Summer MIDWEEK

WHY DO THEOLOGY?
OR...

THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING WHAT YOU BELIEVE ABOUT GOD

While interest in theology is on an upswing among many American Christians, some modern-day church goers are quick to turn their noses up at the though of theology.  Several may insist on sentimental spirituality or religious ritualism, but knowing God more intimately and trusting him more fully often requires digging in to understand the basic elements of foundational faith.  Doing theology may seem like work at first, but the payoff is transformational.

When we talk about theology, we are talking about God - his nature, character, and workings - his Being, his activity.  The subject of God serves as the fountainhead for our understanding of everything else related to the Christian faith.  In fact, the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom.  Psalm 111:10 A growing understanding of God yields an increasing understanding of faith, salvation, church, Christan mission, and the living of the daily life.

It's simple.  As goes our theology, so goes our life.

  

Doing theology is a matter of obedience to God.

  

Theology is "the study of God."  Theology is not for the minister, the missionary, or the martyr.  It's for everyone.  While individual believers are at different stages in the faith journey, God calls each one of us to do theology.  The eleventh century philosopher and theologian, Anselm described trust in God as a continuous process of "faith seeking understanding." When we do theology, we are seeking a greater understanding of God whom, in fact, we can never fully know.  In one sense he is so great and glorious that we can never fully know him.  (Romans 11"33-36) We realize that we will not see clearly until we are with God forever.  (1 Corinthians 13:12) On the other hand, we are called to know him.   (2 Peter 3:18)

As an elderly man, the apostle Paul was still pursuing the Knowledge of Christ.  (Philippians 3:10) We are commanded to pursue the knowledge of God.  Following Christ does not mean that we check our minds at the door or put our minds in neutral.  Just the opposite!  Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" Mathew 22:37

It's a command.  Grow.  Know God better.  It's a matter of obedience.

Doing theology helps us discern the voices of life.

Navigating the many sounds which continuously come at us is hard work.  Somebody's voice is always clamoring for our time, attention, and commitment.  Knowing the good, the right, and the true is not always an easy thing to know.  Distinguishing between truth and falsehood is often challenging and always requires God's leading.

From the beginning, the evil one has sought to steal, kill, and destroy through lies.  (John 10:10) God had spoken to Eve in the Garden of Eden, but Eve also had heard a voice saying something different than what God said.  Her willful act of sin was an example of listening to the wring voice.

God is the ultimate reality from which all other truths come.  Christ, who himself embodied truth said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).  No one can continuously discern truth without an increasing knowledge of God's character and expectations.  Doing theology causes us to focus on God and provides us with the proper lenses through which we can see and discern the many voices of life.

Doing theology helps us respond properly to those who ask the reason for our hope.  (or . . . Doing theology improves our evangelistic efforts.)

We are to always be prepared to make a defense to others for the reason for our hope (1 Peter 3:15).  Would you be ready if someone asked you to give the rationale concerning your Christian belief?  Would you be able to confidently explain why you believe what you believe?

Christian faith is indeed personal, but it should never be private.  We should always be ready to share our faith with others.  More than just being ready, we should be doing it-actually sharing our faith!  Too often we are about "loving Jesus" without adequate knowledge of who Jesus really is.  Doing theology discourages a mere pietistic spirituality and leads to a more robust understanding of God which in turn results in a greater and more accurate love for Jesus.

Many grew up in the church singing, "You ask me how I know he lives?  He lives within my heart."  By singing the words of such a song, one could just as well be singing about Santa Clause as he is singing about Jesus Christ.  Such experiential exclamations are admirable, but these desiring reasons for the faith which we hold often desire rationalistic and propositional truth as well as our experiential assertions.  Doing theology helps up provide both.

Doing theology strengthens trust in our spiritual foundation.

Spirituality is popular these days.  However, followers of Christ understand that mere spirituality is not our goal.  Our spirituality is rooted in the foundation of God's work in Christ.  Our spirituality has an object, and his name is Jesus Christ.  Our spirituality is biblical.

Doing theology gives attention to the foundation of our faith.  As goes the foundation, so goes the structure which is built on that foundation.  Jesus spoke of the essential importance of the foundation-warning that if the foundation is faulty, the house will fall.  He also warned that if the foundation is sound, the house will stand regardless of what may come against it (Matthew 7:25-27).

Some wonder why cracks may appear in the walls of our spiritual houses.  Could it be that attention needs to be given to the foundation and not simply the the walls?  Christian faith may be encouraged by personal experiences, behavioral conformity to Christian values, and religious activities, but our faith will be ultimately encouraged and strengthened by a focus on the foundational aspects.  Doing theology does just that-it focuses on the foundation in which our Christian faith is rooted.

Doing theology results in personal transformation.

Someone studying God for the sake of mere information is not studying God.  True theology always sharpens the mind and warms the heart.  A theologian who may be "cold-hearted" is not a theologian at all.

The Bible says, "Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2).  Transformation is not an option for the believer.  Christians are commanded to be transformed-a work that only God can do.  However, that work of transformation is a process-the renewing of the mind.

Theology is an exercise of the mind.  Theology is also an exercise of the heart.  Theology should always stoke the fires of devotion and contribute to transformed living.  Theology is not ultimately about the information of God in our heads, but the transformation of God in our lives.

Join us this summer in the Great Room beginning Wednesday, June 1, for Summer MIDWEEK as we do theology together.  Dr. Wayne Grudem, Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies, Phoenix Seminary, will lead us by DVD as we strive to grow in Christ's grace and knowledge (2 Peter 3:18).  Put on your thinking cap and come spend time with our faith family as we examine questions like, "What is the Bible?", "What is creation?", and more.

Supper is at 5:00 pm.  Singing and study begins at 6:00 pm.

Come.  Think.  Grow.  Be transformed.

Pastor Todd

Guilt, Conviction, and Looking to God

Christians often struggle discerning between guilt and conviction.  Sometimes church goers say they feel guilty if they are not doing what those across the pew may be doing.  Whether it be a particular type of Bible Study, a particular type of mission project, listening to a particular type of music, spending money in a particular way, or more, obsessing on feelings related to what other Christians are doing is less than helpful.

Guilt and conviction are close cousins.  “Guilt” is defined as “a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.”  “Conviction” is the act of convicting which may be defined “to prove or declare guilty of an offense” or “to impress with a sense of guilt.”

While guilt and conviction may have family ties, there is a fine line between the two.  We will grow spiritually, experience Christian freedom and enjoy our lives more when we know the difference.

All Christians should be engaged in prayer, Bible reading, fellowship, and ministry.  If a believer is not actively involved in these four activities, there are serious concerns. 

Do you see Christians living out their faith in particularly different ways than you are seeking to live?  Do the good and different actions of others sometimes cause you to feel “guilty,” or to feel as though you are not “doing enough?”  While each of us is called to “work out our own salvation” (Philippians 2:12), the way we individual believers collectively “work out” our own salvation should in fact be a shining example of Christian diversity. 

God has made his body to be just that—a body. All are not hands and all are not feet.  In the same manner, all are not knees, and all are not tongues.  Among God’s people, there is beautiful variety.  God has designed it to be so.

The Bible does in fact prescribe certain actions.  God’s people are commanded to sing, love, seek the things that are above, grow, assemble together, have no other gods before them, and more.  These are nonnegotiable commands which Scripture places before us.  However, applying our Christianity in moment-by-moment living involves making decisions which are both a matter of obedience to God and personal preference. 

Well-meaning orthodox Christians will not differ on matters of murder or adultery or stealing or lying.  All believe Christians should read their Bibles, care for one another and love God.  Related to matters of particularly fleshing out the Christian faith, there are and should be differences among God’s people.

Some English speakers say to“may”to, and some say tom“ah”to.  In the same way, some Christians physically serve the poor in a “hands on” way while others influence policy makers and write legislation to benefit the poor.  Some Christians like to do missions by getting in an airplane and flying to another country while other Christians like to do missions by going to another other state.  Some Christians get up to pray at 4:00 A.M. while others of us do not.  Some Christians choose of have big families while other Christians choose to have smaller families.  Some Christians refuse to watch rated-R movies.  Some do not.

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Such differences of application among God’s people are good and right.  How boring the world would be if all God’s people were the same.  How imbalanced and drab the world would be if we all applied the Christian faith in precisely the same ways.

So, how do we discern between guilt and conviction when good, well-meaning, godly people around us are doing so many different good and God-honoring things? 

Looking to one another for cues as to how to flesh out our faith can be unhelpful.  Let us look to God.

Guilt and conviction among Christians seems to me to be not so much a matter of who is doing what, but Who is serving as Judge.

Speaking to believers in his day, James said “There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.  But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:12)

When someone looks to another person as his Judge, there will undoubtedly be feelings of guilt.  Not only is pleasing another person impossible, we will never know all others might be thinking about us or expecting of us.  Christians looking to others for the leading that only God’s Spirit can provide will often end up feeling frustrated and eventually guilty.  It’s not God’s design, and it’s a bad thing.

When Christians look only to God as Judge, his leading may in fact be conviction, and the conviction of God is never a bad thing.  It is a work of sanctification in our lives.  It's a good thing.

Someone who is rarely convicted by God is probably not walking with God.  Someone who does not welcome God’s conviction probably does not want to walk with God. 

All believers must obey God.

All believers must make their own decisions before God about the particular applications of Christian faith.

All believers must continuously be about finding the fine line between guilt and conviction.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Pastor Todd Brady

Living for Others

As we prepare to observe Memorial Day, let us remember the many who have died in the Lord and who lived their lives so that we might live ours.




It is the righteous man who lives for the next generation.

                                   Dietrich Bonhoeffer





Pastor Todd

Is It Right?

Cowardice asks the question, Is it safe?  Expediency asks the question, Is it politic?  Vanity asks the question, Is it popular?  But conscience asks the question, Is it right?

             Martin Luther King Jr.




Pastor Todd

2011 Graduate Recognition at FBC--Pics

 We celebrated our faith family's high school graduates Sunday morning.  How encouraging it was to think about all that God has for them as they journey into the next chapter of their lives.  A significant milestone indeed!

We reflected on these students' lives and sang Great is Thy Faithfulness together.  As we prayed for their future, we also sang Be Thou My Vision.  This is our prayer for them in the years to come.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

God's got great things in store for you!

Jeremiah 9:23-24.

Pastor Todd

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Sunday Night----ALL PRAISE

All Praise is this Sunday night at 6:00--an evening of worship celebration led by our adult muscians, children's choirs, and guest musicians in the orchestra.  It promises to be a wonderful evening of praise to our great God.  Musical selections have been chosen from the Prestonwood Baptist Church Music Ministry in Dallas, Texas.

What a great time to come together as a faith family and worship God!  What a great time to bring a friend!  What a great time for us to close out the spring by singing praises to God!

See you Sunday night at FBC.

Pastor Todd

Awana Recognition and the Heart of the Gospel

After recognizing a slew of children who walked through the AWANA program on Wednesday nights at FBC this spring, I found myself praying that God might take the Word which we have all so strategically tried to plant in our children's minds (as our church partners with parents for the discipleship of children) and that he might make them "oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified"  Isaiah 61:3.

My prayer is that our children, students, and adults might realize that following God is not about rules, regulations, do's and dont's, but that we all might live freely in the wonderful truth that knowing God is about a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Thomas struggled to know the way to God. Upon asking Jesus the way to the Father  (a process? a program? a list of behavioral expecations? rules and regulations? etc...), Jesus said, "I am the way, and truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me" John 14:6.

The first word out of the mouth of Jesus is "I."  He is the "I am."

Jesus did not say "this is the way."  Rather, he was showing that a relationship with himself is what knowing God is all about.

May the children, students, families, and adults of FBC live in this truth.

Pastor Todd

Different From the World

"When the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first." -Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Sunday in Romania

 

 

A very long, tiring, wonderful and God-blessed day! 

We began with a baptismal service at Grace Baptist Church in Moldova Noua--a high time indeed in the life of this congreation.  Daniel Barnut from Resita drove in to participate with us in the service.  How good it was to be with Pastors Barnut and Damian after their having been in Paducah.

The house was packed as we worshipped together, gave attention to the Word and experienced the celebration of baptism.  14 people were baptized!

We then travelled to Belobresca where Rex spoke again and we shared the service with a group of college students who were from Timisoara and were doing fundraising work for poor children in northeastern Romania.  What a great time of worship we had together. 

Two woship services began simultaneously in two different churches that evening.  Rex spoke at Grace Baptist Church while I was at Maranathana Baptist Church.  After preaching there (the same college students had come there that evening), I then got in a Dacia and drove over to Grace Baptist Church to preach the evening message there. The service lasted an hour and 40 minutes.

After many pictures, Paces, and hugs, we said our goodbyes and went back for a late supper of Sarmali and chicken and fries.

Thank you Lord, for the reminder that ministry is not something we do for you but that ministry is something You do through us.

Pastor Todd

Saturday in Romania

Up and at ‘em with a breakfast of salamis, cheese, bread, tomatoes and bell peppers.  Our gracious guests were good to also give us Americans yogurt and cereal.

Our first appointment was the area business leaders’ conference where men and women came to hear Rex give his Christian testimony and talk about the practice of faith and the operation of a business.

First, we spent the morning investigating things in the city andThe business mens’ conference was encouraging, and there was most considerable discussion when the door was opened for those with questions and comments.  Rex gave his testimony in a beautiful way which honored God, and all learned much about maintaining Christian principle even in the midst of personal challenges.

 looking at business opportunities.  We plan on doing more of this kind of thing on Monday.

Saturday evening, we worshipped in a youth rally at Grace Baptist Church in Moldova Noua.  Rex again gave his testimony and Todd preached Christ.  How the Lord blessed! 

     Ministry is not something we do for God.  Ministry is something God does and allows us to be a part of.

Indeed, God is at work!

Pastor Todd

We Made It!

From Nashville to D.C. to Munich and finally to Timisoara...we eventually got to the Peninsua Elias where we're staying.  

Tonight, we enjoyed a fish dinner on the Danube River (begun by a bowl of delicious fish soup) and made plans for economic and busines exploration tomorrow, leading our business leaders conference in the afternoon, and being a part of the Youth Rally tomorrow night.

After dinner, Tom and I went to a young couple's house to witness to the wife and young mother who is not saved.  I know these dear folks, and the fact that an American from the other side of the planet showed up to her house to evangelize her caused me to feel alot like Navy Seal Special Team 6 going to "do the job."

Although we prayed for her to believe tonight, and although we carefully laid the gospel out to her, she did not believe.  Nor did she get upset that we and the the others in the room  had "put her on the spot."

She did say she understood somethings better as we left and that she and her husband would be coming to the church tomorrow night for the speacial service!

Pray for Julia that she might come to Christ, trusting him in his sovereign goodness.  Pray for Rex tomorrow as he shares his testimony and speaks to the many men who are gathering for the business men's conference.  Pray for me as I preach to the youth of this area.  (We're 8 hours ahead of Paducah time.)

Pastor Todd

Loving God, Loving People . . . In Romania

Todd Brady, Tom Unici, Rex Smith and Sammy Smith embark on their trip to Romania this morning to further the Kingdom and work with fellow brothers proclaiming Christ as King.

Welcome Josh Hancock!



Josh is one of Dale and Cathy Hancock's three sons and the fiancee of Mandy Hodges.  He is serving FBC as a pastoral intern this summer.  Josh plans to enter vocational pastoral ministry, and we are praying that his time among us might indeed be beneficial for him and used by God for His glory among and through us. 

Plan on seeing Josh around a lot this summer, and make an opportunity to welcome Josh and Mandy to our faith family!

Pastor Todd

Sticking to our Vows

Sticking to Our Vows

Todd Brady, First Baptist Church, Paducah, KY

Although most statisticians tell us that 50% of all marriages in America end in divorce, I’m glad it’s still discouraging for me to hear of another famous couple who has made the decision to back away from the vows they once made.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announced their separation by saying, “This has been a great personal and professional transition for each of us.  After a great deal of thought, reflection, discussion, and prayer, we came to this decision together.”

The famous couple separating after 25 years together and 4 children is yet another drop of sludge in the swampy waters of a society which devalues marriage.  What some once considered an unlikely pairing became a quarter-of-a-century union which was eventually torn asunder as the couple decided that they are “amicably separating.”

It’s becoming increasingly normal for couples to break up.  Neil Sedaka used to sing that “breaking up is hard to do,” but when we’re talking about the institution of marriage, let us realize that breaking up is not just a hard thing to do.  It’s not God’s plan.

Marriage is first and foremost about a relationship with God.  In wedding ceremonies, I find myself saying often that the most important person in a marriage is not the man or the woman, but God himself.

God established marriage as a divine institution.  It is God’s design.  “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”  Genesis 2:24

We need men who will “hold fast” to their wives and not separate from them.

 “Amicably separating” might be euphemistic step but it is a step in the wrong direction.  Separation is sad for the couple.  It’s sad for the children.  It’s sad for the family.  It’s sad for our society.  But most of all, separation is sad because it is an effect of the Fall.

Within this fallen world, we know that God has not only reconciled us to Himself through Christ; he has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation.  “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.  We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God”  2 Corinthians 5:20.

Christians reconcile.  Christians make things right.  Christians press through the difficult and uncertain times by doing the right thing.  In short, Christians stick with it—and one of the first places where our perseverance is seen is in our marriages.

The Apostle Paul says that the institution of marriage should be a picture of the relationship which Christ has with the church.  (Ephesians 5:32)

A little over two years ago, a good and godly man in our church was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and for two long years his wife modeled grace and commitment as she cared for and stuck with her sick husband. 

Talk about “in sickness and in health.”

After 37 years of marriage, the man’s wife and daughters stood at his casket, grieving his death and celebrating his new life in Christ 

Today I find myself thanking God that the dear couple in our church did not consider the decision to “amicably separate.”

They stuck to their vows.  Just the way God designed it—‘till death did them part.

Arousing Ourselves to Death

A good word from Russell Moore about a silent cancer which is often rooted in Christian families and churches. 

arousing Ourselves to Death

Porn Is Ravaging Our Churches

The couple will typically tell me first about how stressful their lives are. Maybe he’s lost his job. Perhaps she’s working two. Maybe their children are rowdy or the house is chaotic. But usually, if we talk long enough about their fracturing marriage, there is a sense that something else is afoot. The couple will tell me about how their sex life is near extinction. The man, she’ll tell me, is an emotional wraith, dead to intimacy with his wife. The woman will be frustrated, with what seems to him to be a wild mixture of rage and humiliation. They just don’t know what’s wrong, but they know a Christian marriage isn’t supposed to feel like this.

It’s at this point that I interrupt the discussion, look at the man, and ask, “So how long has the porn been going on?” The couple will look at each other, and then look at me, with a kind of fearful incredulity that communicates the question, “How do you know?” For a few minutes, they seek to reorient themselves to this exposure, wondering, I suppose, if I’m an Old Testament prophet or a New Age psychic. But I’m not either. One doesn’t have to be to sense the spirit of this age. In our time, pornography is the destroying angel of (especially male) Eros, and it’s time the Church faced the horror of this truth.

A Perversion of the Good

In one sense, the issue of pornography is not new at all. Human lust for covenant-breaking sexuality is rooted, Jesus tells us, not in anything external to us but in our fallen passions (Matt. 5:27–28). Every generation of Christians has faced the pornography question, whether with Dionysian pagan art, or with Jazz Age fan-dancers, or with airbrushed centerfolds.

But the situation is unique now. Pornography is not now simply available. With the advent of Internet technology, with its near universal reach and its promise of secrecy, pornography has been weaponized. In some sectors, especially of our young male populations, it is nearly universal. This universality is not, contrary to the propaganda of the pornographers themselves, a sign of its innocence but of its power.

Like all sin, pornography is by definition a perversion of the good, in this case of the mystery of the male and female together in a one-flesh union. The urge toward this is strong indeed, precisely because our Creator, in manifold wisdom, decided that human creatures would not subdivide like amoeba, but that the male would need the female, and the female the male, for the race to survive.

Beyond that is an even greater mystery still. The Apostle Paul tells us that human sexuality is not arbitrary, nor is it merely natural. It is, he reveals, itself an icon of God’s ultimate purpose in the gospel. The one-flesh union is a sign of the union between Christ and his Church (Eph. 5:22–33). If human sexuality is patterned after the very Alpha and Omega of the cosmos, no wonder it is so difficult to restrain. No wonder it seems so wild.

An Ecclesial Issue

Pornography, by its very nature, leads to insatiability. One picture, stored in the memory, will never be enough to continue arousing a man. God, after all, designed the man and the woman to be satisfied not with a single sex act but with an ongoing appetite for each other, for the unitive and procreative union of flesh to flesh and soul to soul. One seeking the mystery outside of this covenantal union will never find what he is looking for. He will never find an image naked enough to satisfy him.

Yes, pornography is an issue of public morality. We have spoken to this repeatedly. A culture that doesn’t safeguard the dignity of human sexuality is a culture on its way to nihilism. Yes, pornography is an issue of social justice. After all, pornography, at least as we know it today, is rarely about mere “images.” Behind those images stand real persons, created in the image of God, who through some sad journey to a far country of despair have tumbled down to this. We agree with those—often even secular feminists with whom we disagree on much—who say that a pornographic culture hurts women and children through the objectification of women, the trafficking of children, and the commodification of sex.

But before pornography is a legal or cultural or moral issue, it is an ecclesial one. Judgment must, as Scripture tells us, begin with the household of God (1 Pet. 4:17). The man who is sitting upstairs viewing pornography while his wife chauffeurs their children to soccer practice might well be a religionless, secular culture warrior. But he is just as likely to be one of our church members, maybe even one who reads Touchstone magazine.

To begin to address this crisis, we call on the church of Jesus Christ to take seriously what is at stake here. Pornography is about more than biological impulses or cultural nihilism; it is about worship. The Christian Church, in all places and in all times and in all communions, has taught that we are not alone in the universe. One aspect of “mere Christianity” is that there are unseen spiritual beings afoot in the cosmos who seek to do us harm.

These powers understand that “the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). They understand that a disruption of the marital sexual bond defaces the embodied icon of Christ and his Church (Eph. 5:32). They know that pornography, in the life of a follower of Jesus Christ, joins Christ, spiritually, to an electronic prostitute or, more likely, to a vast digital harem of electronic prostitutes (1 Cor. 6:16). And these accusing powers know that those who unrepentantly practice these things “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9–10).

Sham Repentance

This means that our churches cannot simply rely on accountability groups and blocking software to combat this scourge. We must see this as darkly spiritual and, first and foremost, reclaim a Christian vision of human sexuality. Internet pornography, after all, is downstream from a view of human sexuality that is self-focused and fruitless. In an era when sex is merely about achieving orgasm by any means necessary, we must reiterate what the Christian Church has always taught: sex is about the covenant union of one man with one woman, a union that is intended to bring about flourishing, love, happiness, and, yes, sensual pleasure.

But it is also intended to bring about new life. An incarnational picture of sexuality, rooted in the mystery of the gospel, is the furthest thing possible from the utilitarian ugliness of pornography. Our first step must be to show why pornography leaves a person, and a culture, so numb and empty. Human sexuality is, as our colleague Robert George put it, more than “body parts rubbing against one another.”

Moreover, we must call for repentance in our own churches, and this will be more difficult than it sounds. Pornography brings with it a kind of sham repentance. Immediately after an “episode” with pornography is “over,” the participant usually, especially at first, feels a kind of revulsion and self-loathing. An adulterer or a fornicator of the more traditional kind can at least rationalize that he is “in love.” Most people, though, don’t write poetry or romantic songs about this isolated, masturbatory compulsion. Even the pagans who find pornography pleasant and necessary seem to recognize that it is kind of pitiful.

Typically, for those who identify as Christians, a pornographic episode is followed by a resolve “never to do it again.” Often these (again, typically) men promise to seek out some sort of accountability and leave it behind. But often this resolve is less about a convicted conscience than about a sated appetite. Even Esau, belly full of red stew, wept for his lost birthright, but “found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears” (Heb. 12:17).

Without genuine repentance, the cycle of temptation will grind on. The powers of this age will collaborate with the biological impulses to make it seem irresistible again. The pseudo-repentance will only keep the sin in hiding. This is devil work, and is among those things our Lord Jesus came to destroy (1 John 3:8).

Genuine Repentance

Our churches must show what genuine repentance looks like. This does not mean setting up legalistic rules and regulations against the use of technology itself. This, the Apostle Paul tells us, is “of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23). It does mean, however, that every point of temptation comes with a corresponding means of escape (1 Cor. 10:13). For some especially vulnerable members of our churches, this will mean giving up the use of home computers or of Internet technology altogether.

Such a suggestion seems absurd to many, as though we were suggesting that some Christians might do well to stop eating or sleeping. But human beings have lived thousands of years without computers and without the Internet. Is our Lord Jesus right when he says it is better to cut off one’s hand or gouge out one’s eye rather than be condemned by our sin? (Matt. 5:29). How much less is it, then, to ask that one cut through a cable?

We must also empower women in our congregations to grapple as Christians with husbands enslaved to pornography. We believe, and have taught emphatically, that wives should submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:23). But, in Scripture and in Christian teaching, all submission (except to the Lord directly) has limits. The husband’s body, the Bible says, belongs to his wife (1 Cor. 7:4). She need not subject herself to being the physical outlet for her husband’s pornographically supplied fantasies. If both are members of a Christian church, and if he will not repent, we counsel the wife to follow our Lord’s steps (laid out in Matt. 18:15–20) to call a brother to repentance, up to and including church action.

The Gospel Answer

Finally, and most importantly, we call on the church to counteract pornography with what the demonic powers fear most: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus, after all, walked with us, before us, into the testing of the appetites. His enemy and ours offered him a solitary masturbatory meal, to be wolfed down in the desert. Jesus turned back Satan’s offer, not because he did not hunger, but because he wanted a marriage supper, joined with his Church “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).

The powers want any child of Adam, especially a brother or sister of the Lord Jesus, to cringe in hiding from accusation. Through the confession of sin, though, any conscience, including one darkened by pornography, can be cleansed. By the blood of Christ, received in repentance and faith, no satanic indictment can stand, not even one that comes with an archived Internet history.

—Russell D. Moore, for the editors

Russell D. Moore is the author of Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches. He lives with his family in Louisville, Kentucky, where he serves as Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and as preaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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Pastor Todd