Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 8

Red-Pilling & Christ

Red-pilling is the realization that you’ve been lied to, the world isn’t the way you were told. A bunch of what you thought was real was actually a sham, a scam, a facade. Satan is the father of lies, and satanic cultures and kingdoms thrive on lies. This is why conversion to Christ is the ultimate red pill. Christ is the truth incarnate. His truth sets men free. And therefore, His Word in Scripture must be our touchstone for everything. Christ is King, not Satan, not his useful idiots in places of power.

Covid was a major red-pilling moment in our culture. The media and cultural elites tried to convince us that millions would die if we didn’t shut down our “non-essential” businesses and churches and schools, stay home, wear masks, stand 6 feet apart, and then when we noticed that abortion clinics and casinos were still open and they were still having private dinner parties, while our grandparents died alone in nursing homes, while they were arresting lone guys on beaches, we saw through the charade. When BLM riots ripped through our cities and protests and marches gathered like churches and they were praised and justified by our politicians and pastors, we realized we had been lied to… by almost everyone.

The tranny jihad has been another radicalizing red pill moment. Demanding that sick men have access to our daughters’ and mothers’ bathrooms and locker rooms and athletics, drag queens in libraries, and performing stripteases in front of young children, and the sudden rush to chemically castrate or permanently, surgically maim any teenager with a moment’s worth of sexual confusion, not to mention the millions of dollars behind it all — revealed to many that this is not about love and equality but about perversion, grooming, pedophila, and a corrupt counseling and medical industry.

And don’t forget the schools. The public/government schools have been complicit in all of this. From sexualizing kids from young ages to DEI indoctrination from preschool to universities, white Christian guilt and shame has metastasized, not to mention plummeting scores and standards on basic math and literature and history, all filled with Cultural Marxist religious talking points, in the name of neutrality and secularism and freedom. Heh. Loads and loads of fabrications, lies, and deception.

But all of this is a setup for any thinking man to wonder if he’s been lied to about everything. The same people who told me to mask up, take a jab, put money in some dude’s junk, and to feel bad for being a white Christian, also told me that the civil rights movement was good, that the confederacy was pure evil, the Salem witch trials and the Spanish inquisition were some of the worst examples of religious persecution, and the crusades and the wars of religion are what happen when people take Christianity too seriously.

It’s no wonder people start asking if the moon landing really happened or if the earth is actually flat and maybe there really are aliens and UFOs. And what about mermaids and unicorns and giants? Could a man really walk on water? Can water be turned into wine? Could the dead rise? Some of these things are true, some are partially true, and some are not.

So what do we do in a moment like this? To the Word and to the Testimony. The false teachers and educational wizards and media gurus have always muttered and chirped with their delusions and lies, scraping for power, trying to manipulate the masses with fear. But God’s Word stands true forever. Men will falter. Men will lie. Men will forget. But God’s Word is sure. And in His Light we see light. In His truth, we can distinguish truth from lies.

And the truth is that we did not get here in a moment or even in just a few years. We got here by slowly neglecting God’s Word. When you cover the lamp, it gets dark in the room. When you stop celebrating God creating the world in six days, when you stop loving God’s good law, when you stop singing all of God’s favorite songs, the Psalms, when you stop telling the story of God’s covenant faithfulness from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to Christ, when you stop loving children, welcoming children into your family, into worship, and doing everything you can to raise them as Christians, when you stop preaching the substitutionary atonement for sin, God’s absolute sovereignty over the universe, and the certainty of the victory of the Great Commission, well, that’s how lies get feet. That’s how it gets dark. That’s how you become susceptible to charades.

The black pill despairs of knowing any truth. Maybe it’s all lies. Maybe there is no point. Maybe it’s all a charade. But you know that isn’t true because you care. Because you’ve seen truth in action, because you know Christ died and rose again, and you know that because when you called on the Lord, He took away your sins and gave you a peace that cannot be taken away. Baptism is real. The Lord’s Supper is real. His church is real, and the gates of Hades cannot prevail against it. And His Kingdom is forever.

We have been here before. Pharaoh tried to keep Israel in Egypt with lies, but God brought them out. The Canaanites and their Baals hampered Israel for many centuries, but God brought them out. Conquered by Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and God brought His people out. The Reformation red-pilled Europe with the gospel of grace. And it is a Bible-drenched wisdom that will be ready for whatever comes next. The lies and charades must fall because Christ is King. And that is the truest thing.

Happy Is That People

Grace Agenda 2024

“Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose God is the LORD” (Ps. 144:15).

Introduction
The theme of this year’s conference is “Jolly Warrior,” and my topic is “Happy is that People.” In the midst of the Great War that commenced immediately after our first parents fell into sin and which went into full conquering mode after the resurrection – in the midst of this Great Conflict – we, the people of the High King of the Universe, are to be marked, notoriously, for being happy. 

So this is a talk about why we’re so happy, and hopefully, as you are reminded of some of the chief reasons, it will make you even happier as you go back out into the fray. There are of course many more reasons than we will cover tonight, but here are four reasons why the people of the living God are a happy people. And as it happens, I’m taking most of this from the Psalms. My title is taken from Psalm 144, and most of what I want to unpack will be taken from this and other psalms. And that should be remembered in all of this. A happy people are a singing people. We sing because we are glad. And we sing in order to multiply that gladness.

Four Reasons for Why We Are a Happy People

1. We are a happy people because we are a forgiven people. 

The word in Hebrew for “happy” is the word “ahshray,” and it is often also translated as “blessed.” Ps. 32:1-2 says, “Happy is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy is the man unto whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, in whose spirit there is no guile.” All of this goes together. Literally, the word for “forgiven” is “lifted up” or “carried.” Happy is the one who has had his sins lifted off of him, carried away, whose sin is covered. 

The next word we need to define is “impute,” which basically means “charged with.” Happy is the man who is not charged with his iniquity. To be forgiven is to know that you could have been charged with numerous particular sins, you should have been charged with them, and you should have been convicted. But instead, the crime was taken away, lifted off of you, and blotted over on your record, and all the charges were dropped. Happy is the man unto whom the Lord does not charge any iniquity.

Finally, Psalm 32 says we are happy because in our spirits there is no guile. Guile is an old word for lies or deceit. We are happy because we are completely forgiven, and we have nothing to hide: no lies, no backlog of sin, no hypocrisy at all. Everything that needs to be confessed, has been confessed. You can go through our internet history, old love letters and yearbooks, and nothing is a festering lie. Everyone who needs to know, has been told, and it’s been made right. 

But then in Psalm 32 David records what it was like before he confessed his sins. When he kept silent, his bones ached like a burning arthritis, and he groaned all day long with agony. He says it was God’s hand heavy upon him. So this is the case for God’s people who are trying to hide sin or refusing to confess or forgive. You cannot be God’s people and be happy while sin festers in your life. You will either have God’s hand on you heavy with conviction or else you will have God’s hand heavy upon you for blessing and happiness. You can have one or the other, but you cannot have both. 

We are a happy people because we have confessed our sins, and the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed us, and we are forgiven. 

2. We are a happy people because we have God’s clear Word and by that Word much fruit. 

“Happy is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also does not wither, and whatsoever he does will prosper” (Ps. 1:1-3).

Christians who choose not to walk in the ways of the ungodly, who turn away from notorious sinners, and do not fellowship with the rebellious scornful, are to be marked by happiness. This would be people who have taken their kids out of government schools, who do no let Netflix or PBS babysit their little ones, and make it a point to fellowship with God’s people regularly. These people, Psalm 1 says, are happy. 

They are not fearful, not in constant angst, not full of anxiety, not stressed out. We are happy. We are happy because we have the counsel of God, the way of God, and we are seated with Christ and His people. The way of transgressors is hard (Prov. 13:15), but the law of God is like finding gold, and it is sweeter than honey. So this is no prideful happiness, no arrogant boasting. This is simply the happiness of goodness. 

The world, the flesh, and the devil offer dinner from the garbage dump. And God in Christ, offers us a feast in His wisdom. Happy are those who turn away from the garbage dump and feast on Christ and His Word. 

Psalm 1 also says that we are happy because we have the law of God and it delights us, as we meditate on it day and night. Unfortunately, we haven’t quite recovered that reputation yet. Theonomy is the doctrine, broadly speaking, that all human laws ought to be based on God’s law. There is plenty of room for debating exactly which laws and how they ought to be applied, but if we agree that God’s law is supreme over all human law, then we’re all theonomists of some stripe. If God’s law is not supreme, then you will have some other law supreme, and wherever that law came from is your god. 

But the point we must underline here is that Psalm 1 says that theonomists ought to be the happiest people in the world. If you are really into God’s law. If you’re constantly chewing on how various verses in Deuteronomy might apply to your life, your family, your church, your city, and all civil governments, it ought to make you really happy. It is our delight. It’s like ice cream with chocolate syrup on top. God’s Words are sweet. Meditating on God’s law should not make you angsty, bitter, or an insufferable troll on social media.  If you think you’re really into God’s law, but you’re only getting more angsty, you aren’t really. 

This happiness of applying God’s Word was actually our Protestant reputation at one point. When the Word of God was being translated and printed and preached openly in the language of the common people, it created a distinctly happy people. And this was one of the chief complaints against our Protestant and Puritan fathers. The center of this happiness was the word of grace, the gospel itself that converted sinners to God. C.S. Lewis says this, “The man who has passed through it feels like one who has waked from nightmare into ecstasy. Like an accepted lover, he feels that he has done nothing, and never could have done anything, to deserve such astonishing happiness… All the initiative has been on God’s side; all has been free, unbounded grace. And all will continue to be free, unbounded grace. His own puny and ridiculous efforts would be as helpless to retain the joy as they would have been to achieve it in the first place. Fortunately, they need not. Bliss is not for sale, cannot be earned… He is not saved because he does works of love: he does works of love because he is saved. It is faith alone that has saved him: faith bestowed by sheer gift. From this buoyant humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings, all the Protestant doctrines originally sprang.” 

When the Word was found, and when the Word was read and proclaimed, this is what it said: Grace. Pure grace. Free grace. Boundless grace. And be done with all your good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings. All Protestant doctrine springs from this happy font.   

And thus the early Protestants and Puritans were not known for being sour, gloomy, or severe. Rather, their enemies accused them of being too light, too easy, and too happy. Lewis again: “Protestantism was not too grim, but too glad, to be true.” Calvin and his followers celebrated the goodness of creation, man’s senses, food and drink, colorful clothing, and the delights of the marriage bed.

We are happy because we have God’s clear gospel Word in Christ, and in Him, the whole world has been given back to us as gifts of grace. Happy is that people.

3. We are a happy people because our families are a blast. 

“Happy is everyone who fears the Lord and walks in His ways… your wife will be as a fruitful vine by the sides of your house; your children will be like olive plants around your table… you shall see your children’s children and peace upon Israel” (Ps. 128).

The homes of Christian people should be the happiest places. They are happy because their sins are forgiven, and they are constantly confessing sin and forgiving one another as quickly as sin happens. No backlog of sins. No hidden sins. No grievances. No grudges. They are happy because they have the Word of Christ proclaiming grace in salvation and grace in every good gift. 

But this Psalm 128 specifically underlines the happiness of a fruitful wife, children, grandchildren, and all around a dinner table. 

Children are multipliers. They multiply what you have personally, and what you have with your wife. So, if you want your home to be a happy place, your heart must be a happy place and your marriage must be a happy place. Your heart is a happy place if it is clean and full of light. You can have that if all your sins are forgiven. 

The basic assignments given in Scripture to husbands are to love your wife and to wives to respect your husband. These are not just rules or generic instructions. These are the steps for the dance. This is how to be happy in your marriage. These are the central ingredients to all the best times, beginning with the fact that these instructions tend to go against our natural inclinations. 

Men tend function primarily on respect, and so respect is what we naturally give. But God says that we must love our wife. And women tend to function primarily on love, and so love is what women most naturally give. But God says that you must respect your husband. And God instructs us to give these particular things because they are what your spouse most needs. Which means incidentally that the thing that your spouse most needs to give you, he isn’t very good at (and she isn’t very good at). 

Many marriage bumps and squabbles are a result of these natural differences between men and women. And God thought it would be hilarious. I suspect he motioned to some of the angels when He made the woman and brought her to the man and said something like, “watch this.” So, there should happiness on both sides of this beginning in the hilarious and glorious differences between male and female. And on top of that, there’s happiness in trying to figure out how to love, how to respect, and there’s happiness in the love and the respect. And all of this should underline the necessity of learning what those specific instructions actually mean. Think of like a treasure hunt, the way to happiness. 

There are many ways and places to delight in your kids and grandkids, but this psalm specifically centers on a table. And this fits with the fact that Christ invites His family to celebrate every Lord’s Day at His table. We rejoice in Christ at His table with His people. And so it makes good sense that Christian people rejoice around tables in their own homes. We are happy people because we have a blast at our tables. 

This means many things, and let me just list a few quickly. First, make a point to actually eat together. Have regular meals as a family. And don’t just thank God for the food; thank God for the opportunity to eat together, to be together at a table. Man doesn’t live by bread alone, and when we eat together, we’re not just ingesting nutrition, we’re sharing life. 

Second, eat good food that you all enjoy. Part of the happiness of a family meal is the fact that we’re all together as a family, but part of the happiness is the gift of good food. This need not mean very expensive food all the time. And there’s a real balancing act here because young children need to be taught to learn to eat good food, and parents need to make sure that the food is actually accessible to the young kids. Always remember that is far better to eat hot dogs with joy than filet mignon with bitterness, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be aiming for joy and filet mignon occasionally.  

Third, fill dinner time with fun stories and laughter and singing. Some of you do this without trying, and so good work. But some of you just aren’t good at it. So, check out a joke book from the library. Find a collection of fun short stories. Give the kids an assignment to come to the dinner table with one funny thing they saw or heard that day. Of course when the kids are little, it’s a bit of mosh pit, and sometimes discipline is needed, but really try to focus on the mission, on the goal, and try not to let everything be about what you’re not allowed to do at the dinner table. Herding cats is best done when you have general direction in mind. Play games, sing songs, tell stories, act things out. And dad lead the way. 

Finally, if our happiness is to be a Christian happiness, aim to bring in some Scripture or hymn or psalm. But when the kids are little keep it short and sweet. 

4. We are a happy people because the Lord is our God. 

“Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose God is the LORD” (Ps. 144:15).

We are happy because we serve the Lord, Jehovah. Who is the Lord? He is our Maker and our Redeemer. He is sovereign over every square inch of creation, and He has planned the salvation of this world. He rules the wind and the waves. He rules cancer and dementia. He rules the nations, and He turns the hearts of Kings like rivers of water. He is the Lord of life and of death. 

When John sees Jesus at the beginning of Revelation, Jesus says, I have the keys of Death and Hades. The Devil is not the Lord of Death anymore. Jesus went down into Death itself and bound it and plundered it. And now He alone rules death. Death is still an enemy, but it is a defanged and thoroughly tamed enemy. We are a happy people because the Lord our God rules heaven and earth and even death itself, and now even death itself serves our Lord. This is why in the New Testament death is so often described as sleep. For believers, death is like falling asleep and waking up to the best day ever.  

No eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has prepared for those who love Him. We are happy because heaven is real, because Jesus is risen from the dead, and we have been given His Holy Spirit, which is His solemn pledge, His personal promise that He will raise us from the dead, and we will reign with Him forever, that every tear will be wiped from every eye, that all will be made right, and all will be made new. We are happy because we are convinced that the best is yet to come. To live is Christ and to die is gain. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us (Rom. 8:18). This life is a light affliction, which is but for a moment, and is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Jesus refers to our heavenly reward as entering into the joy of the Lord. We are a happy people because have this joy that can never be taken away.

I knew an old man a number of years ago named Jim. Jim had never married, never had any kids of his own, and had very few relatives. Someone in our community visited his nursing home at some point, and invited him to church and so he started coming. Jim had suffered a stroke at some point, and so he always used a walker and he spoke with a fairly significant speech impediment and slur. But with some effort, you could make out what he was saying. And as I got to know him, one of the things he began to say to me was that he used to be very angry and very bitter, but now that he was coming to church regularly and fellowshipping with God’s people, he was happy. He would light up and with a big grin look at me and say, “Toby, I’m so happy.” 

At some point Jim had another stroke and he was bedridden, and within a few days, it became clear that Jim was dying. I would go by his nursing home and talk with him and read Scripture. On the day before Jim died, he was awake and alert, but he couldn’t talk any more. I read some Scripture and talked to him for a bit, and just before I left I looked into Jim’s eyes and asked him, Jim, are you still happy? And without missing a beat, his eyes lit up with crystal clarity and he nodded at me vigorously as he squeezed my hand. And the next day, Jim entered into the joy of His Lord. 

We are a happy people because we belong body and soul, in life and death to our faithful savior Jesus Christ. We are the King’s people. We are His nobility. We are His armies. We are His hosts. We are forgiven; we have His Word; He has put us in families; and He is Lord of all and the best is yet to come. 

He sends us into the fray with many different assignments: family assignments, work assignments, church assignments, political assignments, some to suffer more, some to greater achievements, but all for our crucified and risen King. What a privilege. What a joy. Happy is that people.

Aristotle, Eric, and James

Introduction
I missed all the fun my friends Eric Conn and James White had yesterday on the X, debating the implications of a screen shot summarizing Aristotle’s conception of “philia” – the Greek word for “friendship,” defined as “ethno-cultural consensus between members of the same city.” The summary went on to say that for Aristotle, democracy is only possible in homogenous ethnic groups, and tyrants and despots always exploit ethnic rivalries. “Ethnic chaos prevents all philia from developing.”

Eric kicked off the excitement by saying, “Aristotle was right,” and Dr. White wondered whether Eric was taking into account Aristotle’s lack of a Christian anthropology, soteriology, let alone a very different political situation. Dr. White also asked if the gospel indicates that common commitment in Christian society ought to be Christ and His law, rather than tribe and family.

What I Would Say
Not that anyone asked, but I would like to offer the following contribution to the conversation:

Aristotle was right, except for Cain and Abel, Israel in Egypt, and the entire history of Greece (and the world). 

In other words, I would say that Aristotle was mostly right, but wholly insufficient. 

It doesn’t get much more mono-ethnic than Cain and Abel, and envy turned murderous and destroyed that unity, and tyrants haunted Cain’s mono-ethnic family tree. And here we’re using “mono-ethnic” in Aristotle’s cultural sense, not merely a racial, genetic sense. 

Israel was a very homogenous culture going down into Egypt and remained a very homogenous culture in Egypt, and yet a despot and tyrant who did not know Joseph exploited them anyways and enslaved them. A homogenous culture was helpful for their future deliverance, but it was not sufficient to prevent enslavement. 

Likewise, the history of Greece was notoriously unstable, and the best of the Greek philosophers themselves recognized that more was needed than mere shared culture. Amazingly, at least some of the Greeks recognized that there was something disordered in the soul of man and this disorder spilled out into society. While a relatively well-balanced society might lean against that disorder, and it does, it is insufficient for creating widespread, long term order, as the whole history of our sorry planet manifestly demonstrates.

Restoring & Glorifying Nature
Eric and James exchanged verses, particularly Col.3:10-11 and Gal. 3:28, James pointing out that the gospel is doing something surprising to natural relations and differences, and Eric pointing out that it cannot be erasing them since that would also have to include male and female, as the egalitarians try to do. 

And both are right, but instead of saying that true Christian unity (and therefore social harmony) is “outside” of the categories of tribe and family, I believe it would be more accurate to say that Christ came to heal, restore, and glorify the categories of tribe and family. He came, as Malachi says, to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of children to their fathers.” He came to remove the enmity between male and female, husbands and wives. And this is the point of the New Testament “household codes,” the central plan for social, political, and cultural reformation: the restoration and healing of households – where even Christian slaves and masters are exhorted to pursue this unity with one another, even the evil ones. 

But this is where Dr. White has a good point: the exhortations to slaves and masters tells you that this restoration of natural ties and differences in families and tribes is something more radical than mere restoration of nature. Slaves and masters would have often been of different ethnic-cultural backgrounds, often the result of wars and intense resentments, and yet, providentially, made part of the same household, and therefore called to unity. The same has to be said of the New Testament insistence on the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ and in the church, in the household of God — where so much distrust and enmity had existed for centuries. 

This is the glorification of nature. This does not erase nature. This does not displace nature. But where sin has abounded, where animosity and enmity have abounded, grace abounds still more. And frequently, new, fledgling Christian churches found themselves in far flung places, thrust together from many different tribes because of their love for Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. For Paul, the church testified to the gospel not merely through the restoration natural affections (though certainly that) but also through the surprising friendship and unity of very diverse people.

Conclusion
Frequently the, “What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?” discussions (going back to Tertullian) get bogged down in theory, but I actually think it’s more helpful to just use concrete examples and ask whether they are correct or helpful and to what extent. 

In this case, I do think Aristotle is noticing something generally true about the world: without shared language, culture, values, beliefs, and practices, it is virtually impossible for people to work together, communicate, and build a society together. Witness the Tower of Babel. Culture is arguably an extension of language, common practices and values that are intelligible to others. The core of this societal unity is ordinarily extended through natural families.

But that natural unity is not sufficient to build and preserve a society. It is a natural, good, and necessary starting point, such that mass immigration, without healthy systems of assimilation, is an attack on social cohesion, but cultural homogeneity is not sufficient for unity. While Aristotle is right that cultural animosity is easier to exploit by tyrants, natural man has a knack for even screwing up cultural homogeneity. Sin is the root problem for unity, not ethnic difference, any more than sexual difference is what causes marital or familial strife. Those differences exacerbate strife and make unity harder, but sin is the root problem, the disorder in our souls that disorders families and nations.

Nature is the starting point. And grace heals nature. Grace restores nature. Grace does not displace or destroy nature. But having healed and restored nature, grace also does more than we expect. This is not some kind of sentimental multicultural blank check, for guilt-tripping or coercing people into superficial “unity” that will only erupt in violence and strife like it’s doing in the UK right now. But as Pastor Doug likes to say, God meets us where we are and not where we should have been. We should work for a shared cultural unity in our context – our country cannot survive without it, but that means for many of us finding our assignment to love and build unity with people who are very different from us. 

And this love can certainly include mass deportations of illegal immigrants; it can and should include strict enforcement of just laws and just penalties for criminals, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. You cannot have any kind of societal unity based on selective DEI justice. But sometimes we will find ourselves thrust together in the same household, church, city, and nation, and while the gospel does not promise that unity will appear out of nowhere, the gospel does suggest that you may have more to work with in and through your households than you first thought possible. 

Photo by Kumpan Electric on Unsplash

Gavin Ortlund, Megan Basham, and Evangelical Climategate

Introduction
So my friend Megan Basham’s book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda has just dropped and the interwebs have gone up in a sheet of flame. When I started writing this, the book was sitting at number 17 on the Amazon sales list. And hopefully this article convinces another handful of folks to go out and buy their own copy. 

This isn’t a full review. This is just a brief excursion into the initial fray caused by the book, and as it happens, tied to Basham’s work in Chapter 1. Chapter 1 is on Climate Change, and the ways evangelical leaders have been suckered into that particular Leftist Agenda piece. One of the characters that figures in the chapter is Pastor Gavin Ortlund who dropped a video earlier this week arguing that Basham had misrepresented him in Chapter 1 of her book when she critiqued a video he published a couple of years ago about “climate change.”

The Sitch
So Basham summarizes Ortlund’s video, beginning with his concern that many Christians, tending to be politically conservative, have simply dismissed climate change based on socio-political associations – specifically political liberalism — without studying the issues carefully. And Ortlund says he thinks that’s why most Christians aren’t active in leading the charge on something like climate change. But Ortlund cautions strongly against that since human-caused climate change, he argues, is the consensus of most scientists. While Ortlund says he just wants to have a conversation and later in the video insists he doesn’t mean to be depressing or cause panic, he also says that climate change is a really big deal. And he outlines the potential consequences as being very severe: extreme local weather events, not enough water, all your crops dying, drought, famine, flooding, wildfires, people dying, political problems, and war. So it’s a REALLY big deal, and could be catastrophic.

It’s in this context that Basham summarizes his basic stance: “He goes on to say that every ‘scientific body of national or international standing agrees that human-caused global warming is a serious problem.’ To not accept that consensus, he says, is to buy into ‘conspiracy and hoax;’ it is a failure to ‘take a responsible posture’ as a Christian” (P. 27). This is the central bit that Ortlund takes issue with and claims misrepresents his view. He says that what Basham says about him is “not true.” 

But first, Ortlund takes issue with Basham’s summary at the end of Chapter 1 that it isn’t wrong for pastors to weigh in on these complex issues, but it is wrong to make climate change a test for biblical faithfulness. Ortlund says he almost fell out of his chair when he read this. He says that he in no way has done this, and in particular, made a point of not advocating for any particular political policy. But at the very least, Ortlund is forgetting that in his climate change video he did say that “If you are pro-life you should care about climate change” and argued clearly that he believes caring about climate change should go hand in hand with a Christian view of the dominion mandate and care of creation. Rather than actually presenting any other perspectives, Ortlund asserted scientific consensus, warned against rejecting that consensus, and then urged Christians to think of it like being “prolife.” Maybe Ortlund didn’t think about what he was saying when he made that claim, but it would be easy for someone to come away from that video believing that the “scientific consensus” around climate change is just as clear as whether or not it is morally acceptable to murder a baby in its mother’s womb. 

Ortlund points out that at the end of his video he says that if someone has a different opinion about this “that’s fine,” but “that’s fine” in what sense? At best, Ortlund is simply unclear. “That’s fine” like it’s fine to be an atheist and we can have a dialogue about the existence of God (but you’re catastrophically wrong)? He just said that being pro-life means caring about climate change, and therefore it’s hard not to conclude then that caring about climate change is a moral matter and therefore some kind of test of biblical faithfulness, even if Ortlund is willing to have a dialogue about the topic. “That’s fine” and “let’s have a conversation” isn’t clear enough. It’s actually a pretty radical failure of theological and ethical “triage,” one of the key concerns Ortlund says he has about Megan’s work.

But Ortlund doubles down, triples down that all he’s interested in is having that conversation, that dialogue, and making sure Christians actually study the issues. But again, that’s extremely confusing since his only description of an opposing view is with words like “fundamentalist,” “shooting from the hip,” “dismissed for socio-political reasons,” and “political liberalism.” For wanting a “dialogue” and a “conversation” he straw-manned and insulted anyone who might have been willing to sit down with him. I can’t remember a single respectful description of Christians who think that the whole climate change movement is a massive hoax. 

He insists that the whole point of his video was to have a dialogue without attacking each other. But that is exactly what Ortlund did in his video. He did not even allude to the substantial body of evidence, respected theologians or scientists, or millions of reasonable people who do not take “scientific consensus” seriously anymore because the same institutions have been telling us that we evolved from apes, that boys can turn into girls, forecasted millions of deaths from COVID, shut down our churches and businesses, and demanded that we all take an experimental vaccine. I have no doubt that Ortlund intended to have a respectful dialogue, and I assume he and I could sit down with a beer and have a great conversation. But he actually insulted and attacked millions of thoughtful, intelligent Christians, and the fact that he doesn’t know that he did so means he is doing exactly what Basham was pointing out. He is treating conservative Christians the way elite liberals often do, as intellectual rubes, ripe for liberal indoctrination (and I know Ortlund is not a liberal). 

Ortlund tries to claim that Megan has gotten things exactly backwards: that he just wants to have a conversation, and that it is Megan who has made climate change a test of biblical faithfulness. But Megan is the one who actually acknowledges both sides and doesn’t take a side, except where she’s exposing all the funding for the liberal agenda. Ortlund did not present both sides, insulted one side very clearly, likened his position to being pro-life, and then claimed he only wants to have a conversation. 

Who’s Being Irresponsible?
Ortlund’s central objection seems to be Megan’s summary statement: “To not accept that consensus, he says, is to buy into ‘conspiracy and hoax;’ it is a failure to ‘take a responsible posture’ as a Christian” (P. 27). Ortlund insists he did not say this, since in context, the latter quote is from a moment in his video where he says “shooting from the hip” and not “hitting the books” is irresponsible. He says he was only talking about the method of arriving at a conclusion and not the conclusion itself. Fine, but nowhere in the video does Ortlund give even a hint that the conclusion would be responsible either; and all the intimations are that anyone who actually “hit the books” and studied the issues for themselves will come to similar concerns as he has. It is a very reasonable conclusion to make that someone who doesn’t see climate change as on the same level as abortion hasn’t hit the books, is probably shooting from the hip, is probably a reactionary, conservative fundamentalist, and is probably being irresponsible. 

Likewise, he minces words, trying to distinguish all the scientific bodies actually being in cahoots together being a “conspiracy and hoax” from those who have concluded that they actually are in cahoots together. But I’m honestly not sure what the difference is. If they are all colluding, there would be a conspiracy and hoax, and Ortlund admits that would be true enough, but he insists that he didn’t mean that about people who think there is one. But generally speaking, either there is a conspiracy or there is not, and if there is not a conspiracy, but a body of people believe there is, they are the ones now perpetrating a conspiracy. Maybe Ortlund did not intend to imply that, but it seems like a very clear Venn diagram with a bunch of overlap. Megan’s summary interpretation is therefore completely reasonable. 

Ortlund says that Megan’s summary of him is bearing false testimony, but that is simply not true. He has made these claims without any substantial defense of alternative views, leaving viewers to reasonably conclude that being concerned about the extreme possible repercussions of climate change is a really big deal, as big a deal as abortion, and certainly given the impression that conservative Christians who do not view this like him have probably not hit the books, are probably being irresponsible, and they probably think the scientific community is in cahoots on these issues, which is probably a fundamentalist hoax.

Conclusion
Yes, Ortlund does say he doesn’t intend to shame people or create despair in people, but this is simply incoherent given the alarming descriptions he gives of what might happen if we don’t do anything about climate change. Ortlund laments that Megan didn’t present her view of climate change and his view and actually begin a true dialogue, but ironically, that’s exactly what Ortlund failed to do. He says it would have been more productive if Megan had presented both sides and see exactly where they agree or disagree. He says that would have been more productive. Heh. Something about pots and kettles and calling them black.

He also wonders why Megan didn’t call him before the book went to press to discuss where they differ or to clarify his views. Again, the same thing could be said back to Ortlund: why didn’t you interview climate change skeptics? I mean you could have at least quoted from some of the scientists and scholars that have raised serious concerns about climate change claims. I mean, when you “hit the books” and really studied the issues, you read a bunch of the opposing views, correct? You didn’t just watch a bunch of liberal propaganda and assume the conservative critics were irresponsible, conspiracy theorists, did you? So why didn’t you present both views, Mr. Ortlund? 

Yes, the truth matters, but Ortlund’s protests are silly. Megan’s claims are fair and reasonable. This is why I tweeted: “At best, Gavin, doesn’t understand the war we are in. If he did, he would completely understand why @megbasham used him as the example she did. But his bambi-in-the-headlights refusal to understand, while warning against the danger of ‘fundamentalism,’ suggests it’s far worse.”

Ortlund spends the last half of his response video claiming that Megan’s work is a failure of “theological triage,” a failure to delineate clearly the levels of disagreement or agreement, and he cites a bunch of evangelical heroes (Lewis, Machen, Spurgeon, Shaefer) as examples of people who he thinks do a better job at triage and says they would disagree with Megan’s approach. But quite apart from what those men would have thought about the actual scientific questions, I believe those men would not have nearly the same difficulty in seeing what Megan is pointing out. Machen got kicked out of the presbyterian church for throwing down about a missions committee. The fact that Ortlund shakes his head with confusion and says, “Chapter 1 on climate change in a book about shepherds for sale is just really odd,” suggests that he would have the same confusion over Machen’s insistence on an independent missions board.   

Of course the truth matters, and of course we must tell the truth, as Megan did. But for some reason Ortlund cannot see the massive threat of climate change propaganda Megan lays out in the rest of the chapter. Even if he thought she had drawn some wrong conclusions about his particular views, a faithful pastor would appreciate why and how she could have done so. The fact that he doesn’t understand how what he said in that video is just fodder for leftist activists demonstrates that he is for sale. I take him at his word that he has not yet been bought. But he is certainly flirting with it. He cites one chart in his original climate change video alluding to “50 million years” ago and a quick scroll through his other videos suggests he denies a world wide flood and it seems doubtful that he believes in six day creation. I certainly don’t believe Ortlund intends to be for sale, but no one ever does. The sign often goes up on our backs at first, and the enemy feeds us crumbs of respect, bitterness, intellectualism, resentment, disappointment, and fame. And only little by little do good men sell out. But meanwhile, shepherds are not guarding the flock. If Ortlund cares about guarding the flock, which I assume that he honestly does, he would do a new video granting the reasonableness of Megan’s concerns, and explain all the dangers of climate change alarmism and how the “scientific consensus” has often led Christians down dark paths of political and spiritual oppression and destruction. 

At the very least, if Ortlund really is interested in a conversation about climate change, he should invite Cal Beisner onto his channel and actually have that conversation he says he wants to have. But until then, his video is an attack on faithful pastors and scholars like Cal Beisner, his colleagues at the Cornwall Alliance, and millions of faithful Christians who have been talking about these issues intelligently for decades. But a refusal to do that calls into question Ortlund’s sincerity, and only underlines the need for Megan’s book.

Defining Love & Respect

“Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” (Eph. 5:31).

When the Bible gives husbands and wives instructions, it consistently returns to this theme: husbands love, wives respect. But it is sometimes tempting to think we know better than God, and we can hear these Bible words and then think something like: “yes, husbands and wives should be nice.” But that isn’t what it says. It gives particular instructions to husbands and it gives a different instruction to the wives. And even then, if you don’t stop and think about what the different instructions are, you can still redefine the assignment. I could give you a pop quiz and say, what are husbands commanded to do? And most of you could get it right and say, “love their wives.” But what if I followed that up with another question: what does that mean? How many of you would say, “be nice”? And of course the same thing can go for the women. You might know and give the right answer that the Bible commands wives to respect their husbands, but then if I asked you what that means, you might not know. 

So the specific instruction is for husbands to love their wives, and for wives to respect their husbands. We do not mind acknowledging that of course husbands should respect their wives, and wives should love their husbands. But we also believe that when God gives specific instructions there are good reasons for obeying them. At least two of those reasons are that men and women tend to need different things, and therefore, we tend to instinctively give different things. Women tend to be more oriented to love: love is what they need and so love is what they tend to instinctively give. But here the instruction is to respect your husband. Likewise, men tend to be more oriented to respect: respect is what they need and so respect is what they tend to instinctively give. But here the instruction to a husband is to love your wife. So what does it mean to love and what does it mean to respect?

Love initiates, draws near, sympathizes with challenges and difficulty, takes trouble for care and provision, and shows thoughtfulness in little things. Our model for this kind of love is Christ, who loved the Church and gave Himself for her. How did He love His bride? He initiated salvation, drew near in the incarnation, sympathizing with us in our weakness, without any sin, and took responsibility for our trouble, taking our sin upon Himself, dying to set us free, and He rules and reigns for us now, listening to us and answering our prayers and blessing us in so many little things day by day. A husband is to imitate that kind of efficacious love. This means drawing near, dwelling with your wife in an understanding way, sympathizing with her challenges, taking trouble to care for her needs, listening to her, and regularly showing your care and affection in word and deed. 

Respect looks up to, thinks highly of, seeks advice and counsel, and listens to that advice and counsel, gives thanks and praise for accomplishments, and seeks to cheerfully honor preferences. The Christian Church is the model for this kind of respect. The Church seeks to be obedient to Christ in everything, praising Him, thanking Him, seeking advice and counsel, and studying His Word for wisdom, and arranging our lives to please Him. So a wife is to imitate that kind of submissive respect. This means looking up to your husband, thinking highly of him, seeking his counsel and wisdom, and listening to that counsel and wisdom, thanking him and praising him for his hard work and accomplishments, while doing whatever you know to do to please him. 

In both of these instructions, a husband is called to die to himself in obedience to Christ, and a wife is called to die to herself in obedience to Christ. When there is any challenge or trouble, a husband is often tempted to really lean into the respect, and a wife is often tempted to really lean into the love because we tend to give what we want. We tend to give what we think we need. But the Bible says that we need different things, and this is why a man can be perfectly respectful and nothing seems to be improving or a woman can pour on the love, and it doesn’t seem to work. This is because sometimes you are redefining the instructions. You know the word is respect, but what you’re doing is loving. Or you know that you’re supposed to love, but what you’re doing is respecting. 

At the same time, a good marriage is one where you are both striving to know one another, and this includes knowing this about one another. A good marriage is built on a good sense of humor. God created us male and female, and He thought that would be a load of fun. So we should too. Many marriage bumps are simply male and female ways of thinking and acting bumping into one another, and when that happens, we should smile and enjoy the moment. Isn’t it great that she’s a woman? Isn’t it great he’s a man? When you can’t do that, and you resent the differences, in a strange way, you’re sort of wishing your wife was a man or your husband was a woman. Which is apparently what some people have decided to actually do, but quite apart from the immorality of it all, what an utterly boring thing, to be married to someone who thinks just like you. 

But being made a man or a woman in God’s image is glorious. And that means that the distinctive instructions are part of that glory in marriage. When a man, full of testosterone and masculinity, loves a woman, in obedience to God it is glorious. And when a woman, full of grace and wisdom, respects her man, in obedience to God, is altogether lovely. 

So this is the charge, Sami, love your wife like Christ loved the church. And in particular, study what love is in the Bible. Love is not what Hallmark says or Hollywood says or even what Ali says. Love is obedience to God for Ali’s good. Study God’s Word and study Ali, and so love your wife. The more you love her, the more lovely she will be, just as Christ’s love makes His bride more and more glorious. 

Ali, my charge to you is to respect your husband just as the Church honors and submits to Christ in everything. And in particular, study what respect is in the Bible. Respect may not be what first comes into your mind or what the world says it is or even exactly what Sami thinks it is. Respect must be defined by God’s Word and applied to your husband in particular. And the more you respect your husband, the more respectable he will become. 

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

Photo by Jeremy Wong Weddings on Unsplash

10 Thoughts on the Olympic Opening Blasphemy

1. There is no neutrality – secularism is a lie. You will either serve the Living God or some other false god. You will either love God the Father and His only Son Jesus Christ or else you will hate Him and His people. And the same is true for nations and cultures. Nations will serve Christ or demons. And if they refuse to serve Christ, if they insist on neutrality and secularism, they are insisting on demons and destruction in the long run.

2. Proverbs says that all who hate wisdom love death. That death will be pictured in celebrating obesity, sexual suicide through perverse fruitlessness, venereal diseases and STDs, and behind it all, the corpses of millions of babies mutilated and tossed away in the trash. You cannot reject the wisdom of the Creator and remain sane for very long. The madness of Darwinism is coming to fruition. If we evolved from pond scum, life is meaningless and why can’t we evolve into whatever gender or species we want? And why can’t truth, beauty, and justice evolve into whatever we want?

3. When people hate God they deface His image. God’s image is revealed in the glorious duality and binary of male and female. The neutering and “transing” of the image of God is an attack on God Himself. Marriage for life between one man and one woman is the central picture of this harmony. Every attack on marriage and the marriage bed is therefore an attack on the living God and His image in man.

4. There will always be blasphemy laws. And inversely, this means that there will always be some gods it is permissible to mock. But if the opening ceremony had featured a mockumentary moment of Mohammed and Islam, the Parisian streets would be full of violence right now. All false religions ultimately turn violent because their gods are deaf, dumb, blind, and powerless. The adherents of false religions must use force and violence to accomplish their ends (and then credit their false god, sometimes named “justice” or “equality”). Christians are not rioting in the streets because we serve the Living God, but because He is the true God, we want His name honored in the public square. And if His name is not honored, it will ultimately be mocked.

5. Of course pagans will pagan, but this blasphemy should still grieve us since France was once a Christian nation and because many will be crushed by this worldview. “Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked who forsake your law” (Ps. 119:53). There was at least one child in that table orgy, and that was no accident. Think pedophilia. Think chemical castrations and mastectomies, and remember: if children can consent to sex change operations, they can consent to sexual relationships. That is the play. But also think adultery, divorce, abortion, and the destruction of families feeding more addictions and crime. The open mockery of Christianity is also a warmup for persecution of Christians. While we must be willing to be persecuted, we must not willingly allow our world to prepare to do that to us or our children or grandchildren. Loving our enemies means trying to stop them from greater acts of evil.

6. Some are asking: do we need Christian revival or do we need to regain power and crush this? And the answer is “yes.” And true revival would crush this because repentance means putting the old man to death, it means private and public repentance of sin. Unfortunately, “revival-ism” has come to mean vague, private, spiritual feelings in a tent instead of wholesale reformation. But seizing political power apart from the Holy Spirit can only provide a momentary check to this kind of evil before joining the evil. As I always say, don’t join the French Revolution.

7. Speaking of evil, there is clearly something demonic about this. The fact that this deep confusion was presented as a mockery of the Last Supper indicates that they have a particular target of hate: Christ and His disciples. The demons came out screaming and taunting when Jesus came in the gospels. And to some extent, the fact that the mockery is becoming more and more explicit, may indicate a growing fear on the part of the demons. There is a growing Christian consensus that secularism is a dead end (literally). But to the previous point: You cannot defeat evil with evil. We must overcome evil with good, which includes good blasphemy laws, good cops and magistrates, and good criminal penalties for breaking the law, all grounded in God’s good law.

8. We should not miss the fact that despite the evil, God is using this to turn some people to Himself. More than one person has pointed out that the visceral hatred of Christ and Christianity led them to faith in Christ or back to the faith. Remember, it was while the prodigal son was starving for pig pods having wasted his father’s inheritance that he remembered the goodness of his Father’s house. The Christian West has blown our inheritance on all manner of hookers and booze, and therefore this is a moment for Christians to preach the gospel clearly. This is why we’re hosting http://prodigalamerica.com

9. This spectacle is also incredibly ugly and silly. Remember the old adage that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings? Well, this is pretty near the end and the bottom of the barrel. And when the nations rage and plot vain things, like the builders of Babel constructing a tower to Heaven, God sits in heaven and laughs (Ps. 2). So should we. In the long run stupidity doesn’t work. And it’s just weird and gaudy.

10. In addition to registering your thorough disdain and vowing to do everything you can to see nothing like this replicated, especially in your neighborhood, redouble your efforts to love your wife and kids and be faithful in your church and callings. Obedient love is at war with all disobedient love. Obedient love drives out the disordered loves of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Obedient love does justice, loves mercy, and walks humbly with God. Obedient love is altogether lovely.

A Mind to Work

The Text: “So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work” (Neh. 4:6)

Introduction
We live in the ruins of Western Christendom. The walls of once great Christian nations and civilizations have been breached by new pagan hordes. But God in His kindness has done something remarkable here locally in Moscow. He has given us a mind to the work of rebuilding the walls of Christendom. And He has done this in such a way as to cause a spotlight to be shone on this work. People have noticed us building. 

So what are we to think of all this? And what we are to do? The simple answer and exhortation is to remain faithful at your stations. Keep your mind to the work.

Summary of the Text
This verse comes in the midst of God’s people being mocked for their work under Nehemiah, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Their enemies are angry, and they are trying to stir up trouble. They say the Jews are weak and feeble. They say they will not accomplish much. And they say the Jews will certainly not reestablish worship. And whatever they do accomplish, it will be worthless and flimsy and collapse again. And in the midst of that opposition, Nehemiah prays that God would hear these taunts and turn their attacks back upon their own heads. And armed with that prayer, the Jews built the wall, and they made good progress in building the wall, because the people had a mind to work. 

Broadly speaking, our central tasks can divided into three areas: keeping short accounts, honest/diligent labor/study before the Lord, and worshipping like you mean it. 

Keeping Short Accounts
In order to keep our minds to the work, we must have clear minds. And the only way to have clear minds is to have clean hearts. Jesus says that before you talk to your brother about the speck in his eye, first remove the log in your own eye. Then you will see clearly to help your brother. Sin gums up the gears of everything. Sin is like mud on your windshield. Sin is like walking in the dark. Sin doesn’t allow you to see clearly or think clearly. One of the great lies of the Devil is that sin is just the way things are and there’s nothing really to be done about it. The lie is that since everyone sins, normal life is just full of darkness. 

But the gospel says that is not true. The gospel says that God sent His Son into this dark world in order that we might have light. The gospel says that it is possible for sinners to walk in the light with God and have fellowship with one another. 1 John 1:7 says: “If you walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.” How does the blood of Jesus cleanse us from all our sins? “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9). It is possible to walk in the light. It is possible to have a clean heart. This is what we mean by keeping short accounts.

This is how you don’t allow sin to accumulate in your hearts or lives. If you have two houses on the same street, both with large families, and one is clean and tidy and the other one looks like a bomb went off, the difference between the clean house and the dirty house is that in the clean house they pick up. The clean house family has dirty dishes and dirty clothes and spills just like everybody else, but they do the dishes and the laundry, and they clean up the spills. The dirty house ignores the messes, tries to hide them in closets or under the rug, despite the awful smell permeating the house. So this is how you can have a clear mind and a mind to the work: have a clean heart and stay in fellowship with your people. 

Honest as a Huguenot
In the 17th century, a common saying was, “as honest as a Huguenot.” The Huguenots were the French Protestants. We want to continue to cultivate the same kind of reputation in all our labor. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear someone say, “honest as a kirker?” This means no lies and complete sobriety. The truth is the foundational currency of value. A good name and honesty and integrity are even more valuable than the gold standard, bitcoin, or however you’re trying to stave off inflation. The most damaging form of inflation is the inflation of truth. The shysters in the ancient world shaved and clipped coins: do not clip the truth, do not shave the truth. The righteous man swears to his own hurt and doesn’t break his promises. Let your “yes” be a “yes” and your “no” a “no.” A mind to the work, is an honest mind to the work, honest with your parents, honest with your spouse, honest to your boss, honest to your teachers, honest to God. 

Liars have to constantly keep track of their lies, but truth-tellers sleep well at night. And wherever you have not told the truth, go make it right, even if it hurts. That’s the only way to have a mind to the work. But every brick you lay in your family or in this community under pretense or hypocrisy or theft, hoping no one will find out about your lies, is a brick that has no integrity. It would be far better to confess it now, so we can repair the damage now than in six months or six years when the damage is even greater. 

Closely related to honest work is sober-minded work. We are a community that celebrates, and that means it is common to attend a dinner or a party with wine or beer or scotch. The Bible says that God gave wine to make the hearts of men glad, and Jesus turned water into wine for His miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. We want to be the kind of people who would gladly enjoy Christ’s miracle. But the Bible is equally clear that drunkenness is sinful, harmful, and utterly disastrous. We want to continue to build a culture of true Christian joy and celebration, but that joy is clear-headed and sober-minded, not tipsy, not buzzing. And this applies even if you think no one knows. 

Conclusion: Worship Like You Mean It
At the center of all our labor is worship. And that means coming before the Lord honestly. If we are to be truly honest about our sins and truly honest in all our labor, a mind to work, we must fundamentally come before the Lord in complete honesty. God already knows everything. He sees through all our excuses, all our blame-shifting, all our hypocrisies. Therefore, we can only come before Him clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. But those who humble themselves and come in the righteousness of Jesus Christ are most welcome, and the Spirit comes and blesses them and sends them from God’s presence with new joy and vigor. 

This is what we mean by worship like you mean it. Worship in faith, believing that the God of Heaven really meets us here and lifts us up into His presence. That as we sing and pray and listen and eat, the gates of Hades are being shaken – that everything that cannot stand is being broken down, so that only those things that can remain stand firm.

This is how we rebuild the walls of Christendom: clean hearts, honest labor, and true worship. This is how we keep our mind to the work.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen. 

Photo by EJ Yao on Unsplash

The Republican DEI Problem

Introduction
The attempted assassination of Trump and the murder of Corey Comperatore have unmasked the hatred of the radical Left and their media shills for what it is: murderous. And it is right and good to hate that evil woke virus seeking to destroy our nation.

We cannot “unify” with those who hate us like that. We cannot “unify” with those who want us and our Christian way of life in America dead. We can and must pray for our enemies. We can and must refuse to stoop to their level of barbarism and lawlessness. But we can and must resist this coup with all our might.

But in order to resist the enemy forcefully, we must identify the enemy clearly. I said the evil virus we must hate and fight is the “woke” movement. It is the DEI hatred of hard work, honesty, and creativity. It is the Marxist subsidizing of racism, bitterness, grievance farming, victimhood, and at the core of it all: envy. This is the core of the murderous hate. Cain hated his brother because God accepted his brother’s sacrifice. Envy is a murderous hate. It despises what God has given to others. It may be covetous; it may want what they have. But it may just as easily simply hate reality as it is. Envy fundamentally hates and resents God, but since human beings cannot get at God, they strike at His world and at His image bearers. Envy seeks to tear down what God has done and rearrange it. This is why envy is inherently violent and murderous. 

God made the world the way it actually is with mankind made in His image, male and female, and not a Baskin Robbins of gender identities or sexual orientations. God gives human life in His image at the moment of conception, and we are required to honor and protect it, until or unless we have clear permission from the One who gave it that it may be taken (e.g. just war, capital punishment). God defines marriage as one man and one woman, and all other arrangements as perversions, adultery, and fornication. God owns everything because He made it all, and therefore, He gives it to those He pleases, and to whom He gives land and houses and wealth, we are required to honor those gifts, protect those gifts, and not steal them, whether by thugs at gun point or through unjust regulation and taxation, but I repeat myself. 

RL Dabney said that conservatism is the party that never conserves anything but merely the shadow that follows radicalism to perdition. He said that in the 1890s, and it remains largely and tragically true. Therefore, if we are to truly fight this coup in our land, it has to be rid from our own ranks. It was Trump himself who only a few years ago celebrated a congress with the most female members in history. That is the DEI woke virus being celebrated by our current Republican leader. Certainly, the occasional woman will be in a position to serve in a political office in dignity (e.g. Deborah), but if we want traditional marriage and traditional families, we must celebrate the rarity of women in office and not the feminist destruction of our families. 

As much as I enjoyed the fairly traditional pop Hollywood offering of Top Gun Maverick, the DEI placement of the woman in a combat cockpit is a perfect example of our Republican DEI problem. Gotta have that nod to feminist and egalitarian gods, even though they are complete fabrications and lies, even though they lead to murderous destruction and harm. Anatomically, woman’s heart simply does not pump blood at the same rate as a male heart. If men would blackout with those g-forces, the woman more so. And God says it’s as much an abomination for a woman to wear the gear and weapons of a man, as it is for a dude in a dress to be hawking his wares to little kids in public libraries (Dt. 22:5). 

The images of the attempted assassination and the failure of secret service agents, particularly all the women involved, have highlighted the acute danger of DEI policies. It’s not just inappropriate and sinful, it puts people in danger. A faithful father, a hero, was killed protecting his family because apparently the female head of secret service was concerned about a roof being too sloped. Behold your woke feminist gods. They promise you sex, and in the end you get shot. 

The Republican National Confusion
So we come to the Republican National Confusion… er, I mean Convention, and Harmeet Dhillon and Amber Rose are the DEI picks of the planners, not to mention Mark Robinson going on about his goal of becoming the first black governor of North Carolina. And my point is not that Mark Robinson wouldn’t potentially be a great governor of North Carolina. I hope he will be. But when he makes his skin color one of the key factors in why he would be great, he is trying to compete with Kamala Harris, which, to be clear, is a massive self-own. For all I know, there’s never been a red-headed North Carolina governor either, but I don’t think red hair tells us anything about competence, wisdom, or integrity. Why are conservatives still talking like DEI Marxists about women and race? And why are some conservatives doing the same with Jews?

And Harmeet Dhillon may be welcome to speak and offer her support of Trump, but you cannot fight the woke demon by invoking it. And what I mean is that to call on any other god, except the Triune God is to blaspheme the true God. And that it is an act of violence against the true God and His world. If Republicans can bow before Waheguru, then why can’t doctors give thirteen-year-old girls mastectomies? And why can’t men participate in women’s sports? If you don’t want confusion about male and female on the ground, then you cannot have confusion about whose image they bear in Heaven. If it is the true God who created Heaven and Earth and sent His Son Jesus, then worship Him. If it is Waheguru, then serve him. But the RNC just celebrated a tranny prayer: so why can’t California decide not to tell parents if their children want to transition? 

All affirmative action, DEI, and woke grievance culture insists that when bad things have happened, it is not enough to simply repent and do biblical restitution. The Marxist religion says that those who have been oppressed, must be “empowered.” Equality must be achieved by force, whether by government policy, protests, riots, or broad cultural revolution. And this is because this radical virus ultimately rejects God and His Word. If there is no God and if He has not spoken clearly to tell us how to live in this world, then we must be the masters of our own fate. We must seek to remake the world according to our own wisdom. It must be done by force.

But not only has God clearly spoken, He has sent His only Son into this dark world in order to save it, in order to remake it. The woke mind virus is not merely a rejection of God and His Word in general; it is a rejection of His salvation and His Savior in particular. This is where public policy can do very little to really help us. If our hearts are raging mad, good law and policy can only do so much good. Of course, those in power should govern according to God’s law and establish true justice in the land, but those raging hearts must be calmed for it to have any long term success. You cannot solve stage 4 cancer by opting for stage 2 cancer.

The woke, DEI, victim-culture mind virus must be destroyed, but it must be destroyed in the Republican party, otherwise, we are the shadow following the radicals to perdition. And I fully realize that there are wheels within wheels, currents pulling in different directions. Some of the speakers at the RNC were no doubt chosen by certain parts of the establishment and maybe weeks or months in advance. But the goal of true conservatives ought to be to continue pushing the Overton Window with the images of the secret service women and the “sloped roof” nonsense. Women are glorious creatures who are to be honored and protected as women. And therefore, they are not to be pastors, combat soldiers, police officers, UFC fighters, or secret service agents. And their highest callings are to make homes, to be wives and mothers, to practice hospitality, and serve their people with great wisdom. And therefore human life is to be honored from conception, and marriage is between one man and one woman. All of this goes together because God is God, and we are not.

Conclusion 

So the real test of our resolve is whether we will resist this evil all the way down into our own lives. Will we repent of all such murderous hate? Will we completely repudiate it or will we only resist its most gaudy, debauched forms?

Will we repent of the murderous hate that crushes the unborn in every form of abortion? Or will we go along with the new RNC platform, softening the call for equal justice and protection for all human beings?

Will we repent of the murderous hate that destroys families through porn, fornication, adultery, sodomy, and the trans jihad? And will we repent of inviting sex-hustlers to speak at our conventions and for removing language from the RNC platform affirming marriage between one man and one woman?

Will we repent of our murderous hatred against our parents, our envy of our neighbors, and our resentment of the wealth and success of others and toleration of unjust regulation and taxation to fund socialist government programs? 

They say the bullet that grazed Trump’s ear missed killing him by an inch. As Trump said, that was God alone that spared his life. God alone. So what will it be, America: the Triune God of Scripture or Waheguru of the Sikh or Orgasma of the Porn Stars and sodomites? Light or darkness? Light can have no fellowship with darkness.

And to the Republicans tempted to cowardly cave and compromise on these issues in the name of unity (and I’m looking at you, organizers of the Republican National Convention): our enemies want our leaders dead, want our children dead, want our Christian way of life dead. This is no time to make peace with any of that. This is not the moment to back down. This is the moment to fight for life from conception, the glorious differences between male and female, marriage between one man and one woman, and other basic moral principles like: thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not covet. Trump dodged a literal bullet, and our nation seems to have dodged the bullet of a great deal of turmoil and distress. Whatever Trump means by it, we should absolutely stand up now and fight.  

Soft Hearts & Hard Heads

Introduction
Just finished reading a book on the Christian duty of caring for orphans, and it struck me that it represents the best and worst of “TGC” Calvinistic evangelicalism. The best part of it is the soft heart for the gospel and the needs of others. It takes the sufficiency of the gospel and the duties of the gospel seriously. We have been adopted by God, and therefore, we are to spread this message and care to the world. The worst part of it is the sentimentalism, lack of warnings, guilt manipulation, and failure to address large swaths of other Biblical duties that require wisdom and balance.

Why are evangelicals so easily manipulated when it comes to social justice issues, multiculturalism, immigration, abortion, homosexuality, and taxation? Because we have soft hearts and soft heads. We “follow our hearts” rather than use our heads. We are manipulated by needs, by weakness, by hurt and pain, and while it is good and right to feel for those in need, it is disobedience to allow our feelings to drive our action. And much of this is led by the feelings of women, dragging their husbands/pastors behind them. When this happens, it is toxic matriarchy, the mothering instinct untethered from God’s Word, truth, and reality – “untethered empathy” – or what is sometimes called “the longhouse.”

The Need is Not Necessarily the Call
For example, a book on orphan care didn’t mention (that I noticed) the high incidence of sexual abuse and sexual promiscuity in foster care homes, adoptive homes, and blended families. What about the duty a man has to provide for, protect, and love well the children God has already given him? How many adoptive families have brought enormous burdens upon their biological children? How many have created de facto new orphans by their neglect of their biological children because of the constant demands of the adopted orphans? When it comes to missions and mercy ministry, the Hippocratic Oath applies: “first do no harm.”

It has often been said in missions and mercy ministry that “the need is not the same thing as the call.” There are many needs, but we cannot possibly meet all of them. Sometimes God’s providence makes it clear: it’s your brother’s kids who need a place to stay; a family in your church disintegrates; tragedy or disaster strikes or some other personal connection puts a particular need in your path (like the Good Samaritan). But God does not ask for us to give what He has not already provided for us to give, and at the same time, it is sometimes true that God has provided more than we realize, and the need reveals the abundance He has already provided. But it is not generosity to give beyond what you have to some need and then turn around, hat in hand, asking the deacons to help you pay your bills the next month, or worse, require your own children or spouse to pick up the slack.

Hard Heads
When God called Ezekiel to minister to a wayward and whorish nation, He gave him a hard head: “Like adamant stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not be afraid of them, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they are a rebellious house.” Evangelism and missions and mercy work require soft hearts and hard heads: courage, backbone, knowledge, and wisdom. And counting the cost, assessing the strength of your armies before going to war, and doing due diligence about the potential dangers and opposition you will face is not lack of faith or cowardice. It is actually true faith and love of God and the way He made the world.

The problem with many modern evangelicals, maybe Calvinistic evangelicals especially, is that we have soft hearts and soft heads, which makes us easy to manipulate. We are thoughtless and foolish, and then, because we’re Calvinists, we justify our foolishness by appealing to God’s sovereignty – God can do anything. Yes, but remember, that was essentially one of the temptations of the Devil: God can send His angels to save you from your foolishness. But Jesus said that we must not tempt the Lord our God. We must not act the fool and treat God (or His angels) like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Even if God sometimes sends His angels to break His people out of jail.

So Christians should have soft hearts for widows and orphans and immigrants and the lost, for missions, for mercy, and for evangelism, and we are required by God to also have hard heads about the various challenges, difficulties, and temptations we will face addressing those very real needs. Just because Charles Spurgeon started preaching at 17 doesn’t mean we ought to ordinarily ordain seniors in high school to the ministry. Just because George Muller refused to ask for help and relied on God in prayer, doesn’t mean that we are to run our churches or businesses or personal finances that way. We can celebrate miracles and extraordinary circumstances without putting the Lord our God to the test.

And so it is with family members that come out as homosexual or trans, or the immigration crisis, or abortion. Take abortion “exceptions” for rape or incest or the life of a mother: it is a soft headed sentimentalism that thinks killing a baby for the crime of his father or parents will help. It is hard enough that a 13 year old may be pregnant yes, but it is an atrocity to think that murdering her baby helps anything. And even when a mother’s life is truly at risk, delivering a baby prematurely is not an abortion. You are not intentionally taking a baby’s life, even if we do not yet have the medical technology to keep that baby alive.

Likewise, the refusal to exercise church discipline for unbiblical divorce or adultery or fornication or homosexuality or transgenderism because it might make people feel bad, might hurt their feelings. Paul rebuked the Corinthians for being “welcoming and affirming” of that one guy who was shacking up with his step-mom, for going to temple prostitutes, for suing each other, and for getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper, and he was glad that he made them feel sad because it led them to the sorrow of repentance (2 Corinthians 7). We must have hard heads about God’s Word, obedience, and truth, even while being sympathetic to the harsh realities of sin and a fallen world and honestly desiring salvation, healing, and restoration.

While we are called to practice hospitality, your house probably cannot hold more than a certain number of people well. If you invite two families over for dinner and do not invite a third or a fourth, that doesn’t mean you are hard-hearted or faithless. It means you want to practice true hospitality. Too much hospitality becomes inhospitable. Just because God does sometimes multiply the bread and the fishes, that doesn’t mean America can handle any amount of immigration. Even if we would ideally want a relatively easy national border to cross, it is not unchristian to ask for orderly lines, identification, and some measure of accountability and security, especially when there are evil men with evil intentions seeking to harm us and our children. To fail to care for our own households is to be worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5). Even pagans know that we must first care for our own families and neighbors before we can love the strangers well.

Conclusion
Finally, there’s a difference between a life or death emergency and the ongoing hardship of living in a fallen world. If a stranger has a medical emergency on your doorstep, you have some responsibility to care for that need (call 911). If a house is on fire, you stop everything and try to help. If a neighbor child goes missing, you do whatever you can to find him. If the bone is sticking out, you go to the ER.

But there are many hardships and difficulties (broken families, marriages, and less than ideal circumstances) that require longterm holistic solutions, cultural transformation, and gospel marination. In the same way that you cannot simply export “democracy” or a “constitutional republic” to foreign non-Christian cultures, so too, it is often very difficult to address complex needs through a simplistic gospel presentation or simply relocating someone into your Christian home. And just because sometimes it works (and we’ve all heard some glorious testimonies) doesn’t mean it was a good idea.

I say all of this as someone who has gratefully done foster care, supported family members and church members who have adopted, and as a pastor committed to the full-orbed gospel ministry in word and deed. We need soft gospel hearts and hard-headed biblical wisdom. A true “Calvinistic” evangelicalism doesn’t just “wing it.” Our sovereign Father has carefully planned our salvation. He counted the cost, and because of His infinite resources is able to execute our rescue with absolute precision. While we certainly cannot imitate his infinite resources, we must imitate His wise love, His careful provision. Our Father is full of compassion and wisdom. He has a soft heart and a hard head. And of course this also means that sometimes when we have done all that seems wise and prudent, our Father will still give us more than seems reasonable, and then we must trust Him to provide even more. This is the true spirit of adoption.

Photo by Annika Marek-Barta on Unsplash

Fiery Grace

This table is a table of grace. This means it is a table where you don’t receive what you deserve, and where you actually receive what you don’t deserve. All who come in faith in Christ do not receive the judgment they deserve, and all who come in faith in Christ receive the blessing they don’t deserve. 

This is why we say that this is a table of grace. But this is not a wishy-washy grace that says it doesn’t really matter what happened, let bygones be bygones, just forget about it. No, this is a table of fierce grace, fiery grace, a grace with a backbone. How so? Well, what is this bread but the broken body of our Lord Jesus Christ? What is this cup, but the cup of God’s wrath, that Christ drank in our place, and the precious blood of our Lord Jesus, poured out for our sins? 

This is no cheap grace. It was expensive grace. It was bought and paid for by God’s only Son, who died that we might die to sin, and who rose from the dead, so that we might rise to new life in Him. This is true grace, real grace; it’s transforming grace. It’s the kind of grace that doesn’t leave you the same. It’s the kind of grace that welcomes you and changes you. It burns away your dross. It burns away your fears and doubts and shame.

None of us deserves to be here, but Christ Himself invites you. And the only way to come is by faith. This means trusting in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. This means trusting in Jesus Christ for the continued destruction of your sins. This is not a table for people who have it all together. This is a table for those who know they don’t. This is a table for those who need grace, who need strength, who want the Holy Spirit to deal with them and make them holy. 

So come in faith, come looking to Jesus Christ, and so come and welcome to the grace of Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Melanie Lim on Unsplash