Chaos, Control, or Christ

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America, Chaos, Christ, Christianity, Citizenship, Control, Freedom, Government, Jesus Christ, Responsibility, Security

“The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration.  I am rather tired of hearing about our rights…The time has come to hear about responsibilities…America’s future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God’s government.”

–Peter Marshall, U.S. Senate Chaplain, 1947

Marshall was not, I think, the first to make this pointed and poetic differentiation: Christ or chaos.  But he was prescient in his application of it to American society.  With increasing secularization in American society over the last seventy years, the nation has done a lot of rejecting Christ, and has experienced a good amount of chaos in return.

Chaos is, I think, what we are presently experiencing culturally.  It is fairly contained at the moment, and for that we can be thankful.  But we are a divided people, and the moral and psychological consequences of secularization are all too obvious.  Chaos is, at present, where America has gone.

But suggesting that we return to Christ–that we put the Bible and prayer back in schools, that we repent of the hideous wickedness of abortion, etc.–is, to many, a worse alternative to chaos.  Some of them suggest an alternative solution, and that is control.  Whose control?  Well, the government’s, of course.  Give the government ever more intrusive power over the lives of the citizenry, and they will bring about a just and safe society.

We had a choice between Christ and chaos.  We chose chaos.  It’s not going well.  So, rather than choosing Christ, a sizeable portion of the American people would prefer to bring in a third factor–control.  This is the sacrifice of freedom for security.

For there is another triad to bring into the discussion: virtue, freedom, and security.  These three fit well together; or, more properly, virtue allows you to have both freedom and security.  The virtuous man will use his freedom responsibly for the good of others.  But the unvirtuous man will use his freedom to harm others; when a society has thrown out virtue, they must choose between freedom and security–they can’t have both.  Or, to return to the first triad, when a society has rejected Christ, they must choose between chaos (loss of security) or control (loss of freedom).  They must have one.  And it is entirely possible that the attempt will fail and that they will have both chaos and control, neither freedom nor security.

This is the dynamic that a Christian must observe around us.  People feel unsafe, so they ask for more intrusive government control; they also feel their desires inhibited, so they throw off restraint and embrace chaos.  Neither chaos nor control will bring flourishing; but Christ will.  What America needs is not primarily education or legislation, but conversion.

To Desire Aright

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Cross, Distraction, Eternity, God, Life, Meaning, Truth

Eternal Truth, give me right desires,

your fires for mine–ephemeral and vain;

cleanse the stain of my misplaced love

and turn above my wayward eyes.

Arise, weak heart, and see

the glory that the world thinks small

surpasses all; ephemeral life’s charms

and harms alike.  Give me vision,

sweet decision, on that ancient crucifix

to so transfix my wandering gaze

that all my days will view

ever anew your Truth Eternal.

Father Eternal

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Eternity, Father, God, Hope, Humanity, Life, Meaning, Time

Find us, Father eternal

on this jewel of shifting seas

wild with wonders, glorious,

mired with sin and sorrows

Find us, God and Savior

where we shiver, sick with grief,

in our momentary laughter,

in our foolishness,

in the long and languid days,

the hours of iron night

still and strange

Find us.

Father eternal,

unchanging, true,

oh how we need to be

found in you.

That you may believe

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Christianity, Doubt, Faith, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Life, Thomas

Poor apostle Thomas.  Though he was empowered at Pentecost with the rest and carried forth the gospel, we remember him mostly for his skepticism about the resurrection.  Doubting Thomas we remember–but he became Believing Thomas.

For after Thomas so famously vowed not to believe Jesus was risen from the dead until he could verify this personally, Christ appeared and invited him to verify it (John 20:24-27).  At that, Thomas testified not only to Christ’s resurrection but to His divinity: “My Lord and my God!” (v.28, NIV).

“Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed'” (v.29).  Thomas believed, as must all who wish to enter the kingdom of God.  And for those who believe, not on the basis of a visible and tangible experience, like Thomas, but on the basis of the testimony recorded in Scripture and illuminated to us by the work of the Holy Spirit, the blessing of Jesus is given.  The gospel is proclaimed to us, a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life.  We are called to believe this word.

For, as John goes on to say, his gospel is not a complete biography of Jesus, and leaves many of Christ’s works and words out (v.30).  “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (v.31).

Life comes by faith in Jesus Christ.  Such faith is reasonable, but it is still faith.  It is not given us to feel the wounds of Christ with our hands, but to read the words of testimony.  This is by God’s design; Christ could personally appear to each and every person.  But He calls us to receive Him by faith.  Blessed are those who believe, and receive the gift of life everlasting.

The Bread of Life

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Christianity, Faith, God, Healing, Hope, Jesus Christ, Life, Peace, Salvation

In the human heart there is a hunger that nothing in this world can satisfy.  We long for the fullness of life, and we have a sense that all the tragedy of life in this world wasn’t meant to be this way.  We hunger for healing and peace, for God’s shalom.

It can be found.  The hunger of the human heart can be satisfied; God has offered us the bread of life.  “Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty'” (Jn. 6:35, NIV).  The dialogue in which He spoke these words scandalized many, but He was speaking of the profound mystery of the gospel.

Our souls may be satisfied in Christ.  Union with Him by faith is the way of life and peace and joy.

Do you hunger inside?  God has offered you the bread of life.  Come to Him, and hunger and thirst no more.

Revisionist Hermeneutics

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Bible, Biblical Interpretation, ELCA, God, Hermeneutics, Liberalism, Scripture, Truth

When you get to the point where you’re changing the Scripture because you don’t like what it says, isn’t it time to admit you’re gunning for the Holy Spirit’s job?  And, of course, that sort of thing never ends well.

What I mean is, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things.  For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).

So when you’re the ELCA, and you decide to quote Genesis 1:31 as “God saw everything that [God] had made…” because you can’t stand the use of masculine pronouns for God, it’s probably the sign that there’s another spirit at work in your agenda–the spirit of the age.

For being so resistant to taking the Scriptures literally, the ELCA is sure willing to take the task of eisegesis literally.

Oh, the Humanity!

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Humanity, Journalism, Language, Media, Society, Truth

It seems that, as a culture, losing our understanding of who God is has led to us losing our understanding of what man is.  The confusion is obvious when it comes to sex; what sexuality is centrally about seems quite lost on most of western civilization.  But through the sexual revolution we have come to an anthropological revolution, and see all too many people–many of them educated and influential–who no longer know what a man is, what a woman is, and thus what mankind is.

Caught up in all of this is a confusion of language.  On the one hand, this is a result of confused anthropology: we need new words to denote new concepts (thus the expanding acronym for sexual deviancy).  But, on the other hand, the revolution in language is meant to advance the revolution in anthropology.  Pressuring people to talk in new ways is intended to eventually change how they think about things.  By labeling the older vocabulary and expressions as immoral, social architects hope to advance their agenda.

Much could be said about this, but for the moment I just want to direct attention to a recent article by Albert Mohler.

What we are facing in this society is not only a meltdown of meaning, but an intentional confusion. This is a revolution that is even now affecting the language, and is using language to affect the entire culture.

I think he is certainly correct.  There are forces guiding this cultural Hindenburg, from liberal educational boards to entertainment elites to big tech.  By the time the disaster becomes obvious to everyone, I wonder if the cry will be ‘Oh, the humanity!’ or ‘Oh, the humxnity!’

Not Nonsense

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Christianity, Faith, Hope, Jesus Christ, Resurrection

The first heralds of the resurrection were the women who went to the tomb early on that first Easter Sunday.  Having seen the empty sepulcher and heard the declaration of the angels, they returned to share the news:

“When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.  It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.  But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:9-11, NIV).

This is still the Christian proclamation, and it is still the crux of faith.  If it was hard for the disciples to believe, if the message of the resurrection seemed like nonsense to them, we shouldn’t be surprised when it seems like nonsense to so many others.

And we have the challenges of our own time and context.  21st century people think of ourselves as sophisticated and enlightened, and there is a strong tendency to think of the people of former times as rusticated and benighted.  And so when the evangelical faith is proclaimed, that Jesus actually rose from the dead, to many it seems like nonsense.

But it is the word of hope and victory.  It is the proclamation of sinners justified, death undone, and the door of paradise flung wide.  It is the fulfilment of the primordial promise and of the prophecies of millennia.

The free gift of God comes by faith in this risen Savior.  Those whose eyes have been opened by the Holy Spirit see the truth and wonder in what the world calls nonsense; those who have the courage to believe receive.  Those who hope and wait for His return will be rewarded.

Seeing the Choice

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America, Christianity, Culture War, Humanity, Liberalism, Pluralism, Religious Left, Secularism, Truth

A coalition of liberal Christians has recently put out a statement “Christians Against Christian Nationalism,” supporting a pluralistic society, rather than one distinctly Christian.  ‘Christian Nationalism,’ in their term, “demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian.”  This definition, and other features of the statement, tend to lump together the idea that American society should be Christian at the core with other ideas, as “to be a good American, one must be Christian.”

The statement, of course, raises questions it does not directly answer:

Christianity should not be privileged by the state?  What worldview should the state privilege, then?  For the state will certainly promote a worldview, otherwise it cannot enact and enforce laws.

And again, “Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion.”  No?  And if someone wants to revive the practice of human sacrifice engaged in by so many religions throughout history?  We mustn’t reject those religious views?

“Religious instruction is best left to our houses of worship, other religious institutions and families.”  And whose morals and virtues will you teach in the schools?

We must have some kind of a nation.  Why not a Christian one?

Now, when one looks at the greed and corruption, racism and hate, sprawling abortion industry and militant sexual revolution, it is fairly easy to say that we’re not a very Christian nation.  There are a lot of Christians in the nation–and they do a lot of good!–but the character of society is in many ways not very Christian.

But the really important question is not “what is America?” but “what was America meant to be, what should it have been, and what might it be?”  And there the answer is quite obviously “a Christian nation”–in some sense of the term: not as a nation where everyone was or was required to be a Christian, not in the sense that pastors wrote the laws or in the establishment of a state church, but in the sense of a nation founded largely by Christians and shaped through most of its history by Christian morals and principles (the obvious exceptions and hypocrisies notwithstanding).

For what these pro-secularism liberals seem to miss is that a society must have some governing ideology.  Pluralism is never really advocated for that job, except perhaps by thoroughgoing anarchists, because real ideological pluralism would allow any religious and cultural practices a place, and that is obviously not the intention of such secular coalitions.

A limited pluralism is not a foundation-level ideology; something beneath it sets the limits.  The supposed pluralistic ideology being pushed is actually grounded upon something else, some ideology that decides which values and practices are permissible and which aren’t.  That underlying ideology is probably some form of atheism, pantheism, or (most likely) paganism.

So we have to see the choices clearly for the future of our society.  The illusion is that we have a choice between a Christian nation or a pluralist nation; that is not the case.  We have a choice between a Christian nation and a pagan nation.  Either culture will promote an agenda for society, will teach their values in the schools and media, and will enforce their morals in the justice system.

“Christian nationalism” is simply the alternative to pagan nationalism.

The Lost

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Christianity, Compassion, Jesus Christ, Mercy, Repentance, Salvation

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10, NIV).

These words are spoken by Jesus after He pronounces the salvation of a greedy tax collector who repented of his ways.  A miserly government stooge is just the kind of person that people love to hate; but God has compassion on them, just as He has upon the poor.  The greedy, too, are lost.  Christ came to save them.

In all of our disagreements and our (often legitimate) criticisms over social issues, we must never forget the compassion of Christ, the compassion we are to carry if we would be Christlike.  Jesus came to save the poor and needy; He also came to save the rich and greedy.  He came to save the lost.  The gospel is offered to all people: repent and believe.  Repentance will look different for different people–for Zacchaeus, it involved giving away (and giving back) a large amount of money.  But the core is the same: repent and believe, and receive the gift of eternal life from the crucified and risen Savior.

He came to seek and save the lost.