Fixing Those Idiots

Mike Leake

Today’s post comes from my friend, Geoff Box. Geoff is the pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Doniphan, MO.

I grew up during the “social media boom”. I had a Facebook account way back when you could only get one if you had a college email address. Over the years, I’ve seen social media’s reach expand exponentially. Virtually everyone is sharing, liking and following at this point. As social media has grown, my dislike for it has grown too. I still have a Facebook and use it, but really in a very limited way. I do think social media still has potential for being a good thing, but right now it seems the good is being drowned out by the bad.

My biggest concern with social media has been the same for a while now – vitriol. Everyone hates everyone else. I’m not being hyperbolic here in the least. Go ahead and scroll through your favorite feed and tell me that people aren’t continually berating, belittling, mocking, and smearing each other. They are, and Jesus has a word for that – murder.

Matthew 5:21-22 is absolutely clear that anger and name-calling are the fruit of murderous hearts. To avoid confusion let me say, I’m not talking about serious and vigorous debates – those have their place and can be beneficial. What I’m talking about is the insults and abusive language. Jesus used the term “raca” which means, “One who is totally lacking in understanding – ‘numbskull, fool.’”[1] Jesus is telling us not to call people morons (feel free to look at the Greek word for “fool” in that passage). Hateful words are fueled by hateful, murderous hearts whose owners are liable to judgment and the hell of fire. Yikes.

I’m am not surprised when I see this type of behavior coming from unbelievers. Why would I be? Their hearts have not been changed, but when professing Christians behave this way it really is shocking – well, it should be, but I fear we have all become desensitized to it. We need to be more aware of how our words reflect upon our hearts and on our Christ. And frankly, we need to repent of our hateful hearts and the wicked words that spew forth from them.

Brothers and sisters let us not be in the habit of burning our mission field to the ground by blasting everyone who disagrees with us with hellfire breath (James 3:6).[2] Let us be always aware of our need to mortify the works of the flesh by replacing our hatred towards others with love of Christ (first and foremost) and love of others – even if they are wrong. Let’s use social media for good; building up and expanding Christ’s Kingdom, instead of fighting earthly battles using hellish weapons. Let’s stop trying to “fix those idiots” and instead fix our own hearts.

[1] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 387.

[2] For the concept and language of burning the mission field, check out this helpful article: https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2019/july/partisan-evangelicals-and-burning-of-mission-field.html?share=

 

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Read This! 08.06.19

Mike Leake

5 Types of Ministry Rejection Every Leader Faces

Separating these is often a difficult task. If we treat #2 like it’s #5 then we’ll create some problems.

Do Your Prayers Match Your Big-God Preaching?

That’s a great question!

How the Secular Revolt Against Liberalism Can Awaken People to Reality

This is a well-written and well-thought out piece. Of course that won’t be surprising to you when you see that Samuel James is the author.

How to Disagree With Your Pastor

This isn’t saying to never disagree but I think this tempers things a bit. I never really thought about the second one.

How to Handle Criticism

Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 has never really jumped off the pages for me like this. This is incredibly helpful.

The Cross and Criticism

It seems like so many of the good articles written lately are on criticism. Alfred Poirier is one of the best.

5 Ways to Teach Kids to Apply Scripture

It’s wonderful to feed kids full of Bible knowledge, but we want to make sure we are establishing a pattern of applying what they are reading.

How Expository Preaching Should Engage Cultural Concerns (Part 2)

This is helpful. That’s one of the great critiques of verse-by-verse exposition of God’s Word.

I’ve always been intrigued by the story of the lost colony of Roanoke:

The Proverbs 31 Man

Mike Leake

There has been much made about the woman described in Proverbs 31:10-31, but did you know there are actually nine verses which go before those? And those nine verses, I believe, are helpful in thinking about the type of man that God calls us to be.

I saw something the other day that I’ve seen far too many times. A husband sits out in his car smoking a cigarette while he sends his wife into the church to beg for help. I’ve watched men like this remain in the car while we, and his lady, pack heavy boxes of food out to their car. And I want to scream. Be a man!

But maybe that’d just my toxic masculinity talking. Maybe it’s far too outdated for me to expect a guy to actually be strong and use that strength to help others. I wonder if this is what King Lemuel’s mama was feeling when she said, “What are you doing, my son? What are you doing, son of my womb? What are you doing, son of my vows?” She’s watching her son use his strength on himself and it’s breaking her.

When she says, “Don’t give your strength to women” he isn’t talking about proper relationships. It’s connected with her admonition not to give himself to strong drink. You don’t use your strength or power or influence for yourself—you use it for others. That’s what a man does.

King Lemuel has strong drink. Such a thing can be used for medicinal purposes or it can be used for celebration. And so the king has a choice to make. Will he use his influence to heal himself—to make himself merry—or will he spill it out for others? A good king, a good man, will use it for others. He’ll open his mouth (v8-9) for those who can’t.

So for all the talk of a Proverbs 31 woman, I think it’s high time we encourage men to be Proverbs 31 men. Use your God-given strength for others and not yourself. Keep in mind that Jesus refused comfort on the Cross so that you and I could receive ultimate comfort. If you ever want to see a man who gave every bit of his strength for the benefit of others look no further than the Lord Jesus.

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Joshua Harris and the Theological Prosperity Gospel

Mike Leake

“But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.” –Psalm 73:2

The news about Joshua Harris abandoning the Christian faith hit me hard. From my view of things, Josh wasn’t one of those arrogant guys that seemed more infatuated with himself than with Jesus. He seemed genuine. Humble. One of the guys who had the type of humble orthodoxy that I wanted to follow.

I was saddened to hear the news but I wasn’t really shocked, given a few recent posts of his. Nor am I completely convinced that this is the final page written in Josh’s story. I’m not yet ready to give up hope that we might see this prodigal run home. God, I hope so.

His fall from a place of faith startled me, though. It startled me because it could have just as easily been my story. My fall wouldn’t have made any news outlets. I’ve been in Asaph’s position before, my feet on really shaky grounds.

A Different Type of Prosperity Gospel

I grew up in the faith imbibing Harris’ works on purity. And Katelyn Beaty is correct that it was really a form of the prosperity gospel. I think her term “sexual prosperity gospel” is spot on. Being dashed by this form of legalism I soon thereafter found myself in the safe and comforting world of the gospel-centered branch of the Young, Restless, and Reformed crowd. I was given fresh eyes to see Jesus everywhere and the Spirit enlivened my heart to embrace all that God had done for me in Christ.

But all wasn’t bright and beautiful…

I soon found there was a new type of legalism threatening to grab hold of my heart. It was a theological prosperity gospel. The same lie that had captivated me for a season in Harris’ sexual prosperity gospel captured me here. If I had all the right theology, if I was passionate about the truth, and kept all my theological ducks in a row then I could be certain of God’s favor.

Of course this created in me a spirit of fighting and biting and laboring to climb the ladder of truth speakers–all whilst working to set straight any who opposed the truth. After all, if a church wants to be fully blessed by God then she had better have all her theological t’s crossed, and we couldn’t be bogged down by those slow-minded people struggling with our precious doctrines of grace.

Legalism always leaves you empty. God’s grace eventually causes you to wake up to the clay feet of every idol you’ve carved. But that creates a problem when our schtick was the neat and tidy theology of being Young, Restless, and Reformed.

When the Wheels Fall Off

We pride ourselves on the golden chain of God’s grace. (And I still believe in that). But what happens when we start adding other links to this chain? And then what happens when they start to break? What happens when the formula of putting gospel-centered Jesus-focused theology into the oven produces something we can’t recognize? What happens when our theology breeds arrogance, division, lust, greed, and things unbecoming the body of Christ?

This is where my feet nearly stumbled. I couldn’t fathom how a sovereign God who controls the hearts and growth of his people would allow some of these professing followers of Jesus to wound myself and my family so deeply. And it doesn’t seem fair to just say, “they mustn’t be believers”. Because I know I’ve wounded people and I wasn’t comfortable saying that I wasn’t a follower of Jesus.

So I understood completely when Josh said that it was easier just to throw out the whole thing than to try to untangle all the webs. I get it. And I almost did the same thing.

Until I went into the sanctuary of God…

I had to hit pause for a season and just feast on the goodness of God. I didn’t try to untangle all the webs and find answers. I suspended judgment for a bit and just dug into the things which I did know. I set the fact that God is there and God is good as immovable truths. Once these truths coursed deeply enough into my veins I was able to venture out again.

Believing right things about God isn’t the same thing as being enamored with God. Saying that God is good isn’t the same thing as tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. Nobody else could do that for me. My “good” theology wasn’t a big enough fig leaf to cover my naked soul. Only Jesus would do. I didn’t need answers to my pain. My theological prosperity gospel made me think that I had to have all these knots untangled and I had to have understanding and to do everything rightly before I would be able to heal and find God’s favor.

God isn’t the author of confusion. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus is always perfectly sensible to our finite and sinful hearts and minds. When our faith is in a black and white God who only paints in tightly-woven systems of theology we’re going to be baffled when our creative God grabs a paintbrush of a different color and starts painting on our canvas.

That doesn’t mean that God changes His mind or that truth isn’t actually revealed in Scripture. Yes, Jesus doesn’t change and God is always true. But this really  means He will always be inexhaustible. And his blessings aren’t necessarily tied to how much of that unfathomable God we are able to fathom in a given moment. He’s good and He’s good to us because that’s who He is, not because our theology of His goodness is up to a certain level.

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