Note to the T’s: If you change your name to appropriate the gender you are assuming, then you are agreeing with cultural norms that your new name belongs to that gender. If names weren’t gendered, if there weren’t a traditional order to them, you wouldn’t see any need to change it.
Let me explain. The LGB’s all have one thing in common. They assume a duality of gender. They may now deny it, but in so doing, they deny their very identifying characteristic, that being who they are in relation to who they are sexually attracted to. And sexual attraction requires some sort of definition if it will also serve as identification.
To be an L, you must first accept that you are a woman. Following that, you must be sexually attracted to other women. To be a G, you must first accept that you are a man. Following that, you must be sexually attracted to other men. Rocket science, right? To be a B, you must first accept that you are either a woman or a man who is attracted to both women and men. If that weren’t true, you wouldn’t identify as Bi, which is a prefix meaning “two.” Like a bicycle. Or a biannual event. Or binary code.
In contrast, the T’s reject the binaryness of sex and gender. They say that gender is on a scale that goes from here to infinity and beyond, to steal a phrase. Facebook allows you to select from over 50 genders, last I looked, and if that isn’t enough it allows you to self define your own gender. I’m a “dude” on Facebook, for example. You can look me up if you want to be sure, but don’t expect any interaction from me on there. Gab is where to go when you’re tired of being “fact checked” by people who can’t decide if they’re LGB or if they’re just on some bizarre scale of confusion.
A foundational aspect of their worldview is in dispute, not a tertiary aspect. Foundational. If the LGB’s were to reject the T’s based on this, as well as any further additions to the non-word acronym, they could reassume a level of respectability, at least in intelligencia circles. But they allow competing worldviews under their banner, a banner that is already falling to the banner of the T’s, showing the confusion they all share. This may be enough to be celebrated by our culture, but celebration is not the ultimate goal they are after. They long to be worshipped for their confusion. And that is a confusion ultimately stemming from their rejection of God and His word.
Earlier, I highlighted the factors that these people, all made in the image of God, use to define themselves. That pride of self-identification is the root of their error. Well, a root. They have redefined God, a violation of the first commandment. They have made themselves into objects of worship, second commandment. They demand that we speak untruths, 9th commandment. I could go on. Here’s the deal though. We are all created in the image of God. Our identity has always been based on that, whether we choose to admit it or not. We are all in covenant with God whether we like it or not. The only difference is whether your mediator is Adam or Jesus.
The Bible speaks clearly about those who reject the clear truths laid out in nature and in scripture. Such actions are condemned. Such feelings are a direct result of the fall and are to be contested against. The Bible also speaks with hope for ones such as these. The best story that comes to mind is that of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-38. A eunuch was someone who could be trusted completely with anything his master had, including the master’s wife. This is because the eunuch was castrated prior to puberty. This castration would result in a highly reduced level of testosterone, so the eunuch would eventually be recognized by others based on the results of this development alteration. A slight build, reduced body hair, probably also differences in voice and mannerisms. The eunuch was not necessarily trying to change from male to female, but he was dramatically changed in much the same way some evil people want to change confused children in our culture.
This eunuch was trusted by his master and had a high position in his country, but that was only because of irreversible body modifications. Many in the church today would take one of two approaches. The first would be to ignore such a person, thinking he was lost beyond any hope for the gospel. The second would be to speak out against him, though he was not an opponent or rival. In fact, this man was reading the scriptures and trying to make sense of them. It is noted that God put Philip in place to have a conversation with this man, and to explain what he was reading. And once he believed, Philip did not hesitate to accept and baptize him. A gentile with his sexual organs disfigured was loved in the same way many others were. That is how we ought to approach such people, whether they are T’s or LGB’s.
So pray for opportunities to share the gospel with whoever God has in your paths. Look for these opportunities to present themselves. Do not deny God by agreeing to the errors that contradict the word of God. Be patient, gentle and kind. Remember just how much God has forgiven and continues to forgive you.
1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
“May the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace. May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever.”-R.C. Sproul
Who can stop the Lord Almighty? That is the repeating question we asked in song this last Sunday. Most likely, you are familiar with the song if you attend an Evangelical church. It’s fairly popular and has been for several years. Our God is the lion, The Lion of Judah. He’s roaring with power. And fighting our battles. And every knee will bow before Him. Our God is the lamb. The lamb that was slain. For the sins of the world. His blood breaks the chains. And every knee will bow before the lion and the lamb. Every knee will bow before Him.
As I repeated that question (I view it as more of a hypothetical question then as a statement) my mind went to the book that I’ve been reading. That book being “Paradise Restored” by David Chilton. This book is available in paperback on Amazon, but is less expensive in hardcover at American Vision, so do yourself a favor and pick this one up there. It will stretch your assumptions and get you thinking in ways that may surprise you. If that wasn’t true, I wouldn’t be writing this post right now.
One assumption that is being tested is that of WHEN these things will take place. Not necessarily a date, but more of an order of things. Is God fighting our battles now or will he fight one day? I can’t imagine a Christian who would say that they are left to their own devices today. Every knee will bow before the lion and the lamb. When? Before or after the second coming of Christ? Until pretty recently I thought that the only Christian response was that victory on a scale larger than a remnant could only make sense at the second coming. But what if we are truly to be salt and light in this time? Here? Now? What if we are to preserve and improve things for others and not just try to woo people into life rafts for a ship that is destined to only sink?
And don’t forget that Jesus identifies with and AS his people.
Acts 9:3-5 ESV Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
This “both directions” identification isn’t absolute. The church did not atone for sin. The head of the church, Jesus, did. And it is the body, us, who spreads the good news of this victory over sin and death to those whom we come into contact with. All authority on Heaven and Earth have been given to Jesus, and in direct causality we are instructed to go and make these disciples and to baptize and teach. To refuse to go and also to go in such a way that disregards the fact that Jesus holds all authority in His hand are both equally sinful.
Who can stop the Lord Almighty? That’s a good question. I also ask this. Who can stop the bride of the Lord Almighty? She has been given a task. She has been empowered to fulfill her role. Her bridegroom has been given all authority. Not most. All. As we go through the good works set before us (Ephesians 2:10) let’s keep this in mind. We are part of an unstoppable kingdom. To approach the tasks that our Lord has ordained for us as tasks that are doomed to fail is to have the mind of one who doesn’t believe He holds all authority or that we have not been empowered to fulfill them. How can such an approach be anything but sinful?
Still reading. Still learning. Still stretching.
God wins. The controversial part is that we get to be a part of it.
Today was our church’s first “normal” service in a year. We had been meeting with every other row blocked off and having spacing in the remaining rows between family groups. Today, that was all removed. The only abnormal thing was that we were given a card to put at either end of our group to signify a space between you and others. Historically, setting down your coat or Bible served this function just as well, so I see the card as redundant.
There were people sitting in front of and behind me. There were people not far away to my right. I could hear other people as we sang.
That sounds kinda trite, but hear me out. There are what I like to call “one anothers” found primarily in the epistles. These are expectations that God has for those who call upon His name when they gather together. Most of those expectations have been adjusted to comply with governmental requirements and to assuage the fear of death that some of the attendees might have. Sorry, I couldn’t not include that one.
Being in attendance and participating in the service doesn’t complete the instructions given in these “one anothers” but it goes far further than you may think. Societies have been paused now for a good year. Even those like myself who try to live as normal a life as I can in the midst of this plandemic are feeling the fatigue of life. We are more isolated from real human contact than before and the divisiveness just gets exhausting. Being able to actually hear someone near me singing about Christ and Him crucified right along with me and my family is a step toward removing that isolation.
We were created to be in community with our creator and others worshiping that same creator. The church should never again allow the state to dictate what that looks like. The church is the gathering of God’s people, not a commercial for unbelievers to see how cool we are. We need each other. We have always needed each other.
So as you attend services, looks for opportunities to “one another” someone. Shake a hand. Sing it out. Be there. It matters now more than ever before.
In every church I’ve ever been a part of, there is a ceremony where a young child is presented before the Lord. Some churches baptize babies, some have dedications. I’m not here to debate that one. Either way, the children are presented, the parents vow to raise the children in such a way as to lead the children toward Jesus, the church agrees to support this raising in any way possible.
OK then. Sounds good. However, church in America, I have this against you. I have never been a part of a church that had any initiatives that were specifically designed to assist the families with home schooling, and of the churches I have researched in my area, support for home schooling is seldom discovered. I find this to be a big miss in a vast majority of churches. Especially ones that sit mostly empty during the weekdays, with WiFi humming along but nobody on it except the pastor who is preparing a sermon or answering emails.
“We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.”
There are churches that offer private schooling, and I think that’s great. But there are many more churches who neglect this key period of time in the lives of their youngest responsibilities. And this isn’t a big ask. It can begin with a general offer to provide a place where homeschool families can network and combine resources in a Co-Op fashion. This can later evolve within the church as other considerations are discovered.
A while back, I was an elder in a small church that would have 130-150 attendees on an average Sunday. I mentioned this very idea in an elder’s meeting and it went nowhere. We didn’t have any expertise in the area and had enough going on at the time. Meanwhile, at least two of our families were actively homeschooling their children. We had another family who had recently enrolled their kids into government schools because they were advancing into grades the parent wasn’t comfortable teaching.
If religion is primarily about making disciples, government schools are the established religion of America.
Let me rephrase. They handed their kids to be discipled by the government because the homeschool parent felt overwhelmed and the church did nothing to assist. That same church that loves to make vows to assist in the discipling of the child toward salvation in Christ.
For additional reasons, I am no longer even attending this particular church. But I grow more and more convinced that churches need to allow for the facilitation of homeschooling if they are to fulfil their mandate to make disciples and to let the world see that we belong to Jesus by how much we love one another. I have written before about the theological malpractice of using “loving your neighbor” as a pry bar to coerce Christians to do things that are a matter of conscience. This doesn’t fall into that category. Vows were made. And then discarded just as soon as we saw that it was time to start rolling up our sleeves.
Like many of you, I have just learned of the death of Larry Flynt, founder of Hustler magazine. My first thought was that whatever he thought about God in life is probably very different than his thoughts now. I mentioned this to my wife and she wondered aloud if Mr. Flynt ever became a Christian.
I don’t know of any repentance of his sins. I don’t know if he believed in Christ alone for his salvation. I just don’t know.
This isn’t a post warning you against the products or living the lifestyle of a pornographer though. It’s a post warning you against a different temptation we all share. You see, I can compare myself to Larry Flynt or Hugh Heffner all day long and feel really good about myself.
But these men aren’t the standard. They never were the standard. The standard has always been perfect righteousness. God is thrice holy and will not, can not, must not accept any less.
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48 ESV
All of a sudden I’m not thinking about how great I am when I compare myself to Larry Flynt. There is an unbridgeable gap between me and the standard that I continue to fail on a constant basis. My only hope is to have that perfection given to me. I have fallen short and desperately need to be justified.
I am not the standard. Jesus is. I require His perfect righteousness and nothing less. So do you.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV
I am the lamb with seven eyes and seven horns. The lion who roars, calling forth the seven thunders. I know your zeal, the way you have opened your doors to all peoples and ideas, gathering the curious with programs and with emotional messages. You have a history of spreading your message both within your borders and across the world and have not grown weary of sending others to share in my suffering.
But I have this against you. You have decided to resemble the world more than me, and have done this so that your Christian witness might not be hindered! You have withered at infection from without, causing infection from within to set in all the more, disregarding my instruction regarding infectious disease. You have allowed outward appearances to supercede the internal truths spoken from the God who sees the heart.
With all you have been given, shouldn’t much more be required? Have I not made one people from the nations? Haven’t I spoken in a way that you are able to understand? Do you serve me or your local authorities, who also must answer to me? Behold! The master is returning soon, and all of the debts will be reconciled! Your talents will be weighed and measured.
All of this degradation has been championed by those who once measured their growth by love, joy and peace if not by humility and self control. Those who were granted a platform that my people could consume more fulfilling meals but who never used that platform to soften their own hearts or to harden their own feet. There are reasons other than lukewarmness to spit out a drink. These were your champions? May they return to Gath!
Repent of your misdeeds! Repent of your adoption into the world and return to me, if you ever were of me! To the one who overcomes, I will return you to health. I will multiply your joy until it wells up within you and overflows to the nations. Though you must suffer for a little while, your reward will be great.
Editor’s Note: This post is not to be confused with Holy Scripture, nor is it intended to serve as an authoritative instruction to all churches at all times. The letters to the seven churches in Revelation are complete and sufficient. I was only trying to write within the genre in my completely insufficient way.
First a little background. I came to faith seventeen and a half years ago. Old enough to be a spiritual grown up, young enough to still count half years. I was a husband and a father and I knew that I was ill equipped to fulfill my duties in either role in the way that my newfound savior would expect. I had grown up in the church and understood a few basics, but that was about it. So I threw myself into the deep end and sought to learn about God as quickly as possible. That is where this blog originally came from. A Bible reading project leading into a desire to make up for decades of lost time as I viewed it.
A Christian man (I forget his name) found out that I was new to the faith and challenged me to believe and be baptized. Then he asked me what being baptized means and I said that it was a water dunking. He responded with the first Greek word I’d ever heard. Baptizo. He told me that to be saved, you must repent/believe and then be engulfed and overwhelmed by the gospel. Halfhearted Christianity was not salvific and I needed to mature and grow, which just so happens to be exactly what I was looking for.
Rather than invite me into a discipling relationship, he told me to purchase “Desiring God” by John Piper and I read that book chapter by chapter alongside another blogger whose name you would recognize. I was being challenged with ideas that had never occurred to me before and he was my lifeline as I questioned these concepts and heard his take on them.
That was a worldview altering Book. I learned that Christianity is not rules to follow and a savior to resolve my failures. I learned that it is a lifelong battle to seek the greatest joy available, and that joy is found only in God. I now had a foundation to build upon!
Over the next few years, I attended several pastor’s conferences. seeing men preach, men whose books and broadcasts I had been soaking up. Mark Dever, Russell Moore, Albert Mohler, David Platt, Tim Keller and pretty much anyone associated with The Gospel Coalition. My personal favorites were John Piper, John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul. I was a bit bothered by the elevated platform these pastors had in relation to the many pastors who paid for tickets to these events, but the delivery and the richness of content they provided me was invaluable.
Time went on and I grew in the knowledge of my faith by leaps and bounds. Before I knew it, controversies arose among the Christian blogs. My skills as a believer in sola scriptura were put to the test. It was helpful that I came to faith while reading my Bible in its entirety and it was essential in these times that my memory for various passages would make recollections quickly and accurately. I credit the Holy Spirit.
Many topics came and went with various bloggers sharing their stance, and supporting it with biblical references and concepts. We debated the drinking of alcohol, the continuation of spiritual sign gifts, whether children killed in abortion were taken directly to Heaven, and much more. I remain shocked that we never debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. And through all of these debates, my ability to support my stance by the Bible was exercised and strengthened.
And that exegetical strength was put to the test by the Emergent Church. Well, not really. I had enough of a foundation by then that the postmodern Emergent authors rang hollow to me. Sure, some of their complaints were valid, but at the same time their solutions were just vacuous and lacking in any reliable biblical sense whatsoever. If any value was found in their messages, it was that the churches ought to pursue a grace filled authenticity often found in simplicity over complexity. Virtually everything else they shared was rooted in anti-Christian paganism that they would attribute to their post-Christian missional way of thinking. Thankfully, very few of their concepts are overtly found in churches today. With a few notable exceptions.
They advanced notions of social-justice in their conversations, for one. That doesn’t sound so bad to us now, but whenever you hyphenate a concept that is owned by God alone, you begin to undermine His authority in that realm. God defines justice in His law passed down through Moses, and the social-justice of the Emergent Church contradicted that law. Just as the various hyphenated justice statements of the Woke today contradict the Law of God, and thus are not justice at all, but cheap imitations of it. Before you redefine something, first you must reject its original definition.
The various celebrity pastors mentioned above rightly rejected the Emergent movement as pagan. God has been very clear in how we are to approach Him and the practices of the Emergent Church were strange fire before the Lord. As time went on, the EC pastors faded away or converted their teaching to something more orthodox. The celebrity pastors, especially John Piper, were quick to come alongside these men and guide them on a path that was true to the Bible.
How’s that for an intro?
Over time, these various pastors started to reveal that they were not who we thought they were. I first came to this realization when I noticed some troubling tweets from Thabiti Anyabwile, a prominent contributor at The Gospel Coalition. He was openly pushing for leftist causes that are contrary to the laws of God. I pushed back with scripture verses. You know, the really obscure ones like “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not murder,”you know, the ones that most leftists don’t like to think about. He didn’t relent so I copied The Gospel Coalition directly and asked them to step in, since he was using their website and their name in defiance of what one would expect from any publication with the word “Gospel” in it.
Crickets. There came no response. And none of the other TGC members or contributors gave any counter to what he was saying. I lost all hope in The Gospel Coalition as a whole when I happened to see this article.
In church yesterday, leading up to the most contentious election I have ever witnessed, with one candidate who spoke at the national Right to Life march and the other one going on record as wanting to expand abortions without limits in the US and abroad, all paid with our tax dollars, the pastor went so far as to tell us to know what the issues are and to vote through a biblical lens. He did bring up the great evils that a leftist would champion, but he did not name any persons or parties to vote for or against. That has been the norm in churches throughout our country. True Christians oppose killing babies, mutilating young children, stealing from your neighbor, and more. One party champions doing things like this and most pastors are too afraid to endorse against it. Why? Because then they could lose their listeners who love darkness rather than light (John 3:19) and worse yet, they could lose their tax exempt status.
No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.
Luke 16:13-14
Right about now, you’re probably expecting me to tell you to vote straight ticket Republican. I won’t do that. I will remind you of what I said in my last post though. One day you will give an account for every word that you utter, every time you gave or withheld comfort from someone, every time you spent the money that God gave you to manage in ways that are dishonoring to Him. And you will give an account for your positive affirmation of how a candidate has declared he or she will use the authority that you are handing them. And I don’t want to say that I hated my God and my Neighbor by endorsing the destruction of children made in God’s own image.
Maybe you’re cool with that. Thabiti Anyabwile certainly is. And so is The Gospel Coalition. They are more concerned about the coalition than they are in the gospel and don’t let them say otherwise. So very few “celebrity pastors” have remained firm against the onslaught of wokeness, which I haven’t even defined. And honestly I couldn’t fit all there is to say in a single blog post. But wokeness is antithetical to the gospel. It denies that every debt to God was paid by Jesus on behalf of His elect. It denies that true reconciliation can only be found in the gospel. It denies that reconciliation is even attainable. There is only the punishment of your oppressors. No Justice, No Peace? To be woke is to deny the one who defines what justice and peace even are.
Most of the men who I soaked up everything they ever published have turned out like this. They have built their houses upon the sand and I pray for their repentance. I saw glimmers of this in John Piper a few years ago when some racial unrest was happening but the subject changed and he stopped speaking about reparations for sins that he didn’t commit and I thought it was done and over with. Now he has equated the murder of a million babies per year with someone being arrogant. This is the logical progression from the Emergent Church that rejected objectivity. The Emergent Church rejected the notion that the Bible is the final authority in how we ought to live, favoring emotion and the inclusion of heterodox methods of discernment. A breeding ground for wokeness.
I used to suggest John Piper books and recordings to everyone I know. I thought Mark Dever was today’s architect of how a church ought to function. I thought Al Mohler and Russell Moore had the worldview that every Christian ought to share. I thought Kevin DeYoung and David Platt were the next generation of faithful teachers of biblical truth. I thought Tim Keller was a trustworthy deep thinker worthy of being followed. The list goes on.
There are exceptions to be found, but for today I’m once bitten twice shy. If some of the names I’ve shared are concerning to you as well, and you would like some more information, I will suggest you subscribe to AD Robles on YouTube. Also, I am in the middle of an eye opening book called The Woke Supremacy that will give you a much better definition of wokeness as well as the ramifications of it on our society.
They say not to have any living Christian heroes and now I know why that is. My Christian faith is not shaken in the slightest, but I am saddened by what I have seen. And I’ll need to look at the publication date before I offer a copy of Desiring God to anyone I am discipling.
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain-if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith-just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Galatians 3
P.S. Though their names appear in this post, I believe John MacArthur to remain a faithful minister of the gospel and R.C. Sproul has passed away leaving a legacy of faithfulness to the gospel. I have tertiary theological beliefs that differ from both of them, but I am thankful that God has preserved some who have not bowed the knee to the marxist wokeism that can be seen in our culture and in our churches all to much.
P.P.S God will preserve his church, sometimes by allowing fools to expose themselves. Romans 1 calls this “giving them over.” I pray that I am premature in this thinking.
Long time readers will likely not see anything out of the ordinary here. Newer readers to my blog just might. You see, I once operated under a certain set of assumptions. Then, 17 years ago, all of my assumptions were challenged and shown to be left wanting. Now, I still remember these assumptions, all too often I echo them, and sometimes I measure them up against the Bible to see if these assumptions are so. This is one of those times.
What is the determining factor to determine who leads the executive branch of the US Government? If you’ve been through a civics class (and based on the reactions out there I don’t believe most Americans have) each state tallies a vote of their citizens (or residents if they are foolish) and the winner of that state takes a certain amount of electoral votes. Each electoral vote is good for you getting one elector, a person who will submit the vote on your behalf in the electoral college. Win a majority of the electors and you win the presidency. Theoretically.
If I were teaching a government class, I would accept that answer. If I am teaching a Bible class, I would accept the answer with the understanding that ultimately it is God who places rulers in power. Don’t believe me? Read Romans 13:1 again. If that doesn’t do it for you, try Daniel 2:21. Need some red letters? Read John 19:11. God not only places every leader into power, He places leaders who are both good and evil into power for His reasons, not necessarily yours.
So there you have it. Votes do not ultimately determine the winners of elections. God places people in power and he removes them from power. There is no authority on earth that God has not ordained. Therefore, failing to vote for candidate A over candidate B is not the same thing as voting for candidate B. Or is that candidate C? Is candidate C Kanye West or the Libertarian Party nominee? And does it matter in the end? Why vote? To be a responsible citizen? Yes. But even more, we participate in our local governments as an act of worship. “Do all to the glory of God” is the command given in 1 Corinthians 10:31 and if you look up the Greek word for “all” in that verse, it directly translates to English as “all.” No exclusions.
So as you ponder who to vote for this November, remember that you are not installing a person into power, but you are casting your vote as a showing of faith in the One who holds the heart of every leader in His hands. That reference is found in Proverbs 21:1, if you’re wondering. Likewise, if you decide not to vote, that is your right as well. Offhand, I can’t think of any rights that we have that don’t inherently include the right to abstain. The right to speak includes the right to remain silent, as just one example.
It can be difficult to decide how best to vote to the glory of God. Many Christians look for the lesser of two evils approach, which is really absurd if you think about it. All that you know of the evils of the candidates has been told to you by a media that decides not only how to present the stories, it decides what stories to present and what stories to ignore. If the lesser of two evils is your stance, you are a fool who is carried along by the news media, that is not only biased, they are unwilling to acknowledge their bias. Besides that, you are entering the realm of legalism, where you are able to determine which of the candidates is less evil and more pure, deserving of your vote.
Allow me to present an alternative.
In our system of government, the voters are the owner/employers and the candidates are the job applicants. The campaign process is like an extended job interview and the vote is the consensus decision on who should hold the position. Our loyalty is to God, not to any political party. It is never the responsibility of the voter to support or oppose any candidate. Rather, it is the responsibility of the candidate to earn my vote. No voter should be expected to compromise the moral standards of God in order to avoid a worse fate from the opposition. We should never vote against someone, but the candidate needs to provide reasons for us to vote for them.
One day we all will give an account. And I pray that when I do, I can tell God that I voted, not to sway the election, but to demonstrate my fealty to Him. We we not given a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of self control. (2 Tim 1:7) So to vote against the candidate who you fear the most is antithetical to your testimony of God’s power.
God is sovereign. Nothing happens outside His will. All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. In light of these things, let us vote, or not vote, to the glory of God. If you can vote for someone to the glory of God, do so in peace. For me and my house, we vote for the one who has shown an allegiance to the sanctity of life. And yes, we do vote knowing that the opposing party is fully immersed in platform planks that are in direct opposition to every one of the ten commandments. Except maybe commandment #2.
Can you give your vote, your positive affirmation, to someone who wants to expand the baby killing in this country? Can you vote for someone who affirms the delusion that there is more than one gender? Can you vote for someone who believes in an economic system that relies on breaking the tenth commandment not to covet? If you answer yes to any of this, I invite you to read the last verse from Romans 1 again.
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
I’m not sure what things will look like on the other side of this, but I am confident that after this season of hidden things being exposed, we will be stronger for it. People who you thought you could trust to the end have been revealed to be two dimensional friends. People who you disagreed with for tertiary reasons have been shown to be trustworthy.
We will get through this though. Not without realignments. Not without painful separations. But we will get through this. Stronger than before. The hysteria will end far later than it should, but it will end. You will rely on people you didn’t know beforehand and you will trust old friends as much as you trust a fart after a trip to Taco Bell.
From a religious standpoint, this era has been painful to say the least. I had my suspicions about certain “Big Eva” pastors before COVID and the Intersectionality riots, but they have certainly been confirmed in these months. Not only have they been confirmed, but names who I held in high regard once are now meaningless to me. Albert Mohler, Tim Keller, Jason Meyer, Andy Stanley, Mark Dever, pretty much anyone in The Gospel Coalition (which is more interested in the coalition than in the gospel) have been revealed to be gospel redefiners, which is to say that they are gospel deniers.
I came to faith in my 30’s and I wanted to make up for lost time. I read my Bible and poured myself into learning everything I could. I looked for faithful pastors who would saturate me with a view of the gospel that was compelling. I read books, listened to sermons, compared my faithlessness from before with the expectations that God has for those whose hearts of stone are replaced by hearts of flesh. I wanted nothing greater than to be faithful to this high calling.
As time has gone on, most of these “celebrity pastors” have shown themselves to be unworthy of following. The most faithful pastors have generally been those without large followings and with nothing to lose. There are exceptions, of course, but I don’t intend to proclaim anyone famous as a faithful teacher until they have been dead long enough for any secrets to come forth.
Meanwhile, we are in a situation where people in the spotlight and people in the local arena are shown for who they are, and many of them are not who we once thought they were. Perhaps this is painful because we didn’t want to be wrong about them. Perhaps we had thought the best of them and found out later that the best just wasn’t the case.
Any way you look at it, people are showing you who they really are. The masks are coming off, no pun intended. You will be surprised. You will be disappointed. If you are wise, you will learn not to place your trust in the flesh of this world, but rather in the eternal faithfulness of the only one worth worshiping. Your only hope is not found in man, but in God. He has defined the terms and He has demonstrated His justice already.
Accept His definitions and His finished work. To quote Heisenberg of Breaking Bad fame, “No Half Measures.” Jesus does not add to your works. He is your works. Adding to them is actually a subtraction. Trusting in your deeds, however many or few, is folly.
