. And I’m going to pray that in those times when we fall short in our preaching, he will give grace and will work despite our weakness, to build up his people.


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Spiritual COVID and Losing Your Taste for God https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/spiritual-covid-and-losing-your-taste-for-god/ Thu, 20 Jan 2022 05:10:47 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=443071 Thoughts on losing taste and smell, and what it means when spiritually we find it hard to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”]]>

On the last day of July 2021, I tested positive for COVID. The Delta variant broke through the double dose of the Moderna vaccine, and I contracted a mild case (mainly just a head cold, with waves of fatigue) and endured the 10-day quarantine.

On day five, my sense of taste and smell disappeared. At breakfast, nothing out of the ordinary. At lunch, I couldn’t taste a thing. For several days, I lived on a few snacks and some leftover meatloaf, to which, oddly, I added ketchup and mustard if only for the texture, not the flavor.

My family developed the “Skittles test,” where I’d close my eyes and they’d put two or three of the same flavor Skittles in my hand and I’d try to guess the color. I couldn’t. Lemon was the same as grape. Green apple tasted just like orange. No distinction.

The loss of taste was the weirdest part of COVID. Mealtimes lost their joy. I ate and felt sustained but didn’t enjoy good food anymore. Every morning, I made myself a cup of tea, but only out of routine since the effort was about as enjoyable as sipping hot water.

Taste and Conversion 

“Taste and see that the LORD is good,” the psalmist commands us (Ps. 34:8). Before our eyes are opened to the beauty of Christ, we cannot obey this instruction. It takes a supernatural work of the Spirit to help us taste the Lord’s goodness.

It’s not enough to merely recite the truths of the Christian faith, to check off a list of doctrines, or to say we believe in Jesus. Conversion requires the igniting of our tastebuds—a new perception and sensation of the goodness of God. It’s one thing to read about the spiciness of the habanero, another thing to experience it. It’s one thing to write about Blue Bell’s “Cookie Two Step” ice cream, another to savor that delicious sweetness.

Throughout church history, pastors and theologians have reaffirmed the importance of experiencing the truth and goodness of God, not merely elucidating correct doctrine. Here’s Basil the Great:

“As the nature of honey can be described to the inexperienced not so much by speech as by the perception of it through taste, so the goodness of the heavenly Word cannot be clearly taught by doctrines, unless, examining to a greater extent the dogmas of truth, we are able to comprehend by our own experience the goodness of the Lord.”

Developing New Tastes 

In life, we develop taste for various foods and drink. Very few toddlers love green, leafy vegetables. It’s hard to find a third grader who rushes to the coffee maker in the morning.

As a kid, I couldn’t stand salad (all those vegetables, tomatoes, and olives!), but I remember the moment as an adolescent I discovered by surprise my salad’s explosive combination of various vegetables (granted, it was drenched in honey mustard!). Likewise, for years I was disgusted by avocado. Today, there’s nothing I like more than chips and guacamole.

As Christians grow, we discover new tastes, including a hunger and thirst for God’s Word. “How sweet your word is to my taste—sweeter than honey in my mouth!” sings the psalmist (Ps. 119:103, CSB).

We never get over the longing for pure spiritual milk (1 Pet. 2:2–3)—the gospel basics that nourish us daily. But as we develop, our palate changes. We enjoy more and more of God through his Word.

Losing Our Taste 

And yet, whether through sin or suffering, it’s possible to lose the taste you once had for the Lord and his Word.

The Christian life that begins with spiritual astonishment at the glory of the gospel and the goodness and beauty of Christian truth—the wide-eyed surprise of the infant brought into a new world of grace—can descend into a spiritual malaise. Our eyes grow heavy and our tastebuds dim.

Through the pain of suffering or the false promises of sin, we can come down with a case of Spiritual COVID. We’re fatigued and grumpy, and even worse, we can’t taste anything anymore. We eat to survive, not because the food has any taste. We become sluggish in our service, bored with the Bible, less committed to the church.

Those whose livelihoods are supported by the church or Christian ministry can be even more susceptible to this disease. The danger of serving in a Christian organization is that, over time, Jesus becomes a means to an end rather than the end itself. Before long you realize something: you’re no longer in ministry because you’re a follower of Jesus. You’re a follower of Jesus because you don’t want to lose your ministry.

Return of Taste

Thankfully, God is the great Physician who leads us to the refreshing waters of renewal and repentance. God can awaken those tastebuds again!

Three days after my sense of taste and smell were gone, I warmed up a plate of leftover spaghetti, preparing to sit down again for another meal marked by blandness. But when I opened that microwave, I caught a whiff of the tomato sauce. A glorious sensation! (Prego never smelled so good!) And that’s when I knew, it’s coming back. My sense of taste and smell were returning.

A. W. Tozer wrote:

“The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into him, that they may delight in his Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God himself in the core and center of their hearts.”

If you’re in a place today where you find it hard to taste and see that the Lord is good, don’t stop eating. Keep going to God and his Word. Eat every day, no matter how flavorless the meal.

Beg God to awaken those tastebuds again. And wait for the day when, unexpectedly, you’re jolted by the sudden smell of his grace, and the savor of his sweetness returns.


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3 Simple Ways to Flatten Your Neighbor https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/ways-flatten-neighbor/ Tue, 18 Jan 2022 05:10:08 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=443018 It’s easy to flatten our neighbors into rigid categories, without care and consideration, nuance or grace, and thus betray a Christian view of humanity.]]>

I remember as a fourth grader looking in my NIV Adventure Bible at a chart that listed all the kings of Israel and Judah. It included the dates of each king’s reign and a sentence on their accomplishments. On the right-hand side, each king was rated “good,” “bad,” “mostly good,” or “mostly bad.” Someone like King Asa, for example, would have been in the “mostly good” category. Curious, I’d go back and read the biblical account to learn more about Asa, to see why he was mostly good, and that’s when I’d learn how his relationship with the Lord suffered near the end of his life.

These days, unfortunately, many in our society seem to be reverting to fourth-grade categorizations for just about everyone, and often doing so with the zeal of a crusader for a righteous cause.

As our society becomes increasingly post-Christian, it’s no surprise to see the vanishing of a Christian view of humanity—an understanding that allows for complexity, even expects it.

Instead, we give in to the impulse to divide everyone into categories of “bad” or “good,” and then treat them accordingly.

The result? Fewer and fewer people, even in the church (and we ought to know better!), who are able to distinguish what’s good and bad in the same person, or truth and falsehood in particular causes.

It’s easy to flatten our neighbors, past and present, into rigid categories, without care and consideration, nuance or grace, and thus betray a Christian anthropology. Here’s how we do it.

1. Make everyone and everything “all or nothing.”

Every society must decide what virtues should be represented through monuments we erect and names we engrave on buildings. When I lived in Romania, street names changed on occasion, as people reassessed the appropriateness of showing honor to certain individuals in the past.

Unfortunately, much discussion in recent years about historical figures flattens everyone into that all-or-nothing trap. Suddenly, a statue of Winston Churchill in London is threatened because, regardless of his chivalry and heroism in helping to save Western civilization from the threat of Nazism, some of his racial attitudes and subsequent actions were abominable. Abraham Lincoln comes under fire because at various points his commitment to the Union outstripped his abolitionist sensibilities and he never became a champion for Black equality.

Similar impulses show up in religious discussions. Some progressive Christians refuse to learn from any pastor or theologian—no matter how personally devout, biblically rooted, or theologically beneficial—who don’t line up exactly with the latest theological position or political proposal. Meanwhile, some conservative Christians do the same, dismissing any book or boycotting any conference featuring a well-respected, biblical preacher, because they disagree with the way the pastor has handled questions about racial justice in the past.

I’m reminded of a quote from one of my seminary professors who recommended several books from a theologian from another tradition. When a student complained that the theologian was in the “bad” category, the professor said, “I agree with you that he’s fallible and there are problems with some of his views, and yet he is so very helpful in other areas that to not read him is to impoverish yourselves.”

Do not impoverish yourself by flattening your neighbor. The all-or-nothing impulse is not discernment but the opposite. It’s a fearful posture masked by righteous zeal that keeps you from having to actually discern truth from error or good from bad. When you write someone off because you disagree with them in this area or that, you flatten them and impoverish your soul.

2. Equate people with causes.

A second easy way to flatten people is by equating goodness with their cause and not their character.

Let’s be simplistic for a moment and, for the sake of argument, put people into categories of “bad” and “good,” just as a thought experiment.

Ponder this: good people can be attracted to bad causes, and bad people can be attracted to good causes.

Isn’t it possible that someone who exhibits virtues of various kinds, who is truly seeking to do good in the world, can be misled into supporting a bad cause? And isn’t it possible that an opportunist, a person who exhibits very little fruit of the Spirit, can be at the forefront of a good cause?

History is full of examples of good people who were involved, at some level or another, in deeply flawed projects of various sorts, causes that did more harm than good. You can also find people who, for personal gain or for their own advantage (or even out of conviction but without corresponding virtues), advanced righteous causes though their hearts were darkened by sin.

No one walks away from Robert Caro’s magisterial biographies on Lyndon B. Johnson and thinks, This is a good man with great conviction. And yet he was instrumental in advancing the good cause of civil rights for all Americans, no matter how shady he might have been as a politician.

The opposite is also true. You can find people throughout church history, men and women who by all accounts displayed good character and great conviction, people who garnered respect even from their political or theological opponents, who nevertheless advanced theological error or were complicit in injustice.

It’s possible to admire people who demonstrate exemplary virtues, even if they are connected to causes we’d consider unjust or they espouse theology we believe to be in error. This is why Christians should avoid hagiography as we look at heroes in the past. We can recognize that even the greatest people are tainted in different ways, even as they’ve been used to advance the truth.

3. Equate good deeds with goodness or bad deeds with badness.

A simple way to flatten your neighbor is to pretend you’re omniscient, to become the judge of others’ intentions and motivations.

In contrast, the Christian view of humanity reminds you of how much you don’t see below the surface.

Novels are illuminating in this regard. From the outside, one might look at the actions of the prostitute Fantine in Les Miserables and say “This is a woman of the night. She is bad.” But the wider frame helps you see the naivete of a young woman, the injustice she experiences, and the quiet desperation—driven by a good impulse to care for her daughter—that leads to her descent into darkness.

Katerina Ivanovna in The Brothers Karamazov expresses a passionate commitment to remain with Dmitri, a man who has shamed her and treated her abominably. You might look at her actions and say, “What a model of selfless suffering and heroic virtue!” Until Dmitri’s brother, Ivan, pierces the facade and exposes the truth that her desire to play the role of martyr victim is driven by her love for herself. She doesn’t love the man; she loves the image of herself as long-suffering and virtuous.

The Christian view of humanity helps us understand why Jesus tells us not to judge. We cannot see the human heart, only human actions, and not every action reveals the heart. Because of common grace, people in rebellion against God still give good gifts to their children (Matt. 7:11–12). And because of the pervasiveness of sin, even righteous people who love Jesus often live in contradiction to their confession.

Love vs. Flattening

Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. But all too often, in this era of social media fervor, the standard we apply to others is one we never apply to ourselves. When you look at yourself, you see a bundle of contradictions, wrong in ways you don’t see, flawed and often failing, and yet you want people to consider you in all your complexity, not put you into a box of “good” or “bad.”

So treat others the same way. From the heroes you admire to the people you debate with—don’t flatten your neighbors.


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Why Roe v. Wade May Not Make It to 50 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/why-roe-v-wade-may-not-make-it-to-50/ Thu, 13 Jan 2022 05:10:14 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=442228 Why I’m cautiously optimistic that the landmark abortion case may soon be reversed.]]>

January 2023 will mark the 50th year since the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade decision struck down state laws prohibiting pre-viability abortion, thereby authorizing the legal killing of unborn children nationwide.

Nearly 20 years later, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey—a case many expected might overturn Roe—the Court reaffirmed the earlier decision: individual states “may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability” but can enact restrictions that do not present an “undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion.

Opportunity

Here we are again, on the precipice of another landmark decision, and it’s possible that by Roe’s anniversary next year, the Supreme Court will have substantially shifted abortion jurisprudence by returning the question to the states.

All eyes are on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a Mississippi abortion case that asks: Are all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions unconstitutional? In other words, can Mississippi ban nearly all abortions after the unborn child has reached 15 weeks of gestation?

The gambit is a bold one. The Mississippi law has been taken to the Court in the hope that the now-conservative majority will not abandon their originalist or textualist judicial philosophies on a key case.

Pro-life advocates often feel like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football. Disappointed repeatedly by the courts, Americans who believe in the humanity of the unborn have channeled their efforts into changing public opinion, helping women in distress, and caring for families. But could the legal outcome this time be different? Could this be the case that reverses Roe and Casey?

Middle Ground?

John McGinnis believes the Court might look for a middle way to uphold the Mississippi statute by rationally restructuring the Casey decision so that the “undue burden” requirement is satisfied by a 15-week window for seeking an abortion.

That’s possible, but the result would still be an overturning of Roe v. Wade (by moving away from “viability” altogether). And there’s reason to be optimistic that the Court will be bolder in its reasoning.

In the oral arguments, Justice Gorsuch implied that there was no middle ground between reversing Roe and Casey and reaffirming them against Mississippi.

Chief Justice John Roberts asked questions that indicated his search for a way of voting in favor of Mississippi’s law without necessarily overturning Roe. But if he and the other justices were to seek this path, they’d have to substitute a new line in place of viability. And where, in the law, would that line be found?

Sherif Girgis in The Washington Post explains why this case sets up such a dilemma:

The justices will confront the reality that there is then no intellectually honest way for them to uphold the Mississippi law without overruling Roe v. Wade. . . . Upholding the Mississippi law without overruling the court’s previous abortion cases would lack support in any legal source, send even more abortion cases to the court and curb the justices’ ability to overrule Roe down the road.

Roe on Defense

From the opening lines of Scott Stewart in the oral argument—“Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey haunt our country”—it was clear that this case was a direct attack on the legal precedents upholding abortion.

The oral arguments in the Dobbs case at one point centered on whether a ruling’s egregious wrongness can justify its overruling, using Plessy v. Ferguson (which upheld racial segregation) as an example, forcing the solicitor general to imply that even in that case, “materially changed circumstances” are required before precedent can be overruled. Anytime you’re arguing in a way that puts you on the side of Plessy, things aren’t going well, and that’s where the defense of Roe wound up.

Even abortion advocates have criticized Roe v. Wade, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Consider a recent article in ​​the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy:

“As a matter of the Constitution’s text and history, it is no secret that Roe is not just wrong but grievously so. Roe was roundly criticized as wrong the day it was decided, and it has been robustly opposed both within and outside the Court ever since. No sitting Justice has defended the merits of its actual reasoning.”

What’s Next?

If Roe v. Wade is overturned and the question of abortion returns to the states, then those of us who believe in the sanctity of all human life will find the landscape both changed and unchanged. Several states are likely to ban all abortions, but other states will reinforce abortion rights and easier abortion access.

Our work won’t be done; it will be only the beginning of a new phase in the movement to protect all human life. We will continue to care for families in need, persuade our friends and neighbors to support life-affirming legislation, and hold officials accountable to their vow to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Roe may not make it to 50. But the pro-life movement will (and must) stretch beyond next year’s sad anniversary.


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What OxyContin Reveals About Structural Sin https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/purdue-pharma-and-pervasiveness-of-sin/ Tue, 11 Jan 2022 05:10:19 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=440506 The gospel is the answer to both individual and institutional sin.]]>

In the last few years, Christians have engaged in heated discussion and debate about the existence of “systemic” or “structural” sin, especially as applied to racism. Is it possible for sin to be “baked in” the structures of society, or is it primarily (or only) an individual offense?

Some say, yes, systemic racism has existed in the past, with slavery and segregation as the preeminent examples of such injustice. But now that those days are over and our laws have changed, they argue, talk about “systemic racism” is wrongheaded. To combat racial prejudice, we’ve got to focus on the individual heart.

What’s more, some say, any talk about systemic injustice is code for liberation theology or revolutionary Marxist thought. Once you begin down the path of “social justice,” they warn, you’re in danger of redefining sin in such a way that an individual’s disobedience to God’s Word gets lost in all the talk about sin’s structural manifestations. The system overcomes the individual to the point that the “oppressed” (the minority) are cast as the “righteous” because of their oppression while the “oppressors” (the majority) are cast as the guilty because of their privilege.

Standing in (rightful) opposition to the reductionist theories of Marxism and liberation theology, some Christians today go so far as to argue against the idea of anything other than sin and repentance as individual. There is no such thing as national guilt, or systemic sin, or corporate repentance. Sins are always and only individual, not communal.

In thinking through issues like this, I find it helpful to test the validity of certain principles by considering other examples. Let’s set aside the debate over “systemic racism” for a moment and see if the principle of structural sinfulness might apply in another domain.

“Systemic Injustice” Debate: A Different Example

For an example of how sin can infect an organization, including its structure, culture, incentives, and atmosphere, you need look no further than Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. This book helps readers understand how and why more Americans have died from opioid overdoses than in all the wars the United States has fought since WWII.

Where do we begin the attempt to assign responsibility for the opioid epidemic? Empire of Pain describes how brothers Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler entered the ranks of New York high society and then came to own Purdue, America’s leading supplier of opioids.

Over the years, the Sackler family created an ecosystem for clinically testing their own drugs before finding ways to “secure favorable reports from the doctors and hospitals with which they had connections, devise an advertising campaign in their agency, publish the clinical articles and the advertisements in their own medical journals, and use their public relations muscle to place articles in newspapers and magazines.”

Righteous Cause 

The stated motivation for pushing the opioid OxyContin was compassion and mercy—to desire to deliver drugs that would alleviate any pain, not just for cancer patients. “There was a sense, in the industry, that Purdue was doing right and doing well—providing an innovative product that was helping people and making money hand over fist,” Keefe writes.

As one employee said, “We felt like we were doing a righteous thing. There’s millions of people in pain, and we have the solution.”

By cajoling the FDA, and by providing free samples designed to “acquaint” patients with OxyContin, the family ensured their opioids would be top of mind with new patients. They dominated the market.

Fallout

The result has been catastrophic. Keefe writes:

Some communities began to resemble a zombie movie, as the phenomenon claimed one citizen after another, sending previously well-adjusted, functioning adults into a spiral of dependence and addiction. . . .

When it became clear that people were abusing Oxy­Contin, Purdue’s leaders responded by blaming the victims. The opioid addicts were the criminals and victimizers, misusing a perfectly good product and giving the company a bad name. “We are losing sales because physicians have become scared or intimidated from press reports!” they said.

For years, the Sacklers denied the addictiveness of the drug. Eventually, the company conceded that OxyContin could be dangerous, just in time to secure an exclusive patent for a new “abuse-resistant” version. Then, in an audacious reversal, Purdue asked the FDA to refuse to accept generic versions of the original OxyContin because the product they’d been selling all those years should now be deemed “unsafe.”

No Single Actor 

Empire of Pain is maddening to read. Anyone with a sense of justice will be simultaneously grieved and angry at how this company skirted the law, relied on personal connections, and built a culture on a foundation of falsehood about its primary products. Purdue sent sales reps to call on prescribers the company knew were giving out unnecessary prescriptions, even going so far as to give kickbacks to the doctors of these pill mills.

But you can’t blame a single person for the opioid crisis. What we see here is a case of sinfulness and selfishness pervading several reinforcing institutions designed to increase sales, at any cost. People inside and outside the company were involved—corrupt doctors handing out prescriptions, salespeople and secretaries facilitating the flood of opioids into ravaged communities, and government officials who turned a blind eye to the mounting legal problems. You can describe this as conspiracy or collusion by individuals at the highest levels of a business, but the institutional structures (including the governmental approvals and the relational dynamics between multiple organizations) and the institutional incentives were all tilted toward injustice.

Everyone involved was culpable, though not equally so. We wouldn’t hold a secretary doing paperwork for Purdue to the same degree of guilt as one of the Sackler family members, but surely some culpability remains.

Pervasiveness of Sin

Empire of Pain is a good example of structural sin—the corruption of an institution given over to perverse incentives, bad habits, and false beliefs. More than just a conspiracy of individual bad actors, the situation with Purdue demonstrates how a business itself, or a system, program, or law, can be set up in such a way that even good-willed individuals become enmeshed in carrying out evil beyond their intentions.

Sin is pervasive. All of us are involved, at some level or another, in injustice, simply by participating in a global economy where wrongs (small and large) take place on a regular basis. It’s impossible to fully extricate ourselves from every potential entanglement with evil.

It’s no wonder that on occasion the apostle Paul talked about sin not merely as individual transgression but as a power, giving a personification to “Sin” as something more than the sum of what sinners do. How else do we explain how civilized German Lutherans fell prey to Hitler’s corrupted call for national greatness? Or how Christians in Rwanda committed shocking atrocities of ethnic violence against one another?

Overly individualized visions of sin diminish the pervasiveness of sin’s effects on society. Likewise, the problem with liberation theology and Marxist views of structural sinfulness is not that they go too far in their diagnosis; it’s that they don’t go far enough. Structural manifestations of sin are part, not all, of the problem. The human heart should remain foregrounded, not diminished, because the heart remains desperately wicked whether on the side of the “oppressor” or “victim.”

Because we hunger and thirst for righteousness and pray to see the Lord’s will done on earth as in heaven, we do whatever we can to expunge “systemic injustice” from our society, even as we recognize such attempts will always be provisional and that even our reforms will be susceptible to sin’s effects, causing unintended consequences that will form the basis for future reformers.

Thankfully, we have a Savior who both covers and conquers sins. We are justified by faith in his atoning blood, to cover all our sins of omission and commission. And we are ambassadors of reconciliation who testify of One who conquered the power of Sin and promises to bring about a new heaven and new earth, where righteousness dwells. The gospel is the answer to both individual and institutional sin.


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Work Out Your Body . . . and Your Soul https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/a-more-holistic-workout/ Thu, 06 Jan 2022 05:10:55 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=440331 To be a well-rounded individual, to be people of depth and insight, we must pursue working out in three dimensions: body, soul, and mind.]]>

More and more, I’m convinced that renewal and restoration in the church will not happen apart from individual Christians recommitting to more holistic forms of spiritual self-discipline and Christian practice. We must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, in utter dependence on the one who works in us both to will and to work according to his good purpose.

The beginning of a calendar year is marked by New Year’s resolutions. Most of these goals focus on physical improvement. We want to lose weight, put on muscle, get healthier, walk more, etc. So, we resolve to eat more of this and less of that, to work out at home or take advantage of a gym membership.

As Christians, we believe we should steward our bodies well, and yes, diet and exercise play a part in these resolutions. But more than our neighbors, we should consider “working out” holistically.

3 Parts to a Holistic Workout

I work with a guy fresh out of college who asked me recently about developing a routine of reading more often and about being more consistent in daily devotions. He’s an army guy, so he’s familiar with boot camp, and workouts, and “getting your reps in.”

To be a well-rounded individual, to be a person of depth and insight, I told him, we must pursue working out in three dimensions: body, soul, and mind.

Body

We walk, we exercise, we go to the gym, we do push-ups and pull-ups because we want to take care of our physical bodies. Most people think in these terms when they hear “workout,” so let’s move on to another type of exercise.

Mind

We work out our minds by picking up books that are hard to read and persevering through them, by setting reading goals that stretch us. If you read for just 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening, you’ll get through multiple books a year, even big books that demand your attention and focus.

This is not unattainable. Tony Reinke writes:

“The average reader moves through a book at a pace of about 250 words per minute. So 420 minutes of reading per week translates into 105,000 words per week. This book is roughly 55,000 words. Assuming that you can read for one hour each day, and that you read at around 250 words per minute, you can complete more than one book per week, or about seventy books per year.”

The point of reading, or listening to audiobooks, or taking the Great Courses, or studying textbooks isn’t to consume an arbitrary number of books so you can brag to your friends. The point of such reading is the pursuit of wisdom.

So, ask yourself the question: Where do you need to stretch? We have available to us books of theology and sociology, books that have made a cultural impact, worlds of imagination. Alan Jacobs writes:

“Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered, easily assessed.”

Maybe this is the year to work through several novels of Charles Dickens. Maybe this is the year you’ll make your way through Millard Erickson’s Systematic Theology. Maybe this is the year you’ll dip into the Church Fathers.

Read for pleasure. Read for wisdom. Read with friends and family members who can give you good recommendations, discuss big ideas, and help you stay intentional about working out your mind.

Soul

The third aspect of a holistic workout requires you to pay attention to your soul. Whether you call it “devotions” or a “quiet time,” the point is to set aside time to meditate on God’s Word and to pray. I go to the Psalms in 30 Days as a spiritual workout. It’s not that I expect a flash of insight every morning when I read God’s Word, just like I don’t expect one round of exercises to keep my body in shape. But I know that over time, I’m getting my reps in. I want to develop into the kind of person who can’t imagine beginning or ending the day without prayer and Bible study, someone with the ability to silence the noise and hear the Lord.

The way the Bible does its work on our hearts is often not through the lightning bolt but through the gentle and quiet rhythms of daily submission, of opening our lives before this open Book and asking God to change us. Change doesn’t always happen overnight. Growth doesn’t happen in an instant. Instead, it happens over time, as we eat and drink and exercise.

The same is true of Scripture reading. The same is true of prioritizing in-person church attendance. The workout of the soul requires not merely private Bible study, but corporate Christian practice, where we draw near to the God who meets with us and ministers to us. In church, we also learn to obey the “one another” commands of the New Testament and ask God to expand our hearts so that we love him and love our neighbors.

A Vision of the Future: Who Are You Becoming?

Ask yourself: what kind of person do you want to be in 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years? If the Lord grants me another 20 or 30 years of life, I hope to be an older person in the room with wisdom to offer those younger than me. The only way I’ll achieve that is if I put time into reading, reflecting, listening, and thinking, into saturating myself in the Word of God and serving his people now.

The key word is consistency. Words have weight when they come from someone consistent.

In Philippians 2, Paul talks about the “proven character” of Timothy (Phil. 2:22, CSB). Consistency isn’t something you can conjure up in a day or two, a week or two, even a month or two. It takes time and energy and effort, but what a great character trait to have!

Why do we work out—body, mind, and soul? To be consistent, to be healthy and whole, to reflect the God we worship.

We rely on the consistency of God’s grace and mercy and his empowering Spirit. And we pray we become the type of people others can rely on for our consistency. We see God as faithful and constant, and we pray we become the type of people others see as faithful and constant.

A holistic workout isn’t about you. It’s about developing wisdom and a consistency that shows the world how dependable and reliable God is.


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It’s Time to (Re)Build https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/its-time-to-rebuild/ Tue, 04 Jan 2022 05:10:26 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=440051 The right kind of deconstruction is the first step in a project of reconstruction, of rebuilding, of restoration.]]>

“Deconstruction” may be the buzzword these days, but I wonder if “collapse” better captures the sentiment for many Christians. Collapsing loyalties, collapsing certainties—the collapse of confidence in institutions, leaders, and churches. And what’s worse, a collapse of confidence in the beauty and goodness of Christian truth (or the idea we can ascertain truth at all).

Surveys and polls show not only the rise of secularism and the unaffiliated but also a steady erosion of trust in religious institutions. We think we can face the world’s pressures on our own, without the structural supports of a strong church or a close-knit family, but our individualist assumptions betray us. And people who experience this collapse of confidence remain, for a time, more uncertain, less confident.

Vacuum of Allegiance

But this uncertainty can only last for a time. As Robert Nisbet explains, “Human beings cannot long stand a vacuum of allegiance.”

We will pledge our loyalty to some project or another, even if it’s the shrunken desire to satisfy our immediate appetites. Allegiance will return. We will find something to capture our hearts—a cause to get behind—and today, for some of the Christians who adopt “deconstruction” terminology, certainty and confidence return. Except this time, the collapse of confidence in historic Christianity becomes the rock-ribbed assurance of another position—that the Christian faith has been hopelessly compromised and must be altered or abandoned.

Rebuilding from the Rubble 

There’s a good kind of deconstruction—what Hunter Beaumont calls “disenculturation”—that calls on the church to distinguish authentic Christianity from its cultural trappings and to strip away floors and walls that have rotted. This kind of deconstruction is a demonstration of repentance and humility—the willingness to acknowledge the church’s waywardness and to return to Jesus, begging him to remake us in his image so that we display his glory among us.

Unfortunately, too often in conversations about deconstruction, conservatives betray conservatism by defending rot. And progressives betray progress by blowing up foundational pillars.

So, let the rotting portions of a building come down! May we unlearn the falsehoods we’ve taken as truth, scrape away any accretions that block our view of the Savior, and change our minds when the Scriptures confront us with our myopia and selfishness.

But the basis for rooting out rot must be the Scriptures on which we stand. We strip the moldy floors because we care about the house and because there’s still a firm foundation underneath. The right kind of deconstruction is the first step in a project of reconstruction, of rebuilding, of restoration.

Restorative Deconstruction 

For that restoration process to take place, we must resist the current mood that finds pleasure in unsettling all convictions, that pushes us to question everything we’ve ever been told, as if progress demands we reject the faith of our grandmother, or sneer at whatever we find silly in the church that first showed us Jesus, or untether ourselves from the wisdom of the church through the ages.

Restoration begins with deconstruction as a roadway of repentance, filled with faith, hope, and love: faith in the unshakable goodness of Christian truth, hope for the day the church will better reflect the beauty of grace, and love for the stumbling people Jesus died to save.

Time to (Re)Build 

In the years to come, as we survey the apocalyptic destruction left in the wake of God’s decision to humble and expose our sins, as we recommit ourselves to removing rot wherever we see it (in our own lives as well as in the church), we will be called on to build. To reconstruct. To restore.

In two insightful articles about the proper role of a Christian professor, Brad East explains why he sees his task as one of fortification—securing and grounding the faith of his students. “Deconstruction is a razing,” he writes, “but I’m in the business of raising homes to live in.” 

This doesn’t mean avoiding hard questions or never grappling with doubt. It doesn’t mean accepting without question the assumptions we’ve inherited from the communities that formed us. In fact, this fortification process will often lead to harder questions. But we ask these questions with the goal of returning to the Scriptures and the great Christian tradition for answers, acknowledging that we’re not the first generation to wrestle, nor will we be the last.

There’s a difference between the questioner who delights in excoriating our Christian communities for their missteps as a way of discrediting them and disregarding their authority and the questioner who acknowledges sin and evil by drawing us closer to the foundation of those communities, by relying on a shared commitment to the authority of God’s Word as the standard by which we course-correct.

An example? Brad writes about students entering his class having imbibed from their churches an implicit pseudo-Marcionite posture—a “tacit skepticism of Israel’s God, Israel’s Scriptures, and Israel’s God.” In order to deconstruct those Marcionite beliefs, the professor could take an adversarial posture to the homes and churches of his students, telling them again and again how their pastors and teachers failed to do justice to two-thirds of the Bible and the story of Abraham and his descendants. But what if, instead, the professor seeks to dismantle Marcionite beliefs by going back to the foundation of those churches’ convictions, showing how an implicit dismissal of the Old Testament is unfaithful to the very beliefs his students have always held dear?

It’s that restorative sensibility that reminds us we’re in the business of “building, not tearing down—all the while allowing that building sometimes involves rebuilding, or removing this slat for that one, or securing walls or foundations in a more reliable way, and so on. The end is the edifice, which is why St. Paul calls for edification.”

A Future for Spiritual Replenishment 

The future of Christianity in the West does not belong to those whose “brand” is deconstruction. It belongs, instead, to the poor in spirit who mourn the fallenness of the world and church, the humble who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart whose pursuit of peace leads to the reviling of Pharisees within the church and scoffers who have left.

Spiritual replenishment will require work—the Spirit’s work through us—as we seek to inhabit and love the church, so the beauty of Christ shines again through the smeared stained glass.

The ultimate purpose of deconstruction is not to bomb the rubble, but to rebuild.


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My Favorite Reads of 2021 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/favorite-reads-2021/ Thu, 09 Dec 2021 05:10:59 +0000 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/?post_type=trevin-wax&p=433193 The books I most enjoyed reading in 2021.]]>

At the close of every year, I share a list of the books I most enjoyed reading during the calendar year. There’s usually a mix of theology, cultural analysis, biography, and fiction. Here’s hoping a few of this year’s favorite reads will make their way onto your Christmas wish list or provide some good gift ideas.

If nothing on this list stands out, feel free to peruse my selections in previous years, going all the way back to 2006.

2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006

And if nothing in those lists appeals to you, well, I wonder why you are reading my blog in the first place!

Here are my picks for 2021.

#1. POILU
The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918

I was mesmerized by Louis Barthas’ World War I notebooks. His descriptive language puts you in the scene like no other war memoir I’ve ever read. You not only see the war through the eyes of a soldier, you begin to feel what the soldiers feel—their frustration and exhaustion, their cynicism and sincerity, the stretches of insufferable boredom and misery in the trenches and fields, punctuated by sheer terror and the exhilaration of the battle. What’s more, Barthas the barrelmaker doesn’t reflect on a brief stint in one area of the war; he survived four years at the front as a common soldier. I plan to send a few samples from Poilu to my newsletter subscribers next week. Sign up if you’re interested in knowing more.

#2. THE MAKING OF C. S. LEWIS
From Atheist to Apologist (1918-45)
by Harry Lee Poe

Hal Poe’s second installment in his three-book biography of C. S. Lewis traces, arguably, the most interesting part of Lewis’s life—his journey from atheism to a formidable Christian apologist. It’s the follow-up to Becoming C. S. Lewis, the most extensive work chronicling Lewis’s childhood and adolescence. This biography shows how Lewis’s day-to-day activities and friendships contributed to the development of his thought.

#3. THE SECULAR CREED
Engaging Five Contemporary Claims
by Rebecca McLaughlin

This is the shortest book on my list this year, but don’t let its brevity fool you. Rebecca McLaughlin’s engagement of the yard signs that declare “Black lives matter, love is love, gay rights are civil rights” and so forth is powerful. She exposes the problems and lies at root in this “secular creed,” but in a way that shows how the gospel fulfills the deeper longings of our neighbors. A brief but potent work of apologetics, accessible to anyone.

#4. THE TRINITARIAN FAITH
The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church
by T. F. Torrance

This is the deepest theological book on my list this year. It demands patience and attention, but the rewards are remarkable. Torrance’s exploration of the Trinity is one of last century’s most important Trinitarian studies, and even if one comes to different conclusions here and there, he succeeds in offering a masterful exposition of several church fathers, most notably Athanasius.

#5. FREEDOM’S PROPHET
Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers
by Richard S. Newman

What if I told you there was a man during the American Revolutionary era who was born into slavery, trusted in Christ as a teenager, converted his master, purchased his freedom, rode the circuit as a preacher with renowned Methodist preacher Francis Asbury, served as a chimney sweep (perhaps even for George Washington!), survived yellow fever, walked out of his church in protest of segregation, founded the black church, and then bought back his own church building years later? That man is Richard Allen. Here’s my fuller review of this book.

#6. JANE EYRE
by Charlotte Brontë

This book is a consistent presence on scholarly lists of “greatest English novels,” so this year, I decided to pick up a beautiful new clothbound edition that features literature professor Karen Prior’s guidance. I wasn’t disappointed. Easily the best fiction book I read this year—it’s a book that takes you deep into the inner struggles of a young woman smitten by a man who holds a dark secret. Beautiful, brooding, introspective, thrilling.

#7. TO FLOURISH OR DESTRUCT
A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil
by Christian Smith

This volume by Christian Smith builds upon (and summarizes) his trilogy on anthropology that began with Moral Believing Animals and What is a Person?. Smith’s approach to philosophical anthropology follows the pattern of Christian natural-law thinking about humanity, but he uses social science terms and categories as he does so. Smith is at his best when he points out the flaws in other, popular sociological approaches to anthropology, showing how they are not empirical or objective, but also grounded in faith assumptions about human nature. 

#8. THE STORY OF CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS
Tracing the Development of the Christian Faith

by Donald Fairbairn and Ryan Reeves

This is one of the best books I’ve come across on church history, the development of Christian theology, the ecumenical councils, and the relationship between creeds and confessions. It’s been helpful in clarifying some of my recent thinking and writing. It’s also very accessible. An enjoyable, enlightening book.

#9. STRANGE RITES
New Religions for a Godless World

by Tara Isabella Burton

Tara Isabella Burton’s research describes the increase in number of religiously “remixed” people in American society. It’s a shift from institutional religion to intuitional religion: “A new, eclectic, chaotic, and thoroughly, quintessentially American religion. A religion of emotive intuition, of aestheticized and commodified experience, of self-creation and self-improvement . . . A religion decoupled from institutions, from creeds, from metaphysical truth-claims about God or the universe of the Way Things Are, but that still seeks—in various and varying ways—to provide us with the pillars of what religion always has: meaning, purpose, community, ritual.” This is our mission field, folks.

#10. THE DEVIL’S REDEMPTION
A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism
by Michael McClymond

I hesitated at putting this two-volume book on the list simply because of its price tag and because of its length. Please, someone, release a shorter version of this research! Still, McClymond is an excellent writer whose journey through Christian theology, analyzing the enduring universalist position of salvation (and its effects on various movements and churrch traditions) is a delight to read. A tour de force! 

HONORABLE MENTION

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN
The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics
by O. Carter Snead

Until I read this book on anthropology and embodiment, I had never considered the connection between American laws on abortion and expressive individualism. His argument goes into greater detail than I’ve summarized here, and he applies the same thinking to euthanasia and end-of-life choices, as well as reproductive technologies like IVF. Overall, he makes a persuasive (albeit chilling) case that a reductionist view of humanity can make a tomb of the womb.


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