The Crux of the Matter

Legal Backgrounder on California Senate Bill 1146 (SB 1146)

2016-06-28T10:02:00.003-07:00

There is currently a bill--Senate Bill 1146, aka SB 1146--pending in the California legislature, which aims at stripping Christian colleges and universities in California of their current religious exemption from the California state Equity in Education Act.

The Equity in Education Act is a 1982 California law which was modeled on the federal Title IX legislation, and which aimed at combating gender discrimination in California colleges. The law stripped institutions which discriminated on the basis of gender of all state funding. The Equity in Education Act was subsequently amended to disallow not only discrimination on the basis of gender, but also discrimination on the basis of the full gamut of protected categories (race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and disability).

The Equity in Education Act, however, allowed, and currently still allows, religious exemptions from the requirements of the law for those colleges for which compliance would represent a violation of their religious beliefs. SB 1146 aims to limit the religious exemption from the Equity in Education Act only to those programs which actually train religious ministers. All other programs would be made subject to the requirements of the law. The purpose of this post is to provide concise legal background on the applicable federal and state law and on SB 1146 itself.

Federal Law

The federal Title IX law is a part of 1972 federal legislation (20 U.S.C. 1681-1688), which prohibited discrimination against women in any educational institutions or programs funded by the federal government. Exemptions from Title IX are granted if an institution is considered to be controlled by a religious organization. For the purposes of Title IX, an institution is considered to be controlled by a religious organization (and thus eligible for an exemption) if one or more of the following conditions is met:

the purpose of the institution or the department is to train ministers of religion or to teach theology
faculty, students, or employees are required to adhere to be members of the religious organization or to express personal belief in a statement of faith of the religion
the charter and catalog of the institution state either that it is controlled by a religious organization or that it is committed to a particular set of religious beliefs; the organization’s governing board is comprised of representatives of controlling religious organization; and that significant funding is derived from the controlling religious organization.

The scope of the Title IX law was subsequently restricted in the 1984 Supreme Court decision of Grove City College v. Bell. In this case, Grove City College, a small Christian college in Pennsylvania, had appealed a ruling by the Department of Education which held that since some of their programs accepted Basic Educational Opportunity Grants the entire institution was bound by Title IX requirements. Grove City College held that only the particular programs which received federal government were governed by Title IX. The Supreme Court agreed with Grove City College.

However, this narrowing of Title IX was subsequently reversed by the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, by which Congress changed Title IX so that any institution accepting any federal money at all was bound to adhere to all Title IX requirements.

Title IX deals only with gender discrimination. However, in 2014 and 2016, the Department of Education of the Obama Administration released guidelines which held that Title IX “extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.” In response to this, a number of California colleges (along with many colleges nationally) have filed for religious exemptions from Title IX. Among these colleges are Biola University, Fresno Pacific University, William Jessup University, and Simpson University.

Another body of federal law (besides Title IX) which forbids discrimination by recipients of federal funds for education is Title VI (U.S.C. 2000d et seq.), which was enacted by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law forbids discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. There are no exemptions from Title VI.

California Law

In addition to the federal laws, there are also a number of California laws which deal with discrimination in education.

The Equity in Education/Higher Education Act (California Education Code 200 et seq.), which was based on the federal Title IX, first enacted in 1982, and subsequently amended a number of times, prohibits institutions receiving public funds for discriminating against members of any of California’s protected classes (nationality, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or disability). Significantly, this law is allowed to be enforced through private civil action - that is, not only may the law be used by the state to deny funds to non-exempt colleges, it may be used by plaintiffs who allege discrimination on the part of these colleges. The original version of the Equity in Education Act allowed exemptions for religious colleges. These exemptions were modeled on the exemptions of the federal Title IX law, which are still in place.

California Government Code 11135, which is California’s version of the federal Title VI, prohibits any program or organization which receives public funds from using the categories of race, country of origin, ethnicity, age, sex, sexual orientation, color, genetic information, or disability to limit access. This law allows for no religious exemptions.

California SB 1146

The proposed law, California Senate Bill 1146 (SB 1146), authored by Senator Richard Lara (D), which passed the California Senate on a vote of 26-13, and is currently pending in the California Assembly, proposes to eliminate religious exemptions for all institutions except for religious institutions specifically involved in the training of ministers.

The principal impact of the bill, if it were passed, would be three-fold:

Any exempt institution is subjected to an onerous burden of reporting requirements.
Any non-exempt institution which discriminates on the basis of categories protected by California law will be prohibited from receiving any state funds. In addition, students of these non-exempt institutions will lose all state financial aid.
Any non-exempt institution may be sued by private parties for alleged violations of non-discrimination law.

It is actually the third of these provisions which is the most dangerous, in that the loss of a religious exemption opens the door to a myriad of lawsuits against these Christian colleges for adhering to their religious beliefs.

The text of the proposed law can be found here: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB1146

I will write a follow-up post later on the ways in which this bill represents a substantial infringement of the equal protection and religious liberty rights of Christian citizens of California and why every citizen who cares about the Constitution should oppose the bill.

Some Quick Responses to A Few Common Objections from Abortion Advocates

2015-08-24T19:13:00.005-07:00

I've had a number of arguments with abortion advocates. I am usually struck by how predictable and slogan-like their responses are. Here are a number of the more common ones I've heard, along with some quick and easy responses.

(1) You pro-life people are involved in a war on women.

Response: I'm not sure why you think is the case. The vast majority of pro-life people don't hate women. In fact, it's probably safe to say that the majority of active pro-life people are women. Why they would be involved in a war on themselves is hard to account for.

NB: For the following few questions, I am indebted for much of the information about the history of abortion in the United States to:

Forsythe, Clarke. Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade. New York: Encounter Books, 2013.

(2) Abortion is "women's health." In seeking to eliminate it, you are attacking women's health.

Response: Actually, the evidence is mounting that it is abortion, and not childbirth, which is a danger to women's bodily health. While Roe v. Wade's prohibition on government regulation of the abortion industry has made it difficult to obtain statistics on the risks associated with abortion, a number of studies indicate significant future health risks to the mother, even when there are no immediate physical complications from the abortion. For example, see

Thorp, John, Katherine Hartmann, and Elizabeth Shadigan. "Long-Term Physical and Psychological Health Consequences of Induced Abortion: Review of the Evidence." Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey 58 (January 2003): 67.

Among the increased risks identified in the studies reviewed by Thorp et al., are increased risk of premature birth, increased risk of placenta previa, and increased risk of suicide and drug abuse. In addition, abortion advocates often dramatically overstate the health risks associated with pregnancy.

(3) You want to go back to the days of the "back-alley abortion."

Response: The idea that prior to Roe v. Wade there were enormous numbers of "back-alley abortions" is a complete myth. The most common numbers which have been thrown out by abortion advocates are those of 200,000-1,200,000 illegal abortions performed annually, and the 5000 annual deaths from abortion. The former of these two figures derives from a 1955 Planned Parenthood conference, which was in turn partially based upon a 1936 book by Frederick Taussig, which estimated 681,000 illegal abortions per year. The estimate of 5000 deaths is contained in the same book.

It is worth noting that the official 1930's figures for death from abortion from the National Center for Health Statistics, estimated 1313 abortion-related deaths, most of them due to infection. It is important to note that this figure dates from before the widespread use of antibiotics in hospitals. The number of pregnancy-related deaths from all causes fell dramatically after antibiotics were readily available. National Center for Health Statistics data show that there were 7,466 pregnancy-related deaths in 1940. That number fell to 2,697 by 1950, to 1,328 by 1960, to 684 by 1970, and to 554 by 1972. (Cf. Forsythe, Abuse of Discretion, 412n89.)

Official statistics for abortion-related deaths also fell. There were 159 abortion-related deaths in 1966, and 41 in 1972. (Cf. Forsythe, Abuse of Discretion, 203.) Dr. Robert Nelson, medical director of Planned Parenthood in Washington, DC, stated that annual deaths from septic abortions in the District of Columbia between 1940 and 1943 were between zero and five. (As cited in Forsythe, Abuse of Discretion, 204.) Dr. Milton Helpern reported at the 1955 Planned Parenthood conference that in New York City (in which were performed the overwhelming majority of abortions done in the United States prior to the legalization of abortion by Roe v. Wade), the number of abortion-related deaths had fallen from 144 in 1921 to 15 in 1951. (Cf. Forsythe, Abuse of Discretion, 204.)

As for the number of illegal abortions performed annually, even leaders in Planned Parenthood acknowledged that 80-90 percent of all illegal abortions performed prior to Roe v. Wade were performed by physicians. (Cf. Forsythe, Abuse of Discretion, 201, citing Mary Calderone, medical director of Planned Parenthood, and Dr. Alan Guttmacher.) Given that only a small number of physicians were willing to perform illegal services of this type, this makes the high number of illegal abortions (i.e., 600,000 per year) impossible.

In short, the idea of rampant back-alley abortions is a complete myth, concocted solely to persuade gullible people of the urgent need to support the legalization of abortion.

(4) Abortion is a matter of women's control over her own body.

Response: At first glance, this claim seems to be true. It is true, after all, that the infant does in fact reside within the woman's body. The problem with the claim, though, is that it claims that it is only the woman's body which is in question, when, of course, that is not true. The other body in question is that of the child.

This argument also seems to assume that the child somehow appeared inside the woman without any action on the woman's part having contributed to that. However, in all but a tiny percentage of cases (less than 0.4%, or 4 out of 1000 cases of abortion result from rape or incest), the presence of a child is a result of a decision on the part of a woman and her partner to engage in sexual activity for which pregnancy is a possible outcome. If a woman doesn't want to have the possibility to get pregnant, the woman ought not to engage in sexual intercourse. That is, a woman does have a right to control her body. But once she has made the decision to use her body in such a way that another human being has been created, it is too late to object that she has now lost the right to control her body. That is, it was her choice that put the child there, and once the child exists, it is no longer just the woman's body which is in question.

The so-called "right to choose" is one of the oldest slogans in the pro-abortion lexicon. But, when examined, the slogan makes no sense. It is true that we all have the right to choose our actions. But not all of our actions are moral or legal. Some

(5) It's just a "clump of tissue" which is being aborted.

If the term "clump of tissue" is to be used in this way, it can just as well be used of an adult human being. The fact is that a child developing in the womb of a woman is a full organism with his or her own DNA, and, left to itself, it will, under normal circumstances, develop into an adult human being. To call a whole organism with unique DNA a "clump of tissue" is just playing games with words to obscure what is really going on. What is growing in the womb of a pregnant woman is a whole organism with human DNA, that is, a human being.

(6) Even if it is a human life, it's not a person yet, so it's OK to abort.

This objection is based on the idea that there is a distinction between human life and "personhood." But to allow this distinction is to say that to be a human being does not, in and of itself, make you a person. That is, to allow a distinction between being a human being and being a person is to say that to be a person you must not only be a living human being: you must also add to that the possession of some other set of attributes.

One of the problems with defining personhood in terms of a list of attributes supposedly required for personhood is that the list varies from person to person. Some people say that it is "consciousness" (which no one seems to be able to define precisely) which makes a person a person. But this definition would seem to say that temporarily comatose people are not persons. Others would say that to be a person you have to have been conscious at some point in the past. But this seems a little strange on its face. As Christopher Kaczor has asked (The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice, New York: Routledge, 2015, p. 67), "why would a being who achieved consciousness but has permanently lost it be more valuable than a being who is about to achieve consciousness, which will be enjoyed over the course of a long life?".

Others would say that the requirement for personhood is the ability to value one's own existence. People who hold this position argue that you can only harm someone who knows that they have been harmed. This sounds plausible, at first. The problem, though, is that, once again, this definition would exclude people who presently are comatose or under anesthesia. Moreover, as Christopher Kaczor (The Ethics of Abortion, p. 49) has pointed out, if someone steals a winning lottery ticket from you, you have been harmed, even if you didn't know that it was a winning lottery ticket.

Recognizing these problems with saying that a person must be actually able to value their own existence, some have attempted to modify the definition to say that persons are those who are potentially capable of valuing their own existence. But, if this change is made, a human infant in utero then becomes a person, in that, given time, a human in embryo will grow into a human being who values their own existence.

Others have tried to create a definition of personhood in terms of the present possession of certain physical hardware (e.g., neural circuits in the brain) necessary to normal human consciousness, even if you are not presently conscious. But this definition is problematic in that it would exclude from personhood those who are brain-damaged in various ways.

An even deeper objection to the idea of defining personhood in terms of the possession of particular attributes of adult human beings is that that form of definition assumes that it is adult humanhood which defines what it is to be human. But it could just as easily be said that a human being is defined by what he or she does in all the stages of his or her life, from conception through death. That is, a human being is one who does certain things when he or she has a gestational age of three months, other things when he or she is ten years old, and still other things when he or she is in the final decade of life. It is not immediately clear why it is a specific stage of adulthood which should be taken as defining what it is to be human. For example, it is well known that children are better at learning languages than adults are. Why should we not define personhood in terms of facility of learning language and treat three year olds as the highest embodiment of human personhood, so that three year olds have more rights than adults?

Perhaps more important than any of these specific responses to problematic definitions of personhood is the question of why any one of us should have the right to come up with our own list of attributes of what defines personhood. After all, if everyone is allowed to make up their own definition, why might not someone be able to make up a definition of personhood which, for example, excludes Jewish people, African Americans, or Causasian Americans? Nor can we somehow rest the right to make this decision about having a right to life an in a democratic majority, because this works directly against the understanding, embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution that there are some rights which cannot be taken away from anyone by any majority, and that among such rights is the right to life.

In short, if the right to life is not guaranteed to every human being, then there is no longer an absolute right to life. In giving some group of people the right to define personhood, we have also given them the right to take the right to life away from some people merely by calling them non-persons.

The Christian view is the view that to be a human being and to be a person are one and the same thing, and that the value and dignity of a human being are consequences of the fact human beings bear God's image in their essence and at every stage of their development.

(7) Even if it is a developing human being, it does not come immediately into possession of full human rights. Rights are proportional to the degree of development.

Response: This is the view which is called gradualism. The idea is that personhood is not so much a discrete state as it is a continuum, so that a late-term infant in utero has greater rights than the rights to be granted to a one-day old embryo. At first this idea seems plausible.

The central problem with this view is that, even though they are allowing for a continuum of development up to the point of "full human personhood," they are still defining "full human personhood" in terms of the possession of certain attributes. But, as was noted above, this is a shockingly arrogant thing to try to define. Who gave any person or group of persons to define what attributes it is that define humanity, regardless of whether those attributes are gradually acquired? If everyone is allowed to define these attributes for themselves, why cannot some define personhood in terms of intelligence, so that any who are mentally handicapped are not persons, or at least are "less persons"?

And, if someone who holds this point of view rejects the idea of "degrees of personhood," then we are back to defining some cutoff on the continuum between "non-personhood" and "personhood." Who is it that gets to define where this cutoff goes? Does everyone get to decide for themselves? And if it is to be by majority vote, this leads to the idea that rights to life are subject to majority vote.

In short, gradualism does not solve the problem with views of "personhood" which are based on possession of attributes instead of, as in the Christian view, the view that personhood is inherent in being a living member of the human race.

(8) It's OK to abort up until a certain time (quickening, sentience, viability, birth, ...), but not after that time. Or, no one knows when human life really begins, so no one should be able to make laws which enshrine a particular view of the matter.

Response: The basic question is whether the child is a human being with full human rights at any given point of time. The problem with defining cutoffs in the period of development in the womb is that such cutoffs are arbitrary. How do we know, as an objective matter, that a certain point is definitely when human personhood begins? And, if we don't know that any particular point is precisely the right point, then we might be killing a human being. The appeal to ignorance doesn't work. To abort because we don't know for sure that a developing infant is a human being is precisely the same as walking into a room blindfolded and with earplugs in your ears and firing a loaded gun in random directions when you don't know for sure that there are no people in there. The reason you should not do that is because your lack of knowledge should make you more careful, not less careful.

As for being able to make laws, we make laws which require us not to do careless things that might threaten the lives of others all the time.

(9) You pro-lifers are illegitimately objecting to "settled law." Roe v. Wade should never be questioned.

Response: Have you ever heard of the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision? In that decision, the Supreme Court held that black Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens, and, as a consequence, lacked the standing to sue in federal courts. The Court also found in that decision that the federal government did not have the constitutional authority to regulate slavery. It is widely conceded that this Supreme Court decision was wrong. In fact, it is widely called the worst decision that the Supreme Court ever made.

If you think that Dred Scott was wrong, then you believe the Supreme Court can be wrong. And if the Supreme Court can be wrong, then it is important to fight the wrong, not just accept it.

(10) What about rape, incest, and the life of the mother?

Response: First, it is important to note that only 0.4% (or 4 out of 1000) abortions are done for these reasons.

Second, with regard to rape and incest, although the crime that led to the pregnancy is horrible, and although the woman made no choice to become pregnant, the thing that must be weighed in deciding what is the right thing to do is the rights of the child against the rights of the mother. If it is true that a child is a human being with all of the rights that pertain to humanity, including a right to life, from the point of conception, then what this weighs is the emotional pain of the mother against the life of the child. If the child is in fact a human being with full human rights then the right of the child to life outweighs the right of the mother.

Third, with regard to cases in which the life of the mother is genuinely at risk (such as with ectopic pregnancies), then it really is a case of weighing each situation on its own. In the case of ectopic pregnancies, if an abortion is not done, both mother and child will certainly die, whereas if an abortion is done, the mother will live. Accordingly, in that situation, the right thing is for the abortion to be done. Other situations must be analyzed in a similar manner. If there are cases in which it truly is one life weighed against another, the decision ought to belong to the mother in consultation with qualified doctors and family members.

(11) You have a right to your opinion, and I have a right to mine. You do not have the right to force your religious opinion on me.

Response: This objection confuses a number of things. First, it confuses my expression of the judgment that, since abortion is the morally unjustified taking of another human being's life, it ought to be outlawed, with the actual making of a law. If such a law were ever passed, it would not be me imposing my opinion on anyone, it would be society at large making a law. To say that society at large never has the right to do that is to say that no one has the right to pass laws. But that is absurd.

What this objection is really about is whether or not it would be morally right to make laws forbidding abortion. Whether or not it is right depends upon whether the infant in utero is a human being with a right to life. If the infant in utero is a human being with a right to life, then forbidding abortion is equivalent to forbidding murder.

So, when someone says that no one has the right to force their opinion on another about whether an infant in utero is a human being they are saying that this question (i.e., whether the infant in utero is a human being) is not a question of objective fact, but a question of subjective judgment. But to say that it is a matter of subjective judgment is to say that since no one knows whether a human life is present, each person should get to decide for themselves. But if it were truly the case that no one knew, the right response is actually to say that we should not kill, because we might be killing. As discussed above, if we as a society cannot make an objective determination that performing an abortion is not killing, then the moral act is to not do it, because we might be killing.

(12) If you don't have a uterus, then you have no right to legislate to women about abortion.

Response: This objection is absurd. It effectively claims that no one should get to make laws about any people other than people exactly like themselves. Indeed, since there is no one exactly like me, it really implies that we should do away with law altogether.

The relevant consideration when we make laws is not whether we are a member of the group, but whether the law is a just one. The justice of abortion has nothing to do with whether or not any particular legislator has a uterus.

(13) Christians have no right to be pro-life because a lot of them don't do everything they can to seek the welfare of children after they are born.

Response: This is another irrelevant argument. Although it is true that a consistent pro-life ethic would lead people to support life after birth as much as prior to it. Nevertheless, if a person is not consistent in this, it doesn't imply that they are wrong if they think that abortion is murder. It just means they are a hypocrite.

Abortion Litmus Tests and the Presidential Primary Voter

2015-08-17T16:52:00.002-07:00

There have been a number of occasions over the years when I have debated with friends the question of if there are times when Christians are morally obligated to be "single issue voters." More precisely, the question we have debated is the question of whether there are times when Christians ought to exclude certain candidates from consideration solely on the basis of certain "litmus tests."

Most of us don't usually apply such litmus tests, of course. For most issues we are quite comfortable with the idea of setting aside some areas of disagreement we might have with a certain candidate and voting for them anyway.

We might do this for a variety of reasons. For example, we might think that the issues about which we disagree are less important than those concerning which we agree. Or, even if our areas of disagreement with the candidate are important ones, we might decide that the candidate wouldn't have power to make any changes relative to the issues concerning which we disagree with them. For example, we might decide to vote for a certain candidate for dog catcher because the candidate is good at catching dogs, despite the fact that we know that the candidate disagrees with us in favoring decreased federal defense spending. We would feel comfortable doing this since we know that dogcatchers have no influence over federal defense spending budgets.

In short, we make these trade-offs all the time, and it's often not very easy to explain to others, or even to ourselves, how we justify the trade-offs that we make.

So, in this post I'd like to focus on a narrower issue. In particular, I'd like to very briefly discuss the question of what trade-offs between the issue of abortion and other issues Christians can allow themselves to make when deciding whom to support for the office of President of the United States.

Most conservative Christians would agree that abortion is a grave moral evil, and that we are morally obligated to fight against its practice in any ethical way we can. Nevertheless, the question of abortion is also a controversial and closely contested one, and the battle lines between those for and against abortion have not moved a great deal since Roe v. Wade. A consequence of this apparent stalemate is that most of us don't expect any President to be able to make much difference with regard to the issue of abortion in the near term. Because of this, we tend to just assume that change on this issue is impossible, and to choose our Presidents based on which issues we think they can actually do something about.

The problem with taking this tack, though, is that it seems to foreclose the very possibility of change. It seems to foster a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, we assume that change is impossible, so we elect candidates who are guaranteed not to change anything.

Therefore, if we are ever to change the laws about abortion in this country, it is necessary that presidents be committed foes of abortion: men and women who will take every legal action open to them to limit the practice of abortion, and who will only nominate candidates to the Supreme Court who can be relied upon to overturn Roe v. Wade. Further, if we are to have a President of this type, it is necessary, in turn, Christian voters must have a very strong preference for pro-life presidents over non-pro-life presidents.

Given that every Christian is morally obligated to use every reasonable ethical means at their disposal to combat the practice of abortion, it follows that Christians ought to have a good ethical reason to justify their voting for any President who is not a committed pro-lifer.

An example of such a reason might be that there was some other immediately obtainable moral good of a greater order than making progress toward saving the lives of over one million babies killed every year, and which could be obtained in no other way than through the election of a non-pro-life President.

Another example of such a reason might be that a situation exists in which there is no electable candidate who is strongly pro-life, but there is one who is moderately pro-life, and who would make some progress toward protecting the life of the unborn, without foreclosing on the option of further progress in the future.

In any case, though, the point is that abortion, since it is an issue of life and death which affects over a million baby human beings per year, is so serious a moral issue that it cannot be considered just another ordinary issue to be weighed against everyday issues such as immigration and tax reform.

To bring the issue even closer to home, those GOP voters in the 2016 Republican primary who are considering supporting Donald Trump should ask themselves (leaving aside the questions of whether Mr. Trump can in fact be counted upon to keep his word, and whether he is able to do the things he says he will) whether immigration reform of the sort that Donald Trump is proposing is so important that it justifies electing a President who has no intention of making any changes whatsoever relative to the practice of abortion.

Some have argued, for example, in supporting such a view, that both legal and illegal immigrants generally become Democratic voters, and that Democratic voters are anti-life, so that if we want to maintain the political strength to fight anti-life Democrats, we need to reform immigration to keep the nation from becoming Democratic.

This sort of argument is weak, in that the issue of abortion is, properly speaking, not a partisan issue. That is, despite the fact that today, generally speaking, Republicans are pro-life and Democrats are not, the issue itself is not a political issue, but a moral one, and the task that faces is not first and foremost a political task, but a moral one - to persuade people of both parties of the evils of abortion and to muster majorities to roll it back. To use immigration as a tool in this way has the negative side effect of making abortion hostage to one political party. If our goal is to persuade people of the evils of abortion, we are better off helping people understand that there is nothing Democratic or Republican about wanting to save the lives of babies.

In short, I would argue that Christian voters ought not to think of themselves first and foremost as Republican or Democratic voters, but as Christian voters. And with regard to life this means participating in party politics without making our Christianity captive to it. And it means that whenever we vote for a candidate for the Presidency we must do our best to support candidates who will do what is right.

So what should a Christian do when there are no candidates on the ballot who support their point of view? Is choosing the "lesser of two evils" acceptable? Yes, I think so. If there truly are no other alternatives, then we have a constrained choice and we must use the gift of a vote of conscience to choose the lesser of two evils. But even here we must make sure that no politician or party ever makes the mistake of taking the "Christian" vote for granted because they are just a little better than the other party. Christians should continue to use whatever means they have to put forward Christian candidates who actually are real alternatives. They should force parties to take account of them in the making of party platforms. But above all, they should pray for God to open the eyes of their fellow-citizens and for Him to provide them with leaders who will do justly, and love mercy, and encourage people to walk humbly with their God.

When Do Christians Who Die Receive Their New Resurrection Bodies?

2015-02-15T10:58:00.000-08:00

It's quite common to hear people say, when a loved one dies, that "they now have their new body."

It's a nice sentiment, but it's not true.

The Bible is quite clear about the fact that people do not receive their new resurrection bodies until the time at which Jesus returns from heaven to earth.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thess 4:16-17 ESV)

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. (1 Cor 15:21-23 ESV)

Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (John 5:28-29 ESV)

But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. (2 Tim 2:16-18 ESV)

So what is the state, then, of those who have died in Christ? They are in the presence of Christ, to be sure. Paul makes this clear when he says

Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (2 Cor 5:8 ESV)

and

I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:23 ESV)

To the thief on the cross as well, Jesus said,

And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43 ESV)

So, if those who have died in Christ are with Him, but have not received their new bodies, what is their state exactly? That is a mystery on which the Scripture does not shed a great deal of light. It is enough to say that it is a blessed state:

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” (Rev 14:13 ESV)

So why is it then, that Christians ought not to say that people have received their new bodies? The real reason is that it takes away from the anticipation of the great Day of Resurrection. On that day, the whole of God's people will inherit together the great blessing of eternal life in resurrection bodies that Jesus has earned for them:

And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. (Heb 11:39-40 ESV)

It is our resurrection to life on the Last Day which is God's final vindication of those who are His. On that day, the entire Temple of God's people (Ephesians 2:19-22) will be complete, and will take visible, glorified form in a new heaven and a new earth. There shall not be a single one missing from this Temple, and all shall inherit together. This is the great, living hope of the Christian which should motivate and encourage all of us.

An important difference between post-Christendom societies and Islamic ones ...

2015-02-04T12:42:00.003-08:00

There is an important contrast between Christianity and Islam which should inform the thinking of Western leaders as to what they can expect of Middle Eastern nations with regard to the protection of the rights of religious minorities. This contrast is seen in the different ways the two religions conceive the proper relationship between religion and earthly governments. Christianity, both as described in the words of Jesus ("my kingdom is not of this world ") and in its initial status as an illegal religion in the 1st-3rd century Roman Empire, was always, properly speaking, a religion distinct from the state, while Islam was always conceived of as being most properly embodied in the earthly state.

Said another way, the medieval marriage of "Christianity" with secular government, being contrary to the nature of the church as described in the New Testament and as expressed in Christianity's early history, was really a perversion of the true nature of Christianity; while Islam's consistent pursuit of a worldwide umma and caliphate, and it's continued tendency toward suppression of competing alternatives, are entirely consistent with Islam's founding narratives. It is thus not a surprise that the context in which the ideas of separation of church and state, of freedom of conscience, and of equality of all before the law was that of post-Christendom Enlightenment Europe, reforming itself after the unnatural marriage that was Christendom immolated itself in the Wars of Religion.

When dealing with most of the Islamic states of the Middle East, it is important to remember that they have a very different history and worldview than those of post-Enlightenment Europe. There are, of course, plenty of Muslim citizens of Western nations who have adopted the Western notion of a secular state, and have understood Islam as being a private matter of morals of reverence for their god, and of respect for their equal rights of those of different faiths. But these ideas which were endemic to early Christianity - of being one religion among many, of treating all human beings with the same respect, and of being part of a kingdom which is not of this world - are not ideas which were characteristic of the Islamic world in its infancy, and and are still not ideas which are commonly held in Middle Eastern nations.

Even in the post-Christendom West, there still remain many who, nostalgic for the days of their political supremacy, would seek to restore Christianity as a sort of official state religion. But there is no warrant for doing this in the New Testament, and therefore, when the attempt is made to do it, the result is inevitably a state which represents a false Christianity, untrue to its founding. When Islam seeks to do this, however, it is doing exactly what the Quran calls for. This crucial difference between the essential natures of Christianity and Islam ought always to be borne in mind in deciding Western policies toward the region.

Western politicians have too often understood the Middle Eastern nations as "just like Western nations except for the language and the turbans." But this is a dangerous delusion, and leads to all sorts of quixotic adventures. The people in the Middle East have the right to govern themselves as they think best, and we in the West ought to help where we can reasonably do so, but we need stay hard-headed and remain clear on one thing above all. These nations differ from us in very significant ways, and are not likely to resemble European liberal and secular democracies any time soon.

We in the West should take measures to contain craziness, to keep lunatics from spreading their insanity to other countries, and should intervene wherever we reasonably can to prevent barbarity and destruction. But we need to avoid delusional crusades based on the premise that these nations will easily be made in the image of Western secular democracies, especially in terms of their respect for the rights of religious minorities. They will not.

On reconciling orthodox Christianity with modern science ...

2015-02-02T09:53:00.004-08:00

I ran across this short article by Cathy Lynn Grossman in the Washington Post today (hat tip to Nancy Pearcey for directing me to it). It divides Americans into three groups with respect to their views on Christianity and science: "Traditionalists," "Moderns," and "Post-Seculars." The third of these consists of scientifically literate Christians who, nevertheless, remain serious and devoted Christians.

I probably would consider myself among this group, believing, as I do, that scientific evidence cannot be blithely dismissed or rationalized away with lame and embarrassing quack science explanations. On the contrary, I think that the fact that God does not lie implies that special revelation in Scripture and general revelation in nature cannot, in the final analysis, contradict each other (although they certainly may appear to do so in the short term), and that apparent conflicts between the two sometimes demand that believers live with the cognitive dissonance of being unable to completely reconcile everything. What this means is not that we believe that two actually contradictory things can be simultaneously true, but that, not seeing yet how to reconcile the contradiction, we neither abandon our faith in God's revelation nor our intellectual integrity. Humility and honesty sometimes require us to say that there are lots of things we don't yet understand, and that we are much more likely to be wrong in trying to prematurely attain cognitive rest through the pretense of universal understanding than we are in living with the tension of faith while we work for and await a more complete understanding.

There are those who will object to this position, insisting that either religion must be rejected or rationality must be. The answer to both sides is the same: the apparent gain in consistency is illusory. The worldview of scientific materialism cannot account for the most important aspects of human existence, such as moral obligation (the best scientism can do on this question is to provide a phenomenological explanation - it can't provide the categorical imperative) and justice. Religious anti-rationalism only leads to rejection of God's revelation in nature and to living in a self-imposed religious ghetto (indeed, it could fairly be argued that it was the abandonment by evangelicals of the life of the mind that was the most important contributor to the loss of influence in our civilization).

To both materialists and anti-intellectualists, I would argue that all truth is God's truth, that reality is both more complex and more simple than you imagine, and that one ought not mistake one's own mind for God's.

Some reflections about Christians' responses to abortion on the occasion of Sanctity of Life Sunday

2015-01-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Sanctity of Life Sunday.

Many evangelical churches across the United States will devote their Sunday messages to addressing our national shame of abortion.

The occasion suggests a few reflections:

(1) The act of aborting a child arises out of a fundamentally pagan, "this-worldly" philosophy, which assumes that this life is all there is, so that our aim ought to be to maximize our personal pleasure during this life and to minimize our pain and inconvenience. A belief system such as this is the polar opposite of that of Christianity, which teaches that it is our eternal destiny that ought to govern our thinking and our choices in this world. Christianity teaches that each human being faces one of two destinies: either endless life in a world of glory, goodness, and love, or endless misery and undying death. Although Christians know that they do not earn the right to heaven, but are given it as a gift, and that they receive this gift only by means of trusting in what Jesus Christ did for them, they also know that no-one whose destiny is heaven can continue to live in a way which is characteristic of those whose destiny is hell. Christians know that they have been, are being, and will be changed, from being consumed with themselves and their own needs to being consumed with God and with love for others. The act of abortion does not arise out of this Christian way of thinking and being. Abortion is sin against God, who is the giver of life.

(2) Much of the debate about abortion centers around the question of the point in time at which life begins (that is, the point in time when it is no longer just the rights of the woman which must be considered, but also the rights of the child). Much ink and many words have been spent trying to justify different points of view on this question. But this way of framing the debate arises out of a basically naturalistic/scientistic misconception: that it is possible to draw a line at some point in the natural development of a fertilized ovum into an adult human being and to definitively assert "Here is where life begins."

From a Christian perspective, life begins at the point when, if the natural process is not disrupted in some way, a living human baby will result. If humans must force the process of the development of a baby to end, then what they are doing is taking into their own hands the judgment that the gift of life from God to the child should not have been given. Christians understand that God is the creator of life, that He creates through the natural process of fertilization and gestation, and that the artificial "termination" of this process at any point takes away from the child-to-be the life in this world that God gave. To draw lines in the process of gestation is to usurp a power whose legitimate use God has reserved to Himself alone: the deciding of the question of when life begins and ends. The taking of life from an unborn baby, regardless of the stage of development, is entirely equivalent to the taking of life from an adult, and God, since He is absolutely just and fair, must judge the crime of taking another person's life.

(3) Many people, having been brought up in Christian homes and thinking themselves Christians, justify the idea of abortion to themselves by telling themselves that God will forgive them even if they do it. This is a way of thinking which is radically wrong. Although God does indeed forgive all manner of sin, He does so to those whom He has made truly repentant of their sin. Forgiveness is not given to those who still justify their sin and presume on God's mercy to overlook things that they would do again if they were back in the same situation. God is not some "kindly old gentleman in the sky" who clucks his tongue at evil and will overlook it as soon as it is committed. He is a perfectly fair and just God who hates all sin. God does not favor the rights of the parents over the child. He is a just God. In fact, if God takes any side, Scripture is clear that He takes the side of the oppressed and the powerless.

And yet, it bears repeating, it still remains true that those who truly do trust Christ and submit to His Lordship are forgiven from every sin - including abortion - and receive forgiveness and healing.

Isn't this a contradiction? How do we reconcile the fact that God is absolutely just and yet that God forgives? The only place these two facts can be reconciled is at the cross of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If God winks at sin, then ultimately there is no justice in the universe. But if God does not forgive, then no human has any hope, because all have sinned and God cannot just pass over sin. But the fact of sin and the fact of God's graciousness are reconciled in Jesus' death. Jesus suffered the penalty of sin in His own person on behalf of those to whom it is given to trust Him and submit to Him as King. Forgiveness of sins is only given to those who trust and submit to Christ.

This is why deciding in advance that you will commit a sin and that God will forgive you afterward is such a totally wrong way of thinking. To even think in this way may very well mean that you have not trusted Christ at all. Deciding in advance that God will forgive you for the sin you plan to commit intentionally is a defiance against God's grace. This type of sin will harden you. It tends to the destruction of your soul.

(4) The church of Jesus Christ is the place where the good news of the forgiving and healing grace of God in Jesus is proclaimed and embodied. We Christians, because we know that God has forgiven and healed us, do not withhold grace and forgiveness from those to whom God has extended His grace. If God no longer calls our sins to mind, we are to be like Him in utterly forgiving the sins of others who follow Christ. We may not personally hold against others that for which God has forgiven them. Any "church" that condemns repentant sinners is not really a church at all.

(5) Christians not only oppose abortion: they hold all life to be a sacred gift of God. It is because of this that we cannot just tell people not to abort - we must also help to provide options and care for those who choose to bring life into this world. To do otherwise would show that we don't really think life is sacred. We must show that we treasure the life of children already born as well as unborn ones.

(6) Abortion presents a uniquely difficult challenge for Christians to communicate with unbelieving friends and neighbors for two reasons: (a) our worldview arises out of completely different worldview assumptions than those held by the non-Christian world, and (b) the fact that Christians believe that the life of a baby is taken in abortion implies that they are morally obligated to act on behalf of an unborn baby in the same way they would be if they were to see one person about to murder another.

First, believers cannot expect unbelievers to completely understand their conclusions, because unbelievers do not reason from the same presuppositions. If a person believes that the physical world and this life are all that there is, and that there are no rewards and punishments except those experienced in this life, then it makes complete sense that one would try to maximize pleasure and minimize inconvenience in this life. Of course, it's worth pointing out that this worldview, if followed consistently, doesn't actually support the idea of "rights" at all - if the universe is a blind, godless, place, then there are no such things as rights, of a woman or of a child. All there is is seeking one's own advantage.

Second, since believers believe that abortion is the killing of a baby, it is implied that they will try to stop abortions. This will inevitably be perceived by an unbeliever as coercive and intrusive. That is, unbelievers will rightly see the effort to prevent abortion as the effort of a believer to impose his or her worldview on the unbeliever. Abortion is not like some moral issues which Christians would relegate to the realm of "being between the unbeliever and God." It falls in the realm of public evils in which the Christian worldview requires intervention. If Christians believe they can leave the decision to abort a child up to the individual, it logically follows that they believe the decision for one person to murder another ought to be left up to decision of the individual. To distinguish between the case of the murder of an adult and the abortion of a child is to acknowledge the very distinction on which opposition to abortion is premised. If you once concede that there is a difference between these two cases, you are admitting that humans get to decide when life begins (and ends) - and this decision can ultimately only be made on considerations of the "value" of a life - considerations which are completely alien to a biblical worldview.

To hold a Christian worldview on abortion, then, inherently involves us in a certain level of moral obligation to "impose" our worldview on unbelievers. In the same way and to the extent that we would seek to prevent the murder of an adult we are to use all appropriate means to prevent the killing of an unborn child. This may seem to be a radical statement, but to think otherwise is to concede the argument in advance by effectively saying that an unborn baby is not a full human being with full human rights.

(7) What, then, are the "appropriate" ways in which Christians may to prevent the killing of an unborn child? Aye, there's the rub. Certainly, Christians ought to be involved in efforts to roll back evil laws and judicial rulings which permit murder, just as they once worked to do away with slavery. Christians, too, ought to be deeply involved in providing good options for mothers who don't wish to be mothers to give their children to parents who will love and care for them.

But what about taking action beyond this? After all, it is true that Christians, where human law conflicts with the Law of God are required to obey God rather than men. Should we take this as implying our obligation to protect the unborn in the same way that we would feel we were morally obligated to take action to prevent someone with a gun from killing someone else? For example, although the rulings of the judges in our nation make it illegal to prevent women from entering abortion clinics, are Christians obligated to disobey these laws? Clearly there are some very thorny issues here that need to be carefully thought through. It is not sufficient to just fall back on the fact that Christians are in general commanded to obey the laws. There are times when to do that involves us in disobedience to God.

Of course, it is always wrong for Christians to try to right wrongs by committing evil themselves. It is always wrong for Christians to take such actions as bombing abortion clinics or shooting abortion doctors. Even to the extent that Christians are to take actions which prevent people from getting abortions, they must not violate God's Law in doing that.

I can propose no easy answers to the question of how far Christians ought to go, or what actions they ought to take, in preventing people from getting abortions which are legal in this nation. There are no easy answers to this question (although, as noted above, there clearly are some actions which Christians cannot take). Each Christian is obligated to think through these issues carefully in the light of the Word of God, and in His Presence. But Sanctity of Life Sunday is a good day to stop and consider the question.

May God see fit to change the hearts and minds of many in our land so that this evil practice disappears and many come to recognize the sacredness of life which God created in His image.

On "Christian nations" and Christians' political/social involvement

2015-01-13T12:42:00.002-08:00

It is fairly common for conservative, evangelical Christians in America to claim, either explicitly or implicitly, that America was founded as a "Christian nation," has fallen away from its roots, and needs to return to them.

I don't agree with the claim when stated in this form.

Does this mean I support the anti-theistic, amoral society that we're becoming?

Well, no.

What I don't agree with in the claim above is the premise that America (where the word America refers to the political entity which came into existence in 1788 with the signing of its present Constitution) was ever a "Christian nation" or that Christians ought to be trying to establish formally Christian nations on the earth anyway. Relative to the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, it might be true (although I doubt it) that America was once a nation with a high percentage of Christians. America might also have been (and I believe it was) founded by men, the overwhelming majority of whom were devout Christians, with the sincere goal of establishing righteous government. But it was never a Christian nation.

In fact, I don't even think such a thing as a Christian nation is even possible in this age redemptive history.

Why, you might ask, do I think that? Well, for starters, the term "nation," in its political sense, signifies a well-defined group of people who agree to be subject to a common system of government. Given that not all Americans ever agreed to be subject to Christ (i.e., to become Christians) or to the Bible, and given that office-bearing was never restricted to Christians, this nation was never a Christian nation in any meaningful sense. It is true that American institutions were established with enormous influence of Christian ideas, but that does not make the United States a Christian nation.

As for the reason that I don't think there can even be such a thing as a Christian nation in this age of the world, that requires a little more explanation.

Even if we were to allow for the possibility (which I don't, so long as Christ Himself is not physically here on earth to govern) that it's legitimate for Christians to establish a nation governed exclusively by Christians using only the Bible as their ultimate standard, we must contend with a horrendously difficult set of issues with regard to what that hypothetical system of government would look like.

When evangelical Christians talk about a "Christian nation," they usually have a pretty limited idea in their minds of what that means. What they often have in mind is a semi-mythical golden age in the American past that we need to "get back to." If pressed, they'll usually come up with a relatively short list of things that we need to do: outlaw abortion, put prayer and the Bible back in schools, get rid of no-fault divorce, make sexual activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage illegal, clean up the smut in media, and so on.

Many conservative evangelicals would also add various things to this list which are probably more Republican ideas than solidly biblical ones: things like reducing taxes (does the Bible really specify what the right level of taxation is or what combination of property, earned income, capital gains, sales, custom/excise, value-added, etc. should be levied to gather it?), getting rid of national health care plans (does the Bible really tell us how to deal with out of control health-care inflation), providing for a strong national defense, tort reform, Second Amendment rights, and so on.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that any of these things are bad policy recommendations. I'm actually in favor of many of them (assuming they are implemented well). What I am saying is that implementing various of these things is not at all the same thing as drawing a comprehensive model for laws and civil administration from the Bible.

What would a more comprehensively biblical model for civil administration even look like? As many non-Christians have noted, there are lots of laws in the Bible that Christians don't keep any more. While I think it's not that hard to defend in general (i.e. in terms of a distinction between moral, ceremonial, and civil law) why that is so, making individual decisions about which laws from ancient Israel ought to have some kind of counterpart in today's civil law is a complicated matter. And yet, if someone proposes to establish a nation whose civil laws are derived from biblical prescriptions, it is necessary to be very clear and comprehensive in identifying which laws and institutions are binding outside the context of ancient Israel, and which are not. And even for those which are still binding, there remains the question of which of those laws are to be enforced by state authority (as opposed to being enforced by God Himself).

It's impossible to do this comprehensively in this short blog post, but to illustrate the complexities of this project, consider a few examples.

Most Christians will agree that it is not appropriate to adopt the ceremonial code of ancient Israel as a binding standard for Americans. But what about ancient Israel's administrative laws? Should we have something analogous to allowing the poor to glean the edges of a field in our law code? What about the idea of inalienable family land title (i.e., land that can only be temporarily leased, not sold)? Sabbatical years? Years of jubilee?

And what about the moral Law? Meaning the one that most Christians still believe represents God's will for all mankind (I don't personally know any Christians who think it's OK to murder, steal, commit adultery, and so on). The last time I checked, the Ten Commandments also require that only the true God is to be worshiped, that graven images cannot be made, that one is not to misuse God's Name, that the Sabbath is to be observed (which Sabbath? Saturday, Sunday, your choice of any day so long as you do it? or is it only the Nine Commandments now?) and to honor parents. Elsewhere in Scripture these same "religious" prescriptions have specified punishments for violating them (usually the penalty is death). Please note, I'm not writing any of this with any intent to mock God's holy Law. God forbid! But I am saying that the fact that God's covenant with ancient Israel was unique ought to make us think very hard about how to apply even the moral laws and their civil penalties outside of Israel's redemptive-historical context.

Some readers might want to avoid all these issues with the rather lame response that "we are not under the Law." That is certainly true of Christians with regard to our accountability to God's eternal punishment for breaking His moral Law. But that's not what we're talking about here. The point here is that if you propose to establish an earthly system of government with earthly laws having earthly penalties for disobedience, you need to say which biblical laws you are choosing to have a civil government enforce and why you've chosen those ones and not others.

You see, in ancient Israel people didn't really have much choice in anything. They were born Israelites (well, yes, there were some proselytes as well) and, being Israelites, were obligated to live under the entire Mosaic code. Once a person had entered the covenant, whether through birth or through conversion, leaving was not permitted. You were obligated to keep the entire Mosaic Law - which dealt comprehensively with ceremonial, civil, and moral matters - under penalty of civil government.

That situation is not at all the same as that of the modern Christian. The New Testament seems clear in teaching that to be converted to Christianity is something which is ultimately between the individual and God. Although every individual person does have moral obligation to trust in Christ, it is God, and not the civil magistrate, who will enforce the penalty (the eternal penalty of hell) for his or her refusal to do so.There is no hint in the New Testament that someone who apostatizes from Christianity (or never makes profession in the first place) is expected to face a civil penalty for that. In this age of redemptive history, the church, as God's covenant community, does not bear civil authority (although individual Christians often do).

And what about our system of government itself? Some modern advocates of a Christian government for the U.S. argue that the Scripture calls for a democratic republic as the biblical form of government. This is not an exegetically sound claim. Actually, Old Testament Israel was a monarchy, not a republic, and leadership in the tribes was family- and clan-based. Although there are instances of leaders being chosen (as in Exodus 18 and in Numbers 11), it seems from closer examination of genealogical records that those leaders chosen to represent the tribes in national assemblies were generally clan leaders - there was nothing resembling a modern election and political campaign.

And what about the offices of government? In America we have three branches: legislative, judicial, and executive. In ancient Israel, you had prophet, priest, and king. You didn't have a legislative branch. The Law was fixed. You didn't get to change it or add to it. You only got to interpret it. This was what kings and the judges appointed by them did, with input from the priests. Prophets were messengers from God who confronted kings, priests, and people for failure to keep the covenant of Law.

In short, the models for government that we find in the Bible don't seem directly applicable to the situation of a non-covenant nation in the Christian era. So, someone who proposes to establish a system of laws and government established on "Christian" or "biblical" principles is not so much having those things prescribed out of Scripture as inventing things and determining whether what they've invented contradicts anything from the Law of Scripture which is of abiding validity.

It seems, then, that the project of establishing Christian government is not a simple one. This doesn't by itself imply, of course, that we're not supposed to try to do it. The fact that something is hard doesn't mean that we're not obligated to do it. Are there other reasons that Christian nations cannot exist in this age?

The most important reason is theological. There is a Christian nation. Only one Christian nation. The church. Redeemed out of every earthly nation by God and promised a heavenly city. As the Apostle Peter says,

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10, ESV)

The Apostle Paul, too, confirms this:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:20, ESV)

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says something similar:

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13-16, ESV)

And Jesus Himself confirms it:

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world.” (John 18:36a, ESV)

In the book of Revelation, the living creatures and the elders sing of it:

They sing a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.” (Rev 5:9-10, ESV)

All these verses confirm the idea that there is only one Christian nation - and it is not America or any other earthly nation. It is the nation consisting of those whom Christ has redeemed out of the nations of the earth. The church consists of those who trust Christ and willingly submit to Him as King. This church already reigns with Christ in heaven, but, when He returns, will reign with Him on the earth.

From this it follows that the quest to establish a nation formally as a Christian nation is a foolish one. It has no biblical basis and, if attempted, will only lead to apostasy and a repetition of the evils that attended the church in its abominable alliance with the Roman empire that began with the reign of Constantine.

So is it legitimate for Christians to play any part in earthly politics and government? The answer is definitely yes, so long as it is borne in mind that it is not the church that is to govern earthly kingdoms on earth before Christ's return. Rather, individual Christians are to seek to do justly in using that power and influence which God has entrusted to them. As is well-illustrated in the discussion of biblical law above, doing this is by no means a simple matter. It often involves a great deal of thinking to determine whether laws and policy proposals are consistent with the moral Law of God, and with the societal obligation to care for the weak and suffering.

In short, Christians are called to act as salt and light in this present evil age, upholding the requirements of the moral Law of God in their own lives, submitting to and supporting earthly governments so long as what those governments require is consistent with what is right, and using whatever authority or influence God has entrusted to them to see that justice and righteousness are established and mercy is done.

But neither America nor any other earthly nation is the promised Land. The Christian's citizenship is in heaven. We will not build the New Jerusalem. That city will descend from heaven with Christ. We are sojourners here in Babylon and must seek the good of the earthly cities (or nations) in which we dwell. Law and morality are not the Gospel. We Christians have infinitely more in common with Christians of other nations than we have with the pagans in our own. Our thanksgiving to God for the blessings of belonging to our earthly nations (in my case, of being an American), and our earnest efforts to establish righteousness and do justice in our nations must never distract us from preaching the Gospel of salvation through faith in Christ and entry through Him into the eternal heavenly kingdom to which the redeemed from every nation belong.

Is Atlanta Effectively Barring Conservative Evangelical Christians from Managerial Jobs?

2015-01-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

On January 6, the New York Times published an article in which it was reported that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed had fired Kelvin Cochran, the chief of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department. The firing was a response (so Mayor Reed said) to Mr. Cochran's having distributed copies of a book he had written to several members of the department who had not asked for it, and who objected to the book's characterization of sexual activity between people of the same gender as "vile, vulgar, and inappropriate." The mayor said that he believed that Mr. Cochran's "actions and decision-making undermine his ability to effectively manage a large, diverse work force.” The mayor added that “every single employee under the fire chief’s command deserves the certainty that he or she is a valued member of the team and that fairness and respect guide employment decisions.”

Mr Cochran responded that no-one received the book who had not been personally identified to him as an evangelical Christian. It is not at all clear, though, that even if Mr. Cochran had only given his book to those who shared his views that it really would have made any difference at all in the outcome. That is to say, Mr. Cochran was fired, not because he gave copies of his book to people who didn't want it, but because Mr. Cochran's public condemnation of homosexuality was seen as implying his inability to be perceived by all employees as a fair manager. In the final analysis, it doesn't really matter whether Mr. Cochran's views were expressed in a book, made in a speech, expressed in a blog, or communicated in some other way.The real reason for Mr. Cochran's firing was that, in light of the fact that he sincerely believes that homosexual activity to be immoral and "vile," his continued employment by the city of Atlanta would be perceived by many as an endorsement (or at least a non-repudiation) of his beliefs.

One might be tempted to write this case off as another minor skirmish in the culture wars of the modern United States. It would be a mistake to do so. I am not sure if Mr. Cochran will pursue his case in court (I hope he does), but if he does, his case highlights an issue which everyone who cares about the freedoms of speech and of the free exercise of religion ought to care about. This issue is the fact that Mr Cochran was not fired for actually violating the rights of any of his employees. He was fired on the basis of his views alone. That is, he was fired because his religious views in and of themselves, without regard to any action arising out of them, was judged sufficient basis for his disqualification from the office of fire chief.

Regardless of the opinion one might hold with regard to Mr. Cochran's beliefs, as a matter of law, the case of his firing is significant since it represents a departure from the legal standard which has been in place ever since the finding of the Supreme Court in Reynolds v. United States 98 U.S. 145 (1878). In Reynolds, the Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion so long as religious beliefs do not result in actions which actually contravene relevant national law. Later, in Cantwell v. Connecticut 310 U.S. 296 (1940), the Supreme Court, on the basis of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, applied this to state law as well. Case law and legislation in the second half of the twentieth century further clarified that any government laws, policies, or regulations which impinge on a person's right to act in accordance with their beliefs must be in pursuit of a broad and legitimate government purpose and must be framed in a way which is minimally burdensome. (For a very brief history of modern religious liberty law in the United States, see here.)

That is, it is the law of the land that no national, state, or local government is permitted to discriminate against a person on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs. Mr. Cochran was fired from a government position merely for expressing certain sincerely held religious beliefs. It is ironic that Mr. Cochran was discriminated against on the basis of the mayor's desire to establish a non-discriminatory environment for the city's employees. That is, rather than requiring gay and lesbian employees to remain under the supervision of a manager who might violate their rights, the mayor chose to actually violate the rights of the fire chief.

Some might respond to this that the fire chief had not merely potentially violated the rights of those city employees under his supervision, but had actually violated their rights by condemning homosexual activity as "vile." But this is nonsense. No-one has a right not to be offended. Even public officials retain a right to free speech, so long as it is clear when they are speaking for themselves and when they are speaking as a public office-holder. To assert the contrary will merely disqualify everyone with strong views on controversial issues from political office, since such views always offend someone. The non-existent "right to not be offended" would, if implemented, virtually guarantee unrepresentative government, since every significant issue dividing society by definition fosters strong opinions, and, by this silly non-right would guarantee that only those with no opinion on divisive issues could be candidates.

In order to have one's rights violated one must have suffered material, tangible damage. That someone has experienced emotional distress as a result of having heard others disparage them, their behavior, or their views does not, in general, mean that their rights have been violated. (NB, I do think there is an exception to this general principle in the case of children - laws and policies preventing children from being bullied are, within certain limits, a good thing.)

With regard to the establishment of "opinion tests" in order to be qualified for public office, where does it end? Do we really want to live in a nation where the government imposes litmus tests for belief? Such tests are expressly forbidden by the Constitution, regardless of how any hypothetical Supreme Court might wish to interpret it.

It is high time that our society was reminded that toleration does not mean that we never hear views with which we disagree. Toleration does not guarantee a public square where no-one ever says anything controversial. What toleration means is that we respect the rights of others to publicly express views which disagree with our own - even views which personally disparage us - and to do so without public penalty. Again, it is ironic that the concept of "tolerance" is being pressed in directions which are profoundly intolerant. Wild-eyed zealots of all stripes must be reminded that zealotry can only prosper in a world of tolerance for diverse opinion. To insist on uniformity of publicly expressed opinion is to insist on tyranny.

This not, of course, to say that there should be no limits at all on free speech or on the free exercise of religion. The classic examples of people who shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or who claim a religious right to perform human sacrifice come to mind. It is, however, to say that any free society must permit people to differ with each other on important matters and to do so publicly and without government-imposed penalty.

It is to be hoped that the great center of our nation will act, as it usually has in the past, to restrain those foolish would-be revolutionaries who so earnestly seek to use the force of law to purge American society of those with whom they disagree. If not stopped, they will ultimately find that the demons they unleash will not establish a the "good society," but the guillotine and the gulag.

On the First Amendment Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses and the Debate about the Christian Heritage of the United States

2015-01-05T17:10:00.001-08:00

It is now a fixture of political debate to hear the political left arguing for the "separation of church and state" and the religious right arguing in response that constitutionally there really is no such thing. What are citizens (especially Christians) to make of these rival claims?

Well, to begin with, the conservatives are right in saying that the phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution. What the Constitution has to say about the relationship between religion and government is found in the First Amendment, which merely states that

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion , or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

So where did the phrase "separation of church and state" come from? The phrase, in fact, has its origin in a letter which President Thomas Jefferson sent in response to three representatives of the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, who had written him on October 7, 1801. These men had written to Jefferson on behalf of the 26-member Baptist Association, which was working to overturn the establishment of the Congregational church in New England. The text of their letter can be found here.

In his letter responding to them, Jefferson said the following:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

That is, the phrase "separation of church and state" entered the American lexicon as Thomas Jefferson's interpretation as to the effect of the First Amendment's prohibiting the federal government from either establishing a church or interfering with the right of individuals to hold whatever religious beliefs that they might happen to hold.

The full text of Jefferson's response makes clear that he personally objected to the idea of any government's advantaging or disadvantaging of citizens on the basis of their religious convictions and affiliations. It is also clear that Jefferson understood that, as a result of the First Amendment to the Constitution, the federal government lacked any authority to repeal the establishment by the states of New England of "official" churches.

That Jefferson's response to the Danbury Baptists was so widely publicized (it was published in a number of newspapers) gave evidence that the issue of establishment was a live one in the early Republic. Indeed, the issue of establishment of religion at the state level played a substantial role in the election of 1800. In that election, the infant United States chose to elect Thomas Jefferson over his opponent John Adams. Adams was a representative of the Federalist party, which found the majority of its support in New England, where the Congregational church was the established church. Jefferson, on the other hand, was a representative of the Democratic-Republican party, which favored religious freedom and disestablishment. The Methodists and Baptists (who were stronger in the West of the new nation) generally favored Jefferson because of his party's support for disestablishment, while the congregationalists supported the Federalists.

Despite the fact that Adams was himself a Unitarian, many of the more orthodox clergymen of New England told their parishioners that they were conscience-bound to vote against Jefferson since he was a deist (which was true). Jefferson ultimately prevailed in the election.

In the ensuing years of the Second Great Awakening, appeals were commonly made on the basis of the identity of the United States as a "Christian nation" for lawmakers to support various crusades to establish laws in favor of Sabbath-keeping, and against slavery and alcohol. These appeals to the Christian identity of the United States were made, not on the basis of any official establishment of Christianity as the state religion of the United States, but on the basis of the fact that the overwhelming majority of citizens considered themselves to be Christians, and considered themselves to have the right to advocate for laws in keeping with their beliefs.

This "generally Christian" character of the American Republic continued throughout the 19th century, manifesting itself in such institutions as the chaplaincy of the House and Senate, as well as in the proclamation of national days of prayer and thanksgiving, and in public prayer. It is not at all difficult to find public documents and findings of the House and Senate at the time invoking Christianity in a quasi-official way.

Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists surfaced once again in constitutional arguments about the First Amendment "Free Exercise" clause in 1878. In the case of Reynolds v. United States 98 U.S. 145 (1878) (which can be found here), a Mormon man appealed his conviction on the charge of bigamy on the basis that his religion required it, so that his prosecution was a violation of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. As part of their argument, his lawyers cited the phrase "separation between church and state" from Jefferson's letter in support of his claim. In its decision, the Supreme Court ultimately held that this claim of religious immunity from the laws of the land must be set aside since otherwise it would amount to the freedom of every person to do as he or she wished and to excuse it on the basis of religion. That is, the Supreme Court, citing Jefferson, acknowledged that the government had no authority to interfere in matters of private belief, but held that the Free Exercise clause only governed private beliefs, not actions in violation of national laws.

Jefferson's phrase surfaced once again in 1947 in the case of Everson v. Board of Education 330 U.S. 1 (1947). In this historically important case, the U.S. Supreme Court held, on the basis of the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which requires that every citizen is entitled to the equal protection of the laws of the United States) that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment does not only to the federal government, but also to the states. That is, the Supreme Court held that states were no longer free to establish churches since that would mean that the citizens of any such state would now no longer have the same rights as the citizens of another state. The Supreme Court had made a similar argument on the basis of the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in its earlier decision in Cantwell v. Connecticut 310 U.S. 296 (1940), which established that Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment was binding on the states.

Justice Hugo Black, in his majority opinion (which can be found here) for Everson v. Board of Education, cited Jefferson's phrase "wall of separation between Church and State" in finding that

The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither [the state nor Federal Government] can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither [the state nor Federal Government] can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.'

The combination of these Supreme Court decisions on religious liberty, then, established the core of United States constitutional and case law as it existed in the middle of the twentieth century, prior to the great societal and cultural changes that took place during the decade of the 1960's. As can be readily seen, even those disputes about free exercise and the establishment which arose up to this point in time were raised in the context of the "least common denominator" of a broadly Protestant society. That is, even after the formal disestablishment of the established churches of the colonial era, the Protestant hegemony was so general at the governmental level that those churches retained substantial influence, so that these rulings of the Supreme Court had limited practical impact. In this Protestant society, it was quite natural for governmental representatives to almost unconsciously act in accord with the religious consensus, and there were few to object when they did so.

It was during the latter part of the 20th century, and particularly during the epochal decade of the 1960's, that this Protestant hegemony in government unraveled. As this unraveling took place, and as the society at large became increasingly post-Protestant, those who felt that religion was being imposed upon them by their government became more vocal with their objections.

The Supreme Court, governed as it was by the precedents of Reynolds and Everson, continued to work out the logical consequences of these prior decisions in the increasingly pluralist United States. The first major religious liberty decision after Everson was Engel v. Vitale 370 U.S. 421 (1962), in which the Court found that it was unconstitutional for public schools to impose non-denominational prayer.

In Sherbert v. Verner 374 U.S. 398 (1963), the Supreme Court articulated a principle for adjudicating Free Exercise cases which came to be known as the Sherbert Test. The Sherbert Test was a four-fold test as to whether a state could be permitted to infringe on an individual's free exercise rights. This four-fold test involved proving
- that a person's religious beliefs are sincerely held
- that a proposed government action interferes substantially with a person's right to free exercise
- that the government is acting in pursuit of a "compelling interest"
- that the government has pursued its compelling interest in a minimally burdensome way.

Later, in Lemon v. Kurtzman 403 U.S. 602 (1971), the court expanded on the criteria elaborated in Everson to articulate three principles for determining whether proposed national legislation was constitutional with regard to Establishment Clause issues. These three principles are that the proposed legislation served a non-religious purpose, that its purpose was neither to advantage or disadvantage religion, and that its effect was not "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

The Sherman Test did not last long. In the landmark Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith 494 U.S. 872 (1990), the Supreme Court eliminated the Sherman Test, thus eliminating the requirement for strict scrutiny of proposed governmental legislation for impact on Free Exercise rights. A number of legislators seeing that the Supreme Court had, in not requiring governments to use only the least burdensome way of achieving legitimate and generally applicable governmental ends, effectively eliminated the constitutional protection of Free Exercise, passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which reimposed strict scrutiny as a standard. Subsequently, the Court decided in City of Boerne v. Flores 521 U.S. 507 (1997) that RFRA was unconstitutional because it was an invasion by Congress of the Court's exclusive right to define rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result, RFRA became applicable only to the federal government and not to states.

As the national government has become increasingly post-protestant, there has arisen an increasing large body of legislation and judicial decision which is contrary to the moral and religious principles of historical Christianity, and the situation has turned from being one of a protestant majority imposing a religion on a non-protestant minority into a secular government imposing objectionable law on what is still a substantial protestant majority.

Since the 1960's there have also been increasing incursions (judicially justified on the basis of the Establishment Clause) into the right of Christians to full use of public facilities and participation in public forums. Recent examples include decisions of colleges to deny Christian groups the right to recognition if they do not allow non-Christians to be elected as leaders.

It seems increasingly evident that what started out as an effort to protect the rights of religious (and non-religious) minorities has grown into a substantial burden on the rights of Christians to free exercise and full participation in government and public fora. It seems that many have come to understand "separation of church and state" to imply a "religion-free" public square. That is to say, many (especially militant secularists) began to argue that any expression whatsoever of religious belief in a public forum ought to be excluded on principle.

This ongoing secularist effort to exclude religion from the public square has resulted in a backlash in conservative and religious circles. One form which this backlash has taken is the formation of a number of advocacy groups with the intent of propagating a "counter-narrative" to that propagated by the aggressive secularists. The counter-narrative which these Christian groups seek to propagate is the narrative that the United States was from the beginning a Christian nation, that this Christian nation was aggressively hijacked by aggressive secularists, and that Christians must now wake up and "take back" what has been taken from them.

This backlash against overweening secularism is a badly needed correction. However, this necessary response to the efforts of those who would seek to to exclude religion from having a voice in the public square has been undermined in its effectiveness by the overly simplistic characterization that the United States was originally a "Christian nation."

It is incontrovertibly true that the United States was and is a Christian nation if by that is meant that Christianity is the professed religion of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Indeed, large majorities of Americans still claim affiliation with Christianity, even if that affiliation has little effect on their day-to-day lives. To use "Christian nation" in this sense borders on the meaningless. But it is not this sense of the term "Christian nation" that is in dispute.

On the other hand, if what is meant by the term "Christian nation" is that there is a national church, with a distinct creed and confession, of which all citizens must be members, then the United States was never a Christian nation. It is true that some of the early colonies (notably the Plymouth colony) partially satisfied this definition (although those colonies weren't "nations"), in that only members of the church were allowed to vote or could hold political office, but these colonial arrangements were only a distant memory by the time of the founding of the United States.

If what is meant by "Christian nation," though, is a nation in which it is considered entirely legitimate for Christians of various confessions to advocate for laws which suit their beliefs, for Christian lawmakers and magistrates to represent Christian views, and for governments to recognize the legitimate rights of religion without privileging one citizen's belief (or lack of belief) over another's, then in that sense, the United States indisputably was, for most of its history, and may in a limited sense still be, a Christian nation.

Which of these concepts of "Christian nation" is it that these conservative Christian groups are setting forth as that which must be "taken back" from the aggressive secularists? Too often this question is not answered with sufficient clarity by these groups, and the result is confused debate in which protagonists talk past each other, or, even worse, invest effort in defending "truths" from history which are, in fact, demonstrably untrue. In either case, the result is undesirable in that opponents are unconvinced and crucial credibility is lost with observers of the debate.

It is essential that Christians seek to defend their historical and constitutional rights to advocate for laws they believe in, and to not be required to keep their Christian confession a private matter. But in seeking to defend Christians' right to advocate for laws which comport with their beliefs, it important to remember that it would be contrary to Christianity to seek to establish a regime in which those who believe differently (or do not believe at all) would be coerced to support a religion to which they did not subscribe, or would be disadvantaged financially or legislatively, or would be excluded from either office or political representation.

Moreover, it is also important that Christians' claims to political freedom be defended on the basis of actual historical truth, not misrepresentations and falsehoods. It is too often the case that historical documents are "cherry-picked" for evidence in support of a pre-determined historical conclusions, and that any evidence contrary to the pre-determined conclusion is just ignored.

For those who would like to learn more, there are a number of helpful books and resources available which present a balanced view of the history of church/state relations and religious liberty issues in the United States. Some good examples are the following:

Butler, Jon, Grant Wacker, and Randall Balmer. Religion in American Life: A Short History. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Fea, John. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.

Harris, Matthew L. and Thomas S. Kidd. The Founding Fathers and the Debate Over Religion in Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Noll, Mark A. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.

For a more legally and judicially focused background on religious liberty in the United States, see:

Alley, Robert S. The Constitution & Religion: Leading Supreme Court Cases on Church and State. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1999.

Laycock, Douglas. Religious Liberty, Volume 1: Overviews and History. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010.

Laycock, Douglas. Religious Liberty, Volume 2: The Free Exercise Clause. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011.

Another Year Is Over - Are You Ready for the Harvest?

2012-12-31T19:09:00.001-08:00

It's New Year's Eve.

I don't know about you, but for me and my family, a lot changed in 2012. Some of the changes that actually took place were things that seemed within the realm of possibility a year ago, and other changes never even crossed my mind.

Realizing the limits of human ability to see the future might cause us to be apprehensive of what may await us in 2013. Even though we Christians know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, there are no guarantees that our path through this world will be easy or pleasurable. Indeed, for many of our Christian brothers and sisters in different parts of the world the path to heaven is marked with deep pain and suffering.

But, no matter how dark the world around us becomes, no matter what we are called to face for the sake of the testimony of Jesus, we can have confidence that because we Christians have been saved, these things will work out for our joy and for the greater glory of God.

But for those who have not been saved, there is no future of blessing to look forward to. There are many for whom the year 2013 will be their last. None of us knows when our life will end. The transition of years is a good time to take stock of where we stand with the Lord and commit our souls to His care.

Spurgeon says it well:

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." Jeremiah 8:20

Not saved! Dear reader, is this your sorry condition? Warned of the judgment to come, invited to escape for your life, and yet at this moment, not saved! You know the way of salvation, you read it in the Bible, you hear it from the pulpit, it is explained to you by friends, and still you neglect it, and therefore you are not saved! You will be without excuse when the Lord shall execute judgment. The Holy Spirit has blessed the Word that has been preached in your hearing, and times of refreshing have come from the divine presence, and yet you are still without Christ. All these hopeful seasons have come and gone - your summer and your harvest have passed - and still you are not saved! Years have followed one another into eternity, and your last year will soon be here: Youth has gone, manhood is going, and still you are not saved. Let me ask you - will you ever be saved? Is there any likelihood of it? Already the most favorable seasons have left you unsaved. Will other occasions alter your condition? Every means has failed with you - the best of means, used perseveringly, and with the utmost affection. What more can be done for you? Affliction and prosperity have equally failed to impress you; tears and prayers and sermons have been wasted on your barren heart. Are not the probabilities dead against your ever being saved? Is it not more than likely that you will forever stay as you are till death forever bars the door of hope? Do you recoil from this idea? Yet it is a most reasonable one: He who is not washed in so many waters will in all probability go filthy to his end. The convenient time has never come - why should it ever come? It is logical to fear that it will never arrive and that like Felix you will find no convenient occasion until you are in hell. Think carefully about hell and of the dreadful probability that you will soon be there!

Reader, suppose you should die unsaved - no words can picture your doom. Write out your dreadful predicament in tears and blood; talk of it with groans and gnashing of teeth. You will be punished with everlasting destruction and banished from the glory of the Lord and from the glory of His power. Allow my words to startle you into serious thought. Be wise, be wise in time, and before another year begins, believe in Jesus, who is able to save you completely. Consecrate these last hours to lonely thought, and if you are brought to deep repentance, it will be well; and if it leads to a humble faith in Jesus, it will be best of all. See to it that this year does not pass away with you still unforgiven. Do not let the new year's midnight bells sound upon a joyless spirit! Now, now, NOW believe and live.

ESCAPE FOR THY LIFE;

LOOK NOT BEHIND THEE,

NEITHER STAY THOU

IN THE PLAIN,

ESCAPE TO THE MOUNTAIN

LEST THOU BE CONSUMED.

(Spurgeon selection above from Morning and Evening, by C.H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by Alistair Begg, Crossway Books, 2003, p. 351.)

All the World Will Be Blessed

2012-06-10T17:57:00.004-07:00

I've been thinking today about a number of passages that describe God's joining the Gentiles to the descendants of Israel in order to gather "a people for his Name" (Acts 15:14) from all nations. Thought I'd share the passages here.

God to Abraham: "... and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed ..."

God to Jacob: "Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

Messianic prophecy through Isaiah: "And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
He says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

"Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, "Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel."

Jesus: "I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven."

"The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. ... But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

'Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands - remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.'

"When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel."

' And they [the elders and living creatures around God's throne] sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.” '

' "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!"
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble
and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.'

(Genesis 22:18; Genesis 28:14; Isaiah 49:5-6; Luke 2:25-32; Matthew 8:11; Acts 15:11; Ephesians 2:11-13; Ephesians 3:4-6; Revelation 5:9-10, Psalm 107:1-3 ESV)

I'm so thankful to have been grafted into the olive tree of those who are Abraham's descendants by faith ...

Diabolical Want Ads ...

2012-05-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

I ran across the funny photo at left recently. At first I just laughed, but then, me being me, I got to thinking about it.

I mean, if the evil one posted job ads, couldn't this be pretty close to one that he would write? He is, after all, seeking world domination. And he does enslave people to work 24-7 for his objectives (2 Timothy 2:26). Messy death is indeed inevitable but he does allow his minions to have pointless, glitzy toys in the interim.

And yet, when he gives his sales pitch, somehow so many people find it to be compelling and logical.

So much so that even God's people can occasionally ask themselves whether they're really right when so many other people are going a different way.

So what are the key beliefs on which the deception depends?

Here's my first take on a few of the things that the evil one gets people to accept without question because once they're accepted his form of slavery seems quite logical:

(1) This physical world really is all that there is. There's nothing beyond it.
(2) All truth should be evaluated by means which are really only appropriate for understanding physical reality. That is, if you can't find it physically it doesn't exist. This is really a variant of point 1.
(3) Once you're dead, you're dead.
(4) The pleasure you experience in this life is really all the good that you're ever going to see before you die, so you should pursue that above everything else.
(5) There really isn't any such thing as absolute standard of "good" or "evil" to which anyone's accountable. All there really is is what different people like or don't like. So you should pursue whatever you think is good.

Contrast this with the biblical worldview:

(1) God is the ultimate reality and He is the reason for the existence of everything exists. Everything exists to bring Him glory.
(2) Truth is what agrees with God's self-validating revelation. Physical science is only good for understanding physical law.
(3) Men are spiritual. There is an eternal life after death, and our destiny there is determined in this life.
(4) The reward is in eternity. Any good we see here is only a presentiment of what God has for those that love Him. The ultimate Reward is knowing God.
(5) We are all evaluated by our response to God. Do we fall at His feet in worship? Or try to hide? Do we give Him glory and derive all of our pleasure from Him? Or try to find those things in false substitutes. We are morally obligated and designed to pursue God.

Stark difference, no?

It is true, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:19 that if we trust in Christ in this life only then we Christians are of all people most to be pitied. Because if that's true, then all the things we believe in are a lie and we really should be doing as the world does: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

But we aren't wrong.

So "Choose this day whom you will serve .. but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15).

"O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance." Isaiah 26:13

Did Jesus really descend into hell?

2012-04-08T01:52:00.000-07:00

The above, known as "The Apostle's Creed" is one of the oldest statements of faith of the Christian church. For any of you who can read Latin, here is the creed in Latin:

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem;
Creatorem coeli et terrae.
Et in Jesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum;
qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto,
natus ex Maria virgine;
passus sub Pontio Pilato,
crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus;
descendit ad inferna;
tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;
ascendit ad coelos;
sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis;
inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos.

Credo in Spiritum Sanctum;
sanctam ecclesiam catholicam;
sanctorum communionem;
remissionem peccatorum;
carnis resurrectionem;
vitam oeternam.
Amen.

And here it is in Greek:

Πιστεύω εἰς θεòν πατέρα, παντοκράτορα,
ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς.Καὶ εἰς Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ, τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν,
τὸν συλληφθέντα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου,
γεννηθέντα ἐκ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου,
παθόντα ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου,
σταυρωθέντα, θανόντα, καὶ ταφέντα,
κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα,
τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἀναστάντα ἀπὸ τῶν νεκρῶν,
ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανούς,
καθεζόμενον ἐν δεξιᾷ θεοῦ πατρὸς παντοδυνάμου,
ἐκαῖθεν ἐρχόμενον κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς.

Πιστεύω εἰς πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον,
ἁγίαν καθολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν,
ἁγίων κοινωνίαν,
ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν,
σαρκὸς ἀνάστασιν,
ζωὴν αἰώνιον.
Ἀμήν.

And finally, in English:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost;
the holy catholic church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting.
Amen.

Most of the creed is accepted as a standard of orthodoxy by almost every major tradition of Christianity. But there is an exception: the phrase "descended into hell". With respect to that phrase there is variation. Some modern versions of the creed (e.g., the United Methodists) excise the phrase.

So, it being the Saturday of the Paschal weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to post briefly on how this phrase came to be in the creed and, more importantly, whether it's really true that Jesus descended into hell. Please forgive the fact that I haven't properly footnoted and referenced everything below. I'll do that later as I'm trying to get this post out in answer to a friend's question.

The Latin text of the Apostle's Creed is a conglomerate from a number of Latin (and maybe Greek) versions, themselves based on texts assembled from various written sources, dating from second to the third centuries (e.g., Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Novatian). The early Roman creed was as follows:

I believe in God the Father almighty;
and in Christ Jesus His only Son, our Lord,
Who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried,
on the third day rose again from the dead,
ascended to heaven,
sits at the right hand of the Father,
whence He will come to judge the living and the dead;
and in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Church,
the remission of sins,
the resurrection of the flesh.

The first version of the creed to incorporate the phrase "descendit in inferna" is the Aquileian version of the creed recorded by Rufinus ca. 390 A.D. Other versions of the creed that existed prior to and contemporaneously with the Aquileian version (e.g., versions from Rome, Milan, Hippo) do not include the phrase. Moreover, no Latin versions of the creed from that time until approximately 650 A.D. contain the phrase.

Interestingly, a number of the Eastern (Greek) versions of the creed use the phrase (as above) "κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα" ("descended to the lowest [parts]") instead of "descended into Hades". This is interesting, because this phrase in Greek is reminiscent of a phrase in Ephesians 4:9 "κατέβη εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς" ("descended to the lower regions of the earth"). Which would mean that the creed originally may have been doing nothing more than describing Jesus burial by echoing Paul's description of Jesus' "descent".

Moreover, it's sometimes the case that the Greek texts that use these phrases (i.e., "descended into Hades", "descended to the lowest") don't mention the burial of Christ, and the ones that mention His burial don't mention a descent.

Indeed, Rufinus himself says in his commentary on the creed that he believes "descendit in inferna" to be synonymous with being buried.

Well, that's the history of the text of the Creed, such as it is.

More important than any of this, what does the Bible say on the subject?

First, I should say that having Jesus go to the literal hell (called Gehenna, and described as the lake of fire by Jesus and in Revelation 20:10 - which seems to be a different place than the abyss or bottomless pit in Revelation 20:1) creates some problems. One of those is that it isn't clear that hell is even populated yet. It seems from the latter part of Revelation 20 that people are only thrown there after the final judgment. Moreover, the texts used to support the idea of the descent into hell (see below) talk about Jesus going to Hades (the underworld, the place of the dead), not to Gehenna (the place of eternal punishment).

Texts which are used to support the idea of "the harrowing of hell" are Psalm 16:8-10, Ephesians 4:8-9, 1 Peter 3:18-20, 1 Peter 4:4-6. Sometimes the resurrection of departed saints described in Matthew 27:52-53 is also put forward in combination with the above passages as evidence of Jesus' descent into the underworld and taking saints to heaven.

The Psalm 16 text "you will not abandon my soul to Sheol" was quoted by Peter in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2. He quotes the same text from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that was in use at the time of Jesus and the apostles) as "you will not abandon my soul to Hades." This is all fine, since both the Hebrew Sheol and Hades generally mean "the grave" or "the place of the dead". Unfortunately, though, the King James Version translated Hades in Acts 2:27 as "hell", which has led many to use this verse as support for Jesus' descent into hell.

The Ephesians 4:8-9 text (already mentioned above) doesn't say that Jesus went to hell, but rather that he descended to the lower parts of the earth. In the context it probably makes more sense to understand this as being about Jesus' incarnation and subsequent ascension, rather than being about the events between His death and resurrection.

The 1 Peter texts are notoriously difficult to interpret. The major options for interpreting these texts are to understand the "spirits in prison" as being one of:

(1) people from prior to the flood who were preached to by Noah (1 Peter 3:19-20)

(2) evil angels

(3) the spirits of the just from the times prior to Jesus' death who were in "Abraham's bosom" or "Paradise" in Sheol (in contrast to the evil who, as in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31 were in the "bad" part of Sheol)

All of these options present some problems. In option 1, we would have to account for why the people to whom Noah preached prior to the flood should be in a special category of people that get a second chance for repentance after death. It seems more likely to me that in referring to Jesus preaching to the "spirits [presently] in prison", what is meant is that it was the Spirit of Jesus preaching through Noah during the time that he preached to those people who were ultimately judged in the flood.

As for the evil angels theory, it's based on not only on the reference to "spirits" in 1 Peter 3, but also on passages such as the situation in which Jesus threw the legion of demons from the Gadarene demoniacs into the herd of pigs. The demons begged Jesus not to torture them "before the time". They also asked Him not to send them to the abyss (Luke 8). This seems to show that there was a place called "the abyss" (also mentioned in Revelation, e.g. 9:1 and 20:1) which is a place of imprisonment and punishment for demons. And, the theory goes, Jesus went to this place to announce His victory to the evil spirits imprisoned there. The problem with this theory is that it is hard to reconcile with what seems to be going on in 1 Peter 3. Why would only evil spirits from the time of Noah be imprisoned there? There's nothing else in Scripture or Jewish tradition about evil spirits from the time of Noah being imprisoned in the abyss, so this one verse seems like a bit of a dubious foundation for a doctrine. Moreover, there seems to be a distinction in scripture between "the abyss" and Hades and Gehenna and there's no explicit support for the idea that Jesus went to the abyss.

The third theory, that Jesus went to preach to the righteous in "Abraham's bosom" seems at first to make some sense, especially when considered in light of the parable of Lazarus in Luke 16 and in light of the events described in Matthew 27:52-53. But this theory also runs into problems, in that it's not the righteous that are being preached to according to 1 Peter 3, but the ones who did not obey in the time of Noah.

In short, none of these theories seem especially strong - certainly not strong enough to make their way into a major confession of faith of the church.

So, in light of this background, how has the church interpreted this passage in the creed over the centuries?

Well, as already mentioned, up until the 7th century or so there doesn't seem to be any strong evidence of the presence of the phrase "descent into hell" in the creed. From that point forward to the present, though, the Roman Catholic church interprets the phrase "descent into hell" as referring to Jesus preaching to Old Testament saints in limbo. The Anglican church teaches that Jesus preached to the Old Testament saints, but that they were in the "Paradise" part of the underworld instead of in limbo. Lutherans teach that "descent into hell" means that Jesus proclaimed his victory to evil spirits (i.e., as the first phase of His exaltation). The Reformed/Presbyterian branch of the church teaches that the descent into hell refers to the fact that God poured out His full wrath on human body and soul of Jesus during the entire time of His suffering and death and that it is this suffering and death that is referred to. Other non-Lutheran, non-Reformed, non-Episcopal protestant churches either excise the doctrine from the creed or treat it as something of a mystery about which they are not dogmatic.

So what do I think? I probably pretty closely follow the Reformed view.

The view that makes the most sense to me is to say that Jesus experienced my punishment in place and that that punishment was not only the physical judgment of the body, but also the judgment of the human nature by experiencing the full measure of the anger of God -- which I would call hell. And I think He experienced this during His Passion. I'm inclined to think that when Jesus said "Tetelestai!" (It is finished!) on the Cross and gave up the ghost, that He really meant that it was finished. Moreover, I think that the promise He made to the repentant criminal on the cross next to him that that day he would be with Him in Paradise was fulfilled ... and that idea is not really compatible with Jesus going to hell for a whole day first.

But yes, I also think that it's somewhat of a mystery what was happening during the time that Jesus was in the tomb so I'm not too dogmatic about it.

So I can still say the words of the creed, interpreting the "descended into hell" as undergoing in my place all of the wrath of God that, had it been poured out on me, would have resulted in my being thrown into hell. He delivered me and every other Christian from the hell that we were condemned to by taking the hell of God's righteous anger onto Himself.

Hope that helps in clarifying what I think about it. As always, your views are welcomed!

Hidden in Plain Sight

2012-04-01T17:23:00.002-07:00

It's pretty amazing what some artists are doing in 3D pavement art nowadays. Here's an example by Edgar Mueller.

In order for you to experience the effects of this art, though, you have to be standing in the right place. If you stand in the wrong place, it doesn't look anything like what it's supposed to look like. For example, here are two images of another piece of pavement art, one taken from the "correct" perspective, and the second from an "incorrect" one:

You see, the picture only makes sense when looked at the "right" way.

It occurs to me that in some cases, truth can be like that too. You can have the same collection of data, but if you don't look at it in the right way or from the right perspective, you can completely miss the point.

In fact, sometimes what we see or don't see can be a very accurate barometer of the state of our hearts.

I've been reading the book of Matthew this week. One thing that comes through over and over in the book of Matthew is the fact that when Jesus was physically here, he was not recognized because people had completely the wrong idea about the kind of Messiah that they were expecting.

When Jesus showed up, people had available to them the same books (of the Old Testament) that we read. They had the same data we have, but they were only seeing the parts about the conquering King. They generally overlooked the passages that talked about how Messiah was also a suffering Servant who would take away the sins of the people (as in Isaiah 53).

And the fact that they overlooked the complete picture of Jesus was not at all an accident. The reason that the people overlooked the prophecies of the suffering Servant was because they didn't want that kind of Messiah.

Even more than that, the complete concept of salvation that many had at the time that Jesus walked the earth was mistaken. People conceived of salvation as being primarily a matter of physical descent from Abraham combined with the doing of good deeds. And many thought of the blessings of salvation primarily in "this-worldly" terms - as being a matter of experiencing national sovereignty and freedom. In short, they had missed the entire point of the story of the Hebrew Bible: that God had promised to make Abraham the "father of many goyim; that Israel would be a light to the nations and that through her he would raise up a Deliverer for all of mankind; that the goal was ultimately to restore the right relationship between man and God.

Of this all the Law and the Prophets spoke. But no-one could see it. Because, although they had the same text, they were looking at it all wrong.

We see this even among Jesus' own followers. For example, in Matthew 11, John the Baptist, who had been thrown in prison by Herod sends his disciples to ask Jesus whether He was the expected One or whether they should await another. It seems likely from this that even the Baptist was confused about what was going on. Jesus tells John's disciples to tell John the messianic signs that He was doing and to have faith. As John's disciples were leaving, Jesus turned to the crowd and asked them metaphorically whether they thought that John was a soft man, or one who was likely to be of weak opinions. The answer was a decided no. In fact, says Jesus, John is the greatest of all of the prophets up to that time. But, Jesus said, even the least of the Kingdom would be greater than John.

A lot of people have different opinions about what Jesus meant by that. My own feeling, though, is that Jesus meant that the citizens of the Kingdom are greater than John in that they have a clearer revelation of the truth about God and about His Kingdom and His Messiah.

In contrast, Jesus shows that the people rejected both John and Jesus for opposite reasons, thus showing that they were not really open to the truth at all. They would reject the truth no matter what form it came in. Jesus then finishes the discourse by praising God that He has hidden Himself from the wise and learned but revealed Himself to children.

The same theme is there a couple of chapters later when Jesus tells a bunch of parables of the Kingdom, one of the common themes of which is the "hiddenness" of the Kingdom. He even says explicitly, quoting Isaiah, that He taught all things in parables so that

d“‘“You will indeed hear but never understand,

and you will indeed see but never perceive.”

15 For this people's heart has grown dull,

and with their ears ethey can barely hear,

and ftheir eyes they have closed,

lest they should see with their eyes

and hear with their ears

and gunderstand with their heart

and hturn, and I would heal them.’

That is, he veiled the truth in such a way that only those who had been given hearts able to receive the truth would be able to receive it.

Today is Palm Sunday.

On Palm Sunday Jesus rode down from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem as King. The crowds surrounding Him were shouting hosanna, but Jesus, when He drew near the city said the following (recorded in Luke 19):

41 rAnd when he drew near and saw the city, she wept over it, 42 saying, t“Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now uthey are hidden from your eyes. 43 For vthe days will come upon you, when your enemies wwill set up a barricade around you and xsurround you and hem you in on every side 44 yand tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And zthey will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know athe time of your bvisitation.”

Ultimately, the people of that time were held accountable not only for the truth that they did know, but for the truth that they should have known but didn't want to see.

It wasn't like it was easy to see and that we're all so much smarter and better than those who missed it. Even after Jesus had been raised, we read in Luke 24,of how, on the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus chides the men He's walking with for being "foolish of heart and slow to believe" all that the Scripture said about Him. It wasn't until the Holy Spirit was poured out that people began to really understand Jesus, because the Holy Spirit is the One who enlightens our hearts to reveal the truth.

In short, the truth about Jesus is always there, "hidden in plain sight". But only those who have been given "eyes to see"will actually be able to perceive it.

As it says in 2 Cor 4:6:

6 For God, who said, m“Let light shine out of darkness,” nhas shone in our hearts to give othe light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is still the the hidden King. Hidden in plain sight.

Hebrews 4:7

t“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts.”

Don't be mistaken about who Jesus is. Keep seeking to understand Him more. Don't miss Him on this your day because you did not know the time of your visitation.

True Religion

2012-03-25T17:46:00.001-07:00

LORD GOD ALMIGHTY,

I ask not to be enrolled amongst the earthly great and rich,
but to be numbered with the spiritually blessed,.
Make it my present, supreme, persevering concern
to obtain those blessings which are
spiritual in their nature,
eternal in their continuance,
satisfying in their possession.

Preserve me from a false estimate of the whole
or a part of my character;
May I pay regard to
my principles as well as my conduct,
my motives as well as my actions,

Help me
never to mistake the excitement of my passions
for the renewing of the Holy Spirit,
never to judge my religion by occasional
impressions and impulses, but by my
constant and prevailing disposition.

May my heart be right with thee,
and my life as becometh the gospel.

May I maintain a supreme regard to another
and better world,
and feel and confess myself a stranger
and a pilgrim here.

Afford me all the direction, defense, support,
and consolation my journey hence requires,
and grant me a mind stayed upon thee.

Give me large abundance of the supply of
the Spirit of Jesus,
that I may be prepared for every duty,
love thee in all my mercies,
submit to thee in every trial,
trust thee when walking in darkness,
have peace in thee amidst life's changes.

Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief
and uncertainties.

- from The Valley of Vision, A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

Life, Life, Eternal Life!

2012-03-25T17:19:00.001-07:00

So I saw in my dream that the Man began to run: Now he had not run far from his own door, but his Wife and Children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the Man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on crying, Life! Life! Eternal Life!

(John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress)

Who Should I Support (cont.) - more on 2012 Republican nomination

2012-02-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a long post on the Republican nomination process. In that post I concluded that, although I thought Rick Santorum came the closest to representing my views, I would probably support Mitt Romney because I thought he was the only candidate that had a chance of winning the national election. My reasoning was that it would be much better to have a watered-down, liberal Republican than another term of President Obama. I also said that I wanted Santorum to stay in the race long enough to pull Mitt clearly to the right and pin him down there.

In light of recent events my views have changed a little.

First, what hasn't changed:

I still think that *any* of the Republican candidates (with the possible exception of Ron Paul, who I think is dangerously naive in foreign policy - potentially disastrously so) would be hugely preferable to a second term of Barack Obama. A second term would see him running even further to the left, possibly ensconcing a couple of liberal Supreme Court justices to continue to provide favorable votes for the destruction of most of what makes the United States distinctive and great.

I'm still a little worried that nomination of a Republican candidate who is a true conservative may condemn us nationally to what we've been experiencing here in California for the past 30 years or so, viz., that we put up candidates that the base likes but that can't be elected state-wide, and so end up ceding the government to the other party and end up living under their horrible policies.

But, ...

I'm feeling a little more confident about Rick Santorum.

Maybe it's just the momentum generated by his trouncing of Romney in three contests last night (Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado), but I listened to excerpts from some of his recent speeches and he is quite effective in articulating a political philosophy that I think many still hold: a political philosophy of freedom, limited government, and constitutionalism. Moreover, when he speaks of that philosophy I get the sense that he holds these beliefs genuinely and passionately, in contrast to the sense I get from Mitt Romney, who seems prone to changes in what should be core political convictions.

It may also be that some of the actions taken by the Obama administration in recent days (notably the announcement by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that Christian institutions would be required to provide abortion coverage in their health insurance plans) have increased the likelihood that a number of Catholic voters who might otherwise vote as union Democrats might be induced to vote for a Republican alternative.

It may also be that during the Republican debates it's become clear just how much the nomination of Romney would play right into the Democrat's hands in that it would be hard for him to use the unpopular Obamacare legislation against him in that he enacted something very similar in Massachusetts with Romneycare. Moreover, he plays right into the "99%" class warfare rhetoric that they seem to want to run on.

And, perhaps most importantly, it may be that Santorum seems to have performed well in midwestern states that have been the battleground States (along with Florida) in the last few elections. If Santorum continues to dominate the more moderate Romney in states like Michigan, that might be a strong signal that he's able to draw enough voters from the center of the spectrum to prevail over President Obama in the general election.

In any case, I'm feeling more confident about Rick Santorum.

Who Should I Support? On the 2012 Elections ...

2012-01-09T01:01:00.000-08:00

I don't do too many political posts, but given that there's been a lot of discussion over the past few months about the candidates for the Republican nomination for the U.S. 2012 presidential election, I thought I'd put in my two cents.

First, the background:

There are at least four major, somewhat overlapping segments within today's Republican party:

(1) the so-called "social conservatives" (some like to call them the "religious right"),

(2) the "fiscal and foreign-policy conservatives"

(3) the Establishment, country-club Republicans (sometimes derisively called RINOs)

(4) the libertarians.

The Tea Party tends to overlap the first two groups, but I'd guess that about 70% of the Tea Party movement falls in the fiscal/foreign-policy conservative group.

These groups differ on which issues are most important to them:

The most important issues to the social conservatives at this point tend to be abortion and the defense of marriage. Generally speaking, however, social conservatives are also very concerned about irresponsible spending and the debilitating effects that it will have on the country in the future. They have had a working alliance with the fiscal and foreign-policy conservatives since Reagan's '80's, but they deeply distrust Establishment Republicans (and they generally perceive Romney as belonging to this latter group).

The most important issues to the fiscal and foreign-policy conservatives tend to be restoring sanity to the budgeting and spending process, protecting our allies (especially Israel), and projecting military strength (particularly toward terrorism, and more generally toward ideological opponents in the Middle East, Russia/Central Asia, and the Far East).

No-one wants to admit to being an Establishment, country-club (sometimes derisively called RINO) Republican nowadays. Indeed, to be labeled as one can send a candidate into fits of high dudgeon. But this group is somewhat philosophically similar to the neocon fiscal/foreign-policy conservatives in their diagnoses. It's just that they're much less aggressive in their prescriptions. Indeed, they have proven to be not so very different Democrats in their tolerance for a growing national debt. They are also generally socially liberal.

The libertarians share the commitment to fiscal rectitude of the fiscal/foreign policy conservatives, but generally are not energized by either social issues or playing policeman to the world.

Of the major candidates:

Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, and now Rick Santorum have successively been the candidates of the social conservatives. (Social conservatives were always uneasy with Herman Cain). They deeply distrust Romney and don't really like Gingrich. They also would never vote for Ron Paul based on his libertarian views on social issues. Moreover, many of the social conservatives are also strong supporters of Israel and don't trust Ron Paul to support Israel.

The fiscal/foreign policy conservatives don't really have a horse in the race. They liked Pawlenty till he dropped out. Lately they've been waffling between their own Gingrich (who's seen as unreliable) and Establishment candidate Mitt Romney. The favorite candidates of the fiscal/foreign policy conservatives (like Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels) didn't run this time. Santorum is generally acceptable to the fiscal/foreign policy conservatives, although they see him as not having been firm enough on budgetary issues during his time as a Senator.

Establishment Republicans prefer Huntsman and Romney. Romney has always governed as an Establishment Republican but is perceived to be masquerading as a fiscal/foreign policy conservative.

The libertarians, obviously, prefer Ron Paul. Their top issue at the moment is fiscal and budgetary discipline.

In terms of the calculus of winning (which is not necessarily the only or right way of choosing a candidate - see below), the Republicans must choose a candidate who can create sufficient consensus and excitement across all of these groups. In my opinion, the only one of the above factions of the party that can reasonably expect to field such a candidate is the fiscal/foreign policy conservatives. But a successful candidate would have to be seen as a true fiscal conservative in order to be accepted by the libertarians in sufficient numbers to prevent a quixotic 3rd party run by Ron Paul in the general election that would doom us to four more years of Barack Obama. Secondly, a successful candidate needs to be someone who will be accepted by the social conservatives as being a likely defender of their issues while still being perceived as sufficiently "mainstream" to prevail in the general election.

With respect to this profile of a winning candidate, the choice seems to fall (barring a last minute entry or re-entry into the race of someone like Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty, Chris Christie, or Bobbie Jindal) between Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney. Romney, of course, has the weaknesses that he is not perceived to be a real fiscal conservative and hasn't really been seen as much of a culture warrior either. Gingrich is a good debater but won't draw well from the social conservatives (as shown in the Iowa outcome). Santorum, on the other hand, is probably perceived as being somewhat more trustworthy than Romney and less trustworthy than Gingrich on fiscal issues, but much more so on social ones. The downside to a Santorum general election candidacy is that he's much more likely than Romney or Gingrich to be so tarred as a theocrat that it compromises his ability to draw votes from blue-dog Democrats and libertarians in the general election.

As I said above, though, winning isn't everything. That is, it's good to win if winning doesn't cause you to make unacceptable compromises. So which compromises are unacceptable?

Well, it's probably best to begin with an explicitly stated priority list of what I think's most important and then support a candidate in terms of their likely impact relative to others when assessed against the priority list.

At the top of the list I'd have to put issues bearing on the freedom to worship God and bear witness to Him publicly. In the second place I'd put the responsibility of civil government to recognize and uphold (i.e., reward/punish) a non-relativistic code of moral behavior in its citizens - i.e., to ensure that persons (meaning person as the Bible defines it) are protected in their lives, persons, property, and contracts, as generally defined in the second tablet of the Ten Commandments). In the third place I'd put caring for the weak among us and creating opportunity for people to provide for themselves and others.

Contrary to some theonomists, I don't believe it is the charter of the church to impose theocracies over non-believers or believers of different stripes. The church has tried to play that game at too many points in its long history and it always results in corruption and tyranny. That will have to wait until Jesus Christ returns.

With regard to these principles, the best leader would be one who recognizes their own responsibility before God to uphold justice, and who recognizes that justice is a transcendent standard that they don't get to define but instead are responsible to uphold. More specifically, the list of things I seek in such a leader who seeks to uphold justice:

First, I would prefer a leader who shares my belief that the most urgent moral issue facing our nation today is the issue of abortion. Second, I think that it is a very pressing matter to find a leader who will seek to defend the foundational institutions of marriage and family, personally embodying a high regard for those institutions and using every reasonable means to encourage the citizenry to honor them as well. Third, we need to come up with long term solutions to the profligate spending and growth of the federal government. This growth in government spending compromises long-term stability and productivity of the nation and will ensure a poorer future for everyone. We must shrink government, though, by recognizing the need to care for the most vulnerable among us while still creating incentive and opportunity for people to work. Fourth, we must find leaders who are likely to be wise in defending our nation against threats from enemies to our values and way of life (the most critical issues in this area are international terrorism and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea).

All this is to say that I fall in the category of a social conservative who believes that fiscal rectitude is also a moral issue. This is not to say that I don't believe that our government has a role in caring for the poor among us. I believe it does. But income/wealth equality is not the outcome that we ought to seek - rather we should seek to make the United States continue to be the land of opportunity, while ensuring that those of our citizens who are unable to care for themselves have adequate food, shelter, and clothing.

So, generally speaking, I want the candidate who is most likely to uphold these views. Where does this leave me personally? Santorum's views are closest to mine, but I think he's less likely to prevail in the national election than are Romney or Gingrich. Given Obama's abysmal approval ratings, I give Mitt Romney a 60-70% chance of beating Obama in the general election, Gingrich about the same, and Santorum only about a 40-50% chance to beat him.

If Romney or Gingrich win, their impact will be marginal on social issues, somewhat better on fiscal ones, but much better than the disaster that would ensue under a second term of Obama if Republicans voted for Santorum and that caused Obama to win. Moreover, even if Santorum won, it's quite unclear whether he'd actually have much more impact on the issue of abortion (via Supreme Court appointments) than Newt or Mitt would. All would probably be roughly the same in terms of their likely actions with respect to other marriage/family issues. So the risk of supporting Santorum (as against the other two candidates) seems to be high while the likely relative gain (again, relative to them) quite low.

So do I do what we tend to do in California and vote for a candidate in the primaries that's too conservative to win in the general election and then end up worse off than I would have been if I'd held my nose and voted in the primaries for a candidate who is likely to win but who isn't too obnoxious to what's important to me?

Tough questions.

I guess net-net, based on the admittedly somewhat defensive and defeatist calculus above, and despite the fact that Santorum is actually closer to my views, I come down on the side of supporting Romney, but I'd feel better if a bruising primary fight did its bit to ensure that he feels constrained to govern as a conservative and not as a RINO.

As always, I'm interested in your comments ...

The Word of God, Written and Incarnate: How Men Can Know God

2011-12-03T22:50:00.001-08:00

How can men know God? Where should we look to find Him?

The answer, humbling as it is to finite and sinful humankind, is that, on our own, we can't. Without his revelation to us, he can't be found. We are dependent on Him to reveal Himself to us. This is for two reasons. First, that God is infinitely beyond us: He is infinite, and transcends the created order. Second, because He is holy, and we are sinful rebels whose ability to know and understand Him has been broken by our sin.

First, God is transcendent. That is, He is not part of the created order, but is the Personal Source of all other being. Since He is outside the created order, created things can only know Him in the ways He chooses to reveal Himself. Failure to grasp the truth of God's utter transcendence will result in the denial that there is a God at all (atheism); or the conception of God as being identical with the cosmos (pantheism); or the conception of God as being coextensive and coeternal with the cosmos but everywhere present within it (panentheism); or the conception of God as being only a part of the created order (paganism, idolatry).

In coming to understand that God is transcendent over creation, though, we must also know that God is immanent within His creation. That is, He is not an absentee Creator who does not interact with the created order, and about Whom nothing can be known except His existence. Rather, He is active in providential care for His creation: he enters freely into it, revealing Himself to His creatures in the ways that He chooses. Failure to grasp the truth of God's immanence will result in the concept of a God Who may exist, but Who cannot be known.

Because He is transcendent, it is only as He reveals Himself within the created order that those within can know Him. Because God is immanent, He has revealed Himself.

So where has God revealed Himself? God is not a natural object that we come to understand as we do with created things, through scientific or rational observation and investigation. We also do not learn to know Him by searching for Him within our own minds and hearts. He comes to us from outside our sin-darkened minds and speaks a revealing and redeeming Word. He is the speaking Subject Who speaks all created things into being, Whose Word comes to us from outside ourselves and effectively accomplishes the revealing and redeeming purpose for which It was spoken. And God's Word comes to us in three forms: the spoken creation, which testifies to God's eternal power and divine nature, the written record of His revelation to the prophets and apostles, and the Living Word who God spoke into history and who continues to reveal Himself through the written Word to God's people. That is, God has spoken in creation, Scripture and in Jesus.

In Creation:

"For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." Romans 1:18-20, ESV

"The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world." Psalm 19:1-4, ESV

In Scripture:

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:14-16

In Jesus Himself:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made ... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:1-3, 14 ESV

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." Colossians 1:15-20, ESV

"Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power." Hebrews 1:1-3, ESV

"He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is 'The Word of God.' Revelation 19:13, ESV

How do we know the Scripture as God's Word? And how do we recognize Jesus as God's living Word? Because God authenticates it to us. God's Word, when spoken, requires no authentication beyond itself. Since God is God, His speech is recognized as His speech by those to Whom it is directed. Moreover, there is no higher authority to appeal to if one were to ask God to authenticate that is in fact Him speaking. God Himself is the highest of all authorities. God's word is effective and is always recognized by those to whom it is spoken:

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account." Hebrews 4:12-13, ESV

"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:10-11 ESV

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." John 10:27-29, ESV

This Christmas, as you remember the birth of the Savior, take time to reflect on His identity as God's unique and final incarnate Word to His people. And, if you know Him, worship and thank Him for the indescribable gift He gave in taking on human nature, dying to reconcile us to God, being raised as the proof of God's acceptance of His sacrifice, continuing with us through the Spirit, and for the promise that the day will come when we will see Him face to face and be able to worship Him as He deserves.

A Prayer at the Beginning of a New Week

2011-11-13T23:14:00.001-08:00

Eternal, Infinite, Transcendent God and My Father, You know all things.

You know past, present, and future exhaustively. From the statistical motions and state transitions of subatomic fields to the slow spinning of galactic clusters. You know every thought and every inclination of every person you have made. There is nothing that will happen in this week that will be a surprise to You.

Not only do You know all things, You rule all things. It is Your Will that governs and works all things together for good to those who love you.

For me, and for the rest of my fellow humanity, the events of the coming week (or day, hour, minute, or second!) are unpredictable and uncertain. But you already know what You have planned for me.

So in the face of this, where should I begin in my praying? What can I say to One knows what I will say before I even think it? To my infinite Father who is ordering all things for my good?

Let me begin by thanking You for the grace You've given me. And yet, please give me grace to love and trust You more each day. Teach me each day to hate sin more and to turn from it. When I fall, give me faith to rise again in the knowledge that You had already forgiven me. Help me to become increasingly consumed with the eternal treasure that You have given me in Jesus. Teach me to be wise in making use of the time. Show me those to whom you want me to extend Your grace. Teach me to see the world and my walk through it rightly and to be guided by the Holy Spirit and by Your Word.

In Jesus Name,

Amen

Online Bible and theology training - for FREE

2011-10-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

One of the most acute problems facing the church at large today is the critical lack of biblically trained elders and leaders. This problem has a severe consequence in the church's being less than effective in confronting false teaching and beliefs of all kinds both inside and outside our congregations.

In light of this, I am very excited about http://www.biblicaltraining.org, which is a free website with a wealth of seminary level classes on a wide variety of subjects, including Bible, theology, and biblical languages.

I strongly urge all of you to take a look around the site, take some of the classes, and to consider supporting the ministry which is dedicated to training people prepared to "contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints."

A dead-on accurate warning of the dangers of watered-down evangelicalism

2011-09-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

This evening I ran across this convocation sermon from Tim Tennent, given at Asbury Seminary.
http://www.patheos.com/community/bibleandculture/2011/09/25/the-clarion-call-to-watered-down-evangelicalism/

A couple of key quotes to whet your interest:

"... brothers and sisters, we must recognize that our own kitchen is on fire and within one generation, the whole evangelical house will soon be engulfed in flames. If liberalism is guilty of demythologizing the miraculous, we have surely been guilty of trivializing it. If liberalism is guilty of turning all theological statements into anthropological ones, surely we must be found guilty of making Christianity just another face of the multi-headed Hydra of American, market-driven consumerism. "

"These examples all seem so small and insignificant. Yet, that’s how all drift happens. You see, liberal Protestants never woke up one morning and said to themselves, “Hey, let’s adopt an Arian Christology, shall we?” No one said 'Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could devote the next 50 years to undermining the apostolic faith.' No! I’ve read their writings. They were deeply concerned, as we are, to make the gospel relevant to modern people. Evangelicals have not openly abandoned apostolic Christianity. No one set out to cheapen the gospel, diminish God’s holiness or downplay the cost of discipleship. It’s just happening."

I sincerely and urgently recommend the whole article to your prayerful attention.

Reflections and resolutions on the occasion of another birthday

2011-09-07T00:09:00.000-07:00

So it seems I blinked a couple of times and somehow another year flew by. And when I stopped and counted, I suddenly realized that without my being very aware of it happening, I've probably made it well past the midpoint of my life.

So it seems like a good time to thank God publicly for His grace in keeping me safe thus far, and to put in writing a few of the resolutions on which I'm focused on at this stage of my sojourning - and on which, by God's grace, I'm hoping to become still more focused.

So, without further ado, I offer the following notes to myself:

(1) Life goes by much faster than you think it's going to. Don't waste time with trivialities. Abandon yourself to the love of God. Live to know God's glory and to make it known.

(2) Life is not predictable or controllable. Stop trying to make it so. Seek to know and do God's will, and trust when things don't work out the way you think they should that He is good and is working all things for the good of those who love Him.

(3) Everything in this world is transient. Invest your transient possessions to build the eternal wealth of God's Kingdom.

(4) Life's too short to waste energy being different things to different people. Ask God to help you be the same person before God and all men.

(5) You will inevitably and constantly fail at doing these things. Remember that your eternal inheritance is secured not on the basis of your becoming all that you wish to be in this life, but on the basis of the perfect God-Man, Jesus the Messiah, who has already redeemed you from all your sin and will preserve you to the end.

Do We Really Believe What We Say We Believe?

2011-07-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking this week about what I really, truly believe. Which is not at all the same thing as what I kinda sorta believe, or wish I believed. I'd stake my life on what I really, truly believe, but probably wouldn't on the things I only kinda believe.

The martyrs of the early years of the Christian Church had to face this question in its starkest form (and many Christians in different parts of the world today still have to): they were told that they would be imprisoned, tortured, or killed if they confessed Jesus as Lord and Messiah, but could go free if they denied Him.

The consequences of confessing that we believe in Christ in the modern West may not be nearly as stark as those faced by persecuted Christians, but ultimately the question is the same: do we really believe what we say we believe? That is, that repentance and faith in Jesus as Savior from sin, and submission to Him as Lord and King, are the only way that people can be reconciled to the God against whom they've sinned? That unless people are reconciled to God before they die, that they face an eternity of suffering in separation from God?

If I really believe these things that I confess, wouldn't my life be ordered differently?

In short, my faith is too weak and my heart is too cold.

Thou God of all Grace,
Thou hast given me a Saviour,
produce in me a faith to live by Him,
to make Him all my desire,
all my hope,
all my glory.

May I enter Him as my refuge,
build on Him as my foundation,
walk in Him as my way,
follow Him as my guide,
conform to Him as my example,
receive His instructions as my Prophet,
rely on His intercession as my High Priest,
obey Him as my King.

May I never be ashamed of Him or His words,
but joyfully bear His reproach,
never displease Him by unholy or imprudent conduct,
never count it a glory if I take it patiently
when buffeted for a fault,
never make the multitude my model,
never delay when Thy Word invites me to advance.

May Thy dear Son preserve me from this present, evil world,
so that its smiles never allure,
nor its frowns terrify,
nor its vices defile,
nor its errors delude me.

May I feel that I am a stranger and a pilgrim on earth,
declaring plainly that I seek a country,
my title to it becoming daily more clear,
my meetness for it more perfect,
my foretastes of it more abundant;
and whatsoever I do may it be done
in the Saviour's Name.

- from "The Valley of Vision: Puritan Prayers and Devotions", The Banner of Truth Trust