…is just not appealing to us. It’s too cerebral, too based on the brain, too intellectual. “Christianity is not intellectual, it’s faith, the heart, the soul” – according to a preacher friend of my dad’s. That attitude is pervasive in evangelical Christianity in general, but I seem to encounter it a lot in black churches.

For instance, I recently went with my Dad to go and visit a church. Now, whenever I go somewhere with Dad and people see this burly (well, kinda) guy right next to him, they usually think I’m one of his elders and so my Dad will point out that I’m actually his son. (I look more like Mum than Dad, so folks don’t make the connection that quickly). After the service, the pastor of the church, who used to pastor in the same denomination as my Dad when we lived in Germany, came and sat with Dad and myself and asked me what I was studying. Before I could even muster up an answer, my Dad mentioned what my degree is in and then (incorrectly) said I was also studying theology. Aside from the fact I was mildly annoyed – I am 20 and rather capable of answering direct questions, the pastor’s response was telling. The pastor immediately said, “Why?”, followed by a comment to my dad about how theologically-minded people are always the first to criticise his ministry. I said nothing – after all, I’m smart enough not to challenge someone in their own house, especially when I didn’t particularly want to be there. I kindly corrected my dad in the car home, reminding him that I don’t formally study theology and that he really didn’t need to mention that in the first place.

To be honest, the experience of a mild telling-off for no real reason had gotten to me, but it got me thinking. Why is it that the pastor in question, my dad (himself a pastor of many years’ experience), other pastors I’ve had the opportunity to come in contact with and loads of “lay people” have this aversion for the theological? What is it about theology makes Christians -  and especially black Christians, I would argue – so frightened of doctrine?

In his fantastic work Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, Dr R.C. Sproul lists ten reasons why Christians in general tend to have an aversion to doctrine and theology – ten reasons I find all too easily in much of the black church as I get to see it.

1. The “Childlike Faith” Error

Time would fail me to deal with just how prevalent this idea is. Basically it goes a little like this: in places like Mark 10:15, Jesus says: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” Receiving the kingdom of God like a child is then taken to mean that like children don’t have all the knowledge in the world but just believe, so we should adopt that kind of attitude.

Now my gripe isn’t so much with Mark 10:15 – Scripture is Scripture. My gripe is with a reading of this text which equates to childish, not childlike faith. Dr Sproul explains:

There is a vast difference, however, between a childlike faith and a childish faith, though the two are often confused. A childish faith balks at learning the things of God in depth. It refuses the meat of the gospel while clinging to a diet of milk. For this, the childish Christian receives an admonition:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14)

A refusal to go deeper into the name of maintaining a misguided innocence is childish. In fact the Bible expressly commands us to grow up in terms of understanding:

[14] so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

(Ephesians 4:14 ESV)

[20] Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

(1 Corinthians 14:20 ESV)

Childlike faith is childlike in its dependence and trust, not in its inability to understand. The Bible calls us paradoxically to be mature yet childlike. It is foolish to pick one and reject the other.

2. Fear of Theological Skepticism

Let’s face facts – there are many unbelieving people with an interest with theology. As I write, I’m reminded of the name of Leslie Weatherhead. Weatherhead, a Methodist, was pastor of  City Temple, here in the city of London. To say he was a theological liberal would be something of an understatement. For instance, here is his take and you can read his words for yourself if you don’t believe I’m telling the truth:

The doctrine of Jesus’s “Virgin Birth” was not part of the missionary message of the early Church. As far as we know, Jesus did not mention it to His apostles. Certainly, Mark, Peter, Paul and John show no knowledge of such a miracle. And if it really had been a “Divine Conception”, surely Mary would have told her Son? If she had, then He and His apostles would undoubtedly have regarded it as highly significant, and included it in their teachings.

However, in St. Matthew’s Gospel we read that Joseph seemed shocked at Mary’s pregnancy and was “minded to put her away privily”, “not willing to make her a public example” [chapter 1, verses 18-19]. References elsewhere to his being “a righteous man” rule out premarital intimacy. Besides, if the child were his, Jewish law would have demanded his care for Mary and her unborn child. He would not have been allowed to “put her away”. Indeed, it would not have entered his head to do so.

Whence then came Mary’s pregnancy? Can we suppose that some village rascal was responsible for her condition? I hold that the beauty of the peerless story rules this out. Read again the first chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel and imagine a village maiden of sixteen or so, after some mystical experience beyond the power of any pen to describe, saying quietly, “Behold the slave-girl of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word!” [Luke 1, verse 38].

One explanation of Mary’s pregnancy has been put forward by Mr. C. A. Wainwright of Oxford. First, he refers to the “sacred marriage” ceremony which was an ancient and widespread custom in the Near and Middle East (including Egypt and India). The high priest played the part of a divine messenger. He was “married” to a virgin with whom he cohabited. The offspring of such a union was regarded as a son of god, or a divine personage.

Now Zacharias was the priest on duty in the temple at the relevant time. He “executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course” (Luke 1, verse 8). We are told that, though old, Zacharias was not impotent, for he made his wife Elisabeth pregnant though she was past the normal time of child-bearing. John the Baptist was their son.

We are also told that after Mary’s visitation from the angel who told her she was to bear Jesus, Mary replied: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” Mary was then reassured: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God” [Luke 1, verse 35].

We are then told that Mary entered the house of Zacharias [Luke 1, verses 39-40], stayed there three months, and then returned to her own house [Luke 1, verse 56].

In a “sacred marriage” of the sort described by Mr Wainwright, a stay of three months was required in the house of the priest, or in the sacred precincts, to make sure that pregnancy was established*. This would explain why Mary stayed in the home of Zacharias for that length of time before returning to her own home. Indeed, what an otherwise strange reaction to Gabriel’s message was her hurried journey into Zacharias’s house! “Mary arose, and went with haste and entered the house of Zacharias” [Luke 1, verse 39].

Now here’s a man saying that the Virgin Birth was more a lurid tale of an older man sleeping with a younger girl in some weird kind of spiritual-sexual rite. But people will read stuff like that (and sadly, there is a lot of it) and say, “See, that’s where theology will take you. I’d rather just believe it and leave it at that.”

The problem is unbelief in the name of God isn’t all that new. In the days of the New Testament, there were a group of men called the Sadducees. The Sadducees were part of the ruling religious class of the day and they had some peculiar views. They denied any sort of resurrection, didn’t believe in the afterlife or in much of the supernatural. As you can imagine, they just loved Jesus and the Apostles. No, they opposed his message with everything they had – yet they felt themselves to be true to the Law of Moses. Why expect times to change? Didn’t Paul says that the risk of believing another Jesus was always a threat (Galatians 1:6-9, 2 Cor 11:4)? The existence of the counterfeit and false doesn’t rule out the existence of the genuine and authentic. The answer to theological unbelief is not the rejection of theology – it’s the rejection of unbelief! As Christians, we are a believing people – either we believe that God has spoken and we need to listen (which is the natural orientation of Biblical Christianity) or we believe that we have spoken and God needs to listen (every other form of “Christianity”).

Rejecting theology because of aberrant forms of it is like refusing to watch an Arsenal game because Spurs are useless. (UK readers: don’t argue – just smile and accept it.) In all seriousness, it’s more akin to rejecting the use of money because counterfeits are circulating. It’s like refusing to drive because they are drunk drivers or refusing to eat because some folks cannot cook. It sounds absurd, I agree, but that is what we do if we shun all theology because of the “bad apples”.

To be continued…

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Often I get asked how does being black and being Reformed work out. After all, the world I grew up was dominated by the theological superstructure of Pentecostalism. Until I was 18, I knew personally of two types of African Christian – Pentecostal and Catholic. There was a Baptist church behind my house – but they were (and are still) for all intents, Pentecostal. When I came under the teaching of Reformed theology, I knew I’d encountered a worldview shift of epic proportions. I also knew that a lot of reformed teaching clashed not just because of the theology I grew up with, but also because of things considered fundamental to being a ‘black Christian’. In short, I had – or thought I had – to make a choice: either I was going down the Reformed road or going down the ‘black’ road?

Fast forward the next few years to today and I am not so convinced I needed to choose. I am convinced however that there are some issues that need to be addressed. This series isn’t 100% planned out in my mind, but here are some of the issues I want to hit:

• Is there such a thing as the black church?
• Does it need reforming?
• Does being reformed entail an identity change?
• Do I need to be ‘white’ to be reformed?
• Is there a black theology?

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It’s 10:20pm on Reformation Day. October 31, 2011. 494 years after Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to a church door and sparked off the greatest revival of truth since the days of the early church. I struggled to think what to write for Reformation Day, even though today was my day off.

Then it hit me – times haven’t changed all that much since 1517. Luther had indulgences, promising blessing from God in return for cash and we have…well, we have this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What was the answer in 1517? A rediscovery of the Gospel of God’s glorious grace. And in 2011, well, the answer is still the Gospel of God’s grace. Take some time and rediscover the glorious truth of salvation by the free grace of God in Christ Jesus:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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The Reformer Reader explains what the three uses are:

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James MacDonald, founding pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel, has invited T.D. Jakes, pastor of The Potter’s House and charismatic superstar, as a guest for the second round of his Elephant Room round-table discussions.

The response has been either supportive (as of James MacDonald’s set of responses), “let’s wait for it to happen” (as per Mark Driscoll) or “this is bad” (like Carl Trueman of Ref21).

Now I’ll tell you upfront – this is in the “this is real” category. I am shocked that James MacDonald, a man I once thoroughly respected and even featured on my blog in its early days, has opened the door to a man who, in my rather frank assessment, should have the door slammed firmly in his face. Harsh assessment? Observe the following:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yeah, that’s his game – ripping people off for their God-given, hard-earned money in the name of God – and yet he’s going to be on the show, come the 25th of January.

Enough ink has been spilled on Jakes’ vagueness on the Trinity – although this has inspired to do a Reformation II Radio show on the Trinity at some point in the next month. I want to consider the following comment MacDonald in this blog post regarding his invite of Jakes:

I am also excited to hear him state his views on money, which may be closer to Scripture than the monasticism currently touring reformed world.

This comment epitomizes an ignorance in the prosperity gospel which is actually more widespread than most would care to realize. For the record, I think MacDonald’s comment is ignorant and devoid of any Biblical basis. Jakes’ view of money is firmly rooted in the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel hinges on a number of factors:

1. A warped view of God

In their world, God is so good to His children, He’ll never allow them to be sick, allow them to be poor or allow them to suffer. God always blesses, provided you follow the right formula and ‘live right’. Essentially God turns into a sugar daddy. Further, God is a being who has faith – the kind of faith we ought to had. He created the world using His faith and when we become believers, He gives us the same kind of faith so we can create things (more on this later).

My Bible tells me that God has need of no-one. Read passages like Isaiah 40-55, where the Almighty basically says, “I’m God – all pretenders fall back and know your place”. Faith is dependent on something bigger than itself – if God has faith, He’s no longer God. Further, God does indeed makes “all things [to] work together for good” (Romans 8:28), but making all things work together for good and making you wildly rich, wildly healthy and super-influential are two different things. It’s not even realistic – the only ones who get rich off that scheme are the ones who teach it.

2. A warped view of salvation

Now follow me here because this can get a little confusing. To understand the prosperity Gospel – much like the Biblical Gospel – requires a proper understanding of the beginning of salvation history. In their view, God, in creating Adam, didn’t just create an image-bearer but He created a miniature of himself – a little god. This little god had all the dominion and then he gave it all to the Devil. In salvation, the born-again man regains his dominion and all its accrued benefits, including access to the blessing of Abraham, which is interpreted to mean all the blessings promised in the Old Covenant including freedom from poverty, health and unlimited blessing. By the way, he is now a little god, capable of speaking things into existence like his Father.

Again the Bible nowhere teaches that God created Adam as a little god, that Abraham’s blessing equals financial blessing in this life (if anything the Bible teaches the blessing of Abraham is salvation from sin through Christ – Galatians 3:13-14 for proof). This is foreign to the NT – and Jakes has been caught teaching this stuff over and over.

No idea lives in blissful isolation, including one’s idea of money. I’m sorry, Pastor MacDonald, but Jakes’ view is nowhere near close to Scripture – it is a view borne out of a sub-Christian reading of the Bible. Further, it is the outgrowth of a system which doesn’t have in Biblical Christianity, but out of New Thought and metaphysics.

I’m amazed that MacDonald could make just such a statement as though no-one has done the spadework to show that, in actuality, the prosperity gospel view of money is in fact a different Gospel. Then again, what does that tell you about the attachment to money and pleasure in many evangelical hearts? God help us (literally) for Christ’s sake!

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• MacDonald, Jakes & the Elephant in the Room (challies.com)
• The Elephant Room, T.D. Jakes, and our reaction (theexpositor.wordpress.com)
• The Elephant Room and T.D. Jakes (theexpositor.wordpress.com)
• Pyromaniacs: Playing nice with heretics (theexpositor.wordpress.com)

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The Metropolitan Tabernacle

I’m honoured to be a member at the Metropolitan Tabernacle here in London, where Dr. Peter Masters serves as Minister. This past Wednesday, Dr. Masters taught from 1 Tim 4:13-14 in our midweek Bible study on the subject of Exercising Gifts. Particularly edifying was the defense of cessationism (the Biblical teaching that the sign gifts have ceased in operation for today). You can listen to the message at the link below:

Go get Adobe Flash Player!

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As if life had been designed to be this difficult, Dad was – and is – a pastor. Oldest son of a preacher, the weight was now suffocating. Not only am I living with a family who supposedly looked to me as a model, now an entire church looks at me like I’m some kind of barometer. So I was always kind, always gracious, always did whatever the church asked of me.

With a sentence like that, you have two options: rebel (and rebel hard) or embrace it and get on with it. I went down the embrace route – especially after being converted at age 14. I was a straight-A student, respectful beyond measure, never really spoke much, was a little self-righteous and took myself very seriously. It would be fair to say I was uptight – after all, the world was watching.

Well, then I became reformed. I was 17, in college doing my A-levels, still a bit of a uptight snob and hearing the paradigm-shattering truth that actually God isn’t impressed with my snobbery – He is, in a sense, impressed with Jesus and Jesus alone. Now I had a problem. Things had changed for me – but I was still the oldest of four and the “pastor’s son” (never mind he has two others and a daughter). Clearly I still in my “world” – but remember that the Gospel had entered the equation and everything had now changed.

You see, I could continue putting on the act of having it all together or realise I didn’t really have to, because God would be no less happy with me if I did have a bad day, didn’t want to talk to anyone at church and wanted to be left alone by siblings who in reality don’t really care what I do. But as Tullian Tchividjian has said, the trouble with grace is that we are scared of it, and so, even after becoming reformed, I just transferred the audience for the act. Now I had to keep it all together, be the nicest, most articulate guy and all the rest – to keep reformed folks “on-side”.

So how did we finally get to the place where I really understood the Gospel? Well, last summer, I had one of those “never again” summers. Sparing you all the gory details, I needed heart surgery, fell in love, fell out with my family in a major way and almost nose-dived in my struggle with depression. Coming out of that period, one thing kept me going: God, in the Gospel, calls me to stop trying and start trusting.

And there is the key to not taking yourself too seriously. Thinking every eye – including God’s – is on you puts you under the obligation of looking the part. Actually, the Bible is clear – God’s eye is only on Jesus. As Christians, God sees us clothed in the righteousness of Jesus – and that pleases Him. And so, I’m free to be me – heaven forbid, free to enjoy life – just as God intended. And when it doesn’t pan out, lean on Christ – 1 John 1:8-9 is still true today as it was when it was written.

And there you have it – how to not be so uptight and enjoy life as the Gospel allows us to.

Come to me, all you who labour and are weighed down and I will give you rest – Jesus, Matthew 11:28

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A scene from a well-known conference. Does this help or hinder Christians to love their local church?

R. Scott Clark, professor at Westminster Seminary California and author of the book Recovering the Reformed Confession, has a phrase called QIRE – the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience. By that, Dr. Clark refers to the desire to experience God outside of the “ordinary” means of grace in the preaching of the Word and the administration of the ordinances. That quest takes all kinds of forms – from charismatic excesses to the desire to hear that “still, small voice”. Don’t believe me? Look up a list of the fastest growing churches – the vast majority caters in providing outlets for QIRE candidates. Few cater to believers who simply want to hear the Bible taught in-depth and without frills.

Ironically, whenever I think of people who fuel their faith on the experiential and objective, I am always drawn back to the “still, small voice” passage:

1 Kings 19:11-12 (English Standard Version)

¹¹And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. ¹²And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.

I’ve remarked dozens of times in my Bible studies that if we stuck a good deal of Christians there on the mountain and gave them all of the loud, earthmoving stuff and there were no still, small voice, they’d say, “Yup, God was there – it was emotional. I even knelt  down and cried because it was so powerful.” But the text is clear – for all the bells and whistles, GOD WASN’T THERE!!!!!He just wasn’t.

“That’s nice, Doug, but why the long story?” Because I am convinced that many Christians are seeking the power of God and carry about the notion that only when they see or feel something are they truly experiencing God. So…when they are sitting in church under the ministry of God’s Word, responding in prayer and the sung praise of God, fellowship with the brethren and Christian service, they are bored senseless, because they are still on the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experence, rather than receiving the ordinary means of grace.

Think about some of the conferences and meetings that people attend and what makes people flock to them. I love conferences, workshops and special times of fellowship (as an aside, my church’s 36th annual School of Theology is coming up – will be great to meet some of you if you decide to come down). But when any conference fosters a dissatisfaction with godly, sound, “ordinary” local church ministry, then we have a problem. The local church is God’s own appointed missions agency, training centre and family hub – with the Scripture at the focus. No other experience, no other meeting, no other means will give us the lasting and powerful impact that Bible-driven local churches can.

Praise God for those churches which are faithful to the mission we have been given – and pray the Lord to help more believers to love, accept and support the ministry of their local churches as they minister the Word. Hopefully, they retire from the Quest and begin the real journey…

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John Calvin: Bible expositor, eminent scholar and...generally unemployable in 2011?

Before you answer, we’re talking about a man who preached pretty much every day across Geneva and was so dedicated to the ministry of the Word that when he made his return to Geneva following his forced exile, he picked up his preaching ministry in EXACTLY the following verse where he had left off years before. Could a man that radically devoted to the truth of Scripture and its proclamation receive the call to pastor a church today? In the majority of popular church circles, probably not. At least, that’s the picture I get from the attitude of Christians to the Word in general.

It’s been three and a half years since I came to adopt what is commonly called “reformed theology”. In that time, if you could ask me what the one major thing that has changed in my approach to life in general, it would be this: everything has shifted around my desire for God’s Word. And I’m not alone in that assessment. The desire to be rigorously Bible-based is something I’m exposed to all the time in my circle of friends, but outside of friends who share a similar belief in the doctrines of grace, I find that the Bible has become boring for many “believers” I know, particularly young people, to who my post will be addressed.

I think there are three distinct reasons why being – to put it forcefully – completely and utterly consumed by a passion for God’s Word is shunned by so many:

1. It takes work. Young people, especially, are some of the most mentally lazy people on the face of God’s good green earth. One could argue that the effects of an entertainment generation have dulled our ability to think, though for what it is worth, I don’t buy the myth that attention spans are dying. Folks still watch EastEnders for 25-30, don’t they?

I personally think we choose not to apply our brains to thinking through deep concepts and ideas. After all, many young people are engaged in full-time education, studying in fields which require deep thinking, analysis and coming to conclusions. Most students read very complicated material for their courses – but why isn’t that translated into our pursuit of God through the Word?

2. We like to be entertained. Now, we won’t put it as flippantly as that, but it sums up our attitude to things. We’ll put spiritual-sounding expressions on it like “ministered to me” or “feeds my spirit”, but I ask: What exactly is the material we often associate with these things? Eight out of ten times (which is a lot), we really mean, “I wanted something which wasn’t too heavy, didn’t require me to think through and made me feel warm inside.” Now, the Word of God, accurately preached, can do that too. I can read Christian books which are Bible-based and be encouraged. But seeking those things WITHOUT the Word is dangerous.

3. We don’t like to be challenged. This especially irks me to no end. As I write, I’ve been engaged in a conversation with someone upset that someone dared argue against the idea that women can serve in ordained, local church ministry. At the rub of the argument is the desire not to be challenged on that issue. That attitude means you never step outside your own boundaries, you never question anything outside your little world and when someone who actually believes the Word trumps your world comes along and tries to get you to see things a little differently, the response is one of anger because your artificial world has been turned on its head. Going to the Bible, being a good Berean and proving all things (1 Thess 5:21, cf. Acts 17:11) will sometimes mean that traditions get the roundhouse to the face which they deserve. Sometimes changes will have to take place and relationships may have to be severed but if this is because of God’s Word, then let’s have it!

Ultimately, it is God alone who imparts a love for His Word, but we need to desire it, even in days when it is not popular and not cared about. May it the prayer of all God’s people that we would esteem the words of His mouth more than the food we need to live physically.

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