Evidence piles up week by week demonstrating that reformed pastors of North America are fully agreed that people should not be considered criminals or shamed because of “who they love.” Covenant Seminary’s theology prof David Jones started the movement twenty years ago and it’s taken the Reformed church by storm.
How do Reformed pastors get away with this when a fair number of the sheep they pasture continue to be revulsed by the LGBTQ perversions? Why do their sheep continue to listen to them and pay them?
Pastors are sneaky. Adept with language, we specialize in keeping frogs in denominational and cultural kettles.
No man trained by Gordon-Conwell or Covenant is gauche enough to stand in the pulpit Sunday mornings announcing his apologies to gays and lesbians. Nothing that obvious.
Rather, in the pulpit we say we “believe” marriage should be “reserved” for one man and one woman. We suggest heterosexual marriage is “God’s best for human flourishing.”
This sounds perfectly Biblical to the sheep, so they nudge each other while nodding approvingly at their pastor. “In our liberal culture, isn’t it wonderful to have such a faithful man leading us?”
The pastor also says he is opposed to gay Christians having sex with each other, although generally speaking he doesn’t say this in the pulpit Sunday mornings. It’s reserved for private conversations and new membership classes—occasions when people have the nerve to ask him directly.
Again, to the sheep this sounds good. Our pastor is “firm” or “clear on homosexuality,” they say. “He makes no bones about marriage being reserved for men and women and gay sex being not God’s best.”
Biblically speaking though, this pastor is not faithful at all. He betrays sodomites and lesbians by abandoning them to their lusts and perversions. What’s the tell?
His language. Among those who use their tongue for a living, words have meanings and the choice of words says everything.
We could go on and on demonstrating Reformed pastors’ complete repudiation of the words of Scripture the Holy Spirit has inspired to warn and condemn the LGBTQ sexual perversions, but you all have ears. Listen for yourselves.
What is the point of claiming a high view of Scripture’s authority and inspiration if one refuses to wield the sword of the Spirit? Read Romans 1 or 1Corinthians 6 and try to find that language in your pastor’s preaching and teaching and writing. Gone. Absent. He doesn’t want anyone to call him a “hater.”
But instead of pointing out the abandonment of Scripture’s words, let’s look at the words pastors have chosen instead.
One phrase will do: “human flourishing.”
Reformed pastors up to their eyeballs in the precious language of Bryan Chapell, Al Mohler, Russ Moore, and that master of rhetoric to whom all men owe allegiance and obeisance, Tim Keller.
Until God’s people demand preachers who refuse to scratch their ears, God’s people will continue to have preachers who scratch their ears. But nothing could be worse for our souls and the souls of our loved ones. Nothing.
*****
Want more helpful direction on the LGBTQ issues, read The Grace of Shame. Want to know what other readers thought of it, check out The Grace of Shame’s page on Goodreads. As one of the authors, permit me to say the book has 69 ratings/reviews for an average of 4.8 (out of 5).
