Tearing Down the Gallows

Some want nothing more than to see others hang.

Increasingly the Christian blogosphere is being populated with bloggers outing heretics. I've blogged on this before (here, here, and here) and I'm not going to rehash old posts. What I want to discuss is something I hope all of us will consider whenever any of us takes on a pastor, speaker, preacher, ministry, or trend in the Church. I understand that there are people out there who are trying to corrupt the Gospel and that grieves me, but there are just as many people out there who are simply not understood by others and wind up bullied by well-meaning heresy hunters. Not only do godly men and women discern the difference, but act correctly when the worst is suspected.

That is what this post is about. I hope what follows edifies the Body and serves as a template for confronting others in the manner of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. Remove the Log

For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
—Matthew 7:2-5 ESV

Anyone who wishes to confront heresy needs to have an exceedingly well-ordered house with nary a pane of glass in sight. Jesus used a strong word here—hypocrite—and He means it. This necessitates great humility on the part of anyone confronting another because we must come to grips with our own sinfulness before we confront a lapsed brother. In other words, a gleeful slashing at an opponent is sinful. No one who confronts heretics should do so if they find it to be enjoyable or a source of self-worth. Too many times that is the spirit I see at work in those who seek to topple heretics. Remember that the criteria used against heretics will be the criteria used against those who confront them.

My personal belief on this issue, in light of what the Lord is saying in this passage, is there are enough issues confronting biblically-solid and doctrinally-correct churches that we have better works to be doing for the Kingdom than looking for heretics under this rock and that. I believe what Jesus is saying is that it's hard enough for us to keep the logs out of our own eyes than to be devoting our time to worrying about the specks in others. I can hate the practices of the 21st century Nicolaitans, but I don't have to spend every waking moment looking for them.

2. Bear True Witness

And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and they set up false witnesses who said, "This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us."
—Acts 6:12-14 ESV

Before Stephen was smashed to death by stones, the people who opposed him rounded up a crew to bear false witness against him, dragging him before the Sanhedrin at the temple. I find the text of their false accusation fascinating. Why? Because their accusation is exactly what they understood. In other words, the false nature of their testimony came not because they were lying but because they failed to comprehend what they heard.

What exactly had Jesus said to those who confronted Him after driving the moneychangers out of the temple?

So the Jews said to him, "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
—John 2:18-21 ESV

Note the context given by John in that last sentence so no one would be confused.

The Sanhedrin had already heard similar witness against Jesus, so Stephen had another strike against him because the Sanhedrin had a special distaste for the line of accusation the witnesses used. Hearing the same argument probably emboldened them further despite having less personal knowledge of Stephen than the more prominent Jesus.

But the point here is that the lack of understanding on the part of the witnesses is what made them false, not the fact that they were fabricating lies to get their way.

The upshot of this is if we go off half-cocked, lacking understanding as to what our opponents are saying exactly, then we bear false witness against them when we accuse them of impropriety. But too often our accusations are just that—uninformed. A wise man listens, understands, then speaks. A fool speaks without understanding.

Are we spending any time truly understanding what potential heretics are saying or do we shoot first and ask questions later? If the latter, then we are no better than those we accuse because we are bearing false witness against them.

This plays into the next issue, too.

3. Stifle Gossip

The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body.
—Proverbs 18:8 ESV

God hates gossip. Gossip is unsubstantiated, unreliable, or comes from second or third-hand sources. Those sources of gossip are usually ungodly, too. God's people should never engage in gossip, yet we so often use gossip to slander those we view as enemies.

Recently, I counted at least four blogs I read that cited a mainstream newspaper article profiling a well-known pastor in Michigan. Those blogs tore into that pastor based on what was in the newspaper article. One of those blogs even slammed the pastor because the newspaper reporter elected to refer to him as "the hottest preacher in Michigan," as if the pastor had any control over the editorial license of the reporter!

The problem with newspapers and other forms of the mainstream media (MSM) is—and unless your name is "Rip Van Winkle" you should know this—they are not always reliable sources. How many times in the last five years has an award-winning reporter fudged the facts on a story or twisted them to make the story more compelling? Do we remember the recent editorial bloodletting at The New York Times?

We now know that newspapers can be sources of gossip just like our next-door neighbor. What sense is shown by any Christian who assassinates the character or ministry of a fellow Christian based on what a newspaper article says? Worse still, anyone who's been a Christian for a while and has any contact with the MSM knows that whenever it covers anything related to the Church it usually interprets incorrectly or out of context! Christians cannot pick and choose their allegiance to newspapers by loving them when they tear into a supposed heretic, but then turn around and scream bloody murder when their own church or favorite Christian leader winds up on the wrong side of some reporter's misplaced ire or outright ignorance.

In short, if we don't check our facts from multiple reputable sources before we say anything about a suspected heretic, we are nothing more than gossips.

4. Confront the Wayward Personally

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
—Matthew 18:15-17 ESV

I find it staggering that the folks most charged up about church discipline are never willing to confront the people they write about in their blogs face-to-face. It is gossip to talk about someone behind their back, refusing to bring the charges to them in person. This is one of the reasons that I shy away from naming names and prefer to talk about general trends that are troubling in the church rather than discussing an individual. Because if I name that individual who has sinned against me or others by their heretical beliefs they have shared with me, I owe it to them to confront them in a manner befitting true Christian brotherhood. How easy it is to snipe at others remotely!

Now someone might argue that the passage I selected above pertains to a personal affront. But I would argue that anyone who perverts the truth of God—especially because they have an incomplete understanding, as many do—has sinned against me because I am part of the Church as a whole. It is my responsibility to go to him or her and set things straight. If they refuse to hear me, then I do have some complaint. However, as I mentioned above in #1, our complaint is done tearfully and with humility.

Personal confrontation also has a sharpening quality. The famous "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another" from Proverbs 27:17 implies that there is some dullness to begin with. If we do not confront personally, how will they be sharpened? Even more so, how will we be sharpened if we fail to faithfully bring that personal confrontation?

5. Practice the "Golden Rule"

And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
—Luke 6:31 ESV

Who here wishes to suffer the brickbats of someone accusing you of heresy? If not, why should we dole out the vitriol on them?

There is always a way of correction that follows the way of Christ, reproving wisely and under the right circumstances. And for every person who will come back with Jesus driving out the moneychangers, I say, You are not a member of the Godhead. If anger is called for, we must be very careful that we do not violate Eph. 4:26. Not many of us are adept at righteous anger. Those that are rarely need to use it because they understand the implications:

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.
—Matthew 5:22 ESV

We are liable for our anger one way or the other. Are we using it wisely?

6. Observe the Samaritan

Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."
—Luke 10:30-37 ESV

I want to look sideways at this familiar passage, at what Jesus is implying here in His parable. As the storyteller, He is observing the Samaritan, that outcast race, showing us what that man is doing right.

We know from John 4:9 that the righteous people of God, the Jews, have no dealings with the unwashed Samaritans. They were rejected because of their incorrect beliefs. Yet Jesus used the example of someone who was incorrect in everything else he did, though right in one crucial area.

I have said in other places on Cerulean Sanctum that those we find to be in error are often so because they are reacting badly to something we ourselves did wrong or failed to do at all. The way that some pervert the Gospel also shows us where we have failed to defend the portion being perverted. This is to our shame as much as it is to theirs.

So just like the Samaritan, real heretics may have something to teach us, for rarely does any heretic do everything wrong. There may be one thing they do exactly right that may prove us to have fallen down in our own faith. God often uses heathens to correct His wayward people. The hard way is for them to overpower us. The better way is to observe them and learn from what they do right, just as the Jews in Jesus story of the Good Samaritan needed to learn something from that hated heretic Samaritan.

Wise men and women understand this and realize that judgment begins with the House of God. (1 Peter 4:17)

7. Pray Psalm 51

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
—Psalms 51:1b-13 ESV

From where we started, we come full circle to here. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; you, me, and all the heretics of the world. Before we confront anyone, we should repeat Psalm 51. Think of it as a way of "counting to ten" before we accuse someone of anything. And pay close attention to that last verse, verse 13: Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

Is that our aim when we confront heretics? Do we really wish to see them abandon their heresy and return to God, or do we wish to see them consigned to hell? I know which one gives the Lord more pleasure.

And that is the way I pray that all of us will pursue.

Has the Christian Blogosphere Lost Its Collective Mind?

Okay, so I go away for the weekend only to come back to what appears to be a collective nervous breakdown in the Christian Blogosphere.

Folks, I know that no one cares to read us out there in the secular world, but still. If we're going to act like imbeciles, then our witness is destroyed, toasted, racked on a spit, and baked to a crackly crunch. Is that what we're about? Does it lift up the name of Jesus for us to go postal on each other?

I understand that even now a horde of Slice of Laodicea commenters, brows knit in consternation, is marching up to the Great White North, torches in readiness, to roast Tim Challies' backbacon. Ingrid's already apologized for the unintentional outcome of the post that created this stir, but when you can't tell the trolls from the real commenters on your blog, you've got deep blogging issues.

James White is ranting that some Baptist Web site won't answer his e-mails from almost three years ago. The way things are going over at his blog, I expect to see him drop the term "semipelagian poopyhead" on some minor heretic any day now. Loved his take on KJV-only and his book The Forgotten Trinity, but anymore I leave his site feeling drained.

A number of Christian blogs (I'm not even going to name because I'm tired of it) are leveling the boom on Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church based on quotes from a secular newspaper. Do I have to remind the owners of those blogs of the last three years of MSM implosions based on lousy reporting? There's a little thing called "context" that can turn quotes 180 degrees. My advice? Go to his church and see for yourself—then you can desecrate him all you want (as long as you follow this advice first.) I knew Rob from Wheaton College, and yes, he was "unique." But I can't tell you anything about him based on a sound bite. Before we publicly lambaste someone who claims to be a brother in Christ, we better have our facts straight. A couple quotes from a secular newspaper doth not a lynching make.

I feel sad writing this post. About four times I nearly threw the whole thing away because I don't want to be accused of perpetuating the same problem I'm complaining about.

I've long contended that the Internet is not real life. It's a lousy community when you get right down to it. And for that reason I want to tell a story from my own life that I hope you all will read and consider.

When I was at Carnegie Mellon University studying AI & Robotics in the early 1980s, CMU was on the cutting edge of the pre-Internet world. Every dorm had networked computers, IBM was opening up a networking research center on campus, and there was so much stinking CPU horsepower at the school that they ran their HVAC systems through the mainframe cooling systems in order to heat their academic buildings. In short, only MIT was even close in computing power.

One of the cool things about the school was that it was on ARPANET. I could e-mail a friend at MIT. Back then that was something. We also had a college online community that existed only in cyberspace. We talked about every subject imaginable. Everyone had cool handles, so it was easy to hide behind our anonymity and be "free."

I liked to hang out in an area discussing Christianity. Needless to say, it got contentious considering that the (self-identified) "heathen" to Christian ratio was about 500:1. One day a "heathen" posted something really sick and the worst flame war I've ever seen in my life erupted. I tried with all my might to keep it civil, but things got out of control. I've never seen such hateful things said in my life from people with handles like Blasphemer, Bot, Mr. Wizard, and Grue.

Yet behind each of those handles was a person—someone I could be sitting next to in class and not even know it. So I proposed something radical. I asked that the most vocal people—about forty altogether—meet up at a local Italian restaurant for dinner. We could talk face-to-face, drop the anonymity, and be real people. Maybe then we could come to a better understanding. Everyone in the flame war agreed, all forty.

I reserved a room at the Italian place, set up carpools with the forty, arranged a rendezous on campus so we could drive down in the carpools, and had the whole thing worked out. I was really looking forward to this.

Day comes, my watch shows 4:30 PM. I'm in the meeting spot for the carpools and no one shows. Around 4:40, my laid-back, barefoot Christian buddy, Tom (AKA "Captain Zodiac"), arrives and says, "Hey, where is everybody?" Tom and I sat there until 5:15 before we finally called the restaurant, canceled, and went upstairs to grab a burger in the lounge cafeteria.

Two days later, most everyone was at it again on the BBS system, flaming away. When I asked where everyone had been, there was a vast silence. I never got a response. As for me, I gradually bowed out of the "conversation" having learned a great lesson about human nature.

Folks, a name and a postage stamp-sized pic on the Web is not a person. You don't know me and I really don't know you, either. It's easy to tear out someone's heart on the Web through our pseudo-anonymity. It is far harder to tear out someone's heart in person. But when we get right down to it, the Lord would not have us savage each other on the Web anymore than He would condone us savaging each other in person.

Can we all just take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds? Can we count to ten before we post the latest flame bait or character assassination. I'm tired of the hunt for heretics. Cerulean Sanctum gets more combined hits from people looking for heretics than any other kind of Google search. That's really sad.

Is this all we are about? I've blogged many times about this, but it's getting stupid now and I'm questioning why we Christians even blog if this is all we can do.

If the picture that some of us are presenting to the world at large looks like a bunch of fussbudget, life-haters on a perpetual witch hunt, well let me tell you we're excelling at that.

Can we stop for a while? Please? I'm pleading now. Let's stop slaying each other remotely via words. Just last week I proposed that we spend a month in prayer for anyone we disagree with before we write them up on our blogs as "Enemies of Christ." Is that an impossible request?

August is a new month. Yes, it's a hot hazy one in much of the nation, but we can bring down the temperature if we try. Can we attempt this month to write something better on our blogs than one spiritual smackdown after another?

I have an idea. Why don't we try to reach out to some secular blogs and see if we can reciprocate some blogrolling. Better yet, why don't we try to reach out to some secular bloggers who may never have had a good relationship with anyone who takes the name of Christ and show them the love of Jesus any way we can? Can we try to turn the "dog days" of August into the "God Days" of August?

Isn't that ultimately the heart of the Lord for all of us God-bloggers?

On Consigning Enemies of Christ to Hell

It's one of those blast furnace kind of days here today, 95 degrees with 95% humidity. To the amusement of little boys everywhere, the sun is so hot right now that ants burst into flame on the sidewalk without need for a magnifying glass. As I type, my son is sipping hot peppermint tea—of all things—somehow oblivious to the heat pump outside laboring to rid our house of thermal build-up. The dryer is working with the weather to scorch our clothes dry, and just to add insult to injury, I need to take a flamethrower to some weeds outside tonight.

Why not talk about hell, then?

The Christian blogosphere talks about hell far more than you'll hear from any pulpit. I've read just about every take on hell you can imagine in just the last few weeks. But every one of those theological treatises has ignored one kind of hell, the hell that most people experience: hell on earth.

It doesn't take much for us Christians to castigate anyone we deem to be unworthy sinners. You don't have to look very far to find such horrid heathens. The Christian blogosphere is brimming over with posts that name names and point fingers. The names of the enemies change, but the general collection of them remains the same. You're likely to find homosexuals, evolutionists, atheists, and the ACLU in that category. Karl Rove seems to occupy that spot for Sojourners types, while the hardcore conservatives still get mileage out of Bill Clinton. And then there's whatever preacher or teacher we love to hate. Benny Hinn, Rick Warren, Joyce Meyer, Ken Copeland—maybe even your own pastor will show up on that list, who knows. The important thing here is that hell needs to be invoked whenever we think about them.

More and more I believe that we truly want to see some people burn in hell. It used to be the Hitlers, Pol Pots, and Stalins of the world, but increasingly it's the people we disagree with—you know, The Enemies of Christ. And from the dialog I see occurring on an increasing number of Christian Web sites, I believe that there are a few too many Christians who would get no more glee than to have a front row seat in Abraham's bosom so they can stare out over the chasm that separates heaven from hell and lob a few jeers at the prisoners of hell. Because we all know that nothing hurts worse than to be in hell and have to suffer the receiving end of cat-calls from The People Who Got It Right.

But waiting for the eventual demise of the Enemies of Christ is not enough for some of the most vocal critics out there. They'd love nothing more than to see people in hell right now, here on earth. Such an idea almost warms the cockles of their hearts (that is if stone can have cockles.)

Now it would seem a hard thing to make hell on earth for people, but I now know how it comes about easily.

You see, most people on earth are already in hell because they have no prayer covering. Most of those destined for fire have never once had anyone pray for them. At no time has a Christian stood up in public or stolen away to his or her prayer closet to pray for these souls just waiting for damnation. Not once. More often than not there hasn't been a real Christian within ten feet of those Enemies at any time in all their years on earth. No one to pick them up when they fall. No one to hear their hurts. No one to take their confession. At least no one who we would consider Spirit-filled.

It is a far easier thing to call someone an Enemy of Christ than it is to pray for them. It takes no effort on our part to just keep doing what we already do when confronted with people with whom we disagree. How simple it is to label someone "godless" or "heretical" or "deceived" than it is to get down on our knees and say to God Our Father, "And so I once was. May your truth be made known to them through me, Lord Jesus, by any means possible."

Because you see, someone may have been praying for you long before you surrendered up your Enemy of Christ label and became a Child of God. Someone loved you and me enough to have labored in prayer over our souls for years and yet we can't spare those we consider Enemies of Christ one second of our day to cover them in prayer for what may be the first time in their lives. No, it's easier to blog about their sin, to throw up our hands in disgust, and to leap to our feet in protest than it is to fold those hands and bow those knees.

So this is what I ask of anyone who comes to Cerulean Sanctum. Before you blog about this Enemy of Christ or that heretic, spend one month in prayer for them. Pray every single day. Pray that God would put Spirit-filled Christians into their lives who will speak life and truth into them, sharing the Gospel not only in words but also deeds. If you are close enough to actually be that supportive person, then consider taking the job because obviously no one else has. If after the end of that month of prayer (and service) your righteous indignation still burns hot, then do as you are lead of the Spirit.

Some people are already in hell, folks. Not having a prayer covering is the very definition of being in hell on earth. Not having the fellowship of committed Christians willing to draw up alongside you and help you through your hell on earth only makes it worse. Perhaps we need to remember how fortunate we are to have had that covering and that presence of devout believers in our own lives. And perhaps we need to stand in the gap for all we perceive to be Enemies of Christ before we get online and bitch and moan about them.