While people condemn the blasphemy laws in God’s law as being barbaric and severe, every society has blasphemy laws. These are the laws that tell you what you can and can’t say about certain people and subjects; “gods” you must worship or, at least, refrain from criticizing. These laws are not arbitrary. They tell you who defines the culture and what the culture is. They tell you who the gods of the culture are; that is, what or who is worshiped. Sometimes these laws are codified and enforced by authorities. At other times they are general cultural practices that are endorsed by the authorities’ unwillingness to stand against injustice. Pressure by activists is put on companies to conform to their morality. If they don’t conform, they will be canceled or attacked. Whether codified or passive among government officials, or a loud, powerful, cultural movement, blasphemy laws exist, and violators will be prosecuted.
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Rhythms and Rituals for Adoring the King
Guest Post by Grant Van Brimmer
We all develop daily routines and rhythms. We all have morning routines, whether well regimented or not, whether that is to always sleep in or to rise early. Again, whether well regimented or not, we also have nightly rhythms. Nevertheless, we are creatures of habit. As James K.A. Smith observed, we are inescapably shaped by the various liturgies we partake in. He goes on to say, “Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies. They prime us to approach the world in a certain way, to value certain things, to aim for certain goals, to pursue certain dreams, to work together on certain projects.”[1]
We develop routines, habits, and rhythms because we are liturgical worshipping creatures. The scriptures teach us that we were created to glorify God (Is 43:7), that daily routine matters (Deut 6) and that we become like what we worship (Ps 115).
Here’s where the rubber meets the road: since our daily lives are lived out of what we love and worship, our routines necessarily shape us. This should cause us to take stock of our routines and consider what might need to change.
Here is a question of appraisal: How often do you verbally proclaim Jesus is King, even if just to yourself?
In the incredibly helpful work Pro Rege: Living Under Christ’s Kingship: Volume 1, Abraham Kuyper contrasts the popular view of Christ within Christian circles with the view of Mohammad in Muslim circles.
Even if you haven’t experienced firsthand the deep adoration Muslims have for Allah and his Prophet Muhammad, most know that it is detestable to speak lightly of Muhammad in Muslim culture.
The discipline of this adoration is commendable. It is also a harsh indictment on evangelicals. Most evangelicals don’t feel any inner anguish when we hear pagans use the name of King Jesus as a swear word. Rather than Jesus’ name being highly revered because it is by which men may be saved (Acts 4:12), it is treated as common.
Kuyper notes that more than the mandatory five prayers a day, many devout Muslims even add a couple of voluntary prayers throughout the day. Kuyper says, “Altogether, this adds up to approximately 1,800 prayers per year, and for some Muslims over 2,500 prayers. In each of them, the commemoration of Muhammad occurs between four and five times. This means that every single worshiper commemorates the name of Muhammad more than ten thousand times per year.”[2] No wonder it is unthinkable to treat their prophet’s name lightly.
Kuyper admits that there is certainly a mechanical (meaningless) element to this practice. Christians must admit that the reason for the mechanical nature of the Muslim prayer life is due to the fact that they are not offering prayers to the true God or a true prophet of God. Christians must not ditch habit, routine, or personal liturgies, just because a pagan does it wrong.
In light of the desire to be conformed into the image of Christ, we develop habits, or daily liturgies, such as prayer and scripture reading to form us into the type of people we aim to be. May I suggest developing a habit of verbally proclaiming the Kingship of Jesus throughout your day? The goal would be to direct your heart towards a deeper adoration and reverence for our King.
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Paul Tripp, Wokism, and Tri-Perspectivalism
I wish to offer just a couple of initial thoughts on the psychology of conversion towards woke and social justice ideologies. The task seems rather complex, and I do not wish to offer the final word but a mere word on a somewhat layered conversation. This is a primer’s worth of articulation on the subject.
This post stemmed from some questions raised by some fine people in my recent post on Paul Tripp. Some sent me private questions, and some others opined on the note. The gist is that several people expressed how much they have appreciated Paul Tripp’s work in the past and cannot understand how he could make such dramatic shifts culturally. They are wondering what causes such magnificent theological and cultural changes. For the record, I restate my level of appreciation for Tripp and his labors on a variety of counseling themes.
Nevertheless, trajectories are a real thing, and some prophets can see these things more accurately and astutely than I do. My own assessment is that these trends stem from a set of priorities.
Over the years, many of us have been completely shocked by movements among Reformed people who hold to the Catechisms, Confessions, and Creeds, but yet have sold their ideologies to the biggest woke bidders. I have detailed many of these over the years, but I want to offer just a brief summary as to why this manifestation is so evident in our day.
It is first and foremost essential to note that these movements happen slowly for most and are fast-paced for a few. These theological movements generally occur when perspectives begin to change in little things. Big changes occur through a thousand microscopic ones.
The classic example of this is the Republican political leader who makes remarkable speeches on the dangers of leftist sexual ethics and how modern attempts at distorting traditional marriage are dangerous. That healthy dogma begins to lose stamina when his son comes out as a homosexual. Suddenly, the strong assertions rooted in Genesis 1-2 begin to lose their vigor and eventually–as we have seen many times–that politician succumbs to social pressures and changes his view of sexual ethics affirming that homosexuality is something brave and bold and that we ought to listen more attentively to those in that community.
I argue that these changes are perspectival. If we break them down to existential (experiences), situational (cultural-historical), and normative (the authority of the Bible) we can arrive at a more accurate interpretive model for how these stalwarts move incrementally towards woke and BLM rhetoric.
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Paul Tripp and Deconstruction
I have no regrets re-discussing the current brouhaha over deconstructionist thought because I view it as a threat to Christian society. So, once again, it seems that the Neo-Decons are treating themselves as revolutionaries, or better yet, Reformers. If you think of the Protestant Reformation, we had a man like Luther who saw the exegesis of Rome as deficient, to put it mildly. The German Reformer viewed Rome’s abandonment of the Bible as a big deal. He was right, in case you were wondering. But here comes the Decons viewing themselves as heroes and arguing that they are true Reformers like Luther and stuff.
Except, of course, they are not. Decons are tearing the Bible asunder to restore it from its ancient ways to provide sufferers and victims new hope. Because, after all, what hope can prophecies of judgment provide? What can overthrowing tables provide? What can divine justice provide? Well, for the Christian, everything! But judgment texts won’t suffice for those who believe the Church needs a new orientation–to find better and more suitable ways to deal with the suffering– and a total re-modeling of the faith. Since European white men ruined exegesis, we now need a new interpretive framework to consider the Bible afresh.
Let me take this opportunity to mention someone who has been causing me some concern over the years. It’s someone I met personally in my field of interest—counseling—but whose trajectory leads me to doubt his overall project, which is Paul Tripp. Tripp has done much good, and I’d recommend several things he’s written, but his recent urges towards the cultures of victimization and racial reconciliation led him to make the following statements:
“We should all be deconstructing our faith, we better do it. Because our faith becomes a culture, a culture so webbed into the purity of truth that it’s hard to separate the two. I celebrate the church of Jesus Christ…but I’m sad for the church.”
In another place, he notes:
“I’m sad we’ve become so loyal to [evangelical] culture, we’re afraid to deconstruct in places where it’s lost its way, it’s harmful, it’s producing things that allow the world to mock & cause young people to walk away.”
This is a prime example where the answer leads to greater damage than the question itself. Now, there is a lot to dissect and read in its raw form; one can find some nuggets of kindness and generosity. And I am certainly not in the “Burn the witch” camp. But one should be relatively cautious about Tripp’s attempts at rehearsing for the play while using the enemy’s playbook. Theologically, I would suspect that Tripp and Derrida hold nothing in common. But attempts to revise/deconstruct the faith is somewhat troubling to me. Even if the rationale is pure, hell is paved…etc. etc.
As Dustin Messer noted about ex-evangelicals, and what appears to be the future of Decons–in my understanding:
“What they’ve deconstructed is the faith, what they’ve kept is the ethos of the subculture that weaned them on emotional appeals, swallowing goldfish for entertainment, & an obsession with who’s “in” & who’s “out.”‘
There is additionally a layer of borrowed vocabulary that we must consider. I read counseling material too often and know that counseling vocabulary can be a language in itself. It’s possible that “deconstruction” can make sense in a separate context. But overall, the language of deconstruction attached to “our faith” is dangerous, even if the attempts are noble.
Vocabularies can be shared to make sense of things, but when we borrow Jemar Tisby’s lexicon to make sense out of the current cultural milieu, we borrow from the wrong source. In fact, you may notice that the farther one is from embodying cultural and political conservative values, the more prone he is to re-imagining the faith into something more privatized and particularized that keeps us away from the nasty Constantinians.
I genuinely hope that Tripp is not going in that direction. After all, our faith is a culture and produces particular cultures. It may not be what Tripp and others wish it to be, but you simply can’t split that baby.
Fun! A Little Fun, on 1 – 2 – 3 – 2 – 1
Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride
Ring them bells St. Peter
Bob Dylan, from “Ring Them Bells” / “Oh Mercy” / 1989
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
Oh, it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow
Look at your calendar – or better yet, look at mine… you might have moved on to another date.
Today’s date is a palindrome. A chiasm – a thing the Bible is full of because God designed scripture and history that way. What goes up – comes down. What is divided is reunited. This is a great mystery sometimes. But a beautiful one. Bad things come undone. The arrogant are abased, and the poor are lifted up.
Every valley shall be exalted. And every hill made low.
Supreme courts court the idea of supremely reversing themselves. The White Witch is destroyed and Father Christmas starts passing out presents again as the shortest days of the year struggle to reverse themselves into longer light.
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My Baptist Obstacles: Did Circumcision Come from a Works-Based Religion?
Continuity Over Replacement
The waterfall above shows water moving from one level of land to another, but the water is continuous – the same water. Some things are different about the Old and New Testaments, but salvation and grace are not part of those things. Salvation and Grace are a constant – a continuity. What does this have to do with baptism?
One thing that held me back from understanding baptism was my complete misunderstanding of the Old Testament – I misunderstood salvation, I misunderstood the reason for Jewish markers like the law and circumcision – I thought circumcision was part of a works based religion. So it was hard for me to hear any connections between baptism and circumcision. But I was wrong.
This week I will discuss the gracious, non-works based salvation of the Old Testament. Next week I will discuss the salvation of Gentiles in the Old Testament and the reason circumcision was only for Jews.
So let’s find out whether circumcision came from a works based religion. Without further ado, let’s back up to my late childhood:
One year when I was youngish, after my father pen-marked my height in the paint of a hall doorway, I remember having a child’s epiphany. I remember working over a specific deep though while I looked at the ink line on the jamb up close to my eyes. It wasn’t about ink or height; it was about Christians being the true Jews. I ran to tell my parents: Jesus was a Jew. God had “started” Christianity from the truest teacher of the Jews – Jesus. That meant that our religion, Christianity was the faithful continuation of God’s true religion. We had the true Judaism, and it was they who had rejected Jesus who had left.
I admit that I was under-informed at that age about the complexities of the situation.
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The Walk: A Thanksgiving Movie Review
Philippe Petit walked across a wire strung between the Twin Towers in 1974. That is 1,312 feet in the air. He walked across it 8 times for a total of 45 minutes.
In the movie about it, The Walk, at the climax, Philippe is walking across the wire for the second time and he says, “And then I feel something that maybe I have never truly felt before. I feel thankful. So I get down on one knee and I salute. First, I salute the wire, then the towers, and then I salute the great city of New York.”
At the highest point in the movie, he offers thanks. The movie is about thanksgiving.
However, Philippe fails at this one point. He fails to offer thanks to what is still higher than him. He fails to acknowledge God.
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My Baptist Obstacles: The Great Commission Says “Baptize Disciples”
One of the last things I did in my effort not to jump my theological ship rashly was to call on my theologically minded pastor to come convince me I was headed in the wrong direction. I asked if there was a book I could read to persuade me back to the baptist position. I bring this up because the book he gave me used today’s exact argument amongst several others. It argued: Jesus says to “make disciples, and baptize them” so therefore – we cannot baptize babies because they cannot be disciples.
Today I would treat the answer completely differently than I did as a college student. Today I would say – So what? Converted disciples have baby disciples. I believe the point is made easily this way:
- God was automatically the God of children born to believers: I will be God to you and to your descendants after you, (Gen 17); the promise is for you and your children (Acts 2).
- This covenant was possible in tangible reality, not just in wishful thinking, because God normatively extends the gift of faith to the infants of the church: You made me trust you at my mother’s breasts…and from my mother’s womb you have been my God, (Ps 22).
- The nascent faith of babies grows into the intellectual faith of toddlers: This is why we are commanded to teach diligently to our children that “Yhwh is OUR God…” and that “You shall love Yhwh YOUR God with all your heart…” (Dt 6).
It said to teach them what is already true about them. Not teach them until they convert. But teach them that God has been their God, and let them sing it out – first as joyful noise in church (Ps 8), and later as a confession about God’s sovereign gift to a baby (Ps 71 and 22).
I had throughout my young Christian years remarked that there was no conversion into God’s religion for children born into the covenant in the Old Testament:
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Building Liturgical Muscles
My primary concern is whether our worship is preparing for a muscular Christendom. My argument is that saying “no” to government overreach requires heavy lifting, and not many people are willing to do that. They’d be comfortable doing whatever uncomfortable yoga poses the guba’ment demands. “Warrior poses on left foot,” please!” “Absolutely, as long as my right foot can remain where it is. This little series of contorted positions eventually leads to directions the body is not meant to go.
Little by little the ability to say, “no” is fleshed out of you one arduous pose at a time. So, if you want to say “no” as a way of life to the many and boost-erous amount of demands from the state, then you need to lift up holy hands and kneel and sing out. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit precisely because it is a training ground for the weightiness of God to abide in you. Therefore, you must say “no” with consistency.
You can’t collapse under the weight of statist imperatives, but you will if all you do is participate in the spontaneity of evangelical masses with floppy hands in the air one chorus at a time. When Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” I think he meant every part of that phrase in English and Greek. Work this whole liturgical thing first so that your muscles are ready for war when war cometh. Weak worship produces unsteady hands (Ps. 144:1).
If men think they can opine on social media against these efforts without the efforts of worship, it is in vain. They must respond to the rhetoric of the left with the worship of heaven. They need to take the weekly task as preparation for the Sunday duty. When this becomes common parlance in the home, then saying “no” to bureaucrats is as easy as spreading gee butter on freshly-baked sourdough bread.
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I mentioned in my sermon yesterday that Christians too often live in the glory of the past and therefore wish to repeat slogans of the past as a mode of operation. This can be a clear case of nostalgia or a clear case of laziness. Unlike whatever those Q-Anon imbeciles believe, Reagan is not coming back from the grave, and neither is J.F.K.’s brother.
It is much easier to repeat slogans than to refresh slogans to apply to our current societal decay. The latter takes hard work and muscle-building rituals, whereas the first requires only a handy textbook and memorization techniques.
Christians need to move forward and seek the glory of God in our regular exercise of killing sin lest sin kills us. It begins now by shutting off those stupid apps that consume our day; by giving your son a hug; by encouraging our wives in their domestic labors; by opening the Bible and our homes to others; by doing the hard work of worship when the world around us thinks it’s non-sensical.
You want to build your liturgical muscles, then fight it out in the private square and then watch the public square bow before Christendom like Caesar did to Messiah Jesus and how Biden will one day to the Ascended Lord of glory.
My Baptist Obstacles: Immersion
Welcome back, my friends! When we last talked, we had outlined a list of arguments I personally used to use against infant baptism [LINK TO PREVIOUS]. As I had begun to question the possibility that infant baptism was correct, I had to address these exact items. These are not straw men. These are the kind of arguments that intelligent and godly men do employ. I am writing about them because I changed my mind about them after vigorously using them for a long time.
So I am not insulting you if you have said the same; I am not mocking you if you don’t agree with me. What I will say for my infant baptism view is that the doctrines of including children in the covenant have brought me endless joy since I came to see each one of these doctrines as true, convinced by scripture. This is why I hope to share such joy with others.
So today’s goal is to address the concept of baptism as full immersion:
My first memory of being taught an argument against infant baptism was an argument against sprinkling and pouring. It went like this: The Greek term for baptism, the word we get “baptism” from, is baptizo. Baptizo means “total immersion under water” and therefore sprinkling and pouring are NOT baptism because they are not full immersion. Furthermore, we are said to be buried with Christ in baptism, and only immersion pictures this – not sprinkling, and not pouring. Since baptism is by immersion only, infant baptism is false. That is the argument.
This counter-argument is fairly simple, and thankfully is unsophisticated:
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