Sorry, no voiceover/podcast this time, as I’ve lost my voice thanks to a cold.
With capital punishment in US headlines twice in recent weeks, the pope decided to weigh in to reiterate the Roman Catholic church’s (recent) teaching that the death penalty is immoral. He wrote:
The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty
As you might expect, this received a good deal of pushback since, you know, the Bible quite clearly supported the very death penalty that Leo calls inadmissible.
Right after Noah stepped off the ark, God said that “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6). The dignity the pope appealed to in order to oppose the death penalty is the same reason God said the death penalty must be enforced.
However, this capitulation from Rome is nothing new, and neither is it solely a Roman Catholic problem. When the Bible clashes with the world’s godless tenets, many who claim Christianity will ignore obvious Scriptural teaching in order to show the world how nice they can be.
We must reject nicer-than-Godism every time we see it.
We are to show the love of Christ in everything we do, but that doesn’t always mean people are going to think we’re nice. If you’ll read the Gospels, people didn’t always think Jesus was nice, either. In supposedly attempting to be like Him, many end up making Him look like the bad cop to their good cop.
Speaking the truth in love gives people a chance to draw near to God. Nicer-than-Godism attempts to get people to come closer to us.
This Nicer-than-Godism manifests itself most often in these three ways.
First, it reads cultural views into the Bible rather than the other way around.
We can see this in the Catholic Church’s 180° on capital punishment that began in the 1960s, but plenty of other examples can work just as well.
Consider women leadership in the church. The Bible so obviously opposes this that there’s really no case to be made to the contrary… and yet, plenty of people try.
They apologize for the church’s meanness in excluding women from the pulpit and the eldership. They point to obscure women in the Scriptures like Junia or Phoebe to insist that those women override the obvious teachings of 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2.
Nobody thought those women were leaders of the church until feminism became the culture’s standard for male-female roles. Then, all of a sudden, a new Bible teaching showed up, pushed by people who want women to know that they themselves are nicer than what Paul wrote by God’s inspiration.
If the Bible is not our standard of truth, then we have no standard of truth. If cultural changes make us change our reading of the text, then we’re not serious about God’s Word.
Second, it’s ashamed of the Old Testament.
Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley infamously insisted that Christians need to “unhitch” our faith from the Old Testament, because the severity found in it is off-putting to the lost. In other words, Stanley told Christians that God wasn’t nice enough in the Old Testament, and we need to ditch those books in order to help our image with those outside the church.
This is a constant refrain I run into when citing the Old Testament—that those books don’t matter as much, and that Jesus represents a change of direction.
While I don’t believe we are under the Law of Moses, it remains inspired and has much to teach us about who God is. And, to pit Jesus against how God behaved and spoke in the Old Testament is literal heresy. The Jesus who said “turn the other cheek” is also the one who commanded Israel to eliminate the Amalekites.
If you’re trying to be nicer than the God of the Old Testament, you’re also trying to out-nice, Jesus, too. Don’t do it.
Third, it ignores the verses that don’t fit its view.
To be nicer than God, you have to pretend God didn’t say things He clearly said. A few examples:
On an issue like modesty, nicer-than-Godism lectures young men about the verses on looking with lust (Matthew 5:28), which are certainly valid, but it ignores that women are told to dress modestly and discreetly (1 Timothy 2:9).
When they do acknowledge that verse, they will tell you that the technical attention is actually about drawing attention to oneself… as though going to the beach in one’s underwear doesn’t draw attention. But it’s hard to sound nice when you say that women should dress up.
On immigration, they can always tell you that God said “Treat the foreigner like one of your own” (Leviticus 19:33-34). They seemed to pass over the ones that demand the sojourners assimilate to Israel’s religious practices like observing the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10) and undergoing ritual cleansing (Leviticus 17:15).
They especially miss the one that says that it’s a sign of judgment when the alien rises up to rule over them (Deuteronomy 28:43-45). You don’t sound as nice when you read those verses, but they’re most certainly in there.
On the death penalty discussion, Jesus did indeed say to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), and passed on stoning the adulterous woman in John 8 (though He legally had no jurisdiction to do so anyway).
At the same time, He gave governments a sword (Romans 13:4). If your view acknowledges those first two Scriptures but not the third, you may be trying to out-nice God.
"Hide the socially unpopular parts of the Bible or else the lost might not listen" is not a Biblical evangelism strategy.
What are we trying to do here?
Were we sent out to get the world to like us? Or were we sent to tell them that Jesus is Lord, and that they must respond accordingly?
Telling somebody that they are not lord of their own lives, and that they have no authority to decide what is good and what is evil, is going to get a lot of them to dislike us. That doesn’t come across as very nice. If that surprises you, go re-read the book of Acts.
But ultimately, that’s what we have to do if we’re going to preach Jesus as Lord. This is not about being nice. It is about being loving.
You, me, the Pope, and everyone else have no shot at being more loving than God. So, the best thing we can do is point people to Him, rather than trying to attract them to us through our niceness.
This week’s Think Deeper Podcast discusses spiritual burnout, and when to take a step back from involvement for a season of rest.