the road less travelled
Last week we began to work our way through the Westminster Confession of Faith. The first section is entitled Of Holy Scripture, and today we continue our journey through this section.
II. Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these:
Read More“[The] church is more than the local building and congregation. The term is closer in meaning to the kingdom of God. It has reference to the called-out people of God in all their work together for the Lord.”1 This means that the structures of the church institution are never to be a limiting factor in extending the reign of God and pursuing the work of the kingdom – the work of ordained clergy and elders in their institutional role does not exhaust the calling of church, leaving the laity to merely ‘secular’ tasks. Neither is the church to become self-serving by becoming a wealth and power center for its own sake. The church is to be a servant institution that equips, empowers and sends out every Christian in terms of God’s glorious kingdom purposes.
Joseph Boot in The Mission of God
1. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, vol 2, 670
I received an email from a reader a week or so ago and in one sentence he put his finger on a feeling that has been growing in my mind. He wrote, “In my lifetime there has never been a time where it feels like there are so many dark forces around us; it feels like we are in precursor stages to something much worse.” It certainly feels like we are on the edge of something. And when I say “something”, I do not mean pink cupcakes with chocolate sprinkles. More the kind of something that Gandalf refers to when sitting with Pippin on the walls of Minas Tirith and says, “It’s the deep breath before the plunge.” Ever since the fall of Adam, there has been constant warfare between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Sometimes it’s a Cold War and hostilities are not open, but every now and then open war breaks upon us, whether we would have it or not.
Perhaps those of us thinking like this are of a naturally pessimistic nature and we would think this about any time that we live in. Maybe history will show us to be utterly and completely wrong. Perhaps we are misreading the signs of the times. But I don’t think so. I think that we are like the dreamer who has awoken with relief from a nightmare only to realise that the disaster of his nightmare is real and imminent. If we are right, what are we to do? What is the battle plan? Where ought we to focus our efforts? Here are things I think urgently need addressing by Christians and the church in New Zealand.
1. We must acknowledge our individual and corporate sin as the reason we find ourselves in this current situation and repent by making changes where Christ in his Word calls for change. (Part 1A and 1B).
2. We must commit ourselves to dependence on our king. This means prayer, particularly for wisdom and courage and a renewed appetite for His Word, particularly looking at how God’s people of old have responded to times like these. (Parts 2A, 2B and 2C)
3. We must confront the Church’s unholy dualism and learn once more to apply the lordship of Christ to all things. (Parts 3A, 3B, 3C and 3D)
4. We must develop and practise an evangelism that not only calls for personal salvation, but Christ’s lordship in every sphere of life. In other words we must disciple the nations to obey everything that Christ taught and call unbelievers to recognise Christ’s kingship on earth. (Part 4)
5. We must seek to build a Christian counter-culture. and in that attempt, embrace Christian truths that make the world cringe.
6. We ought to prioritise Christian marriage and family as one of the most powerful methods of resistance
7. We must protect our children while we train them for the day they join us in the battle.
8. We must pray for and seek out leaders who understand the times, encourage (literally make or put in courage) timid leaders and challenge the compromised.
9. We must prioritise obedience to our king over wealth, comfort and respectability. We must be prepared to suffer for holding to the truth.
10. We ought to put our hope in the sovereignty of the reigning Christ who is subduing all his enemies. This is our Christian hope. We know how the story ends. He wins. And since this is so, we should fight like we can actually win, and at the very least, go down swinging
No doubt clearer thinkers will see other essential ingredients in our resistance. Feel free to let me know your thoughts on this. In future posts, we will explore each of these in a little more detail.
Here in New Zealand, we have once again been subjected to a nationwide lockdown. Churches are closed, the nation is on house arrest, and you can only go to work if the government deems your work essential.
I am convinced that one of the premier problems facing the Christian church is a disgraceful complicity with the idolatry of the state and a woefully lacking theology of government.
By the end of this series, I want to make the suggestion that churches and church leaders are morally obliged to disregard our government’s lockdown orders and reopen the church as soon as possible. But before we get there, we must lay some Biblical foundations. Foundations that have been eroded for decades and are about to cause a collapse of the entire house.
What I want to do here is lay a ground-up foundation for Biblical principles regarding our theology of government and then make application to our current cultural moment. My hope is that we might all be able to take a step back and reconsider some of our assumptions about the role of government and our obligations before God in relation to government edicts.
Across this series, we will look at three core principles and then some applications regarding our current cultural moment. here is where we are heading:
This first installment explores principle one. Enjoy.
Read MoreGiven that we have completed our look through the Directory for Private Worship, I thought it worthwhile to look at another historic reformed document. This time I have chosen the Westminster Confession of Fath, a more important document, and one that is still held as a standard by Presbyterian churches around the world today. We will work through this confession point by point every Wednesday.
The Confession was drawn up by an Assembly of clergy and laymen which was appointed by the English Parliament in 1643. The Assembly also produced other Christian classics such as the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the Form of Church Government and the Directory for Public Worship. The Confession itself was completed in 1647.
Today we will begin at Section 1 Of Holy Scripture.
1. Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.
The first clause highlights what some refer to as general revelation. God’s works of creation and providence display who he is. We know that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God’, (Psalm 19) and we know that the apostle Paul says that what may be known about God is plain to men and they are without excuse before God (Romans 1). However, this revelation of God is not sufficient for knowledge that leads to salvation.
This leads to the next sentences where special revelation is introduced. God has spoken and revealed himself in various ways and manners (Hebrews 1:1). The purpose of the revelation is to reveal his will to his people. These revelations have been committed to writing so that the truth can be preserved and spread as well as aiding the church to establish itself and protect God’s people against the corruption of the world, the flesh (our fallen and sinful nature as expressed in Romans 8:7) and the devil.
The final clause highlights an important point. Scripture teaches that God no longer reveals himself in the ways he revealed himself to the prophets and apostles of old. The Assembly believed that his final revelation was in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:2). For the Church, this means the Scriptures are our final standard in life and practice, since they are the revelation of Christ and his will for his church.
No doubt you’ve seen it on Instagram or Facebook, or whatever social media platform you have the misfortune of being compelled to use. Some self-congratulatory automaton sharing a photo of themself being vaccinated or a post about their vaccination and then the words, “You’re welcome.” Virtue Signalling. The latest way shallow and insufferable people get their feeling of righteousness.
This is a kind of modern-day Pharisee. They vaunt their socially acceptable views as proof of their righteousness and acceptability. I imagine a new scenario based on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, although, in our modern version, the tax collector would be seen as automatically righteous because the modern-day Pharisee is a state worshipper and loves confiscatory taxes because…#bekind.
A young man logged onto Facebook to worship himself. “God, I thank me, and demand others thank me that I am not like other people. Even though most of the opinions that I trumpet as righteous are exactly the same as my friends, I am still not like other people. You know, those deplorable evildoers who refuse to wear masks, those who refuse to get the new vaccine, those who refuse to bow to the will of the majority for the sake of convenience, those who hold different opinions to me. I fast twice a week and try to eat less meat for the sake of the environment and don’t give a 10th of all I get because I am righteous and support government redistribution of wealth.” I tell you the truth. This person logged off justified in the sight of his god.
Dear Christian, we ought not to be this person. Jesus wrote about this kind of ‘easy’ righteousness, which is no righteousness at all. He said, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” It is all too easy for a good action to be performed in a way that erases all the heavenly value of that good deed. Not that I am for a minute suggesting that getting a vaccine of dubious efficacy is a righteous act. I don’t think righteousness will ever be as easy as getting a prick in the arm. And boasting about it on social media will never lead to it either.
Today we conclude our short series on disaster and the Lord. In part 1, we looked at the general principle of blessing following obedience and curses following disobedience which is seen throughout redemptive history. Yesterday, in part 2, we saw that it does seem to be a pattern in scripture that national disaster tends to follow disobedience, but on a personal level, suffering is not always the result of personal sin, since sin has social effects. Reading these posts is a helpful setup for this one.
The last two posts have provided a short theological backdrop and setup which allows us to finally deal with COVID-19. One way of thinking about the pandemic would be to consider what the God of the Bible might be telling us. What we have suffered over the last year and a half is not random. It is all part of His plan. I claim no supernatural inspiration. But I do read the Scriptures, and the Scriptures teach that disaster is often used against nations because of their sin and idolatry. Furthermore, let us acknowledge, that God has every reason to punish the Western world for their covenant-breaking and idolatry. We, who once placed God at the very centre of our social lives have for decades been steadily changing our values and allegiance. God says “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and we have allowed no-fault divorce and have refused to sanction those who break the sacred covenant of marriage. God says “Thou shalt not kill” and our hands are red with the blood of tens of thousands of unborn children. God says, “Thou shalt not steal”, and with envious hearts, we attempt to legitimise and call ‘good’ the theft of our neighbour’s goods through the redistributive state. God says, “Thou shalt not covet”, and we have made an art of it, envying successful groups and demonising them in the name of social justice.
Yet these are only sides accompanying our main. They are simply indicators of our great sin. God says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and we have bowed down to many other idols. One of our national idols is the idol of state. Do you doubt me? Whose name has been hallowed such that criticism is almost sacrilegious in this crisis? Whose will is done on this patch of earth as God’s will is in heaven? Who do we look to to give us this day our daily bread when we lose our jobs? Who do we expect to deliver us from this evil? Who have we given radical power and dominion to with nary a second thought? Who do we expect to care for us in our old age if we don’t have enough money to cover things? Whose benefits are we expected not to forget if not the state who heals all our diseases, who redeems our life from the pit and crowns us with loving#bekindness and compassion and who satisfies us with good things? Who do we look to when things go wrong? Who do we expect to train our children? Who do we look to provide answers to every crisis from poverty, to housing to health and education?
Can we doubt at the very least the possibility that COVID-19 is a divine curse on our rejection of God and the breaking of the covenant of creation with him and turning to the state as our redeemer? And if it is, who could deny that it is richly deserved? God has often highlighted the impotence of idols in redemptive history. The very thing that people trust is shown to be empty, worthless and vain. Who could say that Western governments have managed this pandemic well? Have any of them come out of this looking like an omnipotent deity, or just petty tyrant clowns clutching at straws? It’s clearly beyond them. They are shown to be impotent by a microscopic virus. He that dwelleth in heaven is surely laughing!
At this point, there are two options. A nation and its leaders can take note of God’s hand of judgment and turn to Him in repentance. That would be wise. Wise, but uncommon. Idolatry tends to lead to blindness and folly. Rather than turn and be saved, people blindly think that what they need is more of their idol, not less. Frequently in redemptive history, people needed to suffer under the heavy hand of their idols for a long time before they turned in repentance to God.
In New Zealand, and in much of the Western world, there are not too many encouraging signs at this point. Instead of looking at our idol of state and seeing its impotence to save, we have doubled down like rebellious fools. Our idol promises that with ever more power and excessive regulation they will save us, but instead they enslave us. Unlike the God who creates from nothing, they cannot manufacture wealth and are plundering our children and grandchildren in their fruitless attempts at deity. In all this, the reality is that we are just increasing the wrath stored up against us and prolonging the pain that we as a people will suffer.
The call to all who have eyes to see is to repent. Let us repent of our idolatry of state. It cannot save, and is being shown for impotent idol it is. Repentance ought to start with the household of God, which has not been completely innocent in this idolatry. We have unfortunately been complicit. We have wanted our children educated at someone else’s expense. We’ve enjoyed not needing to use our tithes to help the poor among us since we’ve outsourced that. We’ve failed to speak and apply God’s Word to the politics of envy-driven redistributive government. We’ve not held the marriage bed to be honourable and suffered immorality to be named among us. We must repent and commit to living out God’s laws in our lives and calling our brothers and sisters to do the same. Then we must commit to the Great Commission, calling our fellow citizens to turn from their evil ways, embrace the king and his laws and live.
In our previous post, we looked at the biblical foundations for believing that God is sovereign in disasters. We saw that God causes disasters and that he blesses covenant obedience and curses covenant disobedience. We further saw that even nations outside of Israel were expected to obey his law, and were held responsible and punished for egregious breaches.
Does this mean that all disaster is a result of God’s curse? Emphatically no. Scripture explores this issue at the personal level. For example, we have the case of Job, a righteous man who suffered disaster at the hands of Satan, because of a cosmic bet between God and Satan. Furthermore, Jesus himself warns against this kind of thinking. When his disciples asked if the blind man or his parents had sinned that he was born blind, Jesus replied that it was neither of those reasons. Rather it was that the “works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3).
On another occasion, Jesus was asked about some Galileans who had evidently been killed by Pilate while they were offering sacrifices. Jesus asks whether these Galileans were worse sinners than all the others that they died in this way. He explicitly says “No”. He then mentions a tower that fell and killed some people in Siloam. Were these who died worse than others? No! Jesus then uses the events to highlight the importance of repentance. He says, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:5). I suspect strongly, and I think the context supports it, that this repentance is acknowledging their Messiah and avoiding the covenant divorce judgment that would be the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
In the rest of the New Testament, we are encouraged to expect suffering as part of the Christian life. For example, the apostle Peter reminds his readers that they ought not to be surprised by the fiery trial they are going through (I Peter 4:12), Paul tells Timothy that all who desire to live a godly life will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3:12), and the apostle John, of course, spent much of Revelation encouraging a church that would soon suffer the wrath of a diabolical state.
So where does this leave us? There are three things we can say about suffering and disasters. To begin with, we must recognise that disaster and suffering is God-ordained and therefore not random. We don’t live in a Darwinian world of randomness. There is a sovereign God on the throne. Secondly, we know that God uses disasters and suffering in a variety of ways. On a national level, suffering is often linked with national sin and idolatry. On a more individual level, things can be more confusing. Suffering may or may not be the result of personal sinful choices. Sin after all is social, and in society, the effects of sin ripple outwards like the disturbance a stone causes on the smooth water in a pond. Who suffers from the philandering husband who fails to father his children? He will. His wife and children will. And the ripples will spread out from there. Thirdly any kind of disaster or suffering ought to drive people toward God. For the unregenerate sinner, a disaster or personal suffering ought to drive him to repentance and the giving up of idolatry. For the believer, it ought to drive him closer to the Father who is His ultimate good.
Posts like this and its sequel are risky. Some will deliberately misinterpret what I say. I will be cast as a ‘Brian Tamaki’ who was ridiculed for tying the natural disasters with homosexuality around the time of the Christchurch earthquake. But I believe what I am saying is clear from Scripture. So it is good and profitable for us to meditate and think about it. The secular materialist rules out supernatural causes of disasters because they are materialists. They don’t believe in anything beyond the material world. However Christians are not materialists, so we should see what God’s Word has to say about Disasters and our God.
Let us begin our meditation by looking at a passage from the prophet Amos. Amos warned the Northern kingdom of Israel of God’s impending doom because of their covenant-breaking idolatry in the 8th century B.C. In amongst a series of rhetorical questions, Amos asks,
Is a trumpet blown in a city,
and the people are not afraid?
Does disaster come to a city,
unless the Lord has done it?
Disasters are not a surprise to God. Does a disaster come to a city taking God by surprise? No. Disaster comes because he causes it. Now here, this rhetorical device serves as a warning to a prosperous but idolatrous Israel. Do you think you are safe because you are rich and powerful? You are not, because you have broken covenant with God.
This is a general principle. God is sovereign. Nothing catches him by surprise. He does as he pleases (Psalm 115:3). He is the God who brings prosperity and brings disaster (Isaiah 45:7). He is the God who sets up and removes kings (Daniel 2:21).
And on what basis does God do all of this? On the basis of covenant faithfulness. It is righteousness that exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to it (Proverbs 14:34). Read Deuteronomy 28 to see how this principle applied to Israel itself. If Israel faithfully obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, then He would set them ‘high above all the nations of the earth‘ (Deuteronomy 28:1). Then the blessings that will overtake them for covenant faithfulness were enumerated. On the other hand, should they forsook the covenant, covenant curses would overtake them. There would be ‘frustration’ in all they undertook to do, and eventual removal from the land.
Does this apply to other nations? Are they under a similar covenant? Yes. While God covenanted in a special way with Israel, we see that God does deal with nations according to their sin. For example, the reason God allowed Israel to wipe out the people of Canaan under Joshua, was because of their sin, which at that point had reached full measure (Genesis 15:16). In Isaiah 24 we read of a judgment on the whole earth (not just Israel) because of their disregard of God’s laws. This is viewed as breaking the ‘everlasting covenant’ (Isaiah 24:5). As David says in 2 Samuel 23:3-4, The God of Israel has spoken; the rock of Israel has said to me: When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth. God does indeed bless nations when they live according to His laws and He punishes them for their evil.
Does this apply today? Why would it not? God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. He continues to deal with mankind by covenant. And now, Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father and rules from on high. He is the king of Psalm 2. the nations might rage, but God orders all of their leaders to kiss the Son. Jesus commanded his disciples to go into all the world and make disciples, teaching the nations to observe all of His commandments. What happens when nations refuse to kiss the Son? They are the Son’s inheritance. If they do not come to him they will be dashed to pieces. They will perish in their way. He will have the nations. I do not believe we have any reason to somehow imagine God no longer deals with groups of people according to their obedience to his laws now that Christ has come. In fact, I think there is more reason to think that he will do this if Acts 17:31 is anything to go by.
In a recent post looking at one of the excuses Christian parents make to avoid giving a Christian education, we focused on the holy grail of school for many, that of socialisation. In passing, I mentioned that socialisation in a secular environment could look like a child conforming to the pattern of this world rather than being transformed into the image of Christ.
Hannah Arendt, an American political commentator who wrote many books commented on the issue of peer pressure in an essay entitled “Crisis in Education”. There she compares the authority of a tyrannical individual over a child with the tyranny of a group. She writes:
the authority of a group, even a child group, is always considerably stronger and more tyrannical than the severest authority of an individual person can ever be. If one looks at it from the standpoint of the individual child, his chances to rebel or to do anything on his own hook are practically nil; he no longer finds himself in a very unequal contest with a person who has, to be sure, absolute superiority over him but in contest with whom he can nevertheless count on the solidarity of other children, that is, of his own kind; rather he is in the position, hopeless by definition, of a minority of one confronted by the absolute majority of all the others. There are very few grown people who can endure such a situation, even when it is not supported by external means of compulsion; children are simply and utterly incapable of it.
While not a Christian as far as I can tell, Arendt is right on the money and her point has implications for Christian parents. Few grown-up people can endure the pressure of being the odd one out. Witness the way your facebook friends pay homage to the alphabet cult during ‘pride’ month by changing their profile pictures. Children cannot handle this pressure at all. They are by intention programmed to imitate those around them. However in God’s design, this ought to be parents and other wise adults, not their peers. In our modern world, we bundle them off into huge schools, where they are isolated from wise adult council and surrounded by hundreds of other children their own age. To make matters worse, for the Christian, most of these children come from families who have no love for Christ and are caught up in rebellion and idolatry. How will your children stand in this pressure when the entire system is predicated on turning out children who have internalize the norms and ideologies of society – a society that is at war with the king?