It’s important to remember that a good man can end badly. See Joash in 2 Chronicles 24, who “did what was right in the sight of the LORD all the days of Jehoiada the priest” (v. 2), which included zealously restoring the house of the LORD. “But after the death of Jehoiada the officials of Judah came and bowed down to the king, and the king listened to them” (v. 17). Joash ends up murdering Zechariah, the faithful prophet-son of Jehoiada the priest.
I think we often want to put men into simple categories of good guy and bad guy, and we want to be able to say, “Aha! I knew he was bad all along.” But how often do men start the race well and finish badly because of the many stumbling blocks of power, influence, and self-righteousness?
Sometimes, sure. Sadly, though, the warning signs often are glaring for years and decades prior to the point when even the sheep have their eyes opened. That pastors, elders, and boards of trustees refuse to act on those signs years earlier is unconscionable. Doing so might well have brought repentance and prevention of scandal among the sheep.
It always seemed to me that God’s officers think it is pious to avoid criticism of one another until the sheep force us to it, and then we think, “Well, now I guess I have to and no one will blame me.”
I remember one of our elders who had in the past been a season ticket holder to IU basketball responding to Coach Knight’s firing by Brand by saying, “Bobby was always a bully. If they had disciplined him for it years ago, he wouldn’t have had to come to this end.”
The vision behind Evangel Presbytery is our working together to save each man’s dignity by puncturing each man’s pride. Joke from an old CCM song. But seriously, having to defend ourselves—and not just our doctrine, but also our character—is good for us. Think of Calvin’s Company of Pastors telling the dude among them who was attracting all the young men aspiring to the office of pastor to come and hear him that he needed to stop preaching the way he was because it wasn’t simple and direct enough. Now that’s a presbytery. Love,
Absolutely. I think one of the reasons we like to put men into categories of good and bad is because we ourselves want to be able to think that we’re safe and that we don’t require examination.
It’s explicit in Joash’s case that much of his faithfulness was due to the presence of Jehoiada calling him to faithfulness as a king. We are all dependent on God keeping us in His path by using those around us who will question us and call us to faithfulness.
I’m not sure I put anyone into a category of good or back, but I used to think Mohler was generally safe; now I’d say he’s too proud to be safe and very possibly, based on this testimony which is ringing true of his present behavior, I think he may very well be the sort of double minded man that James warns us about.
When I was studying physics at high school, I was introduced to the idea of half-life; which measures how long it takes a radioactive object to lose half its radioactivity, which as a result declines slowly rather than in a straight line.
It’s also a good idea for understanding the effectiveness of religious institutions; they start off strongly, then that effectiveness peters out without ever actually getting to zero. I think that the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC delayed the inevitable, by about thirty years, but it hasn’t prevented it.
At a stab, I wonder if Mohler is seeing what is happening with the younger southern Baptists, and is trying to preserve his influence amongst them, rather than calling them to repentance … and being ignored as “yesterday’s man” as a result.
Seems that some have begun to see a pattern, at least in Southern Baptist institutions. The conclusion from the link below:
Christian institutions have already been accused of intellectual cowardice because of their refusal to stand up and be heard on highly salient public issues that most threaten the integrity of higher education today, and that directly impinge on their Christian identity — namely, today’s radical sexual ideology. It is no accident that most of these firings concern faculty who stand their ground on Christian sexual morality and take a public position on the current controversies. Having first abdicated their own responsibility, the institutions must then purge the faculty who demonstrate the embarrassing integrity to insist on doing their job.
All this casts into serious doubt on the claim of such institutions to be either Christian or academic at all and instead makes them appear as little more than employment schemes for diffident administrators and pliable faculty — or as one critic puts it, hedge funds “with classrooms attached.”
Ironically, this even blocks employees from invoking Matthew 18 as written or even calling attention to its subversion. The aim is not reconciling people who disagree, but eliminating them.
Does anyone know why Dr… Baskerville lost his position at Patrick Henry? My daughter is a sophomore there. I remember reading some of his writings a decade ago when he was writing on men’s rights in divorce proceedings.