Category: Culture

From the Mailbox – Pastor, Why are You so Adamant Regarding Celibate Sodomite Ministers?

Dear Pastor,

I was listening to your sermon this past Sunday and something stuck out to me that I don’t fully understand. I’m hoping you can clear up my misunderstanding.

You were preaching on how cultural Marxism has crept into the Christian church. You listed a few examples that came to your mind. I’m unable to understand one of them. You mentioned a pastor had announced he is same sex attracted but celibate. Then remarked the church was too cowardly (I’m reciting from memory here so if I get the verbiage wrong I apologize) to punish that pastor. 

I don’t think I understand why this pastor needs to be punished. Shouldn’t this be looked at similar to a sober alcoholic or a gambler who avoids the casino? I would have imagined we’d rejoice that someone is resisting temptation by God’s power and willing to share their struggle with others. Just as an aside, is the sharing of his urge the issue here? Is it normalizing same sex attraction within the church? Clearly I don’t know the character of the person you mentioned so who’s to say if they’re truthful. But taking the story at face value it seems like God’s victory, not something worthy of chastisement or punishment by human hands. 

If you could explain your line of thinking and what you meant when you brought that up I’d appreciate it. It feels like I don’t understand the scope of the example that you brought up or I misheard something.
 I enjoyed the past few weeks’ sermons and I’m looking forward to the next one. Thanks for taking the time to read this e-mail.

Zebulon Johnson

Hello Zebulon

Thank you for taking the time to ask. I hope I can answer your excellent question in a satisfying manner.

1.) It’s one thing to admit privately in a counseling session that you’re having trouble with same sex attracted (ssa) feelings. It’s quite another to celebrate the fact that you’re SSA. The Pastor in question has been a keynote speaker at several Revoice conferences held at his church. These conferences have been a gathering sight for anti-Christ Christianity which you can read about here,

https://gospelreformation.net/a-needful-departure/?print=print

2.) Scripture teaches that Ministers are to be “above reproach” ( 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6-7). I don’t think it is evidence of being above reproach if little Tommy on his way home from Church says to his parents…. “Daddy, Mommy, why do we attend a church where the Pastor likes other men the way Daddy likes Mommy?”

3.) Yes, it is normalizing the aberration. As I said, I have no problem coming alongside a brother or sister privately who has these temptations but when they start holding conferences in order to connect with one another, this means that the aberration is being mainstreamed.

I have, in the past, sought to befriend people w/ this besetting sin. Sadly, they never repented. So, this is not a matter of “Ew, this is icky and I don’t want to be around it.” It is a matter of “We should not be mainstreaming this in the church.”

4.) I do not think that it would be wise for a man who was a former alcoholic to be in the ministry if that alcoholism was recent. This would be doubly true if there was a boasting quality to his statement … “I am an alcoholic Christian, though I remain celibate as to the bottle today.”

5.) When Christ redeems us we don’t identify with the sin that we were redeemed from. The minister in question repeatedly says… “I am a gay Christian who is celibate.” NO… he is just a Christian who used to practice sodomy. Scripture says

9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor [b]homosexuals, nor [c]sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were [d]sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

The emphasis here is on the fact that what they once were, they now are no longer because they have been “Justified, in the name of the Lord.” Yet, the Pastor in question desires to continue to find his identity not in being justified but in proclaiming that he is a gay Christian.

6.) Some sins are worse than other sins. Westminster Catechism,

Q151 – What are those aggravations that make some sins more heinous than others?

Sins receive their aggravations,

a. From the persons offending922 if they be of riper age,923 greater experience or grace,924 eminent for profession,925 gifts,926 place,927 office,928 guides to others,929 and whose example is likely to be followed by others.930

b. From the parties offended:931 if immediately against God,932 his attributes,933 and worship,934 against Christ, and his grace,935 the Holy Spirit,936 his witness,937 and workings938 against superiors, men of eminence,939 and such as we stand especially related and engaged unto,940 against any of the saints,941 particularly weak brethren,942 the souls of them, or any other,943 and the common good of all or many.944

c. From the nature and quality of the offense:945 if it be against the express letter of the law,946 break many commandments, contain it in many sins:947 if not only conceived in the heart, but breaks forth in words and actions,948 scandalise others,949 and admit of no reparation:950 if against means,951 mercies,952 judgments,953 light of nature,954 conviction of conscience,955 public or private admonition,956 censures of the church,957 civil punishments;958 and our prayers, purposes, promises,959 vows,960 covenants,961 and engagements to God or men:962 if done deliberately,963 wilfully,964 presumptuously,965 impudently,966 boasting,967 maliciously,968 frequently,969 obstinately,970 with delight,971 continuance,972 or relapsing after repentance.973

d. From circumstances of time974 and place:975 if on the Lord’s day,976 or other times of divine worship,977 or immediately before978 or after these,979 or other helps to prevent or remedy such miscarriages,980 if in public, or in the presence of others, who are thereby likely to be provoked or defiled981 .
Sodomy is a particularly heinous sin. The desire for sodomy is a particular heinous sin. We know that sodomy is a particularly heinous sin because its committal required the death penalty in the OT. Now, to be sure, the temptation for sodomy is not as heinous as the actual act but referring to #2 above it is my conviction that to say “I am a gay Christian” removes one from the category of “above reproach.”

7.) If a Minister said … “I lust after other men’s wives but I am celibate” would you think that man belongs in the pulpit?

8.) The Pastor in question had an explanation for all this on the floor of their Denominational meeting. That explanation requires its own post in order to reveal the deep problems with his explanation and why it was not particularly Christian. His explanation only reinforced my conviction that he was in the wrong career. He clearly articulated that he self-identified as gay (more accurately, sodomite). It is sin for a Christian to find their identity in their sinful behavior OR desires.

9.) The fact that all this is proof that sodomy has been accepted is seen in the reality that while increasing numbers of “Christians” are accepting this language from a minister saying, “I am same sex attracted,” they would still never accept a minister saying… “I am same sex attracted to farm animals, but it’s ok because I resist the temptation to bed a milking cow.” Really what’s the difference? There is none. Neither is there any difference between a minister saying… “I am sexually attracted to dead people … to 3 year old boys … to toaster ovens.. but it’s ok because I don’t give in to those sexual attractions.” Nobody in their right mind would hire someone like that as a minister and yet they are ready to cheer a minister who says … “I am sexually attracted to other men but, it’s ok, I don’t give into that.” Why is that? It is because sodomy has been main-streamed already in the minds of simpleton Christians and all those other things will eventually likewise soon enough be main-streamed unless the Lord Christ desires to grant Reformation.

It’s all softening people up to accept the sodomite as Christian and is reflecting that many people have accepted this category and will soon accept the idea of two men being sodomites as long as they are married. This is the arc of all of this malfeasance.

10.) I don’t doubt that there are people who are ssa who may indeed be Christian. I do doubt that ssa people who boast of being ssa but celibate have yet to increase in sanctification.

11.) Now, invariably, people will accuse me of being a Pharisee for all of the above. So, I offer the necessary confession that I understand that I am, like the Apostle Paul, the chief of sinners. I understand that all my righteousness is in Christ alone. I understand that I need to continue to press on to the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I admit that apart from grace I would fall again tomorrow. I seriously labor to try to not think of myself more highly than I ought. If I knew the minister in question I would be glad to be friends with him just as I had two good friends once upon a time who were sodomites. I just don’t think this belongs in the pulpit, and further, I am convinced that the fact it is in the pulpit and is so widely accepted is evidence that the Institutional church has largely become a harlot.

Some of the bullet points above overlapped so you’ll forgive me if I’ve been repetitive.

Thanks for writing to ask,

Pastor Bret

Considering Christopher Dawson

“Christopher Dawson insisted that the function of any educational system was to created a common world of moral and intellectual values, a common memory which helped a given culture to maintain itself. To say that such a common educational tradition has now largely disappeared is to say that our culture is under thread of dissolution. What is today called ‘multiculturalism,’ that is, the idea that a society can be built around a plurality of cultures, with no single one of them dominating, presumably for Dawson would be a prescription for culture disintegration, and one question is whether in any respect he would be wrong.”

Christopher Dawson
The Crisis of Western Educations
Glen W. Olsen – Introduction

This is why I expect a civil war to break out in the West an America in the next 10 years. If it doesn’t it will be due to the fact that the single culture of multiculturalism will have put down all contenders to the throne. Multiculturalism could prevail as the single culture as it did in antiquity with the State being the agent that all cultures must bend the knee. In this scenario the State keeps the peace among all the various gods/cultures and in essence becomes god walking on the earth. As in ancient Rome all gods/cultures are allowed as long as they all pinch incense to Caesar. It looks to me that is where we are arcing and only if one of the religions/cultures really take their religion/culture seriously could there be a possible altering of our current historical arc.

—-

“Christopher Dawson thought it impossible for a minority to maintain to retain rigorous religious practice in a secular culture. Within the religious minority there would be constant ‘leakage’ with only a minority actually living and understanding their religion. Therefore it was not possible for Catholics to long live in a ghetto. They constantly had to address the enveloping culture, and their constant effort should be to encourage growth in the secular culture around them of those things which make the Catholic life viable, especially the teaching of an objective form of the history of Christian culture in the public schools.”

Christopher Dawson
The Crisis of Western Education
Glen W. Olsen – Introduction

1.) I wonder if Dawson would have labeled any culture as secular given his insistence that all culture is the enfleshment of some religion?

2.) The reason for the constant leakage is found in the fact that the culture shapes the people and as, per Dawson, culture is religion enfleshed, the reason that the leakage occurs is because the Christians as living in an alien religious culture are constantly being catechized by that culture into a religion that is not Christianity.

3.) When Dawson talks about the need for Christians to “encourage growth in the secular culture around them of those things which make the Catholic (Christian) life viable,” what he is saying is that Christians must not be conformed to the world but transformed by the renewing of their minds.

4.) Of course Dawson was in error about the need for all this to happen within the public schools. Even in Dawson’s lifetime the schools were hopelessly determined to snuff out a Christianity (Catholic or Protestant) that could challenge Dawson’s “secular culture.”

Christopher Dawson & McAtee; The Relationship Between Religion & Culture

“The idea that culture is embodied religion runs through Dawson’s writings. According to this view, every culture in its origins has religion at its center, and we may speak of culture as a kind of enfleshment of religion over time. Culture is the sum of ways in which some religion becomes embodied in material forms and patterns of life.”

Christopher Dawson
The Crisis of Western Education
Introduction – Glen W. Olsen

1.) Those who desire to champion two Kingdom thinking can never understand this truth because for them religion/theology belongs in a very circumscribed realm. For two Kingdom chaps religion/theology is one thing while politics, education, arts, family life, philosophy, etc. are all quite different things. Indeed, the two kingdom chaps insist that religion/theology must stay out of these other areas that are the very marrow of culture. Dawson (and Henry Van Til, and all worldview thinkers protested vehemently.

2.) For those with eyes to see all of life, not least of which includes culture, is a window into the soul of those moving through life. From the way a man dresses to the way that they speak to the way that they drive to the foods that they eat are all contributory expressions of the religion/theology they embrace and so animates them. Habits, as well as culture, are the movie screen on which the theology of people(s) is cast.

3.) Because this is true understanding culture grants one the prophetic/predictive ability of what people will do next. This is because people act consistent with their culture/habits. Because that is true one can build on the ability of understanding people by understanding their culture (religion).

4.) This also explains why parents must be careful about the education of their children. The role of the educator is to catechize the student into the religion/theology that is the driving of the curriculum being used. There is no curriculum, nor study, nor textbook that isn’t at the same time inculcating some religion/theology. We would also add that this explains why parents should be careful with the friends they allow their children to make. All potential friends are theology containers. Are those potential friends of your children carriers of the theology/religion that you, as a parent, desire your children to be influenced by?

5.) I note all this fully understanding that Dawson himself believed that Christian culture had a kind of dualism at heart. At this point I believe Dawson was inconsistent with his own project. All of culture is religiously/theologically integrated so as to from one expression of the same religion/theology.

Is “Saving People From Their Sins” the Ultimate Mission of the Church? A Repudiation of “Reformed” Rev. Chrissy Gordon

“DeYoung expressed, ‘Pugnacity and jocularity are not the occasional and unfortunate by-products of the brand; they are the brand.’ He’s exactly correct. As Christendom has collapsed in the West, Wilson has offered a vision that plays on the fears and emotions of those who are panicking. This is precisely why the mission of the church, all of the sudden, takes a drastic turn in its elevating of cultural transformation while ‘saving people from their sins’ becomes only a means to this greater end.”

Rev. Chrissy Gordon
R2K “Minister”
Quote from 2023

1.) Could anybody tell me what is wrong with toughness and humor (pugnacity and jocularity) being the type of Christianity one lives? Is this a case where people like DeYoung and Gordon are offended by having a sense of humor? Clearly, no one will be accusing DeYoung and Gordon of having the toughness required in order to be accused of being “pugnacious.”

2.) The Reformed have always believed that “saving people from their sins” is only the means to a greater end. It is the Lutherans, historically, who believed that “saving people from their sins” was the end of the message of the Gospel. Contrary to Lutherans, the Reformed always held that “saving people from their sins” was only a means to the higher end of a people determined to live for the glory of God. One of those ways people live for the glory of God is the cultural transformation that is the product of saved people seeking to live for the glory of God.

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological.”

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ – p. 189-190

Another way to put the differences between Lutheranism (what Gordon is trying to sell) and Reformed worldviews is that for Lutheranism salvation is for man and terminates on man, individually considered while for Reformed thought salvation is for God and serves the terminating end of a renewed cosmos dripping and saturated with God’s glory. For Lutheranism the teleology is man atoned for, whereas for Reformed thought the teleology includes but doesn’t end with man atoned for. For Reformed thought the teleology is the atonement as well as all the totality of corresponding and inevitable consequences that the atonement brings upon men who have been atoned for. Atonement for individual men is not the end product of Christ’s work. Atonement is the beginning and creating point of enlisting men into the cause of cosmic renewal for the glory of God. Men are not atoned for and saved for the sake of being atoned for and saved. Men are atoned for and saved to be put on a mission to take captive every thought and take dominion over every crevice of the cosmos to make all thoughts and all crevices obedient to King Christ. In Reformed thought, classical Lutheran thought is provincial and anthropocentric and is far to horizontally circumscribed and vertically nugatory.

Whatever Gordon is expressing here (I think it is Lutheranism) this is not the way the Reformed have thought over the centuries.

In other words… Rev. Gordon is just flat out in error here. However, nobody is surprised by Rev. Gordon and error going together like peas and carrots.

Machen & McAtee on the Importance of Christianity Capturing Culture

“False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed in only winning a straggler here and there. If we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which by the resistless force of logic prevent Christianity from being regarded by anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances what God desires us to do is destroy the obstacle at the root. That method or procedure is based simply on the profound believe in the pervasive belief of ideas. So, as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.

Christianity is exerting a far less powerful direct influence in the civilized world today than it was exerting thirty years ago.”


“The chief obstacle to the Christian religion today lies in the sphere of the intellect. Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel. For making it subservient religious emotion is not enough, intellectual labor is also necessary. And that labor is being collected. The church has turned to easier task and now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life. Perhaps by God’s grace, through His good Spirit, in His good time, she might issue once more with power and an age of doubt may be followed by the dawn of an era of faith.”

Dr. J. Gresham Machen
1912

Machen here is fighting the rampant pietism that has been characteristic of the church in the West since the 1st great awakening. Though he doesn’t mention the word “Pietism” we know that is what was in his sites given his comment on how religious emotion will never be enough to make culture subservient to Christianity. This ubiquitous pietism that Machen was fighting in 1912 remains with us even yet today. It is precisely because the church continues to pursue grabbing the religious emotions of people as opposed to the intellectual labor necessary for a culture to be subservient to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

This fault has even become monstrous in the denominations once thought of as being conservative. In these denominations Christianity has become subservient to a decidedly non-Christian culture. Indeed, the “theology” called R2K, even insists, contra Machen that there can be no such thing as Christian culture. The counsel of R2K is that Machen was in error when he wrote about the necessity to make culture subservient to the Gospel. (I wish Machen had said “Christianity” instead of “Gospel” because today the word “Gospel” has become reductionistic compared to the more full orbed idea of “Christianity” which the “Gospel” is the entry point of.)

Right now culture is indeed the deadliest enemy of Christianity because our current culture has been made captive to and is an expression of anti-Christ theologies and religions. As such, our current culture is re-defining and re-shaping the definition of Christianity as the contemporary “conservative” church reinterprets Christianity through the prism of our modern anti-Christ culture. This has become so pronounced that those clergy who are not yet reinterpreting Christianity through the prism of our anti-Christ culture are now being defrocked, dismissed, and excommunicated from their formerly Christian denominations, and that because they still cling to the old ways and walk the old paths that our Reformed Fathers blazed and trod.

The intellectual labor required, that Machen spoke of, is in abeyance. Many of those reputed to be pillars in the NAPARC/LCMS/CREC/Southern Baptist denominations are using their intellect to say either that the Church should not be concerned with the culture (pietism) or that it is not possible to have a transforming effect on culture (R2K/Gnosticism). In those rare cases where the Church does admit that it can be salt and light in the culture the Church offers up a salt and light that only makes the taste flatter and the darkness heavier. (Here I’m thinking of Doug Wilson and the CREC.)

Machen wrote this over 110 years ago. Matters have only gotten worse since 1912. The Church has become a pale reflection of the Spirit of the Age. Still, there is reason for confidence …. even great confidence. The Spirit of the Age is a Spirit of death and dying. It has nothing to offer and in the end, because death when it wins, loses, the future is for those who champion Machen’s type of thinking.

However, before the Church can win out again, it has to once again realize and embrace engagement with the culture.

Another word here. What Machen says here speaks to the idea of Cultural Christianity that so many denounce. Machen is calling for a Christianity that is so predominant in the culture that it becomes the cultural presuppositional setting even for those who reject Christ. Machen is arguing that Christianity must become the fait accompli of a peoples contextual environment. Machen argues that without that reality our missionary endeavors among our own people and in our own nation will produce little fruit. The reason that Machen can argue in such a manner is that when a culture is the outward manifestation of a people’s inward Christ hating theology the consequence is that neither the Gospel nor Biblical Christianity can make any sense because people in such a Christ hating culture have no frame of reference by which to understand the claims of Christ. When culture becomes anti-Christ culture placarding and explaining Christ to such a culture is like trying to explain rocket propulsion to sub-Saharan Xhosa Africans.

Now, the accusation will be here that both Machen and I are de-super naturalizing conversion. Nothing could be further from the truth. All conversion requires a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit to open eyes. However, all because all conversion requires a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit to open eyes that does not mean we work harder to make it even darker out…. and that is what the modern church is doing. It is working more and more diligently to make our current cultural night even darker than it already is and it is doing that by reinterpreting the Christian faith through the premises of anti-Christ culture.

The visible conservative church must repent. If it does not we are headed for even more dark night and old chaos before post tenebras lux finally breaks through.