Paul's Passing Thoughts

I posted on an article referred to me yesterday written by Tullian Tchividjian. In the post Tchividjian praises his late father for his passive approach to raising Tullian which was dubbed “grace.” And apparently, as one of the premier heretics of our day, Tchividjian thinks he turned out well, thanks to his father’s grace-like rearing. An excerpt:

Years later he told me that he saw all those checks being cashed [checks that Little T-T stole from his father and forged], but he decided not to say anything about it at the time. It didn’t happen immediately (the fruits of grace are always in the future), but that demonstration of unconditional grace was the beginning of God doing a miraculous work in my heart and life. My dad’s literal “turning of the other cheek” gave me a picture of God’s unconditional love that I couldn’t shake…. Steve Brown once said, “Children will run from law and they’ll run from grace. The ones who run from law rarely come back. But the ones who run from grace always come back. Grace draws its own back home.” I ran from grace. It drew me home.

In yesterday’s post I addressed the fundamental misrepresentation of biblical law and grace in all of this. In this post I would like to address Tchividjian’s all-out assault on the plain sense of Scripture. But remember, Tchividjian is representative of New Calvinism and authentic Reformed doctrine in general. Tchividjian has a very strong grasp on what the Reformers believed and taught. And like T-T (pronounced “tee-tee”), they redefined many biblical concepts and realities in opposition to the common sense hermeneutic. In mysticism, common sense is for the common folk.

This isn’t particularly deep; God condemns the passive parenting T-T praises as commendable and supposedly based on grace versus law. As I addressed yesterday, there is no law in the grace of justification, but there is ample grace in the practice of law in sanctification. The fundamental heresy of Calvinism projects the grace of justification onto sanctification which makes law a part of justification. That’s the crux. Fear of law in sanctification reveals a belief that law is also the standard for justification. So, parents who fear law in parenting deprive their children of grace. If for no other reason, it cannot be denied that love is of grace and to deprive your children of discipline is to also deprive them of love:

Hebrews 12:7 – It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Moreover, one can read of the unspeakable tragedy that fell upon the house of Eli and all of Israel because of his passive parenting of his sons Hophni and Phinehas (starting in 1Samuel 2:12). God also accused Eli of honoring his sons above Him because he would not discipline them.

Again, T-T is representative of the authentic Reformed doctrine sweeping the American church and covertly taking over its institutions. Hindering the needed alternative is Protestant propaganda that the average Christian father is not “qualified” to lead his family and others.

But we must ask ourselves: “We can’t do better than this? Really? We don’t know that  Eli’s example is a bad idea? Protestant pastors are on such a higher spiritual plane than we are that the obvious really isn’t true?”

In our day, if you can discern reality—you’re qualified.

paul