The invidious control of God with knowledge, and the tiresome dynamics of a splintering Church

by guest contributor Brian F. Marks

I’m excited to bring you another poignant piece by my good friend and guest contributor Brian F. Marks.

I remember how my mind was blown when I learned that most Christians who have ever lived, probably 75% of them, never owned a Bible or had read it for themselves. They were not allowed; they couldn’t. Growing up in the United States, a developed Western nation where most of the citizens are literate and have some kind of Christian heritage (and even most hotel rooms have a Bible on the nightstand, thank you Gideons!), having access to God’s Word was second nature. I also remember seeing this extremely moving footage watching Chinese Christians swarming a box full of Bibles, despite living under the repressive cruelty of the CCP, picking up their new prized possession. Prior to the 1600s, the Bible was the purview of the church. Theological education was done by priests and elders.

Indeed, Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press was named the most influential person of the millennium in TIME magazine’s 2000 year special. Have you heard of a “Gutenberg Bible”? His intervention furthered God’s Word more than ever before, and with it, widespread biblical literacy. This is a good thing. I wouldn’t want to return to a time where only a few were able to pore over the pages of Scripture and encounter God there.

But today, in the biblically literate West, those who study the Bible obsessively and preach it authoritatively will say God is in control, and they may believe that. But they act like they control God. And they function as though they can do so with all their knowledge. This is an invidious temptation and it’s so troubling particularly given other phenomena concurrently plaguing the Body of Christ. 

I’ve been burdened lately, particularly when reading John 17:21-24 when Jesus prayed for all those who would follow him that they would be one, “just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.” Pause for a minute there and consider how profound that is. If you’re reading this today and you have come to know Christ, you’re included in the prayer Jesus himself prayed over 2000 years ago. 

But heartbreakingly, it’s a prayer that Jesus prayed that, in some ways, still seems to be unanswered. 

The burden feels especially painful for me. I feel it in the form of fierce heartache and the persistent frustration of it has bedeviled my soul that it’s causing me to tug on some threads I’ve previously brushed off. It’s not what they call “deconstruction” or a crisis of faith. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s a thread-tugging journey I sense the Holy Spirit is nudging me to explore. 

It helps that I’m currently in a position where I am able to see the whole lay of the land of the church, a macro-lens on the landscape, if you will. While I certainly don’t see everything and maybe I’m too jaded but by virtue of what I’m doing every day, it’s simply true that I see more than most. 

So, here we go…

Unbearably Contentious Infighting

Bible-believing evangelicals? They have some great strengths. But they trouble me. Sure, many (dare I say most?) are wonderful people who love the Lord. I really should seek them out more. But on Christian Twitter/X? In much of leadership and major thought leaders and certain notorious, loudmouthed tribes with large followings? They give me indigestion.

There is an accusatory spirit that seems to never go away in so many of them and it is made worse in that they claim that they are interpreting Scripture just as the text says. They mostly think they are objective, neutral, and completely faithful, untainted by any outside influences, in keeping with the historic faith in its purest form. 

Many go to churches where they teach expositionally, line by line, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. They read and study the Word again and again and again. They’re all about getting it right. And tight. 

Some of these people have intellectually robust and sophisticated substance, bright minds, rapier wits, and smarty-pants wicked tongues. Some will telegraph some gross faux-humility about God being all-knowing and how their finite human minds are limited, but for all intents and purposes, they think they’ve got it nailed down and figured it out. 

And their goal seems to be to pack people’s heads with their perfectly correct theology and all will be well. To be fair, it’s true that sound doctrine matters. But to them, it’s the be-all end-all. 

And despite what they get right (and they do get some important things right) the contentiousness never seems to stop. This is what feels so painful. Why is it like this? It’s not the abundant life in the Kingdom. It’s an exhausting spiritual hamster wheel. They really are not so different, even on the resurrection side of the cross, than the Pharisees whom Jesus confronted in John 5. Jesus told those teachers of the law that they diligently study the Scriptures thinking that it would give them life, but really, they had to come to HIM. 

Many Christians, even well-intended ones, are no different. 

They seem to elevate doctrines about Jesus over the person of Jesus. They are often blind to their pet doctrines and isms because something seems to have just clicked in their heads. They are convinced that they’ve figured it out so precisely that any disagreement, no matter how slight, is disagreement with God and thus blasphemous and heretical. They clam up and panic at the thought of being…wrong. 

It seems that as time passes, there’s always something, always another gnarly theological dispute, always another conflict to respond to that our crazy politics brings to the fore. 

What usually happens is that people get mad and they hurt people and it damages their faith and hurts them personally. And I have to wonder, as I’ve argued previously, if this isn’t greatly contributing to the rise of the religious “nones.”

It’s more than just being on guard for deceptive leaven, watching out for false teaching, which is necessary in every age.

Resisting The Spirit of the Age Is Still Needed

But it is here where I completely understand where those Bible-believing evangelicals whom I’ve just argued are guilty of trying to control God with all their knowledge are coming from, even as they give me indigestion. And that’s because I’m also acutely aware of the need for a bold response to what I think is the behemoth stronghold in the West: the distortion of sexuality. It’s a huge, ferocious beast. The deception around it is enormous and pervasive. And so, I’ll offer a bold response of my own:

Out of a reverential regard for the physical structure of the human body, which Christians believe conveys a moral message that they must respect, Christians hold that the human person is made male and female in God’s image, is designed with a telos, an end purpose. It is not overstating to say, in a way, that the Christian faith exalts the human body, because of the eternal realities to which it points. 

While there are certainly prudential considerations about the extent to which the state governs issues of sexual immorality, generally speaking, faithful Christians have maintained that the law, being the pedagogical teacher it is, indelibly shapes social attitudes and mores about what is good. Any moral ill, then, that decimates the vital social structures of marriage and family ought to be at best discouraged if not legally prohibited. Though the sexual revolution promised “freedom” and “liberation,” in the long term, the reverse is true because a society cannot function without strong family units as its backbone.    

Human history is replete with examples of nations rising and falling and, as Oxford social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin documented in his 1934 book Sex and Culture – which traced 80 primitive tribes and 6 known civilizations over the course of 5,000 years of history – when increased sexual freedom was unleashed in societies, it eventually yielded a cultural collapse only three generations later. Concurrently, when strict prenuptial chastity ceased being the norm, other goods like absolute monogamy, belief in God, and rational thinking also vanished within three generations, Unwin observed. When total sexual “freedom” was embraced by a culture, in terms of human flourishing the result was what he called an “inert” culture, one with a “dead level of conception.

Conservative, Bible-believing Christians, for all their flaws, deeply understand these truths. Marriage is only ever between a man and a woman. Anything outside of God’s definition and standards is sin. Transgenderism is the epitome of sexual idolatry. When biblical standards for sexuality break down, society as a whole breaks down. It’s intricately linked. 

And while I believe these evangelicals are right, they severely undermine their case by turning a blind eye to abuse in their own ranks. 

But even more maddeningly still, those who are calling out the abuse within small-o orthodox Christian circles are undermining the very stable structures and standards upon which our society is built. As feminist Louise Perry, author of “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution” noted in one of the most moving First Things essays I’ve ever read, it was the moral innovation of the Christian faith transformed the ancient pagan world and gave rise to the elevation of women who could, for the first time, demand sexual continence of men. As she succinctly put it: “Feminism is not opposed to Christianity; it is its descendant.” 

But today? There's a new book about abuse that is an absolute disaster. It’s called “#ChurchToo” by Emily Allison which is purportedly about addressing the harms of “purity culture” and how it enables abuse while also advocating for morally inverted insanities such as “ethical nonmonagamy”, “ethical porn,” and, of course, all things LGBTQ. It is, sadly, one of the many examples of women who claim Christ pushing debauchery while claiming to also want equal treatment in the church and and end to sexual abuse. It’s insane, contradictory postmodern drivel and the only thing more maddening about it is the smarmy, self-righteous tone in which they deliver it.  

It gives me ulcers because I think abuse is a real problem in some churches but the solution is NOT furthering more sexually idolatrous immorality dressed up as enlightened woke thinking.

What Can Be Done?  

In view of all of this, I’m left wondering, do I dare ever hope for this elusive unity even possible at all in evangelicalism? There is compromise and virulently false teaching that must be resisted. But so much else seems so inherently contentious because of the propositionalism upon which so much seems to rely. Can’t we all agree on the basics (including reverence of godly standards about what sin is), the core doctrinal essentials, and cooperate together for the advance of the Kingdom and the furtherance of the Good News? To ask some Bible-believing evangelicals, no, we can’t. The basics aren’t enough for them because they want control of the theology. It makes them feel good. 

How can we get to the place where believers were “of one heart and mind” as they were in Acts? Does it require…persecution? I sure hope not. And I really hate it how some people romanticize persecution as though that’s something to desire because then it might purify the church and that will be better. I mean, just ask Middle Eastern Christians who’ve seen their communities nearly wiped out by ISIS in recent years if they think persecution is a good, purifying thing. 

And so here I am, approximately  2000 stream-of-consciousness words later, doing my best to keep my eyes on the Author and Perfecter of our faith, whose eternal plan of redemption and reconciliation of all things in Him is somehow going right according to plan, even amid all the chaos and contentious conflict..

I don’t have a workable solution to the things I see and I hate that I don’t, except to call upon the Lord and ask Him to move in a mysterious, supernatural way that only He can. It’s moments like these that cause me to recognize my own futility though I know I want to refuse to try and control God with my theology even as I do my best to remain faithful to Him and contend what’s good and true. I don’t do it perfectly. None of us does. 

Maybe the best thing to do while we wait on Him is to join Jesus in praying his still-unanswered John 17 prayer: “May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Come, Lord Jesus.