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A Christian Leader Reminds Believers of the Power of Character
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A Christian Leader Reminds Believers of the Power of Character

John Piper revives Christian convictions of the recent past.

David French
Oct 25, 2020
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A Christian Leader Reminds Believers of the Power of Character
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“Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”

Southern Baptist Convention, June 1, 1998

“Is it not baffling, then, that so many Christians seem to be sure that they are saving human lives and freedoms by treating as minimal the destructive effects of the spreading gangrene of high-profile, high-handed, culture-shaping sin?”

Theologian and pastor John Piper, October 22, 2020

One of the sad realities of the present moment is the extent to which many millions of Americans have to be convinced that some rather foundational civilizational values are in fact true and good. In the constitutional context, for example, no longer can one simply say, “Your plan will violate the First Amendment” and hope to win an argument. Instead, one often has to go back a step, and first convince an audience of the virtue of free speech before one can even begin to create any concern for a violation of a person’s legal rights.

Similarly, we’re no longer in a position (especially in parts of the American Christian community) where one can point out a political leader’s serious moral defects and expect believers to think there is any serious problem with those defects—unless and until one can tie those defects to specific poor policy choices. The leader, in this conception, is essentially a producer of specific laws and policies, and it’s the laws and policies that then shape the nation, not the character of the man or woman in power. 

Interestingly, I’ve never really seen this principle applied outside of politics—and I never heard it strongly argued before the age of Trump. In the world of business, for example, we see even CEOs or managers who run profitable enterprises fired and even disgraced for personal scandals that are completely unrelated, say, to their plans for a new product line. 

Moreover, outside of politics, we don’t even think twice about these character tests. Why? Because their necessity is self-evident. In a company, in a church, in a military unit—everywhere, really—leaders are culture-makers. They’re culture-shapers. And they have an immense impact on the institutions they lead, the people they lead, and the communities they influence. 

And this brings me to John Piper and the two quotes above. Last Thursday, hours before the final presidential debate, Piper became one of the most prominent Evangelical leaders in the United States to speak as plainly and clearly about the power of character to shape a nation as Evangelicals did in 1998, when Bill Clinton was in their crosshairs. It was an important moment, not least because he took the trouble to explain not just that “character counts,” but why it counts so very much. 

His essay, published on the Desiring God website, begins with an explosive claim, that the sins of “unrepentant sexual immorality,” “unrepentant boastfulness,” “unrepentant vulgarity,” and “unrepentant factiousness” aren’t just deadly for an individual’s soul (absent repentance), they’re deadly to a nation. 

Wait. Deadly to a nation? Can he be serious? Here it’s worth quoting Piper at some length:

It is a drastic mistake to think that the deadly influences of a leader come only through his policies and not also through his person.

This is true not only because flagrant boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness are self-incriminating, but also because they are nation-corrupting. They move out from centers of influence to infect whole cultures. The last five years bear vivid witness to this infection at almost every level of society.

More:

There is a character connection between rulers and subjects. When the Bible describes a king by saying, “He sinned and made Israel to sin” (1 Kings 14:16), it does not mean he twisted their arm. It means his influence shaped the people. That’s the calling of a leader. Take the lead in giving shape to the character of your people. So it happens. For good or for ill.

Piper is absolutely correct. We see the power of leaders in scripture, and we see the power of leaders in our own lives. That power emanates from leaders at the smallest scale (our own families) to the largest scale (our president). 

In my career I’ve been in institutions that were led well and institutions that were led poorly, and one of the cardinal characteristics of good leadership is that the leader creates an environment where he or she models and rewards virtue and excellence. 

Virtuous leadership is a great gift to the people you lead and influence. It’s an act of love. If you’ve ever gone from a dysfunctional environment to a place where character truly counts, it’s as if an immense weight is removed from your shoulders. It’s liberating. It’s invigorating. It’s life-giving. 

Let’s put it this way: While even healthy institutions are never perfect, in a healthy institution, virtue is rewarded and vice is the rebellion. In unhealthy institutions, the opposite is often the case—vice is rewarded and virtue is rebellious. And that reality creates a radiating set of pressures that place immense strains even on good men and women. 

I’ll never forget, for example, watching Mitt Romney—a wealthy and powerful man in his own right—deliver his speech explaining his decision to become the first senator in the history of the United States to vote to convict an impeached president from his own political party. The difficulty of the moment was evident from his delivery. It is hard to defy those with more power, even if you possess considerable means and influence. 

We know this to be true. We feel it in our own lives in those times when we are faced with the terrible choice—defy or comply. When dysfunction reigns, destruction often follows. When vice is the path of least resistance—especially when that vice permits us to indulge in our own temptations—then sin can spread like a virus. 

In 1998, Christian leaders knew this. They watched, aghast, as some secular cultural leaders began excusing or minimizing adultery for the sake of defending a powerful man. They were stunned when the avatars of pop culture hounded and mocked Monica Lewinsky for her role in the affair. Other leading figures mocked Clinton’s critics as puritanical. These words might sound strange in the #MeToo era, but I was there. I remember. 

What were the lessons radiating from the Oval Office? Marriage is not sacred. Lies about sex are of little importance. 

What are the lessons radiating from this Oval Office? Marriage still isn’t sacred. Lies about anything are of little importance. Cruelty can be a virtue. 

Are those lessons having an effect? Undoubtedly, yes. Moreover, it’s remarkably easy to adopt the ethos and methods of the world’s most powerful man. Imitating Clinton required finding a Monica. Imitating Trump requires merely opening your Facebook app, hurling insults, and hitting “enter.” 

But wait, you might object. Those sins are serious, no question, but they are nothing compared to the sins that Trump fights—including mainly the sin of abortion. But where do those sins come from? As Piper says, they come from “the very character that so many Christian leaders are treating as comparatively innocuous, because they think Roe and SCOTUS and Planned Parenthood are more pivotal, more decisive, battlegrounds.”

Trump cannot end abortion. Even if SCOTUS overturns Roe, it will not overturn abortion. That will require a culture that emphasizes love, selfless sacrifice, and mutual support. If a “pro-life” president uses his immense power to flaunt “boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness” even as he purports to modestly change policy, he is ultimately destructive to the culture Christians seek to create. 

Piper puts it more bluntly: “It is naive to think that a man can be effectively pro-life and manifest consistently the character traits that lead to death—temporal and eternal.”

One last thing…

I don’t have much to say to introduce this song, except that it’s based on one of my favorite psalms, beautifully sung—and it’s a reminder that as earthly leaders fail, our Heavenly Father will not: 

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

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John Cheyney
Oct 25, 2020

I went out and read the Piper article. As with many here, I am a Christian who has walked away from the church writ large, and articles like this are exactly why.

In the end, the article is a complete failure to me because he never mentions Donald Trump by name.

I don't follow Dr. Piper so I have no idea what his past writings on Trump have been. He makes a theological argument that the moral status of a leader is critical, and he lists all of the Biblical sins that Trump has violated in his rise to power. This would have been an awesome article four years ago. Christians who supported (and still support) Trump knew all of this even before the first election. They knew what they were getting, and they were getting what they wanted: political power. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jerry Falwell chose to politicize the Evangelical Church, and he chose to tie it to the Republican party. When you have someone like Robert Jeffress preaching at First Baptist Dallas on Sunday and then shilling for Trump on Fox News on Monday, and neither his church nor his denomination makes any outward efforts to stop him, I can't see that church as anything but a political arm of the Trump administration. He gets to hide behind the law because he doesn't say Trump's name in services. He just 'prays for the leaders of our nation.' I'm sure he will say those same great prayers with Biden is President, won't he? <Dripping sarcasm noted>

Multitudes of Christians jumped through theological hoops to justify putting Donald Trump in power. Remember the argument that Trump was really the new Cyrus? If you were willing to do that once, you can take this article and turn it around to not support Joe Biden just as easily as you can to make it not support Donald Trump.

I am afraid that the rise in the support of the QAnon conspiracy in the church is the next big issue the church will have to face. If/when Trump loses I am genuinely fearful that many of his Evangelical followers will find it easier to turn to Q for solace than the Bible or people like Dr. Piper. I fervently hope that church leaderships take the opportunity now to fight back against QAnon and don't wait four years as they have with Trump.

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Rick Carr
Oct 25, 2020

David, I am not a fan of John Piper for many reasons but he is right on this point and I am thankful that you quoted him and wrote this article. I have watched in stunned disbelief as Evangelicals have gone out of their way to support Trump the last four years blind to the cost, namely destroying the foundations of this country.

Bill Barr believes the reason for the problems in this country all stem from a secular attack on our so called “Judeo-Christian” foundations. Eric Metaxas echoed this when debating you not long ago. Both fail to recon with two facts; First, people of other faiths or no faith at all can do good, have character and desire to live in a nation where people respect and value others. Secondly, one can be “against” many sins and remain racist, hateful, bigoted, greedy, etc.

The emptying of the churches in American has nothing to do with an attack from the outside but from an awareness of the hypocrisy being modeled and preached weekly from the inside. Pining after a con man like Trump demonstrates these dispirited believers are correct for leaving.

Some have cast Trump (Pence and Pompeo believe this about themselves as well) as God’s man for the moment. Metaxas mentioned he sees Trump as a modern Cyrus. At a recent church meeting a woman “prophesied” over Trump saying how God was giving him a “second wind.”

This opens up a topic for another time but Evangelicals need to come to terms with the fact that they do not know what God’s mind is. They cannot know that Trump is chosen by God any more than they can know what team God wants to win the World Series.

This is why I am so critical of Robert Jeffress who in a Fox News interview recently intimated that anyone who voted for Biden could not be an Evangelical Christian and is deserving of God’s wrath. Somehow Jeffress knows that overturning Roe is the single most important item on God’s agenda - despite the fact that his predecessor W. A. Criswell held quite a different view.

Those Evangelicals who would insist they know what God is thinking and that are certain Trump is God’s chosen man are no better at knowing and pointing to the truth that is “Q” because truth is not what drives them.

Truth is simple (or as the Proverbs say - wisdom cries aloud in the market), it is on the surface. Kick too hard and you will stub your toe on it. Piper sees this and his message is clear for those who have ears to hear.

Best regards,

Rick Carr

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