Hatmaker, Halloween, and a Reforming Cure

Hatmaker, Halloween, and a Reforming Cure October 28, 2016

It’s Friday! And you know what that means! It means another birthday tea. Two little girls born in October, two birthday teas, so much baking. But it also means that Monday is Halloween, ugh, and Reformation Day, yay. I was looking back through my archives for that Halloween post of long ago–ten reasons to hate Halloween–and there it was, only last year. My feelings haven’t changed at all, so I guess I won’t bother writing that one over again. This year is even worse because no one has any idea what they are going to be and everyone is already complaining that it’s going to be too cold and that they don’t want to have to run from house to house. “Man up” we said to them. “Those that don’t run don’t get candy.” And really, why pass up another opportunity to mark Satan’s feast day.

Don’t fuss at me. Obviously I don’t think we should worship Satan. But I also don’t think Christians should bash each other on this point. If you dislike your Christian sister letting her kids trick or treat you should try to forgive her and not consign her soul to the ash pit of disapprobation. Let’s join together in horror over essential matters, not non essential ones, like piling on Jen Hatmaker.

Really, I think a confusion of essential/non essential matters has contributed to the now ubiquitous falling of Christians into the usual heresy of the day. I keep trying to say this in a hundred different ways but never quite get to the root of it. There are so many streams that flow into the river of Sin and Failure, it’s hard to follow each to the source and discover how much it is responsible for the great overpowering Torrent below. I like to tirelessly beat the drum of the Failure of Preaching so that everyone wishes I would be quiet and go away.

But a failure of preaching–by which I mean confusing the saving news of Jesus Christ to deliver the sinner out of eternal death and into the everlasting arms of Jesus which includes the convicting light of the law and the judgement that accompanies it with moral therapeutic deism and/or be good be nice–is also a problem of misunderstanding audiophora, that is, essential/non essential matters. The preacher, wrongly believing that his congregation understands the depth and height and breadth of the gospel, turns his irritated gaze to the horridness of everyone’s behavior. The women are told to submit. The men are sent to promise keepers. Everyone is yelled at to be grateful and make space for God and any other number of burdensome attitudes of the heart that are impossible to attain by the power of the human will. As this shift is made lots of other issues rise up like cream to the top of everyone’s gaze. Children being obedient. Christians celebrating Halloween. Length of skirts. Meanwhile the people starve and turn to other writers and bible studies or become episcopalian.

I know, I know, I keep saying the same thing over and over. But I’m grieved. I’m swinging between anger and loss and never hitting the place of acceptance. I was really sad when I, who loved listening to Beth Moore however many hateful things I had to say about her hair, heard her manhandle (cough) some text in Luke and place an impossible burden on her audience. She took what should have been the glory of Christ in the gospel, and turned it into a to do list. Not only so, she undermined the trustworthiness of the text itself. Someday I might go try to dig it up and listen to it again. But I don’t want to because it was so grievous, so subtle, so heartbreaking.

And so what of Jen Hatmaker, who, I hear, has been a tremendous help to women around the country. I ask myself, why did so many Need to read her? Why were so many helped? I bet it’s because they weren’t getting a full meal on Sunday morning. First they probably had to sing Good Good Father for a while, and then probably the preacher sent them home with a pile of guilt and work.

Enough already. Exposit the scriptures, for heaven’s sake. Really, for the sake of heaven, because the people are perishing.

I’ve added Jen Hatmaker to my prayer list, when I remember to pray. Were I starving to death in church I would be so tempted to join up to the foolishness of the day, the denial of the gospel for the world’s love and acceptance. Were I not weekly strengthened in the scriptures I would have pitched over the edge myself. The remedy for the American church isn’t difficult, it isn’t complicated.

But it doesn’t include more yelling about the stupidity of women following after celebrity authors. It doesn’t include more blaming. It includes a new reformation, another returning to the root, the foundation, the glory of scripture. Of rediscovering again the power of God in the Word to save the lost, build the church, and glorify himself. It means preachers single-mindedly devoting themselves to the exposition of God’s word, of feeding their people–all of them, the women and the men. And that means that when you are stuck in a church that is concentrating totally on your behavior, on your role in your marriage, on the level of your gratefulness or whatever, it means making some hard decisions and spending some long hours in prayer about what to do.

And now I will arise and attend to the crying child who wants to be a Detective for Halloween but doesn’t know what that means. And also I will actually bake that cake.


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