A Childlike Faith

More frequently than I would wish, I come across young Christians who are strongly socialist in their leanings. They vote Labour or the Greens. They have some knowledge of the Christian doctrine of sin, but do not seem to apply it universally. For them, individuals can be sinners. For example, landlords can be greedy when they want to raise rents. Corporations and businesses can sin, as in when they ‘oppress’ their workers by not supporting the raising of the minimum wage or sick leave entitlements. Whole classes and races of people can be responsible for sin; the current example being white privilege. Yet the strange thing is, they never seem to apply this to their political heroes. Whenever you point out that their heroes are promoting legislation that is antithetical to a Christian worldview, they reflexively defend their heroes. For example, attempt to criticise the hate speech legislation as dangerous, or point out that the conversion therapy ban is over the top and liable to lead to parents being hamstrung and they will retort with some vacuous nonsense like, “As Christians, we are called to love,” or “No one is going to punish a Christian parent for speaking biblical truth to their child when they are sexually confused.” Their naivety is culpable stupidity. They are Lenin’s apocryphal useful idiots. Their 17-year discipleship of secular indoctrination has clearly worked.

Dear young socialist Christians. Your child-like faith is misdirected. Placing that child-like faith in anyone but Jesus Christ is idolatry. Repent and develop a healthy scepticism of those in rebellion against your true king.

The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #13

We come now to our penultimate post on the directory for private worship.

XIII. And, because it is not given to every one to speak a word in season to a wearied or distressed conscience, it is expedient, that a person (in that case,) finding no ease, after the use of all ordinary means, private and publick, have their address to their own pastor, or some experienced Christian: but if the person troubled in conscience be of that condition, or of that sex, that discretion, modesty, or fear of scandal, requireth a godly, grave, and secret friend to be present with them in their said address, it is expedient that such a friend be present.

The language here is a little bit difficult. What is being said is that there will be situations where a person might not have someone who is able to give them apt biblical exhortation. Perhaps the situation might be in a family where the head of the household is not a Christian, or new to the faith and ill-equipped for the situation one of the household members finds themselves in. In these situations, when ordinary means, both private (which I take to mean individual Scripture reading and prayer as well as family worship) and public (which I imagine includes the exhortation from the pulpit), have been exhausted and unfruitful, a person is encouraged to seek individual counsel from their own pastor or an experienced Christian. The framers wisely point out that this should be done in a way that avoids potential scandal.

It is interesting to note that this ought not to be the normal way Christians find help. The authors of this directory seem to see this kind of counsel as extraordinary. Building strong Christian homes ought to minimise the need for this kind of counsel. In my experience as a teacher, children from well-grounded homes are far less likely to have mental health issues or require help from others outside of the family.

The New Androgyny

Mary Eberstadt is a Catholic author and social commentator who has written a number of great books including Home Alone America, How the West Lost God and her latest book, Primal Screams. If you have never read any of her work before, I’d highly recommend you grab a book of hers from the library.

Primal Screams has the subtitle, “How the sexual revolution created identity politics”. It’s well worth a read. She makes a number of interesting points throughout, but her comments on a section looking at the new androgyny were particularly interesting.

“The bedrock fact is that today’s women are continually given the message that they must perform like men – that men are the standard by which women should be measured.” Obviously, this disadvantages most women, because. unsurprisingly, women are not as good at being men as men! Most women, she rightly points out, cannot compete with men on male terms – ‘sexually, athletically, professionally or otherwise’. She suggests that our view of a successful woman has become the kind of woman how behaves most like a man, and a ‘beta woman’ is one who does not. Women who act like men are rewarded, and those who persist in traditional female roles – ‘marrying, raising a family of size, devoting time and talent to what used to be called domestic arts‘ are viewed with disdain.

As Christians, we ought to celebrate the distinctive designs of men and women and a woman’s special role as nurturer. We ought to challenge the secular paradigm that only one sex is needed and that success for a woman ought to look like success for a man. This is patently untrue and is a denial of creation design. God created Eve because he wanted women in his world. As male and female mankind images God. It is good and right for a woman to attend to the domestic arts and create a haven for her family as a wife and mother. We should celebrate this, and present the superiority of God’s design for families in our joyous, fruitful and serene family life.

Disturbing Events in NZ

There have been some disturbing developments in NZ lately, and as Christians we ought to be aware of them and think carefully about their significance. Cam Slate of the BFD has highligrhted them in a post provocatively entitled “It’s Official, New Zealand Is Now a Dictatorship“. He highlights disturbing things that have happened in the last week. I quote:

  1. The entire country was locked down under Level Four rules.
  2. The Government passed regulations to enforce mandatory masking.
  3. The Government passed regulations to require compulsory tracing.
  4. The Government via the Police abrogated Health exemption cards to compulsory masking.
  5. People who were protesting were arrested, charged and placed under house arrest with no access to internet capable devices
  6. The Government sets up and encourages people to use a snitch line to dob in neighbours, friends and family
  7. Media are operating as Government snitches
  8. The Prime Minister and her un-elected Health Czar have suspended parliament unilaterally.

To that, I would add the government’s anti-parent approach as demonstrated in the conversion therapy bill and the Ministry of Health’s advice that children between 12-15 do not need parental consent for the vaccine. Go and read Cam’s whole article on the BFD.

Also check out the press releases from Judith Collins and David Seymour. Suspending Parliament at such a time is unconscionable.

Welcome!

We’ve noticed increased traffic in recent months which suggests there are a few more regular readers. Welcome.

You can expect to see a new post every weekday, and often one on the weekends also.

This Thursday we are introducing another writer for Sojournal, Ethan Aloiai, the Maga hat wearing teacher who drove the New Zealand left into a frenzy after his appearance at a 2020 BLM protest. This led to an attempted cancellation by the ever tolerant and open-minded David Farrier (among others) who couldn’t handle people supporting Ethan on his blog site so he mass-banned them. Fair enough, his website and all. However, what is outrageous was the degree of his antagonism which was seen in his attempt to get Ethan censured by the Teaching Council. Apparently we cannot tolerate a man with different views to David teaching children at an independent school which people choose and pay money for because they don’t want the kind of schools David approves of. That’s the totaleftarians for you. They don’t have an argument. They only have cancellations and force.

This has been a spectacular example of an ‘own goal’. Because of the egregious attempts at destroying him, Ethan has now been featured on Talanoa Sa’o with excellent commentary on education in New Zealand. He is also becoming well-known in Christian education for his expertise in critical theory. Ethan Aloiai is arguably New Zealand’s foremost expert on critical theory and its dangers, and we are really excited to have him on board with Sojournal! Look out for his first post, highlighting his conversion therapy bill submission which will feature on Thursday at 9:00.

A Father’s Words

Words of reassurance, offered or withheld, are monumental in a child’s growth. Words of encouragement, or exhortation, or patient teaching, are the same. When a child has grown up under the devastation of unremitting harshness (and sometimes not so unwitting), or the devastation of neglect, the one thing a father may not say is that it “was not that big a deal.” Of course it was a big deal. The child is (hopefully) going to be praying the Lord’s Prayer for the rest of his life. What will naturally, readily, come to mind whenever he starts, whenever he says, “Our father…”? What does that mean to him in his bones, and who taught it to him?

Douglas Wilson in Father Hunger

Render to Caesar What is Caesar’s

In yesterday’s article, we highlighted the general weakness of the church in its thinking on government. It is so weak, that when I use the word government, many Christian readers will automatically assume that I am talking about state government. Some will be unaware of any other God-ordained governments. This is because we live in an era where the state government has increased in power and usurped the power of other legitimate and God-ordained spheres of government causing these to atrophy.

In my experience, when one talks to Christians who have imbibed the statist culture about the immorality of the state’s involvement in education, healthcare and welfare or of the evil of redistributionist taxes, one does not have to wait long before one is told that Christians ought to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. What is most frustrating about these conversations is that what is Caesar’s is automatically assumed to be the status quo. It seems Caesar can never overreach his authority.

The Context

So today we will briefly look at this passage. Jesus was nearing the end of his earthly ministry, and he had aroused the envy-ridden ire of the religious leaders. Jesus had just not-so-subtly condemned them for their unwillingness to submit to him and celebrate him as the son of God in a parable that ended in their destruction and the destruction of their city, a not so subtle reference to Jerusalem. In response, the Pharisees set about fulfilling the prophecy by plotting to entangle Jesus. They wanted to get rid of him. However, Jesus had not only made enemies of the religious leaders, but also the political leaders. Herod was not so fond of him either.

This led, as it has throughout history, to the odd alliance of secular power with religious leadership. Some of the disciples of the Pharisees and some Herodians joined together in an attempt to trap Jesus. The Pharisees hated the idea of Jews paying taxes to some foreign overlord. The Herodians, like Herod, were cosied up to the Romans and wanted the status quo to remain. So this unusual alliance comes to Jesus with flattering words. The attempted trap was a question. “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” The trap was laid and ready to be sprung. They thought they had Jesus. They knew his claim – to be the son of the king. They had witnessed the Messianic triumphal entry. They had rebuked him for not suppressing the kingly ascriptions of the crowd and children who entered the temple precincts with him. They knew the Scriptures. The Messiah would rule the nations and dash his enemies to pieces. But they did not believe Jesus was the Messiah.

So their trap was an attempt to force Jesus to make explicit what had been implicit up until this time or suffer the wrath of the people. If Jesus was truly the Messiah, they expected he would own it by saying everything belongs to me, and therefore Caesar does not have the right to take money from the Jews, my people. This would make him an enemy to Caesar who would brook no opposition to his claims to deity and rule. That would mean death. If on the other hand he wavered and claimed Caesar had the authority to tax the Jews, he would lose the popularity that so provoked them.

Jesus Reply and Its Meaning

So this is the context of Jesus’ reply. It was a trap. Jesus knew his time was very near, but it was not yet. He must die when the times were fulfilled. He had to be the Passover lamb. So Jesus asks for a coin to be brought to him. He asks whose inscription is on the coin. Of course, it is the image of Caesar. Then Jesus says, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God, what is God’s.” The response of those who heard this was to marvel. Jesus had not been trapped and answered in an amazing way. Our problem is we don’t see how amazing his answer was. It was not an answer that ruled in favour of the Herodians or the Pharisees. If we don’t get that, we miss what we should marvel at. Jesus took the trap by its jaws and broke it.

First of all, his listeners are told to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, or what is due to him. That means Caesar does have things that are due to him. Caesar can tax. Caesar does have a legitimate realm in which to exercise authority. The Pharisees, whose hatred for the Romans caused them to reject the tax, hated authority in general. Their king had come, and they plotted how to take his authority. To them, Jesus says, “There are things that you must render to Caesar.”

But there is more. And this is what our modern secularised statist Christians fail to understand. Too often, Christians assume that Jesus is saying that government has carte blanche on what Caesar owns and ought to be rendered. When they tell us to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s they leave the very question of what belongs to Caesar unanswered. They assume Caesar is due everything he claims he is due. Why? Because their secular education with its idol of state and demos has trained them in worship well.

However, as Douglas Wilson often points out, one of the things Caesar is not rendered is the right to determine what should be rendered to him! Jesus’ answer was not simply “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” He finished by saying, “and to God what is God’s.”

The very coin that Jesus asked for, the denarius, had an inscription of Caesar on the coin, and would have had the words “Tiberius Caesar Augustus Son to the Divine Augustus” and on the other side, “Highest Priest”. Do these titles belong to Caesar? Should the early Christians have rendered them to him? Well considering he lies dead to this day awaiting the command of Christ to come out from his grave….of course not. Caesar thought he ought to have these titles rendered to him but they belong to Christ.

Furthermore, his first-century audience, well-versed in Scriptures would have been reminded of another image on something more valuable than a cold dead piece of metal. Man was stamped with the very image of God. Thus each one of those men in front of Jesus ought to have been rendered to God. The Pharisees, who stood in the way of the king ought to have bowed down before him. The supporters of the immoral Herod ought to have given themselves to Christ. All men ought to be rendered to God. All positions of authority ought to be rendered to God. All things ought to be rendered to God, because they are all his.

What does this mean? It means Caesar ought to render himself to God, by governing according to God’s laws, and not arrogating to himself what God has given to others. If he refuses to do this, he is not following Christ’s dictum here. In these very words, Jesus signaled the coming of the end to all totalitarians and self-aggrandizing powers. Nimrod in the days of the tower of Babel, the Pharaohs of Egypt, the kings and rulers of Assyria, Babylon and Persia and Greece, and yes, the Caesars of Rome were totalitarians. They abused and oppressed their citizens. But now, Christ has come, and he sounds the warning to all would-be oppressive regimes. Their end is nigh. Christ is king. He rules. Rulers and enemies who take counsel against him will be dashed in pieces. For he reigns. His yoke is easy and his burden light. And he shall have dominion, not they.

As Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, it conquered in a slow and gradual way. Even Caesar eventually rendered himself to God. As this took place, and as the fruit of Christianity gradually spread over the ensuing two millennia, where Christ’s kingdom has held sway, tyrants have been toppled and a Christian view of government has gradually developed and influenced society giving freedom to citizens. It is because of Christ’s words here in Matthew, and elsewhere that absolute monarchy was abolished. It is because of his words that the Constitution which granted rights to the individual became the founding document of the United States of America. Christ’s rule and reign brings freedom from the old way of tyranny. Unfortunately, as nations turn against Christ and embrace the idol of statism, they will once again suffer tyranny. If we will not render ourselves to God, He will hand us over to the not-so-tender love of our false gods.

In our current setting, we are really in little danger of refusing to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. This is not a problem many of us have. But in what seems a common danger, our leaders will use verses like these ones to challenge us on a sin that few of us are likely to commit while neglecting to highlight the very real danger almost all of us are in. “Make sure you give Caesar his due,” they remind their law-abiding congregations as we struggle to support our families on one income under exorbitant redistributive taxes that reward idleness and immorality. We will rail against a sin that we are unlikely to be committing because it’s more comfortable that way, and our religious leaders can remain ‘respectable’ in the eyes of the secular elite. Once again, just as in Jesus’ time, our religious leaders and secular leaders seem united in their opposition to Christ’s claims of universal lordship.

Let us not settle for that uneasy truce. Let us remember the things we ought to render to God. First of all, we render ourselves to God, not Caesar. We belong to God, not our rulers. When our governments try to tyrannise us or threaten us as if we belong to them, we should tell them in no uncertain terms that they ought to render themselves to God, and that we most certainly will never render ourselves to them. We will say as one, “I will never render complete and utter obedience to you, because I belong to God, and therefore I am not your slave. I was bought by Christ and I am now free.”

Secondly, we will never render our children to them. My children have the very image of God stamped on them. Of course they do not belong to the government! Therefore I will not let an out-of-control and self-aggrandizing government take my children and brainwash them in their overweening attempts at control through education. That would be idolatry on my part. So I say to the state, “They are not your children, they belong to Christ.”

Thirdly we will not render our work to the government. Sure, because they are bigger than us, and can unjustly take our money from us to give to their pet idolatries, we might be bullied and forced to give up the fruits of our labour. But we will recognise that this labour and its fruit does not belong to them. God has called each man to the task of dominion. As God enjoyed the fruit of his work, and blessed it, so each man ought to enjoy the fruit of his own work. It ought not to be confiscated from him and its blessing be transferred to another. This is unjust, and the God of justice will judge such wickedness.

Fourthly and on a related note, we will remind them, and our fellow citizens that the role of the state is a minister of the sword. God appoints the state to administer justice. They are stewards of the authority he gives them. Christians who are not naive realise that despite allowing the state to bear the sword, Christ does not authorise it to kill indiscriminately or make up its own standards of justice. This same logic applies to the role of the state. Yes, Christ commands us to render tax to Caesar and Caesar can lawfully tax. But that does not mean he cannot unlawfully tax. When Caesar taxes to usurp authority that Christ has not given him, he is in rebellion against Christ. Christ has given the state a particular role. It is not the minister of welfare. Nor is it the minister of education. And it certainly isn’t the minister of economics. It is not minister of the Word and Sacrament. Whenever the state steps outside of its God-given bounds, it is rebelling against its king, Jesus Christ. We will do all we can to encourage our fellow Christians to reject the idolatry of statism and to worship Christ alone. We will encourage them to reject the easy, but almost always idolatrous answer to all problems that begins with the words, “The government needs to…” We will work to see the state reject its idolatry and fulfill the calling Christ has given it. This means we need the gospel of Christ’s lordship to be preached and accepted in the hearts of our fellow citizens. Repent and believe. Christ is Lord, not Caesar.

The Biblical Role of Government

For too long now, Christians in the West have not really had to think too hard about the biblical role of government. We have lived in the afterglow of a civilization raised up by Christian presence in the past. Thus tyranny, where the gospel shone its light was eventually destroyed. It is unfortunate for us that we have forgotten the lessons learned through centuries of persecution and tyrannical governments. If we are not careful, we are set to learn them again; the hard way.

The all too common response of pastors and Christian leaders in the evangelical church at least in my experience in New Zealand is to assume since state government is ordained by God there are really very few biblical limits on what it can do. Christians are told to submit unless we are told to do something that is a sin. This seems a little too simplistic to me.

In the evangelical church, this naivety is regrettably combined with a dualistic worldview. The gospel is seen as about personal salvation rather than the universal kingship of Christ. Faith is expressed in the private sphere through prayer and Bible reading. The standard held up of faithful Christianity often involves giving up ‘the things of this world’ like a difficult job in order to spend more time helping out in ‘Christian’ (church) activities. Living out the Christian faith at work is equated with sharing the gospel of personal salvation, or perhaps ensuring personal integrity and honesty in one’s business dealings, or perhaps starting a work Bible study meeting. None of this is bad per se, but it is an unfortunately truncated view that neglects the application of the lordship of Christ to 90% of the average Christian’s life.

Consequently, many Christians have not thought through a Christian view of (among other earthy subjects) politics. So it is, that we have Christians who view politics as dirty and unworthy of Christian interest, and simultaneously take for granted the default socialist statist approach to governance. Thus, the role of state has continued to grow and grow unchecked with little or no Christian opposition. This should not have been.

Education is a case in point. In New Zealand the 1877 education act was passed into law. It established ‘free’, compulsory and secular education for all Pakeha New Zealand children. Well-grounded and Biblical Christians should never have supported this legislation, but around the world acts like this were supported with very little outcry from Christian leaders. R.L. Dabney’s prescient opposition being one prominent exception. Little by little the state’s appetite for control has grown and expanded. As each successive generation passes away, a new generation grows up assuming the current approach to government is normal.

So it is, that we have a state that believes it is responsible for our children’s education, our health, our economic well-being, our housing, our media and the information we receive, our charity and so on, right down to managing our interpersonal actions to ensure we don’t offend each other. We are slowly but surely being enslaved. What we need is a Biblical worldview of government. And given the pandemic and government actions as a response to this, we had better figure out what we think and how we must act toward government quickly.

In posts that follow, we will explore some Biblical passages that will help us develop our thinking on government and its role.

The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #12

It’s Tuesday, so we take a look at the next direction in the Directory for Private worship.

XII Seeing the word of God requireth that we should consider one another, to provoke unto love and good works; therefore, at all times, and specially in this time, wherein profanity abounds, and mockers, walking after their own lusts, think it strange that others run not with them to the same excess of riot; every member of this kirk ought to stir up themselves, and one another, to the duties of mutual edification, by instruction, admonition, rebuke; exhorting one another to manifest the grace of God in denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and in living godly, soberly and righteously in this present world; by comforting the feeble-minded, and praying with or for one another. Which duties respectively are to be performed upon special occasions offered by Divine Providence; as, namely, when under any calamity, cross, or great difficulty, counsel or comfort is sought; or when an offender is to be reclaimed by private admonition, and if that be not effectual, by joining one or two more in the admonition, according to the rule of Christ, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

We are first reminded of the truth that God requires believers to encourage each other toward love and good deeds. This requirement is especially important in times where the culture at large provides many examples of people who ignore God and live contrary to God’s law and expect others to join them in their rebellion. I am reminded of the situation we Christians find ourselves in here in New Zealand in the 21st century. Many weaker Christians are being sucked into the vortex of rebellion. Many have been incapacitated by the secular worldview that surrounds them. Consequently, we need Christian brothers to spur us on in these times, to help prevent us from either taking on the world’s opinions and ideas, or falling into its sin. This should start in the Christian nuclear family, but extend throughout the Church body.

The creators of the directory desire that every member of the church should see it as their duty through instruction, admonition and rebuke to exhort others to show the grace of God and reject ungodliness and worldly lusts. It’s not something I have seen a lot of in recent years. Culturally, we modern Westerners are individualists, and it comes as a shock to us if someone has the temerity to rebuke us or instruct us. Part of the issue here is that our churches are not as strong as they should be, because we have not developed the kind of community and fellowship that ought to be seen. We don’t want to get too close to each other precisely because people might see our flaws and that could get quite uncomfortable. Rightly, we also want to avoid legalise. Nevertheless, this aspect of the directory was certainly a challenge to me. Sometimes it is hard enough to rebuke or take a rebuke from someone in our immediate family. Taking this out into the community of believers we belong to seems even more daunting. Yet it is a command of Scripture.

The rule continues by highlighting the positive side of encouragement and admonition. Not only do we help our brothers and sisters avoid ungodliness and worldly lusts, we exhort them into godly and sober living. I think an element of this is the older and more mature Christians modeling Christian living as well as promoting a Christian view of the world. We should not only critique pagan approaches to living, for example, the unnecessary putting off of marriage and family for the sake of a career, but we should also encourage a Christian culture – one of marriage, family and lots of children! Again, unfortunately, the promotion of such Christian ideas is something that can be difficult, because much of the church is individualistic and has imbibed the pluralism of the age. We are brought up to believe that we just have to choose the best path for us. An approach to Christian living that highlights some paths as godly and others as ungodly runs counter to this. Furthermore, the promotion of what is a good and right Christian norm can be seen as a rebuke to those who for whatever reason do not fit the norm. When was the last time you heard a sermon on a Christian approach to child-raising that decried the scourge of daycare and instead promoted mothers…well…being mothers? It’s hard for pastors to encourage a godly lifestyle when they are afraid of the pushback from congregations. It takes courage to promote godly Christian approaches to life.

We conclude our brief look at the twelfth direction, by noting the way it highlights comforting the faint-hearted and praying both with and for each other. We live in perilous times, and courage is needed to live as Christians. There will be times where we are the faint-hearted and we need the community of believers to comfort us, and there will be times where we have to comfort those who are faint-hearted. Prayer is going to be a necessary part of this. In such time as these, it is clear that nothing we can do on our own will change anything. We need God’s Holy Spirit to be at work in and through us and our Christian communities.