Persuasive Christian Parent: Teach Your Children Christianity is True!

Persuasive Christian Parent: Teach Your Children Christianity is True!

Oct 19, 2023 | Parents and Family

If you want to be a persuasive Christian parent, and you want your children’s faith to endure for their entire lives, teach them Christianity is true. It’s pretty simple, actually, but it takes work. I’ll justify that briefly below, but having written a book about being a Persuasive Christian Parent, I am convinced parents’ influence on their children is the primary influence on whether they maintain their faith throughout their lives. I know many Christians don’t buy this. They’ve seen children grow up in perfectly fine Christian homes and abandon the faith to one degree or another. They conclude, not unreasonably, that while parents certainly have a significant influence on their children, it is ultimately limited. I reject that. I go into some detail about this in the book, so I can’t do it here. You’ll just have to trust me, or read the book (you’ll be able to listen to the audio book in the not too distant future).

For mom and dad this is going to take some work. If your child came up to you and asked: “Mom, Dad, why do you believe Christianity is true?” Could you give them a credible answer? Be honest. If you stammer, or give them a half-baked answer, you need to get to work. I would like to commission a study, and I suspect I know what the conclusion would be. The study would be of all the young people, says 20s and 30s, who have gone through what we now call “deconversion.” If they grew up in a Christian household, we would ask them a simple question: “Did your parents teach you that Christianity was true, and why it is?” I am convinced the overwhelming majority would answer, no. Or if they did, it wasn’t very persuasive. The reason is that most Christian parents know what they believe, basic gospel, but have very little understanding of why they believe it, why their faith is “justified true belief.” Not teaching our Children why Christianity is the truth about the ultimate nature of things in this secular age leaves them susceptible to the lies of secularism they swim in every day.

The reason I was prompted to write this was because of an Apologetics Canada podcast I recently listened to. It confirmed exactly what I’m saying. The guest was John Marriot who has written five books on people walking away from their faith. He’s interviewed many such people and read hundreds of accounts and found that people don’t walk away because they want to sin more, etc. They say it comes down to no longer believing Christianity is the truth. He tends to believe them. When I heard that I instantly thought of my book, especially the second section on, “It’s All About Truth.” I felt so strongly about the Truth of the matter that when I first started thinking about writing the book, I decided this would be the first chapter. It turned out being chapters 3 and 4 because I felt “It’s All About Parents” was more important to establish up front. To decrease the odds that our children will experience a deconversion as they grow up in a hostile secular culture, the most important thing we can do for them, by far, is to persuade them Christianity is the truth.

Secularism Is Dead
We are living in a secular culture that daily attempts to drown us in its godless worldview. It is critical to understand this is not a threat to our children’s faith. Most Christians will not agree with that assertion. The problem seeing secularism as a threat gives it far too much credit as a credible alternative to Christianity. It is not! In fact, secularism (life without God) is a pathetically weak alternatives that gives zero answers to life’s most pressing questions. Why is it in an utterly secular culture, in the most prosperous country in the history of the world, almost 50,000 people successfully killed themselves last year? Does a God-less worldview have any answers to this beside drugs and therapy? It does not. Secularism is an almost 400 year-long experiment in futility. Once reason usurped God’s throne he was slowly set aside as necessary to a functioning society. But something ironic happened on the way to the coronation of God-lessness. It completely failed. Secularism is dead. It has been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Therefore, there is nothing to fear from it. As I say in the book, our secular culture is the best friend of our children’s faith. I’ve used the culture all their lives, and still do as they are adults, to defend and argue for the truth of Christianity. Bottom line: If our children are to not only have their faith survive but thrive, they must be convinced with every ounce of their being that Christianity is the ultimate truth about the nature reality. How do we do that? Well, you’ll have to read the book to see how I did it, and see if you think I make my case. For a short blog post I can only do so much, but if you are one of those Christians who realize you need to work on your apologetic chops hopefully this will wet your whistle enough to check out the book.

Think about it. If your children are convinced Christianity is true, could anything make them walk away from it? Most if not all those who walk away from the faith never study apologetics, history, philosophy, or theology in any depth. They don’t come to their rejection after a thorough examination of the evidence. I’m sure after whatever input they’ve received, Christianity is no longer plausible to them, it no longer seems true, or seems real. This brings up a concept called plausibility structures, or the framework in our minds that makes certain things seem true to us and other things not true. It isn’t that they are true or not true, but that they seem so. I address this in a couple chapters of the book, but for those who reject the Christianity they once believed in, it simply no longer seems true to them, is no longer plausible. They’ve lived in a secular plausibility structure for so long with no counter narrative that Christianity doesn’t really have a chance.

There is No Such Thing as an Unbeliever
(This is going to be the title of a book I want to write in the not too distant future, God willing. That’s how important this is.)

One the most pernicious of the many lies of secularism is that if you’re not a Christian or “religious” then you don’t need faith. The uncritically accepted assumption of almost all people in the West is that if you’re not “religious” then you don’t need to believe things. Only “religious” people believe things, only “religious” people need faith. So the person who decides to reject the Christianity they once believed in thinks they are going from faith to not-faith, from belief to-not belief. What they fail to realize, and what is likely never pointed out to them, is that they are going from one faith to another. After they no longer embrace Christianity they are every bit the “religious” believer as they were before. Only there is far less evidence and plausibility for the veracity of their new faith than Christianity—and it’s not even close!

The question is always what we believe or have faith in, and why we believe it, not whether or not we have faith. The people who turn away from Christianity can tell you plenty of reasons why they no longer believe in it, but zero reasons for their newfound faith. They are under impression they gave up “faith” when they gave up Christianity. In defending Christianity to such people, in what we call apologetics (see I Peter 3:15), they are very easy to deal with. Probably one in a million can give a coherent defense of their new worldview, their new faith. Just asking the rest what they now believe in and why they believe it will leave them dumbfounded. They’ll likely think it’s a meaningless question because they’re no longer “religious.” I’m confident you’ll get a strange look, but it’s a wonderful question to begin a conversation if they’re open to it. If this happens to be one of your children, it’s a good question to get them thinking they don’t exist in some faith-neutral place where they don’t have to make decisions about what they believe and why.

A great phrase to keep in mind when grappling with such things is “the consideration of the alternative.” If we don’t believe in one thing then we are forced to believe in the alternative. Agnosticism is not an alternative but a copout for not thinking seriously about serious things. We may encounter people who just have no desire to think about or discuss serious things, and we just love them and pray. It is all, of course, up to the Holy Spirit, so we pray. However, and this gets us to the work part, we work like it depends on us. The saying goes, we work like it depends on us, and pray because it depends on God. What work am I talking about? Our apologetics chops. Each of us must ask ourselves, how good are we are defending the veracity Christianity. If most Christians are honest, they will have to say . . . . terrible.

Get to Work
That was the word I used about myself back in 2009 (along with horrible and pathetic). I had an encounter with a co-worker and it was embarrassing. He wouldn’t have noticed, but I sure did. After that I committed myself to put in the work. I got a little MP3 player (I still use one!) and listened to everything I could find. I also read everything I could get my hands on. I was determined in Paul’s words to Timothy, to study to show myself to God as one approved (2 Tim. 2:15). The word study (KJV) or do your best in Greek means “(figuratively) to move speedily by showing full diligence (fully applying oneself).” This is not just for professional ministers as was Timothy, but to every single Christian. If we’re honest most of us are lazy. There are many things in life more important to us than our Christianity. This is, I know, tough love. Most Christians know far more about their careers or hobbies than they know about their Christianity, and that ought not to be.

Just going to church on Sunday and reading our Bibles is not enough. Per Peter’s command, if we’re always to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that that have, that is going to take time and effort. There really is no excuse nowadays with the Internet to not show ourselves as one approved when it comes to defending our faith, and that is first to ourselves. Once we are fully convinced and know why, we can share that with others. If we have children, we too can become persuasive Christian parents and have confidence our children will have a faith that endures for life. What we will realize the longer we study and the more we teach is what C.S. Lewis said was the reason he believed in Christianity:

 I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.

This is what we have to pass on to our children! Christianity, God in Christ, makes sense of literally every single thing of existence. When they are convinced of this any kind of secular alternative to Christianity will appear to them as the phony worthless alternative it is. God has seen to it by providing for us everything we need for building an enduring faith in both us and our children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Christian Life of Repentance

The Christian Life of Repentance

Oct 16, 2023 | The Gospel

Martin Luther nailed his world-changing 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Writing in Latin to engage clergy in debate about the propositions, not to start a Reformation, it was translated into German and because of Guttenberg’s press soon spread all over Europe and started a spiritual and cultural conflagration. Whether or not Luther intended it to be the most important, the first thesis certainly is:

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

The longer I’m on this journey with Jesus the more I understand how true this is. There was a time in Jesus’ ministry when he was eating with “tax collectors and sinners.” The religious professionals didn’t like that one bit, so Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Here we see the essence of the Christian life. Those who think they’re doing fine, who see themselves as morally healthy, will see no need for a Savior. On the other hand, those who have a conscience beset by doubt about their own moral worth know they need something. Whether that brings them to a Savior is God’s work.

When reading this passage in Luke 7 recently I was struck by repentance as almost a Continental Divide in the human heart:

29 All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptized by John. 30 But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.

Luke doesn’t tell us here what the baptism of John meant, but in chapter 3 says it was a “baptism of repentance.”

Before we explore that, we need to understand that repentance doesn’t save someone, as if being sorry for our sins somehow makes us acceptable to God. Prior to his conversion, Luther basically thought it did. Catholic teaching calls it the Sacrament of Penance, and Luther took it to mean he needed to pay for his own sins through self-inflicted suffering. Mercifully, God saved him from himself and triggered the Reformation as he was studying and teaching the book of Romans. He came across this verse in chapter 1:

17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

The proverbial lightbulb when on for Luther, and the direction of Western civilization changed in that moment. He realized no matter how sorry he was, no matter how much repentance or penance he engaged in, he could never make himself righteous before God. The righteousness of God, he now knew, could only be had by faith, by trust, not by works. All of a sudden he saw the good news! We Evangelicals who are all about the gospel sometimes fall into this trap. We’ll tend to think the more I feel sorry for my sin, the worse I feel about it, acknowledge how worthless and horrible a sinner I am, the more God will like me, or something like that. God doesn’t forgive us, though, based on how sincere our confession or repentance is, but because of Christ. Thus the Apostle John writes in I John 1:9:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

I’ll never forget hearing Chuck Swindoll preach on this verse saying because God is just he has no choice; he has to forgive our sin when we confess. Our feeling of remorse isn’t the issue. Because of what Christ accomplished for us in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, God in His justice has to forgive us. Do we feel horrible and guilty for our sin? Of course, or we should, but that’s not the thing. The reason God forgives us is His integrity not how sorry we are. We simply look to the cross and we know.

Theologically, this is based on a covenant, a promise, the eternal Triune God made with Himself prior to creating the world—it is that which determines our salvation, not us. This is known as the covenant of redemption. When the creation fell into sin through man’s rebellion, God promised He would save it by giving a people to the Son who would save them (election in biblical terms). After Jesus accomplished redemption for His people (Matt. 1:21), he ascended to His coronation as king in heaven sitting at the right hand of the Father, and from there sent His Holy Spirit to apply the redemption He had accomplished on earth. Here is where we get back to the passage in Luke 7 and consider the meaning of repentance.

What Came First, The Chicken or the Egg
Those who were baptized by John having repented of their sins were able to “acknowledged that God’s way was right.” Those who did not, who “rejected God’s purpose for themselves,” could not acknowledged that God’s way was right. They were unable to do so because they refused to repent and be baptized. This is the proverbial chicken and egg question. What came first, the change of heart toward God then the repentance, or repentance then change toward God? Of course, you can’t have one without the other; no chicken no egg, no egg no chicken. You need both. Looked at theologically, though, man is dead in his sin (Gen. 2:17, Rom. 6:23, Eph. 2:1) and so by sinful nature it is impossible for him to repent. Thankfully, Jesus gave us the answer to the chicken and egg question about sinful human beings and salvation in his discussion with Nicodemus in John 3. The pious Pharisee told Jesus he must be from God because of the miracles he was doing and

3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

The phrase translated born again can also mean from above or from heaven. Nicodemus is appropriately confused as are most people who encountered Jesus, and he asks him how such a thing can be. Jesus answers that this happens by being born of the Spirit, that’s how one is born again, born from above. So repentance comes as a result of God’s working in our hearts, it does not cause God to work.

This is consistent with what Jesus also says later in John’s gospel about the mission of the Holy Spirit when Jesus sent him after he has ascended to the Father (John 16):

8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

The Greek word convict is a harsh one, unpleasant to all we sinful human beings: to reprove, rebuke, discipline, expose, show to be guilty. His job is to reveal to us our guilt so we admit we have need of Savior. When we understand this, truly grasp our desperate state, we will repent, we can’t help but repent. The Holy Spirit exposes us for what we truly are, unworthy sinners before a holy God, rightfully condemned. Non-Christians have a hard time accepting this dynamic because it seems as I said, harsh. Why can’t God just be more accepting? They think of God as love, meaning he’s just a nice old man who forgives, forgets, and accepts everyone for who they are. He can’t do that because he is holy and just. Even secular non-Christians know they can’t even live up to their own standards, so what makes them think they can live up to the standards of a holy God? Sin!

We Christians, however, are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and know to the depths of our marrow that we are wretched, hopeless sinners without God’s intervention in Christ. He will not let us forget or ignore our sin either, which is why I John 1:9 is so important in the Christian life of daily repentance. I begin my prayer time every morning with two things, thanksgiving and repentance, which always seems to lead to doxology, to praise and worship. We can’t help as we grow in our understanding and knowledge of God to continually marvel at His mercy and grace. Indeed, the sicker we realize we are when we come to the spiritual hospital, the more able we are to fulfill the greatest commandment to love Him and other sinners. He who is forgiven much, Jesus said loves much.

Lastly, let’s look at the Greek word for repentance, metanoia-μετάνοια, meaning a change of mind. It is clear from Luke repentance is primarily about a change of mind regarding our relationship to God, not so much about what we think of as right and wrong, good and bad. The first temptation of Satan to man was to question the character of God with the question, who gets to be God. Repentance says God is God and I am not. Kind of obvious, I know, but we’re stubborn little sinners who don’t easily give up our pretensions to godhood. Confession to Him daily that He is God and I am not, is a good way to start every day. As John and Jesus both said introducing his work, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.

 

Uninvented: Reading A Biblical Text Theologically and Apologetically

Uninvented: Reading A Biblical Text Theologically and Apologetically

Oct 12, 2023 | Apologetics, Uncategorized

Given we live in an utterly secular age it is important for the sustenance of our faith that we learn to read biblical texts through apologetic lenses. The inspiration for my book Uninvented came from a growing conviction I developed as I studied apologetics that the Bible itself was a testimony to its own veracity. The question before us is always the same: could this be made up or invented. Remember that biblical critical scholars for several hundred years affirmed that it could be. In fact, they seemed to think making it up so easy they never saw the need to defend their position. To them their anti-supernatural bias wasn’t a bias at all but the obvious position of enlightened “scientific” scholars. Nope, it was bias plain and simple. Before they even got to the text they assumed miracles can’t happen and the biblical concepts of revelation and inspiration can’t be real. This apologetics orientation applies to the theology of the text as well.

I didn’t focus on how the theology did that, but I’m sure an entire book could be written just about that. I hadn’t even thought about such a thing when I initially had the idea for writing the book. I was going to call it Psychological Apologetics, because how the people portrayed thought and acted reflected how real people think and act. The text has verisimilitude in a way no ancient text could have had given there was no such thing as fiction in the ancient world. The Bible reads like straight ahead history and we have only two choices when we come to the text: Either it is true or it is not. In the history of scholarly biblical criticism I referenced, many scholars have wanted to have it both ways. They take some of what Jesus said and did as having actually happened, and some as made up depending on the whim of the scholar. If we don’t accept that the Bible is the inspired work of one Divine author, then on what basis do we accept any of it as authoritative? To me, such an approach is arbitrary and completely worthless. In the title of the great Frank Sinatra song, it’s either all or nothing at all.

The Problem of the Partial Jesus
In the book I call this a partial Jesus, and he’s a real big problem for those scholars, as well as anyone else who only wants a piece of Jesus. This would include Christian heresies like Islam and Mormonism, but also other religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, not to mention Judaism from whence Christianity sprang. I quote Jewish historian Geza Vermes in the book, and he loves certain parts of Jesus, but ignores those parts, for example, where Jesus declares himself to be the divine Son of God who is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). Which brings me to the apologetics of the theology of the Bible. Jesus is the easiest and most obvious example of this, but we find this theological verisimilitude everywhere. I was again reminded of this when I read this passage in Luke 9:

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

The Greek word translated life, psuché- ψυχή, is where we get our word psychology. It’s often translated soul, and means the essence of who we are as persons, all that makes us specifically unique as us, you and me. Modern Christians tend to interpret these verses as Jesus referring to eternal life, what happens to our souls after death, but I think Jesus is referring to something much larger in scope. How many people throughout history have metaphorically gained the whole world, yet are empty and miserable. Such people often ask—Is that all there is? They thought the entire world, everything their hearts could have desired given to them, would be enough to finally satisfy the longing in their being. It wasn’t, and isn’t. I believe Jesus is speaking primarily to this, to life in this fallen world, with the heavenly life to come gravy on the turkey.

The theological genius of this passage and it’s apologetic power comes from its counter intuitive message. If we really want what the whole world could never give us, it’s in somehow denying ourselves, metaphorically taking up the worst instrument of death and torture ever devised by man, and following Jesus. Who says such things! Certainly not the great moral teacher so many of those scholars and religions have said He is. In the words of the great trilimma made famous by C.S. Lewis, Jesus is either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord. There simply are no other choices. And there are myriad examples of Jesus saying things like this throughout the gospels. We are confronted with a stark, binary choice when we encounter the Jesus we find there: He is either who he said he was, the divine Son of God come from heaven to be the Savior of the world, or he was not. If it is in fact the latter, he has to have been the most diabolically evil person who ever lived. All of his life would then have been a fraud meant to deceive people into believing something that was not true.

Coming back to the passage, when we really grapple with what Jesus is declaring, it gets even crazier. The choice before us is more stark, more binary, and the implications profound beyond words to capture. He’s saying if you want true fulfillment and purpose and hope and joy and excitement and everything you think the world can give you, it’s all to be found in Him! The extra added bonus, the cherry on top if you will, is that we get to live forever in a resurrected body on a redeemed earth where there will be no more suffering, tears, and death. In light of this passage, we can better understand what Jesus is saying in the John 14 passage:

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

We Evangelicals are entirely too familiar with this passage to be as utterly blown away by it as we should be. Anyone who wants a partial Jesus needs to be confronted with this passage. If it is true, then He is Lord and Savior. If is not, burn the Bible and run away from it as fast as you can. It is simply either/or. Anything else is, as my father often said, BS.

Theological Apologetics in Redemptive History
The apologetics power of passages like this must not be seen in isolation, as if the argument begins and ends with the trilemma, or the binary choice we are all confronted with when encountering Jesus. What makes the theological apologetic so powerful is seeing it as a thread woven together from the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation. The thread of the theological history of redemption weaves together a glorious tapestry of such stunning beauty it would be absolutely impossible to be the mere product of human imagination and ingenuity.

I often marvel at God’s revelation in creation where we sees God’s invisible qualities made visible in material reality (Rom. 1:20). The more science and knowledge advances, the more it is obvious the insane complexity could only be a product than of an Almighty personal God. The only proper response is doxology and dumbfounded silence in the face of such majesty. The inscripturated word of that same God in our Bibles is even more amazing to me than that! Written over 1500 years by 40 or so authors primarily in two languages into 66 so called books, and yet it has a continuity that is breathtaking. The only plausible explanation is one divine author.

The entirety of the history of redemption is found in the first three chapters of Genesis: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. In the words of that wonderful Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song written by Joni Mitchell, it’s all about getting “back to the garden.” And we’re not talking about Woodstock. God created everything good, very good, and he placed the apex of his creation man, in the center of the garden, paradise, which was then promptly ruined by that man. God of course knew this would happen and He had a plan, revealed to us in chapter 3. He’s letting Adam and Eve know they blew it big time, but that their rebellion, and ours, is not the end of the story. Outlining the curse that came as a result, He says to the serpent:

15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

In this one verse is encapsulated all the ugliness in the entire history of the world, and the answer to that ugliness. It is this cosmic drama that plays out so compellingly in our Bibles, and makes it read so real. At the heart of the drama is conflict, one every human being knows exists. There is something profoundly wrong with this world, and us, and we all feel in the depths of our beings there must be an answer. And guess what? We know what it is! Why in the world do we mostly keep it to ourselves? Don’t do that! Be a little annoying for Jesus, and you my just find someone else who’s looking for the answer you’ve found.

 

 

Colonies of Heaven and Our Spiritual Home

Colonies of Heaven and Our Spiritual Home

Oct 9, 2023 | Eschatology

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good”? The biblical truth of the matter is the opposite: the only way you can be any earthly good is if you are “so heavenly minded.” The former is the typical understanding of most Christians post 19th century’s Second Great Awakening. We are saved, supposedly, so when we die our souls go to heaven, which is somewhere up there, far, far away. In fact, when I was first presented the gospel at the tender age of 18, the guy asked me, “If you died right now would you go to heaven?” For me it was a powerful question because I sure didn’t want to go to hell, but it set me up for the pietistic, over spiritualized Christianity I was born-again into a few months later at college. Christianity seemed kind of like a British double decker bus, with the upper deck being where the important “spiritual” stuff happened, and the lower deck was where I lived daily life, which wasn’t so important.

This is a very hard habit of mind to break because so many streams of Christian and secular thought have come down to us in Western civilization mitigating against a robust earthly faith. Such a faith calls us to live the heavenly life here as we bring God’s kingdom to this earth, to this fallen world. Unfortunately, we tend to equate earth, the material stuff, with what is fallen, a concept we get from Plato not the Bible. God created everything good, in fact very good, and the fall didn’t make it suddenly bad. That’s why becoming a Christian isn’t an escape from this world, the earth, because our mission is to transform it, as Paul says in Romans 12, to “overcome evil with good.” Or in a metaphor used throughout the Bible, to bring light to a dark fallen world. And remember, light always defeats darkness—when light shows up, darkness flees.

Which brings me to this discussion of colonies, something I learned about from a blog post by Doug Wilson. He discusses this passage from Philippians 3:

20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

This is a thrilling passage, but like most Christians I used to typically focus on the first sentence assuming it meant going to heaven is the thing. In other words, the Christian life is a short sojourn on this earth, which is not our home, and when we get to heaven we will finally be home, where we belong. Here we’re aliens, and we belong up there. The problem with this perspective is that it’s exactly wrong, upside down from biblical truth. This is where Wilson’s discussion of Paul’s use of the word “citizenship” is helpful in understanding the biblical picture of salvation in the gospel. 

The Greek word translated citizenship, politeuma-πολίτευμα, is where we get our word polity from, or a form of government. The idea is not referring to a location, but to the rule or laws under which we live. Paul isn’t saying our Christian life is really about some far off spiritual place we call heaven, but rather it’s about living here and now according to the rules and laws of God’s heavenly kingdom, or in Paul’s metaphor, Rome. Paul was writing to Christians in the Roman colony of Phillippi, and he and those who he was writing to understood what he meant. Here’s how Wilson puts it:

In this passage, Paul is using this striking metaphor for a reason. He says that our citizenship is in heaven (v. 20). We look toward heaven because that is where Jesus went, which means that heaven is the place He is going to come from when He returns to earth. When the metaphor is translated, it means that Jesus was going to come from “Rome” back to “Philippi.” He was not going to take “Philippi” up to “Rome.” And so when the Savior, the Lord Jesus, comes, He is going to transform our lowly body so that it becomes like His glorious body (v. 21). What He does in this final transformation is in complete accord with the authority He is exercising now as He brings all things into subjection to Himself (v. 21). In multiple places, the New Testament tells us that He is doing this.

Thus on this earth in this life we live in colonies of heaven, and the end game is down here not up there. The idea of “going to heaven” gets the image all wrong. When we’re saved, heaven is coming to us! And Jesus because he was given authority over all things when he ascended to the right hand of God is bringing everything under his control, every single thing. No matter what it looks like to us at the moment, Jesus is ruling and ordaining all things to his glorious, predetermined end. Daniel 7:14 tells us what this means:

He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

This dominion is happening now, His reign extending and kingdom advancing, and we His church get to be part of making all this happen. I used to think this process had little if anything to do with now, and that it was only going to happen when it was fully realized at his return in glory. Ironically, though, because of the early influence of Francis Schaeffer in my Christian life I always believed that Christianity applied to every area of life, but in the end it was a futile enterprise. I now realize my mistake.

I was under the impression that it was merely Christian ideas, the Christian worldview, that spoke to culture and politics, art and architecture, philosophy and law, etc., but completely missed that it was far more profound than that. It was in Paul’s words in Ephesians 1, rather, Christ seated at God’s “right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” Somehow I completely missed, “in the present age.” Why would I do that? Because I thought “going to heaven” was the thing instead of heaven coming to earth. And even more important, I didn’t realize that when the Church is bringing the kingdom of heaven on earth, a la the Lord’s prayer, it isn’t us doing that, but the Lord Jesus himself! The victory isn’t ours but His. We’re simply his body carrying out His orders as subjects in His earthy colonies. This is what it means to make disciples of all nations.

This is a critical distinction the holier-than-though above-it-all Christians I wrote about in my last few posts don’t get at all. They see Christians who engage in and prioritize cultural and political engagement as somehow doing that apart from the rule of Christ, as if the victories we achieve are our victories and not Christ’s. As if we’re building our kingdom and not the kingdom of God. That’s why they throw around words such as “authoritarian” when talking about people like me. Read the Great Commission in Matthew 28 again. The reason we make disciples of all nations (not individuals) is because Jesus has been given all authority “in heaven and on earth.” Because this is true, He tells us to therefore, go. We do the legwork because God uses saved sinners to build his kingdom, and He has the authority and power to turn our feeble efforts into results for our good and His glory. It’s because of this that I said above that the Philippians 3 passage is so thrilling. We’re Jesus’s advance team! And we’re ultimately on the winning team!

So, what does this look like? We can take our cue from Jesus’ command in his Great Commission. After baptizing the converted, it means “teaching them to obey everything” He commanded. That includes not only everything in the gospels, the “red letters” if you will, but the entire Old Testament because it’s all about Him and is His word, as well as the rest of the New Testament because it’s all about Him and is His word. Unfortunately because of our pietistic privatized faith the tendency is to see this as only applying to our personal and not our professional lives or occupations. What does it look like to obey everything if I’m a truck driver? Or an engineer or architect or teacher? I grapple with how I do it every day as a sales guy loving and serving my customers and co-workers. This is for each Christian to figure out how they bring the gospel, their Christian worldview, and God’s law to bear on everything they do.

Now imagine what happens when a city council woman or county commissioner or state legislator becomes a Christian. Do they not bring their Christian faith to bear on how they carry out their public duties? God’s word and law is their ultimate standard, and they will do politics differently than someone who has a different standard. They don’t leave their faith at home and enter some neutral secular square because they are doing politics. This doesn’t mean Christians agree on public policy positions, but that they govern based on God’s word and law as Christians and everyone should know it.

Here is a sermon Wilson gave some years ago where he goes more in depth into this idea. It’s amazing how wrong we as Christians have gotten this for so long. We’re bringing to earth what God will ultimately bring at the consumation of all things revealed to us in Revelation 21 and 22.

Education and the Myth of Neutrality

Education and the Myth of Neutrality

Oct 5, 2023 | Parents and Family, Uncategorized

I use the phrase, “the myth of neutrality” here from time to time when addressing issues related to culture and politics. It also very much has to do with how we educate our children in America. This myth is the fruit of the secularism bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment, and which completely smothered the Christian West in the latter half of the 20th century. This mythical idea is as simple as it is deceptive: public life in a pluralistic society where there are many different religions and beliefs must be neutral with regard to ultimate questions, e.g., the meaning of life and death, sin and salvation, God, heaven and hell, the basis of morality, etc. The problem is that we can’t, not a single one of us, be neutral regarding these questions, ever. This applies both to our personal lives and our lives lived in society with other people, including government. Yet this myth has been accepted for a hundred years or more by most Americans, and sadly most Christians as well.

The opportunity to discuss this comes from the approval for a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma in June. Immediately we saw headlines like this: “Oklahoma’s Religious Charter School Aims to Break Church-State Separation.” Oh the horror! It isn’t just liberals, leftists, and libertarians who oppose such a thing, but many conservatives as well. This piece at Current addresses the intrepid David French who thinks the Oklahoma ruling is a threat to religious freedom. It’s shocking that someone who claims to be a conservative (although a Trump-MAGA hating one) and a Christian could be so historically ignorant, but French fits the bill. Everyone knows Thomas Jefferson came up with the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” in a letter to Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, which has come to mean the separation of religion or Christianity from the state.

Regardless of what the secular Jefferson thought it meant, life in America never reflected an impenetrable wall of separation until the mid-20th century. As examples, for most of American history there were sabbath laws, and sodomy was a felony in all 50 states as recently as 1962. The foundation of law in America had always been the Bible and the Christian worldview, but after World War II cultural elites were intent on replacing Christianity with secularism. A significant part of that mission was the Supreme Court  Emerson v. Board of Education decision in 1947 which effectively made secularism the established religion of the United State of America. Christianity and the Bible would no longer be allowed in American “public” schools. In 1962 it was made “official” when the Supreme Court struck down the right for children to pray in schools. Now all would be made to worship at the altar of secularism, and religion’s influence would be confined to the home and church.

In spite of Jefferson’s predilections, America’s founders believed deeply in the importance of religion and education, and to that end the Continental Congress in July 1787 passed The Northwest Ordinance in which they stated:

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Religion to the Founders meant Christianity, and its morality and knowledge was necessary to good government and a happy populace. In other words, civilization and the success of American government depended on education and the influence of Christianity. It didn’t follow, however, that encouragement meant government control of education given the Founders’ deep suspicion of human nature and government power. Yet, over time “public” education came to mean government education subsidized by taxpayers controlled by the government. From a Christian perspective there should be no such thing as “public” education let alone government education. J. Gresham Machen put this presciently in his 1934 Education, Christianity and the State:

Every lover of human freedom ought to oppose with all his might the giving of federal aid to the schools of this country; for federal aid in the long run inevitably means federal control, and federal control means control by a centralized and irresponsible bureaucracy, and control by such a bureaucracy means the death of everything that might make this country great.

Who can argue with this after 89 years of hindsight. And it looks like Machen might be encouraged by a political and cultural movement to Make America Great Again.

R.J. Rushdoony in his 1961 book, Intellectual Schizophrenia: Culture, Crisis and Education further makes the point:

The public school is now unmistakably a state school, and its concept of education is inevitably statist. This is apparent in various ways. First of all, education has ceased to be a responsibility of the home and has become a responsibility of the state. . . . the state still claims sole right to determine the nature, extent, and time of education. Thus, a basic family right has been destroyed and the state’s control over the child asserted.

It cannot be both state and family, only either/or. And this is not just an argument for liberty over against government tyranny, but a fundamentally religious question. American public schools are the establishment of a secular religion in the guise of religious neutrality. Joe Boot in The Mission of God explains:

We can clearly see . . . that neither the structure within which we educate, nor the purpose for which we educate, nor the content by which we educate, can be neutral.

Doug Wilson states why this an indisputable fact in The Case for Classical Christian Education:

Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a morality will be imposed in that education, but rather which morality will be imposed. Christians and assorted traditionalists who want a secular school system to instill anything other than secular ethics are wanting something that has never happened and can never happen.

He further asserts that public or “common schools were going to be the means by which the entire progressive agenda was ushered in.” Progressive in the twenty-first century is nothing like the early progressives imagined, but in hindsight it’s easy to see how secular progressive education paved the way for the current takeover of education by cultural Marxists.

Does this mean that what we know as “public education” needs to be “abolished,” to borrow from Marx? Yes! School choice may be a good stopgap measure to take away some of the monopoly power of the government, but it is only temporary. It follows from the biblical imperative of the familial responsibility of educating our children, that it must be completely private and divorced from government at any level. Government money always brings with it government influence. Education is a worldview enterprise, and in America parents should be free to decide in what worldview they want their children educated. Parents should pay for their own children’s education and not forced via taxes to pay for others.                                                                 

What that looks like and how we get there I don’t know. I only know this should be the objective of any Christian who understands the incompatibility of Christianity with any other worldview in the educating of children. In the meantime as we work toward this, I believe that charter classical schools are a critical means to challenging the secular progressive monopoly on education. The ideal is classical and Christian, but even charter “public” classical schools are a powerful weapon against secularism. They reject the postmodern relativism of secularism, and teach that there is objective goodness, beauty, and truth rooted in history and the classical and biblical texts of the Western tradition. The ultimate responsibility for the children’s faith and worldview is the parents, but a classical education will at least not indoctrinate them into the dogmatic secularism of the current cultural and government American elite.