Coming to terms with the flaws of your heroes can be rough. We all need heroes, mentors, those who will inspire us and open our hearts and minds as we grow toward intellectual and spiritual maturity, but those to whom we look are not flawless. In some cases, the flaw if well known. Martin Luther, for example, wrote and spoke in favor of kind treatment of the Jews of Europe earlier in his Post-Reformation career, only to change course around 1536, ultimately writing a disgusting tract entitled, On the Jews and Their Lies. This change in his thinking taints the last ten years of Luther's life, increases the scrutiny of anything he wrote in that period, and of course complicates his legacy because his antisemitism was influential in the road that eventually led to the Holocaust. When considering Martin Luther, the bravery of "Here I stand, I can do no other" is weighed with the darkness that made a home in his thinking later in life. People are complicated, they all have flaws, heroes are no exception. Not every hero has a glaring flaw, let us not be that jaded, but some do, and pretending otherwise is a bad idea.
Which brings us to one of Christianity's great preachers, Jonathan Edwards, a leader of the Great Awakening along with George Whitefield, who was used by God to bring about tremendous reform in the American Church. And a slave owner. {Jonathan Edwards' disturbing support for slavery: some reflections, by David Baker } In 2019, Pastor Jason Meyer wrestled with Edwards' legacy in light of his owning of slaves, Jonathan Edwards and His Support of Slavery: A Lament, without attempting to sugarcoat or excuse Edwards' choices:
Jonathan Edwards had more intellectual firepower than any person reading this article, and he was a systematic thinker. He could connect theological dots like no one else. If he could succumb to such obvious, woeful oppression and injustice and theological hypocrisy, then we should be spurred on to greater levels of self-examination. Where are our blind spots? Or where do we willfully turn a blind eye to things we’re simply afraid to address?
And then this month, Meyer's mentor, who picked Meyer to succeed him as the lead pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, decided to revisit Jonathan Edward's legacy by speculating that Edwards owned slaves with good intentions: How Could Jonathan Edwards Own Slaves? Wrestling with the History of a Hero:
I do not know whether Edwards purchased the 14-year-old Venus to rescue her from abuse. I do not know whether she was given care in the Edwards home far above what she could have hoped for under many other circumstances at age 14. I do not know if the boy Titus was similarly bought to rescue him from distress and was then given hope. I do not know if the Edwardses used their upper-class privileges (including the power to purchase slaves) for beneficent purposes toward at-risk black children. The scope of what we do not know is very great.
If someone says, “Piper, this is just wishful thinking,” my answer is that indeed it is wishful thinking. I do not wish for one of my heroes to be more tarnished than he already is. But perhaps it is not just wishful thinking. My wishes are not baseless, however unlikely they may seem against the backdrop of mid-eighteenth-century attitudes. All I know of the godliness that Edwards taught, and in so many ways modeled, inclines me to wish in just this way. It is the sort of dream that, if it came true, would not surprise me.
Rather than wrestling with the contradiction in Edward's life and testimony that the owning of slaves makes clear, Piper has decided (at this particular moment) to attempt to excuse/explain this flaw, leading to predictable blowback: Christian Leaders React to John Piper’s Thoughts on His ‘Hero’ Who Owned Slaves By Jessica Lea and John Piper's 'Wishful Thinking' about Jonathan Edwards and Slavery, by Chris Gehrz.
This change of tone is particularly disturbing, in part, because John Piper himself had a much more balanced and God honoring answer to the fact that Edwards owned slaves in 2013: Slavery and Jonathan Edwards. Had he left it at that, we wouldn't be questioning his thought processes and conclusions now. My past self doesn't always agree with my current self, but hopefully that's because I've grown in wisdom and knowledge, maybe even humility, it is hard for me to see how this could be the case regarding this particular issue and John Piper.
There is much to admire about the life and ministry of John Piper, even if one rejects his strict Complementarianism, as I do, but this late in life attempt to polish the image of Edwards is certainly troubling. When taken together with the choice of the seminary that Piper founded to make its new president Pastor Joe Rigney, whose current crusade (along with other like minded fellows) is to declare Empathy a Sin: Have you heard the one about empathy being a sin? by Mark Wingfield at the same time that Pastor Jason Meyer resigned from Bethlehem Baptist Church, along with two other pastors. The three pastors in question were, as noted by Christianity Today the staff's most empathetic pastors. {This article is insightful: Bethlehem Baptist Leaders Clash Over ‘Coddling’ and ‘Cancel Culture’ A debate over “untethered empathy” underscores how departing leaders, including John Piper’s successor, approached hot-button issues like race and abuse. KATE SHELLNUTT}. #1 Rigney vs. Empathy, #2 Meyer and other pastors resign, #3 Piper speculates that Edwards owned slaves for good reasons.
In the end, I don't know John Piper personally, and he certainly has no idea who I am. I've never been to Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. And yet, at the same time that John Piper and Joe Rigney are badmouthing empathy and disparaging the idea of feeling the pain of others {declaring it to be a SIN of all things}, John Piper also decides to look on the sunny side of Edwards' ownership of slaves. Taken together, these two purposeful stances are an ominous sign that doesn't belong in any church of any denomination: The pain felt by the oppressed is not their problem.
For more discussion of the "Empathy is Sin" debacle:
Empathy is Not a Sin, by Warren Throckmorton
“Your Empathy Is a Sin”: A Response to Desiring God, by Rebecca Davis
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