Justin Taylor's Blog, page 8

The Song John Piper Wants Played at His Funeral

In his book, Worship Seeking Understanding, John Witvliet cites a worship leaders who spoke of weekly congregational singing as “rehearsing the congregation for a future funeral.” Witvliet comments: “What if we planned our music with this as a primary goal? ‘Musician, why did you choose that piece of music?’ ‘Well, it fit the texts of the day, it was well crafted, it challenged us musically—but mostly I picked it because you’ll need to know that piece when your family is preparing to bury a loved one.”

This made me want to ask a few godly leaders I trust and respect for one song that they would like to have played at their funeral.

Below is an entry from John Piper.

[See the other entries: Joni Eareckson Tada, Russell Moore, Michael Reeves]

According to actuarial tables I am supposed to die when Steve Green’s song, “God and God Alone,” turns 50. That would be sweet. My wife will have the final say of what happens at my funeral, but if I get my way, the first word uttered will be the word “God” in the first, unannounced song, “God and God Alone.”

There are four reasons, because the song has four verses which celebrate four cherished realities.

1. Divine Creation

God and God alone
Created all these things we call our own
From the mighty to the small
The Glory in them all
Is God’s and God’s alone

God made everything that is not God. He stands in need of nothing. He owns it all. We don’t own anything. Everything is a stewardship. The aim of the owner is that we use his world so as to make him look more valuable than the world. Every glorious created thing is a gift. We exist to show that “The glory in them all / Is God’s and God’s alone.”

2. Divine Beauty

God and God alone
Is fit to take the universe’s throne
Let everything that lives
Reserve its truest praise
For God and God alone

God’s “fitness” to take the universe’s throne is owing to the beauty of his own intrinsic perfections. He is not “fit” because there is a law outside himself that he conforms to. There is no pre-existent blueprint which he exists to fit. There is nothing above him or outside him, but what he fitly creates and rules from his throne. All that happens is his blueprint, including every note struck at this funeral, or not.

Thanksgiving is what we render for God’s benefits. Praise is what we render for God’s beauty. In the end, beauty is what ultimately and perfectly fits the way God is. To see that, and savor that, and show that, is why we live. Therefore, “Let everything that lives / Reserve its truest praise / For God and God alone.”

3. Divine Sovereignty

God and God alone
Reveals the truth of all we call unknown
And the best and worst of man
Won’t change the Master’s plan
It’s God’s and God’s alone

God’s plan stands. Ours fail or fit his. This is what it means to be God. “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose’” (Is. 46:9–10).

Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand” (Prov. 19:21).

The worst of men, like Pilate and Herod, did their best to stand against God’s plan. But only fulfilled it. Without this evil-wielding sovereignty there would be no cross, no blood, no salvation, no gospel. I praise God that the plan that stands “Is God’s and God’s alone.”

4. Divine Delight

God and God alone
Will be the joy of our eternal home
He will be our one desire
Our hearts will never tire
Of God and God alone

Not heaven. Not escape from hell. Not the forgiveness of sins. Not eternal life. Not the resurrection of a glorious body. Not reunion with loved ones. Not every tear removed. Not health restored. Not the inheritance of all things. Not the new heavens and the new earth. But God and God alone will be the joy of our eternal home. He will welcome us into his joy. “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21). He will be the joy of all our joys.

No created thing is inexhaustible in soul-satisfying wonders. All of them would become boring in a thousand years. But not God. For “in the coming ages he will show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7). It will take all future ages to exhaust the “riches of God’s grace,” because they are “immeasurable.” Therefore “Our hearts will never tire / Of God and God alone.”

A Meditation from Dane Ortlund on Psalm 42

Sinclair Ferguson writes of Dane Ortlund’s In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms: “The author whose Gentle and Lowly has helped so many to see Christ more clearly takes us gently by the hand to Jesus’s own devotional manual, the prayer book he loved, and the blueprint for his own life and ministry, and leads us to him all over again, day after day.”

Dane’s meditation on Psalm 42 below has been a great encouragement to me. I’d encourage you to go and read the psalm first, then the following.

The psalmist is deeply discouraged. He says to God that it feels as if all “your waves have gone over me” (v. 7). Some adversities are so great that they cannot be handled in the same way as some of the other, more minor disappointments and frustrations of life. This particular type of adversity passes a threshold that the garden-variety trials do not reach. Imagine wading out into the ocean. You begin to feel the waves coming against you. First your ankles, then your knees, and so on. As you continue further into the water, eventually a wave comes that cannot be out-jumped. It washes over you. You are now submerged and completely terrified.

What is someone who professes faith in Christ to do when the waves of life wash over him? Will his faith prove to be genuine? Or will he spurn Christ and rush toward the false harbors of this world?

At such a moment of trial, we are forced into one of two positions: either cynicism and coldness of heart or true depth with God. A spouse betrays. A habitual sin, left unchecked, blows up in our face. We are publicly shamed in some way that will haunt us as long as we live. A malignant, inoperable tumor. Profound disillusionment in some way. It feels like “a deadly wound in my bones” (v. 10).

When that moment comes, sent by the hand of a tender Father, will we believe what we have confessed about God to be true, or will we suspect him of deserting us? The two lines of professed-belief and heart-belief, to this point parallel, are suddenly forced either to overlap completely or to move further apart. We cannot go on as before. And why does this happen? Because God will not let us remain the people we would be as long as the waves reached only our waist.

But above all else, when life implodes, remember that his own dear Son went through the greatest nightmare himself, in our place. The tidal wave of judgement from God washed over Another so that it need never wash over us.

The Song Michael Reeves Wants Played at His Funeral

In his book, Worship Seeking Understanding, John Witvliet cites a worship leaders who spoke of weekly congregational singing as “rehearsing the congregation for a future funeral.” Witvliet comments: “What if we planned our music with this as a primary goal? ‘Musician, why did you choose that piece of music?’ ‘Well, it fit the texts of the day, it was well crafted, it challenged us musically—but mostly I picked it because you’ll need to know that piece when your family is preparing to bury a loved one.”

This made me want to ask a few godly leaders I trust and respect for one song that they would like to have played at their funeral.

Below is an entry from Michael Reeves, president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in Bridgend and Oxford, United Kingdom, and the author most recently of Rejoice and Tremble.

[See the other entries: Joni Eareckson Tada, Russell Moore]

As a teenager, I wanted to have Elgar’s “Nimrod” played at my funeral, as Winston Churchill had at his. Its poignant, melancholic grandeur appealed to my towering pride, for I wanted people to think much of me.

Now I would choose “Thine Be the Glory.”

My reasoning is simple: in the face of death I want people to look to the living, loving Jesus, conqueror of sin and death, and so sing a gospel hymn of triumph. Looking to him they will find the comfort they need. I also love how the tune captures the sense of the truth that death has lost its sting, and the feel of Jesus scattering our fear and gloom.

Thine be the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son;
endless is the vict’ry Thou o’er death hast won.
Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,
kept the folded grave-clothes where Thy body lay.

Thine be the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son;
endless is the vict’ry Thou o’er death hast won.

Lo, Jesus meets us, risen from the tomb.
Lovingly He greets us, scatters fear and gloom;
let His church with gladness hymns of triumph sing,
for the Lord now liveth; death hath lost its sting.

Thine be the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son;
endless is the vict’ry Thou o’er death hast won.

No more we doubt Thee, glorious Prince of life!!
Life is nought without Thee; aid us in our strife;
make us more than conqu’rors, through Thy deathless love;
bring us safe through Jordan to Thy home above.

Thine be the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son;
endless is the vict’ry Thou o’er death hast won.

The Song Russell Moore Wants Played at His Funeral

In his book, Worship Seeking Understanding, John Witvliet cites a worship leaders who spoke of weekly congregational singing as “rehearsing the congregation for a future funeral.” Witvliet comments: “What if we planned our music with this as a primary goal? ‘Musician, why did you choose that piece of music?’ ‘Well, it fit the texts of the day, it was well crafted, it challenged us musically—but mostly I picked it because you’ll need to know that piece when your family is preparing to bury a loved one.”

This made me want to ask a few godly leaders I trust and respect for one song that they would like to have played at their funeral.

[See the other entries: Joni Eareckson Tada]

My funeral service is already written out (and has been for about twenty years), and while there are several hymns included, all of which mean much to me, two stand out. Those hymns are “Just As I Am” and “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Here’s why I chose them.

Both of these songs have to do with growing up as a child at Woolmarket Baptist Church in Biloxi, Mississippi.

“Just As I Am” was, like in many revivalist churches of the era, a standard “invitation hymn” played during the Altar Call, in which those wishing to profess faith or to ask for prayer were welcomed to the steps of the front of the church. I think as a child I always assumed this had been the case going all the way back to Augustine, and was surprised to learn that it was rooted instead in the relatively recent Billy Graham crusades of the mid-twentieth century.

I know many people criticize and caricature the so-called “invitation system,” and surely there was some manipulation involved with some. But, for me, those moments focused and reminded me of several things. First, I would remember that we weren’t a social club or a political society but an outpost of God’s mission calling the lost to the gospel. Second, I was always reminded both that I am a sinner and that God’s love for me in Christ wasn’t about my performance or my lists of accomplishments: that I stood before him “just as I am,” clothed in Christ. This hymn communicates for me the cross—that there God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

The second hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers” is likewise often caricatured—as militant or triumphalist. When I hear it, though, I remember marching into my church’s sanctuary for Vacation Bible School assemblies, with one of us carrying the American flag, another the Christian flag, and another the Bible. We would then pledge allegiance to all three. This was the closest thing we had to a formal liturgy, but it was enough to remind me that life in Christ is momentous, that we were part of something much larger than ourselves: the kingdom of Christ. And it reminded me that the eternal future waiting for us would come after much struggle but was exuberantly joyful. That hymn is included to remind whoever loved me and is there that my life story is not over at that funeral but is, by God’s grace, just beginning.

Those two songs represent both cross and kingdom, both grace and glory, both redemption and resurrection—and that’s what I would like to be the last word in this life and the first word in the next.

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot;
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt;
Fightings within, and fears without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind;
Yes, all I need, in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am, Thy love unknown
Has broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Onward Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before.
Christ, the royal Master,
Leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
See, His banners go!
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus,
Going on before.

At the name of Jesus
Satan’s host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers,
On to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver
At the shout of praise:
Brothers, lift your voices,
Loud your anthems raise!

Like a mighty army
Moves the Church of God:
Brothers, we are treading
Where the saints have trod;
We are not divided,
All one Body we—
One in faith and Spirit,
One eternally.

Crowns and thrones may perish,
Kingdoms rise and wane;
But the Church of Jesus
Constant will remain.
Gates of hell can never
’Gainst the Church prevail;
We have Christ’s own promise,
Which can never fail.

Onward, then, ye people!
Join our happy throng;
Blend with ours your voices
In the triumph song.
Glory, laud and honor
Unto Christ, the King;
This through countless ages
Men and angels sing.

J. I. Packer’s Final Book

J. I. Packer, who went to be with his Triune covenant Lord on July 21, 2020, was never able to see this final book in print. But The Heritage of Anglican Theology was near and dear to his heart, the one book he wanted to give his last years to. At one point along the way, when his macular degeneration had advanced to such a degree that he could no longer read the written page, his wife read the edited manuscript aloud to him and he verbally offered his corrections.

The original idea to do this book was made by Professor Don Lewis, a church historian, faculty colleague, and fellow church member with Packer. Lewis explains in the introduction how the book came about and the process that was used to turn Packer’s classroom teaching on Anglicanism into a book.

“This book is in a sense J. I. Packer’s last will and testament to the church he served for so many years. Reflecting on both the history and the theology of Anglicanism, he offers Anglicans and others a vision of the historic riches of the Anglican tradition and a vision for how the past can be used to address the present and the future. Distinctively Protestant yet catholic in spirit and tone, these pages reflect the thought, churchmanship, and piety of the man. I will always regard Packer as the great Presbyterian theologian we never had. But our loss was Anglicanism’s gain, as this book so admirably demonstrates.”

—Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies, Grove City College

“The subject matter of this book is vast, and only someone with particular gifts of theology, Christian commitment, and skillful communication could attempt to cover it. Packer succeeds with consummate mastery, lucidly guiding the reader through what he refers to as ‘a jungle of lush growth of all sorts.’ The result is a compelling, informative, and instructive read that should have its place in the lives of all Anglicans, theologians and laity alike. I recommend it most highly.”

—Benjamin Kwashi, Archbishop, Diocese of Jos, Nigeria; General Secretary, Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)

The Song Joni Eareckson Tada Wants Played at Her Funeral

In his book, Worship Seeking Understanding, John Witvliet cites a worship leaders who spoke of weekly congregational singing as “rehearsing the congregation for a future funeral.” Witvliet comments: “What if we planned our music with this as a primary goal? ‘Musician, why did you choose that piece of music?’ ‘Well, it fit the texts of the day, it was well crafted, it challenged us musically—but mostly I picked it because you’ll need to know that piece when your family is preparing to bury a loved one.”

This made me want to ask a few godly leaders I trust and respect for one song that they would like to have played at their funeral.

Joni Eareckson Tada is up first in the series. Here is her response:

Okay, if we’re not talking about hymns like “For All the Saints” or “Thine Be the Glory,” then I’d ask Laura Story to take a break from her busy schedule and come sing her anthem, “Blessings.”

I first heard it over a decade ago when I was still new at dealing with intractable pain.

I was sitting backstage at a disability conference, watching an interpreter sign the song for those who were Deaf. I was struck by her hand signs for the lyrics, “When darkness seems to win, we know that pain reminds our heart that this is not, this is not our home.”

Forgetting that I was moments from speaking, a reservoir of tears spilled over and I began sobbing—regrettably, I’d been nursing the thought that God was asking too much of me—agonizing pain on top of quadriplegia. This simple song put an end to that.

So, at my funeral, I want people to experience what I did that day, that their hardest trials are really their mercies in disguise. They are mercies because they force us into the arms of Jesus where, otherwise, we might not be inclined to go. When we see trials that way, our unruly hearts learn that this world is, in no way, our home.

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not our home

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise

Blessings lyrics © Capitol Christian Music Group

The Most Effective Technology on the Planet to Block Pornography

Over two years ago, I read in Maxwell Anderson’s Weekend Reader newsletter about a new internet tool that was doing things no one else had figured out:

1. Filter images, not just websites
Other products on the market, like Disney’s Circle or Covenant Eyes, allow users to set filters on their wifi network to block websites. I use Circle and think it’s helpful. But many of the most popular websites feature a mix of appropriate and inappropriate content—Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It just is the nature of the modern Internet (and this is largely driven by the advent and embrace of user-generated content). In this kind of world, the all-or-nothing approach of blocking or allowing entire websites just doesn’t work.

Only Canopy allows users to filter content within websites. Canopy will allow you to view appropriate content on those sites, while filtering out what’s inappropriate, because it uses computer vision to analyze images on your screen as they are being loaded, and filters out inappropriate content real-time. With Canopy, you get the good without the bad and avoid all of those fights with your kids. No other technology does this.

2. Filter video not just still images
Canopy can work like that because it recognizes inappropriate content in video in addition to still images. This is also unique in the world of filters available to consumers and super-important since video is making up a greater and greater share of online content.

3. It works in the background
Internet filters offered today work one of two ways. Wifi filters block websites you deem inappropriate when you are attached to a particular network – but they don’t work when you leave that network. Browser filters block sites when you use that browser—but don’t prevent you or your kid from using a different browser. Canopy works in the background of your device, regardless of the browser you use and regardless of what network you are on.

4. It can prevent sexting
Canopy doesn’t just work on your browser, it works on your device. So when your kid receives a text message with sexual image, Canopy can filter it out. If your kid tries to snap an inappropriate photo of him or herself, Canopy will lock the image and send the parent a warning. Once locked, the image can’t be edited or shared.

Sean Clifford is the CEO of Canopy, a tech company in Austin that uses the most effective technology on the planet to block pornography. He was kind enough to answer some questions about their amazing technology and the vision behind their work.

Before we get into the details of how the technology works and why pornography is such a massive problem in our world today, let’s begin at a more personal level: Why do you care so much about this?

My wife and I have four children. We want to give them a chance to be kids. We want to provide them the space to develop a healthy understanding of intimacy. We would love for them to meet a great person, get married, and have happy marriages. All of those things become significantly harder in a world saturated by pornography.

As someone who cares about families flourishing, I think pornography is one of the greatest challenges we have to confront. It causes a tremendous amount of suffering, warps imaginations, impedes healthy relationships, destroys marriages, and more. This is borne out by survey research, medical studies, and a thousand heart-breaking anecdotes that I could share. Right now, it is hard to avoid even if you don’t seek it out.

Lastly, this topic touches on two of the most important questions of today: Can we live well with technology? And can we successfully regulate our appetites in a culture that is reluctant to suggest any sort of limits? We are in trouble if we don’t get these answers right. Canopy isn’t the entire solution, but it is a critical piece.

Can you tell me more about Canopy?

Canopy is a tech company on a mission to create a world of healthy tech users. We think the Internet is amazing, but recognize that it isn’t always safe for children. We are hopeful to change that by shifting the choice of what is seen from search engines, marketers and strangers back to families.

Our first product is a next-generation Internet filter that protects kids from online pornography, wherever it appears. One of the big challenges of navigating the digital world is that explicit content no longer is limited to pornography websites. It can appear anywhere and everywhere, which renders many of the traditional safeguards ineffective.

To confront this challenge, we are bringing advanced tech to the fight. Our software leverages cutting-edge technology that was developed, tested, and deployed in Israel. With these advances, our filter can detect sexually explicit content in real time and seamlessly remove it. We also employ the image-recognition AI to deter sexting by flagging if photos saved to the device contain nudity or minimal clothing.

You have made the argument that pornography has changed over the last few decades. What is the difference between “old porn” and “new porn,” and what sort of generational divide are you seeing when it comes to understanding just how harmful pornography can be?

A lot of people’s perception of pornography is stuck in the Sixties. They think Playboy: a few nude photos in a magazine that’s really hard to find. That’s “old porn” and it’s amazingly tame compared to what our kids are exposed to today.

“New porn” is much more addictive, harmful, and difficult to avoid. It’s a totally different problem than what parents faced with Playboy.

Let’s start with addiction. Video pornography is just more compelling than photos. Add the instant availability of the smartphone and the endless novelty of new content, and you have the most tempting and bingeable pornography ever made. It’s no wonder millions of Americans say they are addicted.

Next, let’s talk about the harmful impact of “new porn.” We know from the scientific literature that pornography is formative. It shapes our tastes, our perception of what’s normal, and the brain itself. For example, over time users have to watch more and more intense content to get the same effect. That means that a teenage boy with normal sexual desires can—after years of consuming pornography—find that he’s developed unhealthy and extreme tastes. That’s not a recipe for healthy, real-life relationships.

The real tragedy—and the problem we are determined to tackle—is just how hard “new porn” is to avoid. You don’t have to go looking for it, it now comes looking for you. It’s on social media, on group chats, and on “good” websites that you’d never expect to have explicit content.

Today, if parents don’t take action, it’s virtually inevitable that their children will be exposed to pornography. Statistically, it’s likely to happen before they graduate from elementary school. That’s terrifying.

There are growing criticisms of pornography as harmful to public health. But it seems to me that there are two kinds of health warnings that cultural gatekeepers can offer. On the one hand, there are poison warnings (ingest this, and it could kill you!); on the other hand, there are ingredient warnings (too much salt in your diet can have negative repercussions, so use it in moderation). I think a good swath of the elites’ analysis of pornography falls more into the latter category. Agree or disagree?

That assessment accurately describes the consensus perspective of the last 20 years, but things are changing. More and more folks are realizing that porn should come with a “poison warning” and not merely counsel for “moderation.”

Thanks to advances in science and medicine, we now know a lot more about how pornography impacts the brain and body. Studies suggest that porn can be overwhelmingly addictive, rewire the brain, and result in physical symptoms like erectile dysfunction. Moreover, as the very nature of porn shifts from “old porn” to “new porn,” its impact is much more pronounced. Pornhub is exponentially more addicting than Playboy, and that is starting to appear in the research.

Concern about pornography’s impact on children is not new, but it has taken on a greater weight as the nature of pornography has become more intense and the age of exposure continues to drop.

How does Canopy’s software work?

First, I should note that Canopy is a software program that works on smartphones, tablets, and computers. There is a dashboard app for parents to control settings and a child app that installs the filter, and it takes about 15 minutes to set up. At a high level, we designed Canopy to deliver families a porn-free Internet experience.

Our next-gen Internet filter was made possible by a few big tech breakthroughs. Our tech team developed an advanced artificial intelligence system that can detect pornographic content with over 99.7% accuracy. They also identified a way to scan and filter traffic in milliseconds, as you browse, to prevent exposure from happening in the first place.

Thanks to these advances, Canopy blocks porn websites, even if they are brand new and have never been scanned or tagged before.

Another unique feature is that we can seamlessly filter within web pages, serving the good without the bad. As explicit content no longer is limited to porn websites, this is a critical capability.

We also have a sexting prevention feature that can detect if photos saved to the device contain nudity or minimal clothing. Once an image is flagged, the child has the choice: delete the inappropriate photo or send it to a parent to review. That’s a powerful deterrent that can stop someone from sending a bikini or lingerie photo, which is typically the gateway to sending nudes.

A lot of readers use or have used various platforms, tools, and filters so that they don’t see pornography. How is Canopy different from what is currently on the market?

At a high level, one key distinction is that we are focused on prevention, not accountability. There are some good tools out there for accountability. Our goal is to prevent exposure. Turning to the customer experience, our product is unique in a few ways:

First, we block pornography that other filters miss. Most filters rely on a list of known bad websites, so they might miss new porn sites and pornography that appears on sites that contain both good and bad content. As our software filters traffic in real time, it can catch a lot more.

Second, by filtering within websites, Canopy can deliver the good without the bad. Traditional filters offer a blunt, all-or-nothing choice that blocks too much or too little. Do you want all of Twitter or none of Twitter? We like to think that we bring a scalpel instead of a butcher’s cleaver.

Third, Canopy is the only tool out there that scans and analyzes photos on the device to deter sexting. There are no other products on the market that offer that functionality.

Finally, we are tirelessly working to make Canopy as tamper-proof as possible. A filter that you can delete or circumvent isn’t very helpful. For example, we developed an uninstall prevention feature to prevent removal without permission, and when we can’t filter within apps, we grant parents the ability to limit access. We are always tracking how tech savvy teenagers get around filters (and frequently they do). Many of their approaches are ingenious, but they won’t work with Canopy.

Tell us a little bit more about your parent company and its track record in Israel.

Canopy is the U.S. expansion of Netspark, an Israeli technology company that has pioneered some incredible advances to keep families safe online.

An amazing figure, Rabbi Moshe Weiss, helped found the company to ensure that families could partake in the digital world without all of the toxic content that comes with it. Netspark has been active in Israel for more than a decade and now protects more than 2 million smartphones, tablets, and computers. Through partnerships with the Israeli Ministry of Education, Netspark’s technology helps safeguard more than 90% of the schools.

Beyond the numbers, the company is beginning to have an impact on the culture and has helped create a new social standard. We hear stories from our colleagues of parents asking other parents if their devices are protected in advance of a sleepover. They tell us of girls informing guys they need a filter on their devices in order to date and high school students taking it upon themselves to get a filter because they want to live free from temptations.

It is an encouraging case study and inspires what we would like to achieve here in the States.

If readers want to give Canopy a try, is there a discount code they could use for a free trial?

We’d love that! They can visit canopy.us and use the code “TGC” for 30 days free and 15% off forever.

And we really want to hear from folks who embrace this mission. Anyone can send us a note at feedback@hicanopy.com. We are committed to getting this right and welcome both feedback and new ideas for ways we can help families.

In July of 2021, Crossway will publish Garrett Kell’s Pure in Heart: Sexual Sin and the Promises of God, and in September 2021, Crossway will publish Ray Ortlund’s The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility. I highly recommend both books.

What Francis Schaeffer Constantly Had to Remind Himself of When Doing Apologetics

Francis Schaeffer:

As I seek to [move a man toward the logical conclusions of his presuppositions], I need to remind myself constantly that this is not a game I am playing.

If I begin to enjoy it as a kind of intellectual exercise, then I am cruel and can expect no real spiritual results.

As I push the man off his false balance, he must be able to feel that I care for him. Otherwise I will only end up destroying him, and the cruelty and ugliness of it all will destroy me as well.

Merely to be abstract and cold is to show that I do not really believe this person to be created in God’s image and therefore one of my kind. Pushing him towards the logic of his presuppositions is going to cause him pain; therefore, I must not push any further than I need to.

—Francis Schaffer, The God Who Is There (1968), in Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1990), 138.

J. I. Packer once offered a tribute to Schaeffer, called “No Little Person.” His description of Schaeffer’s manner should be the aim of every evangelist and apologist, indeed, every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ: “There was no guile in it, no party narrowness, no manipulation, only the passionate persuasiveness of the prophet who hurries in to share with others what he himself sees.”

 

Three Meanings of ‘Secular’

James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 20–22.

[Secular1, or Secular as Temporal]

1. In classical or medieval accounts, the “secular” amounted to something like “the temporal” — the realm of “earthly” politics or of “mundane” vocations. This is the “secular” of the purported sacred/ secular divide. The priest, for instance, pursues a “sacred” vocation, while the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker are engaged in “secular” pursuits.

Following Taylor, let’s call this secular1.

[Secular2, or Secular as Areligious]

2. In modernity, particularly in the wake of the Enlightenment, “secular” begins to refer to a nonsectarian, neutral, and areligious space or standpoint.

The public square is “secular” insofar as it is (allegedly) nonreligious; schools are “secular” when they are no longer “parochial” — hence “public” schools are thought to be “secular” schools. Similarly, in the late twentieth century people will describe themselves as “secular,” meaning they have no religious affiliation and hold no “religious” beliefs.

We’ll refer to this as secular2.

It is this notion of the secular that is assumed both by the secularization thesis and by normative secularism.

According to secularization theory, as cultures experienced modernization and technological advancement, the (divisive) forces of religious belief and participation wither in the face of modernity’s disenchantment of the world.

According to secularism, political spaces (and the constitutions that create them) should carve out a realm purified of the contingency, particularity, and irrationality of religious belief and instead be governed by universal, neutral rationality.

Secularism is always secularism2.

And secularization theory is usually a confident expectation that societies will be become secular2 — that is, characterized by decreasing religious belief and participation. People who self-identify as “secular” are usually identifying as areligious.

[Secular3, or Secular as an Age of Contested Belief]

3. But Taylor helpfully articulates a third sense of the secular (secular3) — and it is this notion that should be heard in his title: A Secular Age. A society is secular3 insofar as religious belief or belief in God is understood to be one option among others, and thus contestable (and contested).

At issue here is a shift in “the conditions of belief.” As Taylor notes, the shift to secularity “in this sense” indicates “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”

It is in this sense that we live in a “secular age” even if religious participation might be visible and fervent.

And it is in this sense that we could still entertain a certain “secularization3 thesis.” But this would be an account not of how religion will wither in late modern societies, but rather of how and why the plausibility structures of such societies will make religion contestable (and contested).

It is the emergence of “the secular” in this sense that makes possible the emergence of an “exclusive humanism” — a radically new option in the marketplace of beliefs, a vision of life in which anything beyond the immanent is eclipsed.

“For the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true.”

Three Meanings of “Secular”

James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 20–22.

[Secular1, or Secular as Temporal]

1. In classical or medieval accounts, the “secular” amounted to something like “the temporal” — the realm of “earthly” politics or of “mundane” vocations. This is the “secular” of the purported sacred/ secular divide. The priest, for instance, pursues a “sacred” vocation, while the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker are engaged in “secular” pursuits.

Following Taylor, let’s call this secular1.

[Secular2, or Secular as Areligious]

2. In modernity, particularly in the wake of the Enlightenment, “secular” begins to refer to a nonsectarian, neutral, and areligious space or standpoint.

The public square is “secular” insofar as it is (allegedly) nonreligious; schools are “secular” when they are no longer “parochial” — hence “public” schools are thought to be “secular” schools. Similarly, in the late twentieth century people will describe themselves as “secular,” meaning they have no religious affiliation and hold no “religious” beliefs.

We’ll refer to this as secular2.

It is this notion of the secular that is assumed both by the secularization thesis and by normative secularism.

According to secularization theory, as cultures experienced modernization and technological advancement, the (divisive) forces of religious belief and participation wither in the face of modernity’s disenchantment of the world.

According to secularism, political spaces (and the constitutions that create them) should carve out a realm purified of the contingency, particularity, and irrationality of religious belief and instead be governed by universal, neutral rationality.

Secularism is always secularism2.

And secularization theory is usually a confident expectation that societies will be become secular2 — that is, characterized by decreasing religious belief and participation. People who self-identify as “secular” are usually identifying as areligious.

[Secular3, or Secular as an Age of Contested Belief]

3. But Taylor helpfully articulates a third sense of the secular (secular3) — and it is this notion that should be heard in his title: A Secular Age. A society is secular3 insofar as religious belief or belief in God is understood to be one option among others, and thus contestable (and contested).

At issue here is a shift in “the conditions of belief.” As Taylor notes, the shift to secularity “in this sense” indicates “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”

It is in this sense that we live in a “secular age” even if religious participation might be visible and fervent.

And it is in this sense that we could still entertain a certain “secularization3 thesis.” But this would be an account not of how religion will wither in late modern societies, but rather of how and why the plausibility structures of such societies will make religion contestable (and contested).

It is the emergence of “the secular” in this sense that makes possible the emergence of an “exclusive humanism” — a radically new option in the marketplace of beliefs, a vision of life in which anything beyond the immanent is eclipsed.

“For the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true.”