Soundbite Christianity

It occurred to me today that Christianity has suffered from the soundbite culture just as much as anything else.

I recently found the following video. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a quick look.

This video contains many of the tired old arguments and caricaturizations I have heard ad nausea for years. Frankly, I am a bit weary of hearing my faith reduced to a soundbite (an incorrect one at that) and then used to justify something so counter to it. Because this video is so succinct and pithy, I thought I would take a few moments to dissect and address the many points that compose these old arguments.

1) Starting at 0:37 – Do not be fooled. When the Prime Minister is using the word “conscience,” he is not using it the same way as the Church has used it. He is making an emotional argument here. We’ll see this throughout the points made as the prime minister effectively portrays himself as “loving” and those opposed to “marriage equality” as “unloving.” This is no small point. The world in which we live is something other than modern. By modern, I mean privileging and honoring logic and logical arguments above everything else. Whatever we are now, whether it be postmodern or something else, the world now privileges and honors emotion above all else. As a result, arguments take place in the sphere of emotion more than logic. This is a problem for everyone. Once someone makes an emotional argument, there’s very little you can say, especially in a “politically correct” society. It takes time to appreciate the emotions being expressed while trying to show the incoherence in using it as an argument. Of course, in a soundbite culture, this is nearly impossible. Therefore, arguments are won in the sphere of emotion more than logic. They even border on the logical fallacy. By keeping this in mind, you can be ready for it and, perhaps, even be immune to the ad hominem attacks being made against you.

2) At 0:47 “it was the right thing to do” – After laying his emotional argument (undeveloped as it is at this point) on the table, he supports it with the concept of “right.” However, stop and think about this for a moment. What makes something “right”? I assume he means morally right. So, where does he go to find the standard of morality? Well, I’ve already tipped my hand by suggesting he finds it in his emotions. Whether or not I’m right, we Christians ought to be mindful of people claiming moral “rightness.” There is only one place it comes from: the Lord of creation. He set the law for His creation to operate smoothly. Anyone claiming “rightness” apart from this law is effectively saying they don’t want to live by it.

3) Starting at 0:50 – Sadly, this argument has won the day, because of Christians who do not take seriously the reality of sin. Simply put, if people are born gay (note: nobody can really know this, since homosexuality doesn’t manifest until sexual puberty), then it has everything to do with sin and nothing to do with “how we’re built.” I know our culture has effectively blocked out these words, but God created man and woman for marriage (Genesis 2, Ephesians 5, Matthew 19, to name a few). We were built for that type of relationship. Sin has permeated creation so entirely that we are born into sin. Thus, we have abnormalities like birth defects, babies born before term, chromosome problems, “natural” tendencies, and more. Now, this argument should highlight a place where the Church has failed. We have expected people to be blameless before accepting them. We have expected holiness before acknowledging the sanctity of all life. We have expected perfection before helping people through their struggles. We must strive to do better. We do so by taking sin a bit more seriously.

4) Starting at 1:20 – To be honest, this is probably the slickest rhetorical move the Prime Minister makes. He does not differentiate the way “we’re built” from the way “we are.” As discussed in the last point, a serious attitude towards sin can help us differentiate these two states of being. When we do, we can then say, “I accept who you are and where you are, but I also want you to see what God sees and love what God desires for your life. He wants you free from the burden of sin.” In the American Church, I believe this is our chief struggle: accepting people for who they are, loving them for who they are, not expecting them to change, yet praying for the Holy Spirit to show them what God sees and desires. To put it as a question, “Why do we expect people outside the Church to act like the Church?” Maybe a bit more bluntly, “Why do we expect people outside the Church to live by the law of God — when we don’t even do it — before giving them the pure unadulterated gospel of Christ?

5) Starting at 1:25 – This is probably the stickiest part of the whole argument for Christians. It actually contains the both parts of the soundbite that has come to define Christianity: one, it should have no say in the public realm; two, it only speaks of “love.” I’ll get to the second part later. As for the first part, I must be abundantly clear. I am not suggesting the Church establish a theocracy. There are numerous aspects of the public realm that remain gray, even for Christians. For example, should the government run healthcare? Faithful Christians can come down on both sides. However, there are some aspects in the public realm that are not gray. In fact, the Church is even called to insist on God’s order of things. For example, the state should protect it’s citizens. (Note: Though the answer to the question, “How?” is another gray area, the fact that countries provide safety for their citizens remains absolute). Therefore, I fundamentally disagree with the Prime Minister, when he says that the Church has no business telling two people of the same gender they cannot get married. More than that, I disagree with the Prime Minister, who implicitly suggests the state need not listen to the Church on this matter. The Church is simply insisting that God created the world in a particular way. When we ignore this order, we do so to our own peril.

6) Starting at 2:00 – I feel bad for this pastor. He seems to live as many Christians live in this world. He assumes that people will recognize God’s will/law when they hear it. The sad truth is that the Fall has handicapped all people, even Christians, from recognizing God’s will. Again, taking sin seriously could have helped him tremendously here. As a quick comment, notice the smirk on the man’s face behind the pastor and the accompanying low murmur as the pastor brings up Jesus. This should simply remind us that Christendom is dying. We can no longer expect the words of Jesus or the Bible to hold the same authority in our culture and world as they once did.

7) Starting at 2:35 – The Bible does not say slavery is a natural condition. Instead, it takes it as a reality of the world and tells people how to live within such a condition. I actually agree with the Prime Minister, when he says social conditions change. Clearly, in the western world, slavery is no longer a social condition. Therefore, we rightly look upon it as abhorrent. Sadly, not everyone in the past, present, or future world knows this. In Ephesians 5, Paul tells Christians how they ought to live within this social condition. If you want to see what Paul thinks of Christian slave owners, read Philemon. Most people who make this argument have never done so. (For a much better and somewhat technical look at this particular argument, click here.)

8) Starting at 3:05 – The coup de grâce of the Prime Minster’s argument is here. In a soundbite, he declares the centrality of the gospel as universal love, which put into the form of a command expresses itself as “love your fellow man.” The Church actually has a name for this soundbite theology. It’s called gospel reductionism. This means two things. One, the gospel has been reduced to a single quality: love. Sadly, it isn’t even reduced to the love of Jesus Christ as the sacrifice for all sinners. Instead, it’s reduced to a vague and subjectively defined love. In other words, instead of being specific in a time and place, the love of gospel reductionism is general and redefined based on “human and social conditions.” Two, the gospel is the only thing that matters in Scripture. So, you can throw out Adam and Eve, since it doesn’t really speak of the gospel (or so they say). You can remove any notion of sin, since it’s uncomfortable to talk about anyway. You can also throw out the goal of holiness, because if we truly “love” one another, then we’ll let people do whatever they want. As long as you keep the “gospel” of universal “love,” all else is fair game for dismissal.

To put these two points together: not only is the gospel reduced to a soundbite of subjective universal love, but the entirety of Scripture is reduced to the soundbite of this “love.” The truth of the matter is that everything in the Bible, in time itself, flows to and from the cross, which is the true expression of love. There we find that we are sinners in need of salvation; a salvation we cannot achieve. There we find God made man dying in an act of sacrificial love  unlike anything we had seen before and have seen since. There we find the true meaning of love: God did not want us to live a life headed for separation from him, so He sent His Son to pay the debt we owe in order that we may live with him eternally. That’s the love of the gospel. And this gospel, the true gospel, does not reduce Scripture. It expands it. It shows us that the rest of the Bible cannot be ignored. It shows us that the law of God is not some arbitrary or unfair list of rules, but is really the will of God, the way He created us and everything around us to operate. It shows us that holiness is ours through Christ and we ought to live like it.

With all this in mind, I encourage you to resist the temptation to believe the soundbite.