Proclaiming the Resurrection

Tags

America, Atonement, Christianity, Easter, Gospel, Hope, Jesus Christ, Progressive Christianity, Religious Left, Resurrection, Salvation, Secularism, Truth

Easter brings us the joyful proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the good news of salvation for all who trust in Him.  The Church is commissioned to share this word, and we must beware the world’s temptation to water down, re-direct, or alter the message.  A couple of prominent politician’s takes on Easter, this year, underline how readily this happens in our culture.

            President Biden gave an opinion piece Religion News Service, ‘Let us recommit ourselves to the lessons of Easter’, notable more for what it neglects than for what it says.  Most significantly, President Biden makes no mention of the resurrection of Jesus Christ—which is quite odd for a supposedly committed Catholic, but explained by the fact that what he really wants to talk about is not Easter but COVID and other national issues.

            “Easter is a time to celebrate the spirit of renewal and the promise of brighter days to come”, he begins, which is true if you supply all of the unspoken context about the atoning death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fact that the spirit of renewal is the Holy Spirit, and the cosmic realities of Christian eschatology.  Without that context, such vague words of hope are banal and even deceptive.

            From there he expresses grief regarding the loss of the COVID pandemic, leading to the statement that “the traditions of Holy Week remind us of the journey from sorrow to salvation—that faith, hope and love can lead us out of the darkness and into the light.”  Once again, an allusion to the meaning of Easter that could be stretched to fit the gospel with enough interpretive gymnastics—the three theological virtues characterize the work of the Holy Spirit in the redeemed by their union with Jesus Christ—but, much more likely, point to a vague sub-Christian spirituality whereby we may save ourselves through virtue.  Faith, hope and love do not lead us out of darkness; Jesus Christ, the light of the world, came into our world to lead us out of darkness and bring us life.

            More about COVID follows, pointing to how things are better and calling people to help those in need and get vaccinated.  Towards the end he says, “As we commemorate this holiest of days, let us recommit ourselves to the lessons of Easter.  Let us love and care for our neighbors—as Jesus did, and as we’ve seen so many ordinary, extraordinary people do over the course of this difficult year.”  That is the sole mention of Jesus in the article, a typical liberal reduction of His mission to the moral influence of His compassion.

            Whereas President Biden’s piece is notoriously vague and neglects to mention the resurrection, more directly anti-gospel is a tweet that has gained some notoriety, by Rev. Raphael Warnock, Baptist minister and recently elected Senator.  Warnock tweeted, and since deleted, as reported in the Christian Post:

“The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Warnock wrote on Twitter Easter Sunday.  “Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.”

            That is a direct denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He does not oppose or neglect the resurrection, but he attempts to ‘transcend’ it—to humanistic works-based salvation.  If this is, indeed, Warnock’s belief (one news report claimed to have a source informing them it was written by an assistant), then he is not a Christian.  The message of Easter cannot transcend the resurrection of Christ; it centers upon the resurrection of Christ.  The message of Easter cannot point to salvation by our good works; it is precisely the message of salvation by Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, of His atoning death and vindicatory resurrection.

            Easter is a message of hope, precisely because it is a specific and definite message and precisely because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  To make it a humanistic message is to reject the world-shaking significance of what God has done, and tragically miss the offer of forgiveness, redemption, and eternal life.

Boundaries of Freedom

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America, Christianity, Church, Culture, Culture War, Equality Act, Freedom, Gospel, Government, Humanity, Legislation, LGBTQ+, Secularism, Society

Human freedom is a precious thing: frequently curtailed, dearly bought, and easily lost.  If we are free—free to speak the truth without fear of punishment, free to worship unmolested, free to work and live and build and go where we wish, we should thank God.  Many have not enjoyed such freedom.

            Yet, in a fallen world, freedom must always have limits.  Freedom must be curtailed by law, otherwise it is (by definition) anarchy—which, in a sinful mankind, means uncontrolled wickedness.  Few people want anarchy, but we dispute the proper boundaries of freedom; and such disputes are often, in the end, disputes about the basis of freedom.

            In contemporary American society, there is an essential tug-of-war between conservatives and liberals about the boundaries of freedom, which reflects a fundamental disagreement about the basis of freedom.  The foundational disagreement is between a nation founded on the idea that freedom was bestowed by God, as described in the Declaration of Independence, and which conservatives try to conserve, and the liberal pursuit of a nation where freedom is provided by the government, in accordance with secular ideology.

Such different bases for freedom obviously suggest different boundaries within which it may be responsibly exercised.  If freedom is a gift of God, then it ought be exercised in accordance with the truth, which God has declared and to which nature testifies.  If freedom is granted by the government, then it will be bounded by the prevailing ideology, whatever that may be—in our case, the identity politics of the American elites.  There is, of course, common territory between the two; there are also stark differences.

This is the framework within which current cultural and legislative waves are swelling.  George Weigel rightly points out the ideological militancy, that in a time of so many pressing issues, with so much constructive governance needing to be done, these culture war offensives are being launched:

“So what did the House of Representatives do on February 25? By a vote of 224-206, the House decided to criminalize Genesis 1:27 by passing the “Equality Act,” a Newspeak misnomer reminiscent of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.”

The so-called “Equality Act” is a piece of legislation intended to codify another level of the liberal vision of freedom—freedom for people who claim a certain identity (LGBTQ+) to act in accordance with their ideology without consequences, while simultaneously taking away freedom from people with Christian (and other) religious convictions to operate according to conscience.  These two visions of freedom are in direct opposition, and conflict is inescapable.  Certainly, compromises have been attempted, but the Equality Act, with its denial of religious exemptions for various religious organizations, is not one of them.

We have to understand that a whole battle of worldviews is playing out here.  That can be obscured by some ways of framing the issue.  Take a recent opinion piece by David W. Keys in the leftist Religion News Service, “Religious freedom protects our right to worship.  It doesn’t protect discrimination.”  The title tells you all you need to know; for Keys, despite his claim to Christian identity, the boundaries of freedom are set by contemporary secular moral vision, with its basis in nondiscrimination, rather than by adherence to the truth as revealed by God and attested by nature.  Your religious freedom ends at the doors of the church (if it extends that far), and society is to be governed by a moral code built on the mores of our corrupt cultural elites.

The fundamental question is whether government is to be the guardian of freedom given by God, or the god who gives, and therefore gets to define, freedom.  Secularism has consequences, and one of them is that it shifts government from guardian to god.  That is to say that the secularizing impulse is, in its own peculiar way, an idolatrous impulse.  Our civilization has been going down this road for a long time—but it’s not too late to turn around.

Whether or not that happens, the church needs to have her head on straight.  Whether we find ourselves in Christendom or Babylon, we are called to be a culture set apart.  Sometimes that means defiance; may God give us strength to persevere, wisdom to judge the times, and spines to stand.

Jesus is Lord.

A Crisis of Worship

Tags

Abortion, America, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Paganism, Secularism, Sexual Revolution

            It is important to recognize that the destructive (and self-destructive) tendencies of our culture are a function of idolatry.  These things are religiously (or irreligiously) derived.  A culture is a social organism, and will manifest on the macrocosmic scale the maladies of its microcosms; the idolatries of the human heart, when sufficiently represented in society, will represent as cultural idolatries.

            Such idolatries are only more insidious when clothed in Christian garb, and the attempt is made to subvert the witness of the church.  As an instance of this stark hypocrisy, the director of “surgical services” for Missouri’s sole abortion “clinic”, Kawanna Shannon, claims faith in Christ.  But how can she possibly reconcile Christianity with her work destroying children?

“I’ve always been a person that believed that a woman had a right to choose,” she explained. “The conflict really came in, ‘Am I gonna be able to function as I feel I need to function in church, or in faith, and be able to stand and fight for the rights of women? And am I going to be allowed to do that? Or am I going to be looked at as, ‘You can’t be both.’ And I just decided one day that I could be both. And no one but I had the right to tell me that I couldn’t be.”

Shannon said she will continue “to fight for women’s rights and stand up for women. And also love God and be a Christian. I can do both.”

She said people are surprised to learn she has five kids and supports abortion rights.

“That was my choice. I had the right to choose to carry to term and parent. My choice,” Shannon said. “We all have choices. And who are you to say their choice is wrong? You can’t pick and choose who you wanna love.”

She believes we all have our “individual walk with God.”

            You see, faith in Christ, for Shannon, does not mean the real Lordship of Christ—the biblical picture of vital and vivifying faith.  The individual as self-determining agency—the self as god—is pronounced in her expressed worldview: she gets to decide whether the contradictories of Christianity and abortion are reconcilable, no one else has a right to tell her, everyone has a right to make their own choices, “who are you to say their choice is wrong?”  Her idea of an “individual walk with God” appears to be a walk led by the individual. Her whole framework misses the one factor of decisive importance to actual Christian ethics—not what she thinks, what people choose, what I say, but what God says.

            So Shannon is a microcosmic demonstration of our macrocosmic cultural crisis.  It is a crisis of authority—who gets to declare what is true, beautiful, and good?  Since the correct answer is God, our crisis of authority is a crisis of worship.

            That means, among other things, that political and legal solutions are temporary at best.  A religious problem requires a religious solution.  The gospel is the solution—the real gospel, the whole gospel, the hard-edged true Christianity with its conviction, repentance, reconciliation, and discipleship.

            Jesus is Lord.

Eyes Open

Tags

Abortion, America, Politics, Truth, Wisdom

There is a difference between faith in the ultimate victory of God and turning a blind eye to present realities. Christian realism may appear to be optimism at some times and cynicism at others, but it’s really neither: it’s just a matter of who we are looking at. When we look to God we have every confidence; when we look at the powers of the world, we recognize the corruption of fallen mankind. In both cases, we look with eyes open.

But the politicized climate of American society tempts us to turn a blind eye to one side or the other. I’m afraid this is a bipartisan failing, and calls for repentance and discernment, for a pragmatic politics informed by the Christian vision and an unflagging trust in the mercy and might of God.

So when one reads the statement signed by Richard Mouw and Ronald Sider of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden that they “feel used and betrayed” by the administration’s recent pro-abortion action, the biggest question is why they were surprised. They did not know that an administration so committed to the sexual revolution–and pro-abortion advocacy, particularly–was going to act in accordance with that agenda? It’s not surprising, and they shouldn’t be surprised by it. Be careful in your engagement with the powers of this world; act with your eyes open, and fixed on Christ.

An Easy Question

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America, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, LGBTQ+, Progressive Christianity, Religious Left, Secularism, Society, Tolerance

Jason Jimenez, writing in the Christian Post, asks a question both pointed and quite easy to answer, “Why does the media give a pass to Biden’s faith?” The question might be more broadly applied, as Jimenez does, to the better part of the cultural and political left. In an era where consistent Christian beliefs are frequently tarred by the left, and a particular season where a wide variety of orthodox Christians are being painted together with the pejorative label ‘Christian nationalism’, why is Biden’s professed Catholicism, not only personally but in his politics, so gushingly held forth?

The answer, again, is rather obvious, and Jimenez knows it: Biden is advancing the leftist agenda. While some on the cultural left object to Christian faith per se, the more usual objections are to the Christian worldview and its whole outlook on human flourishing–particularly, in recent times, to the Christian teaching that mankind is made up of men and women, who are neither changeable nor interchangeable. Opposing this worldview calls for championing secularism and labeling Christians as dangerous, nationalists, bigots, and so forth.

But when you find political champions who claim Christian allegiance but promote your secular pluralistic worldview, that’s a different story. Now you have an avenue for claiming that Christian faith is consistent with the sexual revolution and its anthropology–which is what the religious left consistently provides. Not everyone in the cultural left will like it; as Religion News Service recently observed, “Secular groups praise Biden’s agenda but express concerns about religious rhetoric“. But you’re advancing the secular policies. At the end of the day, as Rachel Laser of Americans United is quoted in the article, “actions are so much more important than words”. As long as its just ‘religious rhetoric’, not actually an applied Christian worldview, its fairly tolerable to the hard secularists, and useful to the religious left in general.

In the end, the common ground between leftist disdain for the Catholic identity of Justice Barrett and promotion of the Catholic identity of President Biden is the advance of secular ideology. Reaction to Christian identity is conditioned on whether the professed Christianity is challenging or bolstering the secular worldview.

Is there a hypocrisy and inconsistency at work? Of course. But is there anything surprising or hard to understand? Not at all.

Vain Aspirations and Kingdom Culture

Tags

Abortion, America, Christ, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, God, Idolatry, Pluralism, Poetry, Prophecy, Religious Left, Secularism, Society

            For the inauguration of President Biden a few weeks ago, a poem was read by Amanda Gorman, Youth Poet Laureate, entitled, “The Hill We Climb.”  Leaving literary criticism to others, I wish to reflect upon a single line in the poem: “Scripture tells us to envision that, ‘everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.’”

            The Scripture is Micah 4:4.  Here the prophet is describing divine deliverance in the last days, and the context is extremely significant: what the “Scripture tells us to envision” is the exaltation of the one true God, figured in the elevation of His holy mountain (v.1), and the universal dissemination of the knowledge of God (v.2), and—in such context—universal peace and prosperity (vv.3-4).  It is, indeed, a wonderful eschatological vision, and we would do well to envision it.

            But it is not a vision consonant with the cultural headwinds of contemporary America.  The glories of the prophesied epoch are both consummated by and built upon the exaltation of the one true God; God’s glory founds, surmounts, and surrounds all the delights of the age to come.  The prophesied peace and prosperity does not crown a culture of pluralistic idolatry—there are other prophecies for that (e.g. Micah 5:10-15).  Sitting under one’s own vine and fig tree (v.4) comes together with a universal pursuit of God’s will, “that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (v.2).  It is absurd to envision this future while—to allude to just a couple of policy objectives of the incoming administration—denying God’s design for humanity and destroying innocent human life in the womb.

            That is the great dissonance that echoes behind the selective appropriation (?!) of the divine promises in the context of idolatry and immorality.  As reported by Alexandra Desanctis in National Review, “Sponsoring a Flag at Today’s Inaugeration Sends a Donation to Planned Parenthood.”  Does a civics that alludes to the worship of Molech reasonably expect the blessing of Yahweh?

            The proper application of this observation is to remember that eschatological vision prescribes present faithfulness.  Micah 4:4 in the context of America today is a call to repentance.  The age to come comes by the glorious work of the child born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), not by any labors of ours, and certainly not by secular pluralistic ideologies.  There is a present foretaste and an ultimate fulfillment of this promised peace and prosperity—for all who will have it.  But, for a culture chasing idols, all such aspirations are vain.

            For those who will have it, there is another culture, within and without the cultures of this world; there is a kingdom ever advancing, life-giving, loyal and good.  For those who belong to that kingdom, and hope to inherit its promises, it is imperative to live in its culture.  Without withdrawing from the world, while still pragmatic in politics and active in society, the people of God can inhabit the culture they long for in the present.  That, I suggest, is the way forward in 2021 and beyond.

Broken Censors

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America, Big Tech, Censorship, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Freedom, Hope, LGBTQ+, Media, Morality, Secularism, Sexual Immorality, Social Media, Society

The fallout from the despicable Capitol storming continues, in the social sphere as well as the explicitly political.  Tech corporations have silenced not only certain social media accounts, but the platform Parler, an alternative to Twitter.

In principle, these communication giants are just trying to stop people from using their platforms to promote violence; but, accusations of selective enforcement of such policies call this into question.  More significantly, this is only a ramping up of a pattern of technocratic suppression of conservative and Christian speech.  What can we observe from what the tech giants censor, and what they permit?

Because, of course, there has always been censorship.  That is to say, societies have mores, and they tend to enforce those mores in some way and to some degree.  I was reading the other day Francis Schaeffer’s Escape from Reason.  Writing about the Marquis de Sade, Schaeffer observes that “Twenty or thirty years ago [from 1968], if anyone was found with one of his books in England he was liable to have difficulties with the law” (38).  Now, Schaeffer is talking about shifting moral standards, for he goes on to say, “Today, he has become a great name in drama, in philosophy, in literature.”  But I just wish to remind people that there was a time when sadistic ‘literature’ was censored—and such censorship is good for society, not only because sadism hurts people but because it appears that the (natural?) result of failing to censor immorality is that eighty years down the road you end up censoring morality.  In the early 20^th century in the west you could get into trouble for advocating pagan sexual morality; in the 21^st, for advocating Christian sexual morality.

The call for a society free of moral censorship was a transitional stage in imposing a new (im)morality, just as feminism was a transitional stage to the abolition of gender.  I am not saying there is a mastermind behind these things, but that when you kick out the foundation the house will continue to crumble.

And, to extend the metaphor, other people may come along and try to build something new out of the rubble, according to their own designs and with very unsound architectural principles.  A morally neutral society—secular, in that sense—is an illusion.  You can maintain that illusion for a while, living off the (appropriated?) social capital of residual Christendom even while denouncing it.  But man is a moral animal.  A new morality emerges, and it may yet prove as heavy-handed as it is immoral.

Consider this: Planned Parenthood has a Twitter account.  Yes, that unabashed destroyer of innocent life tweets freely.  Promoting violence is, apparently, quite acceptable to Twitter.  The recent social media purges, then, merely highlight the instability and double-mindedness of a society in rebellion against the Lord of Life.

But the Lord is King, and His Kingdom stands in the midst of this dark world, and His victory is unstoppable.  The Word of God cannot be silenced.  He is exalted, and “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Php. 2:10-11, ESV).

We do not need to fret or fear the turmoil around us.  We do need to focus on Christ and His kingdom.  The tremors in our society are an ominous but useful reminder to live as kingdom citizens in this world and in our nation: as men and women, to live lives of true discipleship; as families, to raise our children in the knowledge of the truth and the fear of the Lord; as churches, to operate as outposts of the kingdom of God, and cultivate a Christian counter-culture that has the kingship of Christ at the center.  If the church did that, we might get to be the ones rebuilding the crumbled house of western civilization.  Who knows?  With God all things are possible.

But, more importantly, our perspective must remain eternal.  Nations and civilizations come and go.  God is King forever, and His children persevere in this life because in the life to come they shall be with their Lord in the new heavens and new earth, where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

Another Warning

Tags

America, Culture, God, Hope, Repentance, Salvation

Albert Mohler offers some good reflections on the evil of the riot in our nation’s capitol yesterday. It was a grim and tragic moment in American history.

Freedom is good for humanity, and anarchy is just as much an enemy of freedom as is totalitarianism. The corruption of our democratic institutions is no excuse for desecrating them, and assaulting democracy does not lead to human flourishing.

The headlines are one more call to repentance and revival, if we will read them right. Jesus is Lord. The Prince of Peace offers hope, life, and healing. Without Him, we are lost.

“In the Name of…”

Tags

America, Christianity, Culture, God, Government, Idolatry, Pluralism, Progressive Christianity, Religious Left, Secularism, Society, Truth, United Methodists

            I mentioned a couple of days ago the silliness with which Rep. Cleaver ended his prayer for the opening of congress on Sunday, and I certainly wasn’t alone in observing the nonsense of it.  But that little detail has gotten more attention than the fact that the prayer was problematic in more significant ways.  How we end our prayers matters, but may not matter as much as the basic question of who we are praying to.

            I am no connoisseur of congressional prayers, and would be unsurprised if they were blasphemous as a matter of course; I make no claim that Cleaver’s prayer stands out from the pack (though it might, for all I know).  But the ending has claimed so much attention that we might as well draw people’s eyes up a few lines from “amen and awoman.”

            You can view the whole prayer on C-Span (there’s also a transcript, but it is both incomplete and unreliable).  And the prayer is not all bad, as concerns its content: there is humility, and an expressed desire for unity (if rendered somewhat incredible by the prayer’s conclusion).  But the question of great concern is, to whom is he praying?

            Towards the beginning, he invokes, “Eternal God,” which is an acceptable, if not explicit, Christian address.  He says, “The members of this august body acknowledge your sacred supremacy,” which seems to me unlikely, but we shall return to that.  Various phrases biblical and Christian phrases suggest that it is the one true God whom Cleaver addresses—without ever bringing in any of the key terms, such as “Jesus,” “Holy Spirit,” or “Trinity,” that might really seal the deal.  Nonetheless, one is left with the impression that he might actually be praying to the actual God—and making the audacious claim that the U.S. congress operates in submission to the Holy One.

            But, at the end, he concludes, “We ask it in the name of the monotheistic god, Brahma, and god known by many names, by many different faiths.”

            Beg pardon?

            It would appear that Cleaver has been praying to a hypothetical shared god of the world’s religions.  He conflates “the monotheistic god”—an inadequate catchall that could conceivably have reference to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, “Brahma”—the Hindu creator god, and a general reference to the gods of other religions.  In this secularized, pluralistic prayer, Cleaver seems to be trying to include everyone—thus effectively excluding most people.

            This notion, that all religions (or at least certain religions) really worship the same god under different names is not at all unique.  It is unsurprising to see it on the religious left, and perhaps the only safe course on the political left.  It is also blasphemous.

            When we read the Scriptures, we do not find God regarding worship of other gods as really being worship of Himself.  We find God profoundly distinguishing Himself from the gods of the pagans, “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (Ps. 96:5, ESV).  God declares the idols worthless (Jer. 10:15), and the worship of such idols futile (Isa. 42:17).  We find not that God may be sought by any name, but that there is one name we must confess, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

            To whom, then, was Representative Cleaver praying?  Whose “sacred supremacy” does he (and, he presumes, the rest of congress) acknowledge?  Not, apparently, the one true God.

            And that is the real problem behind all the other problems.  If our leaders submitted to the true God, our nation would not advance legislation that defies God and denigrates, devastates, and destroys people made in His image.  Idolatry is the problem, and as long as we worship idols we will harm image-bearers.  All hopes grounded in idolatry are vain.

            But there is a light in the darkness, and hope for any who will have it.  When we acknowledge the one true God, when we confess the name of our Savior, then we find the path of life.  “Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9).  He is the true hope, light, and life eternal.

Matrimony (II)

Tags

America, Christianity, Church, Culture, Culture War, Marriage, Society, Theology, Truth

            I recently wrote a little essay on the meaning of matrimony, and want to follow that up with a few thoughts about its significance in terms of human culture.  If, as Scripture teaches and history bears out, marriage is the fundamental human society, the health and solidity of the institution of marriage will have a profound influence on society more broadly.  This gives us a lens to understand so many of our culture’s ills, and offers a prescription for addressing them.

            The family is the basic social unit.  Here the fundamental diversity of humanity as man and woman shows its complementarity in the unity of marriage; this unity is (normatively) fruitful.  Thus husband, wife, and children, the basic society, form the cells of a healthy social body on the larger scale.  In the mutual love and support of the family an environment is created that is naturally conducive to human flourishing—naturally, because this is the divine design.

            In saying this, I do not mean to deny the great value of extended families, close friendships, neighborhood communities, and all the rest.  I only point out that the core human society is the nuclear family, and therefore that marriage has a social significance frequently neglected in the contemporary west.  This is the fundamental building block of a healthy society, and our long denigration of the institution of marriage has, it stands to reason, a sizeable share in the blame for the extent of our besetting social ills: poverty, drug abuse, abortion, suicide, and so on.

The project of rebuilding western civilization, which we might fruitfully consider, would need the restoration of marriage as a core tenet.  Bear in mind that all of this assumes a true understanding of marriage, a Christian understanding of marriage.  Marriage with the gospel at the center is the kind of marriage we need.

So, in the first place, churches should invest heavily in nourishing strong Christian families.  Every marriage truly consecrated—Christward, God-centered marriage—is a fortress built in the kingdom of God’s invasion of this dark world.  Here a tree has been planted to bear fruit in the midst of the desert.  Here a sanctuary has been fenced to raise children who will be protected and loved and taught to stand straight in a culture enslaved, who will know the truth, and by God’s grace may believe the truth.  Here a banner has been raised to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the wonder of the Spirit’s transforming power.

Secondly, we should oppose any ideology, force, or movement that aims to displace or dismantle the family.  This is a typical tendency of contemporary secular social philosophy; the family is to be denounced as an artificial construction, and its functions outsourced to the community or the government.  We see this in educational agendas, political policy, and social advocacy, to name a few.  But any denigration of the family is fundamentally misanthropic, and must be resisted.

Thirdly, and most importantly, we must see the implications of this for the family of the church.  In our fallen world, human society will never be as it ought.  God is at work to repair what sin has broken, and this is primarily exercised through the community of the faithful.  The church, in fact, supersedes the biological family (without nullifying it); separated from the family of God, the family of man will be inevitably dysfunctional.  The church must be family for all the families of the church, and for all those who have no other family.

For in His love, God has made a way for us to come into His family.  In the church, we realize now a foretaste of the fellowship of the family of God.  For all those who are lonely and lost, for those whose families are broken or abusive, God reaches out with His gospel of love, forgiveness, acceptance, and healing.  This is the message that transforms lives, communities, even cultures; this is the message of Christian marriage and the proclamation of the church: God has made a way, in Jesus Christ, for us to be reconciled to Him and adopted into His family.

God has worked to draw us to Himself.  That is the testimony of matrimony.