Revisiting Martin Luther

One reason that I like holidays is the extra time for reading. The last book that I enjoyed last week was Martin Luther: A Spiritual Biography by Herman Selderhuis. I started another book on Monday night, but I still find myself thinking about Luther. All books can become conversation partners, but some lead to more reflection than others. 

Selderhuis capably traced the spiritual and theological development in Luther's thought, for example on the questions of justification and the proper use of force. He argued for his perspective on the question of exactly when Luther stopped being a monk. He showed Luther as a man of his times, a unique individual but, like everyone, influenced by the historical currents around him. I was fascinated by the way that he described the transition from Luther being the leader of the Reformation to being one important voice within it.

The issue that I still find myself pondering involves Luther's personality. This book reminded me of an issue that has interested me for years. Luther was a great man, but he used rough language, guzzled beer in excess, told crude jokes around his table, and was notorious for his stubbornness. His stubbornness was positive, enabling him to continue to function in spite of many physical problems. It was also negative, resulting in many broken relationships and lost opportunities.

I have decided that Luther's negative qualities contributed to his most celebrated moment. When he stood before the assembled nobles at the Diet of Worms, everyone believed that he was going to be burned alive if he did not back down. Facing the emperor would have been beyond intimidating. Everyone in the room, Luther included, would have assumed that the assembled nobles were better than him. Their society was stratified, and no one would have imagined anything different at the time. The pressure was immense. The best kind of person to stand up to that kind of pressure is a person who does not care what other people think, the kind of person who speaks his mind and does not back down. Those qualities made him the perfect person to begin the Reformation, and those same qualities meant that he could not continue to be the leader for the rest of his life. In the providence of God, the perfect man was there at the perfect time. In his great stubbornness, he made his great contribution to the kingdom.

Rediscovering Calvin Miller

 One of the joys of a personal library is the ability to revisit a book whenever you want. I recently picked up Calvin Miller's Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition for my first serious visit in several years. The visit took me on a journey down memory lane.

Years ago, I was in a glorified internship with the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (today the North American Mission Board). I was right out of college, and I found myself preaching to over 200 senior adults every Sunday during the winter months. At the time, I had never had a formal class on preaching or on the Bible. I was desperate for help, and I found it in Calvin Miller. The first two preaching books I bought were his Marketplace Preaching and Spirit, Word, and Story. Those were the wrong books for someone just starting out, but I did not know that then. I devoured them, and later I devoured other works of his. His thoughts on preaching came to be a major influence in my life long before I ever heard him preach. 

The gaps in my education have been filled through the years, and I have come to understand some issues differently than he did, but I never have lost an appreciation for Calvin Miller. I was writing a dissertation in 2006 when Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition was released, but I took the time to devour it in much the same way as its predecessors. My recent interaction with the same book was slower and more thoughtful. 

Through the years, I was able to interact with him a few times in small group settings. We had a couple of conversations on the fringes of those meetings. One of those was about two weeks before he died. In person, I found him to be exactly the person he was in his books: a humble man with a sterling character and an intense devotion to Christ. 

My recent interaction with Preaching led to pulling other Calvin Miller books from my shelves, to thumbing through some of them, and to re-reading sections of others. There are some concepts that I need to revisit and some ideas that I should reevaluate. Preaching is a subject that no one ever truly masters. It is always a work in progress. I remember some comments from Martin Luther along those lines, and I suspect that Calvin Miller would agree. As far as I can tell, he was not finished growing as a preacher until he had preached his last sermon.

Today, I am thankful for Calvin Miller and the legacy that he has left for us.

We Knew Exactly What We Were Doing

Last Spring, I became aware of reports of mismanagment of sexual abuse cases in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). At this time, I do not believe that anyone has a completely clear picture of what has happened. There seems to be solid evidence that some mistakes were made, at the very least. There are suspicions that what has happened is worse than mere mistakes. A possibility exists that there has been a culture at the SBC Executive Committee of cover ups. Quite a few facts are in the public domain now, and some of those facts seem to be damning, but nothing like a coherent and complete picture has emerged. Basically, we do not know the whole story.

I went to the SBC annual meeting in June specifically because of the questions about the handling of sexual abuse cases. For various reasons, I had not planned to go this year, but I went anyway. At the end of the convention, I was relieved. "Pleased" would be too strong of a word to use because too many people are hurt. This is an ugly business, but I was relieved. The Southern Baptist Convention had done the right thing. There would be a full and independent investigation by a third party with a report to the whole convention next year. 

Now, that outcome is in doubt. I watched most of the live stream of the recent SBC Executive Committee meeting, which ended yesterday. I am deeply disappointed in the result. For what may have been the first time ever, the Executive Committee did not follow the clearly expressed will of the messengers of the SBC. The headquarters of the SBC is supposed to be the local church, but they turned that upside down yesterday. One thread running through that Executive Committee meeting and through other conversations was that the messengers did not understand the ramifications of what happened in June. It was almost as if insurance policies and dollar signs were floating around the room during the debate. I want to be clear: I knew exactly what I was doing.

I have led Southern Baptists for decades. I have faced some ugly situations. I have been to law enforcement myself. I have talked to an attorney about a sticky situation. I have supported people in the aftermath of abuse. Some things will never leave me. I have the scars that come from leadership, but I am not unique. There were thousands of men with the same kind of experiences in that room in Nashville with me. There were thousands of pastor's wives in that room too, women who have served alongside their husbands helping people through every kind of suffering that exists. On top of that, there were the missionaries, and counselors, and many others who also face down evil as part of their everyday ministry. Many abuse survivors were in that room, many more than those who identified themselves publicly. Together, we have faced every kind of difficult and complicated situation that exists. We knew exactly what we were doing.

In a group of over 15,000, some people may have been confused. Some people obviously do not understand parliamentary procedure. Big meetings can be confusing, but anyone who was there remembers the mood of the room. The anti-establishment feeling was strong. The messengers wanted a full and independent investigation no matter what the cost may be. That was what we approved. Out of well over 15,000 people, I saw maybe 50 "no" votes from where I was seated. We knew what we were doing, and we voted for it overwhelmingly.

All of this hand-wringing and dithering around over potential lawsuits and insurance questions misses the point entirely. If there is moral rot, it must be exposed. If it costs tens of millions of dollars, so what? Hiding it will cost much more in the long run. Moral rot that is allowed to fester always costs more, and it costs much more than dollars. People have been hurt in ways that most of us cannot imagine. There is no price tag for that. There is no price tag for losing trust, and trust has been lost. If trust in the SBC wasn't already dead, then it died yesterday.

I remain committed to the SBC, and part of that commitment is to use whatever influence I have to do what is right. The rot must be exposed and removed. We must restore trust. If the people who were responsible had acted responsibly in the first place, we would not be here. It costs more to do the right thing now than it did back then. It will cost even more if we continue to put it off.  Anyone who stands against exposing and removing the rot should be replaced. The next meeting in Anaheim is in my calendar, and I will be ready. We knew exactly what we were doing, and we still intend to do it.

Speculation and the Bible

When there is a disaster, some people start speculating about God's judgments and the end of the world. I grew up in a church culture with some speculation. Everyone did not do it, but a few people did. As a young adult, I began to question the speculation that was being presented as if it were biblical prophecy. I remember being at a Christian concert during the first Gulf War when the singer stopped and announced that Iraq had fired Scud missiles toward Israel. This was presented as if it were all plainly presented in Revelation. Somewhere around 1995, I remember a well-meaning good ol' boy preacher who explained how hurricanes Erin and Opal were God's judgment on a particular "gay" beach outside of Pensacola. Some people are quick to label a particular disaster as God's judgment, often while ignoring plenty of facts along the way.

Throughout time people have speculated, and that speculation has just faded away as the course of history has moved forward. I remember the 88 reasons that Jesus was coming back in 1988. The same guys published another book in 1989, but it did not get as much attention. The Y2K disaster was not a disaster after all. The prognostications about the first Gulf War were not fulfilled. Through the years, "the antichrist" has been identified as Hitler, Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev (remember the birthmark?), Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 letters in each name), some supercomputer in Switzerland, Barak Obama, and Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Barney was a joke, proving that almost anything can be identified by "666" if you play with the numbers enough. History is littered with other examples. Each of these has faded away, destined to be replaced by new speculation in the future.

Presenting speculation about the Bible as if it were responsible interpretation confuses people. We live in a society in which many people have great difficulty with concepts like meaning, application, and truth. Most people just do not distinguish between what a text means and how it should be applied. Many people have fuzzy ideas about the nature of truth. Some people have problems in distinguishing between fact and opinion. At one time or another, many of us have been fooled by something we have read on the Internet. The bottom line is that we must be careful with how we interpret the Bible and how we communicate it. In our current situation with COVID - 19, fast and loose connections between something in the newspaper and something in the Bible are not helpful, and they may be harmful.

May we all be careful with how we interpret the Bible, and with how we communicate it. COVID - 19 has people's attention. Let's respond with responsible communication of biblical truth, and forget about the speculation.

Spurgeon's Parallel Lines

I have learned through the years that oft-repeated quotes can take on a life of their own. Retellings in different contexts can flatten the features of a quote, or sometimes even subtly change its meaning. When the famous quote from Spurgeon about parallel lines came up in conversation recently, I wondered about it. Then, I planned to use it in a sermon. To the best of my memory, I had never heard the passage actually quoted. Everybody usually just refers to the quote. To the best of my memory, I had never seen it in print. I had just heard it referenced time and time again. So I looked it up. Here is the quote with a bit of its original context from Spurgeon's A Defense of Calvinism:

That God predestines, and yet that man is responsible, are two facts that few can see clearly. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find, in another Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do not believe they can ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the human mind which pursues them farthest will never discover that they converge, but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.

Since the references to this quote often are used to find common ground between Baptists with different ideas about God's sovereignty and human free will, I was happy to see that the quote can properly be used to serve this purpose. Among conservative evangelicals, what unites us is far more important than our minor disagreements. We never will understand everything. Let us thank God that he has revealed himself to us, that he is sovereign, and that he is merciful and gracious.