Several weeks ago our family embarked on what I’ll call a difficult season. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it has involved sustained acquaintance with medical-grade vinyl, rabid equipment alarms, and that particular shade of jaundiced yellow universally favoured by hospital custodial teams.

While too early in the process to pretend I have any special wisdom or advice to share, the Scriptures note that no temptation overtakes us except for those that are common to everyone. Since seasons of crisis are no exception, I thought I’d share some particular temptations I’ve already noticed scratching at the windows and howling down the chimney. Perhaps there will be some extension of application to others who find themselves in similar circumstances.

Resorting to cheap therapy

The hardest moments in life are those where you feel least in control. I say “feel” because the reality is we’re never really in control. Rogue cells in the body, rogue drivers on the road, rogue powers on the geopolitical stage; these are just a few examples of things we can’t predict or really do anything about. When unexpected things happen, our illusions of control rapidly unravel and all kinds of symptoms begin to emerge — anger, irritability, and an almost-murderous self-protectionism.

In light of these dangers, we can go one of two ways. We can flee to the Lord, who is a refuge for those who trust in him (Psalm 46). Or we can flee to any one of the endless cheap, benumbing comforts the world offers.

Sin is always at its most potent when it least looks like sin. During moments of crisis, sin eagerly disguises itself as reasonable therapy. “You can’t expect me to be patient at a time like this.” “You can’t expect me to control my emotions at a time like this.” “You can’t expect me not to overeat or indulge in mindless media consumption in a time like this.” Suddenly everything becomes permissible. Worse, certain “miserable comforters” will gather around and endorse such responses as entirely justified and reasonable.

And so if we’re not careful — if we’re not on our guard — a season where we are most in need of fellowship with God, we are poised furthest away from it. When it is most crucial that we make wise decisions, we are the furthest away from wisdom. By these means Satan most efficiently destroys both comfort and comforter.

All treatment, ALL THE TIME

As strange as it sounds, there are certain lonely individuals who wait their entire lives for a significant diagnosis. Suddenly everyone is asking how they’re doing, what treatments they’re undergoing, or the latest updates regarding their condition. Not only this but they suddenly find unprecedented opportunities to endlessly talk about themselves.

But as I was recently reminded, spiritually-healthy saints don’t actually want to talk about themselves, much less about their “condition.” They would rather not stare into the bleak void of the unknown or discuss various pill protocols and worst-case scenarios. They genuinely want to hear what other people are doing. They want to talk about other things. They want to help and encourage the church. They want to share the reason for the hope that is in them. They realize that attempting to exegete the future is not only futile, it also injects a kind of prevailing moroseness into everything.

Don’t assume that sick people, especially sick Christians, just want to talk about their sickness. They probably don’t. The spiritually-healthy Christian “is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.”

Confusing legitimate responsibility with omniscience

The looming specter of disease inspires all kinds of mania in its participants. At least it does in me. Those who were never interested in such things before suddenly become ravenous for any information or insight that might give them an edge. And don’t get me wrong, gathering information and doing one’s own research, especially in the midst of a socialist health system that has no moral qualms with murdering the young or elderly, is a responsible thing to do.

But if one isn’t careful, it is easy to unconsciously transpose oneself into “God-mode” — where those under your care will die apart from your minute-by-minute intervention. And then at some point the inevitable moment comes: where one promising study seems to question, or even contradict, some other study you’d just been researching. Where you suddenly stumble onto an entirely new field of research you didn’t even know existed. It is easy to become paralyzed at the sheer volume of things one doesn’t know.

At these times, it is important to remember we are not omniscient; nor are the best doctors or scientists. We do what we can. We have the conversations we need to have, and do the research we need to do. But then we commit our soul to God, and refuse to spend the entire evening second-guessing everything we’d already decided earlier in the day. There will never not be a shadow of doubt. There will never be 100% certainty about any course of action. There will never not be the risk of some updated study four months from now completely altering the information we currently have.

At a certain point you have to act, sometimes you have to act on the fly, without all the information. That is okay. That is actually how God has designed things. The good news is that he knows our frame. Really, the most important thing to do — whether you’re the one in the hospital bed or waiting nearby — is to start each new day of unknowns with prayer for wisdom. It is amazing how the maintenance of such a simple rythym can transform the most dark and chaotic situations into a well-lit path.

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It has recently come to my attention that certain people have more money than other people.

Not only is this fact disturbing on a societal level, it has also caused various painful memories to resurface from my own past. One in particular replays itself again and again. It’s lunch time and I’m in grade six. My dutch friend Tim is enjoying a crustless, wonder-bread sandwich with chocolate sprinkles. I’m sitting next to him, making dry, emphatic smacking sounds while attempting to muster enough saliva to reconstitute a three-day old bran muffin. Despite my evident suffering, he refuses to share a single bite of his sandwich with me.

The recollection of this early exposure to capitalist swinery plunged me into an extended, self-destructive memory cycle, which I’ve been attempting to resolve with a sequence of nutella and fruit-loop danishes. So far I’ve just gained fifteen pounds.

Thankfully, Canadians for Tax Fairness, a non-profit, non-partisan, definitely-not-socialist advocacy group recently published a report, “Which looked at the wealth held by ultra-rich families in Canada’s four biggest provinces and . . . proposed that different annual and one-time wealth taxes could address inequality.”

This could be the answer to all of our problems. To THE problem …

… The problem of billionaires.

And, really, the much bigger problem of me not being one of them.

The nature of wealth

The error of all “eat the rich” rhetoric can be illustrated by means of a bad analogy. It starts with a cake — let’s say a cake divided into sixteen pieces. If Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg each take four pieces of that cake, that only leaves four pieces for the rest of us. This is unfair. This is unjust.1 In fact, the only way to correct such gross inequality is to take a big ol’ utility knife and start carving away slivers of other people’s cake, call it a slice tax, which can then be reabsorbed into the common cake pool.

And can we all just agree that a pool of cake sounds like a great place to spend an August afternoon? The yellow jackets would be a problem, of course.

There’s a tiny problem though.

Those who’ve taken logic will hopefully remember that an analogy is only as good as its premise. And in this case, the premise smells like a ditch full of dead racoons. That’s because wealth isn’t a zero-sum situation (one person’s gain is inevitably another person’s loss). The fact that billionaires make billions of dollars doesn’t inherently prevent someone else from also making billions of dollars; which helps explain why there are 3400 billionaires in the world instead of just one. Wealth is a product of labour. More wealth can be generated — more cake can be made — if more people engage in labour.

Now, are there forces in the world, or in your life, which would make such a pursuit unlikely or unwise? Sure. Likely, even. But it’s not because other people are stealing anything from you. To resurrect our analogy, wealth is more like cupboards of ingredients than a finished cake. Or a field of wheat. Or a grove of peaches. Or a tree full of … cinnamon … nuts?

Advocates of redistributive economics — typically either government officials, welfare recipients, or morally-desperate retirees — don’t like illimitable wealth models for many reasons. Some of these include: 1. It’s easier to blame others than be responsible for your own success (or failure). 2. It’s essential for the aims of the would-be authoritarian State that its citizens come to believe socioeconomic harmony (i.e., “equality”) cannot be achieved apart from its direct and constant intervention. 3. Would-be authoritarian states cannot achieve critical mass apart from atomic levels of taxation — redistributive rhetoric (carefully couched in virtue) provides the ideal front by which to launder and diffuse taxpayer money throughout its own ranks.

The nature of government

It is advantageous for the State that its citizens believe billionaires are mustachioed villains hiding in their bedrooms, surrounded by little brown sacks with dollar signs on them. This is also why they’re happy to render modest tithes to media outlets: the narrative must keep spinning.

In this reimagined fairy tale, government adopts the role of Robin Hood, with taxation functioning as both his bow and merry men, enabling him to “acquire” the stolen wealth. He can then trundle it through the villages on a big wooden cart, tossing guilders and haunches of venison to starving peasants. The problem with this narrative, apart from the fact that it’s missing a priest and a rabbi, is that it hinges on the validity of the first argument, which I’ve already demonstrated is phonier than an AbTronic belt.

Now, hear what I’m saying. I’m not saying taxation is theft in itself. Jesus is pretty clear there’s a legitimate place for taxes and let’s none of us start pretending we’re holier than Jesus. But then, Jesus also condemns hypocrites who wax on about their commitment to the public good, and righting wrongs, and correcting inequalities and then go on to “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders.”

The truth is, none of the frauds who talk about fixing inequality actually give a rat’s ear for the poor. Nor do they care that their “solutions” only make the lives of those on the edge of poverty even more precarious. What they do care about, and what Pharisees of every age care about, is someone else having what they want, what a ceremonial observance of righteousness can do for a guilty conscience, and what certain forms of social homage can do for their own influence.

The nature of redistribution

Combining all federal, provincial, and local taxes (income tax, payroll deductions, sales tax, property tax, and fuel tax), the average Canadian family gives around 42.3% of their total cash income to the government. Despite this, and despite truly heroic spending, all of the things we’re supposedly paying for (healthcare, education, etc.) are patently getting worse. Coincidentally, thousands of government employees now make over $200,000 salaries.

The only thing that happens when an already-fat state figures out how to accrue more taxes, is that it gets fatter. We call this the “My 600-pound government” principle.

The point at which redistributive models fully metastasize is the point at which there are no longer enough goods and services to redistribute. In Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he describes the futility of life in a Soviet labour camp, in which one team of labourers is forced to steal metal sheeting from another camp project in order to complete their own project. There isn’t enough resources to go around because no one is actually doing anything. Socialist rhetoric only remains viable as long as there is enough incidental wealth to sustain the parasite class. Redistribution schemes ultimately lead to a degradation of services across the board.

Even if we grant that heavy taxation would benefit the general population, Thomas Sowell notes that higher taxes for the rich don’t actually result in more taxes being collected. It simply means the rich move elsewhere, or sink their funds into tax-proof investments. Which, in fact, is exactly what’s happening. No one who isn’t a cenobite is going to sit around indefinitely while you stab them with sharpened curtain poles until their lifeblood drains into a pail.

The nature of nature

The socialist problem is perennial because human nature is perennial. The factor that provoked Cain to murder his brother is the same factor provoking us now: envy.

You feel it when your friend buys the truck you’ve been lusting after for months. You feel it when you see people on a cruise that you’ve been wanting to go on, or when someone starts talking about an opportunity you’d been hoping for. “That deserves to be me,” you tell yourself. “Why are they so happy and I’m so miserable?” And then that fateful phrase: “It’s not fair.”

Pretty soon we start looking for someone to blame. When we start to realize how petty and vindictive we sound, we have to disguise that envy in pious language. We care about justice. We care about equality. We want everyone to have their fair share. No we don’t. We’re mad that other people have what we want, and blame and revenge is more gratifying than taking another job or being content with what you have.

The cure isn’t easy. But it is simple. And because I feel guilty for starting you off with a bad analogy, I’m going to leave you with a great one:

The central cultural peril we face is the deadly sin of envy. Envy lies at the root of virtually every political trouble we have, and we have many. The antidote is therefore gratitude, and it needs to be 100 proof gratitude. Now the only place you can get that kind of gratitude is from the distilleries of Heaven, made with peat from the salt marshes of Paradise. We need something smoky enough to burn away every form of envy, the kind of envy that loves to hide under the human tongue, like the malicious bacteria it is. Roll that drink around in your mouth, and let it do all of the grateful work.

-Doug Wilson

That the pen is mightier than the sword isn’t just a fundamental principle of the West — it’s a fundamental principle of Christianity, apart from which there would be no West. The only reason we enjoy the freedoms we do is because our founders believed that truth — ultimately the truth of Christ — provides the only stable basis for society; and that as long as truth is proclaimed, there is the power to transform individuals, nations, and the world.

When you read the Scriptures, the first thing you’ll notice is that their focus is very different from the focus of secular history books. Sure, the goings-on of various empires and powers are acknowledged, but even this is mostly in passing. One minute Babylon or Assyria or Egypt appear as a totalizing power; the next they’ve been conquered or displaced. This is consistent with Christianity, which has always affirmed the greatest power men can produce is nothing compared to the living, enduring Word of God.

Consider that the good news of the Gospel didn’t come down as an edict from the king. Rather, it was a message spread by poor and powerless people, and has been ever since. What this means is that if we have the truth — if the Word of Christ “dwells in us richly” — we have everything. And that if we everything except the truth we have nothing.

We live in an age where everyone is encouraged to believe whatever they want and no one is allowed to say anything against it. In contrast to this prevailing worldview, there is the church, which Paul calls “a pillar and a buttress of the truth.” The church takes her marching orders from Jesus. It is her duty to preach and teach that not all ideas are valid; that some ideas are positively evil and must be condemned, and that others are absolutely necessary and must be affirmed without qualification.

One of the greatest threats to the life and witness of the church is false teaching. This makes sense if you think about it. If all we have is the truth, then whatever would threaten and undermine that truth must become our mortal enemy. The other thing to keep in mind is what Paul states in 1 Timothy 4:1, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” In other words, false teaching isn’t something that only existed in the first centuries of the church. It remains a perennial danger until Christ returns.

What this means for Christians is that we must assume a continual posture of humble vigilance. Towards the world, yes — but especially towards ourselves.

Confronting the monster within

What we see in the New Testament is that the greatest threats confronting the church don’t come from without but from within. One of the unique characteristics of Christianity is that unlike the base tribal impulses that come naturally for fallen humanity, Christians don’t locate evil exclusively in some other person or group. Instead, we recognize that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The problem is we’ve gotten so used to hearing this, we can lose sight of its novelty; we can start reciting it as a mantra rather than clinging to it as bedrock reality. Yet the Bible places particular emphasis on putting off our own individual sin. Does this mean we’re unconcerned with the world around us? Absolutely not. To love God and our neighbor requires us to do justice, to care for the poor, and to give voice to the voiceless. But the humility and desire to do these things starts by acknowledging and confessing the propensities of our own hearts.

True Christians are characterized by an ongoing desire for holiness — an ongoing desire to be like Jesus. Such a person recognizes that even though we’re born again, the old nature is constantly fighting against us. There is always remaining sin to confess and put to death. As it says in 1 John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and the word is not in us.”

A lot of people think that Christians are people who go around pretending they’re better than others. And certainly one of the easiest ways to cover our own guilt is by talking about the flaws and failures of others. In setting up a moral standard apart from God’s Word, we leave off comparing ourselves to his righteous standard and begin comparing ourselves to other people. But a true Christian is someone who recognizes that apart from Jesus, they’re just as capable of evil as everyone else. They know that there was only one human being who has ever perfectly loved God and others, and that he died the death that we deserve for the sins we’ve committed.

A Christian is someone who acknowledges and lives in the reality that in the flesh, nothing good dwells; that we are just as dependent on the grace of God on year fifty as on year one. It is only those who become less aware of their need for Jesus who fall away from him and reveal themselves to have never truly known him.

Where there’s no humble acknowledgement of sin in our own hearts, and only perpetual blame and accusing others, there is no spirit of Christ in us.

The drift away from sober mindedness

Since 2020 there’s been a massive shift away from the humble acknowledgement of our own sin to an inordinate focus on the sins of others.

Before covid, I knew almost nothing about politics. My life was taken up with immediate concerns — my family, church, my school. Outside that circle, my involvement shrunk significantly. And then there was this shift — suddenly forces from outside were having this huge impact on my life to an extent that I had to stop and figure things out. And many people did. What I’ve noticed since is that as we’ve become more aware of the enemy outside, we’ve become less aware of the enemy inside.

There’s a way to engage in the culture war that’s just a cover. By joining the “right side” of such-and-such a movement, we start to believe that makes us righteous people. But no one is justified before God merely by participating in the right cause or opposing the right thing. The true battle lines are formed between those who recognize the sin in their own heart and those who don’t. Those are the lines. And, frankly, I think there’s a lot of people engaged in the so-called culture war who think they’re on the good side when they’re not. Which is why, increasingly, you see that the “left” and “right” are really just the same team with different jerseys. They’re both fighting the same war. They’re both falling back to the same strategies.

One of the main characteristics of false teaching is that it lets us draw lines other than where God’s Word draws them. “I’m white, I’m Canadian, I affirm traditional gender roles, I want beautiful architecture. I lift weights.” These things become what sets us apart from other people. But according to the Scriptures, the only distinction that matters is faith or unbelief. The only thing that matters is the worship of the true God or the worship of idols.

One day we’re all going to stand before the Lord of Hosts, and he’s not going to ask if we were of European descent, married a white girl, or voted conservative. His only question will be: did you love my Son?

When we condemn and blame others at the expense of being honest about ourselves, we end up being hypocrites and frauds. True Christians recognize the greatest commandments (to love God and our neighbor) are the only moral standards by which we are judged. The advance of “christendom” will only take place as we subject ourselves to the scrutiny of this standards, confess where we fall short, and seek his grace and power to be transformed.

Embracing the discomfort of conviction

In a nutshell, false teaching is whatever contradicts the standard of the Word of God and produces the fruit of ungodliness. These things always go together.

Another way of saying this is that false teaching always affirms our sinful desires. How do you know when you’re living contrary to the truth? Well, do you ever find yourself challenged? Confronted? Contradicted? Today, we’re told to view whatever contradicts us as a threat. But according to Scripture, feeling challenged or confronted is indicative of God’s work in our lives. Christians ought to view these moments as the best moments of their lives; as the lifeline they didn’t know they needed. Sure conviction feels awful when you’re suddenly forced to acknowledge, “Wow, I’m not right about a lot of things. Which means I might have to change my mind on a lot of things, which means I’m going to have to change my life on a lot of things.” But godly grief that brings repentance is the only path forward.

Think back to what it felt like to be converted. You go through this very uncomfortable phase of being confronted on all kinds of things you didn’t even know were a problem. But the truth is that the Christian life never stops being about that. The Christian life is about becoming comfortable with discomfort.

But false teaching doesn’t do that. False teaching doesn’t ever make you feel convicted. It never confronts you. In fact, it flatters you. It makes you feel proud. It affirms you.

Now, it can sometimes be difficult to predict the consequence of ideas; not everyone can always see where there might be a logical or theoretical contradiction. What we can do is observe the fruit of ideas. Does a certain belief or doctrine make you more godly? Does it make you more like Jesus? Does it make you love other people more? Does it make you despise your sin and cry out to God for mercy? Does it produce peace amongst brothers or discord?

Sound doctrine, Paul says in Timothy, is healthy doctrine. And the reason he uses the word “healthy” is because, again, false doctrine produces bad fruit but good doctrine produces good fruit. In 1 Timothy 6:3, he say, “It agrees with the sound words of Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness.” Here we have the right standard, the words of Jesus Christ, and the fruit, the teaching that accords or is in line with godliness. False doctrine claims to be Christian but contradicts the teachings of scripture and results in the kind of ungodliness revealed in this text: envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people.

One of the things I’ve noticed in those who hold to false teaching, and especially the kind that’s currently circulating, is a complete absence of godliness, a total disregard for authority, and a fundamental unwillingness to listen or acknowledge one’s own wrong. And this brings us to the real danger of false teaching.

The reason it spreads like wildfire is not only does it affirm our sinful desires, but it rebrands them as righteous. I’m a defender of Christendom! I’m a defender of the West! I care about my ancestors! I care about orthodoxy! All lies. And the reason it spreads so fast is presented in Proverbs 17:4, “An evildoer listens to wicked lips, and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue” and in 2 Timothy 4:3, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

Why do we listen to lies? Because we’re liars. Why do we listen to evil? Because we’re evil. It’s not complicated. Evil people love evil teaching, and false teaching lets us justify ourselves rather than confess our corruption and our need for the true and better righteousness of Christ.

And the result is rampant sin and division between brothers, families, and churches.

Give ‘em the Balaam treatment

What should our response be to this?

In the first few chapters of Revelation, Jesus sends out seven letters to seven churches, each of which contain a variety of rebukes, encouragements, and warnings. In 2:14-16, Jesus says:

Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Notice here that it’s not the entire church that holds to these things — it’s just some of them. Yet he includes the entire church in his warning. He says if such things are tolerated in your midst, you’re not going to be able to make the excuse, “Well, it wasn’t me, it was them.” He says I’m going to come and wage war against you. You can’t love what Jesus hates. You can’t poison his people and be on his side. You can’t have peace with him while you wage war against his sheep.

And make no mistake: to tolerate false teaching is to wage war against his sheep.

And in all of us there is a proclivity to listen to lies because lies tell us all the things about ourselves we want to believe; that we’re awesome and that there’s nothing that needs to change. This isn’t just false teaching — it is an anti-Gospel. It is opposed to Christ and everything he accomplished.

By God’s grace, and with his help, we can and must reject it.

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There is no doubt that saints ought to rejoice. Just as birds ought to fly or trees ought to grow and fill their branches with a thousand little buds and leaves, so the saints ought to rejoice. But the joy of God’s people isn’t ambiguous—it doesn’t hang in the air like a cloud, all vague and undefined. The joy of God’s people is concrete, springing from a specific root: the reign of God.

“The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice…Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice, because of your judgments, O LORD.” (Ps. 97:1, 8)

The reign of God is the joy of His saints. It is the object of their constant praise and meditation. When trouble eclipses their vision and they feel their hearts becoming burdened by fear, anxiety, and unbelief, the Lord’s reign is the thing they must fight to return to. It is this truth they must wrestle to keep in constant view.

Without it, they cannot see the world rightly. Evil appears far more victorious than it truly is; the wicked seem immovable, like giants in the land. Righteousness begins to look feeble, fleeting, and tenuous. In fact, the opposite is the case (the meek will inherit the earth, Ps. 37:11; Matt. 5:5), but this is only possible to see when one looks with the eyes of faith. When God’s throne, established in the heavens (Ps. 103:19), dominates our vision, all our foolish fears are put to rest. Only then can we see the righteous and the wicked in their proper place, the righteous being established like oak trees and the wicked vanishing like phantoms (Ps. 73:20).

And so we must rejoice, Christian reader. And our rejoicing must be rooted firmly in the eternal, indomitable, and all-conquering reign of God. In an age when rage-baiting, shrieking, and childish whining passes for public discourse, we must remain composed and stable. Not because we are aloof, but because we are controlled by the deep and pervasive conviction that God has installed His King on Zion (Ps. 2:6). He has raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. He has set Him far above all rule and authority and power and dominion—both in this age and also the one to come (Eph. 1:21). He has placed all things under His feet, and this truth is the ground beneath our own.

So take heart, and rejoice in the kingdom of God.

Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous, and give thanks to His holy name!

For years, socially-conservative types have identified (correctly) that the progressive engine is fueled on victimhood; that the entire identity-politics machine operates on the assumption that a state of being “marginalized” automatically deputizes individuals to do and demand whatever they want — all in the name of “justice,” of course. Their trauma is so great, in fact, that we cannot possibly hold them accountable for any supposed transgressions. After all, they are only trying to claw their way back to the surface, and things like “expectations,” “responsibilities,” and “consequences” will only further discourage them.

What conservatives have been willfully blind to, however, is that the impulse to blame others isn’t just a “woke” problem. Remember Eve: “It was the serpent’s fault”; Adam: “It was the woman’s fault”; Cain: “It was Able’s fault”; and Aaron: “It was the people’s fault.” Don’t get me wrong — I am not glazing over the pervasive damage that progressive ideology in particular has wrought on Western nations. Such damage has been incalculable and must be acknowledged. What I am saying is that the extent of damage has created the conditions in which one rapidly loses the ability to recognize one’s own sins.

See, the thing with being blind . . . and stay with me here . . . is that you can’t see. This explains why, when attempts are made to call out certain uncannily familiar symptoms of victimhood in the conservative camp, the response, naturally, is to accuse the messenger of being possessed (John 7:20). After all, we’re the good guys — we don’t resort to those kinds of tactics. But the thing is, we do. The knee-jerk response to locate the nexus of evil in some outside collective — “It’s the boomers” “It’s the Liberals” “It’s the government” “It’s the Jews” “It’s the immigrants” “It’s the feminists” — is doing it.

Victim narratives do not empower. They imprison. When young men are repeatedly told their problems are other people’s fault, we lie to them. Yes, there are challenges facing our generation. But challenges, and much bigger ones, also faced our fathers and grandfathers. Personally, I prefer my chances against high taxes and immigration over dying at thirty from the black lung or facing Viet Cong guerilla troops somewhere in the Iron Triangle.

Narratives that lull men into thinking the current cultural conditions exempt them from taking ownership of their sins, households, and vocations need to die, and they needs to die yesterday. As such narratives take on a disturbing degree of legitimacy, and as my son approaches the cusp of his own garden to work, and his own thorns to fight, I felt a duty to encourage and warn him. To encourage him with the reminder that hard work is the proper domain of young men and he shouldn’t be discouraged when he finds it hard. And to warn him — principally against himself.

Although I wrote this to my son, it was suggested there might be broader application, so I have included it below:

“It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.” Lamentations 3:27

“Son, we need to talk about yokes. No, not the kind you find in an egg. I’m talking about the wooden beam fixed over the necks of a pair of oxen, and from there attached to a heavy plow. Because of Adam’s sin, and mine, and yours, the ground is cursed. The harvest is buried in futility and the only way to get it out is through toil. Is through plowing. Often in what seems like concrete-hard soil. As a young man, as a middle-aged man, as an old man, this is your calling. To shoulder that yoke, in whatever form it takes.

Fighting against you, as you take up this hard but good work, are three stubborn enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world will tell you lies. That yokes are bad things. That you deserve better. That you’re being treated unfairly. That other people are the problem. That the system is the problem. That you’re a victim.

Hear the Word of the Lord — It’s good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.

The flesh will tell you lies. That there are shortcuts to a harvest other than hard work. That your failures are someone else’s fault. That sin brings happiness. That things were better in Egypt. That Christ isn’t actually worth the loss of all things.

Hear the word of the Lord — It’s good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.

The devil will tell you lies. Because he hates when young men bear their yokes faithfully. Because he knows that’s how the darkness is kept at bay. Son, he would love to see you snared in toys, in lusts and pleasures, in worthless pursuits, that will steal your strength.

Hear the word of the Lord — It’s good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.

All of this is true. But it’s not the whole story. Because remember — a yoke is made for two. Jesus Christ walks beside and in front of you. And when you’re weary and burdened. And when, despite all your best efforts, there is no harvest, go to him and find rest for your soul. He has shed his own blood for you. And he will never leave nor forsake you.

What this means is that you can plow in hope. And in faith. And yes, even in joy. Hudson, my hope for you and your future isn’t that you are strong enough, but that Christ is. Remember that in him all your labour, all your toil, all the yokes — even if no one sees you bearing them — are not in vain.

Trust him and he will make your paths straight.”

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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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