Piper's View of Piety..."Should Produce a Passion for Social Justice and Practical Mercy "

Here's yet another reason why I love John Piper. Yesterday morning I clicked onto the blog "Desiring God" for my daily dose of John Piper. On this day, Piper summarizes one of his sermons from a few years back about what true piety should produce in us, that is "a passion for social justice and practical mercy." Preaching from Isaiah 58, he lists five needs that Isaiah and Jesus are passionately concerned about. (1) the need for freedom from bondage and oppression (2) the need for food (3) the need for housing (4) the need for clothing (5) the need for respect. The longer version of this sermon is even better, where he makes assertions such as "Piety that does not produce a passion for God-exalting social justice and practical mercy is worthless." and "I want to remind us as a church that we have been saved for the sake of God-exalting good works. We have been saved not merely to avoid evil, but to do good. Therefore the people of Christ should not be known primarily for what we don’t do, but what we do do."

Two months ago, I blogged here about a distorted piety being a fallacy that prevents today's evangelical churches from embracing its God-given responsibility to the poor. Since so many of these churches are children of the enlightenment (modernity) with their pie-in-the-sky dispensationalism, their church-growth/marketing pragmatism, their soul-saving dualism, their idol of consumerism, and of course their misplaced pietism, I've sort of wrote off the church in America (although my obedience to Christ and my calling has kept me within the church). Because Piper is such a towering, influential figure among fundamental and conservative evangelical pastors, maybe pietism in the evangelical church will begin to be restored to its proper place, which is producing a passion for social justice and practical mercy.

Fundamental/Evangelical Fallicies Part 2: Pietism

Keeping with the “isms,” the second fallacy that keeps the evangelical church from embracing their God-given responsibility to the poor is Pietism. This may seem unlikely, since aspects of pietism within the church of America during the 19th century actually inspired Christians to serve the poor and take on injustices such as slavery. Nevertheless, in the 20th century, when the diabolical twins of modernity-reason and science, were at the zenith of their dominance within Western civilization, the American church responded by adding some traditional dispensationalism (which cares little for the social world of today) and some platonic dualism (which treats the physical world as separate and subordinate to the spiritual) to their piety. Before we identify pietism's potential poison of today, let us explore a little of the historical context of this religious phenomenon.

The roots of Pietism go all the way back to seventeenth century Germany when certain church leaders such as Philipp Jakob Spener and August Hermann Francke, tired of cold, stifling, faith of the Lutheran church, began to emphasize pietistic activities such as Bible study, prayer, and religious experiences as a way of reigniting a passion for Jesus Christ. For the next couple hundred years, pietism spread throughout Europe and America, influencing a variety of the protestant groups such as the Mennonites, Moravians, Brethren, Covenant, Puritans, and Methodism.

Fast forward to the early twenty-first century, pietism in its most popular form, mutated into a Purpose-Driven-Life formula, emphasizing five purposes that drives a Christian. According to best-selling author and pastor, Rick Warren, our five purposes in life are worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and mission. Regrettably, Warren did not look to Genesis 1 and 2 to discover who we are as humans and what purposes God assigned the first humans as a foundation to PDL. He might have discovered the multi-dimensions of imago Dei and the creation mandates given to God’s image bearers. Maybe Warren would have viewed this earth as more than a “dress rehearsal” for heaven, which provides very little motivation to help the poor here and now. Maybe Warren would have realized earlier our God-given responsibility to the poor, which finds its roots in the cultural mandate. Even with its emphasis on fellowship, this form of pietism leads to an individualistic, otherworldly gospel that divorces loving God from loving our neighbor.

For instance, growing up in several fundamentalist-Baptist churches, my spiritual formation revolved around piety activities such as studying, reading, and memorizing the Bible, praying, fellowshipping, and evangelism. Never once was I ever encouraged to reach out to the poor. Never once did our youth group ever serve at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter, nor did I hear anything taught from the Bible that mentioned the Christian’s responsibility to help the poor. Yes, I understand that today’s fundamental and evangelical churches do try to include a service project to a soup kitchen now and then and maybe a short-term mission trip that reminds them of how blessed they are here in America. But by in large, the pietistic practices of prayer (including all-night prayer meetings), singing praise and worship songs in church or at Passion worship events, Bible study, revivals, and evangelism that takes place today are not inextricably practiced together with sacrificially loving the poor and oppressed. Hence, the body of Christ appears to be primarily a mouth without any legs and arms.

Thankfully, in the case of Rick Warren a trip to Johannesburg, South Africa caused him to rethink his purposes. After visiting some of the shantytowns and connecting with churches that were housing widows and orphans from AIDS victims, Warren began to reexamine the scriptures in light of the poor and oppressed. “I found 2000 verses on the poor. How did I miss that? I went to Bible college, two seminaries, and I got a doctorate. How did I miss God’s compassion for the poor? I was not seeing all of God’s purposes.” Now am I holding up Rick Warren as the prototype example for evangelicals to follow? No and Yes. I prefer that he communicate a more robust gospel, taking the foundation of creation more seriously (read Wittmer’s Heaven is a Place on Earth) and calling more attention to the devastating consequences of the fall and our depravity as humans (read C. Plantiga’s Not the Way it’s Supposed to be). This leads to a larger view of redemption (including people and all creation), with a response of repentance and belief in Christ (rather than Warren’s “whispering a prayer that will change your life” of “receiving and believing”). Why do I even mention Warren’s view of the gospel? Since he is on the front-lines attempting to equip an army of Christians from all over the world to help solve global poverty and hunger, a PDL surface view of sin, depravity, and evil will never get at the root causes of poverty. Without addressing complex structural systems of evil as well as the deep-seated sin within the hearts everyone, including the poor, the oppressed, and the oppressors, all of our efforts to make a dent in the battle against global hunger and poverty amounts to be as Ballington Booth once said, like trying to “bail the ocean with a thimble.”

Nevertheless, we also need to commend what Rick Warren is doing as well. For instance, by putting the majority of his millions that he made from the sales of Purpose-Driven-Life into charitable foundations that address global poverty and hunger issues, he is living out the apostle Peter’s command to “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” Our pagan culture is taking notice, having a difficult time arguing against all of the good that Rick Warren and Saddleback church are doing for the poor and oppressed. This can only lead to enhancing the reputation of Jesus Christ. 21st century piety is a mixed bag, but can overcome its faults by embracing a full-bodied gospel of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration which can only lead to the Lordship of Christ in every aspect and arena of our lives. May our sacrificial service to the poor and oppressed also compel non-Christians to pronounce, "Soli Deo Gloria!"

Fundamental/Evangelical fallacies (that prevent churches from truly embracing ministry to the poor) Part 1

My last post, Uneasy Consciousness, was actually a prologue to a series that I’ve been thinking about for some time. At first, I was going to name this series “top ten excuses as to why fundamental and conservative churches do not make the poor a priority. But it sounded too wordy and seemed too shallow. However, since most of these churches are children of the enlightenment, I will attempt to expose some fallacies of modernity that still linger among the fundamentalist and conservative evangelical churches. Regrettably, these fallacies prevent them from fully embracing their God-given responsibility to help the poor and needy. At the same time, I must resist the temptation of painting these churches with a broad-brush stroke. Surprisingly, I am finding more and more of these churches seeking ways to live out the 2000 verses in the Bible that speak of God’s heart for the poor and needy. For instance, I’ve witnessed genuine conversations unfold among fundamental church leaders and pastors on internet forums such as Sharper Iron as they discuss and debate what their church’s responsibility should be to the poor. This has been a source of encouragement to me. Even so, I can honestly say as an insider that the fallacies I name are in fact keeping many of these churches from embracing ministry among the poor as part of their mission.

My first fallacy has been everybody’s whipping boy, dispensationalism, which grieves me because this theological construct does contain some points to consider. In recent days, however, dispensationalism has been linked to just about every fault and blemish that fundamentalists and evangelicals possess, which I believe is unfair. But like most things, dispensationalism is comprised of the good, bad and ugly. For those who are not familiar with the term, dispensationalism refers to an understanding of the Bible that divides the relationship of God to humanity throughout redemptive history in sharply separated epochs. What separates them from the rest of Christendom boils down to two things: their literalness when interpreting the Bible and their sharp distinction between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church. Although the theological construct of dispensationalism has only been around for less than two-hundred years of the church’s two-thousand year history, it really took hold among fundamental and conservative evangelical churches within America during the first half of the twentieth century. Much to the surprise and even the chagrin of many of my non-fundamental-evangelical friends, I still hold to a form of dispensationalism, albeit a very broad and progressive one (one of these days, I’ll post why I still see myself within the dispensationalist camp-although on the edge).

However, dispensationalism in its more traditional, historic form has deceived its followers into believing that certain passages of scripture do not really apply to our current dispensational time period. For instance, according to traditional dispensationalists, the “least of these” within the Sheep and Goats judgment passage of Mathew are Jews who experience persecution during the seven-year future tribulation. Therefore, they disregard this vivid picture of final judgment as relevant to their lives because they interpret the story to be about judgment of nations treating persecuted Jews rather than how the current church must treat the “least of these,” right here and right now. The same goes for kingdom living in the Sermon on the Mount. In their view, due to the Jewish rejection of Christ as their Messiah, Jesus postponed His kingdom rule of the Jews until his future millennial reign. Therefore, the ethical demands of the Sermon on the Mount for these dispensationalists represent how God’s people will live under Christ’s rule during his future, literal 1000 year reign on earth (so if this is true, will God allow face-slapping while reigning “with a rod of iron” since we are told to turn the other cheek?)rather than how God's people should live in the here and now. Hence, these scriptures have no bearing on how we are to live today. The same even goes for the Old Testament prophets that pronounced judgment against those who withheld justice for the poor. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture.

Proponents of this view defend dispensationalism by declaring that their interpretation springs from a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic of the entire Bible. Yet could it be that their rigid commitment to this type of hermeneutic created a system of interpretation that depends way too much on modernity’s twin nemesis of rationalism and science? Isn’t it ironic that in their desire to stay faithful to Scripture through a rigid adherence to its hermeneutic may in fact have led them to the edge of theological liberalism? Just as Modernity’s rationalism and darwinistic science influenced many North American mainline churches to embrace liberalism by denying certain doctrines of the faith, has Modernity’s rationalism and Baconian scientific method led certain dispensationalists to render large portions of the Bible meaningless due to their unswervingly rigid embrace of an interpretative method? What is the difference between a person who denies the validity of certain scriptures like Thomas Jefferson who cut and pasted the parts of the Bible that he disagreed with and a dispensationalist that fails to acknowledge the present application of large portions of scripture because he places its primary meaning and application into a future dispensation of time? I’ll let you figure out that question.

What's more, the outworkings of this dispensational hermeneutic has led to an imbalanced view of God’s kingdom, centering most of its attention on a future kingdom with little emphasis on the present. While a person’s entrance into the Kingdom of God receives attention, its ethical responsibilities are minimized. While future events of the escaton dominate its worldview, present kingdom activities are questioned. In addition, with its emphasis on the sharp discontinuity between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church, dispensationalism presents a truncated social ethic, especially in regards to its view of the church’s role helping the poor and oppressed. Their interpretation allows them to make excuses for not helping the poor such as, “Why rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?” “Since this world is going to hell in a hand basket, shouldn’t we primarily focus on what’s really important, which is evangelism?” “Doesn’t focusing on the needs of the poor take away resources for missions and church planting?” “I don’t see any New Testament mandate for alleviating poverty, therefore, why even bother?” Believe me, I've heard them all and debated each and every one of them.

On the other hand, when Christians are not so rigid in their literal, historical, grammatical interpretation of the Bible, but rather take in account the diversity of literary genres that comprise scripture such as narrative, law, poetry, prophesy, parabolic, and apocalyptic, suddenly the kingdom of God (present and future) is brought back into a more balanced “already, but not yet.” When Christians emphasize the unity of the entire cannon, especially with more continuity between Israel and the church rather than making a sharp distinction between the two, the church understands its mission to include more than just evangelism. It incorporates both the good news of the gospel and good works, both the cultural mandate and the redemptive mandate, as they bring the Lordship of Jesus Christ into every arena of life.

This post may be a hard pill to swallow for some of my dispensational friends, but I feel that I must question their theology just as much as I've questioned the sacramental theology of the poor embraced by Shane Claiborne. Have fun unpacking this post!!!

The Uneasy Conscience of a (Post) Modern Fundamentalist

For the past eighteen years, I’ve felt several overriding tensions as I live out the gospel in the ‘hood. In some ways it is an “uneasy conscience” as Dr. Carl F.H. Henry described a half a century ago. For me, this uneasiness surfaces from the tension between the false antithesis of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, specifically as it relates to the faith community’s responsibility to help the poor. The more that I ponder my fundamentalist-Baptist upbringing, the more I realize how this heritage played a part in creating the tension.

Due to my father’s ministry job as a worship pastor, I grew-up attending several different Fundamentalist-Baptist churches of the GARBC for the first twenty-two years of my life. During those two decades, I don’t ever recall hearing a message from any of the pastors or a Bible study from any of the Sunday School teachers that called attention to the plight of the poor and the Christian’s God-given responsibility to help them. Even though I frequented these churches every time the building was open, including every Sunday morning, every Sunday evening, and every Wednesday night, I never heard anyone refer to any of the 2000 or so Bible verses throughout both testaments that implore God’s people to help the poor. So when I began serving the poor at a little store-front church in the inner-city as a college student, I suddenly became acutely aware of how God’s concern for the poor permeated the entire narrative of Scripture. With some mentoring from Servants Center's director Don Tack, I also realized the futileness of pious activities such as street evangelism among the homeless population compared to building relationships and doing holistic ministry among them. Unfortunately, when I switched ministries to become a manager of a homeless shelter (under the direction of Don Tack) that emphasized holistic ministry, my home church in Indiana responded by dropping my missionary support. Later, word got back to me that they believed I had embraced the “social-gospel,” which is sort of like the Scarlet letter of Fundamentalism. My name and ministry suddenly became synonymous with words such as neo-evangelical, compromise, liberal, and social-gospel.

There is pain in rejection, especially from such a grave misunderstanding by my ecclesiastical heritage. I was just as committed to the gospel as I’d ever been. In fact, out of the 21 men that benefited from the homeless shelter during my two years as its supervisor, eleven graduated into self-sufficiency with full-time employment and secure housing. Several men trusted Christ for their salvation and to this day, continue to serve Christ in their church. In comparison, when I was doing street evangelism, several made dramatic professions to Christ, but every single one of them fell away because their “conversion” wasn’t the real thing.

What’s more, I was just as committed to sound doctrine as I’d ever been. I embraced historical fundamentals such as an infallible, inerrant Scripture, Christ’s deity, Christ’s substitutionary atonement for our sins, Christ’s bodily resurrection, and Christ’s imminent return. Yet to the leadership from my former home church, my actions proved otherwise. How twisted the logic of their thinking! That somehow because I added social and economic activities such as job assistance, mentoring, and budget counseling to evangelism among the homeless poor meant that I no longer held to a high view of the Bible and Christ. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t those who hold to an inerrant and infallible view of Scripture be passionately and actively living out what the Scripture actually says? Since they believe the Bible to be true, shouldn’t the fundamental and conservative evangelical churches be most concerned about living out the 2000 or so verses about the poor and oppressed that demand a response from God’s people? Regrettably, this has not been the case. If our treasure is where our heart is, many of the yearly budgets from these churches reflect more of a concern for bricks and mortar, professional pastoral staffing, and quirky Christmas and Easter programs than responding to the needs of the poor.

From that moment fifteen years ago, I realized that an essential part of urban ministry must also include educating the church about ministry among the poor. Therefore, for the past fifteen years of our ministry to at-risk youth and their families in the ‘hood, we have served the church by offering workshops and seminars such as: “how to redemptively assist the poor without creating dependency.” This has been my little way of influencing fundamental and conservative evangelical churches, countering the lack of theological reflection that I’ve observed when addressing current social and economic issues that affect the poor. It has also done wonders when confronting the tension that I feel as a "post-modern" who believes and lives out the fundamentals.