This week I’ll attend the annual (and final) Together for the Gospel Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Beginning Tuesday, all the main sessions will be livestreamed here. Don’t miss it!
Visitation and Sanctification
Hospital visitation is a central plank of pastoral care. In both churches where I’ve been privileged to serve on staff, visiting hospitalized members and their families has been an important part of my ministry.
People don’t like hospitals, whether as patients or visitors. Some even confess a pathological fear of them. On some level, I can understand that. It is, after all, a hospital. It’s not designed to be an especially inviting place. Yet since Christ so often gravitated toward the sick and distressed, visiting our hospitalized church family is unavoidable and essential.
However, the pandemic dealt a profound blow to this form of ministry. Pastors were shut out of nearly all hospitals. For the longest time, some hospitals had a one-visitor only policy. In practical terms, this meant that a spouse, parent, and/or child were the only people who had access to their loved ones. Given the circumstances, I’d rather that be the policy than a zero-visitor one. But I felt a mixture of frustration, helplessness, and guilt.
Yet even amid this season of limits, I saw God’s providence. One of our members had searched for a job near his home for a long time, and not long before the pandemic secured employment at the hospital nearest our church, which probably 90% of our members use. Even while I couldn’t visit people, he could. There’s no telling how many countless people Scott was able to visit and pray with.
More generally, despite having many members of advanced age and health decline, we simply didn’t have nearly the number of extended, serious hospitalizations during this period as we typically had in the past. Though I was missing out on some in-person ministry, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Between my child’s arrival in January and a recent wave of hospital visits, I’m getting reacquainted with the hospital’s peculiar ways. I’m remembering how long so many tests and procedures take. I’m observing the cadence of the staff as they shuffle up and down the hallways and from room to room. I’m hearing all the beeps, rings, and dings of the hospital soundtrack.
But people are always the point. I see worry in their faces. I see frustration and impatience welling up. I hear relief when a problem isn’t as severe as initially thought, and fear when it’s worst. I experience the vibe of nurses and doctors—their quest for answers, their perplexed looks when things don’t improve, and exhaustion as they near the end of their shifts.
Sanctification has never been primarily about the quality of one’s devotional time in the morning. It’s certainly necessary to our spiritual growth and maturity, but it’s part fuel for the journey, and part rest stop along the way—it’s not the journey itself. The hospital constitutes a serious and sometimes scary leg of the journey. People’s true preparedness for the life to come has a way of breaking through. Crisis reveals character.
I rejoice that even through a masked face, I can get back to where God’s people are. But He’s already there; He always has been. And He’s using the noisy monitors, the awkward gown, and the uncertain treatment plan to build people up in faith and reorient them toward biblical hope.
A Few Cautions about Intellectual Heroes
My friend Jesse Owens wrote an article a few years ago entitled, “When Even Our Heroes Are Flawed.” This article was reprinted later that same year in ONE Magazine, and deservedly so. It’s an incredibly relevant subject that has gained new legs in the last few years as so many have sought to reexamine, often critically, American history. This “reexamination” is best embodied in the removal of monuments—whether violently toppled or discretely removed.
I have my own reservations about the manner in which monuments are erected, criticized, and/or removed, but let’s not lose the larger question: do we view our heroes honestly?
We’ve increasingly seen more Christian treatments of how we ought to appreciate historical figures who had problematic beliefs and/or qualities. I want to offer two additional premises that I think bring greater context to this discussion:
1-Properly distinguishing between different kinds of flaws or problems.
2-Holding our heroes to the same standards as our enemies.
Consider the first of these two concerns. When we evaluate a historical figure, especially a “hero” or “villain” of some kind, are we able to identify and weigh the relative problem in an accurate way? Let me provide a few examples that often interest evangelicals:
A. Abraham Kuyper had some problematic views concerning race.
B. C.S. Lewis had some beliefs that don’t cohere with orthodox, evangelical theology.
C. Francis Schaeffer’s interpretation of Thomas Aquinas was incorrect.
Many evangelicals have a great appreciation of these three men. Many also, to different degrees, believe that these statements are true. Of course, they may or may not be correct about that! My point in using these examples is that they have been discussed often enough that they’re certainly legitimate intellectual matters.
Now it won’t take too much effort to discern that each of these subjects are different. But they’re similar in that they refer to the level of belief, understanding, and interpretation.
I make this point because none of our heroes are morally or intellectually perfect since no such perfections exist. But given the wide range of subjects about which one could have a belief, and the fact that most of our heroes wrote quite a bit, what is the relative likelihood that we will find them to be wrong on a matter of belief or understanding? The probability is exceedingly high.
It seems to me that we’re probably more likely to excuse our heroes’ intellectual faults for three main reasons: (1) The overall emphasis and thrust of their thinking is sound and valuable; (2) They lived in periods of time where less information may have been available; and (3) When you write and speak about so much, you’re inevitably going to be wrong about something.
What about morals and character? Consider three additional examples.
A. St. Augustine had a concubine for a long period of time.
B. John Calvin was directly implicated in the execution of a theological rival.
C. Charles Spurgeon drank alcohol.
Once again, these are three different examples. They don’t entirely distinguish between pre- and post-conversion behavior and growth (A). They are devoid of historical and political context (B). Or they give the impression that someone participated in a specific practice in the same way that we moderns do (C). But I suspect most Christians would identify each of these as moral concerns. Mind you, we cannot easily separate the moral from the intellectual if we recognize that moral conduct is enabled by our views of moral issues.
For example, if you believed that heresy was a threat not only to ecclesial stability, but also to civil stability, then you could understand how that belief might underwrite the practice of heresy trials. Again, I’m not attempting to unravel the story about Calvin-Servetus. I’m simply observing a connection between belief and behavior.
So why do we excuse the moral failures of our heroes? Is it because, on balance, we believe them more godly than ungodly? Is it because we think they’re contributions are so profoundly important that we don’t want to compromise their present benefit to us and others? Is it because we have personally admired them and learned so much from them for so many years, but only late in our study did we encounter their faults and errors? Excusing the problems now sometimes becomes a face-saving exercise.
I think we must consider these questions, insomuch that we can honestly summon answers. If for no other reason, these inquiries are important because premise one (what kind of problem is this?) impinges on premise two (am I holding enemies to a different standard than heroes?).
Let’s imagine I see a civil rights leader of the twentieth century as a true hero. If I learn that he had some profound moral failures (let’s say he was a serial adulterer), then I must resist the temptation to ignore that detail in my overall evaluation.
Now imagine I view a civil rights leader of the twenty-first century negatively. I see him as a complete fraud because, as it turns out, he is a serial adulterer. If I won’t allow that moral detail to count against my hero from the twentieth century, then I can’t include that in my moral assessment of the other civil rights leader. I must find some standard beyond that to serve as my primary basis for determining whether they were good, godly, and heroic, or not.
Let me use another, more concrete example.
There is a modern fascination with the big-government presidents of the twentieth century—Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson, to name a few. Yet the legacies of these men include profound recklessness in the command of soldiers, blatant racism, serial adultery, and lying to Congress. One could easily erect a standard for presidential greatness based primarily on legislative outcomes, for example, and place moral care, truthfulness, and personal loyalty low on the moral register. But then when you evaluate other presidents, you don’t get to make principles like the aforementioned ones paramount to your estimation of greatness. Stick to legislative outcomes.
Would it be ideal if we always sought to value truthfulness, wisdom, sincerity, competence, and similar virtues in leaders and heroes, even if it meant we had to take our heroes down a few pegs? I think so.
I recognize that certain virtues might be more relevant to certain estimations of those in entertainment, politics, or sports. For example, if the Baseball Hall of Fame wants to include “character on and off the field” as a formal part of their evaluation of nominees, they have every right to do that. Yet if they choose to focus solely on a player’s output on the field, they can do that also. But as a Christian, I don’t have to leave my values at the door when I’m deciding who my favorite player is.
The next time we defend a hero against a moral or intellectual charge—“They were a product of their times,” “They didn’t know what we know now,” “Their overall positive contributions far outweigh the negative”—let’s be sure we extend the same evaluative grace to those who aren’t our heroes.
It’s also advisable to develop moral registers appropriate to the situation. Do we need our favorite actors to stand with us on all our favorite political causes? Do we need presidents to be as good at public speaking as following the Constitution? Do we need our superintendents to be as good at fundraising as curriculum evaluation?
Let’s try to discern the integrity of each sphere of life, while also trying to promote a holistic moral vision for how we as Christians seek to navigate the world. The witness of the church is at stake, and so is our integrity.
Currently Reading:
Catch up/travel week
Quote of the Week:
Culture wars and outrage cycles can fuel ratings and clicks and fundraising appeals, but they cannot reconcile sinners to a holy God. They cannot reunite a fragmented people. And they can’t even, in the long run, make us less afraid. As Christians, Good Friday should remind us that adding more outrage and anger to a culture already exhausted by its own is not how God defines his wisdom and power. Babel building can’t help us. Only cross carrying can.
(Russell Moore, newsletter, April 14)