Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 8

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

Honoring Our Fatherland

We just celebrated our nation’s birthday this last week, and this conjures up many mixed feelings and questions. How do we celebrate a nation that has murdered babies by the millions? How do we celebrate a nation full of corruption and lies and scandals? And on the other hand, should Christians even celebrate our nation, since our citizenship is in Heaven and the Kingdom of God includes many nations? 

The short answer is that is a Christian duty to honor and celebrate everything good about our nation, as an extension of our duty to honor our father and mother. Just as we are to honor the law of our father and mother, and not remove the ancient landmarks established by our fathers, so too we are to honor the biblical laws of our land, as well as the good customs and traditions and true virtues of our history and people. And it is this honor and love of our particular fathers that teach us how to honor other people and nations. We can rightly love other families and nations only when we have learned to love our own. We love our neighbor as ourselves. 

The root of the word “patriot” or “patriotism” is “patria,” which comes from the word for “father.” Patriotism is love of fatherland. In other words, the root of Christian patriotism is honoring fathers. It is no accident then that as we have become a fatherless nation, our nation has reached a crisis. You cannot despise and hate the fathers in your family and church and then magically end up with faithful fathers in the public square. You get faithful fathers in the public square and a virtuous fatherland worth honoring because family fathers and church fathers faithfully lead and lay their lives down for its virtue. It is only by honoring father and mother that it can go well with us in our land. 

So we do not honor the corruption in our land, and understood rightly, every lawful means of resisting that corruption is actually true Christian patriotism. A true Christian patriot hates the evil in his nation because he loves what she ought to be. Likewise, we do not honor the failures and sins of our fathers and mothers, but we remember and celebrate all the good things in faith, asking God that it may go well with us in the land. 

Sam & Tarez

“For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee” (Ps. 84:11-12).

This is the message of the whole Bible: God is good.

These days, it’s common for people to wonder whether it’s even worth it to get married. Why pay all that money and get all dressed up, when you don’t even know if it’s going to work out. What if things go badly? What if he changes? What if she changes?

The answer is because God is good. 

In the beginning, God spoke the worlds into existence. And day by day, as He saw what He had made, He saw that it was good. And when He finished the heavens and the earth and everything in them, He saw that it was very good. 

When people say that just don’t know if there’s a god, when they say, they would believe if He would only reveal Himself, it’s simply astonishing. Open your eyes. Open your mouth. Open your hands. There’s goodness piled up high all around us. It’s Christmas every day. God made everything, and He made everything beautiful in its time. 

People say, yes, but there’s really horrible things in this world: tragedies, evil, cancer, disasters. What about the problem of evil? To which we say two things: first, if there is no God, then there is no such thing as evil. If there is no transcendent standard of goodness, no north star, then there’s no right and wrong, no good or evil. But everyone knows there is such a thing as evil. We know that death and dying and destruction and loss are not the way it’s supposed to be. To which we say, and God agrees. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. 

And the story of the Bible, the story of human history, is the story of that perfect Light overcoming the darkness. It was Adam and Eve leaving a Garden 6,000 years ago, clothed in animal skins with a promise of a seed. It was Noah and his family in an enormous boat saved through the flood. It was Abraham building altars in a land that was not his own, and his family of 70 persons growing into a great nation enslaved in Egypt, and God brought them out by His mighty arm. It was by signs and symbols, prophets and priests and kings, that God brought His light, until He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, the Light of the World to bind and plunder the darkness of this world. And so He did: He cast out demons, He calmed the raging storms, He fed the multitudes, and He turned water into wine. And finally, He took the darkness of our sin, and shame, the darkness of death itself upon Himself on the Cross. And when He died, all of it died. When He died, the power of darkness was broken. And when He rose from the dead, He rose like the morning Sun. He rose, bringing light to the whole world. 

But then they ask, so why doesn’t He just destroy all the darkness. Why doesn’t He just make it all right, right now? And the answer is because He is God and He is good. And He knows better than anyone. Why doesn’t the Sun just appear at the zenith? Why does it take time to rise and scatter the shadows? Because God is good, and He makes everything beautiful in its time. 

But the Scriptures also say that God is patient and merciful. He is slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, and He does not desire that any should perish. Why doesn’t God just swallow up all the darkness in a moment? Because that would mean all of us swallowed up in a moment. We are part of the darkness. We are the Fallen, we are the rebels. We have lied and cheated and stolen and mistreated. And He waits patiently for the rebels to surrender. He waits patiently for all the wicked to lay down their arms. And while He waits, the overwhelming method that God uses to conquer the darkness is His goodness. 

While people rage and blaspheme, He sends them sunsets and good food. He sends them symphonies and laughter and turns water into wine. He sends them goodness piled on top of goodness, and rebels turn away. The wicked call it good luck and evolutionary chance, and as they refuse His gifts, they hide in the shadows and then as if proving their claim, they point out how dark it is. To which we say, in the name of Jesus Christ, come out into the Light. They say it’s dark and getting darker, and we say, not hardly. It’s already 9am, it’s morning, the sun is coming up. It’s getting lighter every minute. 

In Romans 2, after listing so many of the evils of the human race, it says, do you dispise the riches of his goodness and patience and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” What is it that leads sinful rebels to repentance? The riches of his goodness. Goodness is the power of God. Goodness is the omnipotence of God. This is why He requires His people not to return evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good. 

All of this is why it isn’t crazy to get married. The goodness of God brought you here today, and no matter what happens, the goodness of God will carry you through.

Sam, my charge to you is to remember the goodness of God. The goodness of God is your sun and shield. The goodness of God has forgiven all your sins and granted you eternal life in Jesus Christ. The goodness of God has brought you to this day. The goodness of God made you a man, and it is good to be a man. Your masculine strength and instincts are good gifts from the Lord. Continue to train them to imitate Your Heavenly Father in wielding them for good. God said it was not good for Adam to be alone, and so brought him a wife. And Proverbs says that He who finds a wife, finds a good thing, and so here today, Tarez is your crown, your grace and glory and blessing. She is your Lady wisdom. Listen to her and love her and lead her like Christ loves and leads His bride. This is true authority and responsibility, but remember that goodness is your power. And the standard for this love is the Word of God. Love is not doing whatever Tarez wants or whatever you want. Love is doing what God says is best for your family. 

Tarez, my charge to you is to remember the goodness of God. The goodness of God is your sun and shield, your power, and your glory. The goodness of God has forgiven all your sins and granted you eternal life in Jesus Christ. The goodness of God has brought you to this day. The goodness of God made you a woman, and it is good to be a woman. Your feminine beauty and instincts are good gifts from the Lord. You were made to make a home, to be a mother, to feed and clothe and comfort. And in God’s goodness, He has called you to serve Sam, to submit to him, to honor and respect him, to follow him. This is the goodness of God, and the goodness of God is your shield and sun. There are still many dark shadows in this morning land, but the sun is risen, and it’s getting lighter, and your marriage, your home, your family, by God’s grace, is part of the growing light.  

Scripture says, if we 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. This is how sinners walk in the light. As we confess our sins, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Whatever sin you confess in the name of Jesus turns to light and the shadows fade away. 

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

Can Young Children Examine Themselves?

As you know, it is our practice to welcome young baptized children to the Lord’s Supper under the authority of the elders. This practice is called paedocommunion or young child communion. And in this we hold a minority position in the modern Reformed Church. There is evidence that the early church practiced this, but as the Roman Catholic church became more confused and superstitious about the sacraments, the Protestant Reformers largely saw child communion as part of that superstition. 

Most Reformed and presbyterian denominations require baptized children to wait and make some kind profession of faith at an older age before coming to the Lord’s Supper. Their central argument is taken from 1 Cor. 11 where Paul warns against eating and drinking unworthily and becoming guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. It says that a man ought to examine himself as he partakes of the bread and wine, otherwise he may eat and drink damnation, if he does not discern the Lord’s body. 

These are very serious warnings, and so we can appreciate why some would say that children should wait to make sure they are eating and drinking in a worthy manner. However, in context, the particular abuses that Paul is addressing are people who are getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper and others who are forming factions and excluding others. We do believe that children must be taught to understand that this is not just some kind of snack in the middle of church, and they must come in faith believing that this bread and wine represents the death of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and that they have been made part of Christ’s body. But if you can discipline your child and teach him to pray and confess his sins, then there is no reason why we should doubt that young children can examine themselves and so come in a worthy manner. 

Finally, the warnings in Scripture generally run in the other direction regarding children. Jesus warns adults against excluding them, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. And so one of the most important ways we discern the Lord’s Body is by welcoming the littlest members of His body into full fellowship with us at this table. So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

Putting the Patria back in Patriotism

Introduction
Well, a very Happy 4th of July to you and yours. I trust you are grilling something tasty, gathering with friends and family, and shooting off fireworks, hopefully at least a few that are a tad bit illegal. In honor of the holiday, I wanted to interact with a clip I saw floating around of my friends Joel Webbon and Stephen Wolfe talking about the fact that a constitutional republic really only works for a people who know how to govern themselves. As Benjamin Franklin said, it’s a “Republic – if you can keep it.” The verdict is in, says Joel, and clearly, we haven’t kept it. And, when you don’t have a virtuous people governed by the Holy Spirit, you will get the iron fist of stronger government, rulers, and laws.

Descriptive or Prescriptive?
The question I have is whether the point here is descriptive or prescriptive. It’s certainly true that a morally enslaved people will become a politically enslaved people, sort of like that one bumper sticker: “Gravity: It’s the Law.” You cannot have political liberty apart from spiritual liberty, and sometimes, when your nation is sliding into enslavement, the only choice you have is between an Ahab and a Jehoram. And if Jehoram is a little less evil than his father, and would suppress Baal worship just a little bit, you might cast your vote for that guy because, hey, that’s a little better – maybe he buys you a little bit more time (cf. 2 Kgs. 3). And I suppose there comes a time when your constitutional republic is so corrupt that you defect to the pagan empire, like Jeremiah counseled at the end of the nation of Judah. There may also come a time when famine, war, or persecution drives you into an Egypt of necessity where the slave food happens to be pretty decent. And sometimes Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar converts, and there’s a measure of justice and liberty that comes with that. 

But while we still have a little bit of room to breathe, what do we hope for? What do we pray for? What are we working for? Do we actually want the firm-hand of a monarch? Is that what we’re aiming for? Or are we just saying that if we’re not careful, our French Revolution could end up creating a Napoleon? I completely agree with the latter description, but I want to do everything I can to avoid it. And even here, a lot depends upon what we mean by “the firm hand of a monarch.” Do we mean the firm hand of true, biblical righteousness? Do we mean a George Washington striving to establish or re-establish the republic? Do we mean the firm hand of a Moses meekly striving with the slave-mentality of a nation to establish representative judges, due process, and true natural liberty? Or do we mean a “king like the other nations?”

Politics is always a matter of approximating true justice. And sometimes your choice might be between a Saul (who is more like the other nations than we might wish) and more of the tribal chaos of the judges (when there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes). And no doubt there were some in Israel arguing for the necessity of that king given the constant violence of Moses’ failed Israelite republic. And by the time we get to that chopped up concubine, I’d say they had certainly failed to keep that republic. But clearly, while God allowed Israel to anoint a king like the other nations (and the law certainly intimated a king), it was not the best choice in that moment because Israel was rejecting God as their king (1 Sam. 8:7). It could have looked like the best option at that moment. But it wasn’t.

The Patria in Patriotism
It’s certainly true that God may give us what we deserve, which is a globalist regime of Klaus Schwab’s wet dreams, all of us eating bugs in our climate-controlled incubators. And yes, our current constitution is largely a dead letter. But our constitution is dead like my grandfathers are dead. Don’t get me wrong, a written document is in many ways not like a human being, made in the image of God. It does not have a soul that will never die. It will not rise at the resurrection. But what I mean is that what those men wrote and signed and lived out and died for (however haltingly) happened on this soil, in this place, and I am the recipient of that virtue, those blessings, in a similar way to the fact that I am the recipient of the virtues and blessings of Richard Lee Stites and Orville Edmond Sumpter. In other words, there can be no patriotism without a fatherland. “Patria” means fatherland, the land of our fathers, and patriotism is loyalty and love of our fathers’ land. 

One of the things I’ve most appreciated about Stephen Wolfe is his insistence on the particularities of a people, a nation. What binds us together is not primarily ideas but shared experiences, places, family, worship, language, convictions, and customs. While I think “ethnicity” is a challenging way to describe all of that (because we’ve been programmed by our current overlords to think of that as largely racial), I understand that complex synthesis of concrete realities to be what he is getting at with the word “ethnos” or “ethnicity.” 

But this means that the constitution is part of our ethnos. Representative, constitutional government is part of our ethnicity, our American way of life. And if that is the case, we really have to be careful to distinguish between “the firm hand of strong rulers” as the descriptive judgment of God on a wayward people – almost always in the form of some kind of empire (Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon) on the one hand, and the “firm hand of strong rulers” as a prescriptive means of salvaging and rebuilding and repenting as a nation, as represented by the likes of Moses, David, Nehemiah and Ezra, George Washington, Davy Crocket, and Wyatt Erp. There really is a world of difference between contemplating a “Protestant Franco” and the ensuing Spanish Civil War and celebrating the Declaration of Independence and the War for Independence. The ethos and (dare I say) ethnicity (in Wolfe’s sense of the word) of the two paths is monumental. I suppose many believe that the “Protestant” adjective can do enough heavy lifting to salvage the image, but that is to slip into the very “universalism” that Wolfe has so helpfully criticized.

Our nation was built largely on a Scotch and Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, rooted in the history of Alfred the Great, the Magna Charta, Scottish independence, the English Civil War, and a great deal more of the same sort of rugged representationalism, limited government, and constitutional checks and balances, resulting in the famous derision of King George, referring to our War for Independence as the “presbyterian revolt,” largely due to the high number of Scottish presbyterians in the American colonies and the long standing tensions between the Scots and the English.

It’s no accident that “presbuteros” means “elder” or “old man.” Presbyterianism is church polity organized around the representative rule of elders: older, wiser men, our fathers in the faith. Again, it’s no accident that the “black-robed regiment” was disdained by the British during the War for Independence. They knew that it was the presbyterian pastors and elders leading the charge for independence, and that for deeply Scottish and Anglo-Saxon Protestant reasons. It has been said that what you win them with is what you win them to. And so the same is true for us politically. The American republic is in shambles, like many of our families and churches. We have become a fatherless people, bastards all. And so we act like it: angry, impulsive, bitter, and wildly insecure, especially on social media. The temptation in a moment like this is to call for strong leaders who will defend us, but that can very easily mean gang leaders, thugs, and personality cults with varying degrees of beneficence. But the need of the moment is fathers. The need of the moment is biblical patriarchy. Faithful fathers are bound by covenants, by oaths of loyalty, to their marriages, children, parents, churches, and nations. Those covenants bind us together in shared experiences, places, people, customs, and obligations. Biblical covenants are the framework of family, church, and state, with their overlapping duties and responsibilities. 

Conclusion
A constitutional republic is for a religious, self-governing people, and it is not fit for any other kind of people. Witness America’s various attempts at sharing “democracy” with other nations that do not share those cultural values. But now we are witnessing the same insanity with our open borders policies. America is on a path to the same kind of failed states we have already witnessed, only in reverse, with the foreign cultures streaming in, without any human means or hope of assimilating them. 

I do not know if we are Cicero witnessing the crumbling of the American Republic, and some Trumpian Caesar will cross some Rubicon and what appears to be an emerging American Empire will take its place for a few hundred years more, perhaps even with a King Saul of sorts who might seem relatively better than warring tribalism. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And I don’t mean that as some kind of pietistic Jesus-juke. I mean that like Joshua did at the end of his life, with the Mosaic Republic teetering on the edge of the era of the judges. 

There is no absolute moral necessity for a constitutional republic over a constitutional monarchy. But love of our particular fathers, love of our fatherland, means a love of our constitutional republic because despite all the rot and filth and weaponization, it is the land where our fathers died. And it is a way of life – an ordered liberty under Christ – for which they lived and died.

As the old patriotic hymn goes: 

“Our father’s God to, Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!”

The cry of the early patriots was “No King but Christ.” And I intend to hold that ground. No King but Christ, not even a Protestant one, if it can be helped. Many factors would play into how one can and should hold the ground of a burned-out constitutional republic, but it strikes me that Davy Crockett holding the Alamo works, whether literally or figuratively. 

God could certainly raise up a Constantine, which would be better than we deserve, and three hundred years into a thoroughly pagan empire that was probably the most many Christians could hope for. But if the choice is between a Constantinian regime and a slowly crumbling empire that leaves room for a new medieval Christendom of decentralization and a growth, it is not at all clear to me that we ought to hope for Constantine. I’d rather rebuild our republic in the ruins. I’d rather deal with roving bands of Huns than whatever Diocletian the European Union dredges up. 

Happy 4th, y’all.

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

The Glory of Submission

A Brief Take On Head Coverings

Introduction
Women wearing head coverings in church seems to be making a bit of a comeback. And some of my friends are part of the resurgence, and I’m quite sure that a whole bunch of it is driven by an honest repudiation of every vestige of feminism (and good riddance), and a sincere desire to recover a truly biblically-obedient patriarchy. On which principles, we whole-heartily agree. However, on the question of whether the Bible requires women to wear shawls or some sort of hat or veil in church on Sundays, I believe that wide-spread ancient custom was a pious tradition that is permissible but not required by Scripture in the New Covenant. 

All of Scripture
As always, we must take all of Scripture into account, and one of the rules of interpreting Scripture is interpreting the less clear passages in light of the clearer passages. Of particular interest is the fact that the Bible clearly teaches that women ought to be silent in church (not teaching or leading the service) and adorn their hair modestly: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Tim. 2:11-12). Clearly, women are not to teach or preach or “share” or lead men in worship, and this would have been a very easy place to remind the women to make sure that their hair was covered by a shawl or veil. And that would certainly have put a major damper on braided hair and ostentatious gold flakes or pearls woven into the hair. But that was not mentioned. The clear command is modesty, especially with the hair (which apparently everyone can see), and not leading or teaching or having authority over men in church. 

The one passage that can certainly seem like it may be requiring head coverings in worship is 1 Corinthians 11. But before landing there, one more clear text from later in the same letter: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law” (1 Cor. 14:34). So once again, the clear instruction (from the law) is for women to remain quiet, and I take this together with the passage from 1 Timothy 2, to mean that they are not to lead out loud, upfront. Women may pray and sing with the whole congregation, but they may not speak out since they are to be in submission to their own husbands and fathers and the male leadership of the church. 

Honoring Headship
This brings us to 1 Corinthians 11, and we should note that Paul defines his terms at the beginning rather carefully: “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). So, the primary “head” that Paul is says he is talking about is what we would call “headship” – the office of “covenant head.”

Then, as he turns to discuss covering or uncovering “heads,” he begins with the man: “Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head” (1 Cor. 11:4). Except, in this first instance, it doesn’t actually use the word “cover.” The Greek simply says “having against (or down) head.” It is a reasonable translation given what follows, to suggest that he means “cover,” as in, “having something on his head,” but it’s also striking that having defined his terms so carefully (“head” means “covenant headship”), that he initially uses a phrase that suggests being in some way opposed to or against your head (and not the same word “cover” used elsewhere in the text).

The question is: in the next verse when Paul describes a woman praying or prophesying “with an uncovered head” is he now suddenly talking about a woman praying or prophesying without a veil or shawl? If so, that’s a bit of a lurch, since to this point, “head” means “headship/submission.” Given the rest of Scripture regarding how women are supposed to be quiet in worship and not taking on leadership roles, I believe the most straightforward reading of this verse is that Paul is saying that any woman who leads in prayer and prophesying (or teaching or preaching) in public worship is doing so “against” her head and therefore without a “covering,” and that is dishonoring and shameful, just as shameful as if she had her head shaved. In other words, the central driving point is not whether there is fabric covering a woman’s head; the central driving point is whether women are worshipping as women under their heads (husbands/fathers/pastors). Are they honoring that creational and redemptive order or are they defying it or going against it by speaking out in worship? 

Sometimes it is suggested that with the outpouring of charismatic gifts in the first century, it was likely that many women were speaking out in tongues and prophesying in the Christian worship services, and perhaps some were *trying* to do that, and I believe Paul is correcting that misconception. Just because a woman may have a charismatic gift (and some certainly did, cf. Acts 21:9), doesn’t mean she may overturn the natural order. She is still to remain silent in worship as the law says (1 Cor. 14:34). It’s possible that the original custom was for a prophetess to cover her head with a literal shawl or veil while prophesying outside of worship to underline the fact that she was not attempting to act like a man or usurp the authority of her head. Perhaps that pious tradition was imitated by other women and spread into the church as a sign of modesty and submission. 

An obvious question would be: but then why does a man dishonor his “head” if his head is covered? Well, again, it doesn’t initially say that. Our English translations make it sound like verse 4 and 5 are the same words but they aren’t. A man dishonors his head if he prays “against his head,” if he prays or prophesies “being insubordinate” to his head. This is what Paul means by “uncovered.” He means insubordinate, rebellious, and rejecting God’s creational and redemptive order. This is why he presses this point: if a woman is being insubordinate, trying to take the role of a man, especially in worship, she ought to shave her head so her hairstyle matches her actions. She’s acting butch, so she ought to get a butch haircut. Which of course, many modern women have done, but it’s still shameful. But if you realize that a woman with a shaved head is shameful, then she ought to be “covered.” She ought to cheerfully acknowledge and be submissive to the male authorities in her life and not take on a leadership role in the church. 

Because of the Angels
Now at this point, Paul begins playing with this imagery, pointing out that a man’s head is Christ and the image and glory of God (1 Cor. 11:3, 7), and therefore a man should not “cover his head,” and here, Paul finally uses the same wording for the man, and I take that to mean that a man ought not to act or dress like a woman in worship. This prohibits all effeminacy in church, especially breathy male worship leaders. But Paul is also moving into describe the differences in the creation of man and woman and yet their mutuality or mutual dependence. Man was not created from the woman, but the woman was made from the man and for the man, and for that reason, she ought to have “authority (or power) on her head because of the angels.” 

Side note: I’ve sometimes said that perhaps we ought to more commonly explain things this way. Why do I park my car that way? Because of the angels. 

But seriously, why the angels? At least two reasons. One reason is that in worship, we really do come into the heavenly presence of God and all of the angels (Heb. 12). Angels are God’s holy ministers that guard and uphold the laws of nature and providence. And so we honor their ministry to us and for us, when we honor the order of nature. When women worship as women, in submission to the men God has placed over them, they honor the authority and power that God has established in the world. 

The second reason is because in the New Covenant, Christ has ascended far above the angels, “being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they” (Heb. 1:4ff). After the Fall, Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden and were under the angels, as symbolized by the cherubim that guarded the entrance back into the Garden, and the cherubim engraved over the Ark of the covenant and woven into the veil of the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle and temple. And the Bible says that the law was given by angels (Acts 7:53, Gal. 3:19). So in Christ, we have been raised into the heavenly places, and seated with Him above all principality and power, above the angels. Both men and women share in this great glory, but we still share in it as men and women, male and female. Therefore, when a woman joyfully accepts her glory as a woman and the authority over her, that is a picture of the curse of the Fall being removed and is even a testimony of the gospel to the angels. Alternatively, but related, Jason Garwood suggests that this is a reference to Christians judging the angels (cf. 1 Cor. 6:3). 

No doubt in the first century there were proto-feminists who thought that since both men and women shared equally in the inheritance in Christ, that meant that women could pray and prophesy and preach and lead worship just like men. Which incidentally, is still what many claim today: if a woman has the “gifting” why shouldn’t she use it? Paul says, yes, we have the same inheritance in Christ and many similar spiritual gifts for mutual edification (there is no distinction of male or female in forgiveness and eternal life), but the distinctions between men and women are still important, still part of the created order and are still to be honored even in redemption, even in the church and worship. And Paul appeals to nature and custom to underline this point: it just isn’t proper/appropriate for a woman to lead in worship like a man, in the same way that it’s unnatural for a man to have long hair or for a woman to have very short hair like a man. But God has given a natural sign of a woman’s glory in her long hair. For a woman to have longer hair is a glory for her and it is given to her for her natural covering (1 Cor. 11:15). And here, Paul suddenly uses a new word for “covering” – it is her mantle, her garment, her veil – something literally that is thrown around you, like a royal robe. 

Conclusion 
Putting all of this together, it is understandable why it appears to have been customary in many places and many times for women to wear a hat or scarf or handkerchief or shawl in worship: to picture or signify the true “covering” of submissive glory. And so long as it is done in true modesty of heart and submission, it is a perfectly fine tradition. But it is not required by the law of God. What is required is a submissive heart and a quiet, joyful submission to the order of nature which persists even in redemption. 

In seems to me that in some ways an insistence on a shawl or veil is a sort of mild Judaizing, a sort of ceremonial law imposed in the New Testament. For example, in the Old Covenant, priests were required to wear literal head coverings when they went into the Holy Place (Lev. 10:6). And that seems to have represented the veil that separated God and man (because of the angels), but now in Christ, we all with “unveiled faces” behold the glory of God (2 Cor. 3). Men and women both approach with unveiled faces (and heads) in that ceremonial sense because Christ has torn the veil in two. To require an extra veil or symbol of submission beyond long hair seems like a subtle return to the ceremonial symbols and shadows of the Old Covenant. 

But – and running back around the other side – this doesn’t mean that our male/female differences evaporate, and that is why God has given women longer hair to symbolize in a modest but glorious way that they are the glory of man. 

[For more, and variations on all of this, see Lusk and Wedgeworth, and for a very different approach, which was stimulating but ultimately not convincing to me, see Garwood.]

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Temperance and the Price of Liberty

Introduction

Apparently, a number of founding fathers are credited with saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And we still didn’t listen. 

Christopher Rufo reports on the many layers of corruption emanating from and around Texas Children’s Hospital. Beginning with a transgender program serving children as young as 11, defiantly continuing quietly even after laws were passed and promises made, culminating now in the involvement of the FBI and federal prosecutors intimidating and charging not the corrupt doctors and administrators but the courageous whistleblowers who reported on the unethical, criminal, and fraudulent activities surrounding the permanent maiming of healthy bodies. You can even watch a video of FBI agents questioning one nurse from Texas Children’s. 

The same thing has already happened to Paul Vaughn, a peaceful prolife activist and homeschooling father of seven whose home was raided by FBI agents with drawn weapons after a peaceful protest of an abortion clinic eighteen months prior. Vaughn and several others now await sentencing in a federal court on July 2, facing up to eleven years in prison. Meanwhile, if you burned down a police station during 2020 it was a “mostly peaceful protest,” but if you burn out on a PRIDE flag painted on a crosswalk, you’re a dangerous criminal.

The New Right

Many on what might be called the new Christian Right have begun arguing for a more forceful resistance to this neo-Marxist jihad. Not a call to vigilante violence, but a call to take up political power and wield it for good. Some hear these calls as no different than Boromir urging the Council of Elrond to take up the One Ring of power. And I have to admit that some of the voices have occasionally sounded that way to me. There is a kind of worship of political power that our radical progressive adversaries have which is utterly immoral, ungodly, and therefore, not an option for conservative Christians. We absolutely need to be on guard against the flesh, and the offers of power from the Devil. That is always a trap. Don’t take the bait.

But others are simply pointing out that someone will run the FBI. Someone will make the rules. Someone will decide whether to prosecute or not. Wouldn’t it be better for hard-headed Christians to hold those positions of power than the current regime? And since the public square clearly cannot actually be neutral or naked, and some God or gods will be honored and some form of blasphemy will be penalized, shouldn’t Christians stop making Faustian bargains with unbelief? Of course the cries come up that this will entail “Christofacism” and Mosaic Sharia Law and a Handmaid’s Tale of bigotry and oppression. But the fact of the matter is that Puritans founded and built this country. And while there were certainly some abuses in some places, it was that Christian conscience and commitment to all of God’s Word applied to all of life that made room for the most religious and political liberty in modern history. Sodomy was illegal in many states until about fifteen minutes ago, and somehow we managed to build the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

Edmund Spenser & Sir Guyon

Book 2 of Edmund Spenser’s Fairie Queene is the story of Sir Guyon the Knight of Temperance – no, it’s not some kind of moralistic fable against the dangers of alcohol. Spenser’s Knight embodies the classical and Christian virtue of temperance. While in some cases, temperance means moderation and avoiding excesses and extremes, what becomes clear over the course of the tale is that Christian temperance is something more like the love of and execution of “appropriate action or force.” Temperance resists the enticements of excessive physical pleasure, but it also resists the repulsion of physical pain or emotional discomfort. Temperance desires and does what is right and good and appropriate despite what it feels like.  

Some evils a temperate man flees, repudiating the discomfort of what might appear to some as cowardly; other evils a temperate man stands his ground and fights, resisting the temptations to ease or comfort. In the face of some evils, a temperate man is slow and subtle, opposing an impulsive or wrathful spirit; in the face of other evils, a temperate man is fierce and fiery, rejecting the seductive spells of apathy, laziness, or fear. Temperance in this way is not really “moderate” in the sense of mediocre or average. Temperance is appropriately trained desires and action suited to the needs of the moment. The name of Spenser’s Knight of Temperance even points to this: “Guyon” means something like “lively struggle.” Temperance wrestles with every moment, seeking what is good and what is best. Temperance is lively and assertive thoughtfulness, desire, and action well-tempered to the occasion. 

In this view, Jacob’s wrestling with the angel of the Lord was temperate. Joseph’s flight from Potiphar’s wife was temperate. Moses’s pleading before the Lord for Israel was temperate. David’s challenge of Goliath was temperate. Daniel and his friends exemplified temperance in their defiance of evil decrees and endurance of persecution. It was the temperance of Christ that caused Him to endure the suffering of the cross, despising its shame, for the joyful crown and conquest that was set before Him.

Temperance is the virtue that combats every form of gluttony, including the gluttony of comfort, peace, and respectability. Temperance is self-control, wise self-government but going all the way down into the soul, into the bones: instincts and desires trained for action and appropriate force. Like “meekness,” it is strength under control. It is power wielded with virtue. 

Watchful Men

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” might have been another way to say what the Apostle John says: “Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward” (2 John 8). In fact, the exhortations to watchfulness come regularly in the New Testament. Stay awake. Be alert, sober, vigilant. But like the first disciples, we are prone to get tired and fall asleep.  

George Washington warned, speaking of the Constitutional order, that, “It is important … that … those entrusted with its administration … confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department any encroachment upon another…. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create … a real despotism.” Limited government does not happen automatically because someone swore an oath of office. Power is limited by opposing power. The different spheres or jurisdictions were meant to be balancing powers. But they only work if those who occupy them exert the appropriate powers of their offices and rein in the encroachments and excesses of themselves and others.  

Thomas Jefferson believed he was already seeing that consolidation and encroachment in his own lifetime: “Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit, by consolidation first, and then corruption…. The engine of consolidation will be the federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments.” And here we are. 

Constitutional checks and balances only work when there is intense protection of jurisdictions, justice, and morality. In other words, inappropriate and evil exertion of political power must be met with and restrained by appropriate and righteous exertion of political power. This is part of temperance. Conservatives have sometimes feared confident and assertive political action because of how the liberals might weaponize it next time around. But on the one hand, we don’t have the luxury of worrying about what the liberals *might* do when they are already weaponizing everything against what is true, good, and beautiful. It is not weaponizing political power to actively restrain and prosecute evil men.

On the other hand, a lot depends on what it is we are talking about. I agree that expanding the Supreme Court is fraught with dangers. Do we really want to (re)start that game? At the same time, the number of Supreme Court justices is most certainly not a matter of transcendent morality or specified in the Constitution, and if that becomes the game, shrewd Christians must apply biblical virtue to the needs of the moment and not necessarily be constrained by the number nine, our venerable tradition since 1869. I say “restart the game” since history reveals that it was already a game leading up the Civil War and that Abraham Lincoln appointed a 10th justice during his presidency to ensure a repeal of the Dread Scott decision. The political polo continued with the number of justices wavering between 7 and 9 following the war. As recently as 1937, FDR only barely failed to increase the number of justices to as many as 15.

But the more I think about all of this, the more I believe that our nation is as corrupt as it is for the same reasons our churches are so corrupt and weak. Our churches are full of soft, cowardly pastors who are intemperate not only in their lusts and excessive pleasures, but perhaps even more so in their intemperate refusal to stand up to evil because of the blowback, persecution, and unpleasantness that will follow. Church leaders were intimidating and making examples of faithful men long before the FBI. J. Gresham Machen was defrocked and excommunicated in the mainline presbyterian church in the 1920s for his faithfulness. In 2020, many pastors were caught cowering before tyrannical edicts one week and then marching in BLM protests the next. The fruit of all of this is the persecution of prolife protestors and whistleblowers who expose the medical abuse of minors. 

Conclusion

I’ve often pointed to the nine and a half tribes of Israel going to war with the other two and half tribes because of the altar they had built on the other side of the Jordan in Joshua 22. When the elders of Israel heard that an unauthorized altar had been built, they gathered for war and confronted their brothers. As it turns out, it was only an altar of memorial, a testimony for their children to remind them they were truly part of Israel. And when the other elders of Israel heard this, they were satisfied and went home. This is a glorious illustration of the strength and assertiveness of temperance. And no doubt some of the sons of Belial wrote editorials about hot-headed Phinehas and the growing Nietzschean impulses on the other side of the Jordan. But temperance doesn’t care. 

Christians are required to be watchful, intense, and strong like men (1 Cor. 16:13). There is such a thing as intemperance that is drunk on power, drunk on rage, drunk on pleasures. And all of that must be utterly repudiated. Temperance puts that “old man” of the flesh to death. But there is another intemperance that is lazy, apathetic, fearful, weak, and addicted to the pleasures of comfort, respectability, and ease. We must repent of both forms of intemperance. As has been said many times, the only thing necessary for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Temperance repudiates the discomfort of obedience. Temperance despises the shame of wielding godly power. 

We still speak of a blades being tempered – the process of heating up metal in order to make it more durable. In fact, a tempered blade is made slightly less hard in order for it be made tougher. A tempered blade is less brittle in order to be stronger. We are in dire need of well-tempered men, sharp and strong men.

“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Prov. 25:28). Literally, it is a man who cannot “restrain his spirit.” We are a nation without walls because we are a nation of intemperate men. The Ring of Power must always be destroyed, and it will be destroyed through the faithfulness of many playing their different parts in the great struggle. But there will be princes, senators, judges, sheriffs, pastors, and parents, and God has entrusted limited power to each of these offices, and temperance teaches us to wield that power in obedience and joy so that we may remain free.