How Do We Respond to Claims That Christianity Is Dangerous?
00:00:00.000 | Hey everyone, this is Tony.
00:00:02.000 | Well you can pop a confetti popper because on Saturday, this Saturday, this podcast turns
00:00:07.560 | seven years old.
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00:00:41.840 | That's DesiringGod.org/survey.
00:00:45.040 | And I'll mention this address again at the end of today's episode, which starts right
00:00:50.240 | now.
00:00:55.320 | We have a culture question from a pastor who asks this.
00:00:58.120 | Pastor John, hello.
00:00:59.120 | In a recent TGC podcast, Sam Albury said the following thing about campus outreach ministry.
00:01:04.360 | He said this, "People have often thought Christianity was a bit quaint.
00:01:09.880 | You know, there, there, you've got your little faith kind of thing.
00:01:13.040 | But increasingly, what we're seeing in a more secular context is people saying to us is
00:01:17.320 | actually your faith is a danger to society.
00:01:21.420 | And that's new space for us and we're not used to being looked down on and slightly
00:01:25.720 | patronized.
00:01:26.720 | I don't think we're used to feeling like we are the enemy.
00:01:31.240 | People used to say, I don't like Christianity because it's too moral.
00:01:34.920 | Now they're saying, I don't like Christianity because it's too immoral.
00:01:39.040 | And whether it's people saying Christianity is responsible for gay teenagers committing
00:01:42.520 | suicide or for fostering intolerance, those arguments carry far more emotional force than
00:01:49.320 | some of the previous objections I would have dealt with 10 or 15 years ago."
00:01:55.640 | So here's my question, Pastor John.
00:01:57.880 | Christianity started out as a powerful minority voice in culture, but at times in history
00:02:01.920 | and today in America, evangelicalism is a major cultural voice and possibly a deciding
00:02:08.200 | factor in the 2020 presidential election.
00:02:11.980 | So how do we respond as the tide turns and we hear criticisms coming our way that American
00:02:16.680 | Christianity is a bully, using its political and social sway for ends that the world says
00:02:23.920 | are mean, immoral, and even hateful?
00:02:27.880 | I don't presume to have the last word on these complex matters, but I realize also that I
00:02:33.720 | don't have the luxury of saying nothing or thinking nothing because I live in this very
00:02:39.120 | embattled world as a Christian whose citizenship is in heaven, in allegiance to King Jesus
00:02:45.440 | first and foremost, and whose authoritative life charter is the Bible, not the U.S. Constitution,
00:02:53.200 | and who has already died.
00:02:54.920 | I have already died, and my life is hidden with Christ in God, and yet I live a bodily
00:03:03.040 | life here as an exile and sojourner.
00:03:06.920 | So I don't feel like I have the luxury of saying nothing, and yet I speak very much
00:03:12.480 | as an alien.
00:03:13.960 | So I have three things, three kinds of responses to this kind of question and this situation
00:03:20.720 | in which we find ourselves.
00:03:22.080 | The first is to say that what seems new for Christian experience is not new.
00:03:29.120 | I mean, the pastor, in a sense, said that, and I want to underline it.
00:03:34.520 | What we're experiencing is new, and a shift of attitude towards Christianity is not new.
00:03:40.840 | The second thing I want to say, and I'll circle back to these, is to say that the biblical
00:03:47.440 | position on controversial social and cultural issues is not immoral, it's not harmful, it's
00:03:53.960 | not unloving, no matter what the culture says to the opposite.
00:03:58.920 | And the third thing I want to say is that our political voice should be so permeated
00:04:06.360 | by the announcement of the horrors of divine wrath over the human race and the glories
00:04:13.180 | of the gospel of divine rescue and the unsearchable riches of Christ, the ruler of the nations,
00:04:19.920 | and the demand for repentance and faith from every citizen and every politician, so permeated
00:04:25.980 | with all that, that it is evident to all that political concerns for the true Christian
00:04:33.940 | fade into mists compared to these vastly greater realities.
00:04:41.300 | So those are the three things that I want to say, and let me go back now and say just
00:04:46.460 | a word about each one of them.
00:04:48.700 | So there are three things.
00:04:50.100 | Here's number one.
00:04:51.860 | For the people of God to be regarded as immoral and dangerous is not new.
00:04:59.320 | We get the impression that it's new because for about 300 years, we've lived in a peculiar
00:05:06.420 | aberration in the history of the world called America.
00:05:11.380 | Far more biblically normal is what we read in the New Testament.
00:05:16.780 | The Jewish leader said of Jesus, "If we let him go on like this, the Romans will come
00:05:24.340 | and take away our place and our nation," John 11, 48.
00:05:28.180 | In other words, this man is very dangerous.
00:05:30.700 | We can't let him talk anymore like this.
00:05:34.580 | And the same thing was said about the early Christians.
00:05:37.700 | The public accusation in Thessalonica was that these men have turned the world upside
00:05:43.620 | down, Acts 17, 6.
00:05:45.420 | And they were—they're acting—these men are acting against the decrees of Caesar,
00:05:51.940 | which meant they are calling up down and down up and good bad and bad good, and they're
00:05:57.860 | going to wreck our good Roman world.
00:06:02.100 | So that's not new.
00:06:03.380 | Jesus was called the devil, and Matthew warned that if they called the master of the house
00:06:09.900 | the devil, they're going to call us worse things, Matthew 10, 25.
00:06:14.900 | And at the end of Paul's life, the Jews in Rome said, "Well, we've heard about
00:06:19.660 | this sect, Christianity, and it is spoken against everywhere."
00:06:24.740 | Like not here and there, like everywhere, this thing called Christianity, we hear it's
00:06:31.220 | spoken against, Acts 28, 22.
00:06:35.460 | And Peter warned that even though you're doing good deeds, they're going to speak
00:06:40.140 | against you as evildoers, 1 Peter 2, 12.
00:06:43.500 | So they're going to twist our good deeds and make them sound like evil deeds.
00:06:48.700 | This is not new.
00:06:49.860 | It's normal.
00:06:51.220 | It's been the case from the beginning that Christians are slandered, and one of the worst
00:06:56.940 | slanders is to consider our love dangerous.
00:07:02.100 | Here's the second thing.
00:07:03.980 | The biblical position on controversial social, cultural issues is not immoral, it's not
00:07:10.340 | harmful, it's not unloving.
00:07:13.060 | To say out loud that there is no such thing as so-called gay marriage, because God has
00:07:19.060 | created and defined marriage as a covenanted life together of a man and a woman, to say
00:07:25.460 | that out loud is not immoral.
00:07:28.300 | It's not unloving.
00:07:29.420 | It's true, it's moral, it's loving, because God knows what is best for the world, and
00:07:36.940 | therefore it is self-destructive and treasonous to tell him or to tell people that he doesn't
00:07:43.620 | know what he's talking about and to try to celebrate what the opposite is, namely,
00:07:48.740 | abomination.
00:07:49.980 | And the same is true of speaking out loud about biological men trying to be women or
00:07:56.460 | women trying to be men, and boys and girls should not be assisted in becoming what they
00:08:01.980 | are not nor ever can be.
00:08:05.020 | And the same is true in saying out loud that God has issued commands against racism and
00:08:10.100 | against killing unborn children and against political swagger and dozens of other marks
00:08:15.060 | of modern America.
00:08:16.980 | It's not harmful or unloving or immoral to stand up and say the commands of our Creator
00:08:24.940 | are good for us, not harmful, and the path of repentance and faith in Christ and obedience
00:08:31.740 | to his Word is the path of life and joy.
00:08:37.220 | That's not immoral.
00:08:38.220 | It doesn't matter what the world says.
00:08:40.400 | What matters is what is the actual case.
00:08:43.420 | And here's the last thing.
00:08:44.580 | The third thing, and I think it's the most important and the most difficult to bring
00:08:50.780 | about, namely, that the political voice of Christians, especially pastors, I would say,
00:08:58.300 | the political voice of Christians should be so permeated by the announcement of the horrors
00:09:06.720 | of divine wrath over the human race because of God belittling sin and so permeated by
00:09:13.560 | the beauty of the gospel of divine rescue and so permeated with the unsearchable riches
00:09:21.180 | of Christ, the ruler of the nations, and so permeated with the demand for repentance and
00:09:26.620 | faith from every citizen and every politician that our voice should be so permeated with
00:09:33.900 | these things that it is evident to the world that political concerns for true Christians
00:09:42.180 | fade into mists compared to these vastly greater realities.
00:09:50.120 | And I think one of the great failures of much of American Christianity, especially in recent
00:09:56.020 | days, I would say, is that we have fit into the world, including the political world and
00:10:04.620 | the entertainment world and the educational world and the business world, we've just fit
00:10:10.020 | in so comfortably, so innocuously, that it appears to the world that we're just at home
00:10:16.860 | here and that we put our hope in all the same things and all the same processes and all
00:10:22.020 | the same products and all the same politics that they do.
00:10:25.980 | So my point is that whatever we say about politics—and I'm not saying we shouldn't
00:10:31.820 | say anything—but whatever we say about politics, it should have this flavor.
00:10:38.300 | We Christians have died with Christ and our life is hidden with Christ in God.
00:10:44.460 | Our citizenship is in heaven, not on the earth, and we await our King Jesus who will come
00:10:51.540 | and banish all unbelief and ungodliness from the planet.
00:10:55.940 | Every political candidate without faith in Jesus will perish in everlasting torment,
00:11:02.820 | Republican or Democrat.
00:11:04.780 | God hates pride, including political pride, and all self-exalting swagger will be cut
00:11:11.740 | down by King Jesus, and God alone will be exalted in due time.
00:11:18.060 | America is not the new Jerusalem, and politics is not salvation.
00:11:22.820 | We may succeed in putting every fiscal policy, every wise social policy, every international
00:11:29.620 | policy in place, and America will still be a wicked people.
00:11:34.700 | All co-belligerence that muffle the call of co-belligerence to repent is unchristian and
00:11:43.900 | unloving.
00:11:45.460 | Calls for justice without calls for justice toward God and what we should do toward Him
00:11:52.020 | that's right and owing to Him is a compromise with injustice.
00:11:57.360 | Under this radical orientation on Christ and His kingdom, we vote.
00:12:03.700 | We vote, and we expect very little of eternal consequence from our vote.
00:12:10.360 | One day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day, the apostle says, in
00:12:17.180 | the presence of God, which means that roughly two days have passed since Jesus went to heaven,
00:12:25.460 | and America, while she lasts, is about eight hours old.
00:12:30.520 | Our politics should be permeated by what is real, not what is so utterly ephemeral.
00:12:38.040 | Amen.
00:12:39.040 | That's a really good word on the urgency of eternal things and the discord we feel in
00:12:43.560 | this world with its priorities and the eternal world which roots our own priorities.
00:12:49.720 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:51.000 | Yes, on Saturday, the podcast turned seven years old.
00:12:54.400 | Thank you for all your support over the years.
00:12:57.160 | On Monday, we return to field a question about the cross.
00:13:00.400 | Wasn't the cross overkill for sin?
00:13:04.580 | Interesting question.
00:13:05.580 | I know a lot of listeners actually wrestle with in some form.
00:13:08.300 | We're going to voice it, and we're going to answer it on Monday.
00:13:11.880 | Until then, if you're willing to help us out, fill out our online survey.
00:13:16.560 | Many of you have already done so, so thank you.
00:13:18.920 | If you haven't, please go to DesiringGod.org/survey.
00:13:22.600 | That's DesiringGod.org/survey.
00:13:25.680 | I'm Tony Reinhke.
00:13:26.680 | We'll see you on Monday.
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