By Davis Carlton
John Piper manifests the absolutely worthless contribution to political discourse being made by prominent mainstream evangelical pastors (Big Eva). Piper posted on Desiring God with his thoughts on voting and moral priorities in the upcoming election. The article is noteworthy for Piper’s glaring and entirely unacceptable moral hypocrisy as well as his thoroughly unchristian understanding of history.
Piper doesn’t mention either Donald Trump or Joe Biden by name, but it is abundantly obvious that Piper has Trump supporters in mind when he thunders condemnation at the “many Christians [who] consider the sins of unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai), and the like, to be only toxic for our nation, while policies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switching, freedom-limiting, and socialistic overreach are viewed as deadly.”
The reason that Piper gives for his disapproval is the sins attributed by Piper to Trump; sexual immorality, boastfulness, vulgarity, and factiousness, “are sins that destroy people. They are not just deadly. They are deadly forever. They lead to eternal destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9). They destroy persons (Acts 12:20–23). And through persons, they destroy nations (Jeremiah 48:29–31, 42).” This is true, but this applies to any unrepented sin. All unrepentant sinners are condemned to Hell. The issue is that Piper draws a false equivalency between relatively minor sins like “vulgarity” and “factiousness” with sins like murder, homosexuality, and transsexuality which are identified in the Bible as abominations.
John Piper poses as a Reformed pastor, but evidently utterly rejects reformed clarity on the issue of the severity of sin. Does Piper really “think it is baffling and presumptuous to assume that pro-abortion policies kill more people than a culture-saturating, pro-self pride?” Question and Answer #83 in the Westminster Shorter Catechism addresses this very issue, “Some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.” The Larger Catechism expands upon the topic of how some sins are more heinous than others. It is dishonest for Piper to equate “arrogance” with murder even if arrogance and anger can lead to murder. They aren’t the same and they are not interchangeable. Not even close! It shouldn’t be necessary for me to have to explain basic theology to one of America’s most prominent “reformed” pastors.
Piper also dishonestly equates Trump’s personal flaws with the horrible Democratic Party platform. Donald Trump certainly suffers from pride and arrogance, but these aren’t integral to his campaign platform the way that abortion, sodomy, and anti-white hatred are issues that the Democrats are specifically promoting. Evangelical Trump supporters aren’t voting for Trump based upon his checkered sex life or his obnoxious Tweets, but on the policies that Trump has campaigned on. I also agree with AD Robles who states that Trump’s reputation for arrogance is over hyped by the media. Essentially Piper is uncritically accepting the anti-Trump narrative of the mainstream media which blames Donald Trump for all the political unrest in the country as though his rhetoric has forced BLM and Antifa activists to violently rob, loot, and attack innocent bystanders.
While Piper’s drawing a false equivalency between relatively minor sins and grave abominations seriously calls his judgment into question, this is far from his worst offense. This isn’t simply a case of unnecessary preening about how Trump is “divisive” or in Piper’s words “vulgar” and “factious.” If Piper were overly concerned with minor sins this would be annoying, but Piper’s whining about Trump’s sexual immorality and factiousness is rife with blatant hypocrisy.
John Piper presents himself as a committed Christian willing to be ostracized from society for defending his Christian convictions, but an examination of his commentary on political and social issues demonstrates just the opposite. Piper imagines himself bravely singing “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also” as he’s lead to the scaffold prepared to give his life for his uncompromising Christian commitment. The truth is that Piper almost never speaks up when matters of actual Christian morality. Piper rejects “gay marriage” while choosing not to speak out in favor of a Minnesota constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as being between a man and a woman for fear of his church losing its tax-exempt status. At the time Piper’s spokesman David Mathis stated that Piper “wants to avoid the political realm as much as possible. The Christian Gospel is not left, it’s not right. It is what it is.” Of course, Piper has plenty to say about “social justice” issues.
After rejecting the BLM movement due to its radical attack on the family, Piper caved to pressure from black Bernie Sanders supporter Ron Burns and decided to direct people to the BLM website so that people could be educated on race relations by self-described “queer black women.” You’ll forgive me if I’m suspicious of the claim that Piper is above political issues. All of the social issues that Piper weighs in on (invariably on the wrong side) are political issues because politics always concerns public morality. Piper chooses to remain silent on issues that concern actual biblical morality like homosexuality while repeating patently false narratives about black victimization. Piper condemns evangelical Trump supporters by drawing a false equivalence between abortion and Trump’s supposed “factiousness.”
Piper isn’t merely overly concerned by the supposedly nation-destroying effects of Donald Trump’s tweets because in this article Piper admits that he would be open to voting for a non-Christian; someone who by definition is living in soul-destroying sin. After complaining about Trump’s moral failures Piper imagines someone responding, “So what? Rejecting Jesus as Lord also leads to death, but you are willing to vote for a non-Christian, aren’t you?” To which Piper responds, “I am, assuming there is enough overlap between biblical uprightness and the visible outworking of his character and convictions.”
Evidently John Piper believes that Donald Trump’s personal moral flaws have rendered him unfit for office because his “character and convictions” don’t sufficiently “overlap…biblical uprightness.” This might be a valid critique coming from someone else, but not John Piper who complains about Trump’s “unrepentant sexual morality” while praising Martin Luther King as one who “gave his life to change the world” (no, he isn’t talking about Jesus). Piper participated in the MLK50 conference, calling it “risky and righteous” in which he praised King as an agent of divine providence to bring about the end of segregation. Piper did allude to King’s heterodox beliefs while ignoring his sexual indiscretions, which is simply inexcusable given that even mainstream sources now acknowledge the substance of King’s sexual profligacy.
This is nothing other than glaring hypocrisy. Piper treats Trump’s sexual immorality as disqualifying him from office while turning a blind eye to the far worse sexual sins of King, who has influenced contemporary American culture to a far greater extent than Trump has or ever will. This is simply another instance of John Piper utter lack of discernment in his political commentary. Piper complained in 2009 when newly elected President Barack Obama defended the right to abortion, but in so doing so stated that he “wept for joy” at Obama’s inauguration. Why would Piper weep for joy at the election of someone who he acknowledged was a radical pro-abortion candidate to the Presidency? Piper considered the election of a black man as President to be “thrilling,” “amazing,” and “a golden moment.”
John Piper states that voting for Donald Trump undermines “authentic Christian witness” to the extent that he cannot understand how any Christian can vote for Trump in good conscience, but when Piper was asked about pastors at Bethlehem Baptist Church (Piper’s church in Minneapolis) voting for Obama, Piper responded that they could and suspected one of them or possibly more did. Piper insisted that if one took the “whole package” of how Obama was likely to impact the culture, “I would be hard-pressed to say that it is impossible for a solid, reformed, Bible-saturated Christian to make the judgment that at this point in history it might have been a good thing for him to be President.” One of the considerations that Piper said could be considered along with Obama’s “views” and “philosophy” was his ethnicity. According to Piper, it’s possible for a Christian to favor Obama because he is black in spite of the manifest evil of his stated positions presumably because having a black President would be highly symbolic and instrumental in improving race relations (such predictions certainly haven’t aged well). I suppose no price too steep to pay to end “structural racism,” even if it means voting for the most radical pro-abortion candidate for President in American history.
For those keeping score; John Piper speaks out frequently on “social justice” causes, but doesn’t get involved in politics when it comes to issues like the definition of marriage. Piper condemns Donald Trump for his unrepentant sexual immorality, but lauds Martin Luther King without uttering so much as a word against his far worse sexual transgressions. Piper castigates Trump supporters for displaying too much attachment to the material comforts of American institutions by prioritizing policy over character, while Piper himself only manages to speak out on issues within the Leftist mainstream and ignore character issues when it suits him. When Piper does speak out on an issue like abortion, it is to
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