What’s the Begg Deal?

Pop­u­lar pas­tor, Alis­tair Begg, has made waves online recent­ly when he shared a sto­ry of advis­ing a grand­moth­er to attend the wed­ding of her homosexual/transgender grand­child and a trans­gen­der indi­vid­ual. Don’t ask the exact sta­tus of the two par­ties being “wed,” as I’m still unclear on that, and Alis­tair has switched from grand­son to grand­daugh­ter. I’ve pro­vid­ed the entire clip for con­text, but it’s not the ini­tial com­ment that is our main focus today.

Ini­tial­ly, I was­n’t all that inter­est­ed, as oth­ers were cov­er­ing the sit­u­a­tion well, and Begg was not some­one I had fol­lowed, though I was famil­iar with him. That changed after he respond­ed to the ques­tions being asked of him, and in a way that caught me com­plete­ly off guard. Begg had refused to address the sit­u­a­tion pub­licly, until on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 28th, he gave a speech to his church defend­ing him­self and his com­ments. I can­not right­ly call it a ser­mon, and I’ll make that clear why as I go along.

Beg­ging the Ques­tion

Beg­g’s “defense” con­sist­ed of two main com­po­nents. We will dis­cuss one of them in the next sec­tion, but the oth­er was to sim­ply assume he was jus­ti­fied. Now, does­n’t every­one assume their right when they defend them­selves? Yes, but that’s not what Begg did. He let his argu­men­ta­tion sim­ply assume he was right, almost as a giv­en. (I.e. “My posi­tion being cor­rect, is what rea­son­able peo­ple will assume, so I won’t pos­i­tive­ly defend it.”)

Now, he did offer one piece of pos­i­tive defense that I would like to men­tion, and that’s his his­to­ry of con­stan­cy on cor­rect, ortho­dox teach­ing about mar­riage and sex­u­al­i­ty. Again, that assumes his advice was cor­rect, with­out actu­al­ly defend­ing it. A his­to­ry of integri­ty is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion when we exam­ine a sit­u­a­tion, but to imply that a his­to­ry of ortho­doxy teach­ing means you can­not be wrong is absurd. We are imper­fect men han­dling God’s per­fect word, even the best of us can and will get things wrong. To active­ly use your rep­u­ta­tion as a shield, frankly, impugns the integri­ty of that rep­u­ta­tion, and opens you up to the ques­tion: why would a man of true integri­ty not address con­cerns?

In the end, his pos­i­tive defense of him­self was no defense at all, but sim­ply one that begs the ques­tion, that is to say, “But why is your advice not wrong? Why does one need to attend a wed­ding to main­tain a rela­tion­ship?”

I Begg Your Par­don?!

To me though, it was not his pos­i­tive defense that shocked me, but it was his attacks upon those who dis­agree that made my jaw drop. If you don’t see things his way, you’re a Phar­isee! Now, it’s iron­ic how often accu­sa­tions of being a Phar­isee are them­selves Phar­i­saical, but I digress. It was the details that real­ly hit me. Please, watch these short clips to under­stand that I’m not being hyper­bol­ic with what I’m about to say.

I beg your par­don, what did you just say? Now, there were many oth­er ques­tion­able com­ments with regard to how he treat­ed his oppo­nents, but those were the two that stuck out the most. In the first clip, unin­ten­tion­al­ly or inten­tion­al­ly, he draws a con­nec­tion between those who dis­agree with him, and desir­ing what they warn against. The impli­ca­tion is that those who are rais­ing a fuss, are doing so to cov­er their own sex­u­al­ly deviant desires.

The entire log­ic here is strange and strained, as it could be turned back around on Begg, who repeat­ed­ly talked about his stern preach­ing against homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Is he, by his own log­ic a Phar­isee that is secret­ly gay? No, that is absurd. Again, he may not have direct­ly intend­ed that, but he is the one who set up both who are mod­ern Phar­isees, as well as what Phar­isees do.

The sec­ond clip should be a lit­tle more straight­for­ward, as he, while preach­ing to a group of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals, attacks Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals. This is done in a snob­bish way, by con­nect­ing him­self to pop­u­lar British fig­ures, while at the same time paint­ing a very brutish pic­ture of Amer­i­cans who are a bunch of “fun­da­men­tal­ists” who can­not under­stand “nuance.”

It comes back around to this: his posi­tion is right, and if you dis­agree, you’re a brutish, Amer­i­can fun­da­men­tal­ist. His talk is pred­i­cat­ed on show­ing love, com­pas­sion, and grace; and he argues that we need to show those things to homo­sex­u­al peo­ple… but how does he treat those broth­ers who have con­cerns about his unbib­li­cal advice? He mocks and attacks them.

I Begg to Dif­fer

Now we get into the claim that this talk was a ser­mon. Well, I’d beg to dif­fer. This was not a ser­mon, it was a talk at best, or a rant at worst. God’s word was sim­ply a back­drop for him to talk about him­self and how right he is, attack oth­ers, and even read off texts from friends and fam­i­ly that sup­port him. The text he used was Luke 15, though his focus was on the para­ble of the prodi­gal son. In the end… his ref­er­ences to the pas­sage just kind of hung in the air, dis­con­nect­ed from what he was talk­ing about. He’d jump from the dis­grun­tled broth­er in the pas­sage, to him being a Phar­isee, to then Beg­g’s oppo­nents being Phar­isees; like that some­how jus­ti­fied his advice because his oppo­nents were the “bad guys” of the pas­sage.

This is not a ques­tion of top­i­cal vs. expos­i­to­ry, or even sim­ply eise­ge­sis vs exe­ge­sis. It’s an issue of fla­grant dis­re­gard for the entire pur­pose of a ser­mon. Let me be clear, he need­ed to address the sit­u­a­tion, but this was the wrong place and the wrong way to do it. He used the preach­ing of God’s word to attempt to weaponize his church and the many who lis­ten to his ser­mons online. What that his explic­it intent? Irrel­e­vant, as that’s the con­se­quence of the sit­u­a­tion. Using the wor­ship ser­vice to address the con­tro­ver­sy, and in the way he did, was a poor choice in a sim­i­lar vein to the poor choice of advice he gave to that grand­moth­er.

So, What IS the Begg Deal?

The big deal here, at least in what I’m focus­ing on, is the shock­ing lack of integri­ty that a man so high­ly regard­ed could “sud­den­ly” show. Now, I’m not going to do some deep inves­ti­ga­tion to show that he may or may not have had this vein of com­pro­mise for a long time, but I sim­ply want to warn us all of the dan­gers of being “nice.” God’s com­mands are not some­thing we can com­pro­mise on in order to be “nice,” as that will always pro­duce wicked results. It’s like the time that some­one was so “nice” to let a car make a left turn ille­gal­ly, that they sent them into the path of my car. “Nice” can only exist with­in the bounds of law. In the end, Beg­g’s nice­ness birthed a wicked “ser­mon” where he attacked his broth­ers. And that cer­tain­ly is a big deal.

If, on the off chance, Alis­tair sees this, I want to be clear about some­thing. I’m not call­ing you some kind of irre­deemable heretic, nor am I say­ing this sit­u­a­tion is irrepara­ble. I am say­ing that you need to own up to your mis­takes in respond­ing the way you did. Even if those who dis­agree with you are as mean as you por­tray them as (we’re not) that does­n’t jus­ti­fy your actions. I’m dis­ap­point­ed by the advice you gave, but I’m shocked at the way you decid­ed to address the sit­u­a­tion.