What would seem to make her a very imperfect fit for the pulpit of a Southern Baptist church residing solidly in the Bible Belt, though, is that she’s a Jewish Atheist from New York City. (New York City?)
It was exactly what church should be, though.
The only reason I’m posting this instead of linking to it directly is because First West doesn’t currently have a link to let you listen to the interview online, and I think it’s too great for anyone to miss. If you can subscribe to podcasts, definitely subscribe to their podcast either directly or with iTunes — not only for this interview but for the great series they have going right now.
Otherwise, you can use this player to listen online:
As my wife said, “I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am”:
A lot of these points of contention would have been clarified if the author would have used only one version of the Bible, instead of using several (per)versions to make the Bible say what she wanted. Her points are well-taken, even in this modern world, but if DeMoss is going to have us living according to God’s standards for women, she needs to stick with the KJV and not “wrest scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16).
Wow. Really? More interested in what the KJV has to say than what the Bible has to say?
The publishing of the KJV was an awesome landmark in Christianity, and the scholars whose work led to it are sobering, motivating studies in true Christian commitment. But we’ve had 500 years to develop translations that are not only more accurate reflections of the original Word, but are immeasurably easier to understand.
The longer we try to make the Bible of 1611, with its Queen’s English, apply to our lives, the closer we get to the situation that made the KJV so important in the first place: the vast majority of the people simply weren’t able to read or understand the Latin texts. How many can read the KJV today and truly get the meaning that God wanted to convey? If that wasn’t God’s desire 500 years ago, how could it be his desire now?
I’ve heard lots of talk about Obama being a Socialist. Of course, I’ve also heard that he’s Muslim and that he was sworn in with the Koran instead of the Bible. That’s why I don’t take anything at face value that I hear about either candidate.
However, Obama’s position in this video really, really bothers me:
Obama tells Joe: “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they have a chance for success, too.
“I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
I don’t. It’s not better for the people losing the wealth or the people getting the wealth. Here’s why:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good cust omers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant the men began to compare their savings.
‘I only got a dollar out of the $20 ,’declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’
‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’
‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Jesus said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
As Southern Baptists, we absolutely live for that first part. Everything we do is focused on getting people baptized, and without rest we preach that we are sent by God to make that happen. It’s seemingly all we do, and yet we continue to fall farther and farther behind.
Because of that, we’re constantly analyzing why that is and what we can do about it. The two solutions I hear most often is that we need to teach people “strategies sharing their faith” and that we need to “work harder.” I don’t think those are wrong — they absolutely produce results — but, at least in my life, I’ve realized that they only address surface-level symptoms of a fundamental problem.
For me, the real answer is the second part of that very same sentence: teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. I see so much emphasis on “getting them saved” and motivating us to “go and tell,” but so little on making us the kind of people for whom exhortations like that would be completely unnecessary. If we were living our lives as God wanted us to live them, those things would be a very natural result, not something we had to beg and plead for. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Instead, this is the impression I have of how we commission our people to go and tell:
That’s definitely not what we think we’re doing, but I think it’s how many of us feel. Our only qualifications are that we love Andy God and we want to do something for him. Other than that, we’re being forced into a role that we accept very begrudgingly (if at all) because we don’t feel at all adequate for it.
That’s not how God planned it. We’ve all been given gifts by the Spirit for use in his ministry, so we’re completely equipped for what he wants us to do. But we have to remember that it’s his ministry that we’re carrying out, not our own.
Jesus said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Paul said, “Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit.”
I’ve totally missed all of that. In my own life, the talk of needing to work harder and of my own personal responsibility to help people connect to God has led to me trying to do this not in the power of the Spirit, but in my own power. That’s a death spiral. The harder I work, the worse results I have. The worse results I have, the harder I work. The harder I work, the worse results I have…
I need to completely change my focus. Rather than focusing on what I’ve been called to do, I need to focus on who has called me to do it. As I do that, everything else begins to fall into place. “Shazam,” as Gomer would say.
I also have to remember that making disciples is much more than just “getting them saved.” The more we can help people become completely devoted followers of Christ, the more the “getting them saved” begins to take care of itself. I need to focus on discipleship at least as much as I focus on going and telling — if not much more.
This past Sunday, John Avant, pastor of First Baptist Church in West Monroe, LA, shared his preaching time with his good friend Lauren Sandler. Lauren is the author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, so she would seem to be a perfect fit.
