Culture Wars
Culture Wars
Culture Wars
| I write at the very beginning of election day, not knowing the outcome. These are things that we should remember regardless, and they will be applicable regardless. (Of course we know the outcome of the election now, and as Christians, we need to remember this now more than ever.)
1. God is still Father, Christ is still at His right hand, and the Holy Spirit is still abroad in the world, recreating that world according to the image of Christ. When the nations conspire against Him, He laughs at them. 2. The most important thing we can do for our nation, and for the world around us, is to gather for worship every Lord’s Day. The privilege of voting in presidential elections comes to us every four years, while we are graced with the opportunity to take the Lord’s Supper week to week. Right worship reforms the Church, and is therefore God’s central instrument for remaking the world. For this reason, we must insist on worship that is in accordance with Scripture. Judgment begins with the household of God. Our generation is fatherless. In the power of the Spirit, in the name of the Son, we must therefore worship the Father. 3. The first and greatest command is to love God, and the second is to love our neighbor. When the question arises, as it will, as to who is our neighbor, a good policy is to always begin with the smallest, the least, the most defenseless. Never apologize for a crawl-over-broken-glass pro-life stance. Live in such a life-affirming way as to expect apologies from those who would redefine the lives of others (always the lives of others, isn’t it?) into expendible insignificance. 4. Honor women. Honor your mother, your wife, and your daughters. We live in a culture that despises women, and which has engineered a vast machinery of propaganda designed to get them to surrender to it. If you don’t know how to honor, on a day-to-day basis, the women in your life, then learn. Make it a priority. 5. Don’t doubt in the dark what you knew in the light. The late Francis Schaeffer taught evangelical Christians to think like Christians as they engaged with unbelief in the public square. But a goodly number of his proteges, disciples, and name-appropriators have begun to “engage with the culture” in a way that looks more like going native than it looks like missionary work. Melancthons fall apart more rapidly than they used to. Get used to it, but don’t you do it. 6. While pro-life work is at the very center of all mercy ministry, it should not be allowed to distract from the broader kind of mercy ministry that offers gospel help to those who have contributed to their own misery — addicts, convicts, the uneducated and the unemployable. Such mercy ministry must be consistently tenderhearted and hardheaded. Sentimentalists are never able to give themselves away in the ongoing way that bleeding (but thinking) Christians must. 7. Learn something about economics. Please. 8. Cultivate a godly sense of proportion. My family, living in the UK, are encountering evangelical Christians who think that “lack of socialized medicine” is just as bad as abortion-on-demand, because in both cases people are dying. This is as wrong-headed as it is possible to get, even for evangelicals, and on two counts. In the first place, deliberate murder cannot be compared to well-intentioned negligence or incomptence. In the second place, to the extent that we do attack death-dealing incompetence — as we must — we must begin by attacking the species of incompetence that lets people die after many months on waiting lists because some people don’t like accurate pricing mechanisms. Water won’t run uphill just because you can arrange for three bishops to say “Trinitarian” or “incarnational” over it. 9. Count the cost. Freedom of expression is part of our Christian heritage, and one of the things we are fighting for is the right to that expression. We cannot lose the tree and keep the fruit of it. When the laws come, as they will, prohibiting (for example) condemnation of homosexual behavior, then count the cost. And the very next Sunday, start your sermon series on the sins of sodomy. The first message should provide the introduction, and allow the congregation to count the cost as well. They might want a heads up — some of them might think it prudent to head over to a more docile church, one with a kennel-fed pastor. Whenever the state yanks on his lead, he always heels, and then waits expectantly for his treat. A much more sensitive and sensible ministry, don’t you think? 10. Fight in the culture wars as those who gladly serve the triune God of heaven. We are not dogs fighting over a piece of meat, and we must never allow the surly or shrill attitudes of the self-righteous to creep into anything we do. We must be puritan cavaliers, and merry warriors. Fight like a regenerate D’Artagnan, and not like a thug with a Bible he stole from the motel, or a like prim and censorious Miss Grundy, she of the pursed lips. We are Christians, not wowswers. |
Doctrine of the Day
4 Laws
The Four Spiritual Laws, Camp Style
LAW ONE: God is holy and has a plan for your life whether for wrath or for mercy.
LAW TWO: His wrath burns against you and you are hopelessly lost. There is nothing you can do about it. You are sinful and utterly lost; totally depraved, conceived in sin, and are incapable of saving yourself by the merits of your own righteousness.
LAW THREE: The Lord Jesus Christ came into this world, born of a virgin, tempted as we are yet without sin, died in our place and as our merciful and faithful High Priest fulfilled God’s law, took upon Himself every sin that would ever be committed by every who would ever believe, with its guilt and penalty, and all of the wrath of God that persists against our sin.
LAW FOUR: Repent of your sin and confess and receive Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior for eternal life and have peace with Him forever. His love, mercy and grace no one can ever take away once your life is hid in Christ. This is God’s wonderful plan of salvation.
Blogosphere
Around the Blogosphere
Blogosphere
The tunnels underneath Jerusalem that David used may have been discovered
Both identifications of the tunnel to the Bible (David and Zedekiah) strike me as the sort of “biblical archaeology” that Bible believers like myself wish would go away. By that I mean, you find a tunnel and without knowing where it begins or where it ends, you assume that it must be the very one that is mentioned in a famous story in the Scriptures. How is it that such archaeologists, working in a very restricted area, always happen to find exactly what they are looking for?
See Bible Places Blog for More Information View article…
ESV Bible Reading Plans Now on Podcast (FREE)
All the ESV Bible reading plans are now available as free podcasts. You don’t need to do anything special if you’re already subscribed: the MP3s will show up automatically for you.
To subscribe in iTunes, here’s what to do:
- Go to the ESV Reading Plans page.
- Right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) the “RSS” link of the feed you want.
- Choose “Copy Link Location” or “Copy Shortcut.”
- Start iTunes.
- Choose Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast
- Paste the URL from step three into the box.
- Click OK.
Also, The complete Gospel of John is available for free download
How Not to Raise a Pagan
Al Mohler preached a message entitled, “How Not to Raise a Pagan,” drawn from Deuteronomy 6. The audio and video are now available here. Read Full Blog…
Interview with Billy Graham
Tim Funk interviews Billy Graham about life at his Montreat home, his health, the process of aging and preparing to die, Ruth, and regrets he has had.
Grace for Forgiveness; Grace for Repentance (Steve Camp)
“Grace is a provision for men who are so fallen that they cannot lift the ax of justice; so corrupt that they cannot change their own natures; so adverse to God that they cannot turn to Him; so blind that they cannot see Him; so deaf that they cannot hear Him; and so dead that He Himself must open their graves.” -G.S. BISHOP
For an incredible article on grace please keep reading at View article…
Something to Think About
Something to Think About
Something to Think About
Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.
Tim Keller in The Prodigal God , 14-15.
Download of the Day
E-Sword
Keith’s only Bible program. I wouldn’t live without it
