Saturday, October 16, 2010

We Can Do Better

It was inevitable I guess that the down-grade of Christianity would eventually spiral into what can be called for lack of a better term: "Christian" Pornography.  Please understand that it is decidedly unChristian but since it finds its  promoters and participants among those who emphatically insist that they are Christians and who also insist that they are some of the best Christians, what else can we call it?

John MacArthur has confronted this issue more eloquently than I could hope.  But I do want to say something.  MacArthur is the only national voice, the only prominent voice that I am aware of, who is speaking specifically in warning about this.  Perhaps others are speaking against it as well.  I would be delighted to hear about them. 

The chief proponent of this pornography has been  Mark Driscoll.  Most prominent evangelicals either say little or nothing because of Driscoll's rock star status; or they agree with him about it; others, I am sure, have adopted a "greater good" rationalization.  Many young evangelicals have made him into a near idol and they emulate everything he says and does. 

Well,  I am sure that the scruffy, bad boy image that Driscoll cultivates plays well to the crowd looking for a way to slap a thin veneer on the very behavior that is emphatically condemned in the Bible.  It is not Driscoll that grieves me so much.  It is the near silence from men who I thought were mature enough to see this for what it is and to rebuke it as they should.  Some will say that he has "toned it down."  Not nearly enough.   I must say that much of the admiration directed at Driscoll is characteristically the stuff of  "The Emperor's New Clothes."

Brett McCracken has sounded an alarm about the failure of this methodology even from a practical standpoint.  Perhaps that will alert some who are unwilling or unable to oppose this garbage simply because it is wrong. 

I have a precious, godly wife, three daughters living for God, four grand-daughters learning about God and a son in whom I am well-pleased;  I will not have them encounter this perversion of Biblical Christianity and think I do not speak and stand against it.

The gospel deserves better than this.  I do not believe that Christ died so "Christian" juvenile delinquents can wallow in this kind of filth.  Grace overcomes this depravity; it does not turn it into a marketing device.







3 comments:

  1. Interesting and I saw some Facebook related comments. Quite plausibly, sexuality outside of marriage, if not pornography itself, is a struggle for many if not most Christian men in the West anyway.

    My prayer for myself and others is that God makes his alternative, whether marriage or singleness readily available in contentment, and that I will be guided by the Spirit.

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  2. Thanks for comments on satire and theology. I managed to add some other maps that were not working properly previously.

    Happy Sunday.

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  3. 'The theme of the 2010 conference is “Baptists and the Cross: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives.” Featured speakers will include: Tom Schreiner, Stephen Wellum , David Bebbington, Glendon Thompson, Maurice Dowling, James Fuller, and Danny Akin. Other established Baptist History scholars, as well as several Ph.D. students will be presenting papers on the conference theme during the parallel sessions.'

    Dr. Wellum was my advisor/prof. at TWU.

    Blessings.

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