3 Bad Reasons to Leave Your Church

[Mark_Smith]

Larry Nelson- you are spot on. OT worship mentions dancing, tambourines, loud, boisterous, etc. I don’t see requirements that people have a certain skill level to play (except with Israel having one temple, so obviously the best play), or that there is a poetry test, etc)

Granted, any instrument requires a certain skill level to play, whether it is the organ, guitar, violin, the drums, flute, bass, piano, or any other. I suppose that the tambourine requires a certain amount of rhythm too—which I sorely lack! =) At my church, about 4 women share the job of playing our organ (which I am told is more difficult to play than the piano). Why does nobody else play it? Lack of adequate skill.

Regarding worship, I return to David in 2 Samuel. His worship on at least the one occasion took the form of “[Dancing] before the Lord with all his might.” How many of us would be horrified if someone broke out in such a dance in one of our churches? We should not condemn what the Bible does not, though. I really hate to think that fundamentalism is more often than not the “Michal” to CCM’s “David,” unrighteously critical of a style of worship not condemned by, or unacceptable to, God.

Obviously you have to be able to play the instrument. Duh. :-)

A certain poster on SI makes it sound like if you aren’t a virtuoso at what ever instrument you should stay in the pew. That is what I was addressing.

Please define an amateur in the NT church context? Israel had ONE PLACE to go worship which allowed them to pick the best musicians who could dedicate their lives to music performance. Now you have many churches in many places all over the globe.

Who determines what players are good enough…you? Exactly. Musicians in the church are not professionals with those mandatory requirements.

[Larry Nelson]

In contrast, does anyone else recall when BJU screened the Kirk Cameron film Fireproof on campus (which itself surprised many)? During the screening, the CCM music in the film was muted-out of the audio. (For example, the Casting Crowns song Slow Fade, a Biblical plea for marital fidelity, was unheard by the BJU audience.)

BJU showed Fireproof? That’s unfortunate, but not because of the music or Kirk Cameron. Apparently, the discernment on campus about that movie wasn’t any better than in evangelical Christianity generally, where it was unfortunately such a hit. The real problem with the movie is its endorsement of the supposedly Christian wife’s unbiblical divorce threat, sexual refusal of her husband, and flirtation with an adulterous affair as entirely legitimate responses to failings in her husband that did not even come close to biblical grounds for divorce. But husband/father bashing is safe, fashionable, and very popular with the ladies — every bit as much in evangelical Christianity as it is in secular culture — while the bashed males generally will put up with it and try to do better. Ask yourself this: would those same filmmakers even consider making the same movie with the wife being bashed and the husband being commended for denying sex (or provision) to his wife, railing at her, threatening divorce, and taking steps toward an affair with a co-worker? Fat chance. (Hence, the follow-up movie from the same people, Courageous, bashed fathers and praised mothers.) I call double-standard, opportunism, and mass gullibility.

[Mark_Smith]

Larry Nelson- you are spot on. OT worship mentions dancing, tambourines, loud, boisterous, etc. I don’t see requirements that people have a certain skill level to play (except with Israel having one temple, so obviously the best play), or that there is a poetry test, etc)

​

Mark,

I was responding to your assertion that the OT advocates using all sorts of instruments without giving any requirements as to the relative expertise of those playing the instruments. That is just flat out wrong. There were very clear instructions concerning worship in the Tabernacle and Temple, including which group of Levites was assigned to perform music in their corporate worship. Temple music wasn’t restricted to those men because they were obviously the best musicians or because there was only one Temple, so there wasn’t enough opportunity to include amateurs. It was restricted to them because God said so.

Paul

[Greg Long]

Fireproof “endorsed” the wife’s actions? Wow, I did NOT get that at all. Yes, the focus was on the husband, but to me the sense that she was responding to his sinful behavior by making sinful choices of her own, and then she responded to his repentance and pursuing her with love.

The Bible study based on the film talks about the poor decisions she was making as well and how married people should avoid them.

I didn’t read or do the Bible study; if it did balance the scales, great. My comments were based solely on the film itself, in which the wife’s behavior was never reproved at all. If I understand you correctly, you personally recognized that the wife’s behavior was also sinful, which is good. Unfortunately, I don’t have any reason to believe that the filmmakers recognized that, and I’m very sure that a lot of women viewers would never have drawn that same conclusion. They certainly had no reason to do so from the film itself. I think if you’ll think back over the content of the film (setting aside the post-film gloss of the Bible study, which fewer people would have seen), you’ll see the problem I did. (Also, I think you have at least one cause-effect relationship backward; I think the husband’s porn watching was described as his response to her disrespect and sexual refusal.)

Nor is this just my reaction. See https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/how-fireproof-lowers-the-boom/. (Note: Dalrock himself is a Christian, but some of his commenters are not, so their language isn’t as restrained.) I saw this blog post well after I’d seen the movie and come out knowing it had been unbalanced. Before seeing Dalrock’s analysis, I had considered the possibility that I was being hyper-sensitive because of the state of my own marriage at the time: my (now ex-) wife and I saw the movie in between her two divorce filings and our own story bore uncanny resemblance to the marriage in the movie — the “I’m not haaaaaappy because you’re not giving me what I want emotionally and you’re doing some things I don’t like, so I’m going to defiantly withhold sex from you, verbally eviscerate you at every opportunity, and threaten (and actually file for) divorce without biblical grounds.” In my case, there were a couple bonus elements: “I’m going to disrespect you as often as possible in front of the kids (but not at church where others might see me) while describing the situation to others as if I’m the spiritually virtuous one and you’re the gross sinner, and I don’t care what the pastor or the Christian marriage counselor say about what I should do.” Come to find out, the film’s resemblance to my situation wasn’t uncanny at all, because there are a lot of Christian husbands going through nearly identical circumstances. It is therefore folly and (if there were such a thing) Christian film-making malpractice to put a movie out there for the Christian audience that reinforces the idea that the husband is the bad guy, that the only reason the relationship is in shambles is because he needs to shape up spiritually and love her more, and (even if only by silence or omission, though I think it was more than that in Fireproof) that her actions don’t merit any reproof even though she’s the only one threatening an unbiblical divorce.

Another way of thinking about how balanced or imbalanced Fireproof was is to answer the question I asked in my previous comment: Do you really think the filmmakers would have gotten away with reversing the roles in the movie? Would the movie have been met with anywhere near the acclaim and ticket sales (or would it instead have been met with universal scorn) if it had depicted a railing, withholding, adultery-seeking, divorce-threatening husband with nary a negative comment or reproof, while portraying the emotionally absent and occasional porn-watching wife as the scoundrel who needed to shape up spiritually and pursue her husband? Isn’t it the case that to ask the question is to answer it?

Food for thought, I hope.

[Greg Long]

And Courageous was about as far from bashing fathers as I could possibly imagine. SMH

Which characters were shown as needing to step up and be better parents and spouses — wives? some wives and some husbands? Nope — just dads. Is there ever going to be a Courageous for women (or a Fireproof for women)? Not holding my breath. Men will take the abuse and try to do better; women won’t, and very few men would let them because it’s just not nice.

Interestingly, there are a few Christian women bloggers who have picked up on the fact that the endemic assumption in the church, both tacit and explicit, is that wives are purer and more spiritually in tune than husbands. Sure, both are sinners (can’t get away with outright denying wives’ depravity), but wives don’t sin against their husbands as much or as grossly as husbands sin against them. Hence, naturally, Fireproof and Courageous. And 75% of divorce filings by women, both Christian and non-Christian, very few of which even allege adultery, abuse, or abandonment. There are some rays of light out there, but the man bad/woman good narrative is by far the majority one.

[dmyers]

Greg Long wrote:

Fireproof “endorsed” the wife’s actions? Wow, I did NOT get that at all. Yes, the focus was on the husband, but to me the sense that she was responding to his sinful behavior by making sinful choices of her own, and then she responded to his repentance and pursuing her with love.

The Bible study based on the film talks about the poor decisions she was making as well and how married people should avoid them.

I didn’t read or do the Bible study; if it did balance the scales, great. My comments were based solely on the film itself, in which the wife’s behavior was never reproved at all. If I understand you correctly, you personally recognized that the wife’s behavior was also sinful, which is good. Unfortunately, I don’t have any reason to believe that the filmmakers recognized that, and I’m very sure that a lot of women viewers would never have drawn that same conclusion. They certainly had no reason to do so from the film itself. I think if you’ll think back over the content of the film (setting aside the post-film gloss of the Bible study, which fewer people would have seen), you’ll see the problem I did. (Also, I think you have at least one cause-effect relationship backward; I think the husband’s porn watching was described as his response to her disrespect and sexual refusal.)

Nor is this just my reaction. See https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/how-fireproof-lowers-the-boom/. (Note: Dalrock himself is a Christian, but some of his commenters are not, so their language isn’t as restrained.) I saw this blog post well after I’d seen the movie and come out knowing it had been unbalanced. Before seeing Dalrock’s analysis, I had considered the possibility that I was being hyper-sensitive because of the state of my own marriage at the time: my (now ex-) wife and I saw the movie in between her two divorce filings and our own story bore uncanny resemblance to the marriage in the movie — the “I’m not haaaaaappy because you’re not giving me what I want emotionally and you’re doing some things I don’t like, so I’m going to defiantly withhold sex from you, verbally eviscerate you at every opportunity, and threaten (and actually file for) divorce without biblical grounds.” In my case, there were a couple bonus elements: “I’m going to disrespect you as often as possible in front of the kids (but not at church where others might see me) while describing the situation to others as if I’m the spiritually virtuous one and you’re the gross sinner, and I don’t care what the pastor or the Christian marriage counselor say about what I should do.” Come to find out, the film’s resemblance to my situation wasn’t uncanny at all, because there are a lot of Christian husbands going through nearly identical circumstances. It is therefore folly and (if there were such a thing) Christian film-making malpractice to put a movie out there for the Christian audience that reinforces the idea that the husband is the bad guy, that the only reason the relationship is in shambles is because he needs to shape up spiritually and love her more, and (even if only by silence or omission, though I think it was more than that in Fireproof) that her actions don’t merit any reproof even though she’s the only one threatening an unbiblical divorce.

Another way of thinking about how balanced or imbalanced Fireproof was is to answer the question I asked in my previous comment: Do you really think the filmmakers would have gotten away with reversing the roles in the movie? Would the movie have been met with anywhere near the acclaim and ticket sales (or would it instead have been met with universal scorn) if it had depicted a railing, withholding, adultery-seeking, divorce-threatening husband with nary a negative comment or reproof, while portraying the emotionally absent and occasional porn-watching wife as the scoundrel who needed to shape up spiritually and pursue her husband? Isn’t it the case that to ask the question is to answer it?

Food for thought, I hope.

I also want to say that as much as I do endorse Fireproof the movie and the Fireproof Your Marriage Bible study based on the movie, it is not necessarily the marriage study I would recommend the most highly. There are a couple of minor things I would change in the Bible study if I had the choice, and I would probably recommend Sacred Marriage before it.

HSAT, I really think you are allowing your situation to color your view of the movie, and I think you are being very uncharitable to the movie producers. You said that you don’t have any reason to believe that the filmmakers thought the wife’s behavior was sinful. Obviously because they were the ones who wrote and produced the movie in which the wife’s actions took place, you must think that they think it is okay to commit adultery and file for divorce if a husband shirks his responsibilities. I think this is wrong for the following reasons:

• As you know, Fireproof was produced by Sherwood Pictures, which is a ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church. Fireproof was directed by Alex Kendrick and produced by Alex and his brother Stephen Kendrick, along with . Both Alex and Stephen are Associate Pastors at Sherwood Baptist Church. Now, as a pastor I would be the first to tell you that pastors can be wrong in their beliefs, but what you are saying is that two pastors produced a film that endorses adultery and divorce? Really? For me to accept this accusation, I would have to find explicit evidence in the film that this is the case, and there is no such evidence.
• In fact, keep in mind that the wife does NOT commit adultery and does NOT file for divorce. The sense is that she realized the error of her ways and pulled back before she made a terrible mistake.
• In the Fireproof Your Marriage Bible study, one of the six lessons is entirely focused on divorce. It is entitled “Love for a Lifetime.” In this lesson, participants examine Bible passages such as Matthew 19:5-6 and Malachi 2:14-16. These are among the strongest passages in the entire Bible condemning divorce. Questions in the lesson include:
  • “What does Mal. 2:14-16 say about how God views divorce?”
  • “Verse 16 says that God hates divorce. What do you think some of the reasons might be?”
  • And directly to your point about the actions of the wife in the movie, one question says, “Jesus says that man is not to separate what God has joined together. In the movie Fireproof, some of Catherine’s friends blame Caleb for the problems in their marriage. Catherine also becomes very close to a male doctor at the hospital where she works. List some of the ways in which people can ‘separate’ (i.e. physically, emotionally, spiritually) a married couple.” The clear aim of this question is to say that Catherine’s friends were wrong to imply that it was OK for Catherine to do what she was doing because Caleb was doing what he was doing. Her friends in the movie were presented as tempters. I really don’t know how much more clear this could have been.
  • So in order for me to believe you, I would have to believe that the movie producers wrote a Bible study (it was written by Michael Catt and Stephen Kendrick) that DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS what they portrayed in the movie.

Again, the perspective of the movie, which I thought was very clear, is that the husband is the spiritual leader in the home. When he was completely failing in that role, his wife was tempted to sin as well. When he trusted Christ and began to love his wife unconditionally, she ultimately responded to that love. Do you think that any of this is unbiblical?

Now, of course things don’t always work out that way. Of course she could have continued to go her separate way, committed adultery with the doctor, and filed for divorce. That would have been completely wrong and sinful, and I’m going to assume (because I have no reason to think otherwise) that the producers would have viewed those actions as sinful. But the fact is, that is not the story the movie portrayed. I don’t think the producers intended to communicate that if a husband loves his wife she will ALWAYS love him back, or that if a husband loves his wife she will NEVER file for divorce, or that if a wife commits adultery or files for divorce it MUST be the husband’s fault. That is reading things into the movie that just aren’t there.

[dmyers]

Greg Long wrote:

And Courageous was about as far from bashing fathers as I could possibly imagine. SMH

Which characters were shown as needing to step up and be better parents and spouses — wives? some wives and some husbands? Nope — just dads. Is there ever going to be a Courageous for women (or a Fireproof for women)? Not holding my breath. Men will take the abuse and try to do better; women won’t, and very few men would let them because it’s just not nice.

Interestingly, there are a few Christian women bloggers who have picked up on the fact that the endemic assumption in the church, both tacit and explicit, is that wives are purer and more spiritually in tune than husbands. Sure, both are sinners (can’t get away with outright denying wives’ depravity), but wives don’t sin against their husbands as much or as grossly as husbands sin against them. Hence, naturally, Fireproof and Courageous. And 75% of divorce filings by women, both Christian and non-Christian, very few of which even allege adultery, abuse, or abandonment. There are some rays of light out there, but the man bad/woman good narrative is by far the majority one.

Most Christian leaders I read argue that there is a crisis among men in our country, and among men in the church. I think we see evidence of this in our own churches. Now, I believe our church is better than most in this area, and we have a great number of men who are actively engaged in worship, community, and ministry, but overall in the evangelical church there is a higher percentage of women than men who attend and are involved. In the small group that I lead with 13 couples in it, it is more of a challenge to get the men to engage in Bible study, discussion, and prayer than it is for the women to do so.

So the movie producers, seeing this problem, decided to make a movie challenging men to step up and be the spiritual leaders God has called them to be. That does NOT mean that women shouldn’t be spiritual, that women don’t need to be called to grow spiritually, that women don’t have spiritual problems, that problems in the home are all the man’s fault, etc.

Let me put it this way: I have two children. If one of them is struggling with a particular sin problem right now, and I address that particular sin problem with that child, does that mean I am saying the other child is not a sinner? Or doesn’t struggle with sin? Or even doesn’t struggle with that particular sin at all? No.

The movie had a singular focus—to encourage men to courageously lead their families, as God calls us to do in His Word. It was not intended to address women.

OK…so what Bible verse do you use to determine if someone is good enough to play in your church? Specifics please.

Thank you for responding to dmyers. I started writing something then I realized that some one else needed to write it.

IT IS CLEAR that the movie is saying both the actions of the husband and wife are wrong.

I appreciate Fireproof a lot and think of it often when dealing with my wife.

…..as much as I am a fan of doing things well, I cannot lay my hand on something that says that specifically that someone must attain a certain level of musicality before playing for the church. On the flip side, if we believe indeed that things ought to be done “decently and in good order”, and that loving one’s brother does not mean assaulting his eardrums with partially completed chords and out of tune instruments, we then might conclude that we ought to pull some instrumentalists and vocalists aside and say “friend, let’s work on getting that horn in tune.” Or something like that. It is not for no reason that Hollywood often presents music in the church as one of the lower circles of the Inferno, after all.

Regarding the “Manosphere” criticism of Fireproof and other such movies, I’ve not actually seen the movies, but I have noticed a general trend where men’s rights advocates (very often unwilling divorcees) do assume that unless a book, movie, whatever actively confronts the woman’s sin, they are ipso facto condoning it. It’s the men’s rights parallel to feminism, really.

Not that there isn’t a lot of good that “fundagelical” churches ought to be doing—we could add to the list of “bad reasons to leave a church” “because you want to leave your spouse but the church does not allow divorce except in cases of adultery”—but unfortunately, in too many churches the spouse who leaves gets to keep not only the house, but also the church. And that’s a shame, really.