Kingdom Harbor

by Skye Jethani – please check out Skye’s daily devotional here.

A few months ago, a very popular pastor and radio preacher came under public attack, lost numerous speaking invitations, and had his radio program canceled. What was his sin? He counseled a grandmother to attend her trans grandchild’s wedding. The pastor himself is extremely conservative on matters of marriage and sexuality, and his theological position on these issues has not changed. He made that abundantly clear in the aftermath of the controversy. His defense was that he was merely offering pastoral guidance to a woman struggling to maintain a relationship with her beloved grandchild. For his critics, that explanation wasn’t enough.

For some Christians, particularly those in more fundamentalist traditions, to be holy—or at least to appear holy—requires physical separation from anything or anyone that does not conform to their doctrinal or behavioral standards. In the past, this meant keeping a safe distance from alcohol, tobacco, gambling, dancing, rock ‘n roll, movies, or anything else deemed “worldly.” Today, even among very conservative Christians, many of these taboos are gone; dismissed with a chuckle as religious relics from an earlier era. Instead, they’ve been eclipsed by the fear of one all-consuming threat to the holiness of God and his people—the LGBTQ movement. As a result, a pastor may now frequent a bar, smoke stogies, watch rated R movies, and gamble with impunity, but allow one grandmother to be present at her grandchild’s same-sex wedding and judgment will be swift.

Whether the issue is tobacco or trans weddings, the fundamentalist mindset is all about appearances. If something looks wrong it is wrong. Period. There’s no reason to investigate any further. That’s why for fundamentalists attendance equals approval. For example, in the past, Christian fundamentalists saw entering a bar as endorsing alcoholism. Likewise, today they view attending a same-sex wedding as endorsing its theology. No other questions are necessary before passing judgment. The surface is sufficient and any deeper discernment is discouraged. It doesn’t matter if the tea-totaling pastor entered a bar to meet with a struggling church member. His mere presence is condemned as participation. And an old woman’s decades of faithfulness to Christ are irrelevant. Her attendance at a same-sex wedding is proof she’s abandoned God and endorsed evil.

But the real question is: What does this childish and superficial approach to faith reveal about a person’s view of God? Do they think God is incapable of seeing beneath the surface of things too? Is he unable to tell the difference between a grandmother’s love and her theological endorsement? Like Superman’s inability to see through lead, is the all-knowing God suddenly unable to see our hearts the moment we enter a bar, a theater, a temple, or a theologically divergent wedding ceremony? This gets at the fundamental problem with fundamentalism—it assumes God is stupid. Rather than the omniscient, compassionate God who is merciful and slow to anger revealed in scripture, it treats him like a petulant pagan deity whose wrath is easily triggered by misunderstanding and pacified with symbols and slogans.

And yet, the God of the Bible is the opposite of stupid. He looks far deeper than the surface, and he often differentiates between a person’s presence, their participation, and their piety. For example, even when his people actively worshipped him with biblically commanded sacrifices and songs, he still rejected them. “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13). And Jesus condemned the religious leaders of Israel while acknowledging how holy they appeared on the surface. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean” (Matthew 23:27).

God’s deeper discernment also applies to those who do not appear clean or righteous on the surface. When others condemned a prostitute for pouring expensive oil on Jesus’ feet, he praised her instead saying, “Wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Mark 14:9). And when Naaman, after pledging his loyalty to God alone, asked for the Lord’s permission to serve his king by attending rituals at a pagan temple, Elisha said, “Go in peace.” In every example, God is not fooled by appearances. He sees past external things to the hidden truth. He does not make the error of fundamentalism. As the scriptures say, “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Again, please check out Skye’s daily devotional here.