Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Preachers
Mothers naturally want their children to be safe, and to remain safe throughout the course of their lives. But wise mothers don’t value that safety above all things. Better to be the mother of a son who dies valiantly in battle than the mother of a coward who lives long—“come back with your shield or on it” really is a noble sentiment.
So in a time of hot persecution, there is a natural affection that would certainly tempt a mother to want her son to “stay safe,” which would mean staying out of front line ministry. This is a natural inclination, and it must be mortified. But there is also a love for God—in days like ours when cowardice is deemed cool—that should prevent mothers from wanting their sons in that kind of ministry. Why should she want him to be preeminent among all the woke cowards?
So, as already indicated, we are living in just such a time, which is why mamas shouldn’t want their babies to grow up to be preachers—at least the kind of preachers who have learned how to rebuke “sin” (now known as human flourishing deficit points) through six or seven layers of homiletical cotton wool. Woomfy woomf fuflowy!
The word of God preached right is sharper than a two-edged sword, separating the joints and marrow (Heb. 4:12). The word of God mumbled in a way that comports with aforesaid human flourishing is like swatting some tank of a badly-behaving toddler, delivering what sounded like a decisive whomp on top of his diapers and overalls. That’ll show him.
How Is This Possible?
So how is it possible for America to be so corrupt, as corrupt as she has become, and for us to have so many millions of evangelical believers, and to have so many thousands of men preaching to all of us, week after week, and not have hundreds of those men in jail? I am referring to men being jailed, not for throwing bombs, but for preaching the kind of sermons that matter.
How is it that our sermons present so little of a threat that they can be for the most part ignored?
“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb. 12:4, ESV).
God created the world through the Word (Gen. 1:1). He spoke and it came to be. God recreated the world, giving us a new heavens and new earth, and He did so through the Word. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The Word then gave His apostles the ministry of subduing the world through the preached Word, and this was a mission that they passed on to their preaching successors (Matt. 28:19-20), which ought to include us. So in line with all that, we should be men who preach like howitzers in the field, and yet the effect is more like powder puff cannons in the circus.
The Nature of Our Cowardice
We are in a hot war, and yet we somehow have come to think it is actually an occasion for sitting on our kindergarten carpet squares in order to learn from the nice lady how not to run with scissors. Whenever somebody pulls off some fresh new outrage, we think it is sufficient to assure people who ask us about it that we firmly “disagree.” Oh, so glad you “disagree.” So we are all done then? We can then wait around patiently for the next theological atrocity so we can differ with that one also? Just so long as you differ. Just so long as you keep your own nose clean.
Comes now a Lutheran pastor lady who assures us that the use of porn is just fine, especially if the porn is “ethically sourced.” She has a book coming out soon, and because God loves to lay the irony on thick, it is entitled Shameless.
“But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols” (Rev. 2:20, ESV).
What does Jesus hate about you Lutherans? This is not a trick question. He hates how tolerant you are. That virtue you celebrate? That tolerance that you think is so fine? Jesus hates it, because, as all Bible readers know, Jesus is a hater.
Jesus hated the same thing about the Corinthians. They had a guy in their congregation who was getting it on with his stepmom, and certain woke Corinthians were proud of their go-along, get-along attitude about it.
“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you” (1 Cor. 5:1–2, ESV).
But the Lord takes a dim view of all those rainbow decals. When the elements melt with a fervent heat, all of them are going to peel right off.
Now how hard would it be to find Lutherans who “disagreed” with the Rev. Porn-Lady’s approach? Not hard at all. Her approach to porn would have to be considered “problematic,” at least in some quarters. It certainly is “distressing.” Not a few are sick about it. It is also tolerated, by the way. We don’t need to look hard to find somebody who “differs” with this kind of thing. We do need somebody to put their foot through the side of it.
Yeah, but what Wilson apparently does not know is that this lady is from a mainline denomination. Everybody knows how messed up the mainlines are. All of us know that. That is a given. That is granted.
Where the mainline denominations came from is still a grand mystery, it appears.
All of the mainlines were at one time—within living memory—evangelical denominations, and slowly, imperceptibly, magically, inexorably, something happened, we know not what. These things just occur, and we can’t stop it from happening. If only we knew what was causing it!
Over the last two centuries, so many denominations, seminaries, magazines, universities, publishing houses, etc. have gone liberal that you would think that we knew what it looked like by now. Unlike the mercies of God, which are new every morning, the devil’s tricks are always the same. Why should he change anything up, when the same trick always does the trick?
Look, friends. This rot, this cancer, this corruption, this gangrene, this contagion, this oozing blister, has already settled down for a long stay in the two most influential evangelical denominations in America—the PCA and the SBC—and unless somebody does something different, the whole inexorable process is going to go exactly the same way. We therefore currently have two kinds of denominations in America—we have the mainlines and we have the future mainlines.
Note to anyone paying attention, on the off-chance that somebody out there is paying attention: There is a difference between “differing” and doing something “different.” In principle, the evangelical (for now) Presbyterians are sunk because of sex and the evangelical (for now) Baptists are sunk because of race. The progressives placed their torpedoes in different places in their respective hulls. The torpedoes did come from different directions—one from the northeast and one from the southwest, but the ships are both headed in the same direction, which is to say, toward Davy Jones.
The Presbyterians let Revoice sail right on into their New Jerusalem, bringing them apes, ivory and peacocks from the distant land of Oprah, and the Baptists are getting themselves racially woke. And if there is anything worse than a horny Presbyterian, it would have to be a woke Baptist. Know what I’m saying?
I Was Told There Would be Free Books . . .
The free Kindle book that goes with today’s post is Federal Husband, which can be obtained here. The problem we have in the pulpit, outlined above, is a problem that begins in the homes of ministers. Authority flows to those who take responsibility, and it flees those who evade responsibility. The place where many pastors need to learn the basics of this way of thinking—with masculinity understood as the glad and sacrificial acceptance of responsibility—is in the home. This book will be a start.