One of the biggest lies to come out of what is being called the “Emergent Church” movement is the notion that the church must be “culturally relevant” if it wants to reach our postmodern generation. Their argument is that as the culture changes we need to adapt our methods of presenting the gospel and even our language to reach a generation of people who are unfamiliar with the Evangelical Christian subculture. This is an extension of the work pioneered by the likes of Francis Schaeffer and his L’Abris Fellowship who tried to reach long-haired hippie-style “Jesus People” with his watered-down version of the gospel. Schaeffer taught that we need to engage the culture by understanding where it is coming from and pointing out where it is going. Unfortunately, he never identified the destination as “Hell in a hand basket.” Some misguided and impressionable preachers took these ideas to heart like Bill Hybels of Willow Creek who helped create the “seeker-sensitive” church model and Rick Warren who pioneered his Purpose Driven™ model of the church. Since that time, cultural drift continues to shunt America from being a culture that valued Christian separation to one the late Mike Yaconelli has written about that tries to keep pace with this changing culture.

The notion that we need to respond to the culture around us is a heresy that is designed to foster compromise of the truth. Let me state first of all that this idea is exactly backwards from the facts. The True Church has never been influenced by the culture. The True Church should be influencing the culture by setting standards of holiness, good conduct, deportment and acceptable behavior. It is our God-given task to be the arbiters of Biblical interpretation with an eye to practical application. We are to be salt and light in a sin-darkened world, not “culturally relevant” as some have proclaimed. For us to allow the church to be influenced by the culture is to allow error and impurity to tarnish Christ’s spotless bride.

I have heard people tell me that we are already products of our culture. The language and methods that we use in communicating the gospel are already shaped by the culture in which we were raised. This is a deception from the devil. Our critics point to things like the altar call and the style of our music as inventions that have only come into the church in the past two hundred years or less. They say that the language we use in our services was heavily influenced by the culture of the post-war Baby Boom. I want to make it absolutely clear that our church is in no way influenced by the culture we are in and we do not hold to any beliefs that are strictly of cultural origin. At best we are “culturally neutral” in our Pharisee churches.

For example, total abstinence from alcoholic beverages is a timeless Biblical truth, not a cultural norm. The Prohibition Movement in America did not create or foster this doctrinal position as some suppose. It was merely an attempt by Christians to influence the country for good. The fact that so-called Christians in other countries enjoy an occasional alcoholic beverage only proves that they have abandoned the faith once delivered to the saints. Their lack of standards cannot be proved to be a testimony to the notion that consumption of alcoholic beverages is biblically acceptable. This evil is so pernicious that there are even Christians in our country who feel perfectly free to imbibe of spirits despite their claim to being saved.

Those who say that the Bible endorses consumption of alcohol as a beverage misunderstand Paul’s directive to Timothy. He was not saying that alcoholic consumption was permissible. He was advising young Timothy on a medical matter. Folks were so backward in ancient times that they did not have access to medicine like we have today. Paul’s advice was a prescription since wine was the only medicine available at that time. We should no more consider Paul’s advice a license to drink any more than a doctor’s prescription today is a license to take illegal drugs. They also claim that Jesus turned the water into wine at Cana but we all know that the wine he made was non-alcoholic, non-intoxicating wine that was better than anything they had ever tasted before.

Other matters where we have not wavered are in our musical tastes. We listen to the same songs that the church has listened to down through the ages. Our songs cross cultural barriers and come from a wide range of cultural milieus as well as racial and ethnic traditions. We sing the songs of the Wesley brothers from England and timeless songs from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. We even have a hymn or two from Germany and Finland in addition to our traditional American songs. So we are clearly racially and ethnically diverse in our Pharisee churches. This broad diversity of our cultural heritage helps us to transcend cultural boundaries and reach out to white people all over the English-speaking world regardless of ethnic origin or cultural background.

An even more pernicious error is adopting items from the surrounding culture into our worship. Some churches have gotten so bad about this that their music sounds like a popular radio station, their use of projectors looks like a movie house and their sermons sound more like motivational speeches than theological discourse. People aren’t even dressing for church any more like they used to. They look like they are dressed for a day at the park instead of a day of worship before an almighty God. How can people possibly offer up godly worship if they aren’t even dressed in their Sunday best? They may be pleased with themselves but I have no doubts that God is far from pleased with them. The last thing we should try to do is adopt the ways of our surrounding culture into how we conduct our worship services.

True Pharisee Churches today are uninfluenced by our surrounding culture. Our music, dress, conduct, language are all timeless verities of the truth contained in God’s word. We are not in the business of responding to the culture or trying to communicate to the culture. We are in the business of standing for the Truth of Pharisee culture in a sin darkened world. And if the surrounding culture considers us irrelevant, out of touch and out of step with their world, then that is their loss and is none of our concern. They are the ones accountable to God for failing to heed our message. Certainly we are not accountable for failing to communicate it in a way that they can understand. If their hearts were not so darkened by sin, then they would have no problems understanding us.


…as some of your own poets have said, “We are the offspring of God.”
Acts 14:28 (NIV)

A supposed colleague of mine – a non-Pharisee pastor – sent me a link to a story on NPR’s All Things Considered program today. Before I go any further let me state that National Public Radio should just go ahead and change its name to National Liberal Radio. It is so blatantly anti-conservative that the only way I would have heard this story is to listen to it online. That’s why this “colleague” of mine sent an e-mail link to me. He knows I am too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh to tune in to ATC. The story he wanted me to listen to was titled “Afghan Women Prepare for First Vote in 30 Years” which was mildly interesting but that is not what made me hopping mad. Just take a look at this e-mail he sent me and guess why I am hopping mad.

-----Original Message-----

To: Pastor GamalielSubject: Pharisee Taliban?

Hey, Pastor G.

I was listening to NPR on my way home from serving lunch at the homeless shelter downtown this afternoon and a story came on that made me think of you. I had to listen to the repeat broadcast of ATC because I only caught half of the story the first time around and thought they were doing an expose on your church. Ha, ha, just kidding. It turned out to be a report from Afghanistan on women getting the right to vote. If you go to NPR.org and click on All Things Considered for today’s show, you’ll find the piece I was talking about. When you get done, let me know what the difference is between a woman under the Taliban and a woman in a Pharisee church, OK?
LOL
Have a good weekend,
Sparky

I am still seething as I write this column. If any of you managed to hear the story you will see why I am so offended. This “brother” had the temerity to accuse our Pharisee church of relegating women to second class status and treating them just as badly as the Taliban treated women. This is a gross mischaracterization and undermines the high view we take of women and the fact that we put them on a pedestal, rather than treat them as a footstool.

For instance, the Taliban requires women to dress in an extremely demeaning way by keeping them entirely hidden from view and any vestiges of their femininity completely covered. We of the Pharisee church would never do such a thing. Yes, we believe that women should dress modestly but we would never impose extreme fashion requirements on them. The Taliban required women to wear a burkha at all times. We only require women to wear a veil or head covering when they come to church. There are some extreme Christian denominations that impose rigorous headgear for women at all times, but the Pharisee church is nowhere near as stodgy as they are. The Taliban required women to wear extremely limited clothing. Good Pharisee women can dress any way they please as long as they dress modestly in accordance with the Bible and don’t wear that which “pertains to a man.” Godly Pharisee women dress to look like women and take great pleasure in not using gaudiness to draw attention to themselves. They avoid the over-application of cosmetics and jewelry as befits a humble servant of God.

What was most distressing about this story was the rise of women’s suffrage in Afghanistan and the fact that women might consider voting against the wishes of their husbands. Good Pharisee women would never be guilty of “canceling out” their husbands’ votes but would first of all seek the wisdom of their men in all matters political before going to cast their ballots. Some people erroneously think that we are oppressing women by expecting them to consult with their husbands before voting but this is merely prudence. There is a divine order in which God the Father rules over Jesus, Jesus rules the husband, and the husband rules the wife and children as God’s delegated authority. Think of it as an umbrella of authority and women need to be covered by their husbands’ umbrellas. This isn’t my idea. This is God’s plan for families as revealed in the word of God and Bill Gothard seminars, no matter what critics may say. And as the God-appointed ruler of my house, it is my responsibility to make decisions on the big issues of the family: politics, church attendance and family finances to name a few. This is not to say that my wife has no decision making power. She chooses what the kids wear to home school in the morning, what we eat for meals, what day to do the laundry, and other vital matters. It’s just that she leaves the big decisions up to me and I leave the domestic decisions up to her.

Some people, including Pastor Sparks, feel that this view is tyrannical and demeaning to women. What he doesn’t understand is that this Godly order is designed to protect the woman. Just look at the first time women had a chance to make a decision and see what happened. She chose to consign the human race to a fallen condition by eating the forbidden fruit. It is only be God’s grace that He finds Adam to be mostly at fault instead of Eve. With this kind of track record, it is in the woman’s best interest to let the man make all the big, spiritual decisions and let the woman make all the small, fleshly decisions. This divine order of the sexes is really for woman’s own good, even if they are too blind to see it.

Just think about it. Politics can be difficult to understand and confusing. The political dialogue is hard to follow and discernment is a key component required to comprehend what is going on. Why should godly men burden their women unnecessarily with political issues when these women would rather be at home raising their children and caring for the house? We free them up so they are not distracted from the thing they truly love – being a keeper at home. As a godly husband, this is a heavy burden, but it is one I am willing to bear and one that every Pharisee husband should be willing to bear. What kind of husbands would we be if we didn’t provide the necessary guidance to our wives so they would know how to dress, how to vote, how to raise the children and how to spend money? Women are thankful for husbands that have the courage to step in and take charge on these matters.



In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church…
Ephesians 5:28-29 (NIV)