Yesterday, Team Pyro offered a post entitled, “Filthy Calvinists, and the People Who Love to Hate Them.” Basically, the post contends that people love to hate Calvinists and Calvinism and offers non-Calvinists opportunity to explain why. 254 comments later, the conversation still rages.
I read the post yesterday and shrugged. I glanced at about 5 comments thinking, Why do we work ourselves up over this stuff? Nothing new here. Get back to the sermon.
Then last night I curled up with a couple titles given to me for my birthday while in South Africa at Easter. One is by a South African former educator, corporate type, writer and satirist, Ndumiso Ngcobo (who kinda looks like Randy Jackson from American Idol), entitled, Is It Coz I’m Black?
And what should be the title of the night’s essay?
“No Sex, Please! We’re Calvinists.”
Huh?
Like the other essays in the book, this one is a half-serious, half-humorous look at life in South Africa from an admittedly warped perspective. In this case, the essay offers a rather honest look at condom use–or lack thereof–and calls for some much needed honesty in South African hook-up culture (though that’s needed in every place in addition to South Africa).
Anyway, the jab at Calvinists was curious indeed. And, as is far too often the case, historically and theologically just plain wrong. But in honor of the claim over at Pyromaniacs, I offer Ngcobo’s paragraph (the only one touch Calvinism in the article) as exhibit 255 in the “why they love to hate Calvinism and Calvinists” discussion:
Sex is a beautiful, beautiful thing–despite what John Calvin thought.
For the uninitiated in the constipated thoughts of John Calvin, he was the anally retentive bearded fellow who right royally screwed up many societies across the world with his 16th-century theological opinions. He convinced many followers that Jesus wants us all to be miserable and to resist the temptation to partake in any activities that might bring us pleasure. Such as sex. If I were president of the world for a day I’d have his body exhumed, subjected to a firing squad and hanged upside down by his nads on Mary Fitzgerald Square. Him and a succession of those purple-robed pious men with tiny hats from the Vatican (p. 109).
There you have it. Calvin and Calvinists love misery and hate pleasure, including sex–unless, of course, it’s miserable sex. Wow. And this guy managed to put Calvin at the head of a firing line with a succession of Catholic priests! That’s no small feat. To be sure, this is the only way to get Calvin and men from the Vatican in a line-up together.
Anyway, to correct such a warped view of that theology which did indeed change the world, you might try the following talks:
While I’m at it, I’d love to offer another plug for Piper’s recent book, Finally Alive. Or, listen to or watch the sermon series here. I say the title should have an exclamation point in it, because the book nails this very important issue in a very clear and life-giving way. Read it and be blessed in knowing what God has done to raise sinners to life through His Son.
The folks at DG produce some very creative and moving videos. I like this one promoting John Piper’s new book on Ruth, A Sweet and Bitter Providence. But much more than a promotion it’s a moving soliloquy regarding God and His good purposes for our lives.
Jesus. Love. Joy. Gospel. Reward. Love. Did you hear that running through these videos? That’s what I love about T4G! Can’t wait for them to release the rest of these brief recaps and to gather in Louisville in April! Find out more and register here.
John Piper abominates this teaching. I’m with John. Poverty–as disastrous as it is–doesn’t warrant abandoning the only hope of the gospel with the false hope of ‘prosperity.’
Damning people to hell with what they love as fallen people.
That’s a pretty good summary of the ‘prosperity gospel,’ which is not the gospel at all. The appeal to the carnal desires of men (wealth, ownership, influence, etc.) as the basis, evidence, and goal of worship of God is, to put it mildly, soul destroying.
Now, a caveat. This is not to say there are not Christians involved in churches and sitting under preachers committed to the ‘prosperity gospel.’ There are. They trust Christ alone for their salvation. They love Him and they seek to serve Him.
Yet, they may not see how egregious an error the ‘prosperity gospel’ is. There is so much in the Scripture about blessings and about God’s good gifts to His people. There is so much in the Bible about what is good and beautiful in life.
But the ‘prosperity gospel’ makes at least three critical mistakes that may not be easily discerned by a person regularly sitting under this teaching looking into a Bible that contains so much about God’s blessings.
1. The ‘prosperity gospel’ makes wealth and possessions a part of the gospel. In other words, it teaches that Christ’s work includes and purchases prosperity for His people, and defines that prosperity chiefly in terms of things in this life. That’s a different ‘gospel’ (Gal. 1:1-9). It can not save. It says, “Come to Jesus to get your life in order” (the moralist prosperity gospel in so many ‘evangelical’ churches), or “Come to Jesus and you will have houses and lands and money in this life, now” (the materialist prosperity gospel variety taught by so many word-of-faith televangelists and their wanna-be followers). But the biblical gospel is “Turn to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, to be reconciled to the True God, to escape the wrath to come, and live eternally in His love.” That’s good news and precious treasure whether or not we ever find wealth, comfort, ease, or get our lives in some moralistic order. The ‘prosperity gospel’ displaces this good news with a lesser news, “free stuff.”
2. The ‘prosperity gospel’ mistakenly assumes that because something is mentioned a lot in the Bible it must be the main point of the Bible. That’s a serious mistake. My wife and I talk a lot about bills that need to be paid. We have our entire marriage, from the time were were broke college students each working two jobs to just last week when thinking about vacation and the kids’ back-to-school needs. We communicate about money. But is our relationship about money? No, praise God! Our relationship is about a lot of other far more glorious things than money and decisions about money. So it is with the Scriptures. The frequent references about money or possessions or blessings are not the main point: God is the main point. The Bible is about God and His redemptive work. All of life is about God and worship of Him. It’s not about us and our stuff. Prosperity preachers baptize their concern with worldly things with a lot of God-talk. But God becomes the Bible’s backup singer to man’s solo quest for stuff. It’s a theological folly in missing the point.
3. The ‘prosperity gospel’ overlooks suffering. That’s to be expected. Anywhere prosperity gets defined as material wealth, etc., emphasis on comfort goes up and attention to suffering goes out. And yet, the Lord and the apostles call us repeatedly to endure suffering for the glory of His name. In fact, the Christian life, in one sense, is synonymous with the sufferings of Christ. “For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows” (2 Cor. 1:5). Because we’re united to Christ, we suffer. And we are blessed when we suffer for Him (Matt. 5:10-12; 1 Peter). One can’t help but think that much of our weakness as Christians is owing to our un-Christian aversion to suffering, avoiding it at all cost and christening cowardice as wisdom. The ‘prosperity gospel’ lays a pretty deep foundation for that mistake.
Anyway… I didn’t intend to say much at all about this, just to show the video. But I pray that the Lord’s people, redeemed by His blood, would leave these churches and ministries in a mass exodus.
