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By In Culture

How to Offend like a Christian

There is no way around it; there is no shortcut to escape it unless you want to forsake it, but the Gospel offends (I Pet.2:7-8). You must drink it straight. For the Christian, the alternative to living out a Gospel that offends is to live as if the Gospel does not matter.

We can move through our workday cavalierly playing the nominal Christian game, remaining quiet when you should have stood firm; you can let Uncle Joe splurt his vitriol against the church and be a good girl, not causing offense anywhere, and masking our way through the next crisis. Yes, we can gain the world’s approval, but we lose our souls.

Is it or is it not the power of God unto salvation and foolishness to the world (Rom. 1; I Cor. 1)? The way you live determines one of these two choices.

So, how do we intentionally live a Gospel that touches the core of anthropology? That hits the center of human pride? That strikes at the root of secular practice? The first way to live a Gospel that is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; to practice those Christian rituals that birthed the Christ-community in the first century. And they were the “foolish” rituals of hospitality, friendship, and sacraments.

The Early Church had many failures, but they hosted each other, they loved each other, they suffered well, and they broke communion bread amid famine, peril and sword. These practices toppled an empire, turned the world upside down, gave Nero nightmares, and kept Pilate and his wife awake at night. How is that for a Gospel offense?!

Suppose the cultural forces continue to move away from the authentic values of the Church. In that case, members of this royal offense-saturated community must see the Church of our Lord as the headquarters of counter-cultural measures.

This is no time to rest or to play nice with anti-Christian politicians and lawmakers. We must restore our sense of the good by loving one another and surrounding ourselves with a Creed that cannot be torn by the mobs but is embraced by a genuine community of believers. We must return to those principles that formed us into the unstoppable empire that grew from 12 to billions. We need to declare these things loud and clear.

“We believe in God the Father Almighty!” but they will say, “How dare you!”
“Maker of Heaven of Earth!” but they will say, “That’s not science!”
“And in Jesus Christ our Lord!” and they will say, “That’s not diversity.”
“Who shall come to judge the living and the dead!” and they will retort, “Nobody can judge!”

Every time we get together for coffee, eat with our neighbor, talk about the goodness of God, and practice holy habits, we live the Gospel in word and deed. We are embracing a different creed and causing offense to the worldly dogma.

No, there is no way around it. The Gospel offends! It afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. Any other message is false and has no power or salvation. 

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By In Culture

The Necessity of Messy Homes

For years, we have had children and adults roaming our house who do not share our last name. We have adopted the ancient ritual of feeding people, and they, in turn, have invested in feeding us when they bring some of their delicacies. The entire exchange is glorious and delicious.

We have folks weekly for psalms and dessert, and then we have our share of friends and guests staying with us overnight or having meals with us. Eggs, chips and dip, toast, butter, coffee, casseroles, pizza, whiskey, beer, soups, and none of those things in that exact order. The whole thing is a glorious mess of humans and food, the kind of mess that makes the kingdom of God glorious. We love the entire process, which creates a sense of normalcy that is utterly uncomfortable in our culture.

The discomfort stems from a sense of unrealistic neatness that keeps the world from being hospitable. Many evangelicals have fallen into similar traps. Christians wish they had more hospitality, but they do not believe it is sustainable if they have a steady number of guests in their homes.

Our general policy is that we clean when guests come over, which means we clean often, and with our eager tribe of children, cleaning is much more effective, especially with Sargent Wifey.

But the expectation–one I am constantly adjusting to as a Latin man who grew up with impeccable clean homes–that things must always be a certain way and that the home must maintain the correct Asian procedural methods of a certain short lady (how racist of me!) is utterly unrealistic and squashes the culture of hospitality.

The reality is that a home without guests doth not spark joy in the kingdom. Of course, I am not suggesting we forsake those cleanliness habits, but I do suggest we loosen our commitment to certain habits as prerequisites for hospitality.

Think of how many opportunities have been missed because we assumed that such and such a person would look down on us if they saw our house a certain way, the clothes on the couch, the boys’ room in utter chaos, etc.? How many opportunities have been ruined for sweet and intimate communion because we are not “spontaneous” kind of people?

Two additional footnotes are important in this discussion. The first is that if dads are not invested in the cleaning, let their steaks burn a thousand deaths. And the second is that there are seasons when such things need to be paused temporarily. Discernment must come in handy.

I remember a time many years ago when I was having a conversation with a young family with two little kids. The conversation was about our church’s focus on hospitality, to which the father replied: “One day, we will have time for that.” Now, I was quite a young pastor in those days, and my boldness was low on the Richter scale, but today I would simply say, “If you wait for the right time when the “right” time comes, it will always feel like the wrong time.” That’s the case because hospitality is built on the foundation of crying babies and broken toys. It’s a gift you learn to give others with plenty of practice.

Sometimes, when I am in the middle of a deep thought concerning the ontological Trinity with my guests, while 15 kids run around us and in the middle of a very “important” point I was trying to make, my littlest one interrupted with an urgent call from nature. I commented that parents have conversations in fragments in such settings. That should be absolutely normal and expected.

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By In Culture, Theology

An Eschatology Of Pentecost

ESCHATOLOGICAL BLUE DIAMONDS

All diamonds are beautiful and rare. They are formed as a collection of carbon atoms, subjected to unimaginable heat and pressure over the space of time, melding into one of nature’s greatest crystalline masterpieces that has ever captivated the eyes of man. Some diamonds, such as the standard white diamond, are easier to find, occurring nearer to the surface of the earth in the alluvial deposits and within volcanic pipes, which makes them more abundant and affordable in the market. Other diamonds, however, such as the elusive blue diamond, are buried much deeper within the earth’s strata, making them not only harder to extract but also rarer and more costly. 

In the same way, every truth learned from Scripture is precious and essential. Some truths hang right on the surface of the text and do not take much digging to lodge them loose. Other truths, however, take a bit of digging. Yet, the reward for peeling back the layers of Scriptural strata is most definitely worth the reward for all who will venture into its depths. 

This is a good way of thinking about our passage today. Many of you will be familiar with some truths on the surface. These truths are precious and glorious, and I do not want to minimize them. But, if you will grab your shovel and pickaxe, I’d like to take you down just a bit further, below the surface and into the eschatological crust of the text, as we hunt for the Biblical equivalent of blue diamonds. 

THE TEXT: ACTS 2:1-12

1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.5 Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” 12 And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 

To understand this text, let us first consider what eschatology is and how this text is eschatological. 

EXPANDING OUR DEFINITION 

First, eschatology is not merely about the final climactic moments of human history. That is a futurist’s perversion. Instead, eschatology is about what life will look like during the final age of man. Eschatology is about how the history of planet earth will be brought under the rule and dominion of Jesus Christ in these last days we are living in. That end-time age began when Jesus Christ rose from the dead and poured out His Spirit upon all flesh, which we will see in greater detail next week. 

But for now, it is crucial to understand that everything within the old covenant, all of the promises of God, all of the types and shadows, will either pass away under the rule of Christ or will soar to its climax in the rule of Christ. In this way, eschatology has just as much to do with fulfilling the past as it does with the future. Thus, eschatology is trying to understand how all of the old forms and norms will find their ultimate realization and transformation in the new covenant that Christ has ushered in. To say that in shorthand: eschatology is how Christ ushers in His end-time Kingdom, now in part, one day in full.

To that end, let us explore a few examples, beginning with Pentecost. 

PENTECOST AND THE FESTAL CALENDAR

Pentecost comes from the Greek word πεντηκοστή, which means “the fiftieth” or “the fiftieth day,” referring to the fact that the miraculous outpouring of the Holy Spirit happened fifty days after the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday. Yet, the origins of Pentecost and the other key events during Holy Week run much deeper than the first century AD. 

For instance, underneath the events of Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost are buried Old Covenant feasts that directly and chronologically correlate with what Christ is doing. Take, for example, the festival called Passover. This feast was the first among the final three feasts in the Jewish year. During that feast, a lamb was slaughtered for the people’s sins, and its blood was painted on the doorpost of every home so that the angel of death would pass over them. As Christians, we look to Christ as the final and perfect Lamb, whose blood was painted over the mantle of our own hearts, causing the angel of death to pass us over so that we may inherit eternal life in the Son. 

Likewise, underneath the events of Easter and Christ’s resurrection was a Jewish festival immediately following Passover called “First Fruits.” In that feast, the people would praise and worship God for the first sign of the harvest, that once more He had caused the seeds that went down into the earth dead to sprout and break through the ground again, symbolizing new life and resurrection from the dead. When Jesus rose from the dead, during the celebration of this festival, He was not only claiming to be God; He was fulfilling an Old Covenant rite with precision and beauty. 

In the same way, underneath the events of Pentecost was an Old Covenant norm that must be explored if we are going to understand what God is doing in Acts 2. After the Passover and the festival of First Fruits, the Israelites hightail it out of Egypt and travel ferociously towards the Red Sea. After God’s final and glorious showdown with Pharoah, the Israelites continue to Sinai, where God leaves His throne in heaven and descends upon the mountain to dwell with His people. The journey from celebrating the First Fruits in Egypt to seeing Yahweh descend upon the mountain and deliver His law to Moses took exactly fifty days (Just like Pentecost). 

To commemorate that arduous fifty-day journey, God established a feast called the Festival of Weeks (Shavuot in Hebrew), which would become one of the three mandatory pilgrimage festivals that all Jewish males were required to attend once a year in Jerusalem. Furthermore, within the ordinary annual calendar of the Jews, this feast was the last and final celebration of the year, spiritually symbolizing how God’s ultimate and final purpose in redemption was to condescend and draw His sojourning people into His presence forever. 

This is why the timing of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 is so rich and eschatologically significant. All of the events that happen during holy week and Pentecost track perfectly along with the Old Testament Festal calendar. This is not by accident or mere coincidence. God is purposefully taking His Son through each of the final feasts of Israel to show His people how His Son is the end and point that each of these feasts was pointing to. 

In the same way, God rescued His people from the Pharaoh and their taskmasters in Egypt, Heaven’s spotless Lamb came and offered Himself during the final Passover, freeing the people of God from a far worse tyrant than Pharoah. In Christ, we have been set free from the wicked rule of Satan, the slavery of our own sinful flesh, and the bonds of death that once accosted us. He is the hope the Passover was always pointing to. 

Immediately after Christ fulfilled the Passover, He fulfilled the feast of First Fruits, being the first fruit of a new creation, being the first to rise from the ground, breaking out of the earth like the first barley harvest the people were worshiping God for. In this, Christ (the bread of life) became the first one to rise in the new covenant Kingdom. And through His power, He is bringing all His people back to life and out of the grave until the entire harvest has come in. He is the hope the feast of Firstfruits was always pointing to. 

Then, fifty days later, in the same way God descended from heaven to dwell with His people in Sinai, God Himself descended again to dwell with the people of God at Pentecost. But unlike the Old Testament version, where the people needed to remain far off from God because of the finished work of Christ, the Holy Spirit of God would not remain distant but would live even within the heart of every believer. This was the chief end that the Festival of Weeks always pointed to: God living with His people forever. 

These events are not eschatological because they speak about the final moments of history. They are not eschatological because they concern modern-day Apache helicopters, Antichrists, or marks of the beast. These events are eschatological because old covenant trappings were fulfilled through Christ’s faithful work, and the final end-time Kingdom was inaugurated. Passover, Firstfruits, and the Festival of Weeks reached their glorious crescendo in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is our forever Lamb! He is our resurrection and first fruit! And in His Spirit, He is the one who ensured God’s people would dwell in God’s presence forever! In Christ, we are not waiting for these realities to come, but because of Him, they are already fully here. 

Before concluding, there are a couple of other examples of Christ doing this same thing in this passage. Let us dig a bit deeper.  

ESCHATOLOGICAL WIND

While the disciples were waiting for the Holy Spirit to come, just as the Lord Jesus promised, they were huddled together and hiding in an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem. This made sense for a variety of reasons:

  1. Jesus told them to wait, and they would have needed to stay somewhere.
  2. This room was apparently spacious enough to hold 120 of them and private enough to where they would not provoke any undue suspicion.
  3. This was so critical because waiting out in the open, in the town that just killed your master for insurrection and who was likely on the lookout for you, would not have been the best way to stay alive.

Yet, while they were in the safety and seclusion of the upper room, God brought the full fury of His hurricane-like breath, which is essential for a host of reasons.

The main reason is theophanic. When God physically reveals Himself to the people of Old Testament Scripture, He usually does so through a phenomenon called theophany. If you are not familiar with the term, it simply means God using material means to reveal Himself to people in a physical form. Notable examples include God appearing as a burning bush to Moses, a smoking pot to Abraham, a cloud to Israel, and a sparring partner to Jacob. 

In addition to those common theophanies, God often appeared physically as a wind or cloud in various places. First, since the Hebrew word for Spirit (Ruach) also translates as wind, the Holy Spirit hovering over the chaotic primordial waters of pre-creation in the first two verses of the Bible would count as the earliest example of a wind theophany in Scripture (Genesis 1:1-2). More salient to our discussion would be how the Lord appeared during the Red Sea episode, hovering over a different set of waters, blowing back the waves into walls with theophanic fury. In that scene, God delivered His people by His own breath, which indeed connects to Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit. 

Yet, another wind theophany blows closer to the point of Pentecost. If you remember a few paragraphs before, I said the Old Testament equivalent of Pentecost was the Festival of Weeks in Exodus. This festival occurred after Passover and Firstfruits, and it commemorated how the people traveled for fifty days and settled at the base of God’s mountain waiting for Him to descend. When He did descend upon the mountain, the text tells us that He came as a furious storm that shook the mountain so fiercely that the people and the mountain trembled! In the middle of that storm cloud that lowered itself down upon the mountain’s apex, the wind was so intense that it was described as God blowing trumpets with the magnitude of His breath. Is this not precisely what is occurring at Pentecost?

The twelve disciples, like the twelve tribes of Israel, are in an elevated place waiting on their covenant God to come down and make His dwelling place among them. And in much the same way that God descended upon Mt. Sinai with a breathy storm, God filled the upper room with His glorious divine breath, with one notable exception. Instead of the people being barricaded from going into the eye of God’s theophanic hurricane, Christ the better Moses ascended the mountain and made atonement for our sins. Because of that atonement, God would descend and live with us forever. In that way, the wind rushing into the upper room was the definitive sign that God was making His dwelling place, without restrictions or distance, with His people forever. No longer relocated to the tops of mountains or the back room of a Jerusalem temple, but dwelling within His people’s hearts, filling them with His life-giving windy breath. 

ESCHATOLOGICAL FIRE

You will also notice that when the Spirit comes upon God’s people at Pentecost, He came as a tongue of fire that sat aloft on each of the disciples’ heads and did not consume them. This should remind us of how God first revealed Himself to Moses, coming as a fire that did not consume the dusty wilderness bush at Mt. Sinai. In addition, when Moses led God’s people out of Egypt, wasn’t it God who appeared both as a cloud to lead the people by day (wind theophany) and as a tongue of fire to lead them by night (fire theophany)? And, wasn’t it also God, who when His divine cloud descended upon Mount Sinai (wind theophany), that He also appeared through bursts of intense, white-hot lightning at the apex of Sinai (fire theophany)? 

Without belaboring the point, when God drew His people out of Egypt and settled upon the mountain to be their God and them be His people, He used fire and wind as the physical phenomena signifying His genuine spiritual presence. This is, again, precisely what happened in the upper room. The same God who blew His wind and cracked His fiery lightning on Sinai was now inhabiting the Upper Room with wind and flame. And this time, there was no safe distance between the people and their God. He was descending with wind and flame directly onto them – and praise be the Lord Jesus Christ – for this is what our Lord accomplished. 

There is one final Old Testament reality going on in the text that Christ’s Kingdom will not only intersect with but also undo.  

ESCHATOLOGICAL BABEL AND THE TABLE OF NATIONS

The first command in Scripture is for the people of God to be fruitful, to multiply, and to spread out into the uninhabited world (Genesis 1:28). Yet, under the perniciousness of prevailing sin, the people staunchly refused the commands of God and chose rebellion instead. Rather than spreading out and carrying faithful God-glorifying living to the remotest deserts and deepest bogs, sinful man multiplied their iniquities. Then they huddled together in a single plain where they sat stubbornly in disobedience. 

Echoing their creator God, who said: “Let us make man in our image,” this gaggle of future babblers declared: “Let us make a city,” Let us make a tower,” and “Let us make a name for ourselves.” In this threefold repetition of the “let us,” this group quoted God. Yet, their hearts couldn’t be farther from His. Instead of making a name for God, the entire point of our creation, they were consumed (like Lucifer) with making a name for themselves. Instead of spreading out in obedience, they built a tower that so dominated the ancient skyline that no one could get separated from them (Genesis 11:4). They erected a mud-brick skyscraper to ensure no one accidentally obeyed God and ended up scattering.

Ironically, the tower was so slight and unimpressive from God’s vantage point that He described Himself having to come down in order to see it (Genesis 11:5). Picture God squinting and mocking their effort. Then, once God comes down and scrambles their alphabets, they all become so mired in linguistic confusion that everyone ends up scattering anyway, which is another rather humorous aspect of this narrative. Ultimately, the peoples of the earth are subdivided into seventy nations separated by many languages. 

Now, think about what is going on at Pentecost. Instead of God coming down to confuse the people’s languages, God unloosened the various tongues so the people would no longer Babel (pun intended). Instead of one people being divided into all nations on earth (as was the case on the Shinar plain), in Jerusalem that day, people from “all the nations under heaven” came back together as one people under the one true King. In both scenes, the people are confused and bewildered. Yet, in Christ, everything that afflicted the people of God before is now melting away. 

HOW SIGNS WORK

Before drawing this to a close, one additional element to this passage needs to be dug into. If you are tracking, we have dug down under the surface into the layers of Old Testament feasts to see the eschatological truths buried within. We went further down into an understanding of wind and fire theophany to find the gems embedded into the text at that level. Then, we dug further down into the typological level, seeing how Jesus was undoing one of the most profound elements of the curse at Babel by reunifying the nations at Pentecost. Now, we are ready to find blue diamonds. 

When God gives a sign to His people, He gives it to encourage us because He loves us. He uses temporary physical means like water applied in baptism, fire mounted on the apostle’s head, wind rushing into a room at Pentecost, bread and wine at the Lord’s Table to point to eternal spiritual realities that never end. While the physical manifestation of fire on the apostle’s head and wind in their chamber was a singular and non-repeatable event, the spiritual reality that each signified remains. Every time a man or woman believes the Gospel, the fire and breath of God descends upon them, igniting and fueling new life in the Spirit, which makes every believer on earth a walking, talking Mount Sinai. We do not need the physical phenomena to continue. That was only a sign that the spiritual realities had come. 

In the same way, the gift of a unifying tongue that brings the disparate nations back together in Jerusalem is a one-time physical sign from God that need not be repeated in the modern world. In this passage, God was not encouraging an ongoing physical Pentecostal-style tongue babbling because this passage says Christ has cured and will continue to cure the problem present at Babel. Instead, this passage is a physical sign from God that communicates a powerful spiritual truth. At Pentecost, God unloosed their tongues to bring the fractured world back together in His Son. And while the physical manifestation of the miraculous language speaking does not continue to this day, the spiritual consequence of God unifying the Babel-broken world in His Son does continue. In Christ, the scattered, fractured world will be reintegrated. There will one day, and I hope soon, one people, washed with the same baptism, feasting at the same table, joyfully serving their one King. Pentecost was a one-time event that showcases that God is doing that work, and He will not stop until it is finished. 

CONCLUSION

Eschatology is a much larger topic than what concerns the last and final moments of human history. Rightly understood, eschatology speaks about the entirety of Jesus’ end-time Kingdom. It includes things that happened in the very beginning of His reign, such as His Passover completing death, His Firstfruits accomplishing resurrection, His Daniel 7 fulfilling Ascension, His Festival of Weeks closing Pentecost, and His undoing of the curse of Babel. Eschatology includes events in the apostles’ lifetime, such as the Gospel going out and advancing into the Roman world, the downfall and destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the temple era, the sacrificial system, and the priesthood. Eschatology concerns what happened after the canon was closed, how Jesus’ Kingdom eventually overtook the Roman Empire, experienced a Reformation in Europe, and how that Kingdom is alive and well today. 

Eschatology concerns future events, but those events are the minority. More accurately, it is the theological discipline that examines how all the promises of God, from salvation and redemption to His worldwide Kingdom, will come to fruition under the rule and reign of His Son. And when you understand that, you will not only see that you are living in the end times but also that the final era of human history is upon us. This means that we are living under the end-time rule of Christ, and there are end-time things Christ has commanded us to be doing. The apostles were only commanded to sit and wait for a season. Once the Spirit came upon them, they sat and waited no longer.

In the same way, far too many people treat eschatology as something long into the future that is either irrelevant to where we stand or something we have to wait to arrive. Dear ones, our end-time King has come. His end-time kingdom is here. And His Spirit has come upon you, christening you for the end-time service He has commissioned you to. 

With that, do not be the kind of Christian who sits down and does not get involved. Do what the apostles did and turn your city upside down for Christ. Start Bible studies. Host prayer groups. Do some street preaching. Be present and active in your local congregations. Get married to a godly spouse. Have children and disciple them. Use your life to see His end-time Kingdom advance. 

And one last thing: remember what Jesus did at Pentecost. For a moment, He made all the peoples from all the nations in Jerusalem that day speak in one voice. Let that be an encouragement that our work is not in vain. One day, Christ will complete that work. He will make of all the nations on earth one people under God, indivisible, with perfect liberty and perfect justice for all. We labor to see that true and better nation come in full, even as our nation withers around us.

God bless you! 

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By In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Wisdom, Women

Good Wife, Good Life: Integrity, Industry, & Generosity

Despite what many masculine influencers tell young men today, marriage is good. There is no greater blessing in a man’s life than to have a good wife. While marriage has its own challenges, a good marriage makes life easier in many respects because you are facing challenges with mutual support and effort. A good wife makes a good life. (This, by the way, is very different than what is usually meant by “Happy wife. Happy life.” That’s another subject for another day.)

The good wife is described in rich, poetic detail in Proverbs 31. While not every woman will do exactly what this woman is said to do, women in general and wives in particular are to emulate the character of this woman.

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By In Culture, Podcast

KC Commentary – Episode 114: Ministering in a Negative World

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By In Culture

Election and the Way of Obedience

Image courtesy pexels.com

The Christian does not discover his election by means of rigorous introspection. He finds it in the experience of faith and obedience as a baptized member of the Church. Peter said, “Be even more diligent to make your call and election sure” (2Pet. 1:10). Do you know that you were chosen by God for salvation before the foundation of the world? Are you sure? How can you be? Maybe your recurring temptations, frequent weakness of faith, and besetting sins are an indication that you were not chosen by God, are not born from above, and will not be acknowledged by Christ on the last day. How can you have assurance of grace when you fail so often and so miserably, and if you think you do not, how could anyone so arrogant imagine they are saved? Assurance may be theoretically possible, but a truly humble Christian would know it is practically impossible. In fact, to claim to have assurance of salvation would be presumptuous, right?

Just in case you lost the thread above, the position that assurance of salvation is presumptuous was an argument the Roman Church made against the Protestant Reformers. Contrary to this faux humility, the Westminster Confession boldly affirms: “such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace” (18.1) and that with an “infallible assurance” (18.3). Will there be hypocrites who are self-deceived? Of course, but they are not the ones who agonize over their salvation and doubt their possession of grace for grief over their sins. Only born again people do that, because Jesus takes all the fun out of sin. Hypocrites are still able to enjoy their rebellion, at least, for a time, but the believer feels overwhelming guilt and shame over his transgressions, overwhelming but for God’s mercy.

Look again at Peter’s exhortation to “make your call and election sure.” How do we do so? By a Protestant version of penance and self-flagellation? No, by exercising our faith in obedience and growth in grace. After reminding the brethren that God’s power has given to us “all things that pertain to life and godliness” and “exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature” (2Pet. 1:3-4), the apostle then enjoins us: “for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (2Pet. 1:5-7). Then Peter thunders:

For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2Pet. 1:8-11)

Christian, you have been baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You belong to your faithful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You have died with Christ and been raised with him. You no longer live for yourself; you live for the One who died for you and rose again. These are objective truths, not subjective maybes. Live in light of your covenant status and of what God says you are in Christ.

The Lord’s eternal decree with regard to your soul and mine is inaccessible. You cannot look into the Book of Life, nor can I. We perceive his electing grace by its persevering work within us. We gain assurance through the means of grace, the Word of God—as he is read, heard, learned, embraced, prayed, sung, eaten, and obeyed. “Make your call and election sure.” How? By believing in Jesus, and disbelieving the idols in which men trust. By repenting of your sins, but never of your decision to follow Jesus. By loving your wife, children, brethren, neighbor, and enemy, and laboring in prayer that the blessings of heaven might be poured upon them. By taking dominion in the Name of Christ: building, planting, watering, working, and waiting without growing weary in well-doing. By going to Church and being the Church: singing, confessing, praying, heeding, and rejoicing as the elect person you are.The Christian does not discover his election unto salvation by means of rigorous introspection. He finds it by faith, in the exercise of obedience, as a member of the covenant. Assurance does not come in a flash of prophetic insight at a moment in time, but every day in the disciple’s prayer and practice: Thy will be done, on earth, and in my life, as it is in heaven.

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By In Culture

Work as Eternal Stewardship

Labor Day has been a federal holiday in this country since 1894. Still, long ago, Solomon already opined on the importance of work: “A sluggard’s appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied (Prov. 13:4).”

The Christian looks at Labor Day through the lens of the Apostle Paul’s view of work when he concluded his great tome on the resurrection in I Corinthians 15:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Paul believed that the fruit of the resurrection bears fruit in our labors. We labor in resurrection style, not as those without hope. We labor because our work has continued worth long after we are done.

Lester Dekoster defines work as that “which gives meaning to life because it is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others.” In our labors, we bring extended satisfaction to others and ourselves. If we did not work, we could never give back what rightly belongs to God in tithes and offerings. If we did not work, we could never support the vast missionary enterprise worldwide. If we did not labor, we could never enjoy the fruits of our labors in hospitality and charity.

Our work is a form of eternal stewardship. We labor on earth because it shows how we will labor for all eternity. We labor on earth because we are stewards of the earth and we will labor in heaven because all of creation will be ours.

We will never stop working! On this Labor Day, consider the meaning of your work. What you do is not in vain in this world or in the world to come.

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By In Culture

An Encouraging Thought

Photo courtesy pexels.com

J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is a work of Christian imagination structured and permeated by a biblical worldview that will ensure that series of books endures for many generations as a true classic. Many books and essays have been written over the years discussing the Christian worldview in the Middle Earth trilogy. One of them, Donald William’s An Encouraging Thought, takes its title from Gandalf’s remark to Frodo in Chapter Two of Book I in The Fellowship of the Ring:

“Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.”

Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic and inarguably my second favorite papist next only to Chesterton. If you asked Tolkien whether he was a Calvinist, no doubt he would have scoffed and denied it in an inimitably British sort of way. (I trust that Tolkien, Chesterton, and Calvin have made up their differences by now, and if not, will eventually do so in the dazzling brightness of the beatific vision.) Tolkien, like Chesterton, knew only the desiccated form of joyless puritanism, just as many of the Reformers saw the worst expressions of Roman sacerdotalism and reacted, rightly, against it. But what Calvin, Chesterton, and Tolkien’s Middle Earth trilogy share is a cheerful vision of divine sovereignty.

Tolkien was not, self-consciously, a Calvinist. He was a Christian, and as such, he could not help but be Calvinistic when he thought of divine providence. Calvin was not self-consciously a Calvinist either, and he would probably be offended, dismayed, and inclined to righteous invective if he saw us using his name in such a sectarian way. What these men had in common, besides a genuine love and reverence for Christ, was a sense of the Maker’s grandeur. They served a God who is not only in charge but actively and irresistibly in control of all that is and ever will be. God’s sovereignty did not preclude Sauron’s wickedness, Saruman’s treachery, Gollum’s sin-induced insanity, Boromir’s idolatry, or Denethor’s despair. Yet over, above, behind, and around all of these actors on the stage stood the Maker, standing in the shadows, guiding the story “by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will… yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established” (WCF 3.1). Tolkien would not have appreciated me citing the Westminster Confession in interpreting the events of Middle Earth — he did not intend it to be an allegory, and it is not — but read Chapter 5 of the Confession on Providence and then try to explain that The Lord of the Rings is not an epic myth about the providence of God. You cannot do it, because that’s exactly what the Ring trilogy is.

It seems to me we need a wee bit less (by which I mean a whole lot less) theological sectarianism and a greater sense of the size, strength, and sovereignty of the God we serve. Reformed Christians have far more in common, in this regard, with traditional Roman Catholics like Tolkien and Chesterton than any of us have with the evangellyfish in our community and their worship leader who paints his fingernails. I say this not as someone who is less committed to the tenets of historic Calvinism but as someone who has become more convinced the longer he has been a self-conscious Calvinist that those tenets of divine sovereignty are simply biblical and christian and are shared, implicitly if not explicitly, to a greater or lesser degree, by all those who love Christ and take the word of God seriously. Tolkien was not a Calvinist, and one day when we all have died, none of us will be either. We will be simply followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, children of God, and brothers and sisters in his household.

The Enemy who forged the ring of power did not intend for it to fall into the hands of a hobbit from the Shire or to come into the possession of his nephew. Readers of the trilogy will remember that it was not the strength or goodness of either Frodo or Bilbo that saved the day in the end. It could not be. Both eventually fell under the ring’s power, but another hand not only guided but determined its destruction. It was the same hand who placed the ring in Bilbo’s palm inside a dark cavern and on a chain around Frodo’s neck on that long, cheerless journey to Mordor. It was One greater than Sauron and Saruman and Gollum and Wormtongue all combined. And it was this same power that led to the denouement, which happens not on Mt. Doom and in the destruction of Mordor but later in Book VI of The Return of the King when Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to their beloved Shire.

We serve a mighty God, the Maker of heaven and earth, Lord of creation, Master of history, Author of the Future, who holds eternity in his hand. Tolkien was a literary master, but he was only a sub-creator, as he himself admitted. What makes The Lord of the Rings true and timeless is not his creativity but the story’s resonance with biblical revelation. It reflects the glory, power, and wisdom of the true Myth-Maker, the God who wrote the story of cosmological history, and whose breath gave us life as characters on that stage.

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By In Culture

Barbie and the Patriarchy 

By Rich Lusk

I can’t believe I’m actually going to comment on the Barbie movie….but here goes.

A couple of disclaimers: First, I have not seen the movie and do not intend to any time soon, so this is not an attempt to review the movie. In general, I would refrain from commenting on a movie I have not watched, just like I would not talk about a book I have not read. But in this case, I’m really responding more to other people’s reviews and reactions to the movie.

Second disclaimer: I have never liked Barbie. We did not let our girls play with Barbie dolls when they were growing up for all the reasons you might imagine. In many ways, I think the Barbie doll concept represents all that is wrong with modern-day intersexual dynamics. Barbie, with her idealized figure and proportions, her materialistic accessories, her rejection of marriage and motherhood, her detachment from household and obligation to others, and so forth, has always been a damaging and (frankly) oppressive role model for young girls. Barbie has been a tool of the feminist agenda since she was first brought to market.

Barbie is a woman without any meaningful connection — no mother, no father, no husband, no children. She represents the essence of our hyper-individualistic, liberal society in which every person is a self-defining, disconnected atom. But those aspects of Barbiedom are not my main concern here. My purpose in this article is to comment on a few reviews I’ve seen of the movie from conservatives and what I think we can glean from them.

Two Reactions

There seem to be two basic reactions to the movie from the conservative side: There are those like Ben Shapiro, who trash it as feminist garbage and those like Alex Clark and Robin Harris, who tout its subversively traditionalist message, whatever the intent of its creators might have been. It seems to me the movie is very postmodern in that it is disjointed enough for viewers to get just about any message out of it they want.

I am obviously not in a position to adjudicate between the conflicting interpretations of the movie. But the one thing everyone agrees on is that the movie casts the patriarchy in a bad light. The patriarchy is the enemy, standing in the way of female happiness. The movie mentions the patriarchy over and over, always in a negative way. For Barbie to attain full self-actualization, the patriarchy must be smashed, and (apparently, according to the movie) that has not fully happened yet in our world. In response to this theme in the movie, I want to speak a word of defense on behalf of the patriarchy. But I also want to clarify what patriarchy means because I do not think the term is being used accurately.

The Case for the Patriarchy

In defending the patriarchy against the Barbie movie, I am not defending men today in general. In our culture, there is no shortage of scum bag men doing terrible things, treating women in horrific ways, and so on. Men can be evil, and many men in our society today are very evil indeed. But what men generally do cannot be conflated with the patriarchy.

What is the patriarchy? Why is the patriarchy blamed? What has the patriarchy done to wrong women?

Let’s evaluate this summary of what happens at the movie’s climactic moment from Harris’ review:

“Gloria’s speech at the climax of the movie names the impossible position of women under the patriarchy: women must be powerful but also unintimidating, sexy but also serious, intelligent but never critical, an attentive mother but also a powerful career-woman. Society then punishes women for not living up to the standard.”

This is manifestly not what the patriarchy is about. The patriarchy does not put women in this impossible position. The patriarchy actually protects women from this kind of impossible position. Wherever these demands come from, they are not from the patriarchy; they are not from the Christian tradition or the Bible, or nature. The patriarchy does not punish women for failing to live up to this set of standards. In fact, from what I have seen and from what many sociological studies observe, women are far more likely to put each other in this impossible position than men are.

Women tend to be more critical of each other than men are critical of women. Women are far more likely to attack one another’s life choices (e.g., think of the “mommy wars” in which women criticize one another for their choices about work/family balance). Women are far more likely to attack other women’s clothing choices and makeup choices than men. Women are far more likely to “slut shame” one another for being promiscuous than men are. Think of Mencken’s old quip: “A misogynist is a man who hates women almost as much as women hate each other.” In summary, women tend to be far harder on one another than men are on women in general. Women tend to put one another in the impossible position of manifesting contradictory qualities and living out contradictory roles.

This is not to say there is not a “sisterhood” in which women help and support each other; there most certainly is. But it is to say that most of these pressures women feel are not driven by the patriarchy. They are actually driven (ironically) by feminism, which tells women they can (and must!) “have it all.” It is not the patriarchy, but feminism, that requires women to play both roles, e.g., the traditional role of mother as well as the modern role of career woman. It is feminism that tells women they must not only be emotionally supportive of their families at home but also economically productive in the working world. I can certainly see why those demands frustrate women. But dismantling the patriarchy will not make those demands go away; indeed, it will only make them worse. The patriarchy actually relieves the woman of certain burdens feminism has placed on her. The patriarchy does not insist that women bring home a paycheck in addition to caring for young children. Rather, the patriarchy puts the burden of provision squarely on the shoulders of the man and thus frees the woman from the burdens feminism puts on her.

So what is the patriarchy, anyway? The word patriarchy simply means “father rule.” If we want to know what the patriarchy does and what it requires of women, we should look at fathers. What do husbands/fathers require of their wives? What do fathers do for their sons and daughters? 

The essence of patriarchy is a man ruling his household in an orderly way (1 Tim. 3:4), with compassion (Psalm 103:13) and love (Ephesians 5:21ff). A true patriarch will not insist that his wife be an attentive mother and a career woman because, again, the patriarchal system puts the burden of provision on the man. The patriarchy does not demand that women be powerful in the same sense that men are powerful; the patriarchy appreciates femininity. Patriarchs want wives they are sexually attracted to (of course), but they want their women to dress modestly in public; the patriarchy does not pressure women to turn themselves into sex symbols/objects. If anything, the patriarchy is considered sexually repressive in a post-sexual revolution culture precisely because the patriarchal system requires strict sexual morality from both sexes.

What does the patriarchy look like in real life? The patriarchy is a man taking on extra hours at work so he can get his kids through college. The patriarchy is a man working two jobs so his wife can stay home with their newborn child. The patriarchy is a father telling his daughter she cannot go out dressed immodestly on a Friday night (how oppressive to keep her from objectifying herself!). The patriarchy is dear old dad taking it upon himself to vet his daughter’s date before prom. The patriarchy is a man getting out of bed in the middle of the night to check on that noise in the basement. The patriarchy is a man breaking his body to do a difficult and dangerous job he really doesn’t like for forty years so that his family can live in a nice house in a decent neighborhood and take the occasional beach vacation. In short, the patriarchy is about men using their masculine strength, energy, and gifts for the good of their household, for the preservation of their family line.

Normal, healthy men actually get a great deal of satisfaction in providing for their families. They embrace the breadwinner and protector roles as badges of manhood. The patriarchy is concerned with the household, with legacy, with honor. The abdicating, absent, or abusive father is not a patriarch worthy of the name — indeed, he is the very opposite of a patriarch. He is not ruling his household. (I agree with Michael Foster that it is possible to speak of two patriarchies in human history — a faithful patriarchy, patterned after divine fatherhood, and a Satanic patriarchy of evil men. But in another sense, the latter are not really patriarchs in any meaningful way. Satan is only a father in a metaphorical sense. He does not actually create or sire offspring. He does not protect and provide for anyone. He is not paternal. Jesus called the Pharisees sons of the devil but that does not actually make the devil a patriarch. He is actually the anti-patriarch, just as he is the anti-christ. So it is with evil, abusive, and abdicating men. A “baby daddy” who refuses to marry the woman he sleeps with is not building or ruling a household. The lazy, abdicating, or abusive man is failing in his fatherly roles, and thus, even if he physically sires offspring, he is not an archon.)

The Attack of the Patriarchy

What does the attack on patriarchy (whether in our society or the Barbie movie) mean? What does it mean to take down the patriarchy? The consequence is an attack on fathers and, thus, the promotion of fatherlessness. It should be no surprise that as feminism has gained influence in our culture, fatherlessness has become increasingly the norm. Today, more than 1 in 3 children does not live under the same roof as their dad. But when feminists talk about “smashing the patriarchy” today, they do not usually have fathers consciously in view, even though they use a word that invokes fatherhood.

Most women who complain about the injustices of the patriarchy today think of men who are their peers (not fathers) but have mistreated them because they have used them sexually. Or they are thinking of highly successful men who have filled the top-ranking corporate positions that ambitious women want for themselves (the thought that the man might have worked hard to get that job precisely so he could provide for his wife — a woman — does not seem to enter the equation). Patriarchy is viewed as a system that favors and privileges men simply for being men. But there are actually very few privileges men in our society receive simply for being men. Competent, qualified, diligent men will find doors opening for them. But lower-status, lower-quality men struggle. (Apparently, the Barbie movie makes this point, as Ken learns in the “real world” that simply being a man does not mean he gets high-status positions. Despite being male, He has to earn them through credentials and competence.)

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By In Culture, Wisdom, Women

Powerful Woman?

“A strong woman who can find? Her worth is far above jewels.”

~Proverbs 31:10

During World War II, Rosie the Riveter became an iconic figure of the strong woman. The seventeen-year-old Geraldine Doyle posed for a picture that would become a cultural phenomenon, fueling the feminist image and agenda of what women should be: strong, independent women. Doyle didn’t really embody the legend surrounding her image. She only worked for the metal stamping company for two weeks, afraid she would mangle her hands as did her predecessor. Crippled hands would be disastrous for her passion as a cellist. However, the myth bound up in Rosie the Riveter gained a life of its own, becoming something of a foundational story for second-wave feminists.

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