Intentions and Outcomes

Back in March and April of this year, Immanuel Can and I had a two-part discussion of the validity of Tim Keller’s accusations of systemic racism in evangelical support for Christian workers. You can find those posts here and here.

But in working through the issues raised by Mr. Keller, what struck me most forcibly was the apparent ease with which an otherwise-discerning Christian accepts “equity” (as the social justice crowd defines it) as a valid metric for assessing race- and culture-related issues.

I’ve been giving that a little more thought. Because Mr. Keller is not the only one in the evangelical community assuming “systemic” injustices can be uncovered by examining statistics.

Denominations and Discernment

Discernment is a difficult quality to teach. Some people have a great deal more of it than others. It’s a quality that seems to me increasingly and depressingly rare.

It’s not hard to think of Christians who have known the Lord for years, yet remain more than a little gullible and sometimes require the protection of family and friends. You probably know some too. They like people. They think the best of everyone. They have a tendency to be so gentle and trusting that they fall for almost every new thing that comes along, provided it is presented with a smile. They mistake niceness for goodness and pleasant talk for the gospel truth.

Denominations and Discernment

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Does Christianity Discriminate Against Women? [Part 1]

In recent years the accusation that the Bible is anti-female has arisen more and more frequently. Because the Scripture uses the masculine gender to refer to God, it is labelled sexist. Because the Bible teaches that although men and women are equal in God’s sight they have different roles in His service, it is called discriminatory. Because the Old Testament relates how certain women were victimized, it is accused of endorsing the abuse of women.

Are these charges justified?

Whole books have been written about this subject, so it is impossible to give a complete answer here. However, we can examine the three main objections listed above and see if they are truly valid.

Objection #1 — The Bible Describes God in Masculine Terms

Some people assume that the use of a masculine pronoun is meant to imply that men are closer to God or more like God than women are. There is no Scriptural support for such a view, however, and indeed much Scripture to contradict it. Right from the very beginning, the Bible establishes that both men and women are made in the image of God: “So God created man in his own image, male and female he created them”.