Authority’s Secrets
“The heavens for height and the earth for depth, so the heart of kings is unsearchable.”
~Proverbs 25.3
Recently government classified documents are showing up frequently and in some odd places. Classified documents are those secrets to which only certain high-level government officials are privy. The intention of classifying documents is to protect people from the knowledge that they don’t need to have. The government may be protecting those who are working undercover or information that they have on other countries that concern our national security. Sometimes classified documents are a coverup for people who would be punished for crimes if the right people discovered what went on. Nevertheless, the government keeps secrets, and they don’t want those secrets to get out by someone wandering through a former vice president’s garage, his son’s laptop, or even wandering through a former president’s house.
Whatever you believe about the classification of documents and the secrets that they hold, the principle of authorities keeping secrets is a sound one. That is, the Bible teaches that there are some things that authorities will know that others don’t. This is not a gnostic-type special revelation given only to the upper-echelon Illuminati. This is a perspective that subordinates may not have along with information that may hurt them or other people.
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Political Pluralism is a Sham!
When I come back from these speaking engagements, I generally return with a sense of cheer, and this time is no different. My trip to Monroe, LA, was festive as always, and if you read my latest substack, published somewhere between 4:30-5:30 this morning, you already know. For everyone else, please take a look at the link in the comment section.
My talk was on ecclesial conservatism, the kind of thing you can expect me to say occasionally, frequently, well, practically always. But one of my points focused on this supposed cry for political pluralism within local churches. The argument states that congregations should be receptive to political diversity because churches ought to provide spiritual grounding but offer freedom on political decisions. Churches are okay with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents roaming their corridors and pews. if Machen had warrior children, so does Keller. And they look ripe for victim ideology. Sometimes they will even praise “drag-queen-story-hour” as a defense of freedom.
On the other hand, the right hand, that is, I offered an ecclesial vision that conserves creational norms on sexuality, morality, and labor. If we exercise our liturgical muscles in the rhythm of church life under the authority of the Bible, then we will produce conservative, political congregations. I am not saying we should always vote Republican, but I am saying we should always vote, not Democrat. I hope the negation had its effect on that last line.
Megan Basham summarizes a standard daily occurrence in D.C. to make my point:
“So many prominent Christian figures continue to pretend that the two political parties are roughly morally equal, & the way of Jesus is to strike a balance between them. We should stand against the GOP when it stands against Scripture, but this shows why 3rd wayism doesn’t wash.”
And what political event stirs so much precision in Megan’s thoughts? The House passed a bill requiring doctors to provide medical care after an abortion procedure. If a baby survives the massacre of abortion, some humans voted for medical care for those survivors, and others voted against it. Every Republican voted “yes,” while 99% of Democrats voted “no.”
This level of cognitive dissonance is expected, and any attempt to revive Kennedy’s party from its 1960 grave is futile. We can spend our days desiring and working for a better GOP, and they deserve the shared mockery when they abandon the good life. But we spank them like disobedient children, who are still children in the end. Then, we cover them with protection and encouragement.
Churches can disciple Democrat adherents, and they should be welcomed at our tables as those who need Jesus as much as we do, but what they cannot be is treated as ordinary in regular, Bible-believing churches. Healthy congregations conserve the truth and are regularly appalled at barbarism.
Tyranny
“Tyranny” is thrown around in our culture much like the word “abuse.” Every time you make me feel uncomfortable, it is “abuse.” Every exercise of authority is “tyranny.” Because words are misused doesn’t mean that genuine abuses and tyrants don’t exist. They do. But we need to know where God draws these lines.
Solomon’s concern in Proverbs is to train his son to be a wise king and, therefore, to exercise authority properly, whether that authority is over his own appetites or the entirety of Israel. Authority is a right and responsibility granted by God to govern. Wherever God grants authority, that authority is real. When that authority is exercised in harmony with God’s authority, it must be obeyed. To disobey legitimate authority is to disobey God himself.
(more…)The Lavish Grace of Christmas with Pastor Steve Wilkins
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:16 — 7.0MB)
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The Lavish Grace of Christmas! Pastor and Author J. Steven Wilkins discusses the misguided thinking that Christians should not give lavish gifts at Christmas. Our talk centers around a recent movement called the Advent Conspiracy. Pastor Wilkins reminds us of what Christ has done for us at Christmas and how we are to respond in kind. a
- Recorded a few years ago (back)
Christmas Carols: Hannah’s Song
You might think that a previously barren woman who was giving up her three-year-old son to the service of the Tabernacle, only to see him once a year from this time forward, would be mourning her loss and maybe even trying to renege on her vow. But that is not what we see with Hannah. Her heart, bursting with joy, sings a song that picks up melodies from the past and will echo one thousand years into the future as it is taken up by Mary, the mother of our Lord. Hannah is in the Spirit of Christmas a millennium before the birth of Christ Jesus.
Hannah’s exuberance is not grounded in what we find in many popular or even Christian Christmas songs. Her joy is not in the sentiment of memories of family, friends, and romantic interests of the past or present. She is not gushing over being with family at this special time of year. Indeed, she is leaving her son, the son that was the answer to her prayer, because this is her part in God’s grand mission. She is exulting in the true Spirit of Christmas: the fact that God is exalting his faithful people through the crushing of our enemies. The world is upside down because it is being ruled by the serpent and his seed is being set right through the fruit of the resurrected womb of a woman. There is no hint of calling a “Christmas truce” with God’s enemies. This is war, and the birth of this miracle child means that God is fully engaged. Hannah, for one, is quite excited about it. She’s all in with God’s mission for the world.
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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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Brazil’s Election and the Failure of the Evangelical Pastor
This is a sad day for my home country. Lula won a narrowly divisive runoff election this Sunday and will begin his third term as president at the age of 77. Convicted of corruption, he served 580 days in prison, and after his release, he became the symbol of victimhood.
He sought old partnerships and was able to reanimate a nation to the old causes of social transformation through the state. It didn’t matter the misery incurred by such policies in Venezuela, Cuba, or Argentina, Lula’s charm and political capital earned him overwhelming victory in the poorest part of my country, the Northeastern part (where I grew up). Lula functions in some ways like a Neo-Pentecostal leader who appeals to the poor through promises of prosperity, offering a Gospel as convoluted as a Marxian paradigm. And the people said, “Amen!”
Bolsonaro, on the other hand, was the Tropical Trump; if Trump could dance and recite the Lord’s Prayer, he would be the Orange Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is equally charismatic as Lula, and the oddity of the whole thing is that wherever he went in the Northeast, he was received with immense approval. But politics is a tricky business. The people may love a candidate, political inclinations, or moral declarations, but they are easily seduced by flattery and promises of statist charity. I’d also happily admit to Bolsonaro’s number of blunders throughout, but the options were so universally contrary to one another, leaving Brazilians with no excuse.
The tremendous benefit is that this entire thing has awakened a conservative resurgence in my home country. Conservative principles are now much more common than before Bolsonaro’s election. I suspect the various movements will only continue to grow. Certainly, the environment is ripe for a conservative nationalism that sees Brazil’s interests, morally and economically, as the heart of a prosperous nation.
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Life After Roe: New America After Dobbs
At a recent event titled Life After Roe, which was hosted by the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College, a panel of four legal specialists discussed the Dobbs ruling which overturned Roe v Wade. Both pro-life and pro-choice positions were present on this panel made up of two legal professors and two litigators. Read this for an overview of the evening.
The striking thing was how this panel captured quite clearly the crossroads before America.
The Dobbs ruling marks a significant transition for the country as we move from Old America into New America. The order of the panel nicely illustrated this transition. On the left, there was a pro-lifer and pro-choicer, both from Old America, who had one kind of conversation. On the right, there was a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer, both from New America, and they had a different kind of conversation. In New America, the end of Roe is an earthshaking fault line that highlights the divide in this country and the reality that there is almost no common ground between the two sides anymore. The striking thing is that this divide runs not only between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, but also between Old America and New America.
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Prayer at NATCON 2022 in Miami, Fl
When I was invited to offer an invocation at #NatCon2022, I knew that I would be preceded by an opening prayer by a Jewish Rabbi and a prayer on day two by a Roman Catholic priest, and I was to conclude.
I was concerned about the amorphous nature of these events, especially in light of the presence of political and media figures–especially hostile ones–in the audience. But the host gave me a green light to pray as a Protestant, and I did. I was extremely honored to do so. My gratitude to Dr. Yoram Hazony and Dr. Clifford Humphrey for the invitation. P.S. The line of my prayer quoted in the media had a larger context, which, as you can see below, was fairly Christian in orientation.
Prayer for #NatCon2022:
Almighty God, Father, Son and Spirit, we give you thanks for your goodness and faithfulness; for the cup of creation, which overflows with praise and adoration to the Triune God in every square inch of this world. We come before you wholly dependent on your care. We give thanks to your holy name for sins forgiven, redemption displayed, love shown, and justification that comes through the resurrection of Messiah Jesus. We bring ourselves–hearts, minds, souls, and strength–to the great God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
We pray boldly that our nation would be uncompromising in her convictions concerning life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. May she preserve life that comes only from the poetic words of a Creator who uttered, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” May she preserve liberty that comes only from the Gospel-filled language that the truth will set you free; may she find happiness not in the unrestrained sexual revolution but in the marriage between a man and a woman, the bringing up of a godly offspring, the fellowship of the saints, and the love of country.
We pray that you would save and defend your Church universal, which you purchased with the blood of our Lord. Do not allow the Church to be seduced by false messages of prosperity, power, perversion, and self-preservation, but let us be rooted in your love, law, and life. We pray for the proclamation of your Word in this land that it might pierce our hearts and renew our longing to be disciples of the Son of Man who gave his life for us on a tree.
May we not grow weary in well doing, but rather let your Church proclaim the full Gospel that calls kings and nations to acknowledge and serve the king of nations. And therefore, to abandon hope that America might become Christian is to abandon the promise that the nations will be Christianized.
In your infinite wisdom, O God of glory, you have bound us together as allies and co-belligerents seeking the good of the city, the county, and the country. And so, as we pursue the renewal of this nation, remind us that our goal is not ultimately to find refuge in good policies but to find the favor of the good and holy God who made us for his good pleasure.
Bless the labors of Yoram Hazony and NatCon this year and the years to come and prosper this work so that our beloved nation might taste the kind benefits of a society rooted in biblical truth and law.
And so, Father, Son, and Spirit, we pray as Chesterton did, that you may not take thy thunder from us, but indeed take away our pride; the pride that keeps us longing for a new ethic, and ultimately, a new god. Keep us humbled before your truth that it may shine deeply in this dark land; keep us steadfast in thy word that we may always build on the sure promises that are yes and amen, the assurance of a God who does all things well, and on Zion, holy city of our God.
We thank you for your promises in the Psalter that the nations would be your footstool. And so we implore that you would exercise your dominion, O Lord, over this nation. May every valley be exalted and may your throne be established on all the earth.
Enrich us this day with learning that we may grow in wisdom and in knowledge and so find that all wisdom and knowledge is ultimately found in the greater Solomon, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, Amen!
