Warren on the Purpose-Driven Life: A Short Historical Write-Up

The following ended up sounding more negative than I intended, since I really did like the book and thought it served FBC well years ago when the church went through it:

Rick Warren is undoubtedly one of the United States’ most influential pastors and one of the public faces of mainstream Evangelicalism. He and his church have had a huge impact on congregations across the country – and now across the world – through their ministries, in particular through the book The Purpose Driven Life and the small group curriculum/church extravaganza that it is designed to be paired with. The main goal of the book is to engage people in the task of living out God’s purposes for them on this earth in place of some other purpose or purposes that might be pursued instead. It aims to inculcate a sense of direction and of purpose that can be lived into and used to order the various priorities, desires, and goals one might have in day-to-day living that vie for volitional control within one’s mind or will. An orderly, energized, focused life is the ideal goal to be imperfectly pursued in a process of spiritual self-formation.

There are, of course, criticisms one could make of the book. It definitely is not meant to address every person in every circumstance where they might be at and does not show any awareness how particular uses of language may alienate some female readers, as it has in fact done in at least some instances. Nor does it do a perfect job with its use of (often very paraphrastic translations of) Scripture, though at least some of that can be chalked up to audience and format, which does not allow an in depth exegesis of particular verses in their contexts and a subsequent exposition based on this. At least from a critical view, of course, some of the uses of the Scriptures do not really support or say what he is using them to support or say. In Warren’s defense, however, it is hard to find a pastor who does not fall into this from time to time, particularly when speaking on such a popular level. There are certainly pastors who are also very good exegetes, but they are a minority and I do not think we should expect pastors to all be so (though that would be very nice indeed), since not all are given such gifts or talents. It does do a good job of portraying the sort of unsophisticated use of the Scriptures that we can work to improve and show by both example and explicit teaching how to go beyond.

As a kind of how-to manual for self-formation, of course, people are likely to criticize it for not being something else they would rather have. Such books, for instance, always have the danger of being too self-focused, a danger that Warren admirably does in fact try to ameliorate with his constant call to focus on God and others and to live as a member of a community of faith, though this is admittedly at times lost in a focus on one’s own self-interests (the rewards one can get, for instance, from God for being faithful). This, of course, is just a symptom of American Christians’ often not-so-successful struggle to get out of the bonds of individualism and self-focus that are practically bred into Americans and into their perceptions of religion and the Christian life. We want to know how something will benefit us and how it relates to us and focus on ourselves as the center and focus of our own spirituality or religious path. Religion is a consumer affair, like everything else in our culture.

This brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves about this book and about American (and much other) Christianity as well, which is the focus in parts on “going to heaven” when we die as if that was the great hope for Christians. Rather than the cosmic vision of the bodily resurrection of God’s people and the concomitant restoration of all of creation, the earth and the physical universe included, such as one finds in places like Romans 8 and in pieces all throughout the New Testament, we are given a limp, bland, self-centered picture of getting to go as a single solitary individual to a disembodied heaven away from the earth when I die. Christian eschatology has nearly dropped out of the picture, replaced with a kind of Platonist placebo. Such views, however, are common in the individualistic churches we find here in the West. “Going to heaven”, where this is understood as personal, individualistic persistence as a disembodied spirit in an immaterial realm separated from the physical universe, is seen as the great hope and goal of the Christian faith. This has usurped the classical and biblical view of our great hope as being the renewal of all things, including the resurrection of our own bodies, the hallowing of the physical, and heaven descended to earth. The cosmic, physical, redemptive gospel has become a personal, immaterial, escapist fantasy. This almost Gnostic flight from the historically and physically-oriented view of our destiny is something we ought to continue to work to correct in our churches.

The individualism of the book, particularly as it has infected its eschatology, is the main think I would correct in this book as I find it most irksome. The book as a whole, however, has much to say to many people, whether or not it falls short in all the ways listed here – what book does not fall short in many ways or fail to do everything one might want it to do? It offers hope and direction for a more real and deep relationship with God, realizing one’s divine purpose in life, and fleeing from self-serving goals and externally- or self-imposed purposes in favor of the purposes of our life that have been ordained by God, who is the center and anchor of all things.

Why I Think John Piper's 'Christian Hedonism' View Sucks (And Also What's Good About It Too)

Sorry about the long wait between blogs. I've been extremely busy teaching a critical reasoning class by myself for the first time, raising an almost-two-year-old, writing and revising papers for conferences and/or job writing sample, and working on my dissertation. Oh yeah, and taking vacations too. Whew! Anyway, here's a topic that came to mind since FBC did a Sunday School class recently featuring some material of John Piper's (my wife and I were able to make it to the last session only). Part of the material, of course, is John Piper's view he calls 'Christian Hedonism'. Unlike some others, I have no problem with the provocative title - its the actual content I dislike now and always have since I first encountered it in college. I'll start by laying into (some of) the problems I see with the view and will end my nasty things by actually saying some nice things as well (unfortunately, which is a poor reflection on me, I often don't get around to saying many nice things about books or views with which I disagree - I just "don't have the time").

So here are Piper's views as far as I understand them (if I've gotten anything wrong, let me know). The basic idea is that Piper alters the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which reads "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever" to "The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever". Here Piper understand "enjoying" as literally "taking pleasure in", thus effectively altering the statement even further ("enjoying" certainly includes this notion, but it is much broader than this). On Piper's view, our supreme goal should be pleasure - that is, pleasure from (or, perhaps, in or through or...?) God. This should be our overarching desire and goal. Piper gives an analogy where the reason he does loving things for his wife is because it gives him pleasure. Similarly, our motivation in doing godly things should be the pleasure that can ultimately be derived from it. The pursuit of godly pleasure ought to be our number one concern.

There are a lot of things I find wrong, if not even disturbing about this view. First of all, it exalts as godly what I take to be an essentially fallen, sinful motivational structure. God becomes nothing more than the big giant Pez dispenser of pleasure in the sky. Sure, I may do godly things and think godly things perhaps, but the ordering of my motivations is all off. I am to serve God because of what's in it for me - not because I value God or anything he says or does for its own sake. Sure, godly pleasure is a very good thing, but we mess up priorities and the ordering of various values if we put that as numero uno. In effect, by doing so, we put ourselves as numero uno - it is my pleasure in God that matters. So there's a kind of self-centeredness at the heart of Christian hedonism that does not recognize the fact that what we should value most and what our motivations should be centered on should be something outside of ourselves. Not only is it not all about me, but my thinking and desires should not ultimately all be about me either.

Another thing I find wrong with it is that it fails to take into account the Paradox of Hedonism. The idea essentially (which is a very old, wise one noticed by countless thinkers throughout history and throughout the world) is that the surest way not to get happiness is to pursue it as primary goal. It is only when we pursue and value other things and do so for their own sakes that we find happiness in achieving our goals. For non-bodily pleasures, happiness comes precisely as a byproduct of achieving those things we value for their own sakes. If I do not already value something for its sake, I am much less likely to take any pleasure in it. Pleasure or happiness is a reaction to or constituent of achieving our highest goals, not the highest goal itself. That is precisely why seeking non-bodily pleasure for its own sake is so self-defeating! But this is precisely what Piper does - he mistakes the frosting for the cake, the valuable response to what is ultimately valuable for what is ultimately valuable. Sure, pleasure in God probably is one of the highest goods for humans. But it is not the single highest good to be pursued for its own sake, rather it is the proper reaction to pursuing and achieving such higher goods. Piper, like all hedonists of whatever variety, simply gets things mixed up and upside down.

There are good points about Christian hedonism, though. Pleasure in God really is something good. It really is something we should want (it just shouldn't be our ultimate, overarching goal and desire). And it really is something we ought to have and it can be a sign that we aren't quite there yet spiritually if we are lacking in it (though I'd want to include some qualifications here having to do with being tested spiritually, suffering on behalf of others, dark nights of the soul, etc., which do not necessarily indicate any kind of spiritual immaturity). Indeed, the idea of Christian hedonism can help release those who find God and religion a rather stuffy, no-pleasure, all-guilt and suffering all-the-time, somber and bleak affair. (Although, granted, in my life I've more often encountered people who went off the deep end in the other direction and just went around looking for the next big religious high) So Christian hedonism isn't all bad, it just mistakes one key, important part of the main thing for the main thing itself.

Quotes: Anscombe on Various Topics

Last week's biography of Anscombe at the adult Sunday school class went pretty well. Here are some interesting quotes of hers, most of which ended up making it into the presentation:

“You might as well accept any sexual goings–on, if you accept contraceptive intercourse.”

“There is one consideration here which has something like the position of absolute zero or the velocity of light in current physics. It cannot possibly be an exercise of civic authority deliberately to kill or mutilate innocent subjects.”

"In these days, the authorities claim the right to control not only the policy of the nation but also the actions of every individual within it; and their claim has the support of a large section of the people of the country, and of a peculiar force of emotion. This support is gained, and this emotion caused by the fact that they are "evil things" that we are fighting against. That they are evil we need have no doubt; yet many of us still feel distrust of these claims and these emotions lest they blind men to their duty of considering carefully, before they act, the justice of the things they propose to do. Men can be moved to fight by being made to hate the deeds of their enemies; but a war is not made just by the fact that one's enemies' deeds are hateful. Therefore it is our duty to resist passion and to consider carefully whether all the conditions of a just war are satisfied in this present war, lest we sin against the natural law by participating in it."

"For men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder."

“It is nonsense to pretend that you do not intend to do what is the means you take to your chosen end. Otherwise there is absolutely no substance to the Pauline teaching that we may not do evil that good may come.”

“It is not a vague faith in the triumph of the spirit over force (there is little enough warrant for that), but a definite faith in the divine promises, that makes us believe that the Church cannot fail. Those, therefore, who think they must be prepared to wage a war with Russia involving the deliberate massacre of cities, must be prepared to say to God: 'We had to break your law, lest your Church fail. We could not obey your commandments, for we did not believe your promises.'”

“Each nation that has ‘liberal’ abortion laws has rapidly become, if it was not already, a nation of murderers.”

And last, but not least...

"If you do that again, I'll put you on the train to Bicester."

In the Meantime...

Busy working on a biographic presentation on Elizabeth Anscombe for FBC. Here's a funny political comic I found to tide you over until my next blog:

Notes for the Simply Christian Sunday School Class on Justice & Spirituality, God, and Israel

In case anyone was interested, I decided to post my notes on two recent adult Sunday School classes I led at FBC. We are going through the 10 week Sunday School course based on N. T. Wright's book Simply Christian (a great book, and a great course - highly recommended!). I actually did three sessions - one on Justice & Spirituality two weeks ago for one class and two (on God and Israel respectively) which were squeezed into a single morning yesterday. So here you are (hopefully it's understandable - they're just notes after all, though lightly edited to take time schedules and such off of them):

Simply Christian Session 2: Justice & Spirituality

Justice
* Discussion 1: What does Jesus have to do with justice, injustice, and “setting the world to rights”? Is a passion for justice integral to the Christian life? Why or why not? How, if at all, does it relate to the biblical commandment to forgive even one’s enemies?

* Discussion 2: Jesus says that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love one’s neighbor. In the Old Testament God’s heart for the latter is revealed in his passion for mercy and justice. This passion for justice is revealed especially in God’s heart for the poor, minorities, the weak, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the disadvantaged, widows, orphans, aliens and indeed all who are vulnerable or not so well off. How well has today’s evangelical church reflected God’s passion and priorities in its own? Why? How could we do better?

Puzzle: Why is there this universal recognition of and thirst for justice even when we can’t get it, either in society or in ourselves?
Christian answer: God acts justly and is passionate for justice, and we were made in his image.

Micah 6:8

Christianity teaches that this passion for justice, and God’s plan to achieve it, finds its embodiment in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the focal point of God’s call for justice within us, his passion for it and plan to achieve it. Jesus is God’s ultimate answer to injustice by taking all the injustice of the world on himself and therefore all the justice of God against that injustice. And when he completes God’s plan, all will be set aright and injustice will be done away with forever.

How does this affect a Christian’s life? Heroes of the faith passionate for justice precisely because they were Christian. Because Christ is at the center of God’s passion for justice and his solution to injustice and we are in Christ, we too find ourselves called to be agents of justice and conduits for God’s passion for it. When we pursue justice, we are more fully implementing the image of God in which we are made and more fully being conformed to the likeness of God’s Son.

Proverbs 29:7, Amos 5:21-24

What’s the scope of this concern for justice? When we are passionate for justice, we no longer care only for ourselves, our family, our nation, people like us, or even the church. Justice calls us not to be insular: not ‘just us’. This is something the evangelical church is still in the process of trying to get things right. Zechariah 7:9-10. We are to seek justice and mercy for non-Christians, the disadvantaged, and all who are not like us or who do not like us or who we ourselves do not like.

What can we do? Look up IJM, get involved in petitioning leaders about cases of injustice around the world, get involved with World Vision or other similar groups, be a foster parent, environment, above all pray.

Spirituality
* Discussion 3: Look at the list below of the top sellers in Spirituality on Amazon. Considering this list and the success of books like The Da Vinci Code, other “alternative” pictures of Jesus and his message, and stuff like the Gospel of Judas, what can you conclude about our culture’s relationship with spirituality?

The Secret

God Is Not Great
The God Delusion

The Freedom Writers Diary

Left to Tell
The Secret (CD Set)
Law of Attraction: The Secret of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t
Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
The Four Agreements (A Toltec Wisdom Book)
Right People, Right Place, Right Plan
Blue Like Jazz
Ask and It is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Dreams
The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thought to Change Your Life and the World
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
The Success Principle
Your Best Life Now
The Law of Attraction: Teachings of Abraham
Battle of the Mind
Boundaries
The Law of Attraction
The Laws of Thinking: 10 Secrets to Using the Divine Power of Your Mind to Manifest Prosperity

El Secreto (The Secret in Spanish)
~ Other notable best-sellers from the Religion & Spirituality section: Witness to Roswell: The 60-Year Cover-Up; Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More; Atheist Universe

* Discussion 4: How would a religion that truly fulfills our needs for spirituality differ from one that was designed to make a maximum amount of money, converts, and popularity? Are what people want in a religion and what they need the same thing?

Spirituality: that awareness that all humans have that they are made for a relationship with someone or something much bigger, much greater, than anything we humans can know by our own will.

Puzzle: Why is there this universal hunger for spirituality?
Christian answer: We are made by God for a relationship with him, both individually and together.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

Spirituality is very popular now, but people don’t like authority or organized religion and want to, individualistically, create their own spiritual religion without the supposed constraints of Christianity or other such traditions. They want it to meet their wants and needs and to do so now. They are so thirsty for spirituality and so hardened against Christianity that they are willing to drink from polluted spiritual waters.

Chesterton: When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.

Romans 1:21-23

Christian spirituality is very different.
It is rooted in spontaneity, yes, but tradition as well. A personal, individually crafted thing but one that also answers to and is involved with both a community and a history. One that involves solitary contemplation and prayer but also a life of service to the Church and the world. It is intensely practical pursuit, not an idle practice of staring at your navel and thinking good thoughts while you hum a hymn or two. Christian spirituality involves relationship both with God and the community of saints throughout history – today’s private spiritual practices without authority or constraint miss out on all of these dimensions of spiritual richness.

The heart of Christian spirituality is in the foundation of our relationship with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. One text that I think captures the dynamic at the heart of this spirituality is Romans 8.

Simply Christian
Sessions 4&5: God, Israel

GOD
* Discussion: What do you think of when you hear the word “heaven”? How is it the same or different from the three options mentioned? What might be some of the practical implications of these differences?

Heaven and Earth: Three Options
Option One: Heaven = Earth (and so God = Creation)
Option Two: Heaven and Earth fully distinct and completely separate (and so God is distant)
Option Three: Heaven and Earth distinct but overlapping and interlocking

Though Option One has become popular in some churches, Option Two is the most influential of the non-biblical options on people today who call themselves Christians. Option Two unfortunately has had a profound influence on Western Christianity and its influence can be seen in many evangelical churches and sermons.

Salvation for Option Two is escape to another realm, heaven, where one’s immaterial soul goes to after death and where it will dwell away from the material creation and in communion with God forever. Sound familiar? This is a close relative to the old Gnostic heresy, which involved a denial of the basic goodness of creation and views God’s original creation as something that God has or will ultimately abandon as unredeemed or unredeemable. The motto: "The earth is not our home".

In Option Three, God is not a distant God who abandons his creation. Heaven is not a wholly separate realm but one which overlaps with earth. And in the biblical story, these two will be joined together permanently when Christ returns. So salvation ultimately doesn’t mean to live in a disembodied existence away from the earth, but in the end means to be resurrected and live with God forever on the earth. In option three, we will literally and completely have heaven on earth and with Christ this inbreaking of heaven onto earth has already begun – Christ himself is the ultimate overlap and interlocking between heaven and earth and so now we too can be places where heaven and earth meet and where God is present in a living and active way in his Creation. Ephesians 1:3 Ephesians 2:6 “Being in heaven” or “going to heaven” isn’t something exclusively for those who die, but in a very real and important sense on the biblical picture we are already in heaven, though not yet completely or fully – our heavenly, eternal life and communion with God has already begun. What our job is is to live and think this important truth and to constantly remind ourselves of it – salvation is future but it’s importantly present as well.

Salvation on the biblical option involves renewal of and in creation and enjoyment of heaven on earth, not the abandonment of creation and enjoyment of heaven away from the earth. Salvation is about redemption, not escape!

ISRAEL

* Discussion: Consider the following two pictures of Jesus:
1) Jesus came with a message about love and timeless moral truths. The Jewish trappings of what he said are secondary and not necessary to consider for interpreting his universal message.
2) Jesus came with a message directed to the very specific situation of first century Jews and their place in God’s timeline. The Jewish trappings of what he said are essential to it and necessary to consider for interpreting his particular message.
Which picture best captures the Jesus of the Bible? Why? How do these two pictures relate to the three options about God and heaven from the previous session on God?

The biblical story is one of fall/slavery/exile/curse and creation/exodus/return/restoration. These are interwoven throughout Scripture and each member of one of the two categories is spoken of using imagery and terms drawn from others in that same category.
For example, Exodus = Beginning of New Creation,
Return = New Exodus = New Creation,
Restoration = Full Return = New Exodus = New Creation

The Fall and the reign of sin which accompanied it represents for the world the ultimate exile or slavery. The call of Abraham and God’s election of Israel represents the beginning of God’s great rescue plan. Israel was to be God’s means for putting things right. Genesis 12:2-3
But Israel itself was sinful, so they repeated the Fall over and over again and suffered from exile and slavery over and over again.

The king was supposed to be Israel’s representative and take Israel’s job on himself and to be responsible to see that Israel completed God’s job given to them. But the kings were themselves sinful and suffered from the same fate as their people. Messiah was to be the one king to change this – to go through exile and the consequences of sin and then to experience a return from that condition on Israel’s behalf so that Israel might have a full return from ultimate exile and thus have their job fulfilled by this promised king. Restoration of Israel in the person of Messiah meant fulfillment of Israel’s job and thus the setting of things to rights for the whole world – healed relationships and justice, true spirituality, and the full beauty of creation as God intended it. Heaven on earth. We as Christians, of course, believe that this Messiah was none other than Jesus.

Isaiah 49:1-7

Notes on Romans 1:1-6

Here's some notes I wrote up a while back when the Roaring 20's (the 20s+ group at FBC) was studying the book of Romans. Since FBC as a whole is now doing Romans, fellow FBC-ers may or may not find it interesting:

Here, hopefully, is an interesting way of looking at Romans 1:1-6. It could be interesting because, if it is right, it shows that these first few verses set up the basic themes of the rest of Romans which are to be discussed in a more expanded, detailed and applied manner throughout the remaining chapters. These first few verses set up who Paul is, his role in terms of the gospel, and what that gospel is – it more or less sets up Paul’s agenda for the letter. On the way of looking at these verses I want to consider, the focus is on the following things: Jesus Christ and his Messiahship as leader of the People of God, his vindication and exaltation as that Messiah and the result of that, by which Israel’s Messiah becomes also the Gentile’s Messiah so that both Jew and Gentile can equally participate in the People of God and attain ultimate salvation in the age to come.

First, Paul stresses the Jewishness of Jesus – Jesus is Israel’s Messiah foretold by the prophets in the Scriptures, the Messiah who was to be a descendant of David. Of course, mere descent from David does not by itself make Jesus the Messiah (though it is a prerequisite, of course). It was in his resurrection that Jesus was vindicated and shown to be the true Messiah – his Messiahship was confirmed and he was elevated to a new and glorified stage of this Kingship (note that if it is in fact the case that the words ‘with power’ in v.4 should be linked to the words ‘Son of God’ rather than to ‘declared’ then we have a specification of what that next stage of Messiahship is – the Messiah (or Son of God) with power).

But why say that v.4 concerns Jesus’s Messiahship rather than his divinity alone? Consider the following: ‘God’s son’ or ‘the son of God’ (there is no real difference in the Greek – I don’t think there is any difference in the Hebrew either) was a title that was used both in Scripture and in the Jewish culture of the time to refer to Israel, the People of God (for OT examples see, for instance, the passages beginning with Exodus 4:22, and Hosea 11:1). Since Israel was God’s son, His chosen and beloved one for whom He was their Father (there are even more examples of God being called Israel’s Father), such a title applied all the more to Israel’s king.

In this culture, the king was a representative and leader of his people – a kind of corporate individual who stood for all who followed him. So the title of the people could be applied to its representative and the representative’s name or title could be applied to the people. So if we were Jews and Pastor Glen was our representative and leader, we would say that we were ‘in Glen’ or that we ‘belonged in Glen’ or ‘had a part in Glen’ – in a representative sense, Glen would be FBC and FBC would be Glen. If the group did something, it would be in a representative way an act of Glen and if Glen did something it would be in a representative way an act of the group. So if Israel is God’s son, then its king – its representative – is God’s son – God’s election of Israel as his people receives its focal point in the king as Israel’s representative. But of course, Israel could not fulfill the purpose to which it was called and the kingship failed. The Messiah was to be the ultimate, final representative – the true Israel and Son of God who would do what Israel could not and fulfill Israel’s true purpose through himself. As N. T. Wright says, ‘Israel was the son of YHWH: the king who would come to take her destiny on himself would share this title’ (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 486). And it is as this true Messiah – this true leader and head and representative of the People of God – that Jesus shows up in this passage – his resurrection proves who he is and initiates that new stage in his Messiahship where he will reign from heaven in divine power, showing truly that he is both Lord and Messiah (that is, Christ).

More than all this, it has been argued by some commentators that, since the word ‘his’ does not actually show up in the Greek, the proper translation of the end of v.4 should not read ‘by his resurrection from the dead’ but ‘by the resurrection from the dead’. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was the beginning of the resurrection which will be complete and consummated upon his return – Jesus has brought in the kingdom of God and he is the first to partake in it fully, but its fullness here on earth awaits the Second Coming, when the resurrection will fully come. As the representative of his people, since he has part in the resurrection, his people also thereby have part in that resurrection life – though, again, it will only have its completion when he returns and that eternal life comes in fullness and death is no more.

As representative, Jesus is the true Israel, the true Chosen One, the true Son of God and it is by following him that we become part of his people and therefore also join the chosen people, God’s people, and are thereby sons of God. And since being part of God’s People involves following Christ as the representative of God’s People, being part of that people no longer involves being a Jew or following those laws that mark one out ethnically as a Jew – the gospel is also for the Gentiles, who now are called to take part in God’s People by following Christ (without having to also become Jews). Their obedience to Christ and to God is through faith and no longer needs to involve the ethnic boundary markers of the law. Gentiles and Jews together can equally be part of God’s People through Christ and thereby share in the blessings of the coming kingdom and the resurrection of the dead. And those in the church in Rome are also part of that People – both Jews and Gentiles. That is good news.

These are the sorts of facts Paul uses to show how it is only through faith that one is part of Christ – who is the Jewish Messiah and Lord over all – and that because of this neither Jew nor Gentile should look down on the other. Throughout the book, Paul expands on these themes and applies these new realities proclaimed by the gospel to our lives under that same gospel – how are we, Jews and Gentiles, to live now that we both belong to God’s People, have a foot in the kingdom of God that is both now and not yet, and have Christ as our heavenly representative? It is this gospel the proclamation and explanation of which was Paul’s mission and it is key aspects of this gospel and all of its ramifications for the situation and life of the Jews and Gentiles in the church in Rome that Paul wants to present here.

Controversy surrounding FBC

The following is an expression of my own personal, fallible feelings on this issue. In no way should it be taken to reflect the opinions of FBC or any of its staff or members. Especially if, as may be the case, it turns out to be too judgmental or not loving enough toward the parties involved (in which case, apologies to those concerned):

There's a big controversy going on right now about our church here in Davis (FBC - First Baptist Church). One of our members, an elected official named Freddie Oakley, has spoken out against the illegality of gay marriage. Apparently she thinks it is unjust/unfair/politically wrong to limit marriage or people's choice of marriage partners. As far as I know, she has not said anything at all to indicate that she thinks that gay marriage is morally permissible - for all she's said, she may very well think it is wrong or sinful, just that it is a matter of political justice that the state has no right to interfere when it comes to marriage. In other words, it may be wrong, but it is unjust for the state to force someone to accept that it is wrong or act as though it were. Everything she's said publicly has been perfectly compatible with such a combination of views (and, indeed, such a combination of views is not entirely uncommon, especially among people with more of a politically liberal or libertarian bent). After all, plenty of people think JW's are wrong in what they believe but most of the same think it'd be unjust to block them from attaining a place of worship. All this is just to say that though Oakley may be politically in favor of allowing gay marriage, that doesn't directly translate into moral approval or a moral condoning of it (and indeed, some of her comments might seem to support this particular interpretation of her views - look at what she says about how religion ought to be kept out of the law - presumably she has in mind her own religion, Christianity, which is morally against homosexual relationships).
The past two weeks, a group from Placerville called the Church of the Divide (an unintentionally apt name!) has been protesting at FBC because they feel that the church in general, and the staff in particular, have been lax in publicly disciplining Oakley for her "sinfulness". Apparently, they are unaware of the possibility of the combination of views described above. Or maybe they just think that anyone who disagrees with their political stance must thereby be sinning! The former seems pretty likely to me - people quite often confuse moral and legal matters (which is not to say that there is no connection - just that they are not the same). This group has taken FBC's refusal to bar Oakley from worship as moral approval of gay relationships, as evidenced by the sorts of signs they brought to the protest and many of the things they have said. This is, of course, ridiculous, as FBC, in line with the Bible, is against homosexual practices and the pastor has explicitly said as much.
The group sent a letter to FBC, the following being an excerpt:

Due to your apparent refusal to speak with us privately about this issue dealing with the purity of the bride of Christ, His church, we will be following Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18 and will publicly expose your inaction in exercising proper church discipline on a member’s open, public sin. (“Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, TELL IT UNTO THE CHURCH.” Matt 18:15-17)

This is quite the wacky application of these verses, to put it mildly. Jesus is here speaking about the goings on within a particular group of believers (probably originally the local synagogue - its a bit misleading, though hermeneutically still appropriate, to translate the Greek word ekklesia (meaning "assembly") here as "church", though since the local church is just a continuation of the local synagogue the principles still apply). Specifically, this is about interpersonal relationships between members of the same local assembly. More specifically, it's about one individual member personally wronging another individual member - such as through fraud, exploitation, gossip, abuse, etc. Clearly this does not support the Church of the Divide's actions. No one in that group, as far as I know, is a member or even an occasional attendee of FBC nor has any of them been personally wronged by any member of FBC. So there is no Scriptural basis in this passage for them to bring this matter up with our church.
Check out their article on the controversy and the protest here: http://www.churchofthedivide.org/FBCOakleyProtest.htm
and
http://www.informationgospel.net/information_blog.htm

If you read what is written on both websites and watch their video, they are hardly loving - they seem to be taunting FBC staff and volunteers and acting in general in a rather immature manner (notice how the cameraman takes up the issue of setting foot on the property in a rather childish way, reminding me a little of a bratty kid talking back to its parents). They seem to be completely belligerent, arrogant, and uncharitable. They twist everything and interpret everything into the worst possible light without even considering more charitable (and more plausible) interpretations of what is being done and said by FBC staff or members.
It's highly ironic that their website's motto is "Expressing God's Love in a Whole New Kind of Way". This new way seems to be the old "Pharisaic" way of judgment, condemnation, and self-righteousness. Notice how they even describe someone as an "aged, obese bicyclist" - if that's not deliberate malevolence, I don't know what is!
Here's a quote from their site:

Upon arrival, Church of the Divide was met with a hostile crowd of "First Baptist Church" (FBC) personel

I highly doubt it was really hostile. As far as I know, they told the group to leave and endured the group's taunting without uttering any hostile words and in general keeping quiet - how is that hostile? As an aside, it's funny that they talk about "FBC bodyguards" as if we had big, burly tough guys of questionable character and violent tendencies standing about. It's hilarious to think of Jon ("Papa Jon" to his grandkids) as an official "FBC Bodyguard". Maybe they should get an official t-shirt.
Notice the following quote from a man from the group who was asked to leave the property:

"Not very 'welcoming' if you ask me," he added. "I guess only Freddie Oakley gets welcomed here - Bible-believing Christians apparently are not."

That's about as uncharitable as you can get. There's no notion here that perhaps the staff thought that this person was really here to protest and disrupt the service or accost the pastors or parishioners or film what was going on in order to edit and twist the words and actions of the people in the church (which was pretty likely what would have happened - notice on the video that one man who was kicked out of the service had a camera in his hand and kept talking about having gone into the service to speak to the pastor). Instead, if they aren't allowed on the property it must, of course, be because they are Christians and, of course, FBC doesn't want Christians on its property! All this, of course, is getting things almost completely backwards. Any group which is about respect for its members and being welcoming and having an uninterrupted service without its members being molested would precisely not want to welcome such protesters. They are not welcome precisely because they are, in an extremely confrontational and public way, not acting as Christians.

As already mentioned, their use of Scripture in support of their position is piecemeal and not very well executed to say the least. Take some of their signs: "I have this against you - "You tolerate that woman Jezebel (Freddie)" Revelation 2:20". Anyone who knows anything about Revelation or its context should find this laughable - last time I checked, FBC is not located in Thyatira in the first century AD nor is Freddie Oakley a leader at our church attempting to lead the rest of the church into pagan/proto-Gnostic practices. Another quote from them: "I told him [Pastor Glen] homosexuality is a sin of great consequence stemming from the destruction by God of Sodom and was brought up in the Bible, including by Jesus, over 30 times; the judgment of homosexuality is not just individual but societal." Now, I don't remember Jesus ever explicitly bringing up homosexuality, but it's important to remember that the Bible never says that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of gay relationships. That undoubtedly added to their guilt, but Scripture indicates that they were generally very depraved, not just in wanting to have sex with other people of the same gender but in all sorts of ways. They tried to rape some angels, violate norms of hospitality and justice, etc. Scripture indicates that it was because of their wickedness that they were destroyed - it never pinpoints that wickedness as solely or even mostly to be found in gay relationships. So it is hard to say, as they seem to think, that homosexual activity is somehow a greater sin than all others - Scripture just does not support that. If any sins are held in greater contempt at all (which may be disputed), Scripture sees injustice and idolatry as the greatest sins - not homosexual activity. Scripture does see such activity as a grievous sin, just not something somehow at the top of the list. In any case, Oakley wasn't even engaging in such activity nor was she explicitly condoning or supporting it - so the seriousness of homosexual activity as a sin isn't relevant in any case.

Anyway, Scripture is not altogether clear on what all of our political views should be - moral views yes, political views no. In such a gray area, we should be charitable and allow people to differ in their opinions so long as they hold true to the faith and affirm what the Bible is indeed clear about. Even if Oakley were to publicly speak out in favor of the moral permissibility of homosexual relationships, it still is not clear that she should be kicked out of the church - Paul in 1 Corinthians speaks of removing the people who are committing public sexual sins and remain unrepentant, not removing the people he condemns for merely approving of it.

The ultimate problem seems to be that these people think that sinners shouldn't be let into the church. This of course is connected to an ancient heresy opposed by the rest of the church (the Church Father Augustine prominent among those who opposed the heresy). The Church of the Divide apparently believes that Christians can and should be completely sinless. One member told a curious FBC-goer that he personally had been without sin for 28 years or something like that. Of course, this contradicts 1 John "He who says he is without sin is a liar". And so since they think Oakley is a sinner, they think she should go - only the sinless should be allowed in church! But, as Pastor Glen has said, in that case none of us (Dividers included) would be allowed inside!