Heresy – Eve Ettinger

Heresy, Legalism, Privilege, Spiritual Abuse

Privilege, Dave Ramsey, and CONTEXT

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the Dave Ramsey-is-insensitive-and-privileged party.

He wrote a ridiculous post about “habits” of rich people in which he showed that he is super out of touch with what it’s like to be poor, and is a subscriber to prosperity gospel stuff, which is a lovely Gnostic sort of plague on American culture, shown most clearly in political discussions in which the word “entitled” is used to reference the assumption that “people who aren’t as well off as us must be lazy.”

Rachel Held Evans and a few others responded to him, on Twitter and through blog posts and made some good points, and now RHE’s post is going nuts on my Facebook feed.

His privilege is clearly an issue. We are right to be angry at his post and the assumptions therein.

Looking at his teachings more broadly, I’ve observed that long-term, Ramsey’s financial ideas are not especially sound. They don’t teach you how to use credit responsibly, they don’t teach you how to invest, they don’t teach you many important financial management principles that one needs to build wealth well in America.

And for someone like me, who grew up without ever going into debt, who didn’t have student loans, and never owned a credit card, it was downright damaging to my financial stability this year. I couldn’t get a small loan to buy a used car, I haven’t got any sort of credit score or history and therefore I haven’t had a “safety net” of a good visa card, etc., etc. I have had to play catch up to just exist in the credit system so I can do basic life things, like: get approved for an apartment on my own. Thanks, Dave Ramsey! I felt like a trope, the helpless, financially dependent female. [And yes, I have been very lucky to have experienced the privilege that later caused me financial complications this year.]

But I did sit through a handful of his seminars and read at least one of his books, and discussed in great detail his principles with various family members who took his courses over the last decade or so.

And I have to say, it’d be “stoopid” (as he says) to write off his teachings completely. Yes, he’s rich, white, and an arrogant dude. It’s silly to teach that debt is “slavery” and sinful. Sure, debt can be “stoopid,” but it’s just bullshit to think that Jesus is going to love you less if you have student loans.

But if you’re middle class, white, averagely financially literate, and born after 1960, it’s likely he’d be good for you. Ramsey is a skilled manipulator and motivator — part of why 1) he has so many blind followers, and 2) part of why I’m really glad he’s not a pastor — and he exercises his very specific abilities to help a very specific set of people.

Not everything he says is sound — I’m not sure cash is more “painful” than a debit card to use — but he helps those who are either in denial or just numb with fear about their debt by shaking them awake and getting them to start practicing some measure of control and awareness about their spending habits and the long-term ramifications of various debts.

His “snowball” method is not the best way to get rid of debt, but it is motivating and helpful if you’re so scared of your loans and the numbers just seem insurmountable. His “gazelle intensity” is silly, but can be effective, like having a workout coach push you for the first six weeks of your New Year’s exercise plan. A tool is a tool is a tool.

So: Dave Ramsey is a privileged bully, yes. His financial advice is bad long-term. And I hate that he uses shame so much. But, he is very useful for those who need a little courage to start to embrace the challenge of America’s favorite daydream, the self-made man. If they can.

Beauty, Christian Patriarchy, Healing, Heresy, Immodesty Rail, Incarnation, Physicality, Spiritual Abuse, Theology of the Body, Women

IR: Modesty, Dignity, and Gnosticism

Okay. Okay. I’m fed up with the annual Summer Modesty Argument On The Interwebz.

Here’s the rundown:

1) Modesty keeps men’s uncontrollable sex drives in check! vs. NO THAT’S RAPE CULTURE

2) God commands modesty to honor his creation, your body! vs. Uh, modesty is a shame thing and that’s the result of the fall.

3) Modesty makes a statement about What Your Heart Really Wants, so be a good witness! vs. Rape culture, again! I wear what I want, and I’m not asking for anything, AND Jesus doesn’t depend on my clothes for his Kingdom, thanks.

4) Everything in our culture is so sexualized! Wish we could go back to the Good Old Days. vs. Let me give you a history lesson! Everyone was having sex and covering up is a cultural standard, not a godliness thing.

And then, there’s the one that set me off last night, which basically argues that I need to cover up to protect my God-given dignity as a woman.

I want to tackle this idea that my behavior, clothing, or other external things dictates the way church people perceive my dignity. I know it does. I grew up in the thick of modesty-shame culture in SGM.

The message of modesty = dignity was clear, though perhaps not defined in such a reductive fashion. But if your listeners (or readers) are coming away with an idea that’s false, the burden is on you, the teacher/speaker (or writer) to use your language clearly enough to eliminate miscommunication. And so I feel it fair to take on this idea in the manner in which it was received and assumed to be true.

Here’s the beefy quote on this from the article in the Atlantic yesterday:

Here, there is freedom for individual women to practice modesty not primarily to preserve men’s sexual purity, but to preserve their own dignity. To show in outward form the inward truth that they matter to society for their minds, their leadership, their passions, and their talents–talents that have nothing to do with how many heads they can turn. Modesty can become a form of female power.

Female power can take LOTS of forms. Usually by transgressing against a social expectation and rewriting some rules. I get that. I applaud that. Some of my favorite things about feminism is how it’s transgressing social orders as those who are traditionally marginalized are empowering themselves and speaking up.

But my dignity is not won or lost by my clothing OR my level of empowerment. And when we’re talking about my body and dignity and working with the assumption that our motives for this discussion are in keeping with pursuing orthodox Christianity, then I’ll take further issue with this.

If you separate my dignity from my physical self, you’re assuming that my spiritual self is “better” or “holier” than my body, and you are 1) demeaning Christ’s incarnation (and thereby devaluing the sacrament of communion), and 2) embracing Gnosticism, a classic heresy.

God made humankind in his/her image and called us very good. God is not gendered, and we happen to be, but that means that ALL of us are in the image of God. Then, the fall happened, and THEN humans were introduced to shame and shame introduced clothing.

Bodies made, called good.
Sin/shame introduced, clothing happens.

My dignity as a human being comes from the fact that God made me and called it good. My body is inseparable from my human experience and identity, and my body is inseparable from my identity as a Christian, because it was through my understanding of the incarnation that I was able to overcome modesty culture shame about my body and re-embrace it as beautiful and good. Same goes for my sexuality, actually.

Don’t buy the lie that “modesty” will win you respect and dignity. If it does, it’s in a fear- and shame-centered legalistic culture, and Christ died to set us free, not bind us with more shame. My dignity doesn’t need clothes. Or your respect.

Heresy, Legalism, My story, Real Life, Sovereign Grace Ministries

SGM lawsuit: what feeds the crazy?

So, there’s this lawsuit against the denomination (or in their lingo, the “movement” or “family of churches”) that founded the cult-like church I grew up in, where the leaders are being accused of deliberately obstructing justice and preventing sexual abusers of children to live without consequences while making the children “reconcile” with their abusers.

I wish I was making this up.

Now, Christianity Today is running a piece with a quote from the current SGM spokesperson from back in November, essentially expressing that the leaders are affronted that someone would dare bring this lawsuit against them, because it undermines their authority and reputation.

Here’s the quote:

“SGM believes that allowing courts to second-guess pastoral guidance would represent a blow to the First Amendment that would hinder, not help, families seeking spiritual direction among other resources in dealing with the trauma related to any sin including child sexual abuse,” Tommy Hill, SGM’s director of administration, said in a November 14 statement.

They argue that they didn’t need to report these abusers to the law, because the knowledge they had falls under a protection established to preserve the trust of a parishioner/confessor relationship. The problem is this: the abusers didn’t confess initially to the pastors. The parents of the victims and the victims themselves were the ones bringing the report to the pastors. The pastors then proceeded to take what they considered to be appropriate action: in most of these cases (and any other cases of this nature that I’ve ever heard of in my ten years in SGM) the victim was asked about his/her sinful desires which might have caused this situation to start (translation: did you want it? were you asking for it? your heart is deceitful–you might not have been aware of your secret sinful desires. No exaggeration of content, just tone.), and then eventually attempted to conjure a “reconciliation” between the abuser and the victim. Often this entailed apologies on both sides and the expectation of a hug to show goodwill. And while the perpetrator might be, say, removed from helping in Sunday School, he/she would be allowed free range at their home church, in the community, at Bible studies, and at church conferences. And no one outside of those present for the “reconciliation” would know about what had transpired.

This is fucked up. That’s pretty obvious, from a basic human standpoint, let alone a legal or “biblical” one.

I don’t like writing about SGM stuff often. But I think I need to now, because I was in SGM for 10 years and I get how the system works and why this has happened.

Here’s the thing that most outsiders won’t understand: this sort of interaction is objectively wrong, but when you’re immersed in the all-consuming culture that is your average SGM church, you can’t tell.

Let me walk you through the mindset a bit? It’s hard to understand, and I won’t go so far to say you get brainwashed, but you definitely become numb to certain things: lack of appropriate boundaries, pastoral manipulation, guilt trips, performance-based social approval, etc.

You stop thinking critically, because questioning things is ever-so-subtly frowned upon. It’s welcomed, objectively, but you feel slight displeasure or get sidelined because of suddenly busy schedules (because, obviously, if you have questions, you’re asking your pastor to help you understand things better, not studying on your own, because they have slowly, subtly made you dependent on their approval for your confidence in your discernment and spiritual maturity). You get asked to save your questions for after care group, or referred to Systematic Theology (which will probably not answer your question), or be assured that this is really a common concern, and they plan to address it in a sermon series in the fall. Just wait.

So, the mindset.

You arrive at a SGM church. You’re starving for genuine believers who want to talk deeply about their faith and personal struggles and you’re welcomed to the local church with open arms and dinner invitations and suddenly you’re finding that these are really, really nice people. And they seem so happy.

So you start attending their care group. And the material they are studying is heavy in theological terms and discussions of sin, and God’s glory, and God’s sovereign plan. You feel excited that you have found believers who take their faith so seriously and seem to be growing in the Lord.

And you enjoy the sermons and the Sunday morning music–they have a great band, the songs are meaty and not Jesus-is-my-boyfriend-and-4-chords, and the pastors are funny, self-deprecating, and they talk in-depth about verses and reference commentaries and historical context and you feel excited, because this is intellectual AND heartfelt, and they seem so genuine. The pastor seems so humble and tender. You can see yourself “getting plugged in” here for the long-term.

Then, as your first year or two passes, you learn about other things.

The women’s meetings where there’s a joke/illustration about how the godly mom the speaker admires doesn’t even have a junk drawer, she’s so organized. That’s so hospitable of her, to keep her home welcoming and clean! This honors God!

There might be a care group meeting where you’re asked to look back on the last year–where did you fail? Where did you see God “growing you”? Where do you want to grow in your faith this next year? Who is going to keep you accountable to it? And the idea of accountability groups is introduced: a biweekly meeting of 2 or 3 church members of the same sex, where you ask each other “hard questions” about spiritual disciplines and growth–where have you been “struggling” lately? what do you need to repent of? how can you make it right with person you sinned against (they may not even be aware of it!)? do you have any “observations” for me?

You feel encouraged. Areas of weakness are being exposed and you’re getting support from your friends to try to grow and work on them! You have strong Christian friends who really care!

And other things happen. You are urged to be faithful with your giving, so you splurge and give generously to the building fund. You are compelled by someone’s example to go get involved in Sunday School. You want to grow in the feminine, biblical virtue of hospitality, so you have some friends over for dinner once a week. You help make food for care group. You plan baby showers, surprise birthday parties, trips to the movies (where everything is pre-screened via Rotten Tomatoes to make sure that no one will be made to “stumble” because of temptations in the movie related to their sins they’re currently working on). You get really excited when the senior pastor’s daughter-in-law asks you to babysit for her kids one evening–what an honor! You do it for free. You and your husband are hoping to improve your marriage to grow in ways you see the older couples living out godly marriages, so you study books like The Complete Husband, and urge him to make sure he’s got accountability partners for his struggles with lust (because he’s a guy. Duh, he’s always lusting. We know this.), and you schedule yourselves a weekly date night and you try not to have too many expectations for it, so there’s a chance of a deep conversation.

If you have kids, you ask the older moms for wisdom and so they start giving you input. This input morphs into regular unsolicited critiques, and you realize you have to be really serious about spanking the right way, and not letting disobedience on the first issue of a command slide anymore. Your kids need to learn not to interrupt adults, not to be angry or fussy, because you’ll get an observation from some other mom if they see you struggling to control the tone of your family. Oh, and you’re a stay-at-home mom, because that’s God’s best plan and highest calling for you as a woman.

You offend your friend by snapping at her one day over a nothing when you’re stressed, and she writes you a long email later, offering her concerns for the pride and anger residing in your heart. She cares about you, so she’s going to point it out! But you really need to repent and work on that. Maybe have longer quiet times and do a study on peace and gentleness? You wonder if she’s right, or if it’s just that you were overtired and hungry, and that’s not normal. You ask your husband to keep you accountable, and you show the email to your care group leader’s wife, who urges you to take it seriously and to pray about trying to reconcile with your friend. Later your husbands may meet for lunch, to discuss how to handle this reconciliation. They schedule a double date, where you apologize to her (you’re probably crying, because this is sin and it’s serious and you feel terrible because this sort of thing is what put Jesus on the cross for you. You are such a vile sinner!), and she welcomes the apology, and then tells you that she spoke with your care group leader and his wife, too. They have some concerns about your pride, because you didn’t seem to be very receptive to the rebuke at first. Maybe you should meet with them as three couples and talk about it? You’re mortified and want to make it right, so you agree. Your husbands probably don’t say much. Your friend hugs you and tells you how she loves you and is praying for you and really wants to help you grow–that’s all!

The three-way meeting with the care group leader will be the end of this, if you are meek and receptive and don’t argue or question their input. This will end with a time of prayer, and much thankfulness will be expressed over your humble, teachable spirit! Sunday’s sermon is about how you are supposed to make it easy for your pastors to care for you by being teachable and transparent to them, and you feel encouraged. You’re finally on the way to being purified, and man, are you thankful for the cross! Jesus must have suffered a lot to save you. So amazing.

…and then live that way for ten years.

You have the perfect storm for socially quick, manipulative personalities to rise quickly in the ranks of the church leadership, for the depressed and hurting to beat themselves up for their sins and keep accepting any critiques of their attitudes or actions, and the insecure to always, always second-guess their own instincts and instead choose to follow the advice and corrective teachings of those in authority over them.

It’s not brainwashing, but it’s a social immersion into a culture where you lose your sense of self, your boundaries, your privacy, and your ability to reason independently in a slow fade to submissive SGM church member, fiercely loyal to the great people and genuine culture of faith there.

It’s insane.

And so, in that world, your child tells you that so-and-so at care group touched their private parts. You are furious. You confront this person, you tell your care group leader. Your care group leader tells you that he’s going to bring this up with your pastor and get back to you (because no one thinks to call the cops yet), and the pastor wants to meet with you (maybe you’ve never had any one-on-one time with your pastor before, so you feel affirmed and like he’s taking it seriously)…and then you’re angry in the meeting toward your child’s molester, and you get confronted about your anger, and, and, and…

Suddenly, the SGM sin-confrontation system has kicked into high gear, and the child abuse has take a back seat (because, it’s only on the child’s word, and children are so sinful and need to be trained to love Jesus and not walk in their flesh)…

And it never gets reported. And your child is made to hug his/her abuser. And the abuser is seen as repentant and restored, and you think, well, maybe it’ll be okay. That process of rooting out sin is really thorough. And they have so much accountability–from their accountability partner and their care group leader and from the pastor.

And nothing is done about it.

Until now.

Heresy, Incarnation, Joy, Real Life, Thankful

Incarnation and Ikons

I have an ikon now. But what about “Thou shalt not make for yourself any graven image”?

First: I do not think that God is in the picture in my kitchen. I do not think he looks like a double-chinned Caucasian with doe-eyes. I do not believe I am kissing the face of Jesus when I caress this image, and I am not worshiping a picture for its own sake.

The remarkable thing about an ikon is this: prior to the Incarnation of Jesus (when he became man and took on our skin and bones and the sheer tiredness and little pleasures of being human), it was wrong to make an image of God. God was not flesh, God was spirit, and no one had ever seen his face. It would be wrong to make a picture of God, for there was nothing under heaven and on earth that could be designed in his likeness. The commandment in Exodus is to this point. You can’t have an image of God the Spirit.

However, I am not monocovenantal and I believe that God is with us and has been one of us. Jesus’s incarnation gave God a face and a body and a true empathy with humanity’s frailty. Jesus had a nose and eyes and ears. He probably had crooked teeth, bad breath after eating onions, feet that smelled and needed washing. He had hands that got torn up during carpentry work and broken through by the brute force of nails on the cross. He was just like us.

The literary trope of the Everyman is so appealing because we subconsciously know that God cannot have compassion on our troubles and joys unless he becomes just like us, and the Everyman is a hero who is just like us.

To make an image of Jesus is not blasphemy anymore, because an ikon/iconic image of Jesus depicts him as the Everyman, the suffering kinsman who also happens to be the one who can save us all from ourselves. An image of God the Son can be made because he did become flesh that could have been pictured if only he had sat for a portrait. Since he didn’t, we can’t assume he looked exactly one way or another, but that’s part of the beauty of not knowing what he looked like. He is perpetually preserved in our historical imagination as the ultimate Everyman.

Ikons aren’t a violation of the OT commandment. Jesus was made just like you. And Jesus can inhabit my kitchen. He’s just not contained to a picture. And he’s not bound by your abstract idea of his historical person and actions. Go look in your mirror and see Jesus in your own humanity.

revised 11/29 for clarity.

Biblical gender roles, Christian Patriarchy, Gender, Grace, Heresy, Legalism, Men, Women

“Feminist” is not a four-letter word

When I say I’m a feminist, all I mean is that women should be treated like Jesus treated them. In love, fairness, justice, and equality under the law. The majority of women around the world today are not treated with fairness and justice. This is why I call myself a Christian feminist. – Abby at Little Stories [It’s a really good post. Go read the whole thing.]

Where I come from, to identify with the feminist movement or feminist theory is the social equivalent of having a baby out of wedlock and enjoying the shock value, using the f-word in front of the Baptist pastor’s wife just to make her cry/blush, or wearing a pentagram and a mohawk to church because you hate your parents. It’s assumed that if you’re a feminist, you’re giving God the middle finger and plan to do whatever the hell you want to do.

That assumption is so wrong, and I confess I get impatient with those who believe this. People who identify themselves as feminists can sometimes be like that, yes. But then again, the Westboro Baptist Church doesn’t represent those who define themselves as Christians, does it?

The majority of feminists are just trying to live their lives in a thoughtful, ethical manner–respecting everyone, including themselves. Equality cuts both ways. Ethically consistent feminists will seek justice for any who are oppressed, and sometimes that happens to be women.

As an English major, feminism is a word that has a whole world of loaded meaning–and none of it matches up with the bra-burning, baby-killing, men-hating stereotype painted by the conservative Christian ghetto.

Feminist literary theory seems easy to me. At its simplest, it basically examines the text as if it were a photographic negative–what’s missing speaks the loudest. The absence of men in such and such roles, and the absence of women in these other roles, the masculine-heavy language used by the women in a text written by a male author, etc. You approach the text with your assumptions inverted, and see what you find. At its most complex, it tangles psychoanalytic theories of linguistics with feminine absences/presences and delves into subconscious nuances in the very words of a text. That’s where it gets fascinating, really. And my English professors would probably pale at the truncated and caricatured description I just gave–it’s a lot more complex than just what I [tried] to describe. Sorry, Messer.

The reason I feel that feminist theory is easy is this: up until the late 1800s, most books were written by men in a male-dominant culture. Feminist criticism can have a field day with almost anything written before Feminist theory came along and everyone started being self-aware in their writings. (meta-meta. This sort of writing became like an internet meme among novelists in the last 50 years and it’s really annoying.) It’s easy to find something new to pick apart for its misogyny and absence of feminine language. It becomes a cop-out among English students just trying to get a degree without putting a lot of original thought into their theses, while looking like they are because the text they’ve chosen hasn’t been analyzed in depth before from the feminist perspective.

. . . this doesn’t sound anything like the feminism you know, does it?

My point is, “feminist” is a loaded word, and using it in its fullest academic meaning will earn me dirty looks and incredulity from most conservative Christians.

Dear Christians, please lay down your arms, and make sure that word means what you think it means before teaching your children that [insert a word used to describe a group of people] don’t love Jesus.

Christian Patriarchy, Heresy, Legalism, Sovereign Grace Ministries

Squabbles in the Body

When should critics of bad pastoral methods, teaching, and theology stop using Matthew 18 as their guidelines for resolving an issue of possible abuse or heresy (this is not your average church quarrel) and start addressing the issue like a serious academic argument? When should the gloves of nice church behavior come off and the intellectual machine guns be pulled out?

I’m reading A Matter of Basic Principles by Don Veinot and I’m also half-heartedly following the dispute between Sovereign Grace Ministries and their critics and former pastors. Everyone in these situations wastes so much breath explaining how they are justified in what they’re doing (publishing denunciations against other Christians) because of [insert years of relational details here] which obviously show how they followed Matthew 18 to the letter and are now moving on to the last step of “tell it to the Church”… by publishing their arguments.

It’s wearying to read, honestly. Isn’t there a way to biblically shortcut this system when issues are this huge?

Christian Patriarchy, Grace, Heresy, Legalism, My story, Sovereign Grace Ministries

Why I give a damn

Maybe it seems to some of my readers that this whole “Christian Patriarchy” is just one of those sub-culture issue about which Christians like to get their knickers in a twist, and maybe it seems like I need to “just get over it” and accept that there were problems with my family and move on with life. Everyone has their own issues, right?

I would posit that both these reactions are understandable, and that, in a way, I would agree. First: Christians too often care about things that shouldn’t matter, and neglect that which is vital to their identity as Christians (Jesus, grace, forgiveness, etc.). Second: yes, life is hard and everyone has their own story to tell and everyone has their own intensely personal pain to wrestle. Mine is not unusual and mine is not particularly remarkable. I’m not asking you to give me sympathy, I’m not out to get my parents (they’re super nice and I really admire them), and I’m not out to get a memoir deal with a big publisher.

However, I still feel compelled to write about Christian Patriarchy and the detrimental effects that this philosophy of God, life, and family has on churches, women, children, and good heavens, yes! the men involved in and affected by CP.

The reason this issue is so important is that CP–being primarily derived from interpretations of Scripture and reinforced by assertions about God’s character–is at its heart an issue of essential beliefs about God, his nature, and the nature of his relationship with man.

Christian Patriarchy assumes a particularly pernicious interpretation of the gospel, and does not reflect, at all, the God that I know or the grace that He has chosen to define His relationship with mankind. Because a right view of God and grace is vital to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, I feel that I have a sort of moral obligation to “give a damn” about what this school of thought teaches, and if I can intelligently engage with it to the furtherance of a right understanding of grace, I will do so.

I don’t think I can “fix” this issue or even that I have to “win” an argument about whether or not CP is based in heresy. But as someone who has encountered radical grace in my recovery from the legalistic oppression of CP, I have a sort of “mama bear” reaction when I see friends or acquaintances burdened by the mental guilt of CP’s “gospel” and live in a horizon-less, black-and-white world, when there are colors and shadows and sunrises to be found in living without striving to patch oneself together to achieve man-made approval. (Other elements of CP wake in me grief and compassion–more on that in another post.)

Let me unpack this in a bit more detail.

Christian Patriarchy assumes that God demands His people to be separate from the world, citing the Old Testament to back this up, as well as choice selections from Romans.

The idea is, that if His people are to be like Him, they can’t be like the world (e.g. sinful) and so they must live in a radically different manner from the world and separate themselves from sinful people. This thinking makes sense, on some levels, but it goes awry when they handily overlook the fact that there are two different sorts of separation going on between the OT and the NT, reflective of two different covenants with God and two different types of relationship between God and man.

The first (OT) covenant is one of law and ritual purification and a higher physical standard of living for religious purity reasons. God demands His people to be holy, they are sinful, they must obey the Law to appease Him, etc. This covenant, St. Paul later explains, was given to demonstrate man’s utter inability to meet God’s standard through holy living and separation from the world. Sin is a heart issue, and law cannot uproot it from human nature.

Hence, in the NT, God gives His people Christ as a substitute, the incarnate God bearing His people’s sins upon Himself to propitiate for their sinful nature. The focus from this point on is the unmerited grace that God gives through Jesus to those who trust in Him for redemption from themselves. Grace supersedes the need for the law, and grace becomes the motivator for a believer to live a holy life. The relationship between God and man is no longer based upon fear and obligation, and is transformed to be centered upon unmerited, unceasing love and a transformed heart that will naturally desire to live in a way that pleases God.

The Christian Patriarchy movement misses the whole point of the second covenant, the new relationship forged in blood by Christ. CP teachings are classically monocovenantal, which basically means that these people believe that God didn’t make two separate covenants (OT, NT), but rather that the life of Jesus was an addition to the first covenant and that the obligations of the OT law still hold some sway over those who profess faith in Christ.

The details of how the patriarchal Christian is supposed to work to please God by obeying various laws or rules varies from group to group–Bill Gothard is famously detailed in his law-based teachings, Vision Forum is slightly less standardized, and Sovereign Grace Ministries functions almost entirely upon unspoken social mores that function as spiritual laws. However, the focus on outward behavior, undue confession of sin (to parties uninvolved, male authority figures, etc., rather than God or privately to an offended brother), a perverse obsession with personal guilt and striving to improve the self, and a constant feeling among CP individuals that they can’t quite measure up or that they are unworthy of ____ (fill in the blank!)–all these things bear the marks of CP beliefs about God.

In the minds of CP adherents, God becomes a taskmaster, an angry judge, and an indifferent and offended authority figure; all these reflect the sort of men and fathers involved in CP, which suggests to me that they have created this system of theology to mirror God after themselves. And such an action is classic of any heretical teaching: man forming God in his own image is as old as Adam and still just as damning.

This shift in how God is viewed is poisonous to the faith of believers in CP, and stunts the faith of those raised in it, and frightens those to whom CP tries to “witness” or “share their faith”–but it’s not the gospel of grace in Christ that they’re selling. It’s a man-made system of appeasing authority in hopes of purifying oneself and the culture enough to make a lasting difference (in what? it differs, depending on the group. VF would say: America!, Gothard would say: The Church!, others would vary by turns).

A right understanding of God is vital to the Christian walk and vital to the redemption of human hearts desperate for grace. And that’s why I give a damn about this.