Tag: equality

Book Briefs: “Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian” by John Piper

~ Bob Hayton

In Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, John Piper gives us a sober, challenging read which should shake some of us out of our lethargy, when it comes to racial harmony. Piper brings up his own past, of growing up in a segregated south where the conservative Church turned a blind eye to the black man’s struggle. He exposes his own racism, and labors to show how Scripture and specifically the gospel of Christ, cuts at the root of racism.

Piper is known for his rational thought and his Calvinism. While admitting that Calvinists have historically fared poorly if judged on racial concerns, he nevertheless builds a pretty strong case that each of the Calvinistic doctrinal points should lead toward a greater solidarity between races. None of us are favored because of our own actions, our race shouldn’t determine our fate, what’s more is that Jesus Christ died specifically to redeem men and women of every race. A multicolored and multi-ethnic throng surrounds the throne of the Lamb in Revelation 5. And that should be our goal, to make heaven’s will a reality here on earth.

Along the way, Piper discusses practical aspects for how to implement a culture that aims for racial harmony, and he counters numerous objections. He delves into a cultural analysis too of structural racism and white guilt, among other topics. I found some of the appendices most helpful. One was a detailed discussion of the curse of Ham, which has long been a fundamentalist rationale for rigid racial segregation and separation. Another appendix shared some of the vision and policy statements of Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist.

This book is accessible, and personal. It is also informative and provocative. I believe it is very helpful and may have a lasting impact on the church at large. This topic is worth thinking through and praying long and hard about, and John Piper is just the man to help us on this journey. His prayers and his struggles bleed through the pages of this weighty little book. I hope that people of all colors will pick up this book and see the vision for the multi-ethnic church that Christ died for. We all can learn from the wisdom in these pages. I highly recommend this book.

For some excerpts from this book which I shared already here on my blog, click here.

Pick up a copy of this book at any of the following online retailers: Westminster Bookstore, Christianbook.com, Amazon, or direct from Crossway.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Crossway Books. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

About Book Briefs: Book Briefs are book notes, or short-form book reviews. They are my informed evaluation of a book, but stop short of being a full-length book review.

More Resources on Thinking Through the Homosexuality Issue

~ Bob Hayton

In my last post, I shared some of John Piper’s thoughts about homosexual marriage. He clearly does not endorse it, but he doesn’t want to officially hop on a political bandwagon promoting one particular legislative approach to dealing with this in our culture and society at large. The job of churches and pastors is to preach the Word and inform the laypeople with the effect that they apply biblical principles to their political and social activities in a way that honors God and upholds the mission of the church.

Here are some additional resources for dealing with homosexuality, which is an increasing problem for American evangelical Christians, churches and pastors.

First, I encourage you to read this moving testimony about a converted homosexual who served God in spite of his struggles and his AIDS. Next, I’d really encourage you to read my review of Wesley Hill’s book Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. It will open your eyes to the struggles some Christians face regarding homosexuality and give you perspective in looking at others who have identified themselves as homosexual.

Another resource is The Complete Christian Guide to Understanding Homosexuality edited by Joe Dallas and Nancy Heche. You can read my review of that book, here.

I leave you with this video clip of Al Mohler discussing this issue with Mark Dever at this year’s Together 4 the Gospel conference.

John Piper’s Thoughts on Gay Marriage and Pastoral Ministry

~ Bob Hayton ~ 3 Comments

Recently, John Piper preached the following sermon: Let Marriage Be Held in Honor” — Thinking Biblically About So-Called Same-Sex Marriage. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune picked up on his sermon and claimed he was “opting out” of the marriage fight, referring to the proposed marriage amendment to the MN state constitution that is on the ballot this Fall (which defines marriage as between one man and one woman). Piper clarified his remarks, explaining he wasn’t opting out but rather helping his congregation think through the matter biblically. Still the fact remains that Piper has held back from overtly supporting the amendment, preferring not to politicize the church or give explicit weight to one legislative approach to dealing with homosexuality.

Here are some excerpts from that sermon which provide possible reasons for his coming up short of a full endorsement of the marriage amendment.

How should Christian citizens decide which of their views they should seek to put into law? Which moral convictions should Christians seek to pass as legal requirements? Christians believe it is immoral to covet and to steal. But we seek to pass laws against stealing, not against coveting. One of the principles at work here seems to be: the line connecting coveting with damage to the public good is not clear enough. No doubt there is such a connection. God can see it and the public good would, we believe, be greatly enhanced if covetousness were overcome. But finite humans can’t see it clearly enough to regulate coveting with laws and penalties. This is why we have to leave hundreds of immoral acts for Jesus to sort out when he comes.

Laws exist to preserve and enhance the public good. Which means that all laws are based on some conception of what is good for us. Which means that all legislation and all voting is a moral activity. It is based on choices about what is good for the public. And those choices are always informed by a world view. And in that worldview — whether conscious or not — there are views of ultimate reality that determine what a person thinks the public good is.

Which means that all legislation is the legislation of morality. Someone’s view of what is good — what is moral — wins the minds of the majority and carries the day. The question is: Which actions hurt the common good or enhance the common good so much that the one should be prohibited by law and the other should be required by law?

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8. Don’t press the organization of the church or her pastors into political activism. Pray that the church and her ministers would feed the flock of God with the word of God centered on the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. Expect from your shepherds not that they would rally you behind political candidates or legislative initiatives, but they would point you over and over again to God and to his word, and to the cross.

Please try to understand this: When I warn against the politicizing of the church, I do so not to diminish her power but to increase it. The impact of the church for the glory of Christ and the good of the world does not increase when she shifts her priorities from the worship of God and the winning of souls and the nurturing of faith and raising up of new generations of disciples.

If the whole counsel of God is preached with power week in and week out, Christians who are citizens of heaven and citizens of this democratic order will be energized as they ought to speak and act for the common good.

[quoted from the online transcript of Piper’s sermon dated June 16/17, 2012]

The Desiring God blog later posted a fuller transcript of Piper’s words surrounding point 8 from his sermon. Piper also went on to give a series of brief blog posts addressing the topic of homosexuality which I found very helpful. I provide links to these articles below.

I appreciate Piper’s resolve to not allow the church to become too politicized. We need to stand for God’s truth, but in matters of social policy and interacting with the fallen world in which we live, there are valid points to be made for competing visions of legislative strategy. I support marriage as being defined as between one man and one woman. But I also recognize the political reality of the fallen world we live in. There are legal and economic benefits of marriage that could be bestowed on civil unions, and if they want to call that “marriage”, why should I be surprised? Will legislating a definition of marriage fix the problem of the heart? Will it not only add fuel to the fire when it comes to the continuing the fight for “true equality” from our homosexual neighbors? Will it really solve anything?

Martin Luther King Jr. Speaks from a Birmingham Jail

~ Bob Hayton ~ 8 Comments

This Martin Luther King Day, I thought it would be appropriate to offer an excerpt from John Piper’s new book on race that I have been reading. The book is entitled, Bloodlines: Race, Cross and the Christian (Crossway, 2011).

In the introduction to the book, Piper quotes from Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” because this letter “provides a window on the mid-twentieth century world of black Americans.” For those of us who didn’t live through the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement, this excerpt should help us better appreciate the significance of MLK day. I also hope it serves to make us all the more aware of the deceitful sin of racism and ever more resolved to root it out of our lives and our families, communities, and churches.

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On Tuesday, April 16, King was shown a copy of the Birmingham News, which contained a letter from eight Christian and Jewish clergyman of Alabama (all white), criticizing King for his demonstration. In response, King wrote what has come to be called “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and which one biographer described as “the most eloquent and learned expression of the goals and philosophy of the nonviolent movement ever written.”

We need to hear the power and insight with which King spoke to my generation in the sixties–enraging thousands and inspiring thousands. The white clergy had all said he should be more patient, wait, and not demonstrate. He wrote:

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;

…when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she’s told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;

…when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging sings reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “Nigger,” your middle name becomes “Boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”;

…when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”

To the charge that he was an extremist, he responded like this:

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you”? Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”? Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus”?

Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God”? And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “Thus this nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?

And finally he delivered a powerful call to the church, which rings as true today as it did in 1963:

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society…. But the judgment of God is upon the church [today] as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20th century.

That is Martin Luther King’s prophetic voice ringing out of the Birmingham jail in 1963. [pg. 25-27]

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For more on John Piper’s book watch the book trailer, the full 18 minute documentary video, or view the links below. To read King’s entire “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” click here for the letter in .pdf format.

You can pick up a copy of this book at any of the following online retailers: Westminster Bookstore, Monergism Books, Christianbook.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or direct from Crossway.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Crossway Books for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.