Monday, May 23, 2022

Part I

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The SBC Independent Investigation of Sexual Abuse and the Judgment of the Lord

I want to begin today with words from the prophet, Isaiah. It comes from the book of Isaiah 37:1. “It happened when King Hezekiah heard it, that he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth and went into the Lord’s house.”

I’m speaking today at one of the most difficult moments ever experienced by my beloved denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. Considering the historical roots of the SBC, that’s actually quite a statement, but it’s true. This is a moment long in coming, and it is not over.

Yesterday afternoon, the report produced by the investigative firm, Guidepost Solutions concerning sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention was released to the public. Along with everyone else, I saw it yesterday for the first time. The report was produced as an independent investigation of sexual abuse in the SBC and the handling of abuse accusations by the SBC’s Executive Committee.

The report is devastating, heartbreaking, and infuriating. So why am I talking about this today? I am not a neutral or independent observer. I’m president of the SBC’s oldest institution and I’ve been involved in the leadership of the SBC for 35 years. I speak daily on this podcast, The Briefing, to how Christians should understand issues and events from a Christian worldview.

Others thinking about this from greater distance and from outside SBC leadership will certainly address this report and its consequences, but given my own responsibilities and roles, not talking about this today on The Briefing would feel like cowardice and dereliction of duty.

The first truth that must be spoken is the heartbreaking fact that many precious individuals made in God’s image have been victimized by pastors, ministers, teachers, volunteer leaders and others within the context of the local church and denominational ministries.

Women, children, and young people have been particularly harmed. Some of their stories are included and their accusations are documented in the report. One of the recurring revelations in the report is the resistance on the part of many leaders to seek sexual abuse as abuse and all abuse as sin that may well reveal a theological problem rooted in a neglect of the Bible’s teachings on sin and its deceptiveness.

Every single one of these sex abuse survivors deserve protection, but experienced predation. Every cry for help deserved to be heard, but many were not heard. Worse, some were denied and uninvestigated. Shockingly enough, at least some staff members were compiling a list of offenders. Evidently they did nothing with it. Among at least some officials, there was an organized attempt to suppress the truth or to deny it. All, this is now documented for anyone to read.

A second truth is that horrible evil and serious crimes are often hidden within religious context, precisely because those same contexts provide opportunity and camouflage. One of the big lessons of the investigation is that much more must be done to educate Christians about how to prevent abuse and how to deal with reports when they arise. And in a sinful world, they will arise.

The report sets out specific proposals for SBC action and recommendations for churches. There is no human possibility that the SBC will be able to deal with all the recommendations by the time the convention assembles in Anaheim just next month. But the time for action is clearly arrived.

A third truth is that there is truly shocking material in the report. One former SBC president is accused with documentation of sexual abuse. I can’t imagine an informed SBC figure who is not shocked by that specific revelation. Without this independent investigation, would we have ever known? Throughout the report, there is solid documentation of matters handled wrongly and wounded people treated badly. There are also questions that remain unanswered and investigations to be pushed further.

Fourth, the world will be watching how Southern Baptist handle this report and the moral burden of sexual abuse at the upcoming meeting of the SBC in Anaheim, California. If there are factual corrections to be made, let them be made. But the weight of truth calls for repentance broken-hearted concern and a concerted determination to make things right. We will not get and will not deserve a second chance at this.

This report is about one specific denominational entity, but it is the Executive Committee of the SBC after all. And thus, it’s central to the convention’s work. Recommendations extend to every work of the convention and to every entity. Moving ahead will require elected leadership ready to guide Southern Baptist through difficult decisions and necessary actions. No one should underestimate the scale of that challenge.

Southern Baptist must see this report as part of a reckoning that will reveal God’s wrath, but also as mercy each in rightful proportion. Some see this report as an opportunity to condemn the Southern Baptist Convention and to castigate its churches, members, and leaders, as implacably opposed to dealing with this challenge with grace, truth, compassion and with the power of the gospel.

I don’t believe that is so. It was after all the SBC that demanded that this investigation be done. Truth is, the report shows Southern Baptists in the worst light. We have to face that fact, but I must move ahead with the confidence based in long experience that faithful Southern Baptist lay people, pastors, and denominational leaders will do the right thing once they know what that right thing is.

So this is a moment. Just ask Isaiah. It’s a moment for sackcloth and ashes. That’s where we have to start. The gospel of Christ makes clear that that’s not where the story can end, but we’re going to be wearing sackcloth for some time to come.

We will come back to this issue as appropriate, but at least for today, this much seems to be very appropriate.

Part II

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‘For Real, God is Pretend, and For Pretend, God is Real.’: The Problem of Evil, ‘Fictionalism,’ and the Need for a Faith Based on Fact

Next, I want to come to an opinion piece that was written in the New York Times that raises some of the biggest theological issues of our day are any day for that matter. It was written by a Jewish columnist who is also a philosophy professor. He’s written a new book about children and philosophy. The title of the article that ran earlier this month in the New York Times was, “How to Pray to a God You Don’t Believe In.”

Now, I’m coming back to it now because I was waiting to see the response. And in this case, that meant letters to the editor, an incredible number of them, by the way, and the issues that are raised in whatever would come from readers, letters.

Well, this was an article that demanded some kind of response and there was response. And what’s happening today on The Briefing is response. Scott Hershovitz is the author of the article. He says, “The world is awful at the moment. Millions have died of COVID-19, authoritarianism is on the rise, abroad and at home. And now there’s war with all the death, destruction, and dislocation that entails.” He goes on to say and I quote, “In many dark times, many people seek refuge in religion. They hold fast to their faith.”

Then he gets to a very interesting point. Remember that he’s identified in the beginning of the article as a philosophy professor who has written a new book about children and philosophy. Well, it turns out that’s very much at home for this philosophy professor. He writes about his older son, Rex. We’re told that the boy is studying for his bar mitzvah, quote, “But he doesn’t believe in God.”

And this father says that the son said that to the father one day when they were taking a walk. The father then asked when the son said that he didn’t believe in God even as he is studying for his bar mitzvah, that’s the traditional coming of age ceremony of Judaism. The father asked him, “Why not?” The son said, “If God was real, he wouldn’t let all those people die.”

Now, the father says that he was talking about the pandemic, “But he could have been talking about the killing of civilians in Kiev, of Bucha or any number of other atrocities he’s been exposed to in his short life. Well, in this case, the Jewish father says to the son, “Why do you say that?” And the son, now remember he’s preparing for his bar mitzvah, so he is probably about 12 or 13. The son said, “God is supposed to care about us. That doesn’t seem like something you’d let happen if you cared and could stop it.”

Well, very interesting posing of the question. This is indeed a son who’s raising some very intelligent questions. The father tries to explain it by saying, “This is the problem of evil.” It’s an old philosophical question. Rex had never heard of it, but it’s not uncommon for kids to rediscover ancient arguments on their own. As he explains about early adolescent, “They’re thinking the world through. And if you think about God who’s supposed to be all powerful and endlessly empathetic, the existence of evil poses a serious puzzle, why does God let us suffer?”

Now indeed, this is called the problem of evil. It is sometimes referred to as the problem of pain. And it comes down to a modern form of the protest that is often modeled after some of the language found in the Old Testament book known as the book of Job.

Now, the Bible presents Job as an historical figure and his speech as historical speech. And those of us who believe in the infallibility and inspiration of Scripture take Job as an historical person. But Job was abstracted in the 20th century by the playwright, Archibald MacLeish and JB, as MacLeish called him, asked the question, posed this way saying, “If God is good, he is not God. If God is God, he is not good.” Famous 20th century posing of the problem of evil.

But biblical Christians look at that and understand there’s a huge problem here. And for one thing, Christians can never stop with the problem of evil just as defined by our experience. Furthermore, we can’t even discuss the problem of evil simply in terms of our own sin as if sin has the last word. That’s the whole point of the Christian gospel that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, that on the cross Christ paid the due penalty for our sin and satisfied the wrath of God, the righteous justice of God in punishment, in the divine verdict against sin and furthermore that Christ triumphs over evil. Evil in every form.

And furthermore, by the end of the Bible, as you take the Book of Revelation, the perfection of God’s atoning work is such that even as believers are United with Christ and are with him forever in heaven. In heaven, every eye is dry and every tear is wiped away. Now, there are different ways that Christians, biblical Christians, theologically informed Christians have tried to struggle with this question. But as we’re thinking about the problem of evil, there’s something else we have to think about. And that means that first of all, we have to concede.

It’s a real question. It’s a very real question. Why sin? Why death? Why termites? Why mosquitoes? Why cancer? And the answer is ultimately that it is part of God’s plan in permitting evil. That’s the right verb to use in permitting evil in order that in Christ God would triumph over evil. Not just a little bit. Not just for the most part, but totally.

A second issue that Christians have to think about is this. We are, after all sinful human beings. If we use our own imagination, we will imagine a God made in any image we might choose. And that would include by any philosophical configuration that we might prefer. We might come up with a God who would not allow evil, but then there would be no atonement. There’d be no triumph over evil.

Furthermore, Christians have understood that even as this world, this human life is sometimes described as a veil of tears. It is also an experience of great joy, particularly in Christ, but in every life, there is joy. Joy in, say, love of one person for another. Joy, even in just the enjoyment by common grace of food. So as we look at this, we recognize that human experience would not be human experience as we understand it if we did not have human experience as we know it.

And we don’t know it in Eden, we know it on the other side of Eden. We don’t know it before the fall. Adam and Eve did, although apparently for a very short amount of time, human experience has been defined on the other side of the fall. And that means as a part of God’s purpose to triumph over evil in Jesus Christ.

There’s more of course to be said about that libraries have been written about that. Endless sermons have been preached about that, but whatever Christians say or think about that must be consistent with scripture and thus it must be consistent with the scriptures self-revelation of God that he is morally perfect.

One of the shortest verses in scripture is simply, God is love. God isn’t loving, God is love. Whatever he does is love. And we don’t know what love is except for how God acts towards us in his omnipotent love. And that’s one of the reasons in the New Testament, we are told that this is love. And we are to look to Christ and the atoning sacrifice that the father provided for us in the obedience of the son for our salvation.

But the interesting part about this article is not just that he throws out the problem of evil. Remember the title of the article is how to pray to a God you don’t believe in. And this is where things get really interesting because this tells us a lot about the modern secular or sort of secular terrain. Because this particular author, this philosophy professor says that even though he doesn’t believe in God, he does believe in religion. It’s a reminder of those who sometimes say, “I am not someone who believes in God, but I am Jewish. I believe in Jewishness.”

Unless we think that this is just something that is indicative of some forms of Judaism, we need to recognize that liberal Protestantism often comes down to the same thing. In this case, the philosophy professor says that even if God doesn’t exist believing in him can be important. Pretending that he exists might have an important function for human beings.

And it’s even to the credit of his son. He says that the boy preparing for his bar mitzvah says that he believes that he really pretends there is a God even as he doesn’t believe there is a God. The father reflecting on his own thought says this before Rex came along, “I struggled to account for my own religious practice. I don’t believe in God, so why do I fast on Yom Kippur and observe Passover? It’s just what we Jews do, I might have said. It keeps me connected to a community that I value.”

Now, that’s all there is to it. That’s just a humanitarian understanding of religion. It’s not actually about an existing God, a self-existent God who created the universe who revealed himself to us. No, it’s about God is a symbol or perhaps religion is a human artifact that pulls people together and keeps us embedded in certain traditions and community.

By the way, the experience of liberal theology over the course of the last 200 years indicates that as soon as you forfeit the truthfulness of Christianity, you end up with nothing like Christianity at all. Pretty soon, even the habits, the practices, the traditions simply fall away. So does church attendance, which is why so many of those old beautiful, hulking, cathedral-like buildings are actually on the Lord’s day, largely empty.

As a philosophy professor, he speaks about one view and it is known as he says as fictionalism. He says, “Suppose I say, Dumbledore teaches in Hogwarts. If that was a claim about this world, it would be false. Hogwarts doesn’t exist here and neither does Dumbledore. So he can hardly teach there.” But they do exist in a different world, the fictional world that Harry Potter lives in. The sentence, “Dumbledore teaches at Hogwarts,” is true in that fiction. He then explains, “Some philosophers are fictionists about morality. They think rights aren’t real. Except in stories we tell. Others are fictionists about numbers. They think that math is made up. I think both views are mistaken,” he says. “I believe in morality in math.”

But he says he thinks Rex, that is his son was right and onto something important. For real, God is pretend and for pretend, God is real. He says, “I’m a fictionist about God.” Fascinating. Let’s just think about that for a moment. This is a man who says, “Man, I know he means to be taken seriously.” He says that he believes in morality, but he doesn’t believe in God. He has a truthful objective understanding of morality, but he thinks that God is simply fictional.

Well, where does he think the morality comes from? What is morality? Is it just a matter of human judgements? Is it just an accumulated moral tradition? Because clearly, there’s not much authoritative bite in that. Nonetheless, as you think about this, you recognize that even as he says he believes in morality in math, his worldview doesn’t really allow him to explain why morality in math are real and why they work.

Why in the world does two plus two always equal four? Why not three and a half or seven or 127,000? The answer is because God made an orderly universe as reflective of his character and established stable physical laws and made the world the cosmos intelligible to us. That’s why two plus two equals four and will always equal four. But that’s always why killing a fellow human being is wrong and it’s also why telling a lie is wrong. It’s why disobeying parents is wrong. And it’s why those things are actually wrong. Not just wrong-ish.

It’s also interesting that this philosophy professor who says, “It turns out I like my religion inscrutable.” He says that he doesn’t believe the stories we tell, but he says that pretending nonetheless makes them feel the world might be a better place. It’s another reminder that there are people who want to tell the stories, perhaps even on a holiday to tell the stories again. But if you don’t believe the stories are true, then the stories are not about God. And for that matter, they’re not about Dumbledore either.

They are simply in the end about you, which means that they’re only even intelligible. The stories only actually live so long as you live. Just think about how temporary that reality is. I’ll just state, read out loud that I depend upon the truthfulness of the story of Scripture. I depend upon the truthfulness of the story of the gospel, because it’s not just a story.

We tell it as a story. It’s a narrative. It begins as a scripture begins. In the beginning, God created the heavens on the earth, but what a horrifying story, my story would be if my story is all there is to the story. And once I am not, or once I can’t even think about, or remember my story, the story simply disappears. No, my confidence is in the fact that my story by the sovereign providence of God is actually a part of his story. And that’s my story is real, not because I make it real or think it real, but because the Creator really created me and made me a part of the story he is telling.

Part III

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Passing on the Faith Once for All Delivered to the Saints, Starting From the Home: The Apologetic Imperative for Christian Parents Raising Christian Children

But I mentioned the letters. A flurry of letters came in response to that article. And by the way, all of the letters, at least all I could find published in the New York Times, a slew of them were published on May the 21st. They seemed to be very much along the lines of the article written by the philosophy professor and along the lines of the thinking of the philosophy professor’s son, Rex.

One person writing in from Troy, New York says, “I too, pray to a God I don’t believe exists.” He prays to a God he doesn’t believe exists. Now, again, the title of the article written by the philosophy professor was, “How to Pray to a God You Don’t Believe In.” But what do you think prayer is? Is it just a mind game? Is it just the ordering of thoughts in your head? If so, then let me put the point explicitly. We are ultimately doomed.

Another letter writer writing from Port Clyde, Maine offers this saying that “our challenge is to believe that following the direction of goodness will lead us in the world towards an unknown destination crafted by an unknowable God.” But if God is a knowable, then actually we are doomed again, because we can’t know God. We can’t know anything about him. We can’t even know that he fundamentally exists. And perhaps more importantly and urgently for us, we can’t know whether or not he’s pleased or displeased with us. Or how, if he’s displeased, he might come to be pleased.

Now, that requires the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that requires knowing God and knowing who he is. The letter writer makes a very interesting statement and I’m sure it makes sense to a lot of people. She writes, “Maybe an interested child would be intrigued hearing that God is unknowable too big for our small brains.” Well, that’s interesting. Is God unknowable too big for our small brains? Well, the fact is God is infinite and we are finite. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t know him because he made us in his image precisely so that we can know him, and he revealed himself to us so that we can know him.

And thus, even our finite minds by the infinite grace of God given to us in his self-revelation can know him truly. But our knowledge of God is always partial. That’s a part of the Christian confession. We know him in part, but the fact is we have absolute confidence that what we know in part is absolutely true because God has revealed it truthfully, inherently, infallibly to us.

Another issue about the God of the Bible, he wants to be known. He wants his creatures to know him. He has embedded the knowledge of himself and every atom and molecule of creation. He made human beings alone of all the acts of his creation in his image in order that we, as human creatures may consciously know him. And furthermore, again, he reveals himself to us, not only in Scripture, not only in creation, but ultimately in Jesus Christ.

Remember that statement from the gospel of John, we be held his glory. Glory is of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth. Yes, in Christ, we be held his glory. We currently behold his glory. Another writer who was telling us about his grandson, preparing for his bar mitzvah said that he was doing so even though this boy, wasn’t sure he believed in God. The grandfather then asked this grandson if the boy could think of a metaphor for God that made sense to him and the boy responded, “God is like the ocean, and I am the wave.”

That sounds like a pop song from the 1960s, but it actually doesn’t work as theology just saying, “God is the ocean and I’m the wave.” If so, well, the wave doesn’t know the ocean. The wave doesn’t have a relationship to the ocean, and the wave simply falls back into the ocean undetected existing no more. The good news is that it is not simply that God is like an ocean and we are the wave, it is profoundly true that God is the omnipotent, omniscient God of Israel who reveals himself in Scripture, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and the God who redeems us in the Son. And our identity in creation in the present, and ultimately for eternity is established by the Father in the Son for us.

But finally, I want to end today with a word of encouragement to Christian families, a word to Christian parents and to Christian grandparents. Be ready to give an answer, a biblical answer, when these issues come up with your children or grandchildren. It turns out that these grandparents and parents are looking to their children as the font of all wisdom as if they know nothing when it comes to the knowledge of God. And maybe these parents, grandparents actually know nothing.

But you do not know nothing. As Christian parents and Christian grandparents, you have the responsibility to pass on the faith once were all delivered to the saints, starting at home. Or to paraphrase the Old Testament, when your son comes to you in days to come saying, “God is the ocean and I am the wave,” you be ready to tell your son the truth about the self-revealing, trinitarian God of Scripture who not only saves us through the blood of the Lord, Jesus Christ, but reveals himself to us in the world, yes, but most importantly in the Scriptures.

Take your child, take your grandchild into the Scriptures.

And finally make very clear that when you pray, you pray to a God that you actually believe in.

But I mentioned the letters. A flurry of letters came in response to that article. And by the way, all of the letters, at least all I could find published in the New York Times, a slew of them were published on May the 21st. They seemed to be very much along the lines of the article written by the philosophy professor and along the lines of the thinking of the philosophy professor’s son, Rex.

One person writing in from Troy, New York says, “I too, pray to a God I don’t believe exists.” He prays to a God he doesn’t believe exists. Now, again, the title of the article written by the philosophy professor was, “How to Pray to a God You Don’t Believe In.” But what do you think prayer is? Is it just a mind game? Is it just the ordering of thoughts in your head? If so, then let me put the point explicitly. We are ultimately doomed.

Another letter writer writing from Port Clyde, Maine offers this saying that “our challenge is to believe that following the direction of goodness will lead us in the world towards an unknown destination crafted by an unknowable God.” But if God is a knowable, then actually we are doomed again, because we can’t know God. We can’t know anything about him. We can’t even know that he fundamentally exists. And perhaps more importantly and urgently for us, we can’t know whether or not he’s pleased or displeased with us. Or how, if he’s displeased, he might come to be pleased.

Now, that requires the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that requires knowing God and knowing who he is. The letter writer makes a very interesting statement and I’m sure it makes sense to a lot of people. She writes, “Maybe an interested child would be intrigued hearing that God is unknowable too big for our small brains.” Well, that’s interesting. Is God unknowable too big for our small brains? Well, the fact is God is infinite and we are finite. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t know him because he made us in his image precisely so that we can know him, and he revealed himself to us so that we can know him.

And thus, even our finite minds by the infinite grace of God given to us in his self-revelation can know him truly. But our knowledge of God is always partial. That’s a part of the Christian confession. We know him in part, but the fact is we have absolute confidence that what we know in part is absolutely true because God has revealed it truthfully, inherently, infallibly to us.

Another issue about the God of the Bible, he wants to be known. He wants his creatures to know him. He has embedded the knowledge of himself and every atom and molecule of creation. He made human beings alone of all the acts of his creation in his image in order that we, as human creatures may consciously know him. And furthermore, again, he reveals himself to us, not only in Scripture, not only in creation, but ultimately in Jesus Christ.

Remember that statement from the gospel of John, we be held his glory. Glory is of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth. Yes, in Christ, we be held his glory. We currently behold his glory. Another writer who was telling us about his grandson, preparing for his bar mitzvah said that he was doing so even though this boy, wasn’t sure he believed in God. The grandfather then asked this grandson if the boy could think of a metaphor for God that made sense to him and the boy responded, “God is like the ocean, and I am the wave.”

That sounds like a pop song from the 1960s, but it actually doesn’t work as theology just saying, “God is the ocean and I’m the wave.” If so, well, the wave doesn’t know the ocean. The wave doesn’t have a relationship to the ocean, and the wave simply falls back into the ocean undetected existing no more. The good news is that it is not simply that God is like an ocean and we are the wave, it is profoundly true that God is the omnipotent, omniscient God of Israel who reveals himself in Scripture, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and the God who redeems us in the Son. And our identity in creation in the present, and ultimately for eternity is established by the Father in the Son for us.

But finally, I want to end today with a word of encouragement to Christian families, a word to Christian parents and to Christian grandparents. Be ready to give an answer, a biblical answer, when these issues come up with your children or grandchildren. It turns out that these grandparents and parents are looking to their children as the font of all wisdom as if they know nothing when it comes to the knowledge of God. And maybe these parents, grandparents actually know nothing.

But you do not know nothing. As Christian parents and Christian grandparents, you have the responsibility to pass on the faith once were all delivered to the saints, starting at home. Or to paraphrase the Old Testament, when your son comes to you in days to come saying, “God is the ocean and I am the wave,” you be ready to tell your son the truth about the self-revealing, trinitarian God of Scripture who not only saves us through the blood of the Lord, Jesus Christ, but reveals himself to us in the world, yes, but most importantly in the Scriptures.

Take your child, take your grandchild into the Scriptures.

And finally make very clear that when you pray, you pray to a God that you actually believe in.