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Tony Campolo's son Bart, has come out of the agnostic closet. Here are some excerpts from the RNS article:
“You know me. I am not afraid you’re going to hell because the God I believe in doesn’t send people to hell for eternity for having the wrong theology,” Tony responded, according to Bart. “I’m sad because Christianity is my tribe, and I liked having you in my tribe. ”
“I passed just about every stage of heresy on my way to apostasy,” Bart said. “It wasn’t until I exhausted every option for staying a Christian that I gave it up.”
The younger Campolo recounts becoming a Christian in high school. He says he was drawn by the sense of community and the common commitment to love people, promote justice, and transform the world.
“All the dogma and the death and resurrection of Jesus stuff was not the attraction,” Bart said.
His first step away from orthodoxy occurred while doing inner-city ministry near Philadelphia. Bart encountered a girl who had been gang-raped at age 9 and who rejected Christianity after her Sunday school teacher said God could have stopped the act but allowed it for a reason.
Bart decided that if he was going to remain a Christian, he had to believe that God did not authorize that child’s rape and was not in control of the world. He began to imagine God as engaged in a battle with good and evil rather than a cosmic marionette pulling the universe’s strings.
The next rejection occurred as a student at Haverford College in 1981, when two of Bart’s roommates came out to him as gay. Though evangelical Christian teachings repudiated same-sex orientation at the time, he chose instead to jettison the biblical verses that spoke negatively of homosexuality.
“I decided I was going to make room for gay people in my theology, and I became very open about the fact that I would ignore certain Bible verses and underline others,” he said.
End quote.
Consider that his first unbelief started really with Scripture. "Hath God said?" But that determined his rejection of the All-Sovereign God of Scripture, which most professing Christians most are in Bart's camp on this issue, which is a denial of who God is (not to mention His attributes). Then it was the sodomy issue. Again, rejection of Scripture in order to accomdate his friends.This is why I say that where you find compromise, you will find a relationship at stake.I've yet to find an exception to this rule.
This is why biblical doctrine---EVERY BIBLICAL DOCTRINE MATTERS. Doctrine is not a theory to be easily accepted or dismissed.
Wrong doctrine WILL lead to wrong living--sinful living. Without true conversion Bart had no answers for himself, the raped girl, or the sodomites. But neither does his father. Humanism never does, no matter the flavor or degree. Those in darkness are blind and enslaved to sin and Satan and therefore have zero hope to offer anyone. There is nothing more comforting than to know that God is fully in control of His universe and is bringing it to His desired end (see Eph. 1, Jude, 2Peter 2-3, and Revelation). God is righteously just, therefore He will judge all sinners for all their sin. In Bart's world all men are basically good and deserve "better"; moreover his god is not holy nor just, and frankly quite impotent to deal with wickedness (apparently he's ignorant or rejected the OT and Revelation where God deals harshly with the wicked). Worse, Bart rejects the notion that sinners like himself, the raped girl, the rapist, and the sodomite roommates are sinners before the thrice Holy One of Israel and that God is the one offended by all their sin. Everyone is equally wicked before God regardless of how mere sinful man judges it.
Rom 3:10 as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one;
Rom 3:11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
Rom 3:12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one."
Rom 3:13 "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips."
Rom 3:14 "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness."
Rom 3:15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Rom 3:16 in their paths are ruin and misery,
Rom 3:17 and the way of peace they have not known."
Rom 3:18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes."
Rom 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
Rom 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
The comfort that results from the biblical gospel being given and believed, is that once a person is at peace WITH God, they can then have the peace OF God, that surpasses all understanding, because He is the God of all comfort. That raped girl can find hope and peace but it must begin with the Gospel.
Bart wasn't drawn to Christianity for the TRUTH of Jesus Christ, but merely for social justice (which his dad is a huge promoter of). He didn't receive the love of the Truth and so be saved. But when your father is a flaming liberal, hearing the Truth will be hard, not to mention confusing. That said, Bart has access to Scripture so he is totally without excuse.
Bart, like his liberal father, created a false god in his mind. This is idolatry.
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