Carl Trueman: An ecclesiastical challenge

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, March 26. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Every era has its own seductive lies—ideas that capture the culture, even if they stray from the truth. WORLD commentator Carl Trueman says the antidote isn’t outrage or retreat—but sound, faithful preaching.

CARL TRUEMAN: Recent Pew Research findings on the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod make for somber reading for all confessional Christians. Many like myself may not be Lutheran, but we look to the LCMS as a stronghold of traditional Protestant orthodoxy…

Yet the Pew Research indicates that times might well be set to change. It reports that 54% of members think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Fifty percent say homosexuality should be accepted, down slightly from 10 years ago. Fifty percent now favor same-sex marriage…up slightly over the same time.

The fact that such high proportions of Missouri-Synod Lutherans consistently affirm positions incompatible with historic Christianity is a cause for concern. For the professional doom-sages, it will likely fuel that form of lamentation that seems just a little too self-satisfied that another “once-great Valiant-for-Truth” has proved faithless. For those who have been in ministry, it will confirm what they know only too well: that no-one should assume that the orthodoxy of the pulpit and the office-bearers will naturally permeate the pew.

A better response than gleeful lamentation is to read such surveys as pointing to the key ecclesiastical challenges of our day and building pastoral strategies that address them. The church has always faced problems as the wider culture catechizes her people in its own values. When I became a Christian 40 years ago old-style liberalism that questioned the supernatural was the major foe—undermining biblical accounts of miracles and the deity of Christ. It was important to focus in Christian preaching and catechesis on clarifying and reinforcing the vital connection between the historicity of the resurrection and the gospel.

Today, the issue is different. It presents itself as a new morality. Hence, questions about the legitimacy of homosexuality and the desirability of gay marriage are now central. And underlying these overtly moral challenges lurks the question of anthropology: What is man? That question can be recast as “What is man for?”—something that reveals the connection with matters of sex, marriage, and abortion.

This means that ministers, elders, and all with responsibility for teaching the whole counsel of God need to think about how to teach their people a sound anthropology. It is not surprising that a world whose gospel is that of personal happiness has shaped the minds of a rising generation of Christians to see aspects of the sexual revolution as acceptable. The sexual revolution has always sold itself as delivering such happiness and portrayed its opponents as kill-joys. The only way to combat this is to set forth a robust anthropology. One that challenges the values of the sexual revolution at the deepest level and that makes it clear to Christians that there is a necessary connection between the gospel and the meaning of man.

In practical terms, there should be a threefold strategy here. Preaching and catechesis need to bring out that necessary connection again and again and again. Only by constant affirmation of that point will people begin to understand. Worship too plays its role, raising hearts and minds above the earthly sphere to the things that are above. When the beauty of Christ is set forth in the worship service, the tawdry fake beauties of modern society will pale in comparison. And we need to embody in our daily lives what true, biblical anthropology looks like: beautiful marriages, deep friendships, homes marked by hospitality. That is the way to shape the Christian imagination in a way that will draw Christian people away from the lies of this present age.

I’m Carl Trueman.

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