Paul's Passing Thoughts

Recently, friends of this ministry have been sending me some good information and links as Christians are beginning to realize that something doesn’t smell right in reformed evangelical circles. This week, I will be referencing / compiling this information in the right-hand column of this blog. For instance, another blog has recently added a “Gospel Sanctification” archive. This information also makes it much easier for me to blog, being a layman and having other concerns.

In one link sent to me concerning John Piper’s disturbing connections to Rick Warren and others

( http://apprising.org/2010/04/26/is-this-doctrinal-and-sound-dr-john-piper/ ), the professing Christian / lesbian / musician Jennifer Knapp is mentioned as an example of Rick Warren’s “just be who you are” idea:

“’Rick Warren, in his talk at TED2006, stated (at approx. 21:00 in the video) that ‘God Smiles when You Be You’. He states a few seconds later that God gets pleasure out of ‘you being you.’ Friends, there’s a big problem with this message. Rick was speaking to an audience that was primarily non-Christians. Jesus Christ was never mentioned. Instead a humanistic message that ‘God loves us for being us’ was given. This message is not the Gospel, obviously, but the worst part, is that as a Christian pastor, Rick Warren basically just opened the floodgates for any behavior at all. Believers and non-believers alike can now simply do whatever they want, and think (based upon Rick) that God will smile upon them, and receive pleasure from people being whoever they desire to be.

After properly refuting that man-centered fantasy biblically Willman says:

‘Now let’s take Rick’s message and apply it to Jennifer Knapp, the ‘Christian’ who is now publicly stating that she’s a lesbian. She appeared on Larry King Live just the other day, and made this statement:

Larry King: You say you’re the happiest you’ve ever been right now?
Jennifer Knapp: I’m pretty darn happy.
Larry King: So you’re glad all of this happened?
Jennifer Knapp: I am not a regretful person.
Larry King: No, but you feel better?
Jennifer Knapp: I’m… I… I feel blessed to be able to fully be who I am. I love being able to be a musician and part of that process for me as a musician is being open and honest and to not feel like I have to lie or hide anything. I don’t necessarily want to talk about it all the time, but I don’t have to hide it either.

So based on what Rick Warren states, that God takes pleasure in ‘you being you’, Jennifer is currently being smiled upon by God, and He is taking pleasure in the fact that she is a lesbian.’”

As I attempt to use this blog to network information about gospel sanctification, I will continue to remind folks that the current neo-Calvinism movement is primarily made-up of New Covenant Theology and the idea that the same gospel that saved us, also sanctifies us. What many of these bloggers do not yet understand is John Piper’s theological contribution to neo-Calvinism; namely, Christian hedonism. In other words, and as they already, I’m sure, strongly suspect is that these guys plp together for a reason. New Covenant Theology includes the idea that Christ came to fulfill the law (and thereby eliminating its need) and replaced it with a single law of love. What “love” is—is at the discretion of a believers conscience. I have seen elders operate by this approach firsthand. This theology drives Knapp’s life. Here are my comments on this in another post:

“Just this morning, a friend shared an article with me, and several others, from Christianity Today. It was a recent Jennifer Knapp (a contemporary Christian music artist) interview in which she defends her homosexual life style. She stated that she is not obligated to keep the Law because she, or anyone else, is unable to anyway. She (according to her) is only obligated to keep the greatest commandment of loving thy neighbor. Here is what she said:

‘But I’ve always struggled as a Christian with various forms of external evidence that we are obligated to show that we are Christians. I’ve found no law that commands me in any way other than to love my neighbor as myself, and that love is the greatest commandment. At a certain point I find myself so handcuffed in my own faith by trying to get it right—to try and look like a Christian, to try to do the things that Christians should do, to be all of these things externally—to fake it until I get myself all handcuffed and tied up in knots as to what I was supposed to be doing there in the first place. If God expects me, in order to be a Christian, to be able to theologically justify every move that I make, I’m sorry. I’m going to be a miserable failure.'”

She further poo-poos the law with this statement:

“…what most people refer to as the ‘clobber verses’ to refer to this loving relationship as an abomination, while they’re eating shellfish and wearing clothes of five different fabrics.”
Bottom line: most evangelicals see New Covenant Theology as a trivial disagreement regarding semantics. That’s hardly the case. Knapp’s lesbianism is just a symptom—the root cause is what needs to be destroyed: New Covenant Theology.

paul