Sports and their fans are an interesting phenomenon. They are mock wars; our forces against your forces. The forces have specific colors, banners, chants, music, shouts, and sometimes just a great amount of noise around them.
In a war, when your side is winning or has won, you are encircled with joyful noise. The noise is used to intimidate the enemy, celebrate victory, and energize the warriors as it spirals ever upward and energy creates more energy.
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Social media are changing the way we relate to one, and not all of it is bad. Through various social media we can receive information that we would not have had in the past. We can now maintain contact with people whom we have come to know through the years. Technology has afforded us privileges that former generations could have never even imagined. But there are dangers as well; dangers of which we need to be aware and with which we need to engage as we are saturated with this culture that is shaping our lives. Our ability to stay connected at a distance feeds a sinful temptation to salve our desire not to remain lonely yet at the same time remain hidden from others by not allowing anyone to know us too intimately.
Our eternal, triune God created us in relationship and to pursue relationships. Sin destroys our relationships because now we want to hide from God and others just as Adam and Eve did after they sinned. Since we are created in the image of God, we always have this yearning for friendship; to know and be known by others. But we are, many times, afraid. We are afraid that if we allow someone to continually dig into our lives, he will eventually find something there that will repulse him. The converse is also true: if we continue to grow in intimacy with someone, we may be afraid that we will eventually be disappointed and hurt. So, we shield ourselves, keeping people at a safe distance through various means. Superficiality and creating images of ourselves for people online that make it look as if our lives are fantastic all the time make us virtually (pun intended) unknowable. Replacing the pearls of deep friendship with the paste pearls of six hundred “friends” or “followers” online will cost us deeply if we, as the church, don’t recognize the trends and stand against the rising tide that threatens to overwhelm us in its shallowness.
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Young men, you face challenges. That is nothing new. From the beginning of time, men have had battles to fight. Some have cowered in sloth. Some have fought valiantly. Though there are common themes in the war, each generational battle has had its unique variation on the themes. As with previous generations, you are being called to act like men, steeling yourselves for the battles in which God in his providence has placed you.
I have been a young man. Now I am older. I have raised four sons. I was not perfect. I made many mistakes. But I always did what I believed was right with the wisdom I had at the time. I hope you can say the same when you are older. I have been around the block a few times, you might say, and I have learned some wisdom along the way. I’m still learning. This series of letters aims to pass this wisdom on to you so that you will be better men than I am. The focus of these letters is masculinity, what it means to be a man in God’s world.
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Hell is like that bit of family history that the whole family knows about but tries to avoid in polite conversation. The only family member who talks about it is the crazy uncle who has no couth. Some family members do their best to deny that piece of the family story altogether. We can focus on the pleasant things and not deal with that nasty bit.
But it just will not do. That part of the family story turns up time and again. It simply cannot be buried.
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In the beginning, there was an infant king, naked and alone. From his side God created his bride and brought her to him, blessed them, and commanded them to take dominion over the creation, shaping the earth after the image of heaven. They were placed in a garden on a mountain that had a river running through it that flowed from the top of the mountain, through the garden, and then split into four, symbolically flowing to the four corners of the earth. Downriver were all sorts of treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones waiting to be unearthed, purified, and shaped into beautiful adornments for the garden, the woman, and the man himself.
When the man and the woman fell into sin, they were exiled from the garden. They were restored by God and reissued the dominion mandate, but they would now have to fight the curse of sin. They would have to get back into the garden bringing with them the glories of creation. Reentrance required that the man take the lead, enduring the flaming swords of the cherubim, die, be resurrected, and then retrieve his bride from exile along with all of the treasures of creation. There creation’s king and queen would be united in a new, resurrection marriage, adorned with the splendors of creation.
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Whenever we discover that a government official is corrupt, that he has been using his office to become wealthy off of the back of taxpayers or misusing his power in unethical or illegal ways, we become angry. Not so long ago, a Republican Senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, used information he received in private coronavirus briefings to sell a number of stocks before the public announcements of the lockdowns. He made off like a bandit. But that is just the scandal du jour. News such as this is pretty standard.
When we see pastors or TV evangelists fleecing people in the name of God to line their own pockets with great amounts of wealth, we are understandably disgusted.
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I’m standing outside of our family house. You wouldn’t believe what is going on in there. My father is throwing this big party for his wayward son. I refuse to call him “my brother” after what he did.
He has always had a wild streak. Looking back, I can see how it was there his entire childhood. Father never dealt with him the way that he should have, in my opinion. If he had been stricter and not let him have so much freedom, things would have been different. That child got everything he wanted while I slaved away in the house, never receiving anything. Father never gave me as much as a goat so that I could have a good time with my friends, but he is now throwing a party for this profligate son of his with Wagyu beef! The shame of it all.
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We are rapidly approaching the intense campaign season. (It seems that we never leave campaign season anymore. We only have less and more intense seasons of it.) Big elections will be happening soon. Debates will occur and stump speeches will be given. Each candidate will be telling you why he or she should be elected (or at least why the other guy should not be).
Most of these candidates will be telling you all that they are going to do for you. One side is going to give you all this free stuff. The other side is going to reduce your taxes. Everyone is concerned about sweetening the pot to entice you to sign on with his agenda.
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David owed him nothing. He was the grandson of an enemy who tried to kill him several times. Now David’s enemy has been put down. Saul, the king of Israel, is dead, and David has acceded the throne as he was promised through the anointing hand of the prophet Samuel years ago. Most of Saul’s house was dead as well, including his son, Jonathan, who was David’s friend. But there was one member of the house remaining: Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth.
Though lame in both of his feet (2Sm 9.3, 13) and living in “Nowhere” or “Nothing” (Lo-debar; 2Sm 9.5), the blood of Saul still ran through his veins, and there were still some in Israel who might be loyal to the house of Saul. Because of this, Mephibosheth was a rival to the throne. Among the kings of the nations, it would have been common practice and completely understandable to eliminate the last vestiges of Saul’s house so that the potential for a coup would be stopped before it was started. David could even justify this by saying that he was creating peace.
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Systemic racism. The phrase provokes all sorts of visceral responses on all sides of the race debates; fear, guilt, anger, and revulsion to name a few. The cultural narrative is easy to sell nowadays, and everyone from politicians to celebrities to Christians–individuals and entire denominations–are confessing our sin and pleading for forgiveness. Some people in our country have gone so far as to self-flagellate to atone for our cultural sin of systemic racism. Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-Fil-A suggests that the way white people begin to atone for our sins is to shine the shoes of black people. In some Christians circles, prominent Christians such as Tim Keller have written about our sin of racism at the individual and corporate/institutional levels, and some Christians such as Alexander Jun (former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America) and Jemar Tisby have gained notoriety by talking about these issues. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary fired a few professors, and one of the issues was their criticism of the support of the Critical Race Theory at the seminary (a theory closely associated with the whole systemic racism issue). Christians are proudly standing with the Black Lives Matter movement, an organization that is blatantly anti-Christian.
What the culture outside of the Christian Faith does with this issue isn’t surprising to me in the least. My concern is how Christians have become enamored, guilt-ridden, evangelists for this “anti-systemic racism” gospel. Quite frankly, I’m left confused and more than a little frustrated because of the nebulousness of the whole matter.
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Kuyperian Commentary Podcast
