Disappointed in Friends

A number of friends of mine have crossed a line that I think they should not have crossed and I am extremely disappointed. Given that their actions are causing public news, I should write about it publicly so they can subtweet me.

Their guy lost the Southern Baptist Convention presidency. Instead of acting with grace in a church setting, they’ve acted now with partisanship as if the winners and losers are political figures to be slimed in a never ending campaign. The perpetual campaign in a church setting is staggeringly gross. That they are doing it with half-truths and distortions makes it worse. That they have not one ounce of humility left to consider the sins of their own actions makes it damnable.

On top of it all, Ed Litton, the winner, is to my left and I’d have voted for the other guy were I Baptist. But what they are doing to Litton, who is a good man even as we might disagree on things, is beyond the pale.

First came the ‘whisper.’

If you are in the church or follow pastors on social media, you’d have picked up on this. The claim is that Litton says the Bible only whispers about sexual sin. Litton absolutely said that, but the claim is devoid of the larger context.

In the sermon in question, Litton preached that the Bible in the New Testament and Old Testament condemns greed and pride, among other things. He uses sexual sin as a comparison. Given how often we, in our culture, rail on sexual sin, Litton’s point was that the New Testament’s condemnation amounts to a whisper compared to God’s yelling about greed, etc.

He is not saying God and scripture whisper about sexual sin. He is saying the Bible condemns sexual sin, but that the Bible spends a whole lot more time focused on a lot of sins we, in the church and modern society, tend to ignore. I’ve heard this statement made for years by very biblically orthodox pastors. My typical response is that in our times Christians spend a lot of time talking about sexual sin because it is the sin of the day when, during Biblical times, power and greed among the ruling elite were a focus.

It makes one no more or less a sin than the other. It is about focus. But to claim Litton neither condemned sexual sin nor treated it as anything other than a whisper is simply a lie. It takes a snippet from his sermon and removes it from all its context in order to lie about him. Litton flat out does condemn sexual sins from abortion to homosexuality and you’d never know it from the attacks on him.

It is appalling to see people who claim to be pastors doing this solely because their preferred candidate lost an election.

The second attack is an attack on the Southern Baptist Convention itself and its members. A very poorly worded resolution was offered up that essentially, by its plain text, would prohibit the Southern Baptist Convention from advancing a pro-life culture unless it was an all or nothing advance. That is to say, Baptists could not support a late term abortion ban because there’d still be early abortions. A number of people within the Southern Baptist community of churches spoke out against the resolution, which also advocating prosecution of women who had abortions. The people who spoke out are in the adoption and pro-life community. But they are now getting attacked as being pro-abortion for having the audacity to argue we should ban every abortion possible, but not prosecute women or let abortions continue unless we can ban every single one.

The latest attack is against Ed Litton again. They are accusing him of plagiarizing another person — that he took a person’s sermon as his own and did so with no attribution.

In a sermon, Litton recited points made by then Southern Baptist Commission President J.D. Greear and did so with Greear’s permission. Litton could have made it more clear, I suppose. But it is not in dispute that he had Greear’s permission and, again in context, was reiterating the points made by the then sitting President of the SBC, not plagiarizing those points as his own.

Y’all, this is really disgusting stuff. It is the stuff partisans in politics do. It is the stuff sore losers do. It is exactly the sort of stuff Jesus frowns on in the New Testament. These are men of scripture twisting another man’s words and lying about him and assassinating his character all because they lost an election.

It’s like attacking Jesus for claiming Jesus told the Pharisees they could stone the adulteress or attacking Jesus for working on the Sabbath.

They need to repent and some of them are friends of mine.

When you start treating the church like American politics, you’re going to lose the church and possibly your soul in the process. When you treat the church just like you treat politics, it becomes not the most precious of things, but the most transactional of things.

Shame on y’all. Repent.