In an appearance on “The View,” Justin Bieber’s “pastor” — Carl Lentz from Hillsong — bowed before the false gods of progressivism and sexual autonomy and defended abortion. During the taping, the “pastor” ignored God’s command to protect the fatherless and the least of these and instead chose to publicly align himself with the forces of darkness. When asked if abortion is a sin, Lentz responded, “God’s the judge; people have to live to their own convictions.”
Lentz is right; God is the final judge. What Lentz is ignoring (or doesn’t know) is that God has revealed Himself in the Bible, and has declared what is righteous and unrighteous. Among the things that God has clearly and intractably revealed as unrighteous is the killing of innocent humans. The holocaust of babies in our society called abortion is going to one day reap a whirlwind of God’s anger and judgment.
Where Lentz is dead wrong with his statement is his belief that people get to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. If an individual’s convictions are at odds with the Bible, they will one day stand condemned before God, and He will sentence them to an eternal punishment in hell. It is incumbent that humans submit their convictions to God’s revealed will. Lentz’s claim stands in direct rebellion against God.
Further demonstrating his unfitness to call himself a Christian pastor, Lentz told the ladies of “The View”: “I’m trying to teach people who Jesus is first, and find out their story. Before I start picking and choosing what I think is sin in your life, I’d like to know your name.”
Someone needs to tell Lentz that he doesn’t get to decide what’s a sin in a person’s life. In fact, that belief is an example of what Jesus meant when he said, “judge not, lest you be judged.” We are not called to pass judgment (deciding what’s sin or not); we’re called to declare God’s judgment. And God has declared the murder of innocent humans a sin. No matter the circumstance, abortion is a sin.
In the book Theologians Under Hitler, author Robert P. Ericksen writes of disgraced theologian Gerhard Kittel: He “readily admits that much of his work may appear anti-Jewish, but he insists it was always Christian in motivation and scientific in method.”
Shades of Hillsong “pastor” Carl Lentz can be heard in Ericksen’s explanation of Kittel. Substitute “anti-life” or “pro-murder of babies” for “anti-Jewish” (which, to be frank, mean basically the same thing in this context), and you will have a possible quote from a future writer explaining the thinking of professing Christians who supported abortion during the twenty-first century’s horrific holocaust.
Human flourishing is the enemy of progressivism. If you were to go line by line down the list of issues that progressives care most about, you would find a series of desired policies that would serve (or already do serve) as obstacles intended to make it harder for humans to succeed. Abortion sits atop the list of the progressive agenda as a blatant attack on humanity and, more importantly, humanity’s God.
God created all humans in His image. Since progressives can’t actually attack God, they go after the next best thing — His image bearers. By supporting the progressive agenda (specifically abortion) that stands in open rebellion against God, Carl Lentz is providing evidence that whatever he is, he is not a Christian pastor.
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