justice

Praying Against the Respect for Marriage Act Because I’m for the LGBTQ+ Community

by Jed CoppengerBible, Christian living, Church, Culture, justice, Ministry, Politics, Practical Ministry, Prayer November 29, 2022November 29, 2022No Comments

It’s not loving to create laws that promote falsehoods, confusion, discrimination, and harm, while reducing the institutions that help people flourish the most. That’s why, out of love for all people, including the LGBTQ+ community, I’m praying against the Respect for Marriage Act.

I know this isn’t a popular position in our culture or, most likely, a winning position in the Senate today. But, as a Christian pastor, I think it’s important to voice what Scripture clearly teaches to the church and the world around us, if for nothing else, to help people that think we are hateful or wrong, understand better why we believe what we believe. If you know many Christian pastors, you know that we don’t usually speak passionately about legislation related to minimum wage, the debt ceiling, and many other important things. And the reason for this lack of expressed opinion is that there isn’t as much biblical clarity on these issues. They are important, but not as clear as the issue of marriage.

So, if you will, consider briefly this unpopular opinion. To begin with, RFMA promotes falsehoods and confusion because it asserts, following the Obergefell decision, that marriage is something other than a union between a man and a woman—that it can be a “same sex marriage.” Before asking whether or not this definition of marriage has any negative consequences, it should be noted that this definition is out of step with the way marriage has been defined biblically, historically by every culture regardless of beliefs, legally, and philosophically. While “same sex marriage” seems to be a dominant notion today, it is one of the least held views in all of human history.

But, many argue, why does it matter whom people choose to love? Well, first of all, the question of “whom you can love” is different from the question, “What is marriage and who can be married?” You can love all kinds of people in a way that doesn’t redefine marriage. Also, in regards to romantic love, our culture, like other cultures, has laws telling us whom we can and can’t “love” in a romantic way. For instance, even though some in our culture are starting to push back on this idea, most still believe it is wrong for a grown man to have a romantic relationship with a young girl.

But, to put the question more accurately, why should people, whether Christians or not, be concerned about the redefinition of marriage? Because if you redefine marriage like this, then you are promoting a concept that isn’t sound in any historic or philosophical sense. And that’s not a good thing. Words matter. Ideas matter. Institutions like this matter.

Furthermore, you strip a vital social institution of its integrity, which causes greater confusion about what will really lead to human flourishing. It misdirects people away from unions grounded in the creation order that produce human flourishing and toward different unions that do not have the same grounding or track record. It’s confusing.

If it’s true that promoting “same sex marriage” promotes falsehoods and confusion, then it shouldn’t be surprising that there are other negative consequences—like increased discrimination. If RFMA passes, without a doubt, people and institutions that hold the historic position on marriage will be abused for their convictions. If you don’t believe this, you haven’t been paying attention. Over the past decade, more and more people have been defamed, sued, otherwise attacked for their traditional views on marriage. These cake makers, video makers, t-shirt makers, and many more, serve all people, including the LGBTQ+ community, but they simply don’t serve all events—like same sex weddings. This is an important distinction. They serve all people, they just don’t do all events. Yet, tragically, these folks have spent countless hours and money, just trying to live their lives.

Ah, but what about the men and women who need services? There are, of course, plenty of businesses that are happy to serve them. In fact, most businesses aren’t just happy to serve them; they declare their willingness with signs on their doors and slogans on their websites. The issue for many isn’t about creating access to the same kinds of things everyone else has access to, it’s about crushing those who disagree—those who hold to a historic view of marriage. The passing of the RFMA will only put more people and institutions under attack.

Unfortunately, all of this will lead to more harm everywhere. Why? I’ll just mention two of the ways. First, apart from the harm of creating a culture that is controlled by these falsehoods and confusion, with increasing discrimination, it will reduce the help that the most vulnerable in our society get from the people and institutions that hold to the historic view of marriage. It’s very simple. The people who do the most work with the homeless, the hungry, the poor, etc., in our country are the people that mostly hold to the historic view of marriage. If RFMA passes, these people will be under attack more and more. And when you are under attack, whether it’s through a lawsuit or whatever, you have to take the time, money, and energy you were going to use to help struggling people and redirect it to push back on the attack. And while the LGBTQ+ community is effective at many things, with all their power, they have yet to use it to create anything that comes close to what Christians have created to care for the most vulnerable of society. Without question, the RFMA will make life worse for people who need help most.

Secondly, very simply, RFMA will make life worse for children. It’s a sociological fact that children do best when they grow up in a home with a dad and a mom. RFMA will lead to more kids growing up in homes where there isn’t a dad and a mom. While this an unpopular opinion, for the sake of wanting what’s best for kids, it should be said. Think about it. Even if we didn’t use the Bible, the fact that “same sex marriages” don’t produce kids, should be evidence that these “marriages” aren’t the ideal setting for kids. I know, I know, there are many Christians who think these kinds of things shouldn’t be said because they don’t want their friends identifying as LGBTQ+ to be offended. But we have to remember that it’s never loving to lie about these things. Of course, we should treat these folks with dignity and respect. But we must be clear that part of treating them with dignity is speaking the truth in love.

I’m praying that RFMA doesn’t pass, that the LGBTQ+ will take a new, life-giving path toward the truth of their Maker and experience his blood-bought grace—and that all of us, wherever we fall on these issues, can speak the truth in love. We might not disagree less in the days ahead, but perhaps we can disagree better.

6 Steps Rod Dreher Believes Every Christian Should Take In A World That Is Growing More And More Hostile To Christianity

by Jed CoppengerBible, Christian living, Church, Diversity, justice, Ministry, Uncategorized September 16, 2021No Comments

Rod Dreher wrote Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents to equip people to face “soft totalitarianism” that is coming. The title, “Live Not By Lies,” comes from the title of a speech that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave just before he was exiled from Russia. The speech was an effort to help ordinary Russians understand that communism wasn’t too powerful for them to make an impact. They just needed to live in the truth because “the foundation of totalitarianism is an ideology made of lies. The system depends for its existence on a people’s fear of challenging the lies” (xiv).

Dreher’s book comes out of conversations that he had with people who lived under totalitarian states. Often times, these individuals lived in countries where, to the surprise of most of the people in those countries, they became totalitarian states. These “survivors” believe America is in a similar situation without realizing it. “It only takes a catalyst like war, economic depression, plague, or some other severe and prolonged crisis that brings the legitimacy of the liberal democratic system into question” (45).

No, Dreher doesn’t think what happened in Russia, starting in the early 1900’s, Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, to name a few examples, will happen in America in exactly the same way. But those he interviewed for the book see a number of striking similarities:

Elites and elite institutions are abandoning old-fashioned liberalism, based in defending the rights of the individual, and replacing it with a progressive creed that regards justice in terms of groups. It encourages people to identify with groups–ethnic, sexual, and otherwise–and to think of Good and Evil as a matter of power dynamics among the groups. A uptopian vision drives these progressives, one that compels them to seek to rewrite history and reinvent language to reflect their ideals of social justice. Further, these utopian progressives are constantly changing standards of thought, speech, and behavior. You can never be sure when those in power will come after you as a villain for having said or done something that was perfectly fine the day before. And the consequences for violating the new taboos are extreme, including losing your livelihood and having your reputation ruined forever (xi-xii).

These characteristics were the starting points that led to the horrific, totalitarian regimes of the 20th century where tens of millions of people were tortured and murdered in the name of godless progress.

While terms like authoritarianism, totalitarianism, get thrown around often without a proper understanding, Dreher notes, while “authoritarianism is what you have when the state monopolizes political control,” totalitarian society “is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is” (7-8). Dreher claims that soft totalitarianism is therapeutic, exercises control in “soft” ways, and “masks its hatred for dissenters from its utopian ideology in the guise of helping and healing” (7).

In part one, the first four chapters, he outlines in greater detail what he sees as “soft totalitarianism.” He looks at its sources and two key factors that help advance it today: versions of the “ideology of social justice” and surveillance technology (Big Business tracking you and collecting your data). This section ends by looking at the roles that key intellectuals can play in leading a country towards a horrible future.

In short, Dreher argues that there is growing pressure to affirm lies in our culture. We are living, he argues, what Orwell talked about in his famous political dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which said, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command” (14).

This reality is shown today, Dreher continues, by the fact that there can be severe consequences if someone doesn’t affirm:

Men have periods. The woman standing in front of you is to be called “he.” Diversity and inclusion means excluding those who object to ideological uniformity. Equity means treating persons unequally, regardless of their skills and achievements, to achieve an ideologically correct result (15).

How should Christians respond to this? In part two, he offers the following summarized guidance.

Value nothing more than the truth because there are many who will tempt you to turn from the truth to preserve other things you might value more – Dreher argues that soft totalitarianism is built on lies and attacks people who live lies built on the truth. That’s one of the reasons that soft totalitarianism hates free speech and promotes doublethink. What’s this look like? Rusanova, someone who has lived through communism, writes, “In high school and middle school, we had to write essays, like normal school kids do. But you never could write what you think about the subject. Never, ever” (103). That’s why Christians have to be committed to the truth, more than they are committed to comfort, a standard of living, a profession, or anything else. If Christians are going to be committed to the truth, they will have to be content with living lives outside of the mainstream. But remember, “One word of truth outweighs the whole world” (100). Dreher does argue that prudence is needed in how best to speak and live by the truth in this culture, but be careful cowardice isn’t advanced in the name of prudence.

Cultivate cultural memory because there are many who want to revise the past in a way that will ruin the future – In 2019 a survey found that 57 percent of millennials believe that the Declaration of Independence does a better job of offering freedom and equality than the Communist Manifesto (112). That’s why novelist Milan Kundera said that while “nobody will defend gulags” today, “the world remains full of suckers for the false utopian promises that bring gulags into existence” (113). Ex-communist, Polish intellectual Leszek Kolakowski observed, “the great ambition of totalitarianism is the total possession and control of human memory” (114). That’s why it’s so important, Dreher writes, that families, churches, and christian schools come together to cultivate an accurate cultural memory, which is made up of the “stories, events, people, and other phenomena that a society chooses to remember as the building blocks of its collective identity” (114). But it won’t be easy. One survivor noted that “thirty years of freedom has destroyed more cultural memory than the previous era” (116). Everything, Dreher writes, “about modern society is designed to make memory–historical, social, and cultural–hard to cultivate” (113). Be careful, therefore, to understand as much of the past as you can so that you can learn from their mistakes, not repeat them.

Create Christian families because families are one of the greatest threats to oppressive governments – “Under communism the family came under direct and sustained assault by the government, which saw its sovereignty as a threat to state control of all individuals” (132). Dreher argues that the attacks on the family are growing more today. People are using legal means to attack the family, new policies, and more to attack the Christian family structure. Divorce and consumerism impact people’s views on the family in more subtle, but no less significant, ways. Dreher argues that “families must allow for neither patriarchal tyranny nor crazy feminist excesses and also reject the worshiping of children and catering to their every desire” (133). Instead, families should model moral courage, fill children’s moral imaginations with the good, be courageous enough to be weird in society’s eyes, prepare to make great sacrifices for the greater good, teach kids that they are a part of a wider movement, and practice hospitality and serve others (136-143).

Cultivate a real relationship with Christ because he alone provides the power to persevere through persecution with peace – Dreher observes, “every single Christian I interviewed for this book, in every ex-communist country, conveyed a sense of deep inner peace–a peace that they credit to their faith, which gave them ground on which to stand firm” (151). After sharing several inspiring stories (one of which I shared in another post), Dreher concludes, “if you are not rock solid in your commitment to traditional Christianity, then the world will break you. But if you are, then this is the solid rock upon which that world will be broken. And if those solid rocks are joined together, they form a wall of solidarity that is very hard for the enemy to breach” (163).

Stand in solidarity with others, especially in small groups, because the coming culture wants to divide and conquer – Some of the survivors that Dreher interviewed said that the way that they endured the religious persecution was through small groups. The pastors were arrested and houses of worship destroyed, so believers met in small groups, sometimes hidden in the walls of homes, to care and encourage one another in the faith. They even locked arms with those outside of their faith traditions, carefully. Dreher challenges his readers to step into this kind of community today, even you aren’t already. Individualistic Christianity makes a person more vulnerable than they realize.

Suffer with faith in God’s mysterious purposes because the wrong view of suffering can crush you – Jesus taught his disciples that they would suffer. The reason that they can suffer without losing hope or hardening with hatred is because they have a God who works all things for their good (Rom. 8:28). When you understand this, you see that you don’t have to fear potential or actual suffering, because God will use it to grow you. That’s why Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, who was imprisoned and tortured for years, could write, “I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: Bless you, prison! . . . Bless you, prison, for having been in my life” (194)! How could he say that? Well, he believed that God used that horrible time to teach him to truly love. Jesus says that his followers will face resistance and persecution. Let’s make sure that we have a high enough view of Jesus that we believe he can even use it for our good.

Dreher’s book is sobering, challenging, and provocative, to say the least. Most of the people he interviewed who experienced totalitarianism never thought something like totalitarianism would happen to their cultures. Regardless of where our current culture goes in the days ahead, let’s walk in faith, not fear, love, not hate, trusting in our heavenly Father who works all things for our good.

George Floyd, Racism, and 7 Ways Christians Can Work For Racial Justice

by Jed CoppengerBible, Christian living, Church, Diversity, justice, Missions, Practical Ministry, Prayer, Uncategorized June 3, 2020No Comments

When I was younger, I thought the people writing on topics were “experts” who had it all figured out. But after years of working in the publishing industry and getting to know online heroes, I’ve learned I was wrong. It turns out that every blog or book was written by people still trying to figure out their topic — still a work in progress.

That “still trying to figure it out” position is certainly the place from which I write this blog on racial justice. When I was asked to do this a couple of years ago, my first inclination was to run and hide, not write and post. As anyone engaged in the discussion understands, the issues surrounding racial justice are complex, the grace shown to one another is often low, and the progress slow.

Yet here I am writing. I’m writing because Christians are called to speak to issues their God has addressed as well, issues he cares about. And he certainly cares about racial justice. He cares about George Floyd, how he was horribly treated, and the countless issues that are connected to everything that is going on in America right now in 2020. And the church is called to lean into these issues as his ambassadors. Although I write from a “majority culture” perspective, I’d like to share seven ways I’m pursuing racial justice that I’d ask you to consider as you pursue the same.

Pursue racial justice prayerfully. Anyone pursuing racial justice recognizes the issues are challenging and complex. That’s why we ask God for help. That’s why we start with prayer. Prayer starts when we have a high view of God and his abilities, and a low view of ourselves and our abilities. Pride kills prayer, because it doesn’t believe it needs to ask for help. A prayerless pursuit of racial justice is a prideful pursuit, one that ultimately will fail. It says we don’t need God’s help to achieve God’s goals. The pursuit of racial justice is designed to be a prayerful pursuit. He can do more in a moment than we can do in a lifetime.

Pursue racial justice with understanding. One of the most overlooked, yet important, steps to advancing racial justice is accurately understanding the terms of the discussion. People may use the same word in a conversation, but that doesn’t mean they are using it the same way. When some people use the word “justice,” they define it as “equal outcomes,” while others mean “equal opportunities.” You need to understand what “redistributive justice” and “retributive justice” mean. There are different views on “economic justice,” “procedural justice,” and more. These different areas of justice all touch conversations about racial justice. Understanding the terms enables you to see where you agree and disagree, where you need to adjust and where you don’t think you do. Conversations about racial justice move in a constructive direction when the terms being used are understood.

Pursue racial justice by listening humbly, critically, and widely. We don’t know what we don’t know, which is why we need to be a listening people. We listen humbly, because we know there is truth we don’t see, can’t see, and that we need others, even people outside our tribe, to help us see it. We listen critically because we know that while it’s true we can’t see everything, it’s just as true that others can’t either. It’s possible to work against what is just in the name of advancing justice. That’s why we have to listen critically, like the Bereans, so we can figure out what words are in step with God’s Word and what words aren’t (Acts 17:11). And we listen widely because discussions about racial justice have been around for quite some time, and there is a wide range of “authoritative” perspectives on these issues. Listen to people outside your “tribe,” find the main streams of thought on an issue, and step out of your time period for some historical perspective. The pursuit of racial justice is a listening pursuit, so let’s listen humbly, critically, and widely.

Pursue racial justice proportionately. Racial justice issues aren’t all created equal. That is to say, some racial justice issues are clearer than others. Racism is clearly evil. But the right position on issues like minimum wage, particular education policies, what responsibility people have for their ancestors’ sins, and other important issues like these, aren’t as clear. All of these are important issues, but the answers aren’t equally as clear biblically. Because of this, I’ve found the discussions about racial justice move forward more constructively when we pursue it proportionately.

Pursue racial justice relationally. Everybody experiences injustice in some way, but not in the same way. That’s why hanging out with people who aren’t like you is so important. When you hang out with people who aren’t just like you, you learn about injustices that oftentimes aren’t even on your radar. When you love people who are different from you, their problems become your problems. Even if we don’t agree with a particular perspective, we often consider it more carefully when it comes from someone we love. We’re also able to ask questions and have discussions that aren’t possible publicly, especially on our social media platforms. Invest in relationships with people you don’t normally invest in. Pursue racial justice relationally.

Pursue racial justice actively. You can’t do everything, but you can do something. For most people, your best opportunities to pursue racial justice will be local. In my context, I’ve served on a board of a racially diverse Title I school (which means it receives a great deal of funding to help families in need), I’m involved with “affordable housing” discussions, I’m currently part of efforts to help people go through the immigration process, the church I lead is partnering with local ministries that are working specifically on this, our church is growing thousands of pounds of food on our property to make a difference locally, and more. The teams I’m part of are racially diverse, and the people we are trying to help are racially diverse. We don’t always agree, but we are doing our best to make our local context better, more just. While Christians can’t do everything, we can do something. Don’t just talk about racial justice, actively try to bring it about. Get involved. Show up. There are opportunities all around us.

Pursue racial justice restfully. There’s always a tendency for our identities to slide into what we do. The better the cause, the more likely it is to become an identity thief. That’s why I think it’s so important to pursue racial justice restfully—resting in our identity in Christ and who we are as His son or daughter.