Recently a bit of a stir was created when cameras at the Dallas Cowboys game picked up on Ellen DeGeneres seated next to former president George W. Bush in the owner’s private box . The two were laughing and enjoying each other’s company while watching the game.
To say that Ellen DeGeneres and George W. Bush run in different circles would be an understatement. Ellen is a gay Hollywood liberal who has often been a mouthpiece for the LGBTQ community and has used her platform to advance their agenda. Former President Bush is a conservative Republican who ran on a traditional values platform and, for the most part, is a darling of the Evangelical community. It would be hard to find two people more diametrically opposed to each other in terms of their beliefs and values than these two. Yet here they were enjoying each other’s company and eating snacks while watching the Cowboys and Packers.
The reaction to their hanging out together was both swift and predictable. A number of people who are fond of Ellen chastised her for spending time with someone they perceive to be as bigoted and narrow-minded as the former president. These folks who fashion themselves as champions of tolerance proved to be very intolerant in the way they reacted. It was really ironic!
To her credit, Ellen went on her talk show a couple of days later and addressed the situation, saying it’s OK to be friends with people who don’t share the same beliefs and values as you do … that just because you don’t agree with someone on key issues doesn’t mean you can’t have a relationship with them or that you’re entitled to treat them in an uncivil and disrespectful fashion. She said we’re to be kind to each other—not because we agree or have the same belief system, but because being kind is the right thing to do.
Which brings me to John and Beth—John MacArthur and Beth Moore. John MacArthur is a fundamentalist pastor and preacher who has pastored his church—the Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California—for almost fifty years. As a fundamentalist theologian, he doesn’t support women in ministry and has an issue with females like Beth Moore having a platform to teach in spite of their obvious gifts. At a recent conference hosted by his church, the emcee asked a panel of individuals, one of whom was MacArthur, to supply a pithy or one-word answer to certain names. When the name “Beth Moore” was raised, MacArthur’s response, after taking about twenty seconds to formulate an answer, was “Go home.” He then proceeded to say, “There is no case that can be made biblically for a woman preacher. Period. Paragraph. End of discussion.” He also dismissed her gifts and her heart, likening her to someone who has an audience because she has the skill to sell jewelry on the Home Shopping Network.
We can perhaps dismiss MacArthur’s response as playing to the crowd at his home church or a momentary lack of judgment in the heat of the moment. We can also surmise that, at eighty years old, he’s beginning to lose his filter. But the fact remains his words were not only disparaging and condescending, but also mean-spirited. Not only is the issue of women in ministry one which brothers and sisters in Christ can respectfully disagree. (As a Nazarene, I’m part of a denomination that not only affirms the value of women in ministry but expects God to raise up and call women to serve His Kingdom in this capacity. And I firmly believe a case CAN be made for women in ministry. But that’s a topic for another post.) The tone MacArthur struck is very much at odds with the sentiments and opinions of the Scripture he claims to prize. He came off as pompous and arrogant—belittling those who disagree with him. It’s as if he said, “I know more than you misguided people, and it’s not even worth my time to discuss the matter.”
As I was thinking about this, it struck me that George Bush demonstrated, and Ellen DeGeneres articulated, a more biblically sound position and tone, in terms of how to relate to people with whom we don’t see eye-to-eye on issues we deem critically important, than John MacArthur did. Followers of Jesus who come off as pretentious and conceited do tremendous damage and harm to His cause. We come off like those intolerant and hateful folks that Ellen called down for reacting so adversely to her sitting next to George W. Bush at the Cowboys game. At the same time those who are respectful and kind toward folks, in spite of the fact they may not agree on issues that they consider important and/or significant, elevate the stature and enhance the appeal of Jesus.
As I think about this, I remember a concept I read in Paul Hiebert’s book Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues during my doctoral program at Asbury. In that book, he distinguished between two epistemological concepts called naïve realism and critical realism. Naïve realism is the belief the external world is real and I, as an individual, can know it without cultural bent or bias getting in the way. If I embrace naïve realism and you and I disagree, that means one of us must be wrong. And since I’m certain that what I believe is true, I feel compelled to attack your views as false and seek to get you to change … and I often come off as overbearing and self-important in the process. However, if I operate from an underlying foundation of critical realism—a belief that the external world is real but my knowledge of it, while true, is only partial and incomplete—then it is permissible for us to not see eye-to-eye on everything. It’s not that truth is relative, but that our differing cultural predispositions and worldviews causes us to see things differently. As a result, people who operate from a framework of critical realism tend to manifest a more humble spirit and be courteous and kind to those with whom they disagree as opposed to being disparaging … or belittling … or critical.
When it comes to representing Christ and helping him appear both winsome and appealing, I believe the approach of the critical realist (Bush) is much more helpful and favorable than that of the naïve realist (MacArthur). It’s not that our beliefs aren’t important, or that truth doesn’t matter. It’s that people—and the fact that God made them in His image and entrusted them with an immortal soul—are much more important. We need to bear that in mind when we interact with them, whether we agree with them on critical issues or not. And we need to make sure that what we want to say doesn’t get dismissed or lost because of the tone and manner in which we say it.