Simply put, masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. A man who assumes responsibility is learning masculinity, and a culture that encourages men to take responsibility is a culture that is a friend to masculinity.
Douglas Wilson in Father Hunger
The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #14
Today we complete our look at the Directory for Private Worship with the fourteenth direction and the concluding paragraph. First the last direction.
XIV. When persons of divers families are brought together by Divine Providence, being abroad upon their particular vocations, or any necessary occasions; as they would have the Lord their God with them whithersoever they go, they ought to walk with God, and not neglect the duties of prayer and thanksgiving, but take care that the same be performed by such as the company shall judge fittest. And that they likewise take heed that no corrupt communication proceed out of their mouths, but that which is good, to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers.
The authors of the directory recognise that there will be times in life where members of a family may be away from each other and perhaps thrown together with other Christians. These Christians will greatly desire God’s presence with them, and therefore they ought not to neglect private worship in these peculiar settings. With Christian wisdom, they will determine who should best lead the ‘family’ worship in these times in such a way as to avoid corrupting speech but rather promote speech that edifies.
The concluding paragraph turns to the two main purposes of the Directory.
The drift and scope of all these Directions is no other, but that, upon the one part, the power and practice of godliness, amongst all the ministers and members of this kirk, according to their several places and vocations, may be cherished and advanced, and all impiety and mocking of religious exercises suppressed: and, upon the other part, that, under the name and pretext of religious exercises, no such meetings or practices be allowed, as are apt to breed error, scandal, schism, contempt, or misregard of the publick ordinances and ministers, or neglect of the duties of particular callings, or such other evils as are the works, not of the Spirit, but of the flesh, and are contrary to truth and peace.
Firstly, the aim of the Directions is to encourage godliness amongst the members of the church while suppressing impiety and godlessness. Secondly, the Directions seek to prevent meetings that are liable to lead to error or schism and a disregard of the church authorities. This is an interesting aim that clashes with modern sensibilities. We do not think that the church authorities ought to determine who we meet with and share the Scriptures with. It’s something I haven’t had to think too deeply about. While I wholeheartedly agree that every Christian ought to be a member of a local church and be under the authority and pastoral care of church leaders there, I wonder if it is too high-handed for such a controlled approach to Christians meeting together. Do church leaders have the legitimate (by which I mean God-given) authority to control which Christians meet with others to share Scripture and talk about their faith? While I can see a biblical mandate for elders rooting out heresy and contending with those who are attempting to create schisms, it seems that this would be better done by shepherds knowing the flock well rather than trying to prevent ‘unauthorised’ meetings. Perhaps I’m wrong here. I’d be interested to know if there is a biblical warrant for such a heavy-handed approach.
Incompetence and Waste
Those who are regular readers will know that we at The Sojournal are opponents of statism. We believe the state has a legitimate role. It is indeed a minister of God, but it has rebelled against God’s role for it and has arrogated more and more power. We have theological reasons for opposing much of its spending and regarding it as theft. However, we understand that not all Christians are yet theologically convinced of our position. After all, most of us have grown up in an environment of statism. It is only natural for us to assume it is normal and right. It’s an unquestioned assumption in our lives. It’s hard to see our cultural blind spots.
However, let me appeal to the pragmatists among you. State control of things outside what we at The Sojournal consider to be their God-given realm tends to be inept and incompetent. You know this. Accountability matters. And when you can’t take your business elsewhere, there is no accountability, and therefore there is always wastage. Today let’s consider the much-vaunted Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches Programme.
On the Ministry of Education website, we are informed that school lunches will be provided at a maximum per child, per day cost of $5 per Year 1-8 student and $7 for high school students. Now any parent with a few kids living on a budget knows that you can feed your children a healthy lunch for under $5 easy. But even this amount seems mild compared to the actual cost to the taxpayer.
According to the Treasury budget at a glance document for 2021, we are allocating $527,000,000 toward the school lunches programme. According to the document which is dated 20 May 2021, there are currently 144,000 students receiving these ‘free’ lunches. Now let’s do a little basic arithmetic. $527 million, divided by 144,000 students should give us the amount it costs to feed one child lunches per year. Then let’s divide that number by the number of school days in a year (190 in 2021). This gives us a figure of $19.26 per child. Now let’s be generous and assume that there is going to be an increase in the number of children being fed. Let’s #be kind and assume that they managed to get this up to 200,000 students. That would reduce the cost to $13.87 per child.
What does it actually cost to feed a child? I feed my children 2-4 slices of bread for lunch, with their favourite spread and provide them with a piece of fruit as well. Sometimes they’ll get a homemade biscuit. How much does that cost? Around $1. I am almost 14 times more efficient than the government at feeding my children. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am a grumpy old scrooge-like curmudgeon who is half-starving my children, and I ought to spend double what I do on their lunches. That still makes what the government offers nearly 7 times less efficient than me. Furthermore, because I know what my children like, they will actually eat the lunches I provide while “thousands of taxpayer-funded school lunches are being left uneaten by students each week.” Imagine for a moment the good that all this wasted money, confiscated from citizens through taxes, could be used for if its owners were able to choose how to spend it themselves.
Having thus appealed to the pragmatists, I urge you to consider why this is so. Why is it that the government seems to be so incompetent at as simple a task as providing a child with lunch? Why are its attempts at providing welfare, housing and education so bungling? Is it possible that God has so ordered the world that blessing tends to follow cutting along the grain, and cursing and difficulty follow cutting against it. God has ordained the world with different spheres of authority that are charged with different roles. It is not the role of the government to provide food for children. It is the role of parents. God has ordained that the family is to provide food for itself. The father is the God-ordained protector and provider of the family. He is to provide for his children (Genesis 2:15, 3:19). When the family is functioning as it should, it is going to be far better placed to provide food for children.
A Metaphor For Our Situation
If you ever needed a graphic metaphor for our current situation in New Zealand, this is it. Bearded police officers are being asked to remove their facial hair so their masks can ‘work more effectively’ against COVID-19.
This whole virus scenario has shown what an emasculated population we have become. Here we all are, commanded to remain indoors like cowering women and children in a siege to escape from a particularly nasty flu. And we accept it because we are afraid.
From the Archives #1
Since we have so many new readers, we are going to bring out old posts from the archives to help you find your feet and get a feel for The Sojournal. Today, we encourage you to check out our Psalm – The State is My Shepherd.
Should We Seek a Secular Public Sphere?
What most modern Western people (including many Christians) are asking for in the name of ‘freedom’ is in fact a new slavery, when they attempt to secularize the public sphere and pursue freedom without the Lordship of Christ. To object to this by saying that non-believers are not accountable to God’s covenant law (moral law) is finally to say that we have no basis for presenting the gospel to the unbeliever – since Scripture defines sin as lawlessness and only lawbreakers need the gospel!
The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society by Joseph Boot)
A Weightless Culture
When cultures reject God, they cut themselves off from the ultimate ground of reality, and in the end they do indeed become weightless, insubstantial, light as air, ephemeral or, in the terms used by the prophets, “weighed in the balances, and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27 KJV). They give birth “only to wind” (Is 26:18), and like tumbleweed before the hurricanes of history, they are eventually “gone with the wind” (Is 57:13). The judgment over their end is the verdict “Ichabod” – the glory, the reality, the weightiness has gone (1 Sam 4:21).
Os Guiness in Impossible People
Sin is Social
You don’t have to travel far either in the real world or the internet realm to hear a modern man or woman assert that they are OK with an adult choosing to do with their body whatever they want to do. Thus if an adult man wants to sleep with another adult man, that’s OK. If he wants to have his genitalia removed, take hormones and have bits added to him, that’s fine too. If he wants to be involved in polygamy, that’s not a problem. The individual reigns supreme, as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone else. Unfortunately, comments like these can even be heard from Christians – which shows how thoroughly secular pluralism has infected our thinking.
A Christian response should be, “What do the Scriptures teach?” They teach that we are not just free-floating individuals. We are social beings. Yes the individual matters, but we are all interconnected. This is seen in the truth that we are literally all connected. We are all descendants of Noah and through him of Adam. We are further connected by the design of the world. God has so made the world, that we cannot live without each other. I cannot build, or do electrical work, or conduct surgery. I need others. This pattern is also seen in the moral design of the world.
So what ethical implications does this connectedness have? It means that all sin is social. Sin is never just individual. No matter how small, it has ramifications for society through the web of relationships that it impacts. The classic case of course is in our representative head Adam, whose sin caused all of his descendants to be caught up in its effects. Another case in Scripture is the story of Achan whose disobedience to God caused his own death, the death of his family, and the deaths of 36 other Israelite men. David’s sin with Bathsheba led to the slow trainwreck of his family. Solomon’s sin of marrying foreign women and going after their gods had geopolitical implications that caused suffering and misery for centuries to come.
Sin is social. This truth is denied in the statement, “He can do what he wants as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone.” Sin always hurts society. Fatherless homes have an impact. Homosexual unions have an impact. This is why Mosaic law dealt with things in a way that seems more than harsh to us. Adultery was punishable by death. Why? Because the impact on society of this sin is horrific. It doesn’t just hurt the rejected spouse and their children. The effects of sin ripple out through our social connections. So as moderns, we think we are over the barbarity of such responses to adultery. Yet our ‘mercy’ is truly cruel. In our ‘kindness’ we allow and promote behaviour that leads to more crime, more teenage promiscuity, a mental health epidemic among teens, and a high rate of suicide. We all have to live with the effects of that kind of society.
Conversion Practices Prohibition Submission
Dear Prime Minister Ardern and Minister Faafoi,
I greet you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am writing this submission to implore you by the authority of the God of Nations, to abandon this bill and turn from the unjust and wicked spirit that would compel you to write it in the first place.
Both of you bear the honourable title “Minister” and occupy an office worthy of respect and submission. The very title “Minister” as it pertains to civil rulers, comes from the Bible. Romans 13:1-4 teaches that governing authorities are God’s servants (literally ministers) who are obliged to punish evil and praise good. Therefore, Christians are commanded to be in subjection to your God-ordained authority.
Be that as it may, you have betrayed the solemn responsibility of your office. Your authority to govern comes from God. Yet you have betrayed that authority and trust by supporting and promoting this bill. Rather than obediently honouring God in your office, you have sought to usurp authority that was never given to you. You have attempted to take the rights and responsibilities that belong to God alone.
You will give an account before God for the following:
1. The deceptive nature of this bill
From the outset, this bill has been an exercise in manipulation through the control of language. When we hear the phrase “conversion practices” most ordinary people think of electric shock therapy and other abusive practices that do not currently exist in New Zealand. This is clearly intentional. You have intentionally lumped these abusive practices in with ordinary Christian teaching as a bait and switch to coax along ignorant chumps.
You clearly don’t think too much of ordinary New Zealanders, but we see through this. When a teacher, like myself, offers Christian counsel to a student confused about their sexuality, we should not be lumped together with torturers and abusers.
From the beginning, this bill has been championed by radical anti-Christian activists like Shaneel Lall. It is clear that this bill has been designed to target Christians. That much is plain. What is more subtle is the deceptive way you have gone about it. The bill purports to target “conversion practices”, when in reality, it targets those who are trying to affirm boys, girls, men and women in their gender.
2. The unjust treatment of Christian pastors, parents, and teachers
As Christians, we recognise that this world was made by, and is governed by God. He has made mankind as male and female and heterosexual marriages are the natural expression of sexual desire. All attempts to overthrow this creation reality are highhanded rebellion against the king of the universe. We recognise that since Jesus died to pay the penalty for sinners like us, we should gladly submit to his righteous standards for ethical behaviour and moral living.
We teach others to turn to Jesus, recognise him as Lord, and obey all his teachings. This is foundational to our obligations before God. This means that we will indeed teach that God has made boys to grow up into men who love and marry women. This means we will encourage our children, students, and congregations to live in accordance with all that God made them to be. We will teach people to be transformed by the powerful word of God and supress lewd and sinful sexual desires. We will teach people not to rebel against God by seeking to be a member of the opposite sex. We will explain the destructive and perverse results of lifestyles that fail to recognise God’s created order. And we will teach against the radical LGBTQ ideology that is being promoted by our government and many other institutions.
As a teacher in a Christian school, I cannot abide by the proposals of this bill. By definition, I would be castigated as a criminal because all the students I teach are 18 years or younger. Criminalising people like myself for teaching the Christian message and worldview is reprehensible. By doing so you are inviting the judgment of God and placing yourselves under his curse.
Additionally, these laws absolutely exceed the sphere of authority that has been assigned to you. You have no right to tell parents that they can’t encourage their children to live out a Biblical sexual ethic. They are not your children!
All those who set themselves against the Lord and against his people will be held in derision and will come under the wrath of God. Stop seeking to punish the good and righteous teaching of God and his people.
3. The promotion of child abusing LGBTQ ideologies
The real danger to our children and to society is the radical and destructive ethic of the LGBTQ movement. The real and dangerous conversion therapy is practiced by those who seek to chemically and surgically overturn the created order of God. Promoting rank and open rebellion is what should be outlawed, yet this government has demonstrated time and time again that they have no interest in truth and justice.
In order to know how to live and flourish in this world, we must be directed by the life changing message of the gospel. The law of God teaches us how we can best love God and love our neighbours. All other worldviews are ultimately doomed to failure. At the top of the list of destructive worldviews would be the God-denying, self-promoting worldview of radical individualism.
We do not have the right to define what it means to be human. We are creatures. Only the creator has ultimate say about what and who we are, and he has spoken, both in his word and in creation. All attempts to silence his voice can only lead to disaster.
Conclusion
Jesus Christ is Lord. By virtue of his death and resurrection, he has assumed the place of highest authority. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, your authority is a derivative authority. This means that your authority is limited. You do not have the right to legislate immorality. Jesus will judge ministers harshly who have abandoned their duties and who have engaged in open rebellion and warfare against him.
Be that as it may, Jesus is a kind and compassionate ruler who loves to show mercy. In fact, he died to take the penalty for wicked and rebellious servants. He died for homosexual rebels, transgender rebels, and tyrannical rebels. He died to save them from the penalties of their lifestyles, and he now lives to transform them to be made new in Christ.
Recommendations
By the authority of Christ, you are commanded to repent. Abandon this bill. Assign it to the trash heap. Repent for your self-aggrandising lust for power and autonomy. Recognise that Jesus is Lord. Recognise that the only way to govern justly is to do so in light of his Lordship!
If you turn to Christ, you will find him to be a perfect saviour. You will find that his stipulated standards for righteousness and justice are the measure by which you should rule.
I will be praying that you do this.
In Christ,
Ethan Apollo Aloiai
Eternal Fire Insurance Marketing
The modern evangelical tendency to reduce evangelism to a form of ‘eternal fire insurance marketing’ seriously impoverishes our ability to capture a vision of the Messianic kingdom that the evangel is meant to announce and embody.
“The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society” by Joseph Boot