Culture

A friend and his wife were in the final stages of adopting a child they had fostered since birth when a state caseworker asked if they supported same-sex marriage. My friends were caught off guard. They were rightly concerned their response would determine whether the child they loved would be removed and given to someone else. It sounds akin to a growing list of court cases requiring that we silence our faith in public spaces like businesses or schools. For all people of faith—not just Christians—this is impossible.

Our beliefs are at the center of who we are, what we value, and how we live. Telling us to keep our faith to ourselves is an intolerant way of telling Christians to stay in the closet.

But the question remains: how are Christians to live in this post-Christendom and pre-Kingdom world? It’s an uncomfortable situation that you might find yourself in today. Part of the error of the religious Right was thinking everything is political. We don’t want to make the opposite mistake of pretending nothing is political. The most competent government will not bring the Kingdom to earth. It will not change hearts. It will not save souls. But it can hold back the worst of evil, shelter the helpless, and ensure its citizens’ freedom to live out their faith—and go about the Kingdom’s work.

As much as we might want to simply live and let live, we can’t agree with everyone and everything. We want to influence our neighbors to consider biblical principles—not because we’re intolerant but because we love them. And because those principles do in fact lead to fuller and happier lives. We have strong beliefs on issues that impact human welfare and cannot advocate things that clearly violate biblical teaching—untethered sexuality that causes great pains and problems, the taking of innocent unborn life, and more. While we cannot and should not go back to the era of Christendom or expect non-Christians to live like followers of Jesus, we also cannot let issues of justice and mercy slide. In fact, such issues may be the very places that you and I can best display the Gospel and demonstrate the heart of God. Additionally, we cannot be silent as others write laws that hinder religious freedom. Non-Christians worry that our views are being forced on them. We are right to be just as concerned when their views are forced on us.

TWO-STORY TRUTH

An unmarried friend of mine thought it would be a good idea to rent the basement apartment in the home of a married couple. He assumed it was clear they would stay upstairs and he would stay downstairs. The only problem was that the couple often came downstairs without invitation or announcement to intrude on his life and space. Sometimes they came down to visit, other times to snoop around, and still other times to “borrow” something that was his without asking. He felt seriously offended by the invasion of his personal space.

When it comes to Christianity and politics, many outside the church feel like Christianity should live upstairs in the realm of faith, while politics lives downstairs in the realm of fact. Whenever religious people show up uninvited downstairs, the people who live there feel violated.

Underlying this belief is a massive assumption that biblical Christianity does not share. Building on the work of Francis Schaeffer, scholar Nancy Pearcey explains how the prevailing cultural worldview draws a thick line between values and facts. This “two-story truth” keeps “rational, verifiable” facts on the ground floor, while anything deemed “nonrational, noncognitive” has to stay upstairs.1

Everything in the first story applies to everyone. Everything on the second story is up to you, take it or leave it.

“The reason it’s so important for us to learn how to recognize this division is that it is the single most potent weapon for delegitimizing the biblical perspective in the public square today,” Pearcey writes.2 

“The two-story grid functions as a gate-keeper that defines what is to be taken seriously as genuine knowledge, and what can be dismissed as mere wish-fulfillment.” 3

Religion can play in the house so long as it stays in the upstairs closet along with all of the other fairy tales, fiction, and fables.

Keeping faith and politics separate might seem like a good way to avoid conflict and keep everyone happy, like splitting up two squabbling kids. But as Christians, we cannot agree to that. If Jesus is Lord there is no such thing as separating faith and facts, private and public. You can’t say, “Well, when I go to church or read my Bible, those are just for me, and when I go into the voting booth or someone asks my opinion, I chuck my beliefs so I can be objective and neutral.” All is under Jesus’ sovereign authority.

Nancy Pearcey. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008). Kindle Edition.

Ibid.

Ibid.

People outside the church are frustrated when people inside the church fail to see that there should be a clear division between the two. They feel that Christians are out of line when they treat the culture around them as if it were their church. Honestly, as a Bible-teaching pastor, I agree to some degree. Some Christians are wrong in how they understand the relationship between church and society.

Throughout the Bible a clear demarcation exists between God’s people and others. God repeatedly tells His followers that they cannot act like their neighbors—non-believers living among them and the culture around them. God has different expectations of His own. The Old Testament records recurring conversations between God and His people that sound like a dad whose children keep pestering him to get away with the same stuff as the neighbor kids. The dad tells them no, explaining that his family rules are different from the family rules next door. In the New Testament the words “church” and “world” mark this split between the two proverbial families. Sin means crossing that line of demarcation. Holiness means abiding by the rules on this side of the line.

Some Christians seem to miss this. Across history and particularly in America, they see their nation as one big church, resulting in a thing called “Christendom.” My book A Call to Resurgence details this problem. Let me sum up what I say there.

For starters, Christendom is not the same as Christianity. While Christianity has existed for a couple thousand years, Christendom popped into being around 500 years ago (the exact date varies depending on which historian you prefer). America was an experiment in Christendom. It was to be a nation established largely by Christian people with Christian principles pursuing Christian purposes. The line between church and the world soon became very blurry.

America wasn’t the only place where this thing called Christendom took hold. But it led the nations in basing moral values on biblical principles so that people more or less shared a common outlook on right and wrong even when they failed to live up to their ideals. Most everyone knew sex was reserved for marriage. Marriage was for a man and a woman. Pornography and casual sex were generally understood to be evil, even if many didn’t practice what they preached. And last but not least, children were viewed as a desirable part of life. All these basic mores and others were part of the common vision of the good life within a good nation that was as understood in Christendom.

At the center of cultural influence within Christendom were religious leaders and houses of worship. They were essential to upholding the moral framework of a good nation. Politicians were expected to believe in God and attend church, and political speeches were supposed to be littered with the language and imagery of Scripture. Places of worship were given benefits such as tax exemptions as a way of recognizing their value to the greater culture in promoting virtue, restraining vice, and helping the needy.

Despite the dividing line being blurred in the extreme, Christendom and Christianity are not the same thing. Christendom is far bigger and broader than Christianity, encompassing non-Christian beliefs like the deism of Thomas Jefferson, the Unitarianism of many high-level politicians, or the beliefs of outliers like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Under Christendom, America created a new national religion that took concepts and images from Old Testament Israel and reappropriated them. In A Call to Resurgence, I say it this way:

Think of American civil religion in biblical terms: America is Israel. The Revolution is our Exodus. The Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Constitution compose our canon of sacred scripture. Abraham Lincoln is our Moses. Independence Day is our Easter. Our national enemies are our Satan. Benedict Arnold is our Judas. The Founding Fathers are our apostles. Taxes are our tithes. Patriotic songs are our hymnal. The Pledge of Allegiance is our sinner’s prayer. And the president is our preacher, which is why throughout the history of the office our leaders have referred to “God” without any definition or clarification, allowing people to privately import their own understanding of a higher power.1

In this blatant borrowing, the spiritual symbols were kept and the substance was lost. But it is no wonder people mistake Christendom for Christianity. 

Throughout some 500 years of history, Christendom and Christianity have been mutually opportunistic, each using the other to advance the cause. Christendom wanted the social benefits of Christianity without the scriptural beliefs. President George Washington said in his farewell address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports… Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” A century and a half later, president-elect Dwight Eisenhower said, “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” 2

THE DEATH OF CHRISTENDOM

When people care little about the content of faith, it should be no surprise when that faith becomes irrelevant to real life. Christendom as an all- powerful system has died over the course of just a few decades. Nations that were part of Christendom are now over a 500-year infatuation and are largely post-Christendom. The Bible is no longer a highly regarded book, a pastor no longer a highly regarded person, and the church no longer a highly regarded place.

Mark Driscoll, A Call to Resurgence (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013), 11–12.

Patrick Henry, “‘And I Don’t Care What It Is’: The Tradition-History of a Civil Religion Proof-Text,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49, issue 1 (March 1981): 41.

People outside the church are frustrated when people inside the church fail to see that there should be a clear division between the two. They feel that Christians are out of line when they treat the culture around them as if it were their church. Honestly, as a Bible-teaching pastor, I agree to some degree. Some Christians are wrong in how they understand the relationship between church and society.

Throughout the Bible a clear demarcation exists between God’s people and others. God repeatedly tells His followers that they cannot act like their neighbors—non-believers living among them and the culture around them. God has different expectations of His own. The Old Testament records recurring conversations between God and His people that sound like a dad whose children keep pestering him to get away with the same stuff as the neighbor kids. The dad tells them no, explaining that his family rules are different from the family rules next door. In the New Testament the words “church” and “world” mark this split between the two proverbial families. Sin means crossing that line of demarcation. Holiness means abiding by the rules on this side of the line.

Some Christians seem to miss this. Across history and particularly in America, they see their nation as one big church, resulting in a thing called “Christendom.” My book A Call to Resurgence details this problem. Let me sum up what I say there.

For starters, Christendom is not the same as Christianity. While Christianity has existed for a couple thousand years, Christendom popped into being around 500 years ago (the exact date varies depending on which historian you prefer). America was an experiment in Christendom. It was to be a nation established largely by Christian people with Christian principles pursuing Christian purposes. The line between church and the world soon became very blurry.

America wasn’t the only place where this thing called Christendom took hold. But it led the nations in basing moral values on biblical principles so that people more or less shared a common outlook on right and wrong even when they failed to live up to their ideals. Most everyone knew sex was reserved for marriage. Marriage was for a man and a woman. Pornography and casual sex were generally understood to be evil, even if many didn’t practice what they preached. And last but not least, children were viewed as a desirable part of life. All these basic mores and others were part of the common vision of the good life within a good nation that was as understood in Christendom.

At the center of cultural influence within Christendom were religious leaders and houses of worship. They were essential to upholding the moral framework of a good nation. Politicians were expected to believe in God and attend church, and political speeches were supposed to be littered with the language and imagery of Scripture. Places of worship were given benefits such as tax exemptions as a way of recognizing their value to the greater culture in promoting virtue, restraining vice, and helping the needy.

Despite the dividing line being blurred in the extreme, Christendom and Christianity are not the same thing. Christendom is far bigger and broader than Christianity, encompassing non-Christian beliefs like the deism of Thomas Jefferson, the Unitarianism of many high-level politicians, or the beliefs of outliers like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Under Christendom, America created a new national religion that took concepts and images from Old Testament Israel and reappropriated them. In A Call to Resurgence, I say it this way:

Think of American civil religion in biblical terms: America is Israel. The Revolution is our Exodus. The Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Constitution compose our canon of sacred scripture. Abraham Lincoln is our Moses. Independence Day is our Easter. Our national enemies are our Satan. Benedict Arnold is our Judas. The Founding Fathers are our apostles. Taxes are our tithes. Patriotic songs are our hymnal. The Pledge of Allegiance is our sinner’s prayer. And the president is our preacher, which is why throughout the history of the office our leaders have referred to “God” without any definition or clarification, allowing people to privately import their own understanding of a higher power.1

In this blatant borrowing, the spiritual symbols were kept and the substance was lost. But it is no wonder people mistake Christendom for Christianity. 

Throughout some 500 years of history, Christendom and Christianity have been mutually opportunistic, each using the other to advance the cause. Christendom wanted the social benefits of Christianity without the scriptural beliefs. President George Washington said in his farewell address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports… Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” A century and a half later, president-elect Dwight Eisenhower said, “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” 2

THE DEATH OF CHRISTENDOM

When people care little about the content of faith, it should be no surprise when that faith becomes irrelevant to real life. Christendom as an all- powerful system has died over the course of just a few decades. Nations that were part of Christendom are now over a 500-year infatuation and are largely post-Christendom. The Bible is no longer a highly regarded book, a pastor no longer a highly regarded person, and the church no longer a highly regarded place.

Mark Driscoll, A Call to Resurgence (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013), 11–12.

Patrick Henry, “‘And I Don’t Care What It Is’: The Tradition-History of a Civil Religion Proof-Text,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49, issue 1 (March 1981): 41.

I am not a big political person. Politics have never been how I seek positive change in culture, even as a pastor. I have never publicly endorsed any candidate or party. Among Christian leaders and ordinary churchgoers of my generation and younger, I am not alone in my attitude. That revelation might surprise the participants in our research, who resoundingly declared Christians too involved in politics.

Throughout our research, we heard people who consistently took issue with Christians “legislating morality” and “imposing their views” through politics. Half of our national phone survey participants (49%) agreed with the statement, “I don’t like how some Christian groups meddle in politics.” Our survey found that men, in particular, deride Christian involvement in politics, a fact that proved true across our focus groups as well. Men had much more to say than women about their frustration and opposition to Christian involvement in politics.

FEEDBACK

Of all the groups we convened, the men in Austin were probably the most passionate and opinionated about the involvement of Christians in politics. In most places in Texas, politics and religion bleed red, but Austin is an openly avant-garde exception. One guy described being dragged to church as a child: “It just felt silly,” he said. “I didn’t believe it. I thought it was make-believe stuff that they were insisting was real but obviously it wasn’t…I would insist on going in a full Darth Vader costume when they would take me as a little boy. They posted my picture on the church bulletin.”

In Austin, our facilitator opened by asking for everyone’s thoughts on Christianity in general and Jesus in particular. At one point she asked, “Anyone else have an element of Christianity you find distasteful?”

After “evangelists” and “brimstone,” one guy said, “Legislating morality.” Another added, “They’ve gone way beyond what I want the government deciding.”

The facilitator asked, “Is it Christianity using politics or politics using Christianity?”

“Both, without a doubt.”

“Exactly, yes.”

“Politicians use the affiliations to get into a different base of people to use. The people use the politicians to get things enacted like… not being able to buy liquor on Sundays. It used to be whole sections of grocery stores you couldn’t go into.”

“Still can’t.”

“Some counties where you can’t even buy liquor at all.”

“You didn’t use to be able to buy cat litter on Sundays. They relaxed that.” “What?”

“Yes, yes.”

“The Bible Belt… technically you could only buy food or medical oriented things. South Carolina, when I lived there was a lot the same way that was 20 years ago here.”

Multiple participants saw Christians using legislation to control their lives. One guy put it like this:

“I understand that there are some issues, let’s say whether it’s abortion is right or wrong. If you think it’s wrong you should just cut out. I can’t play poker online anymore, I can’t buy alcohol on Sundays without restrictions. I can’t smoke pot. What I watch on TV gets restricted. I can tell you I attribute it to Christians. I sure as heck don’t want a bunch of Christians deciding that level of what I can do in my life. There are some big picture things that we probably all have to agree whether they are okay or not. The Christians are going way beyond that, and this gets into the politics and defining what is okay and what’s not okay for people to do. I just think that’s nuts.”

These post-Christian participants repeatedly found the political shenanigans of the “religious right” frustrating if not downright scary. One Austin man found evangelical Christians more frightening than the dictators of North Korea and Iran:

“As far as what scares me about groups of people in the world that have the potential to do harm, you have radical Muslim extremists and evangelical Christians. Then there’s a big drop off, and you get into maybe military dictators, North Korea, and Iran. Then you have everybody else slowly falling down there. But from everything, and I watch the news all day every day at work, I read a lot. As far as groups that scare me more than a little, and cause [things] to happen that I don’t want to have happen.”

When one group member countered that evangelical Christians aren’t out to blow up the world, another argued that “they have an awful lot of power and they’re using it in a way that I don’t think any group should be using it.”

“In what way?”

“In terms of imposing their view of the world on the world, on everybody else. There’s [sic] not other groups out there that are trying to impose their views…Just steamrolling over everybody. Again that’s extreme and that’s the radical people in the group.”

“Which radical people?”

“High-level Republican leaders,” “Pat Robertson,” “Westboro Baptist,” and “Jerry Falwell.”

SEEING GHOSTS

Reading these exchanges, I often wondered if I had flipped to the “WE HATE FOX NEWS” channel. The Austin guys apparently had watched an assortment of talking-head cultural commentators and assumed they determined the agenda of the entire Christian community. We asked who worries these guys, and they’re like, “Jerry Falwell.” And I’m thinking, “How long has he been in heaven with Jesus now?”

If you weren’t around or not paying attention during the 1980 United States presidential elections, Jerry Falwell epitomized what went down during that era, when a few men swayed American history and reshaped how people think about politics and religion for more than a generation. Falwell was one of the original leaders of the religious Right and a co-founder of the Moral Majority, a political advocacy group organized to battle for conservative values. 

Another evangelist of the day, James Robison, was at ground zero of what became the religious Right. In 1979 he was one of a handful of TV evangelists with a national audience. At a time when the issue of gay rights was grabbing public attention, Robison was known for daring Christians to “come out of the closet.” Following an on-air sermon where he quoted the first chapter of Romans—a passage that calls homosexuality sin—censors kicked him off a major Dallas TV station under what was known as the Fairness Doctrine of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While you might not like what Robison said, you should get First Amendment chills he was not permitted to say it.

Hopping mad, Robison made “Freedom of Speech Is Freedom to Preach” his new bumper sticker. He invited leaders like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed, and Jerry Falwell to a Freedom to Preach rally in a Dallas stadium. These men met backstage with a presidential candidate named Ronald Reagan and decided to back him. The religious Right was born.

CHRISTIANS AND POLITICS

Even at the peak of the religious Right, Christians never formed a unified front. Christians are anything but a homogeneous voting bloc. We’re a messy mix of the entire political spectrum. And when it comes to how we engage politically, you’ll find Christians wandering down four well-worn paths:

Some fight. These folks rally the troops, wage the culture wars, elect candidates to office, put morality to a vote, and try to take back lost ground by punching forward.
Some surrender. This group takes the opposite approach. Sensing that the battle is lost, they surrender the controversial aspects of Christian belief. They give up and give in hoping no one else gets hurt.
Some flee. These people escape as far and fast as possible. They unplug from media, move out of the city, and protect their family from the disease of culture by hunkering down until Jesus comes back, which some are sure is soon.
Some convert. This minority chooses to live as missionaries within the dominant culture, seeking the common good of all, winsomely living out biblical principles, and seeking to evangelize people and cultures so they are transformed.
These markedly different options mean that we can often find ourselves parting ways politically with Christians whom we otherwise agree with in profound ways. But what is the right response?

Once home to the legendary hippie counterculture of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco still wears its progressive reputation proudly. I looked forward to hearing from a focus group of men gathered there to let us know their thoughts on the Christian faith. After introductions, our facilitator sprung her opening question: “What is your first reaction when you hear someone talk about Christianity?” Included in the discussion that followed was the curious assumption by everyone in the focus group that abortion was a morally good thing and not really up for debate. Their conclusion coincided with the national research study in which half of our survey participants (50%) agreed that “the Christian religion and I have different views on social issues like abortion….”

When my wife, Grace, and I first met in high school, I was strongly in favor of abortion. In fact, I was somewhat familiar with the eugenics ideology of Thomas Malthus that was held by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. I wrongly believed that less fit people should be sterilized or not permitted to conceive and encouraged, if not required, to abort if impregnated. I argued for this both in high school classes, as the president of our student body, and later in college classroom debates.

Grace and I had an ongoing debate, as she was a Bible-believing pastor’s daughter who was consistently pro-life in her convictions. I won most of the arguments from a rhetorical point of view, but she was right and I was wrong. Today, as we raise our five beautiful babies together, I cannot even fathom what I was thinking. As a new Christian, my mind was completely transformed on this issue in reading the Bible.

Here is a summary of the eight core biblical truths that pertain to the issue of abortion:

God is the Creator and Author of human life (Gen. 1–2; Deut. 32:39; Ps. 139:13–16).
God made humanity in His image and likeness, which means that human life is unique and sacred (Gen. 1:27; James 3:9).
God intends for human beings to fill the earth (Gen. 1:28, 9:1).
God confirmed that life begins at conception and declares that an unborn baby is a sacred life (Exod. 1:16–17, 21:22–25; Lev. 18:21; Jer. 7:31–32; Ezek. 16:20–21; Mic. 6:7; Matt. 2:16–18; Acts 7:19).
God knows us from our mother’s womb (Jer. 1:5; Job 10:9–12, 31:15; Ps. 119:73; Eccles. 11:5).
God declares that when human life is taken without just cause (i.e., capital punishment, just war, self-defense), the sin of murder has been committed (Gen. 9:5; Exod. 20:13).
God is sovereign over the womb and can ultimately open and close it as He wills (Gen. 20:18, 29:31, 30:22; 1 Sam. 1:5–6; Isa. 66:9; Luke 1:24–25).
Children are a blessing from God to be provided and cared for by parents as well as extended family and the church, including those who are adopted as Jesus was (Gen. 1:28a; Ps. 127:3–5, 128:3–4; Matt. 18:5–6; Mark 9:36–37, 10:16; 1 Tim. 5:8).
In an article I wrote for Fox News, I said this regarding abortion: “Of all the Ten Commandments, number six is the only one that our nation has codified into law. ‘You shall not murder.’ Since 1973, legal abortions in America have taken the lives of 55 million people…That total of 55 million lives equals 17.5% of the country’s current population, is greater than the population of any state in the Union, and is greater than the population of 219 of the world’s countries including South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Australia, Argentina, and Canada. Fifty-five million is about the same as the population of the 25 smallest states and Washington D.C. combined.”1

I went on to explain a discussion I had with Dr. John Piper about his conversation with an abortion doctor. Piper said, “Before I could get my first of 10 arguments out of my mouth, [the doctor] said, ‘Look, I know I’m killing children.” Piper was astounded and asked the man to explain why he would do such a thing. “To be honest, my wife wants me to because it’s a matter of justice for women [and] the lesser of two evils in her mind.”2

Scientifically and medically, it is beyond debate that human life begins at conception. From the initial joining of sperm and egg, the tiny baby is alive, distinct from its mother, and living and growing as a human.3

While the ability to express humanity and personhood changes throughout the life cycle, human essence and human personhood are innate to the living being. No matter how tiny or weak, humans deserve support and protection because they are God’s image-bearers. Princeton professor and former member of the President’s Council on Bioethics Robert P. George rightly says:

Human embryos are not… some other type of animal organism, like a dog or cat. Neither are they a part of an organism, like a heart, a kidney, or a skin cell. Nor again are they a disorganized aggregate, a mere clump of cells awaiting some magical transformation. Rather, a human embryo is a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stage of his or her natural development. Unless severely damaged, or denied or deprived of a suitable environment, a human being in the embryonic stage will, by directing its own integral organic functioning, develop himself or herself to the next more mature developmental stage, i.e., the fetal stage. The embryonic, fetal, child, and adolescent stages are stages in the development of a determinate and enduring entity—a human being—who  comes into existence as a single-celled organism (the zygote) and develops, if all goes well, into adulthood many years later. But does this mean that the human embryo is a human person worthy of full moral respect? Must the early embryo never be used as a mere means for the benefit of others simply because it is a human being? The answer… is “Yes.”4

Furthermore, Christians have always followed the teaching of the Old Testament Jews, that abortion of a preborn child and exposure of a born child are both murderous sins. In the Didache, which was an ancient manual for church instruction, we read, “You shall not commit murder…You shall not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide.”5

Some will argue that there is a difference between a child in a mother’s womb and one outside of it, yet the early church saw both as equal living people and the taking of life in either state as equally murderous. Their convictions were based on Scripture, which uses the same word (brephos) for Elizabeth’s unborn child (John the Baptizer) as that used for the unborn baby Jesus in Mary’s womb and also for the children brought to Jesus (Luke 1:41, 1:44, 2:12, 18:15). Simply, in the divinely inspired pages of Scripture, God reveals to us that a child in the womb and a child singing and dancing around Jesus in worship are equally human beings who bear the image of God, and thankfully Mary did not abort the “tissue” in her womb.

Additionally, the Bible assumes that an unborn baby is a human life and assigns the death penalty for anyone who takes an unborn life because it is murder. Exodus 21:22–25 (ESV) says:

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out [the Hebrew term is yasa, a live birth—not shakal, the typical term for miscarriage], but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Indeed, not to extend legal protections to preborn children because of age, size, or phase of development is a grievous discrimination and injustice akin to racism, sexism, and ageism. Finally, the Good News of Christianity is that not only did God come to earth as a baby, but He grew up to become a man who died on the cross to forgive any and all sins—including the taking of an unborn life.

Mark Driscoll, “What do 55 million people have in common?” https:// www.foxnews.com/opinion/what-do-55-million-people-have-in-common.

Ibid.

See Douglas Considine, ed., Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia, 5th ed.

(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976), 943; Keith L. Moore and T. V. N. Persaud,Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects, 6th ed. (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 2001), 2; Bruce M. Carlson, Patten’s Foundations of Embryology, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 3; Jan Langman, Medical Embryology, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1975), 3; Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996), 8, 29.

Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, Embryo: A Defense of  Human Life (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 3–4. George is a professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and a former member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. Right-to-life arguments have typically been based explicitly on moral and religious grounds. In Embryo, the authors eschew religious arguments and make a purely scientific and philosophical case that the fetus, from the instant of conception, is a human being, with all the moral and political rights inherent in that status. The authors argue that there is no room for a “moral dualism” that regards being a “person” as merely a stage in a human life span. An embryo does not exist in a “prepersonal” stage that does not merit the inviolable rights otherwise ascribed to persons. Instead, the authors argue, the right not to be intentionally killed is inherent in the fact of being a human being and that status begins at the moment of conception. Moreover, just as none should be excluded from moral and legal protections based on race, sex, religion, or ethnicity, none should be excluded on the basis of age, size, or stage of biological development.

Didache 2.2.

When I was a little kid, for some reason one summer day following a rain, the boys in our neighborhood gathered for an epic battle where we threw mud at each other all day. Today, the world feels like that every day. As Christians, when people start slinging mud at us, we should pick it up and get a good look at it. Maybe put it under a microscope and study it. We should under no circumstances throw it back.

With degrees from Princeton, Yale, and Westminster Theological Seminary, Dr. John Frame has written some monumental works that help de ne orthodox Christianity in the modern world. I asked him via email what tolerance today should look like. In a gracious personal reply, he pointed out “every individual or group accepts some beliefs, practices, and people in various ways, and rejects others. So we are all tolerant and intolerant in different ways. It is unreasonable, therefore, either to favor or to disfavor tolerance in general.” He adds, “So when someone says, ‘Some Christian groups are too intolerant,’ we need to find out more specifically the nature of the complaint. What groups? What are they ‘intolerant’ of? How do they express this intolerance? Is this kind of intolerance good or bad?”

Frame suggests that we analyze tolerance through a three-part grid.

Should we tolerate perspectives? Of course. We cannot expect Christians and non-Christians to think the same. But like Dr. Norman Geisler said in an interview I conducted for this project, “We should respect those whose views differ from ours, even if we believe they are false. They have a right to be wrong. Freedom of thought demands that we respect views that differ from ours. But no valid principle demands that we accept contrary views as being true.”

We cannot agree when facts are false. Geisler adds, “Opposite views cannot both be true. For example, if atheism is true then theism is false and vice versa. Likewise, if Muslims are right in claiming that Jesus did not die for our sins and rise from the dead three days later, then Christians who say He did are wrong. Both views can’t be true.”

Should we tolerate practices? When it comes to other religions and alternative sexualities and such, it depends on what we mean by tolerance. We will not sanction gay marriage ceremonies in our church. But say you move next door to a gay couple. Of course you should love them and be the best neighbor you know how. You can still hope they would meet Jesus and walk in repentance.

Should we tolerate people? Absolutely. It’s where the Bible talks about loving our neighbor. So somebody says, “Are you tolerant?” You say, “Well, I really love people, and I’m willing to live in relationship with people that I really disagree with as long as we can be open and honest. I can talk to them about what I believe, and even be open about some things I’d like to see change in their life for their own good. And maybe they would like to see some things change in me.” I have friendships and loving relationships with all kinds of people that disagree with me on all kinds of things.

But as Frame pointed out in our interview, different situations might demand different levels of tolerance. “In the church, for example, we might welcome someone to our worship service, but refuse him as a member.” We might have different standards of tolerance for people who attend compared to church leaders and pastors.

TAKING ONE FOR TEAM JESUS

I played in a baseball tournament when I was 13, and the kid was throwing so fast there was no way in the world we were ever going to get a hit on him. Somehow, he walked a kid and then threw a few wild pitches, so we had a runner on third base. My coach came up and said bluntly, “Mark, I need you to get hit by the pitch.” I gave him a look that said, “You know he’s going to kill me, right?” But my coach wouldn’t let it go. He kept pressuring me to take one for the team. He said, “No, crowd the plate, lean over, and when the ball comes, just turn, and let it hit you. For our team to win, you have to get on base.” And you know what? It worked. Sometimes you just have to take one for the team, and that includes Team Jesus.

The culture is watching Christians more intently than ever. They are thinking, “Whatever team quits first is the one that doesn’t really believe.”

In their eyes our fortitude proves or disproves the truth of what we claim to believe. When the gay rights movement first started, it was a minority group that was viewed with disparagement and called horrible names. And what did they do? They hung in there. Or consider it this way: If a guy today is on his rug praying toward Mecca openly and publicly at the airport—post 9/11—he is probably pretty committed to Islam. It is not bandwagon time for Islam in America. So if I wanted to know more about Islam, I would pick him, because I want to talk to the guy who really believes and practices what he preaches.

Why in the world would we think that Christians should have less fortitude than people who are committed to their sexual identity—or to another religion? We shouldn’t. And we can’t. The bravery and commitment Jesus calls us to stands out because it’s supernatural. People are going to call you names when you live out your faith, but your recourse isn’t anger or fear, it’s love. You’re called to speak the truth and live the truth in love. So hang in there. This is just the beginning.

This series of 30 daily devotions are adapted from the first chapters of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s new book “Christians Might Be Crazy” available exclusively at markdriscoll.org for a tax-deductible gift to Mark Driscoll Ministries. For your gift of any amount, we will email you a digital copy of the book (available worldwide) and also send you a paperback copy of the book (U.S. residents only). Pastor Mark also has a corresponding six-part sermon series that you can find for free at markdriscoll.org or on the free Mark Driscoll Ministries app. Thank you in advance for your partnership which helps people learn that It’s All About Jesus! For our monthly partners who give a recurring gift each month, this premium content will be automatically sent.

Being a Christian today is a lot like when someone calls you a name as a kid. You feel ashamed and put your head down and walk away. Getting called “bigoted,” “intolerant,” “unloving,” or “discriminatory” is just the adult version of playground name-calling. They might as well say, “You’re fat,” “You’re stupid,” “You’re ugly,” and “You’re dumb.” Plenty of Christians are wrestling with that dynamic these days, saying, “Hey, I just got called some really bad names and all these other kids were watching. I quit.”

Here are some of the “playground name-calling” words and phrases our focus groups used to describe Christians and what we believe:

misguided
crazy
selective hearing
psychologically manipulative
dangerous
hypocrites
corruption
dogma
scamming
indoctrinating kids too young to think for themselves oppression
want to be told what to do
conformity
ignorance
blind acceptance
weak personality
closed minded
a little too happy
overbearing
militant recruiting
reprogramming
brainwashing extremists
almost a gang
obnoxious
creepy old white men
anti-science
organized religion
yuck
turning into a monster
whack job religion
As a Christian, this doesn’t sound very tolerant to me. How about you? And I think we have enough real-world evidence to question if the same kind of name-calling would have occurred if a group other than Christians were under discussion. But that has nothing to do with how you and I respond.

It’s all too easy for us to become defensive, but stop for a moment and think about Jesus. As soon as He shows up in Scripture, the name-calling begins. The town gossip is filled with awful, uncorroborated accusations like: His mom has slept with such a parade of men that Jesus’ paternity is a mystery. He’s a liar. He’s from a small, backwater town. He’s uneducated, His dad’s a blue-collar nobody who’s clearly a dope because he believes his wife’s crazy story about getting pregnant while still a virgin. Then, Jesus grows up and the religious people accuse Him of being an alcoholic who performs miraculous works by the power of Satan. Everybody gets a crack. But Jesus didn’t quit, and He never stopped loving.

LOVE  YOUR ENEMIES

On all matters, including tolerance and intolerance, Christians are to imitate God’s example. Speaking to a church in the ancient city of Ephesus, the apostle Paul commanded Christians to “always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love” (Eph. 4:2 NLT). And writing to a church in the ancient city of Colossae, Paul says, “Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:12–14 NLT).

In bringing up our faults and sins, the Bible demonstrates that there is in fact, black and white, right and wrong. But Jesus died that we might be forgiven and changed, so that we can in turn forgive others that they too might change. This is the old tolerance. It is a grander vision for society than the new tolerance, because it holds out hope of a change into something far better, a radical recreation the new tolerance does not hold as a virtue since it is unwilling to call someone out of wrong and into right. This is the vision of Jesus in calling you and me to love both our neighbor and our enemy. He knew we would not agree with everyone but needed to love everyone. This is made more di cult when we are mocked and maligned. But by God’s grace, not impossible.

FLEXIBILITY AND FREEDOM

As scholar Nancy Pearcey points out, the only way to counter the rampant negativity toward Christians is to craft a positive message. “How do we present Christianity in a way that shows that it has even higher ideals—that it is more inspiring, more humane, than any secular worldview?” she asks.4

I believe we need to demonstrate that Christianity is far more tolerant, flexible, and helpful than any other option. We should be con dent that while the Bible is admittedly inflexible on some things, it leaves significant room for culture and conscience. It gives immense latitude for group and individual freedoms.

Consider this: Christianity exists across innumerable cultures and languages and has done so for a few thousand years. The Bible is far and away the most translated book in the history of the world, with at least the New Testament available in nearly 1,500 languages and translations under way in more than 2,500 more.5

What makes this amazing cultural adaptability possible is that the Bible provides far more principles than details. The Bible tends to focus on a person’s heart and motives, giving commands that provide freedom fitted to various cultures. This is necessary because actions can have wildly different meanings in different cultures. Extending your right hand to someone is a common greeting in America, for example, but in cultures where you use your right hand to clean yourself in the bathroom, that would be the height of disrespect.

Christian missionaries working in various cultures refer to this as contextualization. They are keenly aware how complex it is to faithfully carry out biblical commands in differing cultures. Many would argue that Christianity is the most tolerant and adaptable of all religions in world history because it has entered more diverse cultures than any other institution— religious, political, or otherwise.

What about personal conscience? The Bible allows each individual to make personal decisions on many things, though not all things. This includes whether or not one marries (1 Cor. 7:25–28), whether or not one eats foods such as meat (1 Cor. 10:28), and what day one chooses to take as a Sabbath day (Rom. 14:5–6). In reality, the Bible leaves thousands of everyday decisions up to individuals.

A LOVING FATHER PUTS A FENCE UP

An analogy about God’s laws might help. I am a father. I love our five children. When our kids were small, we lived on a busy street. The first thing I did when we moved in was get a fence built. That fence provided boundaries for my children, and the reasoning behind the boundary was not restriction but affection. I was not trying to take anything good from my kids. I was attempting to keep bad things away.

As long as my children played within the boundaries of the fence they were free to play whatever games they wanted and do pretty much whatever they liked, as long as it was not dangerous or harmful.

In Christianity, God is also a Father. His principles for what we should do and not do are like pickets in a fence. God wants His kids to safely have fun in the enormous yard of life He has provided them to enjoy without hopping the fence and getting hurt. Admittedly, many Christians do a bad job talking about their Dad and their yard and their fun. They get obsessed with the fence. To the neighbor kids on the other side of the fence, they seem intolerant and unloving and not fun at all. And no one ever wants to come over and play with kids like that. But what if the neighborhood kids saw us having a blast? Not just because we’re safe, but because we’re free to run without fear. That’s what we’re after.

Nancy Pearcey, “Sexual Identity in a Secular Age,” Summer in the City lecture series, Houston Baptist University, August 5, 2013.
http://www.wycli e.org/about/Statistics.aspx

This series of 30 daily devotions are adapted from the first chapters of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s new book “Christians Might Be Crazy” available exclusively at markdriscoll.org for a tax-deductible gift to Mark Driscoll Ministries. For your gift of any amount, we will email you a digital copy of the book (available worldwide) and also send you a paperback copy of the book (U.S. residents only). Pastor Mark also has a corresponding six-part sermon series that you can find for free at markdriscoll.org or on the free Mark Driscoll Ministries app. Thank you in advance for your partnership which helps people learn that It’s All About Jesus! For our monthly partners who give a recurring gift each month, this premium content will be automatically sent.

Biblical Christianity requires black-and-white thinking because it’s dualistic, also known as binary thinking. From beginning to end, the Bible is thoroughly categorical. Satan and God. Demons and angels. Sin and holiness. Lies and truth. Wolves and shepherds. Non-Christians and Christians. Damnation and salvation. Hell and heaven. An exhaustive list could fill a book, but you get the point. The Bible makes clear distinctions and judgments between logically opposed categories.

But the mainstream culture you and I live in is monistic and rejects dualistic binary thinking. The culture does not see categories. The culture does not allow black-and-white thinking. The culture refuses to allow any categories because that would mean making distinctions, which ultimately ends in making value judgments. Instead of Satan and God, we have a Higher Power. Instead of demons and angels, we have spirits. Instead of sin and holiness, we have individual expression. Instead of lies and truth, we have your truth and my truth. Instead of wolves and shepherds, we have spiritual guides. Instead of non-Christians and Christians, we have everyone defined as God’s children. Instead of damnation and salvation, we have whatever works for you. Instead of hell and heaven, we have people who go to a better place simply because they died.

Monism is a religion. It may not be formal like Christianity, but it is a religious view of the world that rejects dualistic binary thinking. Ultimately, this is a battle between the God of the Bible who is intolerant and the gods of this world who are at war against Him, if you believe the Bible.

NEITHER TOLERANCE NOR UNICORNS ARE IN THE BIBLE

It might surprise you that even as the Bible speaks of God in terms of holiness, love, justice, and mercy, it never suggests tolerance as one of His attributes. A simple English word search of the entire Bible in the most popular English translations shows few if any appearances of the word tolerance. The handful of times it does appear in various translations, it is used pejoratively to describe an evil done by God’s people as they “tolerate” things such as sexual sin (1 Cor. 5:1) and false teaching (Rev. 2:20).

The New Living Translation speaks of God not tolerating other religions (Exod. 20:5; Deut. 5:9), injustice (2 Chron. 19:7; Mic. 6:11), sinful behavior (Ps. 5:4, 101:5), or teaching based on the beliefs of other religions (Rev. 2:14). Reading the Bible does not exactly support the conclusion that the God of the Bible is tolerant or that His people should embrace the new tolerance (or the existence of unicorns, in case you’re wondering).

For Christians, this is bedrock. Who God is, how God acts, and what God commands override all other commitments. While we do not want to appear unloving toward people—especially people we disagree with—we also do not want to be unfaithful to the God whom we believe deserves our love and loyalty. Asking a Christian to approve what God disapproves is akin to asking a daughter to wind up and slap her loving father in the face in the name of being loving toward the neighbor kids who hate Him.

GOD AIN’T TOLERANT, HE’S PATIENT

While the Bible says nothing about God being tolerant, it speaks often about God and His people being patient, loving, and forbearing. This strikes at the heart of how you and I engage the culture around us.

The verse quoted in the rest of the Bible more than any other is God telling us He is “the LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exod. 34:6–7 ESV).

Based on the conversations we’ve read so far, those first claims by God would astound many outside the church today—and even more so if you and I reflected those same qualities. God’s attributes are compassion, mercy, patience, love, and justice. But it’s those same incredible attributes that necessitate black-and-white thinking. God sees some things as “iniquity, rebellion, and sin” and not just preference, taste, and perspective because He is truly loving. And God allows our bad behavior to continue—including my own faults and failings—not because He is tolerant but because He is patient.

If God were merely tolerant, Jesus would not have needed to die in our place for your sins and mine. He would not be holy, and we would not be unholy. There would be no failure on our part that needs fixing. But in compassion, mercy, and love, God came as Jesus Christ to live the life we have not lived and die the death we should have died. God shows patience not because we do not need to change but because we are stubborn and slow to change. The leader of Jesus’ disciples, Peter, says it this way, “The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed,  but wants everyone to repent” (2 Pet. 3:9 NLT). God’s patience far exceeds the new tolerance. God tolerates us—as He seeks to change us—because He loves us.

This series of 30 daily devotions are adapted from the first chapters of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s new book “Christians Might Be Crazy” available exclusively at markdriscoll.org for a tax-deductible gift to Mark Driscoll Ministries. For your gift of any amount, we will email you a digital copy of the book (available worldwide) and also send you a paperback copy of the book (U.S. residents only). Pastor Mark also has a corresponding six-part sermon series that you can find for free at markdriscoll.org or on the free Mark Driscoll Ministries app. Thank you in advance for your partnership which helps people learn that It’s All About Jesus! For our monthly partners who give a recurring gift each month, this premium content will be automatically sent.

In high school, I was not a Christian. Some Christians in our large public school, however, wanted to change that. Year after year, we would have debate after debate. They would try to convert me, and I would try to disprove them. At some point in nearly every debate, they would tell me that I was going to hell because I was a sinner. At that point in the conversation, I would pull out the only Bible verse I had committed to memory and say, “Thou shall not judge.” For me, this was my ace in the hole.

Many who make no claim to follow Jesus are especially critical of what they see as the failure of Christians to live up to their own principles of tolerance. As a guy in Phoenix put it, “The basic belief of Christianity is that you’re not supposed to judge your fellow man.” He continued,

“Saying somebody is going to go to hell because they don’t believe as strong as the other person, or because they did something, that’s a sin. The basic pretext of Christianity is supposed to be tolerant, compassionate, loving, forgiving, merciful. But there’s [sic] a lot of examples in the Bible where biblical figures, they pass judgment on their fellow man. They demonstrate hatred for their fellow man and most definitely not very compassionate.”

But as we saw in the earlier conversation between our facilitator and the focus group in Austin, a complete lack of judgment about what’s right, good, and true leads to chaos and is ultimately impossible to endure in reality. More than that, it leads to a real devaluing of someone else’s ability to think and their inherent dignity as a human—able to stand apart from the animals to think, and feel, and follow deeply held convictions.

So could it be that tolerance is dangerous and intolerance is actually a good thing? Let’s find out.

THOU SHALL NOT JUDGE?

I need to point out that asserting tolerance as the core of Christianity misses the point. The message of the Bible from start to finish is that Jesus came to save sinners and bring them to an eternity in heaven. But this guy makes an argument we heard repeatedly, and which I’m willing to bet you’ve heard yourself. Group participants continually quoted one particular Scripture in some form or other: “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged” (Matt. 7:1 NLT). Even people who knew little of the Bible were quick to quote  this verse, putting it out there multiple times in multiple cities to argue for complete tolerance where no one is ever allowed to judge anyone else.

Read in isolation, that verse seems to prove their point. We might think we should imitate an imaginary Jesus who wanders the countryside speaking poetry and religious pleasantries. That interpretation, however, ignores the rest of the passage, which says:

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?” (Matt. 7:1–9 ESV)

Interpreting Scripture is like understanding a conversation. If you only catch a line or two in the middle you could easily misunderstand the whole of what was said. Likewise, the same easily happens if you grab a line of Scripture without checking the context. In Matthew 7, Jesus rebukes religious leaders who condemn others for sins they tolerate in their own life. Jesus Himself judges them when He calls them hypocrites who have logs protruding from their eyes. He even calls some people “pigs,” an extreme offense in a culture that considered pigs religious pollutants. A few verses later in Matthew 7:15, Jesus rails at “false prophets” who are “wolves,” yet another stinging judgment. What Jesus forbid was not all judging but rather rash and hypocritical judging. That warning hits home for me. It was religious leaders who attacked Jesus the most viciously.

All of this is why Jesus said in John 7:24, “Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly” (NLT). How Christians can judge correctly challenges every generation. Throughout history there has been a nonstop stream of voices that try to steer the church away from black-and-white thinking and mix everything into gray. They attempt to combine the right teachings of the Bible (thesis) and the misguided opinions of culture (antithesis) into a new gray mess (synthesis). This is often done in response to cultural pressure to update, modify, and edit biblical teaching to make it more palatable to its detractors. This “liberal” or “progressive” Christianity marries the church to the changing culture instead of the unchanging Christ. Some Christians still seek a gray way in the name of progress, enlightenment, and love. They accept all sexualities, spiritualties, and ideologies under the banner of the new tolerance.

This series of 30 daily devotions are adapted from the first chapters of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s new book “Christians Might Be Crazy” available exclusively at markdriscoll.org for a tax-deductible gift to Mark Driscoll Ministries. For your gift of any amount, we will email you a digital copy of the book (available worldwide) and also send you a paperback copy of the book (U.S. residents only). Pastor Mark also has a corresponding six-part sermon series that you can find for free at markdriscoll.org or on the free Mark Driscoll Ministries app. Thank you in advance for your partnership which helps people learn that It’s All About Jesus! For our monthly partners who give a recurring gift each month, this premium content will be automatically sent.

“In those days…Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” – Judges 17:6

When our Christians Might Be Crazy facilitator asked the group in Austin if they thought they were being judgmental of the Christian faith, one responded, “That’s all we’re doing, right?” When she wondered aloud if being judgmental is part of human nature, another ventured that it was. Check out the conversation that ensued among the various participants:

“I don’t think being judgmental is bad, personally. I think the way that most people think about it is bad. Yes, it’s a constant. Like you said, it’s human nature. We all look at somebody, we look at a situation, everything, you make judgments and you make your decisions based on those judgments. If we didn’t have any judgments then you would just be an idiot, you wouldn’t do anything for any reason.” “No sense.”

“Yes, you have to have some kind of understanding of what’s going on, right.”

“You’re making judgment calls, basically.”

“It’s what you do with that judgment and taking other pieces of information through religion that can lead to very negative things. But it can also lead to very positive things. They’re just completely dependent on how you take that information and put it into some kind of action….”

“Sometimes it is perfectly logical, and obviously, we have to make thousands and thousands of those calls every day probably, in some way or another. I would say, to me, a judgment has to be a leap some way.”

“But when I take that leap and then start condemning other people for it and telling them that they have to be as me, or else.”

“I’m not saying there are not judgments that are inappropriate.”

“Yes. You’ve got that sliding scale where judgment goes from how to live life to how to harm others.”

“I agree with that. I think that it’s not necessarily wrong to think that someone should do something a certain way. Every philosopher, period, has done that. They’ve all thought that their way of thinking was the best way, or maybe not the best but what should people probably do. Anyone who is talking about morals is talking about how they think people should do things. The difference is when you start to go from, ‘I judge people should do this’ to ‘I judge people
do this and unless they do I think this is going to happen to them’ or ‘I’m going to do something to them….’”

“I’ve met some people before, in life, who approach things more from the standpoint of, ‘This is what truth I feel like I’ve found for myself. I’m not going to tell you whether it’s right or wrong because it works for me and that’s as far as I’ll go with it. If you like it and want to play around with it in your life, cool. Otherwise, don’t worry about it.’ Yes, that’s just sharing their own personal experience and that’s, yay, do that all day long.”

These guys had the guts to admit they were being intolerant. The problem? They shifted the argument to say their own intolerance was good but other people’s intolerance was bad.

GOOD BIGOTS AND BAD BIGOTS

Not all the focus groups saw they were doing the same thing they scorned in others. So the facilitator served up a real-life scenario. She asked the San Francisco women: “You’re an 18-year-old going to college and your roommate is an evangelical Christian. Knowing that, do you switch roommates?” Here was the conversation that followed:

“That’s a factor.”

“That’s prejudiced. That’s like finding out somebody’s gay, or finding out somebody’s a different ethnicity. That’s full-on prejudiced, to just say, ‘I know one thing about this person, and I don’t want to room with them.’ That’s going against everything we say we have a problem with, with them. That seems totally wrong. If they’re a jerk, and they happen to be an evangelical Christian, that’s something different. Based on their faith, that’s pure prejudice.”

“I think it’d be more likely for them to be judging me, than me judging them….”

“I feel like all the judgments being made are more just the whole institution of it, but with individual people, you don’t know how they’re going to be….”

“I feel like we’re bashing them.”
“Yes. If I believe in that and I found out my roommate is an evangelical, I would probably want to switch.”

The issue of tolerance moved from the theoretical to the personal. They claimed to oppose intolerance. But at least some of the San Francisco women were unwilling to live by their own rules and room with a Christian. Their response was—in their own words—“prejudiced,” “judging,” and “bashing.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling the tolerance. Imagine if participants made these comments about African Americans. Women. Asians. Homeless people. Left-handed people. Democrats. Homosexuals. Pick a group. Do you think the conversation would have continued? Intolerance isn’t just a Christian issue but a human issue. It is not a case of the tolerant versus the intolerant but the intolerant versus the intolerant. So how do we find our way forward? By looking at tolerance biblically and practically from the Christian perspective that God is, in fact, intolerant.

This series of 30 daily devotions are adapted from the first chapters of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s new book “Christians Might Be Crazy” available exclusively at markdriscoll.org for a tax-deductible gift to Mark Driscoll Ministries. For your gift of any amount, we will email you a digital copy of the book (available worldwide) and also send you a paperback copy of the book (U.S. residents only). Pastor Mark also has a corresponding six-part sermon series that you can find for free at markdriscoll.org or on the free Mark Driscoll Ministries app. Thank you in advance for your partnership which helps people learn that It’s All About Jesus! For our monthly partners who give a recurring gift each month, this premium content will be automatically sent.

When I was in high school, our friend group would often pile into one of our cars to go find something to do together. Maybe you have some experience with this. If so, you know it never ends well, as one of our friends proved. He had a nasty habit. Thinking he was funny, he would wait for a strategic moment while someone else was driving and with all his might pull up the emergency brake that sat between the driver and passenger in the front seat. Immediately, the car would screech to a halt.

Today, the relational version of that emergency brake is calling someone intolerant. Once someone pulls that, the conversation—and typically the relationship—screeches to a halt.

The Western world has actually experienced a radical redefinition of tolerance. Dr. D. A. Carson explains the difference between the old tolerance and what he calls “the new tolerance.” In his book The Intolerance of Tolerance, he examines the progression of dictionary definitions of tolerance and points out a subtle but massive shift from “accepting the existence of different views” to “acceptance of different views.” Tolerance once meant “recognizing other people’s right to have different beliefs or practices,” but now means “accepting the differing views of other people.”1

Do you see the profound implications of that subtle shift? Under the old definition, two people disagreed without abandoning their position. They naturally thought the other person was mistaken but tolerated their ideas nonetheless. Carson points out three assumptions underlying this scenario: First, objective truth exists. Second, the people who disagree believe their view is true. Third, by sorting through their disagreement in a reasonable manner, both sides have an opportunity to arrive at the actual truth. But as Carson notes, the new tolerance “refuses to adjudicate among competing truth claims and moral claims on the ground that to do so would be intolerant.” It “becomes a synonym for ethical or religious neutrality.” The old tolerance “actually requires you to take a stand among competing truth and ethical claims, for otherwise you are not in a position to put up with something with which you disagree” [emphasis in original].2

Tolerance by definition means disagreement, because you don’t tolerate people that agree with you. You probably enjoy them a lot! So tolerance necessarily means that people do not see eye-to-eye.

Tensions spike between Christians and non-Christians because we tend to think and speak in terms of the old tolerance while others more often than not fall in line with the new tolerance. Christians assume tolerance means figuring out how to get along with people you think are wrong, so that everyone survives to debate another day—and maybe even learn a little something. But much of our world is no longer on that quest for truth. No one is ever right or wrong. As you’ve seen already in the sentiments of our focus groups, one idea or behavior is as good as another. If that is the case, we should not only tolerate differences but approve of and even celebrate everyone and everything as equally right. To put it bluntly, unless you show up for every parade and wave every ag you are an intolerant bigot.

YOU DON’T NEED GOD TO BE GOOD

This shift toward a new tolerance started in the mid-60s but only now dominates public thinking to the point that it tops the list of objections to Christianity. Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl trace this change back to the values-clarification curriculum introduced in many public and some private schools. Beckwith and Koukl quote the curriculum developers boasting that this approach imparts no specific set of values: “There is no sermonizing or moralizing. The goal is to involve the students in practical experiences, make them aware of their own feelings, their own ideas, their own beliefs, so that the choices and decisions they make are conscious and deliberate, based on their own value systems [emphasis in the original].”3 This approach says we should establish our own personal standard of morality based not on objective absolutes but on subjective values. It dethrones God and His universal standard of morality that is apart from us and to which we are accountable, and in His place enthrones our own personal standards of morality. It denies that we are fallen and sinful but instead trains us to trust our own “feelings,” “ideas,” “beliefs,” and “values.” The bottom line is that many people think that you do not need God to be good.

This is exactly how I thought before I became a Christian. I assumed I was a pretty good person with a decent idea of right and wrong who lived a good life by my own instincts, conscience, and perspective. My life worked. I was happy. As a college student, I enjoyed picking up bits and pieces from sociology, psychology, theology, anthropology, history, and philosophy that I relied on to make choices. When I started reading the Bible, every page pulled me into a fight. God was intolerant of some of my behaviors. He took exception to some of my beliefs. He stood in authority over me, judging me and telling me I needed to change. I resisted that. I could not agree with that. It was like I was a cat and the Bible was a hose. But I eventually had a change of heart and mind that caused me to stop straining against God and start surrendering to God.

FLUNKING THE TOLERANCE TEST

It is easy to deny the existence of moral absolutes until we somehow get trampled—and then we are quick to cry out for justice. When you suffer grave harm, no one has to convince you that some actions deserve not tolerance, but punishment. Sexual assault victims, for example, never complain that their values or feelings were violated. They understand that an old-fashioned word like evil better describes their pain.

The new tolerance seems like a wiser, kinder, and gentler way to do life in a world rife with extremism. It seems to value the underdog and give voice to the groups and individuals who have been silenced. But as an overarching ideology, the new tolerance leads to anarchy and misery—the very things it seeks to halt. The new tolerance flunks the test of real life. And isn’t that what we’re after here? Honest conversations about real life that lead to real life- changing answers?

Everyone draws lines. We do not let drunk people drive. We do not let smokers light up in hospitals. We do not let sex o enders teach children at school. We do not let 30-year-old men marry 15-year-old girls. We do not let people lacking eyesight join the military and shoot guns. We do not let illiterate people graduate from Harvard. Why? Because we know these things are wrong. So wrong that we deem them intolerable.

Many focus group participants sensed this tension. The harder they tried to consistently apply the new tolerance the more they realized the dangerous road they were hurdling down. They hedged their statements with provisions like “if no one gets hurt,” which is subjective verbiage anyone could use to excuse their own bad behavior, or “if they are consenting adults,” a stipulation that forces us to ask why we tolerate things from 19-year-olds that we do not with 16-year-olds. Is that not arbitrary and intolerant?

Christians are correct to resist feeling pressured to approve or celebrate things that go against their core beliefs. And that’s how the give-and-take of life works. No one expects vegetarians to root for butcher shops or environmentalists to lose their voice cheering at a monster truck rally. Sometimes our best response to charges of intolerance is to say with genuine love and concern for the truth, “Hey, wait a second, you say we’re intolerant? You’re intolerant too.”

D. A. Carson, The Intolerance of Tolerance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 3.
Ibid., 98.
Sidney Simon quoted in footnote: Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books,1998),

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