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There's always a glitch or two. We should be switching within a few hours -- Lord willing and the crik don't rise.

. . . as we used to say in the Navy. Here's the deal. I started bloggin in 2004, when the world was young and we were all full of idealistic fancies. Blog and Mablog also started out with a platform that was not going to be able hold all the verbal pig iron that I was eventually going to pile onto it. Since that time, I have posted over 7,000 times, and the total word count (not counting your astute observations in the comments) is within shouting distance of 3 million words. Heh. As Solomon would have said, had it occured to him, of the making of blog posts there is no end, and something around here constitutes much weariness and striving after ones and zeros, I mean wind.

But here is the important announcement part. Starting in 2010 (as in, say, tomorrow) Blog and Mablog will appear to most of you in a completely different format -- we have completely remodeled this puppy. I bring this up to beg your indulgence in two particulars.

One is that the Internet is kind of funny about this kind of thing, and so some of you might not see the changes for a day or so. It sometimes takes a while for the cached word to get around.

The second indulgence I crave from you is this. This new blog format will be mangaged by someone (me) who was born (barely) in the second half of the 20th century. This means that my birth was closer to the close of the First World War than it was to my 12th wedding anniversary in 1987. And that means, in its turn, that I was not born (as kids today are) knowing how to do computer things. I can do it, but I have sit here staring at the screen with beads of desperate sweat on my brow, and my tongue sticking out of the side of my mouth. When confronted with challenging computer issues, I generally have the look of a kicked spaniel. I bring this up because this new and improved Mablog will have many electronic nooks and crannies for me to get lost in. You will have to be patient, which incidentally is also urged upon you in Gal. 5:22.

All the old content will be brought over, including the comments. The categories will be a bit different, and navigation around the site, once you get the hang of it, should be much easier. When we shift over, your commenting account should have been preserved, but you may be asked to reset your password. But I am sure we will have enough foul-ups to grant us our alloted quota of consternation. See you tomorrow.

Every faithful Christian educator should want to know the truth, and not just the truth about ultimate things. A man can know the truth about Heaven and Hell, about the triune God, and about the vicarious death of Christ on the cross, and still not have the faintest idea about what he ought to be doing between now and next Thursday. A faithful Christian educator wants to know the truth about the task he has undertaken. Be diligent to know the state of your herds (Prov. 27:23). There is a very foolish school of thought when it comes to car maintenance and repair -- "don't lift the hood if you don't want to know" -- and this approach is not what we should be doing with regard to the education of the little ones in our charge.

It is important to repeat again the principle that Paul sets out for us in the second letter to the Corinthians, which is that it is not enough to commend yourself, it is not enough to measure yourself by yourself, and it is not enough to compare yourself to those who are doing exactly the same thing you are doing. This is not wise (2 Cor. 10:12).

And this, incidentally, is my sole target in this whole discussion. The enemy is not distance learning, or homeschooling, or traditional (non-classical) classrooms. How could it be? The problem, the central problem, is pedagogical ideology, that which will brook no hard questions, and will tolerate no bringers of unpleasant truths. It is this attitude that is the enemy of small children, those who are not capable of resisting what is about to be done to them in the name of the latest thing.

So how then should we measure? When we are evaluating the pedagogical methods we are using, we have to be adults in our thinking. Remember the bell curve. The spread of innate educational ability will manifest itself over any population that is large enough -- and private Christian schools, government schools, and the various forms of homeschooling (coops, on-line learning, and pure kitchen table homeschooling) are all large enough for us to start taking measurements -- if we really want to.

Now no educational method should evaluated on the basis of the fact that there are kids bringing up the rear. No educator can put in what God left out. But neither should we evaluate any method based simply on how the most gifted do. We all know the homeschoolers (I have met a number of them) who could get into Harvard three times before lunch. And at Logos, we have seen more than one class with academic abilities that I have described as "spooky." And also, taking the rough cut numbers, about ten percent of the kids in the government schools are still competitive with anybody anywhere in the world. They can run with the big dogs -- they have not been crippled (at least academically) by a failing school system. I recall one time many years ago how pleased I was when a Logos knowledge bowl team got shellacked by a local (small town) government school team. The sooner you learn that people outside your plausibility structure (as the sociologists call it) know more than you do, the better life will go for you.

The reason we should not evaluate our particular methods by the performance of our best and brightest is that these are the kids who can teach themselves phonics by staring at milk cartons and cereal boxes. These are the kids with a robust immune system, which should never be taken as an argument for surrounding them with germs. There are a bunch of students bright enough to survive and excel despite the incompetence of everyone around them. This is no reason for the team of incompetents around them to start giving one another teaching awards.

Taking the long view, an educational system or method should be evaluated on the basis of two basic goals -- its ability to thoroughly educate the large majority of students in the fat part of the bell curve, and to do so in a way that teaches and enables the best and brightest without exasperating them. It is here that the government school system is failing, and it is here that the private alternatives (private schools and homeschoolers) must be careful not to make the same mistake, which consists of an allergic reaction to any kind of public accountability. And such accountability is never provided by cherry picking results to put in your high gloss prospectus.

One more point should be made. The desire to evade accountability and unpleasant job reviews is a fallen human desire. It is not a desire that is born in someone's heart as soon as they decide to start homeschooling. Contrary to popular reports, Wilson does not have it in for homeschooling. We are all of us sons of Adam, and we all need the truth. Paul tells the Romans that they should not be conformed to the world, but rather to to be transformed by the renewal of their minds (Rom. 12:1-2). What is the immediate result of such a transformation? "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith" (Rom. 12:3). Self-flattery is a temptation that comes to all those who live in this world. Seeing yourself and your activities accurately is one of the greatest gifts of God's grace that He can bestow, and He wants to bestow it on all of us -- and all of us need it. I have been on educational boards of various descriptions for over thirty years, and have visted more schools around the country than I could possibly remember. And I have been a pastor of hundreds of homeschooled and privately schooled kids over the course of decades. The temptation to opt for Buffalo Springfield's "hooray for our side" approach is a universal one. The grace of God, however, is greater, and I have seen the right kind of desire for true accountability within every pedagogical method, and God be praised.

But, to be blunt, I have also seen the temptation to evade it in every educational quadrant as well. Good classical Christian schools are good; bad classical Christian schools are not. Good homeschools are good; bad homeschools are not. But if someone were to say that my statement above clearly implies that there is such a thing as a bad classical Christian school, and that this therefore means that I have it in for classical Christian education generally, this means that the person who responds this way is an ideologue, and is not interested in learning to think in Rom. 12:1-3 categories. The same is true of homeschooling. The fact that there are poor homeschools (and there are more than a few) must never be allowed to be taken as an attack on homeschooling simpliciter, and those who take it that way are not refuting my point, but rather making it.

Nobody likes unpleasant news, but it should still be treated as oil on the head. "Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head" (Ps. 141:5). It only feels like it is breaking my head, but if you take it the right way, that feeling eventually goes away.

The next chapter in Franke's book is Chapter 8, "Scripture As the Word of God." And technically, everything should be okay, because the words are all okay, but everything is so darn parsed, and I think I recognize maneuvering room when I see it.

"The historic commitment of the church to the idea that Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit has led to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God and as such reflective of the intentions of God for human beings and all of creation" (p. 74).

Correct. So why does it clank? Why does it clank like an Abrams tank going over a tin bridge? Things like this can be technically correct, and still seem off, like the band leader counting off, "ONEtwothree4." Or like a man proposing to his dear love Natalie, and having it come out, "naTAlie, woodJA CONsent to marREE me? This DecemBER?" All the information is there, but she would still be justified in thinking that he was making fun of her.

Throughout this chapter, the accent is consistently on the wrong syllAble. The Christian community thinks this, and we also believe that. We function with Scripture at the center, and we treat it as our authority. Christians are anxious to keep Word and Spirit together. The Bible is what it is because it is understood that way within the Christian community. The Bible provides us with a conceptual framework so that we . . .

Like a man introducing the key note speaker at a conference, and by the end of the introduction, we all know a lot more about the introducer than we do about that other guy, whoever he is.

For those of you who have been following this series, this brings to a conclusion our series of study questions through Calvin's Institutes. Congratulations. As my granddaughter Daphne would say, "I dood it."

Book 4/Chapter 20

Obedience to God (section 32)

1. What is the central caveat that Calvin gives concerning obedience to the magistrate?

2. What denial of Daniel ties into this?

3. What does Hosea rebuke the people for?

4. And what does Peter say?

These are the questions for the readings for Thursday, December 31, and those readings can be found here.

We are very grateful to God for last night's safe arrival of our 14th grandchild, Marisol Helen Wilson, a gift of God to Nate and Heather. She weighed in at 9 lb. 12 oz., and appears to like everybody. 

Since the entrance of sin into our fallen world, we have a tendency to divide things that belong together, and to put together things that should be kept distinct. We blur what should be sharp, and we divide what should be blended. Although the creation of marriage antedates the entrance of sin, sin has entered into marriage in profound and pervasive ways. Indeed, the first disruption caused by sin was the disruption of fellowship between our first parents--the first troubles in our world were marriage troubles.

This means that as the image of God is being restored in us, in Christ, the most profound work, the central work, will be in our marriages. It will be there that we see the first evidences of the effectiveness of the Spirit's work . . . or not. It may seem odd to have an exhortation at a wedding begin on this note of marriage troubles, but this does not take away from the joy of this occasion. Some couples have a solid marriage from the first day on, while others struggle. But all couples are married in a world in which the concept of marriage itself is dislocated, and all couples are called to the glorious task of putting things right. This is what a Christian marriage is like--in the Christian gospel, God is putting the world to rights, and in Christian marriages, He is doing that work in the place where our troubles first began. Couples who understand this, who face this reality head on, are couples who are blessed throughout the course of their life together. Couples who believe that nothing needs to be fixed or, if something needs fixing, it is always in the other person, are couples who struggle. They are not living in the world as it is.

In marriage, so much depends on understanding the God-given distinctions between male and female, and so much depends on understanding how they are intended to blend in an organic and complementary way. But we stumble--we were supposed to blend our wills, becoming more and more like-minded, and we were supposed to keep our personalities distinct and sharp, becoming daily more and more like ourselves--growing up into ourselves. Instead of this, we blend our personalities and everything and everybody gets all tangled up, but we keep our wills distinct, becoming increasingly stubborn as the years go by. And then we wonder at the conflicts.

When we start to notice that something is seriously wrong, we sometimes seek help--perhaps in a book, or from a seminar--and we study various aspects of successful marriage, and learn various things, or so we think, but then we do not notice any improvement. So we get another book, or turn to another seminar or weekend retreat. We become like those that the apostle Paul mentioned once, who are always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.

This is because we have divided hearing from actually doing, the very thing that James warned us against. When we hear the word without doing it, we deceive ourselves, James says. One of the places where this deception takes deep root is in the fact that we think we are doing simply because we are willing to hear. We have taken to spending all our time editing recipes, instead of spending time in the kitchen cooking, using recipes in the appropriate way. That "appropriate way" is to learn what you are supposed to do, and then to go and do it. You hear a message on marriage, and you put it into practice.

But in this kitchen of marriage there will be two cooks, and so the point is not to hear a message on what the other cook needs to be doing, and to then spend your time watching him or her, wondering when they are going to start doing their part. The reason they may not be doing their part is quite possibly because they are making the same mistake you are--they are standing there wondering when you are going to start doing your part. In a godly marriage, each person is called to particular things, and each person is to start there.

Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Husbands are called to love their wives as they care for their own bodies. Wives are called to honor and respect their husbands, just as the Church honors the Lord. Husbands learn what they are to do through imitation, and wives learn what they are to do by imitation as well.

Husbands are not told to live if their wives are respectful to them. Wives are not told to respect if their husbands are loving them rightly. Our individual obedience to the authority of Christ is one of the things we are supposed to keep distinct. As both husband and wife keep their hearts faithful, keeping their obedience distinct, they quickly discover, to their great joy, that this is what makes their hearts and wills one.

Let us extend the cooking metaphor still further. A good cook knows how to blend spices in such a way that the presence of each is still markedly there. You can tell its presence, and you can tell the presence of the other, and you are enjoying something that is much greater than the sum of its parts. This is what a good and whole marriage is like. We are not supposed to dump everything into the pot, and call the results "sauce."

Allow me to make one other comment using the cooking metaphor. When you are in the kitchen together, in the way that you ought to be, there will be two great joys. The first is the joy of anticipation, communicated by aroma, and the other is the satisfaction of actually eating the meal. At our table, when our extended family gathers, there are two principal verbal expressions of gratitude and joy. The first is when people come in from outside, and they smell the aroma of the meal that has been prepared. The other is when we sit down to eat, and we compliment and thank the cook. You are called to both. As husband and wife, you are to be satisfied in one another. You are to be satisfied in the goodness of the marriage God has given you. But you are also to live lives of continual preparation, such that the aroma of your gladness in one another is evident to everyone who comes into your home.

Justin, you are called to love this woman as your own body, and you are called to love her as Christ loved the Church. That's a tall order, and yet that is what the vows you are about to take will commit you to. There is no possible way for you to keep these vows unless you are dependent entirely on the grace and goodness of God. The form of the vows that we use don't include the phrase so help me God, but we are assuming this throughout. God promises to equip you for the task you are undertaking. The one thing that interferes with this provision of His is sin, and in all males (not just you), the principle form that this sin takes is the sin of pride. When we take vows in the name of Jesus, we are invoking the fact that God has covenanted with us as well. He is obligated, by His promised grace, to meet us in our weakness, and to strengthen us when we stagger. But you will not apply to Him for this grace if you are being proud. And you need to know how strikingly easy it is for males get proud, particularly when they are in the presence of a girl. And remember, you are now, from this moment on, in the presence of a woman for the rest of your life. So as you are taking these vows, you are asking God to mortify your pride.

Emily, you will be promising, in just a moment, to look up to Justin with heartfelt respect and honor, and to do so in all things. You need to understand that this is not just technical deference, or a grudgingly acknowledgment that he has the responsibility of leading. Your father has given you away, and you are about to give yourself away. You are to look expectantly to Justin, waiting for him to lead you in the Christian discipline of laying down your life for others. He will do this, and you will follow him in it. He will give himself to you, and you will give yourself to him, and then you will both discover that God has returned to both of you what you have given away in His name. You will have your gift returned, while at the same time Justin will still have it. This is a mystery, but I speak about Christ and the Church.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

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

"For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing" (2 Tim. 4: 6-8).

Paul is nearing the end of his Christian pilgrimage, and he speaks of his life as a believer and minister as a drink offering, about to be poured out before the Lord. A drink offering, poured out on the ground, looks as though it is gone forever, but God keeps track of everything that goes into the soil. Paul is ready to be done, and he talks about his readiness with a series of metaphors. The first is taken from the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, and he then follows it up with two athletic metaphors -- or perhaps a military metaphor and an athletic metaphor. He has fought as a warrior or as a boxer ought to fight. He has run as an athlete ought to run, with his eye on the finish line. These metaphors point to the reality that Paul is describing. He has kept the faith, he has not wandered off or veered from the path.

Paul knows that salvation is by grace, and he knows that it is all of grace. He knows that the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to those who have faith in Him. This does not alter in the slightest his willingness to speak about the awards ceremony at the end of the race. Paul's vision of the Christian life is the kind of event that is followed by the raising of flags, the playing of anthems, and the placement of gold medals around the neck. In his day, that prize was a crown, and he describes what he will receive as a "crown of righteousness." The Lord, who is Himself righteousness, will award Paul a crown of righteousness on the last Day. Not only will the Lord do this for Paul, He will also do for everyone who has loved His appearing. Those who love His appearing look forward to it. In that Day, the Lord will honor His gifts with yet more gifts. He who gives all righteousness will reward us for having that righteousness, and He will do it by giving us a crown of righteousness. It is the crowning gift that crowns all gifts.

1. Whom should we serve in the civil realm?

2. Why are there "many princes"?

3. What should we then do?

1. What do we not examine?

2. Are we to be subject to men who are evil in character?

3. When evil rule afflicts us, what are we to be mindful of in the first place?

1. When God raises up deliverers for the people, what two categories do they fall in?

1. When Calvin requires this obedience, what group is he spreaking of?

2. What class of men have the duty to resist the tyranny of the king?

These are the questions for the readings for Wednesday, December 30, and those readings can be found here.

This is a season for personal inventories, and for resolutions. This is appropriate and fitting . . . unless one of your resolutions needs to be to rely less on resolutions and more on actually doing something. Assuming your resolutions help you get things done, you don't want to lose ground here in order to gain ground there. Sanctification is accumulative--one virtue should not displace another.

"Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God" (Rev. 3:2)

"Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing" (Phil. 3:16).

Our first text is taken from the admonition given to the church at Sardis, and it is a pretty stern rebuke. The church there had a reputation for being alive, but was dead (v. 1). It become apparent in the next verse that they were not completely dead (v. 2), but the remaining life there was about to die. There were just a few embers in what had been a roaring fire, and those needed to be blown back into a blaze. "Strengthen the things that remain" means that they needed to get back to first principles, they needed to go back to the word they had first received (v. 3). In the words of the admonition to the church at Ephesus, they needed to return to their first love.

The second text assumes that those reading the exhortation have been faithful, and the call is not to repentance. At the same time, there is no sense of "having arrived." Paul does not consider himself as having "apprehended" but he continues to press on toward the goal (v. 13). The mark that he strives for is the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (v. 14). Anyone who is mature should think the same way, which shows us that maturity is not complacency (v. 15). Let us continue to do what got us here (v. 16). Let us live up to what we have already attained.

If we have wandered off the path, let us return to it. If we have stayed on the path, by the grace of God, let us keep on.

In this world, time is not an automatic friend. We have just passed one of our culture's milestones for time, going from the year 2009 to the year 2010. This is good . . . or it is not. Time deepens wisdom, but it also hardens folly. Time is given so that we might have time to repent, but it also given so that we might be without excuse. Time allows the grain to ripen, and it allows the weeds to grow. Time allows the meat to roast in the oven, and is also what causes it to burn.

God is triune, and reveals Himself to us as triune. The principle way He chose to do this is through the Incarnation of Jesus. In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity was made necessary by God's complete identification with us--which seems counterintuitive. How can the fact that the eternal Logos became a human being forever and ever lead us to the a complex doctrinal formulation that makes our heads hurt? Well, if it makes our heads hurt, then perhaps we are not as Trinitarian as we might like to believe. It is a given that the infinite God cannot be comprehended by finite minds. That much even unbelievers can know. But our glory is that this infinite God who cannot be comprehended took on human flesh forever, and has assumed a dwelling place among us. The relationship we have with Emmanuel, God with us, is not a relationship with a figure of speech. This is gospel; this is what God has done--a perfect man, living a perfect life on our behalf, and then offering up that life in blood sacrifice, so that we might be put right on the basis of His resurrection from the dead. Put right? Put right with what? With everything . . . put right with ourselves, put right with the creation, put right with our neighbor, and put right with our God.

This gospel, in its experienced reality, is transformative. It changes things, and, as it happens, it often changes things that didn't want to be changed. Over time, one of two things will happen. The first is that we persevere in staying on the path, just as we ought to have done. If this is the case, then we need to be encouraged to "keep on keeping on," as we used to say. The other option is that we slide back into the ways of death, as the saints at Sardis did, all while keeping relics of the gospel around. We revert to the sin while keeping this very fine catechism. As time progresses, that catechism becomes a large pebble in our shoe, one that makes us walk funny.

The way we deal with this is that we objectify the truth, putting it "out there," giving credence to it "in its place." Thinking that we have created a safe house for the truth to live in, we are actually killing it. The truth is meant to be lived, and if it isn't lived it isn't our truth. The truth is meant to be loved, and if it isn't loved it isn't our truth.

Now truth is objective, but we must not objectify it. That is what Paul is talking about when he says that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. Paul is not hostile to letters--he wrote "the letter kills" with letters. His words are objectively true, and by this we mean that they are not made true by our applause, and they are not falsified when we withhold our applause. But we objectify truth when we say, "Yeah, uh huh, I heard that before." Or "I knew that once." For those in this position, they must either come to their first love, or they must return to it.

This year our congregation will be 35 years old. During that time, children born in the first years have grown up, married, and are bringing up children of their own in this same congregation. Things we knew and learned have been successfully passed on--let us continue to live up to what we have already attained. Some have joined the conversation part way, and feel like they are always catching up. Some other things we have drifted away from, and so let us return to the basic things, the simple things--love God and hate sin. Love His Word, despise the world, and learn to love the world.

A fitting conclusion is provided by a couple songs--the old gospel song Sweet Jesus says, "Everybody talking about heaven ain't goin' there." And as the song Denomination Blues puts it, "Ya gotta have Jesus, and that's all."

Look at this. Two UK posts in a row. After hearing my daughter express herself in our living room on this subject more than once, I encouraged her to put it in prose that sings. And so she did. Right here. If this were a Blandings story, and if Bekah were Baxter, this is the moment when she is saying it with flower pots, if you catch the allusion.

For all our friends in the UK, may I heartily recommend that you check this out?

There is not really a delicate way to get at one of the root problems with modern higher ed without confronting the emotional engine which drives those problems. And when we confront that engine we discover that the problem is caused by the atomosphere we all live in, and not by this or that nefarious educrat. The kind of colleges we have are plants that grow in the kind of soil that we as a people provide.

We have those who have given themselves over to this vice completely, believing it to be a virtue. Criticize it and the long knives come out. Then we have those who label the vice as a vice, but who believe it is discretely segregated from most of our lives. They do not recognize how much it affects them. And then you have those, like me I hope, who see it as one of the central and pervasive evils of our age, but who are more affected by it than they know, and who consistently hesitate before bringing it up. Because there is no good way to bring it up, especially when you are talking about people's kids.

The evil can be described as a clustered bundle of problems that I will call by the general name of egalitarianism. The cluster is made up of envy, ressentiment, democracy, sentimentalism, and what Charles Murray calls educational romanticism. One obvious consequence of the problem is the notion, now prevalent in our nation, that every kid should go to college. But the reality is that far too many are going to college as it is, and if we had really good guidance counselors working in our high schools, we could cut the number in half.

But in order to make this point I have to distance myself from Aristotle first. He taught that the purpose of what we would call a liberal education was to equip a free man to be a free citizen, and what we would call vocational education was education for slaves -- mere training. But his point, some of which we must recover, had far too low a view of the honorable nature of vocational labors in the sight of God. In another post, I will develop what the Protestant Reformers recovered in their vision of the dignity of all lawful work in the sight of God. God has made certain men for certain ends, and it is their job to find out what those ends are, and to labor joyfully in what God has equipped them to do. In short, with regard to the Puritan work ethic, we have no untouchables. All laborers, from the dairy farmer to the backhoe operator, from the backhoe operator to the librarian, from the librarian to the fish and game specialist, from the fish and game specialist to the software code guy, from the software code guy to the long haul truck driver, all of it is honorable before God. In every lawful vocation, we have the privilege of being Christ to others, and in our dependence on the vocations of others, we receive the gifts of Christ to us with gratitude. More on this later.

I say this because I am about to say that some people are more able than others. Even though God created us with aptitudes that are equally honorable, He did not create with aptitudes that are equally capable. Some people are brighter than others, as in "more intelligent," and this stone cold reality should be reflected in the education we seek to provide to them. It means, bottom line, that most people should not go to college. "College for all" is an idolatrous pipe dream, one that wants to ignore certain creational realities.

Almost thirty percent of American 25-year-olds and higher currently have a B.A. If true educational reform in higher ed takes root, over the course of a generation, we should be able to cut that number in half. If we don't cut that number in half, we will continue to "cut in half" our educational expectations. For example, if we said that our goal was to send every eighteen-year-old to basketball camp, and in the grip of a bizarre ideological frenzy, we insisted that we were going to reach the achievable goal of "every American learning how to dunk the ball," then there are only two possible outcomes. The first will be that reality will eventually set in, and we give up that fantasy, admitting that it was a fantasy. The second is what we are currently doing, especially in the humanities, and that is the achievable goal of lowering the net.

When we send kids to college who are not capable of doing the work, then two irreconcilable forces are pressing against one another, and one of them must give way. Either the historic liberal arts curriculum will give way, or the practice of herding warm bodies into college will give way. Over the last generation or so, it has been the curriculum that has given way -- through grade inflation, through cheating, through abandonment of core curriculum, and so on. When that happens, something invaluable is lost. When it doesn't happen, the unfortunate student who ought to be somewhere else learning how to do something else well is continuously exasperated by the challenge of something he cannot really do.

This means that colleges that are engaged in education reform (as NSA most certainly is) have to be prepared to turn away customers who (in the grip of our broader culture's propaganda on this) are insisting on applying, and they have ready money in their hands. But while the Church takes all comers, the choir doesn't, if you follow my meaning.

This is an enormously practical question, and in order to address it, we have to answer the question in ways that show that we are being accountable to external realities. "For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise" (2 Cor. 10:12).

There are tests available that are valuable predictors of future performance. The fact that some people use these tests ignorantly, or superstitiously, does not alter the fact that a great deal of our turmoil in higher ed is fully preventable, if we were only willing to talk people out of going to college on the basis of what we already know. If someone gathered up (at random) a group of 100 average American high school students, all of whom were intent on applying to NSA, so that I could speak to them, I would regard it as my duty to try to talk half to three quarters of them out of it. But notice that I said "random." If they were a group of 100 A-students from a first rate classical Christian school, it would be more likely that I would only try to talk a quarter of them out of it -- a certain amount of self-selection has already occurred. But if they are anything like their fellow countrymen, their applications have predictive value.

Take the SAT scores, for example . . .

"You should be aware of a problem with percentile points: A percentile point gets wider as it moves toward the extremes. For example, if you raise your SAT scores from 500 to 600, a hundred point gain, you have gone from the 50th to the 84th percentile -- your score has risen 34 percentile points. If you raise it from 700 to 800, you again have raised your score by a hundred points, but by only a little more than 2 percentile points, from the 97.7th to the 99.9th percentiles" (Charles Murray, Real Education, p. 52).

In simple terms, the SAT scores are not a footrace, where every distance between the runners is the same all the way around the track. A 100 point drop from 1200 to 1100 does not have the same significance that a 100 point drop from 1000 to 900 does. Now Murray argues (and I agree with him) that a relaxed standard of college readiness would be a combined verbal/math score on the SAT of 1180. "The most selective schools had a student SAT mean above 1250" (Murray, p. 69). And for those who are curious, the current SAT average for applicants to NSA this next year is around 1220.

Much more needs to be said on all this, but preparation for life is not a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. There are many things that a liberal arts education at NSA cannot do, and there are many people for whom we cannot do what we can do for others. A liberal arts education at the higher level is not for everyone. More than that, it is not for most.

If someone rejects what we offer because they have bought into the technocratic prepare-you-for-a-job paradigm, we want to subvert that paradigm, and we want to recruit as many capable students as we can. But if someone does not apply to NSA because it is clear that God has equipped them and made them for something else, then God bless them all. If the majority of Christian parents are not passing by what we have to offer, then we are not doing our job.

1. Does Calvin believe that magistrates are capable of great wickedness?

2. What does this do in the minds of men who must live under such?

1. What should our first reaction be when we find ourselves governed by a wicked magistrate?

1. What does the wickedness of rulers do to our obligation to render obedience?

2. What particular instance of such a king does Calvin use in the next section?

These are the questions for the readings for Tuesday, December 28, and those readings can be found here.

Just a quick, additional example of how we should draw political conclusions from what everybody knows, this time with some criticism for the neocons.

What with the Christmas Day bomber guy and all, we are seeing another round of debate between the neocons, who say we need to treat this thing like a war, and the Obamacons, who want to treat these events as individual criminal acts, and so on. On paper, if the choices were those outlined above, I would be with the neocons. But the problem is this -- the actual debate is between those who want loosey goosey law enforcement and those who want really tough law enforcement. The latter option might explain why, with Bush gone, we have seen and will continue to see terrorist attacks on our soil stepping up, as with Ft. Hood and this Christmas Day attempt. But the fact that the really bad guys are coming out to play tells us nothing one way or another about whether this is a war or law enforcement.

In this context, war is either a really tired and overdone metaphor (war on drugs, war on poverty, war on whatsit), or it is a legal category. When Congress declares war, which it has not yet done, then we are at war. Until it does, we are not, except to the extent we are stuck in a metaphorical quagmire. Granted, Congress could not declare war on every Islamist cave, or on every shadowy group behind the 14,000 terror attacks since 9-11. Fine. Don't declare war on them -- issue letters of marque and reprisal against them.

But we could have declared war on Iraq and Afghanistan and we declined to do so, because the neocons want to treat this as really, really tough international law enforcement. And I grant that they are much more likely to find bad actors and to give them an extended vacation in lovely Cuba.

But here is the problem. Law enforcement has checks and balances built in. Believe it or not, so do wars. What we are being asked by the neocons to accept is a state of affairs with the privileges of both and the responsibilities of neither. The Obamanauts want us, on the other hand, to have the responsibilities of both and the privileges of neither. Not easy to know which way to lean -- do I want to get blown out of the sky on my next visit to Detroit, or do I want to get hauled off under a little known provision of the Patriot Act after preaching on Leviticus 20:13?

When we are not getting along with others, the pressing temptation is always to believe that you are just as you have always been, and that they have somehow changed. This is often not true at all, but even if it were true, that does not put you in the right. Perhaps they have changed in that they have decided to stop putting up with your rudeness.

But "getting along" is not the oil of insincerity to make the social machinery run more smoothly. The Scriptures describe fellowship as a work of the Holy Spirit. This is a God-given thing, and a work wrought in us by His grace. Once this is said, the next mistake is to think this is just a form of spiritual oil, a divine, supernatural oil, to make the ecclesiastical machinery run more smoothly.

John Owen once said that a man should not think he makes any progress in godliness if he is not daily walking over the "bellies of his lusts." The thing that thwarts all fleshly ambition, spiritual pride, and grasping competition is the cross of Jesus--His death on the cross is what puts to death every form of egoistic striving--and egoistic striving is what prevents us from loving one another. The Holy Spirit does not just come along and fill you with benevolent thoughts. He is a Person, not a shot of joy juice. And the Holy Spirit is the one who applies the death of Jesus to the areas of your life that need mortifying.

It turns out that in order for you get along with others, something has to die.

When we say that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, we generally do well at not inserting any portion of the material creation in between Christ and the believing soul. We know that it is the Word preached or written that was the instrument of salvation, but we don't attribute this power to the ink on the page, or to the leather binding of the Bible, or to the mystic quality of sound waves in the air. The gospel is mediated to the believing soul by means of matter, but we know that faith matters--the matter doesn't matter. The fact that it does not matter simply means that it is not the active agent--rather, it is the carrier of God's gracious purposes, received by faith.

In the proclamation of the gospel, grace is communicated to the believing soul by material means just as much as grace is communicated to us by means of the sacramental water, or the sacramental bread and wine. The organ of efficacious reception is always faith, nothing but faith, faith to the end of the world. But how does faith receive something to believe. Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum, and neither does grace.

When a man is deaf, this is because there is something wrong with his ears, and not because he lives in a vacuum. When a man is not blessed in this Supper, it is because grace is blocked by his unbelief, and not because the grace is not extended. In this meal, Christ is offered to all. In a faithful observance of this Supper, Christ is received by the believer. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. He who has a tongue to taste, let him taste.

Father, Your Word summons our nation to forsake its abominations, and so we confess them on behalf of our people. Hear us on their behalf, we pray, and hear us in such a way that this rebellious people turns in repentance. We confess our ingratitude, our materialism, our bloodiness, and our perversion. Open our eyes to be able to confess even more.

We know, Father, that if we in the Church regard iniquity in our own midst, or in our own hearts, this prayer will be ineffectual. Father, we know that things are muddled in our nation because we have allowed them to become muddled in Your sanctuary. Forgive us this great evil, and restore us for Jesus' sake.

And we also confess our individual sins to You--Selah . . . We do this in the great and glorious name of Jesus, and amen.

God has sprinkled the clean water of the gospel on you. Your sin and filth are removed, along with your heart of stone. Know this, on the strength of the gospel--your sins are forgiven through Christ.

Congregation: Thanks be to God!

This post was originally titled "The Way of the Cross and Constantine," but this is more interesting, don't you think?

Jesus died outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago. That death was not only the hinge upon which all history turns (although it certainly is that), it is also the hinge in the story of every believing soul. The cross is one point in history, and that cross is perichoretically present throughout history as every believing soul is baptized into that death. In short, His death is something that others can be baptized into. His death was an event that was intended for others -- indeed, it was a death that was intended for the whole world. His death was for all.

This means that His death was the center of life for our lost world, and when the virtues of that death take root in individual lives, the way of the cross radiates out from them as well. Like the omniscience of God, the center is now everywhere. I cannot locate the death of Jesus "over there" or "back then" and be faithful to it. As Bonhoffer put it, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. But as that death is communicated everywhere, so is the power of resurrected life. If we die with Him, we shall also live with Him (Rom. 6:8). Death and resurrection are inseparable spiritual realities. They come together; it is a package deal.

This is a point of stumbling for the worldly wise -- and the worldly wise include both the aspirational climbers and the high-minded quitters. Since the beginning, professing Christians have found the way of this death/life to be challenging in ways we would rather not be challenged in, so we generally try to evade this challenge in one of two ways. First, we try to go straight to resurrection, so that we might ride in the kingdom of God's triumphal parade, dressed all in purple. We want the crown, but don't want the cross. Let us call this crude Constantinianism.

The other option wants the cross, but it is not really the way of the cross at all -- it is more like a sociological crucifix. Their process of dying never ends, because in God's economy, whenever definitive death occurs, it is followed by resurrection. And these folks don't want it to be followed by a resurrection -- that would be "triumphalism." Let us call this mistake a crude . . . anything but Constantinianism.

Now let me cash this out in practical, political terms, but preceeded with a little amateur punditry. Like a chess player trying to think three or four moves ahead, I want us to be ready for the challenges ahead of us, not the challenges that our grandfathers faced.

I take it as a given that Obama and all his minions, not to mention his ilk, are evil and destructive. The Christians who support them are Lenin's useful idiots. Those who say and do wicked things should be flatly opposed by Christians, not supported by them. Anybody who cannot see the evil in the ongoing abortion carnage, or in approved homosexual marriages, or in the recent fireworks display of economic mendacity over our nation's capital may perhaps be excused. They are too busy seeing the future, and in their hallucinations, it works. In their kind of future, it always works. As Scott Adams of Dilbert fame put it in one of my Christmas presents yesterday, the glorious thing about the future is that you can never be wrong about it in the present.

So much is obvious. You cannot resist future subtle tyrannies (my soon-to-be-made point in this post) by making excuses for present manifest tyrannies (my point in many others).

Like I said, I am trying to think three or four chess moves ahead. This means I am far more concerned about a future conservative secularism than I am concerned about these last gasps of twentieth-century liberalism. This might take a minute to explain, so give me a minute, woodja?

Their bishop is in a position to take our queen, but contrary to the current crop of conservatives, I want to think about what this game is going to look like a little bit later. It is not enough for me that Glenn Beck is freaking out about the threat to the queen, even though he is quite right about that. Let's think ahead. But in the meantime, I don't want to give the time of day to those liberal Christians who don't believe that their bishop is actually threatening anything. The appearance is there, sure, they handily argue, but the CIA is doing a lot of things of holograms these days.

So how does the way of the cross fit into this? The point is that the world is always opposed to Christ unless it is fully and consciously in submission to Him -- unless it has been converted. But in that case it is not "the world" anymore, at least not the world in the sense that generates worldliness -- the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1 Jn. 2:16).

Right now, Obama is in the White House, and he really is proposing demented things. But America is far more foundationally conservative than people usually believe, and I believe that a conservative backlash of very large proportions is building. And here is my point: for Christians, this is not to be treated as an automatic good. Whatever the temporary relief ("oh, good, our queen is safe"), we have to have our eye on the game, not on the move. Okay, so the lunatics are currently running the asylum -- or as Mencken once described it, democracy is the art of running the zoo from the monkey house -- and we are due for a reaction in which some sane grown-ups will take control of the asylum again. If and when that happens, conservative Christians are in very great danger of going back into their slumbering consent to an idolatrous regime, just so long as it is run by sane grown-ups and doesn't insult them overtly.

But apart from a radical conversion to Jesus Christ, whatever regime is set up will deteriorate over time -- like the house of Charn. So much is not newsworthy. It always happens. So our concern should be to have a Church in that day that is not compromised, such that any open idolatry will be opposed by us, and not just the open idolatry of the leftists.

The true antithesis is between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, and not between the main political parties. But neither is it between the main political parties and splinter true believer parties. Let me illustrate. Tolstoy once said that the difference between revolutionary violence and reactionary violence was the difference between dog poo and cat poo, although he didn't quite put it like that. That seems like a fine way to say "a plague on both your houses," but we are not done with our options yet. The difference between predatory violence and pacifistic non-violence (like Tolstoy's) is the difference between timber wolf poo and rabbit poo. In other words, we are not forced to choose between Idi Amin and Tolstoy. Those who love wars -- our ruling sociopaths-- and those who provoke them -- anachistic pacifists -- are like Grendel and Grendel's mother. Tolstoy was a very talented and twisted soul, but why would we consider him a reliable commentator on the words of Jesus? It is like Karl Barth's relationship with that Charlotte chick. Why does anyone want to get into the theology of a man who was getting it on with her? But I digress . . .

The real antithesis is between living as Jesus commanded and refusing to live that way. This is the real antithesis for those individuals who are living the way of the cross, and it is the real antithesis for nations that would do so as well. Do what the Lord Jesus says to do -- not Karl Rove, not Leo Tolstoy, not Al Gore, not Jonah Goldberg, not Noam Chomsky, not Stanley Hauerwas, not Freidrich Hayek, not Naomi Klein, and not Sean Hannity.

Laws are, Calvin teaches us, preposterous if they try to govern while neglecting God's right, providing only for men (Institutes 4.20.9). All atttempts at secular governments are not just wrong, they are preposterous. Attempts to govern in this way simply sublimate the formal name of the god who is being worshiped, and when that happens it is always a false god. This means that Christians have to understand that attempts at secularism mounted by traditional-values conservatives are every bit as preposterous as those mounted by leftist dreamweavers. Unless conservative Christians (and by this I mean conservative Christians who are politically engaged) learn this lesson, they will be in no position to speak the truth when it becomes urgently necessary. They saved the queen in this move in 2010, but will lose both the queen and the game in 2024. This should not be a difficult lesson to learn -- the death and resurrection of Jesus is the life of the world. This is the true gospel, and the gospel is the only solution to culture. And incidentally, by "gospel" I mean the kind of sermon John Piper would preach, and not the kind of redistributive check that Jim Wallis would hand out. But many professing Christians reject this because the way of the cross seems too simplistic. It is simple, but not simplistic. One little word shall fell him.

Take two political ceiling fans -- one entirely broken down because incoherent leftist economics have busted the motor and half the blades are hanging down. The other is in fine, free market running order. You can't hang either one of them if you are sitting in the cold drizzle of secularism because you don't have a ceiling.

1. When are lawsuits permissible?

2. What must the righteous litigant be without?

3. How should he treat his adversary?

1. Who is Calvin arguing against?

2. What kind of court system is Calvin assuming here?

3. What should the aim of the godly litigant be?

1. What does the righteous litigant maintain?

2. What is he trying to increase, and what not?

Paul's concern (section 21)

1. What were Paul's two concerns in Corinthians?

1. To whom does Calvin say that honor is owed?

1. What passages does Calvin cite in saying that Christians are to be obedient to the rulers?

2. Do what extent may believers be involved in politics?

These are the questions for the readings for Monday, December 27, and those readings can be found here.