This will be a four part series on the gospel and self-esteem, responding to common claims made about Christian self-esteem. The parts have all been written but are too long for one post so I’ll post one part a day for four days. The parts are:

Dangerous Claims
The Danger in Modern Thinking
Love for the Unlovable
Responding to the Love of God

Part 1: Dangerous Claims

What does God have to say about our self-esteem or our self-worth? It is not unusual today to hear that God has quite a bit to say. The idea seems to be that because God declares his love for us and refers to his children as his treasured possession we ought to think of ourselves in exalted terms. In other words, if God loves me, doesn’t that mean I must be something special? If God sees me as lovable, shouldn’t I see myself as lovable?

The end result is an emphasis on self. All of God’s actions are interpreted in terms of their effects on my psychological state. “God loves me, I must be lovable. God died for me, I must be worth dying for. God chose to use me in his work, I must be competent to carry out that work.” This leaves us with a gospel that performs a therapeutic function, making man feel better about himself.

This also leaves us with a decline in teaching or language that goes against the gospel of self-esteem. Some things are still called sin. Most evangelicals will say abortion and homosexuality are sins. But the wrongdoing I commit is not said to be sin – “It is a mistake, a goof, a character flaw, a rough spot. I make mistakes, you make mistakes, but God loves us so don’t worry so much about those mistakes.”

The problem is, none of these claims of self-affirmation can be found in Scripture. Like many distorted teachings, there are elements of truth, but the overall teaching is wrong, deceptive, and dangerous.

Tomorrow, what makes the claims of the gospel of self-esteem wrong, deceptive, and dangerous?

Powerful. From Churches Helping Churches.

Bad news for those who think God rescues and rewards all regardless of righteousness:

The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his rules were before me, and his statutes I did not put away from me. I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from my guilt. So the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.
Psalm 18:20-24

Good news for those who feel they can never satisfy the standard of God’s righteousness:

For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? – the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless.
Psalm 18:31-32

God shows favor to the righteous, but it is God who equips, strengthens and makes the sinner into a saint, makes the unrighteous man into a righteous man. It is all of God, not of me.

Churches Helping Churches

Some additional videos:

Pastor Mark and Pastor James for Churches Helping Churches
Pastor Mark leaving a riot situation

After reading about biblical illiteracy it occurs to me that the theological diversity within the SBC is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing as it encourages our people to unify around the essentials without dividing over non-essentials. There do remain some matters not essential to salvation that nonetheless divide us from other denominations: ecclesiology, baptism, the ordination of women, etc. But there is also remarkable diversity allowed within SBC life. Calvinists work alongside non-Calvinists. Dispensationalists and amillennialists go to church together (okay, not often). The Baptist Faith and Message establishes what is considered the minimum level of acceptable belief. It presents the least common denominator of Baptist faith. And as it stands the BF&M is a good document. Everything it affirms is right and true. But many topics are left unaddressed, providing freedom for individual Baptists to follow diverse convictions on these issues.

The curse of our diversity is that we also try to over establish uniformity. From a least-common-denominator confession of faith we also have a least-common-denominator body of teaching material through Lifeway, once known as the Baptist Sunday School Board. Lifeway’s approach follows that of the Baptist Faith and Message: teach things held in common by all Southern Baptists without crossing into areas of disagreement. This is not an altogether bad approach. As a Calvinist, I would not be happy knowing my money to Lifeway helped pay for material specifically opposing Calvinism. I imagine my non-Calvinist brothers and sisters would be equally appalled if Lifeway started promoting Calvinism.

The problem is with the end result. We wind up with a denomination full of people who have never been trained to go beyond the basics, never trained to dive into Scripture and emerge with rich jewels of truth.

The Lifeway material is fine for what it does, but what it does is not sufficient for the week-in-week-out growth and edification of the people of God. Our people need to be led deeper and further into biblical truth, not dancing around issues where Southern Baptists disagree but confronting those issues head on and emerging with strong convictions about what the Bible says on every subject that it addresses. For Lifeway, the solution might be to offer a variety of material coming from different theological persuasions. Not really a good solution, but I’m not sure what else they could do. In the meantime, individual churches using Lifeway material will need to go places the material will not go, augmenting the weekly lesson with more time spent in the Bible and less time spent in the Sunday school book. In the end this is the best approach anyway, no matter what material is used.

The need for aid in Haiti is going to be long-term. The devastation in the capitol and surrounding regions is so complete, I cannot imagine that much of anything will be left standing when cleanup begins.

The immediate need, however, is for food, water, and medical supplies. There are a number of ministries with work already underway in Haiti that are now reorganizing to respond to this crisis.

It is far too easy for us to feel disconnected from tragedies of this sort, but do not let distance stop your compassion. Give generously to the Haiti relief efforts. I recommend Compassion International though many other good ministries also exist. Below is a list of charities that have begun disaster relief.

Put off that next DVD purchase, this weekend’s movie, the new gadget you thought about purchasing, and spend your money where it will literally save lives.

1. Compassion International
2. IMB Baptist Global Response
3. Feed My Starving Children
4. Food for the Hungry
5. World Vision
6. World Relief
7. Samaritan’s Purse
8. Love a Child
9. Northwest Haiti Christian Mission
10. Compassion Weavers

There are also various blogs and twitter streams from people in Haiti. Below are three places I am following:

• The Livesay Weblog
• Troy Livesay twitter stream
• RHFH Rescue Center

The Boston Globe has also put together a number of pictures from Haiti, showing the extent of the devastation and providing a glimpse of the people caught up in this tragedy.

The New York Times has put together a Twitter list of Twitter streams reporting from/about Haiti.

Does this ever happen to you: you have a block of free time, which in and of itself gets you excited, but as you consider how to use that time you lock up? I waste more time reading pointless news or surfing pointless blogs (I don’t mean yours, Kyle) because I can’t decide which option to pursue during my free time.

So here I am tonight. Do I revive a writing project, read Sailhamer, read Piper, read Ryrie, read Sproul (all books in progress, some shelved for a while), study Spanish, work on Sunday’s sermon, or go read pointless news and blogs?

I suppose I could engage in the Great American Tradition and waste the time in other ways: tv shows and movies. Decisions, decisions.

Update: I left off the pièce de résistance of time wasting: playing pointless games on my iPhone.

Testing out SmugMug. And who says Baptist kids can’t dance?

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children from Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Matthew 3:7-10

It is far too common in certain strands of conservative Christianity to hear preachers saying things such as, “We are under attack today. Society is trying to steal our spiritual heritage. They have taken down the Ten Commandments, they have removed our crosses from the public eye, they have challenged our religious speech. They want to take away our Christian culture and disconnect us from our Christian roots.”

You have probably heard something of the sort so I do not have to give further examples. But such speaking and preaching has always struck me as problematic, somewhat resembling the Pharisees who prided themselves for their spiritual heritage. “We are sons of Abraham!” the Pharisees might declare, “how dare you insinuate that we need to repent!” The Pharisees waved the flag of religious heritage but did little to carry out the commands of God. John the Baptist declared that if God were only interested in children of Abraham, he could make some out of rocks. But God cares about our hearts, not about our heritage.

Too many Christians today are waving the Christian flag and defending their Christian heritage while displaying far too little concern for fruit in keeping with repentance. We can be far too quick to go to the next political rally but slow to volunteer at the homeless shelter. And even on hot political issues such as abortion, we will scream at pro-choice advocates while doing little to minister to and help the woman considering an abortion.

So we see 21st century Pharisees in the midst of conservative Christianity. Passionate about heritage and roots but far too negligent when it comes to doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

It is not important that we plaster the Ten Commandments across our courthouses. It is not important that we paint “One Nation Under God” across the wall of the U. S. Capitol. It is not important that we be allowed to display crosses. God has commanded none of these things. It is, however, important that we serve others in humility, speaking hard words when necessary but not because our pride has been offended.

Rather than living like 21st century Pharisees, ready to pick a fight with anyone who challenges our heritage, may we have the concern of God in Micah 6:8:

He has told you, I man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

I had originally left this out of the previous post. Added it back in when I realized my mistake, but wanted to go ahead and give it its own post as well.

Reasons for Divorce

I want to say a little more on why a husband or wife might decide to divorce his or her spouse.

Scripture does not offer many specific examples. We know in the case of adultery divorce is permitted. And we know from Deuteronomy 24:1-4 that there might be other situations that make divorce permissible. How might a husband or wife decide if a divorce should take place?

First, we recognize that divorce is never mandated in Scripture. Even in the case of adultery, divorce does not have to occur. In the case of adultery, the decision rests with the offended spouse.

But we noted from Deuteronomy that a spouse might divorce for various kinds of indecent behavior, actions that are repugnant to the married life. We also said that abuse is one example. If a man is abusing his wife and/or children, his wife would be justified in divorcing her husband and getting herself and her children to safety. Or if a wife is a drug addict and refuses to give up her addiction, her husband is justified to divorce in order to protect himself and his children from the consequences of drug use. Many other examples of this sort could be given.

The thing to remember is that the offense cannot be casual. The Jews found ways to justify divorce if the wife burned her husband’s breakfast or other similar nonsense. Today a husband might divorce if he wants to marry someone he finds more attractive or appealing. None of these cases involve justified divorce. Similarly, one cannot divorce with the claims of incompatibility. I believe it is sin to divorce for any reasons involving selfish motive or ambition or how one feels about the quality of a marriage.

Divorce is justified if one spouse is chronically engaged in sinful activity that is harmful to the spouse or the children and he or she refuses to repent and turn from his or her sinful actions. A husband or wife may find divorce the last resort, the only way to be protected from spousal sin. Even after divorce reconciliation should be sought, working to lead the sinning spouse to repentance.