I've read some recent Internet chat about how the government overstepped its boundaries by raiding the polygamist compound and took all those kids away. I have not read into this story in-depth, and so I am not going to attempt an in-depth opinion. I just want to jot down my own gut-level reaction.
Polygamy is illegal. Any society that practices polygamy needs to be broken up. The entity that does that sort of breaking-up are the forces that answer to the civil magistrate. It is well within the right of the civil magistrates to forcibly stop polygamy, and the child-bride-ism which is an extension of the polygamy.
Child bride-ism is often, even usually, a cover for human trafficking, especially in Mormonism. Parents sell their under-age daughters for money, and cover it up by calling it an arranged marriage. It isn't marriage, by a Biblical definition. It's a commercial exchange. It is also a carnal flesh-pot arrangement that benefits the slavering desires of the men who run the system. Read the life of Joseph Smith some time, and what it was that ultimately got him killed. A mother being complicit with a child-bride-buying system doesn't make child-bride-buying OK. It makes her an accessory to a crime. I feel no particular sympathy for the upset mothers.
The inadequacies of a state's foster care system in no way justifies the idea of leaving the cult be. Those are two different issues.
No religious group has a right to unlimited religious liberty, any more than a Second Amendment enthusiast can fire off his rifle in the middle of a grade school assembly. None of the Amendments are unlimited or unconditional. This is where a society disconnected from God's Word flounders, yes, since it has no final authority by which it can delineate moral limits on freedom. Since we're ignorant of the Bible, we don't have the wisdom to know when or how to sensibly limit the Amendments in their various applications. But the basic principle is still true, that a religious group can't do whatever it wants in the name of the 1st Amendment.
Joseph Farah at Worldnet asks, "Was this raid necessary?" Well yes, it turns out it was. It was already known from public documents that this sect is a polygamist cult, and polygamy is illegal. All you have to do is to research the FCLDS and you find out their beliefs and practices. In fact, this is a case where moral law overrides the 1st Amendment. The FCLDS does not have a 1st Amendment right to practice polygamy.
Did the state of Texas have probable cause for the raid? Since the media is notoriously unreliable (oddly, the same "conservatives" who rightfully mistrust our country's incompetent media seem eager to accept everything they say at face value in this case), we don't know if the questionable "telephone call from a 16-year-old" is the only trigger for the authorities' actions. It's certainly possible that a fake phone-call was set up by someone connected with the civil powers, in order to create a public justification for the actions taken.
Is this action going to lead to mass roundings-up of everybody's children, like some sort of dystopic sci-fi film? No, most likely not. The West Texas court is already overrun with defense lawyers arguing against what the State of Texas did. There are plenty of people questioning the procedural justifiability of the action. It's not that the outcomes of the action might prove to be beneficial. The benefits to the children might be accidental to the unique circumstances of this situation. No one, including me, wants the state or national government to have the right to do this again this way in other situations. There will probably be enough backlash on the process of how it was all initiated by the civil powers, that procedural safeguards will be clarified and reinforced. Liberal parents don't want state and local government being empowered to claim their kids any more than conservatives do.
It is unbiblical and antiChristian to say that government is a necessary evil. It is not. It is a God-given good, rooted in Adam's headship over Eve prior to the fall. Since I am pro-government in principle, I am unsympathetic to those who automatically explode at any instances of governmental force. Anti-governmentism among conservatives is too often an ideological vessel for what is actually our own arrogance and rebellion. The FCLDS was already a known polygamist group. That alone was just cause for inspecting the compound, and, if proven, taking the children away.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Taming the TRs
A "TR" is insider Christian talk that refers to a kind of Presbyterian/Calvinist who is Totally Reformed. This means more than just some sort of doctrinal strictness of a Calvinist variety. It also means a rigid extremism of attitude -- the refusal to distinguish between matters of primary and secondary importance -- a quickness to criticize the most trivial of differences or take offense at the most minor of faults -- a habit of either crippling a church by turning it inward upon itself, or splitting it, or leaving it. An acquaintance of mine named "Dr. Ken" recently related a case in his church (PCA) where yet another TR family pulled out, solely because they church has a youth pastor. Dr. Ken is a very conservative, evangelical Presbyterian Christian, yet this has happened often enough in his church that it frustrates him quite a bit. I replied to him on the subject, reproduced below with some additional filling-out for this blog...
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Ken,
There is nothing in Scripture that says that having a Christian worker assigned to the evangelism and discipling of adolescents is wrong. In fact, what sort of person would say that having such a thing was bad? You'd have to be willfully ignorant of the Scripture's commandments on outreach and nurture to ever say such a thing.
What people may object to is the spirit and manner in which a particular ministry to the youth is being performed, and that can be a fair thing. Or they might question the spiritual maturity of a particular Pastor of Youth (since a lot of them tend to be younger men). That's right to do, too, since pastoral overseers are supposed to be spiritually mature men.
Can youth be exposed to strongly sinful influences from other youth? Certainly. But that would be true even in a youth group that was 100% comprised of Baptist, Mennonite, or Presbyterian home schooled kids! Sin flows up and out of our flesh. We parents are our child's first instructors in how to be a sinner. I wouldn't want my son tainted by a group of teen Pharisees any more than by a group of teen Libertines. Christ warned us against the yeast of the Pharisees, the Sauducees, and the Herodians. In other words, we face a danger from the ideas taught by works-righteousness legalists (Pharisees), left-wing accomodators (Saducees), and worldly, politicial, ends-justify-the-means people (Herodians).
Many TR families are in fixed rebellion against the idea of a religiously plural society, even within the visible Church. They take the idea of the Church being spiritual Israel too far, in my opinion. It's as if they're trying to recreate the Jewish theocracy (and some of them actually are).
I'm not going to apologize for saying this, because I know it's true. A TR goal is to create an internally self-contained and overly-vigilant society, like the Mennonites. If TRs could somehow gain full control of your church, Ken, they would slowly but surely run off everyone who didn't fit into or accept their rules. In the end, TRs cripple the church's capacity for ministry to anyone who doesn't already fit. All the focus turns inward, and poisons the church. Anybody who doesn't fit into the definition of "sound in the faith" becomes a second class citizen.
This problem is not unique to TRs, though. Every religious organization that has real standards limits its ability to welcome or integrate certain kinds of people. That's the way it ought to be. We call that "church discipline", not that churches really practice it much. We do have doctrinal and lifestyle standards. That's the way it ought to be. We're not supposed to be just mush, like the liberals.
But are our standards on everything we like or prefer always Biblical? Often they are not, regardless of the fact that a TR protests loudly that all of them are. Many of our standards are purely a matter of private opinion, subjective taste, and emotional preference; but TR groups like this won't accept that idea. There are some people who have to find a verse for everything, even if it means ripping a verse out of its proper interpretive context.
It's as if Romans 14 doesn't really exist for the TR type personality. The TR won't put Romans 14 into practice in the context of their own church. Interacting with people who aren't exactly like them irritates them. They don't want their children exposed to any diversity of opinions or practices within the Christian world. The child might question why our family does it this way while that other seemingly Christian family does it that way. Now, when a parent knows that some of what his or her family does is just a matter of preference, and can explain it as such, and is comfortable with just asserting his or her own authority, then it teaches the Christian child how to interact competently and reasonably with the wider world.
But a TR parent doesn't want that to happen. I think they want to not have anything to do with the wider world, if possible. I think a lot of the strictness is born out of fear. It's also a doctrinal error. The old-time Mennonites taught that the secular order was Satan's absolute domain. It was as if they didn't believe in God's universal sovereignty or His common grace.
I would rather train the Christian youth how to think and discern issues logically and Scripturally. I want to prepare my own children to be able to maintain their Christian vitality and spiritual integrity amidst the society (which includes withdrawing from it regularly, and limiting its mental influence on you), and, at the same time, to infect the society back the other way. Infect it, one person at a time, with Jesus Christ. I don't want the salt trapped inside a locked salt-shaker. That would be disobedience to Jesus Christ, who ordered us to get out there and salt the world. Getting my children to that point involves running certain calculated risks. Interaction flows both ways. My children could (and already are, and probably will be in the future) influenced in a bad way by American culture. All of us, including TRs. We U.S. evangelicals are all far more Americanized and McDonaldized -- even the most separationist of us -- than we fully realize.
I also want my kids interacting regularly with Christians who aren't white, or Western European, for instance. I want them familiar with Christians from many other denominations and traditions. I also want them to know how to reason. I don't want them to cumble like a pile of sticks out in the world, due to being mentally underdeveloped. We need to be able to give a reason for the hope that lives within us. I also want my kids to know how to actually do Christian brotherhood and peacemaking in their local church. I think they'll be more useful and fruitful for God's kingdom that way.
+++++
Ken,
There is nothing in Scripture that says that having a Christian worker assigned to the evangelism and discipling of adolescents is wrong. In fact, what sort of person would say that having such a thing was bad? You'd have to be willfully ignorant of the Scripture's commandments on outreach and nurture to ever say such a thing.
What people may object to is the spirit and manner in which a particular ministry to the youth is being performed, and that can be a fair thing. Or they might question the spiritual maturity of a particular Pastor of Youth (since a lot of them tend to be younger men). That's right to do, too, since pastoral overseers are supposed to be spiritually mature men.
Can youth be exposed to strongly sinful influences from other youth? Certainly. But that would be true even in a youth group that was 100% comprised of Baptist, Mennonite, or Presbyterian home schooled kids! Sin flows up and out of our flesh. We parents are our child's first instructors in how to be a sinner. I wouldn't want my son tainted by a group of teen Pharisees any more than by a group of teen Libertines. Christ warned us against the yeast of the Pharisees, the Sauducees, and the Herodians. In other words, we face a danger from the ideas taught by works-righteousness legalists (Pharisees), left-wing accomodators (Saducees), and worldly, politicial, ends-justify-the-means people (Herodians).
Many TR families are in fixed rebellion against the idea of a religiously plural society, even within the visible Church. They take the idea of the Church being spiritual Israel too far, in my opinion. It's as if they're trying to recreate the Jewish theocracy (and some of them actually are).
I'm not going to apologize for saying this, because I know it's true. A TR goal is to create an internally self-contained and overly-vigilant society, like the Mennonites. If TRs could somehow gain full control of your church, Ken, they would slowly but surely run off everyone who didn't fit into or accept their rules. In the end, TRs cripple the church's capacity for ministry to anyone who doesn't already fit. All the focus turns inward, and poisons the church. Anybody who doesn't fit into the definition of "sound in the faith" becomes a second class citizen.
This problem is not unique to TRs, though. Every religious organization that has real standards limits its ability to welcome or integrate certain kinds of people. That's the way it ought to be. We call that "church discipline", not that churches really practice it much. We do have doctrinal and lifestyle standards. That's the way it ought to be. We're not supposed to be just mush, like the liberals.
But are our standards on everything we like or prefer always Biblical? Often they are not, regardless of the fact that a TR protests loudly that all of them are. Many of our standards are purely a matter of private opinion, subjective taste, and emotional preference; but TR groups like this won't accept that idea. There are some people who have to find a verse for everything, even if it means ripping a verse out of its proper interpretive context.
It's as if Romans 14 doesn't really exist for the TR type personality. The TR won't put Romans 14 into practice in the context of their own church. Interacting with people who aren't exactly like them irritates them. They don't want their children exposed to any diversity of opinions or practices within the Christian world. The child might question why our family does it this way while that other seemingly Christian family does it that way. Now, when a parent knows that some of what his or her family does is just a matter of preference, and can explain it as such, and is comfortable with just asserting his or her own authority, then it teaches the Christian child how to interact competently and reasonably with the wider world.
But a TR parent doesn't want that to happen. I think they want to not have anything to do with the wider world, if possible. I think a lot of the strictness is born out of fear. It's also a doctrinal error. The old-time Mennonites taught that the secular order was Satan's absolute domain. It was as if they didn't believe in God's universal sovereignty or His common grace.
I would rather train the Christian youth how to think and discern issues logically and Scripturally. I want to prepare my own children to be able to maintain their Christian vitality and spiritual integrity amidst the society (which includes withdrawing from it regularly, and limiting its mental influence on you), and, at the same time, to infect the society back the other way. Infect it, one person at a time, with Jesus Christ. I don't want the salt trapped inside a locked salt-shaker. That would be disobedience to Jesus Christ, who ordered us to get out there and salt the world. Getting my children to that point involves running certain calculated risks. Interaction flows both ways. My children could (and already are, and probably will be in the future) influenced in a bad way by American culture. All of us, including TRs. We U.S. evangelicals are all far more Americanized and McDonaldized -- even the most separationist of us -- than we fully realize.
I also want my kids interacting regularly with Christians who aren't white, or Western European, for instance. I want them familiar with Christians from many other denominations and traditions. I also want them to know how to reason. I don't want them to cumble like a pile of sticks out in the world, due to being mentally underdeveloped. We need to be able to give a reason for the hope that lives within us. I also want my kids to know how to actually do Christian brotherhood and peacemaking in their local church. I think they'll be more useful and fruitful for God's kingdom that way.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Global Cooling
Global warming alarmists are starting to remind me of the macro-evolutionists. The macro-evolutionist, when confronted with yet another example of science reality that makes macro-evolution impossible, resorts to the "millions of years so you can't see it happening" cover story. The "millions of years" line becomes Felix's Magic Bag, out of which you pull anything, and into which even the biggest elephant can be hidden. At what point can we not tell the difference between macro-evolution that happened so slowly that we can't detect it, and macro-evolution that never happened? In the same way, if global warming is happening so slowly, and so imperceptibly, over such a long period of time, as a way of explaining the last decade of global cooling, doesn't that push the origin of the "proven" data back into a time period when we weren't even recording global temperatures? Into a time when the technology by which we measured such things was far more primitive and unreliable than the technology we use today we use today?
By the way -- even if it can be proven that manmade polluants are causing the over-all temperature of the earth to rise slightly, it is not true that such a thing is a uniformly bad thing; or that the Earth can't compensate on its own (since the Earth is not a brittle china bowl); or that the solutions proposed aren't either (a) stupid sci-fi fantasies posing as science; (b) more productive of widespread human poverty and misery than the warming; and/or (c) humanly unachievable and outside of our control.
By the way -- even if it can be proven that manmade polluants are causing the over-all temperature of the earth to rise slightly, it is not true that such a thing is a uniformly bad thing; or that the Earth can't compensate on its own (since the Earth is not a brittle china bowl); or that the solutions proposed aren't either (a) stupid sci-fi fantasies posing as science; (b) more productive of widespread human poverty and misery than the warming; and/or (c) humanly unachievable and outside of our control.
Youth Ministry -- For Brent Thomas and Matt Proctor
I don't think I've written anything about youth ministry, and since Brent Thomas and Matt Proctor were/are doing EFCA youth ministry (Matt's at Denver Sem right now), and they both linki to my blog, and I'm way ahead on my Sunday message, I felt like scribbling down a few things, from the perspective of a preaching pastor.
Wary and Worried
I briefly candidated around in the early 1990s, looking for staff positions, and I discovered that nearly every preaching pastor that interviewed me had been knifed in the back at least one time by a former, younger associate who wanted their job. It made them wary of me, because I came off to them like a guy who more truly belonged in the pulpit (which turned out to be true; it's why I quit searching and instead went back for my M.Div.). It was very disappointing to me to hear that so many preaching pastors had so many of these repeated bad experiences with their youth and CE guys. Of course, I don't know the true, full stories in those cases I heard, so I know it's possible that this very small number of preacher guys I met had their own sins to answer for. They probably did. But, to the degree their stories were true, they illustrate why it's important that we not treat staff pastorates as only stepping stones to "the real thing" -- that is, the pulpit. Head pastors tend to feel this way about the pulpit, of course, since that's where our hearts are at, so we contribute to this idolization of the pulpit. Pastoring and preaching overlap, strengthen, and nourish each other, but they aren't the same thing, and there are lots of guys who ought to spend their whole careers focused on pastoring and administrative leadership. There must be some way for younger guys to still get their practical experience in Christian service, without panicking their preachers.
Whose Side Are You On?
Marvel Comics recently ran a series called Civil War, where the tagline was "Whose Side Are You On?" I think youth pastors can get caught in that dilemma. They can get caught between differing factions within a church. Their first loyalty is to Jesus Christ and the Bible, or at least it should be. That's the only way they can be of any real help to anyone, or keep their mental bearings when there is conflict. However, it's also true that they need to be loyal to TPTB in that church, humanly speaking. A good youth pastor should know the constitution and by-laws of his church (even if they're boring to read, and even if legalities aren't your thing), since those are Da Rules for how things are supposed to go. When a man joins a church as a youth pastor, he is signing on with a particular administration. He becomes part of that governance, and represents it to those he serves. Authority has been vested into him by the Lord through the governing apparatus of that church. You can't be good at youth work if you're an authoritarian stiff. But no matter how much a worker sympathizes with the kids's perpetual grumbles against imbecilic adult oversight, the youth leader needs to never forget that he (or she) is one of those imbecilic adult overseers --- like it or not!
Delayed Gratification
I've heard it said by a youth ministries instructor in my seminary (Kenny Crosswhite of the PCA) that you can't succeed in youth ministry if you can't handle delayed gratification. Adults feed back to you fairly quickly, whether for good or for bad. It sounds to me like youth work often feeds the good back to you...8-12 years later, when the kid grows up enough to gain some objectivity, look back reflectively on the good for which God used you during an important phase in their life, and then write you one of those little cards or e-mails that youth pastors say they sometimes get. In this way I think youth ministry is harder than preaching.
Not Too Much Sympathy, Not Too Much Authority
A good priest sympathizes with his people (thus a reason for Christ's incarnation, Hebrews 4:15). A good youth worker should be able to sympathize with the feelings, problems, and perspectives of youth. I don't think there's such a thing as a successful stern youth minister. A stern headmaster, yes. A stern youth pastor? No. A youth leader can be like one of the Three Bears' bowls of porridge -- either too hot, or too cold. If you become one of the kids (too hot), then you're not pastoring them anymore. If you become too stern too often (too cold), then you're not a sympathetic priest. This is a good reason to have youth volunteer workers. By involving other adults of various ages, they can fill various discipling roles -- Older Sibling, Surrogate Parent, Fun Coach, etc -- and this leaves you free to (a) not try and fill all those roles alone by yourself, and (b) really be the General Overseer riding herd on the controlled chaos.
Wary and Worried
I briefly candidated around in the early 1990s, looking for staff positions, and I discovered that nearly every preaching pastor that interviewed me had been knifed in the back at least one time by a former, younger associate who wanted their job. It made them wary of me, because I came off to them like a guy who more truly belonged in the pulpit (which turned out to be true; it's why I quit searching and instead went back for my M.Div.). It was very disappointing to me to hear that so many preaching pastors had so many of these repeated bad experiences with their youth and CE guys. Of course, I don't know the true, full stories in those cases I heard, so I know it's possible that this very small number of preacher guys I met had their own sins to answer for. They probably did. But, to the degree their stories were true, they illustrate why it's important that we not treat staff pastorates as only stepping stones to "the real thing" -- that is, the pulpit. Head pastors tend to feel this way about the pulpit, of course, since that's where our hearts are at, so we contribute to this idolization of the pulpit. Pastoring and preaching overlap, strengthen, and nourish each other, but they aren't the same thing, and there are lots of guys who ought to spend their whole careers focused on pastoring and administrative leadership. There must be some way for younger guys to still get their practical experience in Christian service, without panicking their preachers.
Whose Side Are You On?
Marvel Comics recently ran a series called Civil War, where the tagline was "Whose Side Are You On?" I think youth pastors can get caught in that dilemma. They can get caught between differing factions within a church. Their first loyalty is to Jesus Christ and the Bible, or at least it should be. That's the only way they can be of any real help to anyone, or keep their mental bearings when there is conflict. However, it's also true that they need to be loyal to TPTB in that church, humanly speaking. A good youth pastor should know the constitution and by-laws of his church (even if they're boring to read, and even if legalities aren't your thing), since those are Da Rules for how things are supposed to go. When a man joins a church as a youth pastor, he is signing on with a particular administration. He becomes part of that governance, and represents it to those he serves. Authority has been vested into him by the Lord through the governing apparatus of that church. You can't be good at youth work if you're an authoritarian stiff. But no matter how much a worker sympathizes with the kids's perpetual grumbles against imbecilic adult oversight, the youth leader needs to never forget that he (or she) is one of those imbecilic adult overseers --- like it or not!
Delayed Gratification
I've heard it said by a youth ministries instructor in my seminary (Kenny Crosswhite of the PCA) that you can't succeed in youth ministry if you can't handle delayed gratification. Adults feed back to you fairly quickly, whether for good or for bad. It sounds to me like youth work often feeds the good back to you...8-12 years later, when the kid grows up enough to gain some objectivity, look back reflectively on the good for which God used you during an important phase in their life, and then write you one of those little cards or e-mails that youth pastors say they sometimes get. In this way I think youth ministry is harder than preaching.
Not Too Much Sympathy, Not Too Much Authority
A good priest sympathizes with his people (thus a reason for Christ's incarnation, Hebrews 4:15). A good youth worker should be able to sympathize with the feelings, problems, and perspectives of youth. I don't think there's such a thing as a successful stern youth minister. A stern headmaster, yes. A stern youth pastor? No. A youth leader can be like one of the Three Bears' bowls of porridge -- either too hot, or too cold. If you become one of the kids (too hot), then you're not pastoring them anymore. If you become too stern too often (too cold), then you're not a sympathetic priest. This is a good reason to have youth volunteer workers. By involving other adults of various ages, they can fill various discipling roles -- Older Sibling, Surrogate Parent, Fun Coach, etc -- and this leaves you free to (a) not try and fill all those roles alone by yourself, and (b) really be the General Overseer riding herd on the controlled chaos.
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