Reputation, Reputation, Reputation

The Corrosive Effects of the Fear of Disrepute

The evangelical desire to not “offend” too often leads us to subtly shrink back from what we say we believe when the time comes to show how much we truly believe it.

The Keswick Convention is the oldest and most prestigious evangelical conference in the UK. I know many who have contributed to and benefited from it over the years. It is known as something of an evangelical bastion, as promoting sound doctrine, holding the line on key issues, etc. Yet sadly, like many evangelical institutions today, it now appears to be "saddened" not by the heinous evil in its midst but by the potential loss of its own reputation before the world.

Note in the article above the pitiful contrast of emotions. They are "saddened" by brothers and sisters boldly standing for truth and justice; and they are "delighted" to work with the police who so often oppose such Christians as though they're bad for society. By all means we ought to honour law and order, but this is yet another example of where an evangelical institution delightedly (and selectively) clings to Romans 13 for all the wrong reasons.

In case you're wondering, this is the witness by the Pro-Life organisation, the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (@cbruk) which so "saddened" the good people of the Keswick Convention.

This is what they did not want to associate themselves with, because, according to some, "it caused a massive amount of bad feeling in Keswick." Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t THE KILLING CHILDREN the thing that is supposed to cause bad feeling, not the fact that people reasonably point out why the killing of children might be a bad idea?

On “Technical” Beliefs

I expect the Keswick leaders are all technically "pro-life" but simply believe it's not "sensible" to approach the issue in such an apparently "inflammatory" manner (i.e. by literally just showing people what the kind of baby you are legally allowed to kill actually looks like!). After all, they do have a reputation to keep up…

They seem to have forgotten something important about what mission is meant to do. I wrote about this in an article last year (especially related to abortion) on the ways our fear of disrepute to the wrong people at the wrong time often ends up undermining the very things for which we claim to need a good reputation!

I’m frankly fed up of hearing about what people “technically” believe. If you believe something, believe it, and show people why you believe it. Don’t tell people you believe it, and then shirk back from the necessary actions which accompany that belief when the time comes to defend it.

As in the case of William Carey, and countless other evangelical missionaries, beliefs are not meant to stay in our heads and hearts; they’re meant to take root in this world, tearing down bad things and building up good things (cf. Jer. 1:10). The desire to do that is literally why evangelical missionaries and institutions are meant to exist.

Faithful and Fruitful

This will be hard for some evangelicals to hear (because the Keswick Convention is still beloved by many, and still does many other good things), but like many professing "evangelical" institutions in our time, if Keswick continues to be blinded by the need to protect its reputation above the missional needs of the hour, it will no longer be fruitful in advancing the kingdom in the next generation. Against all its hopes and plans, it will become little more than an evangelical holiday retirement club.

I have seen this happen so many times. I have read about it happening even more times. It is not a complicated principle: it is a Biblical one. God honours those who honour him (1Sam. 2:30). It is always easier to keep quiet and save our own skin when the time comes to speak up. It is easy, like Peter, to warm our hands around the fire and dissociate ourselves from those “less respectable” Christian beliefs when we feel we might be doing more good by keeping quiet. Reputational safeguarding can be a subtle and effective means of diverting us from our true mission longer term.

Christian institutions that want to serve the Church well over the coming decades will need to heed the great warning of Hebrews 10:

“we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve our souls.” (Heb. 10:39)

Fruitfulness follows faithfulness. The Lord provides many unexpected tests to us to this end. Such tests will expose the convictions we're willing to fight for and those we're happy to let fall by the wayside for the sake of preserving our own skin (even if we deceive ourselves into thinking that the protection of our reputation before the world is "for the Lord").

The eventual loss of fruitfulness (like the eventual loss of faithfulness) is not always easy to detect over the short term. But years of not saying what ought to be said does things. It breeds a culture in which the fear of “what they’ll say if…” begins to trump the fear of what God has said. Things may seem fine for a while. Then five or ten years down the line, attitudes have changed significantly with barely anyone noticing; eventually it will just be accepted that "this is just the way it is now…"

Reputation, Reputation, Reputation

Reputation does matter, by the way. There is a kind of “people-pleasing” that can be Biblical (cf. 1Cor. 10:33), especially when it is grounded in the desire to please God and do his will. But too often our desire to be winsome and not to “offend” leads the Church to subtly shrink back from what we say we believe, and to choose cowardice over courage when the time comes.

One especially heinous way people and institutions choose cowardice today is in the guise of false humility.

“Well, remember that Jesus ‘made himself nothing’ (Phil. 2:7) and so, unlike those foolish and inflammatory pro-life witnesses—those silly ‘culture warriors’ who stoke up all kinds of attention and controversy—we, like Christ, will keep ourselves out of the limelight lest the people we’re trying to reach think of us as troublemakers. Otherwise they might not hear the Gospel…”

Aside from the fact that such attitudes are often entirely counteractive to the cause of the Gospel, it is worth noting that the KJV captures a more specific connotation of ‘nothing’, saying, “he made himself of no reputation” (Phil. 2:7). We would do well to ponder this, not least in light of the famous words of that Man of no reputation when he said: “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you” (Luke 6:26).

Lord Jesus, please raise up a new generation of Christians concerned not merely with attending and protecting the reputation of conferences which talk about the truth, but those concerned with boldly proclaiming the truth in words and actions when and where it matters.
Amen