Category Archives: Book Review

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June 2, 2017

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American Culture, Book Review, Pastoral, Sin

Psychological Wholeness vs. Biblical Holiness

Psychology 1In this quote David Wells explains what happens when psychological language replaces Biblical language and when psychological wholeness replaces biblical holiness as the goal of the Christian life. All bold is mine.

In our modernized societies in the West, we are faced with an epidemic of lying, theft, abuse, rape, and other predatory behavior, but we are far morel likely to blame it on bad self-image than on bad character. Even in the church, the story is not much different. We have seized upon the language of our therapeutic culture and insist that our preachers toe this line and speak to us in this language. What is often missed, however, is that this language comes from the psychological world, not the moral world, and the chief consequence of this is that responsibility has vanished. We do not accept responsibility because we have no sense at all that we stand in the presence of a God of blazing, majestic purity. And when we lose this sense of the moral “over-againstness” of God, this opposition of what is Good to what is not, we lose all moral urgency. Indeed, we lose our gospel and the whole point of the Christian faith.

This has become an especially pressing concern for the church today. What we see on all sides is the constant preoccupation with psychological wholeness as a substitute for biblical holiness. This inevitably changes the way we think about God. The God of the outside, who stands over against us in his holiness, loses his point for our lives. We find ourselves yearning for comfort, therapeutic comfort, and at the same time the self-discipline and sacrifice of a faith grounded in God’s holiness have become distasteful to us. As this God, the God of the Bible, becomes remote to us, worship loses its awe, his Word loses its power to compel us, obedience loses its attraction, and the church loses its moral authority. That is our situation today, and that is why discipline is so important in the life of the church.

This quote is in a section on the necessity and practice of church discipline, which he defines as, “private rebukes, teaching for the purpose of correction, and…excommunication.”

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May 25, 2017

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American Culture, Book Review

Two Perspectives on Adversity

Here is quote from David Wells’ book The Courage to be Protestant explaining how our forefathers approached adversity and how we currently approach it.

In the older world we left behind, people thought of adversity as inevitable. Adversity was a consequence of the fall for those of a Christian outlook. But even for non-Christians it was never seen as an unexpected intruder on life. It was never thought that life should be without pain. Pain, disease, setbacks, disappointments, and wrong done to us were all seen as part of our life in this world, part of its texture, a thread woven with all the other threads through the fabric of our daily experience. Adversity was seen, even, as a necessary component in life.

Today we resent adversity as an interruption in our pleasure seeking, a rude disruption of our opportunities and our sense of calm. It is a gross injustice. Why should bad things happen to good people? Where is the justice in that? We are entitled to better. Indeed, we are demanding better! Adversity of any kind is unacceptable.

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May 23, 2017

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American Culture, Book Review, Sodomy

Book Review: People to Be Loved

People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an IssuePeople to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue by Preston Sprinkle

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Sprinkle is one of those folks who thinks himself conservative, but is really a half step away from being a full-blown liberal. This mindset skews his entire approach. He thinks he is holding the line. The reality he is part of a rear-guard action that has retreated into the keep in hopes that the enemy will finally go away. But they won’t and surrender is inevitable. If the best you can say about a book is that at least he doesn’t think men should sleep with men, it isn’t a conservative book. He qualifies everything to death. He makes sure conservative Christians understand they are usually a much bigger problem than gays are. He isn’t even sure about excommunicating practicing homosexuals. Maybe, possibly, in a few select circumstances we could go this far. Sodom and Gomorrah has nothing to say to us about sodomy. Greedy, rich, coveting Christians are really the problem here, not gays. On and on it goes. The feeling one gets reading the book is that homosexual Christians have his sympathy while those who think sodomy and the desire for same-sex relationships are sin are more likely than not homophobic.

There are a few interesting sections in the book, including his part about mixed-orientation marriages. He gets some exegesis correct over and against some pro-homosexual folks. I did not disagree with him on everything. But on the whole the book is so condescending to the average, conservative Christian, contains so many qualifications, and gives up so much ground to the pro-homosexual groups that isn’t that helpful.

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May 23, 2017

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American Culture, Book Review

Book Review: The Courage to Be Protestant

The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern WorldThe Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World by David F. Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I began at the end of Wells’ five volume set on American evangelicals. The book was superb, though dated in a few places. I expected to read this book and find a critique of all those folks “out there.” But instead I was convicted of how many areas I have bought into postmodern thinking. My desire for comfort, ease, the enthronement of self, and my too low view of sin all became clearer as I read the book. As the Stones say, “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes well you might find you get what you need.” The book wasn’t necessarily what I wanted or expected, but it was what I needed. For me it was more mirror of my thought than microscope to examine the culture.

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April 10, 2017

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American Culture, Book Review, Masculinity, Pastoral, Sodomy

A Distraction

I just finished reading Preston Sprinkle’s book  People to be Loved.  There were numerous flaws with the book. It reminded me of a man throwing a cup of water on a burning a house and claiming he is fighting the fire. If the best you can say about a book on this subject is at least he doesn’t believe men should have sex with men then it is not going to help fight the battle. My goal is to review various sections of the book. I want to begin with one of the more persistent lines you see from the gay Christian movement: same sex attraction is not just about sex.  Here is Sprinkle:

Being gay doesn’t mean you walk around want to have lots of gay sex any more than being straight means that you walk around wanting to have lots of straight sex. Have a same-sex orientation includes a wealth of other virtuous emotions and desires towards members of the same sex; it cannot be narrowly reduced to a volcanic hunger for sex. Same-sex orientation includes the desire for conversational intimacy, same-sex physical touch, emotional bonds, companionship, doing life together, and expressing mutual affection toward members of the same sex.  And if all of this sounds “gay” to you then David and Jonathan really were gay, since I am alluding to 1-2 Samuel.

He goes on to quote with approval lesbian Julie Rodgers

[same-sex attraction is] an overall draw toward someone of the same sex, which is usually a desire for a deeper level intimacy with those of the same sex. Just like a heterosexual orientation can’t be reduced to a desire for straight sex, a gay orientation can’t be reduced to a desire for gay sex. This longing for intimacy is usually experienced as a desire for nearness, for partnership, for close friendship, rich conversation, and an overall appreciation of beauty.

Again Sprinkle:

Most gay Christians I know say the same thing. Same-sex attraction is much broader than just a drooling desire for gay sex. Such attraction includes a virtuous desire to be intimate-in the David and Jonathan or Jesus and John sense of the phrase-with people of the same sex.

I would love to see quotes from Christians who think people who struggle with SSA walk around with a “drooling desire for gay sex.”  Sprinkle does this a lot in the book where he puts words in the mouths of conservative Christians (with no citations) that I have never heard a conservative Christian in the pew, from the pulpit, in an article, or in a book say. Perhaps he is thinking of Westboro and folks like that.  But conservative Christians distance themselves from groups like this over and over.

But besides the condescension towards conservative Christians, he repeats the mistake I often see in gay Christian literature: It isn’t about sex. We can see the problem with this proposition by asking a simple question: What separates SSA from the desire for close, intimate friendship with someone of the same sex? Right. Sex. If there is no sexual component then it isn’t SSA. A man can have a close intimate friendship with another man without it being sexual. Men have done this for thousands of years and Christian men have done this for just as long. They have kissed each other, embraced each other, wept with each other, spent nights together talking, slept in the same bed, swam naked, showered together, etc. without there being a sexual component. The desire for male physical affection and emotional intimacy does not make it same-sex attraction.

Same-sex attraction does not simply mean you have or desire close friendships with people of the same sex. It means the desire for closeness with a member of the same sex that includes a romantic/sexual component. Without that it is just a close friendship between people of the same sex, which all Christians should have and should work for. This is the reason why the sexual/erotic aspect of SSA should be front and center. It is what makes SSA, SSA. The friendship angle pushed by gay-Christian groups is a distraction.  Friendship is part of SSA, just as friendship is part of marriage. But that is not its central or defining trait. Without the sexual/romantic component it isn’t same-sex attraction.