Gnats and Camels
On missing the point and missing that there is a point
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“Are things worse than they used to be?” That is a question I hear on occasion from those who are younger than I am. The question comes from an understandable angst concerning our national politics and cultural battles. Those who are old enough may (or may not) remember the cultural tumult of the 1970’s - the anti-war movement, the underground groups and their bombings.
Nearly a dozen radical underground groups, dimly remembered outfits such as the Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front and the Symbionese Liberation Army, set off hundreds of bombs during that tumultuous decade—so many, in fact, that many people all but accepted them as a part of daily life. As one woman sniffed to a New York Post reporter after an attack by a Puerto Rican independence group in 1977: “Oh, another bombing? Who is it this time?’”
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In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972 the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American soil, almost five a day. Because they were typically detonated late at night, few caused serious injury, leading to a kind of grudging public acceptance.
Bryan Burrough - The Bombings of America That We Forgot - Time Magazine - September 20, 2016
We may remember stagflation, 9/11, the Gulf Wars, the financial crash and great recession, Watergate, the assassinations, and other times of cultural upheaval, anger, fear, and division. Are things worse now? Maybe. Probably the question depends on emphasis - and, for each individual, their answer to the question might depend on how much time they spend doom scrolling or under the sway of divisive cable news hosts. The times may or may not be worse, but the times are stupider. Those bombings were evil, but they were an attempt, at least, to change the world. We get bomb throwing now, in an attempt to score points with our cultural constituencies.
One of our growing efficiencies at present is that of missing the point, and in the losing of the point, and in the ignoring that there is one. Battles may be more or less angry, but they are about, in general, stupider things - or maybe smaller things. We leave the weighty, important, thorny, complicated question aside - or pretend that there are none of these things so we can do what we really want - attack the “them”. These cultural conflicts become personal, drained of any larger meaning - angry, intense, divisive, and stupid.
Alistair Begg is a reformed, theologically conservative pastor of a large Cleveland-area church. He is a gifted teacher with a national profile - his Truth for Life ministry conveys his bible teachings in the form of daily devotionals and other resources. Until very recently, this ministry featured excerpts from his sermons in a radio program carried by American Family Radio, an evangelical broadcasting network. It is the ‘until very recently’ part that signals where things got stupid. In a recent interview, Begg recounted his advice to a grandmother in response to her question about attending her grandchild’s wedding - a grandchild getting married to someone who is transgender. A wedding she did not approve of and a grandchild she loved.
Begg, who opposes same-sex weddings, suggested she go to the wedding and bring a gift. By doing so, she would show her love for her grandchild—even though she did not approve of the wedding.
“Your love for them may catch them off guard, but your absence will simply reinforce the fact that they said, ‘These people are what I always thought: judgmental, critical, unprepared to countenance anything,’” the evangelical pastor said. He added that Christians would have to take risks in order to show love to those around them.
Alistair Begg Stands by LGBTQ Wedding Advice with Sermon on Jesus’ Compassion - Christianity Today - January 31, 2024
What followed was a careful, theologically rich discussion among Christian leaders on the tension between living out one’s biblical beliefs in a culture that does not share them - on how we can be faithful to what we believe to be true while remaining in loving relationships with those who oppose these views.
Ha Ha Ha!!! Just kidding!!! Of course that isn’t what happened. That would have been a smart controversy - maybe even a smart conflict. What happened was far stupider.
Begg’s comments set off a firestorm among some of his fans and supporters—in particular those in conservative Calvinist and other evangelical communities.
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American Family Radio, an evangelical broadcasting network, dropped Truth for Life, a program based on Begg’s sermons, last week after his advice resurfaced and went viral.
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Begg had been scheduled to speak in March at the Shepherds Conference, a major Reformed evangelical pastors’ gathering led by California pastor and author John MacArthur. After Begg’s comments became public, he and MacArthur talked and decided the controversy would be “an unnecessary distraction,” according to a spokesman for Grace to You, one of the conference sponsors.
“Pastor MacArthur’s counsel on that issue would be completely different from the counsel Alistair Begg said he gave an inquiring grandmother,” said Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You told Religion News Service in an email. “So both agreed that it was necessary for Pastor Begg to withdraw.”
Alistair Begg Stands by LGBTQ Wedding Advice with Sermon on Jesus’ Compassion - Christianity Today - January 31, 2024
Let’s take that last paragraph as a typical representation of our (stupid) times. John MacArthur may be the most prominent Reformed evangelical pastor in the country. He is the pastor of a large church (Grace Church) in Southern California and has, like Begg, a national ministry called (unironically) Grace to You. MacArthur removed Begg from his conference because, as his executive director stated, “Pastor MacArthur’s counsel on that issue would be completely different from the counsel Alistair Begg said he gave an inquiring grandmother.” As my pastor sometimes says, please don’t hear what I am not saying. It wasn’t a stupid question from the grandmother. I happen to agree with Begg’s advice and have given similar advice when asked (which I have been more than once). But the disagreement isn’t, in itself, stupid. A careful, theologically rich discussion on the inherent tension in the question, a tension which may apply to many areas of life in our world for Christians, would not have been stupid. How should I engage those living outside of the teachings of our faith? What can that look like? But we didn’t get that. We got the leader of Grace to You and the leaders of American Family Radio (in response to a backlash from many other pastors and Christian leaders online) saying to Alistair Begg - ‘you aren’t one of us anymore’. Giving permission for so many of these people to throw stones at Begg, denouncing him for “going woke” or “caving to the woke”.
Instead of a real conflict about a real situation faced by real people - answering the question: how does our Christian theology fit into this real life situation? … what are the missional implications of loving those whom we are called to reach while holding to what we believe to be true theologically? We get something far stupider - “you are bad.”
Jesus spent a lot of time (a distressing amount of time in the eyes of the religious leaders of the day) with people who were publicly living outside of the teachings and practices given to God’s people. One of the chief “proofs” in the eyes of those leaders, the Pharisees, that Jesus could not be a true prophet was their belief that a true prophet would know how bad these people were. The assumption being that anyone who had this knowledge would not go to their houses, join them for dinner, enjoy their hospitality. They were wrong about all of that. That is the context of his saying -
Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Luke 5:31-32
I can understand that some might be offended by the apparent implication that those at a same-sex or transgender wedding are the sick who need the doctor. I mean that only in so far as all of us do. Jesus’ words are on two levels. Coming after his sermon on the mount, where none who honestly read this teaching would call themselves ‘righteous’ - he is saying not only that these public ‘sinners’ need to be restored, but that those asking the question need also to be restored, just from a different malady. It is the central lesson of the parable of the prodigal son. The older brother needs grace no less than the younger one. We all need the physician. Recognizing the need is the only qualification for receiving it.
In fact, all the harsh words we see from Jesus, and there are plenty, are directed against those who should know better - in particular, the religious leaders of the day. The entirety of Matthew chapter 23 is devoted to Jesus’ sharp critique of these religious leaders. One passage in particular seems to apply to this controversy and to similar controversies in the Christian world - and there are many.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
Matthew 23:23-24
Jesus is telling some of us that we have missed the point. Fine, if you want to follow the teachings of the Old Testament to give a tenth of what you have as an offering down to the point of counting out your spices and seeds so as to get the exact right number - you may. In any case, don’t neglect the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy and faithfulness. Don’t miss the point. Don’t strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. If you want to strain out the gnats, fine. But once you have swallowed your first camel you know that you have missed the point. You know that you have misplaced the marker of your righteousness.
We are called to love with the love of the One who came to us, ‘while we were yet sinners’. That isn’t a command to go to any certain wedding. It is a call to go everywhere possible to bring that love to those who need it. It is a strange phenomenon that many in the church applaud those who go (in their place) to the ends of the earth, bringing God’s love and truth to those in a cultural setting far from our Christian ideals - while we cancel those who go to (what they suppose to be) the wrong wedding. An important conversation could be had teasing out the similarities and differences of these two expressions of God’s mission of love. We are having a stupid one instead.
Links
The Bombings of America That We Forgot - Bryan Burrough - Time - September 20, 2016
Alistair Begg Stands by LGBTQ Wedding Advice with Sermon on Jesus’ Compassion - Christianity Today - January 31, 2024
Truth for Life - The Bible Teaching Ministry of Alistair Begg
