The Write Place

Alistair Begg strangely enough, advised a grandmother to go to her grandsons wedding (‘The Christian Manifesto’ Interview – Archive – Truth For Life). It does not bode well that this mistake was made as he prepares to release a work on the life of Christ and how to live differently in light of it (‘The Christian Manifesto). I hope this does not portend to greater issues ahead.

I can say that it is with no small measure of sorrow I am addressing this issue; it is also with great urgency. Personal feelings about a man or his ministry should only spur us on to address serious issues in his theology, the sooner the better. If this word festers, it would mean only harm for Begg’s ministry and more importantly the church at large. Of utmost importance, it would damage the name of Christ.

Here’s the excerpt where he talks specifically about this case.

“Does your grandson understand that your belief in Jesus makes it such that you can’t countenance in any affirming way the choices that he has made in life?”

“Yes.”

I said, “Well then, okay. As long as he knows that, then I suggest that you do go to the ceremony. And I suggest that you buy them a gift.”

“Oh,” she said, “what?” She was caught off guard.”

And it is a fine line, isn’t it? It really is. And people need to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. But I think we’re going to take that risk. We’re going to have to take that risk a lot more if we want to build bridges into the hearts and lives of those who don’t understand Jesus and don’t understand that he is a King.”

If Christ is king, why go to a ceremony celebrating a wanton rebellion? If a royalist during the revolution had gone to the Boston Tea Party or the Constitutional Convention to “build bridges” what ought King George have felt? Especially if that individual was an heir like Christians are (Romans 8:17)? Any politician would recognize that such presence would be a statement of legitimacy by the attendee to the events at hand as a representative of the government represented.

Considering the religious aspect of the whole, it gets worse. This isn’t a matter akin to even something laudable like evangelism at a rally, this is participating in public witness to an unholy and blasphemous ceremony. By going she is lending it a legitimacy to any who don’t know her stance, and to those who do she is downplaying the seriousness of the sin.

He continues

“I said, “Well, here’s the thing: 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.’”

Why is Alistair so unconcerned with fidelity to Christ in this instant where the feelings of someone lost in sin are suddenly hurt? I doubt he understands this is what he is doing, but he is doing this as his answer shows his priority is how the Christian is perceived not how faithful to Christ the Christian is. He may never take it all the way but it is the first step to condoning it that we have seen take the Mainline, and I have seen many of friends, follow to full celebration of pagan sexuality. Compromise because of what others think elevates human feelings to be of utmost importance.

This raises the question under an assumption in his words. Is it really loving to go? Of course, it isn’t because God sets the boundaries that define reality including love, not you, me, Alistair or the feelings of this grandmother or her children. Love confronts and this is a time to. Her going will speak quite loudly, it will be condoning by saying I disagree with it, but it is ok for you to do so when God has said otherwise. It will communicate that the sin is tolerable to her, and they can live how they want without consequence. But there is more to it than just her and her grandson and there always is.

We should judge sin; we should be critical of it, and we should be unprepared to tolerate it as much as his hypothetical scenario of rejection anticipates the engagement in all of these towards the Christian. What assumption lies underneath this thought exercise is that Christians should bend first. Christians have the truth of God; we should not bend at all.

There are things to do to blunt and even confound these would be responses that do speak to how to love our unbelieving neighbor, things that align with how God defines love and how to show it. Jesus ate with Zaccheus, the chief tax collector and collaborator with pagan Rome in Jericho and the whole region (Luke 19:1-10). Jesus ate at other times with the lower ranking tax collectors and those called “sinners” for living a life outside of the biblical law, like Levi known as Matthew, and others (Mark 2:13-17). He did not go to watch them or the prostitutes he evangelized at work and sit idly by watching them as they did. Neither did he politely tell them it was wrong and go anyway. Going to this wedding would be doing that exact thing.

Had Jesus seen them doing so, he would have flipped the metaphorical tables like he very really did at the temple where people were being cheated. If she found herself at such an event, she has a duty to disrupt it by being an active witness against it. There’s a reason Christian’s go to gay pride parades and don’t just give a gift and stand politely by, they hand out tracts and evangelize.

Weddings are a divinely instituted ceremony for a divinely created institution (Genesis 2:18-24). Anything other than a man and a woman is a faux wedding that mocks God, mocks the individuals involved, and mocks the model of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33). Gay weddings are a mockery of God and of his Gospel. There can be no reason to participate for any believer. The nebulous excuse of doing this or that to “build bridges” can be used to justify any behavior and blunts the witness of Christians to an unbelieving world, one unwilling to build bridges to you for anything other than conquest.

Paul in (Acts 17:16-33) examines the pagan practices in the marketplace (which he could not avoid seeing) to respond. What Alistair advises is really the same as going to the high places of pagan idolatry during worship services where their gods were worshipped, during their services, and not to act against them.

Gay weddings are worship for a renewed pagan religion. Peter Jones notes June Singer in her book Androgyny, Towards a New Sexuality that homosexuality is actually considered holy in the new paganism we are seeing (Neopaganism Inside the Church / Peter Jones (youtube.com). She is Jungian and Gnostic and Pantheist, in short she believes the material world is not real, and in fact all things are really one. Sex for her is not of two different sexes, that is just an illusion. No, we are all really one so homosexuality tells you how the world really is. He notes in her book she says about homosexuality. 

“It is the Sacrament of Monism (Pantheism)”

-June Singer, Androgyny, Towards a New Sexuality

That is the false Gospel that is behind gay weddings. It is a preaching of a false view of God and the universe, and even of salvation.

You see it in recognized in scripture, it is as old as sin in Romans 1 where Paul retells Genesis 3 and the fall. Notice this portion.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; ²⁷ and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Romans 1:26-32

Alistair I am sure knows the passage, but I hope he is woefully ignorant of all this going on that I have heretofore mentioned. It can be very tempting to be pastoral and fall into the savior mindset. But this misses the point of what is really going on here and leads away from the savior.

With this fully in mind, we can entertain the consistent logic. If this were another Satanic ceremony, would Alistair give the same advice? If this event were the celebration of an abortion, if it was a black sabbath, or a “gender affirmation/surgery party” would he advise her to go with the same advice? 

This is not an unbelieving wedding that is still a wedding, having a man and a woman, which makes some permissible under the right circumstances, and the marriages are recognized by God (1 Corinthians 7:12-16). This is not a funeral, permissible barring blatant idolatry, as all men die and where the Gospel can be preached. A gay wedding is a mockery of the Gospel, one that nobody needs to enter into and a worship service that nobody should in any ways condone.

The Gospel is enough, and perhaps the best to the point response I heard is simple, the Gospel is the bridge and it’s the one God has established. God has shown us how to model it in our relationships and evangelism, and the real bridge is the Gospel itself. We are not to try to outsmart God for the sake of a human evangelism tactic that doesn’t care about fidelity to Christ and prioritizes the feelings and opinions of people lost in sin. Neither should we fall for those who have done so as I suspect (and hope) has happened with Alistair.

If faithfulness is not the first thing, it is nothing. If we get to define what faithfulness looks like, it is not being faithful. The devil is crafty in trying to get us away from what God has said, the argument of “building bridges” has been an effective one in compromising the evangelical elites (of whom, Alistair is a member and a founding member of TGC). The pragmatism approach has claimed Alistair on this point, and it is one that never works. Sin is a tricky thing; you can fall into it when thinking you are exercising virtue in fidelity. You can delude yourself into thinking you are doing God’s work to further his kingdom when you have opened the gates.

Long an excuse to not offend people, the build bridges mindset here reveals an obsession which seeped into the church from the culture that places emotions over truth. This advice will do unimaginable damage to the woman’s grandson, to the culture, and to the name of Christ if people continue to follow it. Alistair thinks he is being pastoral, but only good theology is pastoral. He is seeking to minimize offense, but the truth inevitably and necessarily offends. Let them be offended by the Gospel, then to be comforted by it. We cannot give the unbelieving world a false security by soothing their minds with this false bridge Alistair has been fooled into offering. Follow instead what Jesus actually did.

Galatians 1:10 strikes me as a pretty heavy warning for those who compromise and weaken the witness of the Christian to “build bridges” or “win souls” by compromising or excusing behavior that refuses to confront sin for fear of what others may feel or think.

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

It needs to be mentioned we have seen what the building bridges method teaches. It will teach that a gay wedding is no big deal, and homosexuality with it. Then it will find it’s way into the corners that practice that advice to go. We become servants of the people we are talking to, not Christ in that moment. May we always be wary of that temptation for ourselves.

How should he have answered? That right answer would have been much closer to the example Jesus really gave. Do what Jesus actually did with Zaccheus and the wretches of society. 

Find time with them without lending credibility or excuse to their sin. Meet them in times and places outside of their practicing their sin. If you go to their parades or sinful business, you must witness to them and cannot stand for the sin being performed. For this grandmother, she should not go or give them anything to celebrate what they are doing. She can find ways to invite them both into her life without participating in their sin including celebrating it.

If you place relationships over truth, you will do unspeakable damage. Love demands confrontation and even scorn if it is for the truth, because it is the truth that will set them free.

It’s safe to say the evangelism strategy of “building bridges” has proven to result in giving the devil a foothold. Alistair has done much good work elsewhere but here has become so focused on the feelings of a sinner he has lost sight of his savior. Before we are called to anything else, we are called to fidelity to Christ. He has forgotten that in this moment. Learn to take heed unless you miss the reality of your finitude. Even the best among us makes mistakes or miss things of great importance. Pray that he recognizes this and that would continue to use him for the good of the kingdom.