Threats to the church

Seen on the Internet....

The four greatest current threats to the church: 

(1) Wokeness and the continued secularization of culture. 
(2) A far-right, anti-Semitic counter movement that resorts to the flesh not the Scriptures. 
(3) The advance of Islam in the West. 
(4) Pragmatism within the church.

It's not necessary to critique everything mistaken you find on the Internet. :-)

However, the above reflects a mindset. It's not a list that I think actually tells us anything about the greatest threats that the Western (or perhaps just American) church (which is equated with "the church") really faces. It does tell us something about how the author sees the Christian faith, politics, culture - and, I'd guess in a high number of cases where people say things like this, his own inner fear as he sees what he thought was a reasonably comfortable life in "The (so-called) Christian West" slipping away from him.

According to such lists, the church mainly is threatened by the winds of culture and politics. To that, I can only say "I suggest you read the New Testament carefully. Try to understand the mindset of the apostles, and note carefully all the things that they saw as threats to the church, and then rank all those things in terms of stated or implied importance. And then at the end, note where things that resemble your own list of fears ranked, and ask why there's a difference."

Just a moment's thought along these lines will show us that the sort of mind-set that can write a list like the above is far, far, from the mind of God revealed in Scripture. Is the main requirement for shepherding a church in the West today skill in reading and navigating the external political/cultural winds in society? No, whatever importance that does or doesn't have, there are many things that are much higher priorities.

And if the church's health *did* depend upon successfully ranking what could be gleaned from cultural and political analysis in such a fashion, then we'd be doomed, because we're not omniscient. This list is an implied claim to know far, far more than we do. 

Or in short: "four contemporary cultural/political challenges for the Western church" and "the four greatest threats the church faces" are two very different claims. Someone who thinks that they're the same claim is mainly communicating something about his thinking, not about external reality. Ironically, the sort of worldly mindset that can confuse these two claims is itself one of the significant challenges the church, in every age, faces.

Pastors are not pundits

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/pastor-or-pundit/

Good article. This is a drum I've banged a few times, but the times call for it to keep being banged.

A point I'd not noticed before, but which is obvious as soon as it's pointed out, made in the above example, is that in the last century liberal pastors, who didn't have much of a gospel, used their pulpits to preach mostly their slant on politics. However today it's political conservatives, people on the political right, who talk just as much about politics and appear to (like historic liberals) essentially see the gospel as the means towards social ends. The main thing is accumulating and playing the game of political power: the gospel is a tool towards that end.

We need godly politicians, and we need people whose calling is to apply Christianity within the political realm. But pastor and pundit are two distinct callings. Today we have an excessive number who believe they're called to both. As the article says (by way of quote), there's little evidence that they did receive such a call:

"Most pastors have nothing particularly unique or insightful to say about politics. So much of “speaking prophetically” or applying the Lordship of Christ to all of life amounts to little more than slapdash criticism and recycled talking points."

If we could replace 95% of the pastors who believe that they're called to inform God's people about their latest hot take on political situations, with ones who were passionate about personally discipling the individual members of their flocks, or the cause of foreign missions, or serving those who are suffering, then nothing of value would be lost, and much would be gained. Let us all remember that one day we shall answer to Christ for how we use the pulpit.

Examining the claim that "women shouldn't be voting": the alleged sin of being female

Some claims are so wrong-headed that it is hard to know how to begin addressing them; the very act of addressing them makes you feel like you dignified them and this feels regrettable. Nonetheless, as those claims spread further and wider, it is necessary for God's people to be shown their wrong-ness, so that they might be guarded against them and the other false ideas being laundered into the church alongside them.

Recently one notorious (for his unrepentant anti-semitism and ethno-nationalism, amongst other things) Christian Nationalist posted the following on X (Twitter). I don't read his Tweet feed (except very occasionally to understand what might be "coming down the river"), but was sad to see the following repeated elsewhere by someone who should have known better. Here's what was said:

There are many reasons women shouldn’t be voting. The reasons are rooted in their nature:

1) They are more easily deceived. 
2) They are not made to operate outside of male headship. 
3) They are more likely to fall prey to weaponized empathy and victim-driven ideologies (CRT, Marxism, etc) 
4) They are far more malleable than men 
5) George Orwell was right: “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.” — 1984 
6) They are made to be nurturers in the home, not public pugilists 

There are a lot of things I could say about this, and the dynamics of people trying to use X to gain followers for themselves, and the sub-Christian and anti-Christian ways they go about this. But to avoid making this post excessively long, I'm just going to comment on the above claims.

What's being discussed? 

There are many reasons women shouldn’t be voting.

Firstly, in context, it appears that "voting" means "take part in democratic elections".

What kind of "should not" is being asserted? Is it an ethical obligation upon all women to not vote? i.e. Is female voting akin to adultery or child abuse, an act that is in its essential nature an offence before a holy God? The reasons given suggest that he's thinking more of "should not" in a more utilitarian sense of "it leads to worse outcomes". The arguments, however, are mixed; some are more pragmatic but others less so; and possibly he does mean "it's inherently morally wrong for a woman to cast a vote (and there are other negative consequences too)". When someone purporting to be a Christian teacher says that you "should not" do something, it ought to be made clear if we're talking about offering advice, or avoiding sin. Lack of clarity is pastorally unhelpful and ultimately irresponsible.

The reasons are rooted in their nature:

Note that this is given as applying to all the reasons which are then given. Every one of them is claimed to be a claim not simply about typical or common behaviours found either predominantly amongst women, or amongst women more commonly than men, or the like. The claim is made that the given reasons are actually essential to the nature of womankind. Wherever you find a female, you will (we're told) find the following things.

The writer hasn't troubled himself to clarify if he means female nature as originally made, or fallen female nature after the fall. Insofar as he means created female nature as it came from the hand of God on the sixth day, if he is talking about already-existing moral defects, then this is Gnostic heresy: femininity was mis-created by a malevolent demiurge. Salvation would include having the faults of our creation rectified. 

So, if he means essential female nature but is not committing this error, he must mean something like "it is not fitting or seemly, in general keeping with femininity, to vote". If that is what he means, then this clarifies the words "should not" as meaning being in a very weak sense: not sin, but not fully fitting. Again, this lack of clarity is pastorally irresponsible. We'd again want to ask questions about what the "should not" here really means. "Should" women put out the rubbish bins (garbage cans, for our American friends!)? Should they change tyres on cars? Learn judo? "Should" men wear make-up, or have hair that goes below their shoulders, always (or not) follow the "Billy Graham" rule, or know how to knit clothes? What is the reasoning involved in affirming or denying any of these claims, exactly? If it does go beyond "it seems unseemly to me" (and I'm not saying that all such judgments must be invalid or fatally subjective), then it needs explaining, not just asserting.

If, on the other hand, we are talking about "female nature" after and affected by the fall, then how do the two very important theological considerations of common grace and of redemption affect the judgment being made? Are all women subject to all the worst ravages of 1) to 6) in their final extremity? Apparently not, because the reasons given are nuanced in terms of relative terms like "more easily", "more likely" and "the most", which is the language of tendency and distribution along a curve, rather than of inherent necessity. So, it seems that God's general restraint and blessing after the fall (common grace) and/or his special grace in regenerating through the Holy Spirit, can change the calculus, so that one woman may differ from another (!). But if that is so, then how is the conclusion that no woman, ever should vote derived from the reasons given?

We will come back to this question of what the writer believes about female nature towards the end. It will become clear that he sees female nature, in and of itself, as a problem. But first we need to do some "spade work" before we can show that this is the unavoidable conclusion. 

One last thing before we look at the reasons themselves - why is voting so important that it gets special consideration here? Given reason 6, it appears to be something to do with the public square, public society.  Voting, broadly speaking, is giving your view upon who should represent you in a parliament, or should represent you in leadership as the head of state. These two things aren't entirely the same thing; the former has more the flavour of representation through "giving a voice to your concerns", and the second representation through "being the embodiment of the nation, and setting its direction". Then there's also specific referenda, which could range from the weightiest national down to the most trivial local issues. I would guess that the writer thinks that women shouldn't have a say on any of these things; but why that is, isn't made clear any more than it is clear why voting is the particular part of participation in wider society that should be forbidden to women because of the given reasons.

So, the reasons themselves....

The claims 

"1) They are more easily deceived."

The logic is apparently something like:

a) There are two sexes.
b) One sex is more easily deceived than the other.
c) If you are a member of the more easily deceived sex, you should not be allowed to vote.

That is the logic, but in what way it is logical, I cannot begin to guess. Why should only one of the two sexes be allowed to vote - why is sex the dividing line here, and not something else? What is the relationship between our gendered existence, and whether we should be allowed to contribute to choosing who represents us? Given reason 2), it is likely to be something to do with leadership / headship and gender roles. Somehow, female voting is prohibited because it is an act of illegitimate leadership of men - but is it really, and how so?

Whatever is meant, in any case, this reason in itself is no reason. "The average woman is more easily deceived, therefore no women at all should vote" makes no sense. The actual reasoning is not given. If woman A is not at all easily deceived, but woman B is easily deceived, then how does this establish that both woman A and woman B should be treated identically and both should be denied a vote? Is the claim that "every single woman is always more easily deceived (and specifically more easily deceived when deciding who to vote for) than any given man?" That claim is obviously completely false.

How did the writer learn this, anyway? How do we know that women (all women, everywhere, ever) are more easily deceived into voting the "wrong" way than men (which men?) are? Is it the writer's personal belief, or has he got sociological research that establishes it? Or does he think the Bible somewhere says so? 

I would guess that the writer wants to appeal to 1 Timothy 2:14, which says "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." This is given in 1 Timothy as a reason why teaching of men and authority over men is not permitted to women in the church. I understand its meaning thus: redeemed sisters in Christ, by their submission to legitimate, godly male authority of church elders (that described in the next chapter) testify that they are not "daughters of Eve" in the sense of endorsing and copying her sin, but that they wish to live in their various roles (daughters, single women, wives, widows, etc.) as saved people, to please and honour God. (And yes, therefore it is a binding command for all churches in all times and places). The text, though, does not say "all women are easily deceived", it says "the woman (i.e. Eve) being deceived". Paul, throughout 1 Timothy, teaches that the church is the new creation, and is to be a light and example to the world of creation restored. But there is no suggestion that this testimony includes either the idea that "all women are more gullible than all men", much less that "therefore no woman should be able to vote for a representative in civil society". Such questions are nowhere on Paul's radar: he was not a Christian nationalist, and the politics of the present age were not interesting to him enough to rise to the level of ever being mentioned in any letter. And in 1 Timothy, he is addressing the subject of the organisation of the church, not interaction with civil society. It can, and I'd argue should, be argued that what Paul says has implications outside of the church; but to establish what those implications might be needs careful and nuanced exegesis that take in the whole of Scripture, not grand sweeping statements that move straight from one action of Eve to all women, anywhere and everywhere.

If those who are too easily deceived shouldn't vote, then this will include vast numbers of both men and women in all parts of society, not simply "all women". The history of parliaments and elections renders the idea that when only men voted, deceptions were avoided, ridiculous. To be sure, we all live in times of different deceptions today than the deceptions of our ancestors. But anyone who thinks that they weren't bathed in vast numbers of deceptions with ruinous consequences either for themselves or those that they acted upon, hasn't read history books.

The writer that I'm responding to has himself been deceived into endorsing both ethno-nationalism and absurd fallacies about generic female nature, and presenting them to others as "Christian". By his own logic, should he be allowed to vote?

2) They are not made to operate outside of male headship. 

If purely for the sake of argument we granted this, then how does it support the conclusion "no woman should vote"? Both men and women are not made to operate outside of Christ's headship; therefore neither men nor women should vote. We were originally made under Adam's headship; therefore as long as he was alive, supposing a democracy developed, only Adam should have been allowed to vote in it. How does any of this follow? We should submit to church leadership; therefore only church leaders should express opinions; there should never be any votes for any reason. Again, how does that follow?

The logic presumably resembles "a woman should not operate anywhere outside of male headship; being asked for her preferred parliamentary candidate is operating outside of male headship; therefore she should not do it". This begs so many questions it's hard to know where to begin. What exactly is meant by "operate" here? What, particularly, about voting is an "operation" that is essentially a rejection of male headship, in a way that any other act that a woman performs is not? Any ideas? If it is being argued that voting is essentially some sort of exercise of authority over others, and over other men, then how is it so?

How are widows meant to "operate"? Do church leaders take on the roles of surrogate fathers? Where is that taught? Are unmarried daughters whose fathers have died morally obliged to not "operate" in society, since they have no male headship - and in what ways?

This all sounds very like the deviant doctrine that was more prominent 2-ish decades ago in some circles, that a woman must seek a "covering" for every decision she makes from a suitable man, down to the smallest details (though, blanket "coverings" could be given for trivial decisions). This adds to the word of God and creates burdens upon souls that God has nowhere placed.

Notice how radical the claim is - women are not "made" to operate outside of male headship. It is, again, against their nature - and this time apparently clearly against their creation itself, irrespective of the fall. A woman cannot express an opinion (at least at the ballot box) on who she wishes to represent her in a democracy, because this is somehow an overthrow of the order of creation. There are huge leaps being made here. In general, daughters are born into their parents home, and God tells them to honour their parents, and God gives the father a specific responsibility as head of the home. They should also honour the authority of church elders and civil rulers, in their spheres. But to get from there to forbidding everything that has no male "covering" requires careful and detailed exegesis and demonstration from Scripture, not just hand-waving.

"3) They are more likely to fall prey to weaponized empathy and victim-driven ideologies (CRT, Marxism, etc)"

This is merely objection 1), only in a more specific form. 1) claims that (all) women are more easily deceived; 3) claims that (all) women are more easily deceived by particularly by the name ideologies. (No documentation/research for this claim is offered).

This claim really is laughable. Karl Marx was Karl Marx, not Karolina Marx. And all the men who developed and put his ideology into practice were men, though of course there were other women working in the same field. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Hoxha, Pol Pot, Mao Zedung, etc. - these were men, and the vast majority of their collaborators were men. They originated, adapted, proclaimed, spread and enforced these doctrines across gigantic territories, as the driving forces. So, even if it were to be conceded (which it is not) that women are more likely to fall prey to these ideologies, you're still left with the inconvenient fact that men are still sufficiently prey to these ideologies that they can rule most of the map without needing women's help. In which case - what would the prohibition of the vote to women be expected to achieve? Women can't vote for these poisonous ideologies, which already succeeded without their votes anyway (inasmuch as anyone was being asked to vote for them in the first place)?

Why only left-wing ideologies? I remind you that the man promoting these ideas is a Christian Nationalist, an anti-semite and ethno-nationalist, who is widely and rightly "marked and avoided" because he consistently without apology re-tweets people are unashamed to say the quiet part out loud by endorsing Nazism and praising Hitler. Were women as well as men not complicit in the sins of 20th century fascism in the same way as 21st century gender ideology? Is there some quantitative difference between their level of involvement? What is the evidence for this claim? All the leading Nazis, including all those tried at Nuremberg, were men. If the involvement of more women in public life automatically means more empathy, then would that not have been welcome in 1930s Germany to prevent the catastrophe that ensued? Or are women now only capable of false empathy, and not of true? What sort of theology is underlying all this? Whatever it is, plainly, it is not necessary to give females votes in order for God-hating ideologies to cause world-wide ruin.

Weaponized empathy?

"Weaponized empathy", in Christian Nationalist circles, is increasingly presented as a claim that the sins of our present societies are essentially "too much public femininity". The idea is that females are more empathetic, and that because they're also (allegedly) more gullible, they're more prone to false, sinful perversions of empathy, and thus the more females you have in the "public space", the more you are inevitably going to have ruinous female-specific sins dominating in your society. The solution, therefore, is to push them back out of the public space. As I say, this claim is laughable and historically nonsensical; there is not the slightest argument that can be attempted that Marxism and Nazism are somehow respectively "female" and "male" sins, nor that the latter would somehow be preferable, or is nearer to the teachings of Christ, to the former. Similarly, Critical Race Theory has been promoted and developed widely by both men and women with equal enthusiasm. To be sure, left-wing group-identity racism and right-wing ethno-identity racism aren't the same doctrines, but they're both evil, both insults to the divine image. And for a Christian, there's no scope then to classify one as acceptable because it's supposedly masculine, whereas the other is unacceptable because it's allegedly feminine.

According to the Bible, virtues of gentleness, sympathy, caring for the helpless and needy, nurturing and helping the weak, are not specifically male or female-coded virtues. They are fruits of the Holy Spirit in and for all those who are converted, to be aimed for in ever greater extent in all, and all were found in their fullness and perfection in Christ, the perfect man (and perfect human). There are no uniquely "female" or "male" sins in this area. If it is argued that females might be more vulnerable to missing a particular virtue on one side, and males on the other side, this cannot be an argument for excluding one group from the public square more than for the other. Again, ethno-nationalism and critical race theory are both evil. The choice "shall we prefer our public sins to be of one sort, or the other sort?" is a false choice. The suggestion that "we must exclude females from public life because our public sins need to be 'male-coded' instead of 'female-coded': we must 'sin in the right direction'", is too ridiculous to take seriously. It suggests that something else is going on at a deeper level which is the real reason.

4) They are far more malleable than men 

This claim is made lazily, being essentially identical to 1), that women are "more easily deceived".

Being "malleable" in itself could be a good or bad thing. It's a pity that Stalin wasn't more malleable, and that someone could have persuaded him to starve so many of his own people with his inflexible centralised plans. If (all?) women are more malleable than (all?) men, then this would seem to be an argument for female involvement in public life, since it would seem that men are (on the author's warped simplicities) missing something important unless women are present.

5) George Orwell was right: “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.” — 1984 

Again, how this differs from 1) or 4) is not clear. Women are more gullible... more easily deceived... most likely to swallow slogans and conform. But if women are, by their very nature, followers, then just whom have they been following? If we have got into the mess of Marxism and CRT, then who led women there? It can't both be the case that women led us there, and also that women are by nature followers who just do what men tell them. These claims are self-contradictory. Which is it?

In society today, we have men who argue for Marxism, and men who argue against it. We have men who argue for CRT, and men who argue against CRT. If women are by nature followers, as is being argued, then why does that mean they necessarily follow lies instead of truth? (Whereas men do what, exactly? They follow truth instead of lies? Or they create lies instead of creating truth?). Or is it because women are uniquely susceptible to left-wing ruinous ideologies, because of alleged their innate (universal?) tendency to weaponized empathy, that there is a problem? Since men's empathy can't be so easily warped, therefore only men should vote because they can and do resist the lies that spoil nations? Again, all human history proclaims that this idea is a fable.

It is generally observed, and I agree, that young women are especially sensitive to non-conformity within their circles, more than men in general and on average tend to be. And because young women are desirable to men, there is a tendency for men to seek to please them, which some might think it's best to do by agreeing with them. But that is in no way a necessary male response; indeed, it would be a weak one, contrary to stereotypical masculine virtues. Is the writer confessing that actually, he and the men with him are so weak that once (young) women are allowed to express opinions, then they won't be able to resist going along with them? Where, exactly, is Christian virtue in any of this? Are we all just automatons, pushed around by uncontrollable sexual dynamics which can only be brought back into line by shutting up women in their homes where they can't by their irresistible charms influence such pathetically weak men in the wrong ideological directions?

Going along those lines (and when you read his other outputs), to try to understand the essence of his logic, it becomes clear that the writer does have a woman problem. There's a battle raging within him. Whether he wants to be or likes to be one, he has landed as a misogynist. He's struggling to co-exist with women, and the solution to his internal struggle is to suppress their existence, so that he's not exposed to them and their wiles. So he insults and belittles them as an entire class, to banish the entire class. They are biased towards evil, and if they're allowed into wider society too much, then they will corrupt men who want to please them and are unable to resist doing so. They must be kept away from him, because he has a problem with them as a class. The mask is difficult to keep on, and the only way to get a logical, coherent picture out of these points is to point this unpleasant reality of his thinking out. Women, for this writer, have a natural and stronger tendency towards evil which can't be mitigated, and which inevitably corrupts men (who are incapable of resisting), and therefore they must be suppressed. This is the only reading which logically harmonises all of his beliefs, unpleasant as it is.

6) They are made to be nurturers in the home, not public pugilists 

I don't know if you're tired, but I'm tired. Once more, a lazy appeal to women's alleged nature is made, which is supposed somehow to read straight across without any explanation to the act of voting. It is mostly not even an argument, but just a statement of his conclusion.

What is the connection between voting for your representative, and being a public pugilist? We're not told. Supposing that you are a nurturer in the home, why does this mean that the state must not ask you for your say on who represents you? Why do we have to choose between one or the other - why the dichotomy? So many assertions, so few reasons.

Is a woman who is not a "nurturer in the home" failing to achieve her created purpose? Are all women who don't marry, despite what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 about the superiority of serving Christ whilst unmarried, failures as women? Once a woman becomes a widow, or if she has no children, is she a failed (or simply redundant) woman? Does she need to be redeemed from her failure to nurture in the home, her having come short of her very purpose for existing? What horrible doctrine is this?

Conclusions: the root of this is heresy

Men and women as classes are created with complementary, but non-identical purposes. This is a clear teaching of Scripture, and is evident to any careful observer of the human race. However, to try to build a doctrine with parts such as "no woman ever should vote" or "without being a domestic nurturer, you are necessarily less of a woman" upon that foundation is to add new, soul-crushing chapters to God's word. Moreover, the fact that the only way to do this is to make gross, sweeping generalisations, turning unexplained tendencies into universal rules, and by saying things that betray a general uncomfortableness with the existence of women as a class (they are more prone to evil, and their evil influence cannot be resisted except by shutting them away, because this all-pervasive defect cannot be remedied in this life): this has nothing to do with the Christian faith. It sounds like some other religions I've read about in many times and places, ahem, but not Christianity. It is not what Jesus Christ or his apostles anywhere taught. The doctrine that women are, in their very nature as women, inferior creations to man whose nature corrupts men (who unfortunately cannot resist their spells), is not God's word; it is heresy. The Bible does not teach, but denies, that women are by their very nature as women more bigoted, more gullible, and more prone to perverting kindness into oppression, and that they must be generally suppressed in order to protect men from their irreparably malevolent influence. It is not taught in Genesis, in the gospels, the epistles, or anywhere else in Scripture. 

We should be clear about this. "Christian Nationalists" who teach such doctrines about women steal the name of Christ to spread poisonous errors. Unpleasant as it is, we must refute them. We must not allow those who don't know Christ to believe that this is what Christianity and the gospel say about femininity. They do not.

The eclipse of the eternal

In so much of contemporary Christianity, there is a painfully diminished sense that something's missing. That something is the personal presence of the eternal God, and the accompanying awe, repentance, and delight in being adopted by him.

He's there in theory, but he's not the thrice-holy, glorious, beloved one who is Lord over and satisfies our souls. He's been reduced to a theory. He's a doctrine, an idea, and a means to an end. That end may be some version of "living our best life now", of glorifying God by lots of shiny achievements, of our neat political plans and dreams (or even something more tragic, like a stick to beat others with in trivial debates) but whatever it is, it's an end which isn't God himself, the glorious and beautiful Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The eternal has been eclipsed. God is there... but as part of a system of thought, not as a personal, living being who both makes us tremble, and makes us desire after him. The spiritual realities of the gospel are spoken; but they're tools to help us get through this life with quiet consciences and enjoy the things, the objects and experiences, that we choose to enjoy.

In the New Testament letters, an awesome thought dominates. Christ, the eternal Son of God, who is before and over all things, was amongst us. He shed his blood for us. He has betrothed his church, all who repent and believe, to himself. He is coming again soon to claim them. Soon we will all stand before the Master, to give an account for what we did in the flesh. The night is nearly over, and the day will soon dawn. He is present now by his Spirit to enable us to know and enjoy him, and to testify to his majesty by our words and deeds, but soon will be present in person, to receive our account of how we lived, and to receive us to himself. The eternal has invaded time, and is now, for Christians, the controlling reality of our daily lives. It is here now, and soon will be here in totality: this changes everything.

The eternal should not be eclipsed. The things we allow to eclipse it are just children's toys. We are called to grow up, and become men. May God help us to do so.

Calvin on the attitude of Christians to the coming of Christ

Commenting on Hebrews 10:25 ("not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching"):

Were any one to ask, how could the Apostle say that those who were as yet afar off from the manifestation of Christ, saw the day near and just at hand? I would answer, that from the beginning of the kingdom of Christ the Church was so constituted that the faithful ought to have considered the Judge as coming soon; nor were they indeed deceived by a false notion, when they were prepared to receive Christ almost every moment; for such was the condition of the Church from the time the Gospel was promulgated, that the whole of that period might truly and properly be called the last. They then who have been dead many ages ago lived in the last days no less than we. 

Laughed at is our simplicity in this respect by the worldly wise and scoffers, who deem as fabulous all that we believe respecting the resurrection of the flesh and the last judgment; but that our faith may not fail through their mockery, the Holy Spirit reminds us that a thousand years are before God as one day, (2 Peter 3:8) so that whenever we think of the eternity of the celestial kingdom no time ought to appear long to us. And further, since Christ, after having completed all things necessary for our salvation, has ascended into heaven, it is but reasonable that we who are continually looking for his second manifestation should regard every day as though it were the last. 

Remembering the poor

I was very gladdened to see this article, by Trevin Wax: "Do we remember the poor?"

Six months ago I commented, in a post on "The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel", as follows: 

When outsiders say that evangelicals are far too concerned about laying down the strict confines of orthodoxy and it'd be great if they demonstrated more energy in condescending to help suffering people in their very messy, practical situations, it might well be because, ever since evangelicals made it a priority to clarify that they do not believe "the social gospel", we don't seem to have made it the same priority to so clearly, and conspicuously, make it clear that our lives are handed over to showing love to people in need.  

It seems to me that concern for the poor is much more prominent in the Bible (both Testaments) than it is in contemporary Western evangelicalism; and that conversely, love of endless debate that leads to no action is beloved in Western evangelicalism but is soundly condemned in the Scriptures. So, to see someone with a fairly wide reach talking about this, and making similar points, greatly encouraged me. Trevin Wax doesn't just show us what the New Testament says; he's also not afraid to point out that, in general, we're not doing it as those who went before us either in the Bible or afterwards did, and therefore we must change.

Church leader, are you the sort of person whose Christianity means what the apostle Paul's did? When he met the Jerusalem apostles, he said: "They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do" (Galatians 2:10). There were, at their meeting, only two things that we were told were discussed by the apostles. They established firstly that they were all preaching the same gospel; and they established secondly that they all understood and were zealous for the inevitable implication of the gospel, of serving the poor. This doesn't just mean writing periodic cheques out of our excess, out of the money that we'd just otherwise leave behind to be dealt with in a will when we've departed from this world and couldn't do anything with it anyway. Rather, it is this. “So you say you love the poor?", Gustavo Gutierrez famously asked, and continued: "Then tell me, what are their names?” May God help us to meet this faithful challenge.

No divine thunderbolts (or not often, anyway)

Many things in the world we look at and say "why does God allow that to go on?" Why no divine thunderbolts?

As we grow as Christians, we look more at the church, as we learn that judgment must begin at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17), and that teachers will receive a stricter judgment (James 3:1). It is the church which is called to be the light of the world (Matthew 5:14) - a light to shine before men, and point the way to them. If the world is in a mess then, well, of course it is. It is in darkness. But when the lamp that should be shining out light also has darkness in it, then this is much more tragic. Why does God allow it? Why no divine thunderbolts?

The letters of Revelation 2-3 tell us that Christ does walk amidst the churches, and does judge them. It is a fearsome judgment. The lampstand may be taken away. One question we are left to wrestle with is: how do we know when that has happened?  If the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2 had had its lampstand removed, what would be the signs of this? It was orthodox, fought against wrong beliefs, and laboured with patience, and could not tolerate evil. When its lampstand was removed, would it still be, on the outside, apparently orthodox and hard-working, but just with no real spiritual fruit and operations of the Holy Spirit? Or does Christ's withdrawal of his presence mean a withholding of the grace that would stop it sliding into error and into apathy about the human need around it, so that error and evil would be seen? Presumably his withdrawal would in some manner become more and more obvious, requiring less and less discernment to see it, over time.

One thing that Scripture does teach us is that God's patience is different, far greater, than ours. It is not infinite, but he is very generous in giving people time to repent (Romans 2:1-4, 2 Peter 3:-9). This creates its own danger for those who aren't listening to him, because they (as suggested by Paul in Romans 2) take the lack of divine thunderbolts as confirmation that they're doing just fine, and have no need to change course.

As an example of this in the Bible: the Jerusalem temple and nation were not destroyed by God's judgment until 40 years after Christ was crucified. That gave a whole generation time to reflect, to consider, to see the clear evidence of God's Spirit and fulfilled prophecy in the Christian church, to recognise that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ raised from the dead, and to receive his offer of forgiveness and life. Or, it gave 40 years to convince oneself that the pesky Nazarene trouble-maker had been happily got rid of, and wasn't going to be seen again - and if only now we could squelch out his mad followers, we can then go back to business as usual.

It seems to me that the time of God's patience gives time to reveal the righteousness and wisdom of his justice. When given a long time to reconsider and repent, people lose the excuse of saying "I didn't have time to reflect; nobody warned me; more years would have allowed me to grow wiser, think, and change; it was a simple mistake, an oversight of the sort any mortal makes, that I'd have happily have rectified". In God's grace, with the passing of time, with prayer, with the Holy Spirit, God's people do reflect and repent. But where people don't want to, they're instead giving a full and complete demonstration that they did nothing except what was in their hearts, what they wanted to do. And when God eventually says "enough", nobody can doubt that it was so. The seasons come, the seasons go; warnings are spoken, warnings are ignored, but there's no change - and why not? Because the problem was not something technical, something complicated, something subtle: the problem all along was sin which continually demanded judgment.

There are, then, comparatively few divine thunderbolts in this life because of God's glorious mercy, and because of God's righteous judgment. When you see sin that continues, the situation will not continue indefinitely; it's heading towards one of those two.

Jesus gave himself for people

Matthew 9: ¹⁸ While He spoke these things to them, behold, a ruler came and worshipped Him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay Your hand on her and she will live.” ¹⁹ So Jesus arose and followed him, and so did His disciples.

This sort of thing is, in the gospels, so natural and so frequent, that we easily miss it.

In the modern world we have time for programs and schedules; for projects, for jobs, for careers, for our homes, for entertainment. We have time for ourselves and the things we want to achieve, and our days are divided up even perhaps into 5-minute segments, to make sure we can achieve these things.

Jesus, though, had time for people. He is dealing with the questions of one group (in this case, John's disciples); and then another person comes, and asks for his aid. So, therefore, hence, he arose and followed him. Someone came and interrupted, urgently seeking Jesus; Jesus embraced this new development in the plan of the day, and embraced the new person and new opportunity to serve in front of him.

As modern Westerners we tend to put programmes, action plans and schedules first, and people as individuals often sit a level behind in the structure of our thinking. What would our lives look like if people were first and primary, always, and the rest merely flexible means towards the end of giving ourselves to the image-bearers that God has placed around us? Certainly, Jesus had a programme. But it was all driven by his love for people, and the God who made them. Needy people could never get in the way of his programme, because people were his programme.

Well, that's weird

Having been a missionary, the following experience is familiar to me. You take part in a meeting. You sit, you watch, you observe. You try to understand what's going on. You try to understand what's really going on. What does the way this meeting is organised mean? Why is this being done, and what is the significance of that? Everything seems to flow naturally, as something entirely normal and well-understood by everyone present (except you). You, unfortunately, don't get it. Don't worry: you can try again the next time.

The next time comes, and goes. And the next, and the next; and so on. Unfortunately (for you), though there are some things that you can now explain the inner, local logic of, yet much else passes you by completely and entirely. It's weird. Years pass: it's still weird, really weird. How to relate it to the intended, announced, purported purpose of the meeting? What does it have to do with Christianity? How in any way is it tied to the person, the teachings and the saving work of Jesus Christ, and the Commission that he gave us? Sorry, I don't know. I've tried, but as yet, I'm not sure anyone else really knows either. And yet.... it still makes perfect, effortless sense to the bulk of the people present, such that if you asked them to explain it, well, they couldn't either. Because it just is: this is how things are done, and everybody just knows that. We've always done it this way.

What I am referring to, of course, is that deep, so very deep, thing called culture. Where it all comes from and how it all hangs together is so clear to a cultural native, that not only is it not explained, that some of the time it just can't be explained. If you need it explaining to you, then you'll never get it.

Sometimes, on the other hand (not terribly often!), one of those wonderful moments occurs, when someone says.... "I've been thinking about this, and why do we do it? Is it really in keeping with our purpose and mission, and doesn't it in fact suggest something different to what Jesus taught us, doesn't it clash with it? Shouldn't we change this?" 

When that does happen, it's hard to suppress the urge to jump out of the chair, yell "Yes, yes, yes!", burst into tears, and go and hug the person who said it, and do a few laps of the room in order to work off the adrenaline rush that came from someone saying what you'd been thinking for so long.... but you'd better not do quite this, for it would, in almost any culture, be profoundly weird.

Now, if you live in another culture for enough time, something else begins to happen. Eventually, we hope at least, some of your blinkers begin to come off. It becomes apparent that being weird isn't the exclusive preserve of one or two cultures, much less just the one you happen to be a stranger in. It turns out that in fact your own culture, and your own sub-cultures, are also profoundly weird. There are things that apparently make perfect sense to the people working and acting in them which, if they were gifted with being able to step outside of that for a moment, they'd realise (inside about 10 seconds) are so strange that we can barely begin to describe them. Whether you're British, American, African, Asian; whether you're Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Anglican, etcetera, well, frankly, your culture and sub-culture are very likely quite weird, inexplicably odd, with things more or less prominent that just have no real connection to your advertised and professed identity and purpose.

The moral here isn't "and that's OK, let's all be weird in our own ways and accept it and even delight in it". There is no doubt time and place for a good dose of that. God did create, and does love variety, and it's good for us to broaden our narrow, constricted, darkened little minds not just a bit. And whilst in the church of Jesus Christ this variety should be embraced and celebrated, that doesn't mean that there aren't still parts that are not "good weird", but "bad weird". i.e. They are signs that there is something profoundly wrong. Somewhere, at quite an early stage, far back, someone set their compass wrong, and started wandering off the path, and now we're so far lost we don't even realise it. Things are happening that just should not happen, anywhere, at all, whoever we are. It's not just that we lack understanding (which of course, in any particular case we have to allow for, and must be patient as we labour to understand).

This post isn't about any particular person, people, groups or activities. There is no coded message about some specific situation. I am musing on just how common the cognitive disconnect is, once you have been following Jesus a while. So much of the way of the world around us, and of the way of us disciples who still have so much to learn, just makes no real sense given what we profess to believe, that the experience just comes more and more. It's as if, in this world, we're strangers - we don't really belong here; we're exiles and there's some other place that is home and where we fit in and where it'll all be worked out. It's as if we have to live as if this book, which makes more and more sense to me as I study it more, is the real world, and as if the creation I'm actually living in had some major event that caused things to go off-track, quite early.

Having made that explanation, though, here's one from the world of self-described evangelicalism, apparently on the more conservative end, from the few figures in it that I do recognise. I've not heard of this conference and I don't know much about the writer of this piece, but he's on to something: "The Great Evangelical Schism: Prologue". Look at that poster and read the descriptions. It's not so much that there's something obviously wrong, direct-and-up-front, or that they're trying to be weird. Nowhere does it say they're going to torture babies, or have a fancy dress party in which they all decide to impersonate goats, or to hold an evangelistic rally in which they're only allowed to use the word "Wibbly". It's more subtle than that. Somewhere, the wider movement that this is part of took some wrong turns many stages ago, which actually makes this conference look entirely natural. But if, alternatively, you were to read, say, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, or the Westminster Confession of Faith through a few times, and then read the missionary biographies of Hudson Taylor and John Paton (or their like), and then got transported into this conference, you'd surely realise that some very major changes had happened into the intervening years, that were more than simply questions of style and cultural adiaphora. It's not that I particularly know that any of those people purvey heresy. But it's just.... very weird. How did we get from there to here? What have these two reference points got to do with each-other? It's not a sign of health, whatever it is.

In general, trying to encourage people to be bold for Jesus is a good thing, a good use of our time and efforts. Far better than just consuming content from screens. And my purpose here is, as I say, not particularly to criticise the above conference. The poster/conference are the symptoms of something behind that is widespread, and are not the disease itself. As the article above says, "The “Be Bold for Jesus” conference is a touch-point into this mode of religion, where, among other factors, theology and doctrine take a quantifiable back seat to culture."  Culture is weird. But when evangelical culture/sub-culture has become weird in the wrong ways, we need to work out why that is, and how to retrieve the things that make sense. We're meant to be in a place where people can look in their Bibles, and people can learn about Jesus there, and then look at us, and say "I see what it means, it's talking about being the sort of people that you are, because you're following him". If they instead say "sorry, not interested, you're way too weird", and they're not talking about our life of self-giving for Jesus but about something else that is part of our sub-culture, then, we need to ask God's help to see ourselves more clearly.

Intelligence (artificial and otherwise) and wisdom

"Artificial intelligence" is one of the interesting new technological developments of our time.

What today's "artificial intelligence" actually is 

As ever, it's important to distinguish between what a thing is, and what it is being called. (Or when we're talking about products being sold, between what a thing is, and what it is being marketed as). The name "artificial intelligence" invokes all sorts of ideas out of science fiction: machines that perform actual thinking. Nothing of the kind is actually going on here, though. Today's text-based "AI" (e.g. if you talk to ChatGPT) is based around "Large Language Models", LLMs, which are essentially performing super-charged statistical text-prediction. That is to say, based upon the (enormous) sets of data that they were trained with, at heart, and given your starting text (and given the text from their makers given to prime them, known as their "prompts") as their inputs, they output what would be a reasonable following sequence of text. With the size of their training data, and the massive amount of computation that goes on to work out what could reasonably come next, the results may resemble the output of an intelligent being, but machine itself is doing zero actual thinking. All the intelligence, if we hope that there was some, was in the human-produced training data (and in the programming to access the appropriate parts of that training data to produce an output, and then the human calibration to deal with the consequences of the unhelpful material in the training data). What comes out is based only upon what goes in. This is unlike human intelligence, where people can ultimately output far beyond what was put in, because they are souls, made in the image of God.

So much, then for the marketing. But, leaving aside the current implementation, what about the idea in general?

Intelligence and wisdom

If we think about what the Bible has to say in this area, then we quickly come across an obvious and fundamental fact. The Bible teaches us about the concept of wisdom, which is distinguished from our idea of intelligence. Wisdom is not being very clever, and talking or writing about ideas that are very advanced, in the sense of capacity for technical problem-solving. Wisdom is skill for living rightly, based upon perception and discernment of the underlying realities. And this perception or understanding is based upon understanding the order in which we live. This is in terms of being created beings, recognising our Creator (the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom), understanding that we live in a fallen world, and being able to apply the consequent spiritual principles to the particular situations we find ourselves in, remembering that all our works will be submitted to his judgment and are subject to his providences.

That is to say: as we look at the world around us an analyse some particular situation (the "input data", if you like), then we then learn to evaluate it in terms of the principles of God, our relationship to him, the world he has made and how he intends it to run, and recognise that honouring him and his purposes is the important thing to do. We learn to recognise how, in a particular situation, the principles of wisdom apply. We perceive the workings of sin, of the corrupted desires of the flesh, seeking for worldly gain and immediate advancement contrary to the Creator's principles. We discern the long-term outcomes of different policies and ways of life. We evaluate the different kinds of "gains" at different levels: the differences between trivial but necessary achievements, false achievements and ones of real value; we sort out between such things as the need to eat, drink, look after the state of our "flocks and herds", repair and upkeep, the need to develop character and godly habits, long-term sowing and reaping of what we sowed, how an action will look when we look back perhaps from old age, or on the day of judgment; investing for earth and for heaven, what is of real value and what really impresses men who are walking in the flesh, what is real friendship and what is just empty pretence or froth, and so on, and on, and on. We then decide how to respond and react, whilst remembering that all is still subject to the higher will of our God, to whom we entrust ourselves whether the immediate, flesh-and-blood-level consequences are palatable or not.

Like an LLM's training set in the current text-prediction technology, true wisdom also requires training via considerable experience. It is not something we can have without passing through much, considering much, praying much, being amongst the people of God much, studying the word much, and exercising patience.

So, wisdom has some analogies with "Artificial Intelligence", but it is also fundamentally different, and they are ultimately not the same thing at all. It involves understanding. Wisdom is not simply technical problem-solving, but is discernment. It requires looking at a situation from different perspectives, and remembering which are the important perspectives. It looks beyond immediate appearance, and interprets in the light of God's revealed realities in his Word.

Consequences and conclusions

This being so, "Artificial Intelligence" as the "tech community" is looking at it today is actually of quite limited use. Even supposing that the (considerable) challenges of producing useful products at affordable prices in order to help us to achieve our tasks more efficiently is achieved, these products will still be, like other things, ultimately just tools for human use. Whether the uses that humans put them to will themselves be wise or foolish is another question entirely - one which you will never be able to discern simply by predicting sequential text based upon past training data. "AI" can produce plausible patterns based upon what human beings have written, in the training data. But whether these patterns reflect wisdom that enables us to live rightly in this creation or not: that is a separate question.

The (marketing) talk now from tech circles is of when "AI" will achieve "super-intelligence", surpassing man's abilities. But again, we must remember to go past the marketing: what this really means is just technical problem-solving abilities, resulting in more efficient technological progress. Whether men will be wise or foolish, whether they will be more efficient in doing good or evil, whether they will use their tools to glorify God and serve the poor and needy or whether to build self-centred empires: that is something else. And as ever, the answer is likely to be: some of both. The tares and the wheat will both grow in the field, each revealing more clearly their respective natures, until the harvest.

So, by all means use AI where it can do good, promoting the beautiful and the true. To know where that is, as with every other tool, you'll first need to learn wisdom, and you'll need to regulate your use of the tool at all steps with that wisdom. A chainsaw is a tool for good, if used wisely. If used otherwise... oh dear.

Making the gospel optional

It was good to see this link (found at Tim Challies' blog) this morning: https://www.proclaimanddefend.org/2025/10/23/a-dangerous-new-ecumenism/

Recently there's been a spate of Internet noise from people - who self-describe as evangelical Protestants - giving their opinion that the golden age of Christianity in the world was the medieval period. One supposedly Reformed evangelical publisher emailed out advertisements for a book on Christopher Columbus, breathlessly explaining that "we had been lied to" because we didn't know that Columbus' ultimate motive was to finance a new Crusade to free the "Holy Land" from "the Moslem hordes"..... and this was being presented, without any hint of irony or embarrassment, as a good thing. Many voices declare that the time has come to put aside our differences, and not merely co-operate with sufficiently like-minded people to achieve limited societal aims (such as combating abortion or the promotion of sexual depravity), but to together build a "Christian society" together with those who preach what our confessions of faith say are false gospels which corrupt the fundamentals of Christian faith.

All this is to say: there are a lot of siren voices telling us that, in effect, the gospel is optional. It can be your own private belief: good for you. But outside the privacy of your own thoughts, the Christian faith must be reduced to only the profession that there is one God in three persons, and that salvation has something to do with your preferred version of Jesus. The minimal "Christianity" in this new ecumenism will include the being of God and the fact that the gospel saves, but as to what the gospel is, that is something you can choose for yourself. In the public sphere, Christianity is to be a large tent which includes both saving biblical truth and its denial.

It is never explained why this should be. If we can edit the gospel, then why not the Trinity too? If it does not matter whether salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, or whether it is progressively mediated through the sacerdotal ministry of a official priesthood of the church, then why does it matter if someone is a Binitarian instead of a Trinitarian? That is to say: if the boundaries of what is "Christian" are being extended to include this heresy, then why not that heresy? Why does the meaning of Christianity change when moving in between the church sanctuary and the public square?

In effect, the idea seems to be that as long as we have official, outward Christianity, then it doesn't actually matter if we have genuine spiritual life or not. Which is again to say: the gospel is optional.

But the gospel is not optional: it is everything. We may well co-operate with people who are not Christians on various projects in this world, because we are members of this present age as well as the age to come. But to re-define what is meant by "Christian" in order to accomplish this, is not something the Master has given us freedom to do, and nor should we want to. The gospel is not negotiable, for whatever purpose. Our duty is to pass it on faithfully. If some political purpose requires us to soft-pedal essentials of the gospel or to treat them as optional, then we must sacrifice that political purpose. This is not a choice: this is what being a genuine follower of Jesus who told us to take up the cross implies.

Do you have any tears?

The speech of Paul to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20: 

"18 And when they had come to him, he said to them: “You know, from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, 19 serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews; 20 how I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house, 21 testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."

Note:

• Paul served amongst the people. His life was an open book to them. He could appeal to them to testify as to how he had lived, because they all knew. Like the Lord Jesus Christ, he came to where those he was serving were, and walked as one of them.
• Moreover, his life of service amongst them was consistent. He was not a part-time servant: he had "always" lived amongst them in the same way. Service was not something that he turned on and off, with limits and boundaries: his identity was that of a servant of the Lord. He served with all humility, as his Master did.
• This service brought him "many tears and trials". Paul's life and soul were in his service. He was not a "fixed hours contract" man. Before he gave anything else (time, money, particular labours), he gave himself. And consequently, he brought upon himself many sorrows.

Servant of Jesus, do you have any tears? Or is your ministry carefully constructed to make sure you avoid them? All is clean, professional, well-ordered, to keep all the messiness and pain of sharing your life with other human beings who you are giving yourself in order to bless in Jesus' name at a comfortable arms-length distance?

"I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears", Paul said to the Corinthians. "many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ", he wrote to the Philippians. "I remember your tears", the aged Paul wrote to his son in the faith, Timothy.

Again I ask, servant of Christ, do you have any tears? Is your heart and life sufficiently joined to those that you are serving that, when inevitably the trials and sorrows of human reality intervene, you can only weep? If yes, then the promise of Scripture is that they are stored up before God and precious to him - and one day Jesus will wipe them all away. If no, then, why is this?

Jesus, the divine bridegroom

"For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; he is called the God of the whole earth." - Isaiah 54:5.

"You shall no longer be termed Forsaken, nor shall your land any more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you." - Isaiah 62:4-5.

“When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord God. ...  You are an adulterous wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband." - Ezekiel 16:8 and 32.

"“I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. " - Hosea 2:19-20. 

These are just a few of the Old Testament verses which represent a consistent thread of Old Testament teaching, depicting God as the bridegroom of his covenanted people. The later prophets, such as Hosea, lament the unfaithfulness of the bride, but promise that God will renew the covenant, and take his people, his wife, to himself again.

The New Testament, and Jesus personally, explicitly states that this is fulfilled in Jesus himself, and in the union of Jesus with his church, e.g.:

"And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast." - Matthew 9:15

"You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before Him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease." - John 3:28-30

"Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might [g]sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish." - Ephesians 5:25b-27 

"Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife" - Revelation 21:9 

Were these the only related verses and the only related theme in the Bible (whereas in fact there are very many others on both counts), it would still be quite sufficient to show that Jesus is explicitly presented as God manifest in the flesh, the covenant God of Israel now come personally to fulfil the Old Testament promises. He is not a man, or the most exalted created being, through whom God acts: he, himself, does the things that the Old Testament tells us that God personally does. The concept of God taking a bride through an intermediary who does the actual taking of the bride in the New Testament, as a fulfilment of the Old Testament promise, would be absurd. Jesus, and his apostles, explicitly taught that Jesus himself is God. He does the things that the Old Testament tells us God himself is going to come and do.

On the Calormenes

From time to time, you hear or read someone arguing that C S Lewis was a racist, and that this is proved by his depiction of the Calormenes in the Narnia books.

In recent years I've read enough history to now understand that the Calormenes are essentially - and very clearly - based upon the rulers of the Ottoman Empire during the medieval period and their excesses. i.e. Not upon all "brown-coloured" people in general.

Ironically, then, the people arguing that C S Lewis' depiction was racist seem to be indulging in some sort of racism themselves, because they think that the negative traits of the medieval Ottoman sultans and elite which are poked fun at are something generalisable to all "brown people" in general. Why would they think that? It does sound quite like racism, but perhaps they have some other reason for making that leap.

Or to put this another way: it's like concluding that all the things which Lewis and Tolkien clearly adapted from Norse mythology and its heroes when they formed their heroes form a reliable guide to their view of people of white European descent in general. This makes no sense.

Of course, neither the Calormenes nor the medieval Ottomans are separable from their religion, which is clearly some brand of Islam, filtered through their culture(s). To some modern minds, critiquing a religion in any form is also some sort of racism. I don't recall coming across a serious attempt to explain why this is. Both Islam and Christianity claim to be global faiths, which are not the possession of any specific people-group or race. C S Lewis was a Christian apologist. He can hardly be expected to portray the religious culture and practices of a group based upon the Ottomans positively - just how many of his critics would do so? If the claim is that he deliberately picked upon the medieval Ottomans in order to ridicule Islam in general, then this claim needs to be accompanied by some actual proof. A bare assertion is not an argument.

On deceiving the simple with plausible-sounding words

Seen today on the feed of a prominent Reformed Baptist ministry: 

Premise 1- Government must promote the public good
Premise 2- Christianity, as the only true religion, is part of the public good 
Conclusion- Government must promote Christianity as the only true religion

This conclusion does not at all follow, since (amongst other reasons, but we'll just go with this one for now) there is a disguised/missing premise which is also required:

Hidden Premise: It is the explicit duty of Government to promote any and all public goods (and actively suppress alternatives)

i.e. This argument collapses, or at least severely reduces, all concept of "sphere sovereignty". Must the government force children to do enough exercise, and actively interfere if they fail to? And why just children?

Once such a premise is admitted, both logic and actual human history tell us that there's no logical stopping place to hold back where it'll be taken to. Why just "promote Christianity as the only true religion", and why not "promote the correct specific form(s) of Christianity, and hinder others"? Is it only some vague, under-specified Christianity itself which is a public good, and not any doctrines or practices in particular?

And who will be deciding which ones are correct, by the way? I mean, as long as it's me, then things will turn out just fine, so, no worries there. But if it's you then I'm already quite worried, since I've observed that you sometimes fail to even manage yourself and your family correctly, so being the one true arbiter of all religion for the nation is certainly beyond you. Alright then, that observation applies to me too. Who's it going to be, then?

Oh, it'll be "the Bible", of course! But again - who will be adjudicating what is correct interpretation of the Bible? Is that me, or will it be you? For a start, since the apostles never teach us anything at all resembling the above syllogism, I think we're already off to a very bad start.

But, I suppose, you're going to propose some new version of a "mere Christianity", a minimal creed which the state will decree as acceptable, and it will promote that, and suppress the rest? The Trinity's in then, presumably. I hope, though, that this won't include Eternal Functional Subordination, or attributing three wills to God, and everyone who's dabbled with those will be suppressed? Good stuff. And as Christianity is defined by the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone, independently of needing the benefit of any ritual performance to be justified, and not merely by Trinitarianism (which even the demons believe, and tremble), then certainly Roman Catholics are out. The state has a duty to suppress the works of G K Chesterton and J R R Tolkien. Oh, you like those two? They're different? Well, we'd better have some kind of star chamber of the approved theologians to work all this out for us. Who's going to be on that, by the way? And... what will the state be doing to those unfortunate people who feel conscience-bound before God to promote the errors they believe? I mean, the mental vision of all recalcitrant promoters of incorrect eschatology being marched off to the gulags has a certain Je ne sais quoi to it (good job I'm not one and that only people I disagree with will be caught by these proposals!), but I'm wondering if that's exactly what you had in mind?

And so on and on and on we could go. In practice, in 2025, even generally healthy evangelical denominations have difficulty policing their boundaries. And yet, apparently some Reformed Baptists now think that not only should we allow the state to arbitrate doctrinal questions and what is and isn't inherent to the promotion or denial of true Christianity, but that it's actually required of it.

On the contrary, we should hold to the historical Baptist understanding that the state has been delegated limited authority from the triune God (which it would be better if it recognised, but whether it does or not) to deal with outward breaches of and promote obedience to the second table of the law, as well as to regulate all other necessary accompaniments of government itself, but that the promotion of Christianity is a task which the Great Commission handed explicitly, and only, to the church.

Ah well. It's clear, then, that the given syllogism is about as valid as this one is: 

Premise 1- Government must promote the public good
Premise 2- The historic Baptist position, as the revealed will of our Saviour in Scripture, is part of the public good 
Conclusion- Government must suppress all its competitors, including the invalid syllogism with which this post began

The meaning and the corruption of the Great Commission

One claim amongst those who embrace "Christian Nationalism" that is currently quite prominent is the claim that the Great Commission is the marching orders of their programme.

I've talked about this before, here. But earlier this week, missionary Bible translator Nathan Wells has written a brief and very helpful summary of why this equation perverts God's word. He amply demonstrates that the apostles would not have recognised the programme that is claimed by "Christian Nationalists" to be the one which they received and passed on to us, and that it is not recognisable in their actual activities or teachings. 

Rather, doing this to the church's marching orders, since they are so fundamental, is to pervert the Scriptures to our own harm, and the harm of those who hear such teaching. Nathan Wells distinguishes clearly, as orthodox explanations of the Great Commission throughout church history has, between believing, as we do, that "Christians today may rightly work for justice, integrity, and reform in the public square", and the novel and counterfeit Commission being pushed by "Christian Nationalism". I commend his article to you.

As this seems a suitable place, I'll add one final thought that occurred to me during the last year. Historically, orthodox Christians have generally recognised that the Great Commission is the New Covenant form of the "Dominion Mandate", the Genesis command to man to fulfil the earth and subdue it, filling it with God's glory, as man's great task. This mandate was given in new, covenantally-appropriate forms to Noah, Abraham, and Israel, during the Old Testament. It reaches its climax and fulfilment in the call to disciple amongst all the nations and establish obedient communities of believers in them all.

"Christian Nationalism" subverts this, and reads things as if the Great Commission does not fulfil the Dominion Mandate, but as if it actually were the Dominion Mandate. Instead of the New Testament showing us how, now, after Christ's Resurrection and before his return we are go out and glorify God throughout all domains of life as we await for the day when he'll be revealed to renew all creation and reign visibly, as the fulfilment of all that went before, instead it is re-read as if it were what went before. The precise same goal remains, to be achieved before the Eschaton, and the gospel only edits the means of how to get there. The victory of Christ is re-interpreted, such that having a redeemed people throughout the nations who overcome the trials of the world, flesh and devil is not itself a victory: it is only a preliminary step along the way towards dominating this present age at all levels, with political domination over all other ideologies being the crowning glory which we consciously aim for in order to fulfil the Commission. As such, the disciples in the gospels didn't, until Christ's resurrection, lack understanding of how the ages would unfold and overlap: they actually understood things just right, and just got the timings wrong. (And when they explicitly and repeatedly taught the churches about the overlap of the ages, we're supposed to just bracket that out as still having no real meaning in the end). Once you identify the significance of this mis-reading, it helps to make sense of "Christian Nationalists". It's not that they don't want to arbitrarily stop discipling people after teaching what obedience means personally and within families, but progress also to community life. That would still remain an entirely orthodox position. The problem is that their claims about the Great Commission subvert and change it fundamentally.

Evil, secularism and denial

I had not until today come across this quote from former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

"‘But there was one sense in which the Holocaust changed the whole human equation,’ Sacks added. ‘The culture that produced the Holocaust was not distant. This colossal tragedy and crime took place in the heart of the most civilised culture that the world has ever known. A culture that had achieved the greatest heights of human achievement, in science, in philosophy, in rationalism – this was the culture of Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, the culture of Goethe and Schiller and Bach and Beethoven. Half the signatories of the Wannsee Declaration [authorising the ‘Final Solution’ from 1942] carried the title of Dr. And that was just Germany. France: the country that gave us the Revolution and The Rights of Man had an astonishing history of anti-Semitism. As for Vienna: the cultural capital of Europe was also the epicentre of anti-Semitism. After the Holocaust some people lost their faith. Some people kept their faith and some people found faith in God. But after the Holocaust it is morally impossible to believe in man. The Holocaust is the final, decisive refutation of the idea that you can have a humane civilisation without fear of heaven and without belief in the sanctity of life. The Holocaust may make some lose their faith in God, but it must make all people lose their faith in humankind. After Auschwitz you have to be either very ignorant or very naive to believe in secular humanism. The real challenge of the Shoah is not to faith, but to lack of faith.’ (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)"

That's very incisive. The reality of profound cosmic evil permeates our existence. To deny it is madness and is to choose to live in a fantasy world that has no real overlap with the one we are actually situated in.

This doesn't stop many people from doing so, from living in the fantasy world of post-war secular humanism, prioritising their personal career, entertainment and comfortable retirement. Evil, though, by its nature, can't stop rearing its head, whether at the personal, familial, national or other levels. The human capacity for evil - both to commit, and to pretend not to notice it going on right in front of our noses - is astonishing.

Denial is the preferred option in the West for those who have no answers. If you don't admit the problem, then you don't need to offer a solution. And if you can't offer a solution, then pretending that there is no actual problem that needs a solution is about the only option left (inasmuch as living in a permanent state of complete self-delusion can be called an option). And that is where we are. Secular humanism can't admit any concept of cosmic evil. Problem can only be failures of proper technical process. More training, more funding, better processes, and we'll lick the problems! Except, they keep conspicuously not doing so. Or rather, they would, if they were possible. But the human problem keeps intervening and corrupting the purity of the utopian vision (or rather, of the day-dream). It turns out that failing to factor original sin and our need for God's grace and our repentance into your thinking just makes things worse. 

Here's the secular paradox once we leave behind confident declarations of ideology and enter experienced reality: leaving out all the "irrelevant" supernatural realm leaves us with no tools to even understand the resulting mess in the natural one. Telling oneself that God needs to keep himself strictly to the realm of theory and not intervene in practice results only, time and time again, in practical catastrophe.

Jesus took the evil upon himself. He died and lived again, and teaches us to similarly give away our lives so that others might experience his life. It's not better processes, funding programmes or improved managerial oversight that can deal with cosmic evil. It's the risen life of the innocent one who freely took it all upon himself.

On national consciousness

National consciousness is an interesting thing, which we take for granted. As Christians, though, we should seek to examine and understand it, as part of loving God with all our minds.

By "national consciousness", I mean our awareness of ourselves as members of a particular nation, and that nation's corporate life, including its history, culture, conventions and the sense of belonging to a particular space as part of it.

Recently I was gifted, and read, Robert Massie's very informative biography of Peter the Great. (The whole series is currently on special offer on Kindle). One fascinating section explained the life of the typical Russian at the start of Peter's reign. I was struck by the fact that the typical peasant (which was the great bulk of the people) could, and did, pass their lives without knowing what was happening anywhere more than a few miles from their homes.

How different to today that is. How different to ours the thought-world of such people must have been. How different their relationships, and sense of what was going on and connection to not only those far away (almost no connection at all) and those near at hand (surely much heightened).

Today, it is common for us to know about events happening thousands of miles away, within hours or even minutes of their happening. And then, rapidly, the whole current "conversation" of entire countries is re-shaped by those events: people quickly begin to think "what does this mean for us, how does this change things?"; and commentators, partisans and those searching for followers after their cause (or just after themselves) begin to calculate how they can "weaponise" the event to aid them and promote whatever narrative they're promoting. We're so accustomed to this, that most of us probably only reflect upon the dynamics of it very rarely.

Encountering the 17th century Russian peasant reminds us not only that this has not been the universal experience of human beings, but also whispers the thought that it is actually in large point a choice for us today also. The fact that it's quite normal in the West to feel more familiar with a whole range of characters that we've only actually seen or heard through the mediation of LCD or OLED screens and speakers, than we do with the people who live in our streets, estates, villages and towns, is generally a decision of some sort (even if only the decision to lazily "go with the flow").

It's widely observed that a society in which everything is politicised is not a healthy or strong one. Speaking personally, it was really only with the "Brexit" referendum in 2016 that the new phenomena of specifically national politics being a constant topic of conversation entered into my experience. Brexit, Covid, BLM, Ukraine: a "new normal" arrived in which people's primary consciousness seemed to all be tuned into the "national conversation", by default, becoming the default setting in which they moved and discussed and evaluated life and their place within it.

To be sure, all my life we've been aware of what's going on nationally; the radio and newspapers were a normal part of life long before. But from 2016, something seemed to come to fruition, with Brexit being not the cause, but the final trigger.

In this post I want to just highlight the fact that this pervasive, default "national consciousness" does very much remain a choice. And as Christians, it's a choice we should evaluate, and consider how it relates to serving our Master. There is no law of our existence which requires anyone to be continually plugged into the ebb and flow of events several layers above them in society, requiring them to make it the main thing that they think about as they think about their relationship to the world. To be sure, just as Peter the Great's policies reached into the lives of every village and home, so some national and international events will reach into ours at some level. But even so, that in no way requires them to be the default and most prominent background to our thought-world.

This post has been long enough, but I'd like to end with a suggestion. God loves people, and after loving him with all that we have and are, our other great duty is to love our neighbour. God has made us physical beings, and during Covid we had the "opportunity" to be reminded of how fundamental and irreplacable embodied life is. When Jesus came in the flesh, it wasn't only a means to the end of offering himself in his death. It was also a statement about his love for us. He sat at the tables of tax-collectors and sinners, a whole assortment of complete "nobodies", because of his love. He showed the value that he had for all of those he visited, by visiting them. Surely this has implications for us? Just because someone can decide that he's called to broadcast to the world, does not mean that there's any indication that he should. If we understand the implications of Jesus' incarnation and manner of conducting his ministry, then I'd suggest that there must be very few people who truly are called to such a ministry. The vast, vast majority of us are called to love all the people whom God has placed us among. If 99% of those focussed upon the national scene withdrew themselves, there'd still be plenty of people to speak to that scene... but there'd also be vastly more people to minister in the way that we should, not by word only (whether online or offline), but by meaningful and sustained involvement in the lives of those that God has created.

No man can serve two masters. Meaningful, sustained involvement in the lives of people around us demands a lot of time. The time that we spend making the choice to live primarily as if the national level and conversation were where we should locate ourselves could instead be used for it. If we are to be honest with ourselves, isn't it very likely that the time would be used far, far better if we turned off the news and the Twitter feed and invited the lonely (but perhaps complicated) widower or widow a few doors away if they'd like to come around for tea and cake, or if we could mow their lawn?

On having a good name

Proverbs 22:1 says "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold."

Whether or not we have a good name is not, finally, under our complete control. And if we are faithful, we are very likely to be despised by those who despise God. We follow the one who was crucified, and his apostles were seen by their enemies as "the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things until now" (1 Corinthians 4:13). So, the Bible is not telling us to make the pursuit of our reputation a priority above all others. Sometimes we must say or do things that will make some people think badly of us, in order to be faithful to our Lord.

Nevertheless, the Bible commands us to behave with integrity - wholeness, one-ness, being a single person who does not have different "sides" to him, in different situations. We must live as those who obviously think that integrity is a better thing to possess than great riches. The elder of a church must "have a good testimony among those who are outside" as taught in 1 Timothy 3:7; and examination of that passage will show that ultimately the elder is simply required to actually, clearly, manifest the behaviour that is demanded of all Christians. Elders should demonstrate general Christian maturity consistently, in practice.

What does it take to gain such a reputation? Life-long consistency; and if there are falls, then, as Spurgeon said, one's repentance should be as notorious as one's sin was.

Ecclesiastes 10:1 says "Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment, and cause it to give off a foul odour; so does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honour". Ruining your reputation is easy, and will take a long time to undo. It's no good saying "don't look at the 2% of folly; look at the other 98%!" That's not how human beings work. Try that argument in a court of law and see how far it gets you! If someone "only" commits adultery once a year, and the rest of the time is a model of faithfulness and loving self-giving, then what do we call that someone? We'd call them an unrepentant, serial adulterer. This sort of illustration/example could be extended to just about anything. Once the dead fly is in the perfume, it's not just a tiny bit of ruin that can be bracketed off; it's just ruined, generally, and everyone will notice.

Christian, do you want to be someone who causes your brothers and sisters in the faith to inwardly mourn at your foolishness, at how your testimony dishonours as much as it lifts up the name of Christ, and to be making it a matter of prayer that you'd instead care about having a good name that honours Christ before the world, rather than putting people off him? Does it bother you if, when people say "following Christ doesn't really make a difference", part of what they're thinking is "after all, look at you - you lack self-restraint just as much as us, we don't think you take it all that seriously in the end yourself; you say that Christ is Lord, but is that what you really believe" ?

Brothers and sisters, let "every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God" (James 1:19-20).  This goes not only for wrath, but for all sorts of foolish behaviours.

God says, "Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive" (Proverbs 17:28). We live in the age of quick fixes and life-hacks. Well, I don't know if I've come across many better ones than that one.

Prophetic speech, prophetic lament

A very perceptive article here, which doesn't just apply to its target, but to all Christians on the media who are building their brands in partnership with the mistaken belief that their ungodly speech is actually some form of prophetic witness: https://mereorthodoxy.com/doug-wilson-is-not-a-prophet

On a related note: recently Douglas Wilson's son-in-law recently tweeted, in relation to a review of the development of his church's ministries over the years: "We do many wonderful things here. We make great tri-tip, we make viral videos, we make progressives lose their minds, and it's all just a lot of fun. All of that together is just a whole lot of fun. ..." (I had to look up "tri-tip"; it is "a triangular cut of beef from the lower part of the sirloin").

Watchers of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho, and their associated ministries are accustomed to this rhetoric. It's consistent and uniform enough - without anything said to the contrary - that you eventually notice it. Whatever they're doing, it's a blast, they're having great fun (often in small or large part because they're provoking ideological opponents), and the Christian life in this age is a great party (preferably with good steak). The above is one example of a consistent pattern of output over the years.

God's servants in the Bible do not have anything like this pattern of speech, or presentation of the realities of their ministries.

God's servants in Scripture pen Psalm after Psalm after Psalm of lament, wrestle with the painful experience of God's mysterious (yet good) providence in trying to understand why the wicked enjoy the good life whilst the righteous struggle, say things like "I die daily" (1 Corinthians 15:31), teach that through many troubles we must enter God's kingdom (Acts 14:23), and rebuke and expose the poor understanding of those who think that it's already time to reign with Christ in this age, when in reality it's time to suffer with him (2 Corinthians 8).

They spoke of being lambs for the slaughter (Romans 8), of carrying the precious treasure in earthen vessels of weakness (2 Corinthians 4), and asserted against all outward appearance that the sufferings of the precious time were not worthy to be compared with the glory that would come at the appearance of Christ (Romans 8 again). They commended themselves as God's servants "in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in sleeplessness, in fastings", amongst other things (2 Corinthians 6:4-5). They followed Jesus, who taught us that if we want to save our lives, we shall lose them: so, instead, we must consciously, continually, be counting the cost and then giving them away. Such references could be multiplied very many times over, so consistent and pervasive are they.

Yes, Jesus' apostles rejoiced - but not because it was fun to lampoon the follies of either unbelievers in their darkness, or other Christians. They rejoiced because as the crucified Christ dwelt in them, so did the resurrected Christ - they life that they lived, they lived by Christ living in them, having died to self. And they saw this in those they invested their lives for too: "so then death is working in us, but life in you" (2 Corinthians 4:12). The Spirit of the one who has met with death, died, and then beaten it and entered into endless life, was also in them at the same time. Great sorrow, and invincible joy, together. They served "by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things" (2 Corinthians 6:8-10).

I confess that for a long time after first encountering it I didn't reflect upon this consistent self-testimony of the ministers of Christ Church Moscow, that their ministry has always been a great ride, full of fun, with little to say on the other side of the ledger. (And probably I hadn't yet reached enough maturity of understanding to do so). Now I've come to the viewpoint that when people repeatedly tell us this in a way that makes clear that it's an important part of their self-identity and self-identification to the world, we should believe their self-testimony, and understand its implications. Frankly, the world, the flesh and the devil have made the ministries I've been involved in difficult in various ways for many years, and the thing that helps me to take up the cross and persevere in them is the knowledge that those who die with Christ will be raised with him, and the experience too of a harvest of joy as we see his life appearing in others too: this brings the conviction that he is worthy to be served despite the pains.

If someone else wants to say that their ministry runs, year after year, on quite different lines to that then, well, I'm at least grateful that they have been clear about this.

It is certainly not a coincidence that Christ Church, Moscow promotes theonomic post-millenialism (which the same author wrote a very good critique of around a couple of years ago). The implications of theonomic post-millenialism is that whilst in the Bible and generally subsequently, God's method of discipling people is through the way of the cross, yet in the future there will be a golden age before the return of Christ in which Christianity will be generally popular and accepted, and so suffering will fade into the past, as memory. God's people will then be discipled some other way, not described in Scripture (I've never yet read an explanation of what it will be). It seems to me that many adherents of these beliefs then manage to mentally confuse themselves into believing that this supposed coming age has already dawned, and that they personally are living in it. And that is understandable at some level: your eschatology drives how you live in the present. That's why it's important not to get it wrong (I wrote about the misplaced hope of post-millennialism here).

(Related piece written in 2024, with some similar concerns to those Jeremy Sexton raises).