Interesting Times

Secondary Issues

There are issues in the Scripture that have more weight than others. It's really impossible to deny (Matthew 23:23). It's also not debatable that you are not supposed to fight over matters of conscience (Romans 14:1). 

Then why are there so many fights? I believe it is because no one thinks they are the weaker brother and everyone appeals to Romans 14:14. I don't think I'm the weaker brother now. I didn't think I was the weaker brother 15 years ago on some matters, but looking back I know that I was. In most fights, I think we could define a secondary issue as, "any matter which I do not find important." 

For example, SBC President, J.D. Greear masterfully plays the secondary issues card. He recently said, "The flip side is the rancor and divisiveness of that 10%. They are focused on secondary issues, that you just have to wonder what that means about their priority and their love of the priority issue, the gospel."

Step one, you have to know someone else's heart. So if you disagree with Greear, you are unloving and don't focus on the gospel. Of course, what this implies is J.D. is on the right path with the right spirit.

Step two, is very subtle. There would be unity, if that pesky 10% would just get in line. Why do they have to be so hard headed. He singled them out as a minority, inconsequential group of people who don't fall in line, they are destroying the SBC and the unity that comes if you are truly following the gospel, like JD. 

But, he made a blunder. It was almost perfect play. In order to take the high ground, you can't appeal to specifics. You have to be very vague in the the standard of unity. But once he appealed to the basis for unity, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, he stepped in it. So if that's the basis of their unity, and that's what they've agreed are important issues, then he has to live by them, right? Or are they Secondary Issues?

Woke Word of the Week.

I used to like The Gospel Coalition. That was before they became, as Phil Johnson said, more Coalition than Gospel. They have a podcast publishes a sermon of the week. Recently, it was one on Racism. 

You can search it out if you want to listen to it, but I'm not going to link to it. But there were a couple things I found interesting. One, he called out Billy Graham for holding segregated revivals. I didn't know that, so I looked it up and sure enough he did. But, what you didn't hear in this "sermons" was that he also stopped.

In the 1950s, the majority of southern white evangelicals worried that civil rights activism was a communist fifth column designed to win the Cold War by destroying racial harmony in the segregated South. Many white evangelists, like Billy Graham, accommodated that paranoia by holding segregated revival meetings in the South. However, Graham's racial views started to shift as he spent time overseas. He realized that segregation horrified global Christians, gave the Soviet's a gift-wrapped opportunity for propaganda, and was not supported in the Bible.

Graham's first integrated crusade was in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1953. After the ropes cordoning off the black section of the auditorium were removed, Graham told the ushers who threatened to put them back up, "Either these ropes stay down or you can go on and have the revival without me." From then on, Graham permanently adopted the policy of holding only integrated revivals.

He went after men running for SBC president for encouraging people to vote for "conservative, racist, republicans". Then, called out black preachers for not preaching what he thinks they ought to preach (ie, George Floyd, racism, etc). So much for their stand on exposition. 

Exposition

Speaking of exposition, Kevin D. Williamson wrote a good piece in National Review about the nonsensical LBTQ∞ Supreme Court decision. 

This is not jurisprudence. This is magical thinking. The law says whatever the wizards in the black robes say it says, and they are not very particular about distinguishing between what it says and what they think it should say. If a few lawyers can pretend to be persuaded by an argument, and everybody who wants the outcome it would produce also can pretend to be persuaded by it, then who are you to hold out? Did you go to law school?

And so we must rely on the ladies and gentlemen in Washington to interpret the scriptures for us. Can we trust them to be honest brokers and evenhanded? Consider that the day before yesterday, gathering for a church service was a crime against humanity and getting a haircut in Georgia was to offer human sacrifice to Mammon. And then — poof! — gathering in gigantic crowds of non-socially distanced, sweaty protesters chanting and looting and rioting and burning was an absolute necessity for the survival of democracy and the cause of genuine justice. Consider that the right to keep and bear arms, which is actually found in the Constitution, is severely limited (unless you are leading a left-wing militia uprising in Seattle!), but the right to an abortion, which is found nowhere in the Constitution, is considered virtually absolute. “You can’t see the emperor’s new clothes? Well, we know what you are, then!”

You can read the rest HERE. It's really rather strange that we give these non-elected individuals the power to change our country however they see fit. It's not a legal question but an epistemology issue. Mr. Williamson, a Roman Catholic, I suppose, misses the irony that he opposes men and women in robes interpreting the law for them, does allow for men in robes to interpret the Scripture for him. It's also somewhat ironic, that many Christians who opposed exposition of the Scriptures from the pulpit are pretty angry over the fact that the Supreme Court made a decision by leaving the original intention of the law and finding new meaning and application. 

From the OED

Simony, n. The buying or selling of ecclesiastical or spiritual benefits; esp. the sale or purchase of preferment or office in the church. Also sometimes more generally: trading in sacred things.

Etymology: < (i) Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French symonie, simonie (late 12th cent.; French simonie ), and its etymon (ii) post-classical Latin simonia the buying or selling of ecclesiastical or spiritual benefits (11th cent.; frequently from 12th cent. in British sources) < the name of Simon Magus , who offered money to the Apostles in return for receiving spiritual gifts (Acts 8:18–19)