oakleys.org.uk

"More than one Israelite man went to worship the golden calf because there was a good prospect there for getting laid. It sort of gave the 'golden calf theology' that little extra appeal. God struck twenty-three thousand of them down because of it. We should be well acquainted with God's treatment of them, along with His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, His judgment in the Flood, and so forth. These things were written for us as examples, and apparently God thinks them to be effective examples. We must know them and meditate on them" (Fidelity, p. 35).

"There is a relation between what predominates in our preaching and what we deem to be of greatest importance" (Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, 91).

I think it goes without saying that biblical Christians will vote in November in a way that favors basic pro-life issues, supports a return to some form of fiscal sanity, and rejects all attempts at legislative gender-bending. So much goes without saying. So I am not so much concerned about how our folks vote, for voting out the rapscallions can be edifying on a personal level, and instructive for the kids to boot. I am talking rather about how conservative Christians might get themselves invited to a rally, and then be tempted to get swept up into all the throw-the-bums-out excitement, losing track of some things that would be better not to lose track of. So . . .

1. Keep your head. We are living in a time when politicommotions are running high, and the pushback against socialist lunacy is likely to be rowdy and vigorous . . . but angry mobs do not constitute permission from God to stop obeying Him for the duration of the rally. If you are called to fight, then gird up the loins of your mind (1 Pet. 1:13).

2. Conservative forms of postmodern relativism are no better than the other kinds. History happened the way it did, and advocacy history for our side, celebrating whatever makes us feel better about ourselves, is no better than having the light bulb invented by a Zulu chieftain during Black History Month, and by Edison the rest of the year. I mean, co-opting Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. as champions of conservatism is enough provocation to make St. Francis kick three or four puppies. If some conservative rally a century from now has a big banner of Obama at it, then perhaps it wouldn't be too far off to suggest that somehow, somewhere, somebody slipped a cog.

3. Do not make the mistake of thinking that anything that makes the socialists, liberals, progressives, and commies froth at the mouth must be biblical. What they are advancing is evil, sure enough, but that doesn't mean that anyone who fights them must be good. Evil forces fight other evil forces, evil forces fight confused forces, and evil forces fight good forces. So you could be fighting evil, and still have the odds of you being a good guy be two to one against.

4. Always act, and never react. Action needs to proceed from a biblically based framework of political principles, and not from faux outrage over the fact that your gored ox is not covered by Medicaid.

5. Don't support any political movement in such a way that eliminates your ability to protest the inevitable compromises that will follow in the train of electoral victory, such compromises being undertaken and advanced by Republicans ten minutes after the election. Ten dollars says that after the election, which will be a good night for Republicans, a few leading Republicans will come out almost immediately and say that they don't actually want to dismantle Obamacare piece by piece, in order to throw it into the Chesapeake piece by piece. The only way to effectively counter to this will be by throwing congressmen into the Chesapeake, as a way to help them get the tar and feathers off.

6. Take note of the fact that pastors, theologians and writers alive today, who actually embody the principles held by the Founders, will usually not be allowed anywhere near the microphones, at least not while the television crews are still there. I have a cartoon from The New Yorker hanging on my bulletin board, where a school teacher in a flower power dress is saying to the kids, "'Give me liberty or give me death.' Now what kind of person would say that?"

7. Above all, beware the idolatry of a Christless civil religion. The American civil religion has the kind of pantheon that can fit lots of statues around the base of that dome, and Christians must not bow down to any of them. We are Christians and the worship of a generic Deity is prohibited to us. There is no way to the Father except through the name of Jesus. But there are manifestations of the American civil religion that are seductive to evangelicals. And so we must be told, again and again, little children, keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21).

"Those who worship sexual pleasure receive, in the long run, the destruction of the thing they worship. Wisdom tells us in Proverbs that all who hate her love death (Prov. 8:36). Those who hate sexual wisdom love sexual death" (Fidelity, p. 32).

"Our seminary curricula are largely identical to what they were around the First World War, but the entering seminarian is a profoundly different person than was the seminarian of the early twentieth century. Then, the individual was well-read in poetry, and had studied nearly a decade of classical language (Latin, Greek, or both), learning by reading poetry and ancient languages to read texts carefully. He had written compositions almost weekly in many of his academic classes, and often wrote letters to friends and family. In contrast, the entering seminarian today has the faculties of a sixth- to eighth grader sixty years ago, and the seminary curriculum cannot make this seminarian an adult by the time he graduates" (Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p. 68).

HT: Johnny Simmons

Here are some thoughts by Christopher on the efficacy of prayers for his cancer. The obvious conclusion is that we need to double down.

Here is a web site that looks like a promising bundle of theological resources. Kudos to the guys who got this going again.

"Burning lust that overflows is not an example of men getting away from God (as they like to tell themselves); it is an example of the wrath of God catching up with men" (Fidelity, p. 31).

"So why don't churches routinely conduct annual reviews of their ministers? Because ministers don't want to be told that their preaching is disorganized, hard to follow, irrelevant, and poorly reasoned" (Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p. 34).

Suppose that an American daisy-cutter bomb had been dropped on Mecca, and blew up their sacred rock. Suppose further that through a series of circumstances, a Southern Baptist gentleman proposed building a Christian chapel on the lip of that crater. We would be justified in suppposing this man to be any number of things, but one of the things he emphatically would not be is a moderate.

The fact that he would not be a moderate would not make him a terrorist, of course. It would just make him not a moderate. He would be doing something provocative, and he would be doing it on purpose. If he denied being provocative, this would simply make him a dishonest non-moderate. A real moderate would have stayed home.

Our secularists tend not to see this because they have made the fatal mistake of believing their own propaganda. All religious differences, they think, are mere denominational differences, and they are prepared to unbend liberally when it comes to such denominational distinctives, considered as such. They say, for example, that a free country should allow their Christians to debate whether to baptize with heads upstream or downstream. And then, with a patronizing pat on the head, we are sent on our way in order to debate how many angels our faith community thinks could fit on the head of a pin.

Religion, to them, is false, irrelevant, and pie-in-the-skyish. That being the case, they will treat forays by believers as believers into the political realm as blasphemous outrage, or as impossible contradiction. As a general rule of thumb, it is an outrage when Christians do it, and impossible when Muslims do it.

But on the eve of the Spanish Armada, a Roman Catholic Englishman could not be simply treated as one who believed in Purgatory, for example. Being a Catholic in that setting was a political act. When John of Leiden ascended to the throne of David in the Munster rebellion, to be an anabaptist within a fifty mile radius was a political act. We think that different churches are all listed in the yellow pages, so that we can know what time their services are, and that's it. But it is anachronistic to impose that mentality on those periods of (most of) history when politics and religion mingled in public together. The two cannot really be separated.

The rise of the secularist heresy, and the voluntary quiesence of Christians in the West, created an optical illusion. It looked like politics and religion were separated, when what had actually happened is that secularism established her religion, but with a stripped down liturgy and creed so that people would believe that it was somehow a-religious. "Perhaps if we call it secular, then people won't notice how pervasively religious it is."

This technique was brazen, and it is the kind of thing that can sometimes work . . . for a time. It is like Christians calling their churches "non-denominational." But Grace Chapel, a designated non-denominational place of worship, is also, as it turns out, denominated (named) as Grace Chapel. Abraham Lincoln once asked how many legs a sheep would have if we call the tail a leg. Five, the answer came back. No, he replied, calling the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Calling it secular doesn't make it secular.

Secularism pretended for a time to be neutral about the basic religious concerns, and it was actually anything but neutral. Creating a religion of man is not the same thing as abandoning religion. And so after a time, the pretension wears thin, the contradictions start working their way to the surface, the old alliances and treaties are violated, and the old immanent gods no longer answer when we cry out in their temples.

This is why it is a political act to be a Muslim in America today. To be a Christian in America today is also a political act. It cannot be depoliticized by any ecclesiastical wish or theological whim. Meredith Kline has no wand to wave that will make any faithful Christians fit into this collapsing secular order. This is because our secularist overlords have lost their faith in the ghosts of Jefferson and Voltaire, and have also lost the doctrinal rigor of their convictions, and are wobbling along as best they can. In this crisis of secularist confidence, to be a Christian at all is a political act of defiance. The same goes for the Muslims -- because secularist idols can be challenged by other idols, as well as by the true God. The Muslims, however, have been quicker to see the situation, and quicker to exploit it than have Christians.

If the secularist state could somehow continue on, unruffled, for the next three centuries, a lot of Christians could continue on with their compromises with it. Sure. And if the sky fell, we would all catch larks.

But that is not our situation. Bricks are already falling out of their wall. Their towers are already swaying back and forth. The corrosive acids of their relativism have eaten away all the strength of their three-hundred-year-old mortar. Many of us do not yet see this. So? When the walls of Jericho fell down, I dare say that there were more than few Israelites who were caught flat-footed. But ready or not, here we come.

"At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Ps. 16: 11)

The Basket Case Chronicles #10

“But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:24-25).

Left to themselves, the Jews seek after a sign. Left to themselves, the Greeks pursue what they call wisdom. But fortunately, in the grace of the gospel, the very last thing that God would do is leave us to ourselves. But notice here what God is not leaving us with—He does not abandon us to the sinfulness of seeking supernatural omens, or the stupidity of the philosophy class. When we think of sin, we tend to think of strippers and cocaine, while the apostle Paul thought of images of Jesus appearing in the clouds or the collected works of Aristotle. God’s wisdom cannot be made to line up easily with what respectable people believe to be good and wise.

When God is foolish, it is wiser than we are. When God is weak, He is far stronger than we. The reason we are constantly surprised is that not only are we foolish and weak, but we are also very slow learners.

Nancy and I are coming to Virginia about a month from now, and looking forward to it. You can check out the conference info here.

"The desire which we as Christians must battle is not just a 'plain vanilla,' morally neutral, biological desire for sex. We are fallen creatures, and even as Christians our redemption is not yet completed. We must still deal with the fact that we will confront desires, coming from within ourselves, which are attractive to us by virtue of the fact that they are prohibited by God. Paul does not tell us to restrain our sexual desires because, if we don't watch it, they could be put to a wrong use. These members of ours on the earth are not morally neutral; they must be mortified -- put to death" (Fidelity, p. 25).

"What the contemporaneists and emergents have not yet considered, however, is the possibility that such moribund churches are so not because they are doing the wrong things, but because they are doing them incompetently" (Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p. 32).

In the beginning are the words. Behind and underneath every civilization are the foundational words. Those words can be false and idolatrous, but when they are believed, they still serve in a foundational way. When they are not believed, that culture has entered a sacrificial crisis. Smoke still ascends from their temples, but no one really believes in the gods anymore. The sacrifices don't work, and the populace continues to unravel. "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Ps. 11:3).

Then others come, preaching strange gods, and there is pressure to make a switch -- because human cultures have a deep and undeniable need for efficacious sacrifice. Abandoning ineffectual gods, proven to be such, for ineffectual gods, not yet shown up as failures, can seem like an improvement.

The Ground Zero mosque is an opening gambit, an appeal to secularist America. If Allah is God, then follow Him. And of course, the materialist laughs this idea to scorn -- look at the relative size of the armies and navies, look at the GDPs, look at our cultural achievements. And so the importance of faith is neglected. What is greater -- momentous achievements with no faith following, or tiny achievements supported by blind, unyielding faith? Which one will give way to the other. As Chesterton put it, a man who stands for nothing will fall for anything. The same thing goes for cultures.

There are counter appeals, pulling in an opposite direction, of course. And we can see this kind of thing with the Glenn Beck rally at the Washington Mall this last week end. Those who are contemptuously dismissively of such things are only showing that they don't know what makes human beings tick. People don't just want a full belly -- they want answers. They want to be oriented. They want to be centered. And we don't need to see them getting the right answers to be able to see the hunger for answers.

But we are Reformed. We can't be bothered with providing gospel answers to a starving nation. Let the Mormons do that. The sheep are scattered, and the task of gathering them looks perilously like work. It is too much work to even look like a false shepherd. "My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them"(Ez. 34:6). When Jesus saw the multitudes in this condition, His heart went out to them (Matt. 9:36). Our theologians take it upon themselves a radical two flock theology, postulating an earthly flock that we don't have to pay any attention to, and a heavenly flock that doesn't need any attention from us. It works out just fine, and here we are with a book of thick theology, and a fine cigar.

"Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD; As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock; Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them" (Ez. 34:7-10).

"Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD" (Jer. 23:1-3).

And so there you have it. Woe declared upon the pastors.

"The problem is not outside ourselves in the x-rated videos, or in the skin magazines, or with the porn on the net, or with Suzy Q sunbathing next door. The problem is within -- even within believers. This is simply another way of saying that the problem with pornography is not the pornography" (Fidelity, p. 21).

"I realized then that sermon length is not measured in minutes; it is measured in minutes-beyond-interest" (Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p. 31).

It should not be surprising that after I have urged the establishment of a mere Christendom for some time, that questions about the First Amendment might arise. It would appear that I am tresspassing on the sacred precincts. It would seem that I am strolling across the manicured lawns of the Temple grounds, in order to have a better shot at kicking one of the sacred geese.

So perhaps I had better explain. My position on this can be summarized nicely and in brief compass. It is not the case that a mere Christendom would violate anything in the First Amendment, and the second point would be that, even if it did, we need Christ more than we need Madison.

But, on this point at least, we may certainly have both. The First Amendment, rightly understood, does not prohibit a civil acknowledgement of the Lordship of Jesus. It prohibits the establishment of a particular denomination of Christians at the federal level as the national church. It does not in any way prohibit, to take an example at random, the erecting of a Christmas creche on the steps of the Mugwump County Courthouse. Here's what the amendment says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Our concerns for the present have to do with the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. We may discuss what lawyers have done to mangle the rest of it some other time perhaps.

If you would be so kind, please note the first word of the First Amendment, which is Congress. Congress is the only entity which can violate the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, and they can do so in two ways. The first would be if they were to pass legislation that created the Church of the United States, as England has a Church of England and Denmark the Church of Denmark. The Founders did not do this because they objected to national churches, but rather because they objected to the idea that the United States was a nation. We were, rather, a confederation of nations, meaning that any established religions needed to exist at the appropriate level, which was not the federal level. At that time, federal government and national government were not interchangeable synonyms. If you take the trouble to read The Federalist Papers, a collection of newspaper articles urging ratification of the Constitution, you will discover one of their points to be the fact that those urging ratification disavowed the idea that the Constitution was in any way creating a nation. And this is why, incidentally, Lincoln's phrase in the Gettysburg Address -- "four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation" -- was such a masterpiece of revisionist history.

The second way Congress could violate this part of the First Amendment would be if they interfered with the free exercise of religion, as practiced by any other entity that is not the Congress. Thus far, Congress has not violated the establishment clause, unless you want to count the IRS, but they have specialized in crude and repeated violations of the free exercise clause. Free exercise of religion is rapidly coming to mean that you can still believe whatever you want behind your eyes and between your ears, just so long as you do not try to exercise your religion freely, out in public where people can see you. This is not unlike the modern legal theory, with regard to one amendment down, that argues that the right to keep and bear arms means that you don't really have the right to keep and bear arms. It is hard to get your mind around such legal suppleness, and a minimum of three years in an accredited law school is usually required.

When the Constitution was adopted, 9 of the 13 colonies had established religions at the state level. The longest surviving of these was the Congregational Church in Connecticut, which was supported by that state down into the 1830's. But the point is not that we have such established state religions now. The point is rather a principled one, demonstrating with unarguable clarity what the original intent was. The federal government did not require the states to maintain an established church, but it most certainly permitted it, and did so expressly. Alabama could be officially Baptist, Connecticut Congregational, and Virginia Episcopal, and nothing about such an arrangement would be a violation of the First Amendment as originally conceived. At this point, compare the First Amendment and the Tenth Amendment. What Congress could not do, e.g. establish the Presbyterian Church, any one of the states most certainly could do.

All the states could pick different state flowers and the national government could pick a national flower, and no great conflict ensue. We could do the same with state birds, and adopt the bald eagle as the national bird, and it would cause no great consternation. But to have different state religions, and one national religion over them all is just asking for trouble. The founders were not stupid men, and so they decided to not go there.

In fact, this original understanding of the First Amendment provides us with a model of mere Christendom. The principle of organization between different Christian states need not take a stand on the denominational questions that divide the states from one another. That is what I am arguing for. This is the pattern for mere Christendom. But this cannot be done, let it be said in passing, if Michigan were under Islamic Sharia law and South Dakota under Lutheranism. Religiousdom does not provide a principle of unity at all. Christ does.

So what went wrong? As a result of the War Between the States, and subsequent interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, the position and role of the Bill of Rights was entirely reversed. It was decided that what the federal government previously could not do, as prevented by jealous state governments, the state governments now could not do, as prevented by the overweening and ravenous federal government. We used to be protected from the federal government by the states, and now we are "protected" from the states by the feds. And thus it came about that the function of the Bill of Rights, which was to guard us against an out-of-control central government, went by the wayside.

This reversal tells you everything you need to know about how it came about that our government no longer requires the consent of the governed in order to function. This reversal tells you everything you need to know about how the list of grievances that the Government needs to be willing to redress, as described later in the First Amendment, is a list that is getting longer by the minute.

INTRODUCTION:

We need to begin with the obvious, which is that Scripture teaches that our words affect how we are doing, not to mention t hose around us. But this “obvious” truth can, if unattended, deteriorate into the vagaries of generic uplift. When we speak the good word, it must be a word that is truly wise and good.

THE TEXT:

“A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken”  (Prov. 15:13).

“Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad” (Prov. 12:25) . 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:

We begin by juxtaposing two proverbs, asking each of them to illumine the other. The first tells us that there is a link between the condition of the heart and the condition of the countenance. A merry heart results in a cheerful countenance, just as a man speaks out of the abundance of his heart (Matt. 12:34). The heart is a thermostat, setting the temperature of the rest of your activities. If the heart is sorrowful, the spirit is broken, and if the heart is merry, then the countenance shows it. So, then, how do we adjust the thermostat? When a man’s heart is heavy, then his heart stoops. He becomes discouraged. He cannot carry the weight that providence is asking him to carry. When someone want to help, what they need to do is come in order to speak a good word. A good word makes his heart glad.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING:

But this is a good word, not just any word, and not any old word that somebody thinks is good. “He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him” (Prov. 27:14). Suppose your roommate, or your spouse, or somebody in your house, comes staggering out to breakfast, and pours himself a bowl of Grumpy Nuggets, with no sugar and very little milk. Is that the time to wave your spoon in the air in time with the old gospel song you start to sing in a raucous manner? “Cheer up, ye saints of God, there’s nothing to worry about/Nothing to make you feel afraid, nothing to make you doubt./Remember Jesus loves you so why not stand up and shout?/You’ll be sorry you worried at all tomorrow morning.” And the word of Scripture is fulfilled; you are reckoned as one who curses.

The words you speak should be true, of course, but they need to be more than true. They must also be relevant, and in addition to being relevant, they must also be timely. The only difference between salad and garbage is timing. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear” (Prov. 25:11-12). So don’t be like Mary Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, saying true things all day long, in wildly inappropriate ways. And they should also be kind. The lock on the door of your mouth should have three keys—is it true? is it kind? is it necessary?

CREATURELY IMITATION:

There is more involved in this than just heeding an exhortation to “be nice,” or to “say nice things.” If we need to do this kind of thing in wisdom, and we do, we need to do it in imitation. What we do, we are to do as children, as imitators or followers of God (Eph. 5:1). We worship God through the Word, and so it is not surprising that we are logocentric, that we are people of words. We serve and worship the God who is love, and so we are to walk in love (Eph. 4:15). And, in the same way, we worship the God who spoke the perfect word, the fitting word, into our hearts, and so we are to do the same to others, by imitation and by analogy. Our words are to be gospel, and our words are to be gospel-like.

COUNTERINTUITIVE WORDS:

We want to take it apart in order to find out how it works. But we need to begin with the reality that it works. The Bible calls the preaching of the cross “folly” to the worldly-wise. Why should we be surprised when they come up to us and say that what we are doing doesn’t seem relevant to them. Of course it doesn’t. That is a design feature. God defines what a word fitly spoken looks like. God defines what a perfect setting of silver should be.

NEED AND GRACE:

We learn how to speak to others, speaking the good word, by observing how God speaks to us. And when the gospel comes to us, what is it? We have human need on the one hand and divine grace on the other. The good word spoken is the intersection between need and grace. The good word that preaching brings is this—it is the declaration of the grace of God, addressed to human need, and the declaration is backed up with the authority of God’s throne. So when you come to encourage someone, what is it that you are imitating? It is not a hollow appeal that says, “don’t worry, be happy.”

THE DECLARATION OF THE CHRIST:

Christ, then, is to be preached. By that we mean Christ incarnate, Christ crucified, Christ buried, Christ risen, and Christ ascended. When He is declared in this way, the pattern of death, resurrection, and ascension is not put out there to complete an argument in your intellect, although it may do that. Neither is Christ over all to be preached in such a way as to soothe or excite your emotions, although it may do that as well. We are to love God with all our minds, and we cannot do that without the preaching of Christ crucified. We are to love God with all our hearts, and we cannot do that without the preaching of Christ risen and ascended. But something more is necessary. No, the faithful declaration of this gospel is always aimed at the citadel of the human will. You are not here as spectators, or observers, but rather as worshipers, and this means that you are on the mountain of decision. And when you go down again, into your day-to-day activities, you will be in the valley of decision. Here you are, and here is the Word declared. What are you going to do?