In proof and as a capper, Tchividjian quotes a bunch of directly-relevant Scriptures counseling Christian parents to handle rebellious, criminal dependents in just exactly this manner. No, I’m kidding. Tchividjian doesn’t do anything like that. What he does instead is quote Steve Brown, whose rather appalling teachings about “grace” I’ve examined at great length elsewhere. But it’s a feel-good story, and anyone who disagrees can only be cast as a legalist and anti-grace and a hater and a good-story-spoiler and all those awful things. Besides, it’s at The Gospel Coalition, so it has to be all right, right?

At CBC the Sunday School class has been a series titled The Bible, Marriage and You. Having Biblically laid the foundation of the meaning of marriage, we turned to focus for several lessons on how singles should approach marriage. As long-time Pyro readers would expect, I made a very impassioned case that Christians should not even toy with becoming romantically involved with non-believers.

Last Sunday we capped that portion of the series, and turned to address marrieds. But before we left our focus on singles, I wanted to deal with one last issue. A great believer in prevention, I wanted to head off a pernicious thought: the person who might say, “But ______ dated an unbeliever, and he got saved!” or even “But ____ married an unbeliever, and she got saved/was a great lady/whatever.” In other words, “Sure, maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s even sinful, but other people did it and it worked out okay… so what’s the big deal, Pastor?”

This is course-charting by anecdote, and it is (to say the very least) a foolish way to live.

As you can imagine, I had some thoughts about this, and I shared them with characteristic daintiness and nuance. Which is to say I fired up the grill and barbecued away, driven by passion and conviction and a lot of care and concern for my dear ones here, as well as intrawebbers. My conclusion was that this whole line of thinking amounted to asking “Why not just continue in sin, that grace might abound?”

And then Monday, I read this, and its (at present) unanimously positive, emotional accolades. Ah, me. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

Tullian Tchividjian, now a pastor, admits to having been such an incorrigible 16yo that his father actually booted him out of the house. But Tchividjian continued on a rebellious, ruinous path… and his father fully subsidized it. At one point, after Tchividjian had screwed up a job and lied to his father about what had happened, dad gave him a blank check, no questions asked. Though Tchividjian took advantage of that check, it didn’t stop there. Tullian snuck into the family home and committed repeated acts of theft and felony, stealing dad’s checks and forging his signature. Dad (a clinical psychologist, or so I read) was aware of his son’s crimes, and let him go on (you’ll pardon me) unchecked and unconfronted.

But see: it had a happy ending. By all accounts, Tchividjian’s now converted, is a good guy and a celebrated and well-positioned preacher of wide renown. So we know it was the right thing to do. Right?

In proof and as a capper, Tchividjian quotes a bunch of directly-relevant Scriptures counseling Christian parents to handle rebellious, criminal dependents in just exactly this manner.

No, I’m kidding. Tchividjian doesn’t do anything like that. What he does instead is quote Steve Brown, whose rather appalling teachings about “grace” I’ve examined at great length elsewhere (here, here, and here).

But it’s a feel-good story, and anyone who disagrees can only be cast as a legalist and anti-grace and a hater and a good-story-spoiler and all those awful things. Besides, it’s at The Gospel Coalition, so it has to be all right, right? They’re all sound there. Right?

Tchividjian’s book Jesus + Nothing = Everything received a fair bit of friendly critical pushback, most of which centered around accusations that it fell short of Biblically relating the indicative to the imperative.

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Related Article: Carl Trueman “Anfechtung and Vanilla Essence“