Brief Thoughts on the Lay of the Land

2 Comments

It’s been obvious to all but the most panicked and fearful that the foolishness of the last couple of years has worn itself out. Even apologists for the government’s authoritarian actions earlier in the shamdemic are critiquing the validity of mandates in an omicron environment while still sanctimoniously congratulating themselves on having supported the control health measures, and ‘loved their neighbour’ through their support of state coercion of citizens to be vaccinated. They rest in the self-righteous knowledge that they have helped save New Zealand.

Except that they haven’t. Sure people weren’t dying of covid when we were all locked in our homes for weeks on end and refusing to let people visit our island nation. But what’s happened since the arrival of omicron? Their god the state through its Messiah figure Ardern promised salvation from covid damnation through the sacraments of masks and vaccination. But like all false gods, this one has failed miserably, much to the mirth of the true God (Psalm 2). Only the truly naive and self-deceived can believe that this has all been worth it. Rampant inflation is one of many signs that God is not mocked. Idolatry always ends badly.

Read More

COVID Stats in Australia

2 Comments

Hey Look At That

The Spectator Australia has a great piece detailing the COVID stats there. I recommend you read it.

A couple of stats to whet your appetite.

  • As at 7 September 2021 the CFR for Covid in Australians aged under 50 is <0.034% (16 out of 47,897). This can also be expressed as approximately 4 out of every 12,000 cases.
  • The average life expectancy in Australia is 82.8. As at October 2020 the average age of death from Covid in Australia was approximately 85 and the median age at death approximately 86.
  • Out of 894 cases of people aged over 90 who have tested positive to Covid, 557 have survived (as at 7 September 2021). This means that even those aged over 90 have a statistical chance of over 60% of overcoming Covid.

Read the whole article. It is a fascinating read, and there is only commentary at the end. Most of the piece is just plain statistics.

Read More

Excuses for Avoiding the Responsibility of Christian Education #2

Christians in the West are gripped in a fearful idolatry. We, like the ancient Israelites, cannot decide who we worship. Elijah asked the Israelites, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Today we could say, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions. If Christ is king, follow him, but if the state, then follow it.” Nowhere is this idolatry more obvious than in our capitulation in education. Christians give their children to the enemies of Christ in the hope that their minds will be trained. A few weeks ago we began a series on the excuses Christian parents make for avoiding the responsibility of Christian education. There we looked at perhaps the most sanctified excuse – that of wanting our children to be salt and light. Today we investigate another common excuse: socialisation.

Excuse 2: Socialisation

Many parents have noticed that children who are homeschooled, and even to a certain extent children who attend Christian schools (and I’m not talking about the Christian veneer type schools, but Christian down to the roots types), are…well different. They tend not to be as aware of or obsessed with current fashions in clothing, music and thought. It shows. And parents, because they love their children, do not want their children to have a tough time. They want them to have friends and fit in. They don’t want ‘nerdy’ children. They often want their children to be ‘cool’.

However, this ought not to be the primary goal of a Christian parent. We should seek holiness for our children. And that ought to mean they are different to the children brought up with the secular values of mainstream society. Socialisation is the process of a child internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Now if a society is secular and anti-Christ, then we ought not to want that for our children. In fact, if we want that, we cannot call ourselves Christians in any meaningful way. A Christian wants what Christ wants, and Christ wants followers who are not of the world. We want our children to be different. They ought not to fit in. They ought to be an irritation to a society that is in high rebellion to Christ because they will be constantly reminding them of their need to repent, not only by their speech but by their different values expressed in the way they live with Christ as Lord of all.

In Idols for Destruction, Herbert Sclossberg deals briefly with the concept of socialisation and a Christian response.

Society’s most important institutions serve the socializing function, making people better balance and adjusted to the way things are. And that is why they are so dangerous. All education is of necessity value-laden, and the public school is the most powerful of these instruments of conformity. Its goal is to instil society’s norms and to discredit deviant ideas. The best elements of the Christian school movement…is a determined No! by parents to the homogenization of American life, a recognition that the model to which their children are intended to be conformed has become evil.

And Ye Shall Be As Gods

Ever since the fall of Adam into sin, the temptation to assume godlike abilities has been a natural part of fallen human nature. We think we can determine right and wrong. We think by better controlling our environments we can determine the outcome we desire. Nowhere is this temptation seen so clearly
as when a man or woman assumes political authority.

Enter statists and those who hold socialistic doctrine. Rather than allowing God to be sovereign, these men and women full of arrogance and hubris believe they can rule in place of God. They deny God and idolise the wisdom of man (usually their own) to solve problems. They take from their fellow man with greedy and envious hearts. They render to Caesar what they should render to God. 

In our age, those who aspire to leadership often cite their desire to do good to their fellow man. This always frightens me. These leaders often have an overinflated opinion of themselves and their ability to ensure good for their fellow man. For one, they assume that they know what is good for others. And secondly, they assume they know the best possible way of achieving that good. Unfortunately, the results speak for themselves. They would do better to leave us alone.

Let’s look at one example of their grasping at divinity. Consider poverty. These would be gods see poverty in some sectors of society. Denying the King’s maxim that the poor will always be with us, they try to end poverty. So they forcibly remove blessings from some elements of society so they can distribute those blessings to another. To the rescue of poor single women raising children these benevolent deities ride. Surely this is good we think. We don’t want children to grow up in poverty. Then a few generations later, there is an explosion of children being born out of wedlock and women raising children alone on a measly benefit. Consequently, there is a rise in child poverty, mental health disorders soar, more fatherless young men are attracted to gangs and crime stalks our streets. Rather than admit that their foolish pretension to the throne of God has caused these problems they dig in. More tax, more interference, more carnage. 

Whatever these men and women who have attempted to usurp Christ do, fails miserably. They are not god, and when they attempt to ascend to his throne, they demonstrate to all with open eyes that they are no gods. They cannot dispense blessing and order God’s world in such a way that sinning against the fabric of his universe bears no consequences. They did not create it, they did not redeem it and they do not rule it.

What do we the people do? We should smash our false idol of state and turn back to Christ the king. His yoke is easy and his burden light. Government was never given to us by God to fix everything. It cannot bear that weight. Government was ordained by God to punish the wicked doer, not pontificate about climate change, redistribute the blessings God has given to the slothful, or ‘educate’ our children. When we expect the government to do things God has not designed it to do, we should expect it to do these things poorly, and we should expect it to grow more and more tyrannical and swallow up the other earthly authorities that God has ordained such as fathers, churches and employers.

Bring Back the Doctrine of Vocation

In a recent sermon I heard, the congregation was encouraged to be at a second Sunday meeting (in the evening) as well as the morning service. They were encouraged to attend other weekly meetings of the church, and it was insinuated that it was Satan’s temptation that was causing people to stay at home. There was even that old chestnut, that we need to be careful we are not turning spending time with family into an idol. This was a fairly egregious example of what I have noticed is a serious temptation for many pastors – that of thinking that the church organisation and meetings they run are the most important thing in the lives of every member of the church, and that to miss one indicates a lack of seriousness about one’s faith.

This brow-beating approach to shepherding in order to get the flock to come to more church meetings is unfortunate. As one who has been a Christian for decades, I shrugged it off. I’m not about to be guilt-tripped into attending something because a pastor insinuates it is a sin to not attend. I know the Scriptures. It is dangerous for leaders in the church to put burdens on those they lead that Christ himself does not require. Young Christians however may be fooled by zeal into thinking this is indeed a requirement. The pressure this may put on them when they have a spouse or children and work may indeed cause unhelpful and illegitimate feelings of guilt.

Additionally, I’ve noticed and mentioned in a previous post, the tendency of many pastors to use the Sunday morning service as the opportunity to be evangelists. Instead of feeding God’s beloved sheep and assisting them to apply the gospel to their daily lives, some pastors focus on the gospel message of salvation every week as if their congregations are hardened heathens hovering over the fires of hell.

All this makes me think that our modern clergy need a reawakened understanding of vocation. A book helpful in this area is God at work by Gene Edward Veith Jr. Veith writes, “Churches should not demand so much “church work” from their members that it takes away too much time from their primary vocations.” We the laity are also called. God calls us to our vocations, be they son or daughter, husband or wife, doctor, teacher, labourer, retail assistant, nurse, or homemaker. Yes, pastor, God calls you as our shepherd, but don’t forget that he calls us to our vocations too. It’s easy for pastors to see the good things they are doing (and the vocation of pastor is a good and holy calling!) and expect everyone to turn institutional church-related things into the most important thing in their lives too. But it might be that in attending every church event, I may neglect my God-given calling as a husband or a father. Indeed, it might be that a pastor who fills his time with church events could well be neglecting his God-given calling to be a husband and father too.

Veith puts things this way, “We may assume that what happens on Sunday mornings is not enough, as if coming into Christ’s presence through the proclamation of His Word is a small thing, and as if the daily lives of ordinary Christians are not themselves arenas for divine service.” Pastors need to see their role as shepherds as Paul explained in Ephesians. Pastors are to equip the saints for works of ministry. Unfortunately, because we do not have a solid understanding of the doctrine of vocation, we miss that those works of ministry will often occur outside the institutional church meetings. The sum total of my ministry is not handing out the order of service at church, manning the kitchen, playing in the church band or being part of a welcoming team. These are good things, but my core ministries are being a father and a husband, and whatever God calls me to as I earn money to provide for my family. Paul writes earlier in the epistle of Ephesians, that we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. On a Sunday morning, what we need to see from our pastors is an acknowledgement of the good works God has called us to do in our vocations, and then the opening of the Scriptures to help us in that regard as we are reminded of Christ’s kingship and authority. As Paul writes to the young pastor Timothy, “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.” Preach that word so that your congregation may be ready for every good work during the week.

Idolatry and Family

Over the past few years, I’ve heard and read a troubling little concept. It runs along the lines of “we’ve got to be careful we are not idolising family.” One time I have heard this is in response to parents who spend significant amounts of money on Christian education. What intrigues me about this is that these warnings to avoid idolising family are becoming more and more common in a period of history when family seems to be less and less important even in Christian circles. It seems to me that we are as a whole less likely to idolise family than previous generations. So what’s going on?

First of all, let’s think about idolatry. What is it? Well, of course, one way of thinking about it is placing something before God. God alone is to be at the centre of our lives. He rules, and we worship him alone. Thus far so good. Nobody I know is encouraging fathers or mothers to hold their families as more important than God.

Another way to think about idolatry is disordered desires. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo wrote on this subject. He said, “Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally.” (On Christian Doctrine, I.27-28)

So what does this mean for the family? Yes, we can be involved in the sin of idolatry if we love family more than it ought to be loved. One example of this would be if we are not willing to give up our family for the sake of Christ. This is a very real issue for say a Muslim convert.

But I would suggest that in the Western world, we are more likely to be guilty of a disordered desire in the other direction. We are more likely to love our family less than we should. Is spending thousands of dollars a year to give your children a Christian education idolising your children? Of course not. It’s simple obedience to the king. In fact, I suspect that most reasons for not obeying God’s requirement to train our children ‘Christianly’ is rooted in some other idolatry. We have actually loved something more than family when we should have loved it less.

So the next time you hear someone talking about idolising family, ask yourself, “Why are we so prone to identifying as an idol the thing which is least likely in our cultural milieu to be one? Perhaps we do it to excuse ourselves from doing the hard work of what we ought to be doing. In this case, prioritising our families as highly as God calls us to.

The State Is My Shepherd

The state is my shepherd; I shall not want.

She maketh me lie down on the couch: she leadeth me besides the still waters of self-indulgence and irresponsibility

She removeth my soul.

She stealeth my children and leadeth them in the paths of social justice for her name’s sake.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy public healthcare system and cradle to grave welfare system they comfort me.

Thou prepareth a table of confiscated goodies before me in the presence of mine enemies who would have kept what belonged to them; my greed and avarice runneth over.

Surely pampering and apathy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of slavery until I die.