Voddie Baucham’s Eleventh Commandment

Eric Metaxas sent out a video last week from 2021 titled “Biblical Justice vs. Social Justice.” It was from a panel discussion he’d participated in for Salem Media Group. The other two panelists were Charlie Kirk and Voddie Baucham. Charlie Kirk, as the whole world knows, was assassinated on September 10. Voddie Baucham died two weeks later of an unspecified medical emergency. Charlie was 31; Voddie was 56. So seeing the two of them sitting next to each other on stage was another pause-to-consider moment in a month full of pause-to-consider moments.

I got to see Voddie Baucham in person at the 2006 Desiring God National Conference. It was the same conference that introduced me to Tim Killer and Mark Driscoll. All three were standouts, but Voddie was the only one to talk about abortion—so I knew from the outset that he was made of sterner stuff. He pointed out that when you remove God from the throne of creation, terrible things happen. “If I am no more than the result of random evolutionary processes,” he declared, “and I am more powerful than you are… then it is incumbent upon me to take from you what I need for my own satisfaction.” The logical conclusion of Darwinism, Baucham argued, was the Holocaust—the notion that “the Aryan race [was] further evolved than all other races, [making it] incumbent upon [them] to dominate and/or exterminate other races in order to usher in the next level of our evolution.” But don’t look with too much scorn on the Nazis, he warned, because just as they “looked upon Jews as things and not people in order to justify their extermination,” so too do we when it comes to “the baby in the womb.”

America is obsessed with the moral failures of those who came before us but mostly indifferent to the moral failures perpetrated today. We celebrate them, in fact. We’ll do endless penance for the evil of slavery while we poison and dismember the most helpless members of the human community—and call it health care. When Jason Whitlock asked Voddie more recently whether he was wrong in thinking abortion to be worse than slavery, Voddie’s response was a simple one. “My ancestors were slaves,” he pointed out, “but I’m here. If my mother had had an abortion, I wouldn’t be.” With all that as a backdrop, I’d like to now get to the panel discussion I opened with. Things got interesting for me at the 20 minute mark when the moderator, Owen Strachan, introduced the following:

It strikes me in the context of Christianity, the church, that especially among my generation and younger, the phrase neither left nor right has become very popular in evangelical circles to describe our political philosophy. We’re about Jesus, as indeed all [four] of us are. So that’s good in my view. And yet this... neither left nor right philosophy... I think it’s deadly. It causes, especially younger people, to think, I don’t need to even get my hands dirty at all in the public square. What would you men say in response to that kind of line?

It was Voddie who spoke up first to assert that there seems to be an unwritten 11th commandment that is guiding many pastors today, and it has taken the first Ten Commandments almost completely off the board. What is that 11th commandment? Thou shalt be nice. “What these people are trying to do,” Voddie continued, “is avoid having to confront ideas that oppose them and to avoid debate.” They don’t want the conflict. And by “not stand[ing] for anything,” they can escape “the slings and arrows that come from the other side.” Being neither left nor right, they imagine themselves a friend to all. But there is that pesky little warning Christ issued through the apostle John. Something about being lukewarm. In today’s political climate, I might render it like this: I know your works: that you are neither left nor right. Would that you were either left or right! So, because you are neither, I will spit you out of my mouth. Trying to play both sides, apparently, is something Christ has little patience for.

For Charlie Kirk’s part, he marveled at how many young Christians are simply unwilling to be confrontational. “You don’t take stances on moral issues?” he asked acerbically. “Is that the new position of skinny-jeaned Christianity?” (with apologies, he noted, to Eric Metaxas). To a large extent, it is—for the simple fact that being non-confrontational (and wearing skinny jeans) isn’t just a young Christian problem. It’s perpetrated by plenty of middle-aged pastors as well—who desperately want to be seen as “relevant.” Eric Metaxas articulated the problem this way:

Mega church pastors (have) over focused on evangelism. Now, it’s bad to under focus on evangelism, but if you act as though getting people saved is the only thing we’re here on earth to do, you’re an idiot. You’re not reading the Scripture. The fact of the matter is that if you over focus on evangelism, what happens is you make people think, “I cannot say anything, ever, unless it might help lead somebody to faith. And if I say anything controversial or that they might disagree with, that’s bad for the witness.” And I was hamstrung in that position for years myself. I just thought I’ve got to be careful. I don’t want to be political because it’s all about, you know, getting them saved, getting them saved, getting them saved. Well, at the end of the day, you have to trust truth. And you have to trust that if I speak the truth, I am speaking God. We all understand [that there are] idiots (out there) who drive people away from Jesus… [but] the culture lifts this up as a boogeyman that, oh, you don’t want to be that guy who’s driving people away. He’s the religious fanatic, right? Well, now we have the opposite thing. The guy who is so nice [that] he’s afraid to talk about truth.

Much like today, Eric argued, a lot of good Christians in Nazi Germany didn’t want to compromise their witness by being divisive. So they appealed to Romans 13 and kept quiet about their Jewish neighbors. To those Christians today who are employing a similar tact with regard to their unborn neighbors, Eric says something that is exceedingly un-nice. In his words, “Your witness can go to hell, and your fake evangelism to a fake gospel can go to hell. If you are not willing to stick up for the unborn… your Christianity is worthless.” Eric, you see, is not a nice person. Or perhaps I should say it this way. Eric is not a slave to being nice. And neither was Jesus.

You might remember that Jesus once called Peter Satan for trying to dissuade him from going to the cross and variously called the scribes and Pharisees whitewashed tombs, blind guides, and a brood of vipers. He told the Jews who opposed him that they were children of the devil and called the Canaanites dogs. Jesus said he did not come to bring peace but a sword and warned that he would set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Jesus declared to his hearers that they were an evil and adulterous generation, and when John sent his disciples to find out if he really was the Christ, Jesus listed his credentials along with this rebuke: Blessed is the one who is not offended by me. And in one of the great and humorous displays of their obtuseness, the disciples once asked Jesus, Do you know that the Pharisees are offended by the things you say?

People regularly complain about the biting and sarcastic tone President Trump so often takes with his adversaries, but just imagine what Jesus may have said were he ever unleashed on Twitter. He could easily have made the President’s tweets seem tame by comparison because being nice and being Christlike are two very different things. The difficulty, of course, is that it’s easy to confuse being nice with being kind—and being kind is a fruit of the spirit. There are some overlaps, to be sure, but there are also times when being nice is the opposite of being kind. I would distinguish between the two this way. The aim of niceness is short-term peace. The aim of kindness is the ultimate good of the one upon whom it’s bestowed. A nice person can play fast and loose with the truth. A kind person cannot. A nice person accepts your sin. A kind person seeks to turn you from it. Kindness leads to repentance (Romans 2:4). Niceness leads to nowhere. Christ’s admonition to love your enemies—when coupled with the things that he said to his enemies (and even to his apostles) is further confirmation that being harsh or combative does not preclude the existence of kindness and love. When we love our enemies, and do them good, we are emulating the Most High, who is “kind to the ungrateful and the evil (Luke 6:35).”

President Trump conceded during his remarks at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that, unlike Charlie, he does not love his enemies. “I hate my opponents,” Trump admitted, “and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry.” But he further conceded that, on this front, he may well have something to learn from Erika Kirk—who publicly forgave the man who murdered her husband. On the one hand, it was an extraordinary gesture. On the other, she could not have reasonably done any less. “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Seems pretty clear, right? If Erika had refused to forgive the man who killed Charlie, she would have thereby forsaken the forgiveness of Christ for herself.

Donald Trump is not a nice man, but I actually think he may be selling himself short when it comes to his enemies. Last year before the election, I overheard someone who I know to despise Donald Trump confess to a colleague that though he could never vote for such a despicable man, he had no doubt that life in America would be better if Trump won. I found that incredibly revealing. Because like Christ, Donald Trump has said some terribly offensive things to his enemies, but he seems to genuinely want the best for all Americans. Whether you agree with his policies or not, he at least seems to implement them in good faith—with the conviction that they will in fact make life on the ground better. And isn’t that in itself a form of love for his political opponents?

Charlie Kirk concluded his remarks on biblical justice vs. social justice by offering up a test. This is how to be assured you’re not in the fight: You’re living a comfortable life and everyone loves you. Devotion to Christ “is going to cost you something,” he warned. “You’re going to have to give something up.” In his case, it was his very life, but Charlie, it seems, knew who to fear—not the one who can kill the body, but the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Charlie’s words were still ringing in my ears when, in a strange twist of providence, I listened to an interview that Sinclair Ferguson recently gave to Australian minister Dominic Steele, and Steele asked Ferguson about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Specifically, he asked about the assertion made by some that “if your pastor hasn’t aligned [himself] with Charlie Kirk, (you should) find a different church. This was Ferguson’s response:

In the early church, if someone was martyred, then a kind of sanctity blanket came over the whole family, and the whole family was special, and kind of untouchable. And I think that’s one of the things that has been happening in the last few days. A kind of untouchability about the profession of faith that Charlie Kirk made (has developed) [in place of] the kind of analysis that would recognize the reality of what has happened but also would question, “Is this enthusiasm going to be turned into faithful Christian living, or is all it going to do make people align with power structures?

I’ll grant that when a heroic figure dies young, their exploits can take on mythical proportions, but the two-fold implication of Ferguson’s remark is that Charlie Kirk’s profession of faith wouldn’t hold up to normal scrutiny, and the enthusiastic expressions of faith that have followed his death will not lead to more faithful Christian living. I find both conclusions needlessly devoid of grace and hope. Steele then asked Ferguson what the posture of pastors should be towards politics before revealing that his own congregation has no idea how he votes. “I want people to come to our church,” he continued, “who are highly left wing and are highly right wing, [while] I stay in my lane of preaching Christ and don’t get in the lane of expressing political views.” Ferguson’s response: “I’m very much with you, Dominic, in (maintaining) this church/state separation.”

I don’t want to be too hard on Sinclair Ferguson because my impression of him through the years has been a positive one, and I appreciated much of what he said elsewhere in the interview. While reflecting on the passings of R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur, he said the thing that struck him about both men—despite their many personality differences—was their kindness (not their niceness!). It caused him to look again at the fruit of the spirit, to see that kindness is embedded right there in the middle. “The gospel doesn’t exist in a bubble of the intellect,” he rightly observed. “Many of us are drawn to Christ because we’ve seen reflections of him in others.” But to then hear a very real and respected pastor express a position that to me has become a tired trope was a bit jarring. Especially having just listened to Voddie Baucham, Charlie Kirk, and Eric Metaxas—two of whom are now beyond the grave—communicate the opposite position with such eloquence and conviction. Though it’s hard to reconcile, here are two things to keep in mind. America is not Australia or the UK, and the political landscape today is not what it was in 1975.

“Every culture is uniquely blessed by God, but every culture has unique [ways] of going wrong.” Eric Metaxas said that in the panel discussion, and it may help explain why a Scottish pastor and an Australian pastor could look at the life and death of Charlie Kirk through such a cynical lens. But it’s also true that 50 years ago, when these men were cutting their teeth in ministry, the political divide fell along much different lines. If the only disagreements between the right and the left were ones of fiscal policy, you could make a compelling case for pastoral neutrality. But when the disagreements center on moral questions of profound significance: killing babies, redefining marriage, and chemically-castrating children, staying out of politics goes from being a virtue to a vice. Walter Kirn said last week that we always find a way to rationalize our cowardice. And this is one of the ways we do it. By being nice. By staying in our lane. “The church needs to understand,” Metaxas argued, “that it’s not a choice between: Do I want to lead people to Jesus or do I want to talk about truth?” They are the same thing, he says. “If you don’t understand that… (then) you’re already lost.”

If you were to study every mention of the word nice in the English Bible, you could do it in fairly short order. Because the word appears exactly zero times. It turns out there is no commandment to be nice. And for good reason. The danger in being nice is it’s easy. It’s the pathway of least resistance. It gives you cover to not say or do what most needs to be said and done. John Piper exhorted pastors in a recent X post to not sacrifice worship, reverence, and awe for “a chipper, chatty atmosphere in the name of being a friendly church.” Aka, a nice church. A nice pastor says nothing about the termination of unborn children. A kind pastor warns his congregation to not participate in such deeds of darkness. A nice pastor allows one neighbor to be chopped to pieces so that he doesn’t risk offending another neighbor. A kind pastor intervenes for the bodies of those threatened by abortion and the souls of those doing the threatening. A nice pastor is Mr. Wickham. A kind pastor is Mr. Darcy. One has all the appearance of virtue; the other has all the virtue.

I will confess in closing that I am a still-recovering nice guy. Dispositionally, I am too eager not to give offense, which is ironic in light of the work I do—but that is probably as it should be. If you’re going to engage in intrinsically offensive dialogue, I suspect it’s better to have someone who doesn’t relish the conflict. “The cross reconciles us vertically and horizontally.” That’s how Voddie put it towards the end of his remarks on biblical vs. social justice. But many Christians seem to believe that the cross “is insufficient to reconcile us to one another,” so they bend over backwards to never give offense—which introduces an even bigger problem. “If you believe you can mess up what Christ accomplished on the cross,” Voddie continued, “then you don’t believe Christ accomplished it on the cross.” C.S. Lewis put it this way: “A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world—and might even be more difficult to save.”