Bill Smith, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On March 28, 2020 By Bill Smith In Culture Like

Forgive Us Our Debts

“Please forgive me.” These are, many times, difficult words to say. It is easier to say, “I’m sorry” or even “I apologize.” Somehow those phrases keep me on the same level as you and what I’ve done was simply an accident. “Forgive me” acknowledges that I am somehow in your debt and, therefore, at your mercy. Because we have a need and constant drive to be justified, to believe we are in the right in whatever we say and do, it is difficult to admit when we are wrong, and at the mercy of another to release us from our moral debt.

Being on the other side of forgiveness has its challenges as well. You have been wronged. This person owes you. Now he is coming to ask forgiveness; for you to absorb the debt that he created. If you forgive him, it will cost you in some form or fashion. You want vengeance, your pound of flesh, your money, your dignity, all that he took from you. You want strict justice. Granting forgiveness can be challenging.

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On March 24, 2020 By Bill Smith In Culture Like

Leadership In Crisis

Does anyone envy our leaders right now? “Difficult” does not begin to describe the position in which they find themselves. On the one hand, there is this novel virus that is unpredictable. We know it can be deadly, but we don’t know just what percentage of the population is truly threatened by it. No one can predict that. On the other hand, in order to stop its spread, the lives of millions could be permanently damaged because of economic depression. Many senior citizens who will never contract the virus may lose all of their retirement savings and not be able to afford the staples of life. Business owners may lose everything that they have worked for which will, in turn, affect all of those people they employ along with their families.

Our leaders are in a lose-lose situation in many respects. If they chose to extend a quarantine, they will ruin the lives of millions. That we know without a doubt. If they don’t extend the quarantine, with our ability to know of and report every single death that might be even tangentially related to the COVID-19 virus, some form of media will report it and seek to blame the lack of “an abundance of caution” on the leaders. In many ways, this decision is analogous to choosing to enter into a just war. You know that you are sending many of your military to their deaths, but if you don’t do that, you risk the death of many more citizens and the culture itself when the enemy takes over. This is not an enviable position.

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On March 22, 2020 By Bill Smith In Culture Like

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

It feels weird, doesn’t it? It’s Sunday morning. You are normally bustling around trying to get yourself and the children ready to go to worship, but you’re not. You are sitting at home, probably preparing to watch or having watched an online service. The normal handshakes, hugs, smiles, and conversations enjoyed week-by-week are glaringly absent from your life. Combined voices and instruments of praise are thunderously silent. You can hear the Scriptures preached through the wonders of modern technology—and that’s good—but it’s not the same. It almost feels you’re just watching another YouTube video. There is a noticeable distance. The bread and wine we share after joyfully declaring our peace with one another is absent. There can be no virtual communion. As Paul makes clear, we only fellowship in the Lord’s body and blood when we “come together” (1Cor 11.17ff.). We must be face-to-face as the church; no matter if we meet in smaller gatherings or as the entire local church at one time, our gathering together is necessary for the Lord’s Supper. Today, it is all sadly absent.

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On March 15, 2020 By Bill Smith In Culture Like

Thy Kingdom Come

When Jesus came preaching “the kingdom of God has drawn near” and teaching his disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” the language of the kingdom was not a foreign concept to the people listening. The story of the kingdom begins in the first days of our history.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. They were, in some way, united with one another. The process of creation in those first six days of history involved God dividing parts of his creation and then putting them back together in new relationships with one another. On the second day of creation, God divided the waters above from the waters below and put a firmament in between them. Above the firmament was God’s heaven. Below the firmament was the earth. Heaven and earth, once united, were now separated.

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On March 8, 2020 By Bill Smith In Culture Like

Hallowed Be Thy Name

When things aren’t right in the world, when God’s people are being hounded, brutalized, enslaved, and killed by their enemies, when injustice rules the day, when the created order is threatened with chaos, God’s name is at stake. God has made promises, tying his character, his name, to certain people and their well-being. In order to vindicate his name, he must deliver on his promises.

Throughout the Scriptures we find God’s people appealing to the vindication of God’s character in this way. Moses prays this way when God threatens to destroy Israel when they sinned at Mt. Sinai (Ex 32.11-14). David prays this way throughout the Psalms (cf. e.g., Pss 23.3; 25.11; 31.3; 79.9). Yahweh himself declares through Ezekiel that he will deliver his people for his name’s sake (Ez 36.16-32). Jesus teaches us to appeal to our Father for the vindication of his holy name when he teaches us to pray, “Hallowed be thy name.”

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On March 1, 2020 By Bill Smith In Counseling/Piety, Worship 1

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father

This past Wednesday the church began the journey to Easter. From at least the second century, the church has prepared for Easter in various ways and for various periods of time. Within the first few centuries, the practice of making a prayerful journey through Lent took an almost universal form: forty days of focused prayer, usually involving some type of fasting. (These fast days didn’t include Sundays, which were always feast days.)

The focus of Lent is penitential, which is why fasting is a part of the journey. Fasting is an embodied or enacted prayer that cries out to God for mercy, confessing that we and those for whom we are praying deserve to be cut off from his blessings in death, but look with faith-filled hope for deliverance.

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On February 23, 2020 By Bill Smith In Counseling/Piety, Culture 1

Holy Rudeness

In what the Pharisees would have considered an amazing display of chutzpah, Jesus, after accepting an invitation to go to a Pharisee’s feast, didn’t ritually wash his hands before joining the meal. This ritual washing or baptizing of the hands was not required by the Law of God. It was a part of the oral law tradition that the Pharisees (and others) believed was handed down alongside the written Law and was the authoritative interpretation of the written Law. The Pharisees and their kind were the guardians of this oral law tradition. They believed that meticulously keeping these laws was necessary, not only for their own purity but for the purity of Israel in preparation for the coming kingdom of God.

Jesus claimed to be a kingdom prophet, proclaiming, “the kingdom of God has drawn near.” The Pharisees are, naturally, interested in him and his message. They have been preparing for this for ages. They will be the aristocrats of the kingdom.

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On February 16, 2020 By Bill Smith In Culture 2

Truth & Consequences

There is none so blind as he who will not see. Many people stare the truth in the face but refuse to acknowledge it. They don’t simply ignore it. They go out of their way to defy it. If they refuse to believe it and act in the opposite fashion, then they will make a new reality, their own truth.

Our Western culture is inundated with these truth-deniers. Simple, plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face truths such as, “That little boy is not a girl,” and “Men can’t have babies,” are scoffed at by the Illuminati of our culture. In the wake of centuries of historical evidence that socialism is destructive to a culture, there are still the enlightened ones who say, “But it will work this time because we are implementing it.” As it has from the beginning of time, reality, truth, is merciless to those who defy it. You can’t defy the truth of the way God made and sustains the world and expect it to work out well for you. If you run into a brick wall, no matter what you have convinced yourself to believe, the brick wall is going to win.

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On February 9, 2020 By Bill Smith In Theology, Worship Like

Family Conversation

God is a conversationalist. He speaks. He has always been speaking. Speaking is so much a part of who God is that the second Person of the Trinity is called “the Word” (Jn 1.1, 14). The Father is the Speaker, the Son is the Word, and the Spirit is the Breath that carries the Word of the Father. God speaks within the Trinitarian family eternally.

The conversation of God was so full of love and life that, by it, he created the heavens and the earth to join in. The apex of God’s creation was his own image: man. To be the image of God means many things, but one of the primary meanings is that man is a conversationalist. Man is made to speak.

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On February 2, 2020 By Bill Smith In Theology, Wisdom, Worship Like

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The story of the Good Samaritan is well-known in our culture, not just among Christians, but by everyone. We have Good Samaritan laws that protect those who help people in distress from being sued if the rescue doesn’t go well. Presidents and other politicians have referred to the story of the Good Samaritan in their speeches to encourage certain policies. Back in 2018, Nancy Pelosi recited the entire story in her eight-hour speech on the floor of Congress to promote “The Dream Act.” (https://www.christianpost.com/news/nancy-pelosi-recites-the-good-samaritan-parable-praises-evangelical-leaders-in-8-hour-speech-216989/) There is a Christian mercy ministry run by Franklin Graham called “Samaritan’s Purse.” Christians have a health insurance replacement called “Samaritan Ministries.” The story of the Good Samaritan is well-known, well-loved, and well-used.

When a story like this becomes such a common cultural fixture, it becomes easy to assume we understand the story. Our American culture has taken the story, for the most part, in a very simplistic way, reading it as if it were one of Aesop’s Fables: a story that promotes a moral. In this case, the moral is “Do good for hurting people.” This, of course, is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. There is quite a bit more to the story.

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