Thanks for straightening me out on that one. I’ve been laboring for years under the illusion that Jesus was a pimp.

You almost had me until you said that Jesus was “in” the culture of the prostitutes and tax-collectors. He was among them; he ministered to them. He was not a pimp or an extortionist. He didn’t skim tax receipts to have cred with Zacchaeus.

Now: does failing to be an extortionist or a pimp make one “out of touch” with the culture in question? No: it makes one obedient to God.

In that, let me say that you started making a great point about what we are identifying with. For example, when you started to say that Lev 18’s admonition was about Christ-centered counter-culture, that exactly right. But when you apply that precept and come up with, “but God doesn’t care how we present ourselves to the cultures we are confronting,” you have pretty much denied your first good point.

God wanted the Jews to present themselves in a certain way to the fallen cultures around them in order to prepare the way for the Messiah, amen? But to do that, did God tell them, “you go ahead and try to fit in with the Hitites and the Jebusites because I’m working out my redemptive purposes and you can’t really screw up my plan,” or did he tell them “You shall walk in my ways, for I am the LORD your God”?

Let’s be clear: you’re right the God didn’t call them to Gospel Quartets or Armani suits (and he didn’t call us to those things, either, [halleluia]). The Lord called them to live in a way that confronts the “otherness” of human culture with the holiness of God — the dividing line of the law.

In that, does tattoo evangelism make any sense at all? Let’s imagine that somebody tattoos the 5 solas on this bicep — or perhaps the key doctrines of TULIP. Does that make any sense in the context that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures? It can’t.

What underlies the idea that we should use tattoos for evangelism or get a prim version of Johnny Rotten’s hairstyle to “speak to” a generation is the idea of “how much can I get away with and still be a Christian”.

My answer to that question is: “you cannot get away with anything. If you are trying to figure out what you can do without breaking the Law you are already (or still) under the law and Christ is of no value to you.” If I am inside the Gospel, I am saved from the law and in that rebellion against the law is pointless and hopeless.

That’s off the cuff — I’ll revise and extend those comments on my own blog eventually.

Wow.
Print it, frame it, ship it express to the folks at Bartlett’s.

Good stuff, Michael.

That said…

I find it confounding that you have so many people willing to fling Leviticus 19.28 into everyone’s faces about piercing, yet skip over the other parts of that chapter. How about v19, on garments made of two different materials — anyone else own a 50-50 cotton-polyester shirt? How about v27 and goatees? How about v32 and standing up when old people enter the room — does ANYONE do that anymore?

The sad fact is that everyone picks and chooses which verses to follow depending on how relatively offensive they are to the culture. If everyone in the culture does it, the reasoning is this:

“Whatever God’s reason for issuing that commandment is irrelevant; it’s a CULTURAL issue. God only meant that command for the HEBREWS. But for us more enlightened Gentiles, we can ignore it so long as we stick to the Ten Commandments and the verses prohibiting anything I personally disapprove of (like maybe liquor, fornication, and homosexuality).”

I hardly want to make a case for legalism, but my attitude about the commandments is that it’s probably better to follow them than not. Of course they don’t save. Of course we don’t make brownie points with God by keeping them; He won’t love us any less. But if the commandments are an expression of God’s desires, and we want to please God… why are so many of us (including, admittedly, me) so casually disregarding them?

IMonk says, “Don’t confront with THAT because THAT’s not Christian, either.” When Johnson was talking about confronting with Christ all along, I thought. A little frustrating and nitpicky, if you ask me. Somebody help me see it better if I’m missing something.

Of course, redemption works an internal culture first, of motive and loyalty to Jesus in the heart. What flows out of that matters less than the motive, but it also matters. Mark 7:14-23 applies, I’d say. And James 1:22-25.

Doug Wilson’s got more on this at his blog again…

When he says “Be ye separate,” I am simply pointing out that we exist in a cultural expression of our values (Christian as we understand them) and that is under the critique of Christ as well.

I am not attempting to start a fight with Johnson in any way.

“When Johnson was talking about confronting with Christ all along, I thought.”

That is entirely correct. However, it is very very easy to conflate Christ with our Christian culture and as far as I can see that is what Michael was saying.