Popular Author Stumbles — What Should We Do With His Books?

00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor John Piper.

00:00:10.720 | Here's today's question for you.

00:00:12.840 | "Hello Pastor John, my name is Darmo and I live in Indonesia.

00:00:17.040 | What encouragement would you give for us who have read and admired Eugene Peterson's books

00:00:22.600 | over the years in light of his recent admission that he would marry a gay couple?

00:00:28.880 | He seems to have recanted on this position, but it still leaves in my mind a lingering

00:00:33.760 | question.

00:00:34.760 | When it comes to national or international voices in the church, when do they lose their

00:00:39.160 | platform?

00:00:40.520 | If an evangelical wavers on same-sex marriage, to what extent are their life's works valuable

00:00:45.400 | or not to the church in the future, both in private use and in public commendation?"

00:00:52.100 | What would you say, Pastor John, to Darmo?

00:00:55.280 | Let me try to say something about this question without focusing too much on Eugene Peterson.

00:01:03.080 | It's a bigger issue than one man, but I will say that I was really sad to read his seemingly

00:01:15.000 | cavalier endorsement of so-called same-sex marriage and then how, in my mind, unsatisfying

00:01:24.280 | his retraction was.

00:01:27.800 | Perhaps I wasn't as surprised as some that he would move in that direction, but when

00:01:32.560 | he did, at least for a moment, it was a tragic development.

00:01:38.720 | And I say that, I say it was tragic, because endorsing so-called same-sex marriage involves

00:01:45.740 | three tragic things.

00:01:48.880 | One, it involves a false and destructive view of marriage.

00:01:54.600 | Two, it involves a false and destructive view of sexuality.

00:02:01.600 | And three, and most important, probably, it involves a false and destructive view of the

00:02:08.400 | gospel warning that those who live in unrepentant homosexual activity will not inherit the kingdom

00:02:18.480 | of God, and the gospel of Jesus is given precisely to rescue us from that peril.

00:02:26.160 | So why would we send people into it if we are gospel people?

00:02:31.280 | So to me, these three false and deeply destructive errors are so serious that it's almost inconceivable

00:02:41.240 | to me that a serious Christian would not be prevented by biblical faithfulness and love

00:02:45.800 | for people's eternal good from endorsing so-called same-sex marriage.

00:02:52.160 | So the question for me becomes, in general, what shall we do with books and sermons of

00:02:57.960 | those who, somewhere along the way, depart from biblical faithfulness in these and other

00:03:05.240 | serious ways?

00:03:07.240 | So I've just got four observations that I'll make, and I hope they provide some guidance

00:03:13.960 | to us as we reflect on them.

00:03:16.000 | Number one, in principle, a book that was once properly seen as true and helpful may

00:03:24.720 | remain true and helpful, even if its author says things that are seriously untrue and

00:03:31.640 | unhelpful later on.

00:03:34.720 | The simplest way to show this, that this is true, is to notice that King Solomon was the

00:03:42.240 | author of many of the proverbs—Proverbs 1:1, the proverbs of Solomon, son of David,

00:03:49.000 | king of Israel—and he was the author of the Song of Songs, Song of Solomon 1:1.

00:03:55.920 | And yet, here's what we read in 1 Kings 11, "When Solomon was old, his wives turned away

00:04:02.840 | his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as

00:04:09.880 | was the heart of David his father.

00:04:11.680 | For Solomon went after the Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom,

00:04:17.760 | the abomination of the Ammonites.

00:04:20.160 | So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord."

00:04:24.560 | So I conclude that in principle, a book can remain true and helpful, even if its author

00:04:31.460 | goes off the rails.

00:04:34.280 | Number two, second observation.

00:04:37.700 | If a writer does move in a seriously defective direction, doctrinally or morally, we have

00:04:45.940 | good reason to reread what he has written and be on the lookout for the seeds and trajectories

00:04:56.080 | that might give some explanation for why he went in such a wrong direction.

00:05:02.640 | In retrospect, we might discover in his writings things which, in fact, we had overlooked.

00:05:10.420 | We had given him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps, and now we see, hmm, maybe not.

00:05:15.720 | Those things carried maybe the seeds of the defection or the trajectory of the defection

00:05:23.040 | in the end.

00:05:24.440 | So we might judge that the writings are not as helpful as we once thought they were on

00:05:31.380 | a more careful reading.

00:05:33.480 | Here's the third thing I would say.

00:05:35.400 | In what I said under number one, I used the phrase "in principle."

00:05:40.240 | In principle, a book that was once properly seen as true and helpful may remain true and

00:05:46.000 | helpful.

00:05:47.520 | The reason I use the phrase "in principle" is to distinguish it from inactuality.

00:05:54.760 | In other words, a book never does exist in principle alone, in abstract.

00:06:02.800 | It never exists isolated from connections with author, real and potential readers, churches,

00:06:11.360 | publisher, ministry, the fruit it bears, time in history when it served its purpose.

00:06:18.760 | And the point here is that the decision what to do with a book isn't based on the principal

00:06:28.980 | legitimacy of what it says alone, but also on its connections with people and churches

00:06:36.180 | and ministries and publishers and times, any of which might be very helpful or very harmful

00:06:44.020 | by their connections with the book, or very harmed or helped by their connection with

00:06:51.620 | the book.

00:06:53.060 | And we need to weigh the issue of what our promotion or endorsement of a book may do

00:07:03.300 | in all of those connections.

00:07:05.700 | I'm thinking of the biblical principle of not causing your brother to stumble, because

00:07:11.420 | even in principle, you may have freedom to do something, but in other factors, when they're

00:07:17.660 | drawn in, may make that very act an unloving act, 1 Corinthians 8, Romans 14.

00:07:25.660 | And the last thing, the fourth thing I would say, is that it seems to me that one lesson

00:07:32.120 | we should learn from these repeated situations that happen in history is that excessive,

00:07:40.020 | uncritical praise for an ordinary human author—and here, I'm not thinking of inspired biblical

00:07:49.140 | authors in any of these.

00:07:51.140 | I think God, in his mercy and inspiration, has protected those authors, even though they

00:07:58.380 | are fallen human beings, from writing what is false.

00:08:01.940 | That's what we mean by inspiration.

00:08:03.840 | So I'm not including them in this when I say uncritical praise of an ordinary human author

00:08:11.080 | is probably unwarranted and may do harm, even though we have been tremendously helped by

00:08:18.480 | the person we're praising.

00:08:20.040 | For example, I can hear excessive praise for St. Augustine or John Calvin or Martin Luther

00:08:26.620 | or Karl Barth or my favorite, C.S.

00:08:30.000 | Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, John Owen.

00:08:33.440 | We would probably do well to regularly remind ourselves and our audiences that all authors

00:08:43.240 | have feet of clay and that every book should be read through the discerning lens of biblical

00:08:51.560 | faithfulness.

00:08:53.460 | So bottom line, test all things and hold fast to what is good.

00:08:59.040 | Man, this is very wise and good and insightful, and I think we can apply this to all of our

00:09:05.400 | favorite writers.

00:09:06.400 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:09:07.400 | I love that line, "Uncritical praise of an ordinary human author is probably unwarranted."

00:09:13.000 | Amen.

00:09:14.060 | So well said.

00:09:15.060 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your

00:09:18.360 | day and your commute.

00:09:19.960 | It's really an honor to join you as part of your very busy day as you drive around.

00:09:23.240 | I know a lot of you listen in the car.

00:09:26.000 | Three times a week we publish, and you can subscribe to our audio feeds and keep up with

00:09:29.360 | our new episodes and even search our past episodes in our archive and even reach us

00:09:33.360 | by email with a question you may be facing about life, like this very good one from Darmo.

00:09:38.880 | You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:09:41.640 | Well, speaking of really good questions, we know that God is sovereign.

00:09:50.240 | He can do whatever He wants to whenever He wants to.

00:09:53.800 | He has that kind of power, and I think most of us agree with that.

00:09:58.160 | But does that also mean that God controls all things all the time?

00:10:04.560 | That is a really sharp question, and it comes from a listener in Jacksonville, Florida,

00:10:09.240 | and it's up on Friday.

00:10:11.080 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we will see you then.

00:10:13.440 | [END]

00:10:14.440 | DesiringGod.org

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Popular Author Stumbles — What Should We Do With His Books?

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