Christian Research Journal Reads Episode 145: The Theological Mess in the Moxie of Jen Hatmaker

This is Episode 145 of Christian Research Journal Reads. This is an audio version of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL article, “The Theological Mess in the Moxie of Jen Hatmaker” by Anne Kennedy. This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 42, number 2 (2019). https://www.equip.org/articles/the-theological-mess-in-the-moxie-of-jen-hatmaker/


It was accompanied by Postmodern Realities Podcast Episode 140 The Theological “Mess” in the “Moxie” of Jen Hatmaker. 


This podcast presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles. As the flagship publication of the Christian Research Institute, the Journal seeks to equip followers of Christ to think and to live Christianly—to exercise truth and experience life. Truth, especially essential Christian doctrine, forms the basis for how we live our lives in Christ. As the apostle Paul instructed Timothy in 1 Tim. 4:16, “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”The Christian Research Journal enjoyed a print incarnation of almost 45 years. Now exclusively an online publication, the Journal consists of thousands of free articles. We hope that through these audio articles you are not only equipped to proclaim and defend your faith but that as a disciple you also draw closer to Christ in your walk with Him.  You can find the written version of each article that is an episode of Christian Research Journal Reads at the website of the Christian Research Institute, equip.org. All Christian Research Journal articles at equip.org are completely free and do not require a subscription and are not under a paywall.All episodes will be available at the following podcast platforms with more being added daily! You can help spread the word about this new podcast by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on and telling others!You can view off our Website at the at this link and off our Journal main page. 



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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is episode one hundred and forty five of the
Christian Research Journal Reads Podcast. The Theological Mess in the
Moxie of Jen Hatmaker by Anne Kennedy. This article first
appeared in the print edition of the Christian Research Journal,
Volume forty two, number two in twenty nineteen. The Christian

(00:28):
Research Journal Reads Podcast presents audio versions of Christian Research
Journal articles. To read the full text of this article
and its documentation, please go to equip dot org. That's
e qu ip dot org. The Theological Mess in the

(00:49):
Moxie of Jen Hatmaker by Anne Kennedy. Of all the
public conversations from conservative, evangelical to progressive, Jen Hatmakers is
one of the most culturally appealing. Her trademark breezy well
time humor penetrates to the heart of the overwhelmed American
woman as she gathers into her tribe and admonishes to

(01:12):
keep up the hard work which will, by her gritty love,
save the world. This is hat Maker's gospel. As you
modeled your life on Jesus and love as inclusively as
He did, you will heal yourself, your family, and the world.
This gospel is delivered in a package of can do
No nonsense American pragmatism. Hat Maker rose to prominence in

(01:37):
May twenty thirteen with a viral blog post hilariously decrying
the trials of the exasperating end of the school year.
This led to an HGTV home remodeling show and her
New York Times bestseller for the Love, Fighting for Grace
in a World of Impossible Standards. Thomas Nelson twenty fifteen

(02:00):
joined the conference circuit and endeared herself to mainstream feminine
evangelicalism with her insightful, funny, and unobjectable Bible teaching. She
was well positioned then to rock the evangelical world with
her apparent about face embrace of the LGBT agenda. In
an interview with Jonathan Merrick in twenty sixteen, when asked

(02:23):
by Marrit if she believed LGBT relationships could be holy,
she said quote, I do. I've seen too much pain
and rejection at the intersection of the gay community and
the church end quote. After the interview, LifeWay pulled her
books and social media drew up for battle holiness without God.

(02:44):
Taking her cue from Barbara Brown Taylor, hat Maker confuses
biblical holiness to be set apart from what is common
and sinful with its theological opposite, she writes, quote, but
if we absorb the full council of Scripture and acknowledge
that God sincerely loves us and gave us a whole

(03:06):
world of gifts and joys, we discover many secular things
we love are actually sacred end quote. Fans of her
weekly podcast For the Love will occasionally hear her say
quote that is holy end quote. When a guest describes
the moon rising in the evening, or a young man

(03:27):
rejects the biblical standard of sexuality, or a mother holds
high her sign at a gay pride parade to give hugs.
In for the Love, she applies the word church to
her Sunday evening dinner gatherings. In of mess and moxy,
she writes, quote, making your home pretty is nice, but

(03:51):
making it nourishing is holy. Sister, paint that chair or
hang that mirror, sure, but for the love, don't wait
until everything is done before putting on a pot of
chili and inviting new friends over for football. End quote.
All these disparate human actions and natural phenomena are lumped

(04:12):
together under the label's holy, sanctuary, altar and church. By contrast,
Biblical holiness is grounded in God's otherness, that he is
set apart and utterly opposed to all that is sinful.
God is described in Isaiah six three as thrice holy. Isaiah,

(04:33):
a sinner, cannot stand in his presence. The chasm between
man's common sinful state and God's holiness cannot be bridged
by human effort, and Angel seares Isaiah's lips to cleanse
him and set him apart so that he can speak Moreover,
Jesus carries forward the old Covenant command quote you shall

(04:55):
be holy as I am holy end quote Leviticus nineteen
two into the new with the clear but impossible quote,
you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is
perfect end quote Matthew five forty eight. And in Luke
five eight, Peter expresses the fear Isaiah knew. He sees that,

(05:16):
apart from atonement, God's holiness means his death, and yet
he is in the boat with the one who purges
sinful hearts. By including every heartwarming thought or action with
the theological boundary of holiness, hat Maker shifts the meaning
away from its divine origin and onto the intentions and

(05:39):
feelings of the human person. There is no longer any
meaningful distance between God and humanity, between the Creator and
the created. This shift undermines the biblical category of wrath,
which is central for understanding the Cross. The Gospel without

(05:59):
the hat maker articulates God's sealvific plan this way, she says, quote,
he will send Jesus to change all the rules and
set people free in every way. By word and deed,
example and instruction, Jesus would teach his followers to love
the outcast and the poor, to embrace their communities and

(06:21):
each other. He would give them distinct marching orders generosity, humility, grace, inclusion, courage,
and tell them it all boils down to two things,
loving God and people. The plan had Jesus go on
and on about what it means to be blessed in
this life, making sure he included the upside down stuff, meekness, mourning, community, simplicity, kindness.

(06:51):
He gave honor to a bunch of folks in the
right headspace, like kids and widows and outsiders. He stayed
at parties and diday oh, and Jesus forgave his enemies
while he was hanging on the cross. Just to be
clear about how forgiveness worked pragmatically end quote. The human

(07:12):
dilemma then is one of operating out of wrong categories
what she calls quote headspace end quote. Having correctly identified
the law, love God and love others, the solution she
offers is not then to turn and plead for forgiveness
from the one who gave the standard. Rather, the task

(07:34):
is to reevaluate one's own life and work harder to
keep the command. The law is untainable because it is
centered in the subjective human feelings of empathy and forgiveness.
Hat Maker's own journey to right thinking began when she
first genuinely encountered systematic injustices of hunger, poverty, and racism.

(08:00):
As part of her quest, she developed a test for
biblical interpretation and theological thinking. Quote there is a biblical
benchmark I now use. End quote, She writes. Quote. We
will refer to this criterion for every hard question, big
idea topic, assessment of our own obedience, every should or

(08:24):
should not, and will or will not. We ascribe to
God every theological sound bite here it is if it
isn't also true for a poor, single Christian mom in Haiti,
it isn't true. End quote. The relative goodness of the
Haitian mother is taken as the measure of truth itself.

(08:45):
All truth is determined by the needs, desires, and victim
status of the oppressed. The Cross, in this light represents
the kind of empathetic forgiveness that one human person can
extend to another out of rite knowledge on the one hand,
and inclusivity on the other. She describes the work of

(09:06):
the Cross this way quote, Jesus permanently made this sanctuary safe,
pure and accessible to all. He didn't lessen its holiness,
but rather raised us to Heaven's standards through the Cross. Jesus,
through the church doors, opened the entire world and bid
us come. Obviously, this entire miracle was Jesus doing his life,

(09:28):
his death, his resurrection, his dreams for this earth end quote.
Jesus simply picks someone up when he has fallen down.
There is no reference to the measure of God's wrath
that he took on himself in order to redeem the
sinful and unholy person. For the apostle Paul, the Cross
is central not only to understanding the work of God

(09:51):
in the world, but also to reading scripture. He articulates
the work of the cross this way. Quote Christ read
deemed us from the curse of the law by becoming
a curse for us. End quote Galatians three thirteen and
again quote for our sake, he made him to be sin,

(10:11):
who knew no sin, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God. End quote second Corinthians five
twenty one and again quote for I delivered to you
as of first importance what I also received. That Christ
died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that
he was buried, that he was raised on the third day,

(10:34):
in accordance with the scriptures. End quote one Corinthians fifteen
three and four. The cross is good news. There Jesus
endured to its uttermost the wrath of the Father. He
didn't just forgive, he absorbed the penalty that was owed
to the one who had sinned. This news is central

(10:56):
to the whole witness of scripture, traced out from the
first chapter of Genesis to the last of the Book
of Revelation. Everything points forward and backward to the work
that Jesus accomplished for the redemption of his creation. So
far from measuring a human reading of the Bible by

(11:17):
the experiences of a human person. The Christian looks to
the Cross to understand the holiness and love of God
as it is articulated throughout human history. For hat Maker,
the Cross is about acceptance rather than atonement. But without atonement,
love is robbed of its glory and its power. Love

(11:40):
as acceptance quote love end quote, writes hat Maker. Quote
is a genuine solution. It provides the lighted path to forgiveness,
which sets everyone free. Love makes us brave, pulls up
seats to the table, refuses bigotry and attack injustice. It

(12:01):
is our most powerful spiritual tool. Do not underestimate it
as the solution to almost everything that is broken end quote.
Having redefined holiness as common human work and emptied the
crost of its atoning power, hat Maker twists the love
of God into a new law, and one, if possible,

(12:24):
more burdensome than before. Love narrowed down to the realm
of human feeling and intention, becomes the vessel into which
she pours all her hopes. She writes, quote, we can
stand rightly before God when love leads and compels us.
We need not fear that He will say you love

(12:44):
too greatly, too liberally, too generously too. Shockingly, the entire
story of God reveals a vast, encompassing campaign to love
humanity all the way home. End quote. Hat Maker tethers
love to feelings, feelings that have the power to heal

(13:05):
the human person can quote love humanity all the way home.
End quote. Love is not the action of pouring one's
self out for the good of another. It is a
spiritual force, a deep feeling that draws others into an
accepting community where they can flourish. She writes, quote, Let's

(13:25):
flourish under Paul's instruction. Do your best to present yourself
to God as one approved, a worker who does not
need to be ashamed. You are approved, You are a worker.
Your place is secure. If not you, who who else
will deliver hope to your people? Who else will embrace

(13:48):
the weary and lonely? Who else will take responsibility for
your people and your place? You will? End quote not Jesus, you,
hat Maker incur urages the Christian to pull herself together
and just love. If she is plagued by shame, it
is not because she has rebelled against God. If she

(14:09):
is persecuted by doubt, it is not because she is
cut off by sin. From the light of the truth.
If she is overwhelmed, it is not because she has
failed to live a life centered in the mercy of
the Cross. She simply hasn't learned the tricks of boundaries,

(14:29):
season and self acceptance. The solution is not repentance and faith,
but to love herself, do good to herself, protect herself,
and expend herself. Encouragement as salvation in a world increasingly
characterized by cruelty, isolation, and impossible standards. Hat makers encouraging

(14:54):
socially forgiving humor is a balm for thousands of burdened,
struggling women. Her let yourself off the hook message, when
joined to one of personal empowerment and feelings recast as
world changing actions, is intoxicating for the belagered, helpless, strung

(15:15):
out soul. But in rejecting the Biblical definition of holiness
and sin, her human centered gospel of feelings and works
is not able to provide a deep and satisfying answer
to the question of evil in the world, nor provide
a Christian view of suffering, nor ultimately to rescue the
very person hat maker is so anxious to encourage. Thank

(15:40):
you for listening to another episode from the Christian Research
Journal Reads podcast, which provides audio articles of Christian Research
Journal articles. If you go to equip dot org, you
will find a brand new article for the Christian Research
Journal published weekly. In addition, please subscribe to are other podcasts.

(16:01):
Wherever you find your favorite podcast, you will find the
Christian Research Journal Reads podcast, the Postmodern Realities podcast, which
features interviews with Christian Research Journal authors, our flagship podcast,
The Bible answer Man Broadcast, and the Hank Unplugged podcast,

(16:23):
where cri I President Hank Canagraph takes you out of
the studio and into his study to engage in in depth,
free flowing, essential Christian conversations on critical issues with some
of the most interesting and informative people on the planet.
At equipp dot org, you will also find a lot

(16:43):
of resources to equip you, including many thousands of Christian
Research Journal articles. That's e quip dot rg.