Kevin DeYoung’s brave piece “Stop the Revolution. Join the
Plodders” gained considerable attention, but not nearly as much
discerning pushback from Reformed folk as it should have. I need to say a few
words about it, especially because it concerns a very careless, but
common, fallacy that destroys the true meaning and mission of this thing
called “the church.”
I want to draw your attention
to a particular fallacy that surfaces multiple times in the piece. There are
multiple fallacies that more discerning Reformed folk should be howling about
across social media—straw men, epithets, equivocations, poisoning the well—but
worst of all are the repeated examples of false dichotomy. These are worst not
only for their content, but also for their presupposition. They arise from an
entrenched two-kingdoms dichotomy which keeps the evangelical industrial
complex going.
Remember, it was not so long
ago that DeYoung got candid as to why he likes “two kingdoms” theology: it
provides, in his words, “a bulwark against theonomy and reconstructionism.”
And how does it do this? DeYoung doesn’t tell us so much as show us in this
latest piece. Just witness the fallacies:
It’s sexy among young people—my
generation—to talk about ditching institutional religion and starting a
revolution of real Christ-followers living in real community without the
confines of church.
Notice how the two choices are
structured here: either “real Christ-followers living in real community” or
“the confines of the church.”
Problem: A group of “real
Christ followers living in community” IS the church. In order for
DeYoung’s statement to remain coherent, the implication would have to be true:
anyone engaged in a more flexible ecclesiology than DeYoung’s
four-walls-on-Sunday model is by definition not “the church.” Next:
What the church and the world
needs, we imagine, is for us to be another Bono—Christian, but more spiritual
than religious and more into social justice than the church.
Notice the choices he presents:
emphasize either “social justice” or “the church.”
Problem: social justice (truly
conceived) is a mission of the church. It is not either-or, it is both. If the
church isn’t speaking to issues of social justice, it has neglected a huge
chunk of the Word. Then, only pagans will be addressing these issues, and
you’ll have a pagan-raped society, which is exactly what he have thanks to the
denuded, bifurcated pulpits DeYoung here represents.
The church’s failure in this
area is precisely why church and society are both in such a mess, precisely why
the young people leave the church in droves, and precisely why the Christians
like Bono end up being the ones who have to carry the message of social change.
If, tomorrow, God gave me a
choice to spend the rest of my life serving the ministry of either Bono or
Kevin DeYoung, there is no question whom I would choose. Bono, at least, has
shown himself capable of learning the biblical teaching on
some social issues. I’d go with Bono (and I don’t even really like his music).
Social justice is a calling of
the body of Christ as a community of faithful believers. If your church is not
preaching, teaching, and its members are not engaged, in some work for justice,
you ought to question as to whether that church even still has its lamp stand.
Next:
Until we are content with being
one of the million nameless, faceless church members and not the next
globe-trotting rock star, we aren’t ready to be a part of the church.
Notice the dichotomy: either
“nameless faceless” or “globe-trotting rock star.” Only the former can be part
of the church (which implies the latter are damned to hell?).
Problem: the church includes
all people of all walks of life, all social classes, and many callings
of varied sizes, shapes, and scopes. Setting one against the other is
irresponsible, especially when membership within the body of Christ is attached
to the criteria. Nameless, faceless people can still be engaged in all kinds of
social issues based upon biblical law and a spiritual, God-given,
“Gospel saturated” calling. DeYoung’s fallacy hides this option from his
readers, and labels all such would-be Christians as egomaniacal, wannabe rock
stars who are outside “the church.” Shameful.
Next:
The church is not an incidental
part of God’s plan. Jesus didn’t invite people to join an anti-religion,
anti-doctrine, anti-institutional bandwagon of love, harmony, and
re-integration.
Likewise, “The visible church
is for you and me. Put away the Che Guevara t-shirts, stop the revolution, and
join the rest of the plodders.”
Notice the dichotomy: either
“the church” (as DeYoung envisions it) or you must be “anti-religion,
anti-doctrine, anti-institutional bandwagon of love, harmony, and
re-integration.” Either “visible church” (DeYoung’s brand) or else you’re a
boneheaded, clueless liberal in a “Che Guevara t-shirt.”
That’s the greatest problem in
all of this: DeYoung’s view of “the church” is not just “visible” and
“institutional,” it is a very limited, gelded, bound version of it. For him it
seems that “church” in all its traditional “confines” means “church building”
and “what we do between 11 and 12:30 on Sundays.” Everything else—work,
government, social justice, charity, art, and apparently even Bono—is outside
the church.
This is a message I have been
combatting for a long time now. I even just gave two lectures in Australia and
Tasmania on this very topic. I need to write more on it as well as make those
lectures available soon. Let this suffice for now:
We use the word “church” in
multiple ways, but more often than not we (as DeYoung here personifies) use it
to mean “church building,” “church meeting on Sunday,” or possibly “church
government (i.e., her officers and their decisions; i.e. the church establishment.”
But these are not only highly limited views, they have grown complacent,
truncated, and in some cases, corrupt. In the Bible, the most important view of
“church” is that of the body of Christ made up of all believers in all times
and places.
When I say that social justice
is a mission of the church, I do not mean that we replace corporate worship
with rallies for some social cause—although the pulpits ought to address such
issues far more than they do. What I mean, however, is that the members of the
body of Christ (“the church” in its fullest and most important sense) should be
building and exercising their faith in such a way as to apply God’s word to
every area of life. This would include business, education, social justice,
criminal defense, criminal justice reform, racism, and on and on—issues that
are central to God’s law and often in the early church’s mission in the
book of Acts.
When DeYoung keeps bifurcating between “the church” and all these other
things, he is severing the legs from the body of Christ and limiting its
mission to sitting for sermons and corporate worship on Sundays (and Sunday
school, “VBS,” and the other trappings of American churchianity, administered
by the establishment). DeYoung says he wants plodders, but he really wants
sitters. Anything else he labels a revolutionary with Che t-shirt.
It’s simply time for Christians to explode this myth. If you are a
Christian, you are part of “the church” no matter where you are or what you are
doing, at all times and in all places. You ought to be carrying out the great
commission in obedience and teaching (where appropriate and applicable) at all
times. Whenever any leader in “the church” speaks as if we must neglect all
those things in order to make “the church” what it ought to be—four walls and
corporate worship on Sundays—a chorus of rebuke ought to arise against that
person from a million knowledgeable members of the body of Christ. Or, if you
are the type who does not like the confrontation, simply ignore such a leader and
get on with the 99 percent of the rest of the work of the church which they
have so far neglected and destroyed.
