Here we are, the end of a week where I didn’t blog at all—not by my own intention. I meant to, every day, especially in a week replete with so many news-worthy churchy headlines both near and far. But then I didn’t, mostly because I am gently aging which means that when I’m on the road, or not in the regular stream of my life, I can’t adjust my fingers to the keyboard and produce all the usual content. I used to be able to, but then, I used to do a lot of things, like eat bread and sleep through the night. The upside is that I have a lot of links and thoughts saved up so hopefully this single epic post will make up for all the missed ones.
One
While I was savoring the rolling hills of South Texas, watching the buzzards swoop and circle searching out the delicious dead, Andy Stanley’s sermon from Sunday appeared on the app formerly known as Twitter. If you are not very online and have a real life, you probably don’t know who Andy Stanley is or anything about him. But for everyone else, you have been watching his disappointing slide from unobjectionable mega-church evangelical pastor to snide, occasionally scolding theological deconstructor. He’s the one who wanted, a few minutes ago, to “unhitch” the Old Testament from the New One.
This latest round of schismatic “leadership” has been tried so many times over the last twenty-five years, it is astonishing to me that he is delivering it in the manner of one who has just discovered something new and special. I shouldn’t be astonished…but I am…because it has already been tried and found useless.
Two
You should listen to the sermon, I suppose, if you have time, but to boil it down from the warm sludge of post post post Christian mediocrity, basically Stanley drives a wedge, or unhooks, as it were, the words of God from the love of God. What God says about marriage, protests Stanley, is, of course, of course, true. Two men can’t marry each other, nor two women. God has, for some reason, said that marriage is to be between a man and a woman only, and he, Stanley, of course, of course, affirms the scriptural command. Nevertheless, as we all know, even though it is true, it is also very mean. And so two men or two women who want to indulge in sexual and/or romantic relations with each other, are existentially injured by the truth of Christian morality and need special pastoral care to help them deal with the grief and hurt over the “biblical sexual ethic”—that enfeebled boogeyman of this age.
Three
Moreover, even though parents for all of human history have known exactly what to do with their recalcitrant and sinning offspring:
discipline them out of love for their own good
enable them to acknowledge and treasure the beauty and mercy of the created order
enculturate them
teach them to function within social systems that curb their most wicked proclivities
refuse to indulge their whims for that is the way of perdition
now, in these latter days, parents are thrown into a gaslit netherworld of narcissistic confusion whereby, with the help of people like Stanley, all their natural, nay, God-given inclinations for the preservation of the next generation are cut down at the root, left, stump like, barren, and dry. Instead of being allowed to say something true to a beloved though wayward child—namely
don’t do that,
it is wicked and will kill you
and
I will not enable your destruction by rearranging my own moral and ethical belief system
they have to go to reeducation conferences where they are taught to throw away the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Scriptures, as well as the love and mercy of God.
Four
Stanley’s epic homiletical whine should indicate to every person who sincerely desires to do good and find the Kingdom of God that what he is saying is abyssal, is, as it were, from the pit of hell. The person who says that what God says is not loving is not a good person. Don’t even have dinner with such a one. Offer no hospitality. Offer no succor, no aid, no affirmation to a person who drives a “pastoral” wedge between the word of God and the love of God.
Five
It’s so funny, because, you know, I got to go to GAFCON IV this year and work on the statement that the conference produced, and this was exactly the issue. For thirty years, at least, progressive Anglicans around the world have tried to say that same-sex attracted people needed special pastoral care because what the Bible says about their condition is too hideous to contemplate. Sure, it is true that the Bible doesn’t “bless” a sexual relationship outside the bonds of marriage (this is how it starts, not where it ends up), but the people who are sexually attracted to each other, if they can’t receive God’s blessing in their state of desire for someone they shouldn’t desire, because it is core to who they are, need something differently different from the church than every other person who has ever been a sinner through time and space. The liar has to hear that he should stop lying. The murderer has to hear that murder is wrong. The selfish person, the glutton, the arrogant, the gossip, the person who hasn’t solved climate change or given away a free cup of coffee to the homeless—all these wicked people needed to repent and stop their wickedness. But not the man who desires to have sex with another man, nor the woman who desires to have sex with another woman.
Six
As Matt tweeted, it is so silly that the Pope and Andy Stanley are taking their cues from the Archbishop of Canterbury—Justin Welby—who thinks that you can make some Jesuitical workaround wherein you “bless” the people inside of a relationship without actually blessing the relationship that they’re in. God, as we all know, is easily confused and it’s no inconvenience to pull the wool over his unseeing eyes and get away with whatever particular inclinations we have at any given moment.
Seven
As I listened to Stanley’s “sermon” I had this strange feeling that I was missing something essential. Stanley explains at length that putting l.g.b.t.q…(including the + which Stanley always makes sure to name, because there is no sexual perversity, apparently, that might set a churchgoer beyond the bounds of communion) out of the church, even for a time, is unutterably cruel. Likewise, parents must never cut off their relationship with a child who is caught in sin. It is only by keeping the grown child as close as possible that the child will be loved and will receive the grace and consolation of Christ. I mulled it over as I watched the hawks circle round and round.
And then I remembered that story about a son who came to his father and said, essentially, “I wish you were dead.” And the father—who loved the son—let the son walk away. The father stayed there, where he was, and did nothing except to keep staying where he was. The son went away, as far away as he could go. He spent all he had, all that his own father had given him. He sinned all he could in as little time as possible. And then, he found he had nothing. All that he desired turned out to be vanity, a chasing after the wind. He sat, contemplating the swine, and then, says the storyteller, he “came to himself.” It was as if, for a while, the madness of sin and death had swept him away like a mighty flood. But there, sitting on the stump of his ruin, he discovered that he was wrong and that his father was good.
And so he got up and went back. And his father, who was still there, who had not gone after him to plead with him, who had not changed his manner of life or his moral system, opened his arms and welcomed him home. While the son had been caught in the fog of sin, the father had let him go. When the son came to himself, the father welcomed him home. This is how it’s supposed to work. When someone is unrepentantly sinning, or committed to a poisonous lie, you do not change the truth or twist yourself into knots to enable that person in their death-dealing condition. On the contrary, by letting them go, they are able to feel the consequences of sin and are able to change their minds and come back. And then you welcome them in, of course.
What I’m trying to say is, Stanley is perverting the gospel and no one should ever darken the door of his church again. At least not until he comes to himself, repents, and returns to the grace and light of the Christian faith.
Bonus Eight
I’ve been telling people for twenty years to Go To Church, which is why, I think, I’ve been so obsessed with the Great Dechurching book. It’s so clever of the enemy to make something that, again, has been straightforward for thousands of years—corporate religious devotion to God/the transforming communal action of being with other people in the pew or in the booth or gathered in the Temple, or not gathering manna on the sabbath or whatever—should be turned into a tortuous and unfathomable idea for a majority of people in a country where church attendance was once an unquestioned good. I’ve watched this over my own lifetime and I’m not even that old. When I was a child, Christians went to church. It’s what they did. But over my life, I’ve watched local congregations transformed into something that is not really church. Places where the older people are told they have to attend a different service and go in a different door. Places where pulpits and organs were thrown in the rubbish bin so the pastor could pretend to be something other than a pastor. Places where the grace of God was lied about or withheld from those who needed it the most. Places where the Scriptures were neglected and maligned. Which is to say, my official review is finally out! Check it out, and then listen to the podcast Melanie and I did.
And also, have a nice day!
I am so thankful, Anne, for your writing ministry!
The sickening betrayal of the Gospel by Andy Stanley reminded me of a verse that came up in our EP readings recently:
"HELP me, LORD, for there is not one godly man left; * for the faithful are minished from among the children of men." - Psalm 12:1
It sure seems that way these days.
I'm listening through the Great De-Churching interview now.
THANK YOU AGAIN, for all you do, Anne!
As a prodigal, a prodigious prodigal, I am so grateful to God for His mercy and grace. He has forgiven me, restored me to Himself, given me a second, third, and so on chance. The Father always runs to save me from the just punishment of my sin, always throws a party, always invites all to celebrate that His son has returned.
And just as you say, by the false teaching and preaching of Stanley and a generation of compromised leaders, this joy, the joy of all of heaven, the joy that surprises the prodigal cannot come to those comforted by this false gospel, those who remain caught in same sex sin.