In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
For
Canadian Christians, our situation will probably turn on whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes his cues and influences from The Donald or from the
inevitable moral drift of the last eight years of Leftist dominance.
Tom: Right. So yeah, ten years from now could be a very different
picture for Canadian churches that want to remain faithful to the teaching of
scripture. We could be meeting in big, beautiful, heavily-mortgaged buildings
like we are now, or we could be meeting in small groups in each other’s
basements and keeping our voices down. It very much depends on how much legal
influence our government decides to allow to “social justice” causes, and what
sorts of penalties attach to perceived violations of the rights of special
interest groups like gays and transgenders. What happens in the U.S. in the
next four years will almost surely be influential in determining both those things.
IC: True. And that
may be a serious problem for big, tax-exempt religious organizations and
churches. Do you think it can ever become a problem for smaller churches, house
gatherings or Christian individuals?
Tom: Well, certainly it has at times. If we were to consider the whole of
church history or even churches elsewhere in the modern world, I see
no reason why it couldn’t turn that way with the right series of provocations
and crackdowns even in a relatively liberal place like Canada. But I think it
less likely than things like losing tax-exempt status or being compelled to use
church- and denomination-owned buildings for causes many of us would find
repugnant. Those will be the first steps.
IC: Hmm … well, people in Canada are going to be skeptical it can
go that far. But maybe it can.
Tom: Most drastic social change is like that. Things are fine …
until they aren’t.
Where Do I Come In?
IC: What’s our role in all this?
Tom: I like the part where it all gets delayed for a few years, hence
the current appeal for me of Trump over Hillary. But possibly that’s a little
too Après moi le déluge. On the assumption that some sort of generalized persecution of North American
Christians does occur within our lifetimes, it doesn’t hurt to figure out which
aspects of our faith we’re prepared to go to the wall for, because some of them
will eventually cost us.
IC: That’s good advice. Can you suggest where you would take your
stand, Tom?
Tom: On the transgender issue specifically?
IC: On any issue.
Where do you suggest we should be drawing the line?
Tom: That’s an awfully
broad question. If I have to address it that generally, I’d say with
the truth.
Holding the Line
IC: Well, what I mean is this: apparently evangelicals (broadly
considered) don’t seem to believe that distinctions of role are important
with regard to men and women in the church, or at least they don’t care to hold
the line on that. Apparently, the same church group has decided abortion is something we might be against privately, but few of us think we want to
challenge openly. On the gay issue, we seem to have decided opposition should be local and muted ... and so on. Is
there a line at which we ought to know beforehand we ought to firm up?
Tom: I think I see where you’re going, but let me ask you: Do you see a
biblical role for groups of churches acting as a formal, organized bloc against the decline of society? Because I can’t speak for evangelicalism or Protestantism generally as
to what it should do. Nobody can. Each of us can only talk about “me and my
house”, wouldn’t you say? And maybe those of us in leadership at a local
church can talk about the position their elders have taken on any given issue, assuming
they’ve officially taken one. But beyond that, even if we could get
Christians at the national level to come to some sort of unified position on an
issue (which is a pipe dream), what scriptural mandate would we have
to act?
The Political is Personal
IC: You’re right. I’m not thinking of political action, but
personal response and local-church decision-making. Right now, both
personally and in the local church, it seems we’re trying to stay under the
radar, carrying on with our own business.
Tom: Oh, yes. I totally see what you’re saying there. To make it
practical, I know of a couple of local churches that used to post their Sunday
messages on their website. In one case they elected to stop doing it entirely,
and in the other they purged their online list of audio files in which the speaker said anything that
might potentially draw the fire of the gay or transgender community or lead to
potential lawsuits (the woman’s role comes to mind).
While I understand the legal concern —
and it’s quite legitimate — to the extent they do so they are voluntarily
diminishing their own witness in the world. Anyone genuinely in spiritual need
in these areas and searching for help has to look elsewhere for someone
courageous enough to break with the social justice narrative and tell them the truth.
I almost suspect if we didn’t have so much
in the way of material financial assets to protect, the churches might be a
little more courageous about these things.
Thus Far, and No Further
IC: I think we’ve mistakenly assumed that compromises we made in order
to keep peace with the public world would not undermine our
confidence or cost us in terms of private obedience to Christ. I’m just
looking for the point at which we say, “Thus far, and no further” in terms of
our personal and collective compromising.
Tom: I understand. To assent to the concept of something like gender
fluidity or gender self-determination is, at its core, to willingly perpetuate
falsehood. It is to leave the world in darkness — on that issue at least.
Christians cannot do that. Where you draw that line in the sand will depend on
the individual believing conscience, but you have to draw the line, don’t you.
Personally, I’m not likely to be out
picketing gay marriage in the streets or talking about the destructive lies
told by third-wave feminists on street corners. But I believe it’s very
important to be ready to answer queries about these subjects kindly and
honestly. After all, how can we effectively teach our children the truth about
any of these issues if we’re unwilling to take the heat that comes for
believing them?
Not Giving Assent to a Lie
IC: I like your concept of “not giving your assent to a lie”. That’s
very useful. Anytime a Christian allows others to think he’s going along with
such distortions of truth, he or she is really actually guilty of having an
anti-testimony.
But I also think that maybe we’ve already
sometimes been a bit guilty of that, perhaps. We need to believe, say and
practice that God always made men and women for different roles; that men never
had any right to abandon the spiritual leadership of their homes and churches,
and that they have been sinning in doing so; that abortion was always killing a
human baby; that raising children in the knowledge of God is commanded us by
God; that homosexuality was always a sin; that transsexualism was always both
sin and mental illness, and so on. Maybe we need to rewind the tape on a few of
these things, and take a new stand, no?
Tom: And I’d like to think we’d behave the same way whether the
President of the United States is named Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. This
is a problem for evangelicals that will not go away in a single election cycle.
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