The Only One Whose Opinion Matters
the questions we will face
Gordon MacDonald tells the story of the man who loved to sail. Being a man of resources, he decided to impress his friends by building the most extravagant ocean worthy sailing vessel at his yacht club. No expense was spared: solid wood trim and paneling, brass fittings, the most elegant sails and masts. Every piece of equipment was top of the line. The finished product spelled luxury. Launch day came with the attention of admiring (and jealous) friends as he set sail into the bay and beyond.
He never returned.
The postmortem revealed that he had devoted all his energy to the visible, to what could be seen above the waterline. There was only one problem: the most important part of a sailing ship is what cannot be seen. The keel is what stabilizes and rights the ship in the fiercest of storms. He had gone cheap on his keel. And he paid the price.
Life Below the Waterline
MacDonald deploys the story to ask: Where are you focused? Are you giving appropriate emphasis to what cannot be seen. to what is the most important? Or are you preoccupied with the seemingly visible and significant?
That is the question I ask myself as I do all this reading, engage in all these conversations, and try to understand the crisis of our time. I am entering a storm. This is dangerous territory. I must be wary of the greatest danger, the one within.
Dealing with flaming rhetoric and extreme ideological advocacy can be a temptation. It is easy to justify my equally fierce responses because they appear to be zeal for a righteous cause. My heart can utilize a twisted illogic, calling me to trade what is of greatest value (godliness) for what is more appealing (a sense of righteous anger). Jesus said that under the influence of such passions, many are willing to gain the whole world and lose their souls. I will not be one of them.
Just to be clear, I am not fearful of everlasting condemnation. Christ has answered for my sin by standing in my place. But there is another application: it is the danger of not cherishing godliness. Will I miss a godly life below the waterline, while living as a Christian citizen in troubling times? Will I be shipwrecked (1 Timothy 1:19)?
A life of temptation to use Satan’s means for God’s purposes
Many times, in my life, I have faced battles with evil. In each skirmish I had the opportunity to be shipwrecked, to set aside the weapons of God – holiness, and love and prayer and courage – and to take up the weapons of Satan – deception, breaking confidences, returning evil for evil, and misusing my role and authority. I am grateful that I can say that for the most part, when push came to shove, my wife and I chose to reject the weapons of Satan. Why? Our conviction from Scripture is that any compromise of character or principle, justified for the sake of the battle, is a victory for darkness.
There has been a similar temptation with the pursuit of “success.” In my 40+ years of ministry all kinds of experts offered up the “means” of “making things happen.” I was presented with the certainty that by changing music styles, modifying dress codes, and addressing felt needs I would see conversions and growth. I saw this then, and see it now, as a lie. The Spirit of God is not set free to work because drums replace an organ. That thinking is of the flesh. Yes, I know it often “works.” Satan offered Jesus immense success if he simply made a compromise. It would have worked. He refused and I have and will continue to as well.
My wife often reminds me that God will say that our most significant moments in ministry will be those choices not to dishonor the Spirit, not to defend ourselves, not to retaliate, not to violate confidences – even when it meant loss, shame, and lack of success.
Citizenship, culture wars, and Christ
In the same way, as I have engaged in reflecting on my role as a Christian and citizen, I must ask: What am I willing to compromise to gain? To win? What qualities of godliness will I set aside? What evil will I justify? What truth will I mute? What character flaws in a candidate will I ignore and even deny? What will it profit to win the culture war and lose my soul?
These days I see many Christians caught up in the vitriol and panic of the day. There lives seem to be dominated by the culture war narrative. They are fighting a holy war for a “Christian” culture. But this minimizes the real battle — it is not with the other side’s ideology, it is with the sin within us all in league with principalities and powers.
Up against demonic forces and we become foolish enough to think the ballot box and electing “righteous” candidates will push them back. We become almost silent about the One who has triumphed over evil by his death and resurrection. Worse yet: many have corrupted the pure Gospel by associating Christ with a political movement. To be clear, I find both MAGA types and progressives to be patently self-righteous, assuming they are doing the work of angels.
About now I imagine some will say, “Theology is not what we need, we must be practical.” I am being very practical. Whatever Christians do as citizens must be done with the character that reflects Christ. We are to be light and salt. But we are also to be blameless and harmless children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. If our light and saltiness is corrupted by anger and political idolatry, then no one will see our God. If our Gospel now appears to be a message about who we vote for, all is lost.
Let’s be practical: Questions I will be asked
I want to keep my eyes on what is below the waterline. There is only One who will evaluate our lives and he alone will ask the questions that matter.
God will ask me if I trusted in Him and his weapons for fighting the Evil One. God has ordered my life to be in this time and place. He has put into my mouth the news of the One who delivers people from the powers of darkness. The door of access to him for prayer is open. He has called me to live above reproach. Will I believe his weapons are sufficient or doubt him?
God will ask me if I feared Him and not men. That means fearing neither the woke progressive ideologues on the left nor the evangelical Christian-America Trumpsters on the right. It means speaking judgment on the blasphemous MAGA Bible and the Christian progressive justification of moral perversion. Both are utterly contrary to the faith of the church for the last 2000 years.
God will ask me if I participated in the slander and demonization of faithful believers with whom I differ. Ad hominem arguments have become too acceptable (this was done more recently with Alistair Begg and David French). Will I attack a person, question their character, or will I honor them in debate and disagreement. Francis Schaeffer used to pray that his opponents in debate would, above all else, know that he treated them as an image bearer.
God will ask if I sought to do good to all, and not just Christians. My daily life is filled with opportunities to do good. Christ died that I would be zealous for good works. God is good to all each day. Am I not supposed to love my neighbor as myself? Fight for their rights as well as my own?
God will ask me if I am forming my understanding with facts or partisanship. Am I seeking to be stirred up by biased media or am I making sure I hear all sides? Will I yield my thinking to half truths? Will I test my thinking and assumptions? As an amateur historian (it was my major at Princeton), I am suspicious of simplistic interpretations that appear to be conclusions looking for evidence.
God will ask me if I asked him to work. If anything betrays my unbelief in God’s weapons, it is my prayerless-ness. “You have not because you ask not” is James warning (James 4:1-3). Yet prayer is the weapon of God for wrestling with principalities and powers. Who is calling us to pray? How many pastors called their churches to times of extraordinary prayer for Gospel witness and good works during the COVID crisis?
God will ask me if I labored to preserve the peace and purity of the church. By peace, I mean the refusal to divide or depart because of differences of opinion on a candidate or a policy (one where Scripture is not explicit). Indeed, it means “you are one in Christ” transcends race and political party and matters of how to apply truth in specific situations. No one person has a right to “excommunicate” their friends because of politics. By peace I also mean the pursuit of discipline for those who sow discord by fomenting division.
By purity I mean upholding the 16 ounces to the pound Gospel, the greatness of God, the reality of sin, the infinite value of Christ’s death, the welcome of all to Christ. It also means protecting the Gospel from all who would pervert it or add to it. That includes confusing nationalism with the Gospel.
God will ask me if I kept in mind that the person on the other side will face Christ in the last day. They may find that they have gained the world and lost their soul. Four years ago, in the only time in my life when you could talk with people about dying and not be pushed away — the American church in large part spent its voice on face masks, vaccines, and freedoms. We were grossly unfaithful to God.
How’s that for practical?
Words, attitudes, actions, and thinking interrogated before the face of God. While there are real issues to debate for the good of our society, and while those who advocate for these issues are loud, they must never drown out the eternal story of redemption, the joys of the new creation, and the eternal consequences of sin. Politics is an interim measure. It is not ultimate.
Fear of God for how some are living
I fear for what I may become, for what some people I know are becoming. Our of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. When conversations on Sunday and chats over a meal, when posts and tweets and reading are consumed by the present cultural moment — our hearts are in a dangerous place. Am I being discipled by what I read and listen to or by Jesus? Will I follow Jesus selectively, picking and choosing what I will obey and what I will ignore? I do not wish to be that kind of person.
My questions to them as well as to myself: Will you/I be dominated by the priority of the Gospel and the kingdom of God? What kind of attention are you giving to what is below the waterline? What kind of a person are you becoming?
This is nothing new, it is in the New Testament
I think this is exactly what the Apostolic writers expected of God’s new people in Christ. They too lived in a politically and religiously charged culture. They too were to face the question of where their final allegiance would rest. Nothing in the Roman world was friendly to Christ – everything was against him and his people. The Gospel was and is a political message: Christ is Lord.
What is remarkable is how the apostles focused on their identity in Christ, on understanding all that Jesus is and has done for them, and on their new allegiance to the true Lord. They call them to be a certain kind of people utterly distinct from what is around them.
The early Christians were called to live according to the pattern of God’s grace in Christ.
“Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy,”
(Titus 3:1-5 ESV)
Submit to wicked Claudius and Herod and Nero. Obey the local magistrate. Do good to those who hate you. Stop bickering. Be gentle and show honor to all. Why? because we remember what darkness is and how we have been rescued from it.
This is universal truth. It applies to all God’s people in all places. Christians in the USA, my friends in Serbia and Brazil, as well as the persecuted church in North Korea and India can live this way in response to redemptive reality.
This is how I will live.
Mark, servant of the Most High God, excellent focus and exhortation, my friend. You ask the quintessential question… "Will I believe his weapons are sufficient or doubt him?" Amen!
Thank you, Mark. Really well articulated and worth rereading.
I'm reading through Isaiah, and 2:22 stopped me in my tracks. "Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?" Oh, that I might look to the only One whose opinion matters.