John Piper and “War-Time Living:” A Dissenting View

Yesterday I highlighted Michael Horton’s upcoming book Ordinary. Phillip Cary gives the book four stars out of five at Christianity Today.

Thinking about this conversation brought to mind some questions that I had when first reading John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life. As I noted in my previous post, Piper’s book is more of a theological reflection on making life count for Christ. His book isn’t as rich with concrete examples or superlative language as David Platt’s Radical. Now, Piper is of course an incredibly godly, incredibly seasoned pastor-theologian. Yours truly is a humble undergrad with a blog. So please don’t hear a pernicious 25 year old trying to correct a theological lion like John Piper, especially a 25 year old who has wept during Piper’s sermons and experienced transformation through his books.

I think Piper’s emphasis on “war-time living” is an example of trying to make the Bible mean what it doesn’t actually say. More specifically: I’m not sure the idea that “all of life is war” and that Christians should adopt a continual, in-the-trenches worldview really has the full support of Scripture.

For some context, take Piper’s words in this blog post from Desiring God:

When I say “wartime lifestyle” I mean something very complex. That’s why I say “wartime” and not “simple” lifestyle because of this complexity. In wartime you may need to build a B-52 bomber, which costs millions and millions of dollars, in order to win the war. In a simple lifestyle, however, you wouldn’t fiddle around with bombers. Instead you would just move out to Idaho, plant potatoes, and be irrelevant.

In a wartime lifestyle you always ask yourself, How can my life count to advance the cause of Christ? And if it means buying a computer to keep in touch with your missionaries through email, then you’re going to invest several thousand dollars into a computer and software. That’s a wartime lifestyle. But you might not eat out as often, or you might buy a used car so that you can buy that computer. That’s what I mean by wartime lifestyle. The alternative is to just go with the flow. Everybody gets his toys: bigger house and car, more clothing, more fine food, etc., without even thinking about how the war effort is advancing.

There are two things Piper is saying, and if we don’t correctly identify the differences between the two, any criticism of what Piper says here will sound like an endorsement of materialism or worldliness. The first thing Piper is saying is that the life of the Christian is the life of constant war. That idea he fleshes out consistently in DWYL, and it’s come out in a few of his sermons and other books. Now of course he doesn’t mean physical war against human combatants, but spiritual war, against unbelief, sin, and Satan.

Biblical support for the warring state of the Christian is found in 2 Corinthians and Romans. There, Paul uses the imagery of combat to illuminate the reality of spiritual warfare against indwelling sin and the world’s bastions of unbelief and hostility towards the Gospel. What’s interesting about Paul’s use of the warring motif is that he doesn’t use general terms to describe the permanent state of the believer. Particularly in 2 Corinthians, the spiritual warring that Paul describes has both a definite object and a finite purpose. Paul says that his Gospel ministry wages a specific kind of war against a specific enemey (unbelief) for a specific purpose (taking every thought captive to the mind of Christ). In other words, Paul seems to understand Christian warfare not as a description of the believer’s relationship to all of his world, but as a seasonal posture towards the encroachment of unbelief on the advance of the Gospel.

The interpretation of Christian warring not as continual but as seasonal helps us also make sense of two other Pauline passages that describe the Christian life in very noncombat-like terms. 1 Thessalonians 4 contains an admonition from Paul about what Christian living should look like. Note especially the verses towards the end:

Finally, then, brothers,we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. ² For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. ³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification:that you abstain from sexual immorality; ⁴ that each one of you know how to control his own bodyin holiness and honor, ⁵ not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; ⁶ that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. ⁷ For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. ⁸ Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

⁹ Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, ¹⁰ for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, ¹¹ and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, ¹² so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

Paul’s exhortation to these believers is to live a life of quiet purity and love and generosity. Now Paul could have commanded these believers to understand that since all of life is war, they should radically restructure their lives and move into the citites on mission. But Paul says no such thing. In fact, his commands are closer to the opposite: The church should live quietly and work with their hands and walk properly before outsiders. It sounds as if Paul thinks the truly radical spirituality to which the church is called is not a matter of movement but a matter of faithfulness.

The second point Piper makes is important to think about as well. Note what he says about those who who don’t adopt a war-time lifestyle: They’d be the ones to “move to Idaho, plant potatoes, and be irrelevant.” Now I find this pretty revealing given recent trends involving Reformed evangelicals and urban ministry. Is Piper saying that rural lives are wasted lives when the warfare of the kingdom is happening in the big citites?

I think this is what Dr. Anthony Bradley is talking about when he calls the “radical” meme the “new legalism.” If you adopt a certain vision of the Christian life that reduces spirituality to evangelism or ministry to missions, you’re obliged to furnish a “who’s obeying and who’s not” metric. The question is: Who is radical and who isn’t, or alternatively, how radical is radical enough? As I said in my previous post, my years as a pastor’s kid gave me intimate access to the emotions of ministry. I can testify that the business of measuring just how “kingdom-minded” a certain church function or ministry appartaus is is a torturous exercise that often creates acidic divisions.  I don’t think John Piper believes that ministers in rural areas are necessarily wasting their lives or their ministries. But it’s hard to escape the theological and existential tension that forms when one adopts a “war-time living” worldview.

In sum, I have serious doubts about whether the “war-time lifestyle” meme is biblically accurate or pastorally helpful. I think there are better ways to understand the relationship between the Christian and the world. I hope Michael Horton can say something on this issue. Again, these are not criticisms of Piper himself or even his essential theology. But I feel like Christians are feeling an unbiblical and unnecessary burden of proof on their lives to demonstrate how “sold out” they are for Christ. My hope is that a re-statement of Christian spirituality in this area can help lift that burden.