“Don’t call yourself a believer if you’re not caring for orphans”,  “If we are doing little to nothing, how dare we, how dare we claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.”… “Followers of Jesus Christ care about widows and orphans and they understand that it is a litmus test…It is not an option.”

Those are the more salient points that Kay Warren, wife of Rick Warren, made at a recent Catalyst West conference. Let’s examine those statements a bit. The first thing of note is that she puts a great deal of emphasis on orphans, but not so much on widows. I find this a little surprising for a few reasons. The first is that caring for widows is mentioned far more often than caring for orphans in the scriptures. In the New Testament, orphans are only mentioned once, actually.  In fact, in almost every scripture that mentions caring for orphans and the fatherless, right along side is caring for widows. [and usually foreigners] They go hand in hand. There’s almost 30 verses in fact that have them side by side, such as ” Therefore the Lord will take no pleasure in the young men, nor will he pity the fatherless and widows, for everyone is ungodly and wicked, every mouth speaks vileness. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.” Whoah! Sorry guys! Did NOT mean to post that one. That’s very, very unGodly of God. Let’s try again; “Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.” Zechariah 7:10. Much better.

If we were being consistent then, we wouldn’t just single one marginalized people group out, but it would hold true that the statement could and should read “Don’t call yourself a believer if you’re not caring for widows…  “If we are doing little to nothing, how dare we, how dare we claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.” I’ll be honest and say that when looking at the span of my Christian walk, I have not cared very much for widows. I suppose I have given tithes to the local church which is supposed to offer some monetary care for them, but I can’t be sure how much actually goes into the widow fund. And so in the grand scheme of things, were I being realistic, I would have to say that I have done little to nothing to help the widows. I also haven’t done anything that I know of for orphans. I mean, my wife and I do sponsor three children through world vision and compassion, but I can’t pretend that they are orphans. Don’t get me wrong- I wish they were orphans, as that would offer me a modicum of relief. But they’re not. I’m cursed to help care for children who have mothers and fathers, which means that I fail on that one too. Oh who am I kidding myself? I’m not a Christian at all. I mean, I know that I’ve repented of my damnable sins and put my faith and trust in Christ as the redeemer of my sins and the only one who could wash and justify and sanctify me, as he took my sins and he gave me his righteousness by grace alone through faith alone- but that doesn’t really count. What a fool I’ve been…how dare I claim to be a follower of Christ? His work on the cross clearly doesn’t maintain my salvation, rather it is dependent on how many orphans I adopt and care for. I wish Kay Warren would have told me this sooner. I’d better get on it! In fact, come to think of it, I certainly hope the orphans are caring for other orphans so they can be saved too! Oh man, sorry guys- I have to go! Gotta go find me an orphan to take care of, because if I get hit by a bus and die before that happens, I’m doomed!!!!

Something I’ve noticed in my own life, is that whenever someone asks me how I’m doing, or “How’s life treating you?” I’ll say that I am busy, or some variation thereof. Not only that, but typically I’ll list off what I have to do and go into great detail into the travails and hardships that it my life. I might say something like “Oh, I’m super busy. I have such a crazy week. I’m working overtime at work to get something done, and I have to go shopping for this and take care of that” and so forth. Usually if there is someone similar to me hearing this, they’ll inevitably try to one-up me and say “You think that’s bad!? I have to work 60 hours this week, I only slept three hours last night, and I have to take the kids to their doctors appointment. I then have to cook a meal for everyone on Thursday, not including having worship practice that night and I won’t get any sleep until then, and it’ll be a crazy busy week.” And if I’m the person hearing that- either myself or someone else will one up them “You think that’s busy!?I had to work back-to back over time shifts this week, and I’ll only get about 3 hours of sleep for the next 4 days, and I have to drive to edmonton and back on no sleep in 13 hours to bring my kids to a doctors apointment, then bring them right back for soccer, and then get back to work with an hour to spare to make my shift, and then I have to do….” and it just doesn’t end.

In that moment when someone asks me “how’s life?” I make busyness the first thing that defines me and what describes me. There’s  lot of reasons why this is, and if anyone is the same way I’m sure it wouldn’t take them long to come up with their own reasons as to why they feel the need to make busyness the big thing, and then to one-up people by regaling them with your own tale of overburdened misery. I suspect more than anything that it’s a pride issue. That’s what it boils down to. We take pride in how busy we are. We use it as a means to make it all about me. We speak of it almost as if it’s a badge of honor- as something that we should be proud of, and something that gives us worth. It’s almost like I want attention, or want people to feel sorry for me, and think “Wow, he has so much on his plate. He’s so busy. How does he do it?” Because even when I’m not that busy, I’ll still tell people I am. I might not really be that busy,  but I will exaggerate somewhat and overemphasize it and can make a simple, innocuous day or running a few errands sound like the Boston marathon that I have to run barefoot and backwards and with two broken legs. And it comes down to pride. And probably idolatry. I’m trying to find value in actions rather than in the cross of Christ. I’m trying to find validation in the sympathy of other people rather than finding my worth in my identity in Christ.

And so if you see me around, and you ask me how I’m doing, and I start to go off on that “I’m so busy” tangent; don’t let me. Call me on it. Some days I may genuinely have a lot on the go, but don’t let me regurgitate that to you as if I have it so bad, or as if the world will end if I don’t get everything done. I’m being prideful. And I know it. And I need good people around me to know it too, and to help me accountable and to help me slowly kill it in my life.

“If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both; if it does not encourage the commitment of faith, it reinforces the detachment of unbelief; if it fails to promote humility, it inevitably feeds pride.  So one who theologizes in public, whether formally in the pulpit, on the podium or in print, or informally from the armchair, must think hard about the effect his thoughts will have on people — God’s people, and other people.  Theologians are called to be the church’s water engineers and sewage officers; it is their job to see that God’s pure truth flows abundantly where it is needed, and to filter out any intrusive pollution that might damage health.” J. I. Packer

I recently wrote an article about Jennifer Knapp coming out of the closet and revealing herself to have been engaged in a homosexual relationship with another woman for the better part of a decade. Somewhat surprisingly, I received a comment from a woman who clearly disagreed with the post, and made her feelings known in the comments section. As it were, I want to break that down a bit and make a few notes on the most salient points. Though as a disclaimer, while the post was written by our friend Irisdawm and presented as her own thoughts- It’s not. The thing was copied and pasted from several sources and are not original to her, though I don’t mind terribly, as it’s still not difficult to unpack.

Early on I talked about how homosexual acts were abominable. She countered with the fact that though Leviticus says homosexuality is an abomination, it also says that you shouldn’t plant two different seeds in the same hole, and that it is an abomination to eat a rabbit. Hopefully someone can help me out here, but I’ve never even heard of a scripture that forbids the planting of multiple seeds, and so if someone could find the reference [Irisdawn] I would be more than happy. As for the rabbit- this is part of the cacophony known as Old Testament dietary laws. You can thrown in carrion creatures, bats, mice, ostriches, cats, dogs etc in that list as well, as these were all forbidden to be consumed. In short- while were are not sure why exactly these were forbidden, we know that they were, and that God had a purpose for these. Most were used as a means of keeping the Jews separate from other people and cultures, as a way of maintaining their unique identities. They were a few dietary restrictions implemented at a particular time, for a particular length of time, for a particular people, for a particular purpose, and were repealed in the New Testament revelation as no longer binding. On the flip side you have something like homosexuality. The references to this being wicked spans the entirety of the Bible, has no restrictions,qualifiers or restraints, and is reinforced in the New Testament revelation with even stronger language than in the Old Testament.As it were, it really is a false dichotomy to try to play them off each other.

She later says, speaking about the Levitical references; “When the term abomination is used in the Hebrew bible, it is always used to address a ritual wrong. It is never used to refer to something innately immoral. That’s not true even a little bit. A simple example is found in Leviticus 18, where we are given a long list of perversions and abominations. We are told that the abominations include; having sex with a close relative,  having sex with your mother, having sex with your step mother, having sex with your sister, having sex with your step-sister, having sex with your grandchildren, having sex with your aunt, having sex with your sister in law, having sex with your daughter in law, having sex with a woman and her daughter, having sex with a person of the same sex, having sex with a rival wife, having sex with your neighbours wife, having sex with animals, sacrificing your children to other gods. The scriptures flat out say “For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people.” So that’s one thing. Are we to say that these things are not innately immoral, but rather are simply ritual issues? That these are not really abominations, but were only for that time, and that we can engage in any of those actions because we’re not bound by “Irrelevant Old Testament Ritual Morality” ? Ridiculous.  The second point is quite salient; are we to believe that all those things are wicked and vile and harmful to the soul, but that the one exception was having sex with the same sex. That that one is the exception. That everything else is terrible and immoral and sinful, but that one things squished between all the rest- that one is actually good and beautiful and glorious and pleasing to God and is part of his ideal for humanity?

The next chunk of space is dedicated to trying to explain away Romans 1. I suppose I should say that just because the translators of the NIV chose to use the word perverts as part of their dynamic translation, means very little. Every Literal and Formal translation of the Bible has some variation of “homosexual offenders.” Not only that, but the Greek “arsenokoitai” is still the same in both, so that point is really a non-issue. I find the shenanigans being played with the Greek meaning to be typical, so I won’t object on that point. Irisdawn concludes that the homosexual activity that Paul was talking about was homosexual activity between married men who had a boy on the side with which they had sex with. She also states that “there is in fact another word for homosexuality and homosexual acts, paiderasste. If Paul’s intent was to condemn committed and loving relationships, this would have been a much better choice of words. His audience was not educated, so to use a rare word like arsenokoitai when he could have used the much more commonly known paiderasste just doesn’t add up.”

Ironically enough, she has it quite backwards. It should be noted that yes, Paul indeed coined the arsenokoitai, but that shouldn’t bother us a bit. In fact, we should rejoice over it. Paul coined over 150 terms in the New Testament, and so to say that he invented a word isn’t an argument, especially when we see how he formed it. Paul used the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The Greek translation of the Leviticus passages condemns a man [arseno] lying with [koitai] another man [arseno]. Paul joins these two words together into a neologism, a new word, and thus he condemns in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy what was condemned in Leviticus. It’s not remarkable at all when we see it in place. The two verses which condemn homosexual activity are as follows;

meta arsenos ou koimethese koitai gyniakos
(Lev 18:22)

hos an koimethe meta arsenos koitai gynaikos
(Lev 20:13)

When Paul adopted the term arsenokoite, he took it directly from the Levitical passages-in the Greek translation- forbidding homosexual behavior. The meaning, then, could not be clearer: Though the term is unique to Paul, it refers specifically to homosexual behavior. As for the argument about paiderastia being the better and more appropriate word, well, from what I can tell it doesn’t mean homosexual as in two adults in a same-sex relationship. Rather, it carries the meaning of  “lover of boys.” It is a particular word, with a particular meaning– “one who sodomizes boy children”. Look at the etymology. Break it down.  Paidos means child or boy and Erastes/ Erastai means love or lover. From this we get English words pederast and pedophile and pedophilia.

I’m not concerned with his whole “culture argument” that she’s bringing to the table-easily enough understood, but I am intrigued by this statement “You have to admit that there are at least some passages that either a) don’t apply today; b) still apply but don’t mean what they seem to mean on the surface; or c) are overruled by other passages or biblical themes.” Through a proper reading of scripture, employing proper foundational hermeneutics and the historical, grammatical method, this is not especially hard to do. Are there some things which don’t apply to us today? sure- the need for circumcision being one of them. Some passages we can have legitimate disagreements on [such as eschatological meanderings] but there are no passages that are overruled or rendered false by other passages and verses. That’s not how it works. We reconcile the Word to itself, not to our own subjectivity.

The example with Tom and Sam is a bit laughable to me and breaks down easy enough. The problem isn’t with the perception, but with the act itself. If homosexuality is indeed a sin [and absent hermeneutical gymnastics and desperate arguments to the contrary it indeed is sinful] then that make all the difference if such a sexual practice is in play. If you reverse it and plug “fornicating with my sister” instead of the gay angle, saying ” she’s not my sister, but my sister in Christ”, do we say that just because we misunderstood the first part, that the latter of having sex with one’s sister was not wicked? That it was just a matter of perceptions? I hope not.

Lastly, she missed the point of the “know them by their fruits”. Right now the end result of heterosexual marriages is a devastatingly high divorce rate, but do we say that heterosexual marriages are bearing bad fruit? No. I don’t know any Christ-centred gay couple, as I do not believe such a thing exists. Any such union is the result of a terrible turning away from God and a wilful disobedience to the word of God. These people are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. And because God gave people feelings and emotions and intellect, they may love each other, insomuch as they can understand it.  They may enjoy each other’s company and laugh a lot and adopt a child and raise him as best as they can and grow old together and help the community and be roles models and finally die and be eulogized and beloved by thousands. You can look at the life of a gay couple and see genuine care and affection and joy present there,  but they will die absent Christ and they will die in their defiant, unrepentant sins. The same arguments you make for the gay couple having a wonderful relationship in Christ can be made for the polygamous,  or for the couple who have left their spouse and are now shacking up. You can’t. God does not reward idolatry, open rebellion and cosmic treason with blessings.

I don’t know why we’re playing this game where what the Bible says doesn’t matter, and where subjective feelings are the plumbline by which we measure if something is good and holy. Because I don’t base my views on that, but on the revealed word of God. We can mess around with Paul a bit, but let’s not be ignorant here. You can say “Oh, it wasn’t loving homosexuality that Paul was condemning, it was the typical, common, every-day pedophile relationship” but that won’t explain why we read in Romans 1 “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” If it was just your typical Greek gay romps, then why would he include the women? Are we to believe that it was common for older women to be having sex with young girls and taking them as lovers? Try finding that anywhere in ancient literature. As well, are we to believe that Paul was unfamiliar with Leviticus 18 and 20, which are clearly not just ritualized sins? Are we to believe that Paul was not in agreement with Jesus, who said  “Don’t assume that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” [Matt. 5] which indicated His agreement with all moral laws of the Mosaic Law including the laws prohibiting homosexuality. Or how about his statements on marriage and divorce in Matthew 5 and 19 which  revealed His agreement with the definition of marriage as a lawful bond between a man and woman for life, and affirming that that was God’s plan for creation?

Not just the bible, but how about the witness of the early church fathers? You have comments and writings from men like Justin Martyr, Clement of Rome, Aristides, Theophilus, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Novation, Cyprian of Carthage, Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Basil the great, Augustine, Clearly condemning it. Pick your poison- And that’s just in the first 400n years. Look, there really isn’t any question about what the Bible and 1900 years of Historical Judeo-Christian orthodoxy has taught and believed concerning homosexuality. The only question to answer is “Do I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, or do I reject those teaching with which I disagree with?” Do I acquiesce to the authority of the word, written plainly, or do I treat it as toilet paper to be discarded when it makes me uncomfortable?  That’s it. That’s what it comes down to. I’m not some raging homophobic who wants all gays to go to hell. Not at all. I love homosexuals, and my heart goes out to anyone trapped in sexual sin. I want them to come to church, and be washed and sanctified and justified. I want them to be delivered from their bondage to this, trusting and having faith in the Father even through this trial and burden that they must bear- so that God might be glorified and praised.

What I desire to be is faithful to the scriptures, and if that means that I have to take a stand against this and dismantle silly arguments about abominations and neologisms and everything else, then I’m more than game.

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” D.A. Carson

I’ve always been subject to much confusion regarding free-will growing up in the church. I’ve always been taught that it is an absolute that humanity has, that God gave us a free will and we could either choose for him, or choose against him. I was told in no uncertain terms that God was not a divine rapist, and that he would never, ever, ever, violate our free will.  These pastors that I would listen to would frequently work into their sermons the idea that human free will is sovereign, and the choice is ultimately left entirely up to each sinner to decide what to do with Christ. That made sense to me, as it seemed pretty reasonable. I was in control in every other area of my life; why not this one?

But at the same time, as I worked through the scriptures in my own study, I kept running into biblical statements and doctrinal issues that posed a severe challenge to that sort of free-will theology. I would read clear passages like Romans 9:15-16; where God says “‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.’ So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” and I just didn’t know what to do with that. Not just those verses, but trust me- once you hit Chapter 9, any Arminian vehicle will break down on the Romans road.

Then other questions began to pop up in my head as I thought about this concept of the granted and untouchable free-will of man that God would not interfere with- Why am I praying for my lost friends and family? It seems like I’m wasting my breath to pray to God for their salvation if He can’t do any more than he has already done to save them. Why am I praying “Lord, incline their heart towards you” if God’s not going to mess with their heart either way? Not only that, but why we should pray about anything in the realm of human relationships if God never intrudes on the sanctity of human free will? Furthermore, if man has “free will”, then why would he need the help of the Holy Spirit in coming to Christ?

These questions were what led me to a conclusion- that though I was an Arminian, I prayed like a Calvinist. I wasn’t praying “God, please leave their will absolutely free, so that they can freely choose for or against you. Don’t influence them in any way.” Instead I was asking the Lord in my prayers to be gracious and reveal himself to people, to touch their hearts and tweak their spirits and step into their world to do everything necessary to save them. I was asking the Lord to break down their walls and pass through the hardness of their hearts and press the Holy Spirit upon them and make himself known- prayers that are hardly consistent with a free-will theology which has God’s hands tied regarding  that sort of thing.

Which brings us to a question; do your prayers for people necessarily ask the Lord to violate their  free will?

As in all the churches of the saints,  the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church [1 Corinthians 14:33-35]

I listened to a sermon recently where a pastor made the claim that the reason St. Paul told the women in Corinth to “keep silent” was because they were being disorderly and disrupting the church services. And that’s not the first time I’ve heard this little bit of cultural insight. I’ve heard this time and time again; where they claim that Paul was addressing either new converts or uneducated women who were disrupting the church service by shouting out questions, of which were often irrelevant. Or they say that because the church in Corinth was so disruptive, Paul had no choice but to single them out. As a result, they would say that this is a commandment for the church in Corinth only.

There’s only one problem. It’s not true. There are no facts to support this. There’s no information in the letters to the Corinthians to support this, nor is there any data in extra-biblical sources such as early writings, letters from the church fathers, apostolic and patristic history, etc to corroborate this. In fact, the only writing that exists which is often used to back up this claim are from Greco-Roman and Jewish writings that talk about the concerns for decency and order in public assemblies. Not one of them mentions any women in any Christian church, and certainly not specifically the church in Corinth. Proving that secular Greeks and Romans desired that their public assemblies be orderly does not prove that the women in the church at Corinth were being disruptive or disorderly.

As it were, this whole theory attempts to make the church in Corinth a special one, when in fact Paul applies his rule to “all the churches” . [1 Corinthians 14:33] and again “in the churches” [1 Corinthians 14:34]. Because of this, his rule cannot be restricted to one local church where there were supposedly problems. Rather though, Paul directs the Corinthians to conform to a practice that was universal in the early church. Moreover, this “noisy and disruptive women” theory either doesn’t make sense of Paul’s solution, or it makes his remedy unfair .

First, it really doesn’t make any sense. If the women were indeed being disruptive, Paul would just tell them to act in an orderly way, not to be completely silent. In other cases where there were problems or disorder, such as with tongues or prophecy or with the Lord’s supper, Paul simply prescribes order. If noise and interruptions had been the problem in Corinth, he would have explicitly forbidden disorderly speech, not all speech. Right? It doesn’t make sense that Paul would tell them to treat a paper cut by putting them in a full-body cast.

Second, it would be unfair. If Paul held this view, then he’s pretty much punishing all women for the misdeeds of some. If there were noisy women, in order to be fair, Paul should have said “the disorderly women should keep silent” not “no woman is allowed to speak”. And so when you say that Paul was telling all women to stay silent, because a few women were acting up, you’re ascribing to him a very unjust and ill-thought prescription. Also, Paul would be unfair to punish only the disorderly women and not any disorderly men. And to say that only women and no men were disorderly and disruptive is again merely an assumption with not a single fact to support it.

And lastly, we need to look at the reason Paul is giving for this instruction. He’s not giving “noisy women” as a reason for his instructions, but rather he references the Old Testament law. He says “For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the law also says. [1 Corinthians 14:34] The law mentioned here is a general reference to the Old Testament law. And so he gives the law as the reason for his statements, and it’s dangerous and just plain bad biblical scholarship to remove from our explanation of Paul’s instruction the reason that Paul does give [the law] and replace it with a reason he does not give [loud, disruptive women]

Paul isn’t saying “let the women be silent, because they should not be asking disruptive questions” or “let the women be silent, because God wants orderly worship services” but rather “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.”

So where is the actual biblical, historical evidence that women were disrupting the worship services at Corinth? There is none. No one has ever found any. The idea is mere speculation supported by frequent repetition but not by one shred of hard historical data.

*

And as a note, this verse does not mean that women should never say a word in church. That’s not what’s being said. Paul isn’t speaking here about disorder, but about the principle of submission. In this case- submission to male leadership among God’s people. A far better interpretation of this passage comes from the very context of these verses themselves. Paul is speaking in this context about people giving prophecies and others giving prophecies“Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.” [1 Corinthians 14:29] In the context of judging prophecies, Paul says “the women should keep silent in the churches” He does not allow women to speak out and judge prophecies in front of the whole congregation, but he leaves that governing task to men, which is consistent with what he says in 1 Timothy 2:12, about women not having authority over a man. The verse says nothing about noisy, disruptive women, but the context clearly talks about judging prophecies.