Christian Nationalism is a “Dangerous Ideology”

Christian Nationalism is a “Dangerous Ideology”

Aug 27, 2023 | Western Civilization

When I saw those words I almost laughed out loud. Yeah, I thought, really, really dangerous. These words unsurprisingly come from an article from the very left side of the political-cultural spectrum: “Disciples Confronting Christian Nationalism.”  Although, Sadly, many conservative Christian leaders and intellectuals believe the same thing. It seems the idea of a Christian nation to these Christians of both the left and right is a discredited and archaic position which inevitably leads to stoning homosexuals, burning witches at the stake, and basically a 21st century version of the Spanish Inquisition. They have a deficient understanding of both Christianity and what a nation is in God’s economy. Here are a few quotes from the article demonstrating what this looks like from the left side of the political/cultural spectrum.

Liberal Christians as they used to be called in the early 20th century always had a heretical understanding of the gospel, as so-called progressive Christians do now. So this sentiment wouldn’t surprise us: “Christian Nationalism betrays the gospel and threatens the church.” What exactly is the gospel if it doesn’t apply to nations? Their supposed Savior explicitly says it does when he tells his closest followers just prior to ascending to the right hand of God to exercise the rule he has been given with “all authority in heaven and on earth”:

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

He did not say to make disciples of all people, but all nations, ethnos in Greek. Even most Bible-believing, gospel-declaring conservative Christians miss this one, completely. That’s sad because it isn’t seeing nations as potentially Christian that “betrays the gospel,” but it fulfills it! This doesn’t threaten the church, but it’s one of the primary reasons for its existence! Or maybe Jesus was just kidding.

This leftist/liberal/progressive “Christian” assembly also passed a resolution denouncing Christian nationalism as “a distortion of the Christian faith.” How can you say making nations Christian distorts a faith whose founder commanded his followers to do just that? Again, most conservative Christians, primarily leaders and intellectuals, agree. I’ve found most Christians sitting in the pews every Sunday most definitely want their nations to be more Christian. If they didn’t why would they complain about it all the time? And we see in the following quote how the leftist antipathy to the concept of a Christian nation differs markedly from the conservative one:

The resolution notes Christian Nationalism promotes violence, authoritarianism, “White Supremacy, antisemitism (and other forms of religious bigotry), xenophobia, persecution and scapegoating of LGBTQ+ persons, misogyny, and ableism.” But this dangerous ideology does this, the resolution points out, as it “appropriates the name of Jesus Christ and the language and imagery of scripture to promote this ideology, in direct contradiction to the gospel Jesus preached.” 

And to put the cherry on the top they commit to working “to counter this heretical ideology.” Karl Marx could have been a member in good standing of this denomination.

Let’s make the case that a Christian nation is in fact a thoroughly biblical concept. (I try to stay away from the phrase “Christian nationalism” if I can because of the baggage it’s enemies put on it.) It’s actually an easy case to make, which I attempt in a chapter in my, God willing, forthcoming book, titled,

“The Westphalian Nation-State and The Christian Nation.” If you’re a Christian and believe in nations (i.e., you’re not a globalist), you should be a Christian nationalist. The concept of the nation, or specific people groups, is an important biblical concept, the word being used well over 600 times. In addition to the Great Commission, the Apostle Paul in Acts 17 lays out the case for the God ordained nature of nations:

26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 

You can’t get more biblically unequivocal than that!

Further, a religiously or morally neutral nation cannot exist, a myth far too many Christians believe. This idea of neutrality is the crux of the issue. Most Christians, and all non-Christians, believe a Christian nation is a synonym for theocracy, which is bad, and neutrality is the answer! Although why God ruling a nation (what the word means) is bad I have no idea. Their confusion lies in thinking theocracy means the church ruling the nation, or some man or people ruling in the name of God. Whatever the thinking, it leads inevitably to tyranny and the destruction of liberty. This distortion is more of the poisonous fruit of secularism.

So as not to be the big meanie Christians, they mistakenly believe religious freedom means a type of pluralism where all faiths are equally welcome at a neutral public table with mutual respect and tolerance for all. A perfect example of this misconception comes from David French, a one-time conservative who became an implacable foe of Donald Trump (joining what came to be called the NeverTrumpers). This quote comes from an article in the left-wing Atlantic magazine titled, “Pluralism Has Life Left in It Yet”:

The magic of the American republic is that it can create space for people who possess deeply different world views to live together, work together, and thrive together, even as they stay true to their different religious faiths and moral convictions.

This magic world of America French invents out of whole cloth never existed because in God’s created reality, currently fallen and chock full of sinners, such a pluralist Utopia does not and cannot exist. In fact, America was founded as a Protestant republic with shared biblical assumptions and the Bible as its foundational religious text. Most people don’t realize, obviously including French, that for the first approximately 170 years of America’s history most states had anti-blasphemy and sabbath laws. Doesn’t sound very magical or pluralistic to me!

What French and others like him seem to miss is that we are living in an era when America’s (and the West’s) established religion is secular progressivism, otherwise known as wokeness (i.e., cultural Marxism). It has its own anti-blasphemy laws, as we know all too well. There can be legal consequences, for example, for speaking any words perceived as racist or anti any so-called sexual minority. Despite all evidence to the contrary, well-meaning Christians and liberals who believe in liberty and truth think secular pluralism is the answer to getting rid of the established religion of wokeness. I’m afraid the world as God created it, and fallen, does not work that way. Every nation and the peoples in them exist and live out their collective world view. Vishal Mangalwadi states an unalterable fact of existence in his wonderful book, The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization:

Every civilization is tied together by a final source of authority that gives meaning and ultimate intellectual, moral, and social justification to its culture.

Every nation has some kind of religious establishment, some foundation upon which social order, or disorder, is based, and the consequences will naturally follow. As Christians we can either stick our heads in the sand and pretend neutrality exists, or start thinking seriously and rigorously about what a Christian nation would look like. Secularism cannot be fixed, and true pluralism, true respect for the faith commitments of all people can only exist in a nation that is Christian. Because of the spirit of Babel (Genesis 11) secularism will always and everywhere lead to tyranny and the destruction of liberty. Only where the Spirit of the Lord is can there be liberty (2 Cor. 3:17).

 

Uninvented: The Sermon on the Mount

Uninvented: The Sermon on the Mount

Aug 25, 2023 | Uninvented

One of my primary contentions in Uninvented is that the Bible is impossible to have been made up as merely human invention. I challenge the assumption (never argued for but always assumed) of over 200 years of biblical criticism that not only could the Bible be made up, but it would be relatively easy to do. Like all Christians I never believed the Bible was made up, but in the back of my mind I thought, sure, maybe it could be. I had no idea until I started diving deep into the apologetics literature as I was studying for my first book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, how difficult it would be to argue that the Bible is mere human imagination, so much fiction. Unfortunately, most Christians have no idea why. Having recently read through the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) I was again reminded how compelling the uninvented argument is.

First, even the most dedicated heathen who reads it must admit it comes from the mind of a compelling figure. Note this sermon could not be the product of a committee, but clearly comes from the mind of one man who said things unlike any other in the history of the Jewish religion, or any other religion. In other words, these words could not have been placed in Jesus’ mouth. He says things that would have been so absurd to both Jews and pagans at the time that they would have been literally inconceivable, meaning unable to be conceived. I make this argument consistently in the book. If people can’t imagine something, if it is beyond their ability to even think it, how do they make it up? They don’t! The Sermon on the Mount is one of many examples of Jesus’ teaching first century Jews could not imagine. Skeptics often say the Bible is just another ancient legend or myth, but in the gospels and Acts we’re not dealing with pagan legends and myths, but with Jewish people in a thoroughly Jewish context. The question before us, then, is could a Jewish person, not the divine Son of God, say things like we read in the Sermon on the Mount.

In the book I do a chapter on Jesus’ teaching because it is such a powerful example of how difficult it would be, I believe impossible, to make Jesus up. I’ll comment on a few things in the Sermon below, but in that chapter I discuss how strange and disturbing, especially to Jews, was Jesus teaching that they should eat his flesh and drink his blood, and that it is “real food” and “real drink” (John 6). These are things a lunatic says, if the one who said them is not who he claims to be. Most non-Christians, however, ignore such difficulties, and use the “pick and choose” method. As a perfect example of this, in the chapter I quote Jewish historian Geza Vermes who says, “No objective and enlightened student of the Gospels can help but be struck by the incomparable superiority of Jesus.” He then quotes from another Jewish author:

In his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables.

Then Vermes adds:

Second to none in profundity of insight and grandeur of character, he is in particular an unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the inmost core of spiritual truth and of bringing every issue back to the essence of religion, the existential relationship of man and man, and man and God.

There is a lot of fly food in those sentences made to smell like roses. The only way anyone can make such breathtakingly inane comments is by dealing with a partial Jesus, a Jesus who doesn’t say things like eat my flesh and drink my blood. To harbor such thoughts, a person would have to ignore a large portion of what Jesus actually said according to the gospels.

As for the Sermon, Jesus says things equally as incomprehensible but on the surface less radical, until you realize what he’s actually saying. Start with the Beatitudes. They seem innocent enough, and anyone can embrace them, but the last one is not so easy to accept:

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Then in the next sentence he tells these people that because of this “great will be their reward in heaven.” Who says something like that? A good moral teacher? Hardly. If Jesus was a mere human being, and not God in flesh come to save us from our sins, then he was some kind of megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. It’s even harder to believe someone would put those words in Jesus’ mouth, but to critics, neither of these are even an issue. They would be wrong, and the burden of proof is on them.

In this he compares himself with the prophets, implying he is greater than they were, but he then says something implying he is greater than both the law and the prophets:

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

Such a statement would have been stunning, and controversial, to any first century Jew. For someone to say he could fulfill all the law and the prophets was absurd. God through Moses had instituted the system of animal sacrifice to pay for the sins of all the people which indicates no person could fulfill all of it. Who says such a thing? And as I said, it is even more difficult to believe someone would invent those words and put them in Jesus’ mouth. Remember, we’re talking about first century Jews. Critics for over 200 years basically ignored this most salient fact, the Jewishness of Jesus’ world.

In the same vein, he says numerous times in the Sermon, “You have heard it said, but I say to you . . .” Implying that his authority far exceeded the religious professionals of the day. In fact, he was claiming ultimate authority to be the final arbiter of what God’s law meant. I try to imagine the religious Jews of the time trying to wrap their minds around the implications of that. There was no expectation this would be the Messiah’s role, so unless Jesus was actually the divine Son of God, this makes no sense. We must insist this has to be explained one way or another. Our Jewish scholars I quote above pass over such difficulties with fly food inanities.

We could continue to explore the difficulties, but the important point to take away is that we only have two choices when we come to Jesus and his teaching. As we might say today, it’s a binary choice, a one or a zero. Yet since Jesus walked the earth it seems everyone wants a piece of Jesus, every religion and philosophy, just not the whole Jesus. That Jesus, the one we read about in the gospels, is a real conundrum. He was either in the famous trilemma who he and his followers said he was, Lord, or  a lunatic or a liar. Saying he was a good moral teacher is not an option. Good and moral people do not say the things he said. Not only this, but his closest followers claimed he was the divine Son of God who rose from the dead and ascended to sit at the right hand of God. Then they were persecuted and many gave their lives for it. People don’t do that for what they know to be a lie.

The argument from Jesus, we might call it, is the most powerful argument we have Christianity is true. And he told us he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6).

 

The Life of John Knox, the Christian Long Game, and the Peril of Pessimistic Eschatology

The Life of John Knox, the Christian Long Game, and the Peril of Pessimistic Eschatology

Aug 21, 2023 | Eschatology

I’m currently reading a biography of John Knox, the influential 16th century Scottish Reformer. I knew very little about his life other than that. He was born in 1514 and died in 1572 as the Reformation was beginning to make headway in Catholic Europe. What is especially fascinating about his life and time is now looking at it with my newly fitted postmillennial spectacles (that means glasses for you youngsters), I have a much different perspective than what I might have had before, thus “the Christian long game.” It’s hard to convey and for most of us to grasp just how much we’ve been influenced by dispensational premillennialism to see everything in the short term. Our eschatology, how we see “end times,” has consequences on our perspective and how we live. In other words, our eschatology determines how we see things, how we interpret them, and almost the entire Evangelical church has become pessimistic. Why is that? Why would our theological understanding of how things end make us pessimists? Keep in mind I struggled with this for the first 44(!) years of my Christian life. I say struggle because I didn’t like being a pessimist, but my theological framework left me no other option.

In one way this is understandable and secularism doesn’t help. We’re programmed by the culture to always focus on the immediate, the here, the now. For the non-Christian if this is it, eat, drink, and be merry . . . . Who cares what happens in a hundred or five hundred years. The Christian response to secularism is too often to focus on the next life, reasonably enough. The problem is that Christians have focused salvation almost solely on “going to heaven” when we die, which seems to have become the primary reason we are saved. We’re committed to personal holiness as best we can, our personal relationship to Jesus, and the church is the primary venue for our faith; I’ve heard it called churchianity. This personalization of our faith has little to do with secularism, however. The primary drivers are dispensationalism and pietism, the latter influence coming from 17th century German Lutheranism which made its way broadly into American Evangelicalism in the Second Great Awakening.

Not only do we have an overly personalized faith that has no impact on the culture, but we are also convinced as bad as things are Jesus could be coming back any day. Our dispensational eschatology even tells us the worse it gets the sooner Jesus returns! In a perverse way we are almost inclined to see failure as a sign of progress. As I heard someone put it, tribulation is our hope and societal decay is our encouragement. Evangelism becomes an invitation to join the losing team! At least on this earth, in space and time. All Christians agree our ultimate victory only comes at Jesus’ return. Yet nobody likes this losing, and we complain about it all the time, but again, our theological framework leaves us unable to conclude otherwise. Our myopic eschatology forces us to believe we are passengers on a sinking ship, and who wants to waste time rearranging the deck chairs if it’s going down. We may as well get as many into the life rafts as possible before she goes down. But is that really the biblical testimony of our life in Christ on this earth? It is not! Are we to believe the fall of Adam is more powerful than the resurrection of Christ? It is not!

Needless to say John Knox and the Reformers did not think this way. They lived before the so-called Enlightenment, secularism, and scientific advancement, plus life was harsh and very often short, so there were no illusions about living forever in this life. Yet they saw salvation as far more than going to heaven when you die. They saw Christianity not only as personal spiritual formation, but as societal transformation as well. They were committed to Christianizing their societies and cultures knowing it would never be easy or without Risk. During Bloody Mary’s short reign of five years over 300 Protestants were burned at the stake! Knox and many Protestants who refused to embrace Mary’s Catholicism left Britain and became exiles on the continent, many finding their way to Calvin’s Geneva, which became a model for them of the ideal Christian society. After Mary’s death they made their way back to Britain with the express goal of Christianizing all of England in a Protestant mold. Knox himself was instrumental in transforming Scottland from a primarily Catholic nation and culture to a Protestant and Presbyterian one, all of which in the next two hundred years had a powerful influence on the founding of America.

Because of their eschatology they were what all Christians should be, multigenerational Christians. They knew what they were doing would be a blessing to many generations yet unborn. As I argued in a recent post, the reason Jesus teaches us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come . . . .” is because He expects this coming now, on this earth, in this fallen world, and He expects us to expect it too! Most Christians prior to the rise of dispensationalism in the 19th century did as well. And they never thought the kingdom was just about “spiritual” stuff, or only applied to just Christians and the church. They believed the gospel had implications for all culture and society. And they believed Jesus was serious when he compared the kingdom to a mustard seed and leaven, a slow but relentless growing that in due course would bring the kingdom of heaven to earth (Matt. 13:31-33). They, as are all postmillennialists, were gritty realists who understand we are in a cosmic war against evil, not against flesh and blood. There will be times of suffering and setback, as is apparent from looking at history. The kingdom coming isn’t a straight line to ever increasing success, but a mountain we climb with many valleys and hills, and we only arrive at the ultimate Mt. Everest peak when Jesus returns to destroy the ultimate enemy, death.

One way I’ve come to conceptualize all this can be found in Genesis 3 when the Lord told us the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head and the serpent would strike his heel. I see this now as a microcosm of all redemptive history, not just what happens at Christ’s return. In this little encounter who wins? My money is on the one who crushes. The other who strikes the heel can do some damage, but according to God he has no chance—he gets crushed! Why in the world, literally, do we act as if it’s the other way round? As if the heel striker can crush? I would argue the answer is primarily dispensational eschatology. Few Christians realize how deep and widespread its influence is on our seemingly congenital pessimism about the nature of this world and the spiritual battle in which we are engaged. Christ, we think, is only the victor in eternity, in the sweet by and by, in “heaven” beyond this veil of tears. Of course He is, but He is also the victor here, now, in this life, in this fallen world. He sits at the right hand of God Almighty reigning “until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (I Cor. 15:25). In other words, here, now, in this life, he is crushing it!

Having said that, in one of my favorite sayings, God is never in a hurry. Think about it. When He promised Abram he would bless his offspring, or seed, and make them like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky, it took 2,000(!) years before the seed would be born Jesus of Nazareth. Another 2,000 years has passed, and as far as I can tell we can still count the number of Christians on earth. I think we have a ways to go. And all the nations per Jesus’ command in Matthew 18, the Great Commission, have yet to be made disciples, so we have a lot of work to do. As we go about the business of the Great Commission in our daily lives, all of it, we can have absolute confidence our God in Christ is crushing the serpent’s head before us as we love and serve others and proclaim the gospel. How exciting are our lives! We serve a victorious king; pessimism is not allowed.

 

What Does “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” Mean?

What Does “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” Mean?

Aug 17, 2023 | The Gospel

I’ve wondered all my Christian life why God tells us in His word that we are to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” I thought we were saved by God’s grace, His unmerited favor, that we’ve been saved from God’s wrath through Christ who “paid it all,” and as He says through Isaiah, “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” I thought “there was now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” and that “since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Not only all this, but we know that “perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” And lastly, although I could add a lot more, Christ Jesus is “our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” All of this is my understanding of the gospel, and doesn’t seem to jive with what Paull tells us in Philippians 2:

12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling . . . .

Even though Paul continues this with, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose,” he is still connecting that with “fear and trembling.”

My framework for understanding the gospel, the good news, starts with Genesis 3 after the fall when the Lord comes walking in the garden “in the cool of the day,” and because Adam and Eve have disobeyed Him they hide. They now knew they were naked and were ashamed, so they hid from their Creator. That alienation, the desire to hide or run away from God has been dealt with once for all on the cross, and everything I said about the gospel is true, yet Paul still says our redeemed and reconciled relationship to God through Christ should be characterized by “fear and trembling,” and that we need to “work out our salvation” with this attitude. Until not too long ago this confused me, but it shouldn’t have. I’ll just chalk that up to my ignorance and dullness of heart and mind. I never thought God should now be my best buddy since I’m “saved,” but I couldn’t quite imagine why Paul would use these words.

There are probably many reasons “fear and trembling” is appropriate in our relationship to our God and Savior, but most simply it comes down to He is God and we are not. I know that’s anti-climactic, but it’s true. Read through the Old Testament and see how God teaches His people how they are to relate to Him. Moses says in Deuteronomy 4:24 and 9:3 that Yahweh, Israel’s God, is a “consuming fire.” Moses experienced this directly because when he asked God to show him His glory, the Lord said, “no one may see me and live.” The tabernacle the Israelites were instructed to build included the Holy of Holies where God symbolically dwelled, and it was protected by a great curtain. Only one man ceremonially cleansed, and that only once a year, could enter without being instantly killed. We might say for sinners, holiness kills. That’s kind of a good reason for “fear and trembling,” don’t you think? Or maybe we take this relationship for granted? I’ll give you the answer: Yes we do. We’re sinners, and we’re always fumbling and stumbling around trying to get this thing right. We often don’t. That’s why Jesus being our righteous and sanctification is such incredibly, insanely, wonderfully good news!

Another reason for “fear and trembling” is that we are born-again into a spiritual cosmic drama with consequences beyond our imagining. This is extremely serious business. As Paul says, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” This evil exists in the hearts and minds of every human being, including our own, thus we seek first He who is “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion” and alone is able to “deliver us from evil.”

As good Protestants we know none of our striving means we earn our salvation by what we do, but taking our relationship with our holy Creator God through Christ for granted is a grave error, one we too often make. It is important to understand our salvation from sin into this reconciled relationship is just the beginning. That’s the reason Jesus commands us to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Not second, third, or twenty-eighth, but first. If His kingdom and His righteousness, His Word, living according to His law, is not first in our lives in terms of priority, something’s wrong. What does that mean, though? Clearly it doesn’t mean giving it the most time because for most of us we have to earn a living and raise our families, not to mention enjoy the life and people God has given us. But I suggest it’s giving it the most thought, the most focus, the highest priority in all our seeing and perceiving of life as we live it. We live in a God-drenched reality, and every square inch of it, every millisecond of time, is His. So we see God in all things! As C.S. Lewis said, he believed in Christianity as he believed the sun had risen, not because he sees it but by it he sees everything else.

Paul’s exhortation that we “work out” our salvation in this way convicts most of us as lazy Christians. The Greek word Paul uses for that phrase means, strangely enough, to work! To “effect by labor,” to “achieve.” The Christian life takes effort! In several letters Paul compares it to being an Olympic athlete, and that we are to run the race with the kind of effort it takes to win the prize. It’s unfortunate most Christians know more about their careers, occupations, and hobbies than their Christian faith. That makes some sense given we spend eight or more hours a day at it, but those are not the most important things in our lives. God in Christ is! And Jesus said God’s word should be every bit as important to us as food, “For man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” All of us should be theologians, which simply means the study of God. We should also be apologists, meaning we know not only what we believe but why we believe it, and then competently be able to defend it. That all takes effort! I’ll end this with the Apostle Peter’s words explaining “working out” our salvation (2 Peter 1):

3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

 

5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

 

10 Therefore, brothers, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

Uganda Homosexuality Law Part 2

Uganda Homosexuality Law Part 2

Aug 15, 2023 | Culture, Politics & Government

In my previous post, using Uganda’s new anti-homosexuality law, I argued that Scripture is a legitimate source of authority for nations, that God’s law and rule (theonomy and theocracy) are something Christians should argue for in the public square, specifically regarding a nation’s laws. Everyone is religious; there is no such thing as an unbeliever, and the basis of any nation’s laws come from its fundamental religious (i.e., faith) commitments. As I argued, secular neutrality is a myth. All law comes from somewhere. Ignorant and unthinking people will say, “You can’t legislate morality,” when law is exactly that, legislated morality! So for Christians to say we can’t as Christians use Scripture as a basis for the laws of America is not only un-Scriptural, but self-defeating. It’s like going to fight a war but giving your most powerful and effective weapons to the enemy. Good luck! But it is critically important we realize in the culture wars in which we are engaged, that we are not in any way limited to Scripture in these battles. We have a powerful arsenal that complements Scripture. First is God’s created reality that corresponds to Scripture, and we have the One who made both, our Savior and God who sits at the right hand of the Almighty “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked” (Eph. 1).

I critiqued an article by someone who wrote a piece at American Reformer about the Ugandan law, and I was critical because he stated it wasn’t established “from Scripture, let alone for theonomic or theocratic reasons.” He further contended the law was “an imminently reasonable position compatible with Christian doctrine and ethics, but knowable apart from divine revelation.” The implied assumption is that divine revelation isn’t necessary for such a law to be passed. How else would people know homosexuality is wrong, immoral, and destructive of a flourishing society? The author claims it is “reason, nature, and tradition.” The problem with such an argument is that it is only because of Scripture, verbal revelation of God’s being and will, that “reason, nature, and tradition” tell us homosexuality is immoral and destructive. The ancient Greeks, of whom we Westerners are quite fond, had “reason, nature, and tradition” as well, but not Scripture, and they thought homosexuality was just fine, not immoral in the least. For example, according to Wikipedia:

Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged romantic relationship between an older male (the erastes) and a younger male (the eromenos) usually in his teens.

Kinda blows the whole “reason, nature, and tradition” argument out the door doesn’t it. Why didn’t the ancient Greeks treat homosexuality like the Ancient Hebrews? Scripture! God’s divine verbal revelation. God used words to communicate how his creatures, who also use words, should live so they can experience maximal blessing and flourishing in life. Homosexual activity mitigates against that. God would not have put warnings against homosexuality in his law if it were otherwise.

Contrary to popular opinion, and our natural sinful hearts, God is not a cosmic killjoy. That was Satan’s lie to Eve, and she bought it. All the horror in life goes back to that fundamental lie that we cannot trust God’s character. God didn’t warn us against homosexuality because he didn’t want people attracted to others of the same sex not to have fun or experience romance. He did it because that lifestyle doesn’t lead to true human happiness and flourishing, but misery and unhappiness. Are there happy homosexuals? Of course, but exceptions never disprove rules. And on a societal level the acceptance of homosexuality contributes to the deterioration of the family, as is readily apparent in America. If a homosexual drenched America is such a happy place, why did almost 50,000 people die by their own hands last year? Because America has thrown God’s law under the bus. Rampant sex outside of marriage leads to the dissolution of the family. Dysfunctional families then lead to dysfunctional societies and eventually widespread despair. Human happiness and flourishing is the reason God says sex is only moral and good and blessed inside a marriage between a man and a woman.

As I said above, though, as Christians we are not limited to Scripture when we come to the public square. We must bring Scripture to the debate and never shy away from it, but we also have things compatible with Scripture confirming it: “reason, nature, and tradition.” Christians are not to be Biblicists, meaning we think Scripture is our only source of authority. It is our ultimate and final source, but God hasn’t limited his revelation to just the Bible, but to creation as well. As the Apostle Paul says (Rom. 1:20),

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so they are without excuse.

The “they” Paul is referring to is all of us, every single human being. And note Paul’s assertion, that this revelation of God’s invisible qualities, who He is, is “clearly seen.” It cannot be mistaken for anything else than what it is, a manifestation of God’s “eternal power and divine nature” no matter how much people deny that. Prior to this Paul says people suppress the truth because of their wickedness, meaning they love their sin so much they’ll gladly delude and lie to themselves and believe their lies as if they were true. Thus we passed homosexuality a while ago now, and the lie de jure is that biological sex is not hardwired and can be changed any old time we feel like it. So to the “enlightened” among us, boys can become girls and girls can become boys, and men and women are not fundamentally different. The thing about truth, though, is that it can only be suppressed for so long then the lies start being exposed for what they are, lies.

We are in a wonderful time in history filled with opportunities because the lies are becoming so obvious even people who are not religious or political (“normies”) now realize it. What they don’t realize, however, is that the normalization of homosexuality over the last 40 years has led us to the point where the newest Supreme Court justice doesn’t know what a woman is. Think about that! Reason and nature (creation) tell us exactly what the Bible does about human sexuality. It’s obvious to anyone not previously indoctrinated that each part of the human body has a telos, a purpose, an end for which it was designed. Specific parts are clearly meant for sexual pleasure and procreation, and other parts are not. I won’t belabor the obvious, but when we live according to God’s design in creation, blessings follow, but when we flout them trouble and misery inevitably will. Reason also tells us when we look at all the sociological data over the last 50 years (ignorance is no longer excusable), intact families, husband, wife, kids, are by far the best environment for raising children into emotionally and psychologically healthy functioning adults. Today, sadly, most children grow up without a married mother and father, and we wonder why things are so screwed up. 

We must always remember, everything God commands is for His creatures to flourish as His creatures in His world, contrary to 300 plus years of Enlightenment lies carried into secular lies that morphed into liberal, Marxist, progressive, and leftist lies. This false narrative is well ensconced in the average person’s mind and they believe it. Sadly many Christians buy into it and hurl theocracy around as an epithet. For all of them, if Christians have too much say, too much political power, the country will turn into a version of The Handmaid’s Tale, a book about a Christian fundamentalist theocratic America which was sadly turned into hit show on Hulu. It’s those kind of lies and false narratives that we fight.