January 2006

I've referred before to Doug Wilson's ongoing series of posts dealing with how to adjudicate charges Biblically. All are good.

But, not to take a stray dog by the ears.... Sometimes a series of charges and countercharges can leave you grasping, uncertain where truth lies.

There is seldom a divorce in human marriage or a separation within the Bride of Christ in which there are not elements of sin on both sides. Yet the presence of sinners at either end of a conflict does not mean guilt and innocence cannot be established in the specific issue in contention. It is precisely the job of spiritual leaders to investigate carefully and render judgment at such times.

But when accusations and motives seem murky and you are not in the position of investigator or judge, one good way to know something about the truth of a situation is to examine the tactics of disputants. Tactics reveal truth.

I don't mean we should look to see who speaks in saccharine tones or whose words drip ostentatious piety. I mean we should look at cold hard facts. Cold hard facts are these kinds of things: who went outside the local body first, who spread the dispute before the world? Who is accusing others of offenses against "what is written?" Who is charging others of offenses consisting primarily of tone and attitude? Who took their complaints to the internet? Who tendered apologies? Who refused apologies?

Such things are not conclusive. But they are indicative.

In another life, I could imagine my face being the one behind the steering wheel. Maybe he's stil sitting there because he can't get out--look at his doors.

Yesterday, Lucas Weeks told me this story about life at Indiana University, so I asked him to write it up.

I have a professor from Egypt who teaches my second semester Arabic class. He is a breath of fresh air for two reasons: first, feminism doesn't show up anywhere on his radar. He is a very intelligent man who studies culture, so there is no question he understands feminism intellectually. But he continues to speak and act as if it has absolutely no power over him. Second, he makes generalizations like it's his job. Yesterday, he combined both of these attributes in one fell swoop. As he handed out a quiz, he explained his expectations. He told us each of us must take the quiz "like a man." We should not look to the right or to the left, but instead, with a one-track mind, stay focused on our paper alone and take it "like a man."

Later I was walking to the library with my friend, Abram, telling him about my professor. He chimed in with a story about his Swahili class, taught by a man from Zanzibar. Abram explained to me that there are a set of words in Swahili that one uses when speaking about people. As the professor explained this concept, he had students in the class use the idea in a sentence. One student chimed in and said, "Americans like to drive large cars." After a number of examples, the professor naively asked, "... and what about women? Can someone give a sentence about women?" Abram told me the class immediately went silent.

Deliver those who are being taken away to death, And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back.

If you say, "See, we did not know this," does He not consider it Who weighs the hearts? And does He not know it Who keeps your soul? And will He not render to man according to his work? (Proverbs 24:11,12)

Under the post, "Abortion and the spirit of the anti-Christ," a reader responds:

My time (protesting at an abortuary years ago) proved to me that only God can stop the abortions and He will/or will not when He wants. I'm not sure the prolife demonstrations help. We don't live in a Christian country, at least not the way it was in the past. The abortions are a result of that. The cure to abortions is preaching Jesus and the power of His love.

Well, yes, but the same can be said about any sin. I'm guessing, though, that you wouldn't respond the same way were someone to try to remove your wallet from your hind pocket. "Truly, the answer to this great evil is only the love of God. We should pray for this man's conversion--not confront him as he is in the process of withdrawing my wallet."

Since such comments are so common among Christians today, here are a few more responses.

First, witnessing to the King of Love in the presence of such murder is never wasted, even if we only know of a few lives being saved by that witness. There are many godly responsibilities that seem destined for ineffectiveness that we are faithful to carry out, nevertheless, trusting God for the results. As Mother Theresa often said, "God doesn't call us to be successful; He calls us to be faithful."

One of the places I confront this most frequently is in the practice of church discipline...

There are many reasons for Christians to honor and respect the physical nature God has endowed them with. Rather than disdain the body Christians should honor their physical natures and offer thanks to God for creating us as corporeal beings rather than spirits for the following reasons.

1. Christ became flesh. Had Christ not taken on flesh, no human flesh could enter heaven. Because Christ took on flesh, becoming God incarnate, our salvation is purchased. Flesh is so central to the work of Christ that Scripture warns us denial of Christ's flesh is rejection of Christ's work.

1 John 4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

2. Scripture tells us the body should be nourished and cherished just as Christ loves His Church.

Ephesians 5:28-29 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.

3. The one-flesh union of man and wife was given mankind by God to serve as the source of our greatest earthly help and comfort. Without our physical bodies there would be no marriage, no sexual union, no children. God has blessed us in a manner denied the angels by permitting us bodies with which we may take part in the wonder of procreation. Isaac went into his mother's tent with Rebecca and was comforted there in the loss of his mother by the body of his wife.

4. Without the body how much less joyful life would be. No feasting. No ice cream! No back rubs! No body surfing! No exhaustion! No rest!

5. Without the body, the sacraments could not exist.

6. Though "the flesh" often stands for the sinfulness of this world in Scripture, one of Scripture's great promises is that God will give hearts of flesh in place of hearts of stone to those whom He loves.

Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

7. The Bible promises us that through acting on the flesh God influences and cleanses the spirit.

1 Peter 4:1 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.

Those who disdain the physical significance of the sacraments rarely speak against the value of suffering in the flesh. Yet isn't the promise of spiritual fruit from physical deeds of 1 Peter 4:1 similar in principle to the promises attached to baptism and the Lord's Supper?