“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.’” ~ Jesus

That passage is Matthew 7:21-23. Matthew 5 through 7 are commonly known as “The Sermon on the Mount,” and the above passage comes at the end of that sermon. If you grew up in the church, you’ve probably HEARD of the Sermon on the Mount before, but you might not be too familiar with what it actually says. It doesn’t get a whole lot of press in American christianity these days… The sort of christianity that claims to follow Jesus while voting for fascists and cheering for the building of concentration camps to round up all the immigrants and aliens who Jesus (as well as the entirety of the Bible) calls us to love. Sure, they’ll spend thousands of dollars on poverty tourism mission trips, but if those people come on THIS side of the border, they’d better plan on Alligator Alcatraz/Auschwitz. No, American christians are not very big fans of the red words in the Bible these days. They’ll fight tooth & nail to get those 10 Commandments put up in schools, but the actual words of Jesus in the Bible have become a little too “woke” for them.

The Sermon on the Mount starts with “The Beatitudes,” which are basically Jesus saying that the people the world looks down on are actually the ones who are BLESSED: The poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the spat-upon. The second half of Chapter 5 ends with the “You have HEARD that is was said… But *I* tell you” section. Murder? Don’t have a heart full go anger. Adultery? Cut out your lustful eyes if they cause you to sin (notice he didn’t tell women to change what they’re wearing). Turn the other cheek… Love your enemies… All the parts that no one in the Republican Party is trying to put up on the walls in public schools. Jesus is basically talking to people who are concerned with following Moses’ Law, but Jesus says “I am the fulfillment of that law” and instead tells them that it needs to be less about the letter of the law and more of an internal transformation.

Chapter 6 is Jesus talking about sincerity and a critique of the hypocrisy of outward acts of piety vs. inward righteousness. You know—all the stuff about not giving, fasting, and praying in public just to be seen…

Seriously, if you haven’t read Matthew 5-7 in a while you should. There’s some good stuff there… All of it starkly contrary in every way to the politics of evangelicals and “christian conservatives.” And I realize I’m probably losing the attention of some of you with all this Bible talk, but Chapter 7 talks about judging others, The Golden Rule, and right before the verses I shared at the beginning of this post, Jesus gives a warning about false teachers. Which leads us to the point of this post…

So if you haven’t heard yet, John MacArthur, the influential evangelical pastor of California’s Grace Community Church (quite possibly the most ironically named church in history), has died at age 86. A Facebook acquaintance of mine made a post that said “Praise God for Pastor John MacArthur’s life and devotion to the gospel of Jesus!” I responded with a comment similar to the title of this blog post, and the poster promptly deleted it… So I figured I’d write a short eulogy here.

John MacArthur died a hero to white, bearded theobros mired in reformed theology. He hated all of the things that they hate, and his longevity and financial success gave an air of legitimacy to their own theology of exclusion and supremacy. MANY of you probably have no idea who he was. You may have heard about him during the COVID pandemic when he made national news by suing the State of California for infringing his religious freedom by not letting him hold church services while a deadly & mysterious virus was killing people by the thousands each day. But here’s some things you may NOT know about him:

• He was rabidly anti-social justice. He was the lead signer of an anti-social justice statement signed by about 4400 pastors and leaders (all men), and he described christians working for social justice as one of the most dangerous heresies the church faces. Never mind all that stuff Jesus said about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or caring for the sick. Sure, his message was good news to the poor, setting the captive free, and proclaiming freedom for the oppressed… But what does any of that nonsense have to do with “SOCIAL JUSTICE,” amirite??
• He said Martin Luther King, Jr. was “not a christian at all.” He called him “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel.” This one doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to me. When MLK dreamt of a time when “every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together,” that probably doesn’t sound great to someone like John MacArthur, who enjoys and has grown accustomed to the view from one of his three multi-million dollar mansions.
• He said that slavery is not immoral. And yeah, this one kind of follows naturally from the one above. But you read that right. He was quoted as saying, “Slavery is not immoral. God allowed it. Slavery is not a sin.” He said he thinks “It’s strange that we have such an aversion to slavery, because historically there have been abuses.” He rationalizes that statement by saying, “There have been abuses in marriage, and we don’t have an aversion to marriage.” So gross.
• He denies the reality of mental illness. In interviews, he said that there is “no such thing” as PTSD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or ADHD. That stuff is just SIN, y’all. And all those medications for those mental illnesses just work to turn kids into criminals and drug addicts. And to be fair, he said this when he was in his 80’s, but his followers defend him. Beth Moore (whose ministry he invalidated because she is a woman) is much more gracious than I am capable of being. She said, “I’ve had several very serious conversations with my daughters and my board concerning my public voice in my aging when filters naturally thin and we’re at greater risk of saying more than we should. Please love and respect him enough to sift what should and shouldn’t be publicized.” Basically, John MacArthur thought that prayer, church pressure, and “biblical counseling” were the answer to every problem. Rachel Klinger Cain talks about this rotten fruit here…

• He was a giant hypocrite. He told other pastors not to speak at conferences that had women speakers… even though he did that himself. He also disqualified other leaders in the church based on the behavior of their children, even though his own son was found guilty of defrauding clients in a $16 million investment scheme and forced to pay $367,000 in penalties to the SEC.
• He believed that “empowering women makes weak men.“ Yeah, I know there are plenty of complementarian pastors running around, but it doesn’t make it any less gross. When MacArthur was on a panel and asked about pastor Beth Moore (the same Beth Moore who offered him grace after his disgusting and false comments about mental illness), his response to hearing her name was two words: “Go home.” He preached that “Women are to maintain submission to men in all churches in all times” and that “Women pastors and women preachers are the most obvious evidence of churches rebelling against the Bible.” Just writing these words is like taking a time machine to an era when I am throwing up in my mouth all the time…
• He excommunicated a mother for refusing to take back her abusive husband. Read those words again. The woman, Eileen Gray, had filed for a separation and a protective order because her husband was physically abusive to her. She later found out that he was also sexually abusing their children. She reported the abuse to elders at GCC. The abuser, David Gray, taught Bible and music at MacArthur’s Grace Community Church. John MacArthur ordered the church to publicly shame her and disfellowship. The associate pastor told Eileen that she should model how to “suffer for Jesus” by staying with the man who was kicking the shit out of her and her kids. That same man, by the way, is currently serving a sentence of 21 years to life in a California prison for aggravated child molestation, corporal injury to a child, and child abuse. You can read the whole tragic, infuriating story (and even see video of his shaming her from the pulpit) HERE.
• And OF COURSE he supported donald trump. On a phone call with trump, he told him that “any real, true believer is going to be on your side in this election.” I mean, duh, right? Was there ever any doubt that a man who demonizes calls for social justice, vilifies Martin Luther King, Jr., justifies slavery, denies science, practices hypocrisy, fights against women’s rights, protects abusive men, and was seemingly devoid of compassion and just consistently wrong on every issue was going to throw his support behind a monster like trump? (Of course JM is also hugely anti-LGBTQIA+ as well. It goes without saying that someone whose bad theology and level of consciousness don’t allow him to see something as established as racial injustice or the evil of misogyny is ALSO going to treat marriage equality and LGBTQIA+ rights as some sort of demonic plot).

And right now, some of you might be thinking about saying to me, “What about ‘Judge not, lest YE be judged?’ Aren’t YOU judging John MacArthur right now??” Yes. I am. I’m judging him. I think it’s right and good to draw attention to people in power—especially people with large platforms—who preach hatred… Who practice hypocrisy… Who—with their words and their actions—do HARM. And I’m not trying to compare myself to Jesus here, but if we’re supposed to follow his example, Jesus saves his harshest critiques for church leaders who SHOULD know better.

I mean, who knows? Maybe John MacArthur is a victim too? Maybe he’s a VICTIM of the sort of harmful theology that refuses to acknowledge any sort of progress in the Bible… the sort of theology that has to believe that if someone living in an incredibly misogynistic, barbaric time wrote the words “Women shouldn’t be leaders” in a letter, and then a group of men 300 years later decided to include that letter in the Biblical canon, then we HAVE to believe that those words are true and commanded of us for all time… otherwise the Bible means nothing! I mean, his dad was a preacher too. We have no idea the kind of trauma he lived through… then to be told that PTSD is just sin and disobedience, prayer is the only antidote, and if you disagree, you are going to burn in hell forever?!? Yikes! I can see how something like that could totally turn you into a giant ass and a flaming theological turd in a paper bag on the doorstep of the christian church. Now kind of feel bad for him and his family.

Nah, I can’t feel THAT bad for them… At least his family is inheriting all that cash from all those expensive, leather-bound Bibles he sold with his name on them.

I don’t know. I didn’t know the guy. I’m sure—like all of us—he had some good things and some bad things. He was a good speaker. For a preacher who became a multi-millionaire, he seemed critical of the Prosperity Gospel, so I guess that’s something? He was certainly passionate… but then, so were nearly all of the world’s villains. I have done a LOT of research for this post, and watched hours and hours of videos, and the more I learn, the worse he seems. They called him “A lion of the pulpit.” I could see them engraving those words on his headstone. But if I was in charge of carving the words, the epitaph would read, “Here lies John MacArthur. He embodied nearly everything that is wrong with the church.” I just keep thinking about him saying those words: “EMPOWERING WOMEN MAKES WEAK MEN.” Jesus. These are the words of a man who is just so profoundly broken. And scared. And pathetic. And very ironically… So weak.

I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but the world is a better place without his hateful preaching in it. One of the reasons they say we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead is because they can’t defend themselves… But that didn’t stop MacArthur from attacking Martin Luther King, Jr. a few years ago. MacArthur himself said (when he called The Gospel Coalition “woke” for honoring MLK and my eyes rolled back so far my retinas detached) that “You don’t honor a non-believer who misrepresented Christ and everything about the gospel.” John MacArthur’s legacy is one of abuse, hatred, and harm…May his legacy die with him. He’s the kind of person who reads a Bible verse that says, “you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you,” and he feels compelled to believe that being hated by the world somehow proves he is loved by God. But all it really proves is that he was wrong about so much and cruel to so many. He was the worst kind of christian: That brand of christian whose monstrous, untrustworthy, compassionless theology proclaims and professes an equally monstrous, untrustworthy, and compassionless god. And what’s worse, his preaching skills and large following allowed his perverse theology to do more harm than most. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a name of someone who’s done more to harm American Christianity than John MacArthur. Sure, trump has done huge amounts of harm to the church in America… But hateful preachers like MacArthur are the reason a trump presidency was ever even possible.

Perhaps he just didn’t possess the intelligence or imagination to free himself from the trappings of unchallenged reformed theology. Think about it: Jesus shows up and tells the Jewish leadership that their sacrifices, rituals, and rule-following are not what God cares about… telling them “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The Bible describes our safety & salvation as something God gives freely to us, rather than something we earn… Paul says it’s “so that no one can boast.” But the worst parts of Reformed theology turn that free gift into something they must gate-keep with everything they have. Where the old dysfunctional religion thought their right actions & sacrifices are what justify them before God, the new dysfunctional religion have replaced those idols with the idea that it’s their right theology & beliefs that justify them before God. But the Spirit of Jesus still is desperately seeking MERCY. It tells us that the best way to love God is to love our neighbor. And it cries out: “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.” Spending 50+ years in ministry and missing something this central? What a tragedy… If hell was real, that kind of thing would make a person a real good candidate for a face-full of “Depart from me, I never knew you.” Thank God it’s not. I like to think that right now, God is explaining to John MacArthur all of the many places he got it so wrong over his many years… All of the people he hurt… All of the times he “did not do it to one of the least of these.” And maybe John responds with profound regret and a genuine and anguished apology. That sounds WAY better than a lake of fire. One can hope…

What a weird post. It’s been a while since I’ve written something like this. There’s such a big part of me that wants nothing to do with Christianity anymore… but there’s another part of me that feels like so many of this country’s problems could be solved by correcting people’s harmful, broken, bad theology. This one took a lot out of me. But I was also so energized by a new supporter on PATREON. Her name is Stacy, and she has generously decided to support this blog and my writing by becoming a patron. Thank you, Stacy! Thank you also for the good reporting of Julie Roys and The Roys Report. And thank you to the brilliant Rachel Klinger Cain for what she does. You can follow her on TikTok HERE. If you’d like to support what I do here, you can do that ON PATREON, by leaving a tip ON PAYPAL or by Venmoing me at chris-boeskool, or you can follow the things I post on Bluesky or on this blog’s Facebook page (until something less evil than Facebook comes along). THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!