Should We Stop Reading Dead White Guys?

00:00:04.000 | Reformation Day arrives again and once again the anniversary will be mostly ignored.

00:00:09.000 | Instead, the day will be dominated by goblins, jack-o'-lanterns, and the free distribution of edible earwax,

00:00:15.000 | also known as candy corn, which is absolutely disgusting.

00:00:19.000 | But more seriously, this was an especially tough year to be a dead white guy.

00:00:25.000 | The Shiret Vandals desecrated the Reformation Wall in Geneva, Switzerland.

00:00:29.000 | Not one time, but twice.

00:00:31.000 | In March, feminist activists spray-painted the wall with the question, "Where are the women?"

00:00:36.000 | And then in mid-July, the statues of Calvin, Farrell, Beza, and Knox were baptized in gallons of bright paint,

00:00:42.000 | a rainbow of colors, in what appears to have been a public protest against "bigots" who are out of step with pro-gay culture.

00:00:49.000 | And then in June, a prominent evangelical voice in the States came out to suggest that Reformed folks read dead white guys

00:00:54.000 | because they have daddy issues and because they're evading personal critique,

00:00:58.000 | retreating into books by Spurgeon, Calvin, and Luther, calling readers of these guys, quote,

00:01:03.000 | "little boys with father wounds looking for spiritual fathers who pick dead guys who are not going to actually get to know them or correct them," end quote.

00:01:11.000 | Wow. So dead white guys have fallen on hard times, Pastor John.

00:01:15.000 | Should we stop reading them? What would you say?

00:01:18.000 | Well, talking about celebrating these guys gives me a chance to say something just by way of preface.

00:01:26.000 | It is possible to celebrate people, whether dead or alive, out of proportion with their importance.

00:01:32.000 | You might over-celebrate somebody. You might under-celebrate somebody.

00:01:36.000 | And so when we use the word to celebrate, it gives me the chance to simply say this.

00:01:43.000 | The sins of our fathers, not to mention their finiteness, their cultural limitations, their personal idiosyncrasies, should cause our celebrations to have a kind of chastened enthusiasm.

00:02:01.000 | That's my new phrase, chastened enthusiasm.

00:02:06.000 | Lest we make the mistake like the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1, which in recent days were so helpful.

00:02:15.000 | This was so helpful to me to think about.

00:02:17.000 | You know, they were saying, "I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. I'm of Cephas," in such a way that Paul had to say, "Was Paul crucified for you?"

00:02:25.000 | That's a very telling phrase.

00:02:28.000 | Their enthusiasm was so out of proportion with reality that they were giving the impression in some way that their teachers were starting to take the place of Christ, because Paul said, "Was Paul crucified for you?"

00:02:45.000 | Now, that's just by way of preface.

00:02:47.000 | A chastened enthusiasm for all human teachers and heroes.

00:02:54.000 | Now, here's my response to those two criticisms you raised.

00:02:58.000 | One, yes, they are gloriously out of step with contemporary culture.

00:03:04.000 | That includes both secular American culture and the largely white evangelical culture with its love affair with human self-determination and so-called free will, its entertainment mentality, its downplaying of the importance of doctrine, its normalization of comfort and ease and wealth, and the neglect of holiness and sacrifice and justice.

00:03:33.000 | Its marginalization of the majesty and sovereignty of God, etc., etc.

00:03:40.000 | Yes, yes, they are gloriously out of step with contemporary church and secular culture.

00:03:51.000 | That's my response, first, to number one.

00:03:54.000 | Number two, no, I don't think that 10,000 younger and older men who read Calvin and Owen and Edwards and Spurgeon are "boys with father wounds who are looking for spiritual fathers and pick dead guys who won't actually get to know them or correct them."

00:04:21.000 | That is so off the charts, not the experience of reading these guys.

00:04:28.000 | So, in fact, I would say that to the degree that Father Hunger figures into our motives, and I'm saying our, I'm 73, I'm not a young restless reformed anymore.

00:04:41.000 | I've been reading these guys for 50 years, since I was 23 years old.

00:04:48.000 | And I think it generally works the other way around.

00:04:52.000 | Namely, we, or they, these people who are reading all these old dead white guys, we taste the greatness of what it means to be fathered by those who lovingly blow our cherished idols to smithereens.

00:05:13.000 | Now, let me expand on each of those two observations.

00:05:19.000 | Number one, with regard to the first, the fact that old dead writers from another century are out of step with our times is why you read them, not why you don't read them.

00:05:33.000 | So, those of us who care about ethnic diversity and harmony and justice should see this especially.

00:05:43.000 | We should see this.

00:05:44.000 | Crossing the boundaries, say, of three centuries into the past is a greater cultural stretch than crossing the boundaries to other ethnicities in America in our time.

00:05:59.000 | In other words, it's not as though reading men from the 18th or 17th or 16th centuries, let alone an African from the 5th century, like Augustine, are culturally or temperamentally or presuppositionally close to us.

00:06:16.000 | They aren't.

00:06:17.000 | They are more alien to us in all these ways than virtually all of our American contemporaries, whatever ethnicity.

00:06:27.000 | So, that's one reason they are valuable.

00:06:30.000 | And remember, I'm saying this with a chastened enthusiasm.

00:06:34.000 | So, here's what Lewis said.

00:06:37.000 | C.S. Lewis, very crucial on this issue about reading people outside your own century.

00:06:43.000 | He said, "We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the 20th century," we would now say the 21st century, "concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and Roosevelt."

00:06:58.000 | And we might say, "Something about which there is untroubled agreement between the Grandmaster of the KKK and Bernie Sanders."

00:07:06.000 | None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it and weaken our guard against it if we read only modern books.

00:07:22.000 | So, I think, yes, keep on reading those outside your century.

00:07:30.000 | Get back to 300 years and cross all those cultural barriers, and it will be good for us.

00:07:38.000 | Here's my response in a fuller way to that second issue.

00:07:43.000 | It's grasping at straws to suggest that what's motivating 10,000 young men to read Calvin, Owen, Edwards, Spurgeon, it's grasping at straws to say that they are desiring to find a father figure who won't convict them of their sins and errors.

00:08:03.000 | I was 22 years old when I met the real Jonathan Edwards—not just the sinners in the hands of the angry god Edwards.

00:08:13.000 | I read Edwards nonstop through seminary and grad school.

00:08:19.000 | I recall reading Edwards' Freedom of the Will during seminary, and I remember my whole theological scaffolding—and I had a big personal investment in it, just like we all do—I recall my whole theological scaffolding collapsing.

00:08:39.000 | And I remember weeping. I would go home to my desk. At my desk, put one elbow on each side of the Bible and weep, cry with confusion.

00:08:53.000 | And I recall sitting in a rocking chair in Germany a few years later, in the evenings, reading for the first time Edwards' religious affections as my proud heart was laid bare, layer after layer, by his chapter on evangelical humiliation.

00:09:17.000 | I think that chapter—what, from 250 years ago?—that chapter did a deeper work of conviction in my heart than I can recall ever any other living or dead source doing on me.

00:09:33.000 | So believe me, I have not stayed with Edwards because he has been easy on me.

00:09:41.000 | No one has been harder on John Piper and his ego and his ways than Jonathan Edwards.

00:09:51.000 | And for those that are hard on him today because of his failures, I just pray that they will have this same precious, painful experience.

00:10:04.000 | So let's recognize that our choice of books is conditioned by our cultural, our social, our ecclesiastical, our temperamental position in life.

00:10:17.000 | Let's recognize that and strive to minimize the blinding effects of provincialism.

00:10:24.000 | And I would say to all of us, set yourself biblical goals in what you read.

00:10:30.000 | Decide ahead of—what are the biblical goals in reading a book?

00:10:34.000 | Why am I reading this book?

00:10:36.000 | Which I think would mean something like this.

00:10:39.000 | Read anybody, anybody, in any time period, of any ethnicity, of either sex, of any country, including reading the devil!

00:10:53.000 | And which I say that because 2 Corinthians 12, God makes the devil serve my sanctification.

00:11:02.000 | So read anybody if—and here's the big if that's probably going to rule out the devil, but not necessarily—

00:11:10.000 | if the reading causes you to reverence and glorify the triune God more fully, causes you to love Jesus Christ more passionately,

00:11:22.000 | trust your heavenly Father more consistently, walk by the Spirit more dependently, live in greater holiness of heart and mind and hand,

00:11:34.000 | cherish brothers and sisters in Christ more affectionately, love your enemies with greater willingness to sacrifice,

00:11:42.000 | work more courageously for justice, stand more unashamedly for all the countercultural teachings of the infallible Bible to the right or to the left,

00:11:54.000 | and hope more fully in the coming of Christ, and press on more urgently for the completion of the Great Commission.

00:12:03.000 | If a book is doing those things, I don't care who wrote it, read that book. Read the books that help you along in that kind of pursuit.

00:12:14.000 | Wow, amen. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening along.

00:12:19.000 | Be sure to subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app or on YouTube.

00:12:23.000 | As we inch closer to Reformation Day 2019, next time we look at the Reformation and ask, "What did the Reformation leave us?"

00:12:30.000 | And to find one answer to that question, we will look at the life and ministry and the legacy of John Calvin and his preaching.

00:12:37.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

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Should We Stop Reading Dead White Guys?

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