“Allberry’s use of the term ‘same-sex attraction’ is concerning because of the impression it gives that sodomite feelings are in some way to be excused.”

Enoch Burke
Hedonism & Homosexuality — p. 79

I can understand why Paul asked the Galatians… “Who has bewitched you.” In that context St. Paul was dumbfounded that anybody could have returned to the Judaizing doctrine of Justification by works. I would like to say to the modern American church … “Who has bewitched you?” How could anybody be satisfied with the idea that sodomites impulses are just fine as long as they are not acted upon? Queer but celibate is an acceptable category? “American Christians… who has bewitched you?”

Sam Allberry in one of his “I’m same-sex attracted but I am celibate” diatribes faults the Church for too often thinking it needs to challenge a sodomite coupling when they attend church over their lifestyle playing the “but you don’t do that when an unmarried couple who live together show up in Church” card. Allberry is suggesting if we don’t challenge one we shouldn’t challenge the other about their immoral lifestyles.

This willingness to believe this shows that we are bewitched. Would you countenance someone saying, “I am Holstein-cow attracted?” If someone showed up to attend church with their mare horse and confessed that they were sexually attracted to horses would you say to yourself…

“Well, as I wouldn’t question a visiting man and woman about their living together as unmarried when they showed up as visitors to church therefore I shouldn’t question the Man and mare horse that just showed up for Church out of a matter of civility, good manners, and Christian charity. After all, a man and woman living together unmarried and having sex out of wedlock is no more sinful then a man and a mare horse living together unmarried and having sex out of wedlock?”

The fact that we have made peace with sodomy in the Church is seen in that we can treat same-sex attracted but celibate sodomites as if they are not mentally unhinged. We wouldn’t treat someone who confessed to us that they were dead people attracted but celibate as not unhinged. Why do we accept the idea that someone who is same-sex attracted but celibate as not mentally unhinged?

Dear Pastor,

“Good friends of ours attend a Reformed church near Grand Rapids. John shared with me that doctrine isn’t emphasized, just love for Jesus and others. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Kerry Pauls
Three Rivers, Michigan

Dear Kerry,

Thanks for writing.

Let’s consider this for just a moment.

First we have the problem that apart from doctrine being taught how is it possible to know what love is or looks like? If I don’t have doctrine being taught there is no stable definition of love and each man defines “love” as is right in his own eyes. Apart doctrine how could I determine whether any action is loving or unloving? Bottom line is, one can’t not know what love is apart from doctrine being emphasized.

Second, we have the problem that apart from doctrine being taught how is it possible to know whether the “love for Jesus” is the love for the real Jesus or some impostor Jesus? Without doctrine how do I know if I have the right Jesus or one made up of my own fancy? It is only doctrine that tells me who Jesus is and whether he is worth my love.

Third, as the real Jesus Himself said, “If you love me keep my commandments,” then it is not possible to love the real Jesus without the doctrine that limns out the meaning of His commandments. In other words if you don’t emphasize doctrine then it is not possible to love Jesus because the only way to love Jesus is to understand His commandments and you can’t understand His commandments without emphasizing them.

Fourth, this is not possibly true. I presume that something is said in the pulpit week in and week out. Whatever is said from the pulpit even if it is only “we don’t teach doctrine here but just loving Jesus and others,” then that is the church’s doctrine. (Pathetic as it would be.)

Fifth, this attitude tells me that this Church which does not emphasize doctrine does not “just love Jesus.” Paul tells Timothy explicitly in I Timothy 4,

“If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.”

“Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.”

You see here the importance that the Holy Spirit puts on doctrine?

But you know what … I’m willing to bet that what your friend said of his church is true of a overwhelmingly high percentage of “conservative” “Reformed” “churches” in America. I’m willing to stipulate that most Pastors in most “conservative,” “Reformed” “churches” in America don’t teach doctrine and ironically enough it’s probably a good thing they don’t since if they did they would bugger it up so badly that it would be even more damaging to the congregations souls then what is being said now from pulpits. Your better off with a Pastor that doesn’t emphasize doctrine then you would be with a R2K pastor who did emphasize doctrine.

I’ve been around. I’ve sat in on ordination exams. I’ve spoken with ordained conservative ministers frequently. I’ve been in the ministry over 30 years now. And in all that time I personally know (I’ve met them and talked to them and have a relationship with them) only one other Reformed pastor who I would want emphasizing doctrine. I’m sure there are more out there but I’ve not got to know them beyond just an acquaintance status.

Colossians 1:13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves…

So, Christians believe that with Regeneration the Christ believer has been placed in the New Creation (the age to come). That New Creation is, of course, distinct from this present evil age. This is so much so that the Believer and the unbeliever reside in two different Kingdom with two different Lord’s and two different standards as to what constitutes right and wrong. There is, as such, an inevitable and inescapable anti-thesis. Yet, despite all this commonly accepted Reformed thinking, R2K wants to suggest that those who live in the age to come and those who live in this present wicked age as two contrasting and competing Kingdoms still share a common source of truth and a common ethic as they each, as belonging to two different Lords, interact in what R2K calls the “common realm,” and abide what they call “natural law” a law that is neutral and so can rule both believers and unbelievers in the R2K’s common realm.

Note here also that while R2K insists on two Kingdoms they identify the two Kingdoms as the common realm and the grace realm. But what of the two Kingdoms as identified in Scripture? In Scripture we see the Kingdom of God and the Dominion of Darkness. Has R2K wrongly identified the two Kingdoms in their innovative theology? I think so.

This means that for R2K the one who resides in the new creation vis-a-vis the unregenerate who reside in the un-renewed creation suffer no antithesis in the standard by which their lives are governed in the R2K “common realm.”

How can this be?

It was the French Revolution that brought us the modern notion of the “left” and the “right.” The Jacobins (Montagnards) sat on the left of the Speaker in the Assembly while the Girondins sat center left and those who supported Louis XVI (Constitutional Monarchists) sat on the right in the National Assembly.This is not without significance. The reason that “left” and “right” became designations is because the Left was making a statement. They knew that Christianity taught that those on the right hand of God were the saved while those on the left hand were damned. The seating arrangement reflected their attempt to overthrow God from His throne.This mindset is underscored by the maxim of the left. They freely chanted, “No God, No King,” and took for a motto that “We will not be satisfied until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”The French Revolution, like all revolutions, is ultimately man’s attack on God. The one we are living through right now is the same. Unless we put these God haters down they will do to us just what revolutionaries have always done to God’s people in revolution. For example, in the Bolshevik Revolution Christian church buildings were turned into animal stables, slaughter houses, and dance halls. In addition some 200,000 (Christian) clergy, many crucified, scalped and otherwise tortured, were killed during the approximately 60 years of communist rule in the former Soviet Union. Also 40,000 churches (were) destroyed in the period from 1922 to 1980.

What is going on in Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, New York, and other major American cities is only a political revolution after it is a theological and religious revolution.

I Peter 2:11 Beloved, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh, which war against your soul.

The point here is not that the recipient of Peter’s letter are literally exiles. As such the point of this text is metaphorical communicating that the believers to whom Peter wrote did not fit in with the world system as it was governed by those in opposition to the God of the Bible. Peter is emphasizing the alienation of the recipients of his letter from life in the world as it lies in the thralldom of Satan. The believers that Peter wrote to did not fit in with the values and priorities that characterized their social order.

However, Peter should not be read to teach that believers will in all times, eras, and places have an equal sense of being foreigners and exiles (strangers and aliens). It is true that believers will always have a different destination and will, as such, have a longing for their future eternal home but to make this passage teach that because Christians are strangers and aliens therefore Christians should not seek to extend the present crown rights over every area of life is to make this Scripture say other than what it says.

As the already present Kingdom of God continues to expand across the globe so that the Kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Christ — as the mustard seed continues to grow into a great Kingdom tree that fills all the earth Christians will have less of a sense of alienation, though there will always be a desire to go home and be present with the Lord. We must keep in mind that God intends that planet earth will be an outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven so that all of our social orders treat Christians as aliens and strangers. We know this is true from Daniel 2 where we learn that Jesus Christ pictured as a great stone destroys all the challenging Kingdoms eventuating in that stone (Christ) filling all the earth.

It is true that when, in God’s providence, we live in times of declension, believers feel more the fact that they have no continuing city just as the first century believers were familiar. It is true that when rebellion against Christ is in high fettle Christians will especially have a sense of being strangers and aliens but all because that was the situation of the 1st century believers, and perhaps the situation of believers in different epochs since then, that doesn’t mean that we retire from the loyal work to Christ of soldiers who seek, by the Spirit’s unction, to engage people for Christ. Neither does it mean that we, as Christian just disconnect from being salt and light to those who leverage the great social order Institutions and mechanisms.

It should always be said of Christians by unbelievers in Christ that we Christians have showed up to “throw their cities into turmoil by promoting customs that are unlawful for Christ haters to adopt or practice (Acts 16:20).” We Christians should always be accused by the Christ hater gatekeepers of cultures as those who have turned the world upside down have come to their cities also (Acts 17:6). We as Christians should be threats to social orders which don’t honor Christ just as the social order was threatened by Paul in Ephesus as the Economic gate-keepers were threatened by the Reformation that was bubbling in Ephesus (Acts 19).

We cannot read I Peter 2:11 in such a way as to make it contradict with these examples we find in Holy Writ. Per the way many of the R2K boys interpret I Peter 2:11 Paul was in sin because he did not treat this world as a stranger and alien the way that R2K wants Christians to treat the social orders in which they live.

Scripture does not teach the “quietism” that R2K desires to shoehorn all Christians into. Scripture knows nothing of the kind of pietism that R2k tries to guilt all Christians into owning. R2K takes I Peter 2:11 and twists it to seek to have believers think they are ungodly if they contend for the crown rights of our Liege Lord Christ in the social orders He has providentially placed each of us.

I promise the R2K boys that I will be every bit as much a stranger and alien as we find St. Paul being in the book of Acts.