Kevin DeYoung’s brave piece “Stop the Revolution. Join the
Plodders” gained considerable attention last week, 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 hackneyed fallacy
that destroys the true meaning and mission of this thing called “the church.”
Bojidar Marinov has already
eviscerated the propaganda pitch in
DeYoung’s piece. He is right. I don’t need to build on that. 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 the entrenched
two-kingdoms dichotomy that men like DeYoung depend upon to keep 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 that 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 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, then only pagans will be,
and you’ll have a pagan-raped society, which is exactly what he have thanks to
denuded, bifurcated pulpits DeYoung 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 can’t even stand 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 lampstand.
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.
