The Gospel Coalition

Jonathan Acuff, the man behind the popular site Stuff Christians Like and author of a book with the same title, wrote this week for CNN about why Christians sometimes act like jerks online. He cites debates over beer and Bono as examples that draw out the worst in Christians on the Web. Acuff rightly observes that Christians fail to live up to their namesake with the name-calling so commonplace in online forums.

Much like “Christian hate mail,” being a “Jerk Christian” defies logic. We serve a loving God. We follow a Christ who very plainly told us what to do. In Matthew 22 someone asks Jesus, “What is the most important commandment?” The answer is simple:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Acuff suggests two reasons Christians are tempted to act this way. First, anonymity allows us to hide behind our computer screens and offer harsh words without seeing their effect. Even if kind and loving in person, we may morph into jerks online. Second, when faced with life-long challenges like learning to love our neighbors, Christians may find it easier to sweat the small things. We lose all sense of proportion and our cool.

Any of us who write and read on the Internet can attest to Acuff’s observation about the tone of much Christian debate online. I have no reason to think Christians are actually worse than others on the Web. Visit a political blog or even your local newspaper’s site, and you’ll see some pretty nasty stuff. Yet we have a different standard, a higher calling, and a better example to follow in Jesus Christ. To be sure, Jesus spoke with utmost clarify and color when opposing the Pharisees. Defending the faith requires vigilance. But it also requires trust in God that we don’t have to be jerks in order to make our points.

Using today’s news medium of choice, novelist Anne Rice announced July 28 on Facebook that she has quit being a Christian. Rice, the famed author of Interview with a Vampire, says she still loves Christ. But it’s the rest of us she can’t stand.

I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

Once a “pessimistic atheist,” Rice famously resumed confessing and celebrating Mass in the Roman Catholic Church several years ago. The world learned of her change of heart in 2005 when Knopf announced they would publish Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Rice’s novel about the 7-year-old Jesus. Researching the book, she studied N. T. Wright, Augustine, John A. T. Robinson, D. A. Carson, and Craig Blomberg, among others.

Rice’s story was never tidy, however. Her son and fellow novelist is openly gay. Doubt remained over how she would regard the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings where she plainly disagreed. This week Rice removed all doubt.

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Rice’s defense of “secular humanism” is particularly puzzling for someone who says she remains committed to Christ and argues for the historical validity of the Resurrection. Indeed, Rice says she continues to believe in an active, loving God.

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

So it seems Rice has joined the loud and growing chorus that sings, “I love Jesus, just not the church.” Yet when we read Scripture, we see that Jesus Christ loved the church. In fact, he gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25). It’s not like Jesus loved us naively. He who was betrayed by one of his closest friends and abandoned by others during his time of greatest need surely understood human failings.

All true Christians belong together to the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27), purchased by Jesus’ blood shed on the Cross. “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4-6). Nobody who belongs to a local church will say that it’s always easy to love fellow Christians who have been justified and yet continue to sin. At the same time, no Christian who knows himself believes it’s always easy for others to love him, either. And yet we’ve been called to love one another according to the example of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. A maturing disciple of Christ learns to love when it’s hard and submit to the Word’s authority when we’re tempted to disagree.

On February 20-21 and 27-28, 2009, Don Carson presented a 14-part seminar entitled “The God Who Is There” at Bethlehem Baptist Church’s North Campus in Minneapolis. This series will serve the church well because it simultaneously evangelizes non-Christians and edifies Christians by explaining the Bible’s storyline in a non-reductionistic way.

The series is geared toward “seekers” and articulates Christianity in a way that causes hearers either to reject or embrace the gospel. It’s one thing to know the Bible’s storyline, but it’s another to know one’s role in God’s ongoing story of redemption. “The God Who Is There” engages people at the worldview-level.

And now MP3s (full) and video (10-minute previews) are available for Carson’s 14-part series:

1. The God Who Made Everything | MP3 | Video Preview
2. The God Who Does Not Wipe Out Rebels | MP3 | Video Preview
3. The God Who Writes His Own Agreements | MP3 | Video Preview
4. The God Who Legislates | MP3 | Video Preview
5. The God Who Reigns | MP3 | Video Preview
6. The God Who Is Unfathomably Wise | MP3 | Video Preview
7. The God Who Becomes a Human Being | MP3 | Video Preview
8. The God Who Grants New Birth | MP3 | Video Preview
9. The God Who Loves | MP3 | Video Preview
10. The God Who Dies—and Lives Again | MP3 | Video Preview
11. The God Who Declares the Guilty Just | MP3 | Video Preview
12. The God Who Gathers and Transforms His People | MP3 | Video Preview
13. The God Who Is Very Angry | MP3 | Video Preview
14. The God Who Triumphs | MP3 | Video Preview

These talks correspond to the following book and leader’s guide:

D. A. Carson. The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010.

D. A. Carson. The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story: Leader’s Guide. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010.

The DVDs are currently in production, but ten-minute video previews to each of the fourteen sessions are available on Vimeo. Here’s the opening session:

The God Who Is There – Part 1. The God Who Made Everything (Preview) from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Jonathan Leeman, 9Marks director of communications, kindly asked me a few questions about my role as editorial director for The Gospel Coalition. I appreciate Jonathan for giving me the opportunity to lay out TGC’s unique contribution and share a few of the things we have in store for this site in the future. Just don’t read too much into my answer to the question about TGC’s mascot. And I really would like to see all future 9Marks books featuring an image of Mark Dever wearing a white lab coat and carrying a stethoscope around his neck.

Stan Guthrie, a wise columnist and father of three, responded today to Pamela Paul’s provocative Atlantic article, “Are Fathers Necessary?” Guthrie cites research that reveals the vital contributions of fathers. But there is significant motivation today to devalue the father’s role, due to homosexuality, artificial insemination, out-of-wedlock births, and other developments. Guthrie identifies the spiritual distortions and longings that underlie this latest assault on dads.

We dispense with fatherhood, a basic building block of family and society, at our peril.

So why all the momentum to undermine fathers? I wonder if our discomfort with the idea of human fatherhood is a sign of a problem deeper in our souls. Bible scholars say that God is a mysterious Trinity of three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In his sovereignty, God the Father runs the universe and has set in motion the only sure plan of redemption.

Maybe we devalue our earthly fathers because we are estranged from our heavenly one. We prefer to walk Buddhism’s Eightfold Path, obey Islam’s Five Pillars, or practice our own atheist morality than answer to a heavenly Father. We’d rather invent our own salvation than acknowledge his.

Maybe we evangelicals, who do a good job of emphasizing Jesus the Son, haven’t done as well talking about his Father and ours. It was Jesus, after all, who told us not only that the Father is holy and able to cast us into hell, but that he loves us and knows our every need even before we ask. Far from a ridiculous bumbler, this Father combines wisdom, power, and grace.

Are fathers necessary? Yes, on earth—and in heaven.

Read Guthrie’s whole column at Crosswalk.com.