Beware of shepherds justifying their heartlessness...
(Tim: I've made significant changes to this post since it first went up.) It's been my observation Reformed men who justify silence in the public square under the rubric of "two-kingdom theology" and "the spirituality of the church" are usually unconcerned about the sexual anarchy, oppression, and bloodshed of innocents that has long been the foundation of our civil compact here in these United States. They simply don't give a rip.
It's self-evident on any terms a civilized man accepts for the foundation of common law that sending wives, sisters, and mothers off to fight our enemies is evil, but see if spirituality-of-the-church men address the civil magistrate condemning this evil? It's self-evident on any terms a civilized man accepts for the foundation of common law that ripping unborn babies apart in their mothers' wombs is an evil as great as the world has ever known, but check out whether the two-kingdom men you know write about it on their blogs, speak against it in the public square, preach against it in their pulpits, or show up at the killing place to lift a finger to stop it.
And that, dear brothers, is the error. Thus, proving one has not fallen into this error is the easiest of matters. It only requires a two-kingdom man to give a regular witness against injustice and bloodshed in his public ministry. But if an officer of Christ's Church today is not...
known, as all the Christians were known in the ancient Roman Empire, for taking up the cause of the children being slaughtered and loving the little ones as their Master does, he merits no reading, no listening, no following as a teacher of the church or shepherd of souls.Under the Third Reich, were the true shepherds silent in the midst of the slaughter of millions of Jews, sodomites, mentally handicapped, gypsies, and Christians? Then, what about us? When the day arrives and the light reveals our work as shepherds, will it be seen that we have been faithful witnesses against the anarchy and bloodshed all around us? Or will it become clear we have built with wood, hay, and straw?
There are many church officers today who are collaborators employing doctrine to justify their silence. Let me be clear: I am not saying these men are unconverted, but rather that they are unfaithful.
Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:12-15)
Clearnote Churches
Clearnote Fellowship
Christ the Word
Monthly archive
- May 2013 (18)
- April 2013 (33)
- March 2013 (43)
- February 2013 (28)
- January 2013 (41)
- December 2012 (31)
- November 2012 (37)
- October 2012 (38)
- September 2012 (21)
- August 2012 (28)
- July 2012 (46)
- June 2012 (50)
Popular Posts
Tags
Recent Comments
- K. Bartholomew on The difference between pro-life and anti-antiabortion...
- Kamilla on Inflammatory rhetoric in the abortion debate...
- David Gray on Teach daughters not to be brash and sons not to be effeminate...
- Tamara on Teach daughters not to be brash and sons not to be effeminate...
- Craig French on Inflammatory rhetoric in the abortion debate...
Comments
The best way to read Darryl Hart is when he has the floor and is able to say what he thinks without interruption. As I've said here before, I've been quite appreciative of some of his work, but his errors concerning the relationship between the people of God, the church, the civil magistrate, and unbelievers is a special degree of toxicity to Gospel love and witness, and David and I don't tire of warning against it.
For instance, here is Darryl's response to the above post. I encourage our readers to read Darryl's post, but also his readers' comments:
http://oldlife.org/2010/09/07/tim-bayly-is-doing-his-gilbert-tennent-imp...
And if you're wondering why comments aren't open, here, it's because this discussion is best handled under sphere sovereignty, spheres here being his blog and ours.
Love,
The post calling into question the compassion of radical 2K men has a couple of them riled up. They say they do give a rip about the bloodshed of innocents at the heart of our civil compact here in these United States. They think abortion is evil, they say, and there you have it.
One of them goes on to say, though, that he also gives a rip about other injustices people like me are silent about: like, for instance, that our nation has killed many innocent people in wars on foreign soils; and that, here at home, there remain many Americans underserved by our health care providers.
My answer?
Well, something about subsidiarity and proportionalism. First, subsidiarity.
It's a good principle of government to keep things as small and decentralized as possible...
Each of us is within ten to sixty minutes of a baby slaughterhouse and can easily go there to offer medical help, adoption, love, and warning with calls to repentance to those engaged in the slaughter--both the mothers and the murderers they are paying.
Not so much the Pentagon and USMC, and this assumes the moral equivalency our rad 2K brother espouses is legitimate. But if he wants, I say more power to him if he makes a trip to Washington DC to protest our federal servants' foreign and military policy. Nothing like citizens from the hinterlands to remind servants who it is, precisely, they're serving.
And concerning health care: why not speak to the head of your community hospital and offer money to him to help with the next indigent patient who walks through the emergency room doors needing care but lacking insurance or the money to pay for it? Also, if the rad 2K man is a pastor, he could engage the physicians of his congregation about ways to practice charity medicine without getting in trouble for Medicaid fraud.
In other words, caring about the slaughter of the unborn is no reason not to care about other moral evils surrounding us.
But here's my problem. The very arguments that equate the injustice of some lacking health care and others dying in wars of American imperialism demonstrate rad 2Kers don't give a rip about the slaughter of the unborn. How can a man be concerned about something he knows nothing about? Which is to say, line up all the innocent victims who are dead because they lacked health care or were caught in the sights of the US military serving American imperialism and put them next to all the victims of the slaughter of the unborn causing blood to flow ceaselessly into our gutters and sewage treatment plants, and the proportions of one and the other will make you retch. Trust me--I've done the numbers. What proportion is a few thousand each year to 1,300,000 year after year after year. And this is just unborn babies; we're not counting the newborn defective and feeble and elderly also murdered all around us each day. Read about it and listen to your doctors and nurses, brothers! It's in your homes and the hospital rooms of your church members.
Then we have the lousy implication or argument of moral equivalency, as if the evil of American imperialism (about which I've written) is an evil similar in weight to the cold-blooded slaughter of unborn babies. Get real, men! Have a heart. Think. Study. If you're still able, feel, even.
A certain rad 2K man disses me and my concern about the unborn by offhanded references to the Sixth Commandment being my favorite or precious or only command. Really, that says a lot, doesn't it?
Talk about the absence of concern and compassion and action and preaching against the sacrifice to Molech consuming the Western world today and a Reformed theologian gets into a snit about how preachers shouldn't be fixated on the Sixth Commandment.
Says it all.