August ’25: Posts from X and Other Notes

Most of these notes are X posts form August, but some are pulled from the archives.

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Natural revelation is infallible and absolutely authoritative. But Scripture still has a kind of primacy because of the form in which it’s given. I like how John Frame explains it:

“God has given us Scripture, or “special revelation,” both to supplement natural revelation (by adding to it the message of salvation) and to correct our misuses of natural revelation. As Calvin said, the Christian should look at nature with the “spectacles of Scripture.” If even unfallen Adam needed to interpret the world according to God’s verbal utterance, how much more do we! The point is not that Scripture is more divine or authoritative than natural revelation.
Natural revelation is every bit the word of God and absolutely authoritative. The difference is that Scripture is a verbal utterance that God gives to supplement and correct our view of the world. We must humbly accept that assistance. In doing so, we do not make Scripture more authoritative than natural revelation; rather, we allow the Word (with its ever-present Spirit) to correct our interpretations of natural revelation. To allow Scripture to do its corrective work, we must accept the principle that our settled belief as to Scripture’s teaching must take precedence over what we would believe from nature alone. God gave Scripture as the covenant constitution of the people of God and if it is to serve us in that way, it must take precedence over all other forms of knowledge.
It is wrong, for example, to suggest (as many do) that the “two books of nature and Scripture” should be read side by side, carrying equal weight in every respect. That sort of argument has been used to justify relatively uncritical Christian acceptance of evolution, secular psychology, and so on. In such arguments, Scripture is not permitted to do its corrective work, to protect God’s people from the wisdom of the world (1 Cor. 2:6-16). Hence, sola Scriptura. Nevertheless natural revelation, rightly understood through the “spectacle of Scrpture,” is of tremendous value to the Christian, and specifically, to the apologist….
Granted, our interpretations of Scripture also need to be corrected at times. But the proper order is: Scripture itself corrects our interpretations of both Scripture and nature…Scripture has primacy over all else.”

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No one ever wins the American culture war because the culture war never really ends. 

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As far as I can tell, the only time intinction was practiced in the Bible was with Judas (John 13:26)

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Pastors learn to pastor by pastoring, just like farmers learn to farm by farming, and musicians learn to play an instrument by playing. Yes, book learning is essential and helpful. But translating theological knowing into wise pastoral practice is an art and a skill. It is rooted in the gift of the Holy Spirit given to a man in his ordination (1 Timothy 4:14), but that gift must be exercised, cultivated, and honed.

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Pastors, as you prepare for the divine service tomorrow, remember, preaching is not just a lecture. Preaching an act of worship. Preaching is an effectual means of grace. Your sermon has a context – and that context is the whole of the liturgy and the baptized congregation gathered to receive God’s gifts.

Pastors, know that insofar as your words are true to The Word, you can be fully assured Christ is preaching through you. Preaching is a very special form of speech, with power to raise those who are dead to new life. Preaching has power to kill sin, strengthen faith, and deepen repentance. When you step into the pulpit, remember, you are speaking FOR Christ and even (in a qualified sense) AS Christ.

Preaching is an act of spiritual leadership; your words not only shape individual souls, but shape a community. You are speaking as a shepherd to a flock under your care and protection. You are called to feed to hungry souls with truth that will nourish them unto strength and maturity. Through your preaching, sins are exposed, righteousness is cultivated, and lives are changed. And because lives are changed, the world is changed, history is changed. When you step into the pulpit, you are wielding a sword with great power – do all you can to wield it skillfully.

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Those of you going to church tomorrow will hear a sermon. How should you listen to that sermon?

Obviously, you should listen with reverence and care. Recognize that Satan attacks in the sanctuary first and foremost; you should guard against distractions, a wandering mind, and a hardened heart. Satan would love to snatch away the seed of the word before it can take root. Your pastor put effort into preparing the sermon and preaching it; you should put effort into listening to it. Hear and heed the Word of God!

Further, you should come to worship ready to respond to whatever form the truth of God takes in the text being preached. Scripture is wide, deep, and multifaceted. As the preacher brings the Word of God to you in its various manifestations, receive it with a believing heart and respond in a fitting way.

The Westminster Confession describes faith’s relation to the Word of God this way:

“By this faith a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself speaking therein; and acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life and that which is to come. But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.”

Your faith should submit to the Word of God; whatever Scripture says, God says. As you hear the Word preached, your faith should conform to the text of Scripture. If the pastor declares a promise from the Word, believe it. If he gives a command or makes an application from Scripture, obey it. If your pastor warns you from the Bible, tremble before that warning. And as the sermon puts forth Christ as your Savior, receive him and rest upon him. Your faith must be supple and agile to conform itself to all the different ways in which Scripture (and the sermon) speak to us. Prepare your heart accordingly.

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A red pill proverb: A man will run through a wall for a wife who brings him peace and shows him respect.

It’s rather odd that more women don’t know this basic truth about masculine nature and even more odd that many women who do still refuse to put it into practice.

Women who bring strife and drama into their husband’s lives, or women who beat their husbands down with disrespectful jabs and insults, drive their husbands away and emasculate them. Women vastly underestimate how much men value peace in the marriage relationship. As a rule, men do not enjoy arguing with women, which is why so many men become simps; the normal man does not want conflict with his wife because men were made to fight for women, not with women.

Further, women underestimate how much their respect can fuel a man’s ambition and drive to do great things for her and the family. By nature, men want to be providers and protectors; a man never feels more manly than when he is able to see his family enjoying the fruits of his labor. But a man whose wife has undercut his confidence will never be as productive as he could have been. There’s an old saying, “Behind every successful man is a woman who enabled it” – and it really is true. A wife can make or break her husband, but not nearly enough women know they have this power and or know how to use it for good.

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“There are no good men.”

“There are no good women.”

“There are no good churches.”

I can sympathize to some degree when people say things like this. In a time of cultural declension and widespread apostasy, there are going to be proportionally fewer marriageable men and women, and fewer solid churches.

But when someone says there are “no” good men/women/churches, in most cases they are revealing far more about themselves, their choices, and the community they’ve decided to be a part of. There are still many fine, godly, marriageable young men and women out there. I see more than enough of them. And while it is easy to feel like Elijah when it comes to good, faithful churches (cf. 1 Kings 18:14), the reality is that God has preserved a remnant of faithful churches even in our day. In most American towns and cities of any size, there is at least one good congregation with a solid pastor. (If not, I’d suggest moving to where there is a good church, or helping plant one in your area.)

All that to say: No Christian should take the black pill. There are definitely major problems in our culture (and in the church), but there is no reason to abandon hope. God is still at work.

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The Nicene Creed is a summary of reality. 

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Feminism has been a civilizational-wide test that men have failed.

Feminism proved Western men are simps, more concerned with pleasing women than God.

Feminism proved Western men are soft, more concerned with giving women what they want than doing what is right or what is needed for their nations to survive and thrive. 

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Overly empathetic people are easily manipulated. 

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Many people are suspicious of typological readings of the Old Testament. That’s understandable, given the way some in church history have abused the text of Scripture with fanciful interpretations and abstract allegorizations. But there’s no question Jesus and the apostles read the OT in a typological way (eg, 1 Corinthians 10, 1 Peter 3, etc.). The entire OT is treated as a type – an enacted prophecy, foreshadowing and previewing the suffering and glory of Jesus. When the apostles engage in typology, they are not doing something utterly unique, something only they (as apostles) could do. They are actually teaching us how to read and interpret the OT. After all, the apostles learned their hermeneutics from the master himself, Jesus (Luke 24). We know from Luke 24:27, 44-45 that types are not limited to those explicitly identified as such in the NT; the NT gives us models of typological interpretation, but does not exhaust the OT’s typology. The entire Bible tells one story from beginning to end, a story in which the earlier parts set up patterns and categories that come to fulfillment in the climatic part of the story.

Thus, we should learn our hermeneutics from the apostles. We should read the entire OT the way they did. We must let them teach us how to use the OT. The OT is a Christian book. We do not impose Christ on the OT; we find the Christ who was always already there in a shadowy, veiled way. The OT was about Jesus all along – and so we have to look at the OT in light of Jesus, even as we look at Jesus in light of the OT. 

Can we sometimes get it wrong? Are there brakes and guardrails on typology? Yes, and yes. But note: it is just as dangerous to under-read a biblical text (failing to find what God put there) as it is to over-read a text (finding what God did not put there). Without typology, the OT is reduced to morality tales and stories that illustrate doctrines. But we end up missing its true core meaning, which is found in the union of the crucified and resurrected Messiah with his body and bride. Augustine’s first rule of biblical interpretation in On Christian Doctrine is “totus Christus” – the whole Bible is about Christ and his people. 

Typology is rooted in history. There is both correspondence between a type and its fulfillment, and an escalation, as the fulfillment is always greater. This distinguishes typology from allegory, which is often abstract and ahistorical. 

A couple test cases:

Can you prove Jesus is the promised seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15, who crushes the skull of the serpent, even as his heel is bruised, without using typology?

Paul says Jesus was raised on the third day “according to the Scriptures” in 1 Corinthians 15, but can we show that the OT promised a third day resurrection of the Messiah without using to typology? 

All Christians, most especially pastors and teachers in the church, should work at the skill of learning to interpret the OT in a typological (which is to say, Christological) fashion. 

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“The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed.”

–Augustine, on the relationship of OT to NT 

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I’m very happy for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. I’m available to do premarital counseling if they’re interested. My services are very reasonable priced. 

[This was a tongue-in-cheek post. I’ve said plenty about sexual sin elsewhere. Obviously, what they need most is Jesus. But, still, getting married is at least “sinning in the right direction,” as it’s been put.]

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A note on leadership and headship:

Authority is power to do good for those you love.

Responsibility is ownership of outcomes.

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Let’s talk about the “thoughts and prayers” slogan that gets repeated over and over after a mass tragedy. 

First, the fact that many Democrats attack the practice of praying for victims of some horrible tragedy (like a school shooting) tells you they are on the wrong side, not just in the culture war, but in the spiritual war. It’s Satanic to mock prayer as if it had no value or effect. The reality is that in many of these cases (quite obviously with the most recent trans shooter), we really are up against demonic forces. Prayer is not a standalone solution to the problem (and no Christian would claim prayer is the *only* thing we are called to do), but we have many examples of successfully waged liturgical warfare in the Scripture (eg, 2 Chronicles 20, Revelation 8). Some demons really can only be driven out by prayer. Sometimes prayer is the best weapon we have. When demonic principalities and powers have infiltrated a nation’s culture and politics, you can’t simply vote them out. You need an exorcism.

The reality is that our nation, especially since the 1960s, with the rise of the sexual revolution (= paganism) and the drug revolution (= witchcraft) and abortion (= Molech worship), we have summoned up the demons. And the demons have answered the call. We need to do more than pray, but we better not do less. Prayer is a necessary weapon when facing demonic activity, as we obviously are. 

What about the “thoughts” part of “thoughts and prayers”? I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to mean to say “thoughts.” Does it mean we’re just thinking positive thoughts, hoping some kind of positive vibe or energy will be carried out to those suffering? If so, I’d say this is dumb and worthless. Thoughts have no power to change the world. This sounds new-agey and pagan. If “thoughts” means “we are thinking about those suffering, precisely so we can pray for them,” then all well and good. But the expression is vague. 

The “prayers” part is obviously good, but it needs to qualified. Prayers that are not offered to the Trinity – to the Father, in the power of the Spirit, and the name of the Son – are actually idolatrous. Prayers offered to a generic deity or “higher power” or “universal force” are worse than worthless. The form of the prayer and spirit of the prayer matters. If we want our prayers to be answered, we need to pray in faith to the only God capable of doing what we ask (and indeed much more than we could ever ask or imagine!).

But the content of the prayer matters too. We need to learn how to pray for suffering people. We need to learn to pray for justice, even for vengeance. We need to frame our prayers according to biblical principles and priorities. We need to pray for justice to be done against perpetrators (imprecatory psalms come in handy here, especially if a mass shooter has survived the incident). We need to pray that the civil government will do its job, which is protecting the righteous (not disarming the righteous!!) and punishing the evil doer. Prayers that are more sentimental than Scriptural will not help. So, yes, pray, but use the Scriptures as your guide. Fill your prayers with biblical content. 

Rather than saying “our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of this tragedy,” we should say, “we will pray the Triune God gives comfort to the victims and brings swift justice to the offenders.” Or something like that. Don’t settle for vague prayers offered to a vague god. Be specific about what you are praying for and to whom you are praying. 

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Our society is awash in effeminacy. One manifestation of effeminacy is our inability to hold public officials accountable for obvious corruption and crime.

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Some husbands think they are being gracious by not correcting their wives when they are disrespectful, but actually it is not gracious at all. It’s actually paving the way for disaster. Such a man is allowing the foundation of his household to be subverted. He is refusing to maintain peace and order at his home. He is refusing to fulfill and defend his God-given office as husband. And when a wife is disrespectful to her husband, it’s very likely that her disrespect will grow over time if he does nothing about it. She doesn’t respect him – and when he does not correct her disrespect, she disrespects him even more because she sees he cannot stand up to her. This is why “nice guys” end up in miserable marriages, or on the wrong side of a divorce settlement. 

Tolerating this kind of disrespect in the home is also bad for the children. They see their father being soft and passive, and their mother dominating him with her disrespectful comments. They will grow up to disrespect authority as well, probably starting with their own parents. They will not be given a model of what a good, strong, healthy, and happy marriage looks like. Sons will grow to resent women, daughters will grow to despise men. 

Of course, husbands must not be harsh in correcting their wives, any more than parents can be harsh in disciplining children. He should correct her disrespect in a way that is worthy of her respect – he should be firm and gentle at the same time. But he must correct it. To accommodate a wife’s disrespect in the hope of keeping peace is sure to destroy the peace of the home. Men, if your wife is disrespecting you, put an end to it. It is not arrogant to insist that your wife treat you with respect. Much more is at stake than just getting the respect you are entitled to by the Word of God – the well-being of your own marriage and the future marriages of your children could be at stake as well. 

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I can’t speak to all legalities of Trump employing the National Guard to bring back the rule of law in corrupt and crime ridden cities, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Many of our cities have major sections that are almost completely uninhabitable. Time and time again, it’s been proven that enforcing law and order really does work (eg, Giuliani  in NYC). The broken window theory of crime is true; it operates on the same principle as good parenting. What Trump has done in DC in a short time is impressive. Bringing order out of chaos is an expression of masculinity. And punishing evildoers is the most basic function a civil government has; a government that fails in this respect will fail at everything else.  

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Businesses that hate their customer base deserve to fail. It’s like a sports team that shows contempt for its own fans. This is why “go woke, go broke” is so often true. 

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The Minneapolis trans shooter is another manifestation of Proverbs 8:36. Those who hate the wisdom of God hate life and love death: “but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” The whole sexual revolution, culminating with the T in FLGBTQ, is a love affair with death. It is pagan and demonic. 

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Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. This is an objective fact about the universe. It is reality. It’s true, even if not acknowledged. The whole universe is a Christocracy. Of course, that means every nation is already a Christocracy, existing under Christ’s universal reign, even if the nations refuse to acknowledge and submit to Christ. All authority in heaven and on earth is his. Fulfilling the Great Commission is simply getting the nations to come to grips with what is already true. It’s getting them in touch with reality.

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But somehow, these are all our fault because we are “transphobic.”

If only we were more affirming, they wouldn’t do this…

Yeah, right. That’s how not how demons operate. 

Minnesota Church Shooting: Trans
Republican Party Firebombing: Gender Fluid
Nashville Shooter: Trans
Colorado Tesla Arsonist: Trans
Colorado Springs shooter: Nonbinary
Aberdeen shooter: Trans
Denver school shooter: Trans
Iowa school shooter: Trans/genderfluid
AMC stabber: Trans…

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 27, 2025

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The old covenant world was an angelocracy/demonocracy (Hebrews 1:4-2:5). The new covenant is a Christocracy.

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Sorry to say this, but Eastern Orthodoxy is not the answer to the church’s masculinity crisis. Kissing pictures of men is effeminate. It’s also an idolatrous violation of the second commandment.

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From January 15, 2025:

Right-wing anti-Semites on X: “The Holocaust didn’t happen. But it should have.”

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According to 2 Corinthians 11:2-3, Adam became a cuckold in the Garden of Eden. He stood by and watched as his wife committed spiritual adultery with the serpent. 

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“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” (Psalm 33:12).

This verse presupposes every nation has a g/God. A blessed nation chooses the true God its Lord. A nation with some other god will be cursed. Nations that serve other gods are really serving demons. Or to put it another way, a blessed nation is chosen by God (the rest of the verse calls the blessed nation his heritage/inheritance). This can’t be limited to old covenant Israel. Any nation that, as a nation, seeks the kingdom of God is a “chosen” and “blessed” nation in the sense of Psalm 33; that nation becomes God’s inheritance and brings its treasures into his kingdom (cf. Isaiah 60). In Psalm 2, when David calls on the other kings to kiss the Son (the Messiah/Christ), he’s calling on them to enter into the blessedness of Psalm 33.

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:34).

This proverb shows us that any nation – not just old covenant Israel – can be blessed and exalted. Any nation that seeks to obey God, to please God, to serve God, as a nation, will be exalted. Any nation that lives in rebellion against God will bring reproach and shame upon itself. Nations discipled in righteousness (= nations in which the Great Commission is fulfilled) are glorious nations.

Note that Proverbs 14:34 is about national greatness. In an age of MAGA, we should take note. This proverb could be paraphrased, “righteousness makes a nation great.” There is no national greatness for America, or any other nation, outside of pursuing righteousness.

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Pastoral courage is a major missing element in much of the Reformed and evangelical church today. Courage and orthodoxy go together. But the situation does seem to be changing, as more pastors are realizing there is no other way out of the mess we’ve made in the church and in the culture.

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Ordo amoris is the order of loves, not the order of hatreds. For example: Properly loving my own family – loving them to a greater degree than I love those outside my family – does not mean I hate the stranger. Practically speaking, love admits of degrees and proportions. It is simply impossible to love everyone in the exact same way, nor am I obligated to do so. But loving some less is certainly not the same as hating them. When Jesus said we have to love him to such a degree that it’s like we hate our own family members by comparison, he was speaking hyperbolically. He was speaking of properly ordered and proportioned loves.

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The gospel = God restores (and glorifies) nature/creation through the death and resurrection of Christ.

When we use the slogan, “grace restores nature,” we need to keep two things in mind:

1. Grace doesn’t just put creation back where it started, but ultimately brings us to the eschatological and glorious end God intended from the beginning. The end is greater than the beginning. Story after story in Scripture bears this out (eg, Joseph in the book of Genesis, Job’s narrative arc, etc.). History is not a line or a circle, but a spiral upwards.

2. The restoration of nature requires death and resurrection. Grace does not restore nature by supplementing it, or by getting added to it, but by killing it and raising it. Only the death and resurrection of Jesus can bring gracious healing to the world. Fallen nature can only be set right in and through Christ.

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Natural law and biblical law need each other, and a true Christian ethic draws from both. A creation ethic finds its fulfillment in the kingdom ethic. But the kingdom ethic is rooted in nature and must not be severed from it. The gospel does not negate nature and creational structures. Nor does the gospel leave them unchanged. The gospel transforms creation and culture. The gospel restores nature to its proper function and goal. It’s as if the fall derailed the train of creation; the gospel puts the train back on track so it can reach its divinely ordained end in glory.

To add another layer: Grace and creation/nature do not exist in some kind of dualistic relationship. Grace is never extrinsic to nature because creation’s very existence required grace from the start. Nature is always already graced. Everything is gift (Romans 11:33-36). But for the purposes of this discussion, grace = saving grace, the grace of the gospel. Grace does not get added to a graceless nature, but restores already-graced nature to its proper end.

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One of the key ways we learn wisdom is by coming to appreciate the perspective of the opposite sex on reality. Thus, when a man lives with his wife in an understanding way (cf. 1 Peter 3), he grows in wisdom.

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A man has to know his wife’s weaknesses in order to lead her well. Of course, he also has to know his own weaknesses.

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In Genesis 3, Adam emasculates himself in multiple ways.
First, he fails to protect his wife when the serpent invades the garden.
Second, he follows her into sin when they eat the forbidden fruit, rather than leading her in righteousness.
Third, when God confronts him about what he has done, he blames her as if he were the victim, rather than taking responsibility.

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The Bible commands wives to respect their husbands. But many Christian husbands do not feel respected by their wives.

To a large degree this is because women do not understand respect in the same way as men. For a woman to respect her husband, she has to understand what men perceive as respect, not what she might be prone to think of as respect in a feminine frame.

Women tend to think of respect as being considerate and thoughtful. Respect means being respectful. Respect means speaking kindly. It easily degenerates into being “nice.”

But that’s not what respect means for men. For men, respect means honor. It means recognition, especially for competence and achievement.

A woman who treats her husband more as a child than a man is not respecting him. Mothering a man is the antithesis of respecting him. A woman who nags her husband and constantly tries to tell him what to do and how to do is not respecting him. A wife needs to trust her husband in order to respect him. A woman who respects her husband will express gratitude for the ways he fulfills his masculine duties/responsibilities.

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Nancy Pearcey:

“Men do not find their true self by escaping relationships and riding off into the sunset like a lone ranger. They find their authentic manhood in their core relationships: to God, their wife, their children, their extended family. The phrase ‘be fruitful’ also means to build up the social institutions that historically grow out of the family [including] schools businesses, governments, charities, and community associations…The best strategy for men to validate their identity, then, is to roll up their sleeves and invest more deeply in their families and in creative work that builds up and benefits the human community. The cultural mandate summon up men’s drive to achieve, to accomplish, to have an impact.”

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Postmillennialism and liturgy:

Malachi 1:11 shows the goal of the Great Commission is not just discipled nations but worshipping nations. Evangelism is for the sake of worship. The name of the Lord is to be worshipped in every place, in every nation, from the rising of the sun to its setting. 

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Some people don’t want you know this, but you can simply trust in Jesus and have all your sins forgiven.

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Having a high IQ is no prophylactic against being a fool.

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Pastors are not “life coaches.” Pastors are not, and do not need to be, omnicompetent experts in everything. Your pastor is not the first person to go to for advice in many areas of life, whether it be plumbing problems or investing advice or dietary decisions. Pastors do not need to offer commentary on every cultural and political event.

But if pastors are not “life coaches,” they are most certainly “wisdom coaches,” whose job includes applying divine wisdom to every area of life. Pastors are not experts in every field, but they are generalists who specialize in how everything fits together in God’s “big picture.” Pastors are not pundits providing running commentary on news as it breaks, but they certainly need to be discipling their people in the skill of living faithfully amidst the peculiar challenges of the day. If the pastor’s call is to teach the Bible, and the Bible equips us for every good work (2 Timothy 3), then the pastor should be equipping his people to live faithfully in all of life. This doesn’t mean nailing down every detail – many things are matters of Christian freedom, private judgment, and sanctified common sense – but it does mean providing the shared overarching framework within which a life of comprehensive faithfulness can be pursued.

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Decisions should always be made out of conviction, never out of anxiety – including an anxiety to please other people. Leaders lead by conviction or not at all. There is no way to lead without possessing convictions and the courage to implement them. 

Example #1: Pastors must have convictions about what a worship service (a liturgy) should be like or they will end up catering to the culture or the loudest complainers. A pastor with no convictions in this area cannot lead his people as a royal priesthood. Those convictions should be rooted in and grow out of the soil of biblical theology and exegesis. Sadly many pastors cannot lead well in this area today because their study and training has not equipped them for liturgical leadership. And even sadder, many pastors would rather not do the study in this area, because they are afraid of what they might learn, and they know it would take more courage than they have to implement it. There is no way to be a faithful pastor with developing deeply biblical and historically informed liturgical convictions. A pastor needs to have convictions about the practice or confessing sin and declaring absolution; he needs convictions about appropriate hymnody and psalmist; he needs convictions about the frequency, elements, and proper participants in communion; etc.

Example #2: Many young husbands fail to lead their wives and families because they have not developed convictions in many areas of family life. They do not have a strong principled commitment to good financial stewardship or good eating habits as a family, and so things slip into undisciplined chaos. They do not have strong convictions or defined positions on modesty for their wives and daughters, so the family’s females default to cultural norms. They do not have convictions about education so they thoughtlessly plug their kids into the secular, godless public school system with its diluted curriculum and wretched culture. They do not have strong convictions about which church their family should join so they end up at a church that does more to entertain than equip, and a result thefamily does not get discipled well. These men often  think they are doing a good job because they are constantly deferring to their wives or their most vocal kids, and they are avoiding conflict. But constant deference and conflict avoidance are not actually forms of leadership. This is not how leaders serve those under their care and authority. A husband and father – a patriarch, if you will – has a responsibility to develop a comprehensive vision for his family, including his family’s habits, culture, finances, and theology. He needs to have convictions so he can actually lead his family into righteousness as God requires (cf Genesis 18:19). He must develop wide-ranging convictions (obviously in conversation with his wife and godly men he trusts), and then he must act to ensure that his family embodies those convictions. Anything less is failure to serve. Anything less is a failure of nerve. This is how patriarchs help their families attain the highest good.

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Too many Christians miss church more than they should and too many pastors don’t give them good enough reasons to go.

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Pastors, tomorrow is your game day. Hopefully, you’ve put in the spiritual and academic prep to do your job well when you step into the pulpit. Pray that as you lead the saints into the heavenly sanctuary and into liturgical warfare that you will strike a great blow for the kingdom of Jesus against the prince of darkness! In your preaching, attack sin relentlessly. Show Satan no quarter. In your preaching, pile on gospel comfort so your people experience the love of Jesus through your words. Warn them and assure them, just like the Bible does. Declare sins forgiven by the blood of Jesus. The sword of the Spirit has been put into your hands – wield it skillfully! Live up to the calling you have received. Stir up the gifts you’ve been given. Equip and encourage the troops. Blow the trumpet with clarity and certainty. Summon God’s people to battle. Go to war against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Fight manfully under the banner of the cross. Preach with courage and compassion. Honor the office you hold. You represent Jesus to his bride – carry out your charge faithfully!

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On behalf of pastors everywhere, allow me to remind congregations that most every insightful sermon you hear represents not merely hours of prep work done that week, but the accumulation of years of study and pastoral experience.

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Political action, like familial action, is necessary, and nothing about ecclesiocentrism negates that – or what needs to be done in other spheres, like education, art, etc.

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One way God could unite the church is through a godly magistrate who locks up pastors from various traditions in a room and tells them they can’t come out until they work out their differences. Etc.

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Before we had clowns in the White House and filling Congress, we had clowns in the pulpit. America got clown world because we’ve had clown church. Clown church started with clown worship and clown pastors. As the pastors go, so goes the church; as the church goes, so go the men; and as the men go, so goes the nation.

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Adam received his false Eucharistic meal in the garden from the hand of a woman. Beware of woman “pastors.” False worship and sexual confusion go hand in hand. Idolatrous worship and sexual role-reversal are a pair.

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Why have Presbyterians (along with most other denominations) insisted that sacraments be administered by pastors? Some thoughts:

– The keys of the kingdom entrusted to the church are exercised by elders, and this means they determine who may receive the sacraments. The kingdom is opened and people are loosened from their sins in baptism. People are bound in their sins by the declaration of excommunication (which cuts someone off from the Eucharist).

– It is obvious that some men are qualified for and ordained to church office. What’s the point of ordination? It’s to set men apart as rulers in the congregation, and that rule includes public/formal proclamation of Scripture and administration of the sacraments.

– Paul draws an analogy between pastors and priests in 1 Cor. 9. Priests had oversight of the sacramental meals under the old covenant.

– Hebrews 13 says obey your elders. Are your elders ok with you administering baptism and communion privately? Probably not.

– If elders are going to shepherd the flock, including the exercise of discipline, they have to know who is in the church and who is not, which means they have maintain oversight of baptism and the Eucharist. This is just a matter of doing things decently and in good order.

– There is a difference between validity and regularity. A baptism can be irregular (eg, performed by a midwife in an emergency situation) and still be valid. I’m open to the possibility of, eg, a pastor of a small church who has to travel out of town deputizing a non-pastor to administer the Eucharist while he is away. But these are exceptional cases.

—

One thing the various theological controversies I’ve been involved in over the years has taught me is that there is a massive difference between pastors and theologians who know how to exegete a text of the Bible versus those who just know how to parrot theological slogans. It’s possible to have profitable discussion with the former even if disagreements remain. The latter are worthless in times of controversy, and usually make the controversy worse.

—

What we see in our culture today is largely the failure of the church to practice political and vocational discipleship. Too many American Christians are ignorant of how the Bible applies to political and cultural issues, and they are ignorant because their pastors have not taught them basic biblical truths/principles.

—

There are quite a few pastors — maybe even the majority of evangelical pastors at the moment — who reject the blessings of Christian civilization. If we love our neighbors we will work towards a society shaped and influenced by Christian faith.

—

From August ’24:

Too many Christians hoard their wisdom rather than share it. We need to preach what we practice.

At greater length:

I’ve noticed over the years that some pastors are unwilling to preach the very wisdom they have practiced and that their families have benefited from. For example, I know pastors who had their wives stay home and raise their children. The kids were greatly blessed by having a homemaker, rather than a careerist, as a mother. But these same pastors refuse to preach this truth to their congregations, even though it has biblical grounding (e.g., Titus 2). They do not want to offend anyone, especially women, by taking a controversial stance on the domestic/homemaking role of women. And so the congregation does not benefit from the wisdom the pastor practiced in his own life. He hoards his wisdom rather than sharing it.

Tim Carney and Rob Henderson have demonstrated that America’s successful class does not share its wisdom with the lower classes; in fact they often promote laws and policies that clash with reality – and they pay no price for their advocacy of these policies while the poorer classes do. Henderson refers to this kind of virtue signaling as “luxury beliefs.” The upper classes are comfortably ensconced in communities where they are insulated against the worst effects of the very policies they advocate. For example, they can promote the egalitarian policy of doing away with honors classes in public schools, but their own kids are not harmed by this idiocy because they have their kids in private schools. Another example: America’s upper class often advocates for open borders, which gives them access to cheap labor (housecleaners, carpenters, etc.); this is portrayed as virtuous even though severely hurts the job prospects and economic opportunities of the lower classes in America. Another example: Upper classes prove their liberal virtue by advocating for DEI, even as they manage to get special opportunities for their own children (nepotistic hiring in their businesses, legacy admissions to elite colleges, etc.). Upper class people are far more likely to get married, far less likely to have children out of wedlock, etc., even though they promote those destructive tendencies in the wider culture. America’s most successful people generally live far more conservative lives than one would think given that they usually advocate for more liberal policies. The conservatism of their lives accounts for much of their success; their liberal policies hold down the lower classes, eliminating competition for their children. The hypocrisy of the upper classes is largely hidden, and even gets disguised as progressive virtue.

This is what it comes down to: If the American upper crust really wants to help the lower classes, they will need to preach what they practice. They will need to share their wisdom rather than hoard it.

—

Every man has a god. Even atheists.

Likewise, every nation has a god. Even secular ones. 

—

Calvin on the purpose of civil government:

“Yet civil government has as its appointed end, so long as we live among men, to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church, ato adjust our life to the society of men, to form our social behavior to civil righteousness, to reconcile us with one another, and to promote general peace and tranquillity.”

Sounds FV…er, sounds CN.

—

I heard it once said, “The 3 Forms of Unity represent the ripe fruit of the Reformation; the Westminster Standards represent the overripe fruit of the Reformation.”

I don’t necessarily agree with that. But I can see why someone would think it. 

—

Jesus is the true Israel. Only those united to him by faith are true children of Abraham.

—

“Pastors should only preach spiritual things.”

What are the boundaries of the “spiritual”? Who polices this boundary? Huge swaths of Scripture, including the Torah, the wisdom literature, and the parables of Jesus, teach principles about money, business, and economics. Should pastors just ignore all of that because it isn’t “spiritual”?

—

Real Christianity is better than cultural Christianity, of course, but cultural Christianity is vastly better than cultural progressivism.

—

From February ’25:

The biblical command for a wife to submit to her husband is not so much a test of her trust in her husband, but her trust in the divine design for marriage. When wives submit to their husbands (sin excepted), they are actually submitting to God.

—

When John Calvin described the office of pastor, he centered the pastor’s work on the three marks of the church: pastors are to faithfully preach God’s Word, rightly administer the sacraments, and seek the proper application of discipline. But Calvin believed the pastor had a wider and broader role, not only ministering to the needs of his own congregation, but to the whole community in which his congregation lived.

Calvin said, “Life is not dearer to me the holy bond, to which is annexed the public welfare of our city.” By “holy bond,” Calvin meant the Spiritual bond between a pastor and the members of his flock. He loved his congregation and sought to serve them well as the core of his pastoral calling. But the faithful pastor’s concern extends beyond the health of his sheep to the “public welfare” (or common good) of the whole city.

In other words, for Calvin, the pastor is not only concerned with the ecclesiastical sphere, but with the social, political, and cultural life of the city/state/nation. The pastor is not only concerned with the Great Commission but also the Creation Mandate. The pastor not only aims at individual sanctification but social sanctification. To put it bluntly, for Calvin, the pastorate is a quasi-political office. The pastor is to lead his people in being salt and light. He does not usurp the work of magistrates, fathers, or other spheres, but his teaching and application of God’s Word shapes the way Christians fill these spheres.

For example, Calvin’s teaching in marriage shaped the public policy of the city council with regard to marital disputes and divorce. Calvin’s teaching on parenting and discipleship shaped the educational sphere in Geneva. Calvin’s exegetical work on usury transformed economic policy. And so on.

As Ronald Wallace puts it, Calvin believed the reformation of the church would lead to the reconstruction and transformation of society: Calvin “was convinced that the challenge and power of the gospel must be allowed to cleanse regenerate and direct not only the human heart, but every aspect of social life on earth — family affairs, education, economics, and politics. Christ sought not only an altar in the human heart for his priestly ministry, but a throne at the center of all human life for his kingly ministry.” Thus, Calvin worked “to bring the power of the gospel to bear fully on the life of the city.”

—

I think God is merciful to the children of Baptists who should have been baptized and weren’t. They are covenant children in spite of the fact that their parents and pastors don’t recognize that fact about them. But they still miss out, as do their parents.

When a child is baptized that child enters into the kingdom, household, and family of God. The child is given the Holy Spirit and the promise of forgiveness. The child is united with Christ, publicly and formally. The child is given a Christian identity. The child is given (or should be given) access to the Lord’s table.

It’s no small thing.

—

An older post, from January ‘25:

Jonathan Haidt contrasts people who have an “internal locus of control” with those who have an “external locus of control.” The key to feeling “in control” of your life (in a proper sense) is self-control, especially emotional self control.

The reason some young people do not feel like they are in control of their lives has nothing to do with having strict parents or teachers and coaches who put heavy demands on them. Rather, the feeling of not being in control is due to lacking internal control of oneself. It is not that you are being externally controlled (though that can be a problem in some extreme cases) but that you have not learned how to control yourself, especially your emotions.

The key to feeling confident and “in control” in a good sense is mastering one’s thought process and emotions. You never have control of the world outside yourself (including other people, circumstances, etc.). But you most certainly can control the world inside yourself — your feelings, impulses, desires, reactions, thought patterns, etc. Life does not “just happen” to you; your life is the product of the choices you made under the circumstances you were given. Not everything in your life is necessarily your fault, but it is most certainly your responsibility. Taking full responsibility for yourself opens the gateway to real joy and fulfillment in life.

—

“The faithful must hold the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other, because the building of the church must still be combined with many struggles.”

— John Calvin, on the duty of Christians to fight and build 

Back in the late 1990s, I taught a Sunday School class called “Sword and Trowel” that unpacked this quote from Calvin (unfortunately the class was not recorded). The imagery of sword and trowel (or sword and shovel) comes from Nehemiah 4:7-18, of course. The Israelites were to fight and build – and we are today as well.

—

“How should I respond to an atheist who claims that morality is innate and is essentially a survival instinct?”

That’s non-sense from many angles. 

It would mean we share morality with the lower animals. But is that really so? Is that an adequate morality? Have you seen how animals often treat one another?

It’s simply not true that morality always enhances survival, eg, sometimes the moral thing to do is sacrifice your time, money, or even your life for others.

It confuses the “is” and the “ought.” You can’t derive moral obligation from mere survival instincts. Animals will do most anything, including kill, in order to survive. 

It ignores the fact that cultures can vary widely in what they consider moral, which really cannot be explained in naturalistic terms. 

It ignores that there are things I could do that might enhance my survival that are clearly immoral, eg, stealing. 

You certainly would not get any kind of coherent sexual morality out of that approach (except perhaps calling sodomy immoral since it does not enhance survival).

Etc.

—

Another older X post:

When guys on the right (who should know better) say things like, “Pastors shouldn’t preach anything political, they should never meddle in any civil affairs,” what I hear is a tacit admission that the Bible teaches something contrary to what they want to happen politically. They are granting that their political agenda has unbiblical elements and political preaching could challenge those elements. And so rather than submit their political vision to Scripture, they try to silence Scripture by silencing those who preach it. 

—

“Parents should supervise less in the real world and more in the virtual.”

— Jonathan Haidt on parenting 

—

On the “laws of attraction” – here’s a good example of feminine beauty inspiring masculine greatness/feats of strength:

In Genesis 29:10, Jacob rolled the stone away after he saw Rachel. It seems her beauty inspired him undertake this great feat of strength. A group of shepherds could not roll the stone away but Jacob did it all by himself – seemingly to impress her.

—

Parenting and discipline:

In order for a parent to effectively discipline a child, he must first discipline himself. A parent who lacks emotional and verbal self-discipline will never successful discipline a child. As in so many other areas of life, you have to start with yourself. You have to lead yourself before you can lead others and you have to discipline yourself before you can discipline others.

—

In the long run, it’s impossible to have the fruit of Christian civilization without having the root of Christian faith. 

My hunch is that most American evangelicals who so blithely dismiss the notion of a Christian nation don’t understand what they’re actually asking for (though some once great Western nations in Europe are beginning to get a taste of what an apostate civilization could look like). A little more knowledge of how brutal and barbaric non-Christian nations have historically been would come in handy. I suggest reading something like Vishal Mangalwadi’s “The Book that Made Your  World” or Alvin Schmidt’s “How Christianity Changed the World” to get some perspective.

As Adam Smith reminded us, it is the wealth of nations, not the poverty of nations, that cries for explanation. Poverty needs no explanation in a fallen world. The preconditions needed for prosperity come from a certain worldview and way of life. They cannot be transferred from one culture to another because not all cultures have the supports in place to produce prosperity.

The freedom and prosperity Western nations have so long enjoyed is not “natural” in a fallen world. And it’s certainly not the product of secular rationalism, Marxism, or some other religion, none of which have come close to reproducing the goodness, truth, and beauty that penetrated and shaped Western Christendom. Right now, we are largely still living off the cultural capital our ancestors accumulated. But it won’t last forever – and what comes next won’t be pretty without a return to the faith that built the West. 

Our Christian ancestors worked very hard to exorcise their culture of the demonic. It would be a shame for us to invite the demons back in – especially since they are likely to come back seven times worse. By faith, our ancestors built the best civilization the world has ever known – with America (in most respects) as the capstone. If we topple their work, it will not be easy to rebuild out of the ruins. Civilizations are fragile. At the present moment, we have a grand opportunity to hang on to what’s left of the West and rebuild. But we have to fight for it. And, as with our ancestors, that means fighting by faith, using every weapon God puts at our disposal. 

—

Scripture repeatedly describes God’s people as his inheritance (Psalm 28:9). We are his riches, his treasure, his wealth, even his glory in a certain sense. 

—

If the woman is the glory of man, Christ’s bride, the church, is his glory. 

— 

Smashing the patriarchy (the headship of husbands/fathers) comes at great cost. Adam let his bride take the reins and it brought disaster. Rejecting God’s design brings its own punishment. 

—

Classical liberalism grew out of the Christian faith and requires Christian virtue to sustain it. Apart from that faith and virtue, classical liberalism morphs into the monstrosity of modern liberalism. Classical liberalism is too fragile to endure when severed from its Christian roots. 

To put it another way, if you want classical liberalism, you have to embrace some kind of Christian nationalist position. Classical liberalism cannot be sustained by pluralism. 

—

Interestingly, the same people who think Christian Nationalism is toxic also tend to think masculinity is toxic. There’s a connection there. 

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When it comes to speech, the Bible emphasizes not saying the wrong words more than saying the right words. 

I imagine the same rule applies to tweeting – what you choose to not post might be more important than what you do post.

—

NKJV > ESV

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Self-control is simply impulse control. It means you control sexual impulses, speech impulses, spending impulses, anger impulses, etc. 

—

Speech is a form of power. Like all forms of power, it must be used judiciously. 

The tongue is a mighty beast. It must be tamed and trained. 

Learning to handle your words well is like learning to handle a firearm well. There are disciplines and skills to be mastered, or you can do great harm. 

—

Every trial is a new opportunity to trust God.

—

Sexually self-disciplined men build civilization. Undisciplined men are useless. 

—

The creation mandate (Genesis 1:28) was God’s blueprint for humanity from the beginning, and it is still in force today. God created us to be masters of the creation, to rule it and fill it, to the glory of God. 

—

Those who lack self-control will be controlled by others.

Those who lack self-discipline will be manipulated and steered by others who will exploit their personal weaknesses and impulsiveness. 

—

“If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments”

—G.K. Chesterton

The alternative to self-government under God is tyranny. The real legalists in the world are not Christians who want to see the law of God utilized in the public square, but progressives who multiply new commandments and regulations ad nauseum.

—

Limited civil government presupposes self-government. Those who cannot govern themselves will be governed by tyrants. Freedom is for the disciplined; liberty is got the self-controlled. 

Example: Socialism treats citizens as irresponsible children (or slaves) who need to have the state care for their basic needs because they cannot or will not take care of themselves. 

—

Civil magistrates are supposed to be fathers. If the citizenry is immature and irresponsible, the civil magistrate will have to father them like they are two years old, likely resulting in some kind of socialism or statism. If the citizenry is mature and self-governing, he can treat his people like grown-ups.

—

The creation mandate concerns marriage and work.

Marriage = be fruitful, multiply, fill

Work = rule, subdue, take dominion

Proverbs is about a man’s work and wife – how to fulfill the creation mandate in a fallen world. It’s also about perversions of the creation mandate, such as fornication/adultery and theft/laziness.

It’s interesting that since the 1960s, America has kicked perversions of the creation mandate into high gear, resulting in the lowest marriage and birth rates on record, and massive loss of productive work. The sexual revolution perverted the marriage side of the creation mandate. The rise of socialism perverted the labor shed of the creation mandate. Adultery is stealing another’s wife; socialism is stealing another man’s labor. 

—

Socialist revolution and sexual revolution always go hand in hand. They are both about taking what isn’t yours, they are both about consuming what you have not produced. Socialism is about taking wealth that isn’t yours. Sexual revolution is about taking a woman who isn’t yours. A man who will take wealth that isn’t his (through taxation, redistribution, etc.) will also take a woman who isn’t his (through fornication, adultery, etc.) – and vice versa. Both socialist revolution and sexual revolution are perversions, even inversions, of the creation mandate. 

Marxism is the perfect test case. Free stuff and free love go hand in hand in Marxist revolutions. We saw the rise of both of these in America, especially starting in the 1960s. Destroying private property and destroying the family were just two sides of the same coin. 

The creation mandate has two sides: work and wife, dominion and multiplication. Seizing the means of production, whether in the economy (destroying the fruits of a man’s productive labor) or in the family (since sex in marriage is designed to produce children), are species of the same form of rebellion. 

—

“My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world.”

“The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”

If our view of the kingdom of God is such that that kingdom never intersects with, and transforms, the kingdoms of this world, our view of kingdom is too small (and probably Gnostic as well). The kingdom of God is a real kingdom. It is embodied and instantiated in various ways in the world. While it will not be consummated until the last day, it is definitely real and even visible right now. 

The same Bible that teaches us Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world also teaches us that his kingdom will rule over and even absorb the kingdoms of this world. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world in that it does not have its source, power, or character from this world. It does not advance in the same way as earthly kingdoms. But it does advance. It does have an impact on the world. It is manifested in history. We pray, “Thy kingdom come” for a reason – and the coming of the kingdom is not just something that happens at the end of history, but within history as well, as the kingdom grows and spreads. The kingdom comes as the Great Commission (in all its vast breadth) is fulfilled. 

The same Bible that teaches us Christ’s kingdom is not of this world also teaches Christ has all authority in heaven and earth, and that he is King of kings and Lord of lords. Christ intends for his kingdom to rule the kingdoms of the world, to subdue them even as Adam was to subdue the beasts (cf. Daniel 7). Christ rules every square inch of creation this very moment. Therefore, he ought to be obeyed in every sphere and domain of life; he ought to be acknowledged as king by all individuals as well as by all institutions. The fact of structural religious pluralism in a society like modern America  not alter this fact; the religious pluralism we see in the world just means the church still has a lot of work to do. We called to live as citizens of God’s kingdom in all we do. As we obey Christ by faith, we manifest his kingdom in this world, however imperfectly and incompletely. 

It’s interesting that many people have no problem recognizing there can be a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation or a Hindu nation, even if not every last individual in those nations subscribes to the dominant religion. But many have so bought into a privatized version of the Christian faith, that they think a Christian nation is impossible. Many of those same people have no problem with Christian families, schools, seminaries, businesses – but for some strange reason, the notion of a Christian nation appalls them (and this, despite the fact that many such Christian nations have been historical realities). This is a rejection of Christ’s lordship; it is a denial of the gospel of the kingdom. 

—

The faithful local church is the most important institution on earth and in history. 

The church is Christ’s body, his corporate representative on earth.

The church is Christ’s bride, the supreme object of his love and affection, protection and provision,

The church is the temple of God, his home, indwelt by and built by the Spirit.

The church is the city of God, the new and heavenly Jerusalem, the capital of God’s kingdom.

The rivers of living water flow out of the church to flood the world with grace and righteousness. 

The tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of nations, is found in the church. 

The church is the true synagogue, the gathering place of the new Israel. 

The church is God’s new humanity, entrusted with multiplying redeemed image bearers and filling the earth with discipled nations. 

To the church have been entrusted the tools and weapons that build God’s kingdom in the world and bring new life to sinners – the preaching of the Word, the singing of psalms, and the administering of the sacraments. 

The church may not look like much a lot of the time. She might look weak and ineffectual (and many times, this is due to her own sin and compromise). But the faithful church has a hidden power, the power of God’s kingdom, the power of God’s Word, a power she is called to unleash in the world to bring about its transformation. 

—

We live in a therapeutic age that has redefined sin in terms of diseases and disorders, as a way of escaping responsibility. Anxiety, narcissism, habitual drunkenness and illicit drug use, porn addiction, even a child’s stubborn willfulness, are now viewed as diseases or disorders. But at root, all of these are issues of sin and rebellion. 

You don’t have GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) that can be solved with a pill. Medication might help (or might make things worse) – but medication is no substitute for sanctification. You need to learn to trust your Heavenly Father. No pill can do that for you. Scripture prescribes the remedy for anxiety. 

You do not have NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). Your self-absorption and lack of compassion are forms of pride, which is idolatry of the self. Repent! God brings low the arrogant and exalts the humble. 

You do not have SUD (substance abuse disorder). You are misusing God’s gift of alcohol. You have become a slave to your fallen desires. You need to take responsibility for your choices. Your cravings are not an excuse. 

You do not have HD (hyper-sexuality disorder). You have a problem with self-control. You are perverting God’s gift of sex. Porn addiction just means you are enslaved to your lusts, and you will go to hell unless you repent and fight against these wicked desires. A Christian can never say “I couldn’t help myself” or “I had no choice.” No – you’ve just habituated yourself into making bad choices. This is a moral issue, not a medical or therapeutic one. 

Your child does not ODD (oppositional defiance disorder). A child’s disobedience is a sin, not a sickness, and needs to be addressed accordingly. Your child is not the victim of an illness or disorder; he is a sinner in need of training and correction. Your child needs better mothering and fathering, not pills or a therapist. Don’t use medication or a counselor as a substitute for lazy or inconsistent parenting. 

Very few things we call “mental illnesses” actually have an empirical basis. Yes, the brain, as an organ of the body, can malfunction (concussions, dementia, etc.). But most of what gets categorized as “mental illness” is rooted in the mind/soul/heart, not the brain. People all too often get diagnosed with mental illnesses despite not have having a doctor run a single medical test that could verify the presence of a bodily sickness. 

The result of therapeutic culture is all too often to de-stigmatize things which should be stigmatized and shamed. The irony is that our culture’s therapeutic turn has not solved these problems but intensified them. The inflation of “mental illness” as a category has not helped – especially when so many young people glamorize their diagnoses and turn them into an identity. We are confusing the mind and the brain. Much of this is driven by greed – we have monetized doctors and therapists to medicate many people who are not actually sick, but simply reaping the bad fruit of sinful choices and behaviors. (The Rolling Stones noticed we were over-medicating women as far back as 1965 in “Mother’s Little Helper.”) We are applying secular and medical “solutions” to spiritual problems, but this like treating a broken leg with Advil. The Advil might relieve some of the painful symptoms, but it does not actually deal with the real problem at its root. You need to have your broken bone set if you are actually going to heal. I’ll say it again: therapy is no substitute for repentance and medication cannot take the place of sanctification. As a culture, we have prioritized feeling good over becoming good. This is bad for us. 

I am not saying there is no such thing as mental (brain) illness. I am not saying therapy and medication never help anyone. Sometimes they can be quite useful; medications should be seen as a matter of Christian prudence and liberty. I am saying therapy culture has gotten out of control and treats many moral and spiritual issues (for which we are responsible) as if they were sicknesses (which implies we are not responsible). Therapy culture has subsidized irresponsibility, and so it’s no surprise we have gotten more irresponsibility. Therapy culture does to many issues the same thing the welfare state does to work/laziness – it encourages a flight from responsibility. 

—

When it comes to sin, John Owen was right: it’s kill or be killed. Kill sin or sin will be killing you. 

—

“After the two World Wars, the West replaced the Christian story with the anti-Nazi story. The complex worldview supplied by Scripture and centuries of Christian reflection was secularized and simplified into a vague humanism and hatred of fascism. This has blinded us to all sorts of other evils and provided poor guidance to deal with the ones we do recognize. We are too quick to make parallels between the problems we face today and the battle against the Nazis in WWII. But since that moment was in many ways unique, the response to it should not be paradigmatic. If we leave ourselves only with the anti-Hitler hammer, all we will see are Nazi nails, and we will treat every problem today with the same absolute ruthlessness with which the Allies pummeled their enemies.

Ryrie doesn’t want us to lose the insights and values gained during the Age of Hitler; he just thinks they need to rest on the firmer foundations of a richer story. Many people recognize the flaws in the postwar consensus and wish to erase the lessons of the 20th century. This isn’t the path Ryrie charts. He wants the West to return to its Christian roots, which are far more rich, positive, and firm than simply fearing fascists and defending human rights. But he also wants us to receive the gains in moral and political wisdom from the past ­century. Both the Christian story and the anti-Hitler story are part of the West’s heritage; both are pieces of the particular providence of our societies. It is just that the latter should not overshadow and erase the former.”

— from James Wood’s review of Alex Ryrie’s The Age of Hitler

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In many ways, the book of Proverbs is the key to civilizational success. The story of the rise and fall of Western civilization can largely be told in terms of Proverbs’ twin archetypes, the wise man and the foolish man. 

—

Porn is not just a lust problem; it’s a laziness problem. It’s the sin of a man who does not want to put in the work to win a woman’s heart, and then keep her heart. 

—

Douglas Wilson’s opponents use the serrated edge against him far more than the Wilson uses it against others. And when Wilson uses the serrated edge, it’s usually sharp and funny. Those who use it against him? Not so much. 

Ironically, the people who use the serrated edge the most against Wilson are doing the very thing they so often accuse him of doing.

—

Jesus was the fiercest prophet of them all. And what he threatens to do to his enemies is far worse than what Joshua was commissioned to do to the Canaanites. 

Those seeking a “kinder, gentler God” than the one found in the OT will not find what they seek in Jesus. 

—

What if Christian nationalism is actually good for evangelism?

[This is in response to atheist Rich Cooper’s comment that Wilson represents “real Christianity.”]

What if Christian nationalism is actually good for evangelism? https://t.co/JYEN1Ifvsu

— Pastor Rich Lusk (@Vicar1973) August 15, 2025

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Getting married and having children is a sign of hope. If fulfills humanity’s original purpose, found in the Creation Mandate. It links us with the past and the future, and is the most life-affirming, hope-affirming, creation-affirming thing we can do.

Obviously, the unmarried and childless can have hope in Christ aand for the future as well. But for most people, God calls us to form and build families. Those who intentionally reject this call and these gifts do so at their peril.

—

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s suffragist and feminist views were rooted in Darwinian evolution and a higher critical view of the Bible that treated the OT as “Jewish mythology.” Her goal was to “liberate” women from God’s Word by exonerating Satan. She denied a historical fall, and therefore denied the Bible’s teaching on sin and redemption. Feminism was never an off-shoot of Christian faith or even a “Christian heresy;” it was a rival to Christian faith from the beginning. It was a revival of pagan androgyny. Here are Stanton’s own words:

“If we accept the Darwinian theory, that the race has been a gradual growth from the lower to a higher form of life, and that the story of the fall is a myth, we can exonerate the snake, emancipate the woman, and reconstruct a more rational religion for the nineteenth century, and thus escape all the perplexities of the Jewish mythology as of no more importance than those of the Greek, Persian and Egyptian.”

—

If you don’t believe Jesus propitiated God’s wrath as a substitutionary sacrifice, what happens to the wrath revealed from heaven against sin in Romans 1:18ff? That wrath has to go somewhere. If it doesn’t land on Jesus at the cross….it must land on us. 

—

“And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your children after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your children after you.” (Genesis 17:7)

God never rescinded this promise. It is still in force.

Christian parenting is not law, it is gospel. It is rooted in this promise.

Christian parenting is not a matter of technique or keeping certain commands (though keeping commands is important). It is fundamentally a matter of faith.
The good works Christian parents do in teaching, training, nurturing, and disciplining are not just works, they are works of faith — works driven and empowered by faith in the covenant promise.

Christian parenting is not a matter of evangelizing their children, hoping he will embrace a covenantal identity; it is a matter of discipling the child in an identity God has already given him.

The prayers of Christian parents for their child should start with and flow out of this promise, recognizing God is already the God of the child.
Christian parenting recognizes that grace restores nature, including the family. The child is fallen, a sinner under wrath by nature; but by virtue of the covenant promise, he is a disciple and a member of God’s covenant household, the church. if Adam and his wife had not fasllen into sin, their children would have been God’s children from the beginning; the covenant restores this reality, albeit under fallen conditions.

Christian parents are branches on the olive tree of the covenant. This means their children are natural branches on the tree. They are holy and beloved. A first generation Christian is a wild olive branch grafted into the tree; but when he has children, those children are born on the tree. They should be counted and treated as such.

Christian parents should bring their children to Jesus in every way, just like parents brought their children to Jesus. They should bring their children to Jesus by teaching them the Word of God from infancy, just as Timothy’s mother and grandmother did. They should bring their children to the waters of baptism, where they can be united to Christ, dead to sin and alive to righteousness. They should bring their children to the table as soon as they are able to eat and drink, so they can commue with their Savior. They should pray with their children; absolve their children of sin when they confess and repent; they should impose Christian standards of behavior on their children in age-appropriate ways.

Again, Christian parenting is rooted in the promise. Christian parents should claim the promise, rest in the promise, and raise their children in light of the promise. 

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Christian nationalism grows out of and is undergirded by Christian familialism. There can be no Christian nation where there are not countless Christian families. And where there are happy and holy Christian families, the broader Christianization of the nation is sure to follow. Christian nationalism starts around the dining table. It starts in neighborhoods and schools and sports leagues. It starts in our marriages and with our children. It starts with Christian men launching and growing businesses. It starts with living as Christians in our own daily lives and flows out from there. More than of any of these, Christian nationalism starts with faithful Christian chuches, engaged in reverent worship, with biblically-grounded preaching, serious pastoral care, effective evangelistic and mercy ministry plans, and the faithful execution of church discipline. These are the foundational building blocks of a Christisn nation and Christian culture.

It is a mistake to think of Christian nationalism as some kind of political program. It’s not mainly about passing certain laws or electing certain candidates. It’s not primiarly about political power. It’s mainly about a way of life. It’s about a kind of culture. It’s about truth, goodness, and beauty. Its about the kind of world we want our children to grow up in, and the kind of country we want to leave to our grandkids. It’s about being men and women who are worthy of our ancestors who built Western civilization, and it’s about not squandering all that has been given to us so that we can pass it on to future generations.

Yes, Christian nationalists talk a lot about politics. But that’s incidental and circumstantial. Political power matters, but it’s not the main thing. We talk about politics today for the same reason and in the same way a man with the stomach bug has to talk about his digestion — not because he wants to, but because he has to to if he wants to diagnose the problem and get better. But the reality is that civil power is only a very small piece of what constitues a Christian nation.

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The therapy/counseling industry has exploded in recent decades. We now have more diagnoses, and medications to treat them, than ever before. We have more counselors and therapists than ever before. And yet the problem keeps getting worse. Even elementary school age kids are being sent to therapists. For many people, therapy is supposedly a catch-all solution to life’s problems. 

This is a highly complex issue but I think in many, many of these cases, therapy and drugs are being used to compensate for bad parenting and bad pastoring. Parents and pastors have largely abandoned their offices. They have surrendered their turf to counselors, therapists, and pharmacists. They are not doing what God calls them to do. 

I think we have to be honest and admit that, on the whole, secular therapy has completely failed. Financially, it’s made therapists and pharmaceutical companies a lot of money, but in terms of actually solving people’s problems, it’s largely done more harm than good. 

We must also notice that at a broad societal level, the increase in mental illness largely corresponds with widespread apostasy from the Christian faith. (It should be noted that progressives report far, far higher levels of mental illness than conservatives and Christians.) One of the curses of the covenant is God striking people with confusion of mind, madness, and frustration  (Deuteronomy 28:20, 28). I am NOT saying any particular individual who suffers with these kinds of ailments, which we would call mental illness today, is being or punished or judged for some particular sin; providence is far more complex than that. I AM saying that when a society as a whole has seemingly unprecedented levels of these ailments, we should be asking ourselves hard questions. I am also not saying that every so-called mental illness is ONLY a spiritual problem; there can be other factors involved, as human beings are incredibly complex. But I am also convinced that at a societal level, we will not be healed until we return to God’s Word and God’s ways. It’s as if we have tried everything except repentance. So maybe we should give repentance a try. 

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Deuteronomy 6:8-9, translated into the new covenant, requires nothing less that a Christian civilization (Christendom). The law of God has authority over everything and is to be applied to everything. Consider the categories given to us in these verses of Deuteronomy 6:

The law of God is to be a sign on our hands, governing what we do.

The law of God is to like frontlets between our eyes, like glasses through which we see and interpret the world.

The law of God is to be on our doorposts, governing family life.

The law of God is to be on our city gates, governing social, economic, and political life.

In short, the law of God rules every square inch of life and culture. Nothing is outside the authority of God and his Word.

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From September 2024, on just war:

Most of these rules for warfare below would be addressed in passages like Deuteronomy 20, which puts a pretty tight restraint on how godly men conduct war.

The one exception, I think, is a kind of assassination, like we see with Ehud in Judges 3. “Crushing the head” of the opposing army would seem to be a way to save many lives and hold those most responsible for war (the rulers of nations) accountable.

Ehud was a judge, not a private person, and that is significant to his assassination of Eglon, of course. But the principle could hold wider application.

I think rulers would be significantly less likely to get their nations into war if they knew they’d be treated as prime military targets. This would be even more true if rulers were going to be expected to fight one another on behalf of their people (cf 1 Samuel 17).

ADDENDUM: I should add: “Herem warfare,” or “holy war,” like what we see with Israel’s conquest of Canaan is unique, and must be distinguished from other forms of warfare. Deuteronomy 20 gives rules for normal warfare, not having to do specifically with Canaanites in the land of promise.

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Progressivism itself is a mental illness, usually stemming from unresolved guilt and misplaced pity.

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From October 2024:

Perhaps there are discussions of this, but it would be interesting to know how Southerners like Thornwell would have reconciled the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (requiring runaway slaves to be returned to their masters) with Deuteronomy 23:15-16. In at least one place, Thornwell defended the Fugitive Slave Act, but I don’t know if he ever explained how he squared that with Deuteronomy 23. My guess is that Deuteronomy 23:15-16 presupposes that the slave ran away because he was being oppressed and abused. In cases where the slave was not being abused but ran away, there would be an obligation to return to his master (Philemon). Whatever the case, in my opinion, the Fugitive Slave Act still seems contrary to the Torah and would therefore be an unjust law.

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From October, 2024:

American men were the heroes of the 20th century. Anyone who says otherwise either lacks a moral compass or has been brainwashed by either Nazism or communism.

“If we won, why does it feel like we lost?”

It’s far from the first time this kind of thing has happened in history. Read Deuteronomy 8. Read Joshua followed by Judges. Read about early 18th century England. Etc.

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Parts of a thread from January 2025, on racism and nature, responding to neo-racialists:

Grace restores and perfects nature.

Nature teaches all humans descended from one man. Nations arose providentially in history, but they are not permanent features of nature or the creation (such as sex/gender). Be careful: pressing “grace restores nature” too hard might take you somewhere you don’t want to go! Does Ephesians 2:11ff have any bearing on how you understand grace’s restoration of nature?

The enmity between different people groups is not “natural.” It is the result of sin.

Some ethnicities who immigrated to Israel under Torah were not allowed to become citizens in Israel for several generations because of a history of enmity towards Israel that would make assimilation unlikely. But that’s sin, not nature.

Nehemiah 13:1 is based on Deuteronomy 23. So perhaps there were one or two people groups permanently banned from entrance into Israel – Ammonites and Moabites. But I wonder how absolute this was supposed to be. Obviously, in Nehemiah’s day, they were basically at war with the Ammonites, and they were inter-marrying with unconverted Ammonites. Big problems. But the Moabites are lumped in with the Ammonites, and Ruth was a Moabite who did get incorporated into Israel. Isaiah 11:14 suggests a future conversion and incorporation into Messiah’s kingdom for Ammon.

But I’m not sure I see the point of this appeal. Only two people groups are permanently banned from entering Israel; virtually all others could immigrate provided they properly assimilated and met any other conditions established by Torah. Israel was certainly a nation based on ancestry, going back to Abraham, but it also had “soft edges” with plenty of Gentiles getting incorporated into Israel.

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It’s true that Scripture does not teach “universal suffrage.” While there is a kind of suffrage in Scripture (eg, Deuteronomy 1:13, Acts 6:3), we are not given explicit commands or detailed examples of how this was done. We do not know exactly how civil or ecclesiastical elections were carried out in ancient Israel or in the apostolic church. I suppose one could argue that the “brothers” were commanded to choose the officers in Acts 6, which suggests male voting, but that’s not conclusive. Good arguments can be made for head-of-household voting (noting that women are sometimes heads-of-household), or for some other arrangement (such as some form of individual suffrage based on the consent of the governed), depending on which biblical principles we choose to tie to voting. This leads me to believe that churches and nations can be guided by prudence in the matter. We do not have hard fast rules, but broad principles.

In American history, most women were not suffragists in the lead up to the 19th amendment, and there’s no question the effect of that amendment was to (a) disenfranchise, and therefore break down, the household as the basic building block of our society, and (b) led to modern secularized liberalism, the welfare state, and eventually widespread abortion. It is not at all obvious that universal suffrage in the West has made women happier or safer on the whole. Women’s suffrage came into the West as a form of identity politics that has (very obviously) created a political gender war, leading to falling marriage rates falling birth rates, and epidemic of loneliness. Further, consider many nations in Europe, where many women who have been raped are afraid to testify against their assailant for fear of being accused of racism. I wonder how many conservative women would be willing to trade their voting rights (as Ann Coulter said she would be) in exchange for a more socially and economically conservative society? Are we more committed to a kind of expressive individualism or to a genuinely conservative social order? 

If you want to rile up Christians, sharing that thousands of innocent human beings are murdered in our country daily and we could rise up and stop it likely won’t do it.

But mention that universal suffrage isn’t a Biblical “right” and they are ready to fight.

— Ginna Cross (@GinnaCross) August 12, 2025

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From August 2024:

Quite a few people go to therapy because it’s easier than repenting.

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Secular therapy is “another gospel” that has infected much of the church. Some thoughts:

Secular therapy replaces the language and concepts of  “sin” and “repentance” with those of “trauma” and “safety.”

Many churches and Christians now process life events through therapeutic concepts like “trauma” but this is actually an alternative and rival to the gospel and the Christian faith. Trauma is real, obviously, and we should speak to it and seek to heal it with the tools God has given us.

But the use of trauma has been so inflated, it’s become almost useless and trivializes REAL trauma.

Preaching of God’s law can be traumatic – but in a good and necessary way. Only when the law wounds can the gospel do its healing work. 

We cannot attain maturity without learning to take responsibility for ourselves, including our emotions/emotional responses. For example, avoiding a catastrophizing mentality is a well-documented key to happiness – but this requires mental and emotional discipline and (in many cases) differentiation so you can keep your head all those around you are losing theirs. 

Further, we must beware of safetyism. Making people objectively safer does not always result in better mental health, especially for boys and men – for masculinity to develop and thrive, men need some level of risk/adventure; the lack of it deadens our souls.

Overall, therapy culture has infantilized America. It has produced a culture of immaturity and irresponsibility. If has sucked the soul out of us. It has produced soft, effeminate men. It has produced women who are slaves to their feelings, who get bored with the ordinary duties of life and require ever increasing levels of drama and excitement. It has produced emotionalism in our churches, replacing liturgy with “worship experiences” and preaching with Ted Talk-style self-help messages.

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Confusing – or really conflating – the brain and the mind is a huge problem in current counseling models. Brain illnesses should be distinguished from mental (spiritual) illnesses. They often interrelate, but they are distinct categories. 

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A biblical liturgy will have a sin offering – a corporate confession of sin followed by a declaration of absolution. This is the truest and deepest form of soul therapy. It’s the purest form of pastoral care. It’s hope and healing every Lord’s Day. 

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“The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

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In politics, there will always be winners and losers. One man’s ideal society is another man’s fascist hellhole. And vice versa. That’s just the way it is, and the way it’s always been. Everyone involved in politics, even at the most minimal level, even if all they do is vote, is trying to impose some version of society on others who disagree with it, using the coercive power of the state. There’s no getting around that reality. 

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The white girl sorority tik tok dances are not a sign we are saving our civilization, despite the claims of some. They are a sign of how far we still have to go to recover what has been lost and get back on track. Christless, unrepentant “conservatism” is not the answer. The left is a disaster, but there are pitfalls on the right as well.

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Sexual immorality scars the soul. Yes, there is forgiveness and healing in Christ. But it does not help to cover up the consequences of sin. Christ’s blood covers the sin; it does not cover all the temporal consequences. 

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Stedman makes a good point here. We want marriage rates to go up and this kind of branding won’t do that. We need to give young men more reasons to get married, not fewer. A mark of feminism is pathologizing/demonizing the male sex drive. We have to respect the way God made men. The “normal” male sex drive is the strongest drive in his life – by design. Men who properly order and discipline their sex drive are the builders of civilization. I’m very sympathetic to arguments against hormonal birth control, but the framing made in this video is rooted in a flawed understanding of sex (which is, unfortunately, a feature of Roman Catholicism). 

The reality is that, while sex is not a need for survival the way food and water are needed for survival, it is most certainly a need within marriage. Sex may not be necessary to survival as such, but it is certainly necessary to a marriage’s survival. Sex within marriage is a very legitimate need. It’s not just that the man “needs” sex. The wife needs sex as well. Their marriage needs sex to be what God designed it to be. 

An example: Proverbs 5 commands a man to “rejoice in the wife of his youth” and “be satisfied with her breasts at all times.” To be blunt, a wife should not interfere with her husband’s obedience to these commands. Another example: 1 Corinthians 7:5 teaches the husband and wife to not deprive one another sexually; they should only refrain from sex when they mutually consent to do so, which means that spouses should be sexually available to one another at all times, in principle, unless both agree to abstain. All of these teachings can be qualified and nuanced in various ways. But Scripture most certainly teaches sex within marriage is a great blessing – not only because it gives life to new image bearers, but because sexual union is the heart and glory of the marriage covenant. 

Do you think any single man would want to be married to these women? Would they want to be married at all if this is the experience they're selling?

This is the branding crisis that Christianity is facing right now in the West. Being lectured by these women on sex feels the same… https://t.co/aoG58UvzvO

— Pat Stedman | Dating & Relationship Coach for Men (@Pat_Stedman) August 11, 2025

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Repentance is difficult but necessary after a long disobedience in the same direction. 

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The Binding of Isaac story in Genesis 22 is one of the most obvious typological prefigurings of the gospel in the OT. 

But the typology is not limited to Isaac, the promised seed undergoing a three day (figurative) death and resurrection (Hebrews 11:17-18). Consider also this aspect of the story:

After the Lord tells Abraham to spare Isaac at the last moment, “Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son” (Genesis 22:13). 

The Lord provided a sacrificial ram with a crown of thorns!! Can it get any more clear than that? The whole scene points ahead to the Greater Isaac, the miraculously-born seed of the woman, who will bear the thorn-curse for his people (cf. Genesis 3:18; Galatians 3:13; Matthew 27:29). God be praised for his glorious grace and marvelous provision! 

ADDENDUM: Isaac asks where the sacrificial lamb is. Abraham says the Lord will provide. What is then provided is a ram, not a lamb, leaving us wondering when the lamb will be provided (and opening the door to connections with the later rite of Passover). Of course, it’s easy to fill in the blank here. Jesus will the lamb – the true substitute for Isaac, and the true Passover. 

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People who are on welfare should not get a vote. 

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From November ‘24:

The CREC is basically just a bunch of Bible-believing churches that aren’t ashamed of anything the Bible teaches. It’s really that simple.

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“A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are can abomination to the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 22:5)

The word for what “pertains to a man” specifically refers to military gear. Women are forbidden from being soldiers, from serving in regular combat as members of the armed forces. Women who suit up for battle are practicing a form of cross-dressing because they are taking on a role that does not belong to them — it’s the moral equivalent of a man who puts on a dress and heels. That’s God’s law.

The point: Women do not defend the nation. They are what the men defend. Women do not do the fighting; they are the ones the men are fighting for. Men and woman have different glories; in this instance, it’s the man’s glory to defend, and the woman’s glory to be defended.

ADDENDUM: Deut. 22:5 is not symmetrical. What’s forbidden is distinct for each sex. Look at the Hebrew for what this law forbids women to do — “what pertains to a man” is “keli geber,” which means the “gear of a warrior.”

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On Hebrews 1 and Cessationism – the final word and the finished work go together:

The cry from the cross, “It is finished,” applies to revelation as much as to redemption. When the apostles (who were all witnesses to the risen Christ, including Paul, who became an apostle out of season) finished committing their accounts of Jesus and his work to writing, God’s special revelation to his people was complete. The perfected canon, just like the perfected sacrifice, is now ours. We are no more looking for more revelation from God than we are looking for another blood sacrifice. In Jesus, God spoke his final historical word to us, just as he gave us his final Priest, King, and Prophet. 

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Rome has no meaningful doctrine of initial justification, no change of legal status that takes place when someone is united to Christ by faith — so it’s an entirely different system. 

Just look at what Luther and Calvin said about post-baptismal sin vs Rome’s doctrine of penance.

On the necessity of obedience and final judgment according to works, the Reformers said a lot of things that have been excised by modern Reformed theologians so you’ll have to do your own research.

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From 9/23/24:

You are immortal, even invincible, until God’s purpose for your life is complete.

In a sense, we all have a terminal illness. We are all going to die. It’s not a matter of “if” but “when.” The heart of wisdom is to number our days aright, to reckon with the sheer brevity of life. A life properly used is lived in the shadow of our impending death and the judgement that follows.

As a pastor, the heart of my task is to prepare my people for those two momentous days – the day of death and the day of judgment.

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Luther and Calvin are definitely in alignment on the structure of baptism+absolution vs. the Roman view of baptism+ penance to deal with post-baptismal sin. See linked article.

Rome does not have a legal, declarative understanding of justification so it’s a categorically different kind of thing than my view and that of the Reformers. The downstream impact of that lack is massive, eg, it means that  Rome cannot grant assurance of salvation.

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This podcast is about a year old, but it was a good discussion of Christendom and the gospel of the kingdom. We have not lost the “culture war” because the culture war never ends. But we have lost ground and so we have our work cut out for us:

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Progressivism (socialism, feminism, Marxism, etc.) never works because reality is inflexible. It never yields to the demands of progressive ideology. The essence of progressivism is that you can create your own reality and meaning. It’s the lie of the serpent in the garden – “you shall be as gods.” It’s the non-sense spouted by SCOTUS Justice Kennedy in the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs Casey opinion, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This brand of autonomy is simply idolatry. And it’s certainly not liberty, nor is it liberating.

Progressivism tries to conform reality to its ideas instead of submitting to an external reality. It goes against the grain of reality, and so it always results in splinters. However nice progressivism sounds, it is at war with the way God made the world, which means it is always a fool’s errand. Nature is stubborn. Unnatural, anti-creational ideas and concepts simply won’t work. They conflict with human nature and God’s in-built design for human society. The feminists, Marxists, and so on, are just writing fiction. It’s all fantasy. But in this reality – the one God made, the one in which we actually live – the progressives are rebels who are bound to lose. Unfortunately, they do a lot of damage in the meantime by trying to impose their own will on God’s world. 

Progressives throw the wisdom and tradition of past generations overboard. (Remember: tradition is the “democracy of the dead.” Traditions are just experiments that worked.) Progressive fads change, but human nature does not. Progressivism declares war on God and God’s creation. But trying to transcend God’s laws is just as dangerous and foolish as ignoring his physical laws. Trying to ignore the God’s law of sex will work about as well as ignoring his law of gravity.  The Chris Stapleton lyric describes progressivism quite well: “fallin’ feels like flyin’ ’til you hit the ground.”

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Reality is fixed, not fluid. There are objective standards of truth, goodness, and beauty. 

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Martin Luther was not an antinomian:

“Do not think that you are saved if you are a drunken pig day and night. This is a great sin, and everybody should know that this is such a great iniquity, that it makes you guilty and excludes you from eternal life. Everybody should know that such a sin is contrary to his baptism and hinders his faith and his salvation. Therefore, if you wish to be a Christian, take care that you control yourself. If you do not wish to be saved, go ahead and steal, rob, profiteer as long as you can… But if you do want to be saved, then listen to this: just as adultery and idolatry close up heaven, so does gluttony… Therefore be watchful and sober. That is what is preached to us, who want to be Christians… A drunkard is not dissuaded from his drinking by reason any more than a murderer, an adulterer, whoremonger, or usurer…What should move you is that God forbids it on pain of damnation and loss of the kingdom of heaven.”

–Martin Luther (Sermon on Soberness and Moderation, 1539)

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A wall of personal, privatized piety is not enough to hold back the flood of progressivism. Christians must seek, engage, and use political and cultural power as well. We cannot disciple a nation without discipling its institutions. 

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“But there is a true glory and a true honor, that which cometh from God and not from man: the glory of duty done, of obstacles overcome, of fears resisted, and of generous sacrifices made to a worthy cause, the honor of an integrity of principle stronger than the sense of pain or the fear of death. He deserves most of this honor who from pure motives braves the direst evils and pays the costliest sacrifice for the noblest object. . . .”

— R. L. Dabney on the glory of doing your duty

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I did this podcast with Jacoby Nelson on forgiveness:

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“To withhold the light of the Word from civil rulers is to repeat the error of Rome by withholding the Word from the people. Scripture is the light by which persons see things rightly: “Scripture does not replace nature, but offers us the key to unravel it.”- James Woods + Phillip Hodemaker

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A post on parenting from April 24, 2025:

The most important earthly work we do in this life is raise our children. Everything else we do, except for the worship of God, is subordinate to this end, and even the worship of God includes it.  Christian parents must recognize this. It does not matter how successful you are, how much you accomplish in work or ministry, how much wealth you accumulate, how many public accolades you get, how much fame you attain —  if your children turn against you and/or turn away from the Lord, it’s all for naught. What good would it do to have millions of dollars in middle age or in your later years, if your children hate you or hate the Lord? What good would a mountain house or lake house be if your kids are estranged from you or from Jesus? What good is a family vacation if your family ends up spiritually fractured? 

Obviously, in God’s providence, there are hard situations. I’m not trying to make Christian parents with apostate children feel worse than they already do. Some cases of children who grew up in Christian homes and later apostatized are tough because it can *look* like the parents did everything right. But I’m not concerned here with those difficult cases. I’m much more concerned with helping young Christian parents and parents-to-be focus on the task at hand so they can do it well and experience the full blessings of God’s multi-generational covenant.  

Here’s what’s frustrating: Many Christian parents do not take their parental responsibilities all that seriously. And many churches do not help them take those responsibilities seriously. The results speak for themselves: all too many children raised in Christian homes are lost to the world. Given the reality that having apostate children is perhaps the greatest trial any Christian can deal with, it’s shocking that so many churches give so little time and energy to training parents how to raise their children biblically. Perhaps no other issue (other than marriage, which is equally important in this way) factors into our earthly happiness than our relationship with our children. “Once you are a parent, you can never be happier than your least happy child,” as the old saying goes. But how much teaching do most Christian parents get in their churches about the promises God makes to parents? How much teaching do they get on covenant succession? How much instruction is there about the multi-generational nature of God’s covenant? How much teaching do parents get concerning what it means to raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Or what the Bible says about education and discipline? Or inheritance? The stakes are so high, yet much of the church seems to invest so little.  

Certainly a great deal of earthly joy is lost because so many Christians parents simply don’t know what they are doing. So much kingdom growth is lost, since when we lose our children to the world, the aim of creating Christian culture and civilization is made impossible. And of course, souls are lost through parental neglect.  

In general, Christian parents need to be more diligent and more sacrificial. They need to be more conscientious when it comes to making decisions about discipline and education. And pastors and church leadership need to make teaching and preaching on wise and faithful parenting a priority. Parenting cannot be outsourced – God holds parents (especially fathers) responsible for how they nurture and train their children, and no one can take this task off their plate. But churches (especially pastors) have a responsibility to help parents as they undertake this massive work.

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Proverbs was written to train young men into good men, godly men, glorious men. Proverbs trains young men in their mission – centered in the fulfillment of the Creation Mandate to be fruitful and multiply, to rule and take dominion (this why so much of Proverbs is about a man’s wife and his work). Proverbs is kingly wisdom imparted to young princes. 

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The NT word for “worship” is “proskuneo.” The word literally means to bow or kneel before another as an act of homage. It’s interesting that many Christians will gather for what they call “worship” tomorrow but will not bow or kneel. Have they really worshipped if they don’t actually proskuneo? Why are most modern evangelicals too proud to bow before their God? Why do pagans so often show more reverence for their false gods than evangelicals do to the true God? 

An evangelical might reply: “we bow/kneel in our hearts.” But that’s Gnostic. What we do with our bodies matters. The NT word for worship describes a physical act – an act which summarizes and encapsulates what worship is all about. We should kneel in heart and in body. The whole service should reflect this kind of humility before God. Worship should be joyfully reverent in a holistic way. 

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The word for “witchcraft” or “sorcery” in the NT is “pharmakeia” (eg, Galatians 5:20; used in LXX for witchcraft in OT), from which we get words like “pharmacy.” Witchcraft is closely associated not just with spells, incantations, and curses, but with potions, brews, and drugs. The biblical category for the corner drug dealer is “witch” or “sorcerer.” You may not think of him as a witch or warlock but he is. 

This does not mean everything we call a drug today is a form of witchcraft – but many drugs are. There are certain drugs that have always been associated with witchcraft – particularly psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs. These kinds of drugs are not just chemicals; they are gateways to the demonic realm. Their use is a form of witchcraft. These drugs do more than create biochemical changes in a person; they tap into the realm of spiritual darkness. The experience of “getting high” is actually “getting low” – it is a demonic experience. Drug users refer to their experiences as a “trip” – and drug use is a trip, straight into the underworld. If witchcraft didn’t work, if it didn’t actually beckon the demons, the Bible would not speak so harshly against it. An individual who dabbles with these kinds of drugs is messing with forces he does not and cannot understand; he is playing with demonic powers and opening himself up to their influence. These drugs are deeply deceptive – they often bring great experiences of euphoria and pleasure at first, but then things turn dark. A society that opens itself up to these kinds of drugs is opening hell’s gate. 

The problem with the American “war on drugs” is that it was not theonomic enough. (It’s weird that some theonomists have taken a rather libertarian view of these drugs; I can only conclude they do not understand the full breadth of what witchcraft entails.) The law of Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” should have been applied to drug dealers long ago. Instead, we’ve played around with the problem and let it grow out of control. This is why the demonic has such a grip on American culture. 

Interestingly, in Deuteronomy 18, witchcraft is prohibited in the same breath as child sacrifice. These are pagan practices that should be rejected by Christians and outlawed in Christian nations. And note that in American history, the rise of drug culture, the sexual revolution, and the legalization of abortion (Molech worship) all arise within a very short timeframe in the 1960s and 1970s. These things are always a package deal, and always a part of paganization. We must suppress and criminalize these forms of paganism as part of re-Christianizing our society. 

A few further notes:

— Yes, Paul says everything God made is good and can be enjoyed provided we give thanks (1 Timothy 4:1ff). In context, he is pushing back against those who require abstinence from certain foods and from marriage – in other words, his argument is against those who deny the Creation of Mandate of Genesis 1. Certainly everything God made is good provided we put it to its good and proper use. Obviously poisonous mushrooms are not good for food; Paul does not need to state the obvious so he doesn’t. Likewise, psychedelic and hallucinogenic substances are being misused when taken as drugs. You can no more thank God for them properly than a guy at a bar can thank God for his twelfth shot of vodka. And since the context of Paul’s instruction in 1 Timothy 4 is the Creation Mandate, ingesting or smoking substances that interfere with the productive, wise, and fruitful fulfillment of that mandate are obviously prohibited. I have seen Scripture twisters try to use 1 Timothy 4 to justify the use of drugs but that’s not what Paul is saying. 

— Alcoholic beverages are obviously permissible under God’s law, and even required in at least one case (wine in the Lord’s Supper). But the abuse of alcohol – drunkenness – is demonic in the same way some drugs are. When a person becomes drunk, they lose control. Instead of being filled with the Holy Spirit, they open themselves up to the influence and control of evil spirits. This is why being a drunkard (a regular abuser of alcohol) is in the same vice list as witchcraft in Galatians 5. These are works of the flesh that show someone is not in the kingdom of Christ. 

— The biblical commands to be sober minded prohibit the use of mind-altering drugs (just as they prohibit drinking to excess). God wants his people to be clear headed and wise, alert and active. Drugs that put us in a stupor or detach us from the reality in which God wants us to live clearly violate this command. 

—

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment” (Romans 12:3) is not only good counsel for church life, it’s also good dating advice. Many people have passed up good matches because of an inflated sense of their own value. 

A related piece of dating advice for young people: While young men have great opportunities to increase their attraction value over time if they work hard, women will inevitably lose their attraction value. This one more reason why the lies feminism has told young women (which lies are magnified by social media) are incredibly destructive.

Related: it’s interesting that many women complain about the low quality men they attract, and then blame the men, rather than asking hard questions about themselves. 

—

I preached on 1 Samuel 28 today. At the end, I sought to connect this strange story with the gospel. Like the rest of the OT, this story points us to Jesus — but it does so in a roundabout way. Here are some thoughts:

When Saul sought out the necromancer/witch, he wanted to hear from Samuel. Once upon time, Saul and Samuel had been close. Saul had been like a son to Samuel. Samuel was greatly grieved by Saul’s falling away. Now, when it is too late, Saul has decided he wants to hear from Samuel again.

In a sense, Saul was seeking help from a departed loved one. And it’s easy to see how this could be a temptation for anyone who has lost a loved one, especially one’s whose wisdom we once appreciated. While Saul quit listening to Samuel long ago, in a moment of great crisis, he is desperate to hear from Samuel again. Of course, he ends up doing so in an illicit way, and it results not in deliverance but in disaster.

You might wish you could hear from a departed loved one too — especially if you relied on their wisdom while they lived. But Scripture is clear: you don’t need a word from the dead. You need a word from One who is risen from the dead. The dead do not have any messages for us. We are forbidden from attempting to contact them. We often have to wrestle through the grief of losing a loved one, acknowledging that we will not see them again until we depart from the land of the living ourselves – and we will not be fully reunited with them until the last day at the resurrection.

But in the meantime, we have the presence of One who loves us perfectly, who is always with us, who speaks to us any time we want to hear from him in his Word — the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our Word from God. He is our wisdom. We do not seek forbidden guidance from the dead. We have something better. Someone better. We have Jesus. Every tomb is silent except for the one Jesus broke out of on Easter morning.

In Deuteronomy 18:11, God forbids his people from seeking guidance from mediums and diviners, from sorcerers and necromancers (like the witch at Endor). But then God goes on to say he will raise up a prophet like Moses, a new and greater Moses (18:18). God will speak to us through him. He is the One from whom we should seek guidance and wisdom. When Jesus is transfigured on the Mount, the Father speaks from heaven and says, “Listen to him.” Do seek a word from the dead; seek a word from the One who conquered death.

—

Komisar’s book Being There is full of good insights into the science of motherhood.

“Daycare is terrible for children.” ~ @EricaKomisarCSW pic.twitter.com/LC14C1Kxe0

— Anthony Bradley (@drantbradley) August 7, 2025

—

You don’t need to “find” God’s will for your life. His will was never lost. Just do what he says in the Bible. Or as Augustine put it, “Love God and do what you want.”

—-

I sometimes hear evangelicals talk about evangelism as “building bridges” to unbelievers. I am all for finding effective ways to communicate the gospel and the teaching of Scripture to the world, but all too often this “bridge building” entails shaving off the sharp edges of God’s Word. The only “bridge” between belief and unbelief is repentance.

—

“I shall not travel the tracks of fame

Where the war was not to the strong;

Where Lee the last of the heroes came

With the Men of the South and a flag like flame,

And called the land by its lovely name

In the unforgotten song.”

– G. K. Chesterton

For an excellent overview of Chesterton’s political and historical sensibilities about Lee, the old South, and much more, check this out:

theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/01/deplor…

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The promise of the new covenant is a world filled with God-glorifying fruit. The new covenant will succeed precisely in the ways the old covenant failed. The Israel of God will fill the whole world. 

Isaiah 27:6

    [6] In days to come Jacob shall take root,

        Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots

        and fill the whole world with fruit.This is postmillennialism in one verse. 

—

“The experience of ages proves that the world by wisdom knows not God. The heathen nations, ancient and modern, civilized and savage, have without exception, failed by the light of nature to solve any of the great problems of humanity. This is the testimony of history as well as of Scripture.”

— Charles Hodge on the limits of using natural law with the natural man

—

One of the marks of a great teacher is that he can say the same things many times over, and you never get tired of hearing them – in fact, the repetition is helpful. It is interesting and insightful every time. Doug Wilson is a great example of this. I can listen to Wilson say the same thing for the fiftieth time, and it still yields new insights. I can hear him use the same illustrations again and again, and they always feel fresh. 

Jim Jordan would be another teacher with this gift. I can hear Jim again and again, teaching many of the same things I have already heard him say, and yet it never ceases to be profound. Teachers who have real insight can do this. It’s a gift. 

—

The classic Protestant “two kingdoms” doctrine of the early Reformers was an adaptation of Augustine’s “two cities” model of political theology. The changes made to the 1789 American version of the Westminster Confession were an adaption of the classical “two kingdoms” political theology to a new situation. Kuyperianism was yet a further modification and adaptation of the tradition to challenges presented by a secularizing society. The Theonomic and Christian Reconstructionist movements were variations on the tradition to deal with modern liberalism and pluralism. The current Christian Nationalism movement is yet another adaptation of this tradition to current controversies and problems.

Some of these adaptations were more faithful to Scripture and to our Augustinian, Reformed heritage than others. But they were all modifications within an established tradition.

The “radical two kingdom” view, prevalent in many segments of the Reformed church today, is not an adaptation of the tradition, but the abandonment of that tradition. 

[NOTE: To avoid confusion, I should point out that while the Reformers were operating within and adapting the Augustinian tradition to their situation of a more advanced Christendom, Augustine “two cities” anf the Reformers “two kingdoms” are not the same. They make the same point, but with different terminology. Augustine’s two cities are the city of God and city of man, each animated by a very different love. The “two kingdoms” of the Reformers generally represent the spiritual and the civil, both of which are under and should be obedient to the lordship of Christ (not all the Reformers delineated the two kingdoms in the same way, but that’s a rough approximation for most). I could have also inserted Gelasius’s “two swords” doctrine in there as well, between Augustine and the Reformers, since it was somewhat influential.]
—

Thomas Sowell:

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.”

The failure of leftism, Marxism, progressivism, feminism, etc. explained in one Sowell quote. The fact that an idea might sound nice just makes it more dangerous if that idea clashes with reality and human nature.

—

It’s extremely likely that the disciples had their families with them at the Last Supper in the upper room.

I can’t make a full case right now, but a few considerations:

Passover was obviously a family meal from it’s first institution (Ex. 12). The law only required the men to attend (Deut. 16), but obviously families were welcome to as well. We know that historically, most Jews who lived relatively close to Jerusalem (like all of the apostles) would bring their families to the Passover (cf. Luke 2). 

If the women and children were not present in the upper room, did they skip Passover that year? Did the apostles eat a second Passover meal with them at another time and place? Both of those explanations seem very unlikely to me. It seems more likely they were all together.

This doesn’t mean women and children were at the same table — it’s likely men at sat one table, women and children at another. But it’s also likely that the upper room was large enough for a bigger group; I think the upper room in which they had the Last Supper is the same upper room the disciples and a much larger group were in, in Acts 1:13ff — there were 120 people there, so space would not have been an issue. 

—

My comment from a discussion on gentle parenting and critical theory:

Where did “gentle parenting” come from? 

Abigail Shrier does a good job explaining this in her book Bad Therapy. But here are a few more thoughts:

The therapeutic turn is tightly related to the rise of progressivism and critical theory. All these worldviews conspired to undermine traditional parenting. Traditional parenting came to be viewed as inherently oppressive because they view ALL authority/hierarchy as oppressive. 

Gentle parenting is just therapeutic culture brought into the realm of parenting. And so it insists every feeling/emotion must be validated and parents must be completely non-judgmental.

Honestly, I can see why people who think of parenting in this way either have few kids or no kids because it’s absolutely exhausting and time consuming. It also produces entitled brats. —
Wisdom that gets at the heart of Ecclesiastes:
Live the life that unfolds before you. Do the next thing. 
—

Be thick-skinned and tender-hearted. 

I originally heard this as counsel to young pastors (of which I was one at the time), but it’s a maxim that applies in many areas of life.

—

Husbands are not “spiritual” leaders, they are “everything” leaders. The command is not, “wives, submit to your husbands in spiritual matters” (who polices the boundaries of what is spiritual anyway?).  The command is, “wives, submit to your husbands in everything.” 

—

“Most marriage counseling is not marriage counseling, it’s fruit of the Spirit counseling.” — John Michael Clark 

—

Many men get frustrated because their wives seem to carry a lot of fears and anxieties, most of which seem irrational to men. But I tell husbands to look at this way: her fears and anxieties are your opportunity to be her hero as you rescue her from them, and make her feel safe and cherished. A man who knows and understands his wife’s inner struggles can increase his wife’s respect for him by guiding her through those struggles. But to do this, he cannot get frustrated or angry with her; he cannot get caught up in those fears and anxieties; he cannot become impatient or harsh with her. Instead, he has to be a calm, steady, dependable presence in her life. 

Bottom line: Men, your wife is the weaker vessel, and this is often manifested in things that cause her fear and anxiety. Instead of losing patience with her in those situations, see them as opportunities to display your masculine strength and increase her respect for you. 

—

If a feminist has ever made a man happy, it was on accident.

—

The phrase “servant leadership” is redundant.

Leadership is service.

Many men are afraid of their authority because they don’t want responsibility.

But if you don’t exercise your authority to lead you are still responsible.

You cannot escape God’s design.

—

Headship and submission are crucial to a peaceful marriage. There is no such thing as a democracy of 2, and no such thing as 50/50 leadership.

—

Just like engines need oil to lubrucate them and keep them from overheating, family life needs the grace of constant confession, repentance, and forgiveness. 

—

“The incarnation is the key that unlocks the sense of all God’s revelations. It is the key that unlocks the sense of all God’s works, and brings to light the true meaning of the universe.” — John Williamson Nevin

—

Respect for persons and respect for personal property go hand in hand. We must choose: do we want the economics of envy and theft or the economics of freedom, responsibility, and innovation?

—

Martin Luther:

“For in an exigency, one can do without the sacrament, but not without God’s Word.”

—

Why don’t we allow the free market to do what it does best in health care and health insurance?

—

“The offspring of believers are born holy, because their children, while yet in the womb, before they breathe the vital air, have been adopted into the covenant of eternal life. Nor are they brought into the church by baptism on any other ground than because they belonged to the body of the Church before they were born. He who admits aliens to baptism profanes it…. For how can it be lawful to confer the badge of Christ on aliens from Christ. Baptism must, therefore, be preceded by the gift of adoption, which is not the cause of half salvation merely, but gives salvation entire; and this salvation is afterwards ratified by Baptism.”

— John Calvin

This is why, in Genesis 17, the male child who was NOT circumcised is considered a covenant breaker. In some sense, he was already in covenant with God BEFORE receiving circumcision as a sign of the covenant promise.

—

“As far as I can see many parents today are overprotective but also strangely permissive. They hesitate to give advice or get involved, afraid of seeming controlling or outdated. They obsess over protecting their children physically, but have little interest in guiding them morally. They care more about their children’s safety than their character. Protective parenting once meant caring about who your daughter dated, the decisions she made, and guiding her in a good direction. Now it just means preventing injury. And so children today are deprived of the most fundamental protection: the passing down of morals, principles, and a framework for life. One obvious example of this is that adults act like children now. They talk like teenagers. They use the same social media platforms, play the same video games, listen to the same music. Our world moves too rapidly to retain any wisdom, denying parents the chance to pass anything down or be taken seriously, so they try to keep up with kids, who know more about the world than they do. Fathers are “girl dads” who get told what to think. Mothers are best friends to gossip with. The difference between childhood and adulthood is disappearing, and with it, parental protection.”

— Freya India

—

Why is it so important for Christians to be covenantal and postmillennial (besides the fact that these doctrines are biblical)? Because rival worldviews are covenantal and postmillennial in their own way. Progressivism, Marxism, Islam, etc. are all worldviews that claim ownership of children and expect global victory.

—

The traditional, Reformed, postmillennial understanding of the Great Commission understood that discipling nations had both individual and institutional aspects. They not only preached the gospel, they established Christian institutions to bring about the transformation of culture.

—

“Well would it be for the Church of Christ, if it possessed more plain-speaking ministers, like John the Baptist, in these latter days. A morbid dislike to strong language – an excessive fear of giving offence, a constant flinching from directness and plain speaking – are, unhappily, too much the characteristics of the modern Christian pulpit. Uncharitable language is no doubt always to be deprecated. But there is no charity in flattering unconverted people, by abstaining from any mention of their vices, or in applying smooth epithets to damnable sins. There are two texts which are too much forgotten by Christian preachers. In one it is written, “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.” (Luke 6:26) In the other it is written, “Obviously, I’m not trying to be a people pleaser! No, I am trying to please God. If I were still trying to please people, I would not be Christ’s servant.”

— J. C. Ryle

—

A couple Chesterton quotes on the sexes and marriage:

“[T]he differences between a man and a woman are at the best so obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be got over unless there is an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness and mutual interest.  To put the matter in one metaphor, the sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be welded together, it must be while they are red-hot.  Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman.  But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’  Every man has to find out that his wife is cross – that is to say, sensitive to the point of
madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard.  But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else’s sanity.”

“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.”

—

Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever wondered what a truly biblical marriage proposal look like? Wonder no more! Just consider the end of 1 Samuel 25:

[40] When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” [41] And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” [42] And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.

Note several things here:

Not only did David not get down on a knee with a ring, he didn’t even propose in person. He sent his servants to do it. And when they got to Abigail, they didn’t “pop the question.” They just said, “David sent us to take you to him as his wife.” David didn’t ask Abigail to be his wife; he simply told her to set a wedding date.

Note how Abigail responded. She didn’t just say yes, she bowed down and said she would even be willing to wash the feet of David’s servants. If that’s not a pledge to be a submissive wife, nothing is. Ladies, this is how it’s done. 

Next post: Courtship tips from Ruth and Boaz. 

[Note: This post is sarcastic.]

—

An old thread on race and nations:

What would Aristotle have said if he had lived to see medieval Europe (aka Christendom), where precisely those groups that he observed being antagonistic to one another came together to build a beautiful Christian civilization?

Aristotle could not even begin to imagine what the gospel would accomplish because he did not have the gospel

Think of Belloc’s statement about medieval Christendom, “Europe IS the faith”

Also, there is some confusion about “nature” here

What Aristotle was observing about the hostility of various ethnicities and their inability to get along was not “nature” per se

While it is true in an unfallen world, as humanity spread out to fill the earth, various genetic and cultural ethnicities would form, these groupings are providential, not natural

They would have been contingent, not fixed, even in an unfallen world 

Ethnicities are not fixed in nature the way, say, male and female are

Ethnicities are contingent – they come and go in God’s providence 

Many ancient ethnicities no longer exist, many new ethnicities have come into existence, and there is no reason to think the ethnicities we have today will still be the ones we have 5000 years from now 

In an unfallen world, an ethnicity might have an “in group” preference but would still love the “out group” – and some degree of mixing would not be forbidden or even imprudent

What Aristotle viewed as the natural condition of divided humanity was actually fallen humanity, not God’s creational design as such

But Aristotle had no conception of the fall or redemption , so no way to distinguish fallen from unfallen (or redeemed) humanity

—

Grace does not destroy testosterone, it restores it.

—

Our culture has demonized masculinity. Masculine strength is considered dangerous and toxic. Masculine ambition is replaced by “everyone gets a trophy.” The masculine desire for competition on the ball field is considered a violation of egalitarianism. The masculine desire for competition in the marketplace (capitalism, or the free market) is attacked an unfair, and there is a desire to replace it with a socialized economy, a universal basic income, etc. Masculine hobbies – football, guns, cars – are all under attack.

Many men have become ashamed of their masculine nature. They embrace a kind of effeminacy, thinking it will make them more attractive (it doesn’t). Many men simp for women, embracing feminism and other leftwing causes like abortion and egalitarianism. Men deny their own created nature and accepted a worldly perversion of what it means to be a man.

The need of the hour is, and has been for quite some time, for men to reassert a virtuous masculinity. We need good men who are good at being men. True, there are many forms of masculinity today that really are toxic (e.g., the Andrew Tates of the world). These men are masculine in certain ways, but they are not good men and they will make things worse instead of better. Our culture is in desperate need of genuine, biblically-shaped, creationally-grounded masculinity. The church needs to be producing such men.

One reason I have really enjoyed preaching through 1 Samuel is because it gives us two excellent archetypes of faithful masculinity (along with a lot of distorted versions of masculinity for the sake of comparison). David and Jonathan, as presented in 1 Samuel, are two of the best representations of faithful masculinity we have. David, the humble boy who grows in a wise and valiant warrior, a leader of men, a man who knew how to take risks and endure hardships. Jonathan, the noble son of a ignoble father, a man who understood loyalty and friendship, a man of true humility and virile courage. These are the kinds of men we need. Where are our Davids? Where are our Jonathans? Such men are in short supply. God, grant us such men.

—

Postmillennialism in hymn form:

1 Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Does his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

2 For him shall endless prayer be made,
And praises throng to crown his head;
His Name, like sweet perfume, shall rise
With every morning sacrifice,
With every morning sacrifice.

3 People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on his love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessings on his Name,
Their early blessings on his Name.

4 Blessings abound where’er he reigns;
The pris’ner leaps to lose his chains,
The weary find eternal rest,
And all the sons of want are blest,
And all the sons of want are blest.

5 Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honors to our King,
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud Amen,
And earth repeat the loud Amen.

6 Behold the islands with their kings,
And Europe her best tribute brings;
From north to south the princes meet,
To pay their homage at His feet.

7 There Persia, glorious to behold,
There India shines in eastern gold;
And barb’rous nations at His word
Submit, and bow, and own their Lord.

8 Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more:
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.
9 Great God, whose universal sway
The known and unknown worlds obey,
Now give the kingdom to Thy Son,
Extend His power, exalt His throne.

10 The scepter well becomes His hands;
All Heav’n submits to His commands;
His justice shall avenge the poor,
And pride and rage prevail no more.

11 With power He vindicates the just,
And treads th’oppressor in the dust:
His worship and His fear shall last
Till hours, and years, and time be past.

12 As rain on meadows newly mown,
So shall He send his influence down:
His grace on fainting souls distills,
Like heav’nly dew on thirsty hills.

13 The heathen lands, that lie beneath
The shades of overspreading death,
Revive at His first dawning light;
And deserts blossom at the sight.

14 The saints shall flourish in His days,
Dressed in the robes of joy and praise;
Peace, like a river, from His throne
Shall flow to nations yet unknown.

Does any church sing all 14 verses? My church has done it once or twice, but usually we just sing the first 5 (which is all the Trinity Hymnal and most other hymnals include). As an advocate of paedofaith, verse 3 is probably my favorite, but the overall global scope of the hymn is what makes it so powerful.

The hymn is based on Psalm 72 and usually sung to the majestic Duke Street tune.