RC Sproul Jr

Ask RC: Why are gas prices so high?

2012-03-01T06:28:00.002-08:00

There are ultimately only two ways by which prices are determined, by market forces of supply and demand, or by government forces imposing themselves in markets. When the nation experiences the pain of rapid price increases it does not take long for people to grow angry at the oil companies. They become the scapegoat. Those slightly more sophisticated may give the oil companies a pass, but blame oil speculators, or futures traders. Neither, however, are to blame.

Prices are determined, ultimately, by the consumer. When prices go up, and we don’t change our behavior, we end up paying more than we’d like (which we always do. We’d all like everything we buy to be free) but not more than we are willing. When prices go up and we change our behavior, whether by car-pooling, fewer or shorter trips, or driving cars with better miles-per-gallon, we are decreasing demand. We demonstrate our unwillingness to pay x for y amount of gasoline.

In between prices set by the market and prices set by the state, are prices set by the market, where the state is interfering. Right now prices are rising because of geo-political issues in the middle east. Iran rattles its sword at Israel. Washington rattles its sword at Iran. And those trading in oil futures think there is some chance that the result of all this will be decreased supply, which will create higher consumer prices. They then are willing to pay more for futures contracts (agreements to buy oil at a given price in the future) which makes prices rise now. In like manner, when Washington refuses to allow drilling in its vast holdings, or refuses to allow an oil pipeline to cross our border with Canada this too suggests less supply in the future, pushing prices up.

Doesn’t this mean the speculators are to blame? By no means. Speculators are not economic vampires sucking the life out of us. They perform an important economic service in spreading risk. Oil producers begin exploring a given region, looking for oil. They don’t know what they will find, nor what what they find will be worth when they find it. A futures trader, however, can guarantee a specific return on their investment by buying the contract. The futures trader also cannot predict what gas will be selling for when the gas is delivered. He is taking a chance, shouldering some of the risk. Sometimes he wins; sometimes he loses.

Why is it, I wonder, that those who complain against the oil companies or futures traders when gas is going up in price never sing their praises when prices are going down? When consumers grumble about greed, at least in a free market, they don’t realize that their own greed is showing. We are not owed gas, at this price or that price. No one is cheating us or gouging us when we freely buy their goods, whatever the price. Our calling, at all times, is to give thanks. There is one who knows not only today’s and tomorrow’s gas prices, but knows that we need food, and clothing. And He told us to stop our fretting, to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Would that we hungered for these more than we hunger for lower prices.

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I Have Friends

2012-02-28T08:41:00.002-08:00

It was, I suspect, somewhat early on in the growth of the “accountability” movement. I had heard the concept but had not given it much study. The deacon at the church I attended as a young married man apparently had studied it. And so, seemingly with the approval of the session, he sat perched by the entrance of the sanctuary. He asked me, as he asked everyone passing by, with all the tact and enthusiasm of a carnival barker, if I had an accountability group. Being young and naïve I stopped and asked, “What’s that?”

“Well,” he explained, “it’s a group of men who are active in your life, that care for you enough to challenge you when you fall into sin. They watch out for you, support you, and encourage you to grow in grace and wisdom.” “In that case,” I retorted, “I do have an accountability group. It’s just that I call them my friends.”

Twenty years later I find myself having the same kind of conversation. When people find about the loss of my wife, they suggest that I find myself a group. Though I seek to mask my skepticism, it apparently shows through. “Really,” folks tell me, “you need people that you can talk to, that you can be real with. You need people you can count on to be there for you.” The answer is the same. I understand the need. And it is well met in my life, by my friends.

Now I have nothing against accountability, nor accountability groups. I am positively in favor of grieving, and have nothing against groups built around that theme. What puzzles me on both counts, however, is how we have lost what is natural, and sought to replace it with programs. What does it say about the culture, both inside and outside the church, that callings normally born by friends now are met by something so artificial, so inorganic. These groups strike me as the emotional equivalent of a multivitamin. Sure enough many of us are not getting enough vitamin D or zinc in our diets. But isn’t eating a few more veggies a better way to solve the problem?

Institutional solutions to relational problems at least do this for us- they expose our relational weaknesses. If our lifestyles make healthy meals a challenge, we need to change our lifestyles. If the transience and cyber-ness of our relationships make, well, friendship, a problem we need to change how we relate. We need to love near, and serve near.

And if, on the other hand, we have healthy relationships- real, personal relationships where we encourage one another toward righteousness, where we are free to be ourselves, where we talk with depth, and love with sincerity, we yet have this to do- we need to give thanks. We need not create a gratitude committee at our local church to create a gratitude program. No, we need to give thanks. So here I do. I have friends and family that love and care for me and my children. They check up on me. They look me in the eye when they talk to me. They hug me when they see me. They tell me they love me, and joyfully receive my love in return. They mourn when I mourn, as I rejoice when they rejoice. And I pray that they know that I give thanks to Him for them. I have friends, more and better than I deserve.

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Ten Suggestions For My Unbelieving Friends

2012-02-24T18:23:00.000-08:00

My life, I am persuaded, would fall apart in a heap in a moment were I not a servant of the Lord. Though it is true that Jesus is the very font of my happiness, that is not why I follow Him, nor how I would encourage you to follow Him. Rather I trust in His finished work, and embrace His Lordship because I believe His Word to be true. I pray the same might soon be said of you.

That said, though I fear if you do not repent and believe on His name that your after-life will be too horrible to contemplate, because you are my friend I hope for you the best possible life on this side of the veil. What follows are things you can do, or at least try to do, without embracing Jesus. To the extent that you succeed, your life will be better.

First, live for something bigger than yourself. You may be persuaded that there is nothing above, no transcendent goal, but I suspect in your more honest moments you would confess that you, yourself, you are definitely not a sufficient reason to live. Serving self will make for a miserable life. If you fail, you will be bitter and frustrated. If you succeed, you will face the vanity of it all. And then you die.

Second, turn off the idiot box and its incestuous cousins. Television does not provide rest, but agitates. It is eye candy, which is as healthy for you as nose candy. Youtube, Halo, Hulu and Netflix are just more of the same. These are machines, made by men’s hands telling stories taken from men’s minds. There is more, even under the sun.

Third, show some respect. Learn to honor that which is honorable, and flee from the cynical, the lowbrow, the snarky and the knowing. When all your life is mockery you make a mockery of your life.

Fourth, take some time off. No one ever went to their grave wishing they had put in more hours at work. Bodies need rest, real rest. Yes, work hard, but give yourself a break..

Fifth, do as you are told. We all, by nature, are rebels. And so are the people in authority over us, whether in our families, in our work, or in our community. Everyone has their weaknesses, including those above you in authority. Whatever you might gain in breaking the law, in defying your boss you lose in worrying about getting caught. I know it’s silly to stop at that red light in the middle of that cornfield. But the time you think you’ll shave off your trip will be counterbalanced by having to be hyper vigilant watching for the state police.

Sixth, be nice to people. Don’t hurt them, yell at them, gossip about them. I know people can be jerks. After all, I know me, and I know you. But we can still keep from hating each other, can’t we? Being bitter towards anyone, whether friends or foes, is eating poison and hoping they suffer.

Seventh, and this is a tough one, love on your spouse. You promised to forsake all others. Keep that promise, not just for your spouse’s sake, but for your own. I know how wonderful the mystery dance can be. But I can tell you that everyone who ever stepped out lost more than they gained, even if they were never caught. It destroys you, because it is breaking the most solemn vow you are able to make.

Eighth, don’t take what isn’t yours. Don’t go on the dole and steal from your neighbors through the proxy of the state. Don’t cheat on your taxes, or your time card. Don’t borrow stuff and fail to return it. And don’t steal from your future by constant debt. I know it’s in my holy book, but one need not believe the Bible to see the wisdom of owing no man anything save the obligation to love.

Ninth, tell the truth. There is so much less to keep track of, so much less shame. And you’ll find it rather a pleasant thing to have a reputation for truth telling. And while this may surprise you I would insist that it is also vital that “to thine own self be true”principle. Here I don’t mean the sophomoric notion that you must be true to who you are, but instead that you must be true toward you about you. Tell yourself the truth about yourself. Self-delusion is deadly, for it’s a box we can’t escape from.

Finally, be grateful. I’ve never known anyone, Christian or not, who grumbled and was happy. I’ve never known anyone either who was grateful and unhappy. If you follow the ninth suggestion, you will know that what you have is well more than you deserve.

You won’t, of course, be able to do all this. I don’t do all this. Only one person ever did all this. And He solved our inability by suffering the Father’s wrath that is due to us. Better than all the above is that you would confess your failure, and cling to that Man. He has promised us a wonderful life, a life filled with death and heartache, persecution and broken relationships. And Him.

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Ask RC: Is Social Security an old age insurance program?

2012-02-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

No. While we are often encouraged to see it this way, the truth is that Social Security is a wealth transfer program, an entitlement program. Money is taken from one person, and then given to another. To help us understand this it might be wise to go back to the beginning.

Social Security was a creation of FDR’s New Deal. On the income side it began with a payroll tax on employers, which was in turn matched by employees. This money, however, was not set aside, invested, hidden under a mattress. No, it went right into the out-go side. A farmer can’t harvest his crop until after he grows it. With Social Security the aged harvested what they did not plant. My grandparent’s taxes, went, after Washington’s administrative cut, to checks written for their ancestors. The promise to them wasn’t that they would receive their savings back when they reached the appropriate age. Instead the federal government promised to tax the next generation, ad infinitum.

Washington showed its true colors when it, during the many years that it spent more money that it brought in, kept a budget for Social Security apart from the federal budget. When Social Security, because of the baby boom, began to run a surplus, Social Security’s income was brought into the federal budget. (Keep this in mind the next time someone suggests that for several years President Clinton ran a surplus. He did, in a manner of speaking. More money came in for several years than went out. The promises to pay, however, far exceeded what was brought in. This would be as if I spent $5,000 on new furniture, while bringing in $3000. If my payments were delayed a year, and I spent only $2500 on my other expenses that month I could, though I shouldn’t, claim a surplus.)

That great big aardvark-in-a-python baby-boom bubble, however, is coming home to roost, as that generation approaches retirement. The cash they put in went to their parents, and to the annual budget. Washington did put IOU’s into a bank somewhere. Trouble is, what Washington means by IOU is, I Own You. That is, it is a promise to tax other people. Remember Washington has nothing that it did not first take from someone else.

Social Security has run headlong into three demographic walls. First is the baby boom already mentioned. Second is the pleasant reality that people are living much longer than they once did. And thus, as in a Ponzi scheme, most Social Security recipients receive much more than they put in. Third, not needing actual children to care for them, thanks to the federal government, families radically decreased in size. And so we have fewer people paying for the needs of more people. Bankruptcy is inevitable.

What do we do? If push came to shove I would argue that we cannot accept Social Security. It is asking the state to take the wealth of others for our own gain. On the other hand, people were lead to believe, wrongly, that this was an old age insurance program. So I have no fervent beef with older people who depend on Social Security. I wish it were not so, but the greater wrong-doer here is the federal government.

If you are relatively young, however, you will not have to wrestle with the moral dilemma over whether to take Social Security. It won’t be there for you. When politicians insist that they will protect Social Security what they really mean is, “We’re going to keep taking your money, but we won’t have any to pay out to you.” No one ever wants to be in a position where they must trust Washington for anything. It is no insurance program. It’s a shakedown. Plan on being taken, but do not plan to receive. The Bible calls this going the extra mile, turning the other cheek. It’s what homeschoolers do every year, paying school taxes for schools they don’t use. The God of heaven and earth sees. And He, not Washington, it is who gives us our daily bread.

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Why can’t we all just get along?

2012-02-17T08:38:00.000-08:00

The story is told of the man who was rescued from a desert island twenty years after being shipwrecked. As he proudly showed his rescuers around the island they came to three grass huts. Our Robinson Crusoe pointed out that one of the huts was his home, and the other his church. When asked what the third hut was he replied, with a note of disdain, “That’s where I used to go to church.”

We can’t get along, and the reason is simple enough- we are sinners. Now let’s break that simple answer down a bit, working back to front. What do we mean by sinners? I don’t, of course, mean unsaved. Of course believers, in the eyes of God, are just. That’s what we mean by “justified,” to be declared just. But Luther himself affirmed that Christians are simul justis et peccator, at the same time just and sinner. That sin causes us to believe things that are false. It means we have appetites and desires that are dishonorable. It impacts what we think, feel, say and do.

“Are” of course, reminds us that this is presently true of us. Sin is not behind us yet. We still struggle with it. A day is coming when we will no longer be sinners, but for now, while here, we are.

But what do I mean by “we?” Because we are sinners we are tempted to conclude that the reason we can’t get along is because people are sinners, and by people we mean, other people. “I” could get along with “you” if you would stop doing what you are doing. This process, stay with me as we get grammatical here, happens in the plural as well. That is, “we” could get along with “you” plural if “you” plural would quit doing what “you” plural are doing.

Now the truth is that the other guys, whether we are talking to or about them, are sinners. There are heretics in the land, wild elephants let loose in God’s vineyard. There are also sheep who think it wiser to calm the elephants down, rather than drive them out of the vineyard. To be more clear, one reason “we” can’t get along is because sometimes we’re not we together. Wheat doesn’t and can’t get along with tares. To profess the name of Christ is not to possess the name of Christ. Because they are sinners, wisdom means recognizing that. It means some appropriate level of skepticism, some fruitful usage of shibboleths.

But we must not lose sight of the hard truth that I am a part of we. I too am a sinner. I need to be skeptical most of all about myself, and my motives. My moral indignation over your error, or your refusal to confront evil just may be a smokescreen to keep me from having to confront my own evil. A necessary consequent of “We are sinners” is “I am a sinner.” And as a sinner my desire is, if I must confess my sinfulness, to forget that confession as quickly and as deeply as I can.

There is a right perspective on the Elephant Room 2. I’m happy to confess that host, questioner and answerer all badly dropped the ball. The problem is that I’m happy to confess this is because it distracts from all the balls falling on my own feet. Because they are sinners, we need to call out sin. Because I am a sinner, I must always confess my own sin, to be on guard against proclaiming before our Lord, “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men. I roundly condemn heresy wherever I see it, and in turn condemn those who won’t condemn heresy. I read all the orthodox blogs. And tithe only to the purest coalitions.” Instead, may we, those who name the name of Christ, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, cry out, “Lord, be merciful to us, sinners.”

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Valentine the Brave

2012-02-14T09:11:00.000-08:00

As a rule, men are relational dolts. From an early age girls develop sophisticated communications arrays, whereby they are able to simultaneously translate what anyone says, whether with words, expression or body language, into what they actually mean. They know from birth that when a genteel southern woman tells them, “Well bless your heart” that war has been declared. Men, on the other hand, are tone deaf and body language blind.

Women in turn understand the intricacies of social interaction. They don’t have to be told to write thank you notes; they compose them on the way home from a dinner with friends. They don’t have to be told to send out birth announcements- they start filling them out while in labor. Men, on the other hand, bring their favorite beer to a buddy’s barbecue not as a “host gift” but to make sure there is enough. We watch SportsCenter during labor.

Which is why, perhaps, western culture has constructed one day a year for us, to make it simple. We know our marching orders- a card, flowers or candy, perhaps a gift and a nice romantic dinner for two. We can do that, once, or twice, or four times a year- birthday, Mother’s Day, and the hardest one, our anniversary. When we succeed on these days we tell our wives that we really are trying. We really do love them, and want them to know. We’re fighting our man weaknesses as best as we are able.

What we ought to be doing, however, is fighting her woman weaknesses. The Bible calls us to dwell with our wives with understanding (I Peter 3:7). Women, by and large, crave security. They are given to relational worry. When husbands and wives fight, often the husband is merely annoyed, while the wife fears the end is near. Peter doesn’t call us to turn our wives into men, but calls men to see it from her point of view. We fight her fears by putting her at ease.

A godly husband, then is not one who four times a year takes up the aggravating task of trying to be relational, in order to keep his wife from getting grumpy. Instead a godly husband is tasked with the constant call of communicating his love and commitment to his wife. This is not a few days a year, but every day. Too often husbands get frustrated, even offended by this hard reality. “Doesn’t she think I’m a man of my word? I promised ‘Until death do us part’ and I meant it.”

Such reasoning shows our relational weakness. She doesn’t want to know that she can count on you to grimly see your vow through to the end. She wants to know that you would make it all over again today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. She doesn’t want to know that you will stay with her, but that you want to stay with her.

A year ago on Valentine’s Day I bought my wife a nice gift, and we shared a nice meal together. There were not candles on a linen covered table. There was no table. Denise was in a hospital bed, having been diagnosed with leukemia just days before. Chemotherapy had already begun to erode her appetite for food. Assurance, however, she still desired. She apologized for our surroundings for our celebration. What I heard was “Please tell me we will be okay.” I replied, “Our location is this- we are in the loving hands of our heavenly Father, who will never leave us nor forsake us. And I, by His grace, will joyfully walk with you every step of the way. There is no place I would rather be than right beside you.”

My counsel for you today is to get the flowers. Enjoy a nice meal together. But tomorrow stop, hold her chin, look her in the eye and tell her, “I give thanks to God for you. I would marry you all over again. You are a joy in my life.” And then, the day after that, do it again. Repeat.

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Little Deaths and Big Deaths

2012-02-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

Whether its source is old-fashioned American individualism, new-fangled notions of libertarian social theory, or the pietistic error of sealing the gospel off from positive social change and sealing our sins off from negative social change, we have, as a culture and a church come to the dubious conclusion that what goes on behind closed doors is nobody’s business, and affects only those behind the doors. We, as a culture and a church think when we take our pants off with someone not our spouse, as long as everyone is there voluntarily, the worst thing that can happen is that God might get miffed at us. And He, of course, is rather famous for having a rather forgiving nature.

Six innocent men went to their death at Ai because a different man, Achan, took for himself booty from Jericho. Who would know, I suspect, Achan wondered. Why would we think sexual immorality is any different? “Husbands and wives stray. What’s the big deal? Happens all the time. “ It does indeed happen all the time. And when it does bombs explode in the homes of little children. Hearts are scarred. Fear replaces the departing spouse. These children grow up thinking the deepest betrayal possible to be normal, acceptable, just a part of life. That there is nothing they can depend on. They grow up believing that mommy, or daddy loved their sexual appetites more than they loved them. And they believe rightly.

It could, of course be worse. One need not be married to witness the extent of the destruction that follows in the path of sexual immorality. Simply visit the inner city. There boys without fathers grow up to too often become criminals. They likewise become baby-daddys, creating still more fatherless children. There girls, never having the loving nurture of a father, too often, seek comfort and connection in fornication. And we, if we are concerned at all, are concerned about the economic disadvantages of all things. We think condoms are the solution.

It could be, indeed it is, worse still. Men and women, not married to one another, rollick. Believing their behavior affects only them, they are in turn flabbergasted when another person enters the equation. Here though the child does not end up growing up in a single parent home. No, here the result is murder.

Go and stand outside your local abortion mill. You are unlikely to meet there the poor, bewildered girl whose parents threatened to kick her out of the home and who was lied to, told that all she had inside her was undifferentiated cells. No, what you will meet there is someone angry that anyone would dare discourage her from murdering her shame. Babies both come from sleeping around, and get in the way of sleeping around. So they must be dispatched. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of our desires.

You cannot separate the great evil of abortion from the raging fornication that defines us as a people. Thus more birth control is not the answer. You cannot bring the fire of lust to your bosom without knowing that not only will you be burned, but that the same fire will consume your own home. You cannot witness the flames of Moloch that burn the unborn and forget it all starts with a spark, of illicit desire.

Sexual folly gives birth not just to our own deaths (Proverbs 7: 21-27), but to the deaths of the innocent. Our groping hands are not mere private moral stains. They are instead covered with the blood of our own children. Our cultural obsession with sex isn’t a social problem. It is the war machine that creates the wretched daily stench of thousands of dead bodies, buried in dumpsters. God give us the grace to repent.

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Ask RC: Should a Christian become good friends with pagans?

2012-02-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (II Corinthians 6:14). The text at least ought to raise the question in our minds. Would Paul’s admonition here preclude close, personal friendships with those outside the kingdom? To answer properly we need only to answer this question- is such a friendship being bound together? Is it a partnership? Is it fellowship?

This text, for instance, clearly forbids believers from marrying outside the faith. There is no human relationship more tightly bound than husband and wife. I would suggest in turn that this text does not preclude us from doing ordinary business with unbelievers. I am not bound together with my internet service provider. I am not in partnership with the local newspaper. I am not in fellowship with the dairy farmer who provides my family with milk. Where it gets tricky is in between these two extremes. Can a Christian doctor share a practice with a non-Christian? And can we have close personal friendships with those outside the faith?

Though it’s not terribly dramatic, the answer, as usual, lies in wisdom. Nearly seventeen years ago, on the day I wed my dear wife, the man standing next to me was not a Christian. When we first became friends in college he professed to be a Christian. After college he left that profession behind. Our friendship continued and it continues to this day. I think of this man often, and even prayed for him and his family yesterday during corporate worship, that God would be pleased to grant him new life. We speak on the phone a few times each year, catching up on the news, and remembering our times together in the past. On the one hand, this relationship is “close.” On the other, it is not.

My life, day to day, is not caught up in his. My focus, day to day, is on the lives of my wife, my children, and the saints at my church. I have neighbors that are “friends” that are outside the faith, neighbors that I likewise pray for. There is nothing wrong with such friendships, as long as they are loose. But my soul can only commune with those whose souls commune with our Lord. Whatever we might have in common, in terms of the image of God, with unbelievers, we are defined by our faith.

Each Lord’s Day we remember that on that day we gather with all the saints around the world, the church militant. We remember that we are all lifted up into the heavenly places, to the New Jerusalem where we meet our Lord, and join together with the souls of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12: 22-24.) We remember that we join together with the church triumphant. We remember that we are one body, because we confess one faith. Our loyalty, our hesed, or covenant love, is for those within the body. We are indeed free to reach out to those outside the kingdom, remembering that such once were we. We are not free, however, to juggle our loyalties.

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The Kingdom Notes: Treasure In, Treasure Out

2012-02-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

My beautiful wife loved nothing more than to beautify. She devoted herself to creating a beautiful home. She planted flowers, bushes and trees outside. Inside she hung, placed, painted and etched. Even when she was not well, this was where her heart was. Over the course of the last nine months of her life, most of it spent in sundry hospitals, she watched, I suspect, more Home and Garden Television than all of HGTV’s executives combined.

Her pursuit of beauty, however, did not have its end in a pretty house, but in a godly home. She worked to beautify me, and our children. This morning while I shaved I looked to the shelf she placed between our sinks. There she had placed two small plaques. One reads- “Cast all your anxiety on him because He cares for you” (I Peter 5:7). The other reads, “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him” (Lamentations 3:25). I cried in gratitude to hear her voice, and to hear His gospel.

As the tears dried, and I began to mentally work on this brief piece, I thought about the simplicity of it all. My eyes passed over God’s Word, and everything changed. I thought in turn about what usually enters not just my eye gate, but ear gate. Like most Christians I live in a decadent culture, and consume far too much of its “wisdom.” My eyes are filled with images made in Hollywood, my ears filled with the wisdom of Nashville. My soul is a veritable sluice gate through which pours more filth than my ancestors could have dreamed of. It should not surprise me then that I don’t speak with the wisdom, the grace, the discretion, the honor with which my ancestors spoke.

Nor should it surprise me that my wife spoke into my life such graces. She adorned her home with God’s Word, and so adorned her life with the words of life. A godly woman builds up her house. She did not know, when she placed those plaques on the shelf, that one day I would be anxious about living without her. She did not know that the loss of her light would dim my hopes. She did not intend to whisper to me this morning from a better country. But she did. She whispered the gospel to me.

The next time you are alone in your car, turn on the oldies station. Sing along with as many songs as you can. Then turn off the radio, and begin to sing the Psalms. Then ask yourself what I ask, having failed the test so miserably- who has the words of eternal life, the Beatles, or Jesus?

Uptight evangelicals, which might just be a synonym for fundamentalists, are quick to decry the baleful influence of the broader culture. It’s all too terribly true. Better, however, that we should celebrate the influence of God’s Word. Treasure in, treasure out. Hope in Him. He cares for you.

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The Kingdom Notes: Be Reasonable

2012-02-03T07:26:00.001-08:00

In the great war launched in Genesis 3 between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent there are two other great battles. On one side of the battlefield stands the enemy. The seed of the serpent hate God, would kill Him if they could. They hate His people, and all that they stand for. But they have a battle waging inside themselves because, for all their sin, all their fallenness and depravity they still bear the remains of the image of God. Their great dilemma is that because they are made in God’s image they want to live in a world that makes sense, that is understandable, and coherent. Because, however, the objective reality is that they are under God’s wrath, they must construct a world with no God, or at least, no judgment. It is impossible, irrational.

The other great battle is the mirror of this one. We are the seed of the woman, reborn, remade, reflecting the image of the Son, the express image of His glory. But we still sin. We have an old man with which to do battle. We want to serve God, to manifest His reign, to become like Jesus. But, we also want to be loved, to be respected, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, to be normal. Which weakness the devil is rather adept at exploiting.

Consider, as an example, politics. Because Jesus is our King, because He has set us free, we don’t, generally speaking, want bloated government. Because we aspire to honesty, we want a government of law, that will stay within its Constitutional bounds. Because we honor our fathers in the faith who labored through such issues with great care, we understand that just war is defensive war. Trouble is, the broader culture has veered so far from these basic ideals that to espouse them is not to be considered wrong, but to be considered unsophisticated, ignorant, crazy, unreasonable.

And so we retreat. We back down. We begin to scout out a new line of defense. We move leftward. Oh we’re careful to steer clear of the convictions of the seed of the serpent. We don’t go over to the dark side. We just get close enough that they won’t laugh at us. We do all that we can to maintain loyalty to Christ, while looking sane to the world. And we fail.

Entitlement programs, all of them, even the ones we like, are unconstitutional, unbiblical and indefensible. We cannot defend stealing from our neighbors and burdening our children with crushing debt for these programs, while politely arguing that we shouldn’t for those programs. Preventative assassinations, bombings and wars are also unconstitutional, unbiblical and indefensible. We cannot defend spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives for this strategic objective, but object to doing the same for that strategic objective. Abortions, all of them, even the ones that hide our shame, keep the numbers down among the underprivileged, or take down the human result of rape or incest are unconstitutional, unbiblical and indefensible. We cannot support candidates or legislation that seek to slow, limit, regulate murder.

My point, ultimately, isn’t about politics, but about our unbelief, our fear. We are willing to confess Christ before men, as long as the Christ we confess is palatable, normal, reasonable. We are willing to be Abraham’s kin, as long as we can pitch our tents close to Sodom. I fear, however, that while we think we are Lots, the truth is we are Lost.

We live in a post-Christian west. It will become Christian again not when we can gently reason the world back home, but when we are again willing to be fed to the beasts in their stadia. Our faith is eminently rational. It is not in the least reasonable.

Ask RC: Does God really decide, and care who wins a football game?

2012-01-31T06:41:00.001-08:00

I began asking this question myself long before Tim Tebow was even born. I was a little boy, deeply committed to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I remember praying that they would beat the Oakland Raiders in an upcoming playoff game. When my prayer ended fear set in- what if there were a little boy just like me, somewhere in Oakland, praying that the Raiders would beat the Steelers? My father comforted me by explaining that no real Christian would ever pray for the Raiders.

The truth is God does decide, and He does care. He not only decides who will win the Super Bowl, He decides who will win the game of hearts I play with my children. He decides, or rather decided, everything. There are no places, let alone no playing fields, where God stays on the sidelines.

We need to remember that everything that happens must have a sufficient cause. And we must remember that every sufficient cause eventually traces its way back to God before time. This happens because that happened. That happened because this other thing happened. Eventually this takes us to “God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’”

Of course God works in and through secondary means. He gives the gifts. He creates the weather. The one who numbers the hairs on our heads softens the ground where a defensive back slips, and a playoff game ends on an eighty yard touchdown pass. There is no thing, no cause, over which He is not sovereign.

Isn’t it, though, somehow beneath His dignity to be concerned with such things? Yes, of course it is. God has only one concern- the manifestation of His glory. And that is how He determines what will happen in a football game, and what will happen in an election, and what will happen in a cancer ward. His goal isn’t ultimately to make little boys in Pittsburgh happy, or little boys in Denver happy. His goal, which cannot be thwarted, is to show forth who He is.

Does that mean He plays favorites for the likes of outspoken Christians like Tim Tebow or Drew Brees? Of course. Because God loves those who are His, even as He loves His own Son, God is certain to favor them. That favor, however, isn’t a path to winning a football game, but is instead the path to true victory, becoming more like Jesus. God isn’t glorified in giving Tim Tebow unlikely victories that somehow redound to God’s glory. No, God is glorified in making His children, including Tim Tebow, more like His Son. Sometimes that means leading them to the thrill of victory. Sometimes it means leading them through the agony of defeat.

The more difficult and pertinent question for me isn’t does God care, but should I? I don’t pray for Steeler victories. I do pray that I, along with my parents and my children, will make memories together. And I pray that we would have grace to accept His providence, even when the Steelers lose.

Ask RC: Sin in Heaven?

2012-01-30T06:12:00.001-08:00

The Question: If "The Fall" was caused by just one sin from the very first humans and all humans since have sinned, what are our chances of remaining sinless in heaven? I assume we would still have our gift of free will, so surely someone would sin?

There is no chance whatsoever that we will, once we are in heaven, will fall again into sin, for at least two important reasons. First, God has so promised. The picture we are given of the eternal blessing we receive in Christ includes our being utterly pure, white, without spot or blemish. That we will stay in this state will at least come to pass on the basis of God’s promise. Remember when God stood with Joshua looking out at the city of Jericho and its rather substantial wall. God said, “See, I have delivered the city into your hands.” God’s Word is so certain that what He has spoken, though it has not yet come to pass, that it can be spoken of as in the past tense. I call this tense, “God’s prophetic past.”

Secondly, and perhaps ironically, it is precisely our free will which will be the means by which God’s promise is brought to pass. All moral beings, men, angels and even God Himself are free to choose. All of them, however, in their freedom, always choose according to their nature. God, for instance, could sin, if He so desired. But He does not so desire, for He is altogether good. He is “free” to do evil in one sense, but not free in another sense. No one forces Him to do good, but He will always and only do good.

When we enter into our reward, we will be fully and finally sanctified. That is, we will be fully and finally holy. There will be no more sin, no more desire for sin in us. We will have no more sin nature in us; we will be altogether good. We, like God Himself, will be free to do evil, were we so to desire, but we would never so desire because we will be altogether good. This is one of the greatest promises of eternity, that the struggle within ourselves between the old and the new man, between the Spirit and the flesh will be over. We will be at peace; we will enter into rest. Our warfare will have ended.

The more difficult question is how it is that Adam and Eve, who were created good, could in turn fall into sin in the first place. That answer is well outside the scope of these little missives. I do, however, address it in my book Almighty Over All, as well as in our sound teaching series, “How Strong Is He?” if you are looking to look into that conundrum. It is good and right for us to mourn the fall, to look deeply into all the destruction wrought by our parents’ first sin. But we must in turn look forward to the fullness of the promises of God. We will walk with Him in the garden again, unashamed and at peace. This is what Jesus has brought to pass for us, His beloved bride. We will be what we were made to be, and will stay so forevermore.

The Kingdom Notes: Forty Days of Mourning

2012-01-27T06:47:00.001-08:00

My deepest gratitude to all of you who have walked with me through my grief. Your prayers and encouragement have buoyed me up in the long and dark hours. It is possible that the below will be my last piece committed to this difficult journey. Rest assured, however, that the deep wound will not fully heal on this side of glory, and even then my scar, like His, and yours, will beautify eternity.

Because we are modernists and Gnostics we love to pretend that symbols and rituals have no meaning, that all that matters is what is in our hearts. Because we are humans, and image bearers, we find we cannot escape symbols and rituals. When my wife and I were married almost twenty years ago there were precious few surprises. Black tux for me, white dress for her. Traditional hymns were sung, traditional vows were taken. She processed with her father, and recessed with me. And in between, we exchanged rings- simple, traditional, gold rings. The only twist remained within the tradition, inside the ritual. Inside our rings we had inscribed Joshua 24:15- As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Too many pundits tell us that if we want to have a successful marriage we need to make Jesus the center of it. He is the glue, the center, the guide. There is wisdom here, but also danger. Is Jesus a means to a happy marriage? No, He is the end. Jesus does not exist for our marriages. Rather, our marriages exist for Him. Denise and I married not for ourselves, but that we might serve the Lord. We committed from the beginning not that I would die to self for her sake, nor that she would die to self for mine. Instead we would both strive to die to self for Him. We would pursue not our own happiness, but His glory. And in losing our individual lives, we found our one life together.

Jesus did not, forty days ago, take Denise from me. She was never mine to begin with. He placed her under my care. He blessed me with her wisdom, with her example, with her love. But she was then what she is now, and will always be, His.

I too belong to Him. I asked Him to give me forty days to mourn- to devote time, space, energy to entering into my loss. Those forty days have drawn to a close. Crossing this barrier, stepping out of the ash-pile, however, hasn’t changed my heart. Indeed despite recognizing the objective wisdom of my friend who suggested that I give myself over to mourning for forty days, I find myself not wanting to let go. I know, as I knew from the beginning that moving past this forty days will not end my sadness. I fear, however foolishly however, that it will end her, that she will pull further away from me. I fear that I would be giving up the ghost, which seems to be all I have left of her. The dust of her death has become my familiar familiar.

The irony is the matching fears. That is, in putting that ring on Denise’s finger, in that ritual pregnant with promise and meaning, I was afraid. Could I be the kind of godly husband she deserved? Would I be faithful in leading her? It is the same fear that haunts me now. Will I honor her memory by being the man she helped make? Will I be faithful to her memory, and our pledge? And the mirror of that fear is in the mirror of the ritual. On this, my fortieth day of mourning my beloved, I remove the ring she put on my finger. I cried through putting her ring on, even as I cry in taking mine off.

The ring reminded me not that my life was committed to Denise, but that our lives were committed to the Lord. Its absence, I pray, will remind me still of the message inside. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. God called me to be a husband for almost twenty years. He has called me to be a servant, a soldier, a disciple and a friend for always. Pray that I would be faithful.

Honoring the Living

2012-01-24T07:32:00.001-08:00

There is, in all honesty, a constant tension when dealing with a terminal illness between giving up and facing facts. As I have noted earlier, during my beloved’s nine month battle with leukemia her most frequent question to me was “I can get better, can’t I?” Giving up hope is giving up, and neither of us wanted that. We do indeed serve a God who gave Hezekiah a new lease, who can make dry bones live and so from one perspective it isn’t over until it’s over. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t at least begin to discern what is more likely than not by reading test results.

This question became frighteningly practical to the two of us a few months before Denise passed away. We had yet to embark on a clinical trial that held out some hope for us. But still two of Denise’s dearest and oldest friends determined to come and visit. On the one hand this was a great blessing and an encouragement to Denise. She, though still cooped up in a hospital room, spent hours laughing and reminiscing with these dear ladies. They recounted shared childhood memories, and compared notes on the shared experience of growing up. On the other hand the visit spiked Denise’s fears. Was she facing, she wondered, a farewell tour? What did it say about her prognosis that these ladies were laboring so hard to come and see her?

A few months later we were left with only one choice- hospice. Yes we still believed God could heal. But in our more honest moments we in turn understood that He probably wouldn’t. This, in turn, prompted more visits. A flock of ladies from our beloved church in Virginia came down for one last visit. Family members made special trips. Beall Phillips also came to see Denise. By this point Denise was fading fast. She asked insightful questions of her friends, but fell asleep in the midst of the answers. I found myself in the unenviable position of having to ration her time.

Within a matter of days Denise’s visitor list multiplied by a factor of ten. The only difference was that she was gone. Scores of old friends said goodbye to a casket. I highlight this with the hope of not making anyone feel bad. We all have responsibilities and limitations. I can assure her friends that she never once asked, “Why hasn’t this one come to see me?” Instead I write to encourage you to choose the right hand. Go, and visit. Your loved one may fear more deeply that there is little hope. But that will be utterly trumped by the joy of seeing you. “I must be dying or they wouldn’t have dropped anything to come and see me” is ultimately nothing compared to the joy of seeing you. And if God should bless, what a wonderful memory it would be if ten or twenty years later you could hear, “Remember that time you came to see me because you thought I was dying?”

The truth is, by God’s grace, that I have no regrets about anything. Everyone, childhood friends, relatives, pew neighbors, ministry associates, everyone has done wonderfully by us. We are so overwhelmed with the grace of others that our biggest burden is how to adequately say, “Thank you.” In the end we know we can’t, because the very source of all the kindness we have received is the same grace by which we are redeemed. You don’t repay that. You simply weep in thanksgiving.

So I ask two things. First, if you ever find yourself wondering, “Should I go?” The answer is “Yes, of course.” Second, receive not just my thanks, and the thanks of my children. But also receive the thanks of my dear wife. She is still grateful, on high. There is, among believers, no such thing as a “farewell tour.” There is instead only a “Until we meet again tour.”

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Ask RC: Should churches observe Sanctity of Life Sunday?

2012-01-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

It is a legitimate and important question- the appropriateness of celebrating the incarnation, the celebration of Christmas. I believe it fitting and appropriate, but am in turn always uncomfortable disagreeing with brothers to my right. I understand their concerns, and appreciate their passion for the regulative principle of worship. On the other hand, one can not rightly argue that the birth of the Savior is off limits in the pulpit. The Bible talks about it, and so we may preach about it. Given that, I cannot embrace a position that suggests we can preach about it, but not in December. If we are allowed to preach the promises in Genesis, in Isaiah, if we are allowed to preach the first few chapters of Luke, it seems we ought to be allowed to preach them at any time of year.

The same, it seems to me, applies to not only the church calendar but to church history. That is, we can preach on the Lord’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem and in turn about the resurrection, and so ought to be allowed to preach consecutive sermons on these events each spring. In like manner, if we are right that the Bible teaches the solas of the Reformation, it seems that it would be safe to preach on them the last Sunday in October. One is not, in so doing, becoming Romish in imposing a church calendar, or constructing holy days without biblical warrant. One is instead remembering the grace of God in space, and in time.

While the choice of December 25 as the anniversary of Jesus’ birth is rather dubious, we do know with certainty what happened on January 22, 1973. On that day the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case Roe v. Wade. The nine men determined that every state had the duty to give women unfettered access to abortion up until the birth of the child. It was a day whose infamy overshadows December 7, 1941 in the memory of the church in

America

. Since that time perhaps 50, 000, 000 babies have been murdered in the womb with the full protection of the state and the knowledge of the church.

Abortion in America is, in the judgment of my very wise father, the greatest evil in our history. The American holocaust dwarves the evil of Nazi Germany in both numbers of the dead, and the numbers of we who know what is happening. Can we then impose an obligation that every pulpit should speak against this great evil on the third Sunday of every January? Of course not. The pulpit, like the bearers of God’s image, is sacred. We can not rightly impose any obligation not explicitly found in Scripture. We no more ought to impose Sanctity of Life Sunday on the church than we should impose the observance of the birth of Jesus.

On the other hand, Sanctity of Life Sunday is as fitting, as sensible, as reasonable as observing the Incarnation from the pulpit. Just as we must preach the glory of the incarnation, sometime, if not in December, so we must preach the horror of this evil sometime, if not in January. To be silent is to be complicit. It is to tell our children and grandchildren that we are as guilty as those Germans who knew, and were silent. Of course our pews are filled with the guilty. The same is true of every sin we preach against. Of course the grace of God in Christ trumps even this great evil.

But the same Jesus who died for our sins calls on us to suffer the children to come unto Him. When we are silent, when we treat abortion as a mere social problem, a mere political issue, we expose our complicity. So preach faithfully. Proclaim not the sanctity of life, but the holiness of God, whose image the least of these bear. Call for repentance from the pulpit God placed under your care. Preach the same good news that He preached, that the captive are to be set free, that those marching toward death are to be rescued. Preach, and take the heat. For Jesus says such will make you blessed. Walk by faith, and preach by faith, in season and out of season.

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Five Evangelical Myths or Half Truths

2012-01-17T08:35:00.000-08:00

It can happen even in careful systematic theology. How much more so in popular parlance? We take what the Bible actually teaches, rephrase it so we can understand it, and end up believing our own phrasing, rather than the actual biblical truth. It’s not malicious, but it is dangerous. What follows are five common thoughts, common expressions, within the evangelical church that just aren’t so.

“All sins are equal in the sight of God.” Well, no. It is true enough that every sin is worthy of God’s eternal wrath. It is true enough that if we have broken part of the law we have broken the law (James actually says this.) It is true enough that unjust anger is a violation of the commandment against murder (Jesus actually says this.) None of this, however, means all sins are equal in the sight of God. To say that because all sins deserve eternal wrath means they are all equal is like saying that all numbers over 100 are equal. The truth is that Jesus said of the Pharisees that while they rightly tithed their mint and their cumin, they neglected the weightier matters of the law (Matthew 23:23). No sin is weightless, but some weigh more than others.

“Hell is the absence of God.” Well, no. If God is omnipresent, and He is, is there anywhere He can not be? David understood this, and thus affirmed, “If I make my bed in Sheol, Thou art there” (Psalm 139:8). Hell isn’t the absence of God, but the presence of His wrath. God is there, but His grace, His kindness, His peace are not. God is the great horror of hell.

“Jesus saves us from our sins.” Well, no. It is absolutely true that Jesus saves us. When we face trouble, He is the one we should be crying out to for deliverance. But the great problem with our sins isn’t our sins, but the wrath of God. The trouble I need to be delivered from is the wrath of God. Hell is not my sins, but the wrath of God. We don’t need to be saved from our sins. We need to be saved from the wrath due for our sins.

“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Well, not if your name is Esau. Okay, there certainly is a kind of universal love that God has for all mankind. And certainly all those who repent and believe will be blessed. And certainly God calls all men everywhere to repent. But it is also true that God has prepared vessels for destruction (Romans 9:22). Being prepared for destruction likely wouldn’t be considered “wonderful” by anyone. We don’t know God’s hidden plans, and thus should preach the gospel to all the world. But we shouldn’t, in so preaching, promise what He hasn’t promised.

“Money is the root of all evil.” Well, no. Actually this one is wrong on two counts. First, the text (I Timothy 6:10) tells us that it is the love of money, not money, and that it is all sorts of evil, not all evil. If money were the root of all evil, all we would need to do to bring paradise on earth would be to have no more money. If money were the root of all evil, the problem would be out there, rather than in our hearts. Sin is not an it problem, but an us problem.

The devil isn’t lazy. He will take the breaks we give him. Myths and half-truths are perfect opportunities for us to miss who we are, who God is, and how He reconciles His own to Himself. Perhaps were we more faithful to His Word, we might just be more faithful.

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Ask RC: Do familial curses still exist?

2012-01-13T06:15:00.000-08:00

God tells us in Exodus 20 that He will visit “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,” (verse 5). That might settle the issue, but then God also told us this, “In those days they shall say no more: ‘ The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’” (Jeremiah 31:29). Does this mean that there was, in the old covenant, familial curses, and that in the new they no longer exist? I think not.

I would suggest instead that what was still is, and what is not, never was. God’s promise in Exodus 20 is not that He will send fresh judgment against one generation for the sins of another generation. God does not have beside His throne a box full of thunderbolts that He hurls down on sinners. Much less does He hurl down thunderbolts against someone’s great grandchildren. The consequences of our sin are much more organic than that, as are the results of our obedience.

Suppose that I suffered from covetousness. God is unlikely to, if I am outside the kingdom, send me boils to punish me. Neither is He likely, if I am inside the kingdom, to send me boils to coax me toward repentance. What He is far more likely to do, in either case, is afflict me with collection calls, repo men, crippling interest rates and foreclosure. Now suppose my sons grew up in this covetous household. Is it not more likely that they will learn covetousness from me? Will they not likely see the afflictions as normal life? They certainly are not likely to receive an inheritance that could bless them. They would, in this sense, live with the consequences of my sin, for multiple generations. My iniquity would be visited on them.

That said, if they in turn live covetous lives, will they be able to blame either God or me for the collections calls, repo men, etc? Of course not. They are still responsible to be financially responsible. They are in like manner free to live in gratitude, and to end the cycle.

Those who promote the notion of “familial curses” are correct to note that our sins are not hermetically sealed, affecting only the sinner. (Remember that multiple “innocent” families lost husbands and fathers at Ai because of Achan’s sin at Jericho (Joshua 7:4).) God does indeed deal with us corporately, not just in the family but in churches, communities and nations. Those who think there is some sort of mystical cure, beyond repentance, are, I fear, mistaken.

In the end, if we are suffering and wondering why, the last answer we should come to is, “It is my ancestor’s fault.” On the other hand, when we are tempted to sin, we ought never to lose sight that the consequences certainly can outlive us, and afflict those we love. Thus I pray often that God would spare my children from the fruit of my sins. In either case the answer is to repent and to give thanks. We all enjoy so much more than we are due. And even suffering, for the believer, is blessing. We are to count it all joy.

We Have Met the Enemy

2012-01-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

Though I am optimistic about the long-term future, believing that the nations will in fact be discipled, and the kingdom will cover the earth the way the water covers the seas, it’s an ugly world out there. Every cultural indicator is alarming- more divorce, more illegitimacy, more crime, more drugs. Our entertainment is increasingly morbid and putrid. Perverts have become a protected class. Business, families and governments sink deeper and deeper into debt. The church has not just grown increasingly worldly, but now celebrates its worldliness, calling it outreach. And we still haven’t even touched on the one evil that dwarfs them all, the 3,500 moms who each day murder their own babies, while the rest of us watch.

And so we wring our hands about what they are doing. We write our blog pieces about our strategies to change them. We bewail their folly. We hold our prayer vigils, all of which amounts to, “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men.” Antithesis is important. So much of the problem among God’s people is that our identity is found outside the body. We have forgotten the reality of the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. We have forgotten our call to make manifest the reign of Christ over all things.

That reign, however is not marked by the glory of battle victory. It is not found where we triumphantly plant the flag of Jesus. The antithesis is far too deep for that. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. His reign is manifest as we fall to our knees. His victory song is no martial fanfare, but is instead a dirge, as we cry out “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. “ The glory is the cross, but the cross is also the glory.

Things, in short, are bad out there because that’s where we are. Those who name the name of Christ create those alarming cultural statistics. Christians are the ones consuming Hollywood’s sewage. We are the ones who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman, between the natural and the unnatural. We are the ones who not only spend our children’s inheritance, but demand that the state put our grandchildren deeper in debt. We are the ones flocking to arenas to pay homage to rock star preachers. Worst of all, we are the ones going to abortion mills- not to pray and preach but to procure. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

We, however, have been given the solution. We don’t need a new strategy. We don’t need a new political coalition. What we need is to repent and believe the gospel. We must acknowledge our sins, and turn from them. The first sin to confess is our pride, our blindness to our blindness. And then let us confess that good news that first changed a dying and decadent empire two thousand years ago- Christ is Lord. And then let us pray that He would be pleased to once again change the world with that most precious seed, that most potent weapon, the blood of His martyrs.

Ask RC: Is it true that God blesses those who bless Israel and curses those who curse Israel?

2012-01-06T07:42:00.000-08:00

It must be true, because this is what God says, isn’t it? Well, actually God says this, “I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you;   And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).

When God makes a promise we can know that it is certain, and that He will not change. The problem is, however, when we hear Him saying what He did not say. This text does say not that God will bless those who bless Israel, but rather those who bless Abraham, to whom God is speaking. Later, however, in Numbers 24, it gets a little more clear. There Balaam, clearly speaking about the nation of Israel says, “Blessed is he who blesses you,   And cursed is he who curses you.”

That should settle the matter, should it not? The difficulty is still, however, answering about whom this promise is made. Does not Paul himself say, “But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel” (Romans 9:6). Here it is all too easy to get confused. What could it mean that not all Israel is of Israel?

If there are some who are Israel that are called Israel, and some that are not Israel that are called Israel, which of these are the ones the fit the promise? My dispensational friends suggest that the Israel to whom this promise is made matches up with the nation of Israel founded in 1948 in the Middle East. They hear in this promise that those who bless that nation of Israel will be blessed and those who curse that same nation will be cursed. This, in part, informs the politics of American foreign policy. As long as America sees this Israel as a friend, the reasoning seems to go, God will bless America. When America turns its back on that nation, God will curse this nation.

The Reformed perspective takes a different tack. It affirms that that Israel which is actually Israel, just as with the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, applies to those who are in Christ, who trust in His finished work. Though we deny the moniker, this is what our dispensational friends call “replacement theology.” The Reformed, however, see this is as the outworking of the truth of Galatians 3:7- “Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.” We who are Reformed do not believe God replaced Israel with the church. We believe instead that there has always been only one people of God, those who believe.

Israel is the sons of Abraham. Those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham. Those who are of faith are therefore Israel. And in turn, those who bless those who are of faith will be blessed, and those who curse those who are of faith will be cursed. It is how we treat the church that matters. What of ethnic Israel? What of that country in the Middle East? Many in the Reformed camp hold out hope that there will be one day a mass conversion of those who are not today the sons of Abraham, that virtually all of Israel will once again become Israel. That said, many of these likewise hold out hope that there will be a mass conversion of Arabs, and Persians, of every tongue and every tribe. All of the promises of God belong to the children of Abraham, those who are of faith, including the promise that through Abraham, all the world will be blessed.

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My Better Half

2012-01-03T06:51:00.001-08:00

Children, and their parents, crave stability. When their world is rocked by change, they are comforted by that which remains the same. I have been reminding my children of late that the loss of their mother, for all the pain, doesn’t mean that everything has changed. Indeed when I put my littles to bed each night I, as I have always done, remind them of these bedrock truths, “Daddy loves you. Mommy loves you. Daddy and Mommy love each other. And Jesus loves you.” These are the unchanging truths they can always count on, the solid ground on which they walk. We that are left behind are still together. And I am still me.

I am afraid, however, that I am not still me. This melancholy that follows me about like a cloud hovering over Charlie Brown, that’s not me. Waking up with less energy than when I went to sleep, that’s not me. Uninterested in food, that’s definitely not me. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. Neither do I hear my own voice in what I write. It’s a stranger that sits here crying in my office.

This should not have surprised me. I have long decried our arrogant and modernist tendency in the Reformed world to turn God’s own ontological poetry into mere metaphor. God says the church is the body of Christ and we, instead of entering into the reality that the church is the body of Christ, we reduce it down to “Be nice to each other.” I, however, am guilty as well.

The Bible says that husbands and wives are one flesh. Christian marriage pundits turn this too into “Be nice to each other.” That is, we are told about the importance of open communication. We are encouraged to be as concerned for our spouse as we are for ourselves. We, in rephrasing what God has said so that we might understand it, end up further from the truth. We are not commanded to live as if we were one flesh. Instead we are told that such is the actual truth. The one-flesh reality means that I haven’t just lost the love of my life, but half of me. How could I recognize me, when I am now only half the man I once was? It isn’t quite accurate to say that when she drew her last breath a part of me died. Instead, half of me died.

The good news, however, is the same. Half of me has died, and is with Jesus. Half of me has no melancholy, but only joy. Half of me cries no more. Half of me sins no more. Half of me loves me, and the children, with a perfect love. Mourning, over the coming weeks and months, will move to dancing, as this half of me begins to more deeply believe the blessings I have in my better half.

I love Denise all the way to heaven and back. She in turn loves me all the way from heaven and back. And Jesus loves us both as the great bridge that not only brought us together, but keeps us together. May these gospel truths give me gentle sleep tonight.

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Ask RC: What Now?

2011-12-30T07:31:00.000-08:00

During my Denise’s battle we were all needy enough that we asked for and welcomed prayers for all of us. The grave issue, the underlying problem, was of course her illness. I too prayed for strength for me, for peace for the children. I prayed that God would use the beauty of Denise’s character to draw in the elect. Most of all, however, I prayed that Denise would be made well, that the cancer would be beaten, that she would be blessed with health, comfort and joy. It is rare indeed when we can see such specific prayers answered so clearly and powerfully.

For nine months I have awakened each morning knowing my wife was weak, fragile, fearful, weary and in pain. She was in danger of sinking deeper into illness. I knew it likely that when I would visit her she would at some point cry in sorrow, and that I couldn’t fix it. I prayed against the weakness, the fear and fragility, the weariness and the pain. I prayed against the tears and the sorrow. And now my prayers have been heard. What we wanted for her she has received, and more. We, His children, all together asked for bread for her. He didn’t give her a stone. He didn’t give her bread. He gave her Jesus. She who awoke pity in the hearts of thousands now has awakened with Him, with more health, more comfort, more joy than all of us combined. Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man all that she has already been blessed with (I Corinthians 2:9).

What though of the rest of us, those left behind? We had prayed for strength, for perseverance, for peace. These prayers He has likewise heard. We are, by His grace, strong enough that we are still here, that we have persevered. And we are at peace in our confidence that He will continue to so bless. We have work to do. I have children to raise, and they have the fruit of the Spirit to cultivate. I have lectures to prepare, sermons to preach, articles and chapters to write, and the fruit of the Spirit to cultivate. But there’s one more thing we have to do, me and my children, my extended family and friends. We need to mourn. A commitment to God’s goodness in calling Denise home, a commitment to God’s goodness in taking her from us, does not put mourning out of bounds. Jesus Himself wept just moments before He knew He would call Lazarus out of that tomb. I am not in the least ashamed of my tears. We mourn, but not as those who are without hope (I Thessalonians 4:13).

We do not fail in our work because we are mourning. We do not fail in our mourning as we work. We beautify each with the other. We will do both in accordance with our convictions. We mourn and we work with hope, knowing that all that we do for the kingdom will withstand that great conflagration of wood, hay and stubble.

Many of you, out of tender hearts, no doubt are concerned about practical matters, about logistics. Raising eight children is a jaw-dropping sized job for two healthy parents. Add in homeschooling and the challenge becomes more daunting. And now we go forward without my wife. What is the plan? The plan is to continue to honor both God’s Word and Denise’s legacy. We will continue to speak of Jesus and His kingdom when the children lie down and when they rise up. We will continue to homeschool the children. We will seek out more help around the house. I will seek to remove a few things from my plate, without sweeping its contents in the disposal. We will work hard and efficiently, still guided by the hand written lists and instructions Denise so loved to put together. I don’t, now that she is gone, need to build the transcontinental railroad. I just have to keep the train on the track my wife has so lovingly built.

Prayers for strength, wisdom and perseverance, are of course not just welcomed but coveted. But do not pray as those who are without hope- that’s just worrying on your knees. Instead pray with confidence to our loving Father. I know how powerfully He is not just able, not just willing, but how eager He is to bless, because I’ve seen what He has done for my wife. What now? Give thanks.

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Can You Remember?

2011-12-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

Note: RC wrote this two days before Denise died.

Though children tend to see “I forgot” as an excuse, the Bible seems to see it as a condemnation. God is good to us from our births, and we forget. We look forward, waiting and wondering if and when God will give us what we want. In so doing we forget that we got to this point by the grace of God, forgetting His sundry deliverances along the way. We accept the status quo as our rightful starting point, and dare the ask the Lord of heaven and earth, “What have You done for me lately?

Death, on the other hand, can be good for the memory. Considering what my life will be like without my wife makes me consider what life was like before she blessed us. Already I am finding myself making what were once simple decisions without the blessing of her wisdom, and feeling the paucity of my own insight. I am already living the wisdom of that aphorism that reminds us we will not miss the water until the well runs dry.

I suspect the solution here is less “preparing” for loss, and more gratitude for what was found. That is, as I face a future without the spiritual wisdom of my bride it is less important that I bank what I can still receive from her, and more important that I give thanks to God for all the wisdom He has bestowed over the years through her. Looking through the gift of her wisdom to the source of that wisdom makes it less likely that I will miss her wisdom while I miss her.

My wife’s greatest fear today as her final days slip away isn’t about herself. That’s what she’s like. She is worried about me and the children. I seek to put her at ease by reminding her that the source of the wisdom she gave our family isn’t her as my wife, but Jesus as my husband. He has been taking care of us through her. When she goes, He will still take care of us.

Years ago as I expressed to my then young bride my heart’s desire that He would bless me soon with the honor of a martyr’s death she understandably asked, “But who will take care of us?” I replied wisely, “The same Man who has been taking care of you all along.” Now I am facing the same truth, that all that we have received through Denise ultimately came from the gracious hand and loving heart of Jesus. And He already died once, and will not die again.

It was the grace of God that gave us all a blessed life in southwest Virginia. Leaving there didn’t mean leaving that blessing. In like manner it was the grace of God that gave us the blessed life of having Denise for a wife and mother. Losing her doesn’t mean losing that grace. It means remembering where it ultimately came from. To confuse God’s means of grace with His grace is to fall into idolatry. To look beyond and through the blessing to its Giver is to understand how our God works through what He has made. God loves me. Where I live, and with whom doesn’t change that but reveals that. My calling is to give thanks.

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Praying Friends

2011-12-16T05:56:00.000-08:00

It is not an easy thing to discern where a given soul is headed. The elders of the local church are called with the task of determining the credibility of the professions of those under their care. Because we are all sinners, the presence of sin in a man’s life does not answer the question. Because we all profess Christ, the theological accuracy of ones grasp of the gospel does not answer the question. It is a sticky business indeed.

In our day we, as with every other day, suffer from syncretism, the blending together of the worship of the living God with the worship of the spirit of the age. There are many who profess the name of Christ, who in turn lie like, think like, feel like, hunger like their unbelieving neighbors. Will these prove to be skin-of-their-teeth Christians, or will they prove to be wolves amidst the flock?

Though by no means a cure-all for this challenge, one unexpected test may be found amidst the surfeit of wisdom found in James 5. Who are your friends? When you find yourself in need of aid, to whom do you turn? James tells us, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (verse 16). Now this certainly could be understood as yet another call to righteousness. Do you want your prayers to be effective, to avail much? Pursue righteousness.

That, however, has not been my perspective of late. In this great time of need that the Sproul family finds themselves in, I find myself giving thanks not only for my friends, but for the righteousness of my friends. I am forced to confess my own weakness as a righteous man. I am, however, blessed to confess that I have been blessed with righteous friends. We not only have, literally, thousands praying for us, but we have godly men and women praying for us. As I type my eldest is on the phone with Beall Phillips, a saintly woman and longtime friend of the family. Her prayers, according to James, availeth much, as do the prayers of her husband and children, all of whom manifest the righteousness of Christ in their loyal love to my family.

On my computer, as I type, the music of Nathan Clark George is playing. He too, along with his wife Patsy, are godly, and prayerful for me and mine. My mother, my father, my sister, the Steiman family, the Deweys, Windhams, Murphys, Hays, and dozens more families at Saint Peter Presbyterian in Virginia are praying prayers that availeth much. The saints at Saint Andrews here in Orlando, the saints at Heritage Covenant in Centreville, Tennessee, all of these are not just praying, but praying with power.

My desire here, however, is not merely to give thanks, but to encourage us all to pursue godly friends. Those who make friends with the world have only the world to pray for them. Those who love the saints, on the other hand, have those covered by the righteousness of Christ Himself praying on their behalf.

As the Sprouls move into what we expect to be the most difficult days of our lives, we know not only that we are not alone, not only that we are joined by thousands of pray-ers, but that we have righteous men and women lifting us up to and through the one Righteous Man, whose prayers are not for health and comfort, but that we would be conformed to His image. And His prayers availeth everything.

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Ask RC: What is Apostasy?

2011-12-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

The Bible affirms two important truths that can seem at first blush difficult to reconcile. On the one hand the Bible affirms that all those who are brought to faith in Christ will be kept in the faith, and enter into paradise at their deaths. See I Corinthians 15:58, John 10:28, John 5:24, I John 2:19 and Romans 8. On the other hand the Bible also warns about the dangers of falling away. See Hebrews 6:4-6, Romans 11:17-22, I Timothy 1: 18-19, John 15: 1-2. If nothing can take believers from God’s hand, if those whom He justifies He glorifies, what is going on with those who are cut off, who trample on the blood? Are these warning merely hypothetical, or are we by them assured that what they warn against won’t come to pass? Are they temporarily saved, having received every blessing in Christ, save for persevering grace? No.

Apostasy is real, as is the perseverance of the saints. When God gives a person a new heart that embraces the work of Christ in faith, that person is at peace with God for always. Such a person could never completely fall away from the faith. Apostasy isn’t about those who have been blessed with a faith that trusts in the finished work of Christ alone. Apostasy is what happens when one moves from phenomenologically saved to phenomenologically unsaved, which demonstrates that this person was never ontologically saved.

Big words, I know. Their meanings, however, are fairly simple. All we mean by “phenomenologically” is “as the eye sees.” All we mean by “ontogically” is “as it actually is.” To put it more simply, apostasy is when a person who was a part of the visible church, but not a part of the invisible church, ceases to be a part of the visible church. The profession of faith is either no longer professed, or is deemed no longer to be credible by the elders of the church.

This may seem like rather small potatoes. No one’s soul is actually moving from life to death. That, however, doesn’t make it small potatoes. These lost souls (keeping in mind that at least in some circumstances those who “leave” the faith my yet be saved- see the man excommunicated in I Corinthians, who later repented and is brought back into the church in II Corinthians) are people who were, in terms of the visible church, a part of the body. They are not cut off cleanly. We loved them, enjoyed fellowship with them, and naturally mourn when they depart from us.

As a pastor I have seen men I loved excommunicated for unrepentant, gross and heinous sin. It broke my heart. I have seen whole families simply abandon the church (not our church, not even the Protestant church, but the church). It broke my heart. I have seen multiple families reject the Biblical gospel for the false gospel of Cathodoxy. It broke my heart. People I looked forward to spending eternity with, who I loved because I thought we shared a love for Christ, turned out to be imposters. People whom I hoped to see I heaven appeared to be goats.

Apostasy is real. It happens. It ought to break our hearts. And in turn our hearts must be comforted in knowing that He has never lost one of His own, and will never leave us, nor forsake us.

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Doing Great Things

2011-12-09T06:14:00.001-08:00

When we first learned that my little girl Shannon would always be a little girl, when we discovered about her first birthday that she was profoundly disabled, my father, a deeply compassionate man asked how I was handling the news. I told him that I had been preparing for this moment all my life. If anyone should be able to rest in the sovereignty of God it is me. The sovereignty of God is the cornerstone of Reformed theology, which theology I have been schooled in from my youth by one of its greatest living proponents.

The sovereignty of God, rightly understood, was the very core of my father’s best known work, The Holiness of God. The doctrine came front and center in his next book, Chosen by God. I was a young man when those books were first published. Like many others I ate them up, drank them in, and like too many young men, spat out their wisdom with precious little grace and care. I reveled in God’s sovereignty, and delighted in nothing more than to argue for, to defend, to proclaim that sovereignty.

That all changed, however, when I read still another book by my father, this one born of a family hardship. Surprised by Suffering begins with the still-born birth of my niece, Alissa. From there the book explores not just the truth that God ordains our suffering but why. The point that has stuck with me over the years was this- suffering isn’t something that happens, nor it is just something God permits. It is instead a vocation, a calling. God does not merely say, “I’m going to make you go through this.” Instead He says, “It is My desire for you that you should go through this. Follow Me.”

All of us, when we are brought into the kingdom, in joyful gratitude for the grace of God, want to do great things for the kingdom. Having been rescued by His glorious grace, we want in turn to rescue others, to serve the body, to proclaim the Good News. God has called us to do just that. He calls out heroes who take the message to strange and foreign lands. He calls out pastors who feed the sheep. He calls out teachers, like my father, who explain to the broader body the fullness of the gospel. Some, however, He calls to suffer.

My wife, for this part of His story, is called to suffer. Her role right now is to do this great thing for the kingdom- to be Jesus to us, so that we might be Jesus to her. She is Jesus to us because as we serve her, we remember His promise, that serving the least of these is serving Him (Matthew 25). We, in turn, are Jesus to her, precisely because the church is His body. When we pray for her, she rests in Jesus’ arms. When we bring a meal, she tastes Jesus feeding her. When we dry her eyes, she feels Jesus wiping away her tears.

Hers is not an easy calling. It is, however, a great one. Being Jesus means walking the via dolorosa. How blessed I am to walk that road with her, and with Him.

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Headline Blues

2011-12-08T06:21:00.000-08:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine
Open Letter to Ted Turner

Dear Ted,

Can I call you Ted? Before I get to any of the uncomfortable stuff, first let me thank you profusely for gifting me with year after year of the greatest television show ever put on. It is because of you that I am now the proud owner of 252 of the 259 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. It’s almost enough to make me forget when Sid slid, and my Pittsburgh Pirates went home empty handed. Of course I understand that it wasn’t really a gift to me at all. Rather we had what might be called a business relationship. You agreed to provide the stories of Mayberry, and I agreed, to one degree or another, to watch advertisements. After years of thinking of television as free, I finally discovered what is really happening. The whole show is just a long form infomercial. The shows themselves exist for the ultimate purpose of getting my attention long enough to persuade me to buy this brand of toothpaste rather than that brand. Infomercials, in fact, are the most honest thing going on television.

Which may be one of the reasons that Neil Postman hit the nail on the head when he argued that television is at its worst when it seeks to be ennobling. He was comparatively comfortable with Three Stooges reruns, and, I presume, with Andy Griffith reruns. It was the serious stuff that gets us into serious trouble. That is, someone excusing themselves with, “I only watch the news programs” is something like someone justifying their subscription to Sports Illustrated with “I only look at the swimsuit issue.” News isn’t the savior of television, but its destruction. Which means your visionary, daring efforts are at the forefront of all that is wrong with television. Give them classic movies, but please, turn off the news.

I don’t mean by this, and I say this just so you won’t get bored, that the problem is the leftward slant of what used to be your news channels. This isn’t another tired old conservative screed complaining that you aren’t more like Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. No, this is a comparatively fresh-faced screed complaining that you are too much like Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. My complaint isn’t what you put on television, but that you put it on television. Left versus less left is the same old sham battle you both keep reporting on, as if it made a bit of difference.

Thirty years ago television brought us roughly three hours of news each day. We had the morning shows that spent more time on cooking tips than news. We’ll be broad minded and call that an hour. Then we had, at most, a half hour of local news at noon and at 6:00 and at 11:00. And we had a half hour of national news at 6:30. You, at that time, were bringing us billboards and Braves baseball. You were most famous for winning the America’s Cup half blind from booze, and earning the nickname Captain Outrageous.

But that all changed with CNN and its twenty-four hour coverage of the news of the day. Your challenge wasn’t merely to fill all that time. That was hard enough. The truly damaging work you have done was to persuade us that we need to watch. CNN, to paraphrase a phrase, persuaded our hearts of this alarming truth, that somewhere out there something was going on that we knew nothing about. We have been taught that there’s nothing worse than being caught in the breakdown lane of the information super-highway.

You have changed the landscape of television, which in turn has changed the landscape of the world. Like a Colossus your news empire once sat astride the globe, and shrunk it to the size of utter insignificance. If it becomes news because you covered it, then it never really was news. You have made the world smaller, and made of us not citizens of the globe, but citizens of the tube. You haven’t expanded our vision, you have fit it into a 19 inch box. You have caused distant earthquakes and slavery in the Sudan to become nothing more to us than background noise at supper time. You have spread your smugness, so that we too now are fools enough to think that we are up-to-date, and connected, all through the remote control. Just who does that remote control, anyway? You have taught us to shed a tear over a tsunami, while we can’t be bothered with our own aging parents. We get catharsis on the cheap, the same way we get our headlines.

You should have seen this. You should have known that you were killing what you thought you were promoting. But your eyes were glazed over, and so now, so are ours. Here is some news for you. A day is coming when news once more will be about our neighbors, given out so that we can help. You loved it when the big three networks squealed over the pain the cable networks were creating. You delighted when Wolf Blitzer became the most recognized face in all of Gulf War I. Rest assured your demise isn’t the utter destruction your networks are receiving from Fox, but the growing number, not of hippies, but of Christians, who are tuning out. Your day is done, and now comes the judgment.

As always, we write not merely to castigate, but to call for repentance. Rumor has it that your ex-wife has been given new life. You need to understand that one way or another, that pale Galilean will triumph. His victory is on display 24 hours. Postman, of course, was willing to concede something useful for the television. It is, he used to argue, a rather handy device to communicate certain very important and simple messages like, “Hurricane coming. RUN!” I would agree as well, but add that whenever it is on, because it is on, this is precisely what the television is telling us. We don’t need your education.

What I leave with you is this, a message that is utterly complete without live footage, or Bernard Shaw, a message that is as old as it is timely- Wrath coming. TURN!

In the King’s Service,

Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr.

Ask RC: Is it a sin to marry outside ones race?

2011-12-06T07:03:00.001-08:00

Yes, of course. Happily, in every jurisdiction I am aware of, it is not even legally possible to marry outside ones race. Though there are some arguing that such should be legal, even the “gay” “marriage” movement, by and large, disdains the notion. The Bible is abundantly clear that marriage is only for those of the human race, and to extend the institution beyond that is wrong.

Within the circle of humanity, God does provide a number of other prohibitions. Marriage, for instance, is, according to the Bible, one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4 -5). Marriage is also only between either two believers, or two unbelievers (II Corinthians 6:14). Leviticus 18 gives us the laws of consanguinity, affirming that we may not marry those who are too close kin. The Bible forbids marrying those who have been illegitimately divorced (Matthew 19:9). The only other biblical prohibition that I am aware of is that one cannot divorce, marry another spouse, and then, after a second divorce, or the death of the second spouse, remarry the first (Deuteronomy 24:4).

Does the Bible forbid marrying outside ones culture, ones skin color, ones nation? By no means. Deuteronomy 21: 11-14 gives explicit warrant for a Jewish man to take a wife from among the women of a conquered nation. Though not as compelling, we in turn have biblical examples of godly men who married outside their national identity- Moses and his Cushite wife (Numbers 12:1), and of course Boaz and Ruth.

There have, in the past, been fine and godly men who have argued otherwise. There are likely some fine and godly men who would still so argue. The Bible, however, despite the level of detail to which it does go on whom we may or may not marry, does not so argue. The ancient creeds of the church make no such argument. The great confessional statements of the Reformation make no such argument.

Some have argued that my own position is grounded in worldliness. Those outside the church are always seeking to break down barriers, to deconstruct cultures. Miscegenation, my critics would argue, plays right into the hands of the political and theological left. I would offer two retorts. First, a healthy understanding of the antithesis, of the great battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman doesn’t mean we are to be reactionary, that we are to embrace the opposite of what the world embraces always and everywhere. We aren’t called to walking on our hands because the unbelievers walk on their feet. Because those outside the kingdom of God retain the remnants of the image of God, we should expect to agree with them from time to time.

Second, even a cursory glance of the literature demonstrates that it is actually those who argue against marrying outside ones culture, that were most influenced by worldly wisdom. Darwin’s theory of evolution created a paradigm by which even Christians began to judge one “race” as genetically superior to another. It is true enough that some cultures are better than others. What makes one culture superior, however, isn’t genetics, but the impact of the Christian faith. Low levels of melanin didn’t build Europe, the gospel did. Matching levels of melanin in turn won’t make a godly marriage. The gospel will. Away with legalism that adds to God’s perfect law.

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The Terminal

2011-12-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

The yellowing sky confirmed the wisdom of the forecasters, a tornado might well be just around the bend. With one eye scouring the landscape I dutifully herded my then seven children into our basement. One of them, worried, asked me- “Are we all going to die?” Tender hearted father that I am, I told the truth- “Of course…but probably not today.” We survived the weather that day, but we are all still terminal.

As my wife continues her valiant fight against leukemia she too occasionally asks me to look into my crystal ball. She wants to know if she is going to make it. The doctors don’t know, and they are considerably more knowledgeable than I am. So I tell my wife what I do know- “I don’t know if you are going to get well or not. I do know that that day was appointed before all time. Nothing will make it a day later, nothing a day earlier. Cancer cannot determine when you go home. Only your Father can.

God can and does give clues, from time to time. The Bible affirms that He opens and closes the womb. That doesn’t mean that Abraham and Sarah didn’t have reason to be surprised. That Denise is ill, that it is this kind of cancer, that form of leukemia, this other test result suggests that we have more reason to worry about her than me. Seeking to decipher all these clues causes us to ride a roller coaster of hope and fear. I have come to learn, however, that my confidence on a given day is likely more tied to how poorly I slept the night before than it is deciphering the results of a CT scan.

My calling then is to rest in, to believe, to be comforted by what He has spoken clearly. Providence is His, but there He speaks a strange language in muted tones. His Word, on the other hand is both loud and clear. We know, for starters, that God Himself is behind this. God will either defeat the cancer He has sent, or He will have sent the cancer that calls her home (Isaiah 45:7). We know that whether her time is sooner or later, it works out for the good not only for her, but for her husband and children (Romans 8:28). We know that whenever He calls her home He will at the same time heal her fully (Revelation 21:4).

Insofar as I am able, by His grace, to believe what He has revealed, I am able to be at peace about what He has not revealed. Insofar as I seek to learn the secret things, I will fail to believe what He has revealed. One thing we know for certain- He is good. He loves us with an everlasting love. That doesn’t answer the question of the day or the hour. It just makes it not so important.

It is a good and proper thing that I should, and you as well if you are willing, pray that God would make Denise well, that He would allow us to grow old together. It is, however, a better thing to pray that I would be a faithful husband to my love, and a faithful father to the children He has blessed us with. It is less important that He believe me and my conviction, that the kingdom would be better with her here. It is more important that I believe Him and His promise that the gates of hell will not prevail (Matthew 16:18), and that He who has begun a good work in us will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus (Ephesians 6:10). This train is bound for glory.

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2011-12-01T06:53:00.001-08:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine.
Spam, Wonderful Spam

I don’t want to get too technical with the fine points of economics, but it isn’t strictly true, despite what you’ve heard, that time is money. But it is not that particular bit of misinformation I want to get at here. Rather it is this cousin of that nugget- knowledge is power. It too, despite being accepted wisdom, is unwise horse feathers. Truth be told, time is power and knowledge is used to wrap fish.

We live in the information age, in the comfortable suburbs right off the wonders of the information superhighway. There are wonders of efficiency that the computer has brought us. Just consider eBay. Not only does eBay hook up buyers and sellers that would never have found each other otherwise, but it finds the market price for what is being sold through the magic of an auction. I not only don’t begrudge the information age this real triumph, I’m grateful for it. What I’m wondering though, is where that information goes when we’re done with it.

That said, however, we are in an overload situation. For decades now technology has been busy about the business of bringing us more information. When the airwaves couldn’t bring us enough television, we started laying cable. When that failed, we went with satellites. And what fills all those stations, but more information. We have phones that can reach us in our cars, and virtually everywhere (come and visit Mendota sometime. No reception here, I’m usually happy to report.) We have satellite radio as well. Then there is the internet. In less than a decade we went from dial-up to high speed. Hotels, coffee bars, even Laundromats all make their case that we should frequent their establishments, not because of better service, better mocha supremes or whiter collars, but because they have free wi-fi.

Stranger than all this from the last decade is the technology of this decade. We know we have too much information not because of how much information we have, but because we are now looking to technology to protect us from that information. The software that I see advertised (granted, it’s not like I’m some sort of software guru) is that which promises to protect us from pop-ups and spyware. Bill Gates in a recent interview was asked about new innovations coming from his company. What did he talk about? Spam filters.

Of course we have the same things all over the house. We have locks to keep our children from watching certain channels, and DVD players that will bleep every beeping bleep that tried to make it into your living room. And then there’s the spam eliminator for the telephone, caller ID. We invited the monster into play, and now we’re desperately looking for a leash.

We have magazines and websites devoted to television shows, and television shows devoted to movies, and movies constructed from cancelled television shows. We even have a television show that daily recreates, with real actors, the events of the pop star who is accused of seducing his victim how? With information brought to him by Hollywood.

Once again the complaint here isn’t what’s on, but how much is on. It isn’t so much what they’re telling us, it’s how much they’re telling us. When we try to keep up, we show ourselves not to be well informed and free citizens, but easily manipulated slaves. Pop has become our daddy.

But let’s remember our principles. Time isn’t money, it’s power. Each one of us wakes up each morning with twenty four hours. That we speak of “spending” time suggests that we’ve already killed it. Time is what we invest, because the days are evil. When we miss out on a conversation with our children, because we just had to hear what Rush had to say today, we aren’t investing, we’re spending. When we send the children off to watch Toy Story for the thousandth time so that we can share our wisdom with the world through our blog, we aren’t investing, we’re spending. When we can’t seem to find the time to read our Bibles, but can find the time to read other people’s blogs, then we aren’t investing, we are spending.

If we would know something interesting and important, it probably isn’t about the accusations of sin against the King of Pop. It would probably be more fruitful to know more about our sins against the King of All Things. If we want to worry about the sufferings wrought by sin, we probably don’t need to see which tragedy is boosting Fox’s ratings during sweeps month. It might be better to see how you can help those with whom you have covenanted in the church.

It’s true enough that the Bible doesn’t say you can’t listen to talk radio. It doesn’t say you can’t read or write blogs. It doesn’t say, as far as I know, you can’t read magazines from fly-over territory. And as such, I’m not saying it either. But just as we encourage folks to have lots of children not ultimately because we think contraception is a sin, but because we think children are a blessing, so here the issue isn’t whether you’re allowed to drink in this or that from the broader culture. The question is, aren’t there better things to do with your time? And by that I don’t merely mean more work-y kind of things. I mean more joyful kind of things.

Tomorrow night the Kisers are coming over for dinner. We won’t be watching a movie (though we do from time to time.) We won’t be talking about how the latest stats conjured up by ESPN. We’ll eat, and we’ll visit. We’ll worship and we’ll laugh. We may break out our instruments and peel off a song or two. We’ll enjoy some homebrew, and my clam linguini. And all of the sudden, must see TV isn’t any more.

Here’s another axiom for you, a fundamental economic reality. At the end of the day, as you weigh this good and that, it’s people that matter, flesh and blood, three dimensional people will always trump the titillation of tabloid television. Time is power, invest it wisely.

By R.C. Sproul Jr.

Of Coarse

2011-11-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

My Delaney is 13, and all girl. She is gentle, soft-spoken, beautiful. Yesterday, as she headed off to the field to play her last soccer game of the season I told her what I tell her before every game- “That’s your ball.” I want her to play more aggressively, to not wait for the ball, but to go to it. She hustles, works hard, and is learning that it is indeed her ball.

Later in the game, right in front of me, Delaney’s little girl cousins, and a set of parents, another little girl, playing aggressively for the other team, believing the ball to be hers, found herself on the ground, frustrated and without the ball. She stood, and announced, incredulous about one of Delaney’s teammates- “She f#*%@ing tripped me.”

I was, of course, aghast and appalled, speechless even. The mom next to me asked the girl if she kissed her mom with that mouth. Which got me to thinking about that mom. It’s absolutely true that we are all responsible for our own sins. It is likewise true that our sins tend to beget more sins. What kind of a mother raises a little girl that talks that way? I suspected the kind of mother who speaks that way herself.

After more consideration, however, I have come to suspect that this little girl’s mother may have a reasonably polite tongue, but whose discernment muscles have atrophied away. I suspect the little girl is actually being raised by pop culture. Movies, music, television, video games have all shaped the discourse of those who consume them. We speak what we hear. When what goes in our ears is a sneering, cynical, angry stew, what comes out of our mouths is sneering, cynical, angry words.

Someone once noted the hypocrisy of television executives who trudge down to Washington and appear before Congressional hearings, promising that all the sex and violence doesn’t impact people’s behavior. These same men then meet with advertisers and promise that commercials can change people’s behavior. The forty minutes of programming won’t change a thing. The twenty minutes of advertising will change everything. They can’t have it both ways.

The truth is we are responsible for what we do. No one can stand before God and declare, “NBC made me do it.” The truth is, however, that media matter, and even our most sophisticated worldview grids do not make sludge safe to drink. Our discourse has grown coarse because we drink from the sewers of pop culture.

We spiritualize our self-poisoning, because we are poisoned. We think we have to be hip to this new band, or play that video-game so that we can be relevant, so we can reach the lost. The truth is, the lost are reaching us. As Charles Swindoll once said, “If you drop a white glove in the mud, the mud doesn’t get all ‘glovey.’” The world doesn’t need us to become more like them. “Gritty, edgy, real” is just Christian for “geek who wants to fit it.”

We don’t need salty language to be salt, nor dark language in order to bring light. We need instead to speak the language of heaven. To learn to speak that language, we need to learn to hear it- to read God’s Word, to sing His Psalms, to meditate on His promises. Then grace will flow from our lips.

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Ask RC: Why are college and medical care so expensive?

2011-11-22T07:03:00.001-08:00

Every year we can count on two costs outpacing the rate of inflation- medical insurance and college education. Some might think this is because of how important these two commodities are, but the cost of food does not rise as quickly year after year, and it stands even higher in anyone’s hierarchy of needs. Some might think it’s because both are labor intensive, and the labor must be highly trained. But the cost of a cab ride in New York doesn’t rise as quickly year after year, and there is precious little more labor intensive than having one person driving another around. And if you’ve been in New York traffic, you want a well-trained driver.

The real answer is much more fundamental. In both cases we are seeing government pouring more and more money into each. To understand why this drives costs up we need to first disabuse ourselves of a common bit of economic “wisdom.” We are told, by left and right both, that taxes on businesses are always passed along to the consumer. The government can’t, these folks argue, actually extract money from businesses. Utterly false. The truth is that the price a consumer is willing to pay for a good or service has nothing to do with where the money goes. The price is set by supply and demand. Raising prices, for whatever reason, reduces demand. Imagine, for instance, that Washington determines to impose a $15,000 luxury tax on all new cars. Can Detroit, or even Tokyo, just “pass that on” to the consumer. Would you spend $30,000 on a car you value at $15,000? The artificially high price reduces sales, hurting the business’s bottom line. This is not just an abstract suggestion. Check out what happened to the luxury boat business after the first President Bush broke his no new taxes pledge.

Now back to government subsidizing education and medicine. How much would you be willing to pay for a college education? If that number for most people is $15,000, a year and the state stayed out of the equation, then the cost of an education would stay around $15,000. But suppose the state comes in offering scholarships, grants, and guaranteed loans. Now how much are you willing to pay? Still $15,000. That’s how much you value the education, and so that is what the college can get you to pay. Nothing at all wrong with that- it’s a free trade. How much though, would you be willing to pay of other people’s money? The trouble is that they can charge others, taxpayers, another $15,000, and still get your $15,000.

Don’t believe me? Well, consider the difference in the rates the uninsured pay at the local walk-in clinic compared to the insured. Why are the uninsured given this break? Is it because of the altruism of the medical profession? No. If I am willing to pay $150 to have my son’s arm x-rayed, that is what they will charge. If they can get the state, however, to pay $150, they will seek to charge $300, the $150 I am willing to pay, and the $150 the state is willing to pay.

All of this, in both instances, involves people receiving goods and services that they aren’t paying for, which increases demand. Increasing demand increases prices. Increased prices increases demands for government to “do something.” More government money is poured in, increasing demand, which increases prices. This friends, is how bubbles are blown up. We’ve lived through a tech bubble. We have lived through a stock bubble. In both these instances it’s a more nuanced argument to lay the blame at the feet of the state. We are still recovering from a real estate bubble. The education and medical care bubbles, however, are here. What’s next is when those bubbles pop.

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Unknown Rock Stars

2011-11-18T13:04:00.003-08:00

There are two things necessary to being known as a great man of God- being known, and having a reputation as being a great man of God. It is not in the least necessary that you actually be a great man of God. The same skill set by which one labors to become known works quite well in creating the illusion of godliness. This is not to suggest that all well-known men with a reputation for godliness are frauds. It is to suggest, however, that listening to a heartfelt Christian ballad, reading a winsome and insightful book, or being moved by a dramatic sermon is not sufficient evidence. In order to know if someone is a godly man you have to know the man. And in order to know the man, you have to know his family.

I am privileged to know, though most not well at all, many of the past and current rock stars of the evangelical and particularly Reformed world. The men who impress me the most, however, the ones I am quickest to give thanks for, typically are not so well known.

Lyndon Azcuna ministers to men in prison, not the clearest pathway to evangelical rock stardom. He teaches born again men how to fulfill their callings as fathers, even when their past sins separate the men from their children. Better still, however, Lyndon has a wife that clearly and joyfully loves him, and children who concur. Their ready smiles reflect his constant smile. He leads his family by being constrained by gospel joy.

Mark Dewey once had tens of thousands cheering him on, when he pitched in the major leagues. Now he is cheered on by fourteen, his twelve children, his glowing wife and me. Theirs is a household built on the rock of God’s Word, whose rafters shake from laughter. Were it not for his friendship with me I would say he had perfect judgment. Were it not for his frequent morning grumpiness, I could not think of a sin to lay at this man’s feet.

Marion Lovett, Robert Barnes and Laurence Windham all have something in common. They faithfully shepherd the Lord’s flock in small churches. They are not invited to sit on seminary boards or address large gatherings of pastors eager to know their secrets. But they have secrets, important and potent secrets. Each one of them loves his wife openly and clearly. Each one of them delights in his children. Each one of them showers his flocks and his friends with hesed, loyal love. These are men I can count on to do the right thing. And when they fail, they do the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Finally, I know two unknown rock stars who rightly should be rock stars. Randy Winton, whose songbook is covered with blue grass strains, and Nathan Clark George, who milieu is more blue like jazz, are wonderful musicians making God honoring music. But I know them personally. I know, enjoy, respect and admire their wives and quite literally, one by one, their children. I hope their music tops the charts one day. I know, however, that today their Father in heaven delights in them.

The kingdom of God does not come through fame and influence. It comes through believing the gospel, and loving our wives. It comes through giving thanks and laughter. It comes through humble service and simple friendships. I give thanks for these men, and many more just like them.

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Ask RC: Do all those who die in the womb go to heaven?

2011-11-15T08:30:00.000-08:00

I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say. It is certainly possible that they do. It is also possible that they don’t. It is, in turn, possible that some go to heaven when they die and some do not. Christians have, over the years dealt with this heart-wrenching question a number of different ways.

Some suggest that such children have no need to be saved from the wrath of God because they do not stand guilty before Him. While most of these would agree that even the youngest are tainted by sin (see Psalm 51:5), a few go so far as to suggest that the very young are without sin. Both positions suggest that the Bible leaves room for what they call the “age of accountability,” an unknown time (some suggest age 13 on the basis of the practice of bar mitzvah, when a Jewish boy becomes a man) when children do become responsible before God for their sin. The closest supportive text here is II Samuel 12:21-23.

Some suggest that the children of believers are welcomed to heaven, and leave open the question of the end of the children of unbelievers. The best text in defense of this position is I Corinthians 7:14, where the children of at least one believing parent are said to be “holy.”

Still others take the position that the elect among those dying in the womb go to heaven, and leave open the question of whether or not all or only some such children are elect. Finally, some take a mildly agnostic position, suggesting that “the God of heaven and earth will do rightly.”

I, though I agree that all and only the elect will enter into heaven, and that the judge of all the earth will do rightly, embrace none of these positions. In the end I believe that the texts cited do not warrant the conclusions drawn from them. Thus my bold response- I don’t know. What I am persuaded of is this. All humans, from conception, are sinners and stand guilty before a holy God. Their only hope is the work of Christ applied to them. That work is applied always and only through faith, and that only the faith of the one saved. Babies in heaven are there not by virtue of their age, nor their election, nor their parents. They are there by virtue of Christ, applied to them by their Spirit-given faith.

But can unborn babies believe? Not by themselves, just like you and me. It takes a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit to make that happen. Do we have reason to believe that He sometimes makes that happen? II Samuel 12:21-23 suggests He might. I Corinthians 7:14 suggests He might. Add to that John leaping in the womb at the presence of Christ (Luke 1:41) and we have reason to hope.

This could, of course, include all children dying in the womb. It could include none of them. Either way the Judge of all the earth would have done rightly. This is, clearly enough, an emotional issue. It is not, in my own life, merely abstract. My wife and I lost seven children to miscarriage, and have one precious 14 year old with the capacities of a one year old. Our emotions, however, should not lead us to add to the Bible, nor to muddy the precious saving waters of the work of Christ given to us by faith. Our hope for them is the same as our hope for anyone. We are all sinners, and all without hope save for the work of Christ. But praise be to His name, He came into this world to save sinners.

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Let My People Go

2011-11-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine.

There are at least three different ways to despise the state, two of which are flat wrong. The first, I would guess, represents none of you. There are, nevertheless, in this world, people who hate the government precisely because from time to time they manage to be a terror to evil. That is, sometimes the state arrests thieves and murderers, and thieves and murderers don’t take too kindly to it. Commiserating with this crowd about the evils of the state probably isn’t the wisest thing to do.

The second group is by far the largest. These are the folks who hate the state because it all too often is a terror to good. Our service to others is hindered by their roadblocks, while our own comfort is hampered as well. When my move-in date to my new house is delayed because some building inspector determines that, in case of fire, I need to be able to turn off the electricity to my house from the outside (and who, pray tell, gave us this legislation, the State Association of Cat Burglars?) I get frustrated and angry. When I must pay this tax and that, rent on my own property, I get frustrated and angry. When the state seizes my wealth, hinders my travel, and gums up the operation of my life, I get frustrated and angry. When I am traveling down the road only to be stopped that I might show the state my “papers,” I get frustrated and angry. I’m not suggesting that the beefs aren’t legitimate. They are indeed. The problem with them, however legitimate they may be in themselves, is that they are selfish. God did not put me on this earth with this instruction, “Now, make sure, whatever else you do, that you keep 70% of your income.” Neither did He tell me not to pay Caesar when Caesar mistakes my land for his. Their foolishness is a real burden to me, about the equivalent of walking a mile or two.

The rarest group of state haters, however, have an altogether different motive. One such man prayed this way, “You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Here he speaks to God, about the state. That’s a rather more potent complaint than grumbling under your breath while writing a check to Internal Revenue. What drives this kind of righteous rage? A righteous complaint- “Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.’”

The psalmist’s complaint isn’t that the state has done wrong to the psalmist. Rather he objects to the state’s rebellion against God and His lawful authority. What ought to concern us isn’t getting our toes stepped on, but seeing God dishonored. If we were consumed with God’s glory, and indifferent to our comfort, we would always get this right. To put it another way, the problem with the state isn’t so much what it does, but what it thinks it is. The evil thing about the state is that it seeks to sit upon God’s throne. It claims the power and authority of the state, an affront to the living God.

The problem with Pharaoh, in a manner of speaking then, wasn’t that he enslaved the children of Israel, but that he remembered not Joseph, nor in turn the God of Joseph. God, speaking through His servant Moses speaks what may be the most stirring words in all the Old Testament, “Let My people go.” Pharaoh’s response seals his doom, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.” Here is the great evil, that he would not submit to the Word of God, and thereby would not submit to God Himself.

Moses shared the psalmist’s line of thinking. He stood before Pharaoh, he succeeded in his calling, precisely because his beef was neither personal nor earthly. This is what separates heroes who stand up to tyrants, and rebels who bring destruction on themselves. This is why, as the exodus drew to a close, that Joshua asked the wrong question of the captain of the Lord’s hosts. You remember as Joshua contemplates the challenge set before him, as he walks alone outside the city, only to discover he wasn’t alone. He approaches the warrior and asks, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?” Jesus answered rightly saying, “No, but as the Commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Our warrior king reminds His soldier whose war they are about to fight. The problem, as Achan forgot, wasn’t that the people of Jericho were sitting in the city that belonged to Israel. They were sitting on God’s city, the city He consumed first in defeating it, and then consumed again as a whole burnt offering. Those who aligned themselves with either Egypt or Jericho were destroyed. Those who fought for themselves were likewise destroyed. Those, however, who enrolled in the Lord’s army, tasted the victory.

Nothing has changed. Worse perhaps than both wrong versions of people who hate the state are those who love the state. These are they who beseech the state for their daily bread, who ask the state to lead them not into temptation, who cheer on a president who crosses land and sea to deliver us from evil. Their judgment will be the same. There is but one safe haven, one safe loyalty, and that is to Christ and His kingdom. All others are the broad path to destruction. It is not just kings but all of us who must learn to be wise, to be instructed, to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. We too must kiss the Son, lest He be angry and we perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are those who put their trust in Him.

From Every Thought Captive magazine, a production of Highlands Ministries

Praying Like Crazy

2011-11-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

A crazy person is one who has a break from reality. Those of us who have not embraced postmodernism understand that reality is something outside ourselves that exists, how it exists, quite apart from our agreement or understanding of it. If we think a tail is a leg, a dog still only has four legs. What we think has nothing to do with it.

Which is why I suspect that we are all as crazy as a spectacularly crazy thing. So much of our pathos, so much of our pain, so much of what we seek to escape isn’t about what is, but what we think is. Because we don’t believe in “the” reality, “our ““reality” becomes a place of sorrow and fear.

Imagine if you would, what would happen to your sorrows and fears if God Himself, the maker of heaven and earth, the Father of our Lord, the sovereign One, were to come to you, wrap you in His almighty arms and say to you, “I love you with a perfect love, exactly as I love My Son. I will never stop loving you, no matter what. I am completely, utterly for you. I promise, on My own life, that I will do you good every day of your life. And because I control all things, that means My good is all you will ever experience from this time forward.” What if the Holy Spirit were to say to you, “I am with you wherever you go. I will purify your heart, and fill you with my courage.” Suppose Jesus were to cup your chin in His scar stained hand, look you in the eye and say, “You are My beloved, and I will never forsake you.” Now, would you ever be afraid that He was displeased with you? Would you ever fear the world? Your own flesh? The devil?

Would you, if this had ever happened, ever be dissatisfied? Would you ever lose sleep? Would you ever be short with others? Would envy ever find a toe-hold in you? The truth, the objective, 2+2=4 truth, the “Squirrels have bushy tails” truth is that this is precisely what has happened. These are precisely the present day promises of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only problem is that I’m just crazy enough not to believe these promises.

Which is why I pray. I do not ask that God would do more for me, save that He would help me grasp all that He has already done. I do not ask Him that He would allow me to see the future, but that He would allow me to believe the present. I don’t ask to be made super spiritual. I don’t ask to be a pillar of piety. I don’t ask become an icon of integrity. I only want to be sane, to submit to the blessed reality in which I already live. I only want to believe the One who is the Truth, whose Truth promises to set me free. Pray with, and for me.

Highlands Ministries

Tending Your Tongue

2011-11-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine.

There are probably two reasons why some warnings against some sins are given more often in Scripture than others. First, it may have something to do with the power of a particular temptation. It is certainly a sin to, for instance, put scars all over your body. But God need only say that once in Scripture and that is enough. Not difficult to understand or resist doing, at least for most of us. (Of course, once is enough for any sin.) Conversely, God tells us often to beware the temptation to covet, because it seduces so many of us so often. I’m sure I don’t need to give examples here. The second reason some sins carry more warnings in scripture may be the damage that comes from those particular sins. Adultery isn’t simply a matter of hurting the feelings of the offended spouse (though surely there is nothing simple or light about that); it sprouts all manner of other evil. Therefore, God speaks about adultery often.

How often does God warn us against the sins of the tongue, especially us ladies, and especially referring to gossip? If we would beat this sin, we must face the truth that we are given to it. Perhaps it would help if we understand why. Women tend to be more relational, which means in part that we are interested in how other people are relating to each other. If, for instance, Mr. and Mrs. Jones are late for a dinner date with us, and we learn that they had a flat tire on the way, I would wonder how frustrated each of them must have been, since I already knew Mrs. Jones had had a difficult day at home. R.C., on the other hand, might wonder about what kind of jack the Joneses have in their car, and where they might get the best deal on a new tire. He’s like that.

This relational bent that we ladies have may be exacerbated (read: elevated to the nth degree) by our calling to be keepers at home. That is, because we are still somewhat worldly, we feel that we are missing out on what is happening out in the world (or in our friends’ kitchens and on their porches, etc.) What is happening, I hope, is that our children are being fed and directed in the ways of the Lord and that we are showing hospitality to family and God’s people. One of RC’s frustrations is that when he comes home tired and wanting rest, I can’t wait to hear what’s going on, "out there." Did you see so-and-so? What did they say? How is so and so feeling? Anything happening with their house?

The solution, as with much of our lives, is that we would learn to tend our gardens. That doesn’t mean we don’t care for and pray for others and their needs. We just don’t have our world revolving around ‘news.’ We don’t need to be the first one to share information with others, convincing ourselves it’s so that others can pray. Encouragement to pray is a good thing. Needing to be the one in the know that tells everyone else is not. And if that regularly describes us, I don’t see how we would have the time to be doing the things we should.

I need to know – do I need to know this information? This applies whether I am interrogating my husband for information or talking over the backyard fence with coffee cup in hand. I need to not only not start gossip, I need to know how to stop it. I hate the idea of embarrassing anyone, just as I hate the idea of being embarrassed. But might we not help each other beat this sin if we make it our habit to politely ask each other, “Do I need to know this?” “Is this my business or would it just be interesting to hear?” I’m not saying we can’t pass along happy news. Part of the question ought to be, “Would I say this in this way if the person involved were actually in the room listening?”

We need to remember, in this age of exalting information, that we don’t need information, we need sanctification. It’s not going to help me in having a gentle and quiet spirit to know that Suzy had her nails done yesterday or that Rachel’s new car cost how much?!! Insignificant information is not going to help me help my children pursue godliness. Also, I don’t know about you, but I believe that adage about losing brain cells with each pregnancy. I can’t afford anymore to fill my head with information that doesn’t concern me. Anytime I’m tempted to listen to something I shouldn’t, I should remember what we tell our children when they’re being nosy about their siblings’ business: it’s not your concern. We’ve taught them that so well that when one asks why another one was disciplined, at least one of them will say to the questioner, “Not your concern.” Period. End of story. I should strive to be that cut-and-dried about my own need to know. We need to hunger to grow in grace, not to grow in being in the know.

And as always, we need to remember that there is one who not only knows everything, but knows us as well. We need to rest in His sovereignty, knowing that He works all things for His good pleasure. He will tend those things that are not in our gardens, because everything is His garden. He may use our prayers as a means to certain ends, but He will do just fine without our meddling. The world won’t collapse if we don’t know certain things. And we need to know that He loves us, that there is our peace, our security and our adventure. Stop looking ‘out there’ for those things that only He can give. We need to learn and remember this over and over again until we know it in full. That’s one of the most important things we should seek to know.

By Denise Sproul

Diagnosing Diagnostics

2011-11-03T06:10:00.000-07:00

When you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. In like manner, when you have a wrench everything looks like a bolt. Any given tool empowers us and tempts us. It makes easier the task for which the tool was designed, while tempting us to think that every problem will be solved by it, every question answered by it.

The computer is quite adept at, well, computing. The advent of the internet, while broadening radically how we use our computers, hasn’t changed its capacity for computing. Indeed some of the niftiest tricks our computers/web surfboards can do is compute our own surfing style, and the surfing habits of others. I suspect that blogs would never have taken off were it not for sundry attached diagnostic tools. Facebook, likewise, is powered more by the like button, and the size of our friends list than what it actually communicates. What fun is sharing our thoughts with the world unless we can know how many hits, how many “likes” we have had, or where we rank in the polls down at Wordpress? Are we prompted to get busy and save the world from errant teacher X through our Discernment Ministry blog when we see people are checking in from Montana, Monterey and Mozambique? Soon enough our message is being driven by the numbers, just like the message of that slick, worldly preacher we’re faithfully seeking to take down.

One need not, however, have the Grinch-sized heart of the attack blogger to fall into this fallacy. We are all tempted to measure our success by tangible numbers, both individually and corporately. Just today I read a headline that noted that Bible apps, in all their iterations, are now being downloaded more frequently than Angry Birds. I’m sure that’s a good thing. I’m just not sure how good a thing that is. It may well be that the best thing about it is that people are finally getting tired of Angry Birds. That the Bible has topped it, however, means about as much as the certain truth more homes have Bibles in them than Cabbage Patch dolls. It does tell us something about our spiritual state. But I’m not sure it’s good news.

First, the giddy celebration that “we” beat Angry Birds betrays a profoundly unhealthy and a-historical understanding of the church. We’re not in a race with any software, any technology, or any fad. To even acknowledge such a “competition” is to lose. We celebrate the faith once delivered. Jesus isn’t the newest kid on the block, here to topple Justin Bieber from his throne. He is the Ancient of Days.

Second, the progress of the kingdom, the progress of the sanctification of the church, of the nation, of my family or myself, cannot be measured electronically. Bible downloads isn’t a measure. Bible reading isn’t even a measure. The fruit of the Spirit, that’s the measure. Becoming more like Jesus, that’s the measure. Dying to self, that’s the measure. So far the geniuses down at Google have not come up with a string of algorithms to measure any of those.

Our desire is not that the Bible should topple Angry Birds. Our goal is not that our favorite rock star preacher would trend on twitter. Our hope is the sure and certain truth that our Lord is bringing all things under subjection, is conquering all His enemies, including all the folly that remains within His own. We don’t need diagnostics to know how the story ends- Jesus wins.

www.highlandsministriesonline.org

Ask RC: What is the Regulative Principle of Worship?

2011-11-01T07:18:00.001-07:00

The Regulative Principle of Worship is simple enough. It affirms that Christians ought only to incorporate into their worship those things that God has expressly commanded. The locus classicus for this perspective is Leviticus 10, where Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Levi are struck dead by God for offering “strange fire” before the Lord. The principle is both historical and sound. Its application, however, has often proved to be problematic.

The Bible does indeed give a detailed explanation on exactly how God demands to be worshipped. The challenge is that this explanation is given in the Old Testament, prior to the coming of Christ. The Bible tells us what sacrifices should be brought, how they should be killed, how they should be cut up, how they should be cooked, and who should eat what. In the New Testament all we have are scattered mentions of what the saints actually did when they gathered together.

Because we rightly affirm that Jesus was the once for all sacrifice, and to go back to the shadows would be to deny His coming (see the book of Hebrews), we are left in something of a pickle. We can’t follow the Old Testament requirements, and the New Testament doesn’t contain a clear order of worship. Some solve the dilemma by building what might be called a Frankenstein model of worship. Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, a part of the service is taken from here (where the saints are said to take up a collection) another part from this other text (where they saints are said to celebrate the Lord’s Supper), and still another from this third place, where we see preaching going on.

This patchwork approach, for all there is to commend it, has a few disadvantages. First, like Frankenstein’s monster, it is clumsy. There can be precious little beauty and flow from a service of disparate parts forced together. Second, while it happily avoids the bloody shadows of old covenant worship, it lacks the unifying theme of the sacrifice. Old Testament worship was sacrificial. Though the once for all sacrifice has come, He left us with a fitting ways to remain sacrificial, while not going back to the shadows, while no longer spilling blood- we touch sacrifice when we praise, when we give, and most of all, at the Lord’s Table.

Just as in the Old Covenant, we come to worship because we are called, commanded to appear by the Lord of Hosts. Just as in the Old Covenant we come in ourselves still sinners, and so confess our sins. On this side, however, the sacrifice has already come, and so we who trust in that once for all sacrifice are assured of our pardon. Out of this flows a sacrifice of praise, as we sing the glory of the Redeemer. Having been redeemed, we are in need of direction, instruction from our commander. And so the Word is preached. Just as in the Old Covenant we respond with sacrifice, standing to return to God His tithe, not because the tenth is His, but because all that we have, and all that we are are His. We respond to the call of His sermon with “Here I am. Send me.”

And then He feeds us. Then we share the fellowship meal, wherein we are welcomed to His table, not as soldiers, but as friends. Not as servants, but as children. Finally, just as in the Old Covenant He pronounces His blessing on us, and we depart to make known His reign, until we can come again. Here then we dance, we feast, just as we will at the marriage feast of the lamb.

The Regulative Principle of Worship is a wonderful gift from our fathers. We need to remember, however, that our fathers include not just the Puritans, but Calvin and Luther, as well as Aaron and Levi.

I Wish Those Days Would Come Back Once More

2011-10-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

What a strange and wonderful providence that this machine that sits on my lap, that is capable of astounding wonders, that employs the latest and greatest of technology and design spends most of its energy as a “Way Back” machine. Sure, I write things, I edit things; I study things with my laptop. But the one app that is operating more than any other is iTunes, playing music from my childhood. Here’s a little playlist confession- when I booted up this morning iTunes started with Stevie Wonder’s hit for which this piece is named, followed by the Four Tops ode to my beloved bride, “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I Got.”

There are, I believe, two great triggers to nostalgia, music and smell. The two come together sometimes for me. If I listen to a few Nickel Creek songs in row, or a certain Alison Krauss album suddenly I detect the scent of my own previous chemo. When I went through Hodgkins lymphoma five years ago Alison and Nickel Creek were on constant rotation.

In like manner nostalgia and music come together when Stevie Wonder sings of the glory of the days of his own youth. One would think, based on our adult obsessions, that what we long for from our youth is health and beauty. I would dearly love to have again a thick head of hair, and would love to be able to run about a soccer field for hours at a time again. What I suspect we miss more, however, is innocence.

I remain committed to the biblical doctrine of total depravity. That doctrine applies to children, babies, even unborn babies. We are all sinners, every one. We all stand guilty before the judgment seat of God. The innocence of youth then isn’t a lack of sin and guilt. It is instead a relative ignorance of that sin and guilt in ourselves and in others. When we were young we didn’t yet know how stained our souls already were. We didn’t know all that we were capable of. We didn’t have a long string of spiritual failures behind us. Nor had we yet, for the most part, experienced the great evils others would pour out on us.

An old friend, who sadly, several years ago, had been excommunicated from the church where I served for many years, made the news recently. With no one closing in on him he went to the police to confess to sexually molesting a mentally handicapped sixteen year old girl. As the father of a fourteen year old mentally handicapped girl I am peculiarly angry. As a sinner my heart breaks for both of them, and for the same reason, she for coming to know how evil and cruel men can be, he for coming to know what an evil and cruel man he is. This is how bad we can become, proving depravity isn’t a doctrine but the very font of evil in the world.

When we were young, unless we had been victimized, we didn’t even know such things could ever happen. When we grow older, one way or another this perversion, or alcoholism, or spousal abuse, or abortion, sooner or later touches us all. And we wish we could go back. We long to again be innocent, like a child.

As I sit with my suffering wife as she battles leukemia I have two great comforts. First, Jesus has gone before her. There is no suffering we can experience that He did not experience before us. Second, because He suffered, those days will indeed come back once more. The specter of death that haunts us wears a leash. Jesus has conquered the Grim Reaper, and so his bloody scythe is the very chariot that carries us home. When we are home we will know sin no more. We will be children again. We stand innocent, in Christ, before His judgment seat now. But then we will be innocent in ourselves. Then we will be back in the Garden, to stay. Those days, for we who are in Christ, are coming again.

Highlands Ministries

Ask RC: Is a Christian school a better or worse choice than homeschooling?

2011-10-25T08:12:00.001-07:00

I am, and have been for decades, a strong advocate of homeschooling. The key reason for that is my conviction no child can be properly educated unless they are taught day in and day out the Lordship of Christ over all things. This, of course, is not possible in the public schools that are by law and conviction secular, no matter how many godly teachers and administrators a local school might have.

I have a friend who is rather well know in classical Christian school circles. His conviction is that homeschooling is the best choice for those who don’t have access to a classical Christian school. When one gentlemen sought to get my friend and me into a scuffle over that conviction I told my friend, “When we can get Christian children out of the public schools (roughly eighty percent of evangelical parents send their children to the secular public schools) then we can have a fight over homeschooling versus Christian schooling.” In short, the real issue is the secular perspective of the public schools, more than the methodology of homeschooling versus Christian schooling. I am in favor of, I happily support any educational approach wherein the name of Jesus can be proclaimed at all times.

Within that broad paradigm, unlike my friend in the classical, Christian school movement, however, I am persuaded that homeschooling is the better choice. Not the only possible or proper choice, but the better choice. Here are three simple reasons:

First, God commands that parents teach their children the things of God “when they lie down, when they rise up, when the walk by the way” Deuteronomy 6). When God gives me a job to do I’m not comfortable delegating it to someone else. God could have said, “See to it that someone talks to them of these things…” but He didn’t. I suspect He may have told us to do it because one thing you can’t delegate is learning. Parents learn a great deal through the process of teaching. We, the parents, more faithfully remember the Lordship of Christ as we more faithfully teach the same to our children.

Second, schools tend to promote peer identity. By having children segregated all day every day by age we encourage our children to see themselves not as servants of the King, not as members of their families, but as part of a particular demographic group, with its own dialect, music, style, even ethic. When God mentions age groups He calls for them to come together, not to be separated (see Titus.) Some Christian schools combat this tendency better than others, and no doubt some homeschooling families fall into the same temptation. Overall, however, this problem is far more likely to rear its ugly head in a school setting.

Third, homeschooling allows for far greater liberty. While I might be able to find a Christian school that shares many of my convictions, when I am the teacher I can teach my children all that I believe the Bible teaches. In addition, as a homeschooler my schedule is not set by a larger institution that must take into account the wants and needs of multiple families.

Finally, one bonus reason- we just love doing this. My children delight to have their mom and dad as their teachers, and we delight to have them as our students, to disciple them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We love to be with them, and they with us. We are having way yonder too much fun.

Come as You Aren't

2011-10-21T06:09:00.001-07:00

Too many conversations are far too predictable. Praise the sovereignty of God in salvation and someone will inevitably remind you that God didn’t make robots. You will then remind said friend that dead people are passive people, only to be reminded that God is not willing that any should perish. Warn against the dangers of too much wine, and someone will in turn present the biblical praises for wine, and before long in the back and forth you can count on someone pointing out that sometimes oinos means grape juice. As soon as the conversation begins we know how it will end.

It is the habit of my family to dress for church. I have, on more than one occasion, argued in print that we casually worship a casual god because we enter into his presence casually. I have suggested that on the Lord’s Day we should dress as if we were going to meet the King, because we are going to meet the King. I know, from experience, that it won’t take long for someone to point out the obvious, that God looks not at the outward, but at the heart.

This nugget of wisdom is designed to make us comfortable, even in our comfortable clothes. The implicit message is Jesus doesn’t care what you wear, because He can see what a wonderful person you are. Unlike the modern day Pharisees who are always judging people, Jesus has the insight to really understand you. It is true enough that Jesus is far more concerned with what is in our heart than He is with what is on our backs. It is likewise true that Jesus knows exactly what is in our hearts. What confuses me, however, is how this is supposed to comfort me. Would I rather have Jesus judge me on the basis of my recently dry-cleaned suit, my well ironed dress shirt, and my just-so necktie, or would I rather He judge me on the basis of my desperately wicked, self-deceiving, black as ink heart?

What our “Come as you are” dress says about us is that we are meeting a “Come as you are” god. But if we come as we are, because of what we are, we are walking straight into the wrath of God; we are walking straight into hell. The God we worship is not a come as you are god. He is instead the true and living God who cannot even look upon sin. He is a consuming fire, who insists above all else that He be treated as holy.

The glory of the gospel is that God isn’t looking at my clothes when I come to worship. Whether I am dressed to the nines or dressed in flip-flops, He isn’t looking at my clothes. He is, however, looking at what I am wearing. And praise God what I’m wearing not only covers my body, but covers my heart as well. What I wear to worship is what I wear the rest of the week. I do not come dressed for a formal dance. I do not come dressed for a picnic on the beach. I come instead dressed like royalty. I come dressed like a prince. For I wear the righteousness of the Son of God. I do not come as I am. I come as I AM is.

2011-10-19T06:02:00.001-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine

All Quiet On the Western Front

It probably says more about what defines our moments, the television, than the moments themselves, that we keep multiplying defining moments. For my parents’ generation, it was the death of John F. Kennedy. Everyone remembers where they first heard, or more likely saw, the news. Since that time we have added a moon landing or three, two shuttle disasters, and 9/11. We no longer can be certain what will follow, “Do you remember where you were when you first heard…” I was not yet among the living when JFK died, and was barely four when Neil Armstrong took his small step. But the rest of them I remember not only the events, but where I was for each of them.

Each of these events, however, was more startling than shocking. That is, while we weren’t expecting these things to happen, neither were we thinking, “It will never happen.” Presidents have been killed before, and technological marvels, and failures, are virtually a staple of American life. What truly shocked me, on the other hand, was the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and all that it symbolized, the collapse of the Soviet Union. There we had the curious marriage of both bang and whimper. The speed was bang-like. The events themselves were but a whimper.

Because we are such an a-historical people, we tend to forget that empires come and go. Greece and Rome, because they were both so long ago and so long lasting, are given virtual immortal status. Because we can still find Greece and Rome on a map, we think they’re still with us. The Ottoman Empire, along with the sundry dynasties of China, are just too far east to really count. What we are left with then is the Soviet Empire, and the American Empire. As a child of the Cold War, this was the very air that I breathed, the very water in which I was swimming. Until we woke up one day to discover that the evil empire was no more. We watched the hammer and sickle brought down as hammers and chisels chipped away at that wall. And like the good Americans we are we thought, “Wow, I wonder what those little pieces of the wall will sell for?”

We tend to make one of two mistakes in contemplating our corporate cultural future. For a small few of us, being hip to the rickety nature of our economy, and understanding something of the destructive power of the state, and perhaps even hoping that those who reject the wisdom we have to offer will get their comeuppance, and who ironically have an optimistic view of the long term future, we lean toward Chicken Little. In the 1970’s we were certain that inflation would destroy us. In the 1980’s, we learned to fear AIDS. Then in the 1990’s we feared a far more deadly virus, the millennium bug. Yet here we are, still alive while waiting for the Muslims to overrun us. And with our president’s fiscal policies, the ghosts of phantoms past haunt us again.

The other mistake is more common. When I was busy warning folks (with all due decorum and hedging) about the potential dangers that came with the turning of the clock a few years ago the strangest objection I heard was this, “Don’t you believe in the sovereignty of God?” The unspoken assumption there corporately is the same one that messes us up individually. God is in control. Everything is supposed to be comfortable for me. Therefore nothing bad will happen. Well, there is a difference. It is true for the Christian that God is in control, and that nothing bad will happen to the Christian, understanding that “Bad” should be defined as anything that isn’t helpful in the believer’s sanctification. Comfortable is another matter altogether. But when it comes to this nation, things are different. God is in control still. But everything isn’t supposed to be comfortable for this nation. And of course bad things can happen here.

With both of these mistakes, however, comes a third mistake. Whether you are waiting for judgment, or are sure it will never come, in both circumstances what you have missed is the judgment that has come and continues to come every day. What might cultural judgment look like? Would it look like growing sexual insanity as described in Romans 1? Would it look like a culture where thousands of people each year are murdered by their neighbors? Would a culture under judgment be one where tens of thousands of people each year take their own lives? Would it look like a culture where over a million moms murder over a million babies every year? We keep waiting for God to judge us for these things, and miss the obvious truth, that these things are His judgment against us.

That the economy continues to teeter along, that foreign powers do not rule within our borders, that you can still go out and enjoy a fine meal and a play in turn isn’t a mitigating of the judgment, but an exacerbating of the judgment. Because He has not yet chosen to topple our idols we are fooled into thinking we’ve avoided His judgment, and so we continue down the path of destruction. We miss the opportunity to repent, and that is judgment at its most severe.

When He was but a boy, Jesus performed the first anti-exodus. God’s people had sinned so deeply, that the only safe place for the boy was in the nation of Egypt. Then He returned, and over the next sixty years or so systematically drove out the children of Israel, just as they once drove out the Canaanites. The world was turned upside down. In like manner, not long after the demise of the evil empire, where do we find ourselves, but at home and at peace in the evil empire? We now impose our will not over a few satellite nations in Eastern Europe, but over the whole of the Middle East. We now impose our own cultural decadence on nations that haven’t bowed the knee to our particular utopian scheme. They spread communism, while we spread consumerism. Which is more dangerous to the soul?

Judgment has come. Judgment is here. And judgment will come. The only escape is repentance, recognizing that we are Egypt, a stubborn and foolish nation of hardened hearts.

.

Patience, NOW

2011-10-18T05:51:00.001-07:00

Patience, right now, is in short supply. As so many have been faithful to pray for my wife’s health, and for the emotional weight on the rest of the family, I find my own peculiar weaknesses growing worse. My fuse, which in the best of times is measured in inches rather than yards has gone metric, and is now measured in millimeters. I have a house full of eight children whose lives have been turned upside down. They are struggling with fear and uncertainty, but most of all they miss their mom. They aren’t thinking, “Wow, this must really be hard on dad. We will bend over backwards to make this difficult time for him easier. We will play quietly, get along like angels and put away our toys the moment we finish with them.” No, they’re thinking, “Our lives are being turned upside down. And to top it all off, Dad’s fuse has shrunk to a new low.” Which is a decent approximation of what I’m thinking. Someone needs to find more patience, and as strange as it may seem to me, I am the most likely candidate.

Patience, I believe, comes with self-awareness. That is I will be more gracious toward the hardships of others as I note how hard the hardships are for me. The very shrinkage of my fuse is a clue to tell me why my almost two- year old keeps having these fingernails-on-a-chalkboard meltdowns. Moments ago he was in his highchair, well equipped. Dry pants- check. Milk cup- check. Delicious quiche made by friends- check. So why was he crying, screeching, skipping rope on my last nerve?

The devil had a good laugh at my expense. I responded with all the grace of a Steeler linebacker. I told the crying toddler through clenched teeth, smoke streaming out of my ears, to quit the crying, and now. I gruffly filled his mouth with quiche, and that, of course, calmed him right down. He saw that he was in sin, and contrite, became as quiet as a church mouse and spoke his first complete sentence- Thank you father for the delicious breakfast, ever so sorry to be troubling you with my crying. Will try harder. Pip pip.

Well, no, that’s not what happened. Instead Donovan looked deep into his reserves and found the strength to cry harder, despite a mouthful of quiche. Now what? How can I possibly fix this? And that’s when the Holy Spirit stopped the braying laughter of the serpent. The Spirit reminded me of what we are to do when we sin against a brother. I drew near to my son, and I repented. I asked Donovan, and our Father, to forgive me. It was as if He were trying to teach me something because as soon as I repented, Donovan became quiet.

Repentance, I am persuaded, is good for what ails us. It heals strained relationships. It cultivates patience. It taps into the infinite strength of God most high. It teaches me who I am, not the helpless victim of a crying toddler, but the source of the crying of my child, a helpless victim of an impatient father. God have mercy on my children.

Ask RC: Is it a sin to celebrate Halloween?

2011-10-17T08:03:00.001-07:00

I don’t know. And what’s more, I don’t care. First let me quickly deal with I don’t know, before moving on to the far more significant I don’t care.

The Bible does not say, “Thou shalt not celebrate Halloween.” It certainly doesn’t say, “Though shalt not dress thy little girl as a princess, walk with her through the neighborhood and collect tasty treats.” It does, however, far more than we Christians, take very seriously the supernatural realm. When God established Israel He commanded that witches there be put to death. The same for necromancers. He understood that these are not games to play with, but deadly serious matters. To the extent that celebrating Halloween means playing fast and loose with such things, I would strongly discourage it. That said, even if we confess that this was its origins, it still doesn’t mean dress up and candy are sins. As long as we stay clear of the macabre, I’d argue it’s a meat offered to idols issue. If your conscience is troubled, steer clear. If not, I won’t fuss at you about it.

That said, this is a question I’m not in the least concerned to answer. In my family this is a non-issue. We do not celebrate Halloween, but not because we’re certain doing so is a sin. We don’t celebrate Halloween for this simple reason- because we’re far too busy and far too giddy celebrating something far more significant. No, it’s not a harvest festival. (Indeed I would argue that the sanitized Christian substitute version of Halloween, wherein we call it something else, and dress up as Bible heroes may be the worst possible choice. We copy the ways of the world, badly. It’s the October 31st version of what goes on every Lord’s Day in happy clappy churches, a third rate copy of the world’s inanities.)

We don’t celebrate Halloween because we are too focused on celebrating the Reformation. October 31st marks the anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 these on the church door in Wittenberg. We rejoice that God in His grace emboldened Martin Luther to stand on the promises of God. We give thanks to God for recovering for His people the clarity and simplicity of how we might have peace with Him through the finished work of Jesus Christ. We celebrate the recovery of the Bible as our alone final standard of faith and practice, the ending of the Babylonian captivity of the church. This is not some bland Christian substitute for Halloween. This is the real deal.

Saint Peter Presbyterian Church holds a wonderful three day celebration starting with a bonfire and s’mores party, then a day-long festival, complete with crafts, booths, food, games, contests, the reading of the 95 theses, the retelling of the story of Martin Luther, music and dancing and then a joint worship service on Sunday. The puny and pathetic parties of the world won’t hold a candle to ours. Halloween is a dead issue. The Reformation, that’s life.

Ask RC: What is wrong with the church?

2011-10-14T06:12:00.001-07:00

What is wrong with the church is what is wrong with Christians, sin. Because of our sin, however, we tend to think of sin as something we do, rather than something we are. Because of our sin, in turn, we are more interested in covering our sin than fighting it.

We cover it in at least two ways. The first is misdirection. That is, if we can define sin as that which we are less apt to struggle with, we miss the real problem. So we vow not to drink, smoke or chew and not to go out with girls that do. We behave in nice, respectable ways, and mistake this for growing in grace and wisdom. We show our brothers our sparkly white teeth as if this is how one recognizes a shiny white soul. My business is successful, my wife is happy, my daughter is on the honor roll and my son captains the football team, and because I am a successful American, I must be a faithful Christian.

The second thing we do is baptize our real sins, framing them in the best possible light. Our real problem is our pride, but we call it “protecting our reputation.” Our real problem is our malice, but we call it “zeal for righteousness.” Our real problem is envy, but we call it “encouraging others toward humility.” We devour each other, jockeying for position, hungering for accolades, all under the guise of service to the Suffering Servant.

The bizarre fruit of our sin is that though the church is made up of those who must profess to be humble we are the very picture of pride. We enter in through confessing how utterly unworthy, unable, unattractive we are. We are the body of the base, the weak, the foolish (I Corinthians 1). The very core of our message is, “I can’t possible please God. Only Jesus can do that.” And yet we pretend to do just that, please God, and in pretending gravely displease Him. We cry out to God not to look at us, but to look at Him, then turn around and try to get the body to look at us.

Perhaps worse still, what defines us is that we have precisely what we not just foolishly long for, but what we sinfully pursue. The way in is confessing our unworthiness. But what is on the inside is a banquet feast in our honor. We are the children of God, loved as deeply as He loves Jesus. He is ordering that the robe and the ring be brought forth, that the fatted calf be killed in our honor and we are down at the bunkhouse conniving and backbiting to secure the “Employee of the Month” pin and parking space.

What is wrong with the church? We don’t believe the gospel. We don’t believe that we were dead in our sins, desperately wicked. We don’t believe that He, not we, made us alive, nor that there remains much in us that needs to be put to death. We don’t believe that He suffered the wrath of the Father for us, and that therefore the Father embraces us as His sons. We’re such a mess, there is no program, no book, no preacher, no strategy that can fix us. Only the gospel will do.

Ask RC: How does one learn to suffer well?

2011-10-11T07:57:00.001-07:00

I want to suggest two points that relate directly to suffering, and two that do not. First, you learn to suffer well by watching others suffer well. When we weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn we are not merely offering comfort to others, but are receiving instruction from them as well. We can’t do this, however, unless we enter in. If illness makes us uncomfortable, if we refuse to visit His own who are poor or in prison, if we insist on spending our time exclusively in the village of the happy, pleasant people, we will learn precious little. Visit instead the oppressed outside your local abortion mill. Go where the suffering is, and enter in. God has peculiarly blessed me in giving me a beautiful example to witness in my precious bride. As she is assaulted once again with chemo in an attempt to push back her leukemia relapse I watch her both fight and fear. Through it all, however, there is a bedrock trust in her heavenly Father. Seeing her strength, I am strengthened.

Second, practice. When Denise was first diagnosed with leukemia eight months ago some seemed to fear that after battling breast cancer, after it later metastasized to her back, that her stamina in suffering, and that of our family, might somehow run out, as if God grants us a finite amount of faith, and then bleeds it out through suffering. No. Suffering is like a muscle. The more we use it the stronger it gets. Ironically, each time our family suffers some sort of setback my biggest fear isn’t the setback itself, but wondering, “What future hardship is God trying to get me in shape for?”

The first key to suffering well that isn’t directly related to suffering itself is this- we have to know our Bibles. Because the Bible is the autobiography of God what we find there is God revealed. In His relations with us what stands out most is hesed, the Hebrew term for “loyal love.” When we are steeped in a biblical understanding of these twin truths, that God is all-powerful, and that God loves us unchangeably, we enjoy the peace that passes understanding. When we know our Bibles well we know our purpose isn’t ease and comfort, but to be conformed to the image of the Son, which brings me to the last point.

The second key is to know well Jesus. He, the Bible tells us, is a man well acquainted with sorrow. As we have been dealing with Denise’s battle with her leukemia relapse I am constantly turning back to this precious truth- Jesus was here before me. There is nothing we are going through that He hasn’t been through first. Though the famous Footsteps poem surely has it right, that there is only one set of footsteps because He is carrying us, from another perspective there is only one set of footprints because He is walking in front of us, and we walk in His blood stained footprints. If we know Him, then we know that wherever He goes, we want nothing more than to follow. The Valley of the Shadow of Death is both where He walks and is the very pathway to heaven.

Judging With Charity

2011-10-07T06:47:00.001-07:00

I was scheduled tomorrow to meet with my professor, the man overseeing my Ph.D. studies. He called this evening wanting to know if I wanted to postpone. “That depends,” said I, “on whether you want to yell at me or not for not getting more of my reading done.”” He, gracious man that he is acknowledged, “You have had a lot on your plate lately.”

This same man, from the time I was a boy, has belabored to me the importance of seeking to judge others charitably. Because there is always a speaker and a hearer, and doer and a receiver, because we are all tempted to put ourselves in the best possible light, it is critical, he explained to me as I grew up, that we put ourselves in the other guy’s shoes, and judge what he has said, or done, with the same compassion and understanding with which we judge ourselves.

Which is precisely what he was doing in noting the fullness of my plate. I teach at Reformation Bible College, which while relatively new, is normal for me. I work for Ligonier Ministries and Highlands Ministries, which is normal for me. I am seeking to raise eight children, from 17 to almost 2, which is normal for me. And my wife is in intensive care, fighting for her life against the brutal enemy leukemia. That, of course, is not normal for me.

As we as a family confront this great challenge one of the immediate challenges we face is seeking to keep our lives as normal as possible. My children still have their studies to tend to. I still have students and co-workers that are counting on me. We have soccer matches, piano lessons, hockey games for the children. I still have papers to grade, errands to run, checkbooks to balance, appointments to keep. And we need to visit my dear wife in the hospital not only because it blesses us and her, but because we may not be able to be with her for long.

My professor, who is, of course, also my father and my boss, is well aware of my circumstances. His compassion, which runs deep in ordinary conditions, is more than sufficient for my circumstance. Others, however, do not know. Others grow impatient because I don’t answer their emails quickly enough, because I am not as attentive to their needs as I might normally be, because I am slower to stop and pass the time of day. These, however, if they knew, I am sure would understand.

Which in turn makes me wonder about what I don’t know. How often have I grown irritated with another who is going through a hardship that would immediately douse my frustration, if I only knew about it? We don’t, rightly so, go through our days wearing signs to warn others- “I have been out of work for nine months;” “My husband prefers images of woman on the computer to me;” “My wife is battling an aggressive leukemia.” Without the signs all we are left with is compassion as the default position. Should we not assume the best, especially of our brothers and sisters in the church? Should we not seek to mirror the compassion of Jesus who would not break a bruised reed?

All of us, quite naturally, call for greater compassion when we are the one going through the hardship. How many of us remember, however, to be slow to become angry, when things are going our way? There is a time to stand, to be bold, to call others to account. And then there is most of the time. My hardship is utterly banal. There is nothing new under the sun. Millions of men have found themselves where I now find myself. One Man, however, showed us how to respond. Pray for my wife. Pray for my children. And pray for me, that I would learn grace.

Dust to Dust

2011-10-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine

My father and I agree on many things. There are few we disagree on. But there may be no issue over which we disagree with greater passion than this one- snow. I am not only a pro-snow club member, I am the founder and president of the pro-snow club. I write odes to snow, and fret that they fail to convey the depths of my love. My father, on the other hand, is Mr. Heat Miser, he’s Mr. 101. He literally lives in a land where, each time you step outside, at least nine months of the year, you get this nearly audible message from God, “I did not shape people to live here.” Yet he turns a deaf ear, and continues on his merry way.

I live where we get snow. He lives where there is no snow. But there is another difference as well, more evidence that Florida was not designed for human habitation. If you dig your heel into the ground here, you kick up dirt. If you dig a hole in the ground in Florida, however, before you get down to trowel depth, you will hit sand. And if you can manage to keep the sand in place, and keep digging, all you will find, all the way to China, is more sand. The entire state is nothing more than a sandbar. And imported strips of crab grass sod gently placed on top won’t change that. One could make the case that there are places where there is no snow, that yet make appropriate homes. But you are always far from home when you are far from the dirt.

That we find dirt unpleasant, or even repulsive, is a sign of our sin, our rebellion against our Maker. Christians struggle with the story of Uzzah the Koathite. You remember that when the Philistines sent the Ark of the Covenant back to the people of the covenant, that the priestly line, whose job it was to tend to the sacred things, first failed to obey the law of God. He had given instructions for the transport of the Ark. Those instructions did not include an ox drawn cart. But as the oxen dragged the Ark toward home, one of them stumbled, and it looked as if the ark might fall into the mud. Uzzah, perhaps instinctively, reached out his hand to steady the Ark. God killed him on the spot.

Uzzah’s act demonstrated the twisted hierarchy of the sinful mind. Better, he thought, that the ark should touch a human hand than that it should touch the dirt. The trouble is, Uzzah, like the rest of us, was a sinner. His hand had performed countless acts of rebellion against the God of the Ark. Dirt, on the other hand, has only been obedient, from creation to this day. Every time you take the water out, it becomes dust. Every time you add water, it becomes mud. It obeys God.

That difference, like the differences between my father and me, does not undo the connection, however. The real reason that we cannot be home when we are not near the dirt is because we are dirt. That is, what separates Uzzah from the dirt beneath the Ark is that the dirt is obedient dirt, and Uzzah is rebellious dirt. From dust we were made, and to dust we shall return.

When we come to these biblical truths we show ourselves to be as dumb as dirt. We think, “Oh, this is poetic language.” And then we proceed to ignore the poetry. God is indeed speaking poetically when He tells us, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.” But in saying this God is speaking the truth. We are made of dust. We get our dander up, however, because like Uzzah, we look down our nose at the dirt. We think we’re above the dirt. And in some sense we are. The text goes on to say, “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” “Here,” we say, “is where man’s value comes from. This is where God stamps us with His image. It’s our souls that make us men. Our bodies make us but brutes.” And so we, once again, show ourselves to be the poster children of the Gnostics.

It is true that God has no body. But that doesn’t mean that our bearing His image relates only to our souls. Our bodies show forth His glory. They manifest His beauty. They display His power. All that we are is His image, which means…get ready… God is dirty too.

For the glory of the dirt is in its fecundity, its fertility. There we all twirl together in a living poem, a kaleidoscope of reflective glory- man, woman, dirt, life and God. It is good and right that we should be overawed by the power of God in creation. We ought too to stand in wide eyed wonder as we consider His providence. But it is God’s delight to work through means.

Consider, for instance, what may be my favorite scene in what is my favorite chronicle of Narnia. Digory, Polly, the cabby, his horse, Uncle Andrew and Jadis find themselves in an empty land, “And really it was uncommonly like Nothing. There were no stars. It was so dark that they couldn’t see one another at all and it made no difference whether you kept your eyes shut or open. Under their feet there was a cool, flat something which might have been earth, and was certainly not grass or wood. The air was cold and dry and there was no wind.”

Lewis then begins his description of creation, “In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing…Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes [Digory] almost thought it was coming from the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard…Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. If you had seen or heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that is was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.”

Lewis goes on to describe the creation of the sun, the trees and the grass. Each time the song changes, but the constant refrain is that Aslan’s song brings life. Then we get more clearly to the dirt, “The Lion was singing still. But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we would call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb. It made you want to shout. It made you want to rush at other people and either hug them or fight them…But what the song did to the two humans was nothing compared to what it was doing to the country.

“Can you imagine a stretch of grassy land bubbling like water in a pot? For that is really the best description of what was happening. In all directions it was swelling into humps. They were of different sizes, some no bigger than mole hills, some as big as wheelbarrows, two the size of cottages. And the humps moved and swelled till they burst, and the crumbled earth was poured out of them, and from each hump there came out an animal.”

The dirt in Narnia brought forth life. It was, in fact, so fecund that Lantern Waste is born when the queen hurls a lamp post crossbar leftover from a fracas in London at Aslan. It bounces off His royal snout, and up pops the lantern. Later in the story, Uncle Andrew is buried upside down in the mud. The coins in his pockets fall out, and there grows a tree of silver, and another of gold.

And here, as we do with the poetry of God, we write this off as fantasy. But it must be true. For we live yet under the shadow of the curse. And even now the dirt brings forth abundance. Consider the paper you are holding. It used to be dirt. The seed ate the dirt and grew into a tree. The tree became the paper. Even the ink is the same, processed out of the ground. The computer on which I write was likewise once nothing but dirt. And then there is our food. Productivity, even in our post-industrial age, is the process of taking dirt, and making stuff with it. As such, it is the imitation of God.

Imagine then the power of the dirt in Eden. Then there was no curse. Its abundance makes the astounding productivity of our day appear positively miserly. That superabundance, however, is not only behind us; it is yet before us. For Jesus is redeeming all the earth. He is taking us back to the garden. He will birth a new heavens and a new earth, and there will be no more groaning. Our labors in the dirt are a part of that process. For God, again the great poet, beautifully calls the dirt to call the dirt to productivity, in reflection of His glory.

But we, of course, because we are no longer simple, miss all this. We, like our fathers at Babel, are more impressed with the fire than the dirt the fire cooked for bricks. We are in awe over our technology, and miss the glory of the simplicity of the ground on which we stand. If we were simple, we would, with our brothers the rocks, cry out the glory of the Son of David. If we were only as dumb as dirt, then we would know better our Maker, the Potter.

We are neither separate, because we don’t know where we are connected. We are united Gnostics, with rationalists, with Babel-onians, because we don’t remember that we are sons and daughters of the earth. Like a loose woman, we lose our connections, and start hooking up at random. We miss the beauty of our being, wanting to separate ourselves from ourselves. We are dirt, and so we are beautiful.

We, of course, miss this beauty because we are not deliberate. We are rushed, hasty, thoughtless. We do not take the time to stop and smell the compost that feeds the roses. We foolishly miss the wisdom of our wise Uncle Andrew Lytle who wrote, “It is in fact impossible for any culture to be sound and healthy without a proper respect and proper regard for the soil, no matter how many urban dwellers think that their victuals come from groceries and delicatessens and their milk from tin cans.” While the fools on our left disrespect our mother by worshipping her, we disrespect our mother by dismissing her from our thoughts.

And so we frantically seek to build the kingdom in our back room deals, in our seditious plots to take over the culture that surrounds us. We think we must cut deals with the powers that be, and so miss the power that Is. We want to sit atop our corporate towers, and rule, forgetting that we are already seated in the heavenlies, where no tower can reach us. All the while we are missing what was right under our fingernails. If we would rule the earth, we must simply rule the earth. And we must do it for the everlasting glory of our King, the Rock of our salvation.

Ask RC: Do the Creeds really matter?

2011-10-04T06:17:00.001-07:00

Of course they do. Reformed theology has always held to a balanced view of the value and importance of church history and historical theology. Unlike Rome and eastern Orthodoxy we deny that tradition is a second source of infallible information, or even that church history can give us an infallible understanding of biblical revelation. Contra the Anabaptists, however, we affirm the great import of the wisdom of our fathers. To turn aside from what the church has always taught is fraught with danger. We affirm that God purifies His church in space and time, and that especially the ecumenical creeds can provide for us guidelines for what constitutes orthodoxy.

Consider the doctrine of the Trinity. Even the most ardent defender of the doctrine must confess that the Bible is not crystal clear on the matter. Does that mean, therefore, that we can take it or leave it, nuance it or deny it? Of course not. When the church in history affirms that God is three in person and one in essence, the key issue isn’t whether you are smart enough to come up with another perspective that has some level of plausibility. The issue is whether you are willing to humble yourself before the church, before the bar of history. Are you willing to say, “The church has always affirmed this. The church has always not only denied but condemned the contrary. The church certainly may err. What, though, is the likelihood that I have found wisdom that the church missed from the beginning? If the church has always condemned my position as heresy, how likely is it that they have always been wrong, while I alone am right? “

The creeds are the voice of our fathers. Of course our fathers were not sinless, nor inerrant. But are we more likely to find blessing by honoring them, or by spitting on their graves? Our problem in the contemporary church is that we think we are smarter, more earnest, more missional, more compassionate, more godly than our fathers before us. They got hung up on such petty little things, theological minutia. We, on the other hand, have received a fresh outpouring of the Spirit of broad-mindedness, the Spirit of inclusivity, the Spirit of tolerance.

We have indeed received an outpouring of this spirit. I fear, however, that this spirit did not descend on us from on high, but ascended from the depths to confuse and weaken us. Our fathers in the church gave us a precious inheritance in the creeds. They placed boundary markers around orthodoxy, to keep us from wandering off. Fools that we are, we think ourselves too clever to need such markers, and so move the ancient boundaries. We value not orthodoxy, but effectiveness. We value not honoring the dead, but seducing the living. And any man who can do that well, well, we can obviously learn a great deal from him.

The church’s very first creed was its most basic- Christ is Lord. As Lord, He commands that we honor our fathers, that it would go well for us in the land He has given us. Our fathers taught us that God is one in essence and three in person. We honor God as we honor them.

Ask RC: Since God doesn’t change, why does His law change?

2011-09-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

His law doesn’t change. The application of it does. Theologians wisely distinguish between natural law and positive law. This distinction, however, must be distinguished from natural law and revealed law. The latter distinction separates what we learn about God’s law from the created order, and what we learn from His Word. The former, however, distinguishes between the underlying, unchangeable principles, inherent in the nature of things, and the specific purposes of a particular law.

The most common example is the Old Testament requirement that one build a fence around one’s roof. Do we still have the requirement? Is the American church under a cloud of judgment for not obeying this law? By no means This is positive law. The natural law is broader- do not put your guests or visitors in danger. In Old Testament Israel the roofs of homes were places for social gatherings. In America that is generally not the case. The consistent law, the principle underlying the specific, the natural law may have as its application here, put a fence around your swimming pool so no one accidentally falls in a drowns. We still are required to pursue the safety of those on our property.

The ceremonial laws are much the same. God told the children of Israel to sacrifice lambs on Passover, so that they would remember God’s deliverance and look to the coming of the Lamb of God. When that Lamb came, the call to remember abides; the natural law does not change. The positive law now changes, such that we remember the once for all coming of the Lamb and His deliverance of us through the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Table.

Under the same heading, the kosher laws follow the same pattern. The positive law said, “Don’t eat the pork.” The natural law said, “Be a set apart and distinct people for Me.” In the new covenant the positive law finds its expression not in our diet, but in our love one for another. The borders of our commonwealth are determined by the faith once delivered, not a blood line that traces back to Abraham. We are still called to be a set apart people, but what sets us apart is what makes us a people, our dependence on the finished work of Christ.

The distinction between positive and natural law, of course, is not always easy to make. We are not free to simply dismiss the outward at will. Consider Nadad and Abihu who apparently thought positive law was this kind of fire and natural law was just fire. Things did not go well for them. One way we can know the difference, however, is when the Bible itself calls for the change. Jesus said the bread was His body broken, the wine the cup of the New Covenant. Jesus told Peter to eat the pork. This is the same Jesus who told us that not one jot or tittle would pass away from the law. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. His natural law reflects not only the nature of things, but His own unchanging nature. Circumstances may change. Our Lord does not. Neither then does our obligation to obey whatsoever He commands.

A Fool Load

2011-09-28T06:41:00.001-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine.

Tell you a little story and it won’t take long
About a lazy farmer who wouldn’t hoe his corn.
The reason why I never could tell
For that young man was always well.

He planted his corn in the month of June
By July it was up to his eyes
Come September came a big frost
All that young man’s corn was lost.

Everybody’s busy. Or so everybody would have us believe. We parade our crowded daytimers as evidence of our own significance. We not only schedule every moment of our day, but, in case someone interrupts our plans, we have phones that take more than one call at a time. Even when we relax we have picture-in-picture, so we can watch two shows at once. I don’t know whether it was Locke or Berkeley, but one of them suggested, esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived. In our day we begin with esse est esse on TV, to be is to be on TV. But for those who can’t reach such Olympian heights, to be perceived as busy is to be perceived as being important.

Busy, like wealth, however, is a relative term. My old friend Eddy used to marvel that I took a full load at seminary, while working a full time job. What he didn’t realize was that I had studied rather much of what was covered in seminary when I wasn’t busy, before seminary, as a teenager. Nor did he understand that once I took, “Lounge around the pool reading People magazine” out of my schedule, I had plenty of time. We feel poor because we fail to be grateful for what we have. And we feel busy because we fail to be grateful for what we’re able to do. We lounge in our hot showers feeling cheated because we can’t eat at the nicer restaurants in town, and we lounge in that same hot shower thinking about how busy we are.

Our longing for wealth and busy-ness shares a common root. We long to feel important. As one wise man put it, we hunger for significance. The problem is, we measure such things with the wrong tools. If I spend the rest of my life writing best-selling books, and speaking to tens of thousands of people at conferences, such an impact, though perhaps real, will not equal the impact I have now in raising my children. The impact will not match the impact you have in raising your children. (And again, remember that such is true not because if you raise your children right then they will go forth and write best-sellers or pastor mega-churches, or take back the Ivy League schools. but because they in turn will raise godly seed.) The trouble is, while Americans have Oscar parties, while they gather together to watch the Super Bowl, while they chart the progress to the Final Four, no one pays much attention when we raise our children well. There are no award shows complete with red carpets for raising godly seed. Nope, all we get is a throne in heaven and gold paved streets.

We suffer from the folly of Lot. He had received God’s richest blessing, and then got confused over what that blessing was. By living in close proximity to Abraham, Lot drank deeply from the collateral benefits that came his way. His flocks prospered. He had an increasing number of servants to tend those flocks. But those servants found themselves at odds with Abram’s servants, and Lot chose the lot next to the heathen. He thought the wealth came from him. He thought the combination of his shrewd business sense, his eye for fine grazing land, and his hard work was the source of his prosperity. He, no doubt, mentally shook his head at his uncle’s failure to negotiate wisely when Abraham offered Lot the pick of the land. Proudly then he surveyed all that was before him, and chose the green place, conveniently overlooking the rainbow triangle flag flying over the adjacent town. He noticed, no doubt, the lovely window treatments on the homes, but apparently didn’t notice that Sodom’s birthrate was 0%.

I’m not denying, especially in this issue on laziness and diligence, that God works through means. Rather I want to affirm that while God was the source of Lot’s prosperity, the means He worked through wasn’t Lot’s hard work. Instead it was the character of his uncle. But more important still, it was the very wisdom of his uncle that was the wealth. What made Lot a rich man wasn’t flocks and herds, nor South Beach property, but that his uncle was a man of wisdom and character. What made Lot a poor fool wasn’t that he failed to tend his flocks, but that he failed to tend his soul.

Here too we have to see the connection between first and second causes, between means and ends. What we call laziness, and aversion to working, a reluctance to hoe corn, is not the root of the problem but the fruit of the problem. It’s a noxious weed that grows in the garden of those who will not cultivate the fruit of the spirit. In short, let me say it in both gnostic and agrarian terms- the measure of the man is found not in the size of his silos, but in the yield of his heart. And the fruit of that fruit isn’t barns filled to overflowing, but barns filled to overflowing. That is, a godly man manifests his godliness in raising godly seed.

Here is a great paradox- Jesus taught in paradox, He twisted words that we might see reality, not because we are twisted, but because reality is. Lose your life to gain, be last to be first, die that you might live isn’t a literary technique, but the substance of reality. Which is why we here argue that we conquer by retreat, that we save the watching world by turning our attention, paradoxically, on ourselves.

C.S. Lewis got at this point (actually, I think, in one place or another, he alluded to virtually every point there is to make) in The Screwtape Letters. There Screwtape encouraged Wormwood to encourage his charge to think in grand categories, and to fail to think in the small. A man who can taste the heady draught of a “love for humanity” but can’t force himself to love his neighbor in the pew has already lost the battle. Cultivating a love for humanity, however, is like growing plastic fruit. One need not worry about root rot or bugs, and one can display the “fruit” of one’s labors, but the real deal isn’t there. But Lewis missed an even bigger point. It isn’t enough for the wise man to move his gaze from the amorphous humanity to the neighbor in the pew. If he would do better still, he must turn his gaze inward. What he should be looking to, if he would love both his pew neighbor, and the body of Christ around the globe, is his own soul. The only way to be outward looking, in other words, is to look inward.

Of course there is a deadly and deadening navel gazing. Analysis paralysis is not what I’m calling for. It wouldn’t have done the lazy farmer any good had he, instead of frequenting the parties in the surrounding culture, instead stood in the midst of his growing corn just to look at it. No, we look to ourselves that we might be at work in ourselves. We look inward because what the world needs now isn’t simply one less sinner, but one less sin. The kingdom grows not through, but as we put to death the old man, as we put on Christ.

But there is still another layer of paradox, because, paradoxically, not only does Jesus work through paradox, but so must the devil. We lose our lives when we seek to save them; we become last when we seek to be first. In like manner, the devil is about the business of lulling us to sleep, or encouraging our spiritual sloth. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands, and we are as unconscious as the foolish virgins. The rest he seduces us with, however, is nothing but slave labor. When we are not diligent about the business of bearing much fruit, we are instead busy either making excuses, or pushing rocks up Sisyphusian hills. Changing the world is chasing after the wind. Changing ourselves, in and through the means of grace appointed, is running the race. The devil, who is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field, seduces us into waiting for that beast in the jungle, that one glorious moment of opportunity, where we will usher in the kingdom with our devastating argument, our best-selling book, our cinematic triumph, our Christian president. Meanwhile, the beast is at work in our hearts, where the real battle is, where he turns our gardens into jungles.

You see it in the earnest youth who asks, “What is God’s will for my life?” I’ve been asked this question as if I’m the recruiter down at the Lord’s army. My questioner wants to know will he have the Ranger style glamour of overseas missions in a hostile land? Will he be drafted to be a culture maker, through music, or through growing a para-church ministry for deep pocketed businessmen, I mean, people of influence? Will he be called to be a prestigious professor at the war college, training up future pastors? The answer is surprisingly simple. What is God’s will for your life? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. You don’t have to go to seminary to do that. You don’t have, strangely enough, get to wail on a guitar in front of thousands of adoring fans. You don’t have to wear a power tie and listen to increasing your vocabulary tapes to reach the powerful. All you have to do is…work.

The battle for the kingdom is not some grand version of capture the flag. Jesus doesn’t call us to some colossal game of king of the hill wherein we join the hordes out there trying to climb the mountain to wield the levers of culture. What separates us from the world isn’t simply that we are better at operating the levers, but that we understand that the only way to get the levers is to stop clamoring for them, that the only way to change the world is to change ourselves. That culture making power comes through private prayer, and the foolishness of preaching. We are separate in that the weapons of our warfare aren’t rocket launchers and WMD’s, but one simple stumbling block, the cross of Jesus Christ. What will tear down the gates of hell will not be a frontal assault with a battering ram, but the slow and steady work of fruit producing branches from the one true vine. We don’t, after all, separate because we don’t care about the world, but because we do.

Here is something simple, something separate that we can all do- let us be deliberate in seeking the fruit of the Spirit. Should we not, each morning when we wake, recognize that our calling for that day is to grow in grace, to, to use an inorganic idiom, become more sanctified? There is no program. There is no study guide. There is none of these things, on purpose, deliberately. All there is is “Abide in Me.” Before we dicker over what this means for the objectivity of the covenant, before we wrestle with or against the angels over perseverance of the saints, let’s remember what we know- we are to bear fruit. The answer to “Abide” is found in “Me.”

For therein is His glory. A certain farmer when out to sow. But this farmer scattered no seed on the rocky ground. This farmer, the one whom Mary “mistook” for the gardener, has promised that having begun a good work in us, He will complete it until the end. The great thing about the call to cultivate fruit is that we are the fruit that He is cultivating. The great thing about the call to working out our own salvation in fear and in trembling is that it is He that is working in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. As we work in all diligence, we rest in the arms of Jesus. And one day, all His bundles will bow, in joy, before Him.

Compromising Positions

2011-09-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

It is surely possible for different people to share the same goals, but to employ different strategies. What I am increasingly seeing, however, is how easy it is for strategies and goals to meld together. We all want, I trust, to grow in grace and wisdom, to bear the fruit of the Spirit. We can all agree also, I trust, that careful study of theology can be used as a means to that end, a strategy if you will. What if, however, the strategy and the goal get so entwined that we end up measuring our spiritual maturity not by the standard of godliness, but by the standard of our libraries?

I first noticed this shift in the pro-life movement. Everyone, presumably, wants the babies to be protected. Along the way some have adopted what might be called an incrementalist strategy- we work on stopping the most heinous abortions, and eventually move on to the “exceptions.” For a time that meant pro-lifers were encouraged to support both legislation and candidates that allowed for these exceptions. What totally flummoxed me, however, was in 2000, when the National Right to Life Committee not only encouraged us to vote for George W. Bush, but bestowed on him the title “Pro-Life.” This for a man who expressly, straightforwardly affirmed his conviction that the federal government ought to protect the “right” of doctors and mothers to murder babies conceived in the process of rape or incest. This is the “pro-life” candidate that evangelicals and pro-lifers voted for in droves.

More recently we have seen whole swaths of the “pro-life” movement embracing and laboring for informed consent laws, waiting periods, and clinic regulations- all bits of legislation that conclude, after every hurdle has been jumped- “and then you can kill the baby.” After nearly forty years of this “strategy” we have sunk to crafting, lobbying for and electing officials in support of legislation on how, when and where babies can be murdered. We have confused our strategy and our goal.

All of which tells us how important goals are, and how dangerous strategies can be. My goal with respect to me is that I would become a more godly man, that I would more faithfully obey the law and more joyfully embrace the grace of God. On the life issue the goal isn’t to limit the availability of abortions, nor reduce the number of circumstances in which they might take place. The goal isn’t even that the sanctity of life would be more widely recognized, nor that more babies would be saved. The goal is that God would be honored, in the faithfulness of His people, and in the protecting of His image bearers. Life is not sacred. God is sacred.

There are, happily, a growing number of pro-lifers who understand this principle. My friend Daniel Becker, of the Georgia State Right-To-Life (grtl.org) gets it. The American Right to Life group in Colorado, americanrtl.org, understands it. And God is blessing their faithful efforts. They have learned what Joshua learned outside the walls of Jericho- we don’t seek to enlist God on our side. Instead we seek to serve Him, the Captain of the Lord’s Hosts. Our calling is to fidelity. He will bring the victory. May we go forth into this battle, as with every battle, not following our strategies, but following the Ark of the Covenant- His law, His grace, His presence. And the walls will come tumbling down.

“There’s Someone Wrong on the Internet”

2011-09-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

There have always been men who thought Jesus was coming back on a particular day. There have always been men who believed it quite okay to divorce a wife suffering from Alzheimer’s. There have always been pastors who believe that abortion is an option for moms of conjoined twins. There have always been men who believe hell is virtually empty. There have always been men who believe that women should only teach other women about how to love their husbands to be keepers at home. The difference now is that these wrong ideas at least have the potential to reach a world-wide audience. The difference is that the world can then mull over, chew on, and write about the bad ideas others have brought to the watching world.

Like everyone else when Pat Robertson’s abysmal and unbiblical counsel to a husband whose wife suffered from Alzheimer’s hit the news I felt the temptation to jump in. There was blood in the water, and I was just fool enough to confuse my shark instincts with a passion to defend the holiness of marriage. I managed to just take a nibble, confining my comments to a single tweet. I managed to steer clear of Chuck Smith’s abysmal and unbiblical counsel to the young mom carrying conjoined twins. Harold Camping faced my pen, though in a more meta way as I sought to make a subtle point about the difference between false prophecy and bad exegesis. Rob Bell likewise provoked my pen.

That guy who once wrote that women shouldn’t be teaching each other theology, well, that was me. Happily I did respond to that abysmal and unbiblical advice that I gave, confessing (eventually) that I had been wrong. My confession of my error, however, had about one tenth the reach of my mistake. “I was wrong” pieces just don’t have all the appeal of actually being train-wreck wrong.

I suspect that we respond to these blunders less because we are so passionate about defending the future return of Christ, the sanctity of marriage, the sacredness of life, the reality of hell, the liberty of ladies to encourage one another with the whole of the Bible, and more because it is an occasion to make ourselves look better. “Look at what that idiot said. I’m so much smarter, bolder, more faithful, more humble than him.” When the world wide web was first invented it wasn’t called the web, nor the internet, Rather the demons in research and development below labeled it “The Narcissism Machine.” If we are going to succeed in redeeming it, in plundering the Egyptians, we need to understand its nature. It wasn’t invented to propagate the errors of Robertson, Smith, Camping, Bell and Sproul Jr. It was invented to tickle and titillate the egos of everyone logging on. Pornography exists to tell us how desirable we are, beautiful women just throwing themselves at us. Facebook and Twitter exist to tell us how much we are “liked.” And blogs, complete with sundry analytics, tell us how smart and influential we are.

Blistering posts about the other guy will not win this war. Sound theology and its defense will not win this war. It will take stronger stuff… like humility.

Ethics on the Dais

2011-09-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Conference circuit is a rather odd duck. It includes events sponsored by para-church organizations, and events sponsored by churches. It includes speakers who work for para-church organizations, and speakers who serve as pastors. And speakers who are both. The talks that are given typically have some connection to the Bible, but typically are not sermons.

The circuit, perhaps because it is an odd duck, is also fraught with danger. We communicate something before we even open our mouths, just by being there. And when we are in the audience we tend to hear things before anything is even said. John Piper, for instance, is widely respected in the evangelical conference world. Those who are less enamored of him, at least of late, are likely to be most unhappy because of some of his recent choices in whom he invites to his conferences. After inviting Doug Wilson, Mark Driscoll and Rick Warren one almost gets the sense that there is at Desiring God an Endowed Chair of Lightning Rod Invitees.

Should we conclude that Piper, if not agreeing with everything ever spoken by these three men at least isn’t terribly concerned about it? Whatever we conclude, would we conclude something different about the other men who were invited to Desiring God, and accepted? Is Sinclair Ferguson somehow guilty of Mark Driscoll? And if so, what are we to conclude about those who weren’t even there, but invite Piper to their own conference, or invite Sinclair Ferguson?

The truth of the matter is that inviting someone to speak, is at least some measure of an endorsement., but how much so? Accepting an invitation to speak is a smaller measure, but how much so? Sharing a platform may be no endorsement at all. We get into trouble when we try to create canon law, to act like the church in exercising the keys, complete with fitting punishments, out of such a stew. We try to impose the para-church equivalent of excommunication, and then impose smaller sanctions on those unwilling to honor our judgment.

It only gets worse when you begin to recognize the existence of teams out there. One could argue that the whole of the Reformed world not only parallels college football, but parallels the whole conference/bowl game issues that are so much in the news. Is The Gospel Coalition the SEC, and Reformation 21 the PAC12? Is T4G the Big 12 and just how long are those sanctions going to last anyway? And what do we do with these upstarts that, like Boise State and Utah want to come play with the big boys? Do we lower our standards to get this young recruit in, who is sure to draw a whole better demographic? We have seats to fill after all, and donor/boosters to keep happy.

Conferences make for lousy politics, though they can work quite well as conferences. That is, much of the confusion dissipates when we remember and act on the simple things- why not try to serve your constituency by bringing them teachers who might help them grow in grace? And why not choose the conference you’ll attend not by the fame of the speakers, not by how many fan-boys they might have, but by who might help you grow in grace and wisdom? And why not let go of the incessant need to judge this one because he invited that one who in the past shared a dais with that other one? The simplest solution is this, having our Bible conferences be about the Bible. It, I’ve been told, is quite powerful.

The Feedback Machine

2011-09-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Within the next month my hope and prayer is to finish my new book, The Call to Wonder. When I have finished it will go through an editorial process such that six or more months later people will actually be able to buy the book. There may be at that time some reviews. I may receive some emails from readers. The whole process, from when work began on the book to getting a response will be more than a year.

Within the next week my hope and my prayer is to write my monthly column for Tabletalk magazine. It too will go through an editorial process, and this time, within a few months it will be in readers’ hands. Then too I might receive some emails from readers. The whole process from when the work began to getting a response will be a few months.

Within the next hour my hope and my prayer is to write another Kingdom Note, to be sent out via the internet to supporters of Highlands Ministries and other interested parties. It will go through an editorial process, and within hours will be in readers’ hands. Then I might receive some comments, and perhaps a few “likes.” The whole process from when the work began to getting a response will be a few hours.

All of which ought to tell us something. I suspect there might be a sliding scale, an inverse ration between how quickly we get to press, how quickly we get response, and the amount of impact we have. Blogs or Facebook posts change our moments, while books can change our lives. I suspect magazine articles are somewhere in between.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that all our energy ought to be devoted to writing, and reading books. It might mean, however, that our priorities are slightly askew. It might mean that the surreal world of the internet has at the same time distorted our vision and exaggerated its power. It may mean that our big reach means we are having small talk. I read recently (at blogger, author and pastor Tim Challie’s widely read blog) that the typical post on the internet has a shelf life of 2.8 hours before it is likely to be drowned out by all the internet noise (that is, when everyone else’s 2.8 hours begin). A monthly magazine, at least one with daily Bible studies, has a shelf life of roughly a month. A book has a shelf life measured in years.

All of us want to make a difference for the kingdom. And all of us, not just pastors of churches, are tempted to measure that difference by counting noses. The ease of such accounting is likewise in inverse proportion to its usefulness. We should not be counting noses, but courting hearts. We should be hoping and praying that God would use us to change fewer lives more, rather than more lives hardly at all. That, it seems to me, comes not with blogs, not even with books, but with shepherding the flock, whether in the church, or in the home.

2011-09-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine.
Roll, Lazy River
by RC Sproul Jr.

The experts tell us it’s all about the parking lot, whether for parking cars or keisters. Once it’s not easy to find a spot for the old clunker, people will pass on by to a more spatially congenial place to worship. And we wouldn’t that to happen. So begins the building program, or should I say, so begins VISION 2020!!!! Or should I say, so begins the vicious cycle. You need to build to get more people, and you need more people to afford the new building. You figure you can serve both, that you will untie the Gordian knot with programs. If you build them, they will come.

The drive to add more programs, however, is birthed by the same spirit that births the new parking lot, and the new sanctuary. Both feed the insatiable appetites, both bow before the great god Pander. Trying to lighten the load of the cross, trying to broaden the way simply invites more fellow travelers who are on the road to destruction. Like too many of the companions of Pilgrim, these only distract and mislead. And as with Pilgrim, they drag the rest of us down with them.

Sloth is what drives us, or, perhaps we should say, doesn’t drive us. Though we were made for dominion, since the fall we have been a lazy bundle of inertia and entropy. That is, our default position is to be still, because we don’t care that He is God. We who have been born of water behave like water, always seeking the path of least resistance. And the tide of the church growth movement just keeps pushing us along.

Our laziness begins with our imaginations, as we simply assume, because it’s easiest, that things are as they always have been. The program laden template has already been provided for us, not by the church fathers (we don’t know what they thought because the blamed fools wrote in big words) but by the generation before us. Our parents gave us Sunday School, and so we obviously must give it to our children. But we haven’t even enough curiosity to ask why. The story is told of the young husband who delights as he watches his new bride prepare the Christmas ham for the first time. Just before she puts the porcine appendage in the oven, she cuts a three inch thick slice off one end. “Why do you do that?” he gallantly asks his beloved. She sports a puzzled look, and, confident in her husband’s love, admits she doesn’t know. “I’ll call my mother and ask. She does it every time too.” Alas, her mother is as puzzled by the family habit as she is, and so the bride calls her maternal grandmother. “Grandma, momma says she always cuts a big hunk off the ham before cooking it because she always saw you do it. But she doesn’t know why. Why did you?” “Oh, honey, that’s easy. I had to cut off that slice every time because the hams were always too big for our little oven.”

There was a reasonably commendable explanation for Sunday Schools, the grandmother of all church programs, when they first started. They were designed not to teach the faith to the children of the covenant, but as an outreach to the lost and undereducated. Sunday Schools began as combination of mercy ministry and evangelism. It wasn’t intended for us. These well-meaning folks didn’t listen to the regulative police, and now we have youth leaders with purple hair eating worms for the kingdom. Worse, our fathers have become as weak and shiftless as the fathers of those little urchins of a century ago. It is a hard thing to watch as fathers fail their children. But it is a hard lesson to learn that when we do their job for them, they will only fail all the more.

Of course there are degrees here. There is a laziness that just lets people, including our children, to flounder for themselves. Some presume upon the covenant grace of God, and hand their children to the devil, to lighten their load while they pursue personal peace and affluence. That many churches are dissatisfied with this is to be commended. But again the lazy imagination takes over. No one stops to think how it might work if we, instead of rescuing the children with another program, we would rescue the fathers with church discipline. And so we resave each family, one generation at a time.

It’s hard work teaching grown ups. They argue, and you can’t cancel their television privileges if they don’t do their homework. It’s hard work being a student, as a grownup. After all, you’re so busy driving the kids to youth group. Recently a pastor asked if I had any suggestions for teaching children the basics of the faith. “Yes,” I suggested, “have you considered the parents?” “Oh,’ my embarrassed pastor friend explained, “but they don’t really know anything either.” “That then,” I suggested, “is something we shall have to remedy.”

The problem is even broader than our children. Men who are too morally lazy to be open with their wives, are given instead accountability groups, something they can put down in their Daytimers. Women likewise who aren’t being taught by their husbands, get together with their peers and pool their ignorance. In the meantime, the pastor’s role is to manage all this activity, to direct the sheep to the right room in the education wing, rather than to actually shepherd them. I don’t doubt that some of them, if they don’t know better, are at least uneasy with this status quo. But it’s hard work to swim against the stream, and not good for the bottom line.

Programs are the death of the local church, for they all are gimmicks to make the work of the ministry easier. Why actually talk to your neighbors, when you can get them in the church with a living nativity, or a mailing/phone/billboard campaign that lets everyone in town know they’re welcome to come in their flip flops. Or better yet, maybe moving pictures of Jesus picking up His cross will mean we won’t have to pick up ours. May God grant us the grace to do the work HE has given us to do.

Ask RC: Is it wrong to live as comfortably as we do?

2011-09-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

"Is it wrong to live as comfortably as we do, while people are starving in other parts of the world?"

It is most certainly wrong to not at least ask the question. It should at least jar us a bit. We ought at least to check our hearts when we see starving children in Africa on our 60 inch televisions. Then, however, we need to set aside the emotional response, and see what the Bible has to say.

First, the Bible says quite a bit about our obligation to, at least among the brethren, feed and serve those in need. Matthew 25 reminds us that our failure to feed the hungry and clothe the naked is a failure to serve our Lord. Calloused hearts have no place in the Christian life. Neither, however, does guilt manipulation. Neither does adding to God’s law. God has given us instruction in the formation of the nation of Israel as to how the poor and needy need to be helped. Poor tithes are established. Gleaning laws are established. Jubilee is established. What is not established, however, is either the wrongheaded notion that the poverty of one person is the result of the prosperity of another, or the backwards idea that to live beyond some arbitrary level of comfort is a sin against God and man.

When God established His design for caring for the poor of Israel note first that He did not establish a progressive tithing system. While certainly the more prosperous were to give more than the less the prosperous, they were not called to give a higher percentage of the wealth God had entrusted to their care. They were called instead to enjoy the blessing of God with clean consciences.

This does not mean, of course, that one might not, whatever one’s level of prosperity, give more than God requires. What it does mean, however, is that no man, through guilt, and no state, through force, is free to require a man to give more than God requires. One famous evangelical asked years ago if Jesus were on earth today would He drive a BMW. He thought not, and I tend to agree. He thought such would be too ostentatious for Jesus. I think He might prefer a Mercedes.

One need not feel guilty for what God has given you, save for two reasons. First, if your gain is ill-gotten, by all means feel guilty. If your prosperity is the fruit of stealing from others, lying to others, repent. Second, if your prosperity was earned through serving others in the marketplace there yet remains one thing- you need to give thanks to the Master who owns all things. Our prosperity isn’t our due, but God’s good grace. He is not pleased if we take it for granted, nor if we look down our noses at it.

Do not judge your brother if he obeys God’s law, no matter how God has chosen to bless him. Do not be ashamed, if you are obeying God’s law and God is blessing you. Do not close your heart against those in need. Instead give freely, and be certain to give thanks.

La-La-La I Can’t Hear You

2011-09-07T19:36:00.001-07:00

My friend, Doug Phillips, has written a brief, careful and respectful blog post on a rather emotional issue, government education. You can read it here: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2011/09/9638/. My goal here is neither to repeat his wisdom, nor to defend it, but rather to consider my own sins. This issue is, of course, a rather emotional one. It involves any number of significant life decisions, touching on family income, wives working, family size, home location, etc. This is not a decision that can be hermetically sealed off from the rest of our lives. Most important of all it touches on the immortal souls of those whom we love most dearly, our children.

I, in seeking to persuade others on this issue, often feel as though I am talking to a brick wall. I feel like, no matter how gentle I might be, no matter how logical my arguments might be, I just can’t be heard. No matter how tactfully I might approach the subject, some parents simply hear judgment, and turn off their ears.

Which today has me wondering, on what issues am I like this? Over what issues are others warned, “You can’t talk to him about that, he won’t hear you.”? Or what ideological peer group am I a part of where our whole group is guilty- “You can’t talk to those people about that.”? I’m certain there are many things I am wrong about. The Bible makes that abundantly clear. But one hopes that the Holy Spirit is sufficiently at work on many of my errors that the path is paved for correction to come along. Where, though, have I set up blustery, emotional roadblocks?

And what can I do about it? I’m sure this brief piece will elicit a few suggestions from friends who have tried to get through to me in the past. But I don’t need to hear the same arguments I have refused to hear before again. What I need is a way to learn my deaf-spots. Only when my hearing is cured, or rather, only when I take my fingers out of my ears, is it time for the actual arguments.

I suspect there is likely only one cure--faithful friends. I remember a disagreement I had with my friend Doug Phillips. We were both invited in to deal with a tangled pastoral mess. I gave my counsel to those most intimately involved. Two days later Doug called me. He spent twenty minutes needlessly reminding me of our friendship, needless because if ever there was a man who is for me, it is Doug Phillips. Then he spent twenty minutes explaining how I had been wrong in my counsel. The last eighteen minutes were overkill. Because my ears were opened, it became rather easy to see my error.

My counsel today then is both to be a friend, and to heed the wisdom of your friends. Before you do, however, be careful to understand what a friend is. A friend, remember, is someone who loves you enough not only to tell you you are wrong, but loves you enough so that you can hear it.

Ladies In Waiting?

2011-09-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine
by Denise Sproul

Mothers and daughters today are under assault. They are told by the world that their future lies in getting a job and “making a difference.” There are battles out there, social ills that need to be remedied, and we all need to do our part. They are often told a similar tale in the church and given a similar charge: the exercise of dominion, the building of the kingdom is found in getting power jobs (well, they don’t often use the phrase ‘building the kingdom’ when giving this advice). It doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference if you’re a man or a woman – the advice is the same. It is a good and proper thing that we should defend and delight in the calling to be a wife and mother. This is fighting wisely, and it is most definitely Scriptural. But there is a danger in this approach as well.

We have often been, I’m afraid , teaching our daughters that life begins when they marry. Too often, for instance, our attempt at avoiding the emotional train wreck of dating leads to the emotional train wreck of courtship. That is, we allow or even encourage our daughters to get all giddy-eyed and light-headed because they’re in the safety of courtship and aren’t spending time alone with a young man out on dates. And they get to jump from having no ties to being engaged, and isn’t that exciting and romantic? This, by the way, is not meant to be a denunciation of the whole idea of courtship. There is a proper and healthy way to do it. It does mean, however, that we need to understand that life doesn’t begin for us or our daughters when they marry. Our daughters are not made to be Ladies in Waiting, but Ladies at Work.

Our daughters need to be taught now that they are now working to make manifest the reign of Christ, that they are now exercising dominion; that they are now under authority. This is the same for all believers, no matter what our ages, social standing, marital status or gifts. And what a blessing God has given in that there is a confluence of their work now and their work then. That is, they are actually at work as they are training to be wives and mothers. And they also learn the virtue of hard work. If they are being trained properly and are doing their work with all diligence, they know that it’s rigorous work now and then. It won’t come as a surprise to them later that they need to be prayerful, diligent, good planners, able to multi-task, and keep the best interests of their loved ones at the forefront of their minds.

But their comfort should not be that they are in training (which will make them all the more impatient for ‘someday’ – sigh) but that they are building the kingdom. They are not just storing up recipes in their recipe boxes to someday prepare for their princes, they are helping their own mother with the meal planning and cooking and are bringing a meal to a sick family at church. That’s building the kingdom now and not succumbing to the sin of thinking, “Someday when I have someone special to call my own, then my life will begin.”

Let me say that marrying my prince at 26, a month shy of 27, I can understand that temptation to despair and think one is just waiting for the day the God will answer her prayers and bring her a man. I know it is not easy to wait when you have not yet been given the desire of your heart. Nonetheless, that does not mean we are free to give in to that despondency and think there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s lots we can do: pray, read what God’s Word says about what we should all be doing now –and then set about doing it.

Practically speaking, as our daughters get older, they should take on more and more responsibility and be more and more productive. As mothers, we should, under our husbands’ guidance and authority, be purposefully planning and training for this increasing responsibility and productivity. Your eleven year old is not just going to wake up one morning knowing how to change the baby and feed him his breakfast. Your fourteen year old is not going to plan a week’s worth of suppers and figure out the groceries needed without you putting some effort into teaching her how to do that. And your sixteen year old is not going to diligently seek to be aware of prayer requests of those in the church and other loved ones and be faithfully praying for them if you haven’t modeled and taught her how to do that. We all have areas where we need to be more diligent with our children. The challenge is not getting slack and just coasting, but prayerfully considering what God would have you working on with each child.

Even now we have several young ladies in our own community who have been an enormous help to families such as ours. They are regularly involved in helping numerous families with various things, from cooking and cleaning to math tutoring and knitting instruction. They are busy now with their own families and others’, lending a hand and making manifest God’s kingdom now by making ten peanut butter sandwiches at a time on homemade bread or by taking a special needs child for a walk and showing her the beauty of God’s creation right outside her door. They are helping with newly adopted triplets’ nighttime feedings and are cooking supper and doing play-doh with a three-year old so that a new mother can take a much-needed rest. That is being about the business of kingdom building now and it is also preparing them for what their own future will hopefully hold. We pray that these godly, young, kingdom-building ladies will be blessed with godly husbands. But we pray that they will see their labors now as bearing great fruit. We pray in thanksgiving that our own daughters are seeing their godly examples. And we pray that our daughters will do the same as they grow older. We want them to be eager to marry, but to rejoice in their current calling. And to labor at it with all diligence.

Ask RC: Regarding leadership, sin, repentance and restoration.

2011-09-06T06:05:00.000-07:00

"If a man in leadership falls into sin, admits it, repents and turns from it, should he ever lead again in the same role?"

All men, save Jesus, are sinners. All men, save Jesus, are called to repent and turn from their sins. And only men are called to lead in the church. As such, if we are going to have leaders, that is, elders, and deacons in the church, we had better leave room for repentant elders and deacons. The only thing worse and the only other thing possible is unrepentant elders and deacons.

That said, I suspect the question, while vague, is aiming at something a bit more particular. What do we do with a pastor who has committed adultery? What do we do with a deacon who has embezzled the church’s funds? If they repent, it would seem we are called to forgive. And doesn’t forgiveness mean we act as though it never happened?

Yes, of course we are to forgive the repentant. That doesn’t mean, however, that we are to act as though it never happened. When we forgive we do not forget as if we had amnesia, or as if there is nothing to be concerned about. Instead we forget in the sense that we no longer hold the sin against the sinner. We do not hold a grudge against them. We love the repentant. We embrace the repentant, and we seek to help not just the repentant, but those whom they have wronged. We do not require the embezzler to wear a scarlet E for the rest of his life. But we do not either leave him alone to count the offering. We would be poor stewards of his soul and the kingdom’s funds were we to leave him to his temptation.

Consider how God’s law deals with adultery and divorce. Were I unfaithful to my wife, and were I to repent for such a sin, she would have an obligation to forgive me. She would not, however, have an obligation to stay married to me. Adultery is biblical grounds for a divorce precisely because it is such a betrayal of a trust that future trust is hard to come by. The victim is to forgive. The adulterer is forgiven, But the divorce can still happen, and is still laid at the feet of the adulterer. He is the one who broke the covenant. The victim is free to acknowledge that reality by seeking the legal divorce.

One could argue, and indeed some have, that a pastor who is guilty of infidelity is to be forgiven, but as with marriage itself, has so betrayed the trust inherent in his office that it would preclude his future service as a minister of the gospel. Others, perhaps pointing to Peter’s betrayal of Jesus, and Jesus’ admonition after his repentance that he strengthen the brethren, that a pastor in such a circumstance is oddly even more empowered to serve as a minister of the gospel, having experienced its power so immediately. The danger is, in both positions, papering over our emotional response with pious words. That is, too often the pastor is put out not because it is the right thing, but because of anger, because we haven’t honestly forgiven. Even more common we are fearful of how the church would fare without our pastor, and so keep him on, even cover up for him, and excuse our fear by baptizing it in “forgiveness” and “grace.” Because we are all sinners our temptation is always to do what we want to do. Because we profess Christ, we then cover our desires with rationalizations.

God is good. God can and does not only forgive us, but can and does cleanse us from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9). That said, a man who has proven his willingness to betray his family is more likely than one who has remained faithful to walk into adultery again. A man who has betrayed his office sexually, is likewise more likely to do so again. My counsel would be to remove the man from office. But it is just that, counsel. I cannot claim that the Bible commands it, nor that if forbids leaving such a man in office should he repent.

Ask RC: Are Multi-Site Churches a Good Idea?

2011-09-02T11:55:00.001-07:00

Technology has an uncanny ability not only to solve sundry problems, but to raise meta-level questions about how we do things. Thirty years ago it would have been prohibitively expensive to channel video of a man preaching from one place to another, and so was on no one’s radar. A church could only accommodate growth by building bigger, and/or multiplying services. Today, however, we can grow in a more modular fashion. With relatively inexpensive video equipment we can squeeze in 200 more in the fellowship hall, and later on, another 500 on the other side of town.

Some churches have nuanced the strategy still further by creating different experiences at different sites, with a shared sermon among them. In one site the music and mood is blue like jazz. Everyone drinks fancy coffee while an earnest fellow in skinny jeans leads the service. At another site they offer Mountain Dew and Krispy Kremes, complete with southern gospel singing. When the pastor arrives, however, everyone receives the same sermon.

This is not only not a good idea, it is a profoundly bad idea. It is a mound of bad ideas built on a foundation of bad presuppositions. You can tell, because it is a profoundly American idea. Here’s a brief and partial list of the ways this is bad:

1. It cultivates and encourages the cult of personality. Any preacher who thinks the kingdom is dependent on as many people as possible hearing HIM preach is likely not a good pastor. Any Christian who thinks his spiritual growth is dependent upon hearing HIM preach has not been blessed with good preaching.
2. It cultivates and encourages a form of preaching that is anything but pastoral. The preacher is, in this context, on stage. The recipients of the preaching can’t even have eye contact with the preacher. Instead they receive the entertainment of the sermon like watching a movie, or receive the content of the sermon like a lecture. What they don’t receive is shepherding.
3. It cultivates and encourages a broader failure to watch out for the souls entrusted to the shepherds (Hebrews 13:17). The one preaching cannot pastor thousands of souls scattered all over town, or worse, all over the country. Preaching then is further separated from the shepherding of the sheep.
4. It cultivates and encourages a consumerist mentality among the sheep. A day may be coming where the local multiplex will offer us a choice of listening to this blockbuster big name preach, or down the hall that indie up and comer, or even, further down the hall, that classic dead guy digitally remastered. Already in many towns you can choose to listen to this guy from that multi-site church or some other guy from another one. And just like at the movies, when the preaching ends we file out, having merely shared space, but no love, with others in the room.
5. It cultivates and encourages a lack of dependence on the gospel itself. The power is in the Word, not the one delivering it. Our strategies are foolishly built around the messenger rather than the message.

What then is a church to do when it grows? While I have never, not surprisingly, had this problem when I served as a senior pastor, we did have this problem in the church I planted, after we called another to serve as senior pastor. Our solution to our growth was simple- we created new parishes, complete with parish pastors. We hived off geographically, so that we would worship with our neighbors.

That church now has three parishes, and three pastors. It has three rented buildings. It has three congregations. But it is also one congregation. It has one liturgy, one confession, one session of elders, and one checkbook. Our conviction has been from the start that when you don’t know the person in the pew next to you, it is difficult to live out the “one anothers,” that a shared taste in preachers, or in musical style is not what binds us together, but rather the body of Christ broken is what holds the body together. Our conviction has been from the start that while technology may have its uses, our service should likely look much like it has always looked through the ages. Our conviction has been from the start that preachers are easy enough to find. Pastors, now that’s a challenge.

Those Daring Young Men in Their Dirty Dungarees

2011-08-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine

Everyone remembers the Living Room at home, this despite many of us never getting to visit the sacred space. It was the immaculate room in your house that no one ever went in. You know, with the plastic covers on the furniture, the lampshades that still had the wrappers on them, and that carefully placed area rug, because Spot left a spot. There is a connection, a ratio between an immaculate appearance and the absence of people in the room. The Bible says one sure way to have a clean barn is to not keep an ox in it. (Of course an empty stall will not plow the back forty.) In like manner, one way to keep a clean home is to never allow anyone in it. On a smaller scale, you can keep that immaculate Living Room by denying most folks entrance. The trouble is, if we’re not in the house, then we’re all out in the dirt. Unless, of course, we live in some concrete jungle. Worse still, some who do live in our homes actually prefer the dirt outside to the clean inside. We call these beings boys.

Recently our son Campbell, along with several of our girls and I, were listening to a storytelling tape we had gotten at the National Storytelling Festival. We bought a tape of stories called “Grandma’s Boy.” In one story the main character, Jack, gets absolutely filthy. You don’t even want to know some of the things that were stuck to him. While we were listening to this story for the umpteenth time, Campbell said, “Mommy, Jack and I are a lot alike. We both like to get really dirty!” Now, what a thing to say! It was totally unprompted. We weren’t talking about anything, just listening and laughing. Campbell’s statement was heartfelt and most definitely true. My grocery bills for Shout, bleach and Oxi-Clean over the past seven years will attest to that.

All parents face temptations in child-rearing. Some are tempted toward being too harsh, some too lenient, some with being too rigidly structured or others too flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants. And sometimes it’s not just dad who wants junior to be a mini-him. Too often, mom wants a mini-her, and so tries to raise up a little Lord Fauntleroy. While we can certainly teach our sons to be considerate of our labors in keeping our inside garden clean, we must recognize that they are made for the jungle. Though they may still be young, their default inclination is out. They are by their nature outward looking, and so have to go where the dirt is. That’s why it seems to be magnetically attracted to their clothes, why they don’t usually walk around the puddle but see how big a splash they can make right in the middle of it. We need to be careful not to squelch that while we teach them to honor our labors in our garden.

The first step, as always, is to have a grateful and humble heart. Let us remember that while we are called to tend our garden, that the kingdom isn’t all lily-white doilies and shiny linoleum. Let us also rejoice that God has given us boys and let us rejoice that they are warriors. We happily married our warriors and look forward to one day helping some godly young women to have the same joy in our sons. We should, in fact, be sending them out into the jungle. While this is easier for me than some of you because of the ratio of boys to girls God has sent me (I should actually say ‘boy to girls’), we all need to guard against the temptation of having our little boys help too much with our women’s work. Of course your son can feed the baby her carrots or dust the baseboards, wash the dishes or set the table. But be sure he is also out gathering kindling for the fire and tending to the livestock and that he spends a greater portion of his time doing that kind of work.

Let us likewise praise them in their labors, even if they got that adorable shirt we love dirty. Even if it was your absolute favorite shirt and it will take five washings before it comes out sort of clean, remember that even if you keep the boy in a bubble, the shirt will one day be no more. The boy, however, will one day be a man forever, unless we turn him into a girl. We should delight in the boyishness of our boys, praise God that He made them the way He has. Enjoy your son’s collections of various outdoor stuff. Be interested when he shows you the dirt mound he made into a fort for his toy soldiers. Take delight in the clever way he builds a ramp for his bike or develops a pulley to haul things up into his favorite tree. In fact, be delighted he figured out that grease would make the pulley pull more smoothly. Granted, as women it is sometimes difficult for us to really see things from our boys’ perspective, but we should certainly not make them feel defective because they’re not like us. They can be trained and expected out of courtesy to Mom to take their muddy shoes off before walking across the carpet, but they should not be expected to automatically think to do that on their own. Remember to encourage your husband to encourage the masculinity of your boy. Don’t begrudge him the time it takes, nor the laundry it takes, for Dad to wrestle with his boy in the dirt.

Finally, remember that dirt isn’t bad. God made it and He made man from it. As we’ve argued in this issue, it is both what we work and what we are. It is central to our lives. We should remember as women also that we need not be prisses and should not be afraid to sometimes get dirty ourselves, working and playing hard before the Lord and for His glory.

By Denise Sproul, the White Tornado

Ask RC: Is Faith a Work?

2011-08-30T04:16:00.001-07:00

The Reformation was born out of the biblical conviction that a man is deemed just in the sight of God, forgiven, adopted, not on the basis of his own goodness, but on the basis of the goodness of Christ imputed to him. Not everyone, however, is blessed with this imputation, but only those who trust in that provision, and in that provision alone. The debate at that time, and to this day, has been characterized as faith versus works. Though Rome would not affirm, and indeed rightly condemns crass Pelagianism, the notion that we can earn God’s favor outside His grace, she does see a vital role for our personal righteousness, even while affirming that our righteousness is the result of grace at work in us, with which we must cooperate. In framing the debate as works versus faith, however, some miss the very nature of faith.

One way to err on faith is in fact to turn it into a “work.” In this error we see “faith” as a substitute for our obedience. This view suggests that in the Garden God required total and complete obedience from us in order for us to be at peace with Him. When that failed, God graciously lowered His standard. Now all that He requires of us is that we trust in Him. The trouble with this view is that it wrongly makes faith the ground of our salvation. We stand before the throne of God and He asks why He should allow us into His kingdom. We boldly reply, “Because of my faith.” God then answers, “Faith? I love faith! People with faith, that’s just the kind of people I want to have around. By all means, come on in.” This error in the end is faith in faith, which faith will surely not save. It makes the cross gratuitous, which is blasphemy.

A second error turns faith into a work, and therefore rejects it as vital to our salvation. This view rightly recognizes that it is ultimately the finished work of Christ alone that saves. It rightly affirms that a man is justified because his sins were punished at Calvary, and the obedience of Christ is his. This view rightly affirms solus Christus, by Christ alone. In order, however, to fence off the first error, to be certain we don’t look at our faith as meritorious, it denudes faith of its true nature, turning it into bare assent. This view defines saving faith as agreeing to the truthfulness of the gospel message. This error suffers from two key problems. First, in diminishing the nature of saving faith to bare assent it leaves room even for, in principle, the demons. James says even the demons believe, and shudder (2:19). That is, they know God exists, and hate what they know. It is possible to know something and hate what you know. You can know, you can believe, as the devil himself knows and believes, that Jesus died for sinners, and still not have faith.

The second error here is that it doesn’t solve the problem. If we want to denude faith to be certain it doesn’t turn into a work, how does assent not become a work? Just as with true saving faith I am the one believing, trusting, resting, so even if it is mere assent I am the one assenting. In short, if faith is a work, why isn’t assent a work?

We avoid both problems when we embrace the wisdom of our fathers, the Westminister Divines. In their Shorter Catechism they ask, “What is faith in Jesus Christ?” and answer, “Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered to us in the gospel” (question 86). Faith is not a work on two counts. First, it is a gift from God. It is not just received by grace, but is a grace. Faith is something God gives to us. On our own it is not possible, for we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And note that our faith has a specific object- as He is offered to us in the gospel.”

Second, faith, by its nature, is passive. We rest; we do not work. We receive; we do not earn. There is more to resting than mere assent, but there is not more work. Indeed there is no work at all, just resting and receiving the very ground of our salvation- the work of Christ for us.

Rest. Receive. And rejoice.

Well Enough to Complain

2011-08-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When we are in fear for our lives, there is precious little we aren’t willing to go through to make it out alive. We will endure long hardship. We will put up with humiliating procedures. We will grit our teeth through pain. We will bite bullets, all hoping to get to that place where the worry will subside, and we can move forward knowing we’re going to be okay. At which point we go back to normal; we begin again to grumble against the smallest irritants, buck against the simplest requests and refuse the mildest indignities.

This is precisely where my bride and I found ourselves. Literally thousands of friends and strangers have faithfully prayed for her after she was diagnosed with leukemia just six months ago. She went through two intense rounds of chemo, weeks at a time in a hospital room, sundry pokes and proddings. She lost her hair, her stamina, even her blood type, but never her will, nor His grace. No leukemia, however, was present in her system, as far as they could tell. The immediate fear had dissipated, and all we were left with was the irritants.

Then we had to deal with the sundry side effects of steroids. Then there were multiple trips to the doctors each week. Then there were needle sticks, competing diagnoses from different doctors. Then we had just enough strength, peace and confidence to be aggravated by it all.

There is a lesson here. All of us, whether we remember it or not, were once not just sick, but dead. What lay before us wasn’t death, but hell, unending torment. When the Great Physician drew near, when He made us alive, we clung to Him, pled with Him, promised Him- Lord, whatever You want from me I will do. Wherever You want me to be, there I will go. Whatever you ask me to endure, I will see through to the end. We were once still caught up in the fear of what might have been. We were once caught up in joyful gratitude for our rescue. We have, however, grown accustomed to His grace. Now that our feet are on solid ground, oddly we find it all too easy to slip. We take it, and Him, for granted.

Now we expect not just peace with God, and the promise of eternal life, but we expect health, and wealth, and comfort and ease. When these are threatened we do not remember our former promises, nor from whence we have come. Instead we grumble, complain. Instead we act as though something is not right with the world, because we do not have what we want. Instead we are put out, annoyed.

Fighting leukemia is a hard job, even when leukemia is on the ropes. It is bone wearying work. It is, however, work for the living. In like manner, growing in grace and wisdom is a marathon, not a sprint. But only the living run the race. He has given us life. Our calling is to give Him thanks. Our calling is to lay down our complaints, and run like the wind.

The Death of Dust

2011-08-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES of Every Thought Captive magazine

We never seem to believe the Word of God. We are told, “Those who hate Me love death” and we pat God on the back for the lovely metaphor. Next we conclude that those green haired kids with the needles in their faces, in the big city, they certainly hate God. And finally we nod our head that yes indeed those who hate Him will be unhappy in hell for a long time. God did indeed write poetically when He coined those words. But such doesn’t mean He didn’t mean it. Who, first, are those who hate Him? We are, by nature children of wrath. Those who hate Him are not merely the flamboyant sinners, but all those as yet untouched by His redeeming grace. All those who fit in this category not only are due death, not only face death, not only will live in eternal death unless reborn, but, as the text tells us, love death. They love it, embrace it, bath in it and dine on it.

There is an important linguistic connection between culture and dirt, and, not coincidentally, worship. Culture-cultivate-cult. See? It all involves the same thing, the exercise of dominion. Culture, as we have noted before, is religion, or cultus, externalized. It is taking from the dirt and making gifts for our god, whether that god is our Maker or is made by us, and whether those gifts are the eggs we eat for breakfast, or the bread and wine we consume at His table. The cruel truth, at least to those who hate Him, is that even their labors in turn become His. They build houses that we live in, and tend vineyards whose wine we drink.

Which is why their hatred is so tightly linked to death. They cannot ultimately escape the claims of God on their labor by building Babel. If they build it, He will come, and make it a footstool for His comfort. In the end, all they can do is destroy. In the end they cannot replace life with false life, but must replace it with death. Sartre was dead wrong when he suggested that the only real question left was death. What he meant was that death was the only remaining answer.

But even suicide isn’t enough. For when our bodies return to the dust, in the economy of God they feed the life around them. So death requires not only that we shed our own lives, but that we destroy the very fecundity of the dirt, that we sterilize reality until it too dies. Consider the vision of science fiction writers. While there are exceptions, isn’t it odd that the future worlds we are treated too often exhibit a sparseness that bespeaks sterility? Men and women dress like one another. Children are neither seen nor heard. But worse still, the ground is the consistency of fine powder, a dust that gives no life. Once we’re inside, everything is polished chrome. The future’s so bright, I must have been spayed.

In what is perhaps the greatest science fiction novel ever written, C.S. Lewis makes much the same point. That Hideous Strength, the final installment of his space trilogy, includes a fascinating conversation about the battle being waged on the moon. The gleeful Filistrato explains to the incredulous Mark,
“‘Oh, si, intelligent life. Under the surface. A great race, further advanced than we…They have cleaned their world, broken free (almost) from the organic…They are almost free of Nature, attached to her only by the thinnest, finest cord.’
‘Do you mean that all that,’ Mark pointed to the mottled globe of the Moon, ‘is their own doing?’
‘Why not? If you remove all the vegetation, presently you have not atmosphere, no water.’
‘But what was the purpose?’
‘Hygiene. Why should they have their world all crawling with organisms? And specially, they would banish one organism. Her surface is not all you see. There are still surface-dwellers—savages. One great dirty patch on the far side of her where there is still water and air and forests—yes, and germs and death. They are slowly spreading their hygiene over their whole globe. Disinfecting her…This Institute—Dio meo, it is for something better than housing and vaccinations and faster trains and curing people of cancer. It is for the conquest of death: or for the conquest of organic life, if you prefer. They are the same thing…Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.’”

This love of death drives the world around us to the fruitless madness of sodomy. It causes them to devour their young through abortion. And, even in the evangelical church, it leads us to poison the ground where our own children might have grown. It is why their entertainment traffics in wanton destruction, and why those children who do survive their tour of duty in the womb gun down their enemies, either in their X-box, or in their school hallway. It is why they mar and disfigure their own bodies, their ever present reminder of the life they hate. It is why they embrace their soma of choice. Ecstasy’s just another word for a temporary snooze.

To be counter-cultural, once again, doesn’t mean wearing the death shroud so that we can fit in. Such merely hides our life under a bushel. Rather let us be a bunch of dirty Christians, a people who are so connected with Him who is the life, that our life shines before men. Let us be a people who have not only succumbed to fecundity, but embraced it, in our homes, in our gardens, at our tables. Let us eat the fat of the land. Let the aroma of our feast drown out the smell of death that surrounds them. Let us cultivate a culture of dirt, of life. This is how we fight our war, by digging our trenches, and there in faith planting the seed. We fight death with life, knowing with joy that death will indeed be swallowed up in victory.

By R.C. Sproul Jr.

It Was Nice While It Lasted

2011-08-23T07:31:00.001-07:00

It is a sure sign that sin messes things up that we keep watching the same boxing match over and over again, between truth and unity. Both sides, of course, insist that they have a deep and abiding love for the other. They shake hands in the center of the ring, go back to their corners, wait for the bell and come out ready to destroy the one they love. In the stands we stand, screaming ourselves hoarse in defense of our favorite.

Until recently unity has been on a hot streak. Charismatics, dispensationalists, YRR, and old school Reformed folk, post-mills and a-mils have managed to work together for the gospel. Blogs and conferences, magazines and books have born much fruit from cross-pollinating. We discovered that our brothers on the other side of this aisle or that do not actually have horns. We remembered that the beauty of what unites us is not only more important, but more potent than the nuances that divide us.

But we should never count out truth, or at least our own version of it. Though it was on the ropes, like Rocky in the last few rounds, truth has shown a rare ability to take a punch, and come back strong. It has moved well past highlighting what separates charismatics from dispensationalists and this Reformed group from that, and has now got each camp engaged in its own civil war. Cessationism versus continuationism, neckties versus t-shirts, beer versus teetotalism have sparked fires that rage inside our own worlds.

So what do we do? Can we get truth and unity to kiss and make up? Only if Christians learn to grow up. We need to not only learn to distinguish between primary and secondary doctrines/practices, we need to learn to value them accurately. Can we both agree that being wrong on baptism is not a damnable heresy, and also affirm that it is an issue that matters? Can I seek to correct my Baptist brothers in a way that speaks to them as brothers who are wrong on an important issue? And can I in turn hear with grace my Baptist brothers as they lovingly seek to correct my error on the issue? Can I be concerned that my charismatic brother is leaving open the door for false prophecy and at the same time understand that he is concerned that I am boxing in the Holy Spirit?

I have an opinion on virtually every issue that is being argued on the internet. I think some positions being espoused are good, sound, biblical. I think others are fallacious, dangerous, and unbiblical. I know that whatever the Bible teaches, that is what’s right and true. And I know the Bible teaches that I am often wrong. It is not Rodney King that asks if we can all get along. It is Jesus asking, in His high priestly prayer (John 17). He is the Truth, and He calls us to unity. That comes in reflecting His character. He, even when He corrects us, is for us. He, even when we are wrong, loves us perfectly. He is lowly in spirit and will not break a bruised reed.

We will not change until we choose our heroes not by how cogently or fiercely they defend our position on this issue or that, but by how much they reflect the grace of Christ whatever their position.

Ask RC What is the best way to take criticism?

2011-08-19T06:55:00.001-07:00

I wish I could claim ignorance on the question, resulting from having never received any. Failing that, I wish I could say I have mastered how to handle it. The hard truth is that I receive plenty of criticism. Some of it I deserve. Some of it I don’t. All of it is hard to deal with. What follows then isn’t necessarily what I do, but is instead what I think we all ought to do.

First, fight the temptation to assume the criticism is undeserved. If “people” are bad enough to make all manner of false accusations, and they are, and you are a “people, don’t you think “people” including you might also be bad enough to be blind to their own faults? I have faults, plenty of them. Though I may try to conceal them, I fail at that too. So it may just well may be that the ones I am being accused of are the ones I am guilty of.

Second, forget about how the criticism was delivered, and by whom. Because we are sinners we seek to excuse ourselves, justify ourselves, on the basis of the sins of others. I’ve never met anyone who confessed to being rightly fired from a job. I have met plenty who complained, “I’m not upset that they fired me. It’s the way they did it that bothers me.” Properly translated what they really mean is “I’m upset that they fired me.” Remember that God delivered some fairly compelling criticism through an ass once, and unlike flooding the world, He did not promise never to do it again.

Third, even if the motive behind the criticism is the devil trying to discourage you, he is unlikely to do so by making an accusation that has no resemblance to the truth. The devil would never accuse me of having too high a view of my height. The accusation is laughable. He might, however, accuse me of having too high a view of myself. That one sticks.

Fourth, therefore seek to learn from the criticism. Take the time, in a calm and peaceful manner, to explore that truth the criticism might touch on that is a weakness. Don’t diminish, rationalize or deflect. Do seek to learn the most gentle means of correcting others. Do learn your own blind spots.

Fifth, repent and believe the gospel. Know that your heavenly Father knows things about you that are far worse than whatever you are being criticized for. Know that He knows things about you that even you don’t know. He understands the fullness of how far short we all fall. And He calls us to repent. Repent to Him. Repent to your critics. Repent to those you have disappointed. Do it freely and fully, because in believing the gospel we know that the Father who knows us fully loves us fully. Not because we are better than our critics think. Not because we are better than we think. Not because we are better than He thinks. But because Jesus is better, and we are in Him. Our believing of this good news ought not to be so swift that we forget to repent. Our repentance, however, should never overshadow the certainty of His love. Instead it pushes us to the certainty of His forgiveness. It’s hard to stay down in the dumps when you remember how much He loves you.

Now Play Nice

2011-08-18T08:24:00.001-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVE: Every Thought Captive, Vol 6, Issue 4

Now Play Nice

It is bad enough that we are such suckers for the bait and switch. The devil has been playing this gag on us for millennia. We should have learned by now. When the angel comes along and says, “You know, God is love. And what He wants you to do is to love one another,” the devil doesn’t show up on the other shoulder and say, “Love, ah, that’s for fools. What you really need to do is some good hating.” He’s not that dumb. Instead he shows up on our shoulder and says, “Of course, I want nothing more than for you to love everyone. Love is my favorite thing as well. Why, just the other day I was composing a haiku about love. Let’s see here, how did that go? Love one another; If your lover is not there, love the one you’re with.” He fills God’s words with his meanings, and, because we miss the switch, we end up tied in knots.

What is worse, however, is that he sometimes comes along and actually gets us to substitute a whole different word for the good one. He switches not just the meaning, but the word itself. Nice, though Franklin Sanders rightly calls it the cardinal evangelical virtue, is not, I’m afraid, a command from the Bible. God never said, “Whatever else you do, be nice.” Instead it is a command from the culture. (It was Kurt Vonnegut who put into God’s mouth these words, “But da#$^it, you’ve got to be kind.” And like love, it is a command we have allowed the devil to define.

There is only one thing required to be nice, and only one sin against niceness in the culture. You certainly never have to go out of your way and be a neighbor to anyone. You never have to make personal sacrifices of any sort. All you have to do is repeat the mantra of the age, “If that’s the way you see it, that’s fine.” See how non-threatening that is? It allows both of us to keep our pride, to keep our convictions, to keep our sins. And it costs so little. In short, to be nice is always and only to embrace relativism. Once you’ve swallowed this one, nothing else will ever get caught in your throat.

Actually though, you’re only half the way home. You have to study the other half of the nice rulebook, the side they only talk about when they have to. You see, there is one thing that still must stick in your craw. That, of course, is when some blamed fool refuses to play nice, to abide by the rules. When someone says, “It doesn’t matter how I see it, or how you see it, or how a billion Chinese see it. What matters is how God sees it, because He is the one who determines reality. Our job is to get our own perceptions in line with His, which are of necessity true. And all perceptions which do not match His are of necessity false”, you are not nice if you respond with a polite, “If that’s the way you see it, that’s fine.” Here, according to the devil, and he ought to know, the correct, and only nice response is, “Crucify him.”

If you can call all those who don’t abide by the nice rules of relativism mullahs, and terrorists and Nazis and threats to our way of life and fanatics who must be hunted down like rabid dogs, then you earn that most coveted of sobriquets, “Nice.” It’s not enough to be relatively relativist. You must be absolutely relativist. It’s not enough to have some humility about your or my convictions. You must arrogantly assume that all convictions, by their very nature, must be false. As a nice relativist you must be absolutely certain that any and all absolutists must be stopped, no matter what the cost. Otherwise you may as well be a fellow-traveler with those who just aren’t nice.

It’s important for us to remember this the next time we feel the sting of the accusation that we somehow aren’t nice. The answer isn’t to protest, to get out our relativist credentials, and show how up to date they are. Our response the next time some syndicated columnist tries to connect the dots between us and Osama is to say, “If the objection is that both of us affirm objective truth, objective right and wrong, we’re flat guilty.” If the reason Islam is hated is not because it is false, but because it simply claims to be true, we ought to be in a panic that we as Christians aren’t the most hated group on the planet. If the powers that be insist on hanging all those who reject relativism, then our calling is to charge the gallows, not to tear them down, but to place our own necks in the noose of the not nice.

We can’t play nice with those who define niceness this way. We cannot keep both their rules, and the rules of Him whom we say we serve. When Jesus said, “If you confess me before men…” He didn’t mean standing up at some flag pole and saying, “This is what Jesus means to me…” When Jesus said, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake”, He didn’t mean that we should do everything we can do to change their word, nice, into one that we can affirm, and act upon. He didn’t mean that we should tone down His exclusive claims so that we can wear our nice pins to the nice meetings. He meant we will be blessed when they throw us out.

If we will serve Him our goal ought never to be that when we are gone they say of us, “You know, that so and so sure was nice.” The epitaph we should seek for our grave marker should be Faithful. Instead what needs to be buried is the virtue they call nice, that the name of Christ might live on in the west.

By R.C. Sproul Jr.

Ask RC: In tough economic times, what ought Christians to do?

2011-08-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

There is certainly a biblical injunction that we discern the times. God calls us to do this, however, not so we will know the right move to make at the right time, but so that we will remember what the right move always was. Circumstances don’t change our calling, though they can wake us up to our calling. Such is the case here.

Christians should do what Christians are always called to do. First, we should be looking to our own sin. Why is that that Christians are up in arms politically during a time of shocking deficits, high unemployment and a moribund real estate market, but have been comparatively content over almost forty years of abortion on demand? What does that say about us and our priorities?

The obvious answer is this- money is an idol to us. We think because money seems to be even more important to Gordon Gekko, or Donald Trump, that we are therefore free from seeing it as an idol. We think that having less than somebody else is proof we’re not greedy. But when what we have, whether large or small, is threatened by hard times we find out what a priority wealth is to us.

Money becomes an idol less when we simply want more, and more when we look to it as God. To the Gordon Gekkos of the world, money is their reason for being, and in that way is a god. To us, however, it is our security, and therefore is a god.

It is a good and wise thing to consume less than you produce, to save and invest. And it hurts when our savings take a hit from inflation, and our investments suddenly drop in value. But in good times and bad we are to remember that Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” When James warns us against thinking we can simply plan our future profits- "Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow (James 4: 13-14) he is not only talking about travel plans. A perfectly fitting application in our day might be, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will invest in our 401k, buy and sell, and make a profit.’” Sufficient unto the day is the bread thereunto. And He is our provider, not Morgan Stanley.

What we need to do then is to ask God to provide for us, and to trust that He will. His provision may not match our daydreams. It may not match what we think of as normal. But He will provide. What we need to do is to not spend more than we make. What we need to do is pay, joyfully, our tithes, if only as a confession that we do indeed trust Him to provide our daily bread. What we need to do is to love our neighbor, not ask the state to tax him to finance our plans. What we need to do is go to bed confident that we are living a godly life, while praying for the peace of Babylon. What we need to do is what we have always needed to do.

God is, as always, sending judgment to a nation that thinks it can forget Him, that thinks it can borrow its way to prosperity. That judgment will touch and is touching our lives. But we are safe in the palm of the scarred hand of Jesus. His wrath is not aimed at us for that was spent 2000 years ago. Whatever is coming it will not undo His promises to us. Invest in the gold streets of the New Heavens and the New Earth, where neither rust, nor moth nor thieves, not politicians can enter. Not only is it the safest investment you can make, but it will also have the greatest return.

Encouraging One Another

2011-08-12T06:23:00.001-07:00

I write, but I also read. The two actually go hand in hand. To read only is to be a wisdom vortex, to take in but never breathe out. To write only is to embrace the folly that wisdom ends with you. Without drinking deeply of the wisdom of others we will soon become clouds without rain. As a writer I am well acquainted with the temptations that come to writers. We are easily discouraged. We think we are speaking into the wind, that no one is hearing us. As a reader, however, I have the great privilege of hearing. I get to see God at work in the lives of others as they receive wisdom from the Spirit, and then pass it along to the rest of us. For what it’s worth, my internet reading tends to begin with the wisdom of David and Tim Bayly at Baylyblog. It includes the insights of my friend Lane Keister and his friends at Green Baggins. I also benefit from reading the insights from the sundry contributors at Pyromaniacs. Tim Challies and Doug Phillips are likewise among my favorites.

Were one to construct a theological continuum one would see a fairly clear distinction between the Bayly Brothers and the Pyromaniacs. Though there is of course overlap and continuity, one would see a rather yawning gap between Doug Phillips and Lane Keister. What one would find in common among all these men is a commitment to be in submission to the Word of God. This, I pray, is where I aspire to intersect with all this diversity.

What history has shown us is that we cannot rightly measure commitment to the plain teaching of God’s Word on the basis of one’s conclusions. One can both reach the right conclusions for the wrong reasons, and, though this might be slightly more difficult, the wrong conclusions for the right reasons. That is, some may have a deep passion for God’s Word, but still end up parroting the wisdom of their heroes. There is no body of conclusions that come equipped with some kind of organic seal of approval- All conclusions reached here can be traced clearly to the perspicuous Word of God. Sin always gets in our way.

The hard reality is that the more we grasp the sinfulness of man the more we must watch for the sinfulness of those we hope will teach us wisdom. We are indeed all sinners, which explains why even the most pious among us take wrong turns theologically. But even those who take wrong turns know and teach that the Bible is the map. And what that map always shows us, not surprisingly, is our own sin.

Which means that the ones we ought to be listening to are those who are least likely to tell us what to think, who are most likely to tell us where to look. Those who speak, who write about their own sin, those are the ones who have been given wisdom. Those, on the other hand, who are most quick to point out the sins of others, that is where we need a godly skepticism. Sinners speak of their own sin and God’s grace and pronounce peace. The proud, on the other hand, speak of the sins of others and pronounce judgment. In short, where the gospel shows its impact is where we see ourselves. Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.

Welcome To the Machine

2011-08-11T06:28:00.001-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, Every Thought Captive, Volume 5, Issue 1

It may be a sign that we are in a technological age that we tend to equate technology with machines, but technology is not just about machines. Technology includes in its range of meaning the entire idea of techniques. Human technology need not refer to mechanical pacemakers, but instead can refer to the systems by which we bring about changes in humans. Both a ten-ton bottle-capping machine and an insightful question are tools. One keeps a bottle of soda from spilling and going flat on the way to market; the other, one hopes, provides insights toward spiritual growth. The difficulty is when we begin to see our friends, families and our churches as an assembly line of bottles, in need of the right cap.

Much of the wise criticism that has been made against the church over the last ten to twenty years falls into one of two jeremiads. Sometimes we chasten the church for succumbing to that spirit of the age that we call the therapeutic revolution. Other times we chasten the church for bedding down a different spirit of the age that we call the managerial revolution. In the former the church exists to soothe the tender spirits of the congregants, to keep the pop from losing its fizz, with a dose of pop-psychology. In the latter the spiritual CEO organizes the troops and motivates them until they become an efficient ministry, what else? Machine. These two models for the church share two things in common. First, they are utterly unbiblical. Second, they are both technologically minded. They see the church, and its members, as products to be manipulated to bring about a desired end.

The Bible never describes the church in these technological terms. Never is the church called that which guides the soul toward health, nor that which provides the greatest efficiency for the building of the kingdom. The Bible has all sort of analogies for the church, none of them technological. Instead each of them is organic. The church is not a set of gears and levers, a clockwork orange. Rather it is a set of limbs and appendages, or as Paul describes it in I Corinthians, a body. Of course that might not steer us completely clear of our problem. We’re so technological that we have come even to think of God’s great gift of our own bodies as yet another machine to be tweaked to maximize efficiency. We see our parts as parts, and miss the holiness of the whole.

Paul has another image for us, however, that is hard to reduce to something made down at the machine shop. Paul says that we are, the church as a whole, bride of Christ. Brides are not given to technology. I’m not saying that tools are a man thing, and ladies should stand clear. Rather I’m saying that when we think bride, we necessarily think in organic and not in machine terms. No one says as the bride walks the aisle, “Mercy, look at the torque she’s able to handle with her medial collateral ligaments.” No one says to the bride, “You know, that veil of yours is not ergonomically designed for the giving of a kiss. Why not leave it off?” No one brings a stopwatch to measure the bride’s time in getting up the aisle. A bride is not meant to be efficient, but to be beautiful.

We will not, however, ever read a church bulletin that reads, “First Community Church By the Freeway’s purpose is to look really, really nice for Jesus.” Or, “Our first priority here at Our Lady of the Perpetual Committee Non-Denominational International Family Center is to clean ourselves up good for the wedding day.” That, however, is the health and the business of the church. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be proclaiming the good news, or that we must cease and desist from visiting the sick. I’m not saying we can never have a church picnic for the sake of fellowship, or never deliver turkeys to the poor. Instead we do these things, all that we do, in order to make us more beautiful as a bride. We are not a machine that needs to be honed, but a bride that needs to be beautified. That’s what the Groom has not only called us to do, but what He is doing in us.

That’s not all though. Brides do far more, though never less, than look their best. We are indeed a trophy to our Lord, but we are more. Brides have other callings as well, the first of which is to love and to honor the Groom. The problem with machines is that they lack heart, something the church must cultivate. We are to grow in our love of Christ, to love Him more daily not with our gears and our levers, but with our hearts and souls, minds and strengths. That’s why we study Him and His Word, why we meet Him at His table. That is why our preachers preach His glory, to fill our hearts with sincere affections.

That we are a bride is a given. We were made for such. And so when we take a technological approach to our calling, we turn our Groom into a machine. He is not a machine. He is not a tool by which, if we punch in the right code, we can have happy, successful, well-ordered lives. He is not a means, which is all tools are to some other end. Instead our Groom is the end. He is our delight and our joy, not because of what He has done, what He now does, or because of what He will do, but because of what He is.

He will succeed. He will, because our Groom is altogether sovereign in authority and in power, get us to see what He has already told us, that we are His spotless bride. And when we see it, maybe then we will be spotless, besmirched with neither grease, nor sin.

By R.C. Sproul Jr.

Careful Indifference

2011-08-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

I understand why tans are considered attractive, a sign of health. They communicate, at least to the subconscious mind, that the tanned person has been outside a great deal, perhaps working, perhaps exercising, but in some way active. But is it a lie to seek to communicate that message by a. lying down at the beach or worse b. lying in a tanning bed or worst c. smearing on a liquid tan? In like manner I understand that there are people out there that are too blasé to be bothered with fixing their hair. But what does it say about a person who spends time and money carefully trying to make his hair look careless? Just the right cut, just the right shampoo, just the right gel rightly applied, all to say, “Too cool to care.”

Underneath many of these purposefully shaggy heads we find faded and torn blue jeans. Which might bring us back to the tan. That is, don’t torn jeans suggest that the wearer has been out on the farm working hard to earn bread from the land, that the wearer isn’t so much too cool to care, but is too earnest to care? Don’t ripped jeans say, “Been out plowing the back forty. That’s the kind of guy I am.”? Not if the type of guy you are is the one who gets his tears pre-fabbed in his jeans that he buys at the mall.

Put these things together and we get the authentic look, which can be yours with a simple swipe of the credit card down at the Galleria. The bizarre thing is that this is no secret. We all know where to get a tan. We all know how to muss up our hair. We all know where to buy torn jeans. No one is buying it, despite everyone buying it.

Of course the same is true for those of an older generation. Clean cut hair, well preserved clothes, pasty white skin also communicate a message- I’m mature, responsible and well behaved.” But maturity, responsibility and good behavior don’t actually come from khakis and button down collars any more than sincerity, authenticity and “edginess” come from torn jeans and Jesus tats. The irony, however, is that the uniform of the company man is actually more care-free than the rebel. No man needs to apply mousse to part his hair on the side. No man needs to tear a hole in the knees of his khakis.

The reality is that we are what we are, not what we wear. We can lie with our clothes both about our indifference, and our character. Clothes do carry a message. We ought to want them to speak honestly, rather than to earn us a reputation we don’t deserve. That we fail, however, is why the clothing that matters most is the clothing we can’t see. Liars like us would be doomed, were it not for the righteousness of Christ that covers us. We are neither authentic nor respectable. We are instead phonies, who are saved by grace.

Ask RC: Are There Carnal Christians?

2011-08-05T07:59:00.001-07:00

"Are there carnal Christians- ones who profess to believe and go
immediately back to their old life, who never show evidence
regeneration having taken place?"

Yes, there are “carnal” Christians, but no, there are no Christians who never show evidence of regeneration having taken place. The notion that a person could truly embrace the saving work of Christ while not embracing His Lordship is a pernicious error made most popular by Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ. The “scholarly” support for this distorted perspective has come from Charles Ryrie and Zane Hodges both of whom taught at the dispensational mecca of Dallas Theological Seminary.

This idea has any number of problems. First and foremost is that it divides Christ. It is all well and good to distinguish between the three-fold office of Christ, affirming that He is prophet, priest and king. It is another thing altogether to suggest that one can truly embrace one part of that formula, while passing over another. To embrace the Christ who saves as savior but to reject the Christ who reigns as Lord is to divide Christ.

This notion, secondly, deeply misunderstands how it is that we even come to embrace the saving work of Christ. Because we are, by nature, children of wrath, we are unable, in ourselves, to embrace anything of the work of Christ. Before we can come to Him He must change us first. God the Holy Spirit must change our heart before we can come to faith. This is regeneration, which does not flow from our faith but is the source of our faith. If we have been given a new heart, if our inclination is no longer only toward sin, if we are not only changed by but indwelt by the Spirit, how could we help from growing in grace? He has not only forgiven us, but is cleansing us from all sin (I John 1:9).

Third, this notion cuts off the legs of our assurance. While understanding and affirming the biblical doctrine of God’s saving grace is a critical part of our assurance, it is not enough. The demons, after all, know that Jesus lived a perfect life for us, that He died as a substitute for us, receiving the wrath of the Father due to us for our sins. Our assurance is grounded in our embracing the true gospel, and our changed lives. What sets believers apart from demons and false professors of the true faith is that we are indeed changed. We are not without sin, but we are changed.

Which brings us back to the reality of carnal Christians. The term itself comes from Paul’s admonition to the church at Corinth that the believers there are “carnal.” Do carnal Christians exist? Of course they do. We’re all carnal. That is, we still struggle against our sin nature. We still sin. In that sense all believers are carnal. We are changed by the work of the Spirit, but we are not complete. We are not without sin. Our standard then is not “Am I perfect?” for then no one would qualify as a believer. Instead it is “Am I getting better?” I still struggle against sin. Did I not struggle, were I comfortable with my sin, I would be a carnal “Christian.” That I struggle demonstrates that I am a “carnal” Christian. It is a subtle difference from one perspective. From another it is the difference between eternal life and death.

What Hath God Wrought?

2011-08-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ETC Volume 5, Number 1

It is still dark out this morning, but I’ve already begun a productive day. The fire is burning in the next room, the light bulb burns above me giving me light. I have cut one columnist down to size, at least the articles he’s written for the next two issues of Tabletalk. Having done so I have set my Macintosh computer to work in sending the finished articles down to my comrades in Orlando, while on my PC, I write the last article for the next issue of Every Thought Captive. (By the way, lest you think I’ve gone corporate, I also just finished a breakfast of toast made from Denise’s home ground, home made bread.) I’m feeling good, feeling strong, everything is just whipping along. Oh, “I’ve got mail.” Isn’t technology grand?

Technology this morning gives me a feeling of power. I am master of all I survey. I send this here and it goes. I retrieve that from there, and it comes. I push buttons and behold my thoughts appear on the screen. I’ve got it all under control, unless something goes wrong. That feeling of mastery can dissipate faster than the early morning darkness. All it takes is for the cursor to stop blinking, or for one of those weird messages to pop up on my screen- Warning- Assymtotic cobol error number 4- and I’m suddenly Superman drowning in a pool of kryptonite. Technological hubris is not the exclusive domain of genetic scientists and nuclear physicists. It happens to all of us when we pridefully assume that we have it all under control. And it happens perhaps most frequently where technology intersects with our families.

There is probably no greater life-changing event than the arrival of a child. Jobs change often. That big mortgage we signed, it is on a house that will one day be rubble. But children last forever. Not a one of us would hesitate to burn our homes down or take a job cleaning sewers if it would keep our children alive. And nothing makes us more flummoxed, makes us feel more helpless than the birth of a helpless newborn. This week Shannon and Delaney have been sick, and sick in the most disgusting ways. I want to make them well, but instead all I can do is hold them with one hand, and hold a pot in front of them with the other. I am helpless against the invisible bug that assaults them. Even the doctors tell us, “Just wait, and they’ll get over it.”

This helplessness too often does not cure us of our pride. God humbles us, but we are not humbled. If we can’t manage them when they come, at least, we reason, we can manage when, or if, they come. The geniuses down at Dow Chemical have put in our hands the power over life and death. Or so we think. Sometimes, by the grace of God, our technology of death fails us, and God gifts us with a helpless baby. Sometimes, in the judgment of God, our technology of life fails us, and we learn the hard way that we never had it under control. Sometimes He rewards our assumption that we are in charge, that we have the power of life in us, by giving us charge, and letting us fail.

What would our forefathers have thought had they known that the blessings of their blessings would one day schedule the arrival of blessings as if they were bottles of milk left on the stoop? “We figure that we’ll spend a few years after the wedding getting to know each other, just the two of us [the Christian equivalent of shacking up] and working so we can save money for a house. Then we’ll have our first child, and when he turns four, then we’ll start working on the next. If at that point we have one of each we’ll probably just quit, and then, five years after that I can go back to work. If they’re the same, we’ll wait three years and try again.” God will not be mocked. He who opens and closes the womb will not take orders from yuppie brides.

One thing we miss in our technological age is this wisdom, that life is a profound mystery. Almost daily I find myself staring at one of my children, and wondering, “How did this happen? Once this person, the object of my love, was not. And now there will never again be a time when he will not be.” There was a point in time when my children began, but there will be no time when they end. It did not happen because of chemical reactions, though God may have used them. It did not happen because of the marital act, though God may have used that. It happened because God made it happen. No pill, no barrier, not even abstinence can make it stop, if God has willed it. And no charts, no petri dishes, no thermometers can open a womb, if God has not willed it.

Children are the most tangible, tactile evidence of the work of God that we will ever see on this green earth. They are a constant reminder of our own weakness, our own dependence, because we are His children. And they are a constant reminder of His great strength, His power, His authority, and His grace. We are not due the blessings He sends. But we are called to worship and thank Him for sending them, to acknowledge the Giver, and neither try to refuse His gifts, nor try to wrench them from His hand. We are His children, and not the masters of all we survey. Rather we are servants of the Master, who made and controls all that He surveys, whether it is a smoothly running computer, or a cranky Macintosh, whether it is a closed or a fruitful womb. Let us honor Him by staying out of His way, by acknowledging His absolute authority, and trusting Him to do that which honors Him, and sanctifies us.

By R.C. Sproul Jr.

Says Who?

2011-08-02T06:06:00.001-07:00

Main steam media tags the Norwegian killer as a Christian, and Christians, naturally object. What, I wonder, do our objections say about us? First, is it really inconceivable that this man is a Christian? It may be unlikely. And I may not like it. But I fear our objections run flat into our confession. We are sinners. We are capable of all manner of sin. Are we not betraying a Pelagian sensibility if we protest, “Well, we’re sinners. But not like THAT!!” I know a man who was a believer. He was well respected, and served God’s people in a position of visible leadership. He wrote some of the most beloved songs that are still sung among God’s people. While he was a believer he started an adulterous relationship. To keep himself from being caught he murdered the woman’s husband. Could such a man be a Christian? Well, God says he, David, was God’s own friend.

Do Christians commit murder? Of course they do. Is there some magic number, somewhere between one and a hundred where we can draw a line? I think not. Christians do not, however, murder freely, continuously, without repentance. They do not give themselves over to their sins. If they do, they no longer commit such sins, but practice them, showing their profession to be less than credible. Remember that, quite apart from the reality that we are all guilty of unjustified anger against our brothers, it is likely that your church has a number of saints who have murdered- some aborting their babies, others encouraging their wives, daughters, girlfriends to abort their babies.

Which brings us to the second point. What happens when we define a Christian as broadly as “One who professes to be a Christian?” Who are we to say this man is not a Christian? The better, the more historic question is, “Who is he to say that he is?” The credibility of a person’s profession of faith did not used to and should not ever rest in the one making the profession. Rather it belongs with those who hold the keys, with the elders of the local church. Where are the elders that are ready to stand up and say, “This man is a Christian, as far as we can tell”? There are no such elders, because he is under no such authority.

Those who object to the accuracy of the man’s profession then had better embrace a more robust ecclesiology than we are used to in our day. Without a body of elders who know you, who are in authority over you, how is your profession any better than this man’s? The loosey-goosey I-have-a-love-for-Jesus-in-my-heart, why should I need to join a church is a-historical, unbiblical and rebellious. If you cannot name the elders who will have to give answer for your soul- see Hebrews 13:17 and I Peter 5:7) then why would anyone feel compelled to accept your profession? Is a “Christian” who will accept no authority, in principle, any worse than a “Christian” who commits mass murder?

Would we not be more faithful Christians were we to confess that we too are capable of murder? Would we not profess more accurately, were we to confess that there but for the grace of God go we? Would we not confess the Lord, were we to profess that He redeems killers just like us? Would we not more confess the blood of Christ if we acknowledged His body, the church?

Choosing Blessing

2011-07-28T17:28:00.001-07:00

My experience, of course, does not trump truth. God, after all, is true, and every man a liar. That same lying spirit, however, also infects our arguments. We yet hold onto a modernist conceit that when we are stacking syllogisms, and citing learned reports we can actually do so as neutral, dispassionate scientists. Now it is the postmodern conceit that suggests that we can’t really know anything, that our propensity to lie has spun an inescapable solipsistic web around us. Sound arguments exist, can be followed, and minds can actually get closer to the truth. It’s just not that easy.

What follows, a list of observations on some issues that we struggle with, is not designed to be a careful, exegetical argument. Neither, because what follows is experiential, is it designed to thwart careful, exegetical arguments. These are just some observations that I think we should think about.

First, I have never met a Christian homeschooling parent that regretted the decision to homeschool. I have met countless Christian parents who have chosen the government’s schools for their children who regret their decision.

Second, I have never met a Christian parent that regretted adopting a posture of welcoming children as blessings from the hand of God. I have met countless Christian parents who regret embracing sundry technologies to try to avoid adding new children to their families.

Third, I have never met a Christian that regretted faithfully paying a tithe to the church from their income. I have met many Christians who regret failing to do so.

Fourth, I have never met a Christian that regretted the time spent with their own children. I have met countless Christians who regret not spending more time with their own children.

Fifth, I have never met a Christian husband or wife who regretted having his wife cover her head when gathered for corporate worship. I have met Christian husbands and wives who regret not having done so earlier.

Sixth, I have never been to a church that regretted celebrating the Lord’s Supper each and every Lord’s Day. I know of many churches that regret failing to do so.

Seventh, I have never met a family that regretted spending the copious amounts of money it can take to adopt a child. I have met many families that regret buying boats and rv’s and vacations and fancy, new cars.

Eighth, I know of no father that regrets deciding to actively seek to guard the hearts of his daughters as they prepare for marriage. I know many fathers who regret failing to do so.

Ninth, I know of no family that regrets faithfully having family worship. I know many families that regret failing to do so.

Tenth, I have never met a family that wished they had been less gospel-focused. I have met many that regret not being more gospel focused.

Nothing above argues that any of the choices above are in themselves sins. They may be, but that argument is not being made. Nothing in fact argues that there aren’t people whose experience is different. Nothing above suggests that any of the choices above are matters of eternal life or death for the one making the choices. Nothing in the above suggests that these are the most important issues that we need to grapple with. Nothing above suggests that those who choose the latter route will have miserable lives. Nothing above suggests that those who choose the former choice are better Christians than those who choose the latter. All of the above, I hope, gently encourages us to consider if our rationalizations of our choices might just have caused us to miss the greater blessing.

A Well-Oiled Machine?

2011-07-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

From Every Thought Captive, Volume 5, Issue 1
by Denise Sproul

I am thankful for technology, but am sometimes still confounded by it. Ask any friends of mine who have to wait almost an eternity for an e-mail from me – or ask my husband who just had to hold my hand through getting on this computer to write this article! My subject, in this, my first regular column, is utilizing technology – and therefore, systems – in the home without allowing ourselves to become machine-like. How do we keep the heart of our homes a living, beating, feeling entity rather than a cold machine made of steel? Technology has invaded our homes, just as it has touched every aspect of our world. Sometimes this is a blessing; other times it can be a curse. I am thrilled not to have to rub my family’s clothing against a rock in a cold stream somewhere. On the other hand, I’m less than excited about the mountains of clothing we possess that I have to wash and press (though I have gotten smart about that and now have very few items that need to be ironed). The very machine that makes the clothes easier to wash has also multiplied the clothes.

We sometimes allow technology to affect how we view our families; we come to think of our loved ones as a single economic unit (which they are) but look at each family member as a spoke in the wheel, each with an important job to do. While each person in our family does have an important role and function, he is much more than just that. Going to the opposite extreme of this technological view of the family is likewise unhealthy- the romantic reaction of thinking that whatever is ‘natural’ is best. It should occur to us that whatever is natural, since the Fall, includes sin. It is natural for our children to belch, but unless they’ve just eaten a meal in China, we want to teach them to control certain natural impulses.

We don’t desire to just “let things happen naturally, kick back and relax, just do whatever floats your boat”- I could go on with the aphorisms, but I’m sure you get my drift. We want to bring order, intentionality and deliberateness to our family lives. All of us adults, whether or not we will consciously recognize it, want structure and predictability just as our children do. Part of me is pleased when my husband comments that I run our home like a well-oiled machine; however, I don’t want to take this too far. It is a hard thing to find balance though, because if I am tending capably to things like meals, laundry, homeschooling, and cleaning, those things are very outwardly measurable. One can easily look at a clean house with clean children sitting down to a delicious meal and think, “Wow. She’s doing everything right.” What cannot always be seen are attitudes, lack of time reading to or talking with the children, an in-tune, how-can-I-help-you-today demeanor towards our husbands. For those of us who may struggle with more of a Martha (as opposed to a Mary, choosing the better portion) outlook, we have to constantly be thinking, “What is my focus? Is it what God wants it to be?”

Children are not machines. Yes, they need order, structure, and of course, discipline, but they cannot be crammed in to fit on an assembly line. Whatever our systems are, they require flexibility. It is good to have a plan for when certain household tasks will be done (lest they remain perpetually undone) but it is not good to allow that plan to lead to hyper-scheduling and insensitivity. If I plan to dust from 9:30-10, I don’t tell Campbell to wait for me to hold him when he’s split his lip. If playtime at the park is planned for Saturday morning, I don’t drag my children out in the rain or try to bring the swingset inside. Now, I know as you ponder the two solutions to these dilemmas, you might be thinking, “Oh, I would never do that! How ridiculous!” But how many of us would have a bad attitude about the disruptions to our plans? Do we look at these disruptions as divine intervention, as opportunities for obedience, as things that are also part of God’s plan for our lives for that day, or do we think as we’re holding our crying child, “Now how do I rearrange the rest of the day so that my house is clean?”

Resist the urge to think that all structure and planning is bad. Being like Jesus’ friend Mary does not mean sitting back and letting life happen to you. We are called to live life simply, separately and deliberately. God does exhort us to do things “decently and in order.” We are not to be constantly flying by the seat of our pants and praying that when we land, we’re all in one piece. “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Luke 4:12). Being loving and sensitive is not to be equated with being wishy-washy and undisciplined. As in many cases, balance is the key. If our focus and structure is too narrow, we scrunch our loved ones in to fit our agendas. If it is too broad, our families turn to jelly – no one seems to know which way is up. We must also always keep our eyes on the prize: our goal is to raise godly children, not well-ordered heathen. We must teach our children to be orderly and disciplined, but must also teach them with our words and with our actions what Christ’s love is like. If I grudgingly hold my hurt child, I’m teaching him that love is rude. If I have a fit when we can’t go to the park, I’m teaching him that love is impatient. We want to see godly seed flourish as godly men and women. To be like Christ to your children, never fail to take them into your arms and bless them. Never fail to suffer the children to come unto you.

A Good Word

2011-07-26T07:27:00.001-07:00

Though it didn’t look like it would go that way, it turned out to be a good conversation. Concerned about some attitude problems, my dear wife and I sat down with our three biggest to express those concerns, to encourage repentance, to wash them with the Word. From our perspective the children were falling into a common habit among teenagers, looking to their parents as peers, and seeing their instructions as fodder for arguments. Denise and I were quick and happy to confess that our children haven’t been showing outright defiance, just a bit of cheekiness. They have been forgetting their place.

After some struggle they began to own the problem. They repented of their recent weaknesses. That, however, wasn’t the best part, nor the great turn to the good of the conversation. That happened when they, graciously, humbly, remembering their place, gently suggested that their peace and their place might be more secure were my wife and I more quick to speak encouragement into their lives. It seems our correction may be losing some of its power because it is not sufficiently seasoned with the salt of encouragement.

Our failure to speak more encouragement is likely the fruit of our own lack of gratitude. Were we grateful like we ought to be, we would be quick to speak to those for whom we are grateful. I’m mad about my children. I’m button busting proud of them. But my own sin is to focus my attention on their sin. My sin is to grumble for what is amiss rather than rejoice over what is going well.

This propensity is not limited to just me, nor just to family contexts. The gifts God has given our pastor become the norm, the baseline, what is expected. His weaknesses, on the other hand, become what we focus on, what we think we must correct. Thus we grumble more than we give thanks.

In our work the blessing of our calling becomes what is our due, while the thorns and thistles that we all have to deal with receive our attention and our focus. We think something is amiss with the world, not because we are shocked by the blessings, but surprised by the challenges. Frustration becomes our default position.

God has been so good to my dear wife and to me. We have each other. We have eight wonderful children that pepper our every day with joy. We even have older children that are able to encourage the two of us toward righteousness. There aren’t many parents that can say that about their teenagers. Better still, all of us together have a Lord who forgives us for what we forget. He forgives cheekiness from children. He forgives ingratitude in parents. He gives us peace with each other, and better still, peace with our Father in heaven.

And having forgiven us, He blesses us, with parents who love children, and children who love parents, and a good Word that corrects us all. Yes indeed, those are some fine children. Far better than we deserve.

Ask RC: We can’t find a family integrated church, what should we do?

2011-07-22T04:18:00.001-07:00

First, whenever the question is, “What should we do?” the best first answer is “Repent and believe the gospel.” God does not welcome into His kingdom only those who both trust in the finished work of Christ alone and don’t allow their children into youth group. Some, sad to say, get so excited about discovering that the notion that our children must attend youth group or Sunday School is nothing more than tradition with no biblical warrant, end up with a rather distorted sense of priorities. Some forget the vital distinction between primary and secondary issues. Some, I’m afraid, would rather be in a family-integrated Mormon “church” than a divided evangelical church. Even more, almost as bad, would rather not be in a church than be in a divided church. In order not to divide up their family, the whole family is divided from the church, as these families set up their own “churches” in their own homes. These are in turn cut off from the blessings of elders, pastors, the communion of the saints and the grace of discipline. They are divided from the church. It is madness.

Second, one can always be a family integrated family, even without a family integrated church. I know of no church that requires its members to send their children to youth group, or to Sunday School. You can keep your family together even when others don’t see the wisdom of doing so. You may have to miss Sunday School, or you could, graciously and kindly ask if your child or children might sit in on the adult Sunday School, or if you might sit in in theirs. You can always teach your family together at home before you go to join the saints in corporate worship on the Lord’s Day morning.

Third, you can relax. Though I am confident that a family-integrated church is the best way to go, though I would love to see many churches go back to how the church operated over the centuries, I know in turn that there are plenty of family integrated churches that have far deeper problems than some non family integrated churches. I know that most non family integrated churches have far deeper problems than not being family integrated. We are bodies made up of sinners, and so we ought not be surprised when sin shows its ugly head in our corporate life. When it does, our first instinct ought to be to look for the log in our own eyes. The youth leader is likely not secretly seeking to seduce your children to the dark side. He wants to help. The octogenarian Sunday School teacher isn’t the devil’s handmaiden. She wants to help. The elders who created these programs, even if those programs have some overlap with a Darwinian understanding of education, are not a cabal of Darwinians. They want to help.

With all the cancer my family has been through I have had countless deeply caring people suggest countless alternative therapies. Though they might be right, my response is a sincere, “No thank you.” I don’t need to make them agree with me. I don’t need to defeat their arguments or evidence. I don’t need to have internet wars over their theories. I just pass on what they offer. Sometimes I read their information. Sometimes I don’t. You certainly can feel free to talk to others about your commitment to keeping your family together. You can talk to your pastor and your elders about the issue. But if they don’t hear you as loving, gracious, relaxed, and committed to the well being of the congregation, then you have a bigger problem than age segregation. You have a Hebrews 13:17 problem.:
Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief for that is unprofitable for you.
So back to step one. Repent, and believe the gospel.

Shelter From the Storm

2011-07-20T08:23:00.001-07:00

The grand special effect that caught the eyes of the audience in The Wizard of Oz was color. That’s it, just color. And they were dazzled. And though there were some exciting events, the effects were not up to our modern standards. Still, as the tornado closes in on the family farm, one can’t help but be concerned, or excited. A tornado has three key elements of excitement: speed, power, and unpredictability. I’ve seen my share of natural disasters. I’ve lived in Florida, and I’ve experienced hurricanes. I’ve lived in San Francisco, and I’ve experienced earthquakes. And I’ve lived in Kansas, and I’ve experienced tornadoes. The irony, in the providence of God, is that all three of these wild rides I experienced while living in Pennsylvania. I’m a weather junky. There has never yet been a storm that I have not wished to experience, from the center. When the rain, thunder and winds come our way, Denise is doing well is she can keep me in the sunroom of our house. She won’t coax me all the way inside. I want to be in the middle of it.

Perhaps the appeal is that it seems like such a safe danger, that it gives thrills without guilt. God, I think, isn’t going to get angry with me. I’m endangering no one else, and I’m not breaking His law. But those considerations did not always stop me in my own pursuit of excitement. Not only have I experienced some serious weather, so too have I experienced some serious sin. I’ve lost my lunch a time or two, from overindulging in liquid courage. I’ve been pursued by the law, once for entering where I should not have (I was exploring an abandoned hospital), and once for not allowing others to enter where they should not have (blocking the doors of an abortion mill). I could go on cataloguing the sins of my youth, but the point is that when I was young I did many things I shouldn’t have.

Could my youth have been any different? Of course not. Did God use my sins for my good and His glory? Absolutely. Do I want my children to go through the same things? Not on your life. I want to shelter my children, and I say so without apology. I no more want my children to walk through the storm of my own youthful rebellion than I want them playing outside when the funnel cloud comes blowing through. I want them in the cellar, where they belong, where it is safe.

Some argue against homeschooling on the grounds that such is sheltering children. I always reply, “What are you going to accuse me of next, feeding and clothing our children?” This parenting philosophy, that we throw our lambs to the wolves so that they might become brave, is thinly veiled folly. The argument is so transparent that I wonder that those who make it aren’t ashamed of their nakedness. It is work to guard the hearts of our children. It is no easy thing to fend off those who would consume our children. I mean, how are we supposed to watch NYPD Blue if we won’t let the kids watch it? It seems far better to order the sheep to guard themselves than to stop running with the wolves. We abdicate, and call it courage or wisdom.

Children need to be sheltered, to be protected. They need to be protected from themselves, and from those who would lead them astray. They are not ready to reason out the will of God in all circumstances, far less ready to defeat temptation in whatever form it comes. While God certainly can and does use sin for good, just as He can use a storm, we certainly can not sin that providential grace might abound all the more.

My children, like all children, are sinners. They were born that way. But that doesn’t mean they need to become experts on sin. Wise, yes, jaded, no. While they are by no means innocent before the throne of God, in themselves, nevertheless, I want to maintain their “innocence” as long as possible. They don’t need to know about crack houses, child-beaters, homosexuals, and pornography. That doesn’t make them ignorant either. They do know about spouses who failed to keep their promises. They know that some children disobey all the time, and that some mommies and daddies don’t obey God and punish their disobedient children. They do know about death. They do know that some mommies kill their babies, that many people worship false gods, and that often those who love Jesus are sent to prison or killed. In short, they know the Bible, and they know what it teaches, that the world is full of sin, as are we.

I shelter my children. I would sooner have my children left out in a tornado, than placed in the hands of a professional priest of the religion of the state, a government school teacher. When are they ready to go out and win the lost for Jesus? Here’s a good rule of thumb. Winning souls, and protecting your own soul, is far more difficult, and important than making a living. If they can’t do the latter, don’t send them out to do the former. If you wouldn’t send them out to fight a grown teacher with fists, why do it with wits, especially when the teacher has the whole world cheering him on?

Shelter is good, and not something for which we should be ashamed. There are things children don’t need to know, and keeping them from that knowledge is service to the King. If gay means happy, and queer means odd to your children, you are doing a good thing. Stand firm against the wolves who growl at you that you are sheltering your children. Tell them what one little girl learned the hard way, that there’s no place like home.

By R.C. Sproul Jr.

Ask RC: What is a “Family-integrated church?”

2011-07-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Though it sounds rather complicated and perhaps a smidge experimental, the concept is both simple and ancient. A family integrated church is one that encourages keeping families together by keeping them together. It is a church where families together study the Bible, where families together worship the living God, where families together serve both the church and the world in the name of Jesus Christ.

We fight against a Devil that desperately fights against the family. While we are on guard, as we ought to be, against assaults on the family in the political sphere, we often miss the serpent’s subtleties. The broader culture attacks our families by dividing them. It constructs demographic groups to replace family identity. Each group has its own language, its own clothing, its own music, its own events, its own identity. Our homes, once symbols of togetherness, have now become little more than apartment complexes, designed to keep us apart. Each family member not only has his own room, but in many homes his own phone, television, music system, gaming system. We don’t even share dinner together as Mom rushes off to her book club, Dad heads back to the office, Junior catches a ride to little league practice, and Princess heads off to the youth group meeting. Messages taped to the refrigerator are the apex of our togetherness.

It’s bad enough that such happens six days a week, but we have, in the last fifty or so years, added a new tradition to the church, and imported this same mindset there. Sunday morning we might all share a ride to the church but when we get there Dad goes to his Wild at Heart meeting, Mom to her Women In the Church gathering, Junior is shuttled off to his Little Crusaders class and Princess is hanging out with her friends in the youth building. The result- we end up identifying with our peers rather than our families, just like in the world.

The Bible does actually talk about demographic groups. It addresses the issue. It, however, commands not that we separate from each other based on our stage in life, but that we come together (see Titus 2). The Bible’s pattern, and that which the church followed for over 1900 years, is that the family together is taught and encouraged by the church, and that parents raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Divided Sunday Schools and youth groups were designed with the best of intentions, to reach out to the lost. What they have become, however, is a new tradition, and worse still, a ready excuse for parents to fail in their calling. God calls me, not the Sunday school teachers, not the youth leaders, to speak to my children of the things of God when they lie down, when they walk by the way, and when they rise up (Deuteronomy 6).

My friends, the LeClerc brothers, in association with my friends at the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, have created a brief but insightful documentary, Divided, that deals with this very issue. They have made it possible to watch this video, free of charge, for the next month and a half. I’d encourage you to take a look at www.dividedthemovie.com. It might make you mad. But it will surely make you think.

Ask RC: What are we to make of the Casey Anthony decision?

2011-07-15T08:15:00.001-07:00

Nothing. A little girl died. She might have been murdered. It might have been an accident. It might have been somewhere in between. Her mother may be a murderer, or she may merely be a slightly more dramatic sinner than most of us. She came by her sin naturally, inheriting it from her parents, just like the rest of us. Her verdict may have been a mistake, a travesty of justice, a regrettable inevitability, or the right thing. I don’t know, and I suspect, neither do any of you.

It is a sad and sordid tale, whatever happened. No one should and I, as the father of five of them, never would want to diminish the horror of the death of a little girl. That said, the thing that most interests me in this whole media event is what it tells us about us that it has become such an event. Little children have died for millennia. In our own day thirty five hundred of them die every day, on purpose through the evil of abortion. In both instances there is no flotilla of satellite trucks beaming images into millions of living rooms. In both instances the wire services have not filled our newspapers with the latest information. What’s the difference?

What has changed is technology. Neil Postman, in his classic work, Amusing Ourselves to Death, argued that before the advent of the telegraph there was no such thing as “the news of the day.” There was no category for this form of information- descriptions of events, unlikely to ever directly impact us, in distant lands. The information we sought in times past was information that intersected with our own lives.

Now some might argue that this is a rather narrow and selfish perspective on things. Doesn’t opening the windows of the world onto the suffering of others encourage the virtues of empathy and compassion? Our second instance proves otherwise. It is not a mistake that we are called to love our neighbor. Empathetic feelings about a tragedy far, far away, whether it be a little girl’s death, or an earthquake in Japan, can’t run that deep, given that we aren’t in the least jolted to see the coverage we are watching be interrupted by a pitch to switch which brand of dish soap we use. It is faux empathy, faux compassion, just enough to persuade us that in feeling bad we have actually done something.

Real empathy requires real relationships with real people, with real neighbors. Were we invested in those closest to us, our families, our neighbors, our pew neighbors we would live real lives. Maybe, just maybe, if Casey Antony’s neighbor had not been too busy tuning into whatever captured the nation’s attention three years ago, maybe things might have turned out differently. Maybe we should all take up our cross, follow Jesus, and let the dead bury the dead. Our neighbors, and their unborn children are dying. That it’s not being covered on the news is how you can tell it’s where you’re supposed to be.

Poppies, From Every Thought Captive, Vol 4, Issue 3

2011-07-13T09:32:00.001-07:00

Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is one of those books that changed my life. Now run your eyes down to the bottom of the page. This is RC talking, not Laurence. Laurence has a tendency, an endearing tendency to be rather free with superlatives. I’m stingy, but not about this book. The first thing about the book is its title. Though I have just recently re-read it for one of our Academy classes, I don’t remember whether he makes this point, or someone else does, about the term, “amusing.” We have a tendency to think of amusement as synonymous with entertainment. But its root reveals a more sinister element. “Muse” is Latin meaning to think. The prefix a means to not. An a- theist is one who says there is no God. A person who is a-moral has no morals. And to be a-mused is not to be entertained, but to not think.

We often speak about the idiot box this way. After a long and tiring day we just want to sit and look, to “veg-out.” We don’t want to think, and our friends in Hollywood are happy to oblige. We stop thinking for a few hours, and take a mental nap, the kind you can be awake enough to enjoy.

Then Postman begins the book with a powerful analogy that has, on more than one occasion, made its way into these pages. He notes that while conservatives around the world have manned the ramparts against tyranny, against Orwell’s vision of 1984, too few of us have sounded the alarm about a less well-known, but more chilling dystopian future, that laid out by Alduous Huxley in Brave New World. Orwell, you remember, gave us the terror of Big Brother, that all-seeing totalitarian monster. Huxley gave us the more benign vision of a populace lulled to sleep and complacency through the twin evils of perpetual amusement, and soma, the euphoric, sleep-inducing drug of the masses. Like the poppies placed by the Wicked Witch, as Dorothy and her companions had almost reached their goal of Oz, soma calls us to sleep, to forget, to rest. It calls us to a black sabbath.

And so, Postman argues, has television lulled us asleep. Of course, as with all the devil’s ploys, television not only carries a deadly downside, but it doesn’t even provide the thing promised. That is, not only do you lose your soul, but you don’t ever really get what you bargained for either. The television may give a rest to our bodies and minds, but it only agitates our souls. The constant shifting of the camera angle, the incessant flow of disjointed images can give no rest. To be sure our guard is down. Our rational faculties are not engaged, television being an image and not proposition based medium. But those images stick with us, and as we sleep, turn themselves into propositions, straight from the source, the father of lies.

Postman, who is not a believer, does not argue that such is the result of some sort of conspiracy. The overlords of Hollywood are interested in two things. They want to make a lot of money first, and second, want us to think like they do. But they are not self-consciously trying to put us to sleep. But for all his wisdom, Postman’s worldview does not allow for conspiracies so well buried that they reach down into the very pit of hell. He is right. The moguls do not know what they are doing. But the serpent who pulls their strings knows exactly what he is doing.

What makes the Huxleyan view most chilling is perhaps this. We do not need to be cowed to be put to sleep. Instead we ask for our dose, and take it happily. Big Brother does not threaten that he is watching us, but we watch him because we want to. And like soma, we need a stronger and stronger dose each time to get the same non-rush, whether it be more time in front of the machine, or more action, comedy, or melodrama while we’re there.

But that’s also the good news. I’ve made an amazing discovery in my own journey away from the poppy fields. When you turn off the TV, there are no flying moneys that come to get you. Big Brother doesn’t send the local gendarmes down to teach you a lesson. There are no jealous bureaucrats that tell the King that we’re not bowing down to the proper idol, and we need a serious sauna. All we have to do is turn it off.

And then came another blessing. I discovered, once I got out of the poppy field, that poppies stink. I didn’t want to go back, not because I knew it was wrong or dangerous, but because it wasn’t any fun anymore. Professional TV bashers, including Postman and Ken Myers always shy away from the big application. Having decimated the legitimacy of television, they stop short of telling us to never watch. And so we go on the way we were. I too will not tell you to never watch the television. But I have a suggestion as to how you can judge is too much. If you find that you want to watch it, then you’re still at least half-asleep. You’ll know you’ve cut back enough when you don’t want to watch at all. That’s a joyous thing, like discovering that ice cream is good for you, and zucchini stunts your growth. For what we do with out time should be joyful. Play cards with your family. Read a good book, like Neil Postman. Write a letter to the editor of Every Thought Captive. Try raising chickens, well, don’t do that. Start musing, and you just might find it entertaining.

You’ll discover, if you can just gut it out until the withdrawal symptoms go away, that better than Central Perk, better than Springfield, better than Providence, that there’s no place like home.

By R.C. Sproul Jr.

For Whom the Bells Toll

2011-07-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

Because the serpent is so crafty he has taught us to overlook his craftiness. His feints are those blustering and obvious assaults he makes on God and His Word. His real work, however, happens in the hand we are not watching. Consider for a moment the government’s schools. You can count on one group of Christians at the local state school to get in a dither over the propagation of Darwinist dogma, to get hot and bothered over sundry sexual curricula. You can also count on other Christians to get rather defensive about what so upsets the first group of Christians.

What both sides miss are the potent subtleties that are built right into the system. Far more damaging than whatever New Age heresy that might be spoken in this classroom or that is what is not spoken in any classroom- that Jesus Christ is Lord. Now my beef here isn’t that the public schools aren’t holding classes on theology. My concern is they miss the one unifying truth that binds together every other truth. Because the ground of all truth cannot even be mentioned, the truth has no grounding, and, in the words of TS Eliot, the center cannot hold.

That faux reality, that reality has no unity, is further subtly communicated in the very structure of our schools. We do not give these children wisdom. Instead we instruct them in a string of disjointed “subjects.” The study of these subjects is further divided by a rather peculiar technology, the school bell. When this bell rings we talk about math, until the next bell rings. Then we stop talking about math and start talking about history. Eventually another bell will ring, and we will forget about history long enough to talk about chemistry. And when the next bell rings the children start to salivate like Pavlov’s dogs, because it’s lunchtime.

Just as we ought, when considering the power of pop culture, ask just who is controlled by the remote control, so we should be asking for whom these bells toll. Who is pulling the bell strings? It is the state. It is in their interest to create citizens whose world lacks unity. It is in their interest to create citizens who are willing to be herded this way and that by the ringing of bells. It would be bad enough were the state raising our children for us. Instead they are raising our children for them.

Our Lord, however, rings the bell of liberty. He came to set the captives free. He is the truth, the very truth that sets us free. Which is why any education that excludes Him is the education of a slave. It is not legalism that calls us to speak to our children of Jesus when they lie down, when they rise up and when they walk by the way, but rather the perfect law of liberty. May He be pleased to give us children more free than we, and may they raise up children who are free indeed. May He let freedom ring.

Ask RC: Are my sins remembered by God?

2011-07-08T06:55:00.001-07:00

It was a moment over which I remain deeply ashamed. The office meeting was getting pretty intense. Arguments were getting rather heated. I found myself, in the argument, opposing the perspective of the president of the organization, who was also the chairman of the board. He made a suggestion of some sort, and I replied, while the half a dozen others in the room stared in shock, “Are you out of your mind?”

To his credit the chairman remained calm in reply, explaining to me that no, he was quite sane. I knew I had done badly as soon as the words left my mouth. When the meeting was over I went to him and apologized. He forgave me right away. I wasn’t surprised by that, since he had been forgiving me as long as I can remember. The chairman was my father.

Ten years later the two of us were having another conversation, this one perfectly peaceful. Wishing to illustrate my point I asked him, “Do you remember that time, at that meeting, when I said that really shameful thing, about you being out of your mind?” “No son,” my father replied, “I have no memory of that.” I didn’t push the question. I didn’t probe to find out whether he was speaking metaphorically or not. Either way I was astonished at his character.

Now the Bible regularly uses language about the depth of God’s forgiveness for our sins. He forgets them; He washes us thoroughly from them; He removes them as far from us as the east is from the west. Does this mean He has no knowledge of these sins? Of course not. God knows all things. He knows all things immediately. That is, God never has to compute an answer, nor recall one. All information is immediately before Him.

That we ask this question, however, gets at precisely why God uses this kind of language. We want to know if He really does remember because we are really ashamed and wish He didn’t. We want to be really, really sure we are really, really forgiven. We know that when some humans says after we confess our sins, “I’ve already forgotten it” that they have instead filed it away for later use. Not so with God. There is no later use. There is no secret, hidden grudge.

The glory of the gospel is not that God, just because He’s a nice guy, decides not to hold our sins against us. The glory of the gospel is that my sins are already dealt with, already punished. There is no grudge not because He has forgotten, but because He remembered our sins at Calvary. Our sins are not forgotten but forgiven, because Jesus received their due punishment. Our Father in heaven loves us as if we had never sinned at all. Our sins have no part in the equation. They simply don’t count because they were cancelled on the cross.

My father is a loving and gracious man, who can literally forget. My heavenly Father is a loving and gracious omniscient God who cannot forget. Both of them, praise God, can and do forgive.

Children's Church

2011-07-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

It was Mark Twain who quipped, “In the beginning God made man in His image. And man has been returning the favor ever since.” It was John Calvin who argued in the opening pages of his Institutes that if we would know God well, we must understand man, and if we would understand man well, we must know God. There is a necessary correlation between creature and Creator. The principle holds, however, even when the creature affirms a false creator. That is, though the God of heaven and earth, the God of the Bible is the creator of Muslims, we ought not be surprised that Muslims tend to look an awful lot like Allah. We ought not be surprised that the Greek pantheon looked rather like the Greek culture. It goes both ways of course. We form our vision of God by starting with ourselves, and we form our vision of ourselves by looking at the god we have created. Which is why it makes perfect sense that the evangelical church has rushed headlong into worshipping a baby Jesus.

As always, we justify our betrayal of Jesus on the grounds that we are only trying to win more people. We set aside prophet and king, and present Jesus as a limp-wristed priest. The dreamy, distant looking eyes, the silky soft skin, the gentlemanly behavior of knocking on doors and waiting for an invitation, the pleading, pleading, pleading, that won’t you please let Him in, all match our character perfectly. We too are weak-kneed sissies, little boys in knickers. If we make Jesus inviting and inoffensive, just like us, then maybe the lost will come in. All of which is actually designed to make Jesus safe and inoffensive to us. Where once men thundered from pulpits across the land, in our day we have boys, dressed like Mr. Rogers, sharing behind Lucite lecterns. We have replaced the proclamation of the potent Word of God with Show and Tell.

Lest we wake the giant of the glory of our Maker, we likewise play lullabies when we gather together to worship. Of course worship looks rather more like the nursery. We sing dreamy, distant-sounding songs that evoke the memory of His silky soft skin, and His gentlemanly behavior of knocking on doors and waiting for an invitation, the pleading, pleading, pleading won’t you please let Him in. There are any number of objections that could be raised against the insipid dreck we have the gall to call both worship and music. But the greatest is right here—whatever the words may say, the music itself says God is safe. We want safe, because we are children.

We want to come as we are. We refuse to dress like grownups. We want to be on our way back home soon. After all, little minds have little attention spans. Because we insist on comfortable seats and soft lighting, we insist on getting our bottles of Starbucks in the lobby on the way in. There we sit, laughing at the drama team and sucking down our sweet caffeine. And all of it is stunting our growth.

The statics are damning proof. The church growth movement does not bring the lost into the kingdom. The membership rolls of mega-churches consist of what was the membership rolls of bitty churches. We aren’t winning the lost; we are dumbing down the found. We are pandering to Christians in Pampers and leaving them sitting in their own stink.

It is time to grow up, to mature, to become complete, to be men. This will only happen when we learn to meet with the true and living God, the God of our fathers, the Ancient of Days. Some have argued that contemporary worship emphasizes the immanence of God, while Puritan-style worship emphasizes His transcendence. But when we renew covenant we are blessed with both. As we draw near to the King, as we lift up our hearts, as we are confronted by God in His nearness, His immanence, what we discover is that we do so not so much because he has condescended to us, but because He has lifted us up. We meet Him, the One Who burns and smokes, Who causes mountains and men to tremble, not on our level, but on His, “But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first born who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:25-27).

We ought not to have children’s church, because we are the children’s church. We are the spirits of children deemed just, being perfected, who on the Lord’s Day join with our fathers in the faith. We are the church militant joined together with the church triumphant, a noble army of men and boys who aspire to be men. Nothing will mature us faster than we would behold His glory. Men are made of such things.

The God we worship is from everlasting to everlasting. Before Abraham was, He is. His calling to us is that we would be like Him, that we would grow in grace and in wisdom. We are indeed His children, but we are likewise judges over all the earth. We are the very elders at the gate. May our Father, in His grace, drive with the rod of His wrath, folly far from us, for it is bound up in our hearts. May our Father, in His grace, and through His Spirit, lead us into all things, maturing us, making of us workmen who need not be ashamed. May He take us from our diapers and gift us with the mantle of a prophet, that we might, with the very voices of men and angels, proclaim the glories of His name. May He teach we who are the Sons of God, to be men of God.

From the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of Every Thought Captive magazine.
by RC Sproul Jr.

The Face of Evil

2011-07-05T06:31:00.001-07:00

There are any number of dangers of a steady pop culture diet. To catch our attention Hollywood must increase the tension. The struggle must get more and more dramatic, the stakes must increase. We don’t merely hope the good guys catch the bank robber. Now they are chasing down a serial killer. It is no longer the cavalry taking on a rogue band of Indians. Now cowboys do battle with aliens intent on world conquest. In order for our heroes to be more heroic than the last hero he must face a nemesis more evil, more deadly, more grasping than the old nemesis.

Some fear that as we watch these increasingly global battles that we are increasingly desensitized to mayhem. A constant stream of explosions and stabbings and gun battles, some say, will make us blind to the horror of violence. They may be right.

My fear, however, is rather different. I’m afraid all our celluloid enemies will cause us to miss the genuine evil in our midst. I’m afraid that the monsters that are all too real miss how monstrous they are, because they so little resemble the monsters on TV. Universe colonizing aliens are not real. Serial killers are exceedingly rare. If we looked at the world through the lens of the Bible we would know how to spot real monsters- they are men who leave their wives and children. Real heroes put their pants on one leg at a time. Real villains take their pants off one leg at a time.

I’ve been to their crime scenes. I’ve seen the tear stained faces of their victims. I have listened to the heaving sobs of abandoned women. Those who are called to the role of hero here are not white-hatted cowboys. They are not grizzled detectives. They are not spandex wearing supers. They are the elders of the local church. And I have watched countless such men of Ephraim turn back in the day of battle. At best they ring their hands, wishing there were something they could do. At worst they baptize the evil in their midst with blasphemous talk of a “grace” that is not at the expense of Christ, but the expense of the wife and children.

Christ has given the church the power of the keys not because it is less potent than the sword, but because it is more potent. That virtually every “church” in America refuses to wield this great weapon isn’t mere theological folly. It isn’t merely another alarming trend toward worldliness to write learned articles about. It is silence in the face of evil, which is evil in itself. Boys were made to protect girls, and elders were made to protect families.

Rise up o men of God. The day of battle is here. Selfish evil men, who know all the right answers to all the trendy theological debates of the day, are dropping bombs on their own homes. Women and children are being torn to pieces. Man your stations. Play the man. No army, not even the Lord’s, can survive without discipline.

Ask RC: Is it right to tell my child that Jesus loves them?

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Yes, no, no and yes. First, we rightly affirm that there is a form of love that God has for each and every living human. We all bear His image and that is sufficient to elicit His love in a certain sense. Sometimes called His love of benevolence, the Bible teaches that God has a general good will toward men, such as was announced to the shepherds at the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:14).

This does not mean, however, that we ought to embrace a bland universal brotherhood of man and universal fatherhood of God perspective. This love of benevolence, while real, does not undo the reality of the wrath of God on those who sin against Him. That, we should understand, includes our own children. The love of benevolence does not keep the judgment of God from descending on His creatures, including the very young. So while we can safely affirm that God loves them benevolently, this doesn’t mean by itself that our children are safe from His just wrath. Their youth does not shield them from the wrath of God for their sins (Psalm 51).

Which brings us to our second “no.” Though I would argue and will momentarily, that God looks at the children of believers and the children of unbelievers differently, this does not mean that all children of all believers are safe from the wrath of God. Though one could argue that later in life he came to saving faith, Esau was the child of believers, toward whom the Bible clearly says God felt hatred (Romans 9: 13). Having a true believer in one’s family tree is not a ticket out of the wrath of God. Neither is my faith as a parent sufficient to gain the work of Christ on behalf of my children. My Baptist friends are absolutely right when they affirm that God has no grandchildren.

When, however, I encourage my children to rest in the love that Jesus has for them I do so not merely because of His love of benevolence. Neither am I denying the “no’s” listed above. Instead I encourage my children to believe that Jesus loves them because of what theologians call the judgment of charity. I treat as believers those that I have some reason to believe believe. Some of them, of course, are tares. That could even be the case about my own children. When we speak of the promises of God, however, we rightly affirm that they are for those who have trusted in the finished work of Christ alone. What we don’t do is look skeptically at those God says are His own. His promise is to be a God to me and to my children, and the only way that can happen is when me and my children trust in Him alone.

There is, of course, an opposite danger. I certainly don’t want my children to be given a false sense of assurance. I don’t either want that for any sheep, young or old, under my care. That is why, while we rejoice in worshipping together over God’s good promises, we in turn call one another to faith and repentance. We do not say to those that we credibly believe believe, as far as we can tell, “Turn from your evil ways and enter into the kingdom.” We do, however, tell the assembled congregation, “Repent and believe” for repenting and believing is not something we do only once. It is something both wheat and tares are called to do, the former always, the latter for the first time. And henceforth always. And so I do warn my children, and my wife, and myself against presuming upon God’s grace. We are to make your calling and election sure (II Peter 2:10). We also, on the other hand, all of us, rejoice to proclaim, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God (I John 3:1).

Remember that we cannot know for certain the state of anyone else’s soul. We are not required to see perfectly into the souls of others. We do, however, have to treat believers one way and unbelievers another. A judgment of charity has its dangers, but so does a judgment lacking in charity.