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Pastor Jay's Blog

A Critique of Tony Evans’ Recent Washington Post Article

I have hesitated to write this blog because bringing a critique of a brother is touchy business and prone to misunderstanding. Yet, the topic is important, the article is public, and the lesson is one we need to learn. The brother I am referring to is a well-known preacher in Texas named Tony Evans. He is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and leads a large ministry. He recently wrote an article in the influential newspaper The Washington Post entitled America’s Current Violence Can Be Traced To Christians, which you can read here.

I know little about Tony Evans and his ministry, but the little I do know seems to indicate that he is a faithful brother. I have heard some of his Bible preaching on the radio and “fiery” would be a good one-word description. “Fiery” is secondary to the critically important issue of biblical faithfulness, and he seems to have that too. Yet, his article bothered me, not because of the provocative title, but mainly because of my roller coaster response to it. At first I didn’t know who wrote it, so I was prepared for reading a twisted condemnation of Christian orthodoxy which is so common today. But when I saw it wasn’t that, I went from bracing for the worst to being underwhelmed by a weak milk-toast call for change. Then I saw Tony Evans wrote it. That was when I became doubly underwhelmed and discouraged because it came from a well-known Christian leader. It is for that reason that I wanted to bring a critique about his article in order to contrast it with what I believe is a far more biblically faithful call to engage the current issues in our country.

The article is short and so I am going to attempt to give you a basic synopsis of the article.

Dr. Evans is writing in light of the recent shootings and starts with this premise:

“These recent spates of violence – like all our worldly problems — have happened because Christians have failed to advance God’s kingdom, to spread the faith and to do so in a loving, unified way.”

He adds to this by saying:

“One of the real tragedies today is that the Church as a whole has not furthered God’s light, equity, love and principles in our land in order to be a positive influence and impact for good in the midst of darkness, fear and hate.”

Dr. Evans proposes three main steps to fix this situation. First, the church needs a solemn assembly of prayer and fasting. Second, the Church needs to move people from church membership to following Christ in discipleship. Third, churches need to do good works in their communities.

His concluding paragraph is a good summary of the article and it says the following:

“We must do better. We must unite. We must stand together and commit to one another that we will usher in a wave of change, justice, life, safety, rightness, equity and dignity for all. And above all, we must not let fear or hatred divide us. Peace, unity, love and nonviolence should be our rallying cry and the catalyst for change in our nation. Through this, we can seek to transform the remnants of tragedy into the foundation of a stronger, more equitable future.”

You will notice that there is no blatant error with anything said. It is all couched in biblical terms and with biblical aims to some degree. That is the biggest problem. Discernment isn’t always about distinguishing right from wrong, but distinguishing right from almost right. Dr. Evans was almost right in much of what was said and that is the very thing that will get you way off course in due time. Let’s examine what was almost right in his article.

One of the main problems in this article is the abundance of platitudes. Peace, love, and unity are great things. Who would disagree with that? But those are the end goals. There is a lot of work that has to happen for understanding what is meant by those terms before you can start freely using them in such an article, not to mention before you start accomplishing them. Even a godless world gets that. Recently the Attorney General Loretta Lynch was criticized when she said the solution to recent terrorism was love and compassion. She is right, but there are a thousand things that have to be understood about love, and those things are not going to be dealt with in political circles.

The platitude problem is compounded by the glaring lack of precision in almost every concept Dr. Evans advances. Remember, this is a secular paper that he is writing in. You can’t assume anything these days, especially in spiritual matters and especially in a paper like this. What does it mean to advance God’s kingdom? What is spreading the faith? What exactly is God’s light and God’ principles? What are the biblical manifestations of a “positive influence and impact for good?” I guarantee you that the average readers of the Washington Post have no biblical understanding of any of these ideas. Even worse is that most in the church don’t either, which is a large part of the true problem today.

Another problem is an oversized hope in unity. Dr. Evans mentions it 6 times in his short article. Unity is a wonderful and necessary thing. The Bible calls for it in strong terms, and anyone who threatens disunity in a church will be swiftly disciplined and removed (Titus 3:10-11). But unity only matters if it is built upon truth. If rock solid historic orthodox truth is not the foundation of unity, then separation is what you want. As Adrian Rogers said, “It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error.” Matthew Henry said, “Peace is such a precious jewel that I would give anything for it, but truth.” When anyone starts talking about unity, but there is a conspicuous omission of faithfulness to the word of God, you should get real nervous real fast. The kicker is I think Dr. Evans would agree with that. Yet his article is woefully deficient of clear calls for unity based upon God’s Word. You can be sure that in an article like this one, in a paper like the Washington Post, calls for unity will only fuel the ecumenical spirit that adulterates God’s word.
Finally, the worst part of this article is the total absence of the gospel. Yes, Jesus is mentioned. So what? Islam will talk about Jesus, Mormons will talk about Jesus, and any snake-handler will be crying the name of Jesus as he is juggling those belly crawlers. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, not the reciting of a common 1st century Jewish name, nor simple calls to unity. I realize that the three action points he calls for are good. Prayer, discipleship, and community action are all needful. But when the gospel is removed, or even just pushed to the sides, you have lost the heart of prayer, discipleship, and community action. I think you can see this most clearly in his last summary paragraph which I quoted above. What is he seemingly putting his hope in? “We must unite.” “Above all, we must not [let anything] divide us.” “Peace, unity, love and nonviolence should be our rallying cry and the catalyst for change in our nation.” Where is the gospel? Where is the power of new birth? Peace, unity, love, and nonviolence are absolutely not the catalyst for change. There is only one thing that brings true and lasting change; the gospel. The gospel is the only way peace, unity, and love can exit. To not even mention this is a dereliction of duty for a Christian minister. Not only that, it is a subtle dismantling of the church. If peace, unity, love and nonviolence is all it takes, then any number of organizations can accomplish some self-defined version of those. No need for outdated churches. But the reality is this; peace, unity, love, and nonviolence are fruits of the Spirit who indwells people born again through repentance and faith. Peace, love, and unity are validations of the gospel, and exalting the gospel is what should preoccupy the people of God. We need churches called up to preach that message, and to equip believers for further proclamation of that message in countless ways, in countless places, for countless applications in cultural issues.

I don’t know why Dr. Evans wrote such a poor piece of Christian witness. Maybe he was just having a bad day. But this is a warning to us. We must not talk in vague platitudes and assume people understand biblical concepts. We must never, never, never marginalize the gospel. Finally, we must not count on these types of public platforms to be regularly offered to Christian witnesses. Therefore, we cannot miss such opportunities. We must hold forth chapter and version reasons for why we do what we do, and an abundantly clear testimony of the transforming power of the substitutionary death of Christ for sinners.