To start, I want to apologize to everyone for whom I have not been clear enough in the past about what I will write here today.  For many reasons, some legitimate and some not, I have not expressed how much I hate and how dangerous and defiled I think it is.  Some of you are going to read the title and get it immediately, some will sort of get it, and others will be clueless.  I want to help.

It is difficult to know where to start, mainly because it is difficult to know the primary source of the problem I’m addressing.  The worst of it is a false gospel, but I don’t know if it starts with that.  That’s the most foundational, unless I included a fundamental distortion of the identity of Jesus Christ as a part of the false gospel.  However, a false gospel is in part what comes out of it and then one notices is a necessity for the distorted sanctification and methods.  The gospel, sanctification, and then methods always interrelate.

Everyone needs to change, including me, and to do that, people need patience.  Sometimes patience becomes an excuse.  We just don’t want to take the hard step of confrontation, exposure, and separation.  I still don’t want to do that.  I want to be liked too.  We don’t want to be alone.  It seems horrible and stupid that we enable bad stuff by accommodating.  I have done that though.  Stick with me here.  I’m not going to give my history, but I did put up with some associations that were wrong, because I thought it was appropriate.  I don’t think so any more.

I want to give as succinct a summary of what I’m talking about first.  As I summarize, I am not fully certain on the order of how the elements of this appear, but I’m going to give my opinion in as positive manner as possible.   That is the only aspect that is opinion, the order.  The elements are actual — they are occurring.  Here goes.

Churches use gimmicks to lure lost attenders in order to have more people.  The attenders come for the attraction and when they get there, a message is preached, called a gospel.  This is not a crowd coming mainly because it wants the gospel, but because of a gimmick.  A service and a message is geared to that kind of person.  Over time, people make professions and don’t stay, what is sometimes called a turn-over.  A low percentage stay.

The professions are still explained as salvations.  The message may have been believe, pray this prayer, or even repent, with repent being solely a “change of mind” or a “mere willingness to change.” When the attendees stop coming to church, they are still considered to be saved people, but they’re “backslidden,” because they never were “dedicated.”  The people who come back are those who were “saved,” but now are dedicated.  Some (very few) do, if they “get right.”  This dedication is the view of sanctification.   The idea is people who are saved need some experience after salvation that will cause the salvation to flourish and be fruitful. Some have it and others don’t, but even those who don’t have it — they’re still saved.

The last two paragraphs are the essence of what I’m talking about — a lot more could be said.  The false gospel is the corrupt response to the message they proclaim.  The message must be wrong too, because you can’t have an actual saving Jesus in the heart of the one with something less than a right response to Him. So, yes, Jesus is distorted too.  Was this caused by the  method?  Maybe.  I think the method was led by the desire for success, which is church growth and it will authenticate the church as being powerful or having revival.  It’s a man-centered method.  The later dedication that brings someone back to church is the second blessing.  That experience is the keswick one.  I also believe many have convinced themselves that this is a true version of Christianity, like other false views have.

I don’t want to have anything to do with what I’m describing above.  I want to stay as far away from it as I can.  I don’t even see it, as a whole, as Christianity.  I think you have some Christians in these churches and organizations, but overall it isn’t Christian.  I don’t want anyone to think I support the above with my association and my proximity to it.  Some might think I believe it is permissible, with some justification.  I don’t at all.

What I have described above also comes with a lot of other distortions.  It isn’t unusual that these churches have revivalistic music that is part of their church growth philosophy, that isn’t worship. The music is merely a method.  These associate a certain type of music with the Holy Spirit because of the feeling it produces.  They think the feeling is the Holy Spirit working or moving.  This fits with its false view of spirituality that is the distortion in its sanctification.

Often these churches also have to have a certain style of “preaching.”  They think of it as “alive.”  The preaching isn’t dead, but “alive.”  What they consider “living” is actually just emotional.  They often can’t handle biblical teaching or at least much of it, because they don’t think that it is endued with the Holy Spirit.  The preaching and the music go hand in hand.  The feeling all tends toward emotional decisions that might also produce “dedication.”  All of it amounts to manipulation and it fools people, and yet the advocates say “God is blessing” or “God worked.”  It mostly isn’t God.  I say mostly only because there is some Bible there, and if and when there is, God does bless that, but only when it occurs.

I want to park a moment on the false gospel.  The worst reduce the “gospel” to repeating words or “praying a prayer.”  Others, not the ones doing it, have called this “1-2-3 pray-with-me.”  Some say that repentance is not a prerequisite to justification and salvation, but a post-justification work.  Some say that repentance is repenting of unbelief.  Some say that repentance is a mere change of mind that accompanies faith.  Some say that repentance is a willingness to change, but will not necessarily result in changing.  They say you’ve got to want to change, but you may not for awhile.  None of what I’ve described is a biblical response to gospel truth, but these are the versions of the gospel that fall short, that accompany the wrong methodology and the distorted sanctification.

Also what I am explaining fits with a certain view of church government.  The church needs an operator, who can keep it all going, to keep it all in alignment.  I’ve often called him the circus-meister. He must hold tight reigns on everything, since the grace of God will not.  There must be a means to produce the look of true sanctification.  Some of the behavior is right, but it is caused by a system that isn’t.

The evil junction of all these things has turned into a kind of religion and it is how false religion starts and builds.  The people involved now think it is the truth.  If they see something different, they think they are seeing an impostor, which they reject.  In so doing, they think they’ve shown good judgment. They’ve actually walked away from the light.  It creates a people who lack in discernment.  And the lack of discernment is sometimes what is necessary to keep the show going.

When these churches perform these acts, they call it love.  They see themselves as being loving, since they also see their goals as good.  This “love” isn’t love, but sentimentalism.  Love is according to the truth, and this is not the truth.  So love is twisted as well.

What is very sad is that a lot of what I have described is called Baptist and independent.  It is not Bible, however.  It is not obedient to the Lord.  It is its own way.

If you represent what I’m writing about, do not go into a defense mode.  Be willing to change. Consider what I am writing and whether it is you.  Examine yourself.  Evaluate what you are doing. Believe the Bible.  Do just what it says.  Trust in God.  Wait on Him.  Find your satisfaction in Who He is and what He said. Rely on God’s Word to convince others of the same.

Learn a true gospel. Preach only a true gospel.  Expect those who make professions to live for Christ. When they don’t, don’t consider them to be saved.  Stop relying on extrascriptural and unscriptural means.  Stop manipulating people.  Plant and water.  Let God give the increase.  Worship God.  Enjoy the results God gives.  Live by faith.

If you are supporting what I’ve warned about.  Stop doing that.  Help those people to change.  Don’t accommodate them any longer.

Once upon a time, some people outside of First Baptist of Hammond warned about Jack Hyles. Hyles had worked his situation to insulate against outside interference.  He had established a strong grip of pastoral authority, even when it was obvious to anyone that he was long disqualified from the office.

Through my 27+ years of pastoring, the question of the title of this post has arisen from several individuals on different occasions.  I think it is a good question.  It falls under “prove all things” (1 Thess 5:21).  So let’s begin first with the meetings of a church.  I’ll approach that with the regulative principle of worship.

Any element of worship not taught in scripture is forbidden.  Our worship should be regulated by what God said.  God has told us what He wants and we should give that to Him.  Silence is not permission.

Does Christmas violate the regulative principle?  I can’t see it.  Let me take you through my mental checklist.  The incarnation of Christ, His virgin birth, is the truth.  Singing is an element of worship in the Bible.  Our church believes instrumental music is authorized by God’s Word too.  We see congregational, choir, and small group singing in scripture.  If one preaches the Word of God, he will at some point preach about the incarnation, the Lord’s first coming, His becoming a man.  It’s a teaching all over the Bible, so it is appropriate to preach those passages as an element of worship. That really does cover what we do in our church for Christmas.  None of this is forbidden, because it’s all in the Bible.

So what else matters in this, as it relates to the worship of a church meeting?  Just really trying to be thorough here, but I think of practicing the above paragraph every year and using the term, “Christmas.”  Are those two actions violations of God’s Word?

For the first one, I believe that the incarnation is worth singing and preaching about every year.  The fact that we do this at the same time every December, since scripture doesn’t tell us what time of the year Jesus’ birth is, does not violate the regulative principle.  I can preach about motherhood every mother’s day and that doesn’t conflict with the Bible.  I have had Decembers where I just kept preaching whatever book I was covering, but not because it was wrong to stop and preach about Christ’s birth.  All the winter solstice stuff just seems like a red herring to me.

To me, using the term Christmas could be the most possible wrong practice, and I’m not convinced it is.  Why?  The big problem, it seems, is the “mas” part at the end of “Christmas.”  Is using the term “Christmas” supporting the Roman Catholic mass?  Is using the term Easter supporting the worship of Ishtar?  I don’t believe it is.

I have read some about the history of the word “Christmas,” like I’m sure some of you readers have. There is material all over the internet on this issue, so you can find it.  It’s hard to figure out what is true.  English itself is a new language relative to the history of the world.  It comes primarily from the Latin, a romantic language.

“Mass” comes from the Latin missa, which connects to the English words “dismissal” and “mission.”  At the institution of the Lord’s Table, you might remember that Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn and went out.  We do that at our church, that is, end with a hymn, then prayer, and go out.  The original idea was that after prayer, singing, preaching, and other elements of worship, including the Lord’s Table, another biblical element of worship, the saints were ready to be sent out on their mission, properly prepared for dismissal.

Churches assemble for edification and then disassemble for evangelism.  The Father sent Jesus on His mission and the Lord Jesus sent us on the same mission.  Are we dismissed or sent out every assembly to serve the Lord in the gospel?

Over a period of time, missa became “the eucharist,” transubstantiation, and the whole Catholic liturgy. What was once a part of the order was now the whole thing.  The word developed in its meaning, really perverted.  The word for dismissal became the word for the entire order of Catholic worship.

“Christmas” is a word with an etymology.  Maybe Catholics think “Christmas” is mass in its apostate form.  Of course, Roman Catholics twist a lot of things, like a lot of other religions do too.  You can’t take every word and break it down into its etymology.  People will say, “words mean things.” They do, and in this case, Christmas doesn’t mean “Catholic mass.”  “Christmas” means the celebration of Christ’s birth.

I see using “Christmas” like using Wednesday, Thursday, or Saturday, except the latter has no connection to anything true at all, while missa actually does.  I’m saying the latter are worse, so if someone shouldn’t say “Christmas,” then he shouldn’t say “Wednesday” either.  Wednesday is the “god” Woden, Thursday the god “Thor,” and Saturday the “god” Saturn.  But that’s not what they mean to us.  Are we really celebrating “Woden day” when we use “Wednesday”?  Those three days just do not associate with false worship.  They don’t mean that to the people using them.  I don’t believe there is inherent meaning related to those false gods in the use of those terms.  Get the following, because it’s a scriptural argument.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn’t stand against getting names that referred to pagan gods.  That wasn’t how they stood upon the Word of God.  They kept those names, but they wouldn’t violate dietary restrictions or bow before an idol, because those were taught in scripture.

I believe we have liberty to use the word “Christmas.”  That doesn’t violate the regulative principle of worship.

What about the history of antagonism to Christmas?  It’s there.  My interpretation of it is that it centers on Cromwellian England.  Cromwell had some good points and a lot of bad ones too.  The history of England revolves around religious conflicts, Protestantism versus Catholicism and the divine right of kings and its relationship to the English parliament.

OK, that seems like enough, but then we come to tinsel and trees and bulbs and presents.  The regulative principle applies to corporate worship.  That’s how we argue that principle.  Every life should be regulated by scripture.  You should do what scripture says, but scripture is also silent on a lot.  It does not tell you to listen to radios or not to listen to them.  We’ve got to rely on principles to make these decisions.  This is where Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 6-10 come into play on this.

If the tree really is an act of worship like the Asherah pole or Gideon’s ephod, then we should be rid of it.  If you think it is, then don’t have one.  I don’t think you should be picky on others who do have a tree.  I believe you are violating Romans 14 when you are.  Be picky on yourself.

I have never seen a Christmas tree used in a ceremony of worship.  So how is it wrong?  The tree itself isn’t, any more than meat is wrong.  It’s a tree.   I think the meat was worse in Corinth and Paul said it wasn’t wrong to eat, unless it caused someone to stumble.  There were ways that eating the meat was wrong, but it wasn’t the meat.  If I was convinced of a tree worship religion, I would get rid of my tree.

For a couple of years, my wife and I didn’t set up a tree.  Why?  We were just starting as a church, had just a handful of people, two of which were a couple that had been taught that the tree was a sin. We did not want to hurt those two people’s consciences.  That was a 1 Corinthians 8-10 argument against the tree, but it was because of scruples these people had, which were not even legitimate.  I don’t know that I would do it again, but we did for a couple of Christmases.  Now I’d probably just teach them what I’m writing here.

Here’s another whole different issue — Santa Claus.  We don’t have Santa in our home.  Why?  I think he’s a replacement for Christ at Christmas.   However, if you think that Christmas itself is pagan, then Santa Claus isn’t any different than Christmas itself, or maybe better, because he’s just a fictional character or the historical one, Nicholas, all depending on how you choose to see him.  Because I think Santa is a replacement, we generally opt out on him.  But that’s not something I expect from or judge for everybody else.  If a Christian got caught up in the Santa figure and talked like he was real, that would cross the line for me.  I don’t think parents should lie about who brought the presents.

I remember hearing a country western lyric as played by a roommate I had in college, and this is just out of my brain, because it stuck, “I don’t believe in Santa Clause, but I believe what I believe in, and I believe in Santa’s cause.”  Some people think that giving gifts is the cause of Christmas, and Santa represents Santa’s cause.  I’ll let you judge that for yourself.

Everyone believes in something, either the true God or an idol.  The first of God’s ten commandments warns against and forbids idols.  Idols are whatever Satan and the world system offers as a replacement to God.  The Apostle Paul in Romans 1 says men suppress God out of rebellion.  The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 3 says they don’t want a boss, because they walk after their lusts.  Many things can be an idol, but I want to write about an idol that Jesus talked about, and what might be the American idol.  That idol is the family.

Everything that is an idol is something that God created.  Men worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.  And God created the family.  The family might not be an idol, but it isn’t God and God created it, so it can be one.  Very often, the family supplants God.

In Numbers 21 God told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole for men to look at.  Jesus talked about it in John 3.  However, in 2 Kings 18, Hezekiah destroyed that very image, because the people had made it an idol, burning incense unto it.  Something of God’s design became an idol.

The great commandment is to love God.  The second is to love your neighbor.  Love is most replaced by mere sentimentalism when it comes to family, when people don’t love their family, but use their family as an excuse for not loving God or their neighbor.  It isn’t love for family, but sentimentalism for family.  The “love” for family is the enemy of actual love for family.  The family rather than a means to an end, becomes the end itself.  As an end, it is an idol.

America is itself gullible on the family.  Sentimentalism is bred into American life.  You can see the Norman Rockwell painting with family at the kitchen table.  Stories are written and films are produced with this idyllic portrait of American life with the family at the center.  You read the credo or motto, “God, Family, Country,” as if it is biblical.  Even though it isn’t scriptural, the motto itself is sentimental.  In so many cases, both family and country take the place of God.  Any time family and country unseat God, they themselves will suffer.

Christmas is as sentimental a family time as ever with all of the trappings on full — the tree, the presents, the food, the entertainment, the laughter.  All of this creates these images and moments that people cling to.  Sometimes those circumstances are sabotaged by people and behavior, that ruin the moment, turning it into controversy and bitterness, sour times that were supposed to be sweet.  If they could get a “not like” on a facebook page, they would.

Family counseling and and therapy abounds.  We read about the dysfunctional family.  People strive for that perfect family about which the Mormon denomination has thrived with its promotion of the family.  Married men and women seek to be the “cute couple,” which looks like a successful Christian one.  Everyone gets along and plays games and spends loads of family time on trips and vacations.  You’ve got unbelieving cute couples, believing cute couples, that really do like each other. A child may come along and they’ve got just the perfect little family with the white picket fence and the warm fireplace and and one wonderful family photo, everyone smiling in their casual matching clothes.  The adorable little one has the cute outfit with all the cute gear and latest toys that might guarantee a future.  It’s a dream.

A recent book, Homespun Gospel:  The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism, by Todd M. Brenneman, reads:

The issues that primarily motivate evangelicals—abortion, school choice, homosexuality—conceptually revolve around attacks against the family or home.  The sentimentalized home (conceptualized as a nuclear, heterosexual family unity) is sacred, and evangelicals should do whatever they can do to protect it.

The author says something like this about the family many times in his book.

So how is the family an idol?  First, I want to consider what Jesus and the Apostles said about it.  In many ways, the scriptural terms have been hijacked to support what Jesus was against.  Matthew 10:35 and 37 record the Lord Jesus:

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. . . . He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Earlier in Matthew 8:21-22, Jesus preaches,

And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.  But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.

In Matthew 12:50, we read Jesus say,

For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

Later in Matthew 19:29, we hear the Lord,

And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

Mark and Luke bring these same teachings.  And you can also read a few other gems, one in Luke 2, when Jesus is twelve years old in the temple and his family leaves Him there in Jerusalem, where Mary and He have this exchange in verses 48-49:

And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.  And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

With Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding at Cana, you read another dialogue with his mother in John 2:2-3:

And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.  Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

So much could be said to unpack these, but because of space, I’m going to let them speak for themselves.  The Apostle Paul said more.  Here’s the thinking and practice though that I hear or see contrary to what Jesus said, making the family the American idol.

One, people often use family as an excuse for faithlessness to God or not serving Him.  This is very common and the assumption is that acceptance is mandatory.  You can’t say “no” to family.  Family isn’t often the real reason, but the family card is many times the easiest card to pull.

Two, the popular family member is the one who lets things go.  He doesn’t say anything about family disobedience.  If he does, he is the worst family member.  He is causing disunity in the family and he “just doesn’t get it.”  You wish.

Three, parents adjust their interpretation of the Bible to what their family does.  This is a common basis for interpretation of scripture.  There are numbers and numbers of examples of this.  As children misbehave and veer away, new views of passages emerge.

Four, rather than fulfilling the Great Commission, churches sentimentalize the mission of the church around family.  I made note of that above from the book on evangelical sentimentalism.  Churches are family centers, not kingdom or gospel or discipleship centers.

Five, the church is for the edification of the family, not the members for the edification of the body of Christ.  If the family isn’t feeling edified, it might find someplace where that will occur.  Those places are out there.  An irony is that edification of the family isn’t what is happening.

Six, marriage success leaves out the husband sanctifying the wife like Christ sanctifies the church. That doesn’t always look so cheery or so “cute.”  Sanctification looks messy, but the goal through the leadership of the husband is the glory of God, not being a cute couple.

Seven, families protect family members from discipline.  They shield their family from the convicting work of the Word of God through the church.

There are far more than these, and I would even be interested in hearing from others what they see or have seen.  The truth about the family helps the family.

One decries circular reasoning with reasoning.  By what does he reason?  The laws of logic.  He assumes the laws of logic to argue his position.  How does one prove the laws of logic without logic? Hence, the one complaining of circular reasoning depends on circular reasoning for his argument against it.  One proves the laws of logic by using the laws of logic.

The accusation of circular reasoning proceeds from a false claim of neutrality from the accuser.  He assumes laws.  That isn’t neutral.  That starts with assumptions.  Everyone begins with assumptions. All reasoning arises from presuppositions.  The allegation of circular reason refutes itself, because it begins with laws no matter what the presupposition.

Everyone reasons from the uncaused cause, the prime mover, which is one.  Some reason from the only One, the actual Cause, the one and true God, and the others get the placebo.  Some regress to the Cause and others stop short not because of ignorance, but rebellion.  Every unbelieving person knows God and suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.  Like Jesus said, he hates the light because his deeds are evil.

Only God argues from neutrality, because only God is unaffected.  Everybody knows this.  They know it, but they don’t like to retain God in their knowledge, because they thanklessly reject the goodness of God and walk after their own lust.  God alone, with Whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, provides objective truth.  All the truth is His truth.  Because there is a God, truth is absolute.

The rebel sees truth as relative.  If truth is relative, then it isn’t one, and everyone can do what he wants.  At least in his deluded mind, he operates as a free agent outside of judgment.  In the real world, the only one, he’s going to pay the price for his sin.  This is something else everyone knows.  It’s why when you break the window of an unbeliever, he wants a new window and not rehabilitation.  It’s also why suicide and widespread manic entertainment everywhere that can desensitize the pain of conscience.

Everyone functions in circular reasoning, either starting with God or with something of his own choosing, either God or an idol from God’s creation — science, work, pleasure, government, money. Most stop short of a full regression to the first Cause, and choose their own along the way.  People either worship and serve the Creator or the creature, but everyone worships.  This is why you’ll notice religious fervor with agnostics and atheists.  God might be ejected from the public square, but religion never will.  Man either worships God, himself, or things.

A corollary of valid circular reasoning is arguing for the Bible from the Bible.  This is a primary point of Paul in 1 Corinthians 1-3.  God doesn’t turn to His creation to prove His Word.  It is spiritually discerned.  God Himself testifies of its truthfulness in men’s hearts.

Sure, the Bible can be proven in other ways besides circular reasoning, but circular reasoning is the best argument, because God Himself is its best witness.  And since the problem isn’t knowledge, but rebellion, a person’s nature must be affected by the supernatural to believe it.  Someone doesn’t believe because he is given a better argument, but because He has been persuaded internally by God Himself, the Holy Spirit.  If it was only an intellectual problem, other arguments might be better, but since it is a volitional one, only spiritual weaponry will do.  God is glorified in this methodology, something that really irks unbelievers, since their view of the world revolves around themselves.

So, circular reasoning is a valid argument as long as the premises are true.  Irony alert.  Everyone argues from circular reasoning.  Christians argue with validity.  Everyone else argues fallaciously.  A second irony alert.  Unbelievers assume that all circular reasoning is wrong.  They use circular reasoning to do so.

Men associated with Religious Affections Ministries (RAM), led by Scott Aniol, have written and published a book, A Conservative Christian Declaration (at Amazon), which idea was then critiqued by others on SharperIron, an online forum.  On top of writing the declaration and book, RAM has afforded church leaders to include their church in a list of likeminded conservative churches.   Along with others, I asked myself whether this was a good thing, being a conservative church — shouldn’t it suffice to be a biblical church or an obedient one?

To come to the correct conclusion as to whether one should call his church a conservative church, he needs to understand what it means to be a conservative church, which also means that he should grasp what conservatism itself is and what it means to be a conservative.  Does being conservative add anything important to identifying one’s self?  Would people outside of the church understand what it means to be a conservative church, so that the designation could be helpful to others?

We have all sorts of designations that we apply to churches in order to help identify who they are:  independent, Southern, fundamental, evangelical, Charismatic, etc.  There is some history and rich meaning behind the word “conservative,” that is helpful in distinguishing the characteristics of a person or church.  Even in evangelicalism today, many are using the term “conservative evangelical” to set apart a particular subset of them that are different than the other evangelicals who are not conservative evangelicals.

When we talk about theology, we do divide between conservative and liberal.  If I said a church was conservative theologically, I believe I am saying a good thing about that church, but also hopefully helping someone understand what that church is.  If you have a big set or circle of “church,” and you are narrowing it down to what type of church it is, applying the word “conservative” is going to leave out the liberal churches.  If I said the church had conservative theology with conservative music and conservative lifestyles, all of that would focus our understanding even more about that church.

Would I want my church called a conservative church?  I would.  I like the term “conservative” even as applied to a church.  Our church is an independent Baptist church.  That sets our church apart.  I often called us historic Baptists.  I would use the word conservative too.

What does “conservative” do as a label?  It has a connotative meaning to people for sure, usually to say that we take the Bible literally or strictly.  We are preserving the practices of the past.  We are not loose in our approach to God.  It also says something about the culture of our church.  I remember Mark Driscoll saying that his church was conservative theologically and liberal culturally.  People get what that means.  They should reject the designation, because of its self-contradiction, but they do get what it is.

Conservative also has a specific, definitive meaning.  Some who claim the name conservative are not really conservative.  They might possess some of the tenets of conservatism, perhaps the parts that they think will bring them benefit, but that alone makes them, in my view, not conservative.  You shouldn’t be able to pick and choose what is conservative with you and what isn’t, because conservatism is a consistent position that applies everywhere.  It has a denotative meaning that starts with a transcendent order, which must be God and, therefore, Christian.

Since the transcendent order proceeds from God, it also must be permanent.  The conservative concerns himself with permanent things, because God is eternal and unchanging.  The map of the world in His mind reflects upon God. The categories of permanent things have been labeled the transcendentals, because they transcend space and time unto the being and nature of God.  They represent the perfections of God for which men strive, made in the image of God, which are truth, goodness, and beauty.   The conservative strives to preserve these and shape his society, whether government, church, and family, upon their grand design.

Since God is one, no transcendental can be separated from another.  You can’t give up one without the giving up the others.  You don’t get to be conservative about truth and not about goodness and beauty, or about truth and goodness, but not about beauty.

Some ask, “Who cares?  What difference do they make?”   First, each of the transendentals are Bible.  God ordains them.  If we would obey God, submit to Him, like Jesus submitted to the Father, we will live them.

However, all three — truth, goodness, and beauty — are up for grabs not only in the culture and in the country, but also in the churches.  We live in a relativistic society where none of these three are absolute, like neither is God absolute.  To adapt to the world for utilitarian purposes, men abandon the absolutes.

Biblical Christianity is truth concerning total reality.  It is the story.   It is in this sense that all truth is God’s truth, because everything is God’s story.  He originated the world, the world fell because of rebellion against Him, and it will be redeemed only through Him.  It starts, continues, and ends with God.  Your Christianity affects every area of your life, because your life is a component of the whole.

THE OPPOSITION

The most noticeable opposition to the above conservative declaration comes from those who reject absolute beauty.  Their primary basis for their resistance is that no one can be sure about objective beauty, that beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder.  This is well represented by a few comments in the SharperIron forum:

Does beauty objectively exist? and How do we know what beauty is?  are two separate questions. Not that this group would deny that, but while most of us would agree on the first, agreement on the second would not be so easily reached. And we have to respect that.

This is typical.  He argues from uncertainty.  There is objective beauty, but we don’t know (can’t know) what it is.  Beauty is inaccessible, lost to this generation.

Again, in typical fashion, someone else agrees with subjective beauty, and again because of unattainability:

 I think that I could be persuaded to agree with goodness – as in the works of the Spirit – but beauty, as discussed, is going to need to defined and Scripturally defended, not just made as an assertion to be proclaimed.  When I hear an instrumental piece with no lyrics, it’s can be considered “christian” because it’s “beautiful”?  By what standard?

I do sympathize to a certain extent with the plight of these two comments.  I read a lot at Religious Affections and they stay too ambiguous.  The explanations often are enigmatic and vague.  I can’t say that I know why.  I have my opinion.  They want to keep a seat at the table, and if they talk with more clarity, they will be excluded.  It is a communications strategy, is what I think.  If I’m right, they are not fully depending on God for the persuasion to their position.

If God has a standard of beauty, if He wants us to judge it, then we can.  I don’t think it is that difficult.  I don’t believe it is an intellectual problem.  Men can understand.  The problem is either lust or pride.  They have a lust they cannot abandon or they don’t want to be rejected, which is the pride. Success is numbers and numbers require pleasing men.  Men want what they want.  They want their music, even for worship.

Judging music for beauty is as easy as judging foul or profane speech.  Ugliness has become acceptable.  A lot of immorality and false doctrine has too.  However, we can judge beauty.  It is objective, but we have to apply principles like is the case in so much application of scripture.

WHY

I understand the attraction to a “conservative church.”  Even if that church were separatist, perhaps even historically fundamental, it might not be and probably won’t be truly conservative.   I see this as the appeal of a conservative church.  It distinguishes from vacuousness of fundamentalism, especially related to beauty.  They see much of fundamentalism as not getting it, and being part of the problem.  They see this, I believe, as helping churches and Christians who are looking for the total truth.

The conservative declaration focuses on aesthetics.  They are important.  One cannot love God rightly without objective beauty,  The ugliness also distorts the imagination necessary for true worship of God.  However, I see these same men as having capitulated on a biblical or transcendent view of truth and goodness.  I love their work on beauty, but they are wanting on truth and goodness.  I’m not going to explain in this post, but they are more dogmatic about beauty than the other two.  It amazes me.  As I said, you can’t have one with the others.

On top of my concern for their shortfall on truth and goodness is their lack of conviction. Conservation requires separation.  They won’t take the stand against ugliness necessary to preserve loveliness.

I cannot sign off on the declaration or join the list of churches.  I don’t even believe that these men are conservative.  They are more conservative than most others, but they are not consistent in their conservatism.  However, I like the idea of being known as a conservative church.  If you are a conservative and your church conservative, then you are biblical.  You have to be.  His Word is Truth.

God knows.  If Christianity is about God, biblical Christianity, like Noah was about God, then it should in fact be about God.  I believe they already know.  They just won’t say.  But the people of fundamentalism and evangelicalism will know in the end, either by finding out or having their hand caught in the jelly jar.  Together,they are the biggest reason for the slide toward Gomorrah.

This is God’s world.  And yet out of His longsuffering, He endures all this around us.  To Him, a thousand years are as a day, so this is nothing. But evangelicalism will get the word about how bad its rock music was.  About how bad its marketing was.  About how bad its lack of separation, ecclesiastical and personal, was.  Evangelicalism, and now fundamentalism, has encouraged these things.   They close their eyes to it.  And they use modified forms of what they criticize in the extreme.  They go silent on their favorites, their D. A. Carsons and John Pipers.  Others.  And Christianity has gone down, down, down with it.

You listen to the introduction to Carl Trueman’s Mortification of Spin, joking on Owen’s Mortification of Sin, starting with hard rock music, ugly and profane, utterly clashing with God. They pose like they are opposing evil, meanwhile promoting it.  Two men and a woman, not their wife, bantering casually and jesting back and forth.  It is unbecoming.  They use the rock music to lead into their conversations and discussions about God, associating God with the profanity of the music.  The medium does come with a message and then drags God into it.  You can’t compromise and undermine God’s beauty without doing the same to His truth.  You give up one and you give up all.  It’s a matter of time before the undoing of one becomes the nullification of the other.

I’m saying mark these words about truth and beauty.  I’m saying this because I expect that this warning won’t be heeded.  It will either be marginalized or mocked.  A game is being played with God that He doesn’t accept.  Not long ago, every Christian would be against this perversion.  It’s a form of idolatry, to conform the eternal to the temporal, to straddle man’s desires with God’s.  There is one truth, one God, and one beauty.  Dissolving beauty will disintegrate truth, and it already has and is.  They proceed from the same God.

Men walk after their own lusts.  But they still want the benefits of the God of this world, so they borrow half or less of a Christian worldview, the portion that they want, that will yield them the solution to sin they need, while forfeiting the pleasure of God, His worship.  A new god will form out of the concession of beauty to the eye of the beholder.  You can’t understand God while or when forfeiting this revelation or expression of Himself.  It reorders values and loves.  It forms a god captive to depraved imagination.  It already distorts an orthodox view of God by robbing Him of true affection.

The separation of beauty from truth shapes a god that is a lie.  He carries some of the same labels and evokes the same descriptives, but this isn’t God anymore, and it is only a matter of time until the practice and then doctrine too reaches the reduction of loveliness.  The decline has already begun. And this love of God isn’t love, but sentimentalism.  He won’t accept this passion arising from man’s lust.

I also wrote “diversity of truth” in the title, because more than one truth is already acceptable in evangelicalism and fundamentalism.  It’s only becoming worse and in a steep deterioration trajectory. The abatement of truth and beauty are interrelated, because the acceptance of several truths and the concession of many or any beauties relate to the love of self and the world.  They seem advantageous in this age and in the short term, they are.

Men want what they like and they want to be accepted.  They still want to be included, even if they don’t believe the same.  If men can have what they want and acceptance, but also have the degree of true doctrine that they have eternal life too, that will take that.  And they do.  And will last a very short period of time, like we see men in Old Testament Israel and Judah who did not serve the Lord with their whole heart.  These are half hearted men, who will yield soon destruction because they capitulated on truth and beauty.

Those capitulating feel justified by their numbers, even if they are conservative, because they will and do get numbers.  They have more people.  They convince themselves that it is all about the truth, but it is also about capitulation.  If someone can have Jesus and his movies and his rock music, he’ll take that edition of Christianity in a heart beat, even if it misrepresents God.

So we see John MacArthur as a truth warrior capitulate to the youth culture of the Resolved Conference and the rock band at his Shepherd’s Conference.   He says that music is the entrance to the Charismatic movement, the strange fire, and yet concedes himself to this out of what looks like sheer pragmatism.   It is a tiny number who haven’t succumbed to diversity of either truth or beauty or both.  Now we have a country that won’t fight back against same sex marriage.  The above contributes, because it abdicates to the spirit of the age.

So mark these words.  You who capitulate on the diversity of truth and beauty lead the churches, the country, and the world in apostasy.  It’s you.  Not the government.  Not the schools.  You.

Every Christian should admit that Paul gives a lot of verses, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, to the subject of dress, among others in the New Testament, but especially to headcoverings.  We should know our position on headcoverings.  I’ve written a book, yet to be published on dress.  I want it out and promise you, Lord-willing, that I’ll work on getting it out for the light of day.  I am very, very thorough in that book on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.  How could I write a book on dress and leave it out? I have to admit though, the reason I’m writing this post is because one particular commenter brings it up almost every time he’s here, and he’s become antagonistic about it.  So the squeaky wheel does get the oil.  I am getting private communications from him in which he calls me a hypocrite because I believe in historical doctrine and yet headcoverings are historical doctrine.  He’s essentially calling me out, especially with the ad hominem.

Am I really taking the position I do on headcoverings, because I’m worldly and won’t take a stand, because I’m too afraid?  I should consider that.  I do.  The conscience works two ways.  It accuses and excuses.  We not only want it to accuse, but also to excuse.  When it accuses, when it is supposed excuse, then we have an unscriptural scruple.  This will tend toward a malfunctioning conscience. We don’t want that either.

So when people attempt to arouse my conscience by feeding it with a standard, they can also damage my conscience.  I don’t want that either.  I’ve said I’m fine with the women of other churches, even our own church, wearing headcoverings, because there isn’t anything wrong with it, but they can’t cause division in our church and try to guilt our people into wearing them, when we don’t teach that. Then it becomes a problem.

To start, we should deal with scripture.  The Bible is the sole and final authority for faith and practice.  We rely on it for our position.  Yes, I believe our doctrine should be historical.  That doesn’t mean that it must be the majority historical position, the one most mentioned, as if we’re looking for votes for our position.  I would be fearful if I couldn’t find my position believed by anyone before me.

But this post will be historical, and I hope this ends the accusations and name-calling and challenges. I’m sure others take other positions.  I know that.  However, this is the position that I believe. Perhaps a little of my own history might help to start.  I never heard of wearing headcoverings for women growing up, never encountered a person who took this position.  Then my family moved to Wisconsin and the women of the church we joined wore headcoverings on Sunday mornings.  It wasn’t required.  It wasn’t a church discipline issue.  Actually, the church itself didn’t even take the position, that I knew, but the president of the local Bible college required the female students and wives of male married students to wear them only on Sunday morning.  It was never explained why we were doing that.   At some point I encountered 1 Corinthians 11 and, I guess, I surmised that must be the passage from which that came, but I do not remember one person teaching on it.  Ever.  Maybe you had a similar experience in your upbringing.  I don’t know.

I didn’t ever see another church practicing headcovering teaching.  Since I started pastoring, I’ve heard there are some.  I’ve listened to their teaching.  I’ve listened to Amish or Mennonite teaching on this.  I’m certainly open to changing if it is scriptural.  However, I’m in a situation where I need to be convinced of it, not keep it as a position because I already held it.  I’m not going to lead a church in this unless I’m convinced.  Do I think I could become convinced?  It is unlikely now, because I’ve invested a lot of time in thinking and studying about it and am still unconvinced.  I believe my present position, which is not a wearing headcovering position.

The recent challenge is mainly historical.   I’ve listened and read about history.  I know churches have practiced this.  I know a lot of churches have.  I know that you’ll find the headcovering position in the patristics.  That makes total sense to me.  You’ll find it among Roman Catholics and Protestants and even Baptists.  People did practice headcoverings, I believe.  That is a historical practice.  Is not wearing them a historical practice?  Again, the main if not exclusive question is, is it scriptural?  But let’s go to, is it historical?  I’m not avoiding that.

My view is a cultural or customary position on headcoverings.  I don’t think the headcovering was hair.  I think hair length for women is taught, but Paul is teaching about wearing something that distinguishes women from men in their authority.  I believe the passage is teaching that the women of the church at Corinth needed to wear the symbol of submission to male authority.  I also believe that can be practiced with other than a headcovering, but through some other symbol.  I have taught that having the symbol is important.  Symbols, by the way, should symbolize.  There does in fact need to be symbolism, a symbol, at least one, but I don’t believe headcovering does that any more.  It isn’t customary any longer, which is why I never encountered it growing up.  Now, my antagonists might say that was because of widespread apostasy or rebellion on the teaching.  I don’t think so.  However, I believe the passage itself is teaching cultural or customary teaching and I also see this in history.

For history, yes, I refer to the Westminster Confession, and that bothers some.  Sometimes you just can’t win in this.  Someone wants history.  You refer to the Westminster Confession, and they say, “You’re Baptist,” so why are you referring to Protestants?   I’ve written on this other occasions and I’ve said that Baptists agreed with these confessions many times and only differentiated themselves from them with shorter statements.  I’m not going to cover that ground again.  My purpose is to show that this teaching was around.

I believe that the authors of the Westminster Confession taught that churches were not regulated to cover heads for worship, but that customary sign for women in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 11 revealed unalterable moral principles—submission, authority, designed gender distinction, and proper dress—always to be observed in worship, which is quite different from saying that the customary symbolism itself is unalterable.  They taught that the symbol was cultural or customary.  Wearing headcoverings escapes the regulations for worship as listed by these men, only silence on headcoverings from them. Then the statements of the men indicate that they saw headcoverings as cultural or customary.

One, George Gillespie (1613-1648) discusses three kinds of signs—natural, customary, and voluntary—headcoverings among the customary signs, writing (A Dispute Against English Popish Ceremonies, Naphtali Press, pp. 247-248);

Customable signs; and so the uncovering of the head, which of old was a sign of preeminence, has, through custom, become a sign of subjection.

Two, Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), another of these Westminster divines, writes (The Divine Right of Church Government and Excommunication, Still Waters Revival Books, pp. 89-90):

The Jews to this day, as of old, used not uncovering the head as a sign of honor:  But by the contrary, covering was a sign of honor. If therefore the Jews, being made a visible Church, shall receive the Lord’s Supper, and pray and prophesy with covered heads, men would judge it no dishonoring of their head, or not of disrespect of the Ordinances of God. Though Paul having regard to a national custom, did so esteem it.

Three, Daniel Cawdrey (1588-1664) and Herbert Palmer (1601-1647), two other divines of the Westminster Confession, in The Christian Sabbath Vindicated (1652, second part, p. 463), write:

First, variable, or temporary, which were such injunctions as were prescribed, either for some special ends, as that law for abstaining from blood, and things strangled, Acts 15:1 for avoiding offense to the Jews, or to some special nations, or persons, as agreeable to the customs of those places and times, as that of women being vailed in the Congregations, and some other the like.  Second, invariable and perpetual. . . .

Four, Scottish Covenanter, James Durham (1622-1658), in The Dying Man’s Testament of the Church of Scotland (1680), taught headcovering not a universal principle of regulated worship, but a customable sign:

For no offense whatsoever should men forbear a necessary duty, or commit anything which is materially sinful. . . .  Yet in other things . . . , if the matter is of light concernment in itself, as how men’s gestures are in their walking (suppose in walking softly, or quickly, with cloak or without) men ought to do, or abstain, as may prevent the construction of pride, lightness, etc., or give occasion to others in any of these.  Of such sort was women’s praying with their heads uncovered amongst the Corinthians, it being taken then for an evil sign.

Five, in 1536 John Calvin says in The Institutes of Christian Religion (Westminster Press, p. 1207):

[T]hat women should go out in public with uncovered heads (1 Cor. 11:5). . . . because [God] did not will in outward discipline and ceremonies what we ought to do (because he foresaw that this depended upon the state of the times, and he did not deem one form suitable for all ages). . . .

Calvin used headcoverings on women as a specific example of an outward discipline that as a form depended upon the state of the times.  In other words, it was a cultural issue.  The moral principle should be obeyed in the appropriate form.

And, six, the notes of the Geneva Bible (published in 1599), which were written by Beza, read concerning 1 Corinthians 11:4:

[Paul] gathers that if men do either pray or preach in public assemblies having their heads covered (which was then a sign of subjection), they robbed themselves of their dignity, against God’s ordinance.  It appears that this was a political law serving only for the circumstance that Paul lived in, by this reason, because in these our days for a man to speak bareheaded in an assembly is a sign of subjection.

I could point you to far more historical material than this, supporting the view that I believe, but this surely establishes it as historical with six witnesses.  I mean it when I say there are many more.

In 1 Corinthians 11:16, Paul infers the woman’s headcovering in worship was a “custom,” that is, they had no such custom of women praying unto God uncovered (1 Corinthians 11:13). Paul asks the question in 1 Corinthians 11:13: “is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?”  He answers that question in 1 Corinthians 11:16: “We have no such custom.”  The only other usage of this Greek word for “custom” (sunetheia) in the textus receptus is in John 18:39, where it refers to the “custom” of the Jews to release one prisoner at the time of the Passover (obviously a national custom for the nation of the Jews, just like the covered head for women was a national custom among the nations and societies of the Greeks).   Paul refers to headcovering as a “custom,” which is not the same thing as a scripturally regulated act or practice of worship.

Hopefully this settles this issue.  I think the above is overwhelming.  Maybe I’ll get an apology.