Bug or Feature?

Is it a bug or a feature? Anyone who's worked with new software or has a programmer friend (and if you do, God bless you) will be familiar with the concept. The shiny new program does something... unexpected... and you joke about whether it's an error, or a feature they just neglected to tell you about. Some are wonderful, but often it's something wrong.

Anyway, I thought about that when I saw this tweet from Adrian Warnock defending(?) the Charismatic movement in the wake of the Strange Fire conference:

If we researched & criticised all the crooks, cons, and cookies in the Charismatic Movement we'd have no time for anything else #StrangeFire
— Adrian Warnock (@adrianwarnock) October 17, 2013

So first off, I'm not sure if he's offering a defense or conceding. Wasn't it a large part of the Strange Fire case that the Charismatic movement is overwhelmingly full of "crooks, cons and cookies"? It would be tempting to just say "you're exactly right, now what are you going to do about it?" and move on.

But we need to press a step further.

It's obvious to anyone (except maybe discernment masters like James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll - who, lest we forget, absolutely should know better) that this movement is overrun by heretics and charlatans. It's nice to see Warnock agree. But the question remains, is this a bug of the system, or is it a feature?

Is the flood of "crooks, cons, and cookies" a bug - an error resulting from a few bad lines of code in an otherwise sound program, that can be fixed by a simple patch? Does it just need a minor recalibration, maybe a reboot, and everything will run smoothly? No doubt this is where Warnock stands - it's a good program, but inevitably something goes wrong somewhere, and BOOM - heretics!

Or is it a feature - is it how the system is designed? Is this overwhelming amount of heretics exactly what you'd expect when the system works? I think, and I believe MacArthur and friends made the case very convincingly, that this is an utterly predictable result of the distinctives of Charismatic theology. It's not an occasional aberration; the faithful ones like Piper, Grudem, Warnock, etc are the aberrations.

What else would you expect from a system that promises ongoing divine revelation apart from scripture? People will say all kinds of garbage and claim it's God. Or some will define prophecy down, so God's word will become errant and/or can be ignored at will. Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that?

What else would you expect from a system that teaches a second-tier, higher-plane experience for only some believers, which manifests itself in a particular physical act? Do you think maybe people will try to make themselves do that, and fake it till they make it?

What do you expect when such obvious fakery cannot be questioned under fear of blaspheming the Spirit?

We could go on, but I think that's sufficient for now. Why would we expect anything other than an overwhelming number of blatant false teachers, when all the distinctives of that theology promote the faking of supernatural revelation and signs? Another programming saying comes to mind - garbage in, garbage out.

Budgeting for Adults

I want to make a few points about the current chaos from Washington, but before I do, we need to be on the same page. So this will be sort of an Economics 101 - no, it's much more remedial than that, let's call it Economics 001. This is simply how an adult sets a budget, and the basic principles apply from the personal to the multi-trillion dollar level. This is stuff everyone should know, the sort of thing anyone who wants to be considered a grownup should have down, but, well, look around.

Essentials first. If you only had $100 this month, what would you spend it on? I reckon you'd probably make sure you have food before you have the latest UFC pay-per-view. Food: essential. Entertainment: non-essential.

What do you need? Make sure you have funds allotted for those things first. If you can't afford food/shelter/clothing because you bought Legos, you're a moron, no matter how cool those Legos may be.

Add luxuries in order of importance. Once the vitals are taken care of, add on everything else (and yes, everything non-essential is a luxury). If you had another $100, what would you do with it? Another $100 after that? And so on, until all your income is accounted for. It may be adding a new item, like getting cable. It could be increasing a previous allocation - bumping the food budget so you can go to a nice restaurant. It could be something non-immediate, like savings. Whatever is next-most-important, set aside the money for that.

Note that some categories are purely luxury, but some are a mix of essential and luxury. Food, for instance. The cost of subsistence-level food is essential; everything above that is luxury. A very great luxury to have, mind you, and one you would be wise to invest in quickly. But it's still non-essential.

When all the money is allocated, there is no more. If you have $50k in income, and $65k in allocated spending, u r doin it rong. If you don't have the money, you don't have the money. Either re-prioritize so it's paid for (which will require eliminating or cutting funds to something else) or learn to live without it for now.

That's it. Really. No matter what plan or technique you find, they all come down to this. Prioritize your needs/wants, and allocate funds in order of importance.

Now, let's take this ultra-basic principle and look at the government quasi-shutdown. What can we observe?

They keep using the word 'essential'. I do not think it means what they think it means. It's hard to believe everything 'non-essential' has been shut down when it's running at about 83% capacity (which is still at deficit, by the way). Would you believe 5/6 of your household expenditures are so essential that you can't cut so much as a penny from them? Yet somehow we're supposed to believe this about the government - they can't cut even a penny from these areas for even a few weeks!

So what makes something essential for the federal government? I would suggest several qualifications. (1) It must be a necessary function of a nation; that is, any nation which lacks it is not a nation at all. Examples include the ability to make, execute, and adjudicate laws, and the ability to repel attacks. (2) It must be necessary that this function is performed at the federal level. If state or local governments (or private entities) can do it, it's not essential for the federal government.

Which means that a whole host of programs, departments, and agencies are non-essential luxuries. Some are nice to have, but not necessary for the survival of a nation. Some could just as easily be done at lower levels of government. Even some things we like, like Defense, are a blend of essential and luxury (we may be willing to pay for the luxury of everything above survival-level military, but let's at least be honest that it is a luxury). Some programs are so utterly non-essential, they don't just need a temporary partial shutdown, they need to go away entirely.

When money is short, you cut the least important things first. If you don't have enough one month, you don't buy the Eddie Rabbit tickets while your kids go without food. The most important things are the first to get funded and the last to get cut, and the first things to get cut are the least important. At least if you're an adult, anyway.

If you want to know what politicians value, look at what they threaten to cut first if they don't get more money. Locally it's always liberals threatening to cut police, firefighters, teachers, and hospitals, which I guess means they consider them almost completely unnecessary. Now look at what Obama and his cronies have decided to cut first vs what remains instact, and tell me what he values. Many 'cuts' have been to programs that actually provide some benefit to the public, and the 'cuts' have often cost more than full operation, which would seem odd for a shutdown except that a petulant child is in charge. Which brings me to the last point.

If you are in a financial crunch, and your instinct is to spend more money to antagonize the people who pay the bills, you are despicable. Not that anyone would ever stoop so low, of course.

Nebuchadnezzar and the False Prophets

We could learn a lot from a pagan king.

Now, I don't mean that in a Willow Creek "let's ask wicked business and political folk how they do things and model our church after that" type of learning. I mean, there's an example in scripture where a pagan king gets something right, something that we in the American church all too often get wrong. I'm talking of course about King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon's dealings with false prophets in Daniel 2.

There were a whole bunch of magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, etc in Babylon, people who claimed to have supernatural powers, access to the divine, blah blah blah. They enjoyed a pretty good living and formal government sanction. But then one night, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that was clearly of divine origin. He brought the dream to his supernatural specialists for an interpretation - and that's when their problems began.

Because it was such an important dream, Nebuchadnezzar wanted assurance that he could trust the interpretation. So he devised a simple test - the one who could tell him the dream was the one who could correctly interpret it. After all, he reasoned, if this dream is from a god, surely it would be a trivial matter for that god to reveal the same dream to his chosen interpreter. He put the challenge before his divine experts - and they didn't fail, they didn't even try.

Nebuchadnezzar drew the only logical conclusion. They were frauds. For years they had been collecting their money and putting on a little show, but now he really needed them. Now there was something truly significant that he desperately needed to understand, and they didn't even pretend like they could do anything about it. They were utterly worthless when it really mattered, so what good were they? Worse, this was the first time they could show their true divinely-granted power, and all they could show was that they didn't have any. They had been lying to him, and if there's one thing tyrants don't like, it's finding out they've been deceived. They were deceitful false prophets, claiming to speak the words of gods when they didn't, and he reasonably decided to kill every last one of them.

Of course, the story doesn't end there. The dream was not from merely a god, but from the actual God. And there was a true prophet in their midst, Daniel. God revealed the dream and its interpretation to Daniel, who proclaimed the very word of God to the pagan king. Nebuchadnezzar was a great king, but his kingdom would fall and others would rise in its place. But one day would come a kingdom established by God, which would crush all the kingdoms of this world. As John would record centuries later, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." At the name of this Lord of lords, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Amen.

But back to Nebuchadnezzar - what can we learn from his example, even though he was still a wicked unbeliever? He had no tolerance for deceivers who claimed divine power and divine words. Once it was clear they were charlatans, he decided to get rid of their poison. Why don't we?

The church is full of frauds who claim supernatural powers they don't have. False prophets who claim to speak for God when they don't. Charlatans who claim they can heal but can't. Wizards and magicians of all sorts who claim to be extra-special conduits of divine power, whose miracles elicit laughter rather than awe, whose divine words of wisdom are bad pop wisdom, whose prophecies which aren't outright false are less impressive than Ed Glosser, Trivial Psychic. Deceivers defaming the name of Christ with their wicked shenanigans.

Why do we put up with it? Why are we so much less discerning than a wicked king of olde? Once he knew they were deceivers, he went to get rid of them, through execution (the same punishment God ordered for false prophets in Israel). Once we know these charlatans for what they are, we should get rid of them through the New Covenant parallel - excommunication. Unless and until they repent, goodbye, and good riddance.

Does that seem too harsh? Suggest for me a more appropriate way to deal with those who say "Thus saith the Lord" when the Lord most certainly has not saith. Name a more suitable punishment for those who claim divine inspiration for advice that is worthless at best and destructive at worst. Tell me how best to handle those who mock the Spirit with wretched shows like this and this, or those who put on displays of 'power' accompanied by rank heresy, or those who claim a stream of divine revelation apart from scripture.

Really, I'm open to suggestions. Because a century or so of playing wait-and-see with a tumor doesn't seem to be slowing its growth.

Anyone Can Say Anything

In Mark 2:1-12 we read:

And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” - he said to the paralytic - “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

Anyone can say your sins are forgiven. I mean, the pope can say he's forgiving sins for anyone who retweets him, for cryin' out loud. (Side note - is Tweetzel the saddest Roman episode you can remember? They used to be able to extort money for 'indulgences', now they're reduced to RTs? Pathetic.) Anyone who wants can claim to forgive anyone's sins - who can check it? How would you falsify?

But who would claim to be able to heal the paralyzed? What could be more easily falsifiable? You say you can heal - well, heal! And here, Jesus does exactly that. He tells a paralytic to get up and walk, and he does!

Now, commanding a paralyzed man to walk is beyond amazing. But how does it prove that Jesus can also forgive sins? Jesus says the healing is proof of his authority to forgive (see also here). Is it, and if so, how?

One response is that the visible, unquestionable power on display in healing gives confidence that we can trust him for the invisible power he claims. If he can do this humanly impossible act you can see, why can't he also do the humanly impossible that you can't see?

I think there's something more to it, though. Why was the man paralyzed to begin with? Because of sin. Now I don't mean that in the Job's friends, John 9 kind of way, that he did a specific sin and was paralyzed as punishment. I mean it in the general sense - Adam sinned, and we were cursed, and so life is full of suffering and ends in death. We're sinners living in a broken, cursed world.

When Jesus heals, it isn't just a display of power, generally. When Jesus heals, and raises the dead, he is showing specifically the power to undo the effects of the curse. And if he can overpower the effects of the curse, he can overpower the cause - sin.

In Adam's sin, we were cursed and broken. In the second Adam's righteousness, the curse is broken and we are made new. When Jesus healed, he was pointing to the much greater healing he would perform through his righteous life, death and resurrection. Sin is forgiven, death is conquered, and we are reconciled to God.

Terminology Matters

Warning: adult themes, potentially not safe for homeschoolers.

Thabiti Anyabwile has been catching all kinds of flak for this recent article (warning again - it's a very frank discussion of homosexuality, use discretion). To sum, he recounts a thinktank meeting years ago when he saw the tide turning towards pro-homosexuality, and what he thinks he should have done differently. He suggests that one way to counter the pro-homosexual agenda is to discuss it openly, describing in gory detail what actually occurs, and letting our collective gag reflex work.

Obviously the usual suspects have lined up to denounce him. But there's even been flak from solid quarters, such as Carl Trueman. So I'll try to explain why I think Thabiti has it right, starting by clarifying what he's not saying (if I'm reading him correctly).

Thabiti is not saying that morality is defined by what we find disgusting. He's not saying that our gag reflex always works as it should (sinful creatures that we are). He's not saying that our argument should be primarily or even largely aesthetic. While it is true that we all know sodomy and other homosexual acts are the perverse acting out of idolatry and we generally find them disgusting (see Romans 1), I don't think he's primarily arguing that the disgust makes or proves them to be wrong. He may be suggesting that the sense of disgust at homosex perversion is a residual effect of the imago dei, a warning from the conscience, but that does not seem his main point.

I think his main point is just this: the way we speak of something affects how people view it. That's it. If your opponent controls the terms, he wins the debate.

How many who are now scolding Thabiti use the same reasoning regarding another great evil, the child sacrifice known as abortion? They know full well that evil hides behind euphemisms. So "killing an unborn baby" becomes "aborting a fetus", "removing a blastocyte", or "women's rights". Only the most depraved would vote for a politician who is pro-sucking out a baby's brains before dismembering it and throwing it in the dumpster. But change the term to pro-choice, and suddenly we have a champion of freedom!

Similarly, who could be against 'love' or 'equal rights' or 'marital freedom'? But when you understand that what is really meant by those terms in this context is serial sodomy? It's a little more difficult to support a measure to treat two males violating each other anally as if they're the same as a man and woman in marital covenant. But if you let them hide their disgusting perverse acts behind the banner of 'freedom to love who I want', their evil can gain societal approval much more easily.

Describe evil for what it really is. The deeds of darkness hate the light, and thrive in the shadows. Why let them define the terms?

One more point - a common objection I've seen is that we should be more 'winsome'. The pro-sodomite won people over by being winsome, they say, and we need to outdo him; if we do as Thabiti suggests, we'll lose. Listen - it is impossible to be regarded as the more winsome when you are the one saying "No". Men passionately hate it when God says "No"; do you really think they'll take it well when the message is passed along from a fellow creature? If your idea is to be more kind and loving, absolutely. If you think we will ever be viewed as such, try it a few times and see what happens. Then feel free to join us in speaking the truth plainly.

Should We Follow Gamaliel's Advice?

Acts 5:38-39 reads:

"So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!"

Recently I've been seeing this come up over and over, exhorting us to stop fighting against perceived false teachers, heresies, and unbiblical practices. If it's not true, the reasoning goes, it will die out and go away. And if you're wrong and it actually is true, well, you don't want to oppose God, do you?

Is this an appropriate use of this passage? I think not, for numerous reasons.

First, it's an inference drawn from a narrative which is exactly the opposite of direct commands, such as Titus 1:10-11 and 1 John 4:1-6, as well as descriptions of the church such as Ephesians 4:11-16. In interpretation, the clear always trumps the unclear; clear doctrinal teachings explain the narratives. To subvert clear, unambiguous teaching by making it subordinate to possible inferences drawn from narratives is twisting the Bible on its head. It's a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

But even if that clear teaching wasn't there, would this even be good advice for Christians? True, it's the words of scripture - but it's the words of a blasphemous enemy of the church plotting the best way to eliminate any memory of Jesus Christ*. Well guess what, the words "He has uttered blasphemy" are recorded in scripture about Jesus - should we therefore hold that Jesus is actually a blasphemer? Of course not. Nor should we swallow this utterance unquestioned. At the very least, we need to have the same skepticism we use for the speeches of Job's friends.

And putting that aside, is it even good advice? Really, how often has "just ignore it and it will go away" worked? Maybe with an annoying little sibling you might get lucky occasionally. Maybe. But a health issue, a weed problem, a leaky faucet, Milton, or a subversive movement? Not likely.

No, I don't think this was good advice we should emulate. I think it was providentially terrible advice, just as God providentially made Absalom listen to Hushai's awful advice rather than Ahithophel's counsel. God protected his people by making their enemies act foolishly. By the time they got around to full-on attacks, it was too little, too late.

This advice of Gamaliel's is directly contrary to God's commands, was aimed at destroying the church, and proved to be spectacularly awful. Why, exactly, should the church follow his advice now? Oh that's right - it's those who are promoting unbiblical nonsense and want it to go unchallenged who suggest we should. How about we just obey God instead?

By the way, do you think they actually believe what they're promoting? Here's a test - go to one of their churches and start teaching, say, the full gospel, the sufficiency of scripture, etc. Do you think they'd let you go unopposed or shut you down? Exactly.


*Because he had been mentor of the Apostle Paul, I've often heard people speak of Gamaliel as if he surely must have been a Christian himself. And maybe there's some early-Christian literature describing his conversion, I dunno. But in this story, he's clearly not a Christian. He compares Jesus to some rabble-rousing nobodies and schemes how to make people forget about him, too. Certainly he doesn't speak up affirming Jesus as Lord and Christ! And a few paragraphs later, when we see his great disciple Saul, what is he doing? Assisting in the murder of Stephen, and going on a Christian-killing rampage. So his top man was a persecutor, he rejected Jesus as Messiah and wanted the church to just go away. We think he was a crypto-Christian... why, exactly?

Church Discipline vs Gutless Grace

I've sometimes said that no statement is simultaneously more obvious and controversial than "boys and girls are different". So much of current wickedness - being forced to pretend two boys can marry each other, a 6-year-old boy pretending to be a girl and everyone else being forced to play along - comes from fighting against perhaps the most obvious fact of personhood. If boys and girls are different, these things are reprehensibly wicked. If they're not, then... um... you know, I can't even imagine what to put here. The fact that male and female are different is so blazingly obvious, I can't even think of what to use to illustrate what things would be like if they weren't. Yet that's what we're (very selectively) being forced to pretend. Yeah, that'll end well.

But there's another statement that, within the church is nearly as obvious and nearly as controversial. You ready? "You can judge a tree by its fruit". Aside from pretty much being a tautology, you have Jesus directly teaching it, so you'd think that would settle it. But you'd better have a strong backbone if you try to teach it, or worse yet, act like you believe it. Prepare for the onslaught of "you're confusing law and gospel!" protests, and all manner of assaults from the Gutless Gracers, who seek to exalt grace by insisting that it does nothing but provide fire insurance. I never cease to be amazed at how hard people will work to denounce the thought that a new creation will somehow be new.

I was thinking of this recently as I read some texts on church discipline, Matthew 18:15-20 and 1 Corinthians 5. I seriously wonder how someone who holds to Gutless Grace would handle those passages. That position maintains that there is no necessary connection between your profession of faith and your ensuing life - you can be justified without subsequently ever experiencing even the tiniest bit of sanctification. You can become a good tree while still producing nothing but poisonous fruit and thorns; Jesus is your savior but Satan remains your lord.

Now read those passages, which address how the church is to deal with sin. Notice first, the one being disciplined is one who claims to be a brother - he professes belief in Christ. Second, the discipline is brought on by his actions - in one case sin which he refuses to repent of, in the other case sin which is especially vile. Finally, the last stage of punishment is to put him out of the church, to hand him over to Satan, to have nothing to do with him (such as sharing the Lord's Supper with him), to treat him as an unbeliever.

Put it all together, and here's what you get. Based on his actions, the church is to deny the validity of his profession of faith. The church is to unite and say that he is not one of them, to deny him any form of fellowship, which is only appropriate if he is an unbeliever. Which is to say, because of his conduct, they are to have no confidence that he is a brother in Christ. If a man's belief doesn't affect his actions, the church is to regard it as no belief at all. If he claims Jesus as savior but not as lord, the church is to contradict him and disassociate from him.

So how does the 'Jesus as savior only' position deal with this?