XXI.) That atonement is an inescapable category for man. That if the true atonement of Christ is rejected, a substitute atonement will be sought elsewhere. That masochistic activity is often a false substitute means of self-atonement. That burden-bearing is one such masochistic activity. That transracial adoption is one common form of burden-bearing in the post-Christian church. That sacrificing one’s family to become a foreign missionary is another common form.
This is something that I have written on more than once on Iron Ink. See the below entries for commentary on point XXIConsequences of Sin, and Guilt, as not Quenched in God’s Atonement
The idea of burden-bearing is the idea that once burdened with false guilt we somehow think we are responsible to save the world by ourselves bearing burdens we cannot bear thinking that by doing so we will both rid ourselves of false guilt while saving the world at the same time. One way this expresses itself commonly in the modern evangelical church is by the impulse to adopt transracially (across racial borders). Often when transracial adoptions occur they will sometimes be accompanied by a smugness that suggests because couple A has pursued this kind of adoption that they are automatically superior in some way to couples who have not pursued this kind of questionable activity. Trans-racial adoptions are not normative for the same reasons that polyglot marriages are not normative. They all seek to bring together what God hath separated. If we are not to separate what God hath joined together neither should we normatively seek to join what God has separated apart. Families, like marriages, are going to be stronger and more resilient the more they share a common heritage. Similarly, the more dissonance that is introduced into a family the more conflict that is apt to arise within the family. Certainly we would agree that if a solid black family adopted children from a troubled Chinese family that such a combination could well be promissory of a difficult adjustment period for the polyglot family as well as creating confusion in those Chinese children raised in a loving black home.
The other example Mr. Henry gives is one of the foreign missionary sacrificing their families for the sake of the mission field. Now, clearly every family that becomes missionary does not sacrifice their family to do so. However, that families have been sacrificed in the name of doing missions cannot be doubted. God never called anyone to send their children hundreds if not thousands of miles away to missionary schools for children for extended periods so that they could be free “to do the Lord’s work.” Parents are responsible to rear their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord and that can’t be done by absent parents who are “sacrificing for Jesus.”
Of course it should be everyone’s desire that adoption be as rare as possible if only because adoption means that somewhere along the line something has gone terribly wrong. That orphans in an ideal world would be raised by next of kin only makes sense in light of the fact that families operate best when they share the most in common. The further one gets away from the nearest family ties the less likely adoptees are going to be able to fit in and work in the context of their adopted families.
The logic in only adopting after all the natural children have left the home and the wife being past child bearing years is found in the reality that a home where there can be no competition between adopted children and natural children for the parent’s affection is obviously the best possible situation for adoption.
Another reason that social gospel missions is harmful is that it communicates that the blessings of the Gospel can come to a people apart from their obedience to God’s precepts. If Christian organizations go into deprived countries to build social-order infrastructure the lesson taught is that God’s blessings can be had apart from bowing the knee to God. This is not an argument for ignoring the wicked in their plight. It is an argument that Christians need to be careful that we don’t communicate that social-order sin has no social-order consequences.
In the book, “Missionary Methods, St. Paul’s or Ours: A Study of the Church in the Four Provinces” Missionary and author Roland Allen explicitly notes that St. Paul’s missionary methodology was to establish a beach head for the Church. Spend at most 6 months training the new Elders and then leaving to go elsewhere turning over the newly planted church to the Elders. Whereupon Paul would keep up correspondence in order to counsel the new Elders. This supports the idea that missionary should be temporary. The fact that missionaries should be comprised by men who are as close to as possible ethnically and culturally speaking to where the Church plant is taking place is again a matter of common sense. Men who have a more natural connection to potential church plants are going to be more successful in dealing with all that might arise in a new plant situation. This is no different than assigning ethnic Hellenist Jews to wait on tables in Acts 6 when Hellenist Jewish widows (speaking Greek) raised a complaint that they were being shorted vis-à-vis the Hebrew Jewish widows (speaking Aramean). Greek Jewish deacons were chosen to solve a Greek Jewish widow problem. In the same way planting churches should be done by those who are as close as possible ethnically and culturally to those among whom the church is being planted.
That foreign missionaries should be single men or married but childless couples is seen in the little book “Color me Green.” This book, written by children of Missionaries, tells the story of how missionary children struggle with a sense of belonging because they belong to too many places. They are blue because of their parents country of origin. They are yellow because of the country they were raised in. They feel at home in neither their home country nor the country raised in and so they are “green.” Children ought not to grow up divided against themselves.
I would add one disagreement here. I am convinced that it is the responsibility of each individual as members collectively of the whole Church to indiscriminately spread the Gospel whenever and wherever opportunity arises. One certainly does not have to go overseas to the mission field to do that.
All of the above is important to kinists because we hold that missions should happen, first, as much as possible in the context of natural affinity groups. Second, that the natural affinity group that is the family should not be sacrificed for the sake of missions when missions can be done without breaking up the family unit.
The second sentence above refers to those who insist that God’s cursing upon us should be just accepted by the channels God uses to curse us. Rev. Doug Wilson has advanced this kind of position when he has written in the past;
“In the brewing culture wars, we ought not to stand with those seeking to ban same-sex marriage (or with those seeking to impose it).” “So we openly accept homosexual marriage in the civil realm as God’s means of undermining that civil realm, and we accept that He has done this in judgment for wicked fathering within the Church.”
Doug Wilson
Here the culture was on the brink of a full-on Luciferian assault against God, country, and family and Doug steps up to the mic and before God in heaven and man on earth instructs God’s people to openly accept homosexual marriage in the civil realm because like the prophets of old Doug has a pipeline to God and so knows that to resist same-sex marriage would be a mistake because Doug knows that God has visited us with the scourge of sodomite marriage because of wicked fathering within the Church.
Now, every minister can say that whatever comes into the lives of a people is providentially from the hand of God but no minister should suggest that he knows why God is providentially doing X, Y, or Z because of reasons A, B, C. No minister can crawl into God’s filing cabinet to get a definitive “this is that” reason. I don’t disagree that there is wicked fathering in the Church. I protest that Doug can make macro pronouncements about the mind of God concerning God’s providence — I protest Doug’s assumption to be a kind of Christian version of the Oracle of Delphi. Maybe instead God, in His providence, visited us with the scourge of sodomite marriage in order to punish us for hammerhead ministers making wild arse guesses about why God does this or that.
And to say that “we openly accept sodomite marriage?” What was the man smoking that day? Maybe God intended, contra Saint Doug, for Christians to rise up and resist magistrates who want to foist upon us the acceptance of sodomite marriage instead of just accepting it?
And now Trannyism is upon us. I can just hear the Oracle of Moscow now;
“In the brewing culture wars, we ought not to stand with those seeking to ban men in our women-folk bathrooms (or with those seeking to impose it).” “So we openly accept Trannys in the civil realm as God’s means of undermining that civil realm, and we accept that He has done this in judgment for not enough Christians agreeing with me about not resisting sodomite marriage.”
I can’t wait for Doug’s next “from on high” pronouncement on the coming pedophilia outbreak, not to mention, what God tells Doug about how Christians should resist the routine bedding of farm animals in the civil realm.
