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From Division to One New Humanity · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome back to Reform Thinking. It's good to be back.
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We have quite a stack of material in front of us today.
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We're looking at some theological journals, some,
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well, some pretty frank missionary reports, and a deep
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look at Genesis. Yeah.
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And the topic is one that it tends to generate a lot more
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heat than light out there. That is putting it mildly.
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We are going to be talking about race, the church and what some
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are calling a hidden crisis in modern missions.
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But not the way cable news covers it.
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No, absolutely not. For this deep dive, our goal is
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to examine these issues through the specific lens of Reformed
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theology, looking at Scripture in our standards, right?
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We're drawing from a few key sources today.
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There's a piece by David Beakley on the biblical theology of
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race, some work from Mark Tatlock on missionary
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sanctification, and a really jarring report from Brooks
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Buzzer about deconversion on the mission field.
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That buzzer piece is tough. It really challenges how most
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Western churches, you know measure success.
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It really does. And we will get there, but we
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have to start at the beginning. If we're going to talk about any
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of this, we need to define our terms.
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And Beakley's work starts with a claim that I think will probably
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catch a lot of people off guard, he says.
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The whole concept of race is a fiction.
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A man made category. And we have to be so precise
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here because the words we use really do frame how we see the
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world. Beakley argues that race as we
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use it today, this idea of dividing humanity into different
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biological subspecies based on, you know, skin color or skull
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shape, it's not just bad science, he says.
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It's theologically dangerous. Dangerous in what way?
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I mean we can obviously see physical differences.
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People from different parts of the world look different.
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Of course we see variation, we see phenotypes, but the danger,
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Beakley says, is when we attach a different value or a
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fundamental essential difference to those variations, He takes us
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straight back to Genesis 1.27. God creates man and woman, one
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humanity. Then he goes to Acts 17.26.
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And this is really the key verse for the whole discussion.
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Paul, speaking to the Athenians, says that God made from one man
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every nation of mankind. Some translations say one blood.
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That's right. The point is the same.
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Biblically speaking, there's only one race, the human race.
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We all trace our lineage back to Adam.
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So when we use the word race to imply these deep inherent
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divisions. We're buying into a lie, a lie
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that stands in direct opposition to the biblical account of
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creation. Now Beakley is careful to make a
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distinction. He separates race from
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ethnicity. OK, so draw that line for us.
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What's the real difference there theologically?
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Ethnicity. The Greek word is ethnos is a
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biblical category. It refers to a people group, a
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group that's bound together by a shared culture, language,
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history, geography, family ties, family ties.
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Exactly. And God loves the ethnos.
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Revelation gives us this beautiful picture of people from
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every tribe, tongue, people and nation worshipping the Lamb.
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That's ethnic diversity being celebrated.
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Race, on the other hand, is this modern artificial construct
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that's been used almost exclusively to divide, to create
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hierarchy and to oppress. Beekly actually goes further, he
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says. The root of all this, this drive
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to divide, is satanic. That's a very strong claim.
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Is that just rhetoric? I don't think so.
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He grounds it in Genesis 3.15, the Protoevangelium, the first
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whisper of the Gospel. God's promise to the serpent.
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Yes, God says the seed of the woman will come and crush the
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serpent's head. From that moment on, Satan's
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primary enemy is humanity, specifically the line that will
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produce the Messiah. So his strategy is to destroy
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human harmony. To shatter it, to get us to look
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at each other and not see a fellow image bearer of God, the
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imago day, but to see an other, an enemy, something less than
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human. It's a direct assault on God's
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creative work. So racism isn't just a social
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problem or a political issue, it's fundamentally a spiritual
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war. It's anti creation theology and
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practice and the the historical event that becomes the pivot
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point for all of this is Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel.
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Most of us know the story. People get arrogant, they build
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a big tower. God gets angry and scrambles
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their languages. That's the basic plot, but
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Beakley argues that the physical differences we see today, the
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very things are modern concept of race is built on, are a
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direct consequence of God's judgement at Babel.
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OK, connect those dots. How does confusing languages
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lead to different physical appearances?
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Well, why did God confuse the languages?
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The text says it was to force them to disperse, to scatter
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over the face of the earth. Because they were united in
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rebellion against. Them exactly nothing that they
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propose to do will now be impossible for them.
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United, rebellious humanity is a terrifying thing.
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So he scatters them. And they move into completely
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different environments. Radically different.
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Different climates, different diets, different altitudes,
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different levels of sun exposure.
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You have these small isolated gene pools spreading across the
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globe. And that's where basic human
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biology takes over. Right over many many generations
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you get these micro adaptations. In areas with high UV radiation,
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darker skin provides better protection.
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In northern climates with less sun, lighter skin is more
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efficient at producing vitamin D, so these.
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Aren't different species evolving?
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It's one human genome adapting. It's the same human family tree
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with different branches adapting to the fallout of God's
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judgement. The dispersion was a judgement
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to restrain evil. So you can also say the physical
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differences are like the visible scars of the Babel judgement.
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I think that's a very helpful way to look at it.
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We are living with the physical consequences of that event.
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But here's the Satanic genius of it all.
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Satan takes God's judgement, this diversity that was meant to
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keep us from uniting in rebellion, and he turns it into
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a weapon. He whispers in our ear that
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different means deficient or dangerous or enemy.
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Which explains so much of human history.
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But God doesn't just leave humanity scattered and divided.
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The very next chapter, Genesis 12, is the countermoof.
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It's the beginning of the rescue plan.
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In Genesis 11, God scatters the nations.
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In Genesis 12. He calls one man, Abram, out of
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one of those pagans scattered nations.
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And idolater from UR. A complete Pagan and God makes
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him a promise in you. All the families of the earth
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shall be blessed. God is starting a new family, a
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chosen people, to be the vehicle of blessing to the very nations
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He just judged and scattered. And that new family is Israel.
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They were meant to be the model of a redeemed humanity.
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A Kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
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That was their calling in Exodus 19.
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They were supposed to be set apart, holy, distinct from the
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nations around them. But they were also supposed to
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be a light to the nations. And that's the part they almost
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always failed at. They took their status as God's
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chosen people, and they twisted it into a kind of ethnic
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superiority. They built walls instead of
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bridges. There's a story from the Old
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Testament that Beakley highlights, and I think it's one
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we tend to read over very quickly.
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Numbers chapter 12. It's about Moses, Aaron and
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Miriam. It's a shocking story really,
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because this isn't some Pagan king showing prejudice.
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This is Israel's own leadership, Miriam and Aaron, the prophetess
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and the high priest. They come to Moses and challenge
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his authority. And the text is very specific
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about the pretext. It says they spoke against him
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because of the Kushite woman whom he had married.
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A Kushite woman geographically that it will be from the area of
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modern day Ethiopia or Sudan. That's right, she was a black
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African woman, and Aaron and Miriam Moses, his own siblings,
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use her ethnicity as a weapon against him.
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They're suggesting his marriage to this foreign woman somehow
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diminishes his standing with God.
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It's pure ethnic snobbery. Has the Lord indeed spoken only
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through Moses? You can hear the contempt.
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They're using his marriage to an outsider, a woman with different
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skin, to try and stage a coup. And God's response is immediate
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and and severe. It's terrifying.
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He summons all three of them to the tent of meeting, and the
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punishment he deals out is filled with a kind of divine
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irony. He strikes Miriam with leprosy.
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Yes, and the text says her skin turned white as snow.
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Miriam, who just looked down on the dark skin of Moses wife, is
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now afflicted with a condition that makes her skin a horrifying
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diseased white. It's as if God is saying you
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think skin color is the measure of a person.
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You value whiteness. Fine, here you go, it's a
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plague. It's a powerful divine rebuke
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against partiality. It is, and it shows us that this
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sin runs deep. If the high priest and the
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prophetess of Israel can fall into it, nobody is immune.
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It's a heart problem. Deuteronomy 10 even talks about
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the need for a circumcision of the heart, something only God
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could do. Which brings us to the New
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Testament and the ultimate solution.
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Both Beakley and Tatlock argue that the answer to this division
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isn't some kind of social program.
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The answer is what Paul calls the one new man.
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This is the heart of the gospel's answer to division.
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It's Ephesians chapter 2. Paul talks about Christ breaking
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down the dividing wall of hostility.
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And for his Jewish audience, that was not just a metaphor.
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Not at all. In the Temple in Jerusalem at
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that time, there was a literal Stonewall about four and a half
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feet high that separated the court of the Gentiles from the
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inner courts. The area where only Jews were
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allowed. Right.
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And there were inscriptions on that wall in Greek and Latin
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warning any gentile that if they cross that line, they would have
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only themselves to blame for their subsequent death.
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It was a literal deadline. And Paul says Jesus tore that
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wall down. How?
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He says he did it in his flesh. It wasn't by giving a sermon on
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tolerance. It was by his death on the
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across. The ceremonial law, with its
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dietary rules and circumcision, created a necessary separation
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between Jew and Gentile in the Old Covenant.
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It was a temporary wall. A temporary wall to preserve the
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Messianic line. But Jesus fulfilled the law
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perfectly. He satisfied its demands by his
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death. He paid the penalty for sin for
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both Jew and Gentile, and in his resurrection Paul says he
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created 1 Newman in place of the two.
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I want to drill down on that phrase. 1 Newman, a new humanity
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that's so much more radical than just getting along.
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Yeah. It is.
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It's not about the Gentile having to become a cultural Jew,
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or the Jew giving up his heritage to become like a
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Gentile. It's that both of them died to
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their old identity. And are raised to a new one.
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Their primary identity is no longer ethnic or national, it's
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in Christ. I'm no longer primarily an
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American or a Korean or a Nigerian.
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I am a Christian. That's the new reality, and it's
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why these sources are so critical of merely sociological
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solutions to division. Because you can't get to that
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new creation through legislation or diversity seminars.
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You can't. You need a spiritual heart
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transplant, which only the gospel provides.
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Peace with God is the only route to lasting peace with other
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people. And here's always the challenge.
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The theology is beautiful. We are all one in Christ, but
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the on the ground reality is messy.
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I mean you look at the early church in the book of Acts,
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they're filled with the Holy Spirit.
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The apostles are still there and they have an ethnic blow up
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almost immediately. Acts chapter 6, Yes, it's the
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first major internal crisis the church faced and it was
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absolutely an ethnic issue. You had two groups of Jewish
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Christians in Jerusalem. That's right.
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You have the Hebraic Jews. They were the locals.
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Aramaic speakers probably felt like they were the, you know,
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the A-Team, and then you had the Hellenistic Jews.
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They were from the diaspora, Greek speaking, more worldly.
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They were cultural outsiders. And the conflict breaks out over
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caring for the widows. The Hellenistic widows were
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being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
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That's the word the text uses. They were being neglected.
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It sounds a lot like systemic bias.
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It wasn't one person being mean, it was the system that was
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failing a specific group. I think that's a fair reading.
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And notice what the apostles did not do.
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They didn't say, oh, let's just pray about it and love each
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other more. They didn't dismiss the
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complaint. They took it seriously.
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Very seriously. But their solution wasn't just a
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sermon. It was structural.
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They said, choose seven men from among you, full of the Spirit
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and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
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They created an office, the first deacons, to solve the
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problem. And here's the detail on the
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text that just blows me away every time I read it.
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The names of the seven men they chose.
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Steven, Philip, Prochorus, Nick Gnor, Timon, Parmenas, and
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Nicholas. What's the significance of those
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names? Every single one of them is a
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Greek name. Not a single Hebrew name in the
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bunch. Not one.
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Think about what that means. To solve the problem of the
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Greek speaking minority being neglected, the Hebrew speaking
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leadership empowered 7 men from the Greek speaking minority to
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take charge of the entire food distribution system.
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They didn't just add one Greek guy to the committee for the
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sake of diversity. They handed the keys over to the
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marginalized group. They.
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Did that is incredible spirit LED wisdom and humility.
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It wasn't about being color blind and pretending there was
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no difference. It was about acknowledging the
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cultural friction and building a just structure to manage it.
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It's a huge lesson, but as you said, that kind of humility is
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hard to come by. And this is where the sources
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really pivot to the modern missionary movement and what
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they call the sin of cultural superiority.
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Yeah, Mark Talak's writing on this is very pointed.
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He talks about how Western missionaries, often without even
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realizing it, carry the sense of superiority.
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It's not always overt arrogance. Sometimes it's more subtle.
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The assumption that because our culture produced modern medicine
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and technology, our expression of Christianity must also be
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superior. Exactly.
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We confuse our culture with the gospel.
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We go overseas with the noble goal of preaching Christ, but we
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subconsciously also believe we're there to civilize people,
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to teach them the right way to do things, which almost always
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means the Western way. Tatlock points to 1st
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Corinthians 4 verse 7 as the antidote.
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Paul's question What do you have that you did not receive?
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It's the ultimate ego killer, isn't it?
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It levels the playing field completely.
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You well educated? That was a gift.
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Do you come from a stable country with economic
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opportunity? That was a gift.
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You didn't earn it. Paul himself is the prime
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example. The ultimate example?
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He was born a Roman citizen, a huge privilege.
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He was a Pharisee, a Hebrew of Hebrews.
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He had the best education, the best religious pedigree.
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And what did he say about all of it?
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He counted it all as rubbish or dung compared to knowing Christ.
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Yes. So the missionary can't go in
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with the mindset of a wealthy benefactor bestowing charity on
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the poor. The only right posture is that
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of 1 vigor telling another beggar where to find bread.
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The readings give a historical case study that really brings
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this to life, the story of Jon G Patton.
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The 19th century Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides.
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Which is modern day Vanuatu. Right.
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And this was not an easy mission field.
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I mean, we're talking about tribes that practiced
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cannibalism, ritual widow strangling.
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The stories are intense. Peyton wrote about sleeping with
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his gun next to him for years just to keep from being killed
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and eaten. He did.
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But here's what's so instructive about Patton's approach.
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He made a clear distinction between sin and culture.
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He hated the sin he fought against the idolatry, the
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violence, the witch. But he didn't hate the people or
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their culture itself. No, he didn't try to turn them
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into 19th century Scotsman. He didn't demand they wear
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tartan kilts and eat haggis. His goal was for them to become
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new creatures in Christ, not pale imitations of Europeans.
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He avoided that colonial mindset of a commanding officer.
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That seems like a really difficult line to walk.
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How do you attack sinful practices when those practices
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are so deeply woven into the fabric of a culture?
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It takes immense wisdom and it takes what the sources call
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worldview fluency, which is a topic we need to come back to.
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But practically this whole issue leads into the subject of
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ecclesiology. How do we actually plant and
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structure churches in these multi ethnic contexts?
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Yeah, the sources talk about the complexity of a place like South
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Africa or Kenya. South Africa has 11 official
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languages. Kenya has more than 40 distinct
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tribes. Tribes.
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If you're a missionary and you plant a church, what language do
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you preach in? The default is often the
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language of commerce, the trade language English or French or
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Swahili. It's the most efficient option,
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but the argument made in these articles is that what is most
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efficient is not always what is most effective for the heart.
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Because if you only ever use the trade language.
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You're subtly communicating that God speaks the language of the
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marketplace or the government, but not the language of the
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home, the language of your mother.
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It can create a disconnect. So what's the solution?
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You can't have 40 different services.
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It seems like that would just reinforce tribal divisions.
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No, and that's not the goal. The goal is integration and
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honor. The sources suggest small things
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that send big signals. Sing one of the hymns in a
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minority language. Have the scripture reading done
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in a local vernacular. You signal to everyone that God
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is the God of all peoples, that he delights in every tongue.
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But more important than the language of the service is the
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language of the leadership. This is the key, the tightest
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mandate. Paul tells Titus in chapter one
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that he left him in Crete for this reason to appoint elders in
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every town. The missionaries goal should be
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to work himself out of a job. Precisely.
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A church is not truly a church. It is not self-sustaining until
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it is led by its own qualified local indigenous elders.
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A missionary from another country will always, always be
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an outsider. They'll miss the cultural
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nuances. They'll miss the proverbs, the
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inside jokes, the subtle ways that paganism tries to creep
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back in. A local shepherd knows the smell
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of the local wolves. The goal isn't just diversity on
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the elder board for the sake of a photo op.
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It's about having qualified men who have genuine insight into
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the flock they are shepherding. So if a missionary is still the
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lead pastor after 15 or 20 years.
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They haven't planted a church, they've built a long term
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dependency. They've opened a franchise of
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their sending church. That's a hard word, and it
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connects directly to the character of the missionary
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himself. Tatlock section on the holiness
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of the messenger is just It's a gut check.
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His core thesis is that the messenger's life either
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validates or invalidates the message.
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You can't separate the 2. He has this quote.
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In the darkness, even a dim light shines brightly.
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But the flip side of that is that hypocrisy in a missionary
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is glaring. It's a massive stumbling block.
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We are sending people into cultures that are often built on
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shame and honor. They are watching everything.
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They see how he treats his wife at the market.
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They see see if he pays his local workers fairly and on
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time, right? If a missionary is preaching a
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gospel of love and self-control, but he's known for having a
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short temper or being arrogant, the local people don't just
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conclude oh he's having a bad day.
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They conclude his God is weak. His religion has no power to
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change a person's character, so why would I want it?
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It's the put off put on framework from Colossians
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chapter 3. It is put off the old self with
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its greed, anger, malice. Put on the new self with its
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compassion, kindness, humility, patience.
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And Kellogg argues that this changing character is central to
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our new identity. Our primary identity is no
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longer our ethnicity or our passport.
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It is child of God. That identity shift has to be
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visible. Missions, in this view, isn't
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just an activity we do, it's an act of worship.
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It's the church modeling the image of Christ to a world that
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desperately needs to see him. Holiness becomes the bridge that
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our words travel across. OK, we've laid the theological
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groundwork for race and unity. We've talked about the character
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required of the messenger. Now we have to turn to what
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might be the most the most unsettling part of the research.
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We looked at Brooks Buster's report, The Hidden Crisis of
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Deconversion. This really is the elephant in
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the missions conference room. In the West, we hear a lot about
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the Xvangelical movement. You know, celebrity Christians
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publicly deconstructing their faith.
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Gets a lot of attention. It does, but Buster's point is
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that for every one of those loud D conversions in the West, there
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are thousands of silent ones happening on the mission field
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that nobody ever talks about. A massive, silent apostasy.
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He calls them missing categories in our missionary reports.
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That's the phrase he uses. A missionary sends a newsletter
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back to his supporting churches. The newsletter says praise God
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we had 100, 50 baptisms this quarter or we planted 3 new
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churches. Those are the numbers that get
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people excited. They get the checks written.
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Of course, but the report never says.
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By the way, 75 of the people we baptized last year are now
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offering sacrifices at the Pagan shrine again.
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Or two of the three churches we planted have already collapsed
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because the members were unregenerate.
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We only count people coming in the front door.
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We refuse to look at who is running out the back.
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And Buzzer's charge is a serious 1.
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He says that the modern Western Protestant missions movement is
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often inadvertently capitulating to apostasy.
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Capitulating to apostasy? How?
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Because we are obsessed with speed and numbers.
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We want big results and we want them fast.
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And he identifies 3 main reasons this crisis is happening.
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OK, let's walk through them one by one.
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The first one is too quick to baptize.
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This is a huge departure from historic Christian practice.
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If you read the early church fathers like Justin Martyr or
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look at documents like the D Dash, you find that the process
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for becoming a church member was long and rigorous.
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They had something called the catechumenate, yes.
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And it often lasted for 2 or even 3 years.
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Yeah. Three years before you could be
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baptized. In the modern church, if someone
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says a prayer and we don't get them in the water within three
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weeks, we feel like we're failing them.
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It's a completely different mindset, but we have to remember
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their context. The early church was a
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persecuted minority. A false convert wasn't just an
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awkward situation. A false convert could be a spy,
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a traitor who could get the entire church arrested and
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killed. So they wanted to be absolutely
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sure. They wanted to see evidence, not
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just a verbal profession, but a changed life.
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They wanted to see the fruit of repentance.
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Has this person stopped worshipping their idols?
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Have they renounced their sinful lifestyle?
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They were looking for a changing character.
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Today, we often baptize someone based on an emotional experience
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or a prayer they repeated 5 minutes ago.
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And we give them a false assurance of salvation.
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We. Do.
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And then when persecution comes from their family or the initial
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emotional excitement wears off, they have no spiritual root and
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they fall away. Buzzer quotes Spurgeon on this.
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Repensive preachers. Spurgeon said we are not
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authorized to baptize those who merely desire to be saved, but
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only those who are saved. That is a very fine, but a very
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critical distinction. It requires us to exercise
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pastoral discernment, not just mindless enthusiasm.
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It does. It means we might have fewer
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baptisms to report, but the baptisms we do have will mean
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something. We'd be building the church with
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gold, silver and precious stones instead of wood, hay and
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stubble. OK, that's the first reason.
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The second one buzzer gives is more technical, but it's
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critically important. He calls it language
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limitations. And he draws this distinction
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between what he calls market fluency and worldview fluency.
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Explain that. What's the difference?
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Market fluency is what most missionaries achieve.
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You go to the field, you take language classes for a year or
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two. You learn enough of the local
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language to you know to buy vegetables in the market, to ask
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for directions, to have simple conversations about the weather.
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You can function in the society. You can function can't explain
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the doctrine of substitutionary atonement with a vocabulary
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designed for buying tomatoes. The theological concepts are
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deep and complex. So what do missionaries do?
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They fall into what Bieser calls the translator trap exactly.
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The missionary knows he can't explain the Trinity in the local
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language, so he hires a translator.
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Usually it's a local person who knows some English or Spanish or
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French and that translator. Is almost always an unbeliever.
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That's the problem. So the missionary stands up and
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says a profound theological word like God.
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The unbelieving translator hears that, searches his mind for the
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closest equivalent in his own language, and he picks the name
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of the local tribe. Sky God, a spirit, in some cases
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a demon. Oh no.
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So the missionary. Thinks he's proclaiming the God
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of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the people are hearing a.
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Message about a slightly improved version of the forest.
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Secure they've always worshipped.
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It leads to syncretism. What about a word like sin?
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A great example. How do you?
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Translate that in many cultures, the closest concept is breaking
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a taboo or bringing shame on your family.
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It's not rebelling against the holy character of a sovereign
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creator. You end up preaching a different
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gospel. So Buzzer's argument.
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Is that you cannot faithfully preach the gospel until you have
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achieved worldview fluency? Yes, you have.
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To understand not just what words they use, but how they
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think. What are their core assumptions
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about the world? What are their greatest fears?
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What does honor mean to them? You have to get inside their
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worldview to show them how the gospel confronts and corrects
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it. But that level of.
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Fluency that could take 510 years to develop.
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It's slow. Painful, humbling work.
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It requires years of just listening and learning, of being
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the student, not the teacher. And that leads directly to
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Buzzer's third and final point. Our modern obsession with
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numbers. The idol of numbers.
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This is about the pressure. From back home, from donors and
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sending agencies, it's the entire.
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Ecosystem we've created. Imagine you have two
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missionaries. Missionary A goes to the field,
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spends five years doing the work of learning the language and
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culture to the worldview level, his newsletter reports.
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Still learning the language, no baptisms yet meanwhile.
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Missionary B arrives, hires a translator, and in his first
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year, he reports, we saw 500 people pray a prayer and we
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baptized them all. Who gets all the funding?
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Who gets invited to speak at the Big Missions Conference?
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Missionary B. Every single time we have
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created a system. That financially rewards
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superficiality and speed. We incentivize missionaries to
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take shortcuts that lead to false conversions and collapsing
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churches. We are starving the deep,
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patient work and rewarding the wide, shallow work.
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It's the opposite of. Jesus's ministry the complete
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opposite. Think about John chapter 6.
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Jesus feeds the 5000. His popularity is at an all time
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high. The numbers are incredible.
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If he had a sending agency they'd be thrilled.
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But then he starts teaching hard.
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Doctrine, he does, he tells. Them they must eat his flesh and
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drink his blood. It's offensive, confusing
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teaching and what happens, the text says.
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After this, many of his disciples turned back and no
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longer walked with him. He intentionally finned the.
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Crowd. He wasn't interested in a large
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following of people who misunderstood his mission.
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He was interested in true faith, even if it was in a small number
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of people. He even turns to his 12
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disciples and asks, do you want to go away as well?
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He was willing to go down to. Zero rather than lead a movement
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built on a false premise, Yes. That is a staggering challenge
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to our metrics obsessed church culture.
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We see a shrinking church and call it failure.
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Jesus saw it as pruning necessary pruning.
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Buzzer mentions that Jon. Patton, the missionary we talked
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about earlier, had this same mindset he did he famously.
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Refused to send back what he called idle burstings to his
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supporters in Scotland. He wouldn't count unhatched
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chickens. He knew that God was the one who
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gives the growth and that the only work that will last is the
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work done carefully, faithfully and in God's timing.
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So if we try to. Pull all three of these sources
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together. What's the big picture?
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The big picture is a call. For a radical re evaluation of
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how we do church and missions, Beakley's work on race tells us
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that our unity is not found in sociology but in the gospel
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truth, that we are one blood made, one new man in Christ.
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Attlock's work on holiness. Reminds us that this unity is
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demonstrated and protected by the sanctified lives of
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believers, especially leaders and missionaries.
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Our character is the platform for our message and then
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Bizzer's critine. Is the painful warning.
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It tells us that our good intentions can be undermined by
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a worldly obsession with speed and numbers, that true, lasting
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church planting requires patience, theological depth, and
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a willingness to work slowly. It's a call to recover a.
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Truly reformed understanding of God's sovereignty and salvation
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in church building. It is, God is.
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The one who builds his church. He's not frantic.
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He's not in a hurry. Our job isn't to produce results
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for him. Our job is to be faithful to the
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means He has given us, the clear preaching of the Word, the right
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administration of the sacraments, and the pursuit of
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holiness. The results are his.
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It's actually a great. Relief, in a way, it takes the
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crushing burden of saving the world off of our shoulders and
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puts it back on to God's where it belongs.
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Amen to that. Before we sign.
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Off. I just want to leave our
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listener, you, with one final thought to chew on.
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We talked about that three-year waiting period for baptism in
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the early church. From our modern perspective,
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that sounds almost unloving. It sounds rigid, legalistic,
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exclusionary. It seems like putting up
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barriers. To grace, it does.
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But I want you to ask yourself this question.
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If the early church, the church that faced down the Roman
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Empire, the church that truly did turn the world upside down,
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believed that the purity and holiness of the community had to
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be carefully guarded in order to be effective, why are we so
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convinced that making inclusion as quick and easy as possible is
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the only sign of success? Is it possible that in our rush
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to make the front door of the church wider, we've accidentally
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torn down the walls that make the house a home and a fortress?
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That's the question. We have to sit.
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With this has been a heavy. Deep dive, but a necessary one.
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We really have just skimmed the surface of these sources.
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We encourage you to go read Beekly and Tatlock and Buzzer
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for yourself. Don't just take our word for.
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It dig in until next time. Keep thinking.