Culture Archives - Page 20 of 71 - Kuyperian Commentary

On November 21, 2022 By Joel Ellis In Culture 3

Yahweh Shall Be King Over All the Earth

What was God’s purpose in making the world? Did he create the world in order to destroy it? Did he create the world with one purpose only to see that plan thwarted by human freewill? Does he intend for the majority of human beings to be lost? Does he desire to see the human race multiply and flourish in unbelief only so that at the end of time he can destroy the world and send the vast majority of those he created into everlasting punishment? It seems that this is what many Christians actually believe, even many Reformed Christians. The world is going to hell in a handbasket… literally… and that’s just what the Lord intended all along. The other possibility is even more troubling and unbiblical: namely, that this is not what God decreed or desired but it’s the best he can do given the mess man made with his freedom. In other words, God is not sovereign at all. He’s in charge, technically, but he can’t be held responsible for whatever happens because he is not actually in control. He tells us what is right, but it’s up to man to do right, and if we don’t, God can only do so much about it.

There is another option, one that the Church in earlier generations knew but that many modern Christians have never seriously considered. That is that God made the world in order to fill it with his glory, and he is, and he will. That the human race was created to multiply and fill the earth with worship, and they are, and they will. That the kingdoms of this world are under the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ, and they will all come to know it and, eventually, to bow the knee to King Jesus. That in the end more people will be saved than are lost, that the “few” who are saved refer to the Jews in Jesus’ own generation (cf. Matt. 7:13-14), but that in the end “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26) and God will “bring many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10).

We may not all agree on when, where, or exactly how God’s promises will be fulfilled, and whatever we expect it to look like, we might expect the reality will take us by surprise. But we should have a larger and more hopeful vision than many of us do. We should read current events through the lens of Scripture, and not read Scripture through the lens of current events. We should think better of the Lord than to imagine that he created a world for the purpose of failure and loss, or worse, to imagine that he wants to do better but simply cannot. Will God be most glorified by allowing the world to fall into utter corruption and finally destroy it, saving only a handful of the image bearers he made, or by redeeming, sanctifying, and transforming an entire world so that it becomes a holy temple, a new creation, filled by worshipers of the one true and living God?

We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God, and in this world you will have trouble but be of good cheer [Christ] has overcome the world. But this is not all that Scripture says. Yes, evil will persist and so too will evil-doers until the return of Christ. God’s saints will suffer in many ways in this present age before we pass into glory. But God’s Word elevates and reorients our thinking. It lifts us above the plane of suffering where we presently find ourselves and enables us to survey the field and the Lord’s larger strategy. It fills us with hope in knowing that Jesus is not only Savior but also King, not only Redeemer but the Lord of all. Yahweh shall be King over all the earth (Zech. 14:9). Hear the word, believe it, and rejoice.

On November 17, 2022 By Bill Smith In Culture, Politics, Theology, Wisdom 1

Christ the King

Proverbs is a training manual for David’s son to learn how to exercise authority wisely. Yahweh promised him the nations as an inheritance (Ps 2); that he would rule over the world (Ps 72). Consequently, he must grow in wisdom to match the responsibility that the Father planned for him.

Standing on a mountain in Galilee, having been recently declared David’s true son through his resurrection from the dead (Rom 1.3-4), Jesus proclaims, “All authority in heaven and upon earth has been given to me” (Mt 28.18). Unlike the first son, Adam, who grasped for authority prematurely, seizing the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which had the power to make one wise (Gen 3.6), Jesus was patient, waiting until the Father gave him the authority. He resisted, what James Jordan calls, “the dominion trap,” on several occasions. During his temptation in the wilderness, the devil tempted him by promising him authority over all the kingdoms of the world if he would pledge his fealty to him. “You don’t need to wait. The world is a mess. You need to be a man of action. Jump out there and do something about it. You have power. You could change the world.” Jesus knew that it wasn’t time. Going about taking dominion without first being established in the fear of the Lord and maturing to the point that he could handle the responsibility was a fool’s errand. No matter how good his intentions might be, without the wisdom to handle the responsibility, the mess made in the end would be worse than the beginning.

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On November 12, 2022 By Kuyperian In Culture, Worship 1

A Quick Primer on What It Means to Be Ecclesiocentric

By Rich Lusk

Ecclesiocentrism is incredibly simple to understand and absolutely ubiquitous in Scripture.

The church is the central and most important thing in the world and in history.

That’s it — that’s the fundamental claim.

Ecclesiocentrism can be found on almost every page of the Bible. Some examples:
– nations are blessed/cursed according to how they treat the church (Gen. 12)
– God rules all things for the sake of his church (Eph. 1)
– Grace restores nature, but where is that grace found? In the means given to the church (e.g., in Psalm 128 the blessed man’s blessing comes from Zion, which is the church according to Hebrews 12)
– As the church goes, so the world goes (e.g., in Matthew 5 the church is salt and light)
– Ecclesiastical reformation drives cultural transformation (the lesson of Haggai 1)
– Judgment and reformation begin with the household of God (1 Peter 4)
– The discipleship of the nations and of every sphere of life begins in the church (Matt. 28)
– The church is the leading institution in society and church history is the core of world history (this is evident from the prophets, Acts, etc.)
– The Lord’s service on the Lord’s Day with the Lord’s people in the Lord’s sanctuary is the most important thing we do (the fall took place with a forbidden meal in the sanctuary; restoration is manifested through a meal in the sanctuary)
– God created the world for the sake of the church (as Luther said) so that his Son might have a bride (as Edwards said)
– The storyline of the Bible is basically the storyline of the church (e.g., when the prophets and Acts deal with history, they present the church as central to world events)

These paragraphs from Doug Wilson’s post this week is a good example of ecclesiocentric thinking:

“If we want unbelievers to repent of their sin, the first thing believers should do is show them how. Judgment should begin with the household of God (1 Pet. 4:17). How can we expect them to let go of their sins when we refuse to let go of ours? And more to the pinch point, evangelicals need to learn how to repent of things that we have serenely assumed to be our virtues.

We must repent of our etiolated gospel-centeredness. We need to repent of calling ourselves Jesus-followers instead of Christians. We need to repent of Instagraming our devotional times. We have to repent of our “Jesus is our girl friend” worship songs. We must repent of all our Jesus junk stores. We have to repent of our R2K schizophrenia. We need to repent of the anemic condition of our deracinated seminaries. We need to repent of still caring what Christianity Today prints. We must repent of caring more about our own reputations and turf concerns than we do about the condition of the kingdom at large—we sin like Hezekiah did . . . “peace and safety in my time.” We must repent of all our inverse John the Baptist moves—”they might decrease so that I might increase.” We must repent of caring more about not being publicly associated with worldview thinkers who make us feel extreme than we care about actually understanding the truth as the Word reveals it.”

His basic point: the world won’t change til the church changes. The church leads the way.

Ecclesiocentrists strongly resist dualisms that would marginalize or privatize the church. We believe the church has a public, even political character, as God’s holy nation. So, for example, in many “two kingdom” approaches (e.g., those of WS-CAL and Stephen Wolfe), it is claimed that the church should only deal with “heavenly” or “spiritual things.” The church helps people reach their heavenly telos, but has little to do with man’s earthly telos. So Wolfe says that Christians do not learn about earthly citizenship in the church. Presumably, the magistrate does not learn how to be a Christian magistrate from the church. The church should not teach on manhood/womanhood because those are earthly, not heavenly, concerns.

The problem with that is that the Bible teaches about all of those things and the church is entrusted with teaching the Bible. That does not mean the church’s teaching is exhaustive in these areas or that church is the only place that people learn about these things. But the church does have responsibility to disciple the other spheres.

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On November 10, 2022 By Bill Smith In Culture, Wisdom Like

Thick-skinned Wisdom

A fool’s vexation is known at once, but the shrewd covers shame
Proverbs 12.16

Western culture, particularly Americans, has become emotionally fragile. We are thin-skinned. Overprotection from parents who have coddled their children, shielding them from all physical and emotional discomfort, not allowing them to fail, always defending their actions whether justifiable or not, and safety-netting them created this problem. Is it any wonder that governments have seized upon this to empower themselves, promising complete safety from disease to poverty without any discomfort for their children? While seeking protection of self-esteem and the like, our helicopter parents have made us so fragile, that the least bit of force on our emotional state shatters us.

This safetyism, as Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt name it in their book The Coddling of the American Mind, has become a moral code. Anything that is mentally stressful–a criticism, joke, disagreement–is morally wrong. These relativists in sexual and economic morality become fundamentalist preachers when it comes to the moral code of their feelings. Combine that moral code with a weak mental constitution and you have people who are triggered and fall to pieces when the supreme judge, feelings, is challenged. There are no appeals in this court. If you violate this morality, it is the death penalty. Your reputation, livelihood, or even your physical existence is forfeit. There is no genuine forgiveness and, therefore, no justification no matter how you may grovel. Words such as “transphobic,” “homophobic,” and “racist” are not mere adjectives. They are judicial sentences that condemn.

This thin-skinned-ness is not an incidental cultural irritation. It is morally culpable foolishness. Solomon describes one of the fool’s actions as allowing his emotions and impulses to control him in the face of being put to shame or insulted; his “vexation is known at once” (Pr 12.16). Vexation is an inner agitation or anger. Others control his actions through insults. He is a slave to what everyone thinks of him. Negative comments to him or about him on social media or other outlets must always be answered. He is irritated, and everyone must know it so that he can engender sympathy for himself and against his opponents to regain his status of “justified.” Nothing rolls off his back because it penetrates his skin too easily. This man is a fool who will destroy anything and everyone around him because his feelings were hurt. He is a slave to his impulses, and his masters–everyone around him–will use his own impulses to manipulate him.

The wise, on the other hand, are thick-skinned. They “cover shame.” They either couldn’t care less about unjustifiable insults or, if they are agitated, they don’t allow it to enslave them to irrational or time-consuming responses to seek to justify themselves. Those insulting them lose their power over them when the insulted ignores, laughs at, or even embraces the insult.

Being thick-skinned is important to wisdom’s mission. One of wisdom’s goals is to create an environment of peace, where relationships are whole, healthy, and joyful. This can never happen in relationships with thin-skinned people. They are always getting offended by real or perceived insults. Everyone has to walk on eggshells around them. Their presence is like a flammable fume that fills the air, creating anxiety in the relationships because the slightest word could be an ignition that blows everything up. Marriages, businesses, friendships, churches, and even society as a whole can’t be healthy with these thin-skinned people. People must be able to handle criticism and disagreement, justified or unjustified, if they are going to build healthy relationships.

So, how do you do it? An entire book can be written on this, but here are a few basics for becoming thick-skinned or tough-minded.

First, develop confidence in who you are and what you are doing. I’m not talking about some prideful self-reliance. Learn and accept what your heavenly Father says about you in Christ. Be confident in how he defines you and your purpose. That is foundational. But then, as Proverbs counsels in other places, develop and become competent in skills. You are always open to critiques from those people who have proven themselves to you, but the insults of others don’t matter.

Second, discipline yourself not to respond to insults. There is no hack to this. It will come down to you keeping your mouth shut or not typing that response, but you can put some things in place to help you. Count to one hundred, sleep on it, breathe deeply, quote Scripture, or do something else that makes you pause before you react. Think about the source of the insult. Is he a jerk whose opinion doesn’t matter? Is he having a bad day? Was he innocently joking? Also, think about the consequences of your response. Will this escalate the situation and get me embroiled in something that will be at least a distraction or, at worst, knock me off course?

Third, stress yourself. To discipline yourself in any area requires that you accept stress as a friend, many times bringing it on yourself in smaller doses so that you can handle the larger stressors later. You need to be brutally honest with yourself. You need friends who will be brutally honest with you and whom you will not fight when they tell you the truth. Put yourself in situations in which you can and will be criticized. Ask for critiques. If you can’t handle criticism, you will never get better, and you will always be able to be manipulated by others.

Thick skin is not a luxury in our mission. It is integral to the way of wisdom.

On October 31, 2022 By Adam McIntosh In Culture, Film, History, Music 2

Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Who Ate Jesus

During the late ’90s and early 2000s, there was nothing more exciting to me than the underground Christian music scene. In 1997, at age 12, I started devouring all the Christian punk music I could find.
One of my favorite bands was called Blaster the Rocket Man. They were perhaps the most unique of any other band. Their lyrics centered on horror and sci-fi themes – like werewolves, vampires, and aliens – but from an explicitly Christian worldview. In Blaster’s songs, monsters could be saved from their monstrosities if they put their faith in Jesus. It was very Kuyperian if you think about it: Every square inch belongs to Jesus…even the horror genre.

One of Blaster’s albums was called The Monster Who Ate Jesus. That title might seem sacrilegious on the surface, but I’ve always taken it as a reference to the Lord’s Supper (eucharist, communion). In one of the band’s earlier songs, “American Werewolf,” the only way for the werewolf to end his curse was to eat and drink Christ’s body and blood. I was reminded of this concept while watching Monster, the Netflix show about Jeffrey Dahmer. (Warning: mature audiences only.)

Dahmer was one of the most notorious serial killers in US history, nicknamed the Milwaukee Cannibal. From the late ’70s to the early ’90s, Dahmer drugged, raped, killed, and ate his victims (mostly gay black men). Most people – Christian or not – find these crimes utterly reprehensible. Dahmer’s level of depravity cannot be overstated.

And yet, one of the most fascinating things about Dahmer is that he claimed to become a Christian in prison. Mind you, jailhouse conversions aren’t that fascinating. Many people claim to find Jesus behind bars and many of those conversions are dishonest and/or short-lived. What’s always fascinated me about Dahmer was that he never used his faith to try to get out of prison. In fact, he wanted to be executed, which is the biblical penalty for rapists and murderers (Genesis 9:6, Deuteronomy 22:25-27).

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On October 27, 2022 By Bill Smith In Culture, Theology, Wisdom 1

A Beautiful Gray Crown

A crown of beauty is the gray head found in the way of righteousness.
Proverbs 16.31

We are a culture obsessed with the appearance of youth. When a middle-aged or older man or woman is told, “You look so young,” it is taken as a compliment. To keep those compliments coming, we will do everything from taking supplements to having surgeries; we dress young, nip and tuck everything we can, color our hair, and apply stuff with hyaluronic acid to our faces because it sounds like the model knows what she’s talking about. Forever young is our aim.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to maintain as much youthful vitality as possible. The curse that works through our bodies should be fought just as we fight the thorns and thistles of the ground. But there are certain aspects of aging that we should joyfully accept. Solomon tells his son that gray hair is one of those glories.

One theme that runs through Proverbs is that of exaltation and its means. Our all-glorious God created us with an appetite for glory or exaltation. That appetite drives us in our dominion project just as our appetite for food drives us to find ways to be fed. We want to be more and have more. Sometimes we want the wrong kind of glory and/or we pursue glory in a sinful way, but the fundamental appetite for glory is God-given. It is, after all, the promised end of our salvation (cf. e.g., Rom 8.18-30).

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On October 18, 2022 By Jesse Sumpter In Art, Culture, Film, Men Like

Bad Movies for Boys

Looking for a good movie to show a boy about what it means to be a man? Try these ones out. You might want to check the rating on a couple of these. You should also consider the worldview of each but overall these movies present some key lessons for boys to learn. I say we need more movies like these.

Jumanji (1995)

Not the dumb remakes. This is a fun tale of magic and adventure around a mysterious board game. The adventure is set in the midst of a breakdown between a father and son who get angry at each other. At the end of the adventure the father and son reconcile with each other. The son specifically apologizes to his father. I will note that the son apologizes first. The father also apologizes. But the example of a son apologizing to a father is a rare occurrence in movies. This is a great example for young boys to see.

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On October 14, 2022 By David Koyzis In Culture Like

The altar call: good or bad?

Christianity Today recently published an article by Russell Moore titled, Bring Back Altar Calls, with the following subtitle: “They could foster the worst in evangelical spirituality. But the best of it, too.” Because the article is behind a paywall, I cannot assess the author’s argument, but I will take the occasion to look at the altar call because it is something with which I grew up, at least in part. No, not at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation my parents started with another family in Wheaton, Illinois, when I was a small child. The OPC represents a rather pure form of Old School Presbyterianism, which took a dim view of New Measures revivalism in the 19th century. Worship in our congregation was based on the 1961 Trinity Hymnal, along with the use of traditional liturgical forms such as the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Gloria Patri, the confession of sin and assurance of pardon, and the weekly reading of the Ten Commandments. We sang metrical psalms from the 1912 Psalter of the former United Presbyterian Church in North America.

During spring and summer holidays, however, our family would visit my grandmother and other relatives in small-town southeast Michigan, where we would often remain for weeks at a time. On sundays we worshipped at an independent Baptist church where my mother had been converted to the faith in her late teens and where my parents were married several years later. Worship was something of a haphazard affair. There was no real order of worship laid out in a bulletin. The presiding minister would simply announce the hymns as we went along. These hymns were largely the revival hymns developed following the Second Great Awakening at the turn of the 19th century. The Bible was the King James Version, and everyone brought their own copy along. Many sermons focussed on the end times reflecting a dispensational interpretive framework.

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On October 14, 2022 By Joel Ellis In Culture 6

Discernment, Dominion, and the Devil’s Holiday

Photo by Łukasz Nieścioruk on Unsplash

Fall has arrived, and that means it is time for theological experts on Facegram and Instabook to lecture their Christian friends on the evils of Halloween. The evils warned against are not what you might imagine. Who thought it was a good idea to send young children to the doors of strangers to ask for gifts? “Don’t talk to strangers, kids, unless you are randomly knocking on doors in the neighborhood and asking them to give you things to eat!” But I digress. The dangers are neither gastronomic nor endocrinological. The dangers are, evidently, demonic. I have been reliably informed that Halloween is the Devil’s holiday, and Christians whose children dress up like superheroes or princesses and consume large amounts of candy are agents of Satan, participating in the glorification of evil.

The discussion around Halloween each year demonstrates how reactionary, undiscerning, and historically ignorant many Christians are. The Lord knew what he was doing when he characterized us as sheep. We are not praised for our wisdom or discernment in the Bible, and our behavior tends to justify the Lord’s illustration.

On one hand we have Christians who think any participation in Halloween is of the Devil, that even vocalizing the term is a hat tip to occultism. Concerns about the propriety of such customs easily (and frequently) become judgments against believers whose consciences are not as strict as one’s own. On the other hand there are Christians whose participation in worldly recreation and holidays is never distinctly Christian. At Halloween their costumes glorify, rather than mock and deride, the evil over which Christ has triumphed. Their celebrations take the form of carnal carousing more than Christian thanksgiving. Is it godly and proper for those who worship the risen Savior and delight in the Law of God to dress up like a hooker or serial killer simply because such costumes are socially acceptable on one night each year?

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On October 12, 2022 By Uri Brito In Culture 2