Preaching That Unleashes the Bible’s Power

Why expository sermons should make up your church’s main diet.

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There are two basic forms of preaching: expository and topical. Hughes Oliphant Old defines expository preaching as “the systematic explanation of Scripture done on a week-by-week…basis at the regular meeting of the congregation.” Expository preaching grounds the message in the text so that all the sermon’s points are points in the text, and it majors in the text’s major ideas. It aligns the interpretation of the text with the doctrinal truths of the rest of the Bible. And it always situates the passage within the Bible’s narrative, showing how Christ is the final fulfillment of the text’s theme.

Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism

Timothy Keller (Author)

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By contrast, the main purpose of “thematic” or “topical” preaching is not the unfolding of the ideas within a single biblical text but rather the communication of a biblical idea from a number of texts. Topical preaching may have any one of several aims. It may be to convey truth to nonbelievers (evangelistic preaching) or to instruct believers in a particular aspect of their church’s confession and theology (catechetical preaching). Festal preaching helps listeners celebrate observances in the church year such as Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost, while prophetic preaching speaks to a particular historical or cultural moment.

I would say that expository preaching should provide the main diet of preaching for a Christian community. Why? Here is the main reason (though of course there are many others): Expository preaching is the best method for displaying and conveying your conviction that the whole Bible is true. This approach testifies that you believe every part of the Bible to be God’s Word, not just particular themes and not just the parts you feel comfortable agreeing with.

It is not enough to have a general respect for the Bible that you may have inherited from your upbringing. As a preacher or teacher you will come upon many difficulties in the Bible; and inevitably the biblical authors say things that not only contradict the spirit of the age but also your own convictions and intuitions. Unless your understanding of the Bible—and your confidence in its inspiration and authority—are deep and comprehensive, you will not be able to understand and present it convincingly. Instead of proclaiming, warning, and inviting, you will be sharing, musing, and conjecturing.

It is important to know not only in general that the Bible is true but also that in the Bible God’s words are identical to his actions. When he says, “Let there be light,” there is light (Genesis 1:3). When God renames someone, it automatically remakes him (Genesis 17:5). The Bible does not say that God speaks and then proceeds to act, that he names and then proceeds to shape—but that God’s speaking and acting are the same thing. His word is his action, his divine power.

So how do we hear God’s active Word today if we are not prophets or apostles? God’s words in the mouths of the prophets (Jeremiah 1:9-10), written down, are still God’s words to us when we read them today (Jeremiah 36:1-32). In other words, as we unfold the meaning of the language of Scripture, God becomes powerfully active in our lives. The Bible is not merely information, not even just completely true information. It is “alive and active.” (Hebrews 4:12)—God’s power in verbal form. It is only as we understand the meaning of the words that God names us and shapes us and recreates us.

If you believe only that the Spirit may, in some general way, attend to the preaching of the Bible under some circumstances, then you are likely to undermine its power and authority as you preach by overemphasizing your own experiences or by locating the authority in your church’s tradition and beliefs rather than in the Bible itself. Or you may use the Bible as a set of assorted wise remedies for contemporary social and personal problems. If, however, you believe that the preaching of the Word is one of the main channels for God’s action in the world, then with great care and confidence you will uncover the meaning of the text, fully expecting that God’s Spirit will act in listeners’ lives.

Therefore famous verses about God’s Word being “like fire…and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces” (Jeremiah 23:29) are not mere rhetoric. I have seen hundreds of specific cases in which the Bible itself contained a power to penetrate people’s spiritual indifference and defenses in a way that went far beyond my powers of public speaking. A handful of times I have even had conversations with angry people who were sure that one of their friends told me about them and that I had singled them out in the sermon. I was able to swear honestly that I had had no idea at all about their issue—that it was the Bible itself exercising its power to lay bare the “secrets of their hearts” (1 Corinthians 14:25). I don’t enjoy angry listeners, but I love those conversations.

Let the Lion Out

It’s natural to ask how effective the careful exposition of the Bible could possibly be in a culture that is becoming more and more averse to authority, particularly religious authority. But consider the advice of nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, who famously said:

There seems to be to have been twice as much done in some ages in defending the Bible as in expounding it, but if the whole of our strength shall henceforth go to the exposition and spreading of it, we may leave it pretty much to defend itself. I do not know whether you see that lion—it is very distinctly before my eyes; a number of persons advance to attack him, while a host of us would defend [him]….Pardon me if I offer a quiet suggestion. Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself.

The Bible is like a lion, Spurgeon claims, so you must not spend too much of your breath describing it, defending it, or arguing about why it should be believed. Instead, he urges you to put your energy into simply preaching it—into actually exposing people to it in its clearest and most vivid form. Then the extraordinary power and authority of the Word will become self-evident—even in the most antiauthoritarian settings, among the most skeptical people. I know this to be true.

From PREACHING: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2015 by Timothy Keller

Theology

The Grief, Happiness, and Hope of Late-in-Life Singleness

Hope E. Ferguson, guest writer

What I learned from decades of asking, “Why am I still alone?”

MilosStankovic / iStock

Over the decades, I have attended countless bridal showers, wedding ceremonies, baby showers, and anniversary parties. Again and again, I celebrated my friends’ milestones while waiting for my own happy ending.

Then this year, on my 58th birthday, I bought my wedding dress. Finally, my wait was over.

For a long time, every milestone and every missed opportunity for true love (including a short relationship in my 40s with a verbally abusive man) prompted me to question God: Why did you allow this to happen? Have I not been faithful? Am I not a good enough Christian? Do you really care about me?

Why am I still alone?

I’d always try to encourage myself by saying I only needed to meet one marriageable man or that God could bring “the one” to my doorstep. But as I grew older, my situation began to seem like a walk through an endless desert.

I was not alone. A decade ago marked the first time more than half of American women over age 18 were unmarried. Adults of all races are marrying later, and marriage as an institution is seen as a failing one. The situation is especially dire for black women like me, whom the New York Times describes as victims of the “vanishing black male,” men who are incarcerated or not as educated or financially sound as their black female counterparts.

As I passed 40, then neared 50, my singleness felt like grief. I had to come to terms with the empty arms of not having a child and the possibility of growing old alone. I pondered “these strange ashes,” as Elisabeth Elliot called it; what remains of a dream when the fire and the smoke have cleared.

But God taught me lessons through my waiting. After my long journey of singleness, I have realized that my engagement—the blessing that it is—is not the goal, or “happily ever after.” There’s happiness to be found in any season of life when we are wholeheartedly seeking God’s plan. Despite the depression and hurt I suffered over the years, I know that being happy is not a state God reserves for marriage.

Each friend’s wedding over the years was a chance to remember that (despite the daunting marriage statistics) in God’s economy, there is no scarcity. It’s not as if when someone gets something we want, there’s nothing left for us. We can genuinely “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Rom. 12:15), knowing this truth. And we do reap what we sow. As we partake in the joy of our friends and relatives, we are sowing the seeds of their rejoicing with us.

There were times I struggled with bitterness when I viewed my own stalled love life against others’ blessings. Hebrews 12:15 tells us, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” It is easy to let these bitter feelings fester, and turn into self-pity. But anger, envy, and discouragement keep us from recognizing God’s blessings in our lives. I needed to release that bitterness in exchange for opportunities God had given me to delight in him (Ps. 37) and his will.

Although he doesn’t promise everyone marriage, God does promise to set the lonely in families, and there were always little ones, especially little girls, who needed “other-mothers.” From the little ones who lavished love on me, their Sunday school teacher, to women in the church who offered their friendship and support, I found that I did have community. I decided to fill my season of singleness being busy about God’s business while I waited.

There were times I had to be honest and ask whether I was truly seeking God with all my heart, soul, and strength—or if I was just doing so to find a man. God asks us to put him above our hopes, dreams, and desires. For many of us, only when we make his desires our desires will he grant us the desires of our hearts—and that includes husbands. Psalm 38:9 says, “All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.” He knows our longings; he placed them there. As long as we are alive, God can change our circumstances, no matter how long it takes.

Happily, life and experience have taught me that if you sincerely desire a husband and do not feel “called to be single,” then God may yet “give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 34:7).

A few years before I met my fiancé, I attended an anniversary celebration for a former pastor. After the service, the altar was opened for prayer. A guest pastor began to pray for me exuberantly, but then he paused to tell me, “You have been waiting for something for a long time, and it seems like God has forgotten you. But God wants you to know he has not forgotten you; he has his hook in somebody, and he’s reeling him in.”

I later learned that my fiancé—a man I’d later meet during after-service fellowship in the basement of my church—accepted the Lord within a year of that prayer.

He was on staff of a faith-based drug and alcohol recovery ministry in downstate New York, a ministry that my congregation was hosting. At the prompting of my pastor’s wife, I went to introduce myself to a couple of the young men seated alone on the far end of the room. Before I could make it across the room, a tall, handsome, middle-aged man stepped into my path and introduced himself.

God prepared him, then he reeled him in. Right in my path, by the way.

I have learned that just as singleness is a season, happiness is a season as well. Since God works in and among people, sometimes we have to wait, not because of anything we have done or not done, but because God’s love is putting something together that is “greater than we can hope or imagine.”

Hope E. Ferguson is senior writer for the State University of New York's Empire State College in Saratoga Springs, New York. She blogs about faith, culture, and politics at Morning Joy and has written about issues of race for Her.meneutics.

This article was originally published as part of Her.Meneutics, Christianity Today's blog for women.

- More from Hope E. Ferguson, guest writer

Pastors

Ortberg: Preaching Spit and Polish

John Ortberg

Why I’m trying to get better at preaching.

In conjunction with our most recent print issue of Leadership Journal, an exploration of the State of the Pastorate, we asked a series of pastors a simple question: what is the current state of your pastorate? The full collection of essays will be updated throughout the week.

What’s the state of your pastorate? Let us know online through tweets, blogs, drawings, or smoke signals. Include the hashtag #mypastorate, and we’ll feature our favorites in a post next week.

There are lots of areas in my ministry that need work. I have a leadership coach, and I read books and get feedback so that I can lead better. I’m working on boardsmanship with our elders, and getting 360-degree feedback from our staff. I’m listening to podcasts and going to strategy breakfasts at Stanford and learning about data visualization, which they did not cover in seminary.

But I’m also working on getting better at preaching.

Even though I’ve been here over a decade, I’m trying to improve.

This project has surprised me a little bit, because preaching would an area where I get dinged less at evaluation time than others. But one of the most important principles a leader can remember is that it’s often more helpful to spend time building up a strength than shoring up a weakness. So I decided to work at getting better at preaching.

I was with a preacher friend this last summer who preaches regularly without notes. I asked him how he did it. When I first started speaking, I would memorize each talk I gave word-for-word. I liked speaking that way, but when I began preaching every week, it wasn’t practical. Plus, I fainted twice in a row using that technique, so I didn’t think the strain was worth it. I eventually ended up using long manuscripts that are written out close to word-for-word, and I like the discipline and precision that gives.

But I had feedback from people I respect who brought unchurched folks to our service and who felt like the notes got in the way. And, since we have become a multisite church, I’ve realized what a difference it makes to people at various sites if the speaker (usually me) is looking directly into the camera.

Plus, I thought it was time to try something different just so I don’t fall into a rut.

I have noticed a number of preachers that I admire—Andy Stanley is one—who are able to address their listeners in a way that seems very direct and unmediated by not using notes. But I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. This summer I heard another noteless preacher—Perry Noble—mention that he took the week before he’d be delivering the message to spend about one hour a day practicing giving the message in order to be able to give it without notes. I decided to give it a try.

Trying to cut the notestrings

I’m only a few months into it, but so far I’ve gotten enough feedback on the positive side to suspect it’s worth the time. It’s actually required less than an hour a day.

Typically it works like this: on Monday I’ll spend a little less than an hour talking through the message a few times. I’ll write on margins of the manuscript a word that summarizes that particular paragraph or section. By Wednesday or Thursday we’ll do a run-through that we can video (partly because we could use it for some sites in case of emergency), and by the time I’ve made it through that experience, I breathe a sigh of relief that it’s now deliverable. But I’ll keep running it through my mind—sometimes on car rides, or while I’m walking the dog. (Our dog is growing spiritually, too.)

Also, I’ll have a large screen on the platform with me on which the congregation can read the Scripture texts, and key statements, and quotes—so I’m never more than a few moments away from the next critical idea I have to remember.

Prepping beyond just this week

Just to make things really interesting, I’ve added one more change to message preparation. Until this last year, I’ve always written sermons the same week that I was going to give them. But another pastor I admire—Ken Shigematsu—has written about how he works on messages a week ahead of time. I started trying that, and got on so much of a roll that at the moment I’m working on messages that are three weeks ahead. I find that this gives me more time and space to work on leadership issues, and it also allows ideas to percolate and gives a greater chance to put ministry ideas like visual aids or concrete actions steps into play.

Another reason I’m trying to improve my preaching is because I think it’s helpful for other folks that volunteer or serve on staff or are part of our congregation to know that even though I’ve been here over a decade, I’m trying to improve.

The painful side of preaching spit and polish

I’m still learning in sometimes-painful ways, though.

Recently after one service, I was pretty excited about how well (relative to my standards) the sermon had gone. “It will be fun to send that one to the other venues,” I said. The team looked down at their feet. “We can’t do that,” said one of them.

“Why not?”

“Because of the spittle.”

“Spittle?”

“Yep. You had a big gob of spittle in the corner of your mouth through a big chunk of that message. Jesus could work miracles with mud and spittle, but the sites hate it when we send them a video where you have spittle.”

Great. So now it turns out that not only can we not use this video, but that I actually have a chronic spittle problem that everybody on staff knew about except me. We will have to appoint a Spittle Detector who can send “Wipe Yourself” signals during sermons on a regular basis.

I’ll bet Calvin never had to deal with this.

So my mind is more full with multiple sermons, my heart is more full with the joy of growing, and my mouth is more full with stuff I’d rather not think about. But I’m also getting stretched in ways that I haven’t been stretched before, and I’m working on developing muscles that needed a new workout.

Someone asked cellist Pablo Cassals why he kept practicing so many hours a day when he had been on the concert tour his whole life long and was now in his eighties. I love his answer:

“Because I think I’m getting better.”

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership Journal and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California.

Culture

‘The Armor of Light’ and Inflaming the Conscience: A Conversation with Abigail Disney and Rob Schenck

Alissa Wilkinson

We spoke with the documentary’s director and subject about gun policy, the ways fear manipulates Christians, and why the choice to befriend someone else is vital to peace in public life.

Rev. Rob Schenck in 'The Armor of Light'

Jeff Hutchens

Rev. Rob Schenck in ‘The Armor of Light’

The Armor of Light first started making the festival circuit in spring 2015, but since then the documentary—which confronts the gun policy debate in the context of American evangelicalism and the pro-life movement—has only become more relevant. Director Abigail Disney describes herself as a “pro-choice feminist,” but she grew up around her family’s conservative politics (yes, those Disneys—Walt was her great-uncle) and her interest in the issue sparked the film’s genesis.

The film (which takes its name from Romans 13:12) follows Rev. Rob Schenck, perhaps best known for his deep involvement as a pro-life activist in the early 1990s. Today, Schenck is president of Faith and Action in Washington, D.C. and chairman of the Evangelical Church Alliance. Following a mass shooting event that took place not far from his home, Schenck began to seriously wrestle with his own views on gun violence and policy and its relationship to his firm position on abortion – is it possible to be both pro-gun and pro-life? He meets Lucy McBath, a Christian woman whose unarmed teenage son Jordan Davis was shot and killed. Davis’s case is now a major part of the ongoing debate over Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws. A friendship develops between them, prompting Schenck to initiate a series of conversations around the country with evangelical leaders, questioning whether being pro-gun and pro-life are compatible positions.

I saw the film last April at the Tribeca Film Festival, in a room full of New Yorkers, and wrote about it in my festival round-up. It’s a challenging film. Sometimes, it’s uncomfortable. I can’t imagine anyone, regardless of their beliefs, leaving the theater without something to seriously consider. And though The Armor of Light is undeniably well-made and compelling, what startled me most is its incredibly sensitive and nuanced portrayal of Schenck and other evangelicals with whom he interacts.

I was delighted to talk to Abby Disney and Rob Schenck, who remain grounded in their respective (and opposite) political views – Disney is still a pro-choice feminist, and Schenck is still a pro-life evangelical – but whose friendship and mutual respect for one another is palpable even over the phone. (What follows was edited slightly for clarity.)

The Genesis of the Project

Christianity Today: How did you two get involved with this project?

Joey L.

Abigail Disney

Abigail Disney: I had heard about the gun issue for a really long time and I was thinking about what would be the way to get people talking and thinking about this issue—in a way that wouldn’t inflame people, but would get them talking with each other. That would inflame the conscience and feel like a new contribution to the ideas. All we’re doing is going around and around and around about the same four to five ideas.

Evangelical Christians in the pro-life movement generally have a view about sanctity of life which I think is beautiful—even though I’m a pro-choice feminist myself, I support life. I really did wonder how that could stand side by side with the gun discourse, which is so casual about the gun itself—even about the language of taking human life; I call it the yippee-kai-yay culture. I don’t understand how those two things line up, so I went looking for people to talk to.

I talked to three or four other people before talking to Rob [Schenck]. Rob was someone who really heard me, and really heard what I had to say. Obviously, he was more nuanced than I was. And it really in one conversation, his ears perked up. He recognized that there was an inconsistency, and that this was important. So, based on that conversation, a much larger conversation started with the film.

Rev. Rob Schenck

Rob Schenck: I should add that this wasn’t the very first time that I had recognized the contradiction between the values that so many evangelicals hold on the sanctity of life and the stand they take on the use of guns for personal defense. In my mind, there’s a nuanced difference between someone who uses a gun for hunting and sportmanship; it’s in a different category than someone who has a gun and thinks about using it to kill or maim another human being. It’s a different ethical question.

So, it had crossed my mind in a fleeting way. In the film, we had an experience with an Amish family in Pennsylvania that had raised questions in my heart and mind, but I gave it no special attention. I sort of compartmentalized it. It belonged in a different space than my questions about the sanctity of nascent human life.

That’s how I lived with it until Abby proposed it as a careful examination in this film. It seemed very necessary—important to me by the end of this conversation, but very frightening. I knew the universe of my constituents and polled them, about roughly 100,000 people—and 95% align with the NRA’s position on guns and unfettered 2nd Amendment rights.

I knew that people inside the organization were telling me to not broach the subject, to not consider it. So, it took me some time, five or six weeks, to work that through, prayerfully and internally. To take it under advisement inside my organization and outside of it. Finally, I talked to a prominent conservative Christian personality who said, “If this is truly your conviction, you should go public with it.”

That was my final permission to take the risk, and it’s proven to be fairly risky. Not in the way I expected, but certainly there’s been a downside in it.

CT: You’re worried about losing resources and constituents, right?

RS: Right. And we’ve registered some loss already. We’ve had a few major donors who have said that they will not support our organization any more or me. But really, the loss that concerned me the most were friendships. I have deep friendships of twenty and thirty years, and I am losing some friends over this. And I will lose more. For me, that is the biggest price to pay.

Friendship and Choosing Peace

CT: Friendship is a big part of this film; real progress in public life happens through friendship. Did anything surprise you about friendship as you engaged with this issue?

Eva Anisko

Abigail Disney and Lucy McBath in ‘The Armor of Light’

RS: First of all, if you had asked me a decade ago if I would have the friendship I do with a pro-choice, left-leaning feminist—certainly a very progressive feminist activist who supports a lot of organizations that I’ve been an opponent of for thirty years now—I think I would have been open to it. But I would have had no idea as to how it would come about as it did. I consider it a very generous gift from God to have a frienship with Abby; it gives me a perspective on many things that I would not have had, if it weren’t for our friendship.

CT: What kind of perspectives?

RS: To begin with, the gun question, of course. This is a question of paramount ethical and moral concerns for me and for others. It’s a big question for the evangelical church and the church as a whole—our society. I would not have taken that out of my secret heart box without Abby’s gentle prodding. That’s a consquence of our professional collaboration and our friendship.

Also, if you had asked me three years ago if I had really cared about women who are part of the abortion question, I would have said yes. But it would have been theoretical. I really didn’t care, and that’s a very important realization.

In talking to Abby, I realized something tangential in the equation: the person I describe as the mother of the child, the person who pays the greatest price for the abortion, I saw as just a secondary factor. That’s just a form of contempt. I had to admit that myself I hadn’t completely resolved it. And that’s another gift from Abby.

But probably the biggest one I’ve received from Abby is changing my stereotyping of progressive activists. I always tried to manage that, and I wasn’t successful, but I’m almost there due to my friendship with Abby. I’m a more whole person and truer to the gospel. Christ maintained his hold on the truth but also did not have any contempt for those around him. I want to be more Christ-like, and Abby is helping me to be more Christlike.

CT: Wow. That’s great.

AD: Wow, that is great! I would never imagine that a friendship would have come up like this. I may have walked into the first meeting viewing Rob as anti-woman. Maybe I wasn’t as interested in him as I was in what he was carrying with him. But I felt almost like “Wait, we speak similarly—how is that possible when we’re on the opposite sides of things? How is it possible that we think alike?” That’s a revolution, when you realize that.

After all my conflict resolution classes, studying women in the peace movement, I realized that peace is all about relationships. It doesn’t just happen. You have to choose it; you have to make it. It’s been the most pleasant surprise to find a friend in the midst of all this.

CT: The Armor of Light is kind of a unique film, in that it presents evangelicals as intelligent, smart, relatable, and principled. How did you approach that challenge?

AD: Rob told me about how he came from a progressive, even liberal family. And I totally related. We’ve had those similar Thanksgiving dinner-table experiences, where you learn to carry love in your heart for someone you truly disagree with. Not a lot of us do that.

RS: That’s why, while I consider friendship with Lucy [McBath] to be of great importance and value in every way, it’s very different: Lucy and I come from the same faith realm. Lucy is a born-again Christian, even if we disagree on the pro-choice question. That was another friendship that came out of this project. And really, it was Lucy pulled me across the decision line. That’s an important relationship to me.

Jeff Hutchens

Rob Schenck and Lucy McBath in ‘The Armor of Light’

CT: You can see that in your conversation with her in the film, when she’s pleading with you to consider what’s at stake with the issue of guns. I saw the film months ago, but that part really stuck with me.

Why Make a Movie?

CT: Lots of people have written books and articles on this very subject, but you made a film instead. What do you think is the value of using the medium of film? What about film itself makes it an effective way to explore this issue?

AD: I grew up in a filmmaking family, of course, so I thought about the medium. You think you can fit so much into a film—but you really can’t. Films aren’t about information. The most effective documentaries are stories. They're like a ride: you have to get on and let it take you where it wants to take you. Think about how you feel in a dark theater, when you're not even conscious of your physical body—it’s like a dream starts. Your heart opens up during a good film in a way that’s so powerful. It’s not persuasion; it’s something more. It’s a holy power, a holy gift to do that, and I hate seeing it used for stupidity.

I’ve been writing, I’ve been speaking, I’ve been trying to be a persuader for all of my life, to change the way people think. Then I made a film in my late 40s and thought, “Why wasn’t I doing this all of my life?” So, of course it had to be a film, and maybe a book, and possibly more. But we start with the film, because it engages the user’s moral and creative imaginations.

At the same time, we had the potential to make a really boring film. If it’s all too much in your brain, it’ll fail. So we had to find a way to get people to really respond and feel everything, to respond with an emotional and conscious response. That took a lot of good cinematography. We paid a lot of attention to how it was shot. As important as emotional response is, the beauty of the film will also invite you in, as will the editing and the music. It’s meant to wrap people up with whatever beautiful blanket you want to wrap them up in. We were really proud that we were able to do that.

RS: You know, a few times along the way, Abby alluded to the feeling that some things were being orchestrated and delivered to the project. I like to think of that as providential. Abby, I don’t think you were conscious of Jeff’s [Hutchens, the film’s cinematographer] family background, were you?

AD: Not at all!

RS: Our primary cinematographer had had deep evangelical roots, even though he doesn’t identify as an evangelical. Abby had a very expansive, generous attitude towards evangelicals, and Jeff thoroughly understood the culture, so he effectively moved through the scenery. Not only was he fully knowledgeable about that culture, he was fully comfortable in that setting. I think it added something.

On Fear

CT: A few weeks ago, Marilynne Robinson wrote about Christianity and fear for the New York Review of Books: "First, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind." President Obama read the piece and went to Iowa, and there they had a conversation about fear, guns, and a lot more. What do you think about that statement—and as you travel around the country talking to evangelical leaders, Rob, do you see fear as the primary factor in the conversation?

Jeff Hutchens

Rev. Rob Schenck in ‘The Armor of Light’

RS: I have not yet read the piece, but from what you said, I applaud [Robinson] for pointing out the problem of fear; if it’s not the central problem, then it’s very close to the central problem. Fear, in many ways, is the antithesis of faith. Faith inspires confidence and personal security. It doesn’t happen instantaneously—fear is human, and it’s natural. Jesus experienced it in his humanity, in the Garden of Gethsemane.

We’re never going to vanquish fear, but we need to identify it for what it is. I believe its presence, in such a pronounced way, in the evangelical community is because of fearmongering that’s been happening for the last twenty years, on a mass scale. If it isn’t a massive prediction about the end times and prophecy, it’s the fixation with persecution—which we know almost nothing of in this country; there’s a lot of talk of persecution and comparing persecutions, but if you compare us with other countries, it’s no such thing here. It’s an imagined state, and it doesn’t really exist.

But people literally profit from it. I know this because of my own personal experience. When we raise funds for our organization, we hear that the best way to raise money is to instill fear and anger. If we can get people angry, we will raise more money. It’s not just done in the Christian world, not just in conservative fundraising—it’s everywhere! Literally billions of dollars are raised by this tactic of fear and anger.

Fear doesn’t just help people raise funds. It also builds audiences, whether it’s readership, listenership, or viewership. If you make someone afraid, you will get their attention in a very unique and effective way.

This has been fostered for a long time, and it goes right back to the gun question. Why are Christians arming up? They are afraid that someone is coming for them. I even know of some pastors who are carrying (guns) onto the pulpit. One of them told me, “If somebody comes into my church and tries something, they’ll regret it, because I’ll take them out straight from the pulpit.”

That kind of thought introduces a huge problem for the testimony of the Gospel, but that’s all driven by fear. And fear is driven by other elements. Fear of the other is the fuel. But as Jesus tells us many times, the Gospel is the antidote to fear.

The Armor of Light is currently touring the United States (schedule at the website) and will be released theatrically on October 30.

Alissa Wilkinson is Christianity Today’s chief film critic and an assistant professor of English and humanities at The King’s College in New York City. She writes widely on pop culture and religion and is the co-author, with Robert Joustra, of How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World (Eerdmans, 2016). She tweets @alissamarie.

Pastors

The State of My Pastorate

The pastorate is changing. How is it changing you?

In conjunction with our most recent print issue of Leadership Journal, which explores The State of the Pastorate, we’re featuring a series of personal essays by pastors answering one question: what is the current state of your pastorate?

Each entry represents the unique viewpoint and concerns of an individual pastor in a particular context. While the accounts may vary, all represent the current state of God’s work in the world through his church and those who lead it.

John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California: "Preaching Spit and Polish"

Doug Resler, senior pastor of Parker Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Parker, Colorado: "A Hazardous Duty"

Joe Thorn, lead pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in St. Charles, Illinois: "The Weight and Wait of Ministry"

Kevin Nguyen, campus pastor at Saddleback Church, Irvine (California) South Campus: "Reloading Our Leadership Team."

Linda A. Wurzbacher, pastor of Blessed Hope Community Church in Rochester, New York: "Technology Has Changed My Role as Pastor"

Name Withheld, pastor of a church in Alabama: "Pastoring Racists"

Heather Larson, executive pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois: "The Power of Leading by Influence"

News

First Day of Prayer Draws Debate in One of Africa’s Christian Nations

Morgan Lee

President of Zambia seeks solution to economic problems. Christians debate whether motive matters.

Chola Kunkuta / Facebook

Home of the “world’s worst currency” and a sputtering economy, Zambia needed a national day of prayer. At least, its new president decided it did. So last Sunday, the southwestern African nation had its first.

"I wish to thank the Almighty God for allowing us to assemble and observe the day of repentance, reconciliation, prayer, and fasting,” said Edgar Lungu in his public address. “I personally believe that since we humbled ourselves as a people and have sincerely cried out to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he has heard our cry, has forgiven our sins, and will surely heal our land.”

Zambia, regarded as missionary David Livingstone's greatest legacy, is officially a Christian nation. But it isn't always heaven on earth.

Lungu assumed office in January after his predecessor’s death. Since that time, the price of copper, one of Zambia’s main exports, has consistently fallen. Water shortages caused by drought have crippled the country’s hydropower plants—at times by cutting power for more than half the day, Bloomberg News reported. The bad weather has also hurt the corn crop, which has driven up inflation. In this year alone, Zambia’s currency has dropped nearly 50 percent against the US dollar.

“Only Jesus Christ, the son of God, can resolve the energy crisis overnight because the people in [the ruling Patriot Front party] are not supernatural beings,” said chief government spokesperson Chishimba Kambwili as reported by The Post. Lungu called for bars and restaurants to be shut down and soccer games to be cancelled during the day of prayer.

Lungu’s declaration was backed by the country’s Catholic, mainline, and evangelical groups.

"We congratulate President Lungu for putting God as number one in his life. He has shown it, and may kings respect him," bishop Peter Ndhlovu of the Bible Gospel Church in Africa told the Times of Zambia.

Leaders from the Council of Churches in Zambia authored an op-ed for the Zambian Watchdog offering “prayerful reflection” on why Zambians should be repenting and fasting.

“Even if we are badly hurt by the disrespect, poverty, a weak kwacha [the local currency], load shedding, and general distress in our midst, even if we hope and pray that this Day of Repentance, Fasting, and Prayer will be part of a turnaround, of God lifting us up again, even then, we still can and should thank God, since our whole life should be a life of thanksgiving,” they wrote.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ) also praised the movement. "The event was successful as people gathered. We received reports of people gathering in different places across the country who braved the sun to participate in the day of prayer and fasting," EFZ executive director Pukuta Mwanza told the Times of Zambia.

But Zambia opposition party leader Hakainde Hichilema criticized Lungu’s proclamation as “not genuine,” and listed issues the government should confront before calling for prayer and reconciliation. "Prayers and reconciliation for some of us who are believers and regularly attend church service in our Christian nation is a major undertaking and we do this with very genuine intentions," he wrote in an op-ed for the Lusaka Voice. "It is clear to us that there is an attempt to abrogate commandment 3 [don't take the Lord's name in vain] with regard to the call for a dedicated day of prayers and reconciliation."

One Anglican priest said God will punish Lungu and his team if the declaration was not done in good faith. “When you declare a day of prayers, you must indicate your intentions. Why are you calling for those prayers?” Richard Luonde said in an interview with the Zambian Watchdog. “If you are a sincere man of God, it will not be up to you to declare that you are religious, people will declare you to be religious."

Vice president Sunday Chanda defended the proclamation in the Lusaka Voice, arguing that other countries, including the United States, “have embraced the national day of prayer beyond partisan, religious, and other divides.”

Zambia is 68 percent Protestant and 21 percent Catholic, according to the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project. Zambia's constitution states that Christianity is the country’s official religion, though a later amendment guarantees freedom of religion for all.

But not everyone believes that the country takes its faith seriously; in 2000, CT reported that “eight years after Zambia became a Christian nation, the title is not convincing.”

Among CT's past coverage of Zambia is an in-depth report on how it became “one African nation under God.”

[Photo courtesy of Chola Kunkuta -Facebook]

- More from Morgan Lee

News

20 Questions: What Evangelicals Think of GMOs, Genetics, Fracking, and More

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

New Pew survey explores attitudes on science, including experimental drugs, animal testing, and space exploration.

Mihai Bojin / Flickr

For most churchgoers, faith doesn’t conflict with science, according to the latest survey from the Pew Research Center. In fact, most of the time, religious affiliation doesn’t affect how Americans view scientific topics.

“Our analysis points to only a handful of areas where people’s religious beliefs and practices have a strong connection to their views about science topics,” lead author Cary Funk stated, “and a surprising number of topics where religious differences do not play a central role in explaining their beliefs.”

Other factors that likely play a bigger part: gender, age, race, and education.

Here’s how white evangelicals, black Protestants (two-thirds of whom identify as evangelicals, according to Pew), and Americans who attend religious services weekly feel about 20 science topics:

1. Two-thirds of black Protestants (68%) said genetically modified foods are unsafe, slightly higher than weekly worshipers (60%) and substantially higher than white evangelicals (50%). But 7 in 10 in each group feel that scientists don’t have a clear understanding on the health risks of genetically modified crops.

2. Black Protestants are also more wary of foods grown with pesticides. A full 83 percent said pesticides were generally unsafe, nearly 15 percentage points higher than weekly worshipers (69%) and more than 20 percentage points higher than white evangelicals (62%).

3. The majority of adults (59%) are worried there won’t be enough goods and resources for the growing global population. Weekly worshipers (51%), white evangelicals (47%), and black Protestants (38%) are less concerned. Black Protestants are most likely (60%) to say humans will find a way to stretch natural resources to accommodate everyone.

4. Human astronauts are essential to the future of the space program, said nearly 6 in 10 white evangelicals (59%) and weekly worshipers (56%). Black Protestants (47%) were less convinced.

5. A full 60 percent of black Protestants oppose allowing people to access experimental drugs before the pills are proven to be safe and effective, far more than white evangelicals (42%). Weekly worshipers are evenly split on the issue (49% in favor; 48% opposed).

6. More than four in five Americans (83%) are opposed to the genetic modification of babies to improve their intelligence. White evangelicals (90%), black Protestants (88%), and weekly worshippers (88%) are even more united in their opinion that this takes medical advances too far.

7. Modifying a baby’s intelligence is one thing; altering genes to reduce the risk of serious disease is another. More than one-third of white evangelicals (34%), weekly worshipers (35%), and black Protestants (37%) think this is an appropriate use of medical advances.

8. About one-third of black Protestants (31%) said using bioengineering to make artificial organs for transplant is going too far, slightly more than weekly worshippers (29%) and white evangelicals (27%). Just 2 in 10 infrequent worshipers (19%) feel the same way.

9. About half of American adults (50%), white evangelicals (49%), and weekly worshipers (45%) favor using animals in scientific research. Just 4 in 10 black Protestants (40%) agree.

10. About 7 in 10 Americans (68%), black Protestants (67%), and weekly worshipers (70%) favor requiring childhood vaccinations. Fewer white evangelicals (59%) agree.

11. White evangelicals have the lowest opposition (35%) to the increased use of fracking to extract oil and natural gas, about ten percentage points lower than black Protestants (44%). Those who attend worship services weekly are less likely to oppose fracking (45%) than those who attend less frequently (53%).

12. White evangelicals (70%) and weekly worshipers (57%) are more likely to favor allowing more offshore drilling for oil and gas in US waters, compared with about half (52%) of all Americans and just 46 percent of black Protestants.

13. About half of Americans (51%) and weekly worshipers (47%) oppose building more nuclear power plants to generate electricity. White evangelicals are about ten percentage points less opposed (39%), and black Protestants are about ten percentage points more opposed (65%) to the idea.

14. Almost everybody is on board with the increased use of bioengineered fuel alternatives to gasoline: 68 percent of US adults, 67 percent of weekly worshipers, and 66 percent of white evangelicals agree. Black Protestants agree, too, but less heartily (57%).

15. Almost 4 in 10 white evangelicals (37%) said there is no solid evidence for global warming, compared with 28 percent of weekly worshipers and 20 percent of black Protestants. Of the three groups, black Protestants are most likely to pin blame for global warming on human activity (56%), compared to weekly worshipers (42%) or white evangelicals (28%). White evangelicals are also far more likely (47%) to say that scientists don’t agree on global warming than black Protestants (33%) or weekly worshipers (38%).

16. About twice as many white evangelicals (60%) as Americans (31%) say humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Black Protestants and weekly worshipers are nearly evenly split, with slightly more black Protestants saying that humans evolved (49%) and slightly more weekly worshipers saying that humans always existed in this form (49%). Of the white evangelicals and weekly worshipers who said humans evolved over time, two-thirds said that the process was guided by a supreme being, while one-third said it was due to natural processes. Black Protestants were nearly split again, with slightly more favoring guidance by a supreme being.

17. Most adults (66%) and black Protestants (63%) say that scientists agree on evolution, while white evangelicals are split on the issue (49% say scientists do not agree; 46 percent say they do). Weekly worshipers are much more likely to say scientists disagree (39%) than those who attend less often (23%).

18. Nearly 7 in 10 white evangelicals say scientists are divided on the origins of the universe, more than weekly worshipers (62%) or black Protestants (58%), and far more than American adults at large (52%).

19. Roughly 6 in 10 white evangelicals (63%) and 7 in 10 weekly worshipers said that government investment in basic science, engineering, and technology pays off in the long run. Black Protestants felt that engineering and technology (77%) were more worthy of such investment than basic science (69%).

20. About half of white evangelicals (51%) said that government funding is essential to ensure that scientific progress is made. Black Protestants (61%) and weekly worshipers (58%) were even more supportive.

CT previously reported on the primary finding of Pew's latest report: churchgoers are least likely to see religion and science in conflict.

- More from Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

Books

Excerpt

Billy Graham: Why Linger in the Land of the Dying?

Billy Graham

An excerpt from “Where I Am: Heaven, Eternity, and Our Life Beyond.”

Jon Bilous / Shutterstock

Those who keep Heaven in view experience joy, even in the midst of trouble.

Where I Am: Heaven, Eternity, and Our Life Beyond

Billy Graham (Author), Franklin Graham (Foreword)

Thomas Nelson

256 pages

$15.43

This was never more evident than with my friend Billie Barrows, especially in the months leading up to her death. Cliff and Billie Barrows joined me in ministry while on their honeymoon in 1945. It was the beginning of a long and joyful friendship. Cliff directed our music, and Billie played the piano in those early days.

After forty-nine years of marriage and service together with our team, Billie Barrows transcended this life into eternity. I cannot help but think of the powerful words widely attributed to John Newton as he lay on his deathbed. Someone asked him, “Are you still with us?” Newton whispered, “I am still in the land of the dying, but soon, I shall be in the land of the living!”

You see, death for the Christian is just the entryway to eternity, where the eternal God welcomes us in. The Bible says, “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).

Ruth and I visited the Barrows in their home shortly before Billie’s death. They were expecting their children home for a few days of reunion. Billie knew she did not have long on this earth.

I stayed downstairs with Cliff as he fixed lunch, while Ruth went upstairs with Billie, who had been preparing some of the children’s rooms. She was so happy and filled with joy as she anticipated her children’s visit.

How much more does our heavenly Father anticipate His children’s homecoming? Our imaginations simply cannot comprehend the grandeur of this wonderful home, a place of everlasting joy, contentment, and peace.

How can we ever begin to know the rejoicing that will take place when the Lord brings all of us home in immortal bodies? The morning stars will sing together and the angels will shout for glory. Think of having complete fulfillment, knowing that our homecoming brings unspeakable joy to our wonderful Lord! So why do we prefer lingering here? Because we are not only earthbound in body; we are earthbound in our thinking. But when we leave this place, we will never dwell on it again. Our eyes and hearts will be fixed on Christ.

When we stand at the graveside of a loved one, we sorrow. But those united with Christ in death are also united with Him in the joy of resurrection. There was no joy at the tomb of Lazarus. It was a somber and woeful time—until Jesus arrived!

Words cannot describe the shock of seeing a dead man alive again—and the joy of knowing that we, too, shall one day hear the Lord Jesus call our names. Contemplate it for a moment and imagine hearing His voice speak your name. If that does not cause joy to bubble inside of you, it is doubtful anything else will.

Books

Chuck Colson Was Not a Culture Warrior

Owen Strachan

And anyway, he stopped “winning” his battles a long time ago.

Susan Walsh / AP Images

Winning,” football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing.” Chuck Colson was not much good at football, but he was good at winning. He puckishly turned down Harvard, excelled at Brown, became a Marine, worked for the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in procurement, had three lovely children, practiced lucrative law, and capped it all off by serving his country as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon (1969-73).

The Colson Way: Loving Your Neighbor and Living with Faith in a Hostile World

Owen Strachan (Author), Eric Metaxas (Foreword)

Thomas Nelson

240 pages

$9.54

This was an impressive winning streak, and he did it all by age 38. As a young man, Colson had already stockpiled a lifetime worth of achievement. In his black Brooks Brothers suits, he fit the profile of the classic D. C. powerbroker—young, influential, and untouchable. Until he wasn’t.

‘I Would Walk Over My Grandmother’

Colson played hardball. During his time in Nixon’s administration, he targeted the President’s enemies, at one point spearheading a smear campaign of Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the “Pentagon Papers.” The staffer became known as “Nixon’s hatchet man,” a sobriquet that followed him the rest of his life.

The hatchet man did not know it all, though. When Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published their Washington Post story about the break-in at the Watergate hotel in June 1972, Colson learned about it through the very same paper. Further revelations about Nixon’s team followed, including the taping of presidential conversations. Taken in concert with the Watergate burglary, this news drove public outcry against the President to fever pitch.

At this perilous time, Colson affirmed a reporter’s characterization from a week-old story: “Last week’s UPI story that I was once reported to have said that ‘I would walk over my grandmother if necessary’ is absolutely accurate.” This bold self-description would come back to haunt Colson in spades—and it helped end his prodigious winning streak.

In the summer of 1973, with the press still simmering over Watergate, Colson drove with his wife, Patty, to the Massachusetts coast. He visited a friend named Tom Phillips, CEO of Raytheon. In conversation with Phillips, Colson attempted a meager defense of himself. Phillips would have none of it. “If you had put your faith in God, and if your cause were just, he would have guided you. And his help would have been a thousand times more powerful than all your phony ads and shady schemes put together.”

Thrown off balance, Colson listened as Phillips read C. S. Lewis and shared the gospel with him. His simple testimony crashed into Colson’s defenses. After leaving his friend’s house, Colson began weeping so hard that he could not drive. He was undone, in the language of Isaiah, and he cried out to Christ for forgiveness. Against the odds, Chuck Colson had become a Christian.

Little did he know how much he would need his newfound faith. Not long after this moment, in July 1974, Colson stood before a Washington judge. He was sentenced to three years in prison. In September 1974, he entered the prison camp at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

Colson’s time in jail was not easy. The air was foul. At night, many fellow convicts struggled to sleep. He watched as inmates fought one another to no purpose, and he struggled to experience spiritual health in this deadened environment. In January 1975, Colson received incredible news: He was released from jail. He returned to everyday life and puzzled at his future. As he prayed, Colson could not shake an emerging, and surprising, conviction. He felt that he should launch an effort to help prisoners. You could say it like this: As soon as he got out of prison, Chuck Colson went right back in.

‘Against the World for the World’

Colson threw himself into his newfound mission. He never went half-speed. As Michael Cromartie, Ethics and Public Policy Center vice president, told me, “Chuck thought like a Calvinist but worked like an Arminian.” Not many of the high and mighty would voluntarily—enthusiastically—return to the scene of their public humiliation to share the gospel with the malformed and forgotten. But Colson did.

Prison Fellowship formally incorporated in 1976. Initially, Colson funded it with royalties from his book Born Again. He soon added staff and initiatives. Justice Fellowship focused on prison reform. Angel Tree facilitated the giving of gifts to children of inmates. (President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, participated in the program). The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, now led by John Stonestreet, enabled Colson to comment on cultural trends and featured the radio show BreakPoint, which over 1,400 stations carried by 2010. Colson worked closely with friends like Timothy George, Carl F. H. Henry, and David Dockery in this multi-colored tapestry of ministry. He and George co-wrote a popular Christianity Today column for several years. Everything Colson did, it seems, expanded.

Colson’s public-square work offers modern evangelicals a workable model. Initially, Colson considered himself contra mundum, “against the world,” as a believer. He wished to stand against evil. He never lost this vital perspective, but his friend, First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus, suggested Colson tweak the self-descriptor. The Christian, he said, is contra mundum pro mundo, “against the world for the world,” an elegant and accurate summation of evangelical engagement with a fallen order. The believer, and particularly the public-square witness, opposes evil, but does so not to defeat opponents or gobble up cultural territory. We are against the world out of love, seeking always to win lost friends to Christ and usher them into flourishing.

This is the key to understanding Colson. It differentiates him from the “culture warrior” label that is sometimes affixed to him. Colson was not a culture warrior; he was a Christian witness. In his mind, when he spoke against recidivism or postmodern amorality, when he created new projects to promote a united front against cultural decline, and when he talked quietly with a wayward person about the effects of sin and the reality of damnation, he was opposing evil out of love for neighbor. You could read Chuck Colson as an agent of the “religious right” or the “Moral Majority,” but in truth, he was in but not of these groups. Like his hero, William Wilberforce, he was against the world for the world.

What Victory Really Means

For all this work, Colson won the Templeton Prize for progress in religion in 1993. By the time his life ended in 2012, his investments had paid off. Amidst a panoply of projects, the core of Colson’s work was this: talking with prisoners about redemption. Over and over again, Colson entered prison cells and shared his conversion story. His hearers responded. The inmates of famously hostile Angola Prison so embraced Colson that they made a wooden coffin for him upon his death, as Colson's pastor Hayes Wicker revealed in an interview.

Some onlookers disliked Colson’s work and doubted his motives. One person who had every reason to do so was Bob Woodward, the journalist who had essentially ended Colson’s winning streak. In 2012, Woodward gave remarkable testimony to his transformation: “When Colson went to prison, he experienced, I think, a really genuine conversion and devoted himself to prisoners and prison reform. In a way you can’t question [him] because you talk to people in the prison reform movement and Chuck Colson is a god.” In the eyes of Woodward and others, Colson really had changed in the 1970s. Something had happened to him, something profound. Colson was not a “god,” but he met God. He was never the same.

Chuck Colson, like many a red-blooded American, loved winning. His understanding of success changed greatly during his life, however. It was only when he lost, and lost in spectacular fashion, that he tasted what victory really means.

Owen Strachan is the author of The Colson Way: Loving Your Neighbor and Living with Faith in a Hostile World (Thomas Nelson). He is a professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

- More from Charles Colson

Your Husband’s Infidelity Is Not Your Fault

Julie Roys, guest writer

Adultery comes from a greedy heart, not an insufficient wife.

TLC

Though in many ways polar opposites, reality TV stars Khloe Kardashian and Anna Duggar are receiving similar messages about their husbands’ infidelity from two radically different sources: a pimp and a Christian matriarch.

For Kardashian, the message came from Dennis Hof, owner of the brothel where her estranged husband, former NBA standout Lamar Odom, was found unconscious last week after ingesting cocaine, alcohol, and herbal sexual stimulants. “If she really cared about this man,” Hof said, “he wouldn’t be at my place with my girls.” This, even though Odom’s relationship with drugs and prostitutes predates his relationship with Khloe Kardashian.

For Duggar, the remarks weren’t as direct. Following the Ashley Madison leak, her husband, Josh, admitted to several affairs and a porn addiction. Then, the Duggars’ family pastor in Arkansas addressed the leak in a sermon on infidelity. “If a husband or wife fails to keep his or her partner happy sexually they are opening themselves up to the attack of the enemy,” he said. “And that enemy is going to take your spouse away from you.”

A recent blog post from Anna Duggar’s mother-in-law Michelle carries that implication. When asked to share marital advice, the mom of 19 said that wives should always be available to meet their husbands’ sexual needs, even when they are exhausted or pregnant. “He can get his lunch somewhere else,” Duggar wrote. “But you are the only one who can meet that special need that he has in his life for intimacy…. So be available, and not just available, but be joyfully available for him. Smile and be willing to say, ‘Yes, sweetie I am here for you,’ no matter what.”

Normally I ignore dramas involving reality TV stars. I’ve never watched Keeping up with the Kardashians or the Duggar’s former TLC show, 19 Kids and Counting. However, these stories caught my attention because I have heard this blame-the-wife rationale expressed both inside and outside the church.

Of course, no one but Michelle knows how she intended her advice. If her words were offered innocently, she should say so and apologize for her insensitivity and bad timing. But it’s ludicrous to believe that Anna was responsible for Josh’s immorality. He admitted to molesting five girls when he was a teenager, including two of his sisters. Like Odom, Josh Duggar’s issues began before his relationship with Anna.

Even if both these men had squeaky clean backgrounds prior to marriage, the idea that their wives bear responsibility for their infidelity can be found nowhere in Scripture. Instead, this narrative seems a horribly misogynistic strategy to use fear of infidelity to compel women to submit to their husband’s sexual advances, regardless of their feelings or physical limitations. This has nothing to do with Christian marriage, and actually violates the nature of marriage itself.

His Sin, His Responsibility

Blaming a woman for a man’s sin is as old as the Garden of Eden. When God confronted Adam for eating the apple, Adam immediately blamed Eve. “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Here, Adam is speaking truthfully: Eve had sinned first and given Adam the apple to eat. Scripture doesn’t indicate that Eve’s sin, which certainly influenced Adam, absolves him of responsibility. On the contrary, God curses both, showing that each is responsible for his or her own behavior.

Psalm 62:12 says, “You reward everyone according to what they have done.” This is repeated in Proverbs 24:12: “Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?” And again, in Romans 2:6-8: “God ‘will repay each person according to what they have done.’” Clearly, no amount of mitigating circumstances changes our personal responsibility for our sin.

Lust Is Insatiable

One of the prostitutes whom Odom hired said she was summoned to his room six times in one day, and Odom reportedly ingested several doses of so-called “performance enhancing supplements.” And Duggar not only reportedly had numerous sexual encounters with a prostitute and sought other women on Ashley Madison, but also confessed to indulging in pornography. This seemingly insatiable appetite for sex is common among men who stray because they have exchanged lust for love as the purpose of sex. And, like all sin, the more lust is indulged, the less it satisfies.

“Lust is not the result of an overactive sex drive,” says pastor and author Richard Exley. “If it were, then it could be satisfied with a sexual experience, like a glass of water quenches thirst or a good meal satisfies appetite. But the more we attempt to appease our lust, the more demanding it becomes. There simply is not enough erotica in the world to satisfy lust’s insatiable appetite.”

This is why wives simply offering sex as frequently as their husbands request it does not ensure fidelity. In fact, this practice may exacerbate the lust problem. 2 Peter 2 says those who have “eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin” also have “hearts trained in greed.” Adultery, then, results from a greedy heart, not an insufficient wife.

Any solutions to adultery must address the husband’s problem rather divert attention to the wife he’s betrayed. The husband needs to learn to follow Christ’s example and cherish his wife as his beloved. This means respecting her own desires and being more eager to give than to receive.

Loving Relationship, Not a Service Contract

In Michelle Duggar’s framework, marriage sounds like some kind of service agreement where a wife offers her husband sex and in return, he offers her a listening ear. “He will sit there and listen to everything I need to tell him because he knows that I’m there for him, too,” Duggar wrote. “I’m meeting his needs, he’s meeting my needs.” However, Scripture presents us with a different view of marriage and sex.

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul teaches that husbands and wives should maintain a regular sexual relationship and that their bodies belong to each other. Sex is described as mutually giving—not as something the wife one-sidedly performs for her husband in return for something else. That’s because marriage is supposed to reflect the life and love of the Trinity. Genesis 1:27 describes the husband and wife as made in the image of God. And, theologians have traditionally understood the two becoming one reflects Trinitarian life and love. The marital embrace is meant to be mutually self-giving and affectionate, perhaps the closest approximation of Trinitarian love that we know. To describe marital relations as a service agreement, then, is reductionist and perverse.

Certainly, each marriage is unique. But, as a rule, when husbands focus on loving their wives “as Christ loved the church,” women respond in kind and sex becomes a beautiful reflection of mutual love. If we truly want to reduce adultery, we need to emphasize God’s design for sexuality and marriage, not infuse women with fear of not performing adequately for their husbands. This message not only victimizes women, it also excuses sin and perverts the meaning of marriage.

Julie Roys hosts a national talk show on the Moody Radio Network called Up For Debate. She also writes for various Christian periodicals, blogs at www.julieroys.com, and speaks on life issues, gender and sexuality, motherhood, and the intersection of faith and politics. Julie and her husband live in the Chicago suburbs and have three children.

This article was originally published as part of Her.Meneutics, Christianity Today's blog for women.

- More from Julie Roys, guest writer

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Let the Lion Out

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Prepping beyond just this week

The painful side of preaching spit and polish

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The Genesis of the Project

Friendship and Choosing Peace

Why Make a Movie?

On Fear

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Where I Am: Heaven, Eternity, and Our Life Beyond

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The Colson Way: Loving Your Neighbor and Living with Faith in a Hostile World

‘I Would Walk Over My Grandmother’

‘Against the World for the World’

What Victory Really Means

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His Sin, His Responsibility

Lust Is Insatiable

Loving Relationship, Not a Service Contract

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