Let me set a scene for you.

It’s Davey’s ninth birthday party. Things are going well so far. Davey loved his parent’s unconventional takes on classic party games, including “Bobbing for Bell Peppers,” “Pin the Eyes on the Bush Baby” and, of course, “Musical Exercise Balls.” He wasn’t even that upset when his friend James had to be rushed to the hospital after a hasty bounce sent him careening into the corner of a bar stool.

Just as Davey opens his last present, he hears the sound of a truck backing up.

“Look out the window, son!” Dad says.

When he does, Davey sees a semi-truck unloading a massive rectangular metal container that takes up most of their front yard, including the spot where his 18-speed once existed in three dimensions. The words “Mediterranean Shipping Company” appear in block letters on one side.

“Whoa!” Davey says, shuddering with either terror or excitement. “Wh-what is it?”

Davey’s parents take their son out to the container, where Dad produces a skeleton key from his back pocket and inserts it into a medieval-looking padlock. As it clicks, the massive door swings open with a substratal groan. As Davey’s eyes adjust to the darkness of the crate, his eyes balloon to the size of European cantaloupes.

Gummy Bears. Hundreds of bears. Thousands of bears. Millions and millions and millions of bears!

“Wow! Thanks so much Mom and Dad!” Davey says. “How many can I have? And why does it smell like nail polish in here?”

“As many as you like, dear,” Mom says. “And what you’re smelling is the best part: every gummy bear has been glazed with food grade PCP! Which means the more you eat, the more you’ll want to eat! And the more big and strong you’ll grow.”

Davey didn’t know what PCP was. All he knew was that after the first handful of gummy bears, his parent’s arms had disappeared into their torsos and what looked like a trail of light was leading out of the shipping container towards a supersized, rainbow-colored bush baby brandishing a giant pink toothbrush.

Happy Birthday Davey!

“We are failing our children. Enough is enough. Our parents cannot face these challenges alone and the safety of children cannot be an afterthought.”

- Marc Miller

It’s hard to know how we managed before the days of Canadian Identity and Culture Ministers. Dark indeed were the days when children had to navigate the road towards adulthood without the heavily-moisturized wizard hands of Marc Miller and his ilk, guiding them on the narrow path between supervillain and hermetic poetry consultant. Not to worry though, Marc is here now. Here to remind us that we’re failing our children.

The thing is — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — he’s not wrong.

Why there’s no such thing as “safe” internet

I get it.

It’s hard to keep a straight face when a guy like Marc Miller — chief architect of such multifaceted disasters as the International Student Program — starts prying into other people’s failures. Looking around at what Canada has become, it’s also clear that the last vestiges of identity and culture he’s supposed to be preserving are actively being herded towards a cliff edge. Not to mention that any government figure who starts finding whimsical connections between plural possessive pronouns and other people’s children should get a free ankle monitor and a “Mark and Avoid” t-shirt.

None of this rescues us from the main problem, however, which is the fact that we’re even having this conversation in the first place. Recall, if you will, what we’re trying to do: “make it safer” for kids to just — wander the corridors of the internet. Feel free to read that again. This is like trying to make it safer for kids to wander through an anti-tank minefield. It’s the wrong conversation. The conversation we should be having is, “Why are kids being allowed to wander through minefields at all?”

The problem is bigger than social media. It’s bigger than traffickers or lewd content. The problem is that a disturbing number of kids now carry the means to instantly gratify every passing impulse … in their pockets. It’s like giving them a shipping container full of drug-laced candy and telling them to “stay safe and have fun.”

The fundamental question isn’t what social media companies ought to be doing to keep kids safe. That’s like asking what drug lords ought to be doing to keep their clients safe. We’re not dealing with moral entities here. They don’t work within “oughts.” Their goal is business and, frankly, keeping kids safe just isn’t good for that.

The “oughts,” then, roll down. Down, down, down, to where nobody wants them to stop: parents. If the police find a six-year old roaming around outside Shady Shankman’s Pleasure Palace at two in the morning, guess whose door they’re going to be knocking on? Not the mayor’s; not the neighbor’s; not even Shady Shankman’s. And parents really need to stop fooling themselves here. Even among the vast quantities available, there aren’t enough rules, legislation, or firewalls in the world that could make smartphones “safe” for kids — again, because their greatest danger is existential, not material.

Thus, and much to everyone’s surprise, the entire prospect of a “Digital Safety Commission” proves to be yet one more government boondoggle.

A clear and present responsibility

There’s an epidemic of confusion among parents as to the nature and extent of their responsibilities. Thankfully, the Scriptures chart a clear path out of the weeds, “Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it, Prov. 22:6.” Here it is. A parent’s responsibility is to set their children on the right path, training them towards wisdom and away from folly.

And in case the right path wasn’t clear, it’s the one without the rabid wolves and poisonous gases seeping out of the ground. It’s the one that leads away from depression, the withering of attention spans, the dislocation and isolation from community, the demented delight in brainrot, the exposure to innumerable sexual perversions, the marxist and neo-nazi propaganda, and a hundred other soul-destroying things.

The sad fact is that for many parents of my generation, spending several hours a day checking, scrolling, watching, or messaging has become normalized. It has become expected. It has become part of modern life.

But that “the way things are” weighs more heavily than “the way things ought to be” is an indictment on us. At the end of the day, our children are not actually our own; they are God’s. And not only will every person someday “receive what is due for what he has done,” but also for what he has done with the responsibilities he was given. Denying them may make us feel better, but it doesn’t absolve us.

And really, what more could we want for our kids than to breathe the free air? To help them lay aside every weight so they can give themselves to the race yet before them? As parents we all stumble in many ways.

May drowning our kids in poison candy not be one of them.

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One of the books they read was John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. This book, second in popularity throughout history only to the Bible, tells the story of the Christian journey from the City of Destruction to the Heavenly City. The story is an allegory, an earthy, episodic folk tale, and one that has resonated with the hearts of millions since its publication in 1678.

In this episode, we discuss this beloved story, and invite you to discover with us what has made Bunyan’s little book such an explosively popular “best-seller.”

In times of widespread spiritual decline, it’s only natural to feel the numbing influence of despair creeping steadily into the heart. But this, it turns out, is the problem: despair is natural. It doesn’t proceed from faith.

Despair may best be described as the simple loss of confidence and hope — a kind of resignation that sweeps over the soul in response to some outward pressure or circumstance. Faith would have as its object the indomitable light of God’s glory in the Word and ultimately in the person of Christ. But despair can’t look past the gloom temporarily eclipsing its light, and cripples the heart with constant thoughts of trouble.

We might say despair begins where faith falters.

Feelings of despair are not unfamiliar to the saints. Among the panoply of emotions represented in Scripture, and especially in the Psalms, despair is among one of the most common. As with all sin, it is also one that must be put to death. One of the principle ways we do this is by fixing our eyes on the sure and certain promises of God. We might consider David’s words again: “Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and the people shall dwell there and possess it; the offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.”

Derek Kidner comments helpfully on the note of triumph found in these verses:

“It is striking […] that what is added is not petition but praise; and praise which looks beyond the day of decline and insecurity to the full extent of God’s dominion […] and the perfecting of his people’s inheritance. The psalm is yet another reminder that the most desperate of prayers can end, and rightly so, in doxology.” (Kidner, Psalms 1 – 72, 268)

Every ship needs a heading — a chartered course, a fixed destination, an immovable point toward which it is aimed that keeps the vessel moving unswervingly in the same direction. Human beings are no different. Without a clearly defined telos we are quickly buffeted and blown off course. We become victims of the relentless assaults of despair.

Thankfully, God has given the Scriptures to guide His saints through such danger. In them, we hear the God of Jacob thunder and we are brought back to the orienting centre of all reality: “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Where is the comfort of the people of God found? According to the psalmist, it is found in the remembrance that God has purposed to be exalted in all the earth — and His purposes do not fail.

Thus, when all the world seems to give way, when the fabric of creation itself appears to be unraveling, when that which seemed to be most firm turns out to be brittle and transitory, the Church can rest secure in the knowledge that her covenant Lord will not let His promises become void: Christ will have His inheritance of nations (Ps. 2:8). He will return to be glorified in His saints and marvelled at among all who have believed (2 Thess. 1:10). He will come with His angels in the glory of His Father to repay each person according to what he has done (Matt. 16:27).

Strengthened by the Word of God, our privilege in this fallen age is to look out at the carnage of the world with resolute conviction and conquer despair with hope. For “God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it; the offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.”

Come, Lord Jesus!

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Due to the plummeting returns on corporate activism, high-roller sponsors such as Home Depot, Google, Nissan, and Clorox have all decided to pull their financial support for Pride, leaving a “funding gap” for this year’s festivities. No doubt the absence of Clorox wipes will also present a “sanitization gap” if previous parade antics are any metric to go on.

As a result, Pride organizers from across the country have requested a $9 million cash injection from the Federal government (i.e. taxpayers) to ensure that the noble legacy of grown men in diapers doing the stanky leg on the back of a flatbed can be preserved for generations to come. This, of course, on top of the millions of dollars they’re already getting. Rumor has it Toronto mayor Olivia Chow has personally threatened to inflict her Caribbean Carnival costume on the population if her demands are not met.1

Explanations for the decline of interest are as varied as they are braindead, and include the rise of “far-right extremism,” tariffs, Trump, and the Venus-Jupiter conjunction taking place on June 9th.

No one wants to talk about the real reason, of course, which likely has more to do with the increasingly evident disparity between lgbt+ rhetoric and lgbt+ reality. For years we were scolded into believing Pride was about inclusion, diversity, and justice. What the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Tumbler Ridge shooting, drag story times, and the rising number of transition malpractice lawsuits actually reveal is that Pride is to social justice as a disk mulcher is to a family of shrews loitering in tall grass.

In other words, Pride seems to be experiencing something of a branding crisis.

And I’m 100% here for it.

Evil’s true nature

Why does Pride need millions of dollars to operate? Ostensibly, to cover “security, artists fees, logistics costs and rising budget items.” The deeper reason is because millions of dollars is what it costs to remediate, or at least neutralize, its sheer concentration of moral degeneracy.

See, God has built a kind of principle into the world where the better something is, the less adornment it requires. There’s a reason Jesus said the lilies of the field were dressed finer than Solomon in all his splendor. There’s a reason white remains the most popular colour for weddings. There’s a reason aged ribeye steak needs only the barest suggestion of salt and pepper to taste delicious. There’s a reason Chesterton defines the spectacle of bare tree branches against a pale winter sky is “luxuriantly indefinable to an unusual degree.”

Goodness doesn’t have to fear the relative “nakedness” required by elegance. It has nothing to hide. There are no skeletons in its closet. There is no botox under its skin.

And the inverse is true. There’s a reason Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. There’s a reason corruption loves to luxuriate in fetid carnivals of bureaucracy. And there’s a reason Pride ceremonies are so pervasively gaudy. The worse something is, the more elaborate its disguise has to be. The closer evil appears as its true self, the more apparent its ugliness will be.

God has so made the world that the nature of a thing is difficult to hide indefinitely. This is especially true where evil is concerned. Its best hope is to gradually sear the conscience of everyone around it so that when the mask finally falls off, everyone is already acclimatized to ugliness. Still, much like Simon Cowell’s perfectly-plumpened face, it exists in a precarious state. One exaggerated gesture — one careless laugh — and the whole thing could collapse onto itself.

Consider the sheer volume of propaganda and machinery it took to maintain the illusion of the USSR’s “workers paradise.” And how quickly a single disaster blew the whole thing away.

One little word

As Christians, the inherent instability of evil should hearten us.

In contrast to evil’s fluctuating fortunes, we are receiving a kingdom that can’t be shaken. Whose foundations, established by blood, go down to the very roots of the cosmos. It should also hearten us because, in Luther’s words, “One little word shall fell him.” In context of the hymn, this line is referring to the utter ease by which Satan will ultimately be overthrown. Christ will speak and his reign will evaporate like a late-stage soap bubble.

But we might easily extend the felling power of little words to our own time.

In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Count Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin is one day informed by his wife, Anna, that she is leaving him. Over time, he becomes convinced, contrary to the principles of his faith, that divorcing her is the only option left to him. He spends weeks mastering every argument and positioning every counter-argument. But in the end, it only takes his blubbering, overly-sentimental sister-in-law to stammeringly remind him of the weight of his covenant. In an instant — in a word — the vast architecture of his position is overcome.

That’s how fragile sin is.

At the end of the day, we don’t know if these few pebbles are the beginning of a landslide or simply tremors of a groaning creation. Whether they be few or many, we know Pride’s days are numbered. The only question is — at what point do we not interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake?

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Well, it’s been a while since ol’ Uncle Donkey cracked a window open into his soul. There’s a couple reasons for this.

First, it smells like a moldy old garden shed in here. Second, I live in perennial fear of disturbing any “lonely soulisms” that might be hibernating on the ceiling fan or under the water cooler. This being acknowledged, Paul also makes it clear in 2 Corinthians 1 that God brings his people through various trials so we can more effectively help those around us. If he unfolds particular light to us through a difficult season, good stewardship isn’t stuffing it in a green waste bag and tossing it on the curb.

So for what they’re worth, I thought I’d pass along a box of recent thoughts on words, writing, and communication in general. No, they’re not organized. And yes, you can have them all for a dollar if you also promise to take Great Aunt Tracy’s wicker wine rack. For those who still feel robbed by the end, I’ll only point you towards the contract you automatically agreed to when you became a subscriber.1

To sum up, I’ve lately felt convicted in regards to what I’ll call an … unbefitting … approach to language. This doesn’t mean I’ve cowed to the mewlings of the What Wouldn’t Jesus Say guild, or that Balaam will be any less offensive moving forward for those its become my moral duty to offend. It does mean I’ve been struck afresh at both the world-building and world-shattering nature of words — at their capacity to both make and unmake. And although most people wouldn’t keep their C-4 components in with their Junior Magic Set props, it seems that various factors — the undiminishing stream of online content being perhaps the chief culprit — have essentially acclimatized us to a similar kind of carelessness with our words (Matt 12:36).

Second, there’s a certain indignity that occurs when, instead of being a vehicle for light and beauty, words become a means of satisfying some perverse and shrivelled lust within us. No, God’s kingdom isn’t dependant on the authenticity of his vessels (In every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice … Phil. 1:18). But neither is God glorified by the ministry of hypocrites.

Jesus tells us in Luke 17:10, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” If we are unworthy servants even in the midst of our duty, what does that make us in the midst of abjectly ignore our duty? Something you’d find under a subway bench, that’s what.

The Erosion of Common Ground

Part of the challenge of ministry in our day is that it feels difficult to say or write anything without having to continually stop and explain everything.

This is because effective communication requires shared culture, which the West once had in the form of a Christian worldview. Good, evil, hate, love, men, women, law, justice, faith … we used to have enough in common to have reasonably productive discourse about such things. That was before we sold our birthright for a bowl of goat curry. Multiculturalism, pluralism, and secularism — agents of cultural erosion — have reduced the island of words we can now assume general agreement on to roughly the surface area of a Panera bread loaf.

For those who witnessed the “equity card” debacle at the most recent NDP convention, that’s what happens to language when your common culture evaporates — nonsense — pandemonium. Words, passions and made-up hierarchies being flung around like they’d just been pulled from a bingo-ball machine.

See, when I use the word justice, I have in mind something relating to the punishment of evil. But many just think of flags, taking knees, and Ceremonies for the Appeasement of Vengeful Indigenous Ghosts Haunting the City Hall Council Chambers. When I use the word life, I have in mind the entire spectrum of earthly existence from zygot to natural death. But many just think of infancy to whenever life stops being easy. When I use the word traditional, I mean that which accords with our historical reliance on a Christian worldview. But many just imagine a bank of disembodied “values” relating back to the 1950’s zeitgeist.

Every age has has its own barriers to communication. Ours just happens to be a fluency in brainrot. So what to do in light of it?

When a machine isn’t running right, the solution isn’t to go on pretending everything’s fine. You try and fix what you can, then figure out how to work within what you can’t. When Paul wrote his letter to the Hebrews, he had high hopes of being able to move beyond “elementary teachings.” But they weren’t ready. They were wallowing on the lawn like anaphylactic teletubbies. Does he plow on with temple furnishings anyway? He does not. He shifts gears from “solid food” to “milk.” He communicates on the level of their ability. He becomes all things to all men that by any means he might win them.

Paul’s rules of engagement should become ours. If we need to slow down to define our terms, then so be it. God isn’t panicking, and neither should we.

The other thing I’ve noticed, at least in myself, is the temptation to not say anything until I can say everything. But this isn’t how the Gospel works. God doesn’t wait until someone understands every point of doctrine to save them. He works within our limitations. He takes our few loaves and fish and multiplies them. Through the Spirit, he takes our lame rhetoric and gives it feet like a deer. He takes our leaky apologetic and makes it irrefutable. He gives his angels wings and his messengers a flame of fire.

This gives us freedom to say what can be said, and to write what can be written, without waiting until we can drop the entire 43-Volume Brittanica Encyclopedia in someone’s lap.

A re-exaltation of monotony

Something changed for me one evening this past Christmas, as our family made its way through Ryan Whitaker Smith’s excellent book, Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K. Chesterton.

I can’t remember all the details but there was a blizzard raging outside and a wood fire blazing inside. There was also a half-decent Pinot noir hovering on the fringes. We, or rather Chesterton, had been talking about the incarnation as a kind of invasion into the winter stronghold of our world. As we lingered and chatted, an unexpectedly weighty discussion began to unfold around our dinner table.

Now, you can talk to any member of my family and they’ll tell you the number of times I’ve presided over “profound” discussions have been … minimal. But that evening, every question became incisive. Every response hit the precise heart of things. Every digression became just another facet effortlessly woven into the topic at hand. I became struck by what I can only describe as the divine weight of everything. For those who’ve read Orthodoxy, it felt like I’d just gone on a long journey and returned to my home country with new eyes.

Lewis said that there are no ordinary people — that no one has ever talked to a mere mortal. But the truth is, there’s no ordinary anything. There’s no ordinary dandelions. Or church buildings. Or cows. Or clouds. My dinner in’t ordinary, nor is the lilac tree blooming in front of my house. This isn’t me flirting with pantheism. This is me articulating that to catch even a glimpse of the Christ under creation is to assault any roots of cynicism or utilitarianism that may be mortifying our evangelism. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, and we ought to carry something of this grandeur on our lips and in our pens.

This has been pressed on me even more as I’ve been reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a book in nearly every way opposed to our current way of “doing language.” First, it is unapologetically inconvenient; it’s about 73,000 pages and about as heavy as sack of rice. It is slow and careful. It is self-effacing and razor sharp. It is an unhackable entity. It took a week for me to acclimatize to what this — thing — even was. Once I did, I felt like my canoe was no longer scraping along the surface of the shore and that I was now gliding along in deep water. I began to realize that social media, the relentless news cycle, and the constant pseudo-profundity and rage bait have seriously damaged our ability to take deep breaths.

Our entire generation is busy creating shallow, reactive takes that barely stand the test of hours, let alone years or centuries.

Where to From Here?

The detriment of the modern media machine is that it ends up conflating the urgency of things right in front of us with things happening millions of miles away. This isn’t to say we should ignore geopolitical issues. It is to say we shouldn’t be driven by them. Being preoccupied with what we can’t change instead of what we can usually just means nothing gets done, with our families, churches, and communities suffering the most for it.

There’s also the danger not just of geographical dislocation but of existential dislocation. This happens when, for various reasons, we try to escape into endeavors that not only are of no practical use to anyone, but that are positively destructive: cathartic doomism, empty speculations, ragebaiting, myth wrangling, dubious soothsaying, and pedantic treatises on obscurant theology come to mind. I’m not advocating for anti-intellectualism — in fact, all the things I just mentioned are the definition of anti-intellectualism. I’m advocating for teachers and leaders who make it their aim to carefully, reverently, and excitedly unfold what has been “once for all delivered to the saints.”

So there you have it — a kind of state of the union if you will. If you can count the house centepides scuttling around in my brain a union.

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Dr. Mangalwadi provides both a rigorous intellectual and historical account of specific ways the Bible has built our world, but also first-hand knowledge of the contrast between the consequences of a Biblical worldview and a Hindu worldview.

For a comprehensive and helpful work on the topic, please see Dr. Mangalwadi’s book, This Book Changed Everything: The Bible’s Amazing Impact on Our World (2019).

Rev. Chris Cousine is the preaching pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (CREC) in Cochrane, AB. He is married 26 years to his wife Amy, and father of three children and one grandchild. You can find his substack here.

Each year our church sets aside time to address what Scripture teaches about sexuality, marriage, and the created order. We do this not because we are obsessed with controversy but because God’s Word speaks clearly to matters the world persistently seeks to redefine. Biblical Sexuality Sunday is not a response to headlines or trends. It is an act of pastoral responsibility.

We return to this subject year after year because confusion does not resolve itself. Left unattended, it deepens. And when the Church grows silent or uncertain where Scripture is clear, the cost is not merely intellectual—it is pastoral, generational, and covenantal. God’s people are shaped by what they are taught, but also by what is assumed, neglected, or quietly surrendered.

At the same time, it is important to say what this day is not. This is not an opportunity for outrage or fear-mongering. It is not a moment to posture ourselves as morally superior to the world around us. Nor is it a time to reduce biblical sexuality to a list of prohibitions or cultural talking points. Scripture does not begin with “thou shalt not,” and neither should we.

Instead, our aim each year is clarity—clarity rooted in God’s design, clarity that gives coherence to our lives, and clarity that anchors us amid a culture increasingly detached from meaning, order, and fruitfulness. Sexuality, in the Bible, is never isolated from covenant. It is never detached from purpose. And it is never treated as self-defining. It is always given context, direction, and meaning by God Himself.

Rather than beginning with the boundaries of biblical sexuality, I want us to step back and consider its foundation. Rather than starting with what Scripture forbids, I want us to look first at what Scripture commands. In particular, I want us to see how marriage and sexuality fit within God’s original covenant purpose—and how that purpose is not discarded in the gospel, but fulfilled and expanded.

My goal here is to present to you a unifying thesis — namely that the covenant of marriage and the covenant of redemption share the same structure, purpose, and mandate: fruitfulness that fills the earth. I want to show you how marriage is the original covenant form that the gospel later fulfills and expands, and how the erosion of one covenant form inevitably undermines the clarity and coherence of the other.

The fruitful imperative

After declaring that God had made them male and female, we hear in Genesis 1:28 the first command God gives to humanity: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” This command is striking not only for what it says, but for when it is given. Before there is law, before there is sin, before there is shame, prohibition, or discipline, God gives a positive mandate. The first words spoken over human sexuality are not warnings, but a commission. Fruitfulness is not a concession to the fall; it is a blessing rooted in creation itself.

It is important to see that this is not offered as advice or preference. In God’s providence and sovereignty, this is given as covenant mission. God is not merely describing what might happen; He is commanding what must happen. Fruitfulness is the form that obedience takes in the original covenant. This means that sexuality, from the beginning, is oriented toward participation in God’s purposes rather than the fulfillment of private desires.

We should pause, then, to consider what Scripture means by fruitful. The command itself provides the first clue. Fruitfulness is immediately joined to multiplication. This tells us that fruitfulness is not solitary, nor is it self-contained. One cannot be fruitful by oneself, and one cannot be fruitful apart from the complementary union of male and female as God has created them. Fruitfulness is therefore covenantal by definition. It presupposes union, difference, and cooperation under God’s word.

Just as importantly, the mandate of this covenant union is outward-facing rather than inward. Adam and Eve are not commanded to remain where they are, content with what they possess. They are commanded to fill the earth. This tells us that the original vision was never static. Eden was not meant to be a permanent enclosure, but a starting point. Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden, in the presence of God, with everything they needed to carry out the mission entrusted to them.

The sexual union of Adam and Eve was therefore not an end in itself. It was generative. It was meant to produce offspring who would produce offspring who would produce offspring, spreading as they went, carrying God’s order beyond the boundaries of the Garden. The intention was to take what God had given them—life, blessing, holiness, and communion—and to extend it faithfully through time and space. Fruitfulness, from the very beginning, is the means by which God’s good creation is meant to grow, expand, and be filled with His glory.

This reminds us that human sexuality does not begin with restriction or prohibition, but with a God-given vocation ordered toward outward fruitfulness under His covenant authority.

The goal of fruitfulness

If fruitfulness is the imperative—the mission given to Adam and Eve—then the next logical question is: fruitfulness unto what? What is its goal, its shape, and its direction?

When we speak of fruitfulness, the most obvious form it takes is the production of offspring. That much is clear. But Scripture never treats human reproduction as a merely biological process. As our Lord makes clear in the Gospel of John, there are ultimately two kinds of children in the world: those who belong to God and those who belong to the devil (John 8:44). The question, then, is not simply whether the earth is filled with people, but what kind of people it is filled with.

Was it God’s intention merely to populate the earth indiscriminately, regardless of faith, worship, or obedience? Or was the mandate of fruitfulness ordered toward something greater? The answer is evident from the whole testimony of Scripture. Fruitfulness, while it includes the bearing of children, must also include the faithful formation of those children. The mission is not only reproduction, but image propagation.

To be fruitful, then, is not simply to create biological offspring, but to cultivate and transmit the image of God in all that it entails. Godly fruitfulness includes instruction, formation, and faithfulness. This is why the covenant places such emphasis on teaching. In Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Israel is commanded to teach the words of the Lord diligently to their children—to speak of them in the home, along the way, in rising and lying down. The Law of God is not given merely for personal morality, but so that a people might know how to live rightly before Him.

From this faithful instruction flows culture. As children are trained in worship, obedience, and wisdom, a godly culture begins to take shape—one that mirrors the original creation mandate. This brings us back to Genesis 1:28, where fruitfulness is immediately joined to dominion. Adam and Eve are commanded not only to multiply, but to subdue the earth and exercise authority over it. Fruitfulness, therefore, includes the establishment of order. God does not bless chaos. He brings form, structure, and harmony, just as He did in creation itself.

Finally, this fruitfulness is inherently generational. The covenant does not look only to the present moment, but forward through time. When parents teach their children in faith and obedience, they are training them to carry forward the same covenant mission. God’s mandate for fruitfulness is given so that His reign might spread—faithfully, orderly, and enduringly—across generations.

This helps us see that fruitfulness in Scripture is never merely biological and certainly not accidental, but purposeful, ordered, and aimed at the faithful propagation of God’s image through generations.

Christ our covenant

Next, I want you to see that Christ takes the same covenant shape. This is the crux of my thesis.

Scripture consistently refers to Jesus Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as His bride. There is a tendency, especially in modern preaching, to romanticize this language—to turn it into something primarily emotional or sentimental. But biblically, this is not poetic excess. It is covenantal precision. The marriage imagery applied to Christ and the Church is not borrowed language; it is continuous language. It deliberately reaches back to the first marriage in Genesis and declares its fulfillment.

Let me lay this out clearly.

Adam and Eve were joined together by God Himself. Their union was not self-generated, nor merely contractual; it was a divine act. In the same way, Christ and the Church are joined together by God. Scripture is explicit that salvation is not the result of human initiative, but of God’s sovereign joining—those whom the Father gives to the Son are united to Him by grace. This is covenantal union, not voluntary association.

When God joined Adam and Eve, He declared that the two shall become one flesh. That language is foundational. But the New Testament does not abandon it; it deepens it. Christ and the Church are declared to be one body. The Apostle Paul makes this connection unmistakable when he speaks of believers being members of Christ Himself. The “one flesh” union of marriage was always pointing forward to this greater, corporate reality.

Adam was also established as the covenant head of his marriage. He represented his wife, and through him his household stood or fell. Scripture presents Christ in precisely the same role. Jesus is the covenant head of the Church. Where Adam’s obedience or disobedience determined the fate of those united to him, Christ’s obedience secures life, righteousness, and blessing for all who are united to Him.

The parallel does not stop there. Adam and Eve were commanded to be fruitful. Christ and the Church are likewise called to fruitfulness. The language of bearing fruit fills the teaching of Jesus and the apostles. Union with Christ necessarily results in multiplication—life producing life.

Finally, Adam and Eve were commanded to fill the earth. Christ gives the Church a mission that is unmistakably parallel: to disciple the nations. The Great Commission is not a new idea introduced late in redemptive history. It is best understood as the eschatological expansion of Genesis 1:28. What was first entrusted to a single couple is now carried forward by a redeemed people united to the true and greater Adam.

Christ and the Church, then, are not a departure from the creation mandate. They are its fulfillment. The covenantal union of Adam and Eve finds its fullest expression in the covenantal union of Christ and His Church. But we must be clear about what fulfillment means. Fulfillment does not erase the original mandate; it brings it to maturity. What was planted in the garden as a seed is brought to full harvest in the gospel.

The original command to Adam and Eve—to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth—was never revoked. It was assumed, carried forward, and transformed in Christ. The Church does not set aside Adam and Eve’s mission because Christ has fulfilled it; rather, she takes it up because Christ has fulfilled it. Marriage and family are not rendered obsolete by the gospel; they become the ordinary means by which the Church carries the gospel forward through history.

Christ and the Church are the eschatological and universal form of covenantal union, but Adam and Eve remain the creational form through which that mission advances in time. The Church is not called to abandon fruitfulness, but to practice it rightly—bearing children, forming them in faith, discipling them into obedience, and sending them into the world under Christ’s lordship. In this way, the creation mandate continues, not as a rival to redemption, but as its servant.

The church’s mission

Scripture does not present the Church as a voluntary association or a collection of like-minded individuals. It presents her as a bride. This is covenantal language, not metaphorical sentiment. The Church belongs to a Husband—Jesus Christ—and she has been joined to Him by God for a purpose. That purpose is fruitfulness. The identity of the Church cannot be understood apart from her covenant union with Christ, just as marriage cannot be understood apart from the union of husband and wife.

When this covenantal reality is forgotten, the Church inevitably begins to drift. She loses her sense of direction because she loses her sense of belonging. A bride who forgets that she has a husband will begin to look elsewhere for definition and affirmation. In the same way, when the Church forgets that she is joined to Christ as His bride, her mission becomes confused. The outward orientation of fruitfulness gives way to inward preoccupation.

Scripture consistently presents fruitfulness as something that moves beyond itself. Marriage exists to generate life beyond the couple. In the same way, the Church exists to generate life beyond her own walls. Her calling is not self-construction, but multiplication through faithfulness. When the Church is united to Christ, she bears fruit by extending His life into the world through the making of disciples. This is not an optional program layered onto the Church’s existence; it is the natural expression of covenant union.

When covenantal fruitfulness is replaced with self-reference, the Church begins to resemble the culture around her. Instead of being oriented outward as light, salt, and leaven, she turns inward. Her language shifts from mission to management, from obedience to self-description. Identity becomes fragmented and qualified, rather than received and unified in Christ. The result is not faithfulness, but confusion.

This confusion inevitably reaches questions of sexuality. A Church that has lost confidence in fruitfulness will struggle to explain why sexuality matters at all. Biblical sexuality only makes sense within a framework that assumes outward life, continuity, and inheritance. When fruit is removed from the picture, sexuality becomes unintelligible—either moralized without meaning or sentimentalized without purpose.

The Church’s mission, therefore, is not innovation or self-definition, but covenantal faithfulness. Joined to Christ, she bears fruit in the world. Detached from that union, she loses not only her mission, but her coherence.

This clarifies that the Church’s identity and mission flow not from cultural currents or self-definition, but from covenantal union with Christ that naturally bears fruit beyond itself.

Faithfulness in an age of confusion

How should we then live? What does all of this mean for us?

If fruitfulness is the first covenant command, if it is ordered toward the propagation of God’s image, if it finds its fulfillment in Christ and the Church, and if the Church herself exists as a fruitful bride joined to her Husband, then the question before us is not abstract. It is profoundly practical. The question is whether we will live as a covenant people, or whether we will quietly exchange covenantal faithfulness for cultural accommodation.

Scripture teaches us that God does His work through ordered relationships. Covenant always has shape. It has direction. It has roles. Adam is not Eve, Eve is not Adam, and Christ is not the Church. Equality of value does not erase distinction of office, and dignity does not negate order. From creation onward, fruitfulness depends upon receiving God’s design rather than reinventing it.

This is why questions of leadership in the Church are not merely administrative or pragmatic. They are symbolic. The Church does not exist simply to function efficiently, but to bear faithful witness. Her structure proclaims something, whether she intends it or not.

The New Testament consistently presents the Church as a bride under the loving headship of Christ. That imagery is not sentimental. It is covenantal. Christ leads, protects, gives Himself, and directs the mission. The Church receives, responds, bears fruit, and extends His life into the world. When that symbolic order is preserved, the gospel is proclaimed not only in words, but in form.

When that order is altered, confusion follows.

In much of the Western Church, the push to place women into governing and teaching authority over men has not arisen from careful attention to covenant symbolism, but from pressure to mirror cultural definitions of equality and leadership. The argument is often framed as justice or inclusion, or as gifting, or as a New Testament freedom, but the deeper issue is theological. The Church begins to say, implicitly, that covenant order is negotiable, that symbol does not matter, and that fruitfulness can be sustained apart from form.

But Scripture does not permit us to treat symbolism as incidental. The relationship between Christ and His Church is the interpretive key for understanding marriage, leadership, and authority. When the Church places herself in a position of headship over herself—when she no longer receives leadership patterned after Christ’s covenantal role—she unintentionally distorts the very image she is called to display.

This is not an indictment of women, nor a denial of their indispensable role in the Church. Scripture affirms that clearly. But neither sincerity nor affection for Christ grants the Church authority to alter what God has established. The question before us is not whether motives are good, but whether the Church is speaking truthfully with her structure. The issue is meaning.

Covenant faithfulness is not measured by sincerity alone, but by submission to God’s design.

When the Church reassigns covenant roles to align with cultural expectations, she does not become more faithful; she becomes less intelligible. The Christ–Church relationship begins to lose its clarity. The distinction between giver and receiver, head and body, initiator and bearer of fruit becomes blurred. And when covenant symbols lose clarity, sexuality soon follows, because sexuality depends upon the same grammar of difference, order, and fruitfulness.

This is why churches that abandon biblical patterns of leadership always move toward confusion in sexual ethics. The slope is not slippery because people are malicious. It is slippery because symbols shape instincts. Once the Church learns to say that form does not matter here, she will eventually say it does not matter elsewhere.

Fruitfulness requires order. Order requires faithfulness. Faithfulness requires humility—the humility to receive rather than redefine.

The call before us, then, is not to outrage or fear, but to trust. To trust that God’s design is not arbitrary. To trust that covenantal forms are gifts, not constraints. To trust that fruitfulness flows from obedience, not innovation.

This applies to marriage. It applies to family. It applies to the Church. And it applies to how we bear witness in a world that has forgotten what fruitfulness is for.

The Church does not exist to echo the culture’s confusion, but to display God’s clarity. She does not exist to reinvent herself in every generation, but to remain faithful to the covenant that gives her life. Joined to Christ, ordered under His headship, she bears fruit—not for herself, but for the life of the world.

And that is the hope set before us. Not retreat. Not capitulation. But covenant faithfulness that trusts God to bring the fruit in His time.

When the Word of God governs the household, it inevitably shapes the life of the nation. Faithful families produce faithful citizens. Ordered worship produces ordered communities. When God’s design for marriage, fruitfulness, and authority is honored, law is clarified, education is grounded in truth, and culture begins to reflect the goodness of creation rather than the confusion of rebellion. But when His Word is ignored, disorder spreads outward—from the home, to the church, to the public square.

A flourishing society does not arise from sentiment, technology, or policy alone. It arises when a people submit themselves to the living Word of God and walk according to His design.

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The Carney Government secured an unelected majority this week. This event demonstrates the collapse of representative government in Canada and the installation of a basic dictatorship. With the borders fully open and Liberal MPs now openly boasting about the “new voting base” foreigners provide, it is unlikely we will see a truly Canadian election anytime soon.

However, there is much to give thanks for and rejoice in. We cannot control the times we live in, but we can walk by faith in them.

This week, we discuss numerous realities to give thanks for and chart a course for practical faithfulness in the days ahead.

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“In sacred Scripture let us hear the voice of Him who is the wisdom and power of God the Father, and let us learn the true knowledge of all things that are.”
— John of Damascus, 675–749 AD

I write the following in the wake of two contradictory and amazing events. The first was the safe return of four astronauts from a ten-day flight to the moon. The second, performed recently by a member of Canadian parliament, was a recommendation to add more letters to the LGBT acronym. As it stands, the alphabet will soon be upgraded to MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.

And, yes, I had to copy and paste it.

I said that these events were amazing because, although the former far surpasses the latter, both are astonishing in their own right. I noted they are contradictory because they also go together about as well as milk and vinegar. The first requires rationality, consistency, and a willingness to rigorously submit oneself to the constraints of reality. The second requires the suspension of those things, along with demanding the cruel thugs of logic and reason please wait outside until they’re needed.

Thus we begin to see our problem. A chasm yawns like Tartarus between these two worldviews. One moves with the grain of reality; the other against it. One submits itself to the world and its limitations; the other defies it. One sees there is a rational order to the universe; the other sees only an amoral landscape within which to indulge one’s perverted fantasies.

These two positions, in other words, are completely irreconcilable.

In a rational society, this divide would be obvious, but herein lies the issue: we no longer live in a rational society. We think we are rational because we can send men to the moon. But the truth is, many of the same people who laud the voyage of Artemis II will turn around and praise “gender advocate” Leah Gazan for her courage and advocacy. They will gaze in wonder at images from the heavens and then shout slogans that completely undermine the science they claim to adore.

What are we to make of a society such as this? We can only conclude that, despite our platitudes, reason is dead. Truth has perished. There are some who will protest this claim—they may point to any number of technological gizmos as evidence of our collective knowledge. But, as Socrates once said, having a Meta VR headset is not the same thing as possessing wisdom. At the end of the day, we are still engaged in a vain attempt to embrace both sanity and insanity. Such a culture cannot, in any meaningful sense of the word, be considered “rational.”

Instead, we are far closer to those whom C.S. Lewis described in The Screwtape Letters — men who have grown accustomed to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing inside their heads at any time.1 Who regard “true” and “false” to be outmoded and oppressive categories. Even by our own admission we are a “post-truth” society.

What can be done about the present situation? Is there any hope of ever recovering our reason? The answer is yes. The West was rational once and it can become so once again. But the recovery process will have to go deeper than general appeals to “common sense.” Such appeals ring hollow in a world that has lost almost all degree of commonality, and consequently, almost every shred of sense.

We need a new foundation. Or, rather, we need to return to the foundation that propelled the West into becoming a thinking civilization in the first place. We need to return to the word of God.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

Already I can hear some unhappy heckler raising his voice from the back of the room. Don’t you know the Bible was written by men? Don’t you know it’s full of mistakes? Why do we need some archaic, superstitious book telling us what to do? To our imaginary interlocutor, I will respond both historically and theologically.

With respect to the historical, let’s begin by stating the obvious. The Bible, regardless of one’s opinion of its credibility, lies at the very root of Western civilization. This is simply a fact of history which, if denied, amounts to an embarrassing proclamation of ignorance. But we must go further than simply acknowledging the Bible’s cursory influence on Western culture. It isn’t merely that the Bible influenced Western thought so much as it created Western thought. That is to say, God’s self-revelation, communicated by His Spirit through the written and incarnate Word, was sole responsible for the West’s understanding of what it means to be rational — what it means to know truth and pursue it.

This point has been made very ably by Indian philosopher and public intellectual, Vishal Mangalwadi. Writing on the subject in his book The Book that Made Your World, he notes that the West, in contrast to other cultures of the ancient and medieval period, became a uniquely “thinking” civilization precisely because of the understanding of truth it derived from the Christian Scriptures:

“If God is Truth, if He can speak to us in rationally understandable words, then human rationality is really significant. The way to know the truth is to cultivate our minds and meditate on God’s Word. These theological assumptions constituted the DNA of what we call Western civilization.”2

As Mangalwadi goes on to argue, the biblical understanding of truth and its relationship to the human intellect was truly unique. Other cultures had books and printing long before the West but failed to make use of them in any profitable way. Why? The reason was religious and philosophical. Eastern views led people to believe that the universe was fundamentally irrational, and that the purpose of life was thus to empty one’s mind rather than cultivate it.3 In the West, men had been taught to view Reality as fundamentally rational, and that the eternal Word had been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Western mind was therefore awakened by the burning conviction that truth could be known. A thread had emerged between the heavens and the earth; a tether established between the mind of man and the secrets of the universe. And the engine that drove the whole revolution, gunning forward and gaining steam with every passing century, was the fact that God had spoken.

The Bible, more than any other influence, made man a truly rational animal.

The Ultimate Tether to Ultimate Truth

Okay, so what if the Bible helped our ancestors back in the day? I guess I’m glad for that, if that really is the case. But why do we still need it now that we have things like science, good government, and decent morals? I don’t see why we can’t get along fine without it.

Here we come to the theological answer. I have argued that the Bible played a pivotal role in shaping the Western mind; indeed, it created the Western mind. But my aim in bringing this to light has really been to make a further point—namely, that the Bible’s historical usefulness is not an accident but is owing to the fact that the Bible is exactly what it claims to be.

To state the matter clearly, the Bible made men rational because it is in itself the source and ground of rationality. It is the written expression of the mind of God. It is the window through which we perceive the universe as it truly is. Consequently, it is our ultimate tether to Ultimate Truth; the point of contact between the mind of the creature and the mind of the Creator. Without it, we are left only with our perceptions—shadowy slivers of the world that are subject to misinterpretation, contradiction, and change. This is why modern man’s confidence in ever being able to know anything truly has been so shaken: he has no ground upon which to stand.

With the Bible, however, this problem is resolved. For truth has been revealed by the One supremely qualified to know it, the omniscient and eternal God, in whom all knowledge ultimately resides.

This is why the Bible is necessary for the maintenance of things like “science, good government, and decent morals.” Not simply because the Bible describes these things for us, but because a fixed point of reference is necessary for the existence of knowledge at all. Without some point of contact between our minds and the truly Real, all claims to knowledge simply collapse into a soup of subjectivity. One person claims that socialism is fair, just, and equitable; the other that capitalism is the only good economic system. Another comes along and wonders what “good” could possibly mean, right before the State steps in and responds, “Why, a 40% tax rate, of course.”

This is the chaos of our modern world. At some point there simply needs to be a “Thus sayeth the LORD.”4

Conclusion

The question of which we have been in hot pursuit has been whether or not our culture can ever recover its marbles. Presently, they are scattered abroad like a 12-year-old’s LEGO collection and the prospect of ever getting them back in one place appears relatively grim. Indeed, the situation is grim—impossible, in fact—unless we retrace our steps and get busy repenting.

What this repentance will look like is a whole-hearted embrace of the inspired, infallible, and inerrant word of the living God. Not simply as a helpful guide for spiritual matters, but as the authoritative revelation of the Almighty concerning every matter under the sun. From politics to ethics to government to science to epistemology—everything must be measured against this Rock, because there is no other.

And the church must lead the charge. In a world that presently lies under the power of the evil one, she alone remains the “pillar and buttress” of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15; 1 Jn. 5:19). Once upon a time the church knew this, with the result that human culture was slowly lifted out of darkness and made to walk by the light of divine truth. We have since turned from this light to our ruin and destruction.

But this need not always be the case. Wisdom cries aloud, ever-willing to grant understanding to the humble fools who will heed her call.

“But the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints.” (Prov. 2:6–8)

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. Gen. 1:1-5

Scientists tell us the smallest components of matter in the universe are atoms. If you want to go smaller than atoms (we’re told) you’ll need to deep dive into the weird and wonderful world of quarks, gluons, leptons, and whatever allowed the Delorian to travel back to 1955.

Scientists refer to quarks and their kin as “indivisible” units; that is, they can’t be reduced to anything smaller than themselves. An uncomfortable silence should settle over the room at this point (as often does when quarks come up) which would be a great time for any Christians present to cough slightly. For there is an older, and more fundamental, component to reality than quarks.

We call them words.

Words are sounds (or combinations of characters) that symbolize and communicate meaning. In our day words have fallen out of favour but it’s impossible to overstate their power. Before God spoke there had been darkness; after, there was light. Before the British North America Act of 1867, there had been no nation of Canada; after, there was. Before Winston Churchill unleashed hell at the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, there had been no will to resist a tyrant; after, there was.

How is it that mere sounds and characters carry such weight? Well, at least partly because they aren’t just sounds and characters. They are beakers bubbling with meaning — to help or to harm. They are, in a way, spells, commanding form and agency from that which was previously formless.

Here would also be a good time to insert that although there are similarities between God’s words and ours, they aren’t equal. We can’t speak physical matter into existence nor set the fundamental bounds of its definition. We can’t, for example, command fire to not be hot, the sun to stand still, or the rain to fall upwards. Nevertheless, words remain the most powerful tool in the dominion toolbox. By means of words we woo, wed, work, and worship. By means of words we train our children to love their neighbours, fear God, and build his church. By means of words we subdue the natural world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded us.

Or we would have, had sin not ruined everything. Because of sin, man retains his subcreative abilities, but no longer offers them to God as a sacrifice of praise. He has become a damaged machine — vestiges of the original program remain, but his powers are unpredictable, and frequently destructive. He might name the animals or demand all baby boys be slaughtered. He might curse his wife or announce a benediction. He might write Anna Karenina or 120 Days of Sodom.

Tolkien comments on this terrifying reality in his poem Mythopoeia.

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, ‘twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we’re made.

We cannot escape the power of words. We cannot escape the fact that in the tongue lies all the devastation of a forest fire or a war galley. Words will inevitably flow. The only question is will they drown or nourish? Will they bless the world with truth and light? Or curse it with goblins, dark chapels, and dragon eggs.

The enfeebling agent of poison words

As an illustration of the power of words, consider the following. Recently I made a comment on the absolute state of the Conservative party, which increasingly resembles an Ikea shelving unit left out in the rain for a month. Not long after, some intelligent soul responded with the following:

Treating this as a uniquely Conservative problem misses the point. Modern politics runs on coalition signalling. Public gestures toward different groups are baseline behaviour in a system that requires constant reassurance of belonging — not proof of weakness or capture.

This. This is it.

Whether he intended to or not, this beautiful man summarized the problem that is modern politics better than I ever could have. Modern politics runs on coalition signalling. In other words, the political machine — so long untethered from truth or principle — has become so brittle, it only works if everyone equally commits to a culture of fawning and back-slapping. It doesn’t matter how insane or destructive the words may be. The system requires “constant reassurance of belonging” or it all falls apart, and you with it. Which means the constant lies, flattery, and gaslighting aren’t flaws — they’re the oil that keeps the gears running smoothly.

My commenter might be right that sycophancy isn’t a uniquely conservative behaviour. But he’s dead wrong if he thinks the following language (from a conservative) doesn’t indicate a grievous degree of weakness and capture:

The response will come; wouldn’t it be better to just, you know, not have a fragile political system? Shouldn’t we insist on a system built on truth, sincerity, and accountability?

Lol. And again I say LOL.

Modern politics is no place for such idealism. Modern politics is for adults who understand how the machine runs and have learned to operate within it; who have run the gamut of idealism, to cynicism, to acquiescence, and finally to participation. Modern politics is for people who have come to view courage, honesty, critical-thinking, and moral clarity as downright inhibitive.

If you want to know why Canada is no longer a robust nation, it’s because we no longer have robust institutions. If you want to know why we no longer have robust institutions, it’s because they’ve subsisted on the moral equivalent of strychnine and Jello for the past sixty years. A thing can’t be stronger than its diet. If your institutions — whether a household, or a government, or a church — are fed with poison, they’re not going to be strong.

They’re going to be dead.

I’m not here arguing for a powerful state. I’m arguing for a state that exists for more than the perpetuation of itself. I’m arguing for a state that’s actually able to do its job without sucking the life from its host. And I’m arguing that the state can only do this when it knows what its job is. Without a fixed point, our definitions become whichever way the winds are blowing. We’re left with pragmatism, power dynamics, and coalition signalling.

This is what “modern politics” has become. A feedback loop. A self-reinforcing parasite. A porcelain doll in a hardware store during a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.

In the beginning was light …

It’s interesting to note that in the absence of the Word, words haven’t disappeared. In fact, they’ve multiplied. But because these words are rife with lies, it’s the kind of multiplication that ultimately results in a subtraction. Like multiplying cinder blocks in a rubber life raft.

Decisions are no longer made by directly confronting problems, but via endless “dialogue” and circumlocutory memos. Conflict takes place within an ecosystem of emotional cues, complicated hierarchies, and “sussing out” who will be hurt by what course of action. Right and wrong are determined not by direct appeal to facts, but by signalling the virtue of one’s tribe. The goal is not to arrive at truth but to evade blame while shaming one’s opponents. Evil is no longer identified, it is euphamized. Lies are no longer rebuked, but welcomed as old friends. Blasphemy has become liturgy. Words ought to be a means of life. In our sin and pride, we have enlisted them as agents of death.

The mess that is modern politics should be instructive to Christians.

In the beginning there was nothing. And then God spoke. His words alone were able to take a cataclysm and transform it into an environment of flourishing domesticity. If we want to build resilient churches, households, and institutions, we must return to the blueprints. We must return to the place where dark is made light. We must return to the words of Christ and the word that is Christ.

"The Spirit breathes upon the Word,
And brings the truth to sight;
Precepts and promises afford
A sanctifying light.

A glory gilds the sacred page,
Majestic like the sun:
It gives a light to every age;
It gives but borrows none."

- William Cooper, 1779

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This week, Jeremy and Alex had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Michael Wagner on the subject of Canada’s Christian heritage and identity, along with a number of policies which have actively undermined that identity.

Many Canadians, including Christians, fail to grasp just how pervasive Christianity’s influence has been on Canada’s values, laws, and moral imagination. Even fewer are aware of the particular ways our Christian identity has been undermined through the implementation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was effectively the “progressive depth charge” that would go on to obliterate Christian policies and customs.

We also discussed the issue of Alberta Independence, for which Dr. Wagner is a leading advocate, including the doctrine of the lesser magistrate and the moral validity and responsibility to defend one’s culture.

You can purchase Dr. Wagner’s books here.

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Almost unknown in his own lifetime, A.W. Pink went on to become one of the most influential evangelical authors of the twentieth century. One young pastor, Rev. Robert Harbach, described Pink’s “pastor's heart” and his “warm, heartfelt, and fatherly” demeanor.

Although many of these older authors have since been eclipsed by the sheer volume of contemporary resources, one need only spend a few pages browsing their meditations to realize they are the fountainhead of whatever tributaries we now benefit from.

We have abridged and updated the following from Pink’s original tract, The Godhood of God.

The Godhood of God! What do we mean by this phrase? How sad it is that such a question even needs to be asked today. And yet it does, for our generation is almost completely ignorant of its important truth. What has instead become popular in universities, pulpits, and the press is the dignity, power, and achievements of man. To the modern mind, if God exists at all, He is little more than an abstraction — a being so far removed from the world that He must have little to do with our mundane lives.

Within this theological void, man thinks of himself as a free agent and the sole determiner of his own destiny. Such was the devil’s lie at the beginning—“You will be like God.” (Gen. 3:5).

The question we are faced with is this: what is God like? For the answer, we must turn from human speculation and satanic insinuation to divine revelation.

What is the Godhood of God?

When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that “God” is more than an empty title; that He is more than a distant spectator looking helplessly at the suffering sin has wrought. When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that He is “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Rev. 19:16); that He is something more than a disappointed, dissatisfied, defeated being filled with noble ambitions but lacking the power to carry them out; that He is something more than one who, having endowed man with the power of choice, is now unable to constrain him to do anything; that He is something more than one who has waged a protracted, but unsuccessful war with the devil.

To speak of the Godhood of God is to say that God is on the throne as present, objective fact and not as a piece of abstract theology. To speak of the Godhood of God is to say that the steering wheel is in His hand. It is to say that He is the Potter and that we are the clay; that He shapes vessels both for honour or dishonour, according to His own sovereign right. To speak of the Godhood of God is to say that He “does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth, and that no one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:35).

To speak of the Godhood of God, in other words, is to give the Creator His rightful place; it is to recognize His divine majesty and bow to His universal scepter.

The Godhood of God stands at the base of divine revelation: “In the beginning God,” (Gen 1:1). On it, all other doctrines must be built, and any doctrine not built upon it will ultimately fail. At the beginning of all true theology lies the truth that God is God. He is absolute and irresistible. Without this, we face a closed door. With it, we have a key that unlocks every mystery.

This is true of creation: exclude an almighty God and nothing is left but blind and illogical materialism. This is true of revelation: the Bible is the solitary miracle of literature. Exclude God from it and you have a miracle with no miracle-worker to produce it. This is true of salvation: salvation is “of the Lord” (John 2:9) — exclude Him from any aspect of salvation and it vanishes. This is true of history, for history is “His-story.” It is the outworking in time of His eternal purpose. Exclude God from history and all of it becomes meaningless and purposeless.

“In the beginning God.” These are not only the first words of Holy Scripture but the first principle of all true philosophy. Instead of beginning with man and attempting to reason back to God, we must begin with God and reason forward to man. It is a failure to do this which leaves unsolved the so-called “riddle of the universe.” Begin with the world and try and reason back to God — what is the result? It is this: that God ends up having little or nothing to do with it. Begin with God and reason forward to the world, however, and you now have a light to shine onto every problem.

Because God is holy, His anger burns against sin. Because God is righteous, His judgment falls on those who rebel against Him. Because God is faithful, the solemn warnings of His Word will be fulfilled. Because God is omnipotent, no problem can master Him, no enemy defeat Him, and no purpose of His can be thwarted.

In the beginning, God. In the center, God. At the end, God.

But as soon as this is insisted upon, men will stand up and tell you what they think about God. They will go on about how God must work consistently with His own character — as though a worm was capable of determining what is or isn’t consistent within the divine nature. People will say, with an air of profound wisdom, that God must deal fairly with His creatures — which is true, of course — but who is able to fully discern divine justice? Or any of God’s attributes?

The truth is that man is utterly incompetent of forming a proper estimate of God’s character and ways. It is because of this that God has given us a revelation of His mind, where He plainly declares that “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:8-9). In view of such a scripture as this, it is only to be expected that much of the Bible will conflict with the sentiments of the godless mind, which is naturally opposed to God” (Rom. 8:7).

A creature’s response

One of the most flagrant sins of this age is irreverence. By irreverence I am not now thinking of open blasphemy. Rather, I have in mind the failure to ascribe the honour which is due to the Almighty. It is the limiting of His power and actions by our degrading conceptions: it is the bringing of the Lord God down to our level.

There are multitudes of those who do not profess to be Christians who deny that God is the omnipotent Creator, and there are multitudes of professing Christians who deny that God is the absolute Sovereign. Men boast of their free will, their power, and their achievements. They forget that their lives are at the sovereign disposal of the Divine Ruler, and they have no more power to thwart His divine counsel than an insect has to resist the foot of an elephant.

Ah, my reader, this is the first great lesson we have to learn: that God is the Creator and we are the creature. That He is the Potter and we are the clay. This is the harvest of all life’s lessons, and when we think we have learned them, we soon discover that we need to re-learn them.

God is God and has the right to dispose of you as He sees fit. It is for Him to say where you will live—whether in riches or poverty, whether in health or in sickness. It is for Him to say how long you will live—whether you shall be cut down in youth, like the flower of the field, or whether you will live to old age. Yes, and it is for Him to say where you will spend eternity.

One of the profoundest mysteries of the Incarnation is that the mighty God descended from highest heaven and took upon Him the nature of the creature and came down here to show us how to wear it. That which differentiated the life of Christ from all other lives was His absolute and joyous submission to the Father’s will. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34) was the keynote of the thirty-three years that He lived among men.

Have you benefited by the example left us by Father’s beloved? Has divine grace shown you how to wear your creature nature? Not in self-assertion, but in self-renunciation.

Only in the school of Christ can we learn to say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

Some applications:

1. Pink states that “one of the most flagrant sins of this age is irreverence.” This claim might strike us as odd or misplaced. Typically when we think of “flagrant sins” our mind goes to various public travesties such as abortion, euthanasia, or the multitude of sexual perversions now normalized in our society. Yet all of these flow from a single, polluted source: a degraded view of God.

   Although secular culture has obviously put its own hellish energy behind the debasement of the divine, it is professing evangelicals that have inflicted the most damage (Rom. 2:24). From goofy day camps to permissive divorce culture, from non-threatening sermons to unforgivable concessions to the state, it is Cchristians who have demonstrated, by their actions, that God is not almighty.

   Canada’s recovery will begin when Canadian Christians repent of their worldliness, pathetic “kingdom-growth” strategies, and the general casualness of our fellowship with the Consuming Fire. Judgement must begin at the household of God.

2. Pink states that “the first great lesson we have to learn is that God is the Creator and we are the creature.” Sadly, it is a lesson proud, rebellious sinners least want to learn. We don’t want to “wear [our] creature nature.” We want to throw off our creature nature and instead robe ourselves in the divine nature. The reason the serpent’s lies were so effective is because they so effectively resonated with the defiance of a fallen nature. Apart from grace, we echo with our pharisee forebears, “We do not want this man [Jesus] to rule over us!” (Luke 19:14). This rage at God manifests in the defacement of His creation — murder and mutilation. We’re like the child who would rather see an object destroyed than rescued from its torments and redeemed to proper usage.

   National recovery will begin as we repent of our rage at the absoluteness of God; at the eternal, immovable principles of his cosmos; at His sovereignty; at our fragility and dependance; at the immutability of His will and the mutability of our own.

   As long as Canada is content to lather itself in delusions of niceness and amiability, nothing will change. The only man that left the temple justified was the one who owned himself a sinner (Luke 18:13). We must acknowledge our defiance for what it is and acknowledge the ruin that has resulted from it. And we must acknowledge that only God can change us.

   At the cusp of building the temple, David finds himself blown away at the fact that the normally miserable and miserly Israelites had suddenly become so generous. Then he remembers:

   “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. We are foreigners and strangers in your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you. I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity.”

   1 Chron. 29: 14-17

   Our hope for Canada isn’t that we suddenly come to our senses. Our hope for Canada is that God, in wrath, remembers mercy.

3. We only see the “Godness of God” at its clearest when we view it through the lens of His Son: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ,” (2 Cor. 4:6). Pink’s introductory remarks warn us that we will never see God rightly when we view Him as some transcendent abstraction — someone so high and holy that He remains unaffected from the suffering of His creatures.

   This is not the God of the Bible. In the Bible we see a God that so loves the world He made — despite our rejection of Him — that He sent his only precious Son. One who serves, and works, and weeps, and bleeds, and dies, and rises, and ascends. In Christ alone do we see the “Godness of God.” In Christ alone are all of his attributes honed and sharpened to their keenest edge. As we are transformed by seeing this glory, so our stubborn wills are changed.

   Instead of dominating creation, we will instead respond with “joyous submission to the Father’s will.”

- B.I.

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It’s becoming hard to describe Canada as anything else but a tragedy of our own making. Increasingly, we resemble Jerusalem in the latter days of her apostasy — once a beacon of justice and peace, now a centre of idolatry, bloodshed, and universal mockery (Ezekiel 22:1-5). The root of this ruin isn’t solely the fault of any particular party, immigration policy, or economic strategy. Rather, it has come about from our exchanging the supremacy of God for the illusory and impotent supremacy of man.

It is this cosmic treachery that is ultimately responsible for the erosion of our nation. Only as a nation acknowledges the supremacy of God can there exist a shared bank of values from which to base a shared, formal law.

A united nation must have shared basis for law

By “law,” I mean, broadly, the duties and penalties every citizen is responsible for and subject to. Where there are no shared duties or penalties, there can be no nation; there can only be individuals, families, and tribes. It is only the formal, shared commitment to a set of values, enshrined in law, that can unite otherwise disparate persons and groups into what we know as a nation. This should be fairly obvious. If certain groups think it is morally permissible to steal from and/or kill their neighbours, and other groups believe such actions to be unlawful (and thus subject to penalties), these groups cannot, in any meaningful sense, form a nation. To even attempt such a thing would be to render the word “nation” meaningless.

The concept of a nation that includes formal, shared obligations was once a view held by all Canadians. Our introductory letter to new citizens once emphasized this reality: “Your citizenship carries with it the obligation to live in peaceful brotherhood with your fellow-Canadians and to do your part, to the best of your ability, to preserve Canadian ideals and institutions.”1 Citizenship and shared obligations are inseparable. You cannot have one without the other.

If this is the case, a critical question follows: What is the basis of these obligations? The only rational answer is the true and living God. This isn’t to say that all nations presently acknowledge God as the basis for law. It’s to say that all other bases for law are ultimately only assertions, being that they lack an objective grounding.

Note the claim is not that, as Christians, we simply think our way is best — as if we were just one of many special interest groups vying for influence. Rather, it is that the triune God of Scripture is the only justifiable authority to appeal to in establishing laws, and that all other appeals to authority are false, arbitrary and unjustifiable. In sum:

1. A shared and formal commitment to a particular set of laws is a necessary component of any nation.

2. God is the only justifiable source and standard of said laws.

What follows are some necessary biblical principles we must maintain as we consider the nature of a nation, its laws, and its duty to God.

Laws reflects values

A nation’s laws inevitably reflect its values — what things it considers to be good or evil. In the past, Canadian society valued the dignity of the individual. This principle is rooted in the reality that all individuals are created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:27). Thus, we instituted laws which upheld the value of the individual and punished those who sought to deface that value. Murder, for example, is an assault on human dignity and the image of God and ought to be punished accordingly (Gen 9:6).

It is no surprise that as the value of human life has dissipated in our society, so too have the formal laws protecting it — to the point where we now tolerate the murder of innocents on a scale, and with a kind of ghoulish casualness, that would once have been unthinkable. Such laws (or lack thereof) surrounding abortion and MAiD ultimately reflect a society that has lost all value for human life.

As the Creator, God alone has the authority and ability to define what good is — and by “good” we mean that which functions according to its created purpose. We read repeatedly in the opening pages of Genesis that God looked at the world He made and said it was “good.” In other words, it was functioning the way it was supposed to. This helps explain why the only thing described as not good in the pre-fall world was that Adam was alone (Gen 2:18). Again, this corroborates the idea that “good” is characterized by that which fulfills its God-given duty.

Adam could not fulfill his responsibilities without a helper, which suggests there is an inherent purpose, and therefore value, to all created reality.

The supremacy of God or the supremacy of man

Our own charter begins with the recognition of God’s supremacy: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.”² All politics can be boiled down to how we answer the following question: Will God or man be supreme?

If the world was created by God (Genesis 1-2), then God alone is qulified to determine what is true. Thus, our role as creatures isn’t to define reality, but to discover it. It doesn’t matter what letters we have in front of our name or how many of our fellow creatures approve of what we’re doing: we cannot alter or create reality. Any attempt to do so is simply a manifestation of our own vanity — the original source of our corruption.

As only God made and ordered the world, our laws can only be called “good” to the extent that they reflect that original design.

At the suggestion that they abdicate the throne, devotees of the secular humanist religion might revolt. But might I humbly suggest that, as we inhabit a time in history known as “clown world,” we should really start reconsidering the wisdom of letting the lunatics run the asylum. We gave man’s supremacy a chance. But instead of the flourishing land of freedom we were promised, we managed to transform one of the most prosperous and peaceful nations in world history into the nearly-failed State we inhabit today.

The who shapes the how

A society that recognizes the supremacy of God will be characterized by reason, a desire to be guided by objective principles, and an impulse towards persuasion (as opposed to coercion). Only as we recognize the supremacy of God and His word are we able to recognize reality; that is, are we able to see what’s true.

It is these fundamental principles that our House of Commons, as an institution, was built upon.

It is perfectly consistent with our forsaking of God that this same House has now become little more than a marketplace of lies. Where man is supreme, debate, reason, and persuasion become irrelevant. Where man is supreme, we are left only with the futile task of attempting to establish values through law. Consider the stream of recent progressive legislation (environmental agendas, euthanasia, reconciliation initiatives, etc.) — virtually none of it has been established by appeals to reason or objective value. This is because the purpose is no longer to uphold defensible values but to impose otherwise indefensible positions.

It is perfectly consistent for a society that rejects the authority of God to view the law as a means of coercing people into compliance.

The Supremacy of God upholds the rule of law and limits human authority

The defining feature of the Christian West was once the rule of law, which necessarily places limits on human authority. As we have already seen, the charter introduces the supremacy of God as the necessary precondition of the rights and freedoms enshrined into law. These principles are grounded in the reality of God’s absolute authority as divine Law Giver and man’s unique identity as a creature.

It is the assertion of man’s supremacy that has resulted in the various destructive philosophies we see today. Among the worst of these are moral relativism, secularism, and multiculturalism.

Moral relativism is a fraudulent ideology because nobody actually believes morality is relative. Even its fundamental claim that “morality is not objective” is itself an objective moral claim as well as a flaming contradiction. To demand that “You can’t say you’re right” is really to demand that “You can’t say I’m wrong.” Although this ideology often passes for humility, it is actually the opposite. The contemporary iteration of relativism as a so-called “tolerant” philosophy is merely a hypocritical pretext to rule out all absolute truth claims. As everyone should recognize by now, the adoption of moral relativism in education, media, and law has not lead to a more tolerant, peaceful society.

Secularism undermines the values and laws of a nation by denying the only objective basis by which to enforce them. By removing God as the basis for morality, the secularists remove the only authoritative basis by which such a thing can exist. It isn’t that a secular society ceases to make moral claims; it is that it lacks all basis by which to make them.

Multiculturalism undermines nations by assaulting its shared basis of law. If, as has been demonstrated, a nation can only exist while there is shared commitment to a particular set of values, then what we must acknowledge is that the goal of multiculturalism is the destruction of nations. Culture cannot simply be reduced to certain preferences for food or architecture. Rather, culture is the summation of its values, traditions, and laws. For a nation to have a shared culture, it must agree on those shared values which form the basis of its shared laws, which ultimately form its national identity.

Conclusion

I began by noting the tragic trajectory of Canada. But I must be equally clear that the Canada project need not end in ruin. God didn’t create the world for tragedy but for redemption. However, this redemption involves the reordering of all things around the supremacy of the Son (Col 1:18), who rose from the dead to triumph over a world hell-bent on ruling itself.

And He offers life to all who would surrender.

We cannot flourish as individuals, families, and nations while we reject the supremacy of God, seeking instead to “do what is right in our own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Such a path only leads to misery and death, as we are fast finding out. If only we would “humble ourselves, and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways, then He will hear from heaven and will forgive us our sin and heal our land.’ (2 Chronicles 7:14).

May God call us back to him.

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In recent years, I’ve noticed a marked increase in terms like “insane,” “crazy,” and “ridiculous” to describe our present cultural moment.

Perhaps you’ve witnessed the same phenomenon. Some social gathering is taking place, a lull in the conversation occurs, and a well-meaning fellow (who’s a bit uncomfortable with awkward silence) decides to blurt out the latest tidbit of insanity he happened to see on Instagram that morning. The rest of the group murmurs their agreement, a chorus of grumbling ascending to the heavens like smoke from a garbage fire, and pretty soon everyone is pitching in their own anecdotes and stories. Eventually the dust settles and you all salvage what’s left of your composure, albeit a little dishevelled in spirit and far more disgruntled than you’d like to admit.

Such experiences have become commonplace. The crazy has become too ubiquitous to ignore.

The explanations of the insanity, however, are as varied as Joe Rogan’s podcast guests. Many simply want to lay the blame with “the other guys.” It’s the libs! It’s Trump’s fault! It’s immigration! It’s the boomers! This strategy is quite popular and is employed across the board by conservatives, liberals, and four-year-olds alike. The only problem with it (and it’s just a teeny-weenie one) is that it lacks all traces of depth, thoughtfulness, and explanatory power.

After all, what makes a man think he’s a woman? And what makes a whole culture believe him? What drives a country to murder its seniors instead of caring for them? What compels a culture celebrate sodomy? What makes it destroy its children? These, and a host of other questions, demand an answer—one that goes deeper than blaming any one individual, group, institution, or government.

Presently, our culture seems utterly unable to provide one. Thankfully, the word of God is not so constrained.

Exchanging the truth for a lie

In Romans 1:18–32, the apostle Paul sets forth a blistering rebuke of the Gentile world. Among the many things he notes, one of the most prominent is its moral and sexual insanity:

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves…For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another…And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” (Rom. 1:24, 26–27, 28)

Rebellion leads to judgment, judgment to perversion, and perversion to insanity. As G.K. Chesterton memorably put it: “Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.”1 Yes, and amen. Both Scripture and experience testify to this fact.

But central to the apostle’s argument is a deeper premise. He’s not simply gesturing feverishly at the irrationality of the world; he’s explaining why such is the case. The reason he gives centres around humanity’s rejection not of God generally, but of His authority as Creator in particular: “...they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (v. 25; cf. vv. 18–20)

There is a fundamental connection between our acknowledgment of the Creator and our own sanity. A necessary link that, once cut, results in the steady descent into madness.

In other words, the recognition that God is our Maker and that we are His creatures isn’t a secondary matter. It’s not a private religious belief that can be tucked away in our hearts alongside our views of doilies or the nephilim. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth” is something far more foundational. It’s the very precondition of order, stability, governance, and rationality itself.

Without this pillar, human societies crumble. Morality becomes subjective, truth becomes relative. And before you know it, Cletus is making a beeline for the women’s bathroom.

So much for common sense.

Unchaining ourselves from the sun

Ironically, one of the people who saw the connection between God and sanity most clearly was the atheist thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche. Tracing out the devastating implications of the “death of God” for the future of human society, he wrote:

“What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?”2

Nietzsche himself remained hardened and recalcitrant toward the Christian faith throughout the course of his life. Nevertheless, he saw the startling, even horrifying, consequences of his worldview. Something that most atheists since him seem unwilling to do.

If God is dead, Nietzsche saw, so is meaning. If God is dead, so is truth. If God is dead, so is any transcendent basis for order, logic, rationality, purpose, morality, reason, and ethics. All that remains for the human race is to face the “infinite nothing.” To steel oneself against the cold indifference of reality and embark on a voyage of self-creation. In this terrifying new world, there is no ultimate right or wrong, up or down—there is only instinct, desire, and power.

This is the world as Nietzsche envisioned it. It is also the world we presently inhabit. A world of drag shows and abortion mills, of sexual chaos and postmodern lunacy. In short, a world in rebellion against its Maker, groping in the fog and confusion of a “debased mind.”

“And God said”

In glorious contrast to the darkness and futility of contemporary thought, the words of Scripture thunder: “And God said…And it was so.”

Here the very framework of reality is erected. Not on purely natural causes, but on the sovereign, almighty, and authoritative Word of God. God’s will, in other words, expressed through His Word, is the foundation stone of all creaturely existence (Rev. 4:11). It is the principle that gives being, order, and coherence to all of creation. As the psalmist says, “...he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Ps. 33:9).

In practical terms, this means that God, and no other, is the one who sets the bounds and limits of all reality, giving form and shape, purpose and direction to all created things. He fashions each creature “according to its kind” (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24). He determines the changing of times and seasons (v. 14). He sets the great lights in the expanse of the heavens and fills land and sea with all manner of living things (v. 17, 24–28). This world neither moves nor exists upon its own initiative: it leaps in happy obedience to God’s command.

“The LORD, He is God,” is the great confession of all rational beings. It’s the building block upon which the sanity of the world either stands or falls. To kick against it is to inch toward the abyss. It’s to open the door to whatever vile impulses may come spilling out of the fallen human heart. It’s to surrender every creature as a possible object of man’s perverted and capricious will.

But to rejoice in this confession—to happily own that God is our Maker—is to step into warm and sunlit places. For here our whole posture toward reality is altered: no longer do we stand over the world in proud defiance, we receive it as a gift. Nothing is ours, yet everything has been entrusted to us, given by the hand of God to be stewarded for His glory.

On this view, then, nature is not like a piece of clay to be molded as we see fit. Rather, it is, as Bavinck put it, a “revelation of God’s thoughts and virtues…an unfurling of His wisdom and reflection of His glory.”3 Hence, nothing in creation—from maleness to femaleness, from marriage to family, bodies to sex—is up for debate or redefinition. All creatures have received their form and telos from Almighty God. All must serve their intended purpose. The project of the human being isn’t to pervert these purposes, but to discover and steward them according to God’s good design.

This is the soil out of which civilization grows. The closer we live to it, the greater flourishing we experience. The further we move from it, the more we plunge ourselves into misery and confusion.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, our nation is faced with the choice of Nebuchadnezzar. We may either continue in our insanity, chewing grass like the ox and growing more and more beastly by the day, or else lift our eyes to heaven that our reason might return (Dan. 4:33–34).

I, for one, recommend the latter option. God is merciful and may yet restore to us our former majesty and splendour (v. 36). He may yet send counselors and lords to seek us out, that the kingdom be established and still more greatness be added to us (v. 36). This, of course, would be a magnificent display of His undeserved grace and kindness. But it is possible: God is that good.

And we should pray to that end.

“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.” (Dan. 4:37)

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Show Description:
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The most important pillar of a flourishing nation is God!

Jeremy and Alex open the new series called ‘The Dominion Project’. The goal of this project is to produce a Dominion Declaration, which will be a practical application of the Christian faith to the pursuit of a flourishing nation. The Declaration will, Lord-willing, serve as a flag for Christians to both rally around and fight from. The first and most fundamental doctrine is the doctrine of God, on Whom all things, including nations, depend. This week, we discuss how faith in the True and Living God is necessary to a flourishing nation.

📖 Chapters ⏰
00:00 Introduction
00:29 Opening Scripture: A Deuteronomic Warning
01:21 Podcast Welcome and Banter
02:25 Church Building Hunt
04:05 Nomadic Church and Trust
05:25 Ministry Politics and Gratitude
08:58 Alex's Week and Soup Talk
10:00 Dominion Project Vision
16:04 God and National Flourishing
20:34 Theocracy Is Unavoidable
23:42 Democracy to Authoritarianism
28:13 Who Rules the System
29:43 Theocracy Limits Tyranny
31:13 Christ Rules the Nations
32:04 God as Truth Foundation
35:09 Moral Clarity and Justice
37:05 Canada’s Christian Roots
43:06 Culture Follows Its Gods
45:23 Multiculturalism and Decay
50:17 Identity, Unity, and Revival
55:57 Wrap Up and Reading List

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Not long ago I put out an article commenting on both the brilliance and banality of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent Davos speech. For those whose schedules won’t let them to go back and read it, I basically summarized it as equal parts rhetorically brilliant and epistemologically oblivious.

What do I mean by epistemologically oblivious? By epistemological, I’m referring to that branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. In other words, what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. In other words, how we know what we know. And by oblivious, I mean oblivious — like the young lady at the roundabout yesterday who apparently views “right of way” as more of a nice idea than a legal right. In the same breath as Carney attempts to tell Canadians what Canada is and what it should be, he reaffirms his commitment to pluralism — whose only rule is that you’re not ever allowed to define what something is or what it should be.

But our problem today isn’t just that different people have different answers to the question “How can we know anything?” It’s that most don’t even bother asking the question in the first place. Which means that podcasters, pundits, and politicians can freely spend their days in “nothing except telling or hearing something new,” knowing the majority of their audience will just passively receive it.

At the end of the day, what makes Poilievre’s vision for Canada any better than Carney’s? What makes Bill Gates’ vision for the West any better than Trump’s? Or Elon Musk’s? Or Peppa Pig’s?

Without addressing the epistemological questions, all you have is zeal without knowledge. All you have are a bunch of people hawking their best guesses on how to fix things, with no real reason why we should listen to them beyond how smart they sound, how funny they are, or how many followers they have.

Rehydrating wisdom

One thing that everyone who doesn’t work for the government seems to be able to agree on is that Canada is in a very bad place. Birth rates are declining, 5% of all deaths are due to euthanasia, no one can afford a home, and our most productive province is seriously considering whether to catch the last train for the coast.

When it comes to solutions, answers vary. Perhaps we just need more data, or new trading partners, or lower taxes, or less immigration, or more AI, or more vending bikes stocked with ketamine freeze-pops. Again, the question remains — why one solution over another? Why not all of them at once? Or some of them? Or none of them?

Sooner or later, we’re going to have to admit there is no cure for our nation-wide epistemology problem apart from recovering a fundamental basis for knowledge. There’s no point in arguing about what we should or shouldn’t do if there’s no fixed point to start from — just like there’s no point in trying to hang a picture on the wall if there’s no nail to hang it on.

I mentioned pluralism earlier, but pluralism is really just one of the fruits of secularism, whose goal has always been to delete any point of contact with fundamental knowledge. Or more accurately, to render obscene even the prospect of fundamental knowledge.

Our forebears were not as blind. The authors of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms also seemed be aware of the need for fundamental knowledge. Whatever their intent, they at least identify Canada as a country founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law. How can we know anything? How can we identify a truth from a lie? Because there is a supreme God. There is a singular point of authority. There is a fixed point of morality.

What Canada needs — what will determine whether she recovers her legacy of justice and freedom or becomes a Bolshevik safe space — is to come back into the light.

A Light Shining Ever Brighter

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Genesis 1:1-3

Light is crucial to knowledge. Without it, we stay ignorant.

And yet even within the category of light there are distinctions. Microscopes have a small light underneath the stage to help illuminate specimens. High beams on our vehicles allow us to trace the curvature of a rural road at night. Refrigerator lights tell us exactly what the options are when we pillage its contents at 2AM. But although these lights may be helpful, they are not fundamental. They are secondary; they are imitative; they are, ultimately, a symbol of a much weightier light.

Enter the sun.

The sun provides light, heat, and energy. It affects weather, ocean currents, and photosynthesis, while its massive gravity holds the solar system together. It enables vitamin D production, regulates circadian rhythms, and influences the Earth’s climate and auroras. Without the sun we wouldn’t just be inconvenienced. We’d be dead. Not to mention the immediate peril the Milky Way galaxy would be in.

I bring up this analogy to illustrate why the Canadian recovery conversation needs to go back further than traditional values, democracy, founding fathers, or European ancestry. For whatever light these are, they are lesser lights. They are echoes of some older, brighter truth.

The problem in Canada isn’t that things have gotten a little dim and we need to slightly increase the wattage. The problem in Canada is that the kind of fruit we’re exhibiting suggests a degree of darkness that might best be described as “stygian.” It’s the kind of darkness you find in crypts, catacombs, and certain Hollywood diaries. It’s the kind of darkness only God can interrupt, much like he did at the beginning of creation.

In Genesis, we see the “state of nature” apart from God, which isn’t innocence so much as chaos. When God speaks, he reveals himself as the fundamental point of order — the point at which darkness becomes light, where formlessness becomes form, where inscrutability becomes accessible, and where dust becomes man. In God alone is darkness dispelled, which is why Solomon begins Proverbs where he does, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy one is understanding.”

One of the shabby triumphs of secularism is that people have come to hold the separation of church and state as some kind of sacred dogma — as if a pure state of governance can exist only insofar as it is isolated from divine knowledge. But that was never its intent. Francis Schaeffer notes, “The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent … To have suggested the state separate from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers.”

To say the safest state of man is isolation from the fundamental point of wisdom is like saying the safest state of a bungee jumper is isolation from his anchor point. No doubt this is what pagans want to be true. It’s easier to force the lock than find the key. It’s easier to affirm man, as an individual or collected into various states or tribes, as the measure of all things. It’s easier to rule than submit — even if it means your empire is just a mountain of burning tires.

These are, of course, all lies. For only in God’s light do we see light.

To argue for some bank of wisdom or knowledge outside of God that will somehow fix Canada is the height of naivete. Any “ism” that doesn’t end with the supremacy of God in Christ will just become another darkening ideology. The sooner we mature in our ability to tune out godless pedagogues, the sooner we can hope for recovery.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. Colossians 2: 8-10

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The tragedy of Tumbler Ridge was not a random event. It was the consequence of a collective promotion and toleration of destructive lies. We should mourn the victims, and take responsibility by repudiating lies wherever they are found.

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It also, for me, marks an age where, statistically speaking, I have about as much life behind me as I hope to have in front of me. Only the Lord knows, and I don’t want to presume. I could breathe my last breath before posting this. But regardless of how long the Lord preserves my life, the fact remains: I have now lived long enough to have some things to reflect upon. I’m not sure if it is a common experience, but I find myself looking back more than ahead these days, and I thought I should articulate some of these reflections, even if only for myself.

Gratitude:

Of course, I have much to be thankful for, although I spend far too little time reflecting on this and offering to God the gratitude He deserves.

I’m not sure how much of it is a natural disposition, but I am more aware than most people of the problems around me and within me. I don’t coast through life with the same ease and indifference that I see in many people. I become concerned with troubles very easily. I think that’s actually a big reason for why I’ve been a part of planting a church, starting a school, starting a business, and leading a ministry. I see a lack or need, and I assume it’s up to me to provide at least a part of the solution. One of the consequences of this mentality, however, is that contentment and gratitude are more elusive than they ought to be.

But an honest assessment of my life would warrant unending thanks to our Lord.

He has blessed me far beyond what I deserve.

Firstly, I am His. I have been rescued from death, and given eternal life. My sins are forgiven. I know the truth, and it has set me free. Nothing else compares.

Further, I married a 1-of-1 woman, who is truly committed to my good, even above her own. She is someone I admire and respect in her own right and, for some reason, she has given herself to helping me. Virtually all of the other blessings and fruit in my life are a direct result of her love and support. She’s the person I most want to be around, and the human source of whatever strength I have to fight evil as best I can. She is an incredible mother to our two children, who fill me with pride and delight. My home is a busy but happy place, and the love is deep.

I have the honour and blessing of pastoring a church that I love and enjoy. I have the blessing of serving alongside elders whom I love and respect. My top-two favourite preachers are also members of my own church, so I am well-fed when I take a break. My family is respected and loved by our congregation. Not many pastors, I have come to realize, can say all of that. I get the blessing of focusing my heart on God’s word each Sunday, and worshiping our Lord through preaching. That’s what I love most in life, and when I feel as though I am living according to God’s will for me; when Jesus Christ is big, and we get to glimpse Him in Spirit and truth, even if only in a mirror, dimly for now.

I often tell Bec, our riches are our relationships. We have loving and loyal friends, of such a calibre that is uncommon in this dark world. Truly, they are worth more than any riches in the world. I haven’t known what it is to be alone, perhaps forever. And that is a rare gift.

Loss:

As I have now lived a little while in this fallen world, I am increasingly marked by a feeling of loss. I don’t spend as much time looking forward in anticipation as I do looking back in sadness.

The first funeral I officiated for our church was my own Dad. I’ve experienced the joy and excitement of my wife’s announcement of pregnancy, and the pain of loss. Twice. I’ve buried my friend. I’ve done more funerals with tiny coffins than I ever feared I would, and seen infants and children take their last breaths. I’ve had close friends who shared many meals around my family table become treacherous. Even the city and nation in which I reside has become nearly unrecognizable to me.

I’ve seen many things I love disappear, and I carry a sadness with me now that, at this point, I just accept. I’m tired now, and it is the kind of tired sleep doesn’t fix.

Could I be more thankful? Yes. Could I be less anxious? Yes.

But could I unburden myself completely from the pain of loss, the horror of death, and the sorrow I carry each day? No.

That’s a job for our Lord.

My job is to rejoice in the midst of it (cf. 2 Cor 6:10).

Regret:

Now that I’ve lived a little while, it feels at times like I have experienced as much failure as fruit.

One of the pervasive feelings I experience is that of regret. I think of these things at night, when the house is quiet and memories flood my mind. I regret not having more courage as a teenager to stick up for those who were looked down upon and mistreated. I regret not having more love and patience with my dying father. I wonder about the brothers and friends who fell away, and if I could have done more. I think of my failures to love my daughters as I ought, or to enjoy them more fully while I was anxious about many things. I regret ever being irritated and unloving with a woman who has shown me extraordinary love and respect, and of the kind few men experience.

These things come to mind often now.

One of the ways in which I have had to mature is to adopt a realistic view of a fallen world, without succumbing to anger, bitterness, and despair. And how to walk in repentance and faith, not enslaved to past failures. In some ways, I feel like I’m in the middle of that process.

Hope:

I thought about the remedy to my failures and fears and sorrows and regrets. I thought about the hope I need to sustain me for whatever days I have left. I keep circling back to the beautiful words of the Catechism:

“What is your only comfort in life and in death?

That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death— to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

This has always been all I’ve had, however much I’ve realized it, and all I’ve ever needed. And it will be enough whether I barely last the day, or am granted decades more.