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We are to comport ourselves in such as way that the enemy is either unaware that we are doing anything, or is aware that we are doing something but unaware of what it is. Security can be good because we are (still) marshaling our forces, and the enemy does not know there is an enemy in the field. Or, security can be good because we are not being chatterboxes.
Jesus tells us to rejoice when we are slandered, because, He says, our reward is great in Heaven. But there is another reason to rejoice. There are many times, particularly with the issues that swirl around in our culture wars, when these slanders arise, not from our enemy’s malice, but from their fears. Instead of being indignant, we should think about how we can use that sort of thing
We know how messed up our culture is. We see it in countless ways. But one of the things I have noticed as a result of engaging with atheists with a European background (like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins) is that they think that our country is a hotbed of Puritanism. They are worried about all kinds of things that I don’t think they have any reason to worry about. But since they are going to worry about it anyway, we might as well use it. We might as well say boo! from time to time.
In his first pass, he allowed any soldier who was afraid to fight to simply go home (Judg. 7:1–3).
When we assume the stance of an optimistic outsider, they don’t know what to do.
The answer is to cultivate a sunny Calvinism, a Chestertonian Calvinism. Chesterton himself would of course be annoyed at my appropriation of his great name to serve as an adjective to my soteriology, but we all have our crosses to bear.
John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, was up against John Wilkes, a reformist politician. Montagu looked at Wilkes in exasperation and said, “Upon my soul, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die upon the gallows, or of syphilis” The comeback of the ages was, “That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles, or your mistress.”
Cooperation is accomplished by means of unity of command. There has to be one supreme commander.
You can believe that someone ought not be a general without breaking fellowship with him, or making it personal.
With regard to the latter, we must reject all forms of modernity (arrogant epistemology) and postmodernity (arrogant skepticism).
One of the key features of a gifted leader is his natural ability to communicate well.
Economy of force is the pursuit of efficiency in war. Efficient warfare keeps the conflict from spiraling out of control.
The key here is that we must be motivated by obedience, not by personal vendettas or malice.
In other words, pick your battles carefully and then use the force it takes at that point of battle. The point is not to fight, the point is to fight and win that particular field. What will it take to do that?
We are fighting with the slave-masters over their slaves.
Great forces can be wasted, and often have been. Neglect of this principle is why our nation is in the shape it is in. We are privileged to live in a time when millions of evangelical Christians serve God in our nation. I am not here speaking of nominal Christians. We have countless churches, radio stations, publishing houses, colleges, seminaries, magazines, and astonishing wealth. At the very same time, we are being out-maneuvered by adversaries who have nothing close to our distinct infrastructure.
Economy of force means that we steer away from a “shock and awe” approach. The point is to be effective, and not to show off. The American military is not the first massively strong military to think that such strength can be substituted for principled thinking.
One of the men involved in the conspiracy against David was Ahithophel, a counselor of great wisdom. We don’t know his full story, but his willingness to betray David was quite possibly related to his relationship to Bathsheba. Ahithophel was the father of Eliam, one of David’s “Thirty” (2 Sam. 23:34). And Bathsheba was in turn the daughter of Eliam (2 Sam. 11:3), the granddaughter of Ahithophel. Whether or not what had happened to Ahithophel’s grandson-in-law was the cause of the bad blood, the raw material was certainly there.
As Joe Sobran once put it, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times . . . I’m a Republican!”
What they mean by that is think in gauzy abstractions, act irrationally in the moment. What we mean by it is that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, and that all authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Him, and that therefore we must spend our time discipling all the nations of men, teaching them how to honor and follow Him.
Relate everything to the lordship of Jesus Christ. This will help you break down the walls of arbitrary dualisms in your head. Think in such a way that you learn to relate your opposition to gun control, your support of free markets, your love of mercy ministry, your embrace of new media, and so on, to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Doing this makes you a biblical Christian, and not a Republican or a right-winger. People will call you that—except for the secular Republicans, who will consider you a dangerous hazard to all their hopes and dreams.
Courage is the testing point of every virtue, and the point of every conflict is always local. So, be sure to love and encourage your wife so that she is with you in it. Be sure to love and teach your children so that they grow up in such a way as to stand with you in the city gates. Do not neglect your family for the sake of “the cause.” Your family is part of the cause . . . an essential part. One of John Knox’s daughters was named Elizabeth, and she married a great preacher, a man named John Welch. He was exiled to France for many years, until his doctors told him that he would have to
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Defend free markets at every opportunity. It is not possible to understand the gospel of free grace intelligently if it does not lead to a love for free markets. Free grace creates free men, and free men trade in free markets. If you have a biblical worldview, you cannot be a libertarian. But if you have a biblical worldview, you will be accused of being one.
Gideon was threshing in the wine vat because he was hiding from the tax man.
Do not accept any sexual bribes. Chesterton once noted that free love is the first and most obvious bribe to be offered to a slave.
Love and encourage your wife and children constantly. What the world needs first is gospel, and your family is the best place to showcase the gospel to a lost and wandering culture. The gospel must be preached by anointed evangelists, but what we desperately need is a chorus of amens coming from families that live out this gospel.
15. Make your adversary live up to his own rules. Turn in papers that act on the assumption of absolute relativism taught in the class. Apply for affirmative action scholarships because of your Scottish descent. Your clan was persecuted in the 14th century, and you are still dealing with it. Have your son try out for the girl’s shot put event. Make them say, “No, girls are different.” 16. Don’t fall for abstract calls to repentance, and don’t use abstractions to make you look like you are a courageous denouncer of sin. Call for “Repentance! Broadly considered!” and lots of people will call you
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Pacifists object to deception in warfare, but only because they object to everything else about warfare along with it. But if it is lawful to kill a man at a checkpoint, surely it is lawful to deceive him in order to spare his life.
God hides some of His best work in plain sight. So should we.
In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron made his fatal mistake because he could not comprehend a mindset that could be in possession of the Ring and yet seek to destroy it.
When men have been at war too long, they don’t know what to do when the peace treaty is signed . . . so they hire themselves out as mercenaries.
The work of cultural reformation is a contact sport,
The point of fighting is to win the peace. The Church Militant will not be bored in Heaven, sitting around with nothing to do. The Church Militant will have won through to Heaven, and will know what to do when it eventually gets there. In the words of the spiritual, “gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside.” In the words of Isaiah, we will study war no more—and this will be a blessing, not a grief.
Warfare describes the way the world is, and it is not a state of affairs chosen by us.
Within the Church, it is far more common for flatterers and false teachers to say, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace, than for them to say, “War, war,” when there is no war.
When the bugle blows indistinctly, nobody gets ready for battle. But when it blows distinctly, thousands move swiftly to do completely different things. It is important to remember that many of the things that are done may not look like fighting—as, for example, playing a bugle.
When we offend someone we were intending to offend, and we had good biblical reasons for intending that, we should do our level best to be what I call Tom Petty Presbyterians—don’t back down. Don’t climb down either. Above all, don’t crawl.
Anyone who has not noticed that “demands for apologies” have become one of the central political and cultural tactics of our day has simply not been paying attention. Like many effective tactics, it depends on an impulse that was originally good and right. It is the old Pottery Barn rule—you break it, it’s yours. Everybody knows that. But in our hyper age, we have gotten to the point where old high school pranks can be hauled out in presidential campaigns. This is simply pathological.
When some Christian says something that is not politically correct, and the baddies all go into outrage mode, calling for apologies, we have to understand that they are running a play from their handbook.
This is why, in the Olympic games of our culture wars, it is possible to win a gold medal from God when a bunch of your fellow Christians are embarrassed even to look at you. And that is also why this particular kind of gold medal doesn’t usually go to your head—you can’t hear the national anthem over all the sobbing, and the podium you are standing on is barely visible any more because of the great heap of rotting produce, dead cats, and other objects of questionable origin.
The only difference between salad and garbage is timing.
My father taught me many years ago that the point is to win the man, not the argument.
As Christians, we must begin with the gospel issues. We have to know and understand that we cannot cultivate a culture of death and expect life to be honored and respected in that culture.
If you bless your neighbor with a loud voice first thing in the morning, he knows how to categorize it (Prov. 27:14).
It is not possible to build a culture around a denial of God-given standards, and then arbitrarily reintroduce those standards at your convenience, whenever you need a word like evil to describe what has just happened.
In the prophetic words of C.S. Lewis, “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
We have monsters in our midst, and vapidity in our highest council chambers, not to mention the monsters there too, and all of them want to slouch toward Bethlehem.
We must have a God-given, fixed standard so that we may know why we need forgiveness so much. God’s law is not to pat us on the back and tell us what fine fellows we are. God’s law is given to provide a proper shape for our repentance. In moments like this, we are aghast, but our “repentance” is formless and void. We need the shape of God’s holy Word so that we know how shapeless we have become. We need the Spirit of God to move on our chaotic waters.
When someone is spiraling toward the darkness, the light doesn’t get any better as he goes. This is happening to them because they can’t see. This is what a judicial stupor is.
Winning an argument, with documents and everything, is not what brings repentance.
