Just Church (1)

Tom here. A Christian author IC knows recently gave ComingUntrue permission to do an online serialization of his yet-unpublished manuscript. IC has graciously volunteered his usual Thursday blog spot to promote it, which we will be doing over the next few months. The book is called Just Church, the graphic to the right is not the official cover, and I’ll be quiet now and let author introduce his own subject.

Introduction

“I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”

There are certainly a great number of such warnings in scripture.

Do you think they’re telling the truth? I do.

But let me ask you this: if they are telling the truth about what is bound to happen to the church, then … when? When are such things going to be happening?

There might be three answers. The passage above might be one that applied only to the old Galatians, and was going to happen rarely or never afterward. Do you think that? I don’t. A second answer might be that such passages will always apply. To a certain extent, I think that’s right. But unmistakably, there’s a third option as well: many such warnings promise an increase of false doctrine and misleading teachers as the days progress toward the end times. When do you think that is? Could it be soon? Could it be now?

If you think scripture is telling the truth about a sudden rise in the amount and intensity of false teaching to be experienced by the church in the last days, why do you suppose the Lord bothered to tell us about that? Obviously, it was for the purpose of warning us, of making us aware, of helping us to be prepared. But if that’s the purpose, then why is it that the church today is so reluctant to name false teaching when it appears in our midst?

We live in an age of extreme permissiveness, a time when nobody is allowed to judge anybody or any viewpoint, and toleration of anything is expected. Ironically, we also live in an age of extreme intolerance — intolerance, that is, of anything that is not harmonious with the politically correct social positions of our age. It seems our inclusiveness is of a very specific and rather defined type. But this attitude certainly has leaked into the church, so that today we find that elders and teachers have unprecedented reluctance to identify and deal with any kind of bad doctrine. There are high costs to be paid for taking a stand — churches split over such things, pastors and their associates lose their treasured positions and careers when controversies break out, and (the fear is) the public outside the church will perceive us all as unloving, unkind, exclusive or hard if we fail to admit a particular new view or doctrine, let alone call out a particular person for preaching falsehood.

Yet those who love the Lord are solemnly charged to care for the sheep. Or remember how Paul so earnestly advises Timothy:

“I solemnly exhort you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

It really couldn’t be clearer, could it? Paul almost “swears in” Timothy, invoking the authority of God and of his Son, reminding Timothy of the judgment and the certainty of his appearing and the eternal authority of his kingdom. Can there be a more solemn charge than that? And it is in this context that Paul says, “the time will come”. When it comes, the man of God must be on high alert, ready to do what needs to be done: and if he is not, then he is answerable to the Head of the Church upon his return.

So we have to ask ourselves this: am I ready to do what Christ has charged us to do when false doctrine is entering the church? If you are an elder, a teacher, or even just a mature believer, this charge falls upon you, does it not? And if these are the last days (or even just a dress rehearsal for those days) then the Lord expects us to be ready, alert and decisive in dealing with the influx of errors, twisted doctrines and outright lies that the world will eventually foist upon the church.

Are you ready?

What makes me wonder if we are is this: in the last couple of years we have begun to witness new inroads being made by a truly ungodly theology. And it’s no longer merely large, institutional churches that are surfing the waves of bad doctrine washing in from the world: it’s now the conservative and evangelical churches that are being expected to bow to the latest social trends.

I’m speaking here of a thing called “Social Justice”. That’s its most politically salable name, anyway. What it really turns out to be is a package of false ideas and God-denying perspectives that includes a whole range of other labels as well — cultural sensitivity, inclusive education, critical law studies, New Leftism, neo-Marxism, Liberation Theology … and a ton of acronyms, such as EDI, CRT, SEL, BLM … the list is (quite deliberately) long, varied and confusing. But it all comes down to one ideology, and a rather simple one at that: it’s the old belief that man will solve his own moral problems without God merely by arranging the right political strategy, believing in it fervently enough and by forcing enough people to join the cause. As old and simplistic as it may be, it’s found new life and new public credibility through a program of propaganda unparalleled in Western history. It’s now in law, in our schools, in our media and everywhere; and just recently, it has stepped up to the church door and politely knocked for entry.

Yet I think most Christians are unprepared to deal with this. I think most don’t even recognize it for what it is. That is, of course, the way the false teachers want it. False doctrine always enters with a smiling face and a winning manner; and it takes a really alert, well-taught and serious Christian to see it for what it is.

It’s also hard to call it out. Fellow Christians who don’t see the looming danger often push back with well-meaning intensity, asking how the discerning and mature alarm-raiser is being reasonable to say such harsh things about a wave of thought or a movement that is so socially-accepted or so benign in first appearance. To be a watchman is often to be misunderstood, and to be called “harsh”, “judgmental” or “unloving”. A sort of tightrope act ensues, wherein the concerned elder or teacher tries to walk the line between the extremes of being dismissed as unloving and being actually unloving by not protecting the Lord’s flock. That is no easy balance to strike. It takes guts to be a leader these days.

But there’s a special crown for that, a special reward from God for those who are stalwart in the face of such challenges. Presenting themselves as examples to the flock, they lead humbly and firmly without being domineering. Still, there is always a moment when the real leaders must stand up, take a firm position and declare themselves. Such a moment is now.

That is the case made in this book.

My goal here is to equip church leaders and mature Christians to recognize the present moment, deal with the current threat from Social Justice thinking as it is coming into the church from inside and out. I want you to know what it is, what it is trying to do, what the consequences of not recognizing the danger and dealing with it are, and what can be done about it, given the various scenarios that can develop. My goal is to be as simple as I can, while still giving enough background to make the issues clear.

Thanks to Tom and IC for adapting the book for internet serialization, to AL for his profound psychological insights and to DB, whose comments provided key insights for chapter 7. Of course, ultimate appreciation has to go to our Lord, for his provision of the ability to do a book like this, for the many resources required and the experiences necessary to it, and for being always the greatest incentive to any work done in his name.