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On July 26, 2021 By In Culture

Friendship in an Overly Sexualized Aged

Why are we so lonely? One can begin to articulate indefinitely. But I believe that one of the major reasons is that we have over-sexualized everything. We have allowed the intrinsically failed sexual order of the modern culture to dictate how Christians should act towards one another.

Let’s say two married men while smoking a cigar add a passing but lucid commentary on the beauty of Aubrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The more pious among the Christianese universe will condemn such acts as a betrayal of our fidelity to our wives. That is sheer silliness and false piety. There is a difference between lusting and affirming beauty. A father should affirm the beauty of his daughter because beauty is an objective reality. God is a God of beauty. As someone once told me, your daughter should have heard of her beauty before the first man comes and affirms it. So too, by extension, a man’s wife should hear often from her husband that her beauty exceeds that of Aubrey Hepburn. Men should thrive in praising their wives ‘ beauty and glory.

But in our day, a simple joke can turn into an obscene narrative. Two men hugging one another can send out mixed messages. Why? Because long ago (enter whatever year you like), we decided to accept the premise that intimacy and tenderness are erotic categories reserved for the married or the immoral. We are poorer because we allowed this to become the prevailing ethos of our culture.

I remember well growing up in South America and seeing female friends walking around holding hands, sisters and brothers held hands in public also; men greeted women with a kiss, and men gave one another big monstrous hugs as a public sign of affection. I did not think twice about their masculinity or femininity. It was natural. Even now, when I return to my home country, it takes me a day or two to adjust because I, too, have accepted the strange assertion that intimacy and tenderness belong only in particular categories. And I am of the hugging-party, so imagine someone who is not.

The side-effects of an oversexualized society that is more alone than ever are that it is the most connected society that has ever existed, and yet we are the most drugged, loneliest, and the most comfortable with being drugged and lonely. If you read letters only 100 years ago between friends–let’s say Bonhoeffer’s exchanges with Eberhard– you very quickly get a sense that we don’t live in those times anymore. We are far removed from the words of affection of those two men because we do not treasure intimacy. In fact, we fear it. It is a rare thing for a man to say to another man, “I love you.” Social distancing only confirms our love for the self. In this season, we have decided that relational poverty is our mode of operation. There is much to say, but I leave only with the earnest desire that you will pursue friendship; that you will seek out the other without the fears that so often accompany our erotic-driven world. Love abundantly by not taking people for granted and by not despising their presence.

C.S. Lewis once said that if we could recognize who we were, we would realize that we were walking with possible gods and goddesses, whom if we could see them in all their eternal dignity and glory, we would be tempted to fall and worship.

If anything, let the call of charity and care drive your view of others by accepting beauty and grace where it is found. Let the world misunderstand us. In some ways, our call as Christians is to be misunderstood by the world because they reject our communion with the friend of sinners who is the most beautiful of all.

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On July 23, 2021 By In Culture

Can my Teenager Decide Where we go to Church?

Dear friend,

I am behind on a host of letters, but this one caught my attention since it’s an issue pastors deal with and that little has been said about this topic. You know who you are, so if I don’t capture the essence of your question, please feel free to correct me privately.

As I understand it, your question can be easily summarized as, “Should I ever listen to my young son/daughter about where to go to church?” In sum, your teenage child wants to go to another church because it offers certain benefits for him.

Let me tackle this in two ways:

First, assuming your child is in his early teens, it’s important to know carefully what his/her intentions are; why are these “benefits” so significant for him? For instance, if your child had someone mistreat, harm, abuse him in any way, I urge you to listen carefully to his concerns. There may be deeper issues involved where other people need to be involved. Perhaps the issue is not so much the church, but concern for his well-being. Therefore, I wouldn’t outright refuse to listen to the desire to attend another church. I would ask questions regarding motivation and dig as deep as possible, especially if the child expressed a normal attitude towards the congregation just some weeks prior. If you are part of a large church with lots of programs, I’d accompany your child to these programs to have a better understanding of his situation. Better yet, I would re-consider the overly programmatic church. But that’s a question for another letter.

Second, we trust our children on lots of things, especially if our hearts have been given to them often in their upbringing. But we do not trust children to make ecclesiastical decisions for us. Parents lead the home. Dad and mom decide things pertaining to theology and doctrine and practice and potlucks.

I will be honest: I have yet to see parents pleased when they allow their children to make ecclesiastical decisions for them. Don’t give them that responsibility. If they have 30 friends in the church next door and only two in your current church, then you need to re-orient his view of friendship to those two. Friendships, at that age, are utterly unstable. It may be that the hard thing is the better thing for your family. It may be that you stay in a more faithful church where your children are not quite fitting in, instead of going to some “happening-hip” congregation where your children fit in quite nicely.

Young teenagers don’t need to fit in at this stage, they need to stay in, so they can mature in, and grow into something greater than themselves. Do not allow young teenagers to determine from whence Christian nurture comes.

Sincerely,
Pastor Brito 

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On July 21, 2021 By In Culture

Why I am Happily Postmil

Somewhere in the year 2000, I came into contact with a dangerous cargo filled with contrarian literature. I ate it all so quickly that the only questions I had afterward were some variation of “What’s for dinner?” and “May I have more, please?” I still keep eating contrarian literature, and I really hope that the end result is not that I become a curmudgeon, but that I find creative ways to inculcate those blessings into my community.

So, while we are at it, let me undo speculations among some two-kingdom scholars. They consistently claim that while Jesus has authority over all things, his authority does not provide or is intended to provide a tangible change in the cultural milieu. I, as a lovable contrarian, assert the exact opposite: that the kingdom of Jesus is comprehensive, and whatever it touches, it changes.

The kingdom is not limited to one sphere, nor are things heavenly to be severely differentiated from things earthly. And again, not to repeat the obvious, but the earthly city is not Babylon, nor do we live in this perpetual sense of exile and pilgrimage simply existing seeking a city that shall come. We affirm that the people of God are headed somewhere to take something and claim Someone as Lord over the nations (Rom. 4:13) and that the city has come. Our agenda is to get people to see the ads and RSVP ASAP.

While the Reformers affirm the distinct polities of each sphere and even state without equivocation that there are distinct ends for governmental and ecclesiastical spheres, these ends do not end in wildly strange territories. They serve the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ who has all authority and power in heaven and on earth. Jesus’ earthly authority does not void his heavenly power. They find harmony as one expressive manifestation of Lordship.

So too, you need to notice that when two-kingdom advocates say, “Don’t cause any trouble, let the local officials do their job, because…ya know, Romans 13 and I Peter 4, etc.,” what they are truly implying is that history is static and unmovable. The same texts that state government officials are deacons for righteousness also state that they are under one Ruler who is progressively moving history towards a goal.

Jesus’ overturning the tables was not some act of overt rebellion, it was an act of subversive faithfulness. When the temple does not do what it ought–worship rightly–Jesus has the right to shake things up, and when unfaithfulness endures, he has the right to send armies to tear the whole place down (Lk. 21:24). When Jesus sees a government functioning like a whore, he has the right to tell his people to surround it and sing for seven days and seven nights.

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On July 14, 2021 By In Counseling/Piety, Culture

The Uncomfortable Gospel of Elimelech

In God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis’ wrote that he didn’t come to Christianity for its comfort. Instead, he said that a bottle of Port could give him all the happiness and comfort he needed.

I have been thinking of this sentiment in our modern environment. We have lost the sense that the Christian faith is not a religion of comfort and ease but warfare is inherent to our religious convictions. We fight for things because they are needful and because they are worthy of being rescued. When the people of God leave the presence of God in exchange for comfort, they inherit all sorts of bad jujus. In the Bible, it is always a bad thing to leave the good thing.

When Elimelech left Bethlehem in the Book of Ruth,a he left not just a piece of land. He wasn’t attempting to find a better marketplace in Moab. Moab was a place of deep darkness and idolatry. This wasn’t merely an attempt to take the UHAUL down to a better place; instead, Elimelech left God’s presence and God’s people because things were hard. And when things get hard, evangelical Christians decide either a) let’s leave town, or b) let’s find a gentler God.

Now, I am not calling Elimelech a silly man. His very name means “God is King.” He failed to live up to his status as one who serves Israel’s true King. Surely, Naomi was not a foolish wife, either. But sometimes, our human natures choose the easier thing, especially as we look around the world and see so much pain and suffering. It wasn’t that Elimelech said, “Wow, we are being disobedient; how can we fight this problem in Bethlehem?!” The problem was that Elimelech said, “We are being disobedient; how can we run from this?” Like Jonah, he discovered there was no place he could go where his sins wouldn’t follow.

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  1. Some have objected that Elimelech’s departure was not sinful since it mirrors the departure of others in the Bible. A more potent objection goes like this: “Abraham left the land of promise during the time of famine and Jacob did so as well. Why can’t we say Elimelech is just copying the actions of the patriarchs? Isn’t Elimelech just recapitulating the actions of Abraham and Jacob? There seems to be no divine disapproval of the actions of Abraham and Jacob.” But this argument fails to deal with key differences between the situation of the patriarchs and the situation of Elimelech. While the land was promised to Abraham, the land had not yet been conquered when Abraham and Jacob left because of famine. Abraham does not dwell in the land as a permanent resident. He knew he was just a sojourner. And it is the same with Jacob. Both men knew it would be centuries and generations before their descendants came into full possession of the land. The sins of the Canaanites had to fill up to the full measure, and then they would be driven out of the land. Their land would belong to Israel for as long as she was faithful. But that has not yet happened in the time of Abraham and Jacob. They left before the conquest of the land and before God has set his name there. So, for the patriarchs to leave the land does not carry the same significance as when Elimelech leaves the land. But there is something else to note with regard to Abraham. In Genesis 12-13, it is true that Abraham leaves the land because of famine. But he is not blessed until he begins to turn back to the land. Then he leaves Egypt with spoil. It is as if Abraham’s departure from the land was a kind of exile. But when he turns back towards the land, it is an exodus complete with plunder from the Egyptians.  (back)

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On July 12, 2021 By In Culture

Not Weirdness, but Mereness

It’s Monday, so here it goes. Out of my four topics this week, one that I have been wanting to address for some time is the “weird Christianity” impulse of our day. In preparation for this topic, I read a couple of essays, neither of which made the point I am trying to make, so the most likely conclusion is that the writers’ fathers smelt of elderberries, and I want nothing of it.

The first pre-requisite to understanding this discussion is to keep in mind that the American youth, by and large, are fairly fed up with the modern Christian faith as is. Now, this stems from various angles. Among them is that their parents smoked a lot of weed in their day so that whatever faith they desired to pass on to their children was a tainted mustard seed and whatever that seed produced was enough for their children to reject it later on.

Another perspective is that such young adults felt the burn and went the way of all flesh, accepting Bernie into their hearts. They are probably vegetarians now and look down on people like me because of my muscular consumption of high fats. Theologically, I fart in their general direction. And if my Monthy Python quotations make you uncomfortable, you are probably a vegetarian as well and I sit in judgment of you.

Given that this is the general state of our young adults, what then are they doing? Some of them are rejecting the faith by attending your local display of effeminism. They are likely attending a local church whose pastor has a co-pastor who wears a dress. In most cases, it’s his wife. Yikes! To quote “The Life of Bryan,” “Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for a system of government!”But a whole other group has embraced a somewhat orthodox weird Christianity. This is the group I’d like to address because some of them fall in my camp, or at the very least hover around my camp.

The impulse to be weird is a natural one. Christians do breathe different air. Our ethics are quite strange from the world (Gal. 5:22-23) and our singing tends to bring fire on things indifferent. So, I am not opposed to looking different. In fact, a quick glimpse at what happens in my neck of the woods on Sunday morning will give the modern evangelical lots of topics in the drive home and the next 27 days. What I am seeking to oppose with gracious eyes is the kind of weirdness for weirdness’ sake. Much of our impulse in reaction to what we see as the onslaught of the left is to do things as wildly different than the thing the most conservative Christian is doing. Therefore, we scramble our eggs while singing verses one and nine of the Lorica, we read from one holy translation of the Bible, we put on our legal gloves in judgment of the local family who educates with curriculum A instead of option Z, and we live as if only our idealized agenda fits John’s description of the descending city in Revelation.

What I am arguing for is “Mere Christendom,” not weird Christendom. Christians, in fact, should be the most normal of all people. We should do our jobs each day with a minimal amount of complaining, we should feed our kids each day with a minimal amount of temperamentalism, we should respect our bosses, even when they are pagan imbeciles, we should watch our soccer games without getting drunk, we should go to church with one of three kids wearing something that is not utterly wrinkled, and we should laugh through it all at the end of the day giving thanks to God.

Mere Christendom is not looking for the latest trend to divorce ourselves from culture, but we should be looking for the most biblical way to make a dent in culture with a Christ-centered imprint. One writer put it succinctly when he said that we don’t need to be more weird than Christian.

The faith itself offers plenty of natural ways to be discerning and different. What we don’t need to do is add a shekel or ten to that amount of weirdness. In fact, weirdness never conquered nations. Just look at the Anabaptists of the 16th century. In fact, some of them were anti-trinitarians to the core, and I argue it stemmed from their separationism, which inculcated in them a spirit of ingenuity when it came to theology, and theology does not need ingenuity–hello Arius!”–it needs healthy and normal carriers.~~~~Many, many years ago, a visitor to our congregation came to me asking what I thought about nudist beaches. The fella had a fairly developed biblical view of the topic, arguing from Genesis that the ideal state of man is to be naked and to return to that glorious Edenic state where men walked around naked and were not ashamed. And therefore, attending a nudist beach now and then was not that bad.

Now, remember this was many years ago and our church was small enough that I had some time to give this thing a thought. I did end up responding to his insanity in a five-page paper, which did convince him. If that had happened today, I would have found the two largest guys in our church and escorted him out of the building. Not everything requires an explanation, some things simply require condemnation.

But the fact that he was convinced by my arguments against nudist beaches didn’t mean he stopped seeking after weirdness. It was just one of his many attempts to separate himself from the present culture, but also the present Christian culture, no, the present reformed culture…sorry, the present reformed, sub-culture.

Friends, what the church needs today is not weirdness, but mereness. Mere creeds, mere lives, mere wine, mere merriment, and mere Christendom. And in this, there is much liberty and various ways of growth in the kingdom.

So, three cheers for basic Christian living!

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On July 7, 2021 By In Culture

The Necessity of Messy Homes

We have had an abundance of children and adults in our house between Saturday and Monday. We probably fed over 40 people combined. Eggs, toast, butter, coffee, whiskey, beer, soups, and none of those things in that exact order. The whole thing was a glorious mess; the kind of mess that makes the kingdom of God glorious. Almost all of them were saints from our congregation who took time out of their holiday weekend to help our family do some heavy lifting, and others were just dear friends who are familiar enough with our tribe to come through our home as they please and others were sweet family members visiting. We loved the entire process, and the process creates a sense of normalcy that is utterly uncomfortable in our culture.

The discomfort stems from a sense of neatness that is unrealistic and also prohibits the world of hospitality that many evangelicals wish they had more of, but does not believe is sustainable if they have a steady number of guests in their home. The reality, however, is that Marie Kondo was made for dinner parties of three (mom, dad, and Tommy), and while practical at some level, it can become easily unhealthy at other levels. 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 be always 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. A home without guests doth not spark joy in the kingdom.

I am not suggesting we forsake those habits of cleanliness, but I do suggest we loosen our commitment to certain habits as pre-requisites for hospitality. 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? *And as a sweet little footnote, if dads are not invested in the cleaning, let their steaks burn a thousand deaths.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 in 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.

I was having a conversation with three dads last night in the kitchen of a dear friend while 15 kids ran 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 made the passing comment that parents have conversations in fragments in such settings. That should be absolutely normal and expected.

The entire stage and adaptation to such scenarios set the stage for even greater hospitality in the future. You can tell that the families that thrive in the hospitality department didn’t simply start to host when their kids turned 12, but that they have learned the art of hospitality when their kids were 12 days old. They did it and they still do it, and their children will continue to do it. In fact, the glorious thing about the messiness of houses and toy rooms and unfinished house projects is that it reflects the ongoing growth of the kingdom of God filled with messy humans, broken rooms, and unfinished discipleship programs for civilization. But we can’t wait until the eschaton comes in order to begin practicing kingdom habits; we practice them as the very means for kingdom growth.

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On July 1, 2021 By In Culture, Discipleship, Wisdom

Friend or Folly

Friendship is vital to our humanity. We desire friendship because we are created in the image of the Triune God who is eternally in friendship as Father, Son, and Spirt, and, like him, our mission can only be completed in a community of friendships. The mission God gave us in the beginning cannot be completed by an individual. We need friendships; from the friendship of marriage (cf. Song 5.16) to same-sex friendships to broader societal connections, we need friendships at various levels to complete what God has given us to do. It is not good for man to be alone. Friendships, therefore, are not an optional accoutrement to our humanity.

The drive to have friends is innate in everyone. We want connections, people with whom we can share life. We are broadly connected to all humans so that every person we meet is a friend. The command to “love your neighbor as yourself” in Leviticus 19.18 can rightly be translated, “love your friend as yourself.” There is a sense in which everyone is a friend with whom we are connected and to whom we owe our love. The Bible not only speaks of friends in this broad sense but also speaks of friendships of various degrees of intimacy. Friends of the king (for example, Job or Jesus in John 15) are his trusted advisors. A husband is the wife’s friend (Song 5.16). There are friends and there are friends.

While we owe a friendly duty to all those with whom we come in contact, we don’t share the same intimacy with all. Indeed, we must take care with whom we become close friends because of the way deep friendships shape us. Friendships involve an “entangling of souls.” The soul is our whole person animated before God and the world. Our lives get wrapped up with someone so that our emotions, will, mind, and heart are connected with the other. Jonathan’s soul was knit to David’s so that he loved him as his own soul (1Sm 18.1). That is a close friendship. In these types of friendships as we “share souls” with one another, we take on the characteristics of the other so that our mannerisms, speech patterns, desires, and the direction of our lives blend with the other person.

The entangling of souls can be good for us or bad for us. Paul proverbially tells the Corinthians, “Bad company corrupts good morals” (1Cor 15.33), recognizing this general principle. This is why Solomon and his wife direct their son to be careful about friendships from the start of his instruction (Pr 1.8-19). His son is to avoid the gang of young men who are unhinged from God’s wisdom. He is not to walk in the way with the wicked; he is to “avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on” (Pr 4.14-15). He is to recognize Harlot Folly by the way she speaks and dresses and avoid her as well (Pr 7). Wisdom is to be called his “sister” and insight his close friend (Pr 7.4). He is to seek out Lady Wisdom for his intimate companion. He is to walk with wise men (Pr 13.20).

Some Christians out of misguided love and distortion of mercy might believe that the avoidance of entangling ourselves with the unwise, the rebellious, is selfish. However, Proverbs is quite clear in its directives, and its wisdom is embodied in Jesus himself. Jesus walked the way of wisdom and called others to join him. If they were willing to follow him, to join him in the way of wisdom, he was willing to be patient with them and help them along the way. However, he was willing to cut off relationships with those who did not want to walk or continue to walk with him. The rich young man who appeared to be a hot prospect for the kingdom turned away from Jesus’ call to walk in the way. Jesus didn’t run after him. At one time, after Jesus spoke about being the bread that came down from heaven, many quit following him. He turned to the Twelve and asked them if they would leave him as well. He was not deviating. He was willing to let them go if they didn’t want to continue in the way of wisdom.

As you choose friends, take care. They need to be on the same path of maturing in wisdom. You cannot save the undisciplined, slothful, angry, drunk and glutton, so don’t mix with them (Pr 22.24-25; 23.19-21). The sin magnet that is in you will be drawn toward the atrophy and disorder that characterizes them, and then you will be able to help no one. You will need someone to help you. Find friends who are walking in the way of wisdom and join them, encouraging one another, and so be saved from destruction and be productive in our common mission.

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On June 22, 2021 By In Culture

Are the Chronicles redundant?

During my daily prayer regimen, I read through the New Testament at morning prayer and the Old Testament in the evening, one chapter at a time. At evening prayer I am now making my way through the two books of Chronicles, which many believe form a unit with Ezra and Nehemiah, composed after the return from Babylonian exile, possibly by Ezra himself.

When I’ve read Chronicles in the past, I’ve sometimes thought that they are redundant, simply repeating what the books of Samuel and Kings had already recounted. In the larger biblical narrative, it feels as though the story, which thus far has been smoothly told from Genesis to the exile, is suddenly interrupted by an apparently unnecessary flashback, taking us all the way back to, well, Adam, the first human being. Then we are treated to a long series of proper names, some of whom are familiar but most of whom are not, leaving us wondering what relevance they could possibly have to the larger story of salvation. What harm would have been done by leaving them out and simply skipping from 2 Kings to Ezra?

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On June 21, 2021 By In Culture, Family and Children

Marriage Wars

The following was delivered at the wedding of Michael Jones and Kaitlyn Jack.

What we are witnessing here today is becoming more and more counter-cultural in Western Civilization. The foundations of Western Civilization have been cracking and crumbling for some time now. As men’s abdication of their responsibilities became increasingly evident in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, precipitating the rise of Feminism, the seeds were sown for the destruction of marriage and, with it, a stable civilization.

First, women wanted to be equal with men, and they believed that the greatest codification of that would be the right to vote, which is now enshrined in the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. But the seeds of discontent with biblical structures continued to grow. In the second wave of Feminism, women declared their independence from men. Gloria Steinem proudly declared that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

Men stood by and watched while the serpent continued to convince the woman that God’s structures were oppressive. Consequently, the seeds continued to grow, and in the third wave of Feminism women essentially declared, “We are men.” There are no differences between biological men and women. Our outward displays may be different in some respects, but we are the same. This led to where we are today with the declaration that there is no such thing as men and women; gender is fluid; it’s all in what you feel.

All along the way, men watched and gave tacit approval. Why not? Feminism fed men’s slothfulness.

With the rise of Feminism came the sexual revolution, and with it the availability of sexual relationships without the commitment. Whereas the prevailing culture of chastity and honor encouraged men to take up the responsibilities of a husband, now they could have all of the sexual benefits without the responsibilities. Besides that, with seventy percent of divorces being initiated by women who then leave the man penniless and kept from his children, many men are seeing marriage as a bad business deal.

Women are frustrated because they were told that they could have a career, marry late, and still have all they want. They are discovering that they were lied to.

Marriage has been damaged deeply in our culture. From the hook-up culture to high divorce rates to homosexuals demanding to be recognized as married, God’s institution of marriage, which is fundamental to the stability of any society, is mocked.

But here, today, Michael and Kaitlyn stand before God and witnesses to receive God’s gift of marriage. This gift is given to you, Michael and Kaitlyn, to enjoy. Because you are receiving God’s gift in the way that he prescribes it, there is a reward that comes with it. There is the freedom to enjoy one another without guilt; to know and be known by one another in a way that those who do not obey God will never experience. Enjoy God’s gift to you.

God’s gifts always come with responsibilities. You are stewards of his gift. You enjoy marriage, but marriage does not belong to you. God created marriage for a larger purpose than the personal enjoyment of the individual man and woman. Marriage is a mission. More particularly, it is a military mission.

As I alluded to earlier, we are in a war, not just over the definition of marriage, but the purpose of marriage in the world to help establish the kingdom of God in the world. God instituted marriage as one of the tools or weapons to complete the mission of bringing the world under the lordship of his Son; to see the world patterned after his heavenly abode. The structure of marriage with the man as the head, the woman in submission, and children obeying their parents is not arbitrary and merely a practical way to function. These structures reflect the deep structures with the relationship of God himself that is the pattern for all of life.

Marrying this day before God and witnesses, you are committing yourself to be warriors in this fight. You will do so, not with guns a-blazing, but by simply living out God’s structure and purpose for marriage.

Michael, as you take the lead, determining the mission of the home, part of which is cultivating Kaitlyn’s beauty as a woman, you will be taking up the responsibilities that many men in Western Civilization have neglected. Kaitlyn, as you submit to the loving headship of Michael, helping him in his God-given mission, you will be taking up the responsibilities that many women in Western Civilization have scorned. As the Lord wills and you have and rear godly children, you will be providing even more weapons for the fight. In doing all of these things, you will be faithful to the purpose for which God gave marriage.

Be bold! Be brave! Take up your responsibilities with courage and fight the good fight.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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On June 17, 2021 By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

Revealed Wisdom

The words of Agur son of Jakeh. The oracle.

 The man declares, I am weary, O God; I am weary, O God, but I can prevail. Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth?  What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know! Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. ~Proverbs 30.1-6

The search for wisdom is difficult even when you are doing it right. But when a man searches for wisdom divorced from God’s revelation, it is frustrating, futile, and fruitless. This revelation-less search for wisdom is what Agur describes in the first few verses at the beginning of Proverbs 30. The man is weary in his search. He doesn’t know what it means to be a man in this world. He doesn’t understand the meaning and purpose of it all and how to put his own life in relationship with everything else because he has no knowledge of the Holy One. Divorced from God’s revelation he cannot answer the questions, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?”

This man has searched for wisdom using human reason divorced from divine revelation. This is not an uncommon human experience. This is how man fell in the beginning and how he continues to try to put his life and the world together ever since.

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