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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the Godhood of God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A creature’s response

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some applications:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   1 Chron. 29: 14-17

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

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

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

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

- B.I.

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

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

A united nation must have shared basis for law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laws reflects values

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

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

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

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

The supremacy of God or the supremacy of man

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

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

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

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

The who shapes the how

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

And He offers life to all who would surrender.

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

May God call us back to him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exchanging the truth for a lie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So much for common sense.

Unchaining ourselves from the sun

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

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

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

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

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

“And God said”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

And we should pray to that end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rehydrating wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Light Shining Ever Brighter

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

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

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

Enter the sun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gratitude:

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

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

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

He has blessed me far beyond what I deserve.

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

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

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

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

Loss:

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

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

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

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

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

That’s a job for our Lord.

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

Regret:

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

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

These things come to mind often now.

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

Hope:

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

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

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

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

“In the same year, after Easter, King Alfred, with a few men, made a fortress at a place called Athelney, and from it with the thegns of Somerset he struck out relentlessly and tirelessly against the Vikings. Presently, in the seventh week after Easter, he rode to Egbert’s Stone…and there all the inhabitants of Somerset and Wiltshire and all the inhabitants of Hampshire—those who had not sailed overseas for fear of the Vikings—joined up with him.”1

In the year of our Lord’s Incarnation 878, the isle of Britain had almost fallen. Her grassy hills and ancient forests, once the happy resting place of humble Saxon farms, had been swallowed up in fire and shadow.

Norse invaders were the purveyors of this darkness; Oden’s awful insignia their sign of conquest and ruin. Always and everywhere they roved now like wolves: burning, breaking, raping, destroying. Under their feet almost all of Britain was sunk in darkness, and the darkness was black and terrible.

One place, however, had not yet fallen; one place had yet to bend the knee. That place was Egbert’s Stone, and here the men of Wessex found their courage.

Here they answered Alfred’s noble call, and here they gathered for war. Farmers, craftsmen, ordinary folk—not at all the stuff of legend and lore—assembled round the ancient stone and listened as their hearts were stirred by the King from Athelney. From hence they would go on to win a stunning victory at the Battle of Edington, altering the course of history forever and bringing about the birth of the English people.

Egbert’s Stone was thus the place where light was kindled once again. Love and liberty awakened here, slumbering loyalties found their vigour, and fear was trampled down. Britain was saved at Egbert’s Stone—and perhaps through her the world.

None but God can say what might have happened without the courage of these faithful few. But what can be said is wonderfully apparent to all with eyes to see: darkness is not so mighty as it seems; courage, though small, can fell the greatest foes; victory doesn’t always belong to the strongest; and love is a far more ardent force than greed.

Put simply, Egbert’s Stone reminds us that fairytales are more than tales and that unbending courage in the face of overwhelming odds is not a childish ideal but a manful necessity.

Virtue such as this was cherished once, and it was so for good reason: it was cherished because it was true; it was loved because it was noble.

The Egbert’s Stone Podcast

Recovering the virtues that built our civilization begins by first recovering a love for them. This is what the Egbert’s Stone podcast aims to do. By returning to the works of previous generations—the stories and tales that made our world—we hope to rekindle a love for the Western tradition in the hearts of the common man.

We hope to answer the cynicism and despair of the present moment with the joy and wisdom of former times.

We hope to provide stability and rootedness by tethering ourselves in some small way to the ages that preceded us.

Our culture currently regards the past with scorn—we are thankless children. Yet we owe these forgotten fathers and mothers an immeasurable debt: our world was built by their hands.

Egbert’s Stone is thus a podcast about literature and history. It is a podcast dedicated to remembering and enjoying the great stories and events that have shaped our world.

It is, in short, one more attempt to “hold a candle to this dark world”2 and exalt whatever is lovely, commendable, and true (Phil. 4:8).

We hope you listen along with us as we explore the riches of our Christian heritage.

Listen to Episode 1

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:9 (NIV)

The LORD detests double standards; he is not pleased by dishonest scales. Proverbs 20:23 (NLT)

(Foreward: If you are here via Resistance Coffee Company social media channels, welcome. This, and all further updates regarding the March for Justice will be posted here. There are several reasons for this, among them that we have no interest in exploiting anyone’s suffering for the sake of a brand. We are marching first and foremost as Canadians, not a company.)

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are now facing 7-8 years for the crime of peacefully protesting.

Those with even a passing familiarity with the so-called Freedom Convoy will know it was one of the most effective grass-roots movements Canada has ever seen. Despite the media’s constant attempts to suggest otherwise, it was not an attempt to seize power or incite revolution. It was a movement made up of regular Canadians who no longer recognized the Canada they grew up in and refused to stand by while tyrants and technocrats defaced her legacy.

The state would like us to believe Lich and Barber are dangerous criminals — but let’s set the context shall we? In North York, a 71-year old woman was murdered in cold blood for refusing to hand over her car keys. As a minor, the most jail time he will face is four years. After robbing a liquor store, another man drove the wrong way down the 401, killing 4 people, including a baby. He received a sentence under six months to avoid automatic deportation. Another man tried to buy sex from a 15-year-old and was put under house arrest for fear of delaying his citizenship. Never mind that terrorist mobs have been blocking various roads in Ottawa for almost two years nows.

In the name of “compassion,” violent crime is exploding in Canada while the actually violent criminals are immediately released back into the public.

What we are witnessing in the case of Lich and Barber has nothing to do with justice. It has nothing to do with the equal application of law. It has nothing to do with dispensing a punishment commensurate with the crime. We know this because there has BEEN no crime. If you want to talk about crime, let’s talk about the Federal Court ruling that declared the invocation of the Emergencies Act in 2022 unlawful, unreasonable, and a direct violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Why are the ones responsible for such gross overreach of force not being held responsible? Where is their sentencing? Where is their jail time?

What has become patently clear is that Lich and Barber’s gauntlet through the courts has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with sending a message. “This is what we do to patriots.” “This is what we do to prisoners of conscience.” “This is what we do when you don’t fall in line.”

What we are seeing is pure and simple revenge.

Loving our Neighbor Means Loving Justice

Increasingly, we find ourselves facing the bombed-out aftermath of what was once a nation “under God.”

Are we shocked?

When we abandon law’s foundation (the Bible) should we be surprised when law is weaponized in the hands of snivelling bureaucrats? Should we be surprised that when the truth which imbues dignity is ignored, onetime prisoners of conscience become seven-year’s-time prisoners of the state? When we take away the objective reality of good and evil, should we be surprised when good is called evil and evil is called good?

Admittedly, it can be difficult to know how to “love justice” when injustice seems to be running rampant. At times, we find ourselves echoing King David, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Do we devote ourselves to activism for the rest of our lives? Do we engage in perpetual protest until all wrongs everywhere are righted?

The answer, of course, is no.

A large part of law and order is maintained in the regular lives of regular people in their workplace, homes, churches, and communities. These are precious and essential institutions. When all is said and done, if there’s nothing to fight for, there’s no point in fighting at all.

There comes a time, however, where a line in the sand must be drawn. When we declare, as we did in 2022, “Thus far, and no farther.” In this, we are not acting like spoiled children, or veering out of our ordained lanes, but acting faithfully in the moment we find ourselves in — as citizens, as Christians, as those who care about the future of our nation, and as those made in the image of a just God.

If there is no just God, then there is no justice. If there is no God, justice becomes a matter of personal preference — it is “executed” not at the point of deviation from a rule, but when those with power are thwarted.

Thankfully, we don’t exist in such a world. We live in a world presided over by a God who demonstrated his commitment to justice so thoroughly that he sent his son Jesus Christ for those who deserved punishment; in other words, for all of us. We ought to love justice because God loves it. And we ought to hate injustice because God hates it.

We are not acting recklessly or seditiously when we peacefully dissent. We are not acting above our paygrade as citizens when we do so. This is, in fact, our mandate. When we stand against injustice, we stand with the true Judge, who presides over courts, judges, and governors; just as He stands with those who are weak, powerless, and outnumbered.

The upholding of justice isn’t an incidental issue. It is THE issue. And it is our responsibility as citizens, and especially for those who call themselves Christians. When there is a clear line in the sand, Christians must rally — we must be the first into battle, last out, laughing loudest.

Four years ago, the line was unjust mandates. Today, it seems we’ve come full circle — we must now stand for those who stood for us.

The March

It is clear that Canada’s courts, judges, and government have forgotten their mandate. “Justice” now only serves ideological cause — climate justice, Palestinian justice, immigrant justice, queer justice, etc. Judges, apparently, are no longer interested in equal weights and measures. They are interested in self-preservation.

It isn’t because of any evil that Chris or Tamara committed that they now must be punished; it is because of the good they did. The Freedom Convoy was one of the greatest demonstrations of Canadian patriotism in the history of our nation. That fact is precisely why it must be demonized, discredited, and it’s memory destroyed. That is why Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Canadian heroes, must be labelled as lawless, mischievous threats.

Most importantly, they must be punished for what they represent. The fact that the State is threatening to seize Big Red is proof that they are attempting to destroy even the symbols of dissent.

And make no mistake, Tamara, Chris, and Big Red are symbols. They are symbols of the nation we all once knew and loved. They are a symbol of the values which bound people from sea to sea. If the State insists on crushing every symbol of the nation we swore to defend, then the symbol must be the point of our peaceful resistance. They are the flag we must rally around.

So that’s what we’re going to do.

More specifically, we are going to peacefully march from Peterborough to Ottawa. Assuming a pace of 20km a day, and assuming our kneecaps don’t explode into ribbons partway, this should take us about two weeks. This is not a revolution. This is not a “storm parliament” moment. This is not Convoy 2.0.

This is a march of the silent majority. This is a march for principles. This is march for accused citizens who’ve done nothing wrong.

Details as to the precise location and execution of the event, as well as ways to help for those may not be able to attend, will be updated here.

Lich and Barber stood for us and got crushed. It’s time for Canadian patriots to stand for them and the nation we once knew.

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Last week our men’s group spent some time discussing complementarianism — specifically why, as a movement, it largely failed.

Complementarianism, as Dale Partridge explains. . .

“. . . is a theological view that holds men and women to have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and civil government. This perspective argues that while men and women are equal in value and dignity, they have distinct roles, with men typically serving as leaders in the home and church and women typically fulfilling supportive and nurturing roles.”

Popularized by men like John Piper and Wayne Grudem, the complementarian system initially seemed to be a solution to the inroads of feminism into the church. It was backed by many reformed celebrities, seemed to accurately reflect the biblical reality of marriage, and even came with a website.

But although it was a needed correction, and said many good and true things, it soon became clear it wasn’t nearly enough of a correction. True, it shifted the compass needle, but as anyone who’s been lost in the woods for three weeks will tell you, walk 355 degrees North long enough and you’ll eventually just be going West. The longer a movement goes on, the more likely any initial miscalculations will reveal themselves.

Thirty-five years into the complementarian movement, we can confidently say things have gone bad. Why did they go bad? I think for several reasons, but the big two were: 1) A sheepishness towards Scripture’s assumed and unapologetic patriarchy, manifested in the many ways men were no longer “allowed” to call women to the same standard of repentance as men. 2) A loss in translation between “Young, Restless, and Reformed” posturing and the actual execution of repentance at a local church level.

In other words, there was enough of a correction for Christians to take their kids out of public school and start homeschooling. There was enough of a correction for Christians to affirm certain biblical norms, i.e., husbands as breadwinners, moms as homemakers, children as blessings, etc.

But that’s — well, that’s kind of where the whole thing just ran out of steam.

Under the auspices of complementarianism, husbands would eventually servant-leader themselves into irrelevance, leaving wives to momma bear the heck out of their households. Husbands, unwilling to take on the risks and responsibilities of leadership, accepted their role as token “principals” and curriculum wallets. Wives, left to navigate through the void, sought validation of their lonely enterprise through trad-wife online influencers.

Turns out it wasn’t enough to pay homage to the form of obedience. It wasn’t enough to just play the part. We needed to love the substance underneath.

Creation Order Redux

Men and women DO complement each other, but in more than just an uneasy ceasefire. We find positive and proactive direction in Genesis 2:15-22:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

When God made Adam, he also gave him a job description, which was to move Eden from a state of sublime profusion to a state of sublime definition. “That’s a piranha,” Adam starts, “That’s an anaconda, and there’s a turkey vulture.” Could God have given Adam an already-made list of names for everything? Sure. But he gave him a job instead — and it isn’t humility to refuse a job God gives you.

As a result, “whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”

But there was a problem. By himself, he wasn’t equal to the task. Such a state, God proclaims, wasn’t even good. So God made him a helper.

Far from being inferior, a helper is an absolutely necessary and noble calling — in fact, God refers to himself as a helper many times throughout Scripture. But the thing about a helper is — and stay with me here — they help. A ruler doesn’t outsource the task of dominion to his helper, nor does the helper co-opt the mission for themselves. Rulers rule, and helpers help.

Let’s say you’ve set yourself to the task of reshingling your roof. At around 3pm, the temperature rises to 40 degrees. You feel the approach of a crippling migraine and your back skin is starting to feel like a strip of fruit leather. You look at the work you’ve done so far and realize you are only 1/24th of the way done. But just as you start praying for death’s sweet release, a neighbor comes along and offers to help. You bless his name and proceed to announce a thousand blessings on his children’s children.

What’s changed now that your neighbor is helping you? It’s still your roof. You’re still the one paying for supplies, organizing deliveries, and managing the division of labour. In other words, the roof is still your responsibility. Is the neighbor inferior because he’s a helper and not the homeowner? No. He is, in every way, your qualitative equal.

The difference is that the pre-help prospects of you ever finishing the job were grim to the point of non-existence. And now they aren’t.

Before the fall, Adam was a glad leader and Eve his glad helper. Adam charted out the schedule for the day (Let’s clear that stand of alders; Let’s dam up that river; Let’s forage that opal deposit) and Eve helped him finish it. After the fall, however, things changed. Instead of harmony between Adam and Eve, there was conflict. Instead of ruling, husbands would forever be tempted to passivity and abdication. Instead of helping, wives would forever be tempted to overbear and dominate.

Back to the roof, say the neighbor suddenly starts directing who should do what, ordering new supplies, and telling the homeowner to work through lunch. At this point the neighbor is no longer functioning as a helper. Had he maintained that role, the roof would have been finished in a few days. But because the homeowner would rather avoid conflict (since the neighbor is trying to help after all) the roof will now languish under a blue tarp for the rest of the decade.

Sadly the roofing relationship in this degraded state has become the settled dynamic of many “complementarian” marriages.

Instead of ruling, many husbands have pursued/accepted their truncated role as breadwinners. Instead of helping, many wives have pursued/accepted the household operations as a vehicle to arrive at their own needs and desires. The children soon identify that mom is functionally in charge and that dad is either irrelevant, or relevant only as “Mr. Fun.” Over time, mom’s fears and anxieties (exacerbated because of dad’s absence) become their own — girls become clingy and fearful, boys become limp and listless.

What this tells us is that there’s no workaround to God’s design; no shortcut through his roadmap. God, of course, gives grace in less than ideal circumstances (i.e., a single-parent home) but there’s no such thing as ignoring the biblical pattern and everything turning out okay anyway.

God will not be mocked. What a man sows, he will reap.

Changing Course

The good news is that all is not lost. For the Christian, there is never a point of no return. God can restore the lost years eaten by locusts (Joel 2:25).

That being said, things won’t magically turn around without concerted effort.

Husbands, it starts with you. You are not your wife’s helper. God has not made you to help realize your wife’s vision for the home. God has made you to help her, help you, realize God’s vision for your home.

Now, a helper needs to know what to help with. “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” No one’s going to rally behind the dude blowing through a damp party kazoo. So if you never set clear priorities, you can’t blame your wife for eventually just doing her own thing. Nature can’t exist in a vacuum.

Practically, this means your job isn’t done when you drop the kids off at school or when you earmark a section of the budget for homeschool curriculum. A king can’t just jot some notes down on a sticky pad and hope the best for his kingdom. Problems will arise. And a problem in a king’s dominion is, you guessed it, the king’s problem. If there’s a problem of discipline or direction, the king’s intervention isn’t an intrusion. It’s an expectation.

Husbands, God will hold us accountable for our presence or absence. And if Genesis tell us anything, it’s that we better not try to blame the woman for our failures.

Wives, know your ditches here, too. Throughout the years I’ve sensed a wistfulness among certain women in regards to what they could have been or might have done. One gets the distinct impression they feel incomplete, unrealized, or unappreciated in their roles as wives and mothers. Some try to recover this sense of lost destiny in the midst of their new roles — boss mom, career mom, teacher mom, farmer mom, artist mom, tupperware mom. The list goes on. But these are ultimately poor identities when set next to the gleaming mandate of Proverbs 31. What’s the praise of a random online stranger next to the praise of your husband, children, and neighbors?

Husbands, it’s not enough to be the breadwinner — you need to rule your home. Wives, it’s not enough to be the homemaker — you need to help your husband. If this sounds costly, remember that the only kind of obedience is a costly obedience. It wasn’t enough for the Israelite to scour his flock for a mangey, half-dead lamb to throw on the altar.

It had to be the BEST lamb. It had to cost him.

The good news, and the news that must be received by faith, is that as we pour out our lives — as, indeed, Christ poured out his life — then we will find them.

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So lately its crossed our minds that some of you might be wondering about the hammering we’ve recently been administering to the so-called “woke right.”1 I mean, what gives? You paid (or maybe you didn’t) to see progressives roasted over a slow fire — why all this turning on our own side? No more brother wars, right? No enemies to the right — right? Well, not really. Paul, for example, felt free to announce God’s curse on his Jewish “brothers” for extending a counterfeit gospel to the Galatians. And he didn’t hesitate to shake Peter like a spaniel with a rope toy when he found out about his hypocrisy.

Brotherly rebuke is part of sanctification. It is part of God’s discipline. To avoid or be offended by it may indicate your illegitimacy, but it definitely doesn’t indicate your maturity. As Christians, our impulse must be to oppose any error, from any camp, including our own. The errors of the left are evil, but terribly disguised — like the 300-pound gorilla I saw last week with pigtails and a Jimmy Choo purse. The errors of the right are also evil, but they come like a shiv in the night . . . in that they’re unexpected. Not in that they’re made of soap.

The only way we resist evil — from whatever direction it comes — is to stay close to Jesus. He is the light that exposes the darkness.

Jesus the anti-tribalist

One of the many inconvenient things about Jesus is his stubborn refusal to be co-opted by special interest groups. During his earthly ministry, he managed to slice through every party line in existence: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Scribes, Zealots, Samaritans, Romans — you name it. And yet in refusing to trust himself to any of them (John 2:24), he somehow managed to offend all of them. Time and time again we see Jesus faced with the choice of harnessing the chaotic power of a mob. And time and time again we see him reject it.

Right about now would be the time to give a plug for Jesus as a classless socialist, but remember that Jesus also felt free to offend the classless socialists (Matthew 15:24, John 12:8).

Today we have different groups — globalists and technocrats, transhumanists and posthumanists, ethnocentrists and kinists, anarcho-syndicists and statists, neo-nazis, and Jewish playboys — but the same stubborn Jesus who refuses to lend his glory to their cause. And they know it. You’ve probably noticed how awkward, if not downright hostile, such groups get around Jesus. They’ll talk about politics, and economy, and birthrates, and technology, and identity, and nations, and family, and church, and homeschooling.

But rarely, if ever, does Jesus come into it. There’s a reason for this.

And the reason is that Jesus isn’t interested in the shabby triumph of any one of the million temporal kingdoms dream up for themselves — even the wholesome ones. He will not be their patron. He will not be grafted into the apparatus of influencers who need his endorsement for their online campaigns. He will not be worn as a pin or lucky charm on their lapels.

What he is interested in is the advancement of his kingdom, realized in the eventual and total redemption of all creation. His “tribe,” if it can even be called that, amounts to his eternally blood-bought church — nothing less, nothing more. Not that Jesus’ followers are absorbed into a tribeless collective (tongues and tribes are still identifiable around the throne) but that the fundamental barrier between people groups has been razed. “For [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made [Jews and Gentiles] one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,” (Eph. 2:14).

Again, this doesn’t mean that the legitimacy of nations, borders, and cultures are erased. It does mean that those who insist on the ultimacy of some lesser metric (i.e. ethnicity) in determining the bounds of Christian brotherhood are not actually acting like brothers. They’re acting like ideologues.

Disciples Vs. Ideologues

Perhaps the simplest definition of a disciple is someone who follows Jesus. Where Jesus goes, they follow. Where his word and his Spirit convict them of a sinful pattern of life or thought, they listen. Where they receive a faithful rebuke from a brother or sister, they repent. An ideologue, on the other hand, is someone who refuses to think outside his already-cemented paradigm. An ideologue cannot be Jesus’ disciple by definition since to be a disciple requires the willingness and humility to critique one’s own paradigms. A biblically equivalent term for an ideologue might be a fool — someone who insists on their own way despite wisdom’s intervention.

Because existing in a state of isolation is so precarious, ideologues are quick to form alliances with other like-minded ideologues. This echo chamber further entrenches them in the conviction of the rightness of their ideology while at the same time increasing their influence through sheer strength of numbers. Because they refuse to submit to any standard above themselves, the standard — the line that determines who’s “in” or “out” — soon becomes the tribe itself. What makes something true or false? The fact that the tribe says so. Within a tribe, evidence, reason, accountability, and sober-mindedness all become unnecessary. All that is needed are the ongoing assurances of the tribe.

Untethered from transcendent standards, the moral boundary markers of the tribe becomes arbitrary. Instead of appealing to biblical criteria for faith (i.e., the fruit of the spirit, repentance, faith, etc.) standards like physical capabilities, a luscious beard, and a cache of tribal nomenclature (i.e. “no enemies to the right,” “boomers,” “kings,” “based,”) become the new identifiers. These identifiers are powerful, and imbue the fragile ideologues with a sense of clandestine purpose.

One practical outworking of a tribal mentality is the reduction of all relationships into friends or enemies, with the line between them growing increasingly narrow. Those with critiques, questions, or concerns are viewed as a threat to the integrity of the tribe and are cast out. Viewed through the lense of Scripture, it appears that the rising ranks of pseudo-reformed gatekeepers do not accept the lines where Christ has drawn them — that is, between repentance and unrepentance. Rather, they only receive into their tribe those who pledge loyalty to them. Which is one of many reasons why such men should never be trusted with authority.

It should be said that the new wave of Christian Nationalist tribalists are not actually the defenders of the Christian West they claim to be. The ideological behaviour that is characteristic of their movement is, rather, the undoing of civilization. Not the foundation of it. The perpetual victimhood, lack of self-awareness, and resentment are not the attitudes of those that crossed oceans, cleared forests, built cathedrals, or penned constitutions. They are not the ones to defend the weak or feed Christ’s sheep.

They are, rather, those who would seek great things for themselves (Jeremiah 45:5).

Traitors in the gates

But the tribalist isn’t just a fool. He’s also a traitor. As we’ve noted, the tribalist requires ultimate allegiance to the tribe; which, in the end, is ultimate allegiance to oneself. But offering ultimate allegiance to anything or anyone but Christ is treason. Only when King Jesus is ultimate in our loyalties are all other loyalties ordered rightly. Only then can our allegiances be expressed appropriately.

Although some degree of loyalty is required in any healthy human relationships, it is always limited. In a marriage, a man is truly the head of his wife, but he himself is subject to Christ, who is the Head of the entire Church (Eph 5:23). One of the implications of this is that while the loyalty of a husband’s wife and children to him is real and binding, it isn’t ultimate. Only Christ possesses that kind of authority. Never mind that we’re also expecting treason of others when we make such demands for unconditional loyalty.

It was telling to see the unhinged reaction of a few online tribal warlords in response to the basic and non-controversial suggestion that the authority of husbands is not ultimate, and that a wife can honour both her husband and Christ by appealing to God-ordained authorities to help her. These men, apparently, consider the faithful petition of a wife treasonous. Again, the only way you can think such a thing is if someone considers allegiance to themselves ultimate. That is the attitude of a traitor and a tyrant — and when they tell you who they are, believe them.

It is also telling that the recent crop of tribal influencers will turn their daggers on their own fathers in the faith at even the slightest rebuke. These men know no honour. Again, they are only loyal to those who pledge allegiance to them. Their desire, like the false teachers of Paul’s day, is to flatter fools in the hopes of gaining influence: “They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them” (Galatians 4:17). They are self-aggrandizing revolutionaries who are desperate for allegiance, even if it’s a bunch of angry anons.

In contrast, a godly man does not desire the kind of allegiance which can only rightly be offered to Christ. And a godly man is eager to offer any and all allegiance that Christ requires him to give to others.

The tribalist gives neither. In his heart, he is a traitor.

Such treachery is antithetical to the faithful, loyal love that ought to characterize brothers and sisters in Christ (John 13:34-35), regardless of what tribe they’re in. This loyalty orders our duties or obligations. We have a duty to do good to all people, but “especially the household of God” (Gal 6:10). Pledging allegiance to King Jesus means pledging allegiance to His brothers and sisters as well. The love that ought to characterize Christian brothers and sisters is not a mere sentiment, but the overflow of a covenantal union that is brokered in blood and will stand forever.

Beyond mere humans

Paul resisted the tribal temptation fiercely. In his first letter he reminds the Corinthians that “Whenever someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not acting like mere humans?” This wasn’t a compliment. To behave like a mere human is to behave in a tribal manner; it is to behave in a manner the world understands and appreciates. Paul clarifies that the intent of his ministry wasn’t that they would build on him, but on Christ.

This is key. If you want to find out if a church, or a pastor, or a movement, is cruciform and not tribalistic, you should work hard to assess how much of their vocabulary is christocentric. Assess also how often they make reference to themselves, their ministries, and their influence.

We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking our Reformed-ness makes us safer in this regard. In a spectacular feat of irony, it seems like those who most fiercely cling to the doctrine of total depravity are also least likely to acknowledge it in themselves, their children, and their churches. Go to many Reformed churches and you will hear all kinds of sermons condemning the evils outside — of marxism, communism, and wokeism. But will you hear a sermon on the evil of pride? Or divisiveness? Or hypocrisy? Or partiality? Or envy and hatred? A church that can’t see the logs in its own eye is unlikely to be able to see clearly in regards to any of the logs outside. And let me tell you — there are whole lumber mills at work in even the most orthodox churches.

Being a disciple of Jesus will set you against others, but you will find the lines falling in surprising places — the father against the son, the mother against the daughter. In the kingdom of God, it is union with Christ that marks the fundamental boundary between brothers and sisters. It is non-intuitive; it is, in one sense, non-human. This is why the world hates us — not because we’re united with those who are like us, but because we’re united with those who aren’t. Such an attitude condemns the sectarian, power-hungry worldly system.

Jesus alone is the only good Shepherd. Where we hear his voice, we follow him. And the voice of another we dare not follow. This means we will likely have few heroes here below. And those we do have will most likely be dead, having the testimony of a faithful life to speak of them. It is remarkable to see, even now, how quickly bad fruit follows false teaching. It is why we need to keep close to the Word, and close to Christ.

This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.

May he be honoured and glorified in the church.

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“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (Romans 12:9)

“The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.” (Proverbs 8:13)

There are certain things that every Christian is required to hate; namely, that which is evil. Such holy hatred is not the absence of love but the practical demonstration of it. Scripture is clear that genuine love and the fear of the Lord, both fruit of authentic faith, are characterized by a hatred of evil.

One obvious implication of this Biblical principle is that where there is any toleration of evil, there is a deficiency in both genuine love and the fear of the Lord. Indeed, the sustained toleration of evil — without repentance — is a sure indication that one does not, in fact, know the Lord.

We need to keep this principle in mind as we consider recent events because one of the tactics used by those who tolerate evil is to try to minimize it through obscuring, whitewashing, blaming, and distracting. These aren’t simply clever and coordinated strategies. They are base impulses of the offspring of Adam used to cover their tracks.

The practical consequence of such impulses is that good and evil are made unclear. Anyone who challenges the toleration of evil is quickly bombarded by lies, accusations, non-sequiturs, tribal impulses, and various attempts to overwhelm them into silence. The actual issue (tolerating evil) quickly becomes obscured as more and more time is given to defending against an unending deluge of accusations.

The clearest example of this dynamic was manifest in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is no small irony that those who are presently tolerating a resurgent antisemitism and ethnocentrism in their ranks are acting identically to a bunch of unbelieving Jews. If you held up the various gospel accounts of the tactics of Jesus’ opponents, they would map perfectly onto these men and their horde of anon fans.

Unfortunately, despite the clarity of Scripture, many (if not most) naïve and bewildered onlookers cannot see the play that is being run on them. In the case of the recent situation between Tobias and Joel, most caved at the initial threat (“He’s a liar! We have secret evidence! Delete your twitter account and REPENT!”), apparently having never faced the dynamics of a mob before. Whoever stuck around for the dumpster fire that followed, for the most part, gave into varying degrees of indifference and fatigue.

Both of these responses are exactly what a mob seeks to produce. They want you to doubt your eyes and ears and give way to sheer force. If they cannot make you completely forget why you showed up in the first place, they will make you think it’s just not worth the fight.

The simple fact is this: tolerating evil is an affront to God and a failure to exhibit the most basic fruit of faith, which is genuine love and the fear of the Lord.

If we have reached the place where we can’t even discern good from evil, or identify what genuine love and fear of the Lord looks like, we have wandered so far from our Lord that we’re in danger of forsaking Him entirely. This recent controversy is not, most fundamentally, a clash of personalities or a difference of perspectives regarding pastoral duties to former members.

To suggest so is itself a failure of discernment (in the least), and an attempt to whitewash evil (at worst).

The Context

There has been a shocking rise in the public endorsement of white-identitarianism in general, and antisemitic attitudes in particular, within the professing church. We should note that “antisemitism” here doesn’t refer to any and all criticism of the policies of the nation of Israel, individual Jews, or Judaism in general. What we have here is an ideology built on lies and malice which views an entire ethnic group as uniquely sinful and the functional scapegoats for all evil. This reaction is the fruit of a pathological avoidance of responsibility, comfort with blaming others, and accusations and lies — all wrapped up in a bitterness which defiles (Heb. 12:15).

We have seen barbaric and tribal impulses and attitudes rise in the public square. For example, a clear double standard has been applied to “pro-Palestine” radicals who are allowed to engage in rampant violence and vandalism while questioners of the narrative are arrested. Jews are denied entrance into their workplaces in a display of ethnic discrimination we haven’t seen since Germany in the 1930s.

We might expect such things from our progressive overlords and the various barbarians who have invaded our country. What is discouraging has been the toleration of such anti-Christian attitudes within the ranks of self-identifying “reformed” ministries.

The rise of ethnic nationalism is a predictable development. Historically, it has formed a kind of bulwark against communism, a system which sought to undo all creational norms, historical rooting, and traditional identity markers. Since we live in a culturally Marxist environment, it’s no wonder we see such reactions happening again.

Cultural norms such as family, ethnicity, culture, and nations will never simply cease to exist. However, we must make sure to define these realities according to Scripture rather than to base, unbelieving impulses. The temptation in fighting the left is to simply play the same game using different terms. Many young men, most under 30, have spent most of their lives being told that a number of the most central components of their identity (culture, cultural history, values, ethnic identity) are inherently evil. The left has made whiteness a shorthand term for all evil and many young men are sick of this malicious lie.

But instead of rejecting the terms of the conflict, some have chosen to fight the enemy on the battleground of their opponent’s choosing. This is a moral and strategic failure. They are embracing an identity that is defined by those who hate them and charging into online battles with it, essentially adopting a “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” strategy. This is as near-sighted as it is immoral. You don’t defeat evil by partnering with it.

And make no mistake, adopting woke, identitarian categories is evil.

Recently, several influential pastors endorsed a video featuring white-identitarian themes and explicit Nazi propaganda. When they did (eventually) back down from their public endorsement of the video, they made typically clever and evasive posts — functionally blaming any critics for being unfair, rather than humbly acknowledging their sin and error. It has since become a common tactic of these guys to accuse critics of forcing them into a “struggle session.” This play cleverly identified them as the poor, misunderstood victims who must now bravely oppose the pressures of the mob.

In short, they brushed over their endorsement of evil and labelled anyone suspecting them of wrongdoing as the ones doing evil. The whole play was reminiscent of what we saw from Public Health cat ladies during covid. There was something almost impressive about it in that the stamina required to vindicate oneself takes some degree of thought and intelligence. However, it is not a commendable skill. It may help make you an effective bureaucrat and feminine influencer but it will not make you a godly man, nor help you disciple godly men.

We need to stop at this point and be clear:

Anyone who watches a white-nationalist hype video featuring literal Nazis, which reached an emotional crescendo in the Nazi-filled Berlin stadium and celebrates it as good, has a severely broken moral conscience. There is no other conclusion. Any honest man would humbly admit such a corruption.

Any pastor who would promote such vile and anti-Christian sentiments is not qualified to lead anyone in pursuing good and abhorring evil. And this isn’t (as they will cry) because they said something “taboo.” It’s because they tolerate evil, which reflects an absence of both genuine love and the fear of the Lord.

It is that simple.

All the online rage and clever excuses doesn’t detract from this simple point. It was all an intentional and exhausting attempt to obscure this simple reality. It was done to cover their tracks, creating doubt and identifying their challengers as the ones who were evil.

We need to learn from this if we are to grow in love and the fear of the Lord. We need to hate evil. And right now, we’re doing a terrible job at it.

Lack of Ownership of Sin

Those at a distance from social media may be shocked to hear such evil is even being tolerated, which may lead to the question, “Where is all this coming from?!”

The answer, in a broad sense, is simple. It came from our first father, Adam. The toleration of evil is cultivated in an environment that avoids responsibility and cultivates a posture of blame.

The same people who have tolerated and even publicly promoted white identitarianism and Nazi sympathy have also adopted a policy right out of Adam’s playbook, called “No Enemies to the Right” (NETTR). The basic (pagan) idea behind this sentiment is that our greatest enemy will always be the left, so we will focus our criticism exclusively on them. We will NOT criticize the right. This policy is the breeding ground for hypocrisy, avoidance of repentance, and the cultivation of pagan, tribal impulses that are antithetical to the gospel.

As the covenantal head of our fallen race, Adam and his sinful behaviour serve as the pattern of our behaviour. The reality that Adam bore the primary responsibility for the sins of his household is evidenced by the fact that God addresses him in particular (Gen. 3:9) after the fall. Rather than take responsibility for his sins, however, Adam foolishly sought to hide and admitted later that this response was out of fear.

It is worth noting that fear of judgment characterizes unbelief and reflects a deficiency in love: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18). Adam’s response was not just from fear, but from a malicious desire to blame. Rather than own his failures, Adam blames both God (“the woman you gave me”) and his wife. In blaming God, he is adopting a victim identity. He is functionally saying, “This is your fault, and I am actually the victim here.”

The maliciousness of this blame cannot be overstated: Adam knew that the wages of sin was death (Gen. 2:17). In pointing the finger at his wife, he was willing to have her die before admitting fault. Such scapegoating is the antithesis to love, which is characterized by the sacrificial assumption of responsibility for the good of others.

The reactions of certain Reformed leaders in response to public correction reveals the extreme lengths to which guilty men will go in order to avoid taking responsibility for their sins and failures. The impulse to identify ourselves as victims when we are, in fact, the ones who have wronged others, is innate to all fallen men since. We will blame the innocent — even God himself — and be willing that others should die in our place.

If we fail to grasp man’s capacity for evil, particularly in their avoidance of responsibility, we will fail to grasp what is going on presently and be more likely to tolerate or even participate in evil.

The most serious failure here was that many well-meaning people who observed the aggressive blaming, accusing, hiding, covering, failed to discern what they were seeing. They automatically assumed there must be guilt on both sides. But it doesn’t always take two to fight, as my Dad taught me. Sometimes someone is just wrong. And sometimes the ones who are wrong are the ones most vehemently trying to deny it.

Tolerating evil rather than abhorring it

Evil rarely comes out and openly declares itself. Like the immoral woman from Proverbs, it flatters, whispers, and insinuates from the shadows. It disguises itself as a delicious morsel rather than the burning vial of poison it actually is.

For the individual, such moments serve as a moral crossroads. If evil is tolerated at this early stage, the conscience risks becoming seared (1 Tim. 4:2). A seared conscience, like a seared finger, has lost its sensitivity. It is unable to notice, and rightly respond, to the presence of evil. If the pattern of toleration continues, the distinction between good and evil becomes less and less obvious to the point where it becomes inverted (Is. 5:29). Evil is viewed as good and good is viewed as evil.

But the danger doesn’t just stop at the individual. The danger, as Jesus warned, is the leavening nature of tolerated evil. Whether it’s hypocrisy, resentment, or adultery, at some point the Overton window of any community expands to the point where no evil is too large to fit through. Suddenly, everything is on the table. Everything, of course, except the truth.

When a community is reduced to such a state, it is nearly impossible to change course apart from the grace of God. When the state of a collective conscience has become seared past sensitivity, even a clear appeal to Biblical warnings appears extreme. Consider the Pharisees who, after listening to Jesus, reminded him (you know, in case He didn’t really mean it) that “He had offended them also” (Luke 11:45.) But it turns out He had meant it. And He meant it because evil is extreme. To tolerate evil is to condemn your soul. Thus, evil can and must be responded to with a corresponding ferocity.

For those who think serious rebuke is the problem, here’s a thought experiment. Change the party in question from “Nazi Sympathizer” to “Child Predator.” Would you respond with careful nuance, qualifiers, and prancing little pony steps? Of course not. You would (hopefully!) respond with the hickory mallet of clear truth. And if people tried to get you to “do the reading” surrounding pedophilia, you’d tell them you’ve already done the reading, and the prescription was a millstone around the neck.

In such moments, the role of a pastor or brother is to attempt to awaken the dead conscience to the severity of evil and its consequences through the open administration of the Scriptures. In fact, the whole nature of a prophetic ministry is to awaken seared consciences, whether they’re to the left or to the right.

Certain influential leaders, however, seem to be increasingly comfortable with anti-Christian identitarian ideologies, to the extent that many Kinists, Nazi-sympathizers, and white identitarians consider them as co-belligerents.

Excusing evil in the name of precision

Those flirting with antisemitism will often respond with the defense that it’s all simply a matter of historical accuracy.

But the current revisionism surrounding events such as the Holocaust isn’t simply the adjustment of a particular historical record. It is an attempt to undo history. You see, when we say historical record, we mean something along the lines of “what actually happened.” And what actually happened in 1940’s Germany, according to the corroborated testimony of millions of people with vastly competing interests, was a genocide of inarguable proportions. If allegations you heard in a podcast, citing a newspaper headline, are more reliable to you than millions of eyewitness testimonies on every side, you are not actually interested in history or truth. You are a walking confirmation bias.

The fallout of this circus is that the gnats are strained while the camels are swallowed. The evil of Nazism is obscured while the “evil” of flawed metrics is prioritized (“It was only 5.1 million Jews killed, not 6 million!”). The fact that so much of the Reformed world is seemingly okay with swallowing camels is an indictment on us, and perhaps even the judgment of God on our arrogance. We who decorate the tombs of the prophets, we who make great boasts of our confessional lineage, we who take solace in the sheer historicity of our movement, WE are the ones to now inherit the rot of antisemitism.

The toleration of Nazi-promoting material is wicked and symptomatic of a corrupt conscience. The failure to demonstrate humility in acknowledging such content as evil, but rather endorsing it, is also evil.

Does any of this mean that malicious men can’t be saved? Of course not. Malicious men are the only kind there are. But their path to salvation is the same as everyone else’s: repent and believe Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And the first sins they will have to leave at the door are their malice and resentment. No one can serve two masters.

A round-up1

The sad thing is that the recent online tantrums weren't performed by actual children but by men acting like children — and herein lies the dangerous difference. The tantrums, in response to those calling out the Kinist and identitarian ideologues in the camp, were deceitful, intentional, and malicious. A tantrum is a way of bypassing truth, reason, and justice. It relies solely on manipulation and force. When children do it, they are seeking to control their reality by bending others to their unhinged will. When adults do it, they are doing the same thing.

We need to say, as brothers, pastors, fathers, and friends, that folly is still folly, no matter how many are following it. And we need to stop turning a blind eye to the fools in our midst. The rise and toleration of pagan ideologies is a serious issue and the lack of abhorrence towards it is evidence of both a failure to love and fear the Lord as we ought. One of the most obvious demonstrations of this failure is a dogged refusal to acknowledge it. The cost, in this instance, was Christian witness and principles. Lady wisdom was dragged onto the online altar and butchered, and no one blinked an eye.

Paul’s desire for the Romans was that they “would be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.” What we have seen over the past few months is a warped attempt to reimagine objective evil as hopelessly complex. Such a posture should immediately set off warning bells for any discerning Christian.

Love, as evidenced in the hatred of evil, has always been the measure of true faith. Anything else is just a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.

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You may have noticed that Christian Nationalism, who used to be a sensible, well-mannered kid, has lately been coming home smelling like Marlboros and cheap bourbon. Over the past year we’ve seen a not-so-subtle shift from “There’s no such thing as a neutral government,” to — well, whatever this is:

What cursed rabbit hole did we fall into where such takes are granted a shred of legitimacy?

I guess the first thing to say is that social media is a heck of a drug. People seem to have picked up on the fact that cool, measured content gets instantly buried alive while the spicy, unhinged content gets a goldfish and a lollipop.

Such people quickly learn the art of “hot-taking” and are able to amass a large following in a short amount of time. Pretty soon they start to resemble garbage incinerators, with the ability to convert any and all interactions into influence fuel. Positive feedback affirms their delusions of grandeur while negative feedback only reinforces the conviction that they’re a voice crying in the wilderness. Balanced followers, if there were any, soon head for the door, leaving only a “congregation” of isolated, angry, anonymous young men, who eventually go on to become hosts of error in their own spheres.

Race a gift, not a goal

The fire is big and complex, and my intent isn’t to try and put it all out with one bucket. What I want to address specifically is what we might call the fetishizing of race. For example Corey Mahler, one of the lead voices in the Nazi revoice movement, frequently makes reference to the “paramount importance of race” and alludes to the fact that “Our race ranks among our most precious possessions.”

I don’t actually have a problem with Mahler’s concentric circles of loyalty — “We love our parents as our closest family, then siblings, then cousins, then kinsmen.” I do have a problem with his Nazism, obviously. And I do have a problem seeing young men weaponized into reactionary nationalists as opposed to steady, discerning churchmen. But all of this bad fruit is ultimately downstream from the first heresy, which happened when a legitimate gift (race) started taking on ultimate weight. Take any verse, or idea, in isolation and elevate it to a position of supreme importance and you’ll eventually find yourself down some sketchy back road, where Hitler is a Christian prince.

The obsession with race is partly due to unhealthy emphasis. But it’s also due to bad study habits. Kinists will frequently point to passages like Exodus 20:8 or 1 Timothy 5:8 as a defense for their ethnocentrism. But this is bias informing exegesis, not exegesis informing principle.

In Exodus 20:8 we have the fourth commandment, which is clearly addressing children and parents. 1 Timothy 5 is also clearly addressing children and parents, specifically widowed mothers. The Scriptures unanimously affirm that children owe a duty of care to their parents and that to deny such a duty is to functionally reject the faith. Mahler is correct in that nature also teaches some measure of preference to those in proximity around us — i.e., “siblings, then cousins, then kinsmen.” Paul himself identifies his deep love for “My brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

So kinsmenship isn’t nothing. But nor is it the absolute category Mahler wishes it to be. An error which leads him to gross equivocations:

We are Christians because that is our duty to God; we are racists because that is our duty to nation . . . We can no more yield on this matter than we could yield on the truth that Christ is both fully man and fully God.1

He then goes on to condemn those who refuse to adopt his extreme categories as abhorrent to God. Such language more resembles the ministry of the pharisees, who love to burden people with extrabiblical commands, than anything else.

As Christians, while we must be “wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.” we must also guard against simplistic categories. Sure it’s easier to say “Blood is nothing,” as the globalists do, or “Blood is everything,” as the Kinists do. But both are wrong. In the kingdom of God, the ties of blood exist, but they are not ultimate. Rather, it is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that unites us. Here [in the kingdom] there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Colossians 3:11

Doug Wilson helpfully captures this tension:

In the glow of natural affection, you have a duty to prefer hanging out with your own people (as Augustine would define it) over against hanging out with some random Anglican Nigerian Christian. Be like that bishop in 1 Timothy who manages his own household well. You also have a duty to hide that Anglican Nigerian Christian from your own persecuting cousin, a secularist who works enthusiastically for the deep state. In such a case, be like Rahab, and betray your own people for the sake of the faith.

Jesus affirms the fundamental identity the kingdom should take over allegiance to kinsmen at several points, such as Matthew 12: 48-50:

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

Here we see Jesus already playing with the strictness of boundaries between blood relatives and disciples. If you’re a Christian, you’ve probably observed this very thing over the past few years. When your family and kinsman rejected you for not getting vaccinated, or for going to church, where did you find comfort? With your Christian brothers and sisters.

And also in Luke 14:26:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.

And let’s not forget Revelation 7:9-10

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.

The fundamental division we see throughout Scripture isn’t racial or tribal, but spiritual. We belong either to the kingdom of God or the kingdom of this world. It’s the seed of the redeemer or the seed of the serpent. It’s Cain or Able. It’s Issac or Ishmael. It’s Jacob or Esau. In the New Testament, it’s Jews or Gentiles — not as ethnic categories but as eternal, cruciform categories.

There is nothing in our melanin, or the melanin of our ancestors, that makes us any more or less preferable to God, or deserving of his blessings. If God had not left us a remnant, we would have all become like Sodom and Gomorrah. There is nothing genetic that causes us to search for God on our own. There’s a reason to preserve Western borders, but it’s certainly not because of any inherent purity in our blood. The only reason the West is what it is, is because of its historical biblical moorings.

Hear me — the ONLY reason.

If crime rates differ, it’s because of Scripture. If the amount of single-parent families differ, it’s because of Scripture. If the West is better off than the East in any way — and it is — it’s because of Scripture. That’s it. The further away we get from Scripture, the more we will find ourselves indistinguishable from the rest of the world. As you may have noticed, the death cult is humming away just fine in the West. And we did that all by our little white selves.

All of this to say that although the Gospel doesn’t eliminate the wisdom of national/ethnic boundaries in this world, it certainly prevents them from remaining omnipotent metrics. Our ethnic relationship to one another is not our most precious possession. Our relationship to Jesus — and by extension, those united to him — is our most precious possession. He has achieved, through his blood, a greater unity than familial blood ever could.

Rejecting Tribalism

It’s worth noting that while the rallying cries to “find your tribe” are meant to sound stirring and heroic, retreating to one’s tribe is actually one of the least heroic things in the world. Natural man is inherently tribal — you don’t need to rally him towards it. We all want to find the people who look like us, who do the same things we do, and who believe the same things we do. The slope towards tribalism, whether it’s your biker church or your white nationalist knitting circle, takes no special power to slide down. It’s about as heroic as falling off a roof.

What takes actual power is taking two incompatible entities (i.e., Jews and Gentiles) and uniting them as one tribe of priests under Christ. This is an entirely different enterprise. Tribalism attempts to create fundamental unity around superficial commodities — like skin color or common ancestry. In this, the Kinists are working from the same bankrupt cash drawer as the Marxists: power. This is the bizarre irony at the heart of ethnocentric logic. It wants to position itself as the antithesis of the Left, but at the end of the day it’s just the same dude in a different dress. Although the latter is calling it a kilt.

The entire pretense of the kingdom of God is that it doesn’t move forward on power. From the trembling little band of disciples in Acts, the church has always been a persecuted minority. It has always rejected power plays in wherever form they come. At its heart, the church is a praying, preaching entity, and her victory is sure whether there are three or three million of us.

A Christian Response

The sudden influx of “post-war consensus” experts, white nationalists, and Nazi fanboys isn’t the result of a sudden scholarly breakthrough. They are the warning lights on the dashboard telling us that living memory is rapidly passing into history — and that a bunch of people are on the verge of doing something very stupid again.

Christians must respond, and we must do so with careful distinctions and definitions. We are not excused from responding sober-mindedly just because everyone else is firing arrows into the air like career drunks. On the ground, this looks like rejecting the self-appointed shepherds whose “ministries” are an amalgum of non-sequiturs. The guys who can go from “Churchill had flaws” to “Churchill and Hitler are in the same category of evil” are not the guys we should want leading an amateur brass band, let alone any kind of serious Christian movement.

The way forward will happen as it’s always happened — through humble, prayerful, skillful application of the Word to the issues at hand. Your rule, my rule, our rule, as Christians, is is not whatever devolution Christian Nationalism is experiencing this week. It is the Scriptures. It is Christ. And if you’re doing it right, both sides will probably be angry at you.

A final word to those who are tired of the horns of a dilemma riding up their backside: reject all-or-nothingism. You can affirm the goodness and wisdom of borders and reject the totalizing narrative of race. You can affirm the rightness of preferring your immediate neighbors without despising your foreign neighbors. You can welcome different ethnicities into your church without being a globalist swine.

Reject, with a 30-foot pole, the humorless, grandiose voices equating their tribalist sensibilities with Luther’s defense at Worms.

God help us to this end.

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Rigour - The quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate.

It took me a while to find a positive definition of rigour. Most included a combination of adjectives along the lines of “difficult,” “unpleasant,” or “austere.” Just start talking about a rigorous education, for example, and see how quickly you’ll lose people to visions of slate writing boards, professorial gowns, and warm June afternoons spent languishing in the iron maiden.

I want to push back on this narrative. Not just because it gives me an excuse to repurpose the old, but still brilliant, New Saint Andrew’s maxim — “Not all rigour is mortis.” But because I believe the time has long come for all Christians everywhere to start viewing “rigour” as the most reasonable course of action for those who name the name of Christ.

Especially as it concerns education.

I felt compelled to write the following after finding the above quote posted on a popular Canadian homeschool forum. Not that I want to place a burden on the inspirational quoting community it was never meant to bear, but that I want to challenge Christians, and Christian parents in particular, to confront a long-held dichotomy that is gutting our households, churches, and institutions. Boiled down, it is the belief that rigour (as defined above) is, if not directly opposed to, at least incidental to, education.

This isn’t intended to be a mean-spirited attack on homeschoolers, or even homeschooling as an educational category. I know homeschooling families whose education can rightly be described as “rigorous.” I know there are homeschooling families who legitimately have no other options and are doing the best they can under the circumstances. There will be other exceptions I’ve missed.

My intention here is to address a prevailing disposition I’ve observed among the broader homeschooling community. To a larger extent, it is an attack on the presumptive, anti-intellectual, anti-rigorous, anti-Gospel ethos wherever it may be found.

What Happens When Grace ≠ Rigour

Part of the challenge here is that I probably don’t disagree with the substance, or at least the intention, of the above quote. It is, of course, true that ultimately we’re all progressing towards a much bigger destiny than Harvard or a career in cardiology. It is also true that if we educate our children in a manner that allows them to soar past an ivy league entrance exam, but renders them godless materialists, we have utterly failed as parents.

What it fails to communicate, however, is that there’s more than one way to fail our children. The fact that your child is unable to get into Harvard isn’t necessarily an indication that your education project has been a success. It may even be an indication that your education project has been a failure. Especially considering the kind of work Harvard considers “rigorous” these days. 

There are certain things in life — such as a familiarity with law, medicine, and chemical engineering — that can’t be achieved apart from rigour. Not knowing how the poster defines stress, I can’t comment infallibly on her motives, but I do know that what many people think of as stress today is really just the natural response of doing something hard; of doing something our flesh doesn’t want to do. This kind of “stress” isn’t bad. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary. In fact, it’s called sanctification.

To exclude stressful things when they’re actually only just hard things, isn’t just to exclude us from high-paying jobs. It’s to exclude us from heaven.

Consider the following:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 1 Corinthians 9:24

“Therefore I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight like I am beating the air. No, I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” 1 Corinthians 9:27

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 1 Corinthians 15:10

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1

Notice Paul’s life was one marked by rigour, not a pathological avoidance of “stress.” Throughout his life, we observe no antithesis between the grace he received and the effort he expends. In fact, it’s completely the opposite. It was because he’d received the grace of God that he worked harder than everyone else. This wasn’t a rigour driven by guilt, self, or selfish ambition — such would have characterised his former life as a pharisee. His rigour had been redeemed, and was now the inevitable outflow of gratitude.

In case we’ve forgotten, the call of Christ is to deny ourselves, take up our cross (which is nothing if not an instrument of stress), and follow him on the path of bloody rigour. But because many Christians have been influenced by the self-care movement more than by biblical priorities, “stressful” things — such as the rigour of planning a year of homeschooling — are often swept away.

I worry that this false view of education (that rigour is secondary to self-care) is reflective of an underlying false view of religion. The fact that the road to life is narrow and the road to destruction is broad may lead to the ditch of striving in unbelief, but it definitely shouldn’t lead to the ditch of suicidal presumption. Such an attitude reflects, I believe, a profound misunderstanding of grace, and the rigour that grace promotes.

Serving Others Above Ourselves

Having been in proximity to various homeschooling events over the years — and again, with no malice intended — I’d be hard pressed to describe the prevailing mood as “rigorous.” More often than not, I’ve left thinking, “These are lovely, well-mannered kids who I would absolutely not want operating on my heart or defending me in court.” Rarely do I leave thinking to myself, “These parents need to stop stressing.” If anything, it’s been, “These parents should probably start stressing more.”

And from one angle, fair enough. As those who’ve been in the trenches of home schooling, it’s hard enough going it alone, and even more difficult to identify when and where one is falling behind. Oddly, however, the response from parents when such things are revealed is rarely met with renewed urgency or an impulse to call each other up. Rather, the general response seems to be to double down on mutual empathy and affirmation. 

If we’re honest, perhaps our resistance to rigour isn’t really about the good of others, the glory of God, or the betterment of our children, but our own fears of inadequacy and failure. Pastor Alex summarizes it well:

It’s a position that prioritizes easing one’s conscience rather than an honest consideration of what our children need to flourish. Instead of honestly asking, “What is my duty to God and my neighbour,” and asking for grace and strength to bear it, it encourages you to be the kind of person who asks “How can I keep changing my duties so, “I got this.”  

Nor is this attitude particular to parents.

Faced with the righteous requirement of God’s law, our natural inclination isn’t to cry out to God for grace to love and obey, but to readjust the standard. In this way, our hearts are kept from the inconvenient rhythms of grace and rigour. Such an attitude produces defensive, unteachable, prickly people who aren’t as interested in doing what’s best for others as they are in maintaining an image of togetherness and self-reliance.

We avoid rigour because rigour reveals our weakness. But recall that weakness isn’t a flaw of the Gospel — it’s a feature. In constantly retreating to a narrative that puts our failures in a better light, we are actively engaged in constructing “some other gospel.”

Time for a Test Drive

What if, as parents, instead of making decisions that were easiest for us, we made decisions that were truly best for our children and, in turn, brought the most glory to God?

Let’s say you’ve just (very sensibly) removed your kids from the marxist indoctrination centres known as public school. Where do you go from there? No doubt some friend or acquaintance will, with the best of intentions, recommend homeschooling. The advantages aren’t hard to sell — it’s easier, cheaper, and more flexible. But are those really the metrics that ought to guide our decisions? It may be that homeschooling is the right decision for your kids. But you better make sure you’re going about the decision honestly. And by honestly, I mean apart from the baseline of “What’s going to be easiest for me?”

Will you be able to create a truly rigorous home-learning environment? Will you be able to generate and maintain a standard of excellence for you and your children? Will you be able to resist the urge to take random days off because it’s nice outside or because you just don’t feel like teaching today? Will you be able to push your kids beyond their innate likes and dislikes? Will you be able to push yourself beyond your own innate likes and dislikes? Will you be able to set aside the convenience of “good enough” and rise to meet the challenge of, “This needs to be better”?

An underlying motto present in many, though not all, homeschooling families, goes something like this: “As long as my kids can add, subtract, and read, we’ve done our job.” In fact, I’ve heard this exact phrase numerous times. But do such “achievements” actually mean we’ve done our jobs? Is settling for the minimum base requirement of adulthood a uniquely Christian attitude? Does such a sentiment remotely resemble the rigorous reformational ethic which led to an explosion of universities, hospitals, and enduring civic institutions?

Because of the grace we’ve received, shouldn’t we want to pursue the best, most rigorous education we can muster? Shouldn’t we want to produce a generation of humble, intelligent, Christ-centred doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, scientists, tradespeople, and parents? Is it loving our neighbour to resign them to a world in which Dads have to research their kid’s symptoms on google because there’s no principled doctors left he can trust? 

The homeschooling movement, as an alternative to the degradation of the public system, has been a commendable response. But a perennial danger I’ve seen over and over again is an inability, or unwillingness, to engage in honest self-reflection and reform.

Another kind of opposition to rigour manifests not among homeschooling parents, but among parents drawn to institutional learning. Such parents may be drawn to formal learning institutions not because of the excellence of their education but because of their own reluctance to take up the rigours of leadership and consistent discipline. 

But this, again, is to prioritize our own interests above those of our children. Just as there is no such thing as conversion by proxy, there is no such thing as parenting by proxy. Though institutions may come alongside to partner with parents, they can never take the place of parents. A failure to discipline at home will not be corrected by enrolling Johnny in a Christian school and letting his teachers figure it out. Where such thinking exists, love may look like holding off enrollment so that further training can take place at home. 

There is no way to faithfully live the Christian life and avoid hard, stressful things. Loving and serving others will necessarily come with anxiety, stress, and challenges we must meet with faithful rigour and not retreat.

As it concerns Christian education, the way forward, as our principal recently said, isn’t in making the educational endeavour “easier.” It is acknowledging the magnitude of the endeavour.

This forces us to be dependent on the Lord, and brings him the most glory.

The soaring ceilings, intricate stonework, and beautiful stained-glass windows come at the final stages of a long, difficult project. 

One of the points that I try to drive home to everyone I talk to these days is that we are in the early stages of this building project as we seek to reorient the world to the worship of the Living God through faith in Jesus Christ. 

There are many people who, like us, desire to see our local landscape littered with churches and the horizon filled with the steeples of cathedrals brimming with those who worship in Spirit and truth (John 4:24). 

But in order to build cathedrals, we must first clear the land. 

And in case you didn’t know, “clearing the land” means picking rocks. And picking rocks is not fun. It is physically and mentally arduous, mundane, and rarely receives praise. In short, picking rocks takes faith, labouring for the praise of God and not man. 

People love to see and support results. They love to see intricate woodwork and established structures. They love campaigns and architectural drawings and timelines. They love supporting what they can measure and control. 

But few will support a project when all they see is a forest to be cleared; when the only promise is hard work, and the only measurable result is a pile of stones at the edge of a clearing. 

But if there is no clearing, there is no cathedral. 

At Dominion Press, we are trying to clear the land. We are utilizing the written and spoken word to tear down idols and exalt the risen Lord, Jesus Christ. 

We are labouring in the wasteland of what was once Christendom. We would love to see a great harvest of faith, but we don’t know if we will live to see worship restored on a large scale. What we do know is that the harvest will not come without sowing (1 Cor. 3:5–9), and it is our duty to sow the seed of the Word in faith. 

If you see the value in our labours, please consider supporting us by becoming a paid subscriber.

All of our content remains available for free, as a matter of principle. However, the project we are engaged in cannot be completed alone.

We hope and pray for the construction of cathedrals. But perhaps, in God’s providence, that job will be left to our children and grandchildren. Our job is to be faithful with the little we have been given.

And right now, that looks like picking rocks. 

We are going to keep clearing the land, and hope there are more pioneers who will partner with us. 

Yours in Christ,

Alex

Executive Director

Dominion Press

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As we stand amidst the ruins of Christendom, we must not linger long in lament, but instead turn our eyes to the task at hand. That task is to build.

By God’s grace, we must build Christians, families, churches, schools, and businesses.

We must use all the strength that God supplies to build outposts of resistance against the surrounding tide of darkness.

And we must build in faith, for if the Lord does not build the house, those who labour do so in vain (Psalm 127).

We are thankful to be joined by faithful men who will help equip us in the various tasks God has given us:

Pastor Jacob Reaume (Trinity Bible Chapel)
Pastor Ben Inglis (Hill City Baptist Church)
Pastor Aaron Rock (Harvest Bible Church, Windsor)
Pastor Nate Wright (Crossroads Bible Church, Ingersoll)

Join us as we gather together to sing and learn and rejoice in the God who builds.

Bring your wife. Bring your voice.

There’s worship to offer and work to be done.

Yours,

Alex

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/728345169007?aff=oddtdtcreator

Introduction

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:3–51

The Christian is in a state of war against the dark powers of the evil one (Ephesians 6:10–17). Because the fundamental nature of our warfare is spiritual, our weapons must possess “divine power” which can destroy his strongholds — the arguments and opinions that are opposed to God. Wherever possible, Christians are to take these arguments captive and make them obedient to Christ.

This is military language. It reminds us that we are not only in a battle for people’s souls, but their minds as well. What we are fundamentally engaged in is a battle of ideas, which Paul reminds us of in 2 Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this age [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

One such stronghold, which I will address today, is that of Cultural Marxism (hereafter CM). If ideas have consequences — and surely history testifies to the fact — then CM’s disastrous fruits are now being witnessed to, both in society and, sadly, the church.

The Origins of Marxism and Cultural Marxism

CM is very different from the Marxism-Leninism of the old Soviet Union. You will probably recognize CM today by terms such as multiculturalism, political correctness, tolerance, inclusion, safe sex, sensitivity training, postcolonial studies, aboriginal studies, black lives matters, social justice, diversity, equity, various special interest groups, and the general idea of being “progressive.” By using these terms, the Marxist source of these movements is hidden from plain view.

CM traces its origins, then in seed form, to about 1919 — right after WWI. Karl Marx (1818–1883) had argued that the cause of all societal ills were class distinctions and economic inequality, which created oppression for the working class, who Marx called “the oppressed,” or the proletariat. These were distinct from the ruling business class, or “the oppressors,” or the bourgeoisie, who took advantage of the servants who worked for them. Marx believed that only a revolution of the working class against the ruling class — realized in the obliteration of class distinctions and the supposed economic corruption around the world — would bring about a utopian world where humans would be truly free and no longer held captive by their capitalist masters.

Where human beings were once understood as Homo sapiens (“thinking man”), Marx came to view them rather as Homo fabers (“man the maker/creator”). Because human beings appear to be able to control their lives and fates by means of the tools they possess, they must own the means of production. This is why, under the former Soviet Union, the symbols that appeared on their red flag were the hammer and sickle — tools of labour.

We see in Marx’s view a parody of sorts with the kingdom of God. Marx envisioned a new race of people who would be liberated from their shackles and enter into a paradisiacal world of the Utopia. This, of course, is the humanist version of the new people that God has elected in Christ; the last Adam, who is the federal head of a new humanity, and the establishment of the kingdom of God and the eternal order. The apostle Peter describes this order in these words: “But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).

Marx believed it would be a major war which would cause the working class to rise up against their “rulers.” When the First World War arrived in 1914, Marxists believed the time for revolution had come and that the working classes all over Europe would overthrow capitalism and welcome communism, thereby paving the road to the Utopia. But this did not happen. Instead, millions of people from every class lined up to join the army to fight for their respective countries. Even when the Bolshevik Revolution occured in Russia in 1917, led by Vladimir Lenin, workers in other European countries did not support it. This proved to be a shock to the Marxists, as history was not unfolding according to plan.

Other communist revolutions have occurred throughout history, such as the Chinese Communist Revolution (1949) led by Mao Tse Tung (1893–1976) and the Cuban Revolution (1959) led by Fidel Castro (1926–2016), both of which ended in mass bloodshed. The genocide of a third of Cambodia’s population under Pol Pot (1925–1998) and the Khemr Rouge was another testimony to the horrors of the communist ideology. North Korea today, one of several countries still under active communist rule, is rated as the worst place in the world for Christian persecution, according to Open Doors.2 The once prosperous South American country of Venezuela also descended into absolute chaos, disorder, and starvation with the implantation of communist and socialist views in government in 1999 by Hugo Chavez (1954–2013).

The utter collapse of the Soviet Union in December 26, 1991 led the West to believe that, for the most part, communism was dead. However, Marxism did not die. It merely morphed into another form. Its new target would not be economics, as Karl Marx had thought; it would be culture.

Enter Cultural Marxism

The old Marxist idea that economic disparity was the problem with society was soon abandoned in favour of a more nuanced approach; the way to subvert capitalism would be through culture, not economics. Two Marxist theorists, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) in Italy and Georg Lukács (1885–1971) in Hungary, viewed two major obstacles to the advancement of Marxism:

1. Western culture, and the values it was based on

2. Christianity

Marxists realized it would take time to dismantle these obstacles, as Christianity had been around for nearly 2000 years and by now the working classes were infected with its worldview. As such, the West had to be “de-Christianized;” Christianity had to be uprooted. This would not happen overnight, but would be a long, slow march, particularly through the academic institutions.

CM, like its predecessor, is atheistic and antichristic to the core. Karl Marx had said that religion was the opiate of the people — a drug, a pie in the sky illusion of another world — which hindered progress in the here and now. By destroying the Judeo-Christian principles upon which Western civilization was based, the whole Western world would collapse. This is the essence of deconstructionism, and would eventually become a matter of “pride” for many people. Whatever Christianity exalted in terms of morals must become deplorable; whatever Christianity found deplorable must be exalted. CM would move to subvert any values based on the Christian worldview and, in their place, emphasize women’s rights, gay rights, racial minority rights, and criminal rights — all in the name of social rights.

One of Lukács’ first acts was to introduce sex education into Hungary’s public schools. He knew that if the West’s traditional sexual morals could be destroyed, this would lead to the destruction of Western culture itself, as well as Christianity. He spoke of “free love” and mocked Christian views of sex and monogamy within the context of marriage. He would show graphic sexual images in his classes and encouraged rebellion against parents. Lukács knew very well that the family unit was a biblical Christian concept and so sought to make it the main subject of his attacks. Some of the fruits of Lukács’ thinking included the increased instances of family breakdowns, a steep rise in abortions, and skyrocketing rates of single-mother families.

The irony in all of this is that the Cultural Marxists who produced these tragedies were the same ones claiming to really care for these people.

Cultural Marxism’s Agenda

Cultural Marxists saw academia as the best venue to accomplish its goal of subverting the West and its Christian foundations. They hoped to achieve their mission by influencing the minds of future students, and were largely successful in conquering academic institutions throughout Europe, North America, and Australia. We need only look to organizations such as Planned Parenthood, and the writings of its founder Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), as an early example of their success. Sanger was a eugenicist who saw racial minorities as weeds in need of eradication — it is no surprise that many abortion clinics are located in areas with a higher population of minority groups, where abortion is encouraged.

We are not only seeing the fruits of CM in broader society, but in the church as well, with the rise of Marxist ideologies such as Critical Race Theory.

In 1923, inspired in part by Lukács, a group of German Marxists established a think tank at Frankfurt University in Germany called the Institute for Social Research. This institute, which soon came to be known simply as “the Frankfurt School,” would soon become the main instigator of CM. Other prominent members of the Frankfurt School — Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), Eric Fromm (1900–1980), and Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) — also began to engineer methods by which Western culture and Christianity could be dismantled.

In the 1950s, Herbert Marcuse assembled a coalition of blacks, students, feminist women, and homosexuals and told them that the reason for their oppression was Western civilization and particularly the influence of Christianity. This explains much of the vitriol that Christians in particular continue to receive from these groups, while other religious groups, such as Islam, get a free pass from criticism.

Things were not to continue for the German Frankfurt School due to Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) coming to power in 1933. They fled (Hitler detested Communism) and re-established themselves in New York City. Their focus was still the same, but instead of destroying traditional Western culture in Germany and Europe, they turned their attention to destroying it in the United States, capitalizing on the freedoms afforded there to promulgate their ideology and inventing what came to be known as “Critical Theory.” What was this theory? Essentially, to criticize and denigrate every traditional institution seen as “oppressive,” starting with the nuclear family. We have seen these attacks continue their march in Canada with the redefinition of marriage, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and the promotion of LGBTQ ideologies.

The Frankfurt “refugees” also wrote a series entitled Studies in Prejudice, which argued that anyone who believes in traditional Western culture is ipso facto prejudiced, racist, sexist, facist, mentally ill, and laden with presumptuous privilege. It is telling that CM always states what they are against, but rarely what they stand for. They will protest by yelling and screaming, but rarely will they enter into any meaningful dialogue. To them, logic is nothing but chatter and a tool of the patriarchy; it is not about truth, but about power over truth.

How different from Christianity, which is about truth over power.

Cultural Marxism, Critical Theory, and the Media

As noted above, Critical Theory includes cultural studies, women studies, aboriginal studies, African-American studies, LGBTQ studies, transgender studies, postcolonial studies, and so on. In all of these studies, Western civilization and Christianity are identified as oppressors and the main cause of all societal ills. Women are told they are victims of a patriarchy, and that Christianity is a misogynist, male-centred religion; African-Americans are told they were enslaved by white Christians who also worship a white Jesus; Native Americans are told the Christian white man killed their ancestors and way of life; the LGBTQ movement believes they are hated and condemned by Christians.

It is no surprise there is a deep-seated anger against the West and Christianity by activists in all of these camps.

Cultural Marxists also made their way to Hollywood during the Second World War. Through media and entertainment, they believed (rightly) that they could promulgate their ideology more effectively. We see the fruits of their inculcation even today where Hollywood has become a powerful Leftist ideological medium, positioned to normalize all forms of sexual perversions while cultivating a systemic hatred against anything deemed “Christian.” Such is derisively mocked in the media while other religions are exalted as noble, victimized, and marginalized.

After WWII, most members of the Frankfurt School returned to Germany except for Herbert Marcuse, who stayed in America. He would go on to write Eros and Civilization and argue for free sex (which bloomed in the 1960’s with the sexual revolution) and the abolition from any type of restraints. Marcuse, in fact, coined the phrase, “Make love, not war.” Sex was used by Marcuse to argue for what was called “liberating tolerance,” which he defined as tolerance for all ideas coming from the Left, and intolerance for any ideas coming from the Right. This kind of “tolerance” is still practiced today among many special interest groups. Marcuse praised polymorphous perversity, destigmatized non-heterosexual relations, and stigmatized heterosexual relations in marriage as oppressive.

In short, Marcuse believed humans must be ultimately autonomous in their sexual expression; which is also how Paul describes degenerate men and women in Romans 1:18–32.

The Demonization of the West

Postcolonialism blames all the world’s ills on the West and their oppressive incursion and imperialism into other cultures (Middle East, India, Africa, and the New World among others) and the exploitation of those cultures.

But in fact, all nation states have engaged in colonialism since ancient times. Take islamic colonialism, where Islam “Arabicized” cultures and peoples by eliminating their traditional identities and replacing them with Arabic names and architecture (most of which was copied from Christians in Byzantium). Though CM blames the British as the creators of the caste system in India, it was actually an ancient concept rooted in Hinduism and practised for millennia long before the British even arrived in India. Among the practices the British abolished in India was sati (the practice of widow burning if her husband predeceased her), and the practice of throwing infants to the crocodile. They also built engineering schools as well as other institutions.

The slave trade is also blamed on the West and attributed to their greed. Again, what is never mentioned is the Eastern Slave Trade, which was orchestrated by Muslims and in which captured black, male slaves would be castrated and the females kept as concubines. What is never mentioned is the fact that black tribes in Africa had already been engaged in enslaving other black tribes, even contributing to their sale to Europeans on the coast. And while Westerners are condemned for their oppression of the Indigenous people, no mention is ever made of Native tribes that were annihilating other tribes before Europeans ever arrived (e.g. the Hurons were wiped out by the Iroquois in Canada).

The Crusades are also routinely stereotyped as a malicious attempt by Western Christendom to attack innocent Muslims and take over their lands, including the Holy Land. The going myth is that all of these groups lived happy, harmonious lives until the West got involved. Hollywood, in its production of the movie Kingdom of Heaven, distorted the facts of the Crusades to the point where medieval scholars dismissed the entire feature as a horrible distortion of facts. What is conveniently left out in their narrative is that with the death of the prophet of Islam Muhammad in A.D. 632, the Islamic armies began to take over Christian lands throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and as far as Spain.

The Crusades were launched 400 years later to repel the Islamic hordes from taking over all of Christendom. If it were not for the Crusades, all of Europe would likely have been overwhelmed by Islam and the Reformation would most likely never have taken place.

The New Language of Cultural Marxism

CM is responsible for the slew of new terms that have evolved over the last few years such as homophobia, transphobia, and Islamophobia, to name a few. Oddly, we never hear of “Christophobia.” Why? The reason is simple. Christianity and the West continue to be viewed as the oppressor class, making every other group oppressed.

We see CM at work in Western Europe, where many Europeans are clueless about the growing Islamic threat due to the migration of “refugees” into Europe. This has been allowed via the language of “tolerance,” where migrants’ suffering is viewed as the direct result of the West’s involvement in their countries. What they fail to see is that migration is a central strategy within Islam to spread its religion. The results have been disastrous as many ISIS operatives have come through the migration system and gone on to commit terrorist acts in the West. Westerners continue to excuse these as acts of lone wolves, mental illness, or anything they can think of except addressing the elephant in the room — which is the Islamic religion itself.

This also explains the West’s ever-increasing hatred for Israel — the only democratic country in the Middle East — and siding with Palestinians, who are portrayed as victims of Israeli atrocities. One of the greatest ironies here is the LGBTQ’s support of the same Islamic groups who put homosexuals to death under Islamic sharia law! This also explains why LGBTQ groups will sue Christian bakers for not baking a cake for a gay wedding but would never do the same with a Muslim baker who vehemently refuses to offer his services for gay weddings. Trinity Western University in British Colombia (a Christian institution) was even attacked by the law society in an attempt to bar their graduate students from becoming lawyers.

The Infection of Cultural Marxism in the Church

In the church, we have seen CM rear its ugly head through initiatives in the past such as the Emergent Church (led by Brian McLaren, Steve Chalke, and Bruxy Cavey) and, more recently, Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory.

Pastors wishing to become politically correct by entertaining social justice narratives have admitted LGBTQ members into the church without a corresponding call for repentance, and even ordaining them. Several churches I know have entertained Critical Race Theory only to find their churches in utter confusion, which have resulted in church splits. Another church I am familiar with in Toronto has “land acknowledgements” before the service in which they assert they are on the land of Aboriginal tribes. Of course, the only land acknowledgement that a Christian recognizes is Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.”

We hear terms such as “white privilege,” which is a code word for white, male, heterosexual Christian oppression. If you have white skin, you are not only privileged, but you also bear the original sin of your white oppressive ancestors, which can never be wiped out. It is the unpardonable sin. While the emphasis of CM is on group identity, the Bible focuses on individuals as being made in the image of God. Christ, who was the truly oppressed one, came to save sinners and to remove ethnic boundaries so that He could unify them in Himself; where there is no Jew or Gentile, no male or female, no slave or free, but all are one body in Christ (Galatians 3:28).

All of these incursions by CM have occurred under the nose of the Church. How?To paraphrase a saying commonly attributed to Edmund Burke, the only thing necessary for evil to spread is when good men do nothing. The Church is in the midst of an ideological war. She must reclaim her position as the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:10–16). We have the remedy, and the remedy is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Cultural Marxism, like all other ideologies, is ultimately impotent and spiritually bankrupt. It is an inconsistent worldview built on sand; it will crumble. God has raised the Church in our day for such a time as this. The Church needs to come out of the shadows, out of her comfort zones, and own ourselves as the King’s men.

John Calvin once remarked that a dog will bark when its master is assailed — should we not speak out when our Master, Christ the King, is assailed by those who oppose His sovereign rule? If not now, when? The Church needs to take a stand and destroy the arguments of those who oppose the Lord and His Christ (Psalm 2:1–2), to take their ungodly inconsistent opinions set against the knowledge of God and take them captive to obey Christ the King (2 Corinthians 10:3–5).

Tony Costa earned a B.A. and M.A. in Biblical Studies from the University of Toronto and earned his Ph.D in New Testament and Theology from Radboud University in the Netherlands. He is a professor of apologetics at the Toronto Baptist Seminary. He also teaches as an instructor with the University of Toronto in the areas of Gospel Studies and Archaeology of the Bible and the Ancient Near East. He is the author of Worship and the Risen Jesus in the Pauline Letters and Early Christian Creeds and Hymns. His forthcoming book No King but Christ: The Collapse and Bankruptcy of Secular Worldviews will be released later this year. Tony has also been a contributor of scholarly essays in Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture and Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism and various journals.

This week we released a podcast attempting a critique and response to another recent podcast hosted by Paul Carter and attended by several other pastors across Canada. We were concerned by what seemed to be an attempt both to excuse the rampant pastoral negligence during lockdowns as well as accusing dissenting pastors of pedantry and tribalism. In the wake of that discussion, we thought it would be helpful to provide a written follow-up not only summarizing our concerns but also laying out a clear path for repentance for Canadian churches, Christians, and pastors.

We believe this is important because there seems to be a push to recast the last three years into a narrative that may be convenient but that doesn’t actually reflect reality. This restructuring is taking place by relegating what we believe are first-order issues to the bounds of marginality — even to the point of being non-issues. If such a narrative holds weight, then the hoped-for conclusion seems to be that those pastors who judged it was time to fix bayonets were simply being divisive, and that such a posture negatively and unnecessarily impacted our witness in the culture.

But no one, except God, has the authority to declare reality. As creatures of time and space, all we can do is observe, acknowledge, and submit to the observable reality around us and the declared reality of Scripture. Contrary to the claims of Carter and others, several attempts were made during the pandemic to do exactly this.1

According to Jesus, the refusal and consequent inability to see reality is a symptom of hypocrisy (Luke 12:54-56). Many clever and desperate attempts have been made to absolve oneself of the responsibility to discern the truth. At this point, any Christian who cannot acknowledge the utter devastation and injustice caused by the State (and by the citizens’ compliance) is either culpably lacking in the capacity to discern reality or overcome with hypocrisy. That lockdowns would have devastating consequences for our sheep and neighbours was not some hidden knowledge only available to “the experts.” Rather, it was the only reasonable conclusion one could make based on a basic understanding of human nature and the inescapable biblical rule that actions have consequences. To deny these immutable realities is one of the defining features of folly.

Many pastors, if not most, stand guilty of a sinful abdication of their duty to discern the truth. Their absolute deference to authority is not a sign of humble submission, but sinful idolatry. While we heartily affirm the necessity of limited deference to others in helping discern the truth, a total abdication of responsibility to discern and “judge with right judgements” is sinful and idolatrous. Such an abdication is to implicitly ascribe capabilities to human authority which only God possesses (i.e., omniscience and omnipotence). Further, such an abdication with regard to discerning the truth requires a kind of obedience (ie. free from the responsibility to judge right from wrong) which is only appropriate to offer to God. No man — husband, pastor, or head of state — has the right to command obedience without being tested.

We acknowledge that we ourselves made many mistakes during this time. We did not initially speak when we should have spoken; we reacted out of fear when we should have acted with courage; we trusted ourselves more that we trusted the living, enduring, word of God. We learned many lessons and shed bitter tears.

We also emerged from those dark days with vivid awareness that we needed help; many authorities (doctors, experts, officials, pastors) were making claims that couldn’t all be true. Wherever we landed, we knew there would be serious consequences, and we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. But when an effort was made to examine these various claims against the reality of evidence and the testimony of Scripture, the response was not eagerness and openness, but rather doubling down on dubious counter-claims, including: “The threshold for civil disobedience has not been met”; “Scripture’s command not to forsake meeting wasn’t referring to physical gatherings”; “This isn’t persecution”; and of course, “All of this [conflict] was over very slight disagreement. On a very marginal issue.”

In the space remaining, we want to examine this last claim in more detail, not only because it still seems to be the operating premise among many pastors, but because we do indeed long for reconciliation to take place among Canadian churches. But reconciliation requires repentance, and repentance requires identifying and acknowledging the sin in need of being repented of. Though we cannot repent on behalf of pastors and leaders, we can at least attempt to identify the areas that require repentance.

Sadly, from what we have observed, it seems like there are many pastors capable of teaching and preaching repentance but very few who ever entertain the possibility that they might be among those who need to repent.

We want to reiterate that the issues reopening churches stood and suffered for were not incidental or marginal, and that therefore to condemn such actions was sinful and wrong. But that is not our only aim. When Paul confronted Peter for “not acting in line with the truth of the gospel,” it was not simply for Paul or Peter’s sake, but also for the sake of those who “joined him in his hypocrisy.”

Hypocrisy is not a victimless crime. It is a maelstrom that sucks in and destroys innocence and sincerety — the cornerstones of a healthy church. When hypocrisy is ignored, it does not simply go away; rather, it becomes standard procedure. Love, therefore, seeks to expose it.

We are not interested in personal vindication but in vindication of the truth. We are not interested in our own glory but the greater glory of Christ.

Before we begin, it must be said that many Christian’s categories of first and second order doctrines have not always been helpful or biblical. The claim is often made that only a narrow set of doctrines (the trinity, the atonement) qualify as “Gospel-centered” and are therefore, apparently, the only ones we should refuse to relinquish. Yet all Scripture is breathed out by God and is “profitable for doctrine” (2 Tim. 3:16). All doctrine has implications for the Christian life. The difference is that training in healthy doctrine produces healthy Christians (2 Tim. 4:3) whereas unstable doctrine produces fearful, worldly Christians. And who would argue that such a Christian is a living denial of the Gospel?

Sometimes we forget that the Puritans — those spiritual giants whose dissent we so praise and admire — left the shores of England not due to infractions against today’s set of “first order” doctrines but for what many would now see as relatively minor state overreach into their worship.

Perhaps the category of Gospel-centred is much deeper and broader than we thought.

What follows, then, are what we believe to be six doctrines of “first order” importance that were directly under attack during lockdowns and church closures and yet received almost no discussion from pastors.  

1. The Lordship of Jesus Christ over all rule and authority

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Colossians 1:18–20

The goal of the crucifixion and resurrection was nothing less than to establish the preeminence of Jesus Christ over all things. Including the state. The phrase “Jesus is Lord” (Rom.10:9), so benign to our ears, was actually one of the first creeds to be adopted by the early church and quickly became a touchstone against the totalizing claims of Caesar.

Jesus himself taught that there are limits to the state’s authority. This is clear from his command to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Implicit in such a statement is the assumption that there are categories of things which do not belong to Ceasar, such as the worship we owe to Christ. In this, it must be acknowledged that Christians often quest on the edge of a knife — which again is why reductionistic arguments are so dangerous and unhelpful. We must strive to be model citizens, while at the same time poised to resist “leviathan” when it demands the kind of obedience that properly belongs to Christ alone. 

Defining and limiting the State’s authority is a first-order worship issue, which explains why Christians from every age have been so eager to shed their blood for it. We could refer to the unjust demands of the Jewish state, the Roman state, the Catholic state, the Church of England state, the Communist state, or the secular state. To ascribe authority to any state that has not been given by God is not godly submission, but rank idolatry.

2. The reality of human sinfulness

“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23)

Many pastors and teachers have revealed an underlying functional pelagianism in which a certain class of people (namely the powerful) are almost treated as being above the effects of the fall. This is to entertain a criminal naivety to the point of malpractice. The reason the Bible is clear, and why we must be clear, about the limits of deference to the state is because there is an assumption and an expectation that every authority, sooner or later, will attempt to transgress its limits. They will veer outside their lane. And we must be ready when they do.

It is one thing to recognize the variety of gifts, skills, and expertise God has given to those inside and outside the church. It is another thing, and a sinful one, to assume the functional sinlessness of any authority outside of God. Again, this is idolatry. No human authority is total and therefore no human authority deserves total deference.

That so many Christian pastors encouraged us to blindly trust the same people who believe that boys can be girls, that murdering babies is “women’s health,” and that killing the poor is “compassionate,” was deeply troubling to say the least, and a sinful abdication at most. When faced with the claims of the state and its preferred experts, pastors should have been much less eager to assume the best of their intentions.

3. Standing with the oppressed

“Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” (Proverbs 31:8–9)

Despite the claims of experts, lockdowns were the most devastating social experiment in our lifetime; perhaps in the lifetime of Canada. Many are now saying we won’t even see the full extent of the consequences for some time. It must also be said that the policies that were put into place had the least consequences on those imposing them and the greatest consequences on those beneath them. The people who were most affected were the poor and vulnerable: the sick, the elderly, the homeless. To side with the ruling class at the expense of the poor and vulnerable is not humble deference, but sinful partiality (cf. James 2).

It was, therefore, truly bizarre to hear the men on this podcast talk about the minor inconveniences and mental stress throughout lockdowns. In this they seemed to betray both enormous privilege and a bizarre insulation from the suffering of those around them. This distance from those who suffer is antithetical to the nature of Christ (cf. John 1:14), and those He calls to shepherd the flock (cf. Acts 20:18).

In their willful and persistent refusal to acknowledge the reality of oppression, certain pastors have chosen to side with the oppressors. In their refusal to “judge righteously and defend the rights of the poor and needy,” certain pastors have been complicit in the affliction of their neighbours. The Scriptures are resoundingly clear that the people of God are not to opt for silence in the face of oppression, but to speak and act.

It is a stain on the Canadian church that its Shepherds have, with near uniformity, been identified with the ruling class instead of those suffering under the state’s abuse.

What has become apparent is that many Christians have adopted a definition of obedience that operates primarily within a world of private devotion and experience. This posture allows — indeed, encourages — a view of reality that is blatantly out of focus. Christians can be “local church centered” and then turn around and advocate for the closing of the local church. Christians can be against tyranny and then turn around and recommend we be complicit in it. Christians can decorate the tombs of dissidents and then condemn their offspring.

There is no such thing as costless obedience. Obedience that doesn’t cost anything isn’t obedience; it is worldliness. What Christians needed most during lockdowns were not more more reasons to comply and be comfortable, but biblical principles to build on. And this was exactly what many pastors refused to supply.

4. The necessity of corporate worship

“…not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:25)

The preaching of God’s word in the assembly, the reception of the sacraments, and the practice of church discipline have all historically been considered first-order doctrines. These practises are inseparable from the very nature of the Church itself; one cannot neglect them without denying one’s fundamental identity, and thus, do great harm (Heb 10:25). One of the biggest gaslights during lockdowns were the numerous attempts by pastors to convince Christians that there now exists some controversy over matters which have been totally undisputed until now, when they conveniently happen to be under attack.

It is one thing to allow for freedom of conscience for gathering in terms of some hypothetical, end-of-world scenario — there’s an active shooter on the roof, the building is on fire, you’ve been manacled to the kitchen table.

But attempting to forbid or redefine corporate worship as it has always been understood is an entirely different matter.

It was amazing to hear those who claimed to be so confused during covid be so sure of things in the midst of it. Zoom church is fine! Fragmenting the body is fine! Masks are fine! Vaccines are fine! Everything is fine! And yet — oh, we knew so little, what could we have done? If they were truly confused, why were they so quick to offer their conclusions on matters? And if they weren’t confused, why do they say they were?

While there is certainly freedom to practise various safety protocols as a gathered assembly, it is another thing entirely to forbid the Church from gathering completely. Furthermore, it is deceitful and underhanded to redefine the nature of the gathered Church in order to deny that any such prohibitions are taking place.

5. The preservation of conscience

“Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.” (1 Corinthians 8:12–13)

Pastors who forbid what Christ commands and command what Christ forbids have sinned against Christ.

Masks are not, and have never been, a matter of Christian obedience. To wear a non-aerosol resistant mouth covering against an aerosol-transmitted virus has always been a matter of conscience, and perhaps optimism. Mandating the wearing of a mask as a requirement to attend worship is blatantly sinful. Requiring something of a congregant that God does not require is not an act of piety or compassion but an act of pharisaism.

As far as we’re concerned, any pastor who forbade a member of their church from attending worship because of their unwillingness to wear a piece of cloth on their face — and continues to maintain the moral validity of such an action — has disqualified themselves from ministry. In their callous rejection of sheep that believed differently than them, they demonstrated a lack a basic understanding as to matters of conscience, a dangerous authoritarian attitude, and a staggeringly high view of themselves.

6. Loving your neighbor

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:7–8)

Reducing “loving your neighbor”’ to following ineffective and dangerous public health mandates was sinful. Christians need ensure they are defining love, and everything else, according to Scripture and not how godless authorities demand we show it. Even by the state’s account the people who were most vulnerable received the least care — where were the pastors speaking out?

Was it loving to isolate the elderly like animals for months on end and let them die scared and alone? Was it loving to treat human beings worse than plants, forbidding them even air and sunlight? Was it loving to cancel treatment for cancer patients so that they died in their early 30’s? Was it loving to forbid people from working, taking years off their life expectancy and changing the entire trajectory of their family’s lives? All while you kept your job? Was it loving to publicly support measures which exponentially fuelled inhumanity in citizens — to the point where many had begun advocating for the death of those who refused to comply with restrictions?

Even now, and largely because of those measures, our country has descended to a level of immorality and hatred we have never known before — and it was totally supported by the church under the guise of love.

A Final Word on Freedom

“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)

When we say “freedom,” we mean the right and responsibility to pursue obedience to Jesus Christ by faithfully exercising our duty to God and man. Freedom is not the right and ability to do what we want but rather the right and ability to do as we ought. Framing the defense of freedom as the selfish pursuit of worldly-minded Christians is a condemnable straw man. In this again we see a retreat to pietistic categories of obedience (“I can be free in Christ and still affirm mandates that prevent me from freely gathering to worship!”)

To denigrate freedom as a fundamentally selfish endeavour is to oppose the worship of the true and living God and to denigrate and demean his creatures. To oppose freedom as defined by the Bible, is to oppose both God and man. It is rich to hear men who, by their own admission, didn’t suffer the loss of freedom to the degree of many — and who continue to enjoy enormous freedom — slander and scoff at those who advocated for defending it.

Though we would agree that the Canadian church is indeed suffering a crisis of unity, the root cause is not pettiness, but preferring comfortable Canadian cultural Christianity over the totalizing call of Christ on our lives. We therefore call those who, by their silence or endorsement, failed to serve the sheep entrusted to them and the communities they were called to serve, to repent. This is the first step to reconciliation.

As Christians, we hold out hope that there would be many, like Peter, who, when he turned, did so to the strengthening of his brothers (Luke 22:32). What has been the greatest failure of the Canadian church can yet be its finest hour.

The choice is ours.

The most fundamental reality of our world is the love of a Father for their Son. 

This world is not the result of some cosmic accident, which set in motion a series of random, aimless events.

No. Our world is the overflow of an eternal love that exists between God the Father and His Son, who desire to display that love and welcome others into their shared delight. 

The very purpose of life itself is to know our Heavenly Father and His Son (John 17:3), and the eternal, infinite, incomprehensible love that they share. 

But if this world is the overflow of a Father’s love, then it follows that the deepest pain one can experience is the loss of a child. This loss is, in a very real sense, a tearing of the very fabric of reality. 

The only appropriate response to the loss of a beloved child is lament. 

Even our Lord, when confronting the death of a friend, wept (John 11:35). He who held the power over life and death was not indifferent to the tragedy of loss. I have long wondered about this details of Jesus life, and what it reveals to us. In the least we can say that the horror of death is so great, and the pain of loss so deep, that even when it is temporal, it is overwhelming. 

To be given to grief over the death of another is the necessary evidence of love (11:36). Jesus could not withhold tears because He could not withhold love. 

It is because of this that I find myself nearly desperate to express the pain of this loss. Not to draw attention and sympathy to myself, but to draw attention to the object of my love: my child. 

I feel as though I am betraying their life and memory when I simply move on without, in some way, publicly expressing my pain, and thus, my love.

Since the sudden death of our pre-born child, I have experienced novel feelings of such deep, visceral pain that I have realized that something is different about this kind of loss. This unnatural tragedy has flooded my heart with not only sorrow, but fear.

Death, in general, is not new to me. I have already felt the sting of loss to our ancient foe. I held my Grandpa’s hand as his breathing turned to shallow gasps. I recited the Psalms to him, to strengthen his spirit as his body failed. I watched his last gasp, and waited for another breath that refused to come. Those who insist that we are merely matter in motion have never seen a body without a soul. It is not the same. It was not him. I announced his death to the nurse, and called my grandma and his children. 

I watched the slow, terrible deterioration of my own father. Death arrived early for him, and took its time. We watched my father die a thousand deaths before the end, and we grieved a thousand times before the funeral. I sat with him in the same building that I had with his father before him, where two men of unusual strength finally succumbed, powerless against the enemy of all mankind.

I have sat in hospitals with parents as their children’s lives slipped from their loving yet powerless hands. I have experienced the horror of a miniature casket, and stood watch while the last shovel of dirt covered it from the sight of those left living. 

I have received word of a brain tumour in a child, and heard the sound of unspeakable pain in their parent’s voice. I have walked into hospital rooms to comfort those in shock, and looked into the eyes of a child facing an enemy we had hoped would not strike so young. I then faced the terrible prospect of another small casket. 

What I am saying is that I have felt the pain of death. 

But I have never felt this. 

When we first realized our child was in mortal danger, I heard the tortured exhortation of the poet ringing in my heart:

“Do not go gentle into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

We had hoped that if my wife just lay still enough, the child would overcome the overwhelming forces of darkness; that even in their most vulnerable state, they would rage again the dying of the light they had not yet seen. 

I do not know if they went gentle or hard. I just know that, in the end, they went.

And as they went, a thousand hopes and dreams and memories went too. 

I had been planning to protect them. In the end, I lost them without a fight. 

But I know that my hands were never the safest place to be. The safest place to be is in the hands of our Lord, where they are now. And I must not forbid you from going, my child, when He calls your name.

This is a sadness that goes so deep that it feels like reality itself is coming undone. And in some small but real sense, it is. 

It is a sadness, mixed with fear, mixed with horror. 

I still have the image of blood burned in my mind, the first sign that our child was slipping away from us in the dark of the womb. Alone and defenceless. The feeling I felt when I first saw the red traces of death, and the feeling that still comes to me in the night, is not sadness; it is terror. 

It is the feeling of your worst fears coming upon you. 

There has never been, and will never be, anything I fear in the world more than the death of my children. No threat or accusation or harm can ever produce in me the kind of absolute fear I feel at being powerless to protect my children as I witness them descend to the grave. 

There has never been, and never will be, anything I love more in this world than my children. 

As I have considered these things, I have concluded that my love, and corresponding sense of loss, is a tiny reflection of the Father’s love for not only His own Son, but for us (1 John 3:1). 

So, like our Lord, I have not run from my fears. I have not withheld my tears. I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. And I have taken heart that ‘Thou art with me’, even here. 

Even in the place where reality seems to be coming undone. 

I also take heart in the fact that, just as the death of Christ was some kind of cosmic undoing, His resurrection was a true re-fabrication of reality. When Christ rose from the dead, a new world was born (1 Cor 15:20).

A world created by the reciprocal love of a Father and Son.

But unlike the old world, this one will never again come undone.

We live in the dawning of the new creation, with a sure and certain hope of the resurrection. For now, our love compels us to lament who we have lost, and eagerly anticipate the day when we will go to them (2 Samuel 12:23).