by Stephen Lamb
After reading Matthew’s posts in the last week about Joel Osteen and John Piper, I thought I’d try to add another dimension to this discussion. There are a couple of things that may provide a helpful background for this post. One, I went through a period a couple years ago where I frequently listened to five or ten of John Piper’s sermons a week and quoted him nonstop. But these days, I don’t find myself in agreement with much that he says. Two, many of these thoughts were prompted by a discussion I had recently with a friend who used to live in the Houston area, who presents a rather in-depth, informed argument on why he thinks Piper’s theology is more dangerous than that of Osteen’s. At the same time, after having worked for a television network that played Joel Osteen’s program for a couple years, I don’t find much to like there, either, and much that concerns me regarding the implications of his theology. This post details where I find myself now. It may also be helpful to note again that Matthew’s original posts were satire, which “exaggerate… in order to make a point.”
Having grown up in Fundamentalism, it can be hard for me to see much in it now that I think is good. I have family members who still attend a church I used to be a part of that I am no longer able to visit when I’m in town because of what it does to my soul. But when I look at what the church offers to those family members, the life-giving support they receive from that church body and the ways it helps and prompts them to minister to those around them, I am grateful for it, for their sake. I am learning – or trying to learn, at least – to not demand unadulterated truth from a group or church before seeing anything good in it, as if unadulterated truth were even possible for man, fallible as we are. In the same way that Christianity is not a list of boxes to be checked off, we show off Christ, we become His instruments, when we show grace to others who don’t have it all “right.”
As soon as I write that, I can think of a hundred objections, of reasons why we must warn people away from _____ ministry. “But that pastor likes to remind his congregation yearly that Mother Teresa is in hell, and that church teaches that God hates _____ [pick a people group / demographic you’re not a part of].” Or, “that “ministry” teaches that if you say their magic phrase three times in a row, or if you send in x amount of money, God will be obligated to bless you.” And I get it. I’ve argued that a thousand times. I think there are teachings that are dangerous, things that must be warned against, theologies which have devastating, soul-crushing implications. I don’t have the answers as to where we draw the line. But I’m becoming less and less convinced that it is all black-and-white.
In How (Not) to Speak of God, Irish theologian/philosopher Peter Rollins, one of my favorite authors, fleshes this concept out in a particularly helpful way in the middle of a discussion about orthodoxy and orthopraxy – that is, right belief and right practice. Pete writes:
“This means that the question, ‘What do you believe?’ must always be accompanied by the question, ‘How do you believe?’ We are left then with the idea of orthodoxy and orthopraxis as two terms which refer to a loving engagement with the world that is mediated, though not enslaved by, our reading of the Bible.
We can see an embodiment of this approach to orthodoxy in a situation I once found myself in, where two people from the same church, at different times, approached me to ask if I thought that their church taught the truth. The first person to ask me was a kind and gracious individual who gave of his time and money in a sacrificial manner. The church was not only a comfort to him but also a place of challenge and critique. I listened for a while before saying that I thought his church did emanate truth. Within weeks of this conversation, I met the second person. It was obvious when talking to him that his experience of the same church had been very negative. The teaching was dead to him and the type of projects which the church engaged in had done little to challenge or encourage this individual to live in a genuinely sacrificial manner. Here I found myself saying that this church did not emanate truth (at least for him).
This makes little sense within a modernist paradigm, for the idea of affirming a church as true includes the idea that you think that church is true for all, and to think that one church teaches the truth implies that you necessarily judge any church which contradicts its teaching as incorrect. Yet this need not be the case, as we can illustrate via the parable in which two camels are being led to market. One camel is loaded down with salt while the other is weighed down with cotton. On the way to the market they encounter a river which has burst its banks from a rainstorm the night before and has flooded the road. At one particularly deep part the camels are almost completely submerged. When they finally get to the other side, the camel with the salt on its back has gained a renewed sense of strength, as the water has largely dissolved the salt. However, the camel with the cotton collapses in exhaustion, for the cotton has absorbed much of the water.
In this parable we see how the same stream was experienced in two markedly different ways that depended upon the burdens that each camel brought to it. In the same way, one church may help one person to become more Christ like, while oppressing another: the idea of a single congregation being judged right or wrong in some universal way is naïve. Yet this is not an apology for relativism, because in the same way that we see the first camel as having had a better experience of the water because it is freed from a heavy load, so we must judge our various traditions according to whether they tend towards freeing their congregation from their burdens, helping to transform them into more Christlike individuals. However, if a church is not helping in our transformation, then the problem need not be the church’s, or our own; rather, this may simply be the wrong context for us to be in. Rather than encouraging people to join our community (whatever ‘our’ community happens to be), we ought to be trying to help people to find the right community that will aid them in their further conversion.
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Wow. That is beautiful. Thank you.
Very interesting analogy with the camels. I completely agree that our traditions should us to transformation into Christ-likeness and that one result of this transformation is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17 “where the spirit is, there is freedom”). BUT, I think the analogy breaks down simply because ultimately we are not looking for just freedom.
Yeah, the camel with the salt was freed from their load, but when they got to the market they were without their product, which was the whole reason why they made the journey.
I think the thing that we miss as Christians often is that the product we deal in is the fruit of the spirit (you learned them in sunday school so I’m not going to list them all) but I think the list in Galatians is not necessarily exhaustive. Certainly, generosity, hospitality, community, justice, and freedom are also the fruit of the spirit. And the only way to produce that fruit is through intimacy with Jesus (John 15 et al).
Great post. I guess I just wanted disagree that “we must judge our various traditions according to whether they tend towards freeing their congregation from their burdens”. We must judge wether they produce genuine love for God and other. That’s the real fruit.
I worry that postmodernism will result in many people arriving to the final judgement “free” from their burdens, but also empty of anything else save a warm feeling of “belonging”.
I fully support the move away from fundamentalism, but lets take our stand on Jesus Christ and nothing else. I hope I haven’t misread the authors intentions. Please correct me if so.
I like the point of this post.
The implications of the parable leave something to be desired…but that in no way sours what I think to be the central message of this post.
I gleaned this “the idea of a single congregation being judged right or wrong in some universal way is naïve” as the central message.
I’d easily extend the phrase “single congregation” to include denominational systems & theologies for that matter.
I like the overall message of this piece, but the measure of a church by how it affects one’s burdens seems almost deceptively simple. There is so much to consider; so much to compare to the Bible and Christ himself when it comes to the treatment of “burdens.”
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that the way a church applies itself toward specific burdens should definitely be considered, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can shop around to find which church makes you “feel best” about your own problems without an honest look at whether their methods for doing so are sound. That’s potentially dangerous.
I tend toward agreeing with @Jesse Dukes. The title of the post is a bit of a misnomer – there’s nothing necessarily “communal” about the Christianity described therein; rather, it seems to smack of individualism and personal beliefs, which is not necessarily the way the Church is supposed to be enacted.
Let me explain: The Church was never meant to be a personal matter, an area for the private sphere. It was something that invaded every aspect of one’s life, flowing over into everything else and those around him/her. To call oneself a Christian in the times of the early church meant to mark onself as different, as radical, as possibly dangerous to the status quo. Now, in freedom soaked America, Christianity has become the status quo. There’s nothing out of the ordinary for me to tell the guy I have lunch with about *my* (emphasis on the my) church, or for him to tell me about his.
Note the personal pronouns: his and my. Whatever happened to “the”? We are not a community of individual believers who God talks to in our own individual ways – we’d all have a different Bible if that was the case. That might be unclear: Christianity is *meant* to be carried out in community, and when we allow ourselves to church-shop (which is what this post sounds like) or we don’t take the time to get to know a community because they’re not “freeing us of our burden,” we individualize Christianity and turn it around to being about ourselves, as we humans are so wont to do. It becomes about its effect on us, and I think that calls for a reexamination of what we mean by an edifying community.
With the preponderance of denominations, of different ways of interpreting the Bible, of the different relative truths – we lose the community we’re really supposed to have. While I disagree heartily with John Piper, and choose not to listen to his sermons, I only take issue with him because his way of operating his church (all pronouns intended) results in a lack of community for the believers.
‘Right community’ may not be everyone we agree with, may not be people we even like. God doesn’t care: we’re human, and humans who claim the name of Christ need to be able to come together to love and worship, regardless of whether or not it frees *our* burden. True community means that the camel with the salt reaches over and takes one of the bags of cotton from the other camel in order to help him and love him. If we’re only focused on freeing our burden, we miss the person who is struggling next to us.
That was a lot more in depth than I intended. Thanks for the challenge.
@Diana
What about the very real differences in belief/application that exist amongst believers that necessarily cause one to divide and warn against the other because they believe them to be off track.
That isn’t a new by product of American individualism that we can overcome just by “understanding community”. Those differences existed and are recorded between the very earliest of churches.
@Best Jeff Ever –
I think we see the proper response in Paul with the disagreements in Galatia as a model here. Paul calls out Peter right at the beginning for a “wrong doctrine” – preaching that Gentiles should be circumcised. As he sees it, freedom in Christ means that circumcision is no longer required a mark of the covenant between God and man. Peter, however, has apparently been circumcising Gentiles, making it a marker of the faith. Paul’s response is to point him back to Christ, to tell/warn his community in Galatia (in which he also identifies problems), and to remind them of the original Gospel. He pleads for them to remember the love that brought them to Christ in the first place:
You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (Galatians 5:13-15)
So yes, while we are to be in community with those who preach the Gospel, we are also supposed to warn against and call out those who are not preaching the true Gospel, which is that of reflecting the love of Jesus Christ. If we feel that there are those within our community who are preaching a false gospel (i.e., Joel Osteen), we are not supposed to just say, “Oh well, someone’s getting something out of it. I suppose I’ll let bygones be bygones.” We are supposed to, for the sake of our brothers and sisters who are led astray, call them out on the carpet, just as Paul did to Peter.
And while yes, doctrinal disagreements are nothing new, Enlightenment individualism has integrated them into the Church and made them okay. And to some extent, we have to decide which disagreements are destructive to the faith and which ones are not, and that is not something that we judge based on our individual reaction, on whether or not the burden is freed, but instead on whether or not the community reflects the love of Christ and the light and love of Jesus Christ, which is much more than a freed burden.
Does that make sense? We do call out those we feel destroy the community and love of Christ, and yet individualism (as described in the original post) allows us to slough off the responsibility of doing so by saying that “Oh, I may not be helped, but they are, so it’s okay.”
Does this mean that we allow denominational differences to rise up and build walls? Heck no! This means that we allow those elements which are not *essential* to the faith to be integrated into our community. For example: John Piper. My major beef with him is not his Calvinism – while not a Calvinist myself, I still believe they’re Christians, and I think Piper is attempting to aim in the right direction. Where I do have a problem with him and where I do feel the need to call him out is in the way he operates his church – three separate campuses, and only every third Sunday is your pastor actually in church? I understand that people want to hear him – fine and good, but that’s not community. We don’t come on Sundays to hear John Piper. We come to hear the Gospel of the God of Love spoken out, and John Piper’s way of showing that love is destructive to community, and why I refuse to attend his church with my family who does – his way of running things doesn’t allow for the Body of Christ to experience each other. We just go, hear a sermon (2/3rds of the time via videocast) and leave. Sure, what he has to say may convict some, may help the burden of others, may even bring people to Christ, but without an edifying community to turn to, without a church body to recognize and challenge and be part of it, all you get is a burden free camel while the one next to it is still struggling with a heavy burden.
There’s a fine line there between calling someone out because of heresy, and letting things slide even though you disagree with their interpretation. There’s more peripheral to the faith than we tend to think.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I tend towards inclusiveness. I think cultural & individual filters do make some teachers’ eccentricities either benign or harmful depending on the audience.
I agree with you about following Paul’s example and the importance of pointing towards Christ. But I really think the focus should be positive and constructive, and I really have a problem with those that would take a superior or (worse) hateful tone.
Those who constantly (and sarcastically) campaign against fill-in-the-blank rather than for Christ aren’t very helpful, and I think misunderstand the extent and purpose of God’s grace.
@Best Jeff Ever
Then we are in agreement! Huzzah! See, community? Working out issues in a nice calm manner. 🙂
I’m not real smart when it comes to the theology. Parables on the other hand….
When one’s spirit is stifled by teachings at one church, many are “scared” to leave. “what will they think of me!”. But, to stay & be so unhappy at not only my direction, but the direction of that particular church is wrong.
Listen. God WILL not leave you. He will lead you to that happiness. Surrender your unhappiness. Don’t hang onto that which is weighing you down. (like the camels).
I know I want to get to “market” with the best me I can be. I don’t want to argue theology. I want my life to be simple. The less weight of my burdens, the better my day will be. I don’t want to be a puppet of some church leader’s ideas. I want to learn more truth & pass it on. Take what works for me & leave what doesn’t. But, it is about giving back to all around me. Friend or foe. And to chastise one’s beliefs, if that’s what works for them, is NOT my job. Or anyone elses for that matter.
Thanks for sharing the definition of satire with us! I don’t know MPT, but, satire or not, he spoke what was on his mind. His right to do so is covered in the Constitution. I took it as satire, but those grown men MPT spoke of need to grow up!
Would someone please elaborate for me their specific criticisms of John Piper?
“a friend who used to live in the Houston area, who presents a rather in-depth, informed argument on why he thinks Piper’s theology is more dangerous than that of Osteen’s”
I am stunned to read this! I consider Osteen a heretic who does not preach Christ or sin. One would be hard-pressed to even hear Scripture in his so-called sermons.
Regardless of one’s take on Calvinism, surely Piper is considered a minister of the Gospel, which sets him far apart from Osteen. Right?
What am I missing? Other than what Dianna writes above and an unexplained weird Tweet, I haven’t read any concrete examples of transgressions that would pull him from orthodoxy into heresy.
Really, really curious.
Mary –
My problem with him is essentially as stated above, and you would probably have to approach people more experienced with his actual theological statements to get a better reason.
baylormum –
Hey, it’s okay! As long as you’re still striving to know Christ and working in community with those who love him as well, I believe you’re good. Also, Baylor?! I’m a grad student there. If your kid’s there, chances are, s/he’s getting a good education. 🙂
Dianna, My “kid” is now 23. She graduated in May with a Bachelor in Business/Marketing. She had an awesome experience. Was very involved at ubc with the Children’s ministry her Sr year. We lived in Amarillo until Sept 1st when a job opportunity for husband led us to Central WA. Baylor was an expensive adventure, but one I wouldn’t trade. It was so much more. For all of us. She is Austin working now. She was back for the dc*b release party (one of her best friends is Mark Waldrop) & Homecoming.
Jesse, I think Pete would agree. It’s important to quote that whole sentence you mentioned (emphasis added): “We must judge our various traditions according to whether they tend towards freeing their congregation from their burdens, helping to transform them into more Christlike individuals.”
Dianna, I don’t know if you read the last post I had here on Matthew’s blog – a post strongly against individualism – but that is not what I’m trying to get at. My point is that the only way to come together in true community is to not condemn everything we don’t like that others do, not because of individualism, but because we are not God.
I’m working on a follow-up to this post, and one of the things it will talk about is whether or not we believe that God gives one precise answer to a certain question that will be exactly the same in every culture, every time, every situation. I’ll try to flesh that out more in the next post. Thanks for interacting with these words.
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First off, heresy against whom? Catholics would call Piper’s Calvinism heresy… (Less so with the Arminians which is very similar to Thomism.) We should be careful of that word heresy. Joel believes Jesus is the Lord and the Son of God. Because he does not preach like Piper does not make him a heretic. As a matter of fact, Jesus told parables and preached “REPENT” more than he said anything. And repent means, “change the way you think.” So, in sense, Joel is preaching more like Jesus than Piper is.
My problem with Piper is multilayered. But put in a nutshell: Piper is borderline Gnostic in his teaching of this world and our bodies/flesh. “It’s only 80 years of sucky earth, then we go to heaven!” (Paraphrased lightly from a recent interview)
Also, I heard him recently lump Osteen (without mentioning his name which I consider wimpy) into a camp with horrible televangelist thieves to build his straw man argument. I find that most criticism of Joel is based around this straw argument. I abhor the haughty arrogant criticism and ridicule of another Christian brother as most of it is out of pure spite and flat-out jealousy. I’ve met many a transformed life by the love of Jesus through Lakewood Church. Perfect theology? Probably not, but neither is Piper’s. Whatever the case, the power of God is real at Lakewood.
Gnosticism rears its ugly head throughout protestant theology but contrary to the Gnostic or Piper’s beliefs, the Earth is not meant for the dung heap, and neither are our bodies. They are to be healed, remade and reconciled. This, he does not believe.
We are meant for a new Earth. Piper subscribes to a near- Medieval Gnosticism where heaven is up there and we are down here and up there is where we’ll go forever. I’ll stop there… but one place to start is the dialogue that is ongoing with N.T. Wright and John Piper on justification and heaven.
Piper, who I honestly love to watch, is essentially a fatalist, which leads to his constant theme of defeatism. This is all fueled and supported by his Calvinism, which (ironically, since we’re talking heresy) is considered one of the great true heresies of the Orthodox Church. C.S. Lewis would have some VERY profound differences with Piper. Which is why Piper loves Lewis but considers him very flawed.
But who am I to call anyone a heretic? The internet and blogs have become a modern day Salem where pastors and authors call each other heretics and burn them gladly at the verbal stake. All except Osteen who never seems to breath a peep against another Christian brother. At least that’s one place where Piper could take a lesson.
Stephen, maybe we should take a step back. As I understood it, this post was about evaluating what rubric we use to measure the effectiveness/truth/goodness/success of a specific church/minister/ministry/community. Especially in regards to questions of doctrinal purity or lack thereof. The except from Pete was to engage in the discussion of orthodoxy v. orthopraxy. His take on which was embodied by a parable about camels that was specifically about how separate results can come from a common experience depending on what burdens you bring to the table.
I think those are fantastic questions, maybe some of the most important questions. But I just wanted to make sure before trying to clarify what I said earlier, is this correct?
Matthew,
I just read the letter to Piper. It is a thing of beauty.
I found this post and the comments on it quite thoughtful and enjoy the fact that the discussion has been about issues and not personalities. I’m more or less Reformed, but I belong to a Wesleyan church, and they didn’t screen me for an exact match of doctrine either. I read a book of Piper’s a couple of years back and thought it was good, but these tweet thingies perplex me, especially the one from Ezekiel, the context of which is about idolatry, not immorality. !?
The whole Calvinist/Arminian thing is an argument I try not to get into. In fact, I wonder if predestination and free will might coexist, paradoxical as it sounds. We accept, though we can’t understand, that Jesus was fully God and fully man. We accept, though we can’t understand, that our one God is also a Trinity. We are saved by grace through faith alone, yet faith without works is dead. Could (or should) we look at the Calvinist question in the same light? How much does where we stand on this issue actually affect how we walk, individually or corporately? “Repent and believe” is simple enough for anyone to grasp.
@baylormum – Awesome. I played Ultimate with Mark’s wife, but haven’t been back in a while (grad school took over my life). Baylor’s a great place, and I’m glad you were able to send your daughter here.
@Stephen – Thanks for the reply and for considering what I had to say. I haven’t read your other post, but I will right after this. My comments were both an attempt to clarify what you had written, and to challenge implications that I saw being drawn out of it. After all, if the concern is over whether or not your particular burden is free (as in the analogy), there might be some problems with the logical extension of that. I was merely trying to logically extend that out to the end point, which I saw as individualism. Thanks for the clarification, though.
Hah, Stephen, I did read that, and I guess I just didn’t connect the names. Silly me. But yes, I agree with that post about individualism as well, as I think my points above would hopefully demonstrate. 🙂