Introduction
Just finished reading a book on the Christian duty of caring for orphans, and it struck me that it represents the best and worst of “TGC” Calvinistic evangelicalism. The best part of it is the soft heart for the gospel and the needs of others. It takes the sufficiency of the gospel and the duties of the gospel seriously. We have been adopted by God, and therefore, we are to spread this message and care to the world. The worst part of it is the sentimentalism, lack of warnings, guilt manipulation, and failure to address large swaths of other Biblical duties that require wisdom and balance.
Why are evangelicals so easily manipulated when it comes to social justice issues, multiculturalism, immigration, abortion, homosexuality, and taxation? Because we have soft hearts and soft heads. We “follow our hearts” rather than use our heads. We are manipulated by needs, by weakness, by hurt and pain, and while it is good and right to feel for those in need, it is disobedience to allow our feelings to drive our action. And much of this is led by the feelings of women, dragging their husbands/pastors behind them. When this happens, it is toxic matriarchy, the mothering instinct untethered from God’s Word, truth, and reality – “untethered empathy” – or what is sometimes called “the longhouse.”
The Need is Not Necessarily the Call
For example, a book on orphan care didn’t mention (that I noticed) the high incidence of sexual abuse and sexual promiscuity in foster care homes, adoptive homes, and blended families. What about the duty a man has to provide for, protect, and love well the children God has already given him? How many adoptive families have brought enormous burdens upon their biological children? How many have created de facto new orphans by their neglect of their biological children because of the constant demands of the adopted orphans? When it comes to missions and mercy ministry, the Hippocratic Oath applies: “first do no harm.”
It has often been said in missions and mercy ministry that “the need is not the same thing as the call.” There are many needs, but we cannot possibly meet all of them. Sometimes God’s providence makes it clear: it’s your brother’s kids who need a place to stay; a family in your church disintegrates; tragedy or disaster strikes or some other personal connection puts a particular need in your path (like the Good Samaritan). But God does not ask for us to give what He has not already provided for us to give, and at the same time, it is sometimes true that God has provided more than we realize, and the need reveals the abundance He has already provided. But it is not generosity to give beyond what you have to some need and then turn around, hat in hand, asking the deacons to help you pay your bills the next month, or worse, require your own children or spouse to pick up the slack.
Hard Heads
When God called Ezekiel to minister to a wayward and whorish nation, He gave him a hard head: “Like adamant stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not be afraid of them, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they are a rebellious house.” Evangelism and missions and mercy work require soft hearts and hard heads: courage, backbone, knowledge, and wisdom. And counting the cost, assessing the strength of your armies before going to war, and doing due diligence about the potential dangers and opposition you will face is not lack of faith or cowardice. It is actually true faith and love of God and the way He made the world.
The problem with many modern evangelicals, maybe Calvinistic evangelicals especially, is that we have soft hearts and soft heads, which makes us easy to manipulate. We are thoughtless and foolish, and then, because we’re Calvinists, we justify our foolishness by appealing to God’s sovereignty – God can do anything. Yes, but remember, that was essentially one of the temptations of the Devil: God can send His angels to save you from your foolishness. But Jesus said that we must not tempt the Lord our God. We must not act the fool and treat God (or His angels) like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Even if God sometimes sends His angels to break His people out of jail.
So Christians should have soft hearts for widows and orphans and immigrants and the lost, for missions, for mercy, and for evangelism, and we are required by God to also have hard heads about the various challenges, difficulties, and temptations we will face addressing those very real needs. Just because Charles Spurgeon started preaching at 17 doesn’t mean we ought to ordinarily ordain seniors in high school to the ministry. Just because George Muller refused to ask for help and relied on God in prayer, doesn’t mean that we are to run our churches or businesses or personal finances that way. We can celebrate miracles and extraordinary circumstances without putting the Lord our God to the test.
And so it is with family members that come out as homosexual or trans, or the immigration crisis, or abortion. Take abortion “exceptions” for rape or incest or the life of a mother: it is a soft headed sentimentalism that thinks killing a baby for the crime of his father or parents will help. It is hard enough that a 13 year old may be pregnant yes, but it is an atrocity to think that murdering her baby helps anything. And even when a mother’s life is truly at risk, delivering a baby prematurely is not an abortion. You are not intentionally taking a baby’s life, even if we do not yet have the medical technology to keep that baby alive.
Likewise, the refusal to exercise church discipline for unbiblical divorce or adultery or fornication or homosexuality or transgenderism because it might make people feel bad, might hurt their feelings. Paul rebuked the Corinthians for being “welcoming and affirming” of that one guy who was shacking up with his step-mom, for going to temple prostitutes, for suing each other, and for getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper, and he was glad that he made them feel sad because it led them to the sorrow of repentance (2 Corinthians 7). We must have hard heads about God’s Word, obedience, and truth, even while being sympathetic to the harsh realities of sin and a fallen world and honestly desiring salvation, healing, and restoration.
While we are called to practice hospitality, your house probably cannot hold more than a certain number of people well. If you invite two families over for dinner and do not invite a third or a fourth, that doesn’t mean you are hard-hearted or faithless. It means you want to practice true hospitality. Too much hospitality becomes inhospitable. Just because God does sometimes multiply the bread and the fishes, that doesn’t mean America can handle any amount of immigration. Even if we would ideally want a relatively easy national border to cross, it is not unchristian to ask for orderly lines, identification, and some measure of accountability and security, especially when there are evil men with evil intentions seeking to harm us and our children. To fail to care for our own households is to be worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5). Even pagans know that we must first care for our own families and neighbors before we can love the strangers well.
Conclusion
Finally, there’s a difference between a life or death emergency and the ongoing hardship of living in a fallen world. If a stranger has a medical emergency on your doorstep, you have some responsibility to care for that need (call 911). If a house is on fire, you stop everything and try to help. If a neighbor child goes missing, you do whatever you can to find him. If the bone is sticking out, you go to the ER.
But there are many hardships and difficulties (broken families, marriages, and less than ideal circumstances) that require longterm holistic solutions, cultural transformation, and gospel marination. In the same way that you cannot simply export “democracy” or a “constitutional republic” to foreign non-Christian cultures, so too, it is often very difficult to address complex needs through a simplistic gospel presentation or simply relocating someone into your Christian home. And just because sometimes it works (and we’ve all heard some glorious testimonies) doesn’t mean it was a good idea.
I say all of this as someone who has gratefully done foster care, supported family members and church members who have adopted, and as a pastor committed to the full-orbed gospel ministry in word and deed. We need soft gospel hearts and hard-headed biblical wisdom. A true “Calvinistic” evangelicalism doesn’t just “wing it.” Our sovereign Father has carefully planned our salvation. He counted the cost, and because of His infinite resources is able to execute our rescue with absolute precision. While we certainly cannot imitate his infinite resources, we must imitate His wise love, His careful provision. Our Father is full of compassion and wisdom. He has a soft heart and a hard head. And of course this also means that sometimes when we have done all that seems wise and prudent, our Father will still give us more than seems reasonable, and then we must trust Him to provide even more. This is the true spirit of adoption.
Photo by Annika Marek-Barta on Unsplash
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