Dear Pastor,
In reference to your critique of Tullian Tchividjian a week or so ago I would like to make a couple of comments.
First, I find it amazing that you would cite Billy Graham’s visits with the presidents. Graham has made a conscious effort to be bi-partisan and non-political, something which cannot be said of many evangelicals today. Rick Warren tried that route and was thrown to the evangelical wolves.
Second, I remember someone saying once that it is easy to preach against sins that no one in your congregation commits. It is easy to preach against abortionists and homosexual marriage advocates.
The individual sinner (me and you!) however, are not brought under conviction for the sins of our culture. It is our sins: self-righteousness, unbelief, hatefulness, greed, selfish ambition, impatience, anger, holding grudges, having a sharp tongue (and pen), pride, and the like. Some of us commit acts of murder or sexual sins, as well. But the good news is not that we are sinners, it is that Christ came to save sinners.
Sadly, we have become not associated with Christ and his love for sinners, but the Pharisees and their condemning words.
David
Dear David,
Just a brief response seeking to help you see where you’re in error.
1.) Graham was hugely political. To sanction what US Presidents were doing by appearing with them was HUGELY political. Take only two examples.
a.) When he appeared with President Bush I in the context of Gulf War I, thus communicating the Evangelical approval. Instead Graham should have, at the very least, not appeared with Bush I since the Gulf war was naked aggression. Something no Christian had any business supporting.
b.) The 9-11 Memorial where Graham went all political by being part of a service that communicated that all religions are equal. A political statement if there ever was one.
Billy Graham was a political beast and there is no arguing that he was “non-political” and bi-partisan.
I always liked this quote from R. J. Rushdoony on the likes of Billy Graham.
The kind of religion Billy Graham … represents is readily approved of by corrupt politicians and venal communications media. It does not challenge their godless dreams of dominion, and it does sugar-coat their sins with the veneer of religious respectability, with a facade of pietism. Such men can have the ear of national leaders and preach in the White House and in Congress without affecting even to the extent of an iota the national march into degeneracy and apostasy.
RJ Rushdoony- God’s Plan For Victory
2.) Really? You think it is easy to make a public stand against Abortion and Homosexual marriages? You think Evangelicals in our congregations are not involved in those sins so that they don’t need to be addressed from the pulpit?
3.) Christ came to save repentant sinners. Christ did NOT come to save sinners who are not repentant. This is the problem with the antinomian “Gospel” of Tullian and (presumably) yourself. You think that repentant sinners and unrepentant sinners should be approached in the same way. Here are some words of Geerhardus Vos which might assist you,
“From the fact that to a generation which knew God only as a righteous Judge, and in an atmosphere surcharged with the sense of retribution, He (Jesus) made the sum and substance of His preaching the love of God, it does not follow that, if He were in person to preach to our present age so strangely oblivious of everything but love, His message would be entirely the same.”
Geehardaus Vos
Redemptive History & Biblical Interpretation
The Scriptural Doctrine Of The Love Of God
4.) All I see is self righteousness in the school which flings around the accusation of self-righteousness against those who hold up God’s standard. All I hear them saying is, “Look how much more righteous we are because we don’t expect people to have God’s standard placed before them, unlike those mean people who insists that the Gospel must be preceded by the proclamation of God’s Law word.
5.) I quite agree that all God’s people have sins to repent of. That is why, in our Worship every week, we hear God’s Law, Confess our sins, and then hear God’s declaration of absolution.
6.) David, you said, “The individual sinner (me and you!) however, are not brought under conviction for the sins of our culture” —- Where, pray tell, do you get this David? I am convicted daily.
7.) You seem completely blythe to the fact that there is a set agenda being pushed upon the Church and culture to normalize particular sins. It is not me who is making a hobby horse out of preaching against “Sodomy” or “abortion.” It is the fact that my people are inundated with the message that sodomy and abortion are “normal.” Ministers, preaching in this cultural context, are fools if they don’t take a stand, for the sake of Christ and His people, against those prevailing sins of the zeitgeist that are seeking to force God’s people to conform to the zeitgeist.
8.) In closing allow me to suggest that it is you, by offering the love of a harlot as the love of Christ, who is showing a lack of love to and for the sinner. The good news is that Christ came to save those who see themselves under God’s wrath because they are sinners.
You can be sure that when I am face to face with someone broken by their sin the last thing I will offer is condemnation. You can be sure that whenever I am face to face with someone who is repentant all I have to offer is the Character of God who loves us in spite of our sin. You can be sure that when I am face to face with someone who is repentant what I do is enter into repentance with them.
