This site serves as a blog for my pastoral ministry which includes commentary on culture, random topics related to Biblical studies, pastoral ministry, and Christianity in general. The site also serves as an unofficial virtual office for my seminary students and other friends. The goal is to provide encouragement to saints and direction to sinners and seekers.





Thursday, July 2, 2020

Retiring the Broadus Gavel is Political Dribbling and Less Than Worthless


Raise your hand if you had heard of the history of the Southern Baptist Convention gavel mentioned by J.D. Greear BEFORE Greear mentioned it in a piece on the Baptist Press News on June 11.[1] A current gavel could certainly affect the systemic racism of abortion in America, but a retired gavel would not help either way.

So, here’s the real racism and the real racial reconciliation that needs to occur in America. The real racism going on is that the human race (that’s us) is killing off our race by means of the abortion industry. Additionally, blacks in America are the biggest victims in this tragedy. This is so because more blacks currently use abortion clinics and women’s health clinics for abortions than any other “race.”[2]

Racism is being practiced at the largest level in America in abortion or “women’s health” clinics. Here, black babies have their lives snuffed out every week – that amounted to roughly 236, 918  in 2016.[3] In 10 years, do you realize how many black babies are dead at the hands of women’s health clinics and the Left continues to support it and turn our attention more and more to what in comparison to the atrocities of abortion are superficial issues? These issues cause unrest, create chaos, and lead more of the same demographic into more crimes, all the while turning their attention and the media’s attention to less serious issues, and away from the evil of abortion.

And here’s where God has manifestly clearly called His people to stand up against immorality and to stand up and speak out for the unborn – and protect them. Southern Baptists and other Christian leaders should speak out the loudest and longest against this “systemic” racism. Unfortunately, as older Christian leaders (and I, as a Southern Pastor pastor, am referring primarily to Southern Baptist leaders but also to all Christian leaders in America) have died off or retired, the younger generation of leaders is lacking the biblical wisdom, social courage, and spiritual umph to speak God’s truth into this culture and educate and warn and spiritually and politically fight for the unborn. Again, let me make it clear: the biggest racism issue in our country is abortion! This and other moral ills and evils in our society are where the battle for souls made in the image of God and life itself rages the fiercest. And we’re worried about a largely unknown small block of wood?

God is not pleased with thousands of black babies being killed annually. But He is also not pleased with His people not standing up for the unborn.[4] God’s people are currently too busy bowing to political expediency, fearing the wrath of man and what’s popular, pandering to the demands of criminals, being sure we follow CDC guidelines for a virus (another example of making every effort to conform to the culture), and turning a blind eye to deep matters. Lives matter. If they do, why aren’t we defending them? If black lives matter, why aren’t we defending the most vulnerable of the black lives – the little ones?

Real racial reconciliation would ask something like “What if we as Southern Baptists come up with a plan to help families and especially young men and women to see and understand what’s being done to their race and to the human race and how that many of us are being used by the Left to eradicate some of us.” The numbers are there, so let’s help our neighbors understand the evils of abortion and how that God loves each and every life, small or large, red, yellow, black, or white. But we can’t be of much help to stem this moral evil and this eradication if we are busy with surface issues, with symptoms.

Perhaps if God’s people actually turned to Him and stopped asking the culture how to think and live, and if God’s people called out to God, and if they actually obeyed God (especially in defending the unborn), perhaps we would not be plagued with a pandemic, with chaos, civil unrest, a mental health crisis, enemies like leftists (and worse) both in this country and without funding destruction, crime, racism, and chaos. Perhaps God would bless us.

Additionally, there are other moral issues – homosexual agenda, traditional marriage, and one-parent homes. The Southern Baptist Convention used to stay on front lines with these issues. But we’ve gotten lazy. We cower under the guise of “let’s preach on ‘racial reconciliation’” or, “well, we’re just called to preach the Gospel.” But the Gospel includes many pieces of good news and we’re commanded in the Bible to do a lot more than just preach the Gospel. Speaking up for the unborn is one of them. We’re at ease in Zion and this ease has led to bondage to political correctness and submission to media and an ungodly culture. Is there no God left in Israel?!

Conclusion:
We should get back to the business of caring about issues God deals with in the Bible instead of pandering to an ungodly culture. The pandering helps nothing. It’s so much political correctness and it’s for naught. It does nothing to stem the tide of genocide. It does nothing to help with race relations. Race in fact, is a social construct as Voddie Baucham has pointed out.[5] To turn our attention to the onslaught of the media’s uses of red herrings and continual tossing minor issues into our faces and our thinking, is superficial pandering of the worst kind.

Real racism in America is abortion. This beats out an old gavel used in a denominational convention once a year that up until now no one has known about. What are you thinking – that if all the black women over the last 47 years had seen this gavel retired, they would not have aborted their babies – or that by retiring this gavel, you’ll save several hundred thousand black babies in the next few years.? The only “symbolic yet tangible message”[6] that retiring said gavel sends is that we are taking the cake on “majoring on the minors.” It’s an all new low in Southern Baptist Life. Is this the best we have to offer?

So, here’s the leadership of the SBC – pandering to political correctness, keeping a blind eye and a taped-shut mouth about the larger evils in our land, not continuing a fierce battle for lives and the soul of this nation, not coming up with a plan to help our black families see and understand what’s being done to them systematically through the evil of abortion, and instead worrying about a gavel that’s used once a year at a convention, the history of which no one knew about and the first user who no one today up until now knew his racial views. What about the racial views of the Leftists who are defending and funding abortion? Let’s retire them and their ideologies and their gavels, and their statues, etc. This helps nothing, but since you’re retiring this gavel, maybe just maybe one or two people will sleep better and safer at night, and the gospel will be heard like never before.



[3] https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm. Accessed July 1, 2020. This number is a lot higher – at 890,000 at https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/; accessed July 1, 2020.
[4] There are many verses that support pro-life movement – just do an internet search. A few that include why God had the ancient Israelites to wipe out the pagan nations, how the Bible teaches that a baby in the womb is alive, and the fact that we should stand against this murder are: “Instead, he followed the example of the kings of Israel, even sacrificing his own son in the fire. In this way, he followed the detestable practices of the pagan nations the LORD had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites.” (2 Ki. 16:3 NLT); “They even sacrificed their own sons and daughters in the fire. They consulted fortune-tellers and practiced sorcery and sold themselves to evil, arousing the LORD's anger.” (2 Ki. 17:17 NLT); “He also defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire for Molech.” (2 Ki. 23:10 NAU); "You shall not murder.” (Exod. 20:13 NAU); “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb.” (Ps. 139:13 NLT); “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” (Ps. 127:3 NAU); “There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: 17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood” (Prov. 6:16-17 NAU); “For the choir director. A Psalm of David. How blessed is he who considers the helpless; The LORD will deliver him in a day of trouble.” (Ps. 41:1 NAU).


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