There Will Indeed Be False Teachers

David Stokes, an evangelical pastor, columnist, and budding author, on those who abuse scripture for political purposes.

Hasan And Oswald

My pastor brother David Stokes writes as follows about those who minimize the apparent Islamist tendencies of the accused Ft. Hood murderer:

During the Cuban Missile Crisis (c. 1962), if an American soldier would have opened fire on his comrades while wearing a Che Guevera T-shirt and yelling, “Long Live Lenin, Khrushchev, and Castro,” it is doubtful that the guy’s communist sympathies would have been dismissed as irrelevant and peripheral. The commies were the enemy.

A year after the Cuban missile crisis, the commander-in-chief was murdered in Dallas by a Marine veteran who had not only shilled for Fidel Castro and reached out to the communists in Moscow but tried to defect to the Soviet Union. It was the height of the Cold War. And yet Lee Harvey Oswald's darkest of acts didn't become a pretext for Americans going door to door in their neighborhoods trying to root out communist President killers. It was and remains obvious that he had acted alone. Most of those who resist calling Nidal Malik Hasan a terrorist or lumping him with al-Qaeda are making the same prudent distinction, at least until we learn the whole story.

No Heavenly Middle Ground

Showing how modern Christian evangelicalism is rooted in early 20th century fundamentalism, Pastor David Stokes says that a rapprochement between evangelicals and political liberals is almost impossible:

Evangelicals, those who take the Bible and their faith seriously, need to realize that when it comes to issues like gay marriage – even abortion – there is not really any middle ground with those on the left, even the so-called Christian left.

Rick Warren has spent a great deal of time and money, investing his ministry in initiatives that are outside of the normal evangelical box. He has worked tirelessly in Africa and elsewhere on the issue of AIDS – and has cultivated a compassionate and understanding persona when it comes to dealing with issues and ministry challenges stemming from same-sex attraction.

What Warren has not done, nor will he ever do, is to reach the point where he declares that homosexual behavior is not sinful. He will not do this because he is a Biblicist....

Unless evangelicals are willing to say that the Bible does not call homosexual behavior sinful, no amount of posturing will change anything.

It is sort of like the Israeli-PLO land-for-peace narrative. It will never work because the PLO does not think Israel should exist. Conceded acreage will not assuage that.