The Idolatry of "Tone"

Maintaining the proper “tone” is an idol in today’s evangelical discourse.

Its hardly a secret that maintaining proper, respectable tone is how evangelical leaders keep their status within the guild. You keep your seat at the table by showing utmost courtesy and respect to everyone, even those who are actively undermining the truth.

A godless heretic, for example, can ascend the evangelical ranks with book deals and speaking gigs as long as he’s sufficiently courteous. The evangelical respectability guild values calm, reasonable disagreement over embarrassing, sharp rhetoric.

They claim they’re defending humble, godly, Christ-like discourse.

Maybe. But I think something else is going on.

When our evangelical incentive structures prioritize tone over truth, truth slowly drowns under a suffocating blanket of malignant, self-righteous niceness.

The Pharisees did this in Jesus’ day. John’s gospel says Isaiah had personally seen the glory of God (i.e., truth) and spoke of the coming Messiah. Yet he also predicted that blind, hard hearted leaders of the religious guild would prevent people from seeing and believing in him.

John said this in reference to the Pharisees. They kept people from seeing and believing the truth because they cared more about their clout within the Inner Ring than the truth of God.

John 12:42-43 says, “Many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”

Influential people who would have believed the truth of Christ held back from openly acknowledging him because they feared the Pharisees. They didn’t want to lose their seat at the cool kids table.

This is happening in modern evangelicalism. We obsess about tone because it’s a convenient, pietistic way to avoid facing hard truths we’d rather not hear. It’s human nature. But still, “better is open rebuke than hidden love” (Proverbs 27:5).

As desperate as we are for bold, plain spoken truth in our day, many Christians have no appetite for it unless it’s wrapped in weak, banal, therapeutic sentimentality. In other words, our obsession with tone has crushed the much needed prophetic voice.

This mindset is furthered and enabled by the incessant tone-policing of evangelical schoolmarms. Even necessary, sharp rebukes, appropriately spoken with pastoral concern, are quickly dismissed as “harmful” or “mean spirited.” As a pastor, I’ve experienced this many times myself.

The bottom line is this. Evangelical tone policing has become counter-productive because it creates an inhospitable environment for truth, while enabling hard hearted, truth resistant Christians to feel morally superior for their thin-skinned aversion to it.

This Proverb is true and worth remembering: hard words make soft hearts. Soft words make hard hearts.

King’s Domain Conference: Gendered Virtue

Have you registered yet for the King’s Domain conference, “Gendered Virtue: Men and Women Who Take Dominion,” coming up in less than TWO WEEKS? You’d better get that taken care of ASAP!

The singles mixer has a good number of people signed up, which is exciting.

Being a smaller conference, one of the biggest benefits will be the opportunity to connect with other like minded people in a comfortable setting. You’ll also have a great chance to interact with the speakers and ask them questions. We’ve got Michael Foster, Joe Rigney, Toby Sumpter, Shane Morris, Matt McBee, and myself as keynote speakers.

Here’s a quick explainer video for why we’re doing it and why you should come. If you’ve been considering this conference, go ahead and register now so we can save you a spot!

More details and registration info are available at www.genderedvirtue.com.