Biblical Christians are Winning the War – Here’s Why – A Response to Martin Saunders

The wounds of a friend are faithful. I regard Martin Saunders as a ‘friend’ and therefore his article on Christian Today as faithful.
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/conservative.christians.are.losing.the.argument.heres.why/42742.htm

It wounded. And then some. According to Martin my article on Steve Chalke’s latest attack on Evangelical Christianity was rude, discourteous, ungracious, unloving and not nice. Ouch! I accept of course that that sometimes happens at the more ‘conservative’ end. And its something I abhor. Time for sackcloth and ashes?!

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/david.robertson.on.steve.chalke.i.believe.in.the.jesus.of.the.bible.not.the.jesus.of.western.middle.class.liberalism/42553.htm

But leaving aside the personal, Martin’s article also made me think. About a key issue in the Church in the UK today. What is our future? Martins view is one that many Christians share, ‘Conservative’ Christians are losing the argument because we are just not very nice people. We are the UKIP of Christianity, if not the BNP; backward, bitter and on the wrong side of history. Which is a shame, because according to Martin, we still have a lot to contribute to the diversity of the church, if only we were nicer. I believe that Martin means well and yet I also believe he is profoundly wrong and does not need to be so pessimistic about those us he calls conservatives, and dare I say it, nasty about those of us who are not nice. The trouble is that he gets the wrong picture because he frames the question wrongly.

We are Radicals not Conservatives. I am not a conservative Christian. The terminology is all wrong. Conservative speaks to me of a political, social and staid viewpoint. It is the wrong and unbiblical term to use. We are biblical Christians and therefore the far more appropriate term to use is radical. I don’t want to ‘conserve’ our corrupt society – I want to turn it upside down (Acts 17:6)! The irony is that it is those who call themselves ‘progressives’ who are in fact the conservatives. They go along with the culture and shibboleths of our day. Why do you think the secular media love and laud Steve Chalke, Vicky Beeching, Richard Cole and Bishop Holloway? Because they are basically of the same mind. “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

We are not interested in winning arguments – We want to win the war. Martin is concerned that the ‘conservative’ voice is losing the argument because we are marginalised in the house of bishops or shouted down online. I don’t care. The House of Bishops allows people within it who are scarcely theists, never mind biblical Christians. Being marginalised by such would be an honour. Being invited to share at their table, a real danger. The Internet is filled with flaming trolls who use its anonymity to spew out their bile, hates and frustrations. They can try all they want to drown me; I follow the One who walks on water! In addition, even though I confess I am a very argumentative person I am not really interested in winning arguments. My concern is to fight a spiritual battle. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). I want to win the people and rescue them from the prince of this world, from the forces of darkness, from the deadness of their sins. And I know I can’t. Only the Gospel proclaimed in the power of the Spirit and the love of Christ can. That’s what I care about. I share Pauls passion “For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth’. (2 Corinthians 13:8). It is about time that the Church in the UK realised we are in the midst of a spiritual battle.

Let me give you one personal example of how this works – something I have not shared before – but Martin cut deep – and so out of the depths I tell you this. In 2011 Gordon Wilson (former leader of the SNP) and yours truly prepared a formal response on behalf of Solas (www.solas-cpc.org) to the Scottish government on Same Sex Marriage. We knew that once it was published all hell would break loose. And it did. And not just in a political/media storm sense (it was front page news in Scotland). I had expected the vitriolic letters, hate e-mails and twitter rage. What I had not anticipated was the spiritual assault that came. As a result at the end of that week I ended up in hospital and for several weeks my life hung in the balance. I am immensely thankful to the Lord for his amazing answer to the prayers of thousands of his people (my surgeon who was not a believer said that my survival and return to health was a miracle) but let me tell you something just now. That period of severe illness, coma, pain and near death was also a period of great spiritual blackness, darkness and assault. It makes me shudder every time I think about it and I pray I never have to go through it again. I have no time for those who see ‘demons’ everywhere, but since that day I have been acutely conscious that we are engaged in a spiritual battle. It ain’t nice.

We don’t want to be ‘nice’. And that is why being nice is not really a priority. I am looking at my concordance just now and amazingly, for something so apparently essential to the Christian faith, I just can’t find the word ‘nice’ in it. It does seem to me to be tied up with that ‘conservative’ image. You know the nice old lady who lives in the nice pretty village of Little Woking on The Hill, who gives a nice cup of tea to the nice vicar, before they all have a nice service. To me its Brigadoon fantasy Churchianity. Nothing to do with the real world and the real battle we are supposed to be fighting. You don’t defeat the Nazis by niceness.

Speaking of that real world – I was confused by Martin’s assertion that progressive used to be interchangeable with reformed. Not in any history/theology book that I have ever read. But that is a minor detail compared with the astonishing assertion that the reason we need to be nice is “‘people have access to far more information and a greater array of voices than any other generation in history”. People are now broader and shallower and therefore are more susceptible to the compelling voice and the soundbite. So we need to be nice! If the Church thinks like that we have already lost. Firstly it fails to recognise that the greater array of voices is not providing more information, it is actually only creating more confusion. The Church needs to speak not with the myriad tongues of Babylon, but rather with the clear and certain voice of Christ speaking through his Word. And we must not become broad and shallow in order to appeal to a broad and shallow world! People need depth. “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14). I’m not prepared to encourage people to walk on the broad road just to be popular and win an argument.

Martin however gives us a much better definition of ‘nice’. Nice means kind and compassionate, coming from a place of love. And who could argue with that? But the problem here is that Martin seems only concerned with the tone (which apparently does not appeal to our superficial, shallow, soundbite culture). At a minor level he is being self-contradictory – how is accusing someone of being rude, discourteous and not nice, ‘nice?! Also complaining that division in the church causes unbelief and then setting up such a division, based on perceived tone, is not helpful. In the blue corner we have the nice if somewhat mistaken Mr Chalke, and in the red, the nasty Piper/Robertson serious grumpy, unlistening, joyless, old men. Having said that I accept that being unpleasant, rude, unloving etc is a horrendous way to behave, and not the way of Christ. But the trouble with ‘niceness’ is that it is not about fact. It is about perception. Doubtless for many who read my article now it will be through the ‘nasty- narrative’ spectacles provided by Martin, who read a tone into the article which I do not believe was there.

Martin thinks that liberals are so much better at doing ‘nice’. I agree. Some have the smooth voice, the silky tones, the fine words. So what? The devil is also brilliant at doing nice. He comes as the angel of light, not the nasty horned demon. I have been involved in the UK church scene and the wider politics thereof for long enough to know that liberals are as vicious (behind the scenes), if not more so, than conservatives, when it comes to church politics and power games. I have sat in a meeting where people expressed their ‘love’ for one another, prayed for each other and were very nice; before they went off to an official church meeting where they voted to get rid of the very people they had just been praying with! If someone stabs me in the back it doesn’t make any difference if they do it with a kiss, a smiling face, a prayer and a gentle voice!

The major issue though is that niceness seems to be defining what love, kindness and compassion are, rather than the other way round. I believe it was love, kindness and compassion that compelled Jesus to drive the money changers out of the temple, to tell the Pharisees that they were liars like their father the devil, and to move Paul to write the Galatians that he wished the circumcising false teachers would go the whole way and castrate themselves (Galatians 5:12)! It was because Jesus, and his apostles, were so compassionate, so loving and so kind that they could not bear that people would be deceived by false teaching. That was my motivation in writing about Steve Chalke’s teaching. It was not about him. I don’t know him personally. I have nothing against him personally. It was about his teaching that so harmful to the good news of Jesus and therefore harmful to all who are taken in by it. The trouble is that Martin’s article turns the narrative into a personal one, ‘Chalke is nice, Robertson is nasty.’’’ That may be true but it’s an irrelevant smokescreen. To me nicely beating about the bush is about as useful as inserting emoticons into a Facebook message in order to try and convey tone. Steve Chalke may rarely lash out at this detractors in public – (although accusing us of denying the very nature of God is far fiercer than anything I had said!) but I wish he would actually engage in dialogue with us, (my offer of speaking at his ‘dialogue’ conference still stands – unanswered!), instead of portraying us as backward heartless right wing rednecks, and himself as some kind of latter day compassionate, progressive prophet leading the church into the promised land.

And this is where Martin makes his biggest mistake. “While division in the church is unhelpful, diversity within it is wonderful. Different views, voices and perspectives are like the many component parts of an orchestra, strengthening and complementing one another.” To which I would cry a hearty amen. Except for the one major flaw. The argument with Steve Chalke is not about ‘diversity’ within the church – it is about what the church actually is. This is where the language of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ is so unhelpful. Lets call it what it is – biblical and unbiblical. When the conservative Christian says that Jesus is the Son of God who literally rose from the dead, and the ‘liberal’ Christian says ‘no that is not literally true’ then it is a madness from the pit of hell to say that they are just component parts of the same orchestra. They are from completely different bands, playing different tunes and putting them together creates a discordant clash.

Diversity is what I experience in the church all the time. People of different age, background, race, social class, gifts, experience, temperaments and personalities working and worshipping together in the church. The only thing that unites them together is Christ and his Word. Once people start undermining the Bible they start teaching different Christs. Nothing causes greater division and disharmony. That is why I speak out against a teaching which makes a mockery of the atonement, calls Christ uncompassionate because he does not accept our societies redefinition of marriage and announces that the church has got it all wrong until Steve came along and discovered the ‘lost message of Jesus’. Ironically Martin chastises me for the tone of what I am playing, whilst neglecting to point out that Steve Chalke is the discordant one refusing to go along with The Conductor, and ignoring His score!

Biblical Christianity is winning the war because as Jesus says “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35). “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it”.(Isaiah 55:11). That is why all over the UK there are churches that are growing and developing as the Word of God is proclaimed in the love, joy, power and assurance of the Spirit. Not ‘conservative’ churches. But radical, bible believing, contemporary, Spirit filled churches of whatever denomination. The battle belongs to the Lord and so victory is his. I’m sticking with Christ and his Word, whatever the world says – I have no intention of being a loser! My call is not to compromise with Christ’s enemies, but to win them for Him.

I believe by far the biggest danger we face today in the church in the West, is not the militant secularists, Islamic jihadists or antagonistic atheists. The greatest danger is the enemy within. Hence my ‘not nice’ passion. There is nothing I am more passionate about than Jesus. He is my ‘Magnificent Obsession’. If Peter could be accused of doing the work of Satan because he sought to prevent Christ going to the cross, then I’m sure it’s not wrong to accuse those who deny that work, of the same wrongdoing. Paul warned with tears the Ephesian elders for three years “ “I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:31) It wasn’t nice. But it was Christlike compassionate passion!

The War is on. We will lose some battles (and arguments). But the Victory is already assured. D-Day happened at Calvary. The rest of Time is a mopping up operation as Christ gathers his Bride, and beautifies her for Eternity. I have no worries about defeat at all. I just want to love and serve him. He doesn’t need me. I need him. If we are serious about reaching our broad, shallow, superficial world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then lets not mimic that world, but rather let us follow the teaching of Paul to the Romans who themselves were seeking to reach their great and sinful society; Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2).

An edited version of this appeared on the Christian Today website –

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/biblical.christians.are.winning.the.war.heres.why/42889.htm

David Robertson
Solas CPC
Dundee
10th November 2014