Wheat and Chaff

Cleaning up the Mess

2012-01-14T14:11:00.002-07:00

I have a box of old floppy disks that I keep in my office because Allison (age 16 months) loves to play with them. She comes in and takes them all out and spreads them around the room. They are brightly colored plastic and just the right size for her. I haven't used floppy disks in years, so I don't mind if she destroys them, which she does. Once she takes them all out of the box, she doesn't like to play with them anymore, so she leaves, and I put them all back in the box so she can play with them again.

The kids do the same thing with their playroom- they wreck it. They spread their toys all over the floor, and then they don't like to play in their playroom any more, so they go make messes somewhere else. But once we started training them to clean their playroom (an ongoing process), they get more enjoyment out of it. We used to clean it for them. But then they never learn. They will not clean their room as long as we are cleaning it for them. Even if we don't clean it, they still don't clean it themselves. They just stop using it and go junk up some other room in the house.

Kids will not do the hard thing until you force them to. Famous financial analyst John Mauldin, who has six kids, says the same thing about teenagers- they do not make hard choices until they have to. The longer parents clean their kids' messes up for them, the longer kids will defer growing up. They will still be children when they're 25. The problem is, that the older kids get, the bigger their messes are. A teenager can make a much bigger mess of their lives than a 16-month-old can. So what normally happens is that parents clean up their kids' messes as long as they're able, and then the kids have to deal with it themselves, when the messes are truly large. We're trying to teach our kids to deal with their messes earlier before they get unmanageable. There are also important political implications of this truth- because now the government cleans up people's messes, allowing them to defer maturity even longer.

But as I was talking to my wife about this, she observed that this should change the way we view hard times in our own lives. Maybe a hardship that comes on us suddenly should be viewed as God telling us that we are going to have to stop playing and clean up our room. My children always view it as a disaster when we order them to clean up their room NOW or ELSE, but once they get to it, they usually actually start enjoying it, and they definitely enjoy the results- a playroom that is much more fun and enjoyable to be in.

Sometimes hard times come on us without any relationship to mistakes we've made. Sometimes God just brings tests into His people's lives to build their trust. But sometimes sinful habits cause consequences in our lives and God forces change. Sometimes our response to that is to try to avoid change as long as possible. But we ought to learn to view it as a great mercy and an opportunity for growth, to finally get our room cleaned up so we can start enjoying it the way it's supposed to be.

Even though change seems painful, most of the block is just mental. So many people talk of overcoming sinful habits and afterwards say, "I'm so much happier now! Why didn't I do that years before?" The drunk doesn't know how to live without the bottle, but once he dries up he doesn't know how he lived with it. It is a great and merciful God that brings hard times into our lives to force us to confront sin and deal with it. We ought not resent God for taking away such things, but to thank Him for preventing us from destroying ourselves.

We Are Watching the Tower of Babel Fall, Again

2011-11-25T12:01:00.001-07:00

The EU was about one thing from the beginning, and one thing only- the desire to overcome the curse of God and achieve peace for themselves, without submitting to the rule of Christ.

It is difficult for Americans to appreciate how deeply scarring the two world wars were for Europe. Much of their land was bombed, their families and homes killed, monstrous atrocities committed on all sides, their economies wrecked. They desired at all costs to avoid this fate ever again. After the war, they set about the project of European Union. This project was never workable, and was widely criticized on exactly the grounds that we now see it failing. In this article by Danien Hannan, all the faults of the European Union are laid out well, as well as the fact that all of this was predicted by many from the beginning.

But I think Hannan gets something not quite right. He says,

Why? What were they thinking? If you listen carefully towhat Euro-integrationists were saying when the single currency was launched,you hear a subtext. It's not so much that they liked the euro, it's that theydisliked the people who opposed it.

He says that the European Union is not truly an economic or political project, but a tribal one. Here he starts to get close to the real issue. But in his article, he quotes Angela Merkel saying something that shows us the real issue at heart.

Nobody should take for granted another 50 years of peace andprosperity in Europe, and that's why I say, if the eurofails, Europe fails. We have a historical obligation: toprotect by all means Europe's unification process begunby our forefathers after centuries of hatred and bloodshed.

They are terrified of war. Rightly so- war is terrifying. And so they continue down this path despite the fact that reality has vetoed their dreams. Or even more specifically, God has. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh (Psalm 2) as they attempt to seize the benefits of the kingdom of God by force.

They want peace, but the reason they will not have peace is that they are at war with the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. As long as that war continues, they can never have peace. They are like the false prophets of Isaiah's day crying out, "Peace, Peace" when there is no peace.

Without the Christian perspective this can never be understood. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the agents of God's will, destroying all those who rebel against the rule of King Jesus . One of those horsemen is famine, which we are experiencing just a little bit of in the western world right now, as our foolish dreams are destroying our prosperity. Another one of those horsemen is war, and that crimson rider will no doubt be making his appearance soon. Angela Merkel knows it instinctively, and is terrified, which is why she still desperately pursues her dream. This is why those pushing European Union will continue to do so even as it becomes more and more obvious that it is hopeless. This is why the socialists in our own country will continue to push their dream here. This is why those pushing the increase of the power of the state will never stop, no matter how badly they fail, no matter how thoroughly their lies are exposed. They will never stop, because the only option is to face the judgment of God, and this they cannot do.

We cannot enjoy the benefits of the kingdom of God, one of which is peace, unless we submit to the ruler of that kingdom. God will destroy any attempt to avoid His judgment and reject the rightful rule of Jesus Christ, His Son, to whom He has given the kingdom. Just as He did at the tower of Babel.

From Genesis 11:

3 Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
6 And the LORD said, "Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

They desired to make a name for themselves, to make themselves great. I once heard a liberal atheist say that of all the crimes committed by God in the Bible, this one in Genesis 11 was the greatest. I now understand what he meant. From his perspective, Genesis 11 shows God's intention of preventing man from ever avoiding the effects of His curse, no matter how hard they try. Man can never unite, can never work together, can never cooperate in their schemes. War and division will always plague them, because God decreed it. They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace.

The thing that is destroying the European Union is division. The Greeks are not the Germans and never will be. Their different cultures, different histories, and ancient divisions cannot be overcome by acts of parliaments, by bureaucrats in Brussels.

Socialists point to the relatively successful welfare states in places like Japan and Sweden as the model. Those welfare states work, to the degree that they do, because those populations have high work ethics and a high degree of cultural homogeneity. (America paying for their military defense is a big help too.) But what both of those cultures are now discovering is that a welfare state, over time, destroys the very characteristics that make it work. It destroys the work ethic and the cultural homogeneity.

Because again, God's rule cannot be vetoed. Peace, prosperity, success and safety come only one way- by submission to the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It will come no other way.

But the children of the Beast, the unbelievers of this world, will continue their war, no matter what plagues God visits on them. They worship the Beast, the power of the State, who is the servant of that old dragon, Satan, and are under the power of the false prophet, the lying philosophies and religions of the world, that convinces men that somehow this time it will be different. It won't be different. The Tower of Babel is falling again- as it did for the Soviets in 1990, and for the Nazis in 1945, and for the Kaiser and the shoguns and Napoleon and Genghis Khan and Caesar and Nebuchadnezzar and all that went before. Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords and will smash the nations of the world with a rod of iron.

Psalm 2, again:

10 Now therefore, be wise, O kings; Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear, And rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, And you perish in the way, When His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

Blessed are all those who trust in Him. And for that, today, I am very thankful.

Arrogance and Greed Are Not Products of a Political Party

2011-11-14T14:36:00.001-07:00

I’m conservative, politically. Anyone who knows me knows that. I don’t exactly hide the fact. And I don’t separate that from myChristianity- I think the conservative view of politics and society mostclosely aligns with the Biblical view. But one view of prosperity and security that is often associated with conservatismis just as wrong and just as dangerous as the progressive or leftist politicalview.

I think the central problem with progressivism is that ittends to take a messianic view of collective action. This is why progressives tend to be much morepositive toward state solutions to problems. They tend to frown on individual achievement, or at least to recognizeit only within the context of the broader activity of the state. This speech from Elizabeth Warren that went viral and was very popular in leftist circles is a great example of that kind of thinking. The belief that collective action can solve our problems is something I firmly reject as Antichrist- it is the vain hope that man by his efforts can overcome the curse of God without reference to the rule of Jesus Christ the rightful king of all. This will never happen, and the vain pursuit of this dream has caused untold misery.

But on the conservative side of things, I often hear an intense focus on personal responsibility and individual effort as the means of achieving the higher good. If people would just work hard and take responsibility for their own actions, then things would be fine. Liberals often criticize conservatives as being greedy and uncompassionate, that the strong focus on individual effort tends to be very cruel to those on the margins of society and people who meet with personal tragedies of different kinds. Conservatives answer that the private sector is better suited to deal with compassion than the government; liberals reject that idea, saying that many will fall through the cracks and those that do get charity often will only get it under the restrictions of religious organizations. Liberals believe that a more systematic solution to problems like poverty are needed.

On the extremes, most people reject both of these ideas. People know that we have to work together in many instances. Conservatives for example support the collective defense of the country and prosecution of crime. Most liberals recognize that people should be held responsible for their crimes to a certain extent, and that some profit and reward for hard work is proper. But people tend to be conservative or progressive to the degree that they fall to one side or the other, and most people then end up with a sort of inconsistent hybrid position.

But aren't both of these positions just different versions of the same thing, different ideas of how we as human beings can bless ourselves? Don't both the individualistic perspective and the collectivist tendency deny that our blessings come from God by grace and not through our own effort? "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord watches the city, the watchman watch in vain."

Liberals often accuse conservatives of greed and a lack of compassion, and I am afraid that they are often right. Conservatism doesn't need to entail these things. But I have heard a great many conservative people view the poor and unfortunate in society with contempt, viewing their greater wealth as proof of their superiority. But what do we have that we are not given? Even recognizing that in a land of opportunity (yes, even now) such as ours, where poverty is very often (but not always) the result of poor life choices, what do we have that we are not given? If I have a good work ethic, is that not a gift from God for which I should give thanks and not take pride in? I can identify the poor choices of others whose lifestyle or laziness has made them poor and speak the truth of what the Bible says about work and responsibility. But if I view them with contempt and pride, then I am failing at least as badly as they are.

I have also heard many conservatives express the view that if only we had a society that encouraged hard work and personal responsibility, then we would achieve real prosperity and security. Conservatives also seem to think that a strong military presence will keep us safe from enemies. But is this any more Biblical? The Psalmist said, "Some trust in chariots, some in horses, but we will remember the name of our God." Our prosperity is not in gold and silver or in tanks and jets any more than it is in welfare programs and environmental regulations. Our blessings are in God.

So the Bible tells us that we ought to work hard and take responsibilities for our actions, and that poverty is often the result of laziness and irresponsibility. God often uses our labor as the means by which He blesses us. But conservatives ought to remember that none of our blessings are the result of our own strength or goodness, but the grace of God.

Overall I still prefer conservatism by a wide margin. Arrogance and greed on an individual level causes a great deal of personal destruction. But progressivism seeks to pool that arrogance and greed for greater effect, and the deadly results there are far greater. But pride is pride. The Biblical answer is that this is a cursed and fallen world, without hope apart from Jesus Christ, and that hope is only fully realized in the world to come. Any attempt to overcome that curse and seize prosperity and happiness for ourselves apart from Christ is greed and arrogance, and will come to ruin whether on an individual level or a collective level. A Christian view of conservatism recognizes this, and limits government not because we think a limited government will bring us more blessings, but because we don't look to our political structure to bless us at all, but rather to our sovereign and benevolent God.

Fatalism and Sovereignty

2011-10-20T10:35:00.003-06:00

The believer in God's sovereignty is often called a fatalist or a determinist. Sometimes Christians, stung by this criticism, react by somehow reducing God's control over all things, through language like "God allows bad things to happen" or similar ideas. But the real difference between fatalism and Biblical sovereignty is merely this- fatalism teaches that all things happen for impersonal and abstract reasons, and we are simply caught in the machine. One should not resist one's fate because there is no point. The Biblical understanding of God's sovereignty, however, teaches that all things happen for the good of God's elect people. One should not resist the will of God because there is no point, but also because the will of God is for my good, for my salvation. Fatalism is impersonal, but God's sovereign rule is very personal and benevolent. This is a world of difference.

This One Weird Old Trick

2011-10-17T10:03:00.002-06:00

I heard someone say the other day that you can understand a lot about a culture by looking at the advertising, which makes sense. Advertisers need to connect their products to the values of their culture in order to sell their products.

What does it say about our culture that these "one weird old trick" advertisements have become so prevalent? There seems to be this idea that there's some secret trick to getting rich, getting healthy, getting thin or whatever. If only you were in on the secret, then you would have it too. The assumption seems to be that success is the product of being in on a secret, rather than just hard work and character.

Maybe it's not as representative as it seems to me. I just seem to see a lot of these advertisements, especially online, selling a wide variety of products- car insurance, diet pills, get-rich-quick schemes, etc.

I heard Dave Ramsey the other day saying, "Every time I've ever met good luck, he had work clothes on." Success comes from diligence and hard work, not some "easy weird old trick".

Nibbling on the Hook

2011-10-16T08:47:00.002-06:00

Sin always starts out looking like something different than what it is. Sin is always based on lies. It starts out as something just a little bit "naughty", a little bit daring and attractive. It's crossing the line a little, but it's not really "bad". That's how it looks. So we think we can indulge a little bit, just to edge out a little from God's law, just sin a little bit. We're like fish seeing a worm and saying, we'll just take a little nibble.

But there's a hook. There's something concealed in sin. Jesus said, He who sins is the slave of sin. The slavery is in this lie, this deception about the real nature of sin. Surely David never thought that his little flirting with Bathsheba, just a little look at a bathing woman across the street, would end where it did, with murder, rebellion and the ruin of his kingdom. Surely Esau never thought his little joke would end with the loss of the covenant blessings and alienation from his brother and parents. Surely Eve was just exploring forbidden knowledge a little bit. She never expected it to end with the ruin of the whole human race. And Judas skimming a little bit of money from the offering plate ended with the murder of the Son of God.

It's always like this. Every little sin has the potential to ruin your whole soul. Only the grace of God prevents this. Every little sin is a lie, that we can take God's blessings for ourselves without reference to God's truth. Once I believe that lie there is no end to the destruction I can do to myself and those around me. Every little nibble at that juicy worm has the potential for me cooking in the fisherman's frying pan.

How hopeless our condition is. How truly dependent on grace we are, for every breath that we take. How reliant on Christ we must be, for forgiveness and deliverance from this lie. "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

OWS- Modern day pogrom

2011-10-13T12:01:00.001-06:00

The Occupy Wall Street protests feel to me like the pogroms of the Middle Ages. Some bad thing happens (drought, plague, subprime mortgage meltdown), and without any understanding of why it happened at all, people find some convenient group (Jews, Wall St bankers) to blame for it and call for them to be prosecuted and thrown in jail, or worse. Right now, I'm willing to accept that it's a coincidence that many bankers also happen to be Jews. But really, it's the same kind of ignorant foolishness, driven at least a little by envy. I hear people saying that the country is suffering (true), and that many bankers are doing great (perhaps? A lot of their stock prices are way down), and therefore it must be their fault somehow. If so, make the case. How is this their fault? It's about as rational as saying, my crops failed and my neighbor's didn't, and therefore he must be in league with Satan and cast a spell on my field.

I'm not saying that all bankers are innocent. Some of them probably should go to jail. Angelo Mozilo, for example. But the idea that this is somehow the fault of "bankers" is pointless. If people have specific cases to make against specific bankers or corporations, make them, rather than this sort of blanket condemnation of a whole industry. But of course if you make specific cases against specific bankers, like Mozilo, then that leads back to the real problem, which is the Democratic party. And nobody wants that, of course.

2011-09-26T17:55:00.002-06:00

From Carl Trueman, Is the Reformation Nearly Over?

The Reformation was about more than a doctrinal insight into justification; it was also about abolishing the fetishisation of certain great figures as if they possessed some special magic and about instituting an ideal of educated, personal, local ministry. Maybe the Reformation is nearly over; and maybe it is not Benedictine Catholicism but actually the new reformation, with its multi-sites and its virtual pastors, that is finishing it off. That is quite a sobering and ironic thought.

Great post. Read the whole thing.

Why the Doctrine of the Incarnation Matters

2011-09-19T18:14:00.003-06:00

I'm currently teaching Christology at New Geneva, and at the same time teaching a confirmation class at the church. I am always reminded to be thankful for the work that the early church fathers did in very carefully defining the doctrines of the faith in so many areas. I am also once again impressed with the importance of doctrines that many in our modern age view as trivial.

One of the doctrines denounced by the early church was the doctrine of Monophysitism, and its more subtle counterpart Monothelitism. Monophysitism teaches that Christ had one nature instead of two and Monothelitism advanced the idea of a single will of Christ, rather than two. The orthodox position on these questions was that Christ has two natures, human and divine, without admixture or confusion, and likewise that He had two wills. This seems pretty abstract. But the church was wise to contend for the truth in this matter, and Christians today would be wise to do so as well.

Why does it matter? It is important because of what Christ did for us. He was righteous on our behalf. He succeeded where Adam had failed, succeeded in being the faithful servant of God. He redeemed not only us as individuals, but He redeemed human nature itself. He showed that human nature was not the problem. God created man good- very good, in fact, and God does not make mistakes. It is the subjugation of the good human nature to the corrupting effects of sin which is the problem. Jesus, in being the perfect human being, restored humanity itself.

But to do that, Jesus had to be a real human being, including the possession of a real human will. Where do we see His obedience if the only will He possesses is a divine will? The divine will is unified, and the divine will is what must be obeyed. We see this obedience in the garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus' crucifixion when He prayed to the Father that the bitter cup of what He would endure the next day be taken from Him. Nevertheless, He says, "Not My will but Thine be done." This demonstrates clearly a separation between His human will and the Divine will which He, as fully God, also possessed. We see there in the garden the struggle Jesus endured to conform His human will to His divine will. He succeeded; He obeyed; and in doing so, He redeemed mankind.

Therefore His work is complete. He doesn't just clear the guilt of Adam's sin away and put us back in the position Adam was in, where his favor with God would be determined by his obedience. Jesus truly fulfilled God's righteous requirements for humanity. If I am in Christ, united to Him by faith, then I have passed God's test for humanity- or rather, Jesus has passed it for me. I can add nothing to this. I can do nothing to earn this. Embracing and enjoying this truth to the fullest depends on having the correct doctrine of who Jesus is and what He did.

One amazing implication of this truth is that God will never abandon humanity, will never give up on humanity. In the incarnation, God is forever united to humanity, and therefore will forever be committed to humanity. I find great comfort in this truth.

Running after New Preachers

2011-09-16T12:32:00.000-06:00

From John Newton, quoted by Joel Beeke in The Family at Church:

What I have observed of many, who run about unseasonably after new preachers, has reminded me of Proverbs 27:8, "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is the man that wandereth from his place." Such unsettled hearers seldom thrive: they usually grow wise in their own conceits, have their heads filled with notions, acquire a dry, critical, and censorious spirit; and are more intent upon disputing who is the best preacher, than upon obtaining benefit to themselves from what they hear. If you could find a man, indeed, who had a power in himself of dispensing a blessing to your soul, you might follow him from place to place; but as the blessing is in the Lord's hands, you will be more likely to receive it by waiting where His providence has placed you, and where He has met with you before.

Historical Faith

2011-09-16T12:25:00.001-06:00

I have often struggled with the whole idea of historical faith, which is the idea that someone can assent to the propositions of Scripture and yet not have true faith. Gordon Clark rejects the whole idea, saying that faith is very simply assent to the propositions of the Scripture. Yet he is in the minority. John Calvin certainly spends a great deal of time talking about those who have an “intellectual assent”, an agreement that the events related in the Scriptures actually occurred, and even have a general agreement as to the meaning of those events, and yet have no faith in God. It seems very strange to me that a man could truly agree with what the Bible says and yet have no real faith. An example that Joel Beeke used once was the example of seeing a man’s house burning down, running to the window and finding him asleep in his bed. You shout to him that his house is burning down, and he says, “I know”, and rolls back over to sleep. This kind of behavior does not correspond to anything that I can understand about human behavior.

But I think that perhaps a partial explanation of this disconnect can be found in the different times we are living in compared to the times of the Puritans or of John Calvin. In their cultures, would it not be true that practically every child was raised hearing the stories of the Bible as historical truth? And therefore they would concur with those events as being historically true and even assent to some agreed-on interpretation of those events, but hold these views only because they really had never been given anything else to believe. In many times and in many cultures, the Biblical account of the creation of the universe, for example, was the only account there was. And it would be practically unthinkable, culturally or intellectually, to challenge the historicity of the Biblical accounts. Therefore a man could grow up in this culture, giving assent to these various propositions, and yet having no faith, no trust in God, no “firm persuasion of the truth of God” (John Calvin’s definition of faith). In fact, this means that there are quite a number of other propositions in the Bible that this man would not assent to- the proposition that he is a hopeless sinner, utterly dependent on the sacrifice of Christ for his salvation, but that such salvation is freely offered to him, and that in that salvation every blessing of God is readily available to him, if he will but trust God and wait on Him patiently. These are all propositions of Scripture that such a man could not possibly assent to, even if he were perhaps to pay them lip service.

Now compare that to the current day, when every aspect of Biblical truth is under constant assault from all corners of our culture. Here, for a man to believe that the earth was created by God about six thousand years ago, and that Jesus was the Son of God, born of a virgin, crucified, dead and buried, and rose again from the dead, requires already a strong commitment to the truth of God’s word. Maintaining such beliefs in the face of a culture that is largely hostile to such beliefs requires an active effort. Holding such beliefs even now does not of course indicate true faith. But it indicates a lot more that someone holds such beliefs today than if he held them in the day of John Calvin, when there was really no competition.

True faith requires a choice, requires that one decide that God’s word is faithful and reliable, that God speaks truth in all that He says. It means much more than simply believing what one was taught from childhood or agreeing with the opinions of one’s culture, even if those opinions happen to be correct. In this way I can understand what the Puritans and Calvin and others are concerned about in their warnings against “historical faith”- they are warning against a false security that merely because one has the correct opinions of certain historical or academic facts, that therefore one has true faith. And yet Clark is correct as well, that faith is truly intellectual assent (for what other kind of assent can there be?) to the propositions of Scripture. Those propositions will teach a man that God is true and trustworthy, that He is and that He is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. Those propositions are the propositions that Christ is the redeemer of men, and that by faith and trust in Him I am given every spiritual blessing by God’s promise.

Systematics still matter

2011-08-30T08:46:00.000-06:00

Here's a good demonstration of why systematic theology matters.

Attracted to or Repelled by God

2011-08-26T12:52:00.000-06:00

The faith of the believer is like two magnets that stick to each other. The magnet may be weak, but its natural state will be to be drawn to the other. Depending on the strength of the magnet, it may perhaps be pushed off the other with force, but it will always return to its natural attraction. A heavy object may be pushed off the ground, but it can only be maintained by force; if you remove the force, the object will return to its position of rest on the ground. So the mind of the believer will always be fixed on God. We may be pushed away from God for a time, pressed by trials and difficulties, weighed down with sorrows, distracted or tempted by luxuries and lusts. But true faith will always return to its natural state, which is to be fixed on God. The Holy Spirit is the bond that ties the believer to God, and no distance can overcome the strength of that bond.

On the other hand, magnets which are turned so that the same polarizations are facing each other (plus to plus, minus to minus) repel each other. As a child I enjoyed pushing magnets against each other when aligned this way, and then when I let them go watching them jump off each other. So too may the reprobate be drawn to God temporarily. He may by force of emotions or events be pushed to think of God, terrified of death, desirous of some earthly advantage, tempted by the attraction of eternal bliss. But this is not his natural state. When the external force is removed, the unbeliever is pushed by his natural revulsion toward God back to his normal state, in alienation and enmity toward God, ruled by the darkness of his mind.

In sum, the unbeliever is naturally repelled by God, though he may by an outside force for a time be pushed toward Him. The believer is naturally fixed on God, though he may by an outside force for a time be pushed away.

Rendering the Disease Incurable

2011-08-08T11:08:00.000-06:00

Discussing Pelagius' denial of original sin, John Calvin says, "Through this subtlety Satan attempted to cover up the disease and thus to render it incurable."

How true! It often feels more compassionate to downplay the seriousness of sin, to call it something other than what it is, a disease or a weakness or a disability. But Calvin here nails it. All such attempts are not compassionate, but the opposite. Sin is a wicked rebellion against our creator. Calling it anything else is not a kindness, but rather a cruelty, as it "renders it incurable". Calvin calls it a disease here, but only as an analogy, and not to say that sin is a medical condition which requires scientific treatments, as is so often proposed today. Calvin knew full well that there was only one cure for sin and for all that truly debilitates man, and he knew that the radical nature of the problem required an equally radical solution. Nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ will suffice.

Satan does not want you to be freed from sin. Satan wants you dead. One way he commonly achieves that result is to lull you to sleep, to calm your fears, to convince you that nothing is wrong with you, like a poisoner who tells you your stomach pain must just be indigestion which soon will pass. Therefore everyone ought to be thankful that God loves His creation enough to speak the harsh truth of our real condition, and to provide a remedy for it, in the blood of Christ and the power of the Spirit. Instead people say that orthodox Christianity is harsh and cruel, because that faith speaks the truth of man's real state without concern for our feelings. But is it love to refrain from telling a man that he is dying, in order to spare his feelings?

Is the Beast about to kill Babylon?

2011-07-19T12:01:00.004-06:00

Revelation 17: 16 "And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire. 17 "For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled. 18 "And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth."

There is a lot of worry and fear right now that crushing sovereign debt load of the industrialized world is going to destroy the world's economic system. I'm not sure this is going to happen by any stretch, though I too am concerned about the possibility, given our very high indebtedness. Right now, just the US' federal debt alone is equal to 95% of our GDP, and its publicly held federal debt is equal to more than 20% of the GDP of the entire world. Those are truly scary numbers. I don't think it would be an impossible situation to fix, except for the complete unwillingness of most of our political class to do anything at all about it.

Revelation introduces us to the Whore of Babylon in Revelation 17. Without going into a great deal of exegesis, let me just say that the Idealist interpretation of the whore is usually that she represents the "soft power" of the world, the religious / economic system of the world. She is the counterpart of the Beast, who represents "hard power"- political and military might. She seduces people with wealth and pleasure to participate with her in violence and immorality. The beast and the whore work together for a time, but just before the beast attacks God's people, he turns on Babylon and kills her. Although they worked together, the beast will not tolerate any competition to his earthly power. This is ultimately a disaster for the beast, since it was Babylon that made the kings of the earth so rich and powerful, and after she is killed, the kings of the earth (who killed her) weep and mourn over her loss.

Are we perhaps seeing this happening now? The idealist interpretation of Revelation holds that these events are not predictive of just one set of events before or during the coming of Christ, but that they show general spiritual conditions of the church age. Tribulation and the rise of antichrist are therefore periodic events throughout the church age. But it seems very possible, perhaps likely, that the Scriptures also point to one final dramatic occurrence of these conditions before Jesus' second coming.

However close we may or may not be to the second coming of Christ, the spiritual principles taught in Revelation 17 about the beast and Babylon made me wonder about the current situation- is it perhaps the case that what we are witnessing is the overwhelming lust for power on the part of the state destroying the economic system in the developed world, and that perhaps this is not as bad a thing as I originally thought? After all, the economic system of the developed world is largely godless. It heavily promotes wasteful consumption, sexual immorality, selfishness and greed.

The political class hates any power that competes with their own power. They continually regulate and restrict the economic system because they believe they know better how things should run, which they clearly do not. Governmental spending always increases, because that spending is the means by which the federal government continually achieves more and more power over the economic system. But if they destroy the economic system, they destroy the very thing that makes their power possible. Why would they do such an incredibly foolish thing? Perhaps because God is driving them to it, in order to destroy them, just as God induces the beast to attack Babylon?

There is a statement making the rounds on the Internet right now from Steve Wynn, who is the head of a large casino conglomerate out of Vegas. In this statement, Wynn is lamenting the economic destruction being caused by Obama's policies. He is, I believe, absolutely correct. But should we feel sorry for Wynn? This is a man who has become extremely wealthy by exploiting sin. I am not morally opposed to all forms of gambling. But Las Vegas is a cesspool of immorality and greed. It's called "Sin City" for a reason. So I realized- do I feel sorry for Wynn? Should I?

I feel sorry for all the people who just work at regular jobs and take care of their families who are being hurt by this economic crisis. I feel sorry for men and women who got wealthy providing real value to customers and are now losing it all due to these terrible economic policies. But God is a God of justice, and He will always take care of His own, whatever the economic conditions. And as for the rest, rich or poor, large or small, this is a nation driven by greed, entertainment, immorality and selfishness. Europe is even worse. This is a culture that kills millions of babies every year because they are inconvenient, full of people who refuse to let any consequences stand in the way of their relentless pursuit of pleasure and power.

The saints in Revelation 19 rejoice at the fall of Babylon. They recognize it as God's judgment on wickedness, and His deliverance of the saints who were persecuted by Babylon. Perhaps it is the case that we believers should look at the possibility of an economic collapse in the western world in the same light.

For whatever happens, God is sovereign, and is working His justice and salvation through all things that happen, including the current refusal of our political class to stop stealing and wasting other people's money.

The Unrepentant Appeal to God's Sovereignty

2011-07-14T17:35:00.000-06:00

People living in unrepentant sin are often strangely quick to appeal to God's sovereignty. They wrongly seem to think that this somehow absolves them of guilt. The phenomenon of people suffering the consequences of their own sins then saying something like, "Well, it's all in God's hands" while making no effort at all to change their ways is a strange one to witness, but is very common.

So now not only are they flouting the righteous rule of God, but also blaming God for their rebellion. But the great and awful power of God ought to be no comfort to the one living in open rebellion against that God.

God's great power and sovereignty over all things in creation is used everywhere in Scripture to advance the idea that therefore we ought to repent of our sin and follow Him with our lives. This truth ought to encourage that response in us as well, and never a complacency over sin.

Why We Lie to Ourselves

2011-07-01T08:00:00.002-06:00

I remember when I first heard about a woman preferring a scale that was inaccurate, that told her she was five pounds lighter. She knew it was probably inaccurate, but liked it better anyway. I thought that this was an incredibly vain and ridiculous way to think. I can understand wishing you were five pounds lighter than you are. But what good is it to lie to yourself about it? That's just stupid, and doesn't accomplish anything.

Several years ago I decided I needed to start doing a much better job of tracking my finances. So I opened a spreadsheet and listed all the various items I spend money on, along with estimates of how much I spent. The first time I did this, I saw that I really should have plenty of money left over at the end of the month, but reality was that we were losing ground financially, not gaining (why the exercise what necessary in the first place). When I looked at the spreadsheet again, it was clear that I had lowballed a number of items and left some items off altogether. Further, it was a real mental battle to get that budget accurate. I kept lying to myself. I'd tell myself, well, that isn't a very big expense, or we usually don't spend that much on that, or things like that. I realized that I was lying to myself just like the woman preferring the scale that put her weight at five pounds less.

Why do we lie to ourselves? When you study the prophets in the Old Testament or the apostles in the New, you run into this phenomenon all the time. People prefer the prophets and the teachers that tell them what they want to hear. Ahab threw Micaiah in the dungeon not because he didn't believe Micaiah was telling him the truth, but because Micaiah always gave him bad news.

In Micah 3, Micah describes the false prophets like snakes who bite while they prophesy "peace". They pronounce "shalom", a very pleasing prophesy, on those who feed them.

We lie to ourselves in so many ways. Sin always involves lying, for sin always involves convincing yourself that you will be happier by following your desires rather than God's law. We convince ourselves that we can somehow escape the destructive effects of sin. We convince ourselves that God doesn't really care that much. We convince ourselves that we're not as bad as other people and that surely ought to count for something.

Our churches are full of teachers who think that what matters is that their teachings have the desired outcome, make people feel better and make them act better. They convince themselves that if they massage the message, soften some parts of it, that their churches will grow. Whether the message is strictly "true" or not is not really the point. What is truth? they say, together with Pontius Pilate, another man more concerned with a desirable outcome than with faithfulness to the truth. And if their churches grow, that is proof that God favors what they are doing. How could God be against full churches? But the false prophets of the Old Testament and the false teachers of the new usually had much bigger audiences than the true ones.

In the Garden of Eden, the Devil (a liar from the beginning) convinced Adam and Eve to believe the most destructive lie of all, the lie that they could be like God, knowing good and evil, if they disobeyed God's commands and took matters into their own hands. In our fallen state, we are doomed to continue believing pleasing but self-destructive lies.

Jesus said that if we abide in His word, we will be His disciples. And we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free.

Judging the Poor

2011-06-30T08:00:00.004-06:00

We have been studying Micah in our Bible study here in Limon (audio available here if you're interested). The main thing Micah has been rebuking Judah for is that the powerful, whether economically or politically, oppress and exploit the poor. It might even be better, rather than "the poor", to say middle class, since those that are being oppressed are losing houses and farmlands. Micah describes their actions as being like cannibalism in Micah 3- they strip the meat off God's people, break the bones, and throw the meat in the pot. God's judgment against them will be fierce, the prophet says.

With that in mind we read Psalm 72 this morning and there it says that the just king (prophetically speaking of Christ) will "judge the poor" and protect them from deceit and violence. This gave support to what I've often thought, that what the poor primarily need from the government is justice. They need to be protected from the strong in society, who too often take advantage of the weak to enrich themselves.

Instead, what we have in our society is a political class that buys votes with welfare programs, in the guise of caring for the poor. This actually accomplishes the opposite of what they say. It weakens the poor, as it makes them dependents of the government that they think is there to support them. It destroys their independence and takes away their ability to be protected from oppressors. If the government would simply work to ensure justice and equity for the politically weak in our own nation, it would do far more to ensure prosperity for the poor than any welfare program would ever do. Amos 5 says that justice would water the land like a river.

As it is, tax money and privileges are diverted to politically favored classes. The government decides who can work and for what wages. Licensing, regulations and labor requirements create barriers to entry that protect the big corporations from competition from startups, so that fewer and fewer players control more and more of the production of the country. Everyone suffers as a result, except for the privileged few, and the poorest suffer the most. They're bought off by welfare programs so that they don't recognize that the very people they keep voting for are the very people exploiting them and impoverishing them. Just like the communist party members in Russia who said they were the vanguard of the proletariat, the protectors of the people, but for some reason were the only ones who had their own cars and got to shop at private stores that were always well stocked with western goods while the people all had to wait hours in line just for a loaf of bread. Socialism in every form has been nothing more than a smokescreen for exploitation of the poor and middle class, for the enrichment and empowerment of the elite liars who say they care about the people.

Economic injustice is like a drought on the land- it destroys the productivity of a nation. But justice waters the land like a river.

Update: A related presentation by the Koch Foundation. Economic Freedom and Economic Justice are just two different ways of saying the same thing, unless by justice you mean redistribution- which is the opposite of justice, theft.

How I Left HP

2011-06-29T12:46:00.001-06:00

The last post made me remember something funny about my time at HP. I had been invited to come out to Limon and work as an intern at the church here. I had one year left to go at New Geneva before I had my M. Div. I told the guys at the church here that I was going to stay there at HP for another year and save up money while I finished my degree before going into the ministry. But that next quarter due to some poor decisions that I and others made at HP, I had a very bad quarter financially. So I decided that God was probably telling me it was time to move on, and I told the men at the Limon church that I was ready to take the call.

Later I found out that one of the men in the church here had prayed that I would fail at HP so that I would come out to Limon. I am not sure what exactly to make of all that, even today. But I am not at all sorry I came out to Limon.

The rewards of work

2011-06-29T12:37:00.000-06:00

I just found out yesterday about an old friend of mine that recently got a big promotion. This man was a good buddy from back in the Hewlett Packard days. We started at HP at about the same time, and held the same position for quite a while, selling computers and related products to small and medium businesses. He got his first promotion a little while before I left HP to begin the ministry, a promotion that I might have gotten too except everyone knew that I was probably not going to be at the company very long, since I was planning on going into the ministry. This was 8-9 years ago. My friend has been at HP the whole time, and is now in a very good position, making (presumably) very good money. He didn't tell me what he made, but when he told me the revenue he's responsible for, I imagine he's doing just fine. I was responsible for about $2 million in sales my last year at HP, and his number is now in the billions.

I told Andrea this yesterday, and she said, "Is that hard for you?" And I thought about it, and I think I can honestly say that it isn't. Sure, I wouldn't mind making a lot more money than I do as a pastor. Who wouldn't? And of course there's no guarantee I would have done as well as my friend has done- he's an extremely motivated, hardworking guy with lots of talent and fits very well in that kind of environment. But I had been successful at HP already, and I'm sure that had I thrown myself into that career I would have risen in the ranks. Perhaps not quite as fast as my friend, but still. That it would have been more money is undeniable.

But we made our choices. I wanted to go in the ministry, and I always knew that the financial rewards were not as high as many other fields I might pursue. But there are a lot of different kinds of rewards for the work you do. I'm not going to paint myself as more virtuous than my friend for the choice I made- I'm deeply grateful that there are guys like him in industry who are effective at keeping our economy running. His work facilitates the industry that makes this blog possible, among many other things. I am glad he is rewarded well for the work he does. I am rewarded for the work I do in other ways. Financially my church is generous to me. They are also appreciative of the work I do. I get the privilege of being involved in some very good and very bad things in people's lives, and yes, both are a privilege. It is an honor to be invited into very private matters with people, things normally only family would know about. I find that humbling and gratifying. I get the opportunity to spend a lot of time studying things I find very interesting and profitable. I get paid just to socialize with people, just to see how they're doing.

There's lots of ways to be rewarded for the work you do. Money is just one of them. Work truly is its own reward- to do things that are useful to other people and improves their lives, however that happens, is something that will bring pleasure to us when we learn to recognize what God created us for. When you are doing work that is valuable, then you will be rewarded for that work, in various ways. My advice to young people wondering about this question of work is to find work that people value and that you find satisfying, and the reward will come. It may take a while to get there. Sometimes the need to pay the bills trumps it. But find value in whatever you are doing now, and invest in yourself and your situation so that you can improve your ability to earn a living in ways you find more satisfying. Do this and you will never have to worry about being rewarded for your work. The rewards, financial and otherwise, will come.

Better a poor man's dinner, with love

2011-06-21T08:43:00.001-06:00

Proverbs 15:16 Better is a little with the fear of the LORD, Than great treasure with trouble. 17 Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, Than a fatted calf with hatred.

This proverb has been on my mind a good deal lately. It is one of those sayings that seemed very obviously true when I was very young and first read it. Of course love is better than riches! All the songs say so. But as I grew older I saw how very difficult this truth becomes in the application.

It is so common to give all of our attention to the earthly concerns. Paying the mortgage, getting the oil changed, paying off the credit cards. Besides money, we concern ourselves with so many other concerns like our health, our entertainment, or our jobs. Yet Proverbs is pointing us to the fact that the greatest needs of humanity are spiritual needs, not physical. Love for God, love for our neighbor- these things are far more important than what we eat.

An automobile requires gas to run at all; when we first started driving we learned that truth very quickly. We got good at always putting gas in the car; the feedback for failing to put in gas is immediate. But oil is important too, even if less obvious. If you fail to put oil in the car, it might not be immediately clear, but the result will be even more catastrophic.

Our human relationships don’t usually require the kind of immediate attention that our stomach does. We have to eat every few hours and if we don’t, the feedback is immediate. But we can neglect our spouses or our children sometimes for years without really paying attention. And with God, it’s even more true. People go about their lives paying no attention to God at all for years or decades without really noticing. But the cost cannot be ignored forever; eventually the bill comes due, and then we find that the cost of neglecting the spiritual aspect really is very high. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

Sometimes it is the not-so-obvious needs which are the truly important ones, which is why the Bible reminds us of this so often. Tend to the relationships in your life. Tend to the people in your life that you love; the benefits may not be immediately obvious, but are nonetheless real. Even more importantly, tend to your relationship with God, for the benefits of that relationship are eternal.

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ … But seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6:31, 33)

Sermons on Hebrews- Book project

2011-06-15T14:18:00.000-06:00

I am planning on making my sermon series on the book of Hebrews available as a book. I am going to do this, Lord willing, in serial format, publishing a few sermons at a time in Kindle format. This allows me to keep forward momentum on the project instead of having to do it all in one big chunk. Each sermon takes a fair amount of work editing and formatting, so this allows me to do this project a little bit at a time, and to gauge interest.

My plan right now is to publish two sermons at a time for the Kindle, for 99 cents. When all of the sermons are done (about 60), I will publish them all together, hopefully in both Kindle and hard copy formats. There will probably be two volumes of sermons in hard copy. The first two are available now, from Amazon.

If you're interested in this project but would like to see the sermons published in some different format than Kindle, please let me know.

Love rather than Wrath

2011-06-10T08:45:00.000-06:00

From John Calvin's Institutes, book III, ch. 2, par. 20-21:

But it is especially our conscience itself that, weighed down by a mass of sins, now complains and groans, now accuses itself, now murmurs secretly, now breaks out in open tumult. And so, whether adversities reveal God's wrath, or the conscience finds in itself the proof and ground thereof, thence unbelief obtains weapons and devices to overthrow faith. Yet these are always directed to this objective: That, thinking God to be against us and hostile to us, we should not hope for any help from him, and should fear him as if he were our deadly enemy.

To bear these attacks faith arms and fortifies itself with the Word of the Lord. And when any sort of temptation assails us- suggesting that God is our enemy because he is unfavorable toward us- faith, on the other hand, replies that while he afflicts us he is also merciful because his chastisement arises out of love rather than wrath. When one is stricken by the thought that God is Avenger of iniquities, faith sets over against this the fact that his pardon is ready for all iniquities whenever the sinner betakes himself to the Lord's mercy.

Emphasis mine. I find this quote extremely comforting and I hope it is to you too. When we are faced with temptations, we often think the real battle is the battle to resist that temptation, a battle which we lose over and over. But Calvin here shows that the real battle is what comes after we give in to temptation, which is the temptation to think ourselves despised by God and under His wrath. This is compounded by the fact that God's discipline often follows our failures, a discipline that we in our unbelief confuse with punishment. But punishment arises out of wrath, and discipline arises out of love, a distinction that makes all the difference in the world. When we confidently lay hold of God's love for us, which He promises will never leave us, then we can be patient with and even rejoice in God's discipline, knowing that only our good is in mind. We must constantly "betake [ourselves] to the Lord's mercy." The real battle is always the temptation to doubt God's mercy and grace on the sinner.

On Libertarianism and Utopianism, and the Candidacy of Rep. Ron Paul

2011-05-25T11:28:00.001-06:00

We are once again facing that most dreadful of all seasons, a presidential election. We on the Republican side are again faced with the choice of selecting a presidential candidate, and many of us feel that on this selection hinges the future of the country. The stakes are high. Of course they are always high. But the choice of the right Republican to run against Obama is, we feel, of crucial importance.

It is in this backdrop that many point to a candidate such as Ron Paul. As something of a political junkie, I am frequently asked what I think of Ron Paul. I have had difficulty articulating my objection to Paul as a candidate, but decided it was time to think it out and express it. I will do so by means of a literary allusion, from one of the greatest novels in the English language, Middlemarch:

He had formerly observed with approbation her capacity for worshipping the right object; he now foresaw with sudden terror that this capacity might be replaced by presumption, this worship by the most exasperating of all criticism, -that which sees vaguely a great many fine ends and has not the least notion what it costs to reach them.

A little background is necessary, which is worthwhile since this is such a fascinating book. Mr. Casaubon, the speaker in the previous quote, is a middle-aged, eccentric clergyman whose life is poured into writing an epic book which will seek to unlock the common key in all the mythologies of the world. Dorothea, the "she" mentioned in that quote, fell in love with Mr. Casaubon and married him, despite the warnings that many gave her that it was an unsuitable marriage. She is a deeply idealistic young lady, and has projected onto Mr. Casaubon all of her desires for changing the world, believing that by being his partner and help she will share in his noble work. Once she marries him, she finds out that Casaubon is in fact a rather small and petty man, whose fears and insecurities prevent him from ever finishing his work, and that in fact the book he is working on is simply his way of hiding from the world.

Casaubon is not a bad man. The novel is at pains to point this out. He is merely human. The problem comes from the fact that Dorothea has projected her highly unrealistic ideals onto Casaubon, forcing him to carry a burden which he is unable to bear. The quote above reflects the moment when Casaubon realizes this.

This is the approach, I feel, which a certain segment of the electorate takes to selecting a presidential candidate. Some, of course, pick candidates for the shallowest of reasons- who is more attractive, who promises them all the goodies the want, etc. But there is also a segment who has a vague idea in their mind of what kind of world they would like to live in without any conception at all of what would be required to get there, and fall in love with the candidate who promises them that. Because this candidate is connected to their Utopia, they refuse to see any real flaws in that candidate and even make the flaws out to be virtues. So, if a person has no experience, they say that's a good thing, since experience corrupts. If the person regularly says stupid things, they say that just shows that they're "real" or "honest", instead of being a fake, airbrushed candidate. This is mainly the way that we elected our last president, Barack Obama. There were of course some who knew exactly who the man was and elected him, because they want radical socialism in this country. But many others simply projected all of their fantasies and wish fulfillments of a post-racial society, of an end to political conflict, of brilliant post-partisan political leadership, onto that man, who had deliberately cast himself in such a light as to make such "wishcasting" possible and desirable. He deliberately spoke in vague generalities and platitudes, reserving his much more specific (and very progressive) statements for small friendly audiences.

Conservatives must not make the same mistake. We live in a sinful world, where there is no such thing as perfection. Not by a long shot. All of our candidates are flawed in one way or another. But this should not be surprising. There is no savior in politics. There is no way out of the messy world we live in. Anyone who stays in the spotlight of elected government for any length of time is going to have some uncomfortable things revealed about them, and is going to make some bad mistakes. Oftentimes we are drawn to political outsiders such as Herman Cain, because they appear to be untainted by the corruption of government. But does that really make them better than anyone else? It's easy to be untainted by the corruption of government when you're not in government. Will they remain untainted once they're in? I'm not against political outsiders, but there as in all cases, we must remain realistic. Pride, ambition and greed exist just as much in the private sector as they do in the government. It's often just less visible- that's why we call it the "private sector".

Real candidates also know that there is a difference between where you want to be and where you have to go to get there. Dishonest political campaigns are always telling you, "Step 3- Profit!" without making terribly clear how we get there.

This is why I am a conservative, and not a libertarian. Libertarians and progressives both fail to be realistic about human nature. They claim they are, of course. But both of them simply posit an ideal world and insist that we go to that ideal world as fast as we possibly can. The major difference between the two is the nature of their utopia. Conservatives recognize that this world is fallen and that there is no such thing as perfection, and that anyone telling you that they can deliver any kind of perfection is a snake-oil salesman. Therefore we must be realistic about our candidates and realistic about the kind of change we can expect and the kind of change that is desirable. Government must be limited because of the sinfulness of politicians. But government must exist, and be strong in the things it needs to do, because of the sinfulness of politicians in other countries, as well as of non-politicians in our own. By being realistic about the human condition can we do the best job of restraining its defects and excesses, and encouraging its better side.

A further point about human nature- Revolutions always end badly, because in the breakdown of social structures, revolutions are always coopted by the worst sorts of power-hungry people, the people unrestrained by moral codes and driven most by personal ambition. Change therefore must always be incremental. Anyone promising you quick change is either deeply naive and unrealistic, or is a snake-oil salesman.

This brings me to Ron Paul in particular. I agree with much of Ron Paul's ideals of limited government, sound currency and fiscal restraint. But the conservative movement as a whole agrees with those things, though we disagree about some of the details.

But I have two major issues with Paul. First, he does not seem to be living in the same country I am in. He seems to think that we can just get where he wants to be just by virtue of him being elected. Perhaps I am selling him short here, but he does not seem to have any concrete plan for dealing with our situation now in a realistic way, and instead just tells us how he'd like things to be, which is how I'd like things to be too. It doesn't take any particular competence or virtue to dream. It doesn't take any great intelligence to tell me the things that are wrong with the country right now. What is hard, but necessary, is to articulate a doable plan for moving the country in the right direction, from where we are right now.

Secondly, and this is an extension of the first, is his foreign policy. I understand that we are all weary of war after the last decade. Paul seems to think that we can end all these wars unilaterally, just by leaving. I have plenty of criticisms of how the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were handled. But again, that takes no special brains; hindsight is 20/20. Paul was saying we shouldn't be involved back then, and everybody thought he was a crackpot. Now that we're all tired of war, he's starting to look (to some) like a genius. But he was wrong then and he's still wrong. Just because we've seen the bad consequences of what we did doesn't mean that those consequences are worse than if we had done nothing, or done something different. We don't know what the consequences of doing nothing would have been. We cannot go back and have the argument again based on what we now know, much of which is only true because of the choices that were made in 2002-03. It's always easy to criticize people who try things, to criticize the messes that are caused by accomplishment. It's like the modern environmentalist who criticizes the pollution of industry- he's not criticizing failure. He's criticizing success. Because the industrialist has succeeded in industry, some secondary problems are created that need to be dealt with. But what is the alternative of no pollution? No industry, and living in caves. Where there are no oxen, there the stable is clean.

So it is with foreign policy. We can't just not have a foreign policy. We can't just withdraw from the world. I know we'd all like to. But the world isn't going to let us withdraw. 9/11 happened because people hate Christianity and freedom, not because of some evil America committed. It's not like 9/11 was the first time Muslims ever attacked Christians. 9/11 would have kept happening, and will keep happening, until America simply surrendered, unless we did something about it. We did something about it, and it wasn't perfect, but we haven't had any more 9/11's.

Jesus told us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If I lived in a country where I and my family were in danger of being tortured and killed for being Christians, or for being from the wrong tribe, or being opposed to the government stealing all my property, and there was a powerful nation who could do something about it, I would want them to do it. America can't save the world. We can't help everyone. But to say we can't help everyone is not the same as saying that therefore we shouldn't help anyone. God has given us overwhelming power and strength, and I believe that those who have strength and power should do what they can to help those who do not. We're going to make mistakes. But the alternative is to hide our talent in the ground, which I do not believe is a viable alternative.

So this is my take on Ron Paul- like Dorothea, he has a vague vision of a great many fine ends, and not the least notion how to achieve them. Therefore, we need to find a presidential candidate who has plausible plans that make sense, who has integrity, who shares our vision. We need to understand that such a candidate is going to have flaws, and it's always a judgment call where to draw the line. If you think your candidate has no flaws, then you are being unrealistic or you are being lied to. This is what being a conservative is all about- about being realistic. There is no savior, there is no golden age. Not in this world, anyway.

Travel

2011-05-24T22:28:00.001-06:00

We had a great Synod meeting last week. "Synod" is our annual denominational business meeting- this year in Mitchell, SD, home of the Corn Palace. It was good to see the brothers. I'm spending this week or so by myself; my wife is traveling to visit family. The upside is I get to explore all sorts of new food combinations, like sardines in scrambled eggs (yum!). The downsides are rather more substantial. Miss you, family.

Is God fair?

2011-04-15T07:36:00.000-06:00

The wicked man cries out that God is not fair. The man tried. He really wanted to go to heaven, and he did his best. He thought he had done enough. But now God is telling him it’s not enough. God is not fair.

Ezekiel 33:12 " Therefore you, O son of man, say to the children of your people: 'The righteousness of the righteous man shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression; as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall because of it in the day that he turns from his wickedness; nor shall the righteous be able to live because of his righteousness in the day that he sins.'
13 "When I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, but he trusts in his own righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous works shall be remembered; but because of the iniquity that he has committed, he shall die.
14 "Again, when I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' if he turns from his sin and does what is lawful and right,
15 "if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has stolen, and walks in the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die.
16 "None of his sins which he has committed shall be remembered against him; he has done what is lawful and right; he shall surely live.
17 " Yet the children of your people say, 'The way of the LORD is not fair.' But it is their way which is not fair!”

When a man does good works in order to gain some benefit from them, his motivation is essentially selfish. He has some benefit or goal in mind- wealth, pleasure, a good reputation. When we do what we do for some benefit like this, the time will inevitably come when we decide that we have done enough and now is the time to start benefiting from our hard work. Our essential selfishness comes out and our true nature is revealed. We fall from our “righteous” ways, and do wickedly.

When that day comes, the previous good works that we did will not save us. Our previous outward conformity to God’s law gains us no benefits. We die as the wicked men we are. We die in our sins, under God’s wrath.

But when we, as wicked men, realize that God’s righteousness is not a means to some end, that it is the goal and end, then we turn to it not out of a desire to gain some selfish blessing, but because we recognize- this is our home. This is our purpose. We were created to be righteous, and when I am righteous, I am perfect, happy, content. To be righteous is to dwell in perfect fellowship with God, and He is my exceeding great reward.

This is what it means to repent. It means to rethink our ways, to turn around. This is not about a better way to achieve our selfish goals. It means giving up on our selfish goals, and surrendering to God.

When a man does that, then his previous wickedness is not remembered. He has become a new man, and is embraced as such. All his sins are forgotten.

Ezekiel 33: 10 " Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: 'Thus you say, "If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?" '
11 "Say to them: 'As I live,' says the Lord GOD, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?'

But the people have not changed. There is no closed door on God’s side. So why do they continue to follow their wicked ways? Why do they continue to pursue selfish gain, to turn to idols, to live immorally, even after they have witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, prophesied to happen for this very reason?

The few Hebrews still left in Judah look at the destruction of Jerusalem as an opportunity to enrich themselves. Now they can possess the whole land. The Hebrews in Babylon finally acknowledge Ezekiel as a true prophet. He called it. He said Jerusalem would be destroyed. They doubted him. But he was right. So now he is a celebrity, like a rock star, and everyone wants to go hear him speak. They offer much love with their mouths. But their hearts remain hard, still pursuing selfish gain. They hear his words but they do not do them.

Their hearts are hard. They are like dead men. They cannot hear, will not hear, and therefore will die. God is in no way preventing them from changing. But they lack the ability.

Ezekiel 36:22 " Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord GOD: "I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.
23 "And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD," says the Lord GOD, "when I am hallowed in you before their eyes.
24 "For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land.
25 "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.
26 "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.

So God resolves to save the people Himself. If He waits for them to come to Him, it is clear He will be waiting until the end of time. Therefore He comes to them. By the power of His Spirit He transforms that hard heart, so that finally they will know the truth. Finally they will see that righteousness is not a means to gain some goal. Righteousness is the goal. Fellowship with God is not a way that I can get God to give me what I want. Fellowship with God is what I want. This is repentance, and the result is life.

There is nothing unfair about God's ways. He is very clear and very fair. The wicked man who pursues his own selfish gain will be destroyed regardless of whatever halfhearted attempts he makes at buying God off. But he who desires life and righteousness with God will get it, and with it will get every blessing imaginable.

No man can ever change himself from the wicked man desiring his own gain to the righteous man desiring fellowship with God. The history of Israel and indeed of the whole world proves this. So God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to Earth, to clear the way for fellowship to be restored. Because of what Jesus did while He was on earth, the Spirit of God is granted to God's people, to take that heart of stone out of our flesh and give us a heart of flesh, to heal us and save us, to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

The closed door has never been on God's side. It is, and always has been, on our side. Thank God He did not accept that situation, broke that door down and took us captive, so that we could live and not die.

What could be unfair about that?

He Loves Me Too

2011-03-26T10:29:00.000-06:00

We've been singing "He Loves Me Too" in our morning devotions for a little while. It got me thinking. "Because He loves the little things, I know He loves me too." We know the Bible speaks of the love that God has for all of His creation. Psalm 135 speaks of God's compassion on all He has made. Psalm 32 says that the whole creation is filled with the love of God. When He created all things, He said that the things He created are good, and God loves what is good.

Now these passages are quite a bit less emphatic than the love that God has toward His people. But they are there. But that then ought to make us comfortable with the idea that God loves different things in different senses or degrees. If He loves a bird that He has made, does that mean that He loves me the same as a bird? Jesus says not- "You are of more value than many sparrows." (Matthew 10:31)

On the Hypercalvinist side, there are some that deny any love of God at all for the non-elect. On the Arminian side, there are some that insist that the love of God for all men means that love must be absolutely undifferentiated, so that God could not love some more than others, or show unconditional favor to some but not to others. But I am comfortable thinking that God is at least as complex as I am. He loves all of His creation, including all men, but in His providence and secret will, has decided to show some of us a supreme love, the love of the gospel, of the sacrifice and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to rescue me from my fallen state. I cannot point to anything in me that makes me more worthy of this love than others; I pray only that He would make me worthy of it. I am grateful to know that He loves the sparrow, and therefore loves me too. But I am also grateful that He loves me more than the sparrow, who is here one day and gone the next and is sold for two pennies in the market.

Battling Depression

2011-03-19T19:26:00.000-06:00

An excellent article from the Pryomaniacs on the subject of depression, from one who has suffered from it:

First and above all: you must see depression as your enemy, to be killed and buried and replaced. It is not your friend. It has come to feel comfortable and comforting, even friendly. Your real friends may not understand this, but I do. They see you wrapping a sopping-wet blanket around yourself, and think you're nuts. But I do understand, more's the pity. The sodden blanket is comforting because it's familiar. It has assumed your body-temperature. It has sapped you of strength in the process, too, so that the thought of doing anything different simply seems like too much to ask.

...if you're a Christian, you need to understand that Christ's bequest to you is joy (John 15:11), and that God's will for you is that you rejoice (Philippians 3:1; 4:4). You need to see, understand, and embrace — hear me, now — that right now, you have the very best reasons to be the very happiest that you could ever be.

Poverty Kills

2011-03-18T12:22:00.003-06:00

I am deeply sorry for the people of Japan, and what they are suffering right now because of the earthquake and tsunami. I am, however, also grateful for the very important truth that is being illustrated very dramatically by that earthquake, and that is the truth that poverty kills, far more than anything else in the world.

Japan's earthquake was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake centered about 80 miles off the coast of Japan. It triggered a tsunami that was over 30 feet high in places. The earthquake caused huge damage over wide areas of Japan, and the tsunami just compounded it. Dams broke, whole villages were swept away, the death toll is in the thousands and probably ultimately will be in the tens of thousands, and millions of people are presently without food, water and power. It is a disaster of almost unimaginable proportions.

But remember the Haiti quake of last year. That quake was a 7.0 magnitude quake, which because of the logarithmic nature of that scale, means that the Japanese earthquake was a hundred times greater. It was located closer to a population center- only 16 miles from Port-au-Prince. There was a tsunami, but only a very small one that did only minor damage. That earthquake caused somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths, despite being overall a much smaller event. The two earthquakes are not perfectly comparable due to various differences in geography and the like, but still, the dramatic difference is remarkable. Why does a hundred times bigger earthquake with a massive tsunami cause a tenth of the deaths?

The answer is really rather simple- poverty. All of the people in Haiti died because all of their cheaply built buildings collapsed. The Japanese on the other hand are one of the wealthiest nations on the earth, and had invested extensively in earthquake-resistant construction. Earthquakes are of course quite common in Japan. But they are not unheard of in Haiti either.

Poverty kills, more than anything else in the world. People die all over the world by the millions from this preventable cause. They die of famine, they die of disease because they don't have good drinking water, they die of diseases that are easily treated with inexpensive medicines, they die of malaria spread by mosquitos because they lack the resources to do anything about it. They die of murder and war because they lack the ability to protect themselves.

A country like Haiti has been the target of massive sustained relief and foreign aid efforts for a long time. Yet they remain poor. The same could be said of many places around the world. A country like Japan, on the other hand, was very poor after World War II only 60 years ago. Yet it is now rich. Why? Japan has few natural resources. It has no oil, little coal, few usable minerals on the island. A similar story is told about Taiwan by the great Milton Friedman, a small rocky island to which hundreds of thousands of refugees fled after the Chinese civil war, which has very little by way of natural resources. Yet it is one of the wealthiest countries in the whole region. Why?

There is a great deal of attention right now paid to the nuclear reactors that were damaged in Japan as a result of the earthquake. But a little perspective is in order. The only realistic energy source outside of nuclear power is coal power, and coal mining is among the most dangerous professions on earth. How many people die each year to produce coal power? I don't know the number, but I know it is high. And without electricity, we become poor, and poverty kills. So even if these nuclear reactors melt down and hundreds die as a result, it is still just a fraction of the overall deaths caused by the earthquake, still just a fraction of the deaths that would have been caused by using coal power instead, and an even smaller fraction of the deaths that would be caused by having no electricity at all. People say that you shouldn't build nuclear plants in an earthquake zone. But the total death and destruction of this earthquake would be largely unchanged even if they had all coal power. Yes, nuclear plants might fall over in a 9.0 earthquake. But EVERYTHING falls over in a 9.0 earthquake. If nuclear power plants shouldn't be built in an earthquake zone, then neither should houses, bridges, hospitals, or dams.

When you are rich, you have the ability to weather disasters and protect yourself from the ravages of nature. When you are truly poor, even small problems are calamities. Remember this the next time someone proposes some change that would make us poorer but possibly save some lives. They say, even if one life is saved, wouldn't it be worth it? What price do you put on human life? But if the change makes us poorer, it costs lives. Poverty keeps us from buying medicines, keeps us from building better and sturdier homes, keeps us from providing adequate protection from crime (police forces cost money), keeps us from doing a million things that give us safer, longer, better lives. Poverty forces people to dump their garbage in the river or burn it in the streets, rather than having the means to dispose of it in a safer, cleaner way. People joke about how the tornado always seems to head for the trailer park, but the truth is the trailer park just suffers a lot more from the tornado, while people with better houses with basements are safer.

The ant works hard and lays up for the future in the summertime, while the grasshopper just plays around and has a good time. Then when the hard times come, the ant is safe and well-fed, while the grasshopper dies. The ant, through hard work and frugality, has become rich. The poverty of the grasshopper kills him.

The question of what makes nations rich and what makes them poor is therefore of the utmost importance. What has Japan had that Haiti hasn't had for the last several decades? It's not natural resources. It's not intelligence, or else why is the US so much wealthier than India, when all our doctors and engineers come from India these days? It's not even only hard work. Poor people usually have to work very hard.

It is, I would submit, a commitment on the part of the whole society, to freedom, justice and rule of law. It is an environment where people know they can work hard, take risks and innovate, and not have their wealth simply stolen from them by others. It is a culture where people can trust each other to keep their word and honor their contracts, which is necessary for trade to be possible. It is a society where the poor will be treated with justice, rather than be exploited and oppressed by those more powerful than they; where the poor will have the opportunity to better themselves through their own labor and skills; where people will not be treated as members of a class or caste with only certain economic opportunities open to them, but where the limits on what a man can do are only those limits within himself. In such a society, all individuals have the maximum incentive to use their opportunities and abilities for the good of the whole society.

Very poor societies, such as Haiti, always have a few things in common. They have a very top-heavy authority structure. The economic resources and opportunities are all controlled by just a few people, who dole those benefits out to others in return for political support. There is no commitment to rule of law, so that theft is rarely punished, except when it is done by politically unfavored classes. There is little freedom- permission must be asked of the powerful to do anything. There is no respect for private property; a man's possessions can be seized at any time if it is seen to serve the "greater good".

Put these factors in place, and the country will be poor. In fact, a rich country can be made into a poor one rather quickly, as Zimbabwe has demonstrated in the last twenty years, and as many other places can show us as well. But on the other hand, a poor country can become a rich one with these factors in place, as we have seen in South Korea, Taiwan and many other places.

Remember that, as our country appears to be giving up on these very principles, and our government becomes more centralized, more top-heavy, more intrusive into every area of our lives. Remember that as our political elites tell us that our wealth should be concentrated in their hands to then be distributed equitably to the people. In doing so, they will destroy the factors that made us a rich nation in the first place. More and more people will be sunk into poverty. And poverty kills, more than any other factor in the world.

Consider the fact that it took one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded to reduce parts of Japan, temporarily, to the condition that large parts of the rest of the world live in all the time. Japan will rebuild and recover, though it won't be easy. Haiti, a year later, is still in rubble.

The Reproach of Christ

2011-03-12T10:37:00.002-07:00

Moses valued the "reproach of Christ" better than the treasures of Egypt. Do we?

Seems to me like a lot of Christians these days are OK with being Christians as long as Christianity is cool enough. As long as the pastor is wearing the five thousand dollar designer suit, or jeans that cost more than the wool suit of their old pastor; as long as the worship team is attractive enough; as long as the building is comfortable enough; as long as the message can be presented in a way that's acceptable.

"Yes, I'm a Christian, but I'm not one of THOSE Christians. Not one of those tacky Christians in a polyester suit and a combover. Not one of those embarrassing Christians who believes what the Bible says about creation, or homosexuality, or male headship."

It doesn't matter how we dress it up though. The world hates Christianity, mocks it, ridicules it and will destroy it any way they can. Just like they did Christ. Being a Christian means embracing the shame, the embarrassment, the stumblingblock of the cross, and you will never, never be "socially acceptable" to the world who hates Christ. You will never have the right credentials. You will never be wearing the right shoes. You will never have the right taste in music or go to the proper restaurants.

Moses gave up being a prince in the most powerful empire on earth in order to associate himself with a dirty, beat-down slave people. Most of them were bad, ungrateful idolaters who had rejected the God of their fathers. Those slaves didn't even like Moses very much. They hated him in fact and blamed him for all their problems, telling him that he was wrong to sacrifice everything to save them from Egypt. They rebelled against him and tried to go back to Egypt, saying that everything Moses had done was just for his own ego.

But they were God's people. They were the people of the promise. They were decidedly "unhip", and yet Moses made their fate his fate, because they were God's people.

This is what it means to embrace the shame of the cross, the reproach of Christ, the scandal of the gospel. Jesus said, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you." It means giving up riches, reputation, relationships. It means, worst of all for many in this generation, being uncool.

But Christ was "uncool" for us. Jesus was stripped naked, nailed to a piece of wood and hoisted up where everyone could see him, spit on him, mock him and shame him. He did all of this without a word in His defense. He was a defeated, crushed, powerless and humiliated enemy of every single power structure that existed at the time. He was despised and rejected. He was irrelevant, marginalized, out of touch, unfashionable. And He was, finally and literally, beaten to death. For us.

So now He makes this very simple request of us. For Him, in thankfulness for what He did, we must embrace His shame, His defeat, His rejection and make it our own. The only way to the glory of heaven is through the shame of the cross. The Apostles knew it; they rejoiced to be found worthy to suffer shame for Jesus' sake. Moses knew it; he embraced the promise of God knowing it meant rejecting the glory, sophistication and power of Egypt in exchange for the contempt and ingratitude of an ignorant, rebellious slave people, for the sake of God's promise. And we must know it today. We must not be ashamed of the gospel. It was unfashionable in Paul's day and it is unfashionable in ours. If being relevant and acceptable to our society is what we value then we will reject the true gospel, the true doctrine of Christ. But if we embrace Christ, and rejoice to suffer shame for His sake, then His glory becomes ours as well, and we will one day rule with Him in eternity.

Christian Economics: Trade and Money

2011-03-03T11:39:00.005-07:00

Christian Economics, part 3: Trade and Money

Part 1
Part 2

Proverbs 11:26 The people will curse him who withholds grain, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.

Trade is a fundamental part of our economic life. Without trade, life would be very difficult. Think for a moment of what things would be like if you were required to produce everything you used for yourself. Even with a great deal of training and effort, any of us would at best be able to manage a very rudimentary survival, and only if we are physically strong and healthy.

Even the simplest, most isolated tribe will trade. The men will hunt while the women stay home and tend the gardens or farms, cook and care for the children. There is trade between the men and the women- the men provide many raw materials such as meat and animal skins while the women trade services such as refining those raw materials into usable goods for the men. The men specialize at what they can do most effectively and the women generalize in several other areas. The result is that both the men and the women, through trade, are wealthier than they would otherwise be.

Soon, one tribe sees that another tribe has very good spears, while they are good at making clothes out of skins. So the spear tribe realizes that they can make extra spears and trade them to the other tribe for skins. Both tribes are better off through the trade. The spear tribe makes more spears than they actually need, and value the extra spears less than they value the high quality clothes from the other tribe, which they would not be able to produce themselves. Before, one tribe would have good spears and bad clothes, and the other tribe would have bad spears and good clothes. Through trade, both tribes have good spears and good clothes. Everyone is better off through trade. Soon, more tribes learn of the good spears, and they too wish to trade for them, trading perhaps their own raw materials, perhaps canoes or bows or pottery. This goes on to the point where the spear tribe realizes that it is now more profitable for them to make spears than it is to do anything else. So they stop hunting, stop farming, spend some time making good tools which they never would have made just to make spears for themselves, and spend most of their effort now cranking out high quality spears for all the rest of the tribes, who trade all the other goods the tribe needs in exchange. The tribe now grows far richer than they ever would have been otherwise, and everyone around has great hunting spears.

Now money comes into the picture. It is very convenient to have some store of wealth. Maybe the spear tribe has enough meat for now, but they'd love to be able to get some meat later after the hunting season is over and few people are buying spears. So they accept payment in rare glass beads instead, intending to use those beads later to trade back for food. The beads act as money, a store of wealth.

For something to be effective as money, it needs to be recognizably valuable and non-perishable. It should be convenient to move around. Its weight and size needs to be much smaller than the goods that it purchases, relative to its value. Things such as glass beads were good money for some people at certain times, but as glass beads became much easier to manufacture, they lost their value. Precious metals were much better. Gold, silver and copper are great stores of value. They are attractive. They are very useful for making jewelry, and in the modern age even have many industrial applications, and therefore have intrinsic value. There is a limited supply of each of them- they cannot be manufactured from other things, but must be mined out of the ground. These metals have very distinctive properties of weight, color and malleability, which makes them very difficult to counterfeit. This is why these metals have so commonly been used for money. Money therefore acts as a store of wealth beyond its own ability to raise one's standard of living.

So this raises the question of price. What is the right price for something? When we understand what trade is, we can immediately understand the answer to this question. The right price for something is the price that people are willing to pay. The spear tribe doesn't truly determine the price of its spears. The people who want the spears decide what they are willing to pay. Different people will value them differently. A tribe with no access to metal at all will value those good spears more highly than another tribe that can already make pretty decent spears on their own. Price therefore is determined at its most basic level by the value people place on the goods they are purchasing.

Simply put, this is all trade is. Most of us trade our labor for other goods. We get specialized at particular kinds of labor in order to maximize the worth of that labor. We then trade that labor for money, and use the money to buy the other goods and services that we need. Some people own property, and trade the use of that property for money through rents. Some people purchase labor, and use that labor combined with their own personal skills, abilities and equipment, manufacture the goods or provide the services that other people desire.

Through this system, everyone's wealth is increased. Each time a transaction in a free economy occurs, both sides of the transaction choose to make the transaction because they believe they will be better off. Just as the trade of spears and clothes increases the wealth of both tribes, so my purchase of aspirin at the store makes both of us wealthier. So when I give away money and get aspirin in return, both of us are better off. The people who sell the aspirin are selling it for more than it is worth to them at the time, and the person who buys the aspirin wants the aspirin more than they value any other purpose for which they could use the money. Therefore both are wealthier for the purchase.

Take a look back at the Bible verse quoted at the beginning of the post. We now see why this is so true. When people freely engage in the marketplace of goods and services, they are better off, and so are the people with which they trade. The more buyers and sellers there are, the better off everyone ultimately becomes. A man might withhold his corn in an attempt to drive the price up, because he is too lazy to produce or harvest, or because of false ideas about what wealth truly is. He might save all of his grain in order to protect himself from some imagined disaster. He would be better off by selling that grain, because doing so increases his wealth and the wealth of everyone around him.

For free trade to occur, there are some important conditions that must exist. There must be rule of law. A man needs to have confidence that contracts will be honored and that goods are what people say they are. This is why false weights and measures are an abomination to God. False weights and measures, along with all other forms of theft, destroy economic relationships which, as we established, lie right at the heart of what it means for us to be in the image of God. This is one of the main roles of government- to prevent theft by enforcing contracts, regulating weights and measures and punishing those that steal from others.

There are of course many complications, caveats and qualifications to the simple model I have outlined above. But much of our wrong thinking about economics comes from failing to understand the basic nature of a thing. We hear that the government should restrict what people can sell or buy, or the price at which they can do so. We see gas prices going up and say, why can't the government do something about it? If we realize that the gas prices are the result of free economic decisions of value between buyers and sellers, then we would know that there is no "right" price of gas, and if we want to bring the price down, we should look at what factors are preventing trade or limiting supply, all the time realizing that there are free economic actors on both sides of the trade, and it is just as legitimate for the sellers of gas to want to make a profit as it is for the buyers of gas to get cheap gas.

George Orwell once said, "To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle." We have had a great many highly trained academics from Harvard and Yale, men and women who have written long books, held many high academic, commercial and government positions, who made a great deal of money and have many letters after their name, who told us the present economic crisis could never happen. And yet it happened. They based their thinking on the premise that ingenious state and corporate activity could repeal the basic laws of human interaction and create wealth out of nothing. But currency manipulations, bureaucratic regulations, political schemes and laws can never create wealth. They can certainly destroy it. But the best the state can ever do is to create the environment where wealth creation happens. The way wealth creation happens has always been the same. Economic actors produce goods and services, and then freely exchange those goods and services for other goods and services that they desire. We need to continually struggle to remind ourselves and others of this very simple truth.

Never feel guilty about making a fair profit, of growing wealthy by providing valuable services and goods to others. God created you to do that very thing. Blessed is the man who sells, and cursed is the man who holds back his God-given gifts from the marketplace of free exchange.

Christian Economics: Theft

2011-02-26T11:10:00.002-07:00

The main commandment dealing with economics is the eighth commandment, "do not steal". It is not the only one; as I said in the previous post the commandment against adultery has important implications for us when we recognize that our bodies are part of the overall economy of the resources which have been placed under our stewardship. Likewise, respect for parents, respect for life, not bearing false witness and not coveting all have important economic implications. But the eighth commandment bears directly on our economic life and shapes it.

The eighth commandment establishes the fundamental right of private property. Man was created to have dominion over creation. Creation is much too big for just one man, however, even in a state of perfection. God told Adam to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and his offspring would therefore share in that dominion. That means that creation belongs to humanity for him to use. And he was to tend creation, adding his labor to creation in order to maintain and improve it. The eighth commandment means that a man has a right to the results of his own labor.

Wealth is created by human beings when we apply our labor to the natural world in a way that makes that world more usable. Wealth and money are not the same things. We'll talk more about money in the future, but money is simply a symbol standing for wealth, and often does so in deceptive ways. But true wealth is a rising living standard; that a person has a better, safer and more enjoyable life as a result of efforts made to improve on nature.

The idea of "improving on nature" may sound odd to the modern ears, because of the nature-worship which is so embedded in our culture. The fact is, that we have improved on nature in countless ways, and our society and economy have become so complex that this truth is often obscured. But in raw, unadorned nature, most of us would be dead in very short order. We have clothes to keep us warm, houses to shelter us, medicines to keep us healthy, abundant food, transportation and many other things. The quality, availability and affordability of these things increases constantly. In addition, we have arts, music, entertainment and communication available to us that improves all of our lives in many ways. The misuse of any of these things is not the point- they are available, and of themselves very good, and all of it is the result of individuals and groups working to improve on nature. The eighth commandment dictates that these individuals should have the right to their own labor.

Stealing happens in a lot of different forms. The Heidelberg Catechism talks about the "wicked tricks and devices" by which I seek to take my neighbor's goods. Essentially, any way that I seek to enrich myself at the expense of others is theft. Obviously forcibly taking someone else's goods is theft. Theft also often happens by deceit. The Bible speaks of false weights and measures as an abomination. A farmer brings his wheat in for sale, and the merchant who buys his wheat measures the bushel as bigger than it really is, making it appear that the farmer is selling fewer bushels than he is. And the merchant gets him on the other end too, by weighing the silver out in smaller than the real measure so that he's giving the farmer less silver than he is really owed. In general, this is reflective of all business practices whereby I make the product I am selling to be less valuable than it actually is, or charge more for it than I said I would. When I contract with a man to give him eight hours a labor at a given rate, then if I give him less than eight hours of labor, I am stealing from him.

Theft often happens in much more subtle ways as well. If two neighbors have cornfields, and the one neighbor sneaks over in the middle of the night and destroys the crop of the other in order to make his crop more valuable, most would recognize this as theft. If I take away the productive value of someone else's property, I am stealing. Likewise, a man has property in his own skills and time. He sells this property as his labor. If I take from a man the value of his skills and labor, I am likewise stealing.

When we understand this concept, we see how very pervasive stealing is. Our government dictates the price at which people can work, for example, and dictates a large number of burdensome regulations on businesses. All of these regulations reduce the productive value of people's labor and property. At first glance, a minimum wage law would seem to increase the value of labor, but in fact it does the opposite. A minimum wage law does not make a man more productive than he is otherwise- his labor is worth what it is worth, depending on the skills and experience of the man. If I as a business owner cannot purchase labor at less than, say, $5 an hour, then I will only purchase labor that is worth more than that to me. The practical effect of a minimum wage law, then, is to make it illegal for someone whose labor is only worth $4 an hour to sell his labor. The government has essentially stolen his labor. High rates of unemployment among the youth demonstrate this well- their labor is not worth the amount that the government says is the minimum, and therefore the value of their labor is stolen from them.

Likewise, if I have a business, and the government dictates regulations to me about how I can and cannot do business, they are reducing the value of my business. Some of these regulations are necessary, of course. It is proper for the government to regulate my business in such a way as to prohibit activities which would steal from others. A factory should not be permitted to dump its waste in the river- this would be stealing from everyone else who uses the river. But many regulations, disguised as this sort of thing, are actually intended to benefit politically favored groups at the expense of others. Requiring me to hire certain minorities or disabled people; preventing me from firing people unless I provide very burdensome proof of malfeasance; and many similar regulations are ways of benefiting favored political groups at my expense. All government regulations should be very strictly examined to determine whether they are truly necessary, and whether the same goals could be accomplished in less burdensome ways. And much better is to take action in cases of actual harm against people, rather than preemptively trying to eliminate any harm through the use of regulations.

In Deuteronomy 22:8, when a new house was built, they were required to build a railing around the roof. Roofs in that culture were flat, with access by stair, and people would often dine or socialize on their roofs. It is therefore very reasonable to dictate that a rail should be built to prevent an accidental fall. In similar ways, the government is well within its right to dictate obvious safety precautions. But look at Exodus 21:28-29 for a different kind of example. There, if an ox killed a man, then the ox was to be put to death, but the owner was not guilty. Only if the ox was shown to be dangerous in the past could the man be held responsible. The solution here was not to impose burdensome regulations on all oxen owners. The solution instead was that in the case of actual provable negligence- the ox was known to be dangerous in the past- the man was guilty for the death of the victim and punished accordingly.

Many products have been restricted or prohibited merely to gain political favor, because some group of people in the country got scared over the dangers of this product. Incandescent light bulbs were banned in this country because of the perceived threat of global warming. This of course destroyed that industry in this country; incandescent bulbs will now only be made in other countries. Man-caused global warming is only a theory, and one which is doubted by many. But the law was promoted by environmentalist groups as well as by companies that would be manufacturing the more expensive high-efficiency bulbs, and the law was passed. This was an act of massive theft, and yet is hailed by many as a virtuous deed. The recent accusations against Toyota regarding their brake failures are probably another example- no problem with their brakes has ever been found and most reports can be attributed to driver error, and yet this did not stop many media outlets and politicians from making outrageous accusations. Toyota suffered economic harm as a result, to the benefit of those politicians, activists and media outlets. Now the truth is known, and yet Toyota will likely never be recompensed for their losses.

We should recognize that any restriction on a man's economic activity takes away economic value. This can be justified if such restrictions are necessary to prevent theft or real harm to others. But when we restrict a man's freedom simply to benefit some other favored group such as "workers", the "poor" or any other group, we are stealing from him. If we restrict a man's freedom to prevent the remote possibility of some harm or because unsubstantiated accusations of harm are made, we are again stealing from him.

Theft is extremely serious. God speaks of deceptive economic practices, such as unjust weights and measures, as an abomination (Deuteronomy 25:14-15). When we see that man's economic activity is an essential part of the image of God within him and his mandate for dominion of the creation, we can see the reason why this attack on God's image in man should be taken so seriously.

Christian Economics: The Image of God

2011-02-10T14:05:00.004-07:00

Economics means literally "rule of the house". It addresses the distribution of wealth, goods and services. The name is more appropriate than you might think at first, since the study analyzes the behavior of fundamental economic unit, the household. Economic choices are typically made at the household level.

Economics is often neglected by Christians because of, I believe, a fundamental misunderstanding of what we as humans are. We are not spiritual beings who happen to inhabit a physical body for a time. That is a gnostic error with roots in the ancient church, and led to the frequent abandonment of the economic world in favor of living in caves, hermitages or monasteries by those who desired to be more spiritual. The truth is that God created us to be both physical and spiritual beings. He put Adam in the Garden of Eden and gave him fundamentally material tasks. He was to tend the garden, be fruitful and multiply the earth, and name the animals.

In fact, Adam was said to be "in the image and likeness of God." God's creative acts, beyond the initial ex nihilo creation, involved separating and distinguishing one thing from another- light from dark, sea from dry land- as well as filling these forms with content- stars in the sky, fish in the sea, plants and animals on the land, and so forth. And then He created man, in the image and likeness of God, as the pinnacle of creation. He gave man tasks to do that reflected this image and likeness, in that Adam's acts were small reflections of God's own creative acts. He was to bring order out of chaos in the creation by tending the garden, naming the animals and filling creation with human beings. Man was to be a scientist. Naming the animals meant understanding them. Man was to be an industrialist. Tending the garden meant hard work and industry to take the raw materials of creation and improve on them. And man was to be a father, a family man. All of these things defined man's relationship with creation and with other men, and ultimately with the God that made him. Of course when Adam fell into sin, all of this was brought into ruin and corruption. Man's labor is specifically mentioned in the curse- the creation would rebel against his rule by bringing forth "thorns and thistles", and man's work would now be by the "sweat of his brow."

Salvation involves restoring what was lost. Man was to be a faithful servant of God, but failed. Jesus came to be what Adam failed to be. And He succeeded- He was the faithful servant. In salvation, we are conformed to His image, which means that in salvation we are being restored to our status as faithful imagebearers of God. And that means that our relationship with God's creation will be one of the principal things being restored in us. The implication of this is that economics is a proper and important study for every Christian.

I believe that if economics were better understood, a great deal of foolishness that passes for policy could be avoided. But my concerns here are not primarily political. My concern is that we as Christians understand that being a Christian does not mean retreating from the world. This world is cursed and fallen and will be destroyed by fire. But creation itself will be restored. Eternal life will not be spent sitting on a cloud playing a harp. A "new heavens and new earth" are coming, and our life will be a physical life spent in a physical place. Preparing for that eternal life then means that right now, just as we are learning what it means to treat one another with love, so it also means learning to relate properly to God's creation. We are to take dominion over the creation we are presently in. This means being good stewards (caretakers) of our own bodies in sexual purity. It means being hard at work with what God has given us to do, and doing that work in integrity and thankfulness. It means helping those who are in need. It means using all of the things of God's creation with moderation, joy and thankfulness, and not being drunken or gluttonous. It means not stealing from others.

Unfortunately, the gnostic error persists. It is seen in the fact that when we are called to serve God with our lives, to many that means quitting their jobs and engaging in full-time "church" work, or at least giving most of their money to ministry. It is seen in the fact that it is viewed as somehow inherently immoral to make money, or at least to make very much. But we see here that when I interact with God's creation in dominion, improving on that creation and bringing order out of chaos, I reflect God's own image and begin to fulfill man's original reason for existence. I must do so in a way that glorifies God, of course, and is therefore in accordance with His word; meaning that I do not exploit creation for the satisfaction of my selfish lusts; I do not steal or defraud from others in my labor; and that I always remember to be generous to the poor. But in this way, the Christian sees that so-called "secular" work can be highly glorifying to God. This is the foundation of Christian economics, the understanding that man was created by God as a physical and spiritual being, and is called upon to reflect God's own nature in his physical being and in the physical creation which God has made.

Slander

2011-02-05T10:41:00.001-07:00

Recently, Obama gave a speech in which he quoted Isaiah 40:31, a very familiar verse to many. In the quote Obama left out one phrase, "renew their strength." So Fox News reported that Obama "botched" the quote. I would say this is a good bit petty on Fox News' part. I frequently quote Scripture from memory, and often paraphrase and summarize. Many of the apostles themselves, when quoting the Old Testament, do the same. As long as the meaning of the text is intact, the quote is fine. I wouldn't describe that as botching a quote. The change Obama (probably inadvertently) made did not change the meaning of the verse at all. But cheap shots for the sake of generating a story are nothing new.

But here's where it gets interesting. MediaMatters unloaded on Fox, saying that Fox doesn't know that there's more than one version of the Bible. They claimed that Obama's quote was from the NIV and Fox News' quote was from the KJV, and that Fox was claiming that the misquote was because he didn't quote it in the KJV. This is nonsense; the omitted phrase appears in the NIV as well. The slander continues in the comments on MediaMatters, with people saying things like "The dimwitted teabaggers believe Jesus was a white guy with blue eyes and spoke King's English." and "A lot of Christians don't even know about the Apocrypha, or that the Bible was assembled by an assembly of Priests who determined what was and wasn't "God's Word" by popular vote." But that stuff is just run of the mill for the totally ignorant, malicious way that an awful lot of people on the left think about conservative Christians.

But now, a pastor gets involved. Pastor Dan Schultz, blogging at Religion Dispatches, jumps in, repeating MediaMatters' slander. Both the MediaMatters post and Pastor Dan's post are linked by the conservative blogosphere, with the result that they are quickly corrected in their own comments. Pastor Dan (unlike MediaMatters, so far) at least has enough integrity to realize that he's made a mistake and issues a correction. But even in the correction, he can't help continuing to take shots at Fox, and act as if his error was not as great as theirs-

As several people point out in the comments, Media Matters made a mistake of their own. The President's words don't match exactly the NIV, as MMFA reported. He seems to have left out the phrase "they will renew their strength."

This is somewhat embarrassing.

"Gotcha," however, is neither a functional equivalent of a smear campaign, nor a moral one. Media Matters mistakenly attributed the scripture quote to the NIV; I saw nothing obviously wrong with that, and failed to notice the omission. Shame on me, but I'm not the one charging a sitting president with misquoting the Bible. Nor does the mistake in versions alter the basic point: Fox News said the president "botched" scripture. He did no such thing. He left out a phrase which changes the meaning of the scripture not at all. However much egg this leaves on my face, it changes nothing about the subject. I apologize for my error, as I'm sure Media Matters will once I inform them of it. I wonder if Fox News will follow suit, or will they allow a false impression about the president to stand?

But Fox didn't make a mistake, Pastor Dan. Fox didn't lie about what the President said. They exaggerated the importance of it, true. But you lied. You claimed that Fox did something that they didn't do. And it's interesting to me that leftists have just recently (oh, since sometime in January, 2009) rediscovered the dignity of the presidential office, so that exaggerating about a "sitting president" is somehow so much worse than lying about a news organization.

Pastor Dan goes on:

The standard for professional competence in Biblical scholarship is not memorizing random passages instead of, say, the ability to analyze the literary, textual and theological significance of a particular passage. While the NIV rests in my congregation's pews, Isaiah 40:31 comes up precisely once in the three-year lectionary cycle. Which means, other than being the source of "On Eagle's Wings," it's not exactly a familiar passage. Perhaps Fox News will use this as evidence that I am not in fact a Christian minister, but a secret godless Muslim. I tremble at the thought.

It's a pretty familiar passage to a lot of us. But agreed, memorizing passages doesn't prove a real understanding of Scripture. But do you know what does? Not lying about people, and not continuing to divert blame when you get caught in the lie.

Pastor Dan's actions here are a great example of how gossip and slander work. The only thing that makes this different is that it all happened on the Internet, so he got caught. But you hear a negative story about someone that fits into your preconceived idea of what kind of person they are, and without any proof at all, you repeat that story to others. What Pastor Dan did in the original article was slanderous even if Fox _had_ done what he said they did, since he didn't bother to check to see whether it was true or not.

The Tuscon shooting was a perfect example of this. The shooting happened, and before anyone knew anything about it, it was already being pinned on the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. Anyone who made that claim proved themselves to be a liar, even if the shooter had been a Limbaugh-Beck-Palin fan and a registered Republican, because they were claiming to know something they didn't know. They committed slander, falsely accusing a whole political movement of murder, with no evidence- just innuendo.

If I get drunk and go driving in my car, I am guilty of the sixth commandment whether or not I actually kill anyone, because I recklessly endangered people's lives. Likewise, when I spread stories around about people when I don't know their truthfulness, I am guilty of the ninth, even if the stories happen to be true. (This leaves aside the question of whether it's legitimate to spread even true, negative stories about someone if you have no need to do so.) The catechism tells us that one of the duties of the ninth commandment is to "promote and defend our neighbor's good name." A good reputation is one of the greatest treasures a man can possess. When we recklessly endanger that reputation, we do a great deal of damage to the man. I would rather someone played with matches in my house than that he spread false stories around about me. Being reckless with the truth about someone else's reputation is a great sin, and just because I get lucky and accidentally don't lie some of the time is no defense.

Pastor Dan is a liberal, politically and theologically. He's a pastor in the United Church of Christ, a very liberal denomination. I would love to pin this somehow on his liberalism. But in my own sad experience, even politically and theologically conservative pastors will all too often listen to very harmful lies, from old friends or family members in churches they used to pastor, if it confirms their prejudices against others or strokes their ego about what a better pastor they are than the new guy. Church members will all too often spread rumors about each other and listen to gossip about church members from others outside the church. It makes us feel superior, more righteous, "in the know", and also feeds our envy and resentment of those perceived as being more influential or more popular than we are. Gossip and slander within churches and within denominations is among the most harmful of forces, and causes far more ruin than sins we talk more about such as drunkenness and adultery.

Psalm 101:7- "7 He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight."

Taste and See that the Lord is Good

2011-02-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

The proper relation of good works to the gospel is a common discussion in Christianity, especially since the Protestant Reformation which confirmed so powerfully the doctrine of justification by faith alone. It's been the subject of a recent controversy between several Reformed blogs- a letter from Pyromaniacs warning the White Horse Inn blogger Michael Horton about encouraging antinomianism, a response from Michael Horton, and some related thoughts from Professor R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary.

I have a great deal of respect and sympathy, really, for all of the people involved here. There are, however, some important distinctions to be made and I think underlying this discussion truly is simply some real differences of opinion regarding the nature of the gospel itself. Here is a video of Dr. Lane Tipton making this very point- demonstrating that we can make some pretty basic assumptions about the gospel without even realizing it, and those assumptions will very powerfully affect how we answer a whole bunch of questions. Tipton asserts (and I agree) that the gospel is not simply justification by faith alone. It includes that essential doctrine, of course. But the gospel itself, he says, is the good news of union with Christ, meaning that the gospel is the fact of my union with Him, and all of the benefits associated with that- justification, adoption, sanctification and glorification, are all included.

Jesus said He came to save His people from their sins. If Dr. Tipton is correct, then the salvation which Jesus is offering is not just rescuing from the punishment of sins, but from the sins themselves. The old hymn sang, "Be of sin the double cure; cleanse me from its guilt and power." So we are rescued from the condemnation, but also from the tyranny, of sin.

Heidelberg Catechism q. 86 says,
"Question 86. Since then we are delivered from our misery, merely of grace, through Christ, without any merit of ours, why must we still do good works?
Answer: Because Christ, having redeemed and delivered us by his blood, also renews us by his Holy Spirit, after his own image; that so we may testify, by the whole of our conduct, our gratitude to God for his blessings, (a) and that he may be praised by us; (b) also, that every one may be assured in himself of his faith, (c) by the fruits thereof; and that, by our godly conversation others may be gained to Christ. (d)"

I want to point out that phrase "...that every one may be assured in himself of his faith, (c) by the fruits thereof." This teaches that one part of our assurance of faith is by our works. Our sanctification is never the grounds of our merit before God. But it does demonstrate that God is at work in us, and therefore shows that the promise of God is true. God's claim to be able to save me from my sins is shown to be true by the beginning of that process. I think this points us to the fact that the gospel encompasses more than simply justification, that the gospel includes all of Jesus' benefits, and that therefore an exhortation to good works as a thankful response to God's forgiveness belongs properly to the preaching of the gospel.

Now one school of thought really downplays or outright denies this doctrine that good works have a role in assurance of faith. They say that this breeds legalism on the one hand and despair on the other. How good is good enough? How many good works actually demonstrate that I have true faith? My answer would be, how many apples growing on the tree does it take to show that the apple tree is alive? Just one. Any good work at all in the believer demonstrates the work of faith. The unbeliever is incapable of good works. Also according to the catechism, only those works which proceed from faith are truly good works. The Pharisee, the outward religionist, cannot produce any true fruit, but only a fake version.

This doctrine is not in the least a burden to me. It is a great comfort. I can look at myself and see clearly that I am very far from what I ought to be. I cannot claim to have the least merit to produce before God and say, I am worthy of salvation. But I can look at myself and say, I am not what I was, and I am not what I would be without Jesus. I know that I could not have done this good work in me by my own power, and therefore I recognize the work of the Spirit in me. This gives me comfort when I am downcast over my sin. The Spirit is at work in me, and God will finish the good work which He has begun.

We can therefore challenge ourselves and challenge each other, "O taste and see that the Lord is good!" If you are plagued with doubt, despair and uncertainty about the gospel, my encouragement to you is, lay hold of the promises of the gospel and start striving to live in the light of that blessed freedom. Bathe yourself in the word of God and prayer. Remind yourself constantly of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And endeavor to live in a way that reflects that truth. God will work in you. God will grant you power and strength to overcome sin, when you have faith in Him. You will taste God's goodness in your life, and this will grant you a stronger assurance of the truth of God's promises.

An Analogy about Reality

2011-01-24T07:27:00.001-07:00

A dialogue, between John and David:

John: Consider a fictional character, one who is well-developed by a master of his trade. Someone like King Lear. Is King Lear real?

David: No, naturally not. King Lear doesn't exist. He was invented by William Shakespeare.

J: OK, so tell me something about King Lear.

D: He was a vain and foolish king, who succumbed to the flattery of his two evil daughters and was angered by the truth-telling of his one wise daughter, with disastrous results.

J: Now, you have just predicated things about King Lear. You have made statements about attributes which King Lear possesses. How is that possible if he doesn't exist? How can you say things about something that is nonexistent?

D: Well, I meant that he doesn't exist in history, in reality. He only exists in our minds.

J: So if something only exists in our minds, then it doesn't exist? Does Beethoven's 9th Symphony exist? Would it exist even if every written copy and audio recording of it were destroyed, but people still remembered it? Would it be real then?

D: Sure, but you're talking about the work as a whole. Beethoven's 9th exists just like the play "King Lear" exists. That doesn't mean that the actual person, King Lear, really exists. He's a fiction, invented. He's not a real person. You can't touch him.

J: I can't touch my dead grandfather either. Is he real?

D: Yes, but in a different sense. He existed once. There was a point in time when he existed. King Lear never existed.

J: I can't touch the Holy Spirit either. Is the Holy Spirit real?

D: Of course, but again, in a different sense. God exists spiritually. King Lear does not exist spiritually. There is not a soul or a spirit out there called "King Lear".

J: But when I think "King Lear", if I am familiar with the play, a whole set of ideas pops into my mind. I think of the choice he made to give his kingdom to the two older daughters who flattered him, and his rejection of his younger daughter who told him the truth. We think of Lear having done that. How can something that isn't real do anything? How can a nonexistent thing call into my mind all of these ideas and associations? King Lear is such a popular and classic play because it so beautifully illustrates the foolishness of vanity and the importance of listening to hard truths, and the destruction that flattery causes. I am a wiser person for having known the character King Lear, and so are many others. How can something unreal affect people like you and I?

D: OK, so in a sense perhaps he exists. King Lear exists in the sense that he is a real character in a fictional work, who has characteristics and does things within that fictional work. But he is only real in that sense. Normally when you ask if someone is real, you are asking whether the person is an actual historical figure or whether he is merely the product of fiction. Like Odysseus, for example- was he an actual person about which Homer wrote exaggerated accounts, or was Odysseus entirely invented? We don't really know the answer to the question yet, though we suspect that the first assertion may very well be true. So you still can't really say that King Lear was real. King Lear was created by a man, just invented out of nothing.

J: I was created out of nothing as well, by God. Am I real?

D: Of course you're real. You're sitting right there. I know you.

J: But as we've established, we know King Lear as well. We know his characteristics and personality. We know the choices he made and the results of those choices.

D: As you said, God created us. We are real, but we are not real in the same sense that God is real. God exists of Himself. We are created by Him for His purposes. In that sense I guess you could draw an analogy between the relationship of our existence and God's existence on the one hand, and the relationship of King Lear's existence to William Shakespeare's existence as well. Both are real, but not in the same sense.

J: Yes, I think you're on to something there. At the same time, we should be careful, since the analogy is inexact. Everything that is bears that relationship to God. Everything was created by God- William Shakespeare and the plays that Shakespeare wrote. But man was created in the image and the likeness of God, so it should not disturb us to think that man can create real things in some sense out of nothing, bearing that image of God in his creation, though of course because he's not God, he could not do so in the same way that God creates out of nothing. In a relative sense, though, cannot man create real things (like King Lear) simply out of his own mind, which yet do not rise to the level of his own existence, in the same way that God creates real things that nonetheless can never rise to God's own level of existence?

D: So you're saying that our relationship to God is in some sense analogous to King Lear's relationship to Shakespeare? Wouldn't that have troubling implications for the freedom of our choices? King Lear is just a predetermined play. Are our lives like that?

J: Well, we judge the morality of characters in the play, don't we? Earlier you referred to King Lear's two evil daughters and her one wise and good one.

D: Yes, but that's just within the play.

J: King Lear and his daughters only really exist within the play though. So of course it is only within the play that they can be said to be good or evil. And yet we judge them as such. On what basis to we judge a character in a play to be good or evil if the character was simply doing what he or she was written to do?

D: Well, that's the purpose of the play, or one of them. In the play and in most works of fiction, there are heroes and villains. Good guys and bad guys. Sometimes their characters are complex- there are tragic heroes and anti-heroes and sympathetic villains. But their actions and choices in the play shows whether they are good or bad or some mixture of the two.

J: Choices? How can they be said to have choices? Their lives were written in a play, made up by a playwright. Did King Lear have a choice whether to listen to his evil daughters or his good one?

D: Well, not in an absolute sense of course. Shakespeare made those choices. But within the context of the play, which is the only context in which the characters actually exist, they have choices. Within the play, Lear had a choice, and his bad choice reveals his tragic flaw and leads to his doom. If he had no choice, then the play reveals nothing about right or wrong at all. If he was forced or tricked to do what he did, then the play would reveal nothing about his character, and really have no purpose at all.

J: So you're telling me he had a real choice, but one which only had reality within the limited context of his own limited existence, and that his real choice (within that context) revealed his character, for which he is rightly judged. And all of this is true, within that context, even though looking at it from another perspective, from the higher and more truly real perspective of his creator, William Shakespeare, every aspect of Lear's existence was entirely predetermined according to Shakespeare's own purposes and designs for creating him.

D: Yes, I guess that's right.

J: Interesting.

The most Calvinistic verse in the Bible?

2011-01-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

Acts 17:33 So Paul departed from among them.

This passage comes at the end of Paul's address to the Athenians at the Areopagus. After his sermon to them, specifically preaching of the resurrection of the dead, a concept foreign and ridiculous to Greek philosophy and religion, we read that some mocked Paul and some said, "We will hear you again on this matter." What was Paul's reaction? He left.

Why didn't he continue debating or arguing? Why didn't he "take every thought captive"? Why didn't he "give a defense"?

There are several examples of Paul doing just that, after all. Acts 18:4 tells us that Paul reasoned daily in the synagogue, persuading Jews to accept Christ. There are several similar passages in Acts. Jesus reasoned with the Pharisees and Sadducees. Several of Paul's letters are essentially disputes regarding proper theology.

But all of those passages relate interactions with people within the covenant community regarding proper doctrine. When dealing with unbelievers, as in Acts 17, we see an entirely different approach. He simply announces the gospel and leaves, dealing only with those who accept the message. He doesn't try to convince anyone of anything.

The Biblical teaching on salvation is that it is the Holy Spirit that prepares the heart of the hearer. And in fact, this is the approach we see Paul taking here. He simply pronounces the gospel, and those who have been prepared by the Spirit believe. Some mock him; some wish to debate further. But he shows no interest in either one of these groups. The only group that interests him are those that accept the word of God.

Consider also the Philippian jailer. What is it that convinces him? Not debates or discussions with Paul and Silas. No, it is the witness of their own lives. They sing hymns in the jail, rejoicing in God even while they are in stocks after being beaten. The earthquake comes and breaks their bonds. The jailer is sure that the prisoners have escaped, and prepares to kill himself. But Paul tells him not to hurt himself because they are all still there. Recognizing clearly that these men have something he doesn't, he asks them, "What must I do to be saved?" Paul's answer? Believe. The Holy Spirit has prepared this man, and provided all the evidence needed- the miracle, the sanctified lives of other Christians, and the internal, mysterious preparation. All that is needed for Paul is to wait for the opportunity and present the gospel, and the man is converted.

This corresponds to my own experience as well. I have studied many different arguments and evidences for the truth of Christianity. I have examined the presuppositional approach as well as the classical and evidential approach. But none of these have ever played much of a role in the conversions that I have seen and been involved with. In each case, a person was prepared by the Holy Spirit in different ways to hear the truth, and then the Holy Spirit created an opportunity for them to hear that truth. There were often questions that needed to be resolved, but essentially a person heard the truth and believed it. No debate, no proof, no evidence was really necessary. The Holy Spirit provided all the evidence needed, not me.

These arguments and evidences are not without value. They strengthen the faith of those already believing. They shore us up against the attacks of the world. But even here there is a risk. If the strength of my faith is built on evidences or rational arguments, there are always better arguments. There are always other facts calling into question the evidences. Our own faith is going to be strengthened ultimately the same way we got that faith- by the witness of the Holy Spirit.

So Paul, completely consistent with his teaching on the preeminence of the Spirit of God in salvation, and the need for a man to be regenerated before he will ever understand or accept the truth of the gospel, simply announces the truth of the gospel to a pagan world. Most don't believe, and true to their philosopher roots wish to ridicule his belief (skeptical philosophy) or engage in debate to ascertain its truth (Platonic, Stoic or Epicurean). But some believe. These are the ones Paul cares about. With them he will argue, persuade, convince. With them, he will go to great pains to strive for true doctrine, true understanding. For the rest of them, he just leaves.

What a comfort! This shows us we don't need to master all the perfect arguments for Christianity, be up on all the latest scientific or archaeological discoveries, engage in all the latest philosophical developments. These things aren't entirely without value. But they don't bring the sinner to Christ. The witness of the Spirit brings sinners to Christ- the witness of the Spirit in the Scriptures, in the lives of believers, in the heart of the lost sheep. The Spirit provides all the apologetic needed. We just witness, just proclaim the truth. The Lord brings the harvest.

The Narrow Gate

2010-12-29T16:53:00.001-07:00

In response to a question regarding the meaning of Luke 13:24 "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able."

Does this passage teach that people had faith in Christ but didn't try hard enough, and so were not saved?

People desire salvation. They desire the benefits of Christianity. They desire happiness, peace, forgiveness. But they want to gain those things on their own terms. They want to gain them in a way that satisfies their pride, their lusts, their desires. They don't want to repent and submit to God.

The passage in question essentially means, I think, that the only thing necessary to go to hell is for people to just keep doing what they're doing, to do what comes naturally. To find life, a change is necessary. We have to do what is hard for us- to repent, to renounce our ability to save ourselves, to renounce our right to govern our own lives. People want to just do some ceremonies, to profess the right things, to check off the right boxes and go to heaven. But true salvation comes when we surrender, when we confess Jesus as Lord. If Jesus is Lord, then He's the boss, He tells us what to do, and we do it.

A lot of people in the Gospels believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but they wanted Him to be the Messiah they wanted Him to be, to serve their selfish ends. They never surrendered to Him, and when He disappointed their expectations, they left Him. True salvation is never accomplished by a half-way effort. Jesus said that if you put your hand to the plow and look back, you're not worthy of the kingdom of heaven. We're not saved by our works, we're saved by our faith. But we're not saved by a belief that if we just do the minimum, just check off the right boxes, then God will get off our backs and leave us free to do what we want. The faith that is worked by the Holy Spirit works a complete surrender to Jesus as Lord.

Jesus goes on in that passage to talk about those who claimed the right to enter heaven based on the fact that they showed up when religion was going on- "Lord, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets." They participated in religious activities. But Jesus rejects them, calling them workers of "iniquity", that is, lawlessness. There was no repentance, no desire to change their lives to conform to God's truth, and therefore there was no faith, no relationship. There was just a desire to jump through a few hoops to gain the blessings of salvation.

That is the broad and easy way. The narrow way, the way that few find, is the way repentance, of surrender to the rightful Lord of creation.

No Religion?

2010-12-23T15:44:00.001-07:00

I recently asked a question on my Facebook page about the unwillingness of many Christians to identify Christianity as a “religion”, or even an unwillingness to identify themselves as Christians, but rather as “Jesus-followers” or something similar. This trend has bothered me for a while, and I wanted to understand. The question unfortunately degenerated into a rather foolish and beside-the-point argument. But nonetheless, through that question and some associated research, I discovered some links to some people who make this argument. Here is the "Not Religion" web site. Here's a church saying "Want God, not religion?" Here is Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Facebook page, which features a link to a video called “Jesus vs. Religion”. He starts by saying “religion is about me, my works, my efforts.” Other sites that I found seem to say something similar. So it seems to be the case that Driscoll is opposed to legalism, opposed to self-absorption, opposed to pride, opposed to self-righteousness. Certainly I don't have a problem with any of that. I'm against all those things too. Except, wait, I use the term religion. Does that mean my faith is all about me? Mark Driscoll seems to think so.

Or maybe I'm using the word wrong. Driscoll is obviously a smart and very successful guy. So? What does the dictionary say religion is?

-The worship or service of God or the supernatural. -A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs or practices. -A cause, principle or system of beliefs held to with ardor or faith.

Huh. Seems to be plenty of room in there for what Driscoll talks about. He talks about things he believes. He talks about practices he engages in, or avoids. I see just from his FB page that he's against homosexuality, thinks people ought to get involved in church, and ought to treat women good. He's against the idea that you can work your way to heaven. That's a belief or principle, and he certainly seems to have ardor and faith.

But language is all about usage. So how do people actually use the term "religion", beyond what one source says? Wikipedia says that religion is "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of life and the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency, or human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine." Wikipedia is a user-edited website, so that's some indication of usage. Also, I know that on my Facebook page (and a lot of other people's), under "Religion" I put Christian. And I'm pretty sure my beliefs are at least in the same ballpark as Mark Driscoll.

So what gives? Now maybe I'm biased since I wrote a book and called it "The Essentials of the Christian Religion". But it seems like they're putting a meaning into the word "religion" that it doesn't actually have. How about the Bible? What does it have to say about religion?

The word "religion" or "religious" appears seven times in the New Testament, in the New King James. It translates two different words, deisidaimonia and phreskeia. Both of those words can have positive and negative connotations. Neither appears a whole lot in the Bible. But we're talking about an English word and how we use it. How did the translators use it? In at least one place, it definitely has a positive connotation.

James 1:26-27:

26 If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless.
27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

So there's a good religion and a bad religion. And it depends on sincerity and a willingness to follow through with what one claims. A religion which does not result in wise and careful speech is a worthless religion. A religion which results in charity and purity is a good one. So it all depends on context.

But here's the bigger problem. People have been calling themselves Christians and using the word religion to describe Christianity for a long time. When you say "I don't have a religion" or "I'm not a Christian, I'm a Jesus-follower", it kind of feels like you have contempt for all of those other people, and think that your understanding of Jesus is somehow more pure and sincere than theirs. But the church as a whole is concerned with all the things you're concerned with. Every sincere Christian, even those who use the word "religion", are concerned with a sincere, true relationship with the Lord. They call on Jesus' name in times of trouble. They ask forgiveness of their sins. They strive to live a holy life in thankfulness to God. They put their faith in His sacrifice. They help the widows and orphans.

So what do you gain by this usage? Seeing Mark Driscoll preach and talk, it's very clear that he's anxious to distance himself from traditional Christianity, even though he would not exist were it not for that Christianity. Likewise for all of the other sites I found touting themselves as being "not religion"- rock and roll aesthetics, and a lot of time talking about why they're different. But every one of us stands on the shoulders of giants. A great many men and women labored, sacrificed and even in many cases died so that Driscoll could have the Christianity that he has today. He didn't just make it up on his own. None of us do. And those many many men and women called themselves Christians, and described themselves as religious. The Belgic Confession, the French Confession, the Westminster Confession, the London Baptist Confession and many others all use the word a great deal. John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon both use the word, positively, a great deal. Who is Mark Driscoll or anyone else that you just get to paint all of those people as shallow legalists?

We don't get to just redefine words. Words mean what they mean, according to the way large groups of people use them. And when I say I am "not religious" or distance myself from the word "Christian" then I am cutting myself off from the overwhelming majority of the universal, historic Christian community. This whole "Not religion" movement or "Jesus vs. Religion" is intellectually dishonest, and comes across really arrogant and divisive. I will not impugn Driscoll's motives. He seems to be someone truly trying to spread the gospel, though I haven't studied his teachings exhaustively. But I think everyone needs to remember, when we do the work of the kingdom, that we're not alone. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, we're all part of a very large world-wide community and we should be very careful before we dismiss and mock and separate ourselves from all those who have fought and suffered and labored in the kingdom before us and alongside us. Certainly the historic Christian religion has a lot of flaws and rough spots. But she is our church. If we love Jesus, we will love His church, flaws and all, and work to make her better, not to self-righteously condemn and belittle her and all of those that Jesus has bought with His own blood over the last two thousand years.

Free Will

2010-12-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

The Calvinist / Arminian debate is often seen from the perspective of "free will". I am not sure this is really the best way to characterize the true nature of the debate, to ask the question whether man has a free will or not. Better to ask what "will" is, how it functions, and where it comes from? What is it that determines the choices we make?

Most Reformers are comfortable using the term "free will", in fact. We have to define it properly, of course. I don't think it's best to discuss predestination at the point of man's decisions frankly, because man is truly called to make a choice constantly in Scripture. Predestination rightly understood takes place a step back from the will, at the point of man's nature from which will arises. So man's will is free in the sense that he is not compelled from any outside source from ultimately choosing to follow God or not to follow God. The will then is free to be what it is- the faculty by which, when confronted with choices in my life to make, I prioritize those choices based on my values and my understanding of how those values will be best served by those choices, and then take action based on my perception of what will best serve my values. People do this all the time, and do it well. The emphasis in predestination is therefore properly on the nature, and how the nature of man can become something capable of choosing good, or even desiring to choose good. This is the problem- our natures are corrupt, desiring bad things, and our will reflects this. It's not that the will is malfunctioning, or restricted in some way. Our will is properly reflecting our values. A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.

This helps us address the fact that God constantly calls on man to choose to obey God. Ezekiel 33:11, for example- "Turn, turn from your evil ways! Why would you die, O Israel?" This should not be a challenge for the Calvinist, because as the rest of Ezekiel makes clear, the unbeliever cannot, will not turn from his ways until the stony heart is taken out of his flesh and he is given a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:25). Only then will he hear the word of God and do it. Once the nature is changed, the will follows.

As the quotes above show, the Scriptures talk frequently about the choices we make and where those choices come from. Choices we make simply are not made in a vacuum. They come from our nature, which is completely corrupt in Adam. We hate God, hate his image in others, and our choices reflect this. This is why regeneration is necessary, why a transformation of the nature is necessary. "You must be born again", as the Scriptures tell us. Only with the transformation of the nature can different choices begin to happen.

The Virgin Birth

2010-11-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

(Excerpt from The Essentials of the Christian Religion ):

“Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit; Born of the Virgin Mary”

Jesus’ birth was not a normal birth. It was something very special, in fact, utterly unique. This only happened this one time. The child who was conceived in Mary was conceived by a miracle, by the power of God.

Does this matter? Many Christians today don’t believe that it’s very important whether Jesus was in fact virgin-born or not. What matters, they tell us, is that we believe what Jesus taught us about loving one another. It is of course very important that we believe what Jesus taught us, but the essence of Christianity isn’t first and foremost the teachings of Jesus; it is the life and work of Jesus. The teachings of Jesus show us the meaning of His life and work. The most important thing for Christians to know is not “what would Jesus do?” It’s “what did Jesus do?”

What He did is this: He came to earth to die for our sins, to pay the price for our failure to be what we were created to be, servants of God. Further, He came to be the perfect substitute, to be the obedient servant that we failed to be. His righteousness therefore becomes our righteousness. It is imputed to us, counted to us. When we have faith in Jesus, God regards us as being as righteous as Jesus Himself.

This is only possible if Jesus was not just another regular person. He had to be special. Why would Jesus succeed in living the perfect life if He was just another man like the billions who had gone before or have come since? He succeeded because He wasn’t just another man; He was the Son of God, God Himself, who took on human nature in order to come to earth to redeem humankind from our sins. Only as God Himself would He have the power and strength to overcome the sinful nature of fallen man and do what nobody else could do: live the perfect human life, be the perfect servant of God, and be able to carry the whole burden of God’s wrath against sin, which He did on the cross.

Jesus’ birth shows us something very important. There is, as everyone knows, a big problem with the human race. All of the wars and evil that we experience, all of the misery and despair that we endure, all of the disease and disasters that befall us point to this problem. People have tried endlessly to come up with theories and implement schemes that will solve our problems. Many believe that if only we elect the right politician, pass the right laws, discover the right scientific breakthrough or find some other solution, we can finally solve our problems. Others believe there is no solution, that humanity is simply doomed to be what it is. But Jesus’ birth shows us that being human is not the problem. God created humans, and He created them good. The problem is sin; we rebelled against God and suffer for that rebellion. Jesus showed that a real, true human could, by the power of God, overcome that sin and be what God had intended for humans to be. Jesus is the Son of God, born of a virgin. His true Father is God, not Joseph, and by the power of God He overcame sin. As a result, that power is available to all of us through faith in Jesus.

That’s why Christmas matters. That’s why the story of the shepherds, the angels, the wise men, the star and all the rest of it is significant. Christ’s birth is the means by which God will “save His people from their sins.”

Sometimes we’re reminded during the holiday season to “keep Christ in Christmas.” But it is just as important to keep Christmas in Christianity. When we think of ourselves as Christians, we cannot forget how important it is that Jesus was “conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary.” If He was not, if He was just another man, then we are not saved from our sins. Christianity without the virgin birth is just another set of platitudes and well-wishes at best, and at worst is a manipulative deception.

And as far as “keeping Christ in Christmas,” all we have to do is keep Christ in our hearts all year, and He cannot be anything but the center of Christmas for us as well. Christmas is not some cultural artifact, some abstract element of our heritage. It is and must always be a central part of our faith as Christians. We cannot expect people who do not share our faith all year round to share it during that one season of the year. Christ will only be in Christmas when Christ is the center of our lives the rest of the year as well.

Not Ba'al, but Ishi

2010-11-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

In Hosea 2:16, we read:

16 "And it shall be, in that day," Says the LORD, "That you will call Me 'My Husband,' And no longer call Me 'My Master,' 17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, And they shall be remembered by their name no more.

In the first three chapters of Hosea, God has used the figure of an unfaithful marriage extensively to describe his relationship with Israel. Israel has consorted with foreign gods, and is therefore guilty of adultery against her true husband, Jehovah. Judgment is promised for this. But restoration is also promised. God says that He will put Israel in the wilderness, with a double purpose- to punish her for her unfaithfulness, but also to cut her off from her temptations in order to allure her back to Him. It is in this context that verses 16 and 17, quoted above, appear.

The startling thing that we see in this passage is that the foreign gods that Israel worshiped were not even the real problem. The real problem was that Israel's relationship with Jehovah was wrong from the beginning, in a way that guaranteed idolatry. The word "master" in Hebrew is "Ba'al", which is what they called the foreign gods as well. A "ba'al" was a master, a superior from which one could gain certain benefits if one propitiated or pleased him in the right way. It is evident from our text, and evident from Israel's history, that this is the way they viewed their relationship with Jehovah. But if they worship Jehovah in this way, then it is essentially self-centered; they worship God for what they can get out of Him. If they do that, then idolatry is inevitable. They will seek to maximize their benefit and control by worshiping other gods as well. Israel is like the girl that keeps several suitors on the hook at once, keeping them competing with one another, because she gets the most gifts and luxuries that way.

Instead of this, God is calling Israel to a different kind of relationship. He says, "You will call me 'my husband'" instead. This is the term ishi in Hebrew, also meaning "man". My man, my husband- this is the relationship Israel is called to have with God. It is a personal, intimate, and loving relationship. It is a relationship of delight, desire and selflessness.

God told Abraham, "I am your exceeding great reward." God's people pursue Him rightly for the beauty and glory of what He is, not because of what He can give us. If we're in it for the benefits, then we will always stray. We will seek to maximize those benefits, in the foolishness of our minds, by dipping one toe in this pond and another in that. Of course the result of this is, as we all know, that we end up with nothing. The girl keeping all the different suitors interested in her, and never committing to any of them, will eventually lose them all. They will figure out that she is just using them. Such a selfish, self-serving approach is disastrous in our personal lives, and it is disastrous for our religious lives as well. As long as God is ba'al to us, our relationship is wrong. Because we're still trying to be in the driver's seat, trying to be in control, deciding what to give God in return for which benefits, always holding myself back from total commitment. Syncretism and faithlessness is a given when this is the approach I take to God.

God will not be "ba'al" to us, a sugar daddy that gives us what we want, and we just have to jump through a few hoops, subscribe to the right creeds, go to the right church, in order to keep Him propitiated. He will be "ishi", husband to us, and bless us with Himself first and foremost. Many wonderful things come to us in that relationship. But we need to learn to desire God for who He is, not for what He can give us.

Revelation 21 and 22 list many wonderful things in heaven. Streets of gold, no sickness or hunger, no conflict and the like. But the first thing that's mentioned, the first wonderful thing in heaven, is this:

Revelation 21: 2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.

The best thing about heaven is that God is there. All the rest of it is just icing on the cake, or to look at it another way, just a description of what it is like to be in the presence of God. As John Piper said most memorably in _God is the Gospel_, would you want to be in heaven if God were not there?

Of course not, because without God, it wouldn't be heaven. Put away the ba'als from your mind. There's no such thing. God will never be made to serve us, no matter how many religious observances we perform or how many good works we do. But if we are His, He will allure us back to Him, teaching us to love Him, delight in Him and desire Him above all else. He is the true reward. Without Him, nothing else matters.

Surrendering to God

2010-10-13T11:04:00.000-06:00

I am teaching through the book of Ezekiel again with a different group, and we looked at the first chapter last night. I found myself once again amazed at this incredibly dramatic picture of God and His power.

The vision Ezekiel sees is a vision of a cosmic chariot, pulled by angelic beings. These four living creatures are representative of ultimate power within creation, and they are God's agents. The four living creatures can go in any direction, see in any direction and act in any direction. They are connected to four wheels, and the wheels support a platform, on top of which is a throne, and on the throne is "an appearance of a likeness of a man", glowing like amber and surrounded with a rainbow from the waist up, and from the waist down a pillar of fire. It is the chariot of God, and it is coming from the north, toward Israel, in the posture of an enemy.

Israel's great mistake was their attempt to define God down. They wanted to compartmentalize Jehovah, look to him for help for certain aspects of their life, but to leave other parts of their life ungoverned by God. In those days that took the form of the worship of other gods as well. They committed syncretism, the mixing of religions. But the heart of that sin is the sin of self-worship, that I will decide what God is good for and limit Him to what I give Him. It is the desire to manage God, negotiate with God, contain and control God.

But this vision of God at the beginning of Israel absolutely blows away any idea of such a God. The God that Ezekiel sees cannot be managed. The only possible response to such a figure is surrender, unconditional surrender.

This is why repentance is an absolutely fundamental and necessary element of salvation. Salvation simply isn't possible without it. Repentance is another word for surrender. Until I stop trying to run my own life according to my own rules, I am not dealing with the God that exists. He's not some kindly old man with a big beard and his hands held out offering just as much of Himself as we're willing to take at the time. He's a consuming fire, a conquering king. Accepting His salvation means accepting His rule.

In Luke 14:22-33, Jesus calls us to count the cost of discipleship. He talks about the one who only goes halfway in an endeavor and therefore fails entirely. He also talks about a king who has ten thousand soldiers and is being attacked by a king with twenty thousand. Recognizing he cannot win the fight, he makes peace and asks for terms. Whatever he must surrender and give up to his enemy is better than what he will lose if he fights and is defeated. So he asks for terms. Whatever the cost, he must make peace.

Jesus says, so it is with us. We must forsake all, or we cannot be His disciples. Because that is who God is. There is no half-way salvation. The idea of accepting Jesus as our savior but not as our lord is utter nonsense, asking God to lie about who He is, which He will never do. We must forsake all. Because anything God requires of us, anything we lose, is nothing compared to what we will lose if we keep fighting against God. And by God's grace, it is nothing compared to what He will bestow on those who surrender and accept His glorious and gracious rule.

Eternal Security and Foolish Pride

2010-09-18T11:31:00.002-06:00

This quote is from John Calvin's commentary on Hebrews chapter 6, discussing the "falling away" issue.

But here arises a new question, how can it be that he who has once made such a progress should afterwards fall away? For God, it may be said, calls none effectually but the elect, and Paul testifies that they are really his sons who are led by his Spirit, (Romans 8:14;) and he teaches us, that it is a sure pledge of adoption when Christ makes us partakers of his Spirit. The elect are also beyond the danger of finally falling away; for the Father who gave them to be preserved by Christ his Son is greater than all, and Christ promises to watch over them all so that none may perish. To all this I answer, That God indeed favors none but the elect alone with the Spirit of regeneration, and that by this they are distinguished from the reprobate; for they are renewed after his image and receive the earnest of the Spirit in hope of the future inheritance, and by the same Spirit the Gospel is sealed in their hearts. But I cannot admit that all this is any reason why he should not grant the reprobate also some taste of his grace, why he should not irradiate their minds with some sparks of his light, why he should not give them some perception of his goodness, and in some sort engrave his word on their hearts. Otherwise, where would be the temporal faith mentioned by Mark 4:17? There is therefore some knowledge even in the reprobate, which afterwards vanishes away, either because it did not strike roots sufficiently deep, or because it withers, being choked up.²

And by this bridle the Lord keeps us in fear and humility; and we certainly see how prone human nature is otherwise to security and foolish confidence. At the same time our solicitude ought to be such as not to disturb the peace of conscience. For the Lord strengthens faith in us, while he subdues our flesh: and hence he would have faith to remain and rest tranquilly as in a safe haven; but he exercises the flesh with various conflicts, that it may not grow wanton through idleness.

This is an outstanding discussion of what it means for someone to fall away from the grace of God. And clearly, anyone who thinks that denying God's grace or falling away from that grace is inconsistent with "Calvinism" would properly be accused of being more "Calvinist" than Calvin himself.

Note that last paragraph in particular- the doctrine of eternal security must be properly understood or can very easily become a cloak for antinomianism and pride. God warns us constantly of the danger of self-reliance. Calvin warns us against "security and foolish confidence." God's elect will never fall away from the grace of Jesus Christ, but God works through means, and one of His means are warnings such as we see in Hebrews 6. The elect of God will hear these warnings and listen. The elect of God will never say, "I'm elect, and therefore that warning doesn't apply to me."

And once we understand that truth, we will never again feel any conflict between the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, and the warnings that Scripture constantly gives us against falling away.

Hypocrisy

2010-08-28T09:09:00.000-06:00

The Biblical definition of hypocrite- someone who pretends to believe something he doesn't really believe, especially in reference to Christianity. I.E.- a stage actor, a whitewashed tomb.

The world's definition of hypocrite- anyone who isn't absolutely perfect who condemns any behavior at all. Unless it's me doing the condemnation, and especially when I am condemning this so-called 'hypocrisy' in others.

The Great High Priest

2010-08-21T23:22:00.002-06:00

Many have had to make do with bad pastors, corrupt priests, wicked churches. Many godly and dear believers have suffered under the sinful abuse of God’s offices. But all of God’s children have had Christ. No one can do without Christ. No other man can substitute for Christ or make Him unnecessary or add to His work, however great and wise and godly that man might be. And no man can detract or prevent or hinder His saving grace, however wicked or corrupt that man might be. Without Christ, we have nothing, whatever riches or power we possess. With Christ, we have everything, no matter how poor or despised we may seem.

(From Sunday's Sermon)

Where are our Values?

2010-08-12T10:56:00.001-06:00

Proverbs 13:22 A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, But the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.

One of the things I've learned from the Proverbs is the need to take the long view. When we evaluate things always in terms of how they will impact our lives over the next day or two, how they will make us feel right now, then we will live for self, live for pleasure, for the moment. But when we believe God's promises, then we work and act with an eternal timeframe in mind, using the opportunities we have right now to prepare for that eternal timeframe. Someone who is young and is investing for a retirement that is fifty years away makes different choices than someone who is sixty-five. And if we truly believe that we are destined for eternal life, then we will make choices with that in mind.

On the other hand, someone whose choices are all geared toward immediate pleasure- the next vacation, the next promotion, the next new shiny toy, will make different choices. That second person may even claim to believe in eternity. But their actions show what they truly care about.

Some even seem to have the idea that Jesus' death on the cross frees me to focus on the here and now. The thinking goes like this- Jesus died on the cross to secure my eternal future. Therefore I don't need to worry about eternity at all. I can just focus on living my best life now. But the Scriptures tell us something else constantly- that the man of God, if he does have faith in Jesus, will work with that eternal focus in mind, and not just seek to please himself with his life. The idea that Jesus suffered the terrible pain and shame of the cross in order to free me up to please myself and fulfill my sinful lusts ought to fill any godly man with revulsion.

So people will often ask, is this a sin? Is it sin to go to a ball game, go on vacation, buy a new car? And often, it is the wrong question to ask. The right question is, where are my values? Am I laying up for myself treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupts and thieves break in and steal? Or am I laying up for myself treasures in heaven, treasures that last forever? People of God, what are we doing with our lives? Of course it is not sinful to enjoy the things of this world. But it is a great and terrible sin to enjoy the things of this world as if that is all there is, and to neglect the things of eternity.

And so the Proverb quoted above should be seen in this light. It's not ultimately about money, though our use of money will certainly reflect our commitment to Biblical truth, or lack thereof. It's not saying that it makes you a good man if you leave an inheritance for our grandchildren, and a bad man if you don't. It's saying that when we labor with God's truth in mind, we can have a wonderful assurance that our labor will have permanence and long-term value. If on the other hand, we labor for the present, then the present is what we get, and it's all we get.

Actually, we don't even get the present. We get the past. The vacations we take, the things we buy, the lusts we fulfill- last only for a moment, and then all we have is the memories, which fade away. The new car is only a new car for a moment- every moment you have it, it's less new. And as we grow old, food tastes less good, our bodies don't work as well, we will enjoy the things of this world less and less, and if this world is all we have, we sink into darkness and despair. The knowledge of the transience of this life, if learned only through experience, is a terrible, awful truth, always learned too late.

But if we learn of the transience of this life from God's own truth, then that prepares us to labor toward what is not transient, the eternal blessings afforded by God in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Nothing in the World

2010-06-18T13:23:00.000-06:00

“…we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and there is no God but one.” 1 Cor. 8:4

“To be a Christian means to live as a Christian and to live as a Christian means to live wholeheartedly by and out of divine revelation. Such a life is a life of faith. If a person no longer believes in God, that is in his God, and – in the midst of the church of Christ- in our God, then he cannot live by and out of divine revelation. He may still be called a “Christian,” but he is one in name only. Having ceased to live by and out of divine revelation, he will inevitably live by and out of an idol, which, as Paul writes, is not anything.” – S.U. Zuidema

Zuidema’s point here is that being a Christian means fundamentally living according to the revelation of Jesus. The only alternative is to follow a different truth, that of the idol. And the fundamental truth about idols is that they are lies.

An idol, as Paul says, is “nothing in the world”. Paul was specifically talking there about the false gods of the pagans, with regards to the question of eating meat that had been offered to those idols. Yes, Paul says, an idol of itself is nothing in the world. The problem is when they are something in our minds, as they invariably will be when Christ is not everything in our minds. Our minds must be occupied by something substantial, something real. And if what is real in our minds does not correspond with something that is real outside our minds, then the thing that is real in our minds will correspond to something unreal outside our minds. Zeus was a lie, a fiction. He was no god and had no power. But to the people that worshiped this lie, he was real in their minds. And the disconnect between the unreal thing in the world and the real thing in their minds is what causes all the problems. The result is a person living contrary to reality, someone living a lie. The only way to live in accord with reality is to live by and out of the revelation of Jesus.

So an idol is nothing in the world. Men live according to many idols. We live according to the false gods of sex and money and politics and entertainment. We think these things can save us, that they can give us security or significance or hope for the future. But they cannot. There is no God but One. The only one who can give us all the things we desire, who is Himself all the things we desire, is the One True God who made all things, and He is revealed fully in exactly one place, in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So if we live according to idols, we live according to things that are “nothing in the world”. We live according to unreality. Which is to say, we are insane. The only way to live in reality is to live “by and out of the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

When we are ensnared in sins, then, the answer is always the same. The great mistake we often make is to focus on the sin, to focus on not doing this thing anymore. And we make it into a great enemy, some demon force that we have no power over. But in doing so, we give the idol a reality it does not possess and a glory it does not deserve. The problem is never really the idol; the problem is the failure to live out of the revelation of Jesus. The problem is our relationship with God.

The discussion of idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10 is a great example of this. There is the faction in Corinth which wants to simply say, “we must not contaminate ourselves with idols and therefore eat no meat.” And there is the other faction which wants to say, “an idol is nothing in the world, therefore we can fully participate in these pagan festivals and practices with no consequences”. Paul shows that both are false premises. Both are wrongly focusing on the idol. Instead, Paul says, consider your relationship with God, and whether these practices draw you closer to him or harm the relationship. You cannot fellowship with the idol and with God. The idol itself is nothing- true. But in your mind, as you fellowship with those that believe these ideas, you become partakers with them, and they commune with demons. Communing with demons and God at the same time just doesn’t work. If the idol is truly nothing in the world, then you will gladly give it up rather than hurt the relationship with God. But at the same time you won’t fear the idol. When you can eat the meat and give thanks to God, then eat the meat. The relationship with God is always primary, not the thing.

So much of our trouble in life is just this- believing that things matter that don’t really matter, believing that if we only had this or that thing, then we’d finally be happy. God is our treasure, our fortress, our exceeding great reward. He has revealed to us all the truth needed to live out the joy of fellowship with Him, if we would only just believe that revelation. Jesus is the revelation of God, the Word of God, and in Him we have all we need. And then we see that in throwing away our idols, we are really throwing away nothing at all, and gaining the greatest of all joys and treasures in return.

Earth Day and the Christian

2010-04-22T10:46:00.001-06:00

Today is Earth Day, as I'm sure you all know. And on Earth Day, Christians should continue with the commitment that Christians should always have to work to be good and faithful stewards of the creation which God has made.

God made the earth good. As He looked out over every part of it that He created, recorded in Genesis 1, He pronounced it good. Skies and seas, plants and animals, sun and stars and all of it. But the very best part of His creation came last, when He made man. He made man to bear His image and continue the creative work that God had begun. God's creative work involved bringing things out of nothing, something no creature could ever do. But God's creative work also involved organizing and naming, and He in His great power and majesty, created man in His image and gave man the job of continuing that organizing and naming. Man named the animals and man was to tend the garden. Man's job was to glorify God by, among other things, improving the creation which God had made.

The modern environmentalist movement all too often seems to regard anything that man does in creation as being evil. To the modern environmentalist, man is a cancer, a disease on the earth, and the environmentalist movement, the "green" movement, has the goal of limiting man's impact on nature as much as possible. This is not a Christian environmentalist mindset at all. The Christian environmentalist mindset is that man's negative impact on nature should be minimized and his positive impact on nature maximized.

Mankind, of itself, is not the problem. The problem is that mankind's relationship with creation has been corrupted because of sin. God said that "thorns and thistles" would now grow in the fields and that man would eat his bread in the sweat of his brow until he died and returned to the earth. The solution then is that as man finds redemption from sin in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, then man learns to restore a right relationship with his creator. The modern world, with all of its technological improvements, is testimony to just a little bit of what can be accomplished when man's relationship with creation begins to be restored.

It was Christianity that taught that the universe, because it is created by God and under the stewardship of man, is therefore understandable by man. It is orderly and largely predictable. It is Christianity which freed man from the fear of demons and spirits haunting the world, and instead showed us that the world was intended to be under man's control. Human beings can observe the creation and test predictions about it, to find out how it works, and use that knowledge to improve on the natural world. We have eliminated many diseases, reduced the impact of bad weather, increased the productivity of our farms and even begun to unlock the mysterious power of the atom. These are just beginnings.

Coal plants, freeways and cities are all wonderful things. They are testimonies to the image of God within man, and man's organizing and creative abilities. It's right and proper that we understand best how to minimize the negative impacts of these things on other people and on the rest of creation. But they should not be demonized as evil.

Ultimately the proof of all of this is Jesus Christ Himself. He came as a human being, demonstrating that humanity itself is not the problem, but the corrupted relationship that humanity has with God, and as a result the corrupted relationship that humanity has with everything else in creation. In Jesus Christ our relationship with God is restored, and our relationship with our own nature, our fellow man and the physical creation can also begin to be restored.

Earth Day is essentially a pagan observance, worshiping nature of itself and regarding man's encroachment on it as evil. Earth Day views economic development as an evil to be reduced as much as possible. This is why the concern over the Preble mouse or the spotted owl or any number of other species- it's just a handy way to disrupt, slow down and end economic development. Earth Day and the modern environmentalist movement should be rejected by the Christian as anti-God and anti-human. Modern environmentalism is responsible for the deaths of millions of people, as it prevents the spread of economic development and technological advance in the third world, keeping coal plants from being built and scientific advances in farming from being used. The banning of DDT alone is a crime of huge proportions, leading to the deaths of a million people a year. The modern environmentalist would bring us back under the fear of the ghosts and demons from which Christianity freed us so many centuries ago, and bring us back to huddling in caves in the dark.

Instead, the Christian should always remember that the earth was not created to please man only, but to glorify God through man's faithful stewardship. It is an amazing creation and we should seek to enjoy it by improving upon it through science and industry for the glory of our marvelous Creator. The creation is good, and mankind is very good. Sin is very bad, but there is a solution to that in Jesus Christ. So let us no longer live in fear of demons, in fear of nature or in fear of mankind. Let us embrace Christ, turn away from our sins and embrace our God-given role as stewards of His beautiful creation. Christ is triumphant and is bringing all things together in Him.

Tea Party Infiltrators

2010-04-16T09:23:00.001-06:00

I think the Tea Party infiltration movement may have backfired badly.

For those not familiar with this movement, there has been attempts by leftists to infiltrate the Tea Parties and go to the rallies with racist signs, or truther signs or things like that in order to discredit the Tea Parties. These efforts have, as far as I can see, failed. Instapundit does a great job of cataloging these kinds of events.

What's interesting about this, though, is that when I went to my first Tea Party a year ago or so, I saw exactly one sign that I thought might be interpreted as borderline racist. I thought it was unfortunate but didn't say anything. But at the rally tomorrow, had I seen any such sign it was my intention to confront the person and try to drive them from the rally, at any rate to identify them, post their faces on the internet and make it clear that no such sentiment had any place with the rest of us. As the link above showed, this appears to have been everyone else's reaction as well.

The Tea Parties have never been about racism. They are about fiscal responsibility, government overreach and faithfulness to the constitution. But of course there are always fringe elements. There are always kooks that look at a movement like this as an opportunity to increase their tiny little megaphone. By attempting to play up those fringe elements and make it appear as if those were the core of the Tea Party movement, the leftists will actually have the effect of guaranteeing that any racist signs at Tea Party rallies are promptly identified and disavowed. And after the fact, we can just claim that they must have been infiltrators!

Tax Day Tea Party, Colorado Springs

2010-04-15T15:43:00.003-06:00

Update- first ever Instalanche! Thanks, Glenn.

I was at the April 15th Tea Party in Colorado Springs in Acacia Park. We had a great time. A friend of mine, Rick Carducci, came with me, and we met up with my mom and dad at the rally too.

We were there at about 10:30 and the rally officially began at 11. I am not confident of my ability to estimate numbers, but several people said they thought there were in excess of a thousand people there and that seems right to me. We heard from a few candidates- Ken Buck and Dan Maes were there and gave great speeches.

I was actively on the lookout for any racism or anything like that, and saw none of it. I was kind of hoping there was some, so I could take his picture and out him as a Tea Party crasher, but there wasn't any at all to be seen. There was a little bit of birtherism which I don't think is particularly productive, but I can't blame people for wondering.

My favorite part of the rally though were conversations I had with a number of high school students that had been brought by their teacher to observe the rally. They were all predictably liberal, opposed to the Tea Party and in favor of Obamacare. I was able to engage a few of them in conversation, to try to show them what our concerns were. Who knows how successful it was, but it was fun nonetheless.

Some pics-

God's Great Love

2010-04-05T20:44:00.001-06:00

John 3:16 is such a well-known passage, that sometimes we forget to think about it much. God so loved the world, we read. There's been a great deal of debate on the meaning of the word "world" to Jesus in this passage, which is a feature of the Calvinist / Arminian debate of course. In John, even in this very chapter, the "world" is used to indicate the whole scope of that which is in rebellion against God and alienated from Him. John 3:16 is made that much more remarkable by the fact that it is not the beautiful creation that He made to which He is referring here, but the rebellious, corrupt, disgusting and hateful world order which He says He loves.

In fact, this world is actively under condemnation from God. It is the very world which is condemned to hell for their sin which is loved by God and redeemed from their sin. In John 1:10, we read that the world "did not know Him". And in John 3:17, we read that Jesus coming into the world has the effect of saving "the world". Now of course it does not save every individual. Those who believe are saved, and those who do not believe are not saved, and remain in their condemnation. So the flow of the passage shows us that Christ's presence comes into a world commonly under God's condemnation, but some are rescued and some not, as we see in the following verse.

So what is included in "the world"? Obviously it includes people, and indeed focuses on people. It wasn't the physical creation which sinned against God, though the creation suffers the effects of man's sins. But verse 17 says that Jesus' death saves "the world", and in the next verse discusses two classes of people, those who believe (and are saved) and those who do not (and are not saved). Clearly then Jesus includes both classes of people in the larger class "the world"; indeed, that is the way John has used the term throughout the book. And if "the world" only referred to the saved elect, why discuss those who reject Jesus' message as a subset of "the world"? Verse 19 explicitly includes those who reject the light of Jesus as part of the world- the light came into the world, but men (in the world, part of that subset) loved darkness rather than light, thus demonstrating their condemnation.

As John's theology develops, we see clearly that there is a specific efficacious love which is directed only at the elect. Jesus dies only for His sheep, and His sheep are infallibly saved by that death (John 10). But from John 3, it is clear that all men are originally in this class of 'the world', which is under God's condemnation for their sin, yet loved by God to such a degree that He sent the most precious thing He had, His own Son, to die on the cross to rescue 'the world' from such a state. Individually, that love is fully and efficaciously expressed only to God's elect. But it is clearly an error to say that God has no love at all for the non-elect, or that the elect are never under God's condemnation. All men come from that common state, the world, which is under condemnation from God, alienated from Him, yet loved by Him to such a tremendous degree!

And indeed, what tremendous love this then is. It is not some sterile abstract theological principle. It is an active, effective love, a love that is so strong that it overcomes an otherwise insurmountable force, the wrath of God! When we consider that it is God's own wrath which is conquered by His love, then we can fully appreciate just how great God's love toward us is. And this is precisely Jesus' point- that's what the "so" means. God _so_ loved the world, meaning, to this extreme, infinite degree, God loved the world, to the degree that His own beloved Son suffered the shame and horror of the cross, and for who? For us, His enemies, we who hated Him, we who were under the active condemnation of His great and consuming wrath. God _SO_ loved the world.

Politics and the Judgment of God

2010-03-27T17:31:00.003-06:00

In Jeremiah 21, God tells the prophet Jeremiah this-

8 " Now you shall say to this people, 'Thus says the LORD: "Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.
9 "He who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans who besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be as a prize to him.
10 "For I have set My face against this city for adversity and not for good," says the LORD. "It shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire." '

God had judged Judah and Jerusalem, and given them over to the destruction of the Babylonians. He did so because they had rejected Him. Though they still called themselves Jehovah worshipers, they had worshiped other gods as well, filling His temple with foreign idols, engaged in immorality and flouted God's law in a thousand different ways. And so God brought the Babylonians to punish them. Those who accepted the judgment of God would surrender to the Babylonians and would, as a result, survive. Those who refused to accept that God was judging them would continue their fight against the Babylonians and be destroyed as a result.

America is being judged by God. Is it any wonder? We've glorified fornication and sodomy for decades now. We've murdered innocents by the millions. Our sins are long. Worst of all is the enervation and distortion of the gospel of Christ from our pulpits since before our grandfathers were born. While I wouldn't claim to know the perfect will of God, it seems clear to me that He has been fattening us for the judgment for some time now. We will see what happens. But this we know- God will not ignore sin and wickedness, and America, being home to a faithful Christian witness for centuries and receiving the rich blessings of God, has a particular responsibility which it has utterly neglected and abandoned.

Many conservatives are now promoting a focus on fiscal responsibility in order to save our nation. But I believe our fiscal woes are only the symptom of a deeper rot, a people who have rebelled against God and teach lies as the word of God. If that is true, then focusing on our fiscal problems while ignoring the more fundamental problem is akin to fighting the Babylonians even after God has declared the judgment.

It's like the mainline denominations who are ordaining homosexuals or flirting with it. The "conservatives" in those denominations decry this move as an abandonment of the Christian faith. But where were those conservatives when their denomination ordained women against the word of God? Where were they when their denominations denied Biblical inerrancy, denied the necessity of the virgin birth, denied the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ? Where were they when real conservatives like Machen were being run out of their denominations?

We have complacently sat back while our churches gave up the faithful witness of the truth. And now we are bearing the brunt of it, and we don't like the results. But if God is judging our nation, and I believe He is, then we will have to accept it as being from His hand. We must repent of our sins, repent of the lie that we can gain God's good blessings at the same time as we flout and ignore His word. Fiscal responsibility, material prosperity, good and honest leadership, safety from our enemies, the rule of law- these things are God's blessings to us and not things we achieve for ourselves.

If we as a nation turn back to God, repent of our sins and seek to promote and please Him in every aspect of our lives, public and private, then our blessings will return. But if we continue to glorify and promote everything He hates, we can expect nothing but curses from Him.

So despite so-called conservatives like David Frum, Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, and many others, who claim that the social conservatives are destroying the Republican party, I would respond with a higher truth. Following God is all that matters. God tells King Zedekiah, through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 37:10 that even if they defeated the whole army of the Chaldeans and there were only wounded men left, yet would they take the city and burn it down. When God is against you, it doesn't matter how strong your army is. God told the Israelites that if they rebelled against Him then one enemy would chase a hundred of them and three would chase a thousand.

So until we repent, we will lose. We will lose our freedoms. We will lose our prosperity. We will lose our right to worship, our right to speak freely, our right to assemble or to bear arms. Our military will not save us, our wealth will not save us, our science will not save us. Nothing will. If God is against us, everything is against us.

And though this might sound very depressing, it actually is very encouraging. Because the contrary is likewise true. When we as individuals, as families, as churches and neighborhoods and towns and states and perhaps even as a nation, turn back to God and confess the truth of His word, then nothing can stop us. It doesn't matter what forces are arrayed against us. It doesn't matter what criminals are running our country, or selling us out to foreign interests. It doesn't matter what special interests are united to despoil the nation and corrupt its morality. It doesn't matter how many of our fellow citizens just want to satisfy their wicked lusts and have everyone else pick up the bill. Just follow God. Just trust Him. And then one of us will chase a thousand and three will put ten thousand to flight.

Christians might have a pretty hard time coming in this country. Perhaps we thought the fires of persecution would never come to these shores. To that I'd answer, they've been here for a long time. Christians have been ridiculed and pressured into compromising the integrity of their witness for a long time. Far too many have given in and that's the big reason why we're in the fix we're in. But what has been subtle and under the radar is becoming more and more overt. There are those at the very highest levels of our government, even now, who would prohibit the preaching of God's word if they could.

But we are the light of the world. And all things will work together for the good of His kingdom. We might have to go into exile into Babylon for a while. That's up to God. But if we submit to His will, repent of our sins and seek His glory in our lives, in all we do, we can be confident that He will never let us down. Though the nation fall, God's kingdom goes on as it always have, and His people will be preserved. His salvation will come not by political parties, elections or courts. It will come by the glorious triumph of Jesus Christ.

Eternal Justification and Sola Fide

2010-03-20T18:57:00.001-06:00

The doctrine of eternal justification, which I've explored in the last couple of days, is at its heart a denial of one of the core doctrines of the Reformation, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, or "Sola Fide". This is quite easy to understand- since the elect can be justified, in fact _must_ be justified before he believes, it is possible for a man without faith to be justified before God. The doctrine's whole point is that the elect are always justified, never under the wrath of God. And therefore, at a point before the man has come to faith, he must be justified since there is no other state he could be in. He never is under God's wrath.

The Reformed Puritan points out one clear problem with Scripture and this doctrine
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This brings us to the third point — that of denying that the elect of God were never at any stage under the wrath of God. We have previously looked at Eph. 2:1-3 so we do not have to repeat the same exegesis of the text. Instead, let us look at one of the narrative accounts in Scripture: the story of the wicked king of Judah, King Manasseh the son of King Hezekiah (2 Ki. 21:1-18; 2 Chron. 33:1-20). We know from Scripture that King Manasseh was under the wrath of God for his gross wickedness (2 Ki. 21:6). Yet at the end of his wicked life, Manasseh repented of his sins (2 Chron. 33:13,19).

The question for those like Kraft therefore is this: Is the Bible lying when they state that Manasseh repented of his sins? If he did in fact repent, he must be saved and one of the elect, or isn't he? If he indeed is one of the elect, then the Scripture do in fact teach that he was at one time under the wrath of God, thus falsifying their ridiculous teaching that the elect of God were never under the wrath of God even before conversion.

Manasseh was in rebellion against God, and was therefore under God's wrath. Later he repented, and received God's grace. He was not justified until he repented, and then he was.

In fact, if this doctrine of eternal justification is true, the most obvious conclusion would be universalism. God justifies everybody. Why not? Even the fact that some people never express faith in this life is not necessarily an impediment- after all, perhaps God can simply work faith in the elect after they die, an idea the Predestinarian Network explores here.

And yet Paul says clearly, "By faith is a man justified." Faith is the instrument by which a man lays hold on the forgiveness of sins accomplished in the death of Christ. John the baptist (Mark 1:15) calls on people to "repent, and believe the gospel", and in Matthew 3:2 tells the people to repent in order to "flee the wrath to come". They will be under wrath unless they repent. In Luke 13, Jesus tells the people that they will all perish unless they repent. Peter tells the Jews in Acts 2:38 to repent and they will be saved, receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. And when the Philippian jailer asks Paul, "what must I do to be saved?" Paul says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." (Acts 16:30-31).

The Predestinarians like Brandan Kraft would accuse all of them of being "evangellyfish" or "Crypto-Arminians." The proper answer to them would be, "You don't have to do anything, just recognize that you are already saved." But in every one of these places, the people are called on to make a choice, to express faith, to respond to the offer of the gospel. If they do, they live. If they don't, they die.

One more passage- Romans 5. This passage shows that by Adam death came into the world, and condemnation, on all men, all who are under his headship (Romans 5:16). All men are under Adam's headship, and all are condemned, under God's wrath. All men were "made sinners" by his sin (v. 19). But all men are made righteous by Christ. All are justified by that free gift, when they accept that gift by faith.

The doctrine of predestination should never be interpreted to mean that we don't need to make a choice. We must make a choice, to believe in Christ, and therefore pass from wrath to mercy, from darkness to light, from death to life. Predestination informs us of the way this happens- that by God's eternal election, He grants His Holy Spirit to those that He has chosen, to transform the heart of a man so that the man is able to make that choice, able to believe, able to repent and turn from sinfulness and rebellion to righteousness and life. But until we make that God-enabled choice, we are under the curse of the law.

Now that choice happens in a lot of ways. It's not always a "warming of the heart" moment- it's not always a moment in time at all. Sometimes it's a choice that takes place gradually, over years. Some are regenerate from birth, and always believe in Jesus. Some people are regenerated and come to faith gradually, over years. Some people have that lightning bolt moment.

But nobody is justified unless and until they believe.

Process Matters

2010-03-19T17:42:00.002-06:00

President Obama and others are saying that the American people don't care about process in the health care reform debate- that it's the substance that matters. But Jesus told us that process does matter- it tells us the difference between honest dealers and thieves.

John 10:1 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. 2 "But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

If the substance were good, they wouldn't need to pull the shenanigans- it would be law already. The fact that the substance of the health care bill is so bad and so hated by the American public is what makes this deceptive chicanery necessary.

We can see this operating in all areas of life. People with good intentions toward you are honest in the way that they pursue their goals. If someone is trying to steal your money or enslave you, they ambush you, they trick you, they work under cover of darkness. If a man is climbing into your window at night, you have good reason to suspect him of ill will toward you.

Eternal Justification and Antinomianism

2010-03-19T11:17:00.004-06:00

One of the main issues with eternal justification is the antinomianism to which it leads. Antinomianism means "lawlessness" or "anti-law" and it mainly will take the form that the believer should not or cannot strive to do good works after he has been converted. It teaches that the law has no role in the life of the believer at all.

This antinomianism is expressed explicitly both in personal and ecclesiastical contexts. It is expressed as a suspicion or outright rejection of personal piety. And as I said in the last post, the Predestinarian Network form of eternal justification denies the reality of the visible church, denies any real authority in the church and denies that the church, including the sacraments, is any real means of grace. This will follow for two reasons- first, because the church is an agent of change in the believer's life, and they deny the need for change. Conversion is simply becoming aware of our status as saints. Adam didn't change when he fell, believers don't change when they are saved, and therefore there is no need for means of grace in the believer's life. Secondly, because the eternal justification doctrine teaches that there are two human races essentially- one under the headship of Adam and always justified (from eternity!) and one under the headship of Satan and receiving no offer of the gospel and nothing but wrath- then the visible church has no true fellowship since the elect has nothing at all in common with the reprobate. Only a perfect church could be a true church, and there is no perfect church.

Many places in Scripture deal with the antinomian error. Romans 6 deals with it, saying the reason we should pursue righteousness is because this is the natural outcome of our changed state and condition, from one of death to one of life. Ephesians 5 also addresses it. Ephesians 2 shows us that we were dead in trespasses and sins, and were made alive by Christ. We were children of wrath _by nature_, but were changed in our nature to children of light. In Ephesians 5, Paul tells us to be imitators of Christ and to walk in love. Why? Verse 8- because our state has changed. Once we walked in darkness, but now we are in light. Darkness is frequently used in Scripture not just to indicate ignorance but also a state of wrath- the plagues on Egypt for example, echoed in places like Revelation 9 and 16, and Matthew 22:13 and 25:30. So we were in a state of alienation and wrath, but God transformed us, took us out of that state into a state of light.

Paul tells us that therefore we should act like it. He indicates that there were false teachers telling them something else- "Let no one deceive you with empty words." In particular, he tells us, fornicators, unclean persons, covetous people, idolators, will not inherit the kingdom of God, he says. Revelation 21:27 tells us that nothing sinful will ever dwell in the New Jerusalem. Christ came in order to change our state- to grant us forgiveness and then work righteousness in us so that we would be worthy of standing in His presence, not because of our own inherent righteousness but because of the righteousness which Christ has worked in us.

I believe that this error is what he is referring to in 2 Timothy 3:5- "having a form of godliness but denying its power." This perfectly describes this group. They talk in pious language constantly, but they deny the power of the gospel. They teach that the gospel changes only my legal state with God, instead of recognizing that in addition to that, it changes my actual state, my actual heart, so that I can hear the word of God AND DO IT.

Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:5 to "turn away" from such people. Don't be deceived, brothers and sisters. This is a poisonous doctrine wrapped in piety, that is presented particularly in a form that might be appealing to Reformed believers.

Don't be deceived. We were in a state of wrath, because of our rebellion. We were under condemnation, one with the whole race of humanity, until the Spirit of God worked faith in our hearts and gave us new life, new birth. The result is that we are justified, forgiven of sins, as a result of that faith which lays hold on God's promises. That new heart works new life in us, so that we can begin to put off the old man and put on the new, turning away from sin and learning to please God with our lives.

The Scriptures are full of warnings against those who just want forgiveness, they want expiation from their sins, but have no desire to please God with their lives. They may wrap it in pious talk of their depravity and humility. But the truth is, God calls us to please Him with our good works. He saved us for that purpose. If we are born again in Him, we will seek righteousness. Someone who does not believe it is possible for the believer to experience and live the righteousness of Christ to any degree at all is someone who does not know the work of the Spirit of God.

Adam was in a state of fellowship with God. And when he sinned, he was expelled from that fellowship, with an angel with a flaming sword barring his way back in. His relationship with God changed. He didn't just become newly aware of his condition. His condition changed. And Christ died to restore that condition, to give us new life. Eternal justification is a denial of the gospel, a denial of the faith. Be warned, and reject it. Do not become entangled over "useless wranglings" and disputes and arguments over words- 1 Tim 6:3-5. Reject them, and embrace the full counsel of God.

[UPDATE: Edited for clarity.]

More on Eternal Justification

2010-03-19T10:38:00.001-06:00

I mentioned the doctrine of eternal justification yesterday, and got some questions about just what this is all about, so I thought I'd expand on this some. There are a few different proponents of this in various forms, but the form with which I'm interacting here is most ably represented by the Predestinarian Network.

Eternal justification is of itself an easy doctrine to understand. It is the idea that we are justified from eternity- that is to say, the elect of God are never under God’s wrath in any sense at all. This doctrine is usually predicated on the idea of God’s eternity- He is timeless and therefore His will toward us is timeless. God’s will to do something is the same as Him doing it- therefore if He wills to justify the elect from eternity, then they are justified.

Of itself it might not sound like a big deal, kind of an idle speculation. It was not a subject I’d ever heard in all my years in Reformed circles, in seminary or in reading any of my commentaries, until I was asked about it a few years back. And my initial response was, “I don’t think that’s right, but really, what’s the big deal?” My first response was to quote Ephesians 2:3 which states that we were children of wrath before our conversion, or at one point in our lives, “even as the others.”

I want to try to draw out some of the implications of this doctrine, however, and then try to identify what I think the main problem is that leads to this kind of thinking.

First, consider- if we have always been justified, then Adam never fell from grace. This doctrine denies the fall. And indeed, looking at the profile page of “Darth Gill” AKA Brandan Kraft, with whom I was interacting yesterday, we see this-
“When Adam and Eve sinned, what really happened?
-It was revealed to Adam that he was a sinner and needed the righteousness of Christ which demonstrated the eventual regeneration of every elect individual.”

He denies that Adam changed in any real way except for his understanding. He came to understand what he already was. So God created him, had perfect fellowship with him, and in that state of perfect fellowship, Adam was a sinner. Noodle that for a minute.

Now, combined with their belief then that our own regeneration is a similar experience- not a change in nature, but simply becoming aware of something that was already true, and we see the seeds of a particularly virulent form of antinomianism taking shape. Frankly, though I can’t find a quote to substantiate this, it seems logical that they would then believe that even in heaven itself we would be exactly as we are now. If we were sinners before the fall, and our nature doesn’t change, then why does it need to change even after we go to heaven?

And indeed, going right along with this kind of thinking, Brandan Kraft reacts very poorly (see the comments on that post) to the idea that Christ’s righteousness is infused into us, ever. Even making clear that infused righteousness is not the basis of our justification but only of our sanctification, he still reacts by denying that I know the gospel and am heaping law-works on people. So do they deny progressive sanctification?

Yes they do.

Now the topic of progressive sanctification is a whole other conversation. But their denial of it is a natural companion with their denial of justification by faith alone and assertion of justification from eternity. There is a good deal of doublespeak in their discussion of progressive sanctification- at one time they appear mostly to be concerned with the proper use of the word "sanctification", saying that it refers to our position in Christ (often, but not always true). But their concern is clearly more than just semantic, since they call legalism any time that someone says that a Christian ought to strive to do good works.

And incidentally- what about James? What about "faith without works is dead"? Well, there's a very simple solution to that- deny that it's really the in Bible. Their view is that each believer individually judges what is and is not inspired Scripture, and if James (or anything else) doesn't fit with their understanding of Jesus, then it's not inspired. So they have direct revelation from the Spirit regarding the gospel, and they then select the "core canon" that fits with their understanding of that gospel. This will conveniently dispose of not only James, but anything else they find troubling.

There are so many other areas to explore- like the fact that they then deny that the elect ever has any commonality with the reprobate- they deny that the reprobate are ever under the headship of Adam, but only of Satan. This goes along with a denial of common grace, because God has nothing but wrath and hatred toward the reprobate. There is therefore no offer of the gospel at all to the reprobate. This also entails a denial of the visible church, since every visible church includes people who are not believers, and they deny any possibility of fellowship, even temporary fellowship, with the reprobate, as well as denying that God gives any good gift at all to the reprobate. The church, to them, therefore consists only of the interactions of actual elect people, in whatever form that happens.

Like I said, I've only scratched the surface. Hopefully this gives us enough information to avoid this poisonous doctrine. But next, I want to talk about a couple of Scripture passages that directly address this error.

The Heresy of Eternal Justification

2010-03-18T10:24:00.002-06:00

Here's a great analysis of a particularly destructive error gaining some traction within certain parts of the Christian community, the heresy of eternal justification.

In light of eternal justification, the elect of God were never under the wrath of God. Therefore, they cannot be any time under the federal headship of Adam. This implies no spiritual commonality of any kind with the reprobates. Now, Christianity teaches that all humans are all united in the fact that we are all sinners, and it is only because of particular grace that I as a sinner am saved out of my sin and out of the hellfire I justly deserve. Advocates of eternal justification however logically should deny this. With no spiritual commonality between the elect and reprobates (constituting a denial of the Imago Dei to some extent), the two are as light and darkness. No longer are Christians to be considered as undeserving sinners saved by God's amazing grace, but as saints who happen not to realize that they are already justified. (This of course will logically lead to various forms of Antinomianism but we will not go there).

This rings a bell with me in particular, as this error was part of the trouble that we ran into in our church as well. So I appreciate this very solid analysis.

This doctrine is fundamentally a denial of justification by faith alone. It teaches that the elect is already justified without exercising faith- faith is just the point at which the believer becomes subjectively aware of their justification.

Challies on McLaren- "He hates God. Period."

2010-03-17T12:40:00.000-06:00

Tim Challies has an excellent review of Brian McLaren's new book. McLaren is one of the leading lights of the Emergent church movement, or "conversation" or whatever you want to call it. But Challies has his number-

It wasn't too long ago that I wrote about Brian McLaren and got in trouble. Reflecting on seeing him speak at a nearby church, I suggested that he appears to love Jesus but hate God. Based on immediate and furious reaction, I quickly retracted that statement. I should not have done so. I believed it then and I believe it now. And if it was true then, how much more true is it upon the release of his latest tome A New Kind of Christianity. In this book we finally see where McLaren's journey has taken him; it has taken him into outright, rank, unapologetic apostasy. He hates God. Period.

Read the whole thing. Thanks to the Dunker Journal for the link.

The Right Use of Things

2010-03-17T11:34:00.000-06:00

I received a question about the Christian view of addiction and the right use of things- tobacco in particular. Here is my answer-

I think it's pretty wise for young people to refrain from smoking until they're in their early twenties- maybe 25 or so. By that time, most people have developed the self-awareness and discipline to do something like that without much risk. Most people who get addicted to cigarettes, it seems to me, do so in their teen years. I don't have statistics to back that, but it's my own experience.

Addiction from a medical perspective is defined by consequences. If you are doing something to the point where you are starting to cause yourself real-life serious consequences- losing relationships, productivity, health, money, etc- then you're addicted. I think Biblically this is a good definition as well, of when something stops being "moderate" use. To tell if someone is a drunk, the number of drinks they have in an average day or week is not necessarily useful- one fairly large male might have two or three drinks a day and it not be a problem, whereas an average sized female might be getting drunk every night on the same amount. Or one person who drinks two a day= 14 drinks a week and is never drunk, but another person doesn't drink at all during the week but on the weekend goes out and has five drinks on Friday and Saturday at a club. The first case is drinking more overall than the second, but the second is being much more reckless and irresponsible.

So I think you have to look at it in terms of consequences. Are you using this substance in such a way that it is causing problems in your life, or is likely to down the road?

In the case of smoking in particular, if you're not smoking every day, then you're probably not addicted and don't need to worry much about it. If smoking became a daily habit, or even very close to it, I would become worried and dial it back.

Biblically, the principle is that we are to receive all created things with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:1-5). Thanksgiving is the key. If I am thankful for things, then I recognize that they come from God, and that God therefore defines the right way to use them. Things are never evil of themselves. But all things have a proper use, discerned by "the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:5). So if I am concerned that I am not using something right, or do not know the right way to use something, this is the process- recognize it comes from God and is therefore good, when used properly. Then I pray for wisdom, and search the Scriptures for guidance. The Proverbs are very useful here.

Christians are to be sober, serious, disciplined, and hard-working. We are not to be wasteful and self-indulgent. At the same time, we are not to live in fear, and are to rejoice in God's creation and enjoy it. Proverbs 21:17 is a good one for the self-indulgent. So in general, we need to be governed by the broad principles of Scripture about what kind of person a Christian is to be, what the nature of God's creation is, what the true nature of sin is, and use the things of God's creation in compliance with all of these principles.

God Preserves His People

2010-03-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

From Aspiring Polymathis, a great meditation on God's sovereign drawing of His people:

After the disciples complain about these hard saying, Christ reminds them that the flesh (physical eating) profits nothing but " 'the words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.' For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him." (v.63ff.)

And Christ continues: " 'Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.' 66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more."

What amazing words! What a stupendous mystery. When Christ says 'therefore' he is connecting their unbelief with the fact of God's sovereignty: they cannot come to Christ unless such a movement has been granted to them by the Father.

I think that a careful and thorough study of John 6 is one of the best ways to understand the doctrine of predestination. Thanks, Pastor Mathis.

None good but God

2010-03-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

From Luke 18:18-23:
“Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.”

The man was a ruler- meaning that he was the ruler of a synagogue. That means he paid for the synagogue to be built. That’s how you got to be the ruler of a synagogue, most of the time.

Jesus’ statement about the goodness of God is not referring to God’s moral rectitude. Most of the time, the Bible uses the words “righteous” or “holy” for that. Goodness refers to God’s benevolence and kindness, most of the time.

Jesus was calling attention to the fact that the ruler thought Jesus was just a man, although an important and influential one, like himself. But as Jesus says in other places, all good things come from God, not from man. If Jesus is just a man, then He should not be called good. This man was asking how he could acquire blessings from God, indicating a willingness to do good works to gain those blessings. But Jesus is saying that blessings are not earned from God, they are freely given, for God is good, benevolent, and kind.

The ruler would think of himself as good and benevolent. He had given the money for the synagogue to be built. He had certainly done other good works for people. He saw his money as the way to work his way into heaven, to secure the blessings of God. But Jesus denies that he really is good and benevolent. He is telling the rich man, blessings are not acquired by our good works, our strength, our piety, our money. Blessings are acquired from God, as His free gift. We must simply give up our own ability to save ourselves, and accept those blessings from God.

This is what the rest of the discourse is about. He asks the man about his adherence to the law. Curiously, Jesus’ account of the law is strangely superficial, listing only those commandments which are easy to interpret in a purely outward fashion. Don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal. He is leading the man into a trap. The ruler of the synagogue was certainly familiar with the true requirements of God’s Law. The obligation to love the Lord with all our heart and to love our neighbor wasn’t invented by Jesus. Those are quotes from the Pentateuch, the old law. But flattered by the implication that he has been obedient, he falls into Jesus’ trap- “All this I have done from my youth.” And then Jesus springs the trap- “Go and give all that you have to the poor and come and follow me.”

Jesus wasn’t giving the man a good work to do. He was calling on the man to renounce his good works. The man would be giving up the illusion that he could buy influence and favor and merit. Giving all you have to the poor would not be considered a good work- it would be considered useless, pouring money down a hole. Most would consider it the same way today.

The money itself wasn’t the problem. It never is. No one else in Scripture is ever called to give away all their possessions. The pride was the problem. The self-reliance, the belief that he was the upper crust of society, he was a “good master”, and he could by his benevolence earn eternal life.

But there is none good but one, God. God’s gifts come not as wages for obedience. They come as His free gifts. But we must have faith, believe in Him, freely accept those gifts. As long as we are trying to earn God’s favor, we are denying His benevolence, and those gifts will be withheld.

The man could not give up his pride, his need to earn his own salvation. So he went away sorrowfully.

Man’s pride is the great obstacle. Because ultimately we must come face to face with the truth, and that truth is seen at the cross of Christ, the charity of Jesus’ blood. To our ability to accomplish our own salvation- God’s answer is the cross of Christ. The truth is that a good and righteous man had to be beaten to death on my behalf. That’s what it took to save me. That is the stumblingblock. The pride of man has to be destroyed first, before man will ever accept the charity of blood. He was a rich man- not just in his wallet, but in his heart. He was spiritually rich, and therefore refused the charity.

He is a contrast with another man, a man who was very poor in spirit. The Philippian jailer, supposed to be watching Paul and Silas. The earthquake freed them from their bonds, and the jailer assumed that they had escaped and that therefore he would be executed. He is about to kill himself. He has lost everything. But Paul and Silas are still there. They have been singing hymns all night in the stocks, and now they call on the jailer not to hurt himself, for they are still there.

The jailer fell down before Paul and Silas and ask them the same question that the ruler asked Jesus- but now not in pride and richness of heart, but in desperation and poverty. And their answer is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Accept the charity. For there is none good but one, that is, God.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Repost: The Problem of Evil

2010-03-06T20:30:00.003-07:00

From 2004:
I have just recently finished reading The Problem of Pain. This is probably CS Lewis’ least satisfying book for me. I have long heard, and believed, that Lewis wasn’t much of a theologian, and it is in this book where I see that most vividly on display. There’s a lot to be admired in this book, and I would probably speak more positively of the book if the writer were someone without Lewis’ impressive credentials.

A lot of my difficulty with this book has to do with my own theological approach to the Problem of Evil, and the inadequacy I see in the traditional approach that many theologians take to that issue. In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis suffers from the same deficiencies that the traditional arguments suffer from.

The book addresses one of the oldest problems in philosophy, the problem of evil (called the problem of pain by Lewis, but not really a different issue). The problem of evil is simply this: How can a good God allow evil to exist? In syllogistic form, one might look at it like this:

1. A good and loving God must wish to abolish evil.
2. An all-powerful God must be able to abolish evil.
3. But evil exists.
4. Therefore, a good and all-powerful God must not exist.
If God allows evil to exist, then He must be either not good, or not all-powerful. If He were good, surely He would desire to eliminate evil. If He were all-powerful, He would be able to do so. Since evil exists, a good and all-powerful God must not exist.

I find the typical Christian response to this deeply unsatisfying, mostly because it is profoundly unscriptural but also because it is essentially a concession to the argument. This is the free will defense, and it states basically that God was unable to create a world that was good and that also lacked free will, and therefore free will had to be included. With this free will present, man chose to exercise that free will and chose evil instead of good. Therefore it is man’s fault that evil exists, not God’s.

I say this is unscriptural because in at least two of the main places where the question is actually discussed in the Bible, the free will defense is not invoked. These two places are the book of Job and in Romans 9. In Job, God’s defense is essentially, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” This is God’s answer to Job’s question to why these evils have been allowed to come upon him. God never ducks responsibility, invokes the free will of Satan, or uses any such weasel words as “allowed”. God accepts full responsibility and claims full right. We know from the story that God decreed these occurrences in Job’s life in order to vindicate His glory to Satan and the angelic hosts. He never apologizes for doing so.

In Romans 9, Paul anticipates the question, How can then God find fault with man, for who has resisted His will? This question comes in response to Paul’s argument of God’s complete sovereignty in salvation and damnation. This is essentially the problem of evil- if God is in control of all things, how can we call anything evil? Paul’s answer has two parts. The first (Who are you, O Man, who replies against God?) questions man’s right to ask the question in the first place. The second graciously provides the answer, despite the impertinence of the question:

What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, suffered with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction; and that he might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy... even us, whom he has called…?

That is to say, the destruction of God’s enemies and the merciful salvation of God’s chosen reveals and glorifies God, and is therefore good. Once we understand this, the problem of evil essentially goes away. All is for God’s glory ultimately, therefore nothing resists His will. The term “evil” simply speaks of our own subjective rebellion against God’s will for our lives, not any actual violation of His eternal will, since that is impossible.

The free will defense, on the other hand, weakens God by saying that evil exists ultimately because God was powerless to prevent it. God somehow was ‘required’ to create a world that had free will. He was unable to create a world where men would freely choose to worship Him, without them falling into sin, but was still compelled to create such a world, again presumably to fill some need. But if a good world cannot exist without free will, then what of heaven? Christian theism posits the existence of heaven, where we will serve God forever. Will we be free there? If not, by this argument heaven must not be good. If so, by this argument it must be possible for us to fall from perfection all over again, even in heaven.

Because we are subordinate to God in the very deepest, most metaphysical respect, I am comfortable saying we can freely choose to serve God or to rebel against Him, and yet never depart from His sovereign plan for all things. This also solves the problem of evil. The only problem it creates, I believe, is that it forever denies any hope man could ever have of being truly independent and self-ruling. But this is not a Biblical problem; only the problem of the man who rebels against God his Creator.

The Need for Biblical Literacy

2010-03-01T11:03:00.002-07:00

From The Evangelical Outpost, good thoughts on the need for Biblical literacy:

The lack of understanding that Christian students and adults have concerning the doctrine, narratives, and unity of the scriptures is not merely embarrassing, but also alarming for multiple reasons. The least of these, but one dear to my heart nonetheless, is that much of British and American literature is decontextualized and frankly, lost, without a decent grasp of Biblical themes, characters, and phrases. Why does the narrator of Moby Dick ask to be called “Ishmael”? Why is a painting of David and Bathsheba hanging on Dimmesdale’s wall in The Scarlet Letter? Without some basic biblical literacy, many passages in English literature are left opaque.

A deeper and more pressing concern is that not a lack of understanding of what we believe and why we believe it leads to an inability to articulate these beliefs. This, according to philosopher Charles Taylor, “undermines the possibilities of reality’…religious faith, practice, and commitment can be no more than vaguely real when people cannot talk much about them. Articulacy fosters reality.”

Sentenced to Death

2010-02-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Via The Dunker Journal, a great quote from William F Buckley:

But, in the long view, we all stand sentenced to death, and whether it comes in 1995 or tomorrow makes no difference. That is why the morality of the last days always applies to what is “finally important in human experience.” All our techniques of social welfare, all our science, all our comfort, all our liberty, all our democracy and foreign aid and grandiloquent orations—all that means nothing to me and nothing to you in the moment when we go. At that moment we must put our souls in order, and the way to do that was lighted for us by Jesus, and since then we have had need of no other light. That is what is finally important; it has not changed; and it will not change. It is truth, which shall ever abide in the future. And if it is “reactionary” to hold a truth that will be valid for all future time, then words have lost their meaning, and men their reason.

God Bless Profit

2010-02-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Proverbs 11:26 The people will curse him who withholds grain, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.

I love being a pastor. I also love being a computer repairman. It's a great feeling when people are thanking me profusely while giving me money. The proverb above shows the reason.

I don't have grain. But I do have a pretty good head for computers. And when people take what they can do and share it with others, the others are usually more than happy to compensate the person who has helped them. I've only had about one customer that I can think of that complained about paying my fee.

This is what is great about the free market. You make money in the market by making other people's lives better. This is always the advice I give young people looking to make a living. I tell them, think of how you can make other people's lives better, and do that. You do that, and you'll never have a problem making a living. You might not be able to do it immediately. You probably will need to work toward that goal. But set that goal in mind- using the talents and opportunities that God has given you to serve others. And be sure to charge. Do it for a fair price, but don't do it for free.

Sometimes you hear people talking about "public service." Obama had proposed a plan where you got your student loans forgiven after 20 years, or after 10 years if you went into "public service", by which he meant government. As if government work was somehow more noble and worthwhile than the private sector. And government is, of course, necessary. But when most of the public sector makes a lot more money than the rest of the labor market, it doesn't seem to me to be exactly appropriate to talk about them as if they are sacrificing something for the rest of us. Yes, the policeman improves my life (except when he's giving me a ticket), but does he improve it more than, say, the plumber? If you unthinkingly say that the policeman is more important than the plumber, then I assume your toilet is working right now.

I can fix people's computers. And I'm happy to do it. I don't do it for free, because from one perspective, I need to eat. But from another perspective, I wouldn't be able to fix very many people's computers if I did it for free. I'd have to spend my time making money and just fix computers in my spare time, along with playing with my kids, resting and everything else. But if I charge for it, then I can help a lot more people with my abilities. If the farmer gives his grain away, then he feeds the community for one year. But if he sells it, then he can plant again, and feed them again the next year, year after year. I am blessed to have a church that takes good care of me. But I have debts I'd like to pay faster and savings I'd like to pursue, and so I make a little money on the side fixing computers. If I couldn't charge to do it, then I wouldn't do it much, except for family and friends. Because I charge, I can use my abilities to help a lot more people.

Profit is a dirty word in our culture. I hear people say that the evil insurance companies are only in it for the profit. But profit is the only thing that enables them to do what they do. And the laborer is worthy of his hire. If people cannot make a profit doing something, they will not be able to do it very long, unless they are compelled to do it by force. And then they are slaves.

People all have gifts. People have things they can do that not many other people around them can do quite as well. Figure out how to make other people's lives better with those gifts, and you will make a living. Don't be ashamed or embarrassed to make a profit doing things that make other people's lives better. Don't be afraid to sell your talents. People will not resent you for it. They will bless you, as the proverb says. The one they curse is the one who selfishly hoards what he has for himself only.

We need to recapture the value of work. I read something recently on The Simple Dollar that I really liked- he said, he used to make the mistake of working during his working hours in order to improve his non-working hours. Working for the weekend, the American way. He became much happier and satisfied when he learned to work to improve his working hours, laboring to be able to do things he enjoyed and was satisfied in doing. We spend a great deal of our life working, and it's a shame to spend your life doing something you hate. But if we recapture the value of work, the idea that God created us to work, to take dominion over creation, then we can learn to find satisfaction in our work and work toward job situations that are more satisfying, and make better use of our gifts.

So don't hold yourself back. Don't think profit is a dirty word. Sell yourself, sell your abilities, and the world will bless you. Figure out your gifts, figure out how to use them to better other people's lives, and price those gifts fairly. They will thank you while they give you money. And that really is a great feeling.

Avast

2010-02-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

I've been an AVG user for a long time, but have had increasing problems with it, and have recently switched to Avast for my antivirus protection. So far, I really like it. It seems like all of these products are good for a while and then stop being good. I don't know if they just get taken over by the marketing departments or if they just become bloatware over time. I've also wondered if AV products in particular become less effective as they get more popular and virus writers therefore tailor their product to avoid the most popular AV packages. Whatever the reason is- Norton, McAfee, AVG- all of them seem like they start out good but after a while aren't so much.

Anyway, Avast so far is a nice clean product without a lot of superfluous features. I haven't analyzed it very closely, but it seems to have a pretty thin memory footprint, which I like. And I'm clean of viruses- but then I was before too.

Also, I'd recommend Malwarebytes as a secondary line of defense.

A Famine of the Word

2010-02-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

From Al Mohler:

In many churches, there is almost no public reading of the Word of God. Worship is filled with music, but congregations seem disinterested in listening to the reading of the Bible. We are called to sing in worship, but the congregation cannot live only on the portions of Scripture that are woven into songs and hymns. Christians need the ministry of the Word as the Bible is read before the congregation and God's people -- young and old, rich and poor, married and unmarried, sick and well -- hear it together. The sermon is to consist of the exposition of the Word of God, powerfully and faithfully read, explained, and applied. It is not enough that the sermon take a biblical text as its starting point.

I appreciate Dr. Mohler's thoughts here a great deal. But I'd warn of a temptation that the leadership of churches is always susceptible to, blaming the congregation for disinterest in sermons focused on the word.

The fault belongs in part, obviously, with the congregation. And I can sympathize. I once had a congregation member that would count the number of Bible verses that I read in a service, in order to complain- "He read 52 verses this Sunday!" But what Dr. Mohler doesn't delve in too much is the other part of the problem- pastors who clearly don't believe that the Bible is all that relevant. Nothing is more relevant than knowing who God is, and when the pastor passionately believes and preaches that, then the people can be taught to see the relevance of Scripture. So I think the fault is on both sides, and should be addressed on both sides. I remember asking a certain pastor once how he went about counseling people struggling with addictions or family problems. He said, "Oh, I don't do that. I don't have anything to say to people having those kinds of problems." He just referred them to "professionals." He was clearly a man who did not believe the Bible was terribly relevant to people's actual problems, and it showed in his preaching.

Believers in the pews need to develop a hunger for the word. But pastors are called to preach that word in a lively fashion, showing people how that word is relevant to every aspect of their lives. And that means that the pastors have to believe that themselves.

The Patience of the Saints

2010-02-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

All of the benefits and blessings of the Christian life are only accessible to those who have patience. The riches promised to us by God only come after a time of suffering. Anyone can commit to some changed lifestyle or way of thinking for a short period of time. Only with patience can the benefits of a true commitment to the truth of Jesus Christ be experienced.

In Revelation 13 and 14, twice, John says, "Here is the patience of the saints." Once in chapter 13 verse 10, after talking about the destructive and oppressive power of the beast and the fact that those who oppress and destroy will themselves be oppressed and destroyed, and again in chapter 14, verse 12, after the third angel announces the destruction of all of those who worship the beast.

We have patience in the knowledge that God has the victory. All of the things we suffer in this life only work our good and God's glory, and can never rob us of the promised salvation. All we have to do is endure, a lesson Revelation teaches us over and over. Enduring to the end is the unique characteristic of the true saint of God. Anyone can be faithful for a little while, but only by the power of the Spirit of God, with sincere faith in Christ, can a person endure all of the difficulties of this life to reap the promised blessings. Pray sincerely that God grant us that patience.

Dismantling the Scaffolding

2010-02-09T17:17:00.005-07:00

Unbelieving man spends a great deal of effort trying to account for a great many things that can simply be explained by the existence of God. Where did we come from? How did we achieve all of the complexity we see around us? What is the purpose of life?

Man tries to account for all of these questions without reference to God, or without reference to a God uncontrolled by man. Man declares himself the arbiter of what can and cannot be true, and then examines all truth claims to decide whether or not to accept them.

But it is the word of God which declares what is and what is not, what can and cannot be. God calls man to simply accept His truth, and indeed we cannot even function without reference to this truth. We are not independent. In Him we live and move and have our being. Man can only know anything insofar as he accepts the revelation of God.

Unbelieving man is therefore like a man standing on scaffolding claiming he can fly. You point out to him, no, you're standing on scaffolding. And he says, But I am dismantling the scaffolding under my feet, and when I am done, that will prove that I can fly. One of two things must inevitably occur. The man will continue to stand on God's scaffolding, operate on God's truth, and pretend that he is not, and make a show of dismantling the very thing he is standing on. Or, he will succeed, and truly dismantle the structure of his own thought, and fall into nihilism.

The conversation between Jesus and Pilate, recorded in the book of John chapter 18, perfectly reveals this dilemma in the mind of the unbeliever. Pilate is confronted with Jesus, the revelation of the truth of God. Jesus Himself makes this claim to Pilate, telling Pilate that He came into the world for the purpose of bearing witness to the truth. Pilate's response, perhaps his most famous words, is "What is truth?" Pilate then proceeds to declare that Jesus is innocent, and orders him to be crucified.

Pilate is a man caught on the horns of this dilemma. He is trying to judge reality using his own faculties, but comes upon an impossible case, the case of Jesus himself. In Pilate's understanding, a man like Jesus simply cannot exist. He defies all of Pilate's expectations. He does not cower before Pilate. He is not afraid. He does not defend himself, flatter Pilate, or all of the things that Pilate must be accustomed to for a man of his power. Jesus is accused of things by the Jews that He cannot possibly be guilty of. As long as Pilate insists on the independence of his own mind, he has no way at all of dealing with the situation he is in. Jesus is innocent of the charges, but Pilate's own survival will be jeopardized by antagonizing the Jews, who have threatened to accuse him to Caesar of tolerating a rebel. But if he declares Jesus to be guilty, then he is acting contrary to what he knows is the truth and will be giving the Jews, whom he hates, the victory over him. He has the option of simply submitting to the truth, doing the right thing and trusting God to take care of him. But this he cannot do. Instead, he says, "What is truth?" He denies the validity of thought itself, declaring Jesus innocent and then condemns him to death for a crime that Jesus, by Pilate's own admission, could not possibly have committed.

Tradition tells us that Pilate committed suicide some years later. We don't know for sure. But we know that he committed a kind of suicide, right here in John 18. He commits intellectual suicide, declaring that it is impossible to know the truth, or even that truth does not exist, for the alternative is unthinkable, to submit to God. Rather than admit that he cannot fly, he tears up the scaffolding under his feet and falls to his doom. Rather than admit that his mind is not independently capable of understanding the truth, he declares that there is no truth and destroys the validity of his own mind.

This is always the option facing man. In hell, Jesus tells us that there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Sorrow and rage. The unbeliever in hell has completely destroyed his mind, refusing to acknowledge that God is the rightful judge and king, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

So we can continue to insist on our own autonomy, the independence of our own minds. This is a pure assumption. No evidence is even possible for such a claim, since that evidence could only be judged by that very mind in question. It is a pure assertion, and is made because the alternative is unacceptable to man. The alternative is that we think God's thoughts after him, that our minds, to work properly at all, must be subject to the God that made our minds. But this second alternative is the truth, as declared by the Scriptures and revealed by Jesus Christ. In man's desire for freedom, to fly on his own strength, he ends in despair and death. But by embracing the truth of Jesus Christ, we become what God intends for us to be, creatures made in His image.

And this is just what Jesus told us, that the truth will set us free.

Another Essentials Excerpt

2010-02-08T10:26:00.002-07:00

Here's a second excerpt from my book, The Essentials of the Christian Religion, available here:

The second term, sanctification, refers to the process of actually making us righteous. As we said in the last chapter, we are saved from our sins, not merely from the consequences of our sins. Justification saves us from the eternal consequences of our sins, but it does not save us from the sins themselves.

After we are converted, however, we are adopted as sons by God and we are given the power to really be sons, rather than the enemies that we were before. This power comes to us by the Holy Spirit, who works internally in us to teach us and empower us to live more and more like Christians. This is sanctification. Sanctification means the process of setting something apart. The term was used in the Old Testament to describe the ‘setting apart’ of all the firstborn to God. When any sheep or goat or other animal that people had gave birth to its first offspring, that offspring was given to God as thanks for all God had done for His people. The way it was given to God is that it was sacrificed in the temple. Even firstborn children were said to belong to God, though God did not demand that they be killed. Rather, a substitute offering was to be given. A family was required to offer a lamb, or if the family was poor they could offer a pair of pigeons or turtledoves instead. This symbolized that all that people had was ‘set apart’ to God, that is, taken out of the regular, sinful world and dedicated to God.
Many other symbols in the Old Testament point to this same need: the Jews were forbidden to eat many foods and wear certain clothes that were said to be unclean. If they came into contact with things like dead bodies or unclean foods, then they became unclean too. If they were unclean, then they would not be able to enter the temple, and so they had to be cleansed with a ritual that involved the sprinkling of water.

All of this was just symbolic. God doesn’t care about pork or mixed fabrics. But He cares very much that we set our lives apart for His service. What was taught symbolically in the Old Testament is taught directly in the New, and while Christians are free from the Old Testament purification laws, the deeper reality that those laws pointed to—the need to be separate from the world—is every bit as important as it ever was. And so we Christians need to struggle and fight our whole lives to put away our sinful practices and renounce the ways of this world. Sanctification actually begins at the same moment that conversion occurs, since conversion itself is the beginning of putting away sinful ways and renouncing the world.

The Essentials of the Christian Religion is a survey of basic Christian doctrines, including an exposition of the Apostles' Creed. It is written to be accessible to those uneducated in Christianity, and also refreshing and reminding for those more well-versed.

The Essentials of the Christian Religion

2010-02-06T09:02:00.003-07:00

I have finished my first book, _The Essentials of the Christian Religion_. It's a survey of the basic doctrines of Christianity along with an exposition of the Apostles' Creed. It's about a hundred pages long and is written in a friendly, accessible tone, meant to be easy to give to someone who is asking questions about what we believe, even someone with very little education in religion. It would also serve as a useful reminder on the basic doctrines of Christianity, and includes an exposition of the Apostles Creed. It's available here, and will also be available through Amazon.com in a couple of weeks. Here is an excerpt, from chapter 3:

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, having taken on a real human nature, came to this earth to die for sinners. When we say that Jesus “died for us,” what we mean is that He died in our place. He was our propitiation. This is what the passage in Romans that I quoted earlier is saying. He died so that we didn’t have to. God’s justice is satisfied in that the penalty that was required is paid. Because Jesus is God, He possessed the power to endure the suffering of hell on the cross for all of His people. It is also necessary that Jesus was a true man, because God cannot die, and only in a human body could death and hell be felt.

God’s justice is seen in the cross in that God did not simply wink at the sins that people had committed. The penalty was paid and justice was satisfied. But God’s mercy is also seen, in that it was God Himself who paid that price, and God who elected to accept this substitute sacrifice instead of requiring the penalty to be paid in the flesh of the guilty. This is the meaning of propitiation, of atonement.
And so the Romans passage tells us that we have “redemption” in Christ Jesus. That is to say, we are bought back. Due to our own sins, we had been lost and were the property of death and hell. We were owned by another and not free, because of our sins. Jesus paid that debt that was owed and bought us for Himself. Now we belong to Him.

The Romans passage also says that we are “justified.” This is a most important word. Justification is the act by which someone is declared to be righteous. It is important to make a distinction here between the fact of righteousness and its declaration. In a court of law, when a jury comes back with its verdict, it declares the defendant either guilty or not guilty. The jury is only making a pronouncement with regard to the defendant’s status before the law. We hope that such a pronouncement is true to the fact, but usually we can’t know for sure. A man may be declared innocent when he is actually guilty.

Our justification in Christ is just that sort of declaration. We are held innocent before God’s law, not because of our own righteousness but because of Christ’s righteousness. Christ’s righteousness becomes our own righteousness in a legal sense. We are still sinners and will continue to be sinners until we die, but God judges us as innocent because of Christ’s sacrifice.

The Trinity and the Gospel

2010-01-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

It is not possible to properly communicate the gospel without talking about the Trinity. The Father has pronounced the verdict of death on rebellious man, which is the problem with which we must contend. The Son has paid the price of that verdict, dying for our sins. The Spirit communicates the benefits of that salvation to us, so that Jesus' death is not an abstract truth but a personal force in our lives.

Bearing Witness, Cont.

2010-01-27T10:48:00.002-07:00

How do we bear witness?

It is not necessary to walk around central park with a sandwich board sign saying, "THE END IS NEAR".
It is not necessary to go door to door handing out pamphlets.
It is not necessary to go to seminary, be a missionary, or be in the professional ministry at all.

It is necessary to love the brethren, to reflect the grace that God has shown us to the world. It is necessary to forgive those that have wronged you. It is necessary to work hard to live a life of honesty, integrity, productivity and kindness. It is necessary to fellowship with the body of God's people on earth.

Doing these things, beginning to become what God has made us, bears witness to what it is that a person is supposed to be. When we begin to aim ourselves at the perfection that God intends for us, then we call attention to the great gap between what we are supposed to be and what we are now. This is a warning, to those content with what they are now and with those discontent, but unwilling to recognize the fundamental rebellion against God which is the problem. People's guilt over their own alienation against God is inflamed at the sight of one who is overcoming that alienation, by the power of God's Spirit. The condemnation of the world is seen that when the world sees the light, they prefer the darkness.

John 3: 19 "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 "For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 "But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

By God's grace, let us receive the forgiveness He has offered in the blood of Christ. Let us embrace the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. Let us strive to be conformed to His perfect image. Let us die to the world, and live to Him.

Bearing Witness

2010-01-26T23:33:00.001-07:00

The duty of the Christian is to bear witness to the truth. That is our role in God's economy, in God's plan for history in this age. The world is coming under judgment, and we as Christians must proclaim the truth of that fact.

We're not here to build big churches. We're not here to enjoy ourselves. We're not here to be loved by the world. We're not here to self-actualize. We're here to tell the world the truth about the reality of impending judgment. The world will hate us for that and try to destroy our witness. One of the most effective ways they can accomplish that is to convince us to compromise the truth of our witness by giving in to some degree to the lies of the world. So we need to remain true, keep our witness pure and endure to the end. This is what we're here for.

See Revelation 11.

Just a Baby

2009-12-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

Why a Baby?

The Old Testament prophets spoke frequently of the coming of the Messiah. Here's one such promise, from Isaiah 61:
1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God...

Like many of the passages that speak of the coming of the Messiah, this one associates God's vengeance with the coming of the Messiah. The one who is sent by God will bring vengeance on God's enemies.

God makes these kinds of promises very often in the Old Testament, promising that He will save His people from their enemies, and keep them safe when the Messiah comes. He promises that He will vindicate His good name and destroy God's enemies, who are also the enemies of the people of God. And it was for this reason that Christ came into the world, according to Mary's song of thankfulness to God recorded in Luke 1:46-55.

Now at the time that Jesus was born, the Roman Empire held sway over the Mediterranean world. The Roman Empire was probably the most powerful empire that had existed up to that point. And considering the technology that they had to work with, you might make a case that they were the most powerful empire that has ever existed. They were proud and cruel. They had destroyed many nations, and put many other nations under tribute. They were the uncontested masters of the Mediterranean world for over four centuries.

And besides the Romans, there were many other groups that hated God and His people. There were the Syrian kings who ruled Palestine in the name of the Romans, of whom Herod is the best known. There were also the Jewish religious rulers of the day, the Pharisees and the Saduccees, who would so often come into conflict with Jesus during His ministry.

The nations of the world were under the sway of Satan, and many of Israel's own people were under Satan's sway as well.

But God is God, and of course He will vindicate His good name. He has the power to flood the earth, send fire from heaven, strike men dead of disease or send His mighty angels to earth. One angel was sent against the Assyrian king Sennacherib, and in one night killed 185,000 of his men (2 Kings 19). He could send whole battalions of angels with shoulder-fired rocket launchers against His enemies if He so chose. But what did He do?

He sent a baby.

You are perhaps familiar with the expression, “I'll beat you with one hand tied behind my back.” Competitive people sometimes seek to prove their superiority by winning even while handicapped in some way. When God seeks to demonstrate His awesome power, He decided to destroy the nations of the world with only a baby.

There's nothing more helpless than a baby. The infants of the animal world are very often able to fend for themselves from the moment of birth. But a human baby will die in just a few hours without constant attention. It takes years before a baby is able to do the simplest things for itself.

And this particular baby was born to a poor couple away from home, in the territory of a king who so desperately wanted to hold onto his own power that he ordered all the babies from that region killed.

At Christmas time, we often focus on the nostalgia of childhood, the cute images of baby Jesus, the trappings of a sentimental religiosity. But God did not send Christ into the world to give us an appealing target for our nostalgia. He sent Christ into the world to save His people and destroy His enemies. And to demonstrate God's awesome power, He did all of this with the weakest of things, an infant.

Even when Christ grew, with all of His incredible power, He never used it for His own benefit. He never used it to strike down His enemies, as I very often want Him to do when I read the gospels. When conspired against by numerous powerful enemies, when betrayed and abandoned by His friends, He did nothing to defend Himself, but went as a lamb to the slaughter, looking to all the world as the weakest and most despised of men. And it was in this moment, of His greatest apparent weakness, that He struck the shattering death blow against the powers of all the world and Satan together.

People so often boast against God, if not in words then by our actions. We so often believe we can escape judgment, that we can defy God's laws and create our own kingdoms on earth free of His rule. When God moved to demonstrate the utter foolishness of trusting anyone or anything other than Him, He showed His immense power by laying in the dust all of the glories of earth. And He did it with the weakest of all things. No chariots, no horses, no armies. No lightning bolts, or fire and brimstone. No huge marketing campaigns, grand taxpayer-funded schemes, or well-funded lobbyists.

Just a baby.

Motherhood

2009-12-08T11:40:00.002-07:00

From Charles Dickens, _A Tale of Two Cities_, remarking on the unreality of French upper-class society:

Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur- forming a goodly half of the polite company- would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world- which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother- there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.

A lot of similarities to our own upper-class society, I feel. Women have few babies, if any, and are obsessed with looking as if they never had any. Career women too often relegate their children to the care of others, and feel it more important to pursue the fashions of the day than to raise their own children. "Breeder" is a term of contempt in large swaths of our society. Women of sixty are desperate to look and act like women of twenty.

But God told us that women will be saved by childbirth. There is no justification to be found in the act of childbearing, but there is justification in faith. Part of faith is embracing, not rebelling against, what God has made us, whether men or women, whether young or old. It is Biblically defensible to not have children. But it is not Biblically defensible to not have children, or to have very few children, in order to be able the more freely to pursue our own lusts.

Why should you be a Christian?

2009-11-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

How are you doing today?

I'm not asking to be polite. I really want to know. How are you doing?

Are you fulfilled in your life? Are you happy in your relationships? Are you content with the significance of your existence? Are you at peace with your past and confident in the future?

If you have no feeling at all that there is a problem in your life, a great problem, then there's not much point in reading this pamphlet. I'm not going to try to convince you that you have a problem. I believe that you do have one, and I'm going to identify it for you and provide a solution. But a doctor doesn't come to treat healthy people. So if you think you're healthy, then I'll bid you adieu. But I'll leave you with this thought- the time will come when the reality of this problem becomes undeniable to you. At that time, I hope you will remember what I said. Perhaps you should keep this pamphlet with you and read it again when that happens.

The problem you are experiencing at its heart is guilt. People are supposed to be a certain kind of thing, and it is all too apparent that we are not the kind of thing we are supposed to be. Why is that? A bird never fails to be a bird. A tree is always a tree. Sometimes some force from the outside like a bolt of lightning or a hunter's rifle prevents the tree or the bird from being what it is. But with people, it's different. It's not what is on the outside that causes us to fail to be what we are supposed to be. It's what is on the inside. We know we should not steal, yet we steal. We know we should be kind to other people, yet most of the time we care far more about ourselves than we do anyone else. We don't live up to even the moral principles we hold ourselves, and it's not because something else has forced us to. It's because there's something wrong inside of us. And we try to suppress the awareness of this very basic truth or to convince ourselves that it's other people's fault that we feel this way. But it's not anyone else's fault. It's our fault. People are special- different than birds or trees. We have souls. We are spiritual entities unlike birds or trees and were created in order to voluntarily give our love and praise to the God that made us. But a long time ago the first man decided that he would decide right and wrong for himself, live for himself and rebel against God's rule. And as a result, that man, Adam, and all of the human race after him, were separated from God and we all continue to live in Adam's rebellion.

At heart, guilt is an awareness of separation. When you were a kid and did something naughty and your parents were angry at you, you had this terrible feeling that your parents were now alienated from you, didn't love you anymore. The pain of a spanking didn't bother me all that much. I would routinely cause myself more pain than that just in the course of playing. When my parents would spank me, it was the feeling of disapproval, or worse- the idea that my parents simply didn't love me anymore- that was far more devastating than physical pain. That feeling would always pass soon, because I had loving parents who would reassure me of their love even when disciplining me. But the persistent feeling of guilt in our lives is the knowledge that we are alienated from God, that God is actually hostile to us. The desire to overcome this alienation is the reason people do most of what they do. Work, entertainment, religion and politics- all of it is so often pursued as different ways of either earning God's favor or distracting ourselves from the pain of His displeasure. But it will not go away. It cannot be ignored. And if we don't do something about it, it will kill us. God is the source of our life, and separation from Him will eventually destroy us.

The good news is, there is hope. God has provided a solution to the problem. Two thousand years ago, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, who is God Himself, to earth to become a human being in order to bridge this gap. He came and pronounced the hopelessness of ever earning favor with God by our works, the need we all therefore have for a savior who can rescue us, and the fact that Jesus Himself is that savior. The self-righteous religious authorities of the day, in envy and hatred of Jesus for His exposure of their hypocrisy, murdered Him by falsely accusing Him to the political authorities of the day, leading to His crucifixion. But Jesus had predicted that He would die, and that He would rise from the dead on the third day after He was crucified, and this is what happened. When He rose from the dead He told His disciples that His death was necessary for the salvation of sinners and that they were to go out into all the world and spread the good news of Jesus so that the whole world would know of this salvation. And thus the Christian church was born.

Jesus had to die because God is just. He will not simply ignore sin. Wickedness must be punished. But God's great mercy is seen in that He sent His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to voluntarily pay the price for our sins so that we could be reunited to God. When Jesus died on the cross He became a substitute for us and all the wrath of God against sin was poured out on Him. He said on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus, who was perfect and never sinned, felt the separation and guilt that we feel because of our sin. And the death that we deserve, He took in our place. When we believe what God has said, put our trust in the salvation of Jesus Christ, then we become part of the body of God's people on earth, the church, under the umbrella of Jesus' own perfect righteousness. And now God regards us not as individual wicked sinners, but as members of Jesus' people, and therefore beloved of God because Jesus is beloved of God.

So the Christian is freed from guilt. And when he is freed from guilt, he is also freed of all the self-destructive and evil thoughts and deeds that come from guilt, from the pain and despair of separation from God. With the love of God, we learn to love our fellow man, to love the creation that God has made, and to live our lives as God has intended.

This is all a process. Faith in Christ is just the beginning of the journey. Christians are still sinners, and hurt others and fail in many different ways. The journey can be quite painful at times. But it is the most rewarding thing any of us can do.

If you've stayed with me this long, and still think you'd rather stick with your old way of thinking, then the question I have for you is, “How's that worked out for you so far?” Is your life such a bang-up success that you can be confident rejecting this offer of rescue and salvation? Are you so secure in the meaning and purpose of your life that you feel content going back to your old way? Do you truly believe in your own ability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps? What in your own experience or in the history of the world gives you such confidence in man's ability to save himself?

But if it sounds like giving your life to Jesus is the way to go, then do it. And don't be half-hearted about it. It's all or nothing. Faith in Jesus means making a whole-hearted decision to believe what God has said. You don't have to understand everything right now. But you have to be committed to believing.

If you do believe what God has told you, then there are some important steps you need to take right now.

1. Pray to God, and tell Him what you have decided. He hears, and He has promised to answer every prayer prayed to Him in sincerity. He answers in lots of different ways, so be patient. But tell Him that you recognize your hopelessness, your guilt, and your need for a savior. Confess your sins, and ask for forgiveness. Tell Him that you accept His Son Jesus Christ as your savior, and pledge to make Jesus the Lord of your life.
2. Get into church. You need the support of like-minded people. A lone ranger is a dead ranger, and you need people in your life who will encourage and teach you to live your life for God. Find a church that believes and preaches the word of God, the Bible (unfortunately, not all churches do).
3. Get a Bible, and start reading it. It is God's message to mankind and contains everything you need to know. As a suggestion, start by getting acquainted with Jesus, in the book of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Then read 1 Peter or Ephesians to gain a great deal of instruction about Christian doctrine and life. Then just start reading from the beginning and go all the way through.

It is my great desire and prayer that more are added to the number of Christ's people. But don't wait forever. The guilt that I mentioned earlier is in fact God's warning to people that judgment is coming, and it could come at any time. Christ is coming again, and if you die or if Christ comes again before you have made this decision, then it is too late. Judgment has come, you have refused and rejected God's offer of salvation, and you will then receive the just penalty for your rebellion against the God that made you. I pray that you will instead receive the offered mercy, believe in Jesus Christ and live forever with Christ, and with all of Christ's people.

Your Excuses are Your Own

2009-09-22T11:35:00.002-06:00

One of the most important lessons I ever learned in my life was taught to me by Paul Sondrol, a political science professor at the University of Colorado. I was rather notoriously tardy to things in those days, especially class, and I had Dr. Sondrol as a professor for some upper level political science classes that were small classes, where my tardiness would be noticeable. At the beginning of one such class, during the normal beginning of the semester lecture about class expectations, Dr. Sondrol told us that he hated it when students were late to class. He viewed it as a sign of disrespect. Even after telling us this, I was late almost every day to class by five or ten minutes.

Dr. Sondrol was the sponsoring professor for the Model OAS program at UCCS. Without going into all the details, it was a great program, a lot of fun, a great learning experience and a pretty desirable opportunity with limited slots. I applied for it. The summer before the fall semester, I met with Dr. Sondrol to discuss it. He told me that he thought I was a good fit for the program, but one thing concerned him, my tardiness even after he had told the class that he expected us to be on time. I assured him I wouldn't continue that pattern. I got into the program.

That fall, the first day of class for the Model OAS program, I misread the location of the class, thinking it was on the other side of campus. I was five minutes late. I apologized to Dr. Sondrol, and he graciously accepted. The second class period, I couldn't find a parking spot and was again five minutes late. Mortified, I again apologized to Dr. Sondrol. This time, he told me, "There's always an excuse."

And that's when it hit me. I realized a truth that I heard well expressed recently in the quote- "the maximum effective range of an excuse is zero." An excuse affects me and me only. It might make me feel better about why I didn't do what I should have done. But for everybody else, it has no real effect.

Everybody has challenges in their life. Everybody faces obstacles, has unexpected things happen. Everybody misreads a schedule sometimes or has trouble finding a parking spot. But the difference is, some people live their lives in such a way that any unexpected event, however trivial, throws them off their plans and prevents them from succeeding. Other people live in such a way that they can absorb such unexpected events without difficulty. When Dr. Sondrol said that to me, I resolved to become the second person. I realized I had been the first. And so, every day for the rest of that semester I showed up to class twenty minutes early, and then on the days when something unexpected happened, I'd only be ten minutes early instead of twenty.

Proverbs 26:16 The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes Than seven men who can answer sensibly.

To paraphrase- the lazy man has more answers than a committee of seven.

I'm still not the most organized guy in the world. But I try not to make excuses any more. If I forget something, or fail to get something done, the only acceptable response is to simply accept the blame, try to make it right and do better next time. An excuse serves the purpose of making me feel better. It serves no other real purpose. The other guy, who depends on me doing what I said I was going to do in order for him to accomplish what he wants to do, isn't interested in reasons for failure. He's interested in succeeding. And every successful man knows, there are people who succeed at what they say they're going to do and then there are people who are always making excuses. Guess which one he's going to do business with?

And to take a step back and look at the big spiritual picture- when I come up with excuses for why I can't do what I am supposed to do, it's ultimately God that I'm blaming. I'm saying, God has not given me the resources that I need in order to obey Him. King Saul was an excuse maker. He said, "the people made me do it" when he failed to obey God in the matter of the Amalekite war in 1 Samuel 15. But it didn't matter; God rejected him as king anyway. God always gives us the resources we need to obey Him. God gave me Christ, the most precious gift He had to give. The idea that He would withhold some other thing that I need to succeed is laughable.

And this subject is of course far more important than professional or academic success- spiritual success; though of course, faithfulness in my job or at school is just a subset of faithfulness in my spiritual life. All things are matters of faith. And my prayer to God is that He would grant me the faith and the strength to succeed in my spiritual life, rather than making excuses for failure.

Independence Day

2009-07-04T10:51:00.003-06:00

Independence Day

Men will be ruled. There is no alternative; there never has been. The question has always been, by whom? The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the great founding principles of this nation were a statement that men of this nation would be ruled, must be ruled, by themselves.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This was truly a revolutionary concept for the ages. Its principle was and is that liberty is not a right that governments give to men, that liberty is a right which God gives to men, and which governments can then either acknowledge and defend, or attempt to deny and withhold. Therefore, any government which denies life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness is an illegitimate government, according to the principles of our founding fathers.

The theory is based on theism, at the least. It is based on the idea that God made men. Without the concept of creation, this statement makes no sense. If we are the products of chance or unthinking nature, then it is inevitable, natural, good, that some races, classes, kinds of men should be better than others and should oppress and rule over others. There is no consistent way of expressing the inherent equality of men except under the principle of a God who created them.

But there is no reason of itself why theism should lead to the belief in fundamental equality either. For if God made men, He may have made them unequal, making some races and classes better than others. Certainly many religions believe this. So it is not sufficient to have religion, but one must have a certain kind of religion, one that teaches equality, in order to make the statement made at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.

Christianity is just such a religion. The Apostle Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) The distinctions between mankind, the inherent inferiorities and superiorities are all there erased at the drop of a hat. With those distinctions and rankings goes the idea that one group of people should inherently rule over another. It took the church hundreds of years to work that out and put it into practice, and it has come in fits and starts, but the very concept is fundamentally Christian, fundamentally a part of the gospel and is inconceivable without it.

Certainly through most of its history Christendom has known the rule of kings, many of them tyrants, many more just incompetent. But God sharply criticized the people of Israel for desiring a king. The desire for a king, God said, was a desire to be like the nations around them, to share in their glory and to gain the sense of security that would come from a king with a standing army to go out and fight their battles for them. The desire for a king was fundamentally a repudiation of God's rule. (1 Samuel 8) For four hundred years before then, Israel was ruled politically by judges. There was no perpetual national government; government was handled locally and tribally, and figures known as judges would arise when the need existed for them. They would serve to unite Israel against their common foes and they would also serve to adjudicate disputes brought to them. As long as the people would follow God and not worship the false gods and idols around them, this was the only government they needed.

Think of the freedom they possessed! No palaces to pay for, no imperial guards, no bureaucrats consuming their wealth. No pyramids, no royal tombs, no huge projects erected to the vanity of the rulers. No officials telling them how to live their lives. They were free.

They threw it away, and subjected themselves to kings. First they had Saul who was terrible. Then they had David, who was a very good man, but who as a king was still not very good for the nation. His own sins inflicted war and plague on the nation. And he was the best; it was mostly downhill from there. Ultimately the kings of Israel were a disaster; their oppression split the nation, involved the nation in ruinous alliances and wars, were the avenue for a great deal of wickedness and idolatry entering the nation, and ultimately bringing on the destruction of both the northern and southern kingdoms at the hands of foreigners. The people of Israel threw away their freedom, and ultimately their security and prosperity as well. When they did it, this is what God said to Samuel, the last of the judges:

“.. they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.”

Our founding fathers recognized that a free people could only be a people who would be ruled by God. Only when people voluntarily chose to be ruled by the principles of God's word would a representative government work. One could debate the philosophical underpinnings of this belief, but it really isn't necessary. We see around us in our nation today a people being brought into slavery. But we are not being brought into slavery by a political party, by a president, by foreign enemies or internal conspirators. We are being brought into slavery by ourselves.

You can, for example, trace a great deal of our present economic woes to the subprime mortgage crisis, where banks made loans to people who could not afford to repay them. When they defaulted on those loans in huge numbers, starting especially in 2007 and 2008, the whole credit industry was shaken by it. Some blame the banks for making irresponsible loans. That's true, to a degree. Some blame the government for coercing those banks into making bad loans. Also true, to a degree. But none of it would have been possible except for people who took those loans. People refused to be ruled by the principles of God's word, principles of hard work and savings as the source of wealth, and as a result those people, and the nation as a whole, are being brought into slavery.

Whether the subject is health care, education, abortion, homosexuality, war, civil rights, unemployment or anything else, the principles of right behavior are clearly contained in God's word. If people would follow them, there would be no need for government action to solve problems that don't need to exist. But we don't trust God to take care of us, and so we resort to government schemes. People say we need the government to handle our health insurance for us. But Jesus told us that God would always take care of us, if only we trust Him. If we follow the Scriptures in our behavior, if we lived godly lifestyles, if we were moderate and sensible in our eating, drinking and everything we do, if we worked hard and saved our money, if we were generous with the poor around us, then there would be no need to look to Washington and cry, “Save us from ourselves!” And there would be no need to turn a quarter of our wealth over to power-hungry bureaucrats just to give ourselves the false assurance that they can save us.

Because here's the dirty secret- they can't save us. If we rebel against God, nobody can save us. If we follow His word and submit to His law, then we have no need to worry about any threat, whether economic, foreign, or natural. But if we throw off His rule and resort to our own ways, then no government program in the world will rescue us from His judgment. Israel's kings did not bring them security or prosperity; on the contrary, they sucked up the wealth of the land to glorify themselves and made the nation even more exposed to invasions and oppression than they were before.

We must be ruled by God, or by God we'll be ruled. I bow to no one in my disdain for the current administration and congress. But they aren't the problem. The Democrats aren't the problem; the Republicans aren't the problem either, just as they obviously are not the solution. The problem is us. The problem is a citizenry that will not be ruled by the truth of God's word. The problem is a people who believe that it is their right to indulge in every lust, every desire, every evil dream they have, and that it is their right to have science or government or religion rescue them from the consequences of their bad behavior. The problem is a nation full of people who hear “you deserve to own your home” and believe it, and believe that a law should be passed guaranteeing them home ownership, and that someone else should pay for it. The problem is a nation full of people who do not trust God to protect us, God to give us health, God to give us prosperity, and instead look to false gods, who look to the Beast and Babylon to fulfill our every lust and protect us from every danger, trying very hard not to notice that Babylon is built on dead mens' bones. Whether we look to the monolithic state, or the promises of economic prosperity, or the pleasures of entertainment, it makes no difference. We are pledging ourselves to the empires of the world, the false gods of this age. The empires of the world, including the one we live in now, are built on lies and theft and murder. If we will not bow to the God who made us, then we will bow to tyrants.

The truth will set you free, Jesus said. The key to being free in our political and economic lives is to first be free in our spiritual lives. If we repent of our sins, throw ourselves on God's mercy and pledge ourselves to be ruled by Him in every aspect of our lives, then we will be free as individuals. We will be free of the lies and oppression of evil men in our minds and hearts. We will be able to live lives that are governed by God's gentle and just rule and can trust God completely to meet our needs.

This was the dream of America, a nation of free citizens, self-ruled and looking to the truth of God's word, working out in each of our lives individually, to meet our needs. A nation which recognized the God-given right of every individual to rule themselves by God's principles, and which exercised its governmental function only on those who refused to rule themselves. The pursuit of happiness never meant the untrammeled exercise of every lust, but rather the right to decide for oneself, according to God's truth, how to live one's life, and not have the course of one's life dictated by the state. The constitution isn't inspired by God, and it isn't the only way of living out these principles. But the government of this country was an expression of the Biblical truths of the equality and dignity of man created in the image of God. It certainly wasn't perfect. America's principles failed too often with regard to the American Indians, and completely with regard to the black slaves, at least for many years. But even this was not a failure of the founding principles but a failure to consistently apply those principles. But as we fell away from our Christian roots, as we failed to trust God, as we refused to be ruled by God's truth and came to see our right to indulge all our desires, we have gradually lost our freedom. We are no longer independent.

I fully support the separation of the institutions of church and state. But there can never be any separation between religion and state. We will be ruled by God in every aspect of our lives, public or private. Or we will come under the rule of tyrants, thieves and liars. This is the judgment of God who will not be ignored, and it is inevitable. We see it all around us right now.

If you are a patriot, if you love your country, the greatest service you can do for your country is to recommit yourself to be ruled by the truth of God's word, and to encourage those around you to do it as well. It can't be forced; it must be voluntary. Passing laws, choosing judges, electing officials and the like is all secondary; not unimportant, but secondary. What must be primary is that every one of us becomes citizens first of all of God's kingdom, repenting of our rebellion and submitting to the rule of Jesus Christ. Only then can we be free, and only when this nations returns to a belief in a God who made us and reclaims the rights with which God endowed us, the right to rule ourselves according to God's holy truth, only then will this nation again be independent of the rule of the tyrants of this world.

A Holy Presumption

2009-06-09T12:28:00.002-06:00

To separate faith from confidence would be an attempt to take away heat and light from the sun. I acknowledge, indeed, that, in proportion to the measure of faith, confidence is small in some and greater in others; but faith will never be found unaccompanied by these effects or fruits. A trembling, hesitating, doubting conscience, will always be a sure evidence of unbelief; but a firm, steady faith, will prove to be invincible against the gates of hell. To trust in Christ as Mediator, and to entertain a firm conviction of our heavenly Father's love, -- to venture boldly to promise to ourselves eternal life, and not to tremble at death or hell, -- is, to use a common phrase, a holy presumption. -Calvin's commentary on Ephesians 3:12

A great quote from Calvin, here. Real faith is going to produce confidence and ultimately boldness in my life. As he makes clear, that confidence will be weak at times, especially as my faith is immature and unformed. But he who trusts in God will know that no power on earth, in heaven or in hell can stand against God's will for our lives, and God's will for our lives is that we triumph; not in some carnal sense of fame or money or earthly security, but in God's completion of the work within us which He started.

This goes to the point I was making earlier about overcoming sin, as well. Overcoming sin is not a matter of working up the willpower to change, or changing my environment. The man who does not believe he can change, who fears to hear the exhortations of God's law, who sees only condemnation in God's standards of righteousness, is a man who lacks faith. Overcoming sin is a matter of faith, of believing in God's promise of forgiveness in Christ and empowering by the Holy Spirit. As I believe those promises, I will gain more confidence to tackle what previously seemed insurmountable, the sin in my life. And as that confidence grows, I will even gain boldness to believe and to do what I never before dared believe or do. I will come to believe that I can indeed be perfect, to be sin-free. Not in this life; not in the strength of the flesh, but by God's power and enabling, I am even now aiming toward that goal which is promised me in eternity, that I would be truly holy and a worthy image bearer of my perfectly holy savior.

That is, as Calvin says, a holy presumption.

Tommy

2009-05-25T16:37:00.000-06:00

For Memorial Day

Tommy, by Rudyard Kipling

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o'beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's ``Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's ``Thank you, Mr. Atkins,'' when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy how's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

Overcoming Sin

2009-05-08T09:45:00.003-06:00

One thing I deal with frequently and one question I hear often is how we overcome sin. This is nothing unique for a pastor; every Christian must struggle with this issue. I have some thoughts on the issue and I'm going to write them down purely for my own benefit. As irregular as I've been with this blog, I know I don't have a whole lot of regular readers left. And I also know I don't have any new insight into this question. But it helps me think through things to write them down.

This issue is fundamentally the same whatever the sin is. There are differences in the circumstance, and how particular temptations arise and therefore how they must be avoided. But the heart issues, at root, are the same. This should be broadly applicable, therefore, to all kinds of sin issues. Promiscuity, laziness, drunkenness or other kinds of substance abuse, anger, envy, lying- all of it arises out of the same kind of heart, and that is where we must start with our analysis.

There is an essential trinitarian aspect to overcoming sin in our life. Knowing God is of course foundational; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, the Proverb tells us. The Father declares His law, which diagnoses us, tells us what's wrong with our lives. Further, the Father predestines us to receive the salvation of Jesus Christ from eternity. The Son, Jesus Christ, came to earth to live the perfect life of obedience and to die on the cross, freeing us from guilt and reconciling us to God by the removal of the curse of sin, the punishment of death and hell. The Son's death and resurrection also paves the way for the Holy Spirit, who implements the power of Jesus' death and resurrection in our lives. He comes into our hearts and transforms us, giving us a new heart, one with the power and capability of hearing God's word and doing it. He teaches us through the Holy Scriptures, which are, according to Jesus, “Spirit and life” (John 6:63). All three Persons of the Holy Trinity therefore work together to accomplish this goal of overcoming the sin and corruption in our lives.

I want to focus especially on that second aspect, the death of Christ and the removal of guilt. I cannot stress enough that we must learn to put away guilt if we are ever to overcome sin in our lives. Our natural inclination is to think that we can beat ourselves up with guilt in order to produce changed behavior. But this is to fail to understand guilt. Guilt is the awareness and knowledge of condemnation before God. And it is hopeless; it only works despair. It drives me away from God. This is the whole reason for the necessity of Jesus' death; I cannot overcome the penalty of my sin. As long as I am holding up the penalty of sin in front of myself or others as a motivator to change, all I will accomplish is hopelessness and more sin, since that penalty is an inevitable, insurmountable obstacle, unless it is removed by the death of Christ. And in fact, the sinful behavior itself is part of the penalty of rebellion against God.

Paul says in Romans 8 that there is “no condemnation” for those who are in Christ Jesus. And he establishes that point thoroughly before he goes on to the subject of changing behavior in Romans 12, just as he does in Ephesians. And the reason for putting off sinful behavior and replacing it with righteous behavior is presented by Paul as thankfulness for the reality of our salvation, the reality of the removal of guilt, not to accomplish that removal.

Therefore there is no condemnation by God for your failure to overcome sin. There will be discipline as God lovingly brings pain and consequences into your life in order to help you learn and grow, just as a loving father spanks his child to help the child avoid destructive behaviors. But if you are in Christ, nothing you do will ever cause God to hate or condemn you, since you are now seen in the merit of Christ, and not your own merit.

So once you have it firmly in your mind that a)there is no penalty for failure, since guilt is removed and b) you are guaranteed success by the power of the Holy Spirit in your life, you are ready to start thinking about overcoming sin.

Overcoming sin and changing behavior is described in the Scriptures in a lot of different ways. Paul talks about "renewing our minds" (Romans 12:2) and setting our minds on heavenly things and not on earthly things (Col. 3:1-2). John the Baptist calls his audience to repent (all 4 Gospels, first chapter or two). In 1 Peter 2, the apostle tells us to lay aside evil conduct and to practice righteous conduct. The similarity in all of these kinds of statements is that in each of them, changed behavior is the result of reprogramming our minds. It is necessary to change our values.

If a drunk wants to stop drinking, it's often because the earthly consequences are starting to cause problems for him. Maybe he's in legal trouble; maybe his marriage is failing; maybe his health is being ruined. So he tries to tell himself that all of these consequences are so terrible that he has to stop drinking. This rarely produces any long-term change, though. If the man's motivations are earthly, then the immediate pleasure of the bottle are probably greater to him than the long-term pain of poor health or relationship problems. Even in the gutter, having lost everything he has, the man can still escape into the bottle and feel just as good for a while as he would feel if he were drunk in a nice house with a loving wife. My brother Jim pointed out to me recently that the idea that you have to hit rock-bottom to change is wrong, because there is no rock-bottom. Things can always get worse. The only real rock-bottom is hell, and that comes too late for change. Earthly consequences, even the fear of hell itself, will never produce any real change.

Only when the man reprograms his values, when he starts to believe that the purpose of his life is not to please himself, not to experience pleasure in the things of this world, is real change possible. He must have some purpose that transcends himself, that transcends the world. Most addiction treatment programs recognize this, and it's why the AA program, for example, includes belief in a higher being as one of the necessary steps. But of course true change can only be based on truth; therefore to avoid simply changing from one destructive lie to another, it is necessary that this transcendent purpose be the true transcendent purpose, the God of the Bible. He calls us to glorify and serve Him with our lives. This is a call to a completely different set of values and priorities than those which come naturally to us.

I remember once talking to my dad about time management problems a few years back and I said something along the lines of, "I just feel like I waste a lot of time and then when I get done the things I need to get done, I don't have time left for God." And he responded, "Matthew, it all belongs to God." And then I saw the root of my problem. It wasn't that I was taking too much time for myself and not enough for God. It was that I had a wrong view of the purpose of my life. I was viewing my life as about essentially pleasing myself, while carving out enough time to placate God. Instead, I should view it as all of my time belonging to God and being for the purpose of serving Him; I just do it in different ways. I serve Him by reading my Bible, going to church, talking about Christianity to my friends when I have the chance. But I also serve Him by doing my job, by reading a book for relaxation, by talking to my friends about the weather. Everything I do must be for the purpose of serving God. I do not belong to myself. And this is what Paul means when he calls us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices and set our minds on things above. It means a reprogramming of our minds, of our values.

All sin at its root comes from this source, the belief that I am the god of my own life. My life exists to serve myself, and even my religious activities are seen in that light- to serve my ego, my self-righteousness, to assuage my guilt or to keep God off my back. When I am saved by Jesus Christ, instead I recognize that I am bought with a price and called to serve Him with my life. That is now my transcendent purpose. Putting away sin is only possible when the evil thought patterns that produce sin can be replaced by the truth, by the transcendent purpose of serving God with every aspect of my life.

An Angry Countenance

2009-05-05T20:00:00.003-06:00

A stirring article. Having just recently been through a discipline case involving slander, this really resonates with me.

Does the Lord really mean that it is not only OK but a positive good to get angry with those who destroy other's reputations by backbiting? Surely not. We must be patient, forgiving, kind, charitable, while our neighbor's reputations go up in flames--or so the message is in many churches. How long has it been since anyone in your church was disciplined by the elders for this unspeakable crime against God, the very sin of the devil himself against the church?

The problem with these kinds of sins, the sins of the tongue, first, is that they're difficult to prove. The other problem is that if you face them, then you have very public and painful conflict. But if you don't face them, then people in the church who are being victimized just quietly become disillusioned and drift away. So churches often choose not to face them at all, since the consequences of facing them are so much more visible and obviously painful than the quiet and subtle consequences of not facing them. But God rewards obedience. We should never be afraid to have a fight when we need to.

Sound thinking on government spending

2009-02-14T14:20:00.002-07:00

Here is some sound thinking on the real implications of government spending.

D'Souza, Darwin and God

2009-02-14T13:45:00.005-07:00

Dinesh D'Souza, a writer and thinker for whom I normally have a good deal of respect, got the relationship between evolution and Christianity exactly backward, and effectively, though inadvertently, demonstrated an important point I have tried to make many times in the past.

D'Souza's point about Charles Darwin is that his theory of evolution did not cause him to lose his faith, though he does assert that it has caused others to lose their faith. D'Souza bases this on the fact that Darwin was already angry at God for the death of his daughter at age 10, and also Darwin's refusal to believe that good men such as his grandfather who were unbelievers could be in hell. Darwin therefore was already moving away from Christianity when he started to formulate the theory of evolution. Therefore, says D'Souza, Darwin's loss of his faith and his belief in evolution are unrelated events.

I would posit instead that they are closely related, as Darwin himself said, though D'Souza has the proposed cause and effect backward. Many Christians who believe in evolution make this same mistake, and think that we creationists are just blindly holding onto ignorance out of fear of losing our faith if we realize the truth of science. No, instead we recognize that evolution was simply intellectual cover for what logically did indeed come prior, the rejection of the God of the Bible. If one rejects the God of the Bible then one must find a way around one of the most common and compelling arguments for the existence of that God, which is the nature and existence of the things we see around us. So Darwin is rejecting God, and being of a scientific mindset, he must answer the question of how everything came to be, and he hits on this idea, the theory of evolution. As some of D'Souza's own quotes of Darwin shows, he regarded any divine involvement in science as the death knell of his theory:

When Darwin's co-discoverer of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, wrote him to say that evolution could not account for man’s moral and spiritual nature, Darwin accused him of jeopardizing the whole theory. “I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child.” Darwin's ultimate position was that it was disastrous for evolution to, at any point, permit a divine foot in the door.

So Darwin certainly saw a connection between the two. But D'Souza merely says that it was "complicated", like the way people talk about their relationships on Facebook when they don't want to explain it more clearly. D'Souza likewise says that we have to distinguish between Darwin the unbeliever and Darwin the scientist. Why? Darwin didn't distinguish. To him, evolution was necessary to avoid the God of the Bible, and evolution serves this same purpose for many other scientists, as D'Souza's own quotes again demonstrate:

According to Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

and

Biologist E.O. Wilson writes, “If humankind evolved by Darwinian natural selection, genetic chance and environmental necessity, not God, made the species.” Douglas Futuyma asserts in his textbook Evolutionary Biology, “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of life superfluous.” Biologist William Provine boasts that in the modern era, “evolution is the greatest engine of atheism.”

and

Darwin’s most ardent champion, Thomas Henry Huxley, took a different view. Huxley was vehemently anti-Christian, and he was attracted to Darwin’s theory precisely because they saw it as helping to overthrow the Christian case for divine creation. Huxley noted that evolution’s “complete and irreconcilable antagonism” to Christianity constituted “one of its greatest merits in my eyes.”

Christians or theists who believe in evolution are very anxious not to see this point, as some of my own interactions with them in the past demonstrate. They want to believe that they're just separate issues, but they're not. Evolution is one of the many tools, and one of the handiest tools for the scientifically minded, to avoid the truth about God. And those quotes above just demonstrate that without the theory of Darwin, one has little choice but to believe in a God who created everything. None of D'Souza's handwaving can change the fact that there was the very closest of relationships between Darwin's unbelief and his science. D'Souza never even attempts to examine whether the event that came before (anger at God over the death of his daughter) had any influence on the event that came after (the formulation of the theory of evolution). He simply assumes the wrong cause-and-effect relationship is what we theists believe and then disproves an argument that we don't make.

Now this doesn't mean that everyone who believes in evolution is trying to avoid the truth of the Bible. But this is the purpose of the theory, and the way it functions in most of our secular world. Peter didn't recognize that the Judaizers were trying to steal the faith, and he was led astray. Many Christians are likewise led astray by those trying to destroy the faith. Belief in evolution doesn't necessarily turn one into an atheist. But it sure helps a lot if becoming an atheist is what you're trying to do anyway.

So the point is not that we creationists are afraid of being turned into atheists if we believe in evolution. It's just that we recognize that the major engine promoting evolution is the atheistic impulse, the desire to avoid the truth of God's word, and we see no reason to go along. I see no reason to carry water for people who hate God and the Bible. I see no reason to justify their attacks against my Lord and Savior and call the theory something other than what it is. I see no reason to disbelieve Scripture's clear teachings in favor of this atheistic attack on God. And I see every reason to warn other Christians, like Paul warned Peter, not to fall prey to these deceptions. The evidence may seem compelling and the arguments may seem overwhelming. Satan has always been good at what he does. But their real intention is clear. And God's word is clear. He made all things by the word of His power in six days, some six to ten thousand years ago. Let God be true and every man a liar.

Not under law but grace

2009-02-09T10:24:00.004-07:00

Romans 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.

Why is it the fact that being under grace instead of law has the effect that sin no longer has dominion over us?

Because, as Paul makes so clear in chapter 1 of Romans, sin is the consequence of our rebellion against God and our refusal to worship Him as God. We are "given over" to sin as a consequence. So far from being able to work our way out from under the covenant of law, the very sins we commit, part of the consequence for Adam's rejection of that covenant, continue to condemn us under the terms of that covenant, resulting in more punishment, which includes more sin. So it's hopeless.

We recognize then that grace, forgiveness in the blood of Jesus Christ, is the only way to get out from under that. And part of the result then of accepting the grace of Jesus Christ is that we will be released from the penalty of the covenant of Law, which means that sin will have no more dominion over us.

The believer continues to struggle with sin all of his life, as he realizes and lays hold of the effects of this salvation. The Holy Spirit applies the results of this salvation to us and the result is sanctification. Sin no longer has dominion over us.

And this shows the great foolishness of any that would say that the doctrine of justification by faith alone results in more sin; that statement demonstrates a complete failure to understand what sin is. On the contrary, any attempt to accomplish righteousness by works will result in more sin, since trying to accomplish righteousness by works is to operate according to the covenant of works, which requires perfection. And the failure to keep the covenant of works results in the penalty of that covenant being applied, part of which is being given over to vile affections.

Paul goes on to make this point in Romans 6. We are the servants of whom we obey, either of righteousness unto life, or of sin unto death. Being bought out of the covenant relationship of law, we are freed from obedience to that cruel taskmaster, which because of our failure would have destroyed us in sin and death. We are now bought into the relationship of grace, enabling us to begin to live righteously as we move toward eternal life in that covenant, which is characterized by perfect righteousness. Obeying our new master, grace and forgiveness, results in righteousness and life.

Gay marriage and the media

2009-02-08T15:14:00.003-07:00

I stumbled across this excellent article reacting to a Newsweek piece on gay marriage and the Biblical witness. I really have nothing to say against it. I think that we Christians are going to have to deal with an increasingly hostile media and popular culture on this and many subjects. This article is a good example of how to do it.

Obama and Religion

2009-02-05T10:33:00.005-07:00

My good fried Lee has written a post about Obama on his blog that is for the most part correct. But he says something that I don't believe is quite accurate-

Thus, I was right earlier about his new language just being a new attempt to keep religion out of politics. I did fail to see that he wants to keep religion out of everything. Now I know.

Obama, however, is not against religion. He is against competing religions.

From Liberal Fascism, p. 336-337:

...It is the progressive priesthood- not churches or synagogues- that must sanctify the quest for meaning and spirituality. Independent sources of moral faith are "divisive" and need to be undermined, walled off, excluded from our "common project." This means that liberal churches are fine because they are perceived- rightly or wrongly- to have subordinated religious doctrine to political doctrine. As John Dewey put it in his brief for a secular religion of the state: "If our nominally religious institutions learn how to use their synmbols and rites to express and enhance such a faith, they may become useful allies of a conception of life that is in harmony with knowledge and social needs." Hitler was more succinct: "Against a Church that identifies itself with the State... I have nothing to say."

Conservatives are fond of scoring liberals for their cafeteria Christianty, picking those things they like from the religious menu and eschewing the hard stuff. But there's more than mere hypocrisy at work. What appears to be inconsistency is in fact the continued unfolding of the Social Gospel tapestry to reveal a religion without God. Cafeteria liberals aren't so much inconsistent Christians as they are consistent progressives.

Jonah Goldberg is very perceptive politically. But his religious understanding doesn't go far enough. Fortunately, we have an even deeper analysis available to us:

Revelation 13:11 Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon.
12 And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
13 He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.
14 And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived.

Obama is not against religion. He surrounds himself with the trappings of religion constantly. I remember getting into a discussion with a fellow conservative about whether or not Obama was a secret Muslim. My argument was that it didn't matter. Whether his external trappings were Muslim or Christian, his true religion was the religion of the state, the worship of the beast. He does false signs and wonders to convince people to worship the power of man, which ultimately is the power of the dragon, the power of Satan.

Therefore, religion which serves the interest of the state is just fine with him- a useful ally. And it won't matter at all whether it's Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Wiccan in outward appearance. The only thing that really matters is that it not compete with the ultimate power of the beast. Any religion can be an instrument of deceiving man to worship the state. Obama chooses to use the trappings of Christianity since most people in this country identify themselves nominally as Christian. But it is deceptive.

The various religious leaders who were used by Obama to prop up this image of himself as Christian then are just being used. When Obama said he never really heard Jeremiah Wright say these racist, anti-white, anti-American things in his sermons despite sitting in his church for 20 years, I happen to think that might just be true, because Obama was not there to listen to sermons. He was simply using Wright to further the power of the state, the power of his own political ambitions, just as he used Rick Warren and Gene Robinson and the rest. The false prophet in Revelation, just like the great Whore, use their deceptive powers to convince men to worship the beast.

Am I saying that Obama is the AntiChrist? No, but he is an antichrist, which means a substitute Christ. He is one of the manifestations of that belief that only the power of the state can solve our problems, and that all must be in allegiance to the state. All interests must be subordinated to the public interest, the needs of government, since only government can save us. Which is to say, that we must all worship the power of the state. When Obama attacks divisiveness, says that we all must unite in this time of crisis, that we must put politics aside and our petty personal interests aside to further the common good, this is what he is saying- that we must subordinate all, including our religious beliefs, to the needs of the state.

We worship Christ. He is our only king. He is our only hope. And therefore we will always be a threat to those like Obama, and they will exclude us as much as possible because we will always have a higher allegiance than our allegiance to the state, to the power of the beast. It's not because we're religious that he will exclude us from the body politic- it's because we're of the wrong religion. Ultimately then there are only two religions, and everybody belongs to one or the other. We are either sealed to Christ and worship Him alone, or we are sealed to the beast, and fall under the sway of the false prophets. I believe that in the coming years this choice will become all the more stark and obvious to the faithful Christian.

Prolong the King's Life

2009-01-14T10:18:00.002-07:00

From Psalm 61:
"You will prolong the king's life,
His years as many generations.
He shall abide before God forever.
Oh, prepare mercy and truth, which may preserve him!"

This passage jumped out at me in Psalm 61. It seems like a non sequitur; doesn't really seem to fit. David was a king; was he talking about himself? Perhaps, but he has been talking about himself in the first person, "me, my", etc, and now he suddenly switches to the third person.

The Psalm has been a cry for help, for defense and preservation by God. It is also an acknowledgement and thanksgiving from David that God has truly been there for him, has been a shelter and a "strong tower" for David against his enemies.

The New Geneva Study Bible makes the point that a strong and good king was certainly a source of stability and safety for a people. When the old king died and a new king began to rule, it would be a time of uncertainty and fear. So the idea that the king would rule forever would be very comforting.

But David died. He did not rule forever. He was followed by Solomon who was a good king in some respects but allowed idolatry to proliferate in Jerusalem. And Solomon's son Rehoboam was a fool, whose oppression divided the nation.

God had given David a promise in 2 Samuel 7 that his son would sit on the throne of Israel forever. Solomon of course was not this son. It is Jesus who is the son of David, the king who sits on the throne forever. And now the passage makes sense in the context- David is not talking about himself; he is talking about the promised king, the seed of the woman, the Anointed one who would come and inaugurate an eternal kingdom of peace.

What should we take comfort in amid the difficulties of this life? We have a good and righteous king who rules in heaven, protecting us from all our enemies. We have a high priest mediating for us and reconciling us to God. We have a brilliant and effective teacher showing us the truth and teaching us the right way. All three of these offices are held by one perfect Man, Jesus Christ, and He will never die.

In a political era crying for change, crying for something new, so many look for some transcendent figure who will arise and solve all our problems for us. But change was precisely what David was worried about. He knew the turmoil and instability of this life could bring great danger and disaster. But with God's promises, he knew he was on a rock, on a high tower, from which he could not be budged. With Jesus enthroned in the heavens, we likewise can be confident that all of our needs will be met and nothing that we fear can ever touch us, because nothing can ever touch him.

"So I will sing praise to your name forever,
That I may daily perform my vows."

Truth

2009-01-08T10:53:00.001-07:00

2008 was a tough year for me. My last note, which was a year ago, referred to the problems I had had in my church. Those problems only became more severe in 2008. A few individuals tried to have me removed from the ministry. Their attempt failed, but the conflict just escalated. The elders of my church took actions that we believed were necessary and right for the health of our church and the good of the people involved. The conflict just continued to escalate, going to the regional government of our church, which took certain actions that were a great disappointment to me. In the course of this conflict, many things were said about me and about my elders which were just false and very hurtful.

The result of it now is that all of the people who were so antagonistic to me and to the leadership of my church are out of my church and my denomination. Some of them are in a sister denomination. Others, I don't know if they're going to church at all. Looking back, I remembered how very hurtful it was to me, how disappointed I was when we suffered for doing what I believed at the time and still believe was the right thing to do. My father gave me a plaque for my ordination which is a quote from John Calvin which said, “By watching, and by patiently enduring afflictions, and by constant teaching, the pastor will succeed in having the truth of his ministry established, because from such marks all will acknowledge him to be a good and faithful minister of Christ.” At many points, it was all I could do to “patiently endure afflictions.” But the other result of it was that there is now a sense of unity, peace and joy in the church that exceeds anything I have ever personally experienced.

---

For the new year, I decided to read through the whole Bible, cover to cover. I'm using M'Cheyne's system, and I have subscribed to an RSS feed so the new reading comes to me automatically every day. M'Cheyne's system has you read four chapters a day, from different books of the Bible. It starts you out in Genesis, Ezra, Matthew and Acts. A few days ago, I had gotten a little behind and sat down to catch up on my reading. The reading in Genesis covered the murder of Abel by Cain. The reading in Ezra talked about the wicked people that slandered the Jews to try to prevent them from rebuilding the temple. The reading in Matthew was the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, among other things, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you for my sake.” All of this was really speaking to me. But it was the passage in Acts that really got me.

In Acts 5, the Sanhedrin tries to stop the Apostles from preaching the gospel. They of course refuse, and Peter is thrown into jail. An angel of God comes and frees him, and Peter continues preaching. The Sanhedrin goes and gets him again, and now they're talking about killing him. But Gamaliel makes the (very good) point that if it's of men, nothing will come of it, but if it's of God, then they don't want to be opposing God. So they beat the Apostles and release them. And it says that the Apostles left, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ.

Reading that, I felt a great sorrow at my own lack of faith. We firmly believed at the time, and still believe, that we did the right thing through this controversy. We lovingly called people to repentance and were ignored. When the conflict escalated and the decisions went against us, we “patiently endured”. And I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I know now I should have done more than that. I should have rejoiced, as the Apostles did. Instead I was downcast, depressed, at times feeling very much like Elijah must have felt when he prayed to God for death, because the trials he was experiencing were too great for him.

Why are we surprised as Christians to suffer for doing what's right? The expectation that doing the right thing will result in everyone loving you is a worldly assumption. Jesus told us the world would hate us, because they hated Him. And it jumps off of practically every page of Scripture; Godly men and women suffering because they stood by the truth. Abel; Noah; Abraham; Joseph; David; Daniel; the Jewish youths in Daniel; Esther; Ezekiel; Ezra; Mary; Peter; Paul; John. And above all, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are told again and again that suffering for the truth of Christ is an absolutely expected part of the Christian life. It is one of the defining qualities of the Christian life. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12 that all who desire to live Godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

And certainly the Lord has done so many good things for me. He has surrounded me with good people, people who have stood up for what's true and right. He has blessed me with a wonderful family. I was reading in Psalm 48 this morning and the psalmist is talking about the glorious city of Zion, the city of God. And he exhorts us, “Walk about Zion, and go all around her. Count her towers; mark well her bulwarks. Consider her palaces; that you may tell it to the generation following.” Zion is the city of God, a symbol pointing us to the living temple built on living stones, the church. And when I start to get angry or down again about the events of this last year, I am going to do what the Psalmist exhorts here. I'm going to walk around the walls, count the towers, consider the palaces. I'm going to meditate on the glories of God's church, and how He has protected me and defended me by His truth. The walls, the towers, the bulwarks of God's spiritual city are the people, the saints of God.

And I have an encouragement for you, dear reader. Always stand on the truth. Never compromise it; never back down; never shade or cloud the truth. You might think it will make things easier. You might think it will reduce conflict. But it never does. It just makes it worse; prolongs it. Through all of this conflict, the protection I had was the truth. I never had to worry about certain aspects of the story getting out, or certain people talking to certain other people, or anything like that. I never had to make sure that we had our story straight, or remembered what we'd told one person so we would tell someone else the same story. “Always tell the truth; it's the easiest to remember.” I made mistakes, no question. I didn't handle everything right. I had to apologize for some things, and I did. But I never lied. We stood on the truth, and so at the end of the day we were safe. When you start shading the truth, start pretending things are different than what they really are, you take the solid ground right out from under your own feet, and now you're just standing on swamp. Stand on the rock. Stand on the truth. You'll never have to wonder where you are. And you'll find yourself in the best company in the world, in the company of other people who do likewise.

The Value of the Church

2008-01-03T15:50:00.000-07:00

We have had some fair amount of turmoil at our church here over the last year or so. It's been painful, and I think that may be one of the reasons I've been absent from my blog for so long. But we know of course that God's hand is in all things, and He is working His will in all things. I've seen this doctrine very much fleshed out through these turmoils, as I have seen the good things that God has worked in my life through them.

One of the things I have learned is the value of the visible church. God has put us in this institution, and sometimes people struggle to know what value it has in their lives. We know we're not saved by works but by faith; we know the sacraments do not work remission of sins; we know the church does not stand between me and God as mediator.

But for all those who understand and value sanctification in the life of the believer, the value of the church soon becomes apparent. In the church, the necessity of sacrificial love simply cannot be overstated. As we form relationships with other believers we are naturally drawn to people with whom we are compatible, and when relationships get to be difficult we often simply pull back for a while or end those relationships entirely. But the church doesn't allow us to do that. The church keeps us in close proximity with those that sometimes irritate us, sometimes hurt us, sometimes don't understand us, and sometimes take more work to maintain the relationship than we would really like. It brings us into contact with people that God has chosen for us, rather than just people that we chose ourselves, and God sanctifies us with those people.

It's like a marriage in a lot of ways. At first everything is lovey-dovey and tons of fun. But inevitably hard times come. Your spouse starts to irritate you, disappoints you and fails to live up to the fantasy version of him or her that you constructed in your mind. This is often a very difficult time to live through, but those who have stuck with it and made it through recognize those times as the growing pains necessary to get to the even better parts of marriage.

There's a reason why marriage is used in Scripture as an analogy for the church. Because, like marriage, the best times come with those that you've stuck with through the hard times, when you've laughed and cried together, when you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, when you've learned the truths of Scripture together and have been sanctified together. Marriage has been a very humbling thing for me. I've learned a lot of my own faults that I'm sure I never would have faced had I remained single. And my life in the church has been humbling as well. I've learned a lot of painful things about myself, that I wouldn't likely have faced about myself unless I'd been forced to, like I have this last year. When everything is going well and everyone loves you, it's easy to fool yourself and only think about your strengths. But to get through the hard times intact, you have to take a hard look at those unpleasant truths about yourself, and that's how we grow.

God didn't just send Christ to save us from the penalty of our sins; He sent Christ to save us from the sins themselves. The gospel isn't just justification by faith alone, but the sanctification and glorification that must inevitably follow justification. So if we believe that sanctification is a necessary part of the good news of our salvation, and we see that the church is a wonderful means of our sanctification, then we'll see just how much of an essential part of our salvation the church is. And not just when it's fun and enjoyable; but even more so when it's painful and difficult.

Christ, His Church and Modern Dating [Andrea]

2007-09-16T17:26:00.001-06:00

I've read a lot on courtship in the past. Obviously, once I married my interest in it waned. The subject has been brought back to my mind by discussions with parents whose children are of marriage age, and by this article at the web site Domestic Felicity LAF (Ladies Against Feminism) linked to:
http://ccostello.blogspot.com/2007/04/wasting-time-in-relationships-that-lead.html

While I agree with everything in this article, the author doesn't deal with the argument I feel is really compelling. The author admits there is a lot she could discuss on the matter, so I don't mean to imply she isn't aware of the argument. Having said this, the fundamental reason for my rejection of the modern view of dating is that the Bible uses marriage as a picture of Christ and His church. I've read in more than one article on marriage that the state of our marriage is about more than being happier, but the bigger implication is that we tell a lie about the gospel when the husband fails to live sacrificially in terms of his wife and when the wife fails to submit to the authority of her husband. We undermine our witness to the world when we live our marriages outside of the gospel.

As the church is preparing for the great wedding feast day, so a young woman ought to be adorning herself for her great wedding day. She ought to be cultivating the gifts God has given her trusting those gifts were given to her for a man God is preparing for her. The modern practice of dating, of giving oneself intimately (either emotionally or physically) to several partners before settling for the boring reality of monogomy, seems a horrible defilement of the picture the Bible paints of Christ and His church.

As Christ is preparing a place for his bride, so a young man ought to be busy preparing for manhood and the responsibilities of providing for a family, not out proving his virility in partying and conquests.

Domestic Felicity does a great job of dealing with the practical reasons for rejecting the modern view of dating, but I believe all those reasons can be handled in one fell swoop by embracing the Biblical picture of marriage. When we handle relationships lightly and with self-centered motivations, we are handling the gospel with profane hands. We bring idols into the temple.

We do our young people a disservice by failing to prepare them for the realities of life before they get to adulthood. Do we believe that the God who created us knows what will bring true happiness and fulfillment, or do we think we know better? Is happiness found in pursuing our own lusts and desires, or in striving to be what God has created us to be? Are we teaching our children to bear witness to the gospel in word and deed always, or do we believe that stuff is a drag and they ought to be pursuing fleshly pleasures for right now? Do we want to be like the nations around us who "get" to follow other gods?

I think Christians who understand God's sovereignty have even less excuse. If we believe that God has prepared our spouse for us, how can we engage in intimacy with someone we know we could never marry, either because they are an unbeliever, or because we know we are not suited for one another? How can we give to another what only belongs to our spouse?

Movie Review: The 400 Blows

2007-09-03T15:59:00.001-06:00

We watched The 400 Blows last night, by Francois Truffaut. It's a French film in subtitles, made in 1959. It's about a 13-year-old boy, Antoine Doinel who seems to live a relatively normal life in Paris, but is constantly getting into trouble. He gets terrible grades at school, he is a liar and he steals. It's clear from the beginning that his parents are self-absorbed, and their parental discipline leaves a lot to be desired. They smack him if he does something really bad, but mostly just ignore him. He starts to run away from home to avoid trouble, and with the help of another delinquent friend begins to engage in more serious crime. The title comes from a French expression meaning "raising hell", and this is just what the boy starts to do.

The movie is a brilliant portrayal of how a person would grow up not just with the fact of nobody caring much at all about him, but with the awareness that this was so. Antoine has an interview with a psychologist in a juvenile detention facility where we learn the circumstances of his early childhood that reveal just this awareness. Nobody wants Antoine around and he knows it. His parents are just as amoral as he is. One might be tempted to say he needs examples of right and wrong. But he actually has that, from his authoritarian schoolteachers. What he needs is love.

My wife commented after the film, "There's a huge obvious hole in the film- God." Looking at it from our Christian perspective, it's clear that the boy's real problem is that he as absolutely no sense of why he is even alive, or why it matters at all what he does. The only thing his parents want from him is to not be bothered. Early in the film, the mother discusses how awful it is that some other woman she knows keeps having babies- "Like rabbits. Disgusting." And then they discuss how to get rid of Antoine for the summer- sending him away to camp is better than having him around the place doing nothing.

And so Antoine acts in whatever way suits him at the time, whatever will get what he wants and avoids trouble. So he lies, forges notes from his parents and makes up stories about why he wasn't in school. The only thing motivating him are brief, little pleasures. He goes out to the movies with his parents and has a wonderful evening in the bright lights of the city, laughing about the movie. One of the most touching scenes is when he is being driven away in a police truck to the detention facility, through the city, and he looks out at the bright lights and cries.

The 400 Blows does a beautiful job of portraying this hopelessness and pointlessness of a self-centered life, as well as showing the damage this kind of life does to those around us. Antoine hurt everyone around him, but everyone in Antoine's life had only ever hurt him too. How could he be expected to act out of love for others when he'd never seen it himself? How could he even know what that kind of behavior would look like?

This is why there is no hope outside of Christ. Christ is the great example for all of us what truly sacrificial love looks like. We can look at his example and learn how we ought to treat others. He is much more than just an example of course- His satisfaction for sins, besides being a wonderful example, also reconciles us to God giving us the ability to actually begin to change. And then, following His example, we can begin to live lives centered on love for others, lives with purpose.

The 400 Blows is not a light, fun, entertaining movie. It's a bleak portrayal of nihilism and despair. But it's masterfully done, a forceful picture of life without purpose, life without God.