Once again we find the case of an individual falling away from the faith. Former purity culture preacher Joshua Harris, most famous for his book on “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”. He made this known publicly stating, “By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian…I have lived in repentance for the past several years — repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting to name a few.“
Did he really fall away from the Christian faith or the fake he was under? Would this have happened if he had been under a church with grace and true gospel where the forgiveness of sins is? Yes that’s certainly possible too.
Had Joshua Harris been a Mormon or Jehovah’’s Witness and announced he was no longer a Christian everyone would have said, “Well, of course its a cult, heretical, and not the Christian faith.”
Why he fell away and what he fell from are two separate questions.
While I don’t know Mr. Harris personally, I have witnessed and have known his story several times over by friends and youth I do know, and know exactly why they left the faith and made exactly the same statement he made, that by any measure what they understood as Christian, they were not. Thus, they left either sad, mad, or a bit if both, that which they understood as the “church” or Christian faith.
So, I’m not going to try to read Joshua Harris’ heart about whether he has really fallen away from the Christian faith or the false faith he was in that called itself Christian. I am going to point out what is obvious and verboten in today’s modern que sera sera mind set about the false church calling itself the church and Christian faith.
Because be it Joshua Harris, whatever his personal status is, this is not the first person this has happened too, and being under a heterodoxy that teaches false things as if Christian is never a neutral endeavor or a simple matter of a “faith tradition”. It is a matter of spiritual life of death, and nothing less.
While an individual event in and of itself could happen for many reasons, what the real question is, and in a sense entirely irrelevant to Mr. Harris’ situation, is why heterodoxy is deadly and matters. Finally, it is not an issue of exclusivism vs. inclusivism–the treasured worn out old chestnut retort so often cried.
Most of the church today, in order to remain friends with heterodoxy refuses to recognize false teaching and its danger to the soul when they see it, nor do they desire to do so lest they lose their theological friendliness. I understand that. No one wants to naturally be in the lonely way. However, such a mindset is spiritual neglect.
Opposite of this is Scripture itself. Scripture warns the people of God to protect them and it hangs the problem on the false teachers being false believers not the baptized. Neither scripture, nor Luther, speak in a way against the laity, but against the false teachers. Luther for example said that the nominal Christian, in name only, is not he who still sins or has sin, but he or she who looks down upon the sacraments as if not saving and doing what they say they do. Scripture aims at the false teachers, not the flock, and warns that, “My people perish for lack of knowledge”, He calls them my people but aims at the false prophets. Scripture furthermore warns that “they say, ‘Thus saith the Lord’…but I NEVER sent them” and that they are “rainless clouds”, and “they hunt to death those who God has forgiven.” In fact Luther quotes the last passage of scripture in “Bondage of the Will” regarding the false preachers of his day in the papacy.
In the New Testament Jesus, Paul, and John are even more explicit in warning against false christs, other gospels, and other spirits that name the name “bible, church, Christ, gospel and spirit”, but in fact are the bitterest enemies of the true Christ, Gospel, and Holy Spirit. Put another way, “If you can get an atheist to deny the real Jesus Christ, you have made progress.”
In his 6 part thesis on “The Distinction Between Orthodox and Heterodox Churches”, Dr. Franz Pieper points out in his third thesis:
“It is, therefore, not a matter of indifference which church group a Christian joins; but he has God’s earnest command strictly to distinguish between orthodox and heterodox churches, and, avoiding all church fellowship with the heterodox, to adhere only to the orthodox Church.”
While this may sting modern American sensibilities, the fact of the matter is not all that calls itself the church is the church or Christian, and scripture itself warns of this. This does not mean that true Christians are not in these heterodox or false churches, In fact it means the opposite, which is the point. There certainly are and we know so because of the power and certainty of baptism. What it does mean is that they are, perhaps unbeknown to themselves, in great danger and it is this that gets lost in all the wrangling about what happens to people like Joshua Harris.
False doctrine, teaching, and preaching is never a neutral endeavor, neither to the one doing it or the one under it. Ideas always have consequences. There is, for example, a great difference in assurance that my and your baptism saves and spoken from God Himself as Peter states, and a set of teachings, doctrines, and preachments that deny this that then later throw you back upon the Law for assurance–which never leads there and always leafs to either despair or hypocrisy. Much of this Joshua Harris and many others have very honestly and openly expressed. They have said more than most adults faking it would ever dare to say.
Pieper writes:
“Many Christians suppose that it makes no difference which church group a Christian joins, and they act accordingly. When they come to a place where any kind of Protestant church is found, they join it as members. There are people who were successively Reformed, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, depending upon the place where they lived. And we should not be surprised when this happens among the sects, for they are not certain about their distinctive doctrines, because they are not grounded in God’s Word.”
But why does this matter? Is this just a matter of exclusivism for the sake of exclusivism, or legalism? No, it pertains to just the opposite, the gospel and its freedom! All false teachings and preachments endanger true baptized Christians. This is why Scripture warns that “My people [God calls them His people, they are His people for God Himself baptized them] perish due to a lack of knowledge.” Worse, false doctrine cause many to fall away, into hypocritical self security, become confused, and in worse cases truly perish in unbelief. Joshua Harris and others like him are examples of this multifaceted situation. However, contra Scripture, too many lazy and frankly blind alleged preachers awant to blame them rather than the obvious openly confessed and taught false teachings they were under. Scripture doesn’t blame the baptized, rather it calls them to come out of these churches and away from thses false prophets.
Gerhard writes: “As the Church differs from secular associations which are outside the Church through the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments, so it also differs from heretical communions which are in the Church through the pure preaching of the Word and the correct administration of the Sacraments.” (L. de ecclesia par. 131.)
Franz Pieper amasses multiple testimonies of why one should not be at or attend a heterodox church and they are the same reasons why you tell your kids not to drink poison:
“After the Apology makes the concession that also the Baptism performed by unbelieving pastors in the name of the Church is effective, it continues: “Impious teachers are to be deserted (are not to be received or heard) because they do not act any longer in the place of Christ, but are antichrists. And Christ says Matt. 7:15: Beware of false prophets. And Paul, Gal. 1:9: “If any man preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed. ” (Trigl. p.243-5, par. 48.)
Smalcald Articles: “Paul commands that godless teachers should be avoided and execrated as cursed, Gal. 1,8; Titus 3,10. And 2 Cor. 6, 14 he says: Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what communion hath light with darkness? To dissent from the agreement of so many nations and to be called schismatics is a grave matter. But divine authority commands all not to be allies and defenders of impiety and unjust cruelty.” (Trigl. p.517, par. 41.)
Furthermore: “Because Paul, Gal. 1.7f., enjoins that bishops who teach and defend a godless doctrine and godless services should be regarded as accursed.” Trigl. p.525, par. 72.)
Luther says: “Whoever knows that his pastor teaches Zwinglianism, should avoid him, and rather forego receiving the Sacrament all his life than to receive it from him, yes, rather also die and suffer all things.” (Warning against Zwinglianism. XVII, 2440.)
Again, the reason for not attending a false church is not exclusivism or legalism, but the opposite, the gospel and its freedom. Souls are not properly cared for in such
heterodox churches. Pieper writes with great clarity the real reason why this is so necessary:
“…most of the time, the sects teach in such a way, that the grace-hungry souls can have no sure comfort. The almost universal practice of sectarian preachers is to offer the comfort of the Gospel only then when sinners have first ceased from sin and changed their ways. Whereas, a true Christian knows that there can be no change in a person as long as he does not believe the grace of God.
A person who has come to the knowledge of his sin needs much comfort. For that reason, God has opened many different channels of comfort in the Means of Grace which He ordained. Not only through the preaching of the Gospel does He grant us forgiveness of sins, but also through holy Baptism, and through the holy Supper, He bestows upon and seals for each sinner in particular the forgiveness of sins. Even as it is written, that we are baptized “for the forgiveness of sins,” and that in the Lord’s Supper Christ gives us His sacrificial body and shed blood as a seal that we through the suffering and death of Christ have forgiveness of sins. Yes, Christ the Lord has, in addition, also ordained Absolution in the words: “Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them,” so that a poor sinner, when he hears the Absolution out of a fellow human being’s mouth, can be certain his sins are forgiven before God in heaven. But now the sects not only deny these Means of Grace, they also declare it to be misleading and productive of carnal security if one tries to become certain of the forgiveness of sins through Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Absolution. So they stop up the channels through which Christ wants rich comfort to flow to His people.”
Whatever one may think of Joshua Harris and others like him, claiming they have left the Christian faith, make no mistake about it, whether they actually left the real Christian faith or a false version of it, it was at least in part caused and precipitated by the spiritualy deadly, deceptive, and false antichristic preaching and teachings they were clearly under.
So no one need pick on Joshua Harris or those like him and try to ferret out by trying to read their hearts as to whether they are lost to the faith or not. If anything, Joshua Harris’ and their baptism will pursue them because in it the Holy Spirit has invested Himself, and perhaps they will get a real preacher or Christian who will tell them their baptism absolves them and saves them so that they may be sure based on the promise of God and not any false measure they think is Christian they don’t live up too.
He and those like him are looking for absolution. Luther called this, “Listening for the creature waiting“. They think they have found it in “acceptance” by unbelievers, but it is only absolution, baptism, and the sacrament that absolves them truly. The one thing needed, and the one thing false teachers and churches have obscured from Joshua Harris’ and other’s sight.
This Sacrament is the Gospel 