Last week a pastor who is affiliated with Samaritan’s Purse spoke at my home church. This speaker’s message reflected both the best and worst of evangelical convictions. (The speaker was not Franklin Graham. You probably woudln’t know the speaker by name.)
The first part of the message reflected the ethos of Samaritan’s Purse, which I admire. The text was Ephesians 6: “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” and “put on the full armor of God.” The speaker referred to perseverence in doing the sort of good work done by Samaritan’s Purse. He made some references as asides that suggested a broad, cooperative approach among Christians engaged in such work, and fleshed out his sermon with a solid historical background on his chosen text. That was some of the best of an Evangelical approach: solid, balanced, seeking opportunities to serve the poor and oppressed alongside Christians from other traditions, while holding firmly to a historic, Biblically grounded orthodoxy.
But, just as I began to feel comfortable, he went off the rails. He slid into fundamentalist thundering. At one point, holding the Bible aloft, he shouted “THIS BOOK CAN BE DEFENDED!” Later, he spat (literally) “THE EMERGING CHURCH WILL EMERGE RIGHT INTO NOTHING!” Then he suggested that political efforts to promote peace in the middle east are pointless and alluded to a dispensational premillenial view of Israel and its enemies. He also dismissed political and social efforts to stem the tide of AIDS because it is a “heart” problem. It went on and on like this for the last fifteen minutes or so. It was like listening to two different preachers: sort of a “good cop, bad cop” from the pulpit.
This latter part of the sermon was some of the worst of an old-school Evangelical approach, which can be characterized as “simplify and divide.” What does it mean, and what purpose does it serve, for example, to shout “THIS BOOK CAN BE DEFENDED!”? Yes, there are good responses to many criticism of and attacks on the Bible. But then, there also are many good and difficult questions that honest people ask for which there are not easy answers. We need to be prepared to give the reason for our hope (I Peter 3:15) and to reason with questioners (cf. Acts 17:2), but we shouldn’t expect that the Bible is a simple book or that all (or even most) theological questions are easy.
I was genuinely shocked that someone who works for a relief organization, and who presumably has seen incredible human suffering first-hand, could be so dogmatic. Theodicy, after all, is one of the toughest and deepest questions of them all. Likewise, I was discouraged by the offhanded slam of the “emerging church” coming from someone who works cross-denominationally in a parachurch organization. Perhaps some people who call themselves “emergent” will emerge into nothing, but it’s not so easy to define a distinct “emerging church,” much less to write the whole movement off with a single wad of spit.
Even more so, I was dismayed to hear the old line, long abandoned by most thoughtful dispensational scholars, that we should give up on any political efforts to promote peace in the middle east or to mitigate the effects of diseases and other problems that can result from sinful behavior. This was from someone who works for an international relief organization which, according to the organization’s website, has “sponsored dozens of grassroots HIV/AIDS programs around the world; developed programs to help local churches and ministries teach prevention, offer care, reduce stigma, and show Christ-like compassion to victims of the deadly disease; and supported ministries engaged in orphan care”!
We need more of the “good” Evangelicalism represented by Samaritan’s Purse — deep, strong, but broad — and less of the “bad” represented by the second half of this sermon — narrow, shallow, and defensive.