In this second episode of a three-part series, pastors Derek and Cliff discuss the things that Christians should always boycott.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truths to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I’m here again today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and we have the privilege of training pastors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California, where we are professors of theology. And we are today going to enter back into our discussion of Christians and boycotting. This is part two. So we encourage you to go back and listen to part one. And again, I’ll just remind you to check out WithAllWisdom.org. There are a lot of resources there—a growing collection of resources like video resources, audio resources and written resources—all aimed to help you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so we’re back to this issue of boycotting. And what we want to do in this particular episode is we want to discuss things that Christians should boycott, and to balance that out, things that Christians should not boycott. So I want to hand it back over to you right away, Cliff, and take it away. Tell us what Christians should be boycotting.
Cliff: Yeah. By way of reminder, we read first Corinthians five that says there are times where we should boycott as Christians and in the church. And then going back to my guiding general principles on this very difficult, complex matter was point number one: Christians should boycott sin, false teaching, and the devil and anything related under those three categories. And to do that, the number two principle was we need to clearly distinguish between gray area issues versus biblical prohibitions before we decide what we’re going to boycott or not. Those would just be helpful. So I have a list here, Derek, of things that I think Christians should boycott. And most of these are just prohibitions that I found in the Bible where it said, just flee from this person. Don’t hang out with this person. Don’t go there. And then just try to turn them into practical language that might be relevant to decisions we have to make in life. So those are the things we should boycott. And then I came up with a list of about ten things Christians shouldn’t boycott, also based on scripture, but also from being a pastor and just having Christians ask me questions on these matters. So here’s my list. And they’re, you know—you may agree with me, you may not agree with me out there, but I definitely want to throw them out there. We need to talk through these.
They’re not all easy. Some of them are quite a challenge. But anyway, some of them are pretty black and white. Okay, here are things that Christians should boycott. Number one, we boycott sin that is being endorsed or promoted by other people. Ephesians 5:7. Paul lists explicit sins and he says have nothing to do with them. First Timothy 6:11. Same thing. Do not associate with such things. First Timothy 6 is about having the wrong view of materialism and money. So we should boycott sin that is being endorsed or promoted by other people. Number two, we should boycott the practitioner who is promoting sin. So we boycott overt acts of sin, but we should also boycott those who promote sin. So examples today would just be political activists or Hollywood movie stars who maybe themselves don’t engage in the sin—they don’t engage in the homosexuality or the transgenderism or the woke agenda or whatever, but they heartily promote it and shove it in our face and demand that we do it. They’re not doing it, but they’re promoting sin. And Paul says clearly in Romans that they’re under the wrath of God for doing that. So have nothing to do with it—we boycott sin and those who promote sin. Number three: we boycott unrepentant self-proclaimed Christians.
We just read about this in 1 Corinthians 5. Church discipline is a form of boycotting. Matthew 18 could be added to that. We boycott in step three and step four of Matthew 18, when the sinner refuses to repent. He doesn’t listen to the rebuke. Then we isolate him. Step four is put him out of the church. That’s boycotting. And then Titus 3: reject the factious man after a couple of warnings. That’s boycotting. So that was number three. Boycott unrepentant professing Christians who are in sin. Number four: as Christians, we should boycott heretics and false teachers. The whole book of 2 Peter and the whole book of Jude are written about this. Titus chapter one, verse 11 is explicit—that we should boycott false teaching and shut it down. Silence it immediately and have nothing to do with it. 2 John chapter one, verse ten says, don’t welcome false teachers into your home. Don’t even eat with them. Don’t even associate with them. That’s boycotting. Number five—and you can interject any time here, Derek, if you’ve got comments or questions—we should boycott compromised churches. And at some point, this isn’t always easy to do because you’ve got to decide, well, at what point do I boycott or refrain from going to a certain church based on its practice or doctrine? You know, what are the main priorities there?
Derek: That’s challenging.
Cliff: So there’s a spectrum there. As examples, I put if it’s got—at least in our area, I think—if it’s got women elders and pastors. That’s fundamental. That’s the leadership of the church. You don’t have a church if you don’t have leadership, and if you don’t have qualified leadership, you don’t have a church.
Derek: Right? And it’s such a direct violation of Scripture. All the sophisticated books and articles notwithstanding that have been written in defense of women elders—it is such a clear violation of Scripture, so that doesn’t bode well for other practices and doctrines within that church. So I would agree with that. I’m sure some would disagree, but I think you’re right.
Cliff: Yeah. And then, you know, clearly the doctrine of the gospel, the deity of Christ, the deity of the Trinity, etc. So we boycott those compromised churches that maybe have true doctrine in their statement of faith, but then they incorporate ungodly practices from the world or other religions—like incorporating Roman Catholic theology that’s not in the Bible into their practices like we have around here, which was popular a few years ago. Of all these, after The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson, we had all these Protestant biblical churches, or one-time biblical churches, incorporating all these Catholic practices like Ash Wednesday, putting ashes on your forehead, the stations of the cross, etc. And you and I, as former Catholics, know what that’s all about. I was an altar boy. It’s about venerating statues and idols, and that’s just outright idolatry. And a lot of Protestant Christians, they didn’t even know what it was, but they’re incorporating it in their church. Protestant churches, incorporating the rosary in their church, and icons.
Derek: I didn’t realize that. That’s remarkable.
Cliff: Well, Mark Driscoll was tinkering with that stuff. I mean, he would preach with a t-shirt that said, “Mary is my home girl.”
Derek: Right. That’s interesting. Not surprising.
Cliff: Anyway. Let’s see. So we boycott compromised churches. Number six, we boycott compromised Christian ministries and Christian schools. You know, a lot of our Christian schools started out as Christian schools. And then over time, they compromise and totally lose their bearing of what the original legacy was.
Derek: I was going to say, but I think I’m going to I’m going to wait for you to get all the way through your list. And then I want to go back and ask specifically, what does it look like to boycott these? Because I have an idea in mind. I have some ideas in mind. But I think I’ll let you go through the whole list and then we’ll—
Cliff: Let’s do that just real quick on number six: we boycott compromised Christian ministries. Because that’s harder to figure out than number five, which is boycotting compromised churches. Because there are so many different kinds of Christian ministries. And primarily, these are parachurch ministries, which would include so-called Christian schools, Christian universities, Christian mission agencies, and Christian evangelistic organizations. There’s a gazillion. Let’s just take one of the most popular ones, Cru, which used to be Campus Crusade for Christ. Do we boycott them or not? Well, I think there are some high-profile Christians right now publicly calling them to repent or to be boycotted for their compromise of becoming woke and endorsing the transgender agenda and those kinds of things. And so there are some very highly respected evangelicals calling for a boycott of that parachurch ministry. And I guess the form of boycotting Campus Crusade or Cru today would be, I’m not going to support this Cru missionary anymore. Right? I’m going to put my money elsewhere.
Derek: Right. So you’re not endorsing it. You’re not supporting it financially. This is what we mean by boycott, right? You’re not affirming it as an organization that you’re confident in. Number one, you can communicate that to others. Number two, you can’t support it financially.
Cliff: I’ve done that with certain Christian schools and colleges and universities and seminaries where, at one time, maybe I was supportive of it. And then they changed in an egregious, compromised way. And it’s like, you know, I can’t support them anymore, right? I’m not going to send people to their school. I’m not going to send them money anymore. I’ll write a letter of concern, call them to get back on track, or call them to repent. Number seven, we should boycott divisive people who stir up dissension among believers in the church, particularly over gray area matters, or if they have an agenda. In Titus 3:9, Paul explicitly says reject a factious man. That’s a divisive man who just wants to argue. Another one that I actually want to read is Romans 16:17.
Derek: Yeah, I had that one written down. That’s the one I had written down.
Cliff: If you’ve got that one, just [go ahead and] read it.
Derek: Paul says, I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. Avoid them. The New Living Brown and McManis version would say boycott them.
Cliff: Yeah, absolutely. Well, read that again. The first part of the verse there, Derek.
Derek: I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions.
Cliff: So this is an imperative. This is a command. There are actually two commands in that verse. The first one is watch out. And literally in the Greek text it’s mark out or highlight. Make a formal line of demarcation around that person. So you mark them off deliberately, literally, by name. Then what you do is have nothing to do with them. You isolate them, because they’re divisive. And again, this is within the church. That’s our jurisdiction.
Derek: And this is vital because this kind of person—and we’ve seen it as pastors—this kind of person wreaks all kinds of havoc in the church and can be very destructive. And as he says here, [he] creates obstacles, puts blockages or speed bumps in the road of ministry and causes all kinds of trouble. So this is an important command to obey.
Cliff: Yep. Number eight, we should boycott people who mock the truth or disparage the truth. There are a couple verses on that one. Paul has one in Second Thessalonians chapter three. Boycott just people in general who mock the truth. So he concludes his letter by saying, and anybody who does not listen to us—have nothing to do with them.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: So that’s not calling us to boycott all unbelievers, right? Because he goes on to say, but admonish them as a brother. So these are people within the church, who profess to be Christians, who are adverse or whatever, or don’t want to submit to biblical teaching and biblical truth, yet they call themselves Christians, right? Paul says, you know what? Warn them, admonish them, but don’t associate with them. Boycott them. Isolate them. Number nine, we should boycott bad company or friends. That’s all over the book of Proverbs. That would be Psalm one. That would be First Corinthians, where it says, in verse 15, bad company corrupts good morals. So we should boycott people who are going to be bad for us. As a parent, I did that. My wife and I—we boycotted so-called prospective friends of our kids when they were younger. It’s like, no, you’re not going to be friends with that guy. He’s bad news.
Derek: And there are a lot of friendship verses, you might say, in the Proverbs, and we walk through these with our kids. You don’t go with one given to anger. You don’t associate with one who lacks integrity. You don’t associate with one who is given to gossip, and so on. These are the friendship verses. And so in a sense, you’re right. It’s a kind of boycotting.
Cliff: You mentioned this one earlier, Derek. Number ten: we boycott the devil. And James 4:7 just says, resist the devil. Actually, I think that’s about the only verse in the New Testament that explicitly tells Christians how to deal with the devil. That’s telling that God only says one thing. The only thing you need to know other than Ephesians 6, which says, you know, prayer is the armor of God—but this explicit thing we actually do is resist the devil and he’ll flee, right? Poof. I think resisting the devil is a form of boycotting. Have nothing to do with it. Practically what that looks like—I wrote down a whole bunch of things, and this could be very controversial. And I’ll just warn the listeners right now, some people might be shocked I’m putting these things on the list, but I think resisting the devil means resisting anything directly related to him and his wiles and his techniques, which would include the following, but does not exhaust all of these. But here are some things we should have absolutely nothing to do with, because they are associated with Satan, the devil. Things that would be explicitly forbidden by Scripture that advance Satan’s agenda. Practices of the occult, like talking to the dead through seances. As a Roman Catholic and a very active and large Roman Catholic family, by the way, and 12 years of Catholic school, we routinely (my siblings and I) got involved in seances growing up, trying to talk to the dead. Well, we didn’t see that as incompatible with our religion of Roman Catholicism, because, you know, part of Roman Catholicism is talking and praying to the dead, right? So we should not be involved in that. Occult practices. I think of Joseph Smith, with his divining rod and looking through crystals and that kind of stuff. That’s occultic. Tarot cards. Palm readers, Ouija boards.
Derek: I’m just going to say—should Christians have anything to do with Ouija boards?
Cliff: Well, they sell them in the toy section at Target and Toys R Us, when it used to exist. So there it is. It’s a toy. Yet, as a Roman Catholic, I grew up with the Ouija board. We practiced it. I think sometimes it actually worked, meaning it moved by itself. You ask it a yes or no question. That’s of the devil. It’s not a toy. Crystal balls, witchcraft and all of its forms. Praying for the dead; praying to the dead. Talking to the dead. Determining your life by the stars. The 12 signs of the month—whether you’re a Virgo and all that stuff, like astrology. Hindu meditation and all of its forms. Meditating on any kind of a mantra. You know, I was at a Christian college in Southern California, not The Master’s College, but another Christian college. And during my freshman year I was a Christian. There was a chapel speaker there for three days. He was very well known, and he told the students that they should meditate 2 to 3 times a day on a mantra. Get by yourself, get alone, go into your closet or whatever, and meditate on a mantra. A mantra is a word, and you meditate on it to empty your mind. And he said, but you should do the Christian version. He’s mimicking Hinduism, right? Of meditating on the name of a deity in Hinduism?
This is just overt, ungodly, satanic practice. And he told us the word you should meditate on is the word maranatha as your mantra two times a day, 20 minutes a day. So you are just repeating it over and over again. Maranatha, Maranatha, Maranatha, Maranatha. And then you’re emptying your mind. This was a Christian leader, an evangelical Christian leader, telling us at this Christian college to do that. And I went up and asked him. I was a brand-new Christian. I thought, that doesn’t sound right. Jesus said in Matthew six, don’t repetitively keep doing things mindlessly like the pagans do, right? Christians should not have mantras. Okay, we’re going to get a little more controversial here. You shouldn’t be doing any kind of visualization. That is of an occultic nature, because then you’re creating non-reality. And yet Philippians 4:8 says to meditate on truth, which means reality, right? I would say that Christians shouldn’t be involved in acupuncture. I’ll blame it on David Jeremiah. He’s a great pastor down in San Diego. He’s written extensively on this. So if you have an issue with me—but why would you say that, pastor?! I thought it was medicine. I thought it was science. It helped my headaches, pastor!
Derek: I’ve heard those testimonies.
Cliff: I am very familiar with acupuncture, Derek. Did you know I used to do acupuncture? I’ve tried it. I had a good friend at the previous church, and he was a doctor and a dentist. But he was also a licensed practitioner of acupuncture. He was Japanese. He educated me on how acupuncture works and all. And you can read the literature and the medical journals and the scientific journals. It’s all based on pseudoscience and the spiritual meridians that run through your soul and your body. They’re called meridians. They are invisible spirits that run east and west, north and south, through your body. And when you stick a pen in your body, it redirects those spirits in your body. It is completely based on ancient Chinese religion.
Derek: I’m just going to say it: it’s not scientific. Because that’s very clearly religious and spiritual. That has nothing to do with a scientific understanding of the human body.
Cliff: And he tried to convince me to do it. He said, Cliff, don’t you know that you have meridians running through your body? I said, no, after the way you explained it. Show me some real scientific literature that verifies that. There is none. So some Christians get mad at me when I say avoid acupuncture, but I know what I’m talking about. I tried it, and I studied it. I think Christians should avoid celebrating Halloween in illegitimate ways. I was at a Christian school where I worked at one point previously, and the principal of the preschool, the day before Halloween, she had Halloween decorations all over the Christian preschool. And some of her decorations were witches—silhouettes of witches on brooms and ghosts, etc. And I inquired about that and I said, I don’t think you should have these. And I told her why. I showed her the book of Deuteronomy. She agreed. She took them down. I didn’t say take all your decorations down. She had pumpkins. God made pumpkins. So you want to leave a pumpkin on the wall? That’s fine. God made pumpkins. But not witches. Christians should boycott glamorizing death in all of its forms. Maybe Stephen King books, because that’s all he talks about. It’s morose; it’s unbiblical. The Bible is clear about that. Death is an enemy, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians. Why celebrate it and glamorize it?
Derek: I remember years ago reading Newsweek. I was getting my car repaired. It’s a very vivid memory. I was getting my car repaired and I was reading a Newsweek or Time magazine, one of the two that they have there, and reading about this lady who is a photographer of death. She takes pictures of skeletons of dead bodies, and what she does is she tries to make death beautiful. And I was a youth pastor at the time and, you know, only Christian for about five or so years. But realizing that you can’t make death beautiful. No, that is wrong. It can’t happen. Death is an intruder. Death is bad. It can’t be celebrated. It is the result of sin and God’s judgment upon it. It’s meant to be terrible and ugly and gross and scary. So I just remember reading that going, this isn’t right. It’s an impossibility.
Cliff: Because Paul explicitly says in 1 Corinthians 15, death is an enemy, right? And also, death, in its essence, is the utter and ultimate defacement of the image of God in a human being. We should boycott anything that violates Philippians 4:8-9, and those virtues that we think upon. Number 11: we should boycott gray area issues that violate our conscience. Romans 14:23. Now, we can’t require other Christians to boycott gray area issues that I’m hypersensitive to. It has to be personal, right? It’s a personal choice. So there’s not a mandate for all Christians, right? It’s for you. And you might change over time. You might inform and grow and mature in your conscience. And you don’t have to boycott that anymore because you’re not violating your conscience in that gray area, because it’s actually not a sinful issue. And then number 12 (also from Romans 14:22): we should boycott or abstain from gray areas that cause our fellow Christian brother to stumble. [Number] 13: we should boycott illegitimate beggars who affiliate with the church. That’s 2 Thessalonians 3:11. Idol bodies going around begging people for money, and not working because they’re lazy, and they’re in the church. And Paul says, don’t. In other words, don’t give them money and food if they’re being lazy, which is a form of boycotting.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: [Number] 14. This is my last one here. Oh, we already addressed that one. That’s my list of things we should boycott. And then I have a list of—if I could go through quickly—things we should not boycott.
Derek: Yes. Let me ask you a quick question, though. Just for clarity’s sake. Number two that you mentioned—number one was overt acts of sin. Number two was those who promote sin. And my question there was going to be in light of 1 Corinthians 5, and this where some of the difficulty can come in. But in light of 1 Corinthians 5, where we’re not to judge unbelievers, what does this look like in terms of boycotting those who promote sin? Because you were referencing Romans 13:2. So this is in reference to unbelievers who are actively promoting sin, and throwing it in our face. What does it look like practically to boycott them?
Cliff: Yeah. Hence the very important requirement to distinguish a nuance, because the same Paul who wrote 1 Corinthians 5 also wrote 1 Corinthians 6, and in 1 Corinthians 6 he actually gives a list of sin or sinners who are not going to enter the kingdom of God, right? Those who engage in sexual immorality and homosexuality—they will not enter the kingdom of God. Do not associate with them. Well, wait a minute, Paul. You just said we don’t boycott unbelievers, right? There’s a context. Then it comes down to the context of say, someone who is a practicing homosexual, and there’s context and balance, and you have to think it through. And if they’re practicing and promoting “gay is okay” in the church, that is to be boycotted. If this is just your next-door neighbor who’s gay, you don’t boycott him in terms of just a regular old social civil relationship or even trying to build up a rapport with him. But you don’t engage in his practices. You don’t go to his orgies when he has them on Friday nights and invites you. You boycott that overt practice of the sin. But you continue to pray for him and witness to him. You’ve got boundaries by which you’re not going to cross over a line, which is the line to violate God’s call to holiness.
Derek: Yeah. And when celebrities, for example, are promoting sin and advocating for it in whatever venue they are—on the news or on social media or whatever, you can speak out against it. You can make sure that other Christians recognize that you are not endorsing what that person says, and in fact, you’re in strong disagreement with it, and things like that. Well, at the same time, you’re not saying that if you were to meet that person personally, that you wouldn’t share the gospel with them and evangelize them and that they don’t deserve their salvation.
Cliff: It’s an important question and point you raise because, if you only had 1 Corinthians 5, you would think, oh, okay, we just kind of let unbelievers just do whatever they want all the time, right? Well, no, that’s not the end of the story. That’s not the complete story. Not even close. There are things we proactively do. There’s actually proactive boycotting things we need to do as we engage with unbelievers in the world. And one is evangelizing them and calling them to repent, which makes them angry, actually—pointing out their sin. So we have a prophetic ministry. The church does, and every Christian does, too. If we want to write a letter to the CNN headline guy who bashes Christians to the world, I have my right to speak out against that. A public sin requires a public rebuke or boycott. So we are not completely passive in our engagement with the world and let them just roll over us.
Derek: All right, that’s really, really helpful, Cliff. I want to give you time to go ahead and tell us what we should not boycott, and we can go ahead and do that in the next episode. We’ll head into episode number three. That’ll give us plenty of time there.
Cliff: And did you have any others, Derek, on the first ten, or was that it?
Derek: No. I wanted to ask the practical question about, specifically, how to do number two. You answered number six, which was helpful. How to boycott compromised Christian ministries and churches. That that should seem clear. You’re not going to attend that church. You’re probably not going to encourage people to attend that church, in terms of boycotting compromised churches. You mentioned how to boycott heretics and false teachers. You don’t have anything to do with them. You don’t allow them anywhere in the church. In fact, if they are within the church, you rebuke them and send them out and so on. We’ve already talked about unrepentant Christians. So all of this, I think, we covered what I wanted to in terms of how do we do this practically? And I think we said a number of things on how to do that.
Cliff: And I just want to reiterate the challenge in this, because I used an example of Cru, just because it’s been in the headlines recently and well-known high profile Christian leaders are calling Cru to repent of their woke agenda. But the question is to what level or at what point do we begin boycotting a Christian ministry? That’s not always easy to decide. What’s the tipping point? What is the sin they have to commit? Where I go from my allegiance and support to now I’m not going to support them anymore. That’s not always easy to determine, right? So I supported Campus Crusade for years, in a lot of different ways. I have even spoken at Campus Crusade events. I got saved through the ministry of Campus Crusade.
Derek: So did I. Allan Fleming was his name.
Cliff: Wow. But over the years we’ve seen compromise to a level or degree that I think gets to a point where, you know—what if they don’t change or recant of this view or this position? I’m going to have to boycott them. I can’t support them. And then when people ask me—because people ask me all the time as a pastor—should I give to this ministry or that ministry or whatever? And they’re getting to a point where it’s like, no, that’s not a good use of money, right? You know, give first to your church, or maybe give only to your church. That’s safer.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: So you’ve really got to think on a kind of case by case [basis when it comes to] applying a lot of these.
Derek: All right. Excellent. Well, when we come back in our next episode, we are going to talk about what Christians should not boycott. And then I believe, Cliff, you also have a series of questions that you want to ask. So we’ll do that. It should be fun. Come back for our third part of this discussion on boycotting. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord and His word.