I find the right questions to be remarkably valuable. They can help to clarify points of actual disagreement and agreement (one of the more important tasks in our day). They can distill issues into their essence. The wrong questions will almost always get you the wrong answers and will muck up already cloudy conversations. But the right questions can create clarity and dispel anxiety in a way that few other things can.

In a truly helpful conversation with a few pastors from other churches a series of interconnected conversations about the church and this cultural moment was distilled nicely as one of the more stately fellows summarized nicely: "Its fine to disagree about the particular placement of the line for political resistance or social offense, so long as we can agree that such lines should exist and churches need to know how to find them." There has been a lot of back and forth in these months about the actual authority and role of the magistrate, societal health concerns, and how the church is to best love her neighbor and communicate that love. This conversation has run the gamut of topics from masking, and church gathering restrictions, to broader social issues like sexuality and race. For my own part, I've had to wrestle with a great deal of confusion about how to think biblically and theologically through these different and oddly interrelated issues. It hasn't helped that for decades I was a participant in an unofficial cultural movement of pastors and Christians who approached mission and evangelism from a perspective that was firmly committed to, as best we could, covering up or softening the offensive bits of biblical teaching in order to make sure that the gospel was the main thing left to offend people or compel people. Without getting too far into the remarkable limitations with such an approach. I want to propose two questions that I think are particularly important for churches and leaders of churches to consider right now. Two questions have served me well in the last few months and I think will be helpful as Christians consider what we're up to at this moment. They certainly aren't the only questions to be asked right now. But they should be in the mix.

Before I ask them, I want to point out a historical comparison Carl Trueman has made in his wonderful book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. In it he argues that the most relevant age of church history for us to learn from at this particular cultural moment is the 3rd Century. During the third century, the church existed in a tenuous relationship with Roman society. There were occasional outbreaks of violence and persecution, but nothing of the sort that the church had seen earlier or would see later. Instead, the church's beliefs and worship practices were seen by the broader society as immoral, even evil. They were considered a threat to society and the good of their neighbors. The church learned to maintain her faithful witness during this period and it eventually gave way to significant conversions and a cultural shift in society. But she had to learn how to hold fast to what was objectively good and to do so while being perceived as the bad guys. I believe that this will increasingly be the challenge we face in the west. With this in mind, here are two broad questions we are considering:

1) At what point would you be willing to say ‘No’ to the powers-that-be (be it the local magistrate, the state or the Federal government - or landlords, other pastors, denominational leadership, etc.)?

There has been an abundance of helpful reflections offered encouraging the church to defer, when possible, to the authority of the magistrate (Here is one from Steven Wedgeworth and the Gospel Coalition. While I disagreed with some of his conclusions, I do think he framed the issues helpfully). From where I sit, almost no pastors I know needed that encouragement. There were very few pastors locally, publically raising questions about the authority of the magistrate to pass the ordinances that were passed on churches. And while granting that different circumstances may dictate different responses to various government mandates or laws, as well as recognizing that wisdom is essential to discern when to apply what principles from Scripture, almost all Christians admit that there is a point at which church leaders should resist laws and orders from those who bear authority. We may disagree on whether that line is 12 weeks into this pandemic or 12 months or 18 months. We may disagree on whether the point of resistance should come with mask mandates or attendance restrictions or banning public worship altogether. Finally, we may disagree on whether a pandemic killing less than 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10000 or 1 in 100000 justifies such restrictions. The point is to recognize that such a point of resistance exists - that there is a point at which Jesus requires the church to say, “No.” Perhaps it will be an issue unrelated to global pandemics and will instead have to do with regulations on what can be explicitly taught or who can or can't be hired. But what is that point? What theological principles will be determinative for you, your church and your leaders? Can you imagine what that line looks like and how your church’s leadership could arrive at such a point and what it would look like to lead your people at that cultural moment? It is important, I think, to add the further circumstance of public opinion here. When the church resisted Rome’s rule in the 3rd century they did so as a community perceived to be immoral and a threat to the public good. When churches in China resist government edicts that appear so obviously anti-religious from our distance, they do so as communities perceived to be enemies of their neighbors. Do not presume that such a point of resistance will come with anyone believing that you are doing anything other than making a selfish power grab or behaving in a way that is harmful to society and your neighbors.

2) What social, ethical or theological positions would you be willing to state, with biblical clarity (being willing to state what the bible says in the way the bible says it), knowing that such claims will lead to you and your church being deemed bigoted, evil, or unloving?

We live in an age where it is increasingly common to see traditional ethical or social dividing lines between secular people and Christian people become volatile. It is no longer deemed a moral oddity that Christians believe that homosexuality is a sin or that sex is given only to a man and a woman who are married, it is seen increasingly as a societal evil. The doctrine of hell and God's judgment is morally unacceptable in our day when applied as broadly as the law of God applies it. We live in a world comfortable with Christians who can articulate a softened vision of God's love or a vision of the Kingdom filled with people from every conceivable ethnic group (seen as a reflection of secularism's inclusiveness). But we live in a world where a real call to repentance for real sins is no longer seen as a religious oddity. It is increasingly perceived as a fundamental and divisive problem with the world. So, granted that there may be disagreement on where and how the best ways to articulate these calls to repent of sin and believe in Jesus, what are the points of contention you see where love requires we call our neighbors to repent and believe? The rub here will likely come in the issue of specificity. Our neighbors will not be offended by calls to repent of generic, ambiguous idolatry. They will be offended when you actually burn the idols. The gospel proclaims that sins have been atoned for in the death of Jesus. But these are not ambiguous unnamed sins, they are real rebellions against actual commands given to us by God. Those commands are likely to get everybody in trouble someday.