I doubt the TGC article (which first appeared at IMB) is meant to just create trouble, but it has definitely caused a response.
Both honorshame.com and Jackson Wu responses raise valid concerns, just as Elliot Clark, author of the TGC article most probably felt he raised valid concerns.
I don't really want to just fuel an argument, but my concern is that there seems a desire for 'balance' in a context where honorshame.com point out there is currently little balance, but in the opposite way in which the TGC article is concerned about.
Clark, is worried that with the growing realisation and understanding of honour-shame dynamics in cultures around the world and in Scripture that we are in danger of losing a guilt-innocence-obedience context of the gospel.
I totally agree that with any 'new' understanding any of us are in danger of pushing so hard on that, in order to correct a previously wrong emphasis, that we 'keep pushing' beyond the point of 'balancing' the pendulum swing. When we do that we risk the possibility of dangerous overcorrecting. The refreshing re-awakening to Scripture's honour-shame aspects cannot be expected to be exempt from this human tendancy. But like the honorshame.com cartoon illustrates, we are a long way from an honour-shame over-emphasis in biblical scholarship and Christian literature and preaching and missions, especially when we look at the last 50 years or so in the West.
The whole reason for my local African Theologian co-worker and I writing our book 'Highest Honour' (just printed here in Africa and shortly to be available on-line) was to have a discipleship tool. In a world where there are hundreds if not thousands of discipleship programs from a guilt-innocence perspective there just weren't any discipleship programs available that we could find, which addressed honour-shame issues as part of Godly growth in grace, let alone ones appropriate for Africa.
Personally, in ministry I am almost constantly aware not only of making an effort to contextualise appropriately for an honour-shame African context, but to also ensure that guilt-law-innocence contexts are not overlooked and are explained in ways that will be understood.
I understand the fears of the TGC article author, and he is the voice of many others who share similar concerns that guilt-innocence truths of Scripture will be overlooked if the honour-shame focus is too strong. And yes, we do have to be careful not to 'overcorrect' or just in our zeal, over-emphasise something to the unintentional neglect of other parts of Scripture. I recall very early on in my 'discovery' about honour-shame I was talking with a local theologian about ways to speak the gospel so that honour-shame ears would 'hear' it and I asked about using the word/concepts of guilt. I was in danger of initial overcorrecting, but he was emphatic that alongside honour-shame, to definitely refer to guilt as for the very reason it is not often spoken about, it is 'weighty' and severe when it is spoken about... and when joined with honour-shame concepts would have great impact…and it did.
So I do not deny the caution re pendulum swinging, but this is where we need to realise, that
guilt-innocence and honour-shame are not two alternative opposites in a fight for greatest emphasis in missiology,
but are two God-given partners in co-operation to give us gospel clarity.
However, they are not, in fact, equal partners.
photo: wikimediacommons
1. Need for Re-instatement of the Bible's Supreme Theme
If I could be so bold as to say, the opposite to Clark's fears, is our real danger.
We in the West, have taken a guilt 'sub-theme' of Scripture and made it the supreme theme. The supreme theme of Scripture is not guilt-innocence. The supreme theme of Scripture is God's glory…His honour. As Jackson Wu pointed out, those such as John Piper have repetatively strongly preached this and written about it.
Sin is 'coming short of God's glory' (Romans 3:23) We have failed to honour Him - bottom line. (Romans 1:21-23)
We do well to remember that God first describes sinlessness in Scripture not as 'innocent' or not even as 'innocent and unashamed', but simply 'unashamed'. Scripture has a priority and overarching way to describe sin and it is in honour-shame language not guilt-innocence language. We don't need to make apology for that, it is simply unequivocal reality whether we like it or not. It is not something to be worried about, but to rejoice in. We can fully embrace the Scriptural (rightly placed) honour-shame emphasis with freedom as we endeavour to bring the gospel to a world with a (mis-placed) honour-shame emphasis.
If you want an Old Testament example just go to Nathan's confrontation of David's sin in 2 Samuel 12 - probably on of the most well used examples of personal sin in Scripture. As God's messenger, Nathan did not use 'obedience' language but 'honour' language, even in regard to God's word. He didn't tell David he 'disobeyed' God and God's law (though that was certainly true), but that he 'despised' God and God's word.
The sin problem with our hearts is firstly not an obedience problem but an honour problem. Tedd Tripp even identifies this in regard to how we raise our children in his book 'Shepherding a Child's Heart'.
We have a regal problem before we have a legal problem.
photo: publicdomain
2. Need to Pursue Biblical Realignment More Than 'Balance'
We don't need 'balance', so much as a major biblical re-alignment.
Scripture talks far more about shame than it does guilt. (see 'The Global Gospel' by Werner Mischke p47) Scripture is not 'balanced' in that regard.
Clark in his article mentions the Apostle Paul's reference to the 5th Commandment. Exodus 20 tells us that we are to 'honour our father and mother'. It does not first tell us to 'obey' but to honour. There are only two places in Scripture where a command to obey parents is given, as a 'sub-issue' of the main commandment. (both in Paul's letters - Eph 6:1, Col 3:20) So, yes these mentions by Paul do link obedience with honour but not as a couplet of equally weighted terms. Nor does Paul say to honour parents because there is an overarching command to obey parents, but he says for children to obey parents because there is an overarching command to honour father and mother. His basis for 'obeying' is in the foundation of 'honouring'. Obedience is 'within' the honour issue.
Obeying is more the fruit than the root.
Scripture isn't 'balanced' on this issue, as we might want to understand balance.
God starts with an honour context (no shame) in the Garden of Eden, and that theme continues right the way through Scripture till its culmination in Revelation. It's true, within that is the reality of innocence and the need for obedience, but they are not the main issue. Paul did not say in Romans 1 that God's rebuke and condemnation was because of 'disobedience' but because of 'dishonour'. The thanks we don't give Him, is not just because we are disobedient to a command to 'give thanks', but because our hearts are not inclined as they should be to 'want' to give thanks from a heart that 'wants' to honour Him.
God looks beyond outward displays of 'obedience' to inward devotion (honour) of the heart.
3. Need to Awaken to How Honour Helps Us Understand and Teach Obedience
Clark also seems to fear that if we emphasise honour too much we will be in danger of losing emphasis on obedience. This maybe comes from a mis-understanding that honour-shame emphasis cultures don't have a concept of obedience or law, right and wrong or as he says 'lacks categories for transgression'. This is not a correct understanding of such cultures.
The 'law' categories of honour-shame cultures are that you must give honour and you must not bring shame. The thing to obey is the one category of 'always maintain honour and harmony in relationships'. Anything outside of that is seen as taboo, shameful, and wrong. Every culture is sin-infected and lacks the fulness of godly descriptions of God's objective and eternal definitions of right and wrong, and instead lives by its own (to one degree or another) mis-placed definitions.
We all need our minds renewed with new godly definition of right and wrong. (Romans 12:2)
In fact, since ministering in an honour-shame emphasis culture I have actually come to a greater and wider and deeper understanding of 'obedience' - I have had to - because those around me come at 'obedience' from perspectives that I had not encountered so much in my Western setting. I have found myself more particular in how I deal with the concept of obedience in discipleship because understanding the mis-placed contexts of honour-shame around me, has highlighted the mis-placed understandings of obedience as well.
When honour is sought before the eyes of people instead of God, then obedience becomes something that takes on a subjective 'near enough is good enough as long as no-one sees or objects', rather than a need to obey completely and exactly no matter who sees. (I raised this in my article in the Orality Journal and in that article mentioned how even Nabeel Qureshi mentions the matter in his book 'Seeking Allah Finding Jesus'). Understanding honour-shame has increased, not decreased, my understanding of guilt-innocence-obedience.
photo: wikimediacommons
And if we neglect honour-shame perspectives in our guilt-innocence-obedience emphasis Western culture we quickly become legalistic in our attitudes and require 'laws' for everything. We then have a false view that if there isn't a law to tell us not to do something, we are free to do it, when in fact it might be totally disrespectful. So then a lack of honour-shame awareness distorts the place and purpose of obedience and law and a well functioning society…to say nothing of our relationship with God.
1 John 3:4
I used to think that 'lawlessness' (as a definition of sin mentioned by Elliot Clark) meant individual sinful actions of specific disobedience to the law. However, it is far more than that. Rather than a defence that sin is inherently disobedience, this definition of sin tells us that lawlessness is an attitude of total disregard for both the law and the lawgiver as both Charles Spurgeon and John Macarthur explain.
– or we could say a 'defiance of Almighty God's place of Highest Kingly Honour'!As Spurgeon says: 'he who dares to break God's Law, seeing that he cannot do it except in the immediate Presence of God, for God is everywhere—he that acts contrary to God's Law before God's own face does, as it were, fling down the gauntlet to his God and defy His power! By such action as that, he either means to declare that God is not almighty, or that Jehovah will not exercise His Omnipotence to defend His honor, or that he, himself, does not care what God does, so he will leave Him to do His worst. Every sin has this venom within its bowels—it is a defiance of the mighty Majesty of God' [i]
John MacArthur in his sermon "The Christian's Incompatability with Sin Part 1" on this passage says: "Everyone is doing sin, practicing sin is engaged in practicing lawlessness. And lawlessness is an attitude. It is not so much the transgression of the Law, as the indifference to the Law. Construction here makes sin and lawlessness identical. It's living as if there is no Law. It's living as if there is no law-giver."[ii]
This is about a heart that is 'indifferent' and has no regard or respect for the One who gave and instigated the law. Rather than 1 John 3:4 proving that individual actions of sins of disobedience to the law are transgressions of the law, it is saying that sin (singular) is an attitude of heart that is the very essence of disrespect (dishonour) of both the law and lawgiver…..just as pronounced by the prophet Nathan when he confronted David.
It was my growing understanding of honour-shame that, rather than hindering, has enabled an enlarged understanding of the meaning of lawlessness and the contexts and concepts of obedience and the law.
Proverbs 30:9
If we take a look at Proverbs 30:9 "lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God"
or as the KJV puts it 'take the name of my God in vain',
or as the New Living translates it 'insult God's holy name',
and as some other translations including the NIV put it - 'and so dishonour the name of my God',
...Breaking God's law (stealing in this instance), is all about dishonouring Him and His name - who He is - His very being and position as our Creator, the Almighty. Obedience to the law is foundationally rooted in the requirement for us to honour Him.
A biblical emphasis does not detract from a right understanding and teaching of the law and obedience, but I find it more greatly enables it.
Let's not be afraid of encouraging people to come to understand more and more what it means to see Scripture's overarching theme of honour from beginning to end!
[i] defiance meaning bold resistance to authority, open disregard, contempt - dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/defiance
[ii] http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/62-25
[ii] http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/62-25
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