In his forthcoming book, Fight, Craig Groeschel turns his insight and humor toward the issues that American men deal with every day. Using the famous biblical strongman Samson as a counterexample, Craig calls out the three primary sins that plague men today: pride, lust, and entitlement. Each of these, he argues, cuts men off both from fulfilling their intended purpose and from their most important relationship, which is with God, their true Father.

The book is arranged in an easy-to-read format, with each section divided up into subsections (or subchapters) that typically run just 3 or 4 pages. A guy could easily read a subchapter between meetings, in a waiting room, or before work each day. The accessibility of the format, as well as the content, makes this book a prime candidate for small group studies. While the material of the book doesn’t go as deep as, say, John Eldridge’s classic Wild at Heart or LeAnn Payne’s Crisis in Masculinity, it may be more likely to reach men on the fringes of our churches–those who come because their wives demand it, and who are too distracted by the allures of this world to invest any of their time or energy into a relationship with Jesus.

The book is at its best when Craig combines his self-depracting humor with broadly-appealing biblical insight. He is casting a wide net, one that will capture the attention of most middle-class American men. In that lies the book’s value: to get men thinking about the deeper issues of life who may not otherwise stop and think about such things, much less develop a plan for fighting the various temptations in their lives.

If I were overseeing a men’s ministry and looking for a way to start discipling those men who are on the fringe of my church, I would definitely use this book. It’s funny. It’s challenging. It’s helpful. And it goes deep enough to get men invested in developing a plan to fight the most important battles in their life, but not too deep to overwhelm them. After taking men through Fight, I would probably turn to a book like Wild at Heart to help men confront the inner realities of sin and temptation, as well as deepen their relationship with Jesus.

All in all, this was a really good book with a lot of ministry potential. I recommend it, especially for use in men’s groups.

BookSneeze® provided me with a complimentary, advanced reading copy of this book.

David Platt’s book, Follow Me, is a Reformed, missional catechesis with the goal of moving consumer “Christians” into full discipleship. The problem Platt sets out to address is the masses of “unconverted believers” that attend, worship, and serve in church every Sunday. His diagnosis is stark: “Multitudes of men and women at this moment think that they are saved from their sins when they are not.” (7) American Churches are full of people who claim to be Christians, believe that they are Christians, and may even be told by their pastors that they are Christians, but they are not, in fact, Christians at all. “Only those who are obedient to the words of Christ will enter the Kingdom of Christ. If our lives do not reflect the fruit of following Jesus, then we are foolish to think that we are actually followers of Jesus in the first place.” (16) Put simply, “People who claim to be Christians while their lives look no different from the rest of the world are clearly not Christians.” (18)

Platt puts his finger squarely on the biggest problem facing the American Church today–Consumer Christianity. Not only is there little distinction, morally, between the lives of self-identified Christians and self-identified nonChristians, there is also little difference between the way churchgoers approach Church and the way they approach grocery shopping. Consumerism, not discipleship, has become the world-defining belief of American Christianity. For Platt, this is most evident in the self-centeredness with which many Christians understand salvation.

David Platt begins his catechesis with a study of total depravity, particularly in the light of conversion to Christ. Many Christians will talk about their salvation moment like this: “I invited Jesus into my heart…,” or, “I found Jesus at….” This, Platt argues, is backwards at best. We do not invite or find Jesus; rather, he argues, Jesus invites and finds us. “The reality of the gospel is that we do not become God’s children ultimately because of initiative in us, and he does not provide salvation primarily because of an invitation from us. Instead, before we were ever born, God was working to adopt us.” (29) God initiates and enacts salvation because, left to our own devices, we would never choose God. We are totally depraved, i.e., sinful through and through with no desire for God in our hearts. We are, as Ephesians says, “dead in [our] transgressions and sins.” As Platt aptly puts it: “Inviting Jesus to come into your heart is impossible when you’re dead in sin.” (34)

From his discussion of depravity and salvation, Platt moves to the distinction of Christianity among the world’s religions. Christianity’s distinction, he argues, lies in it’s adherence, not to a list of rules, but to a person–Jesus Christ. “We are not called to simply believe certain points or observe certain practices, but ultimately to cling to the person of Christ as life itself.” (54) Because Christianity is a relationship with the Creator God, it is fundamentally transformative, or as Platt puts it, “supernaturally regenerative” as opposed to “superficially religious.”

Superficial religion involves a counterfeit “Christian” life that consists of nothing more than truths to believe and things to do, and it misses the essence of what it means to follow Jesus. Supernatural regeneration, on the other hand, involves an authentic Christian life that has been awakened by the Spirit, truth, love, passion, power, and purpose of Jesus. (66)

If I were to sum up the core of Platt’s book, I would say it like this: Follow Jesus into his mission to save lost souls. As we saw in his best-seller Radical, David Platt’s heart is directed toward taking the Gospel to all nations. The antidote to Consumer Christianity is Missional Discipleship, i.e., participating in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. This, in my opinion, is where the book excels because it is the way in which it most clearly reflects the calling of its author. David Platt has an apostolic heart, and the Church would do well to heed his call to move from lazy, superficial religion to missional, supernatural regeneration by proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

My Criticism

If you love and adore David Platt and are thoroughly Reformed in your theology with no possibility of ever changing your mind, I encourage you to stop reading this post now, for I would like to address the content of the second chapter, which I have already touched on briefly. In this chapter, Platt makes a thorough, if accessible, presentation of the doctrine of total depravity. He cites many Scriptures, and uses several illustrations, the most moving of which is the story of the adoption of his son. In short, he makes a compelling case that:

• God is solely responsible for the initiation of salvation.
• Human beings are completely sinful, so much so that we are characterized as being “dead” in our sins.
• God hates, even abhors, sinners.

In principle, I agree with the first statement. God is solely responsible for the initiation of salvation, though I would say that happened on the cross and in the empty tomb of Jesus. Only God could do that! From there, God has charged his followers with the proclamation of this news, this Gospel, to everybody else on the face of the earth. In other words, God has placed the message of salvation into human hands. While God did everything to make salvation possible, he has commissioned us to make that salvation available.

Furthermore, Jesus tells parables in the Gospels that seem to give another side to the story. For example, in Matthew 13:44, Jesus says this, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” The active agent in this story is not God or his kingdom, but the human being who found salvation, then gave up everything he had to gain it.

This leads me to the second point of disagreement, which is about the idea of being “dead” in our sins. Here is what Platt says:

Our problem is not simply that we have made some bad decisions. Our problem is not just that we’ve messed up. Our problem is that we are–at the very core of our being–rebels against God, and we are utterly unable to turn to him. This is what the Bible means when it says we are dead in sin. When Paul wrote to the Ephesian Christians and said, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live,” he meant that they were completely dead. Not partially dead. Not almost dead. Not halfway dead. Not kind of dead. Completely dead. (34)

It’s important to point out that they were not, in fact, completely dead, for if they were, it would have been too late for them, and they would not have been alive to hear the proclamation of the Gospel or respond to it in faith. I’m not trying to be a smart aleck, I just want to point out that Paul’s use of “dead” is metaphorical, not literal. Nor was Paul saying that the Ephesians were “spiritually dead.” Paul would not have separated the spiritual life from the physical life, saying that one could be dead while the other was alive; this was an invention of the Gnostics.

The view of humanity painted here by Platt, and elsewhere by other Reformed writers, is simply inaccurate. It assumes that the truest thing about humans is Genesis 3. Platt sums up this view well with this statement: “As we have already seen all the way back in Genesis, our sin is not something that exists outside of us. Sin is ingrained into the core of our being. We don’t just sin; we exist as sinners.” (42-3) The trouble with this statement is that Platt doesn’t go back far enough into Genesis. Before there was a Genesis 3, there was a Genesis 1 and 2, in which humanity is called, by God, good. To be sure, Genesis 3 is all-too-true now–we are sinful creatures–but there will come a day when that will not be true no longer. Genesis 3 is temporary. Genesis 1 and 2 are eternal. The creative act of God is more powerful and more enduring than the destructive acts of Satan and human beings.

In order to understand humanity, we must seek to grasp the tension of the present situation–not simply that Genesis 1, 2, and 3 are all true right now, but also that the Gospels, and particularly the Gospel, are also true right now. We were made by God in the image of God. We were not created sinful. That came through our choice to worship ourselves and disobey God. So we became broken. Then God did the impossible–without becoming sinful, he, too, became broken so that we might be put back together again. Why did he do this? Because he loves us.

Which brings me to my final, and most vehement point of disagreement with Platt: God does not hate sinners. Everything about Jesus should drive this thought away from our hearts and minds. If Jesus is the perfect image of the invisible God, if Jesus is the logos of God, if Jesus does only what he sees his Father doing, then there should be no doubt in our minds, even if we only consider the cross, that God does not hate us, but that he loves so lavishly that he would withhold nothing from us! If you need biblical proof that God does not hate sinners, this is it: Jesus!

There is no doubt in my mind that gay marriage (or, marriage equality) is one of the most important issues of our time. For many people, it has deep, personal significance, and therefore deserves to be treated with respect. In this post I would like to lay out, as briefly as possible, my thoughts on gay marriage. While I have already sketched my thoughts about marriage on this blog (and if you have read that post you already know where I stand on this issue), I would like to talk specifically about gay marriage. My hope is to contribute something to the larger, cultural discussion, that is both gracious and thoughtful. You can judge for yourself whether I have done so at the end of this post.

Let me begin by sketching, as best I can, the current case in support of gay marriage.

Marriage is a basic human right, and human beings ought to be free to marry whomever they choose, insofar as that person is a willing participant in the relationship. Love does not discriminate between genders; homosexual love is qualitatively the same as heterosexual love. A gay man’s love for another man is essentially the same as a straight man’s love for a woman. To deny two consenting adults the freedom to marry is discrimination of the first order, akin to racism, and definitively unAmerican. Our nation’s deepest values, after all, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–at least two of which are flatly denied to homosexual couples through the prohibition of gay marriage. Therefore, gay marriage is not simply about marriage; it is about civil and human rights.

I hope that I have captured the essence of the argument in support of gay marriage, though it is not my intention to debunk this argument. In fact, if I were to approach the issue from a purely American standpoint, I could not debunk it. Within the American political and cultural climate, this argument is perfectly logical, and we, as a people, would have a moral obligation to immediately legalize gay marriage.

However, I do not approach this issue, or any other, as an American. I approach this issue as a Christian whose faith in Jesus is authoritatively informed by the Bible. Based on how I read the Scriptures, I make the following assertions:

The Church, especially the evangelical church and the individuals who compose her, needs to repent of the way in which she has treated homosexuals.

Whatever we believe about homosexuality, there is no excuse for the way the Church has typically treated homosexuals. What we see in Jesus is that God has not treated any human being with contempt or disgust, but has graciously given each of us sinners infinite worth. Rather than extending that grace and worth to homosexuals, we Christians have played the part of the ungrateful man whose massive debt was repaid but who would not forgive the smallest amount owed to him.

I, too, have participated in this hypocrisy, contempt, and disgust. I have told innumerable gay jokes. I have used caricature and overdone imitation to get laughs. I have been thoughtless, careless, and judgmental toward homosexuals. For all of that, I am sorry. I was wrong.

God is neither impressed nor moved by our notion of romantic love.

Somewhere along the way we have developed this idea that there is no higher thing than romantic love. Though billions of people have lived lives at least as happy and healthy as our own without romantic love, we take it to be as important to our well-being as the air we breathe. It is worth fighting for, dying for, or killing for. Romantic love, we believe, is inherently good, and therefore anything that stands in its way must be evil. We are lost without it, and therefore entitled to it. Romantic love is a fundamental human right.

God does not share such a high opinion of romantic love. Don’t get me wrong, God likes romantic love–after all, he created it. But I believe that he created it as an aid to human life, not as the aim or highest ideal of it. Romantic love aids us to have good marriages where union and intimacy are present more often than not. But, as almost all of us have experienced, romantic love can be a real pain. It is no fluke that the ancient Greeks depicted Eros, the god of romantic love, as a mischievous child-god who caused love to grow between two people who had no business being in love. (Think: Evil Cupid.) Romantic love, while a beautiful and glorious thing in the appropriate context, can create feelings within us that, in the wrong contexts, blind us to the truth. 

But perhaps the most important reason that God is not impressed by our overwrought notion of romantic love is that it keeps us from pursuing the greatest love–agape. I’ve written and spoken on agape extensively, so I don’t want to get into it too much here, but I will say that agape is the love that lays down its life, forgoes its rights, forgives sins, and brings life where there was death. It is the love most clearly on display at the cross of Jesus, and it is the love that all who follow Jesus are called to demonstrate. Agape is the love that sustains eternal life, the love upon which the Great Marriage–between Jesus and the Church–will be founded. The agape of God is the most adventurous love story and the most beautiful love song, a poem of love beyond compare. This is the love that is no mere aid to life; it truly is the highest ideal to which we can aspire, for it brings us to the lowest point of ourselves–of dying to ourselves–which is the point at which we will most fully find God and flourish.

Romantic love (Eros) is idolatrously worshipped in our culture, by Christians and nonChristians alike.

While this assertion is related to the previous one, it is worth stating clearly. We worship romantic love. Eros is the god of our age. It dominates our art and entertainment. It gets ratings and sells books. It is, quite literally, everywhere. But Eros makes a fickle god, and I believe that we are experiencing a pandemic of sexual confusion as a result of our idolatry.

This idolatry has manifested itself within the church through our normalization of marriage and marginalization of singleness. We don’t know what to do with people who, like Jesus or Paul, don’t get married. We spend more time teaching our young people how to choose the right spouse than we do training them to become like Jesus. Again, romantic love is important, but agape love is more important.

God created humanity as male and female; this gender complementarity is vital to human flourishing.

It is not for nothing that God created humanity male and female. The vastness of his image could not be borne in a single man–the man needed a complement in order to accomplish his God-given task. Each sex brings elements that are vital to create a good society in which humans and creation can flourish; Adam and Eve each bear one part of the complete image-of-God-on-earth. To forsake one gender in the most basic and important of human social units–the family–whether through divorce, death, or gay marriage, is to throw off the balance of creation and create environments that are adverse to human flourishing. One of our most basic needs as human beings is to have both a father and a mother.

Homosexual activity is contrary to God’s sexual design and purpose, and the Bible consistently names it as one of several sexual sins.

I have heard the arguments that the Bible is not talking about committed, monogamous homosexual relationships when it condemns homosexual practice; that the authors of Scripture did not know about sexual orientations; and that the passages in Leviticus were only concerned with pagan, cultic sexual practice. I am not convinced by this exegesis. The testimony of Scripture is clear that homosexual practice, like infidelity and bestiality, lies outside of God’s design for sex. (I’d like to take a hot second to make the remark that most of the marital relationships in Scripture do not, in fact, reflect God’s design for sex and marriage, either.) God designed sex to achieve a purpose, and contrary to popular teaching both within and without the Church, the purpose of sex is procreation, not to be the ultimate demonstration of romantic love. (I take this as biologically self-evident, and if I were a Darwinian Evolutionist, I would be even more adamant on this point than I am.) As with all created things, the purpose of sex informs the design, and not the other way around. In other words, because the purpose of sex is procreation, sex is designed to be an act of unparalleled union, intimacy, and pleasure. God designed sex this way because these are precisely the things that are most important to a child as he grows–to know that his parents are united, that there is a shared intimacy within the family, and that the parents are pleased with one another and the child. 

When sex becomes about the gratification of sexual desire, or merely a demonstration of romantic love, it becomes disconnected from its created purpose. Like anything else, when sex becomes disconnected from its created purpose it becomes a caricature of itself. We have embraced the caricature. We have replaced the design for the purpose. We have mistakenly declared that the purpose of sex is pleasure, intimacy, and union. Pregnancy is the last thing we want out of sex. (And yes, I think that abortion is extremely relevant to this discussion, but I don’t want to get into that here.) Based on this assumption, very little sexual activity can be declared out of bounds. When sex becomes about pleasure, intimacy, and union, only rape and certain kinds of pedophilia can be wrong.

But the truth is that God has fenced sexual activity in order to create healthy families, which in turn create healthy societies. In this sense, what appears to be a great big “NO” to human desire and happiness is actually one resounding “YES” to human flourishing and joy. On a global scale, the purpose of sex is to populate the world with healthy, whole human beings who rule the earth with strength and wisdom.

It is neither gracious nor loving to encourage and support others in sinful behavior.

Many Christians believe that the most gracious and loving thing we can do for our homosexual neighbors is to help them achieve marriage equality. While I understand this notion, and believe that it is rooted in good intentions, I think it is misguided. Here is why: Our access to the grace and agape love of God is entirely dependent upon our repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ. Grace and agape love forgive and expel sin, not foster and enable it. As the representatives of Jesus Christ on earth, we do no favors to anyone by enabling and supporting sin of any kind, and specifically to our homosexual neighbors by enabling and supporting gay marriage. When we fail to graciously and lovingly call people to repentance, we fail to bring them to the cross of Jesus.

The Gospel offers hope for all who find themselves in bondage.

This is the Gospel: Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was dead and buried, and he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures. This is news of an event that has actually and already happened. The Gospel is the most powerful force on the face of the earth. If Jesus overcame death, and if you follow and trust Jesus, then there is nothing that can keep you in bondage. There is real, tangible hope in the Gospel that can’t be found anywhere else. You do not have to be in bondage to the god of romantic love. You do not have to be in bondage to your sexuality. You do not have to be in bondage to the sins you have committed or the sins that have been committed against you. Jesus has overcome the world and all of its sin, evil, and idolatry. When you find yourself in Jesus, then you, too, have overcome all of this through his power that lives inside of you.

Conclusion: I cannot support gay marriage.

God’s design and purpose for life, love, sex, and marriage leave no place for gay marriage. This is hard news for many people. But if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, it is an opportunity for life, glory, and a love that does not fade with time and age. I believe that God is offering us something that is far more wonderful and incredible than anything our sexuality can offer. Does it sound good now? No, it sounds like bad news, doesn’t it? Hateful, even. But then again, the cross sure looked like defeat and folly for a while, too. Then came resurrection.

And that’s the way it always is with God. He leads us to this place that demands our death, asking us to do something we believe will kill us. And in a way, it does. But then comes resurrection. On the other side of God’s demand is a life more full and flourishing than we ever thought possible.

Christian, nondenominational.

That’s how I’ve always defined myself. From childhood, through college, and for all of my years in ministry, I have always attended nondenominational churches. My churches have been a part of networks (like the Willow Creek Association, or the Alliance for Renewal Churches, with which Ember was associated), but never a denomination. Now, however, Breena and I attend LifePoint Church, which happens to be part of the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m certain that God finds this hilarious.

Today at LifePoint we had the privilege of hosting the SBC-Ohio’s annual evangelism and church planting conference, called Momentum. There were four plenary speakers, David Uth of First Baptist Orlando, Phil Hotsenpiller of Influence Church, Tony Merida of Imago Dei Church, and Michael Catt of Sherwood Baptist Church. (Sherwood is the church that produced the films Courageous, Fireproof, and Facing the Giants.) There were also several workshops, including one by my old friend Matt Pardi of H2O Church in Bowling Green, and another by Shane Tucker, the Worship & Arts Pastor (and my boss) at LifePoint.

I wasn’t planning on “attending” the conference because I was really there to work, but I did get to sit in on just about everything, so I really felt like an attendee. The first highlight for me was Tony Merida’s message, which was so good I pulled out my notebook and started taking notes. He was talking about endurance, and he made the excellent point that grace is the means of endurance. “If you are fatigued,” he continued, “then you are an excellent candidate for grace.” I am fatigued. My wife is fatigued. Like all parents of kids with special needs, we’re exhausted in just about every way you can imagine–physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, relationally. We’re just tired. It was restorative, if even in just a tiny way, to hear Tony say those words. On the flip side of that, though, I was challenged when he said, “It takes great discipline to be a pastor.” Ouch.

The second highlight was Phil Hotsenpiller’s breakout session on transformational discipleship. (I only went to this session because Shane wouldn’t let me go to his on Creative Process. I’m pretty sure he didn’t want me in there because he was going to be dogging on me the whole time.) My takeaway from this teaching was that it’s vital to challenge the minds of men. So much of what Phil said on this point resonated with me because getting people to think more deeply, more critically, and more creatively is a major driving force in all of my communication, whether on this blog, through the preaching I did at Ember, or the teaching I did while at Heritage. Using a teaching on Satan as an example of how he disciples men, Phil asked some very good questions that pretty much blew my mind, but he did it in the same way that I try to approach the Scriptures. The point he was getting at is that men need to be challenged, particularly intellectually, because they’ll get bored after 3 years of church. Amen, brother.

I really enjoyed my time at the conference, and know that God used it to speak to me in several ways. After attending a church planting conference, I’m surprised to find that I’m not jonesing to get back out there and plant again. It’s not that I don’t want to plant another church or be a lead pastor again; it’s that I know that the time is coming, but it’s not now. Even stranger, I’m totally content with that, which is how I know that God has me right where he wants me. This conference was wonderful to take in as an attendee/worker, but it also confirmed the contentment I’m currently experiencing as I pursue God in this pulpitless season of my life.

What’s next? I don’t know. But I’m happy to have spent the day with the Southern Baptists.