It has become clear now that popular Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias covered up a ravenous sexual brokenness “including sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape.” You can read the full statement from RZIM here. This brokenness has come to light as every secret eventually must (Luke 12:3). As we examine the posthumous fallout from Ravi’s dark side, hopefully, we are also examining ourselves.
Ravi was a man of immense intellect, and he articulated a Christian worldview very well. We now discover that he seems to have had large holes in his practice as a Christian. The internet has erupted with questions, allegations, and apologies: How did we fail Ravi? How did Ravi fail us? How are we failing God in all this? Not to mention that the watching world is discounting all the very true and remarkable things he said for all those decades because it turns out that he is just as hypocritical as they privately are.
Among the loudest salvos are calls for more accountability. This is certainly true, but it misses the most crucial point: Ravi was able to creatively circumvent all the accountability structure that RZIM actually had in place. Ravi is a tragic reminder that what we know must become who we are if we ever hope to “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10).
Jesus taught us the way. Christian virtue ethics is that way and it teaches us that we need to allow the Holy Spirit to reshape our mind, will, emotions, and even our bodily habits (see Matthew 22:37). Ravi had a well-developed mental life, but some of his habits appear to have been unreformed. “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). It is natural for human beings to be filled with these things, but when someone turns to Jesus and desires to follow His way, all of that person’s desires must reorient around God Himself. We simply must allow God to reorder our highest loves.
Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). To love God first is the beginning of the good life. We love everything else rightly when we have loved God first “with all your heart.” We must love God with “all our mind,” too. Ravi certainly did this, but this area alone is not enough. Our devotion to Christ must go much deeper than our minds until we have been captured in our whole person.
What does it mean to love God with all of our strength? Dallas Willard taught that sin dwells actually in the members of our bodies (see Romans 6). The muscle memory in our bodies has been trained in a habit of good or bad. Real virtue ethics is the retraining of our habits to align with what we know to be true. To learn more about this I would recommend Dallas Willard’s book Renovation of the Heart; many books have been compiled on this topic, but this one is a great place to begin.
The ancients talked about the head being the seat of reason and the belly being the seat of the primal passions or appetite, after all it is what growls when you are hungry. The head and belly were considered to be at war with one another. The head wanted to contemplate poetry and mathematics; the belly wanted to get drunk, procreate, overeat, and sleep in. Every hung-over student in calculus class testifies to the ancient dilemma.
The ancients had various answers to this dilemma like hedonism (obey the belly) and stoicism (obey the head); these are gross over-simplifications, but they are sufficient. The problem with these approaches is that one is always at war with himself or herself. And the head and belly (reason and passion) will always be at war. “Who shall deliver us from this?” (see Romans 7).
Christian virtue is different. The way of Jesus leads to truth, freedom, and peace with both God and man. Virtue arises from loving God first with all of one’s being—body and soul. If reason is the head and appetite is the belly, then virtue is symbolized by the chest. Virtue is courage and honesty, contentment and justice, etc. Virtue teaches us that the head must rule the belly through the chest, and the chest must be filled with deliberately Christian virtue (see Augustine’s Confessions).
This is why C. S. Lewis’s essay “Men Without Chests” was so critical of the kind of spiritual formation public school children were receiving. It was all head with no virtue, and he drew the obvious conclusion that these children would grow up to be bad adults. To ask them to be kind, upright citizens filled with honor and honesty was absurd since their education divorced ethics from learning. It was like “cutting down the orchard and still demanding its fruit” or “gelding the colts and demanding them to be fruitful and multiply.”
I looked up to Ravi, and the things he spoke were true and good. Truth must go deeper than our minds—it must remake us. In Lewis’s book The Great Divorce, he demonstrates how redemption can reach all the way back through our entire lives so that even our pain, brokenness, and suffering are redemptive toward saving our souls. This is also true for Ravi. Imagine the isolation and despair he must have known, grappling with his sin and not being able to reach out to others for fear of his own reputation. And his suffering is just. That being said, God redeems sinners. Nothing is as important as loving God and knowing Him for all eternity. Let us love God, examine ourselves, and be formed in Christ’s image.
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Jesus Christ rose from the dead, appeared to His disciples, and sent them to the corners of world bearing the message that the Kingdom of God has arrived. The Kingdom advances from its epicenter in Jerusalem, rippling through space and time, ever in conflict “against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Nevertheless, these forces could not entirely resist the dedicated evangelism of true Christ followers, and missionaries traversed the globe shining the light of Christ’s resurrection in every dark space they could reach.
Christianity triumphed over the powers of Roman darkness, brutality, and culture of death. Say what you will about the Church gaining temporal power, the churchmen of the age of Nazianzus and Augustine stubbornly refused to love what the pagans loved. Their hearts were captivated by the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Their hearts were set upon the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Because of this they provided a deep intellectual frame for loving God in a hostile world, a source of theological unity and structure to keep the Kingdom advancing in the face of determined, Satanic obstruction. As Jesus prophesied, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
Jesus Christ began to stitch the patchwork mosaic of the barbarian tribes of Europe together through His work through the Church and through common stories, values, philosophy, and experience. A culture of life began to blossom under the dark shade of Roman tyranny, fostered by Christians’ faithful adherence to the “house rule” found in Ephesians 4-6, Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and the Sermon on the Mount.
Liberation from decay began its upward march in Europe, which would eventually burst forth in the fruit of human rights, abolition of slavery, the scientific method, the arts and humanities, medicine, commerce, and the greatest leap in quality of life that the world has ever witnessed. And these are just the crumbs falling from the Table of the Lord! What joy shall fill the earth at the final consummation of His Kingdom when the world, the flesh, and the devil no longer shade the bloom, when snakes no longer slither in the garden?
But there remains a dragon between our time and that, a dragon capable of sweeping the stars from the sky and blackening the earth with its devastation. It has whipped up a furious cloud of deconstruction, postmodernism, and revisionist history. It descends like a plague of locusts upon our institutions, devouring the fruit. Its cultural Marxism gushes out like acidic fire, dissolving all those woven fibers of shared meaning, philosophy, and experience—leaving in its wake a desolate Hobbesian nightmare, a war of all against all—the Shire come Mordor.
The result can only be catastrophic to our shared society. These postmodern nihilists strip love from the world and claim it is just a power play “dressed for the opera.” They offer no beauty of their own but denigrate all beauty in an attempt to show the best of Western culture—John Donne, Rembrandt, and Beethoven—as ugly, false, and scatological. Or as Roger Scruton once remarked from the halls of Scrutopia, “They wish to parade the best works through the streets, naked and thrashed!” They offer suicide as the only cure for Western atrophy.
When Christians sleep, barbarians invade. That is certainly evident on campuses across the nation. The university has become the diversity; rampant tribalism, segregation, and disorder spoil an entire generation. What devastation shall be wreaked when these ones gain the halls of power? They shall burn what they could not create, raze what they could never build.
Where are our bulwarks? Where is the Ambrose of our time? Where is Augustine, Athanasius, and Anselm? Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere they are needed. Why should we allow the acid of critical theory to dissolve all the grandest things ever created?
Notre Dame is an omen, either that the barbarians are here to stay or that we Christians are no longer worthy of her.
you who seek the Lord:
look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.
“Listen to me, you who know righteousness,
the people in whose heart is my law;
fear not the reproach of man,
nor be dismayed at their revilings.
For the moth will eat them up like a garment,
and the worm will eat them like wool,
but my righteousness will be forever,
and my salvation to all generations.”
Awake, awake, put on strength,
O arm of the Lord;
awake, as in days of old,
the generations of long ago.
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces
, who pierced the dragon?
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Isaiah 51:1, 7-8, 11
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“Well, the rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame
Preacherman seeks the same,
who'll get there first is uncertain”
-Bob Dylan, Jokerman
Violent predator preys on the weak; community shocked by bloody massacre. Commonplace headlines no longer shock us as outrageous acts of evil overlap one another, each more wicked than the last. Perhaps you had never heard of Christchurch, New Zealand, until Brenton Tarrant entered a mosque and opened fire, killing many.
As a Christian, I weep with those who have suffered this latest act of violence.
Oh, that the swords were plowshares! The first reaction of reasonable people is to cry out for someone to stop the carnage, to bring order. Usually this means an outcry for government to make new laws restricting gun ownership. Yet with all the actions taken by government to limit guns, the violence never stops.
Independent Minds (April 27, 2018), a UK media outlet, asked why knife violence is rising so rapidly even among the very young. The UK has been very progressive with laws restricting weapons, like a complete gun ban. Scot Mann, a Tory MP, last week tweeted that all knives should be fitted with a GPS tracker (you’ve got to read it here). The UK continues to restrict freedoms at a rate that would have blown the minds of the founders of the American Republic.
The Washington Post observes, “As Britain cracks down on weapons, criminals turn to acid attacks” (Aug. 26, 2017). No knives, then acid. No acid, then bamboo spears, or fishing line, or bricks. As Bob Dylan sang in Jokerman, “Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks, Molotov cocktails and rocks.” The murderous are among the most resourceful persons on the planet; there is no shortage of violence in the human heart.
The liberals seem to want to make a prison out of the entire society. More guards with more guns, more rules, more video cameras, more of big brother—but never freedom, privacy, or independent thought. George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm as cautionary fiction, not how-to manuals! That point is lost on liberals, as I believe are so many points.
Would-be shooters target schools, mosques, concerts, and other gun-free zones, but never police precincts and shooting ranges. They prey on the weak—not the strong. Chicago is a gun-free zone, but it boasts one of the highest murder rates in the nation. In fact, liberal policies always fail. This is bound to happen when people lead with the heart to the exclusion of the mind.
The answer is to strengthen the weak, not to weaken everyone else. Violence will not disappear until bullies are afraid to act out on their violence. As the old American proverb goes, “God created men, and Samuel Colt made them equal.”
Even if the world was as secure as a prison (though prisons are far from secure), violence would remain in the hearts of men. Strengthen the feeble, do not enfeeble the strong. There is a reason that bullies do not pick a fight with someone stronger than themselves—they are cowards. Stand up to them!
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The movie opens to a drug bust of an oxycodone ring. The drug ring leads to Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider who boasts of his value to the poor Philadelphia community where his practice was located. He had been selling prescriptions through several of the persons working for him. As the various law enforcement agencies discovered the extent of Gosnell’s criminal activities, murders of several infants who were born alive began to surface.
Staff admitted to selling the drug prescriptions and to administering many drugs to patients though they had no training, including anesthetizing women who came in for abortion procedures. Staff also admitted to witnessing Gosnell snipping the necks of hundreds of born-alive babies and eventually providing evidence for seven.
The lone law enforcement agency interested in investigating the murders faced opposition from the District Attorney’s office since charging an abortion doctor with murder would be bad press; nevertheless, the agency was able to obtain a search warrant for Gosnell’s practice.
The movie cuts to Gosnell’s charnel house. It is a conglomeration of three residential homes sewn together by back hallways and doors chopped between walls. The police who searched the place were continuously disoriented. Every scene in this place was half-lit, frenetic, chaotic, and filthy. Cat feces were everywhere. Body parts were stored in the break room refrigerator in milk cartons and old food containers or laying in the hallway. Mice nibbled on the body parts, blood was on the floor and all the equipment, women were sitting on bloody blankets, other women were urinating in the hallway. (All of these descriptions came directly from the police report.) Women waited in the flickering half-light for their turn in the stirrups. But Dr. Gosnell’s magnum opus is a trophy room with over a hundred severed and pickled babies’ feet. Gosnell smiled and defended them as “research.”
The camera zooms in to Gosnell’s face while he talks to his turtles and feeds them clams. The eerie smile as they feed is indicative of the disturbing inner life of “America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer.”
The camera then pans to a woman who looks to be in labor. Gosnell enters the room and conducts an abortion while the police search the building. He emerges with bloody gloves still on, sits down, and begins to eat his supper. The police stare in shock.
At this point in the movie, my teenage daughter and I both broke into tears. The carnage, the pleasure Gosnell took in his grim work, and the utterly sickening conditions stunned us. How could this take place in reality, in Pennsylvania, nine years ago? Surely, this must occur rather in someone’s nightmare, perhaps somewhere on Elm Street.
The film eventually winds its way through a search of Gosnell’s equally dirty home where large amounts of cash were found, but several key documents were not. Meanwhile, Gosnell sits in his bathrobe, plays classical piano, and offers to make breakfast for the officers while the house is searched. Nero’s violin comes to mind.
The trial is a gritty exposé of Gosnell’s criminal activity, but the disinterested media fails to show up. A photo of all the empty seats reserved for media eventually sparks a pro-life Twitter campaign with over 100,000 retweets shaming the news outlets and forcing them to cover the story.
When the media journalists finally drag themselves to the trial, they try to put as positive a spin on the proceedings as possible and may have succeeded had not one of the young workers produced a photograph of “Baby A.” The jury is horrified by the photo (you can view it here). Gosnell is reported to have said of Baby A, “This boy is big enough to walk me to the bus stop.”
The movie reasserts repeatedly that this case “is not about abortion.” The film depicts a great effort to insulate the practice of abortion from Gosnell’s criminal activity. At one point a very nice looking, professional woman from Planned Parenthood takes the stand and exclaims with horror that the way Gosnell practiced abortion is a scandal on the upright abortion providers—they kill more cleanly.
But her hypocrisy is apparent to all. She is defiled by her admission to have personally conducted 30,000 abortions; furthermore, she admitted that a baby of a failed abortion attempt would be left on the table to die. The film justly smears the entire abortion cabal with the blood, feces, and urine from Gosnell’s hallway.
This movie acts like a depth charge: it sinks deep into the psyche and then suddenly a flash of light and people are horrified by the reality of abortion and emerge feeling unclean. In spite of the total media blackout of the book that the film is based on (which went directly to Amazon’s best-seller list), a blackout from Hollywood claiming that the film is too controversial (unlike Cider House Rules, I guess), and a media campaign to justify abortion while belatedly condemning Gosnell, the nation has been appalled to discover what abortion is really like.
Gosnell confirms rather than contradicts what the public has learned about the abortion industry in the last few years: Planned Parenthood sells body parts over a wine-soaked meal (see the video here). New York passes a law allowing abortion up to the moment of birth if a doctor deems fit; the New York legislature erupts in wild applause, whistles, and hoots (see it here). Del. Kathy Tran of Virginia introduces a bill to legally kill babies up to the moment of birth.
Virginia Governor Northam, recipient of $3 million dollars for his campaign from Planned Parenthood, commented about Tran’s bill saying, “If a mother is in labor, the infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and mother.” (See the video here.)
Folks, Gosnell was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, one count of third-degree murder, and many other felonies and misdemeanors. His entire existence was saturated with despair and death. The chilling truth is that the net effect of the New York and Virginia laws would be to justify Gosnell’s actions. It would make 95% of what was shown in this movie legal. If Gosnell practiced in New York today, rather than in Pennsylvania nine years ago, he would be guilty only of bad taste.
America has a fascination with death culture. The violence is overwhelming. But this violence and death ultimately springs from this lethal game of king of the hill that we all must play if there is no God above us. Nietzsche called this deadly game the Will to Power, and he was right when he observed that if God is lost from our consciousness, then we have to create ourselves. He viewed it as an incredible opportunity, but the historical record shows that it has been a disaster.
If all goals, all hopes are bent toward the self, if all thought is given to my future, my happiness, my fulfillment, and my goals, then all that is left is the will to power. Everyone is a means to an end, and the end is only whatever I say it is for myself—damn the world.
Everyone knows that this is the opposite of love (and parenting for that matter). But when there is nothing higher than the here-and-now, nothing more important than myself, I have nothing to live for. I scratch around trying to stay busy till despair finally overwhelms me. Life becomes a series of meaningless jerks toward suicide.
Yet few seem to consider the Christian alternative of God-centered life. Biblical Christianity recognizes that God is there, and because of that we can hope in His goodness. As bad as the world is, God has not abandoned us to it, nor has He been aloof to our suffering. God loved human beings so much that He became one. Jesus Christ became human in order to rescue people “who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15).
Jesus has authored a culture of life. The reason that we fought so hard to end slavery, and why we now fight to end abortion is because the Bible teaches us that each person is made in the image of God. This means that the essential identity of humanity is wrapped up with the identity of God. The inherent worth of a human being means that she cannot be exploited, owned, or murdered. Christians have long stood for this value, and in this titanic struggle of abortion our duty is clear. We must speak for the human persons who are being destroyed. We must speak life and not death.
Please do not abort your baby. Christians are dedicated to life. Please call a pro-life call center like the one found at 1-800-712-4357. We will find a home for your baby! Every life is worth living!
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In the same way that all of us consume and appropriate nutrients from our food, so we all also consume the cultural and social world around us. We cannot help but hear and see and feel the time and tide of culture. Social or cultural osmosis occurs today at astonishing speed and with hideous power.
The zeitgeist means the spirit of the age; it is the mood of an entire era. Think of the Roaring 20s when the Federal Reserve first discovered it could just print money and artificially raise the stock market. Poverty was supposed to have been eradicated. The cultural mood in America was unlimited prosperity, low moral standards, celebration, and heady optimism. After all, the U.S. had just won the war to end all wars, World War I. Moral codes fell dramatically, and hemlines rose accordingly. Booze flowed like ink from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s pen.
There was much pressure on young Americans to adopt the common outlook. The power of culture, though, took a megawatt boost on November 2, 1920. It was the very first broadcast of a commercial radio station, KDKA out of Pittsburgh, which chose that day because it was election day. For the first time people would hear the election results before reading it in the newspapers. (The winner was Warren G. Harding, by the way.) Never before could one person speak to more people at once than someone could meet in person in a lifetime.
A scramble to control the airwaves ensued. Politicians, corporations, and religious leaders all wanted to gain the upper hand over the airwaves so that they could be the one speaking directly to America. The radio became the undisputed king of culture.
Americans began to assume a system of the world, or a way that the world is, without thinking. The advertisements presented a way of life that was accepted uncritically. Society was changing dramatically and it was fueled by the cultural pressure. Many good things occurred, such as women receiving the vote. Cars were being mass produced and 26 million of them were sold in the 1920s. Passenger aviation began to be a viable enterprise, and there were many more technological advancements that transformed everyday life so that many aspects of life would be unrecognizable to someone born only a hundred years before.
All these technologies made the nation seem smaller, but it also made the human person smaller. No one had a voice if he or she didn’t also have a microphone. Eventually the elite got control of the microphones, the government controlled what could be said over the radio, and the common American voice grew almost inaudible under the din of the ten-thousand-megawatt voice bought and paid for by elites.
Then suddenly the world was turned upside down in the 3rd and 4th quarter of October 1929 during a series of corrections, slides, and then eventually crashes to the stock market. Seemingly overnight the zeitgeist moved from optimism, permissiveness, and celebration to humility, repentance, and despair. Everyone was influenced by this new spirit of the age, but the radio remained king. With the proliferation of technology, cultural experiences became far more standardized with everyone feeling the common cultural mood. People could be molded by influencers like never before, and it all happened so naturally.
Fast-forward this narrative and you will see television, color television, an explosion of programming and commercials, cable television, satellite TV, and finally the internet all adding irresistible power to the standardizing influence of culture upon the average American.
A pattern of public manipulation has emerged through the controlling influence of media, and the internet is not immune. As every new technology arrives, everyone scrambles to master it. Eventually a few companies control access, profiting off of the ads and access. Then the government controls appear, controlling content and maintaining monopolistic powers for a chosen few. This has not yet occurred completely in the case of the internet, but it is plainly beginning to occur. Already corporations like Google and Facebook control access, monitor usage, sell the data, and censor content that they do not like. Meanwhile the government has proposed legislation time after time to tax the internet, control speed and bandwidth, stifle competition, regulate content, spy on everyone, etc. If the historical pattern endures, these elite interests will eventually win control. I can only guess that humans will immediately begin working on yet another technology free of these controls, perhaps blockchain?
What does all this have to do with Christianity? Christians, like everyone else, are swimming in the zeitgeist. It influences us whether we realize it or not. Being aware of that fact helps us to take precautions against it and, with hope, avoid some of the worst outcomes.
One of the most important steps in our journey to Christ is to become aware of our own worldview. That is, we actually take off the interpretive lenses through which we view the world and examine them. Are we getting an accurate picture of the world as it really is? Does our worldview transform the blurry, unfocused, and confusing elements of the world into a clear picture? Can it explain both the past and present, and does it provide predictive models with more accuracy than competing worldviews?
Christianity does that for us when it is sufficiently understood. It is the best explanation for the world as it is. It has better answers for the origin of the universe, the existence of life rather than mere matter, the existence of consciousness, the existence of qualia, the fine-tuning of the universe, etc. Science almost always supports a Christian worldview rather than a materialistic one.
Worldview development is vital to passing on genuine Christian values, therefore the Christian has to develop resistance to the zeitgeist in order to be faithful to Christ. I would invite readers to check out the many books written on Christian worldview. An easily accessible online resource is the work of Summit Ministry; there is a fun and free worldview pop quiz here. Feel free to share your results in the comment section of this page. How Christian are you?
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I started, as did you, with a moment shared between my mother and my father. All of us spring from those shared moments, whether they’re occasioned by brokenness or wholeness, violence or love. Nevertheless, they are the essential beginning of a brand-new human being. (I realize there are technical means to circumvent this normal way, but on the whole, those means hold a vanishingly small percentage of conceptions. Besides, this is a reflection not a technical manual.)
Every seed is full of information, and that information has a destiny. For example, an acorn must become an oak tree if it becomes anything at all. It cannot become something else. The destiny of the acorn is to become a mature oak tree, create acorns, and then having fulfilled its destiny, it dies. It is the same for humans.
The material supplied by my parents was rich with information and energy and when combined, produced a new entity—me. The latent energy in my newly formed zygotic self soon was expended; so, in order to bring about the destiny that was also latent in me, I had to consume energy and it has been that way ever since—matter, energy, and teleological information (DNA).
As I grew, I consumed more energy in various forms; my cells split, regrouped, and repeated the process. My body appropriated nutrients from everywhere it could absorb them in order to grow larger, become more complex, and sustain life. Like an acorn growing into an oak, I absorbed matter and energy into my body, appropriating it in order to fulfill my own latent purpose.
But what is that purpose? That question has completely absorbed 20th century philosophy. Is there “something more” to our existence than just eating and reproducing?
The bond of matter, energy, and information (DNA) in the case of humans is more than the sum of its parts. It is more than just an entity capable of consuming and appropriating energy. After all, a plant can do all of those things, and a human being is so much more than a plant. For instance, I have consciousness and the plant does not. Animals have consciousness and have a higher form of existence than plants, but a human being is more than even an animal.
For example, I am self-aware. I can grasp cognitive of concepts like algebra, history, and the future. I can do more than react to present stimuli. These separate me from even the highest animals. I have abilities in my conscious mind that an animal can never have; an animal never wonders if he has done the moral thing, for instance.
Human beings have a higher form of existence than plants or animals. I am much more than an entity that consumes energy and produces matter according to a preordained pattern of information (DNA). I am more than the sum of my parts—and, constant reader, so are you. This is the synergistic reality of the human being.
In philosophy and theology, the soul is the thing that is greater than the sum of its parts. My composite parts cannot explain who I really am. I am not just a body, an eating machine. I am not just a domino in a cosmic chain of events. I am a soul and I have a body.
Not surprisingly, this is what we find also taught in the Bible. It says that in the very beginning “God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).
This remarkable act of God confirms that I truly am more than just matter, energy, and information. God imparted something additional to Adam once he was formed. It was the addition of a rational soul. No other created thing received such a soul, making you and me unique. Adam and Eve reproduced according to their kind, and so on, all the way down to me. I am a conscious, enfleshed soul and accordingly, I will never cease to exist.
Because of this reality that deep down we all know about ourselves, the naturalistic story lacks appeal. It seeks to classify us in terms of eating and reproducing mammals, saying that we are just matter and energy accidently joined for no reason or purpose.
Even though the naturalistic story lacks appeal, many have bought in to it because they have been schooled only by naturalism. The details of the creation story are characterized as a fairy tale, never mind that the naturalist story doesn’t account for very many of the details of our real lives.
The naturalistic story is less than the total story, and because many today have built their mental lives around it, they have shunted their lives. They try to cram all meaning and value into just this life—the eating and drinking and being merry. The problem is that after all the eating and drinking is done, we still feel that we are missing out on something. Is this all there is to life? If you answer “Yes,” you will eventually come to a crisis of meaning and value.
But if you believe there must be something more to life, a spiritual dimension or something, I have good news for you. We live in a thick world full of spirit, soul, and body. It is a world that is charged with spiritual beings great and small, good and evil. And over it all is a good God, a maximally perfect God, who loves His creation so much that He does the unthinkable to keep it connected to Him. But that is for another time. Blessings, constant reader.
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The motto of the medieval Christian world was, “Some to fight, some to work, some to pray.” What this created was a system of the world that was group oriented. One was born into a place and position and expected to perform one’s duty. A serf had a duty, as did the king. The priest had a duty, as did a noble lord. Each was expected to know his or her responsibility and perform it until the day of death.
Persons were less individuals and more a cog in the system—a replaceable part of the whole. Responsibility was paramount. Duty was the ethical anchor of the entire social order, without an abundance of concern for common individuality. A peasant was expected to live a life of service to his or her lord, expected to fold under all individual personality in service of another. This was all perceived as duty.
Plainly, the development of the concept of individualism was welcome in such a rigidly stratified society. Springing from the Imago Dei was the concept that human beings are created equal, that there is no intrinsic difference in quality between the noble and the serf. They are human beings; they are persons, not cogs in a system of the world. The “Rights of Man” was a notable development, but it did not spring from John Locke originally, but from the flow of Christian thought throughout the medieval period.
The concept of individualism produces rights. Rights cannot be violated by anyone, including those with so-called noble blood. The libertarian maxim enshrined in the principle of absolute non-aggression is an example of universal rights of mankind. Another is the Christian theological conclusion to “do no harm.” For the scope of this blog post, I do not have space to explain the difference between positive and negative rights, thought it is a vital discussion. Learn about it here instead.
Although we do possess inalienable rights simply because we are made in the image of God, God Himself has ordained social structures to which we as individuals remain responsible. Not that others are entitled to my duties and service, but because God is entitled to my duty, service, and love. This is often underemphasized in modern libertarian circles, forgotten in political circles by both left and right, and entirely distorted by social pundits.
The Bible says that we are to “let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another” (Romans 13:8). We did not incur this debt because our fellow man has loved us so well that we now owe him or her something. Quite to the contrary, we owe this debt to God, not only because He made us, but also because we as Christians have been redeemed by God.
Jesus explained this debt in His sermon of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21-35). In this parable, a servant hopelessly indebted with an unpayable sum is generously forgiven—no strings attached. But then he seizes his neighbor and demands payment of the very small amount owed to him. The end of the parable describes this unmerciful servant being turned over to tormentors.
When I focus solely on my rights, I have trouble understanding this parable. After all, the first servant was forgiven the debt, why would that create a duty to forgive the debts of others? He didn’t have the right to be forgiven, yet he was. This would not reduce the legal claim that he had upon his fellow servant to be repaid the small amount that was owed him. He still has the right to the money. In a purely legal world, he should still be able to collect. Jesus contends that I should show my obligation to God by forgiving the petty sums owed to me by my fellow human beings.
Jesus’ point was that being forgiven the unpayable sum created a moral obligation—a debt—to the master who forgave. The implication is clear. Based on the dual reality for the Christian that God has both made me and redeemed my unpayable debt, I owe Him forever. I belong to Him. I incurred obligation to Him that I now must show to my fellow human beings; failure in this area blinds me to my responsibility.
This is why I adamantly deny that an individual owes the poor something directly. The poor have no positive right that I have a duty to supply. Nevertheless, due to my indebtedness to Christ, I have a moral obligation to supply whatever it is He commands. If Jesus wants me to make payments to the poor or to whomever, that is His right and my obligation.
Rights are always balanced by responsibilities and responsibilities by rights. God is the all-important link in this chain. If God is missing, we end up with Marxist claims that we are in debt to all other humans; we become slaves to society because we owe them directly whatever we can produce or that they can demand. History shows this to be exactly what happens in any socialist state. The government becomes the guarantor of the people and the individual becomes a cog in the machine once again.
The other side of the coin is equally damning. If God is not there, I cannot truly be responsible to others or society in any way. Marxists may make claims on me, but they are illegitimate claims and I know it. The result is a headlong plunge into absolute individualism which cannot actually produce a stable society. Anarchy is arguably not a suitable basis for society (the libertarian minimum is not anarchy), but it certainly is not a Christian basis for society. This is true because anarchy is totally focused on individual rights to the complete exclusion of responsibilities. The result is chaos.
Take one look at any college campus today and you will notice that hyper-individualism is on full display in the gender wars. A person who is born a woman and feels like a woman, but who sometimes feels like a man who likes to feel like a woman and wears women’s clothing even though she was already wearing women’s clothing before the feeling arose that made her identify as a man wearing women’s clothes (audibly gasps for air)—this all requires a very complex set of pronouns. DNA has been mapped, but it seems less complex than some of the new genders which are being . . . um, discovered? . . . everyday.
Radical hyper-individuality produces chaos and anarchy, period. Rights must be balanced by responsibilities. All humanity owes a debt to God by the virtue that God made them, and whatever one makes one also owns. God has ordained three spheres of authority in life and we as individuals must make our peace with them: Family, State, and Church. Read more about that here.
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I am an individual. I believe in human rights being guaranteed at the individual level. My rights are not derived by my belonging to a group. I believe the State has to maintain what I call the libertarian minimum. That is, it must only guarantee the security of life, liberty, and property to its citizens and go no farther! The State is to guarantee that I do no harm to someone else or use force or violence against another person.
The State’s position is a purely defensive one. It is the amalgamation of every free person’s right to voluntarily unite for the common defense against the aggression of others. It is all the nerds on the playground standing together against a bully saying, “If you fight one of us, you fight all of us.” We have the right to use violence only in self-defense, and we have the right to empower the State to use that defensive power on our behalf in a civil way. But that is as far as the violence can go.
The State may not be used to wield power against others. Our nerds can persuade stronger students into standing with them in solidarity against the bully, but they may not hire the bully to wreak havoc on others. The State is to guarantee that we have rigorous freedom and leave us mostly to ourselves. (Read more about that here.)
There are basically three kinds of freedom: libertine, libertarian, and virtuous (or the pursuit of the good).
Libertine freedom denotes casting off moral restraint and doing whatever gives you pleasure.
Libertarian freedom implies the ability to make choices that can be harmful or destructive, as long as that harm or destruction does not spill over onto another person—that is those actions do not impede another’s life, liberty, or property.
Virtuous freedom is freedom from restraint (chemical, moral, etc.) to pursue the good life. It is the ancient idea of Eudemonia. You can read more about that here.
The State is unable to allow libertine freedom, because that would be unjust. The State cannot allow persons to harm one another. Libertine freedom allows a person to live without moral constraints including theft, murder, fraud, debauchery, etc. It is antinomianism run amuck.
On the other hand, the State is powerless to provide you with virtuous freedom. That is, it cannot compel you pursue the good life, because virtue must be voluntary for it to be virtuous. The State can only prevent others from using violence against you, thus providing everyone with the equal opportunity for the good life. But you must pursue it for yourself at your own expense and to the risk of your own person.
That leaves only libertarian freedom; that is why I call it the libertarian minimum. The State has a responsibility to guarantee this minimum, and any attempts to do otherwise become tyranny and injustice. No one can be allowed to take your life, liberty, or property without repercussions from the law. The libertarian minimum is the only just course for the State regardless of how much persons might wish it could produce a utopia. It can’t.
Asking the State to do otherwise would mean that the State must become a bully and shakedown others on your behalf. The State would have to choose those for whom it would provide benefits and those whom it would subjugate in order for those benefits to be provided. Any service that is mandated as your right must be taken from someone else, who is forced to comply with the State’s demand. The result is that the State treats everyone unfairly—some with benefits and others with burdens. Even though this is the exact opposite of actual justice, it is the current state of affairs in the United States.
If you are to have something you did not earn, someone has to earn it and have it taken away—if that isn’t injustice, what is? Of course, someone could voluntarily give something away from the goodness of her heart, and that would be virtuous. But can you see how forcing her to do this removes the virtue? It is no longer a gift; it is theft by a bully.
The concept of justice is nearly as old as human beings. Christianity places the source of justice in God Himself. He is maximally good and perfect. He is holy and just and He cannot leave sin unpunished (Nahum 1:3). While God does punish nations, and innocent members of the community have to suffer along with those who actually caused the problems, justice is primarily about individual response to God’s way of life. The ultimate day of justice, Judgment Day, is executed toward the individual. See Ezekiel 18, especially verse 20: “The soul that sins, it shall die.”
If this is how God carries out justice, it behooves us to follow suit. We do not condone punishing families for the crimes of one of its members; rather, holding individuals accountable for their own actions is considered just. As obvious as this sounds, the idea is quickly eroding on college campuses and elsewhere where your membership to certain groups is all the signal of character one needs to condemn or praise a person. It is on your group identity that you are judged, not individual character. (Look for my future post concerning intersectionality.)
I believe in the autonomy of the individual. I am not you, you are not me. There is in impassable barrier between my “self” and your “self.” We are distinct from one another. You cannot read my mind, though you may guess what I am thinking. I am innocent of your crimes and vice versa. But there are limits to individualism, which I will discuss in my next post.
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“God is not nature, and nature is not God.” -Gregory Koukl
In Christianity, you do not respect nature, for nature is not a person; you respect the Creator and therefore you do not trash His creation. This is Koukl’s great summary of the relationship of human beings to the earth.
With creation care, we come full circle in our hierarchy of ethical concerns, because care for creation is woven by God into the very fabric of our nature. It is part of our identity as persons made in the image of God, which a careful reader will recognize as the first item in our hierarchy.
In the very first chapter of the Bible, God gives man a job to care for the creation. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27).
Nevertheless, the chapter does not end with us as workers, but as worshippers. God institutes the Sabbath day of rest for us to worship God. Worshiping God is primary. God is not creation; therefore, we do not worship it. We do not worship Gaia, mother Earth. God is not the sum of His creation. He is over it, outside of it, and yet enters into it by choice. He does not need it, but it depends upon Him every nanosecond for its continuation. Human beings have a job to do, but that is not our highest pursuit. We are worshipers, primarily. Always above our work and our duties is our relationship with God—that is the main thing (Psalm 27:4).
To be sure, our relationships toward God, fellow humans, and the creation itself have been fatefully marred by the Fall. The Fall made our work much more difficult, for example it caused pain in childbirth for women and sweat and weeds for men (Genesis 3:16-19). Therefore, our descent into rebellion has placed incredible strain also on the created order. Romans 8:20 states, “For the creation was subjected to frustration…”
Human beings have been scrambling for power, dominance, and control ever since that rebellion. The Bible contains a tragic and bloody history—though the truthful one. Creation itself has been co-opted in humanity’s gory gambit for power. Everything that fallen man has dominance over suffers as a result of the fall. Look around, don’t you see the evidence of that?
John Stott reminded Christians of care for the creation in his last book before departing from this life, The Radical Disciple. He shares these twin insights: 1, that the Bible firmly declares that the “earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1-2), while at the same time that 2, “The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind” (Psalm 115:16).
Stott says that “the earth belongs to God by creation and to us by delegation.” This is another way of saying that the earth belongs under the stewardship of mankind. Human beings do not own the earth; we are merely entrusted with its stewardship. This is not unlike the way a parent owns the home, but gives a room to the child. It is considered his or her room, but obviously he or she does not own it.
Christians believe that Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God and began a recreation of the world and all who live in it, which will be consummated at the final judgment and subsequent making of a new heaven and new earth.
This means that in Christ’s salvation of humankind, He will also remake the earth and its beings too. But it also means that part of our work in the spread of the Gospel and the Kingdom of Jesus is to cooperate with God in his remaking of all the aspects of creation as far as possible. If we can cure a disease, by all means, let’s cure it. If we can change societal structures to make them secure life, liberty, and property, then let’s enact those changes.
Constant reader, we have entered into a partnership with God in creation care; it is our job, but it is not our purpose. Our purpose is to worship God. But part of the way we worship God is to do our job well.
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Christian solidarity seeks racial harmony, justice for individuals, equality of opportunity, and respect for all persons because they are made in the image of God.
Racial harmony occurs when we recognize our essential sameness. The human race is the only race. The differences in hair, eye, and skin color are only genetic traits and have nothing to do with humanity. From a Biblical perspective, humanity is universally fallen because of the failures of our common ancestor Adam (see Romans 5:12-14). This has affected every aspect of all human beings.
Harmony is further found in those who believe in Christ because of our adoption into a new family—the family of God. “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16-17). We are saved from the death that Adam brought into this world through rebirth into God’s family: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Therefore, Christians have a higher identity than our worldly nationality. Truly, we are dual citizens of heaven and earth at the same time, but our ultimate loyalty is to the Kingdom of God.
That is why the emperors of Rome killed our ancestors. We would not recognize Caesar as the highest authority. The worshipful phrase “Jesus Christ is Lord” became an act of sedition. People of every nation, tribe, and tongue were thrown to lions, lit on fire, or murdered in other equally creative ways because of their confession of Christ.
We are a multi-cultural, multi-lingual family; but, we are a real family. The more I personally identify with the reality that God has transformed me to the very core, the more solidarity I will experience with those who have also been transformed by the saving power of God, regardless of differences in surface traits (see Ephesians 2:1-10).
Contrast all this with Marxist ideology. Marxism seeks to divide people in as many ways as possible so that there will be revolution. Men versus women, rich versus poor, black versus white, or whatever other distinction can be made to divide people. Then these distinctions of race, class, and gender are transformed into one’s identity. Those who follow this theory of identity typically believe that these distinctions create an almost impenetrable barrier of misunderstanding.
This means that identity is a function of which group you belong to, not a function of who you are as an individual. In current Marxist philosophy, I cannot escape the point of view that comes from being in whatever race, class, gender groups I find myself. As a white male, I am inseparably part of the patriarchy and if I am damaged as an individual as other groups who have been historically treated unjustly, that is just too bad for me. Social justice for groups is more important in Marxist ideology that whether one individual gets trampled now and then.
Social justice is an attempt to secure justice for groups of people rather than for individuals, which stands in utter contrast to both historical Western thought and Christianity, its forbear. It seeks to create an absolute equality for everyone, even if that means everyone is equally poor and miserable. European reform movements sought to bring the aristocracy down to the common level so that they could all be the same. The English, but especially American, tradition sought to do the opposite. It sought to elevate even the most common to the same status as the aristocracy by recognizing individual rights. In a Christian worldview, rights are not observed because one belongs to a certain social group, but because of the inherent value of the human being who is made in the image of God. Justice is universally applicable to all persons, regardless of class, gender, or race.
That is not to say that injustice cannot be institutionalized, because it obviously has been with slavery being the most notable example, but it occurs wherever one group of people dehumanize (or deindividualize) another group.
The solution is still to guarantee life, liberty, and property to individuals, because to do otherwise means that the rights of groups must trump the rights of individuals, which is how the original injustice was created in the first place. Take one look at the history of the Soviet Socialist Republic and you will see that the subordination of the individual to the all-important needs of the State created the most twisted human rights abuses ever known. The same could be said for Maoist China and Nazi Germany—the common denominator is their ideology can be traced to Marx.
Marxist ideology does not protect individuals. It creates injustice by vengeance. If there is an undervalued group in society, Marxism exploits that rift by enflaming the underdog with revolution. It says we must destroy the oppressor. No individual belonging to the oppressor group can possibly be innocent because they were born into a different race, class, or gender.
Ernest Hemingway was a socialist himself, perhaps not red, but certainly pink. His novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is sympathetic to the Spanish Communist movement. But even he notes that injustice was done when the communists began killing off those in society they determined were the “haves.” Some of the good townspeople and shopkeepers were slaughtered because they were members of a higher class. Hemingway seemed to be torn by this injustice, but the characters in the book felt is was necessary to make their revolution pure.
The reality is that wherever Marxism is believed, injustice certainly follows. This is an intolerable evil. As the venerable Thomas Sowell once remarked, “The grand fallacy of the political left is that evil is localized in some set of ‘oppressors’ from whom we can be ‘liberated.’ That is also its great attraction, for it allows people to attribute their dissatisfactions to other people.” Unfortunately, an ideology built on theft and revenge will always produce murder and injustice.
Are we doomed then? Is there any alternative? Yes! The Bible teaches personal responsibility, value, and equal protection of individuals. Justice is secured for every individual regardless of whatever group he or she may be perceived to belong to. This is the great idea behind Harper Lee’s book To Kill a Mockingbird. Even though Tom Robinson was a poor, black field hand, he deserved justice because he was a human being, made in the image of God. Atticus Finch was honor bound to protect him because injustice to Tom was injustice to us all.
To be sure, injustice can be institutionalized and the world has never been without ready examples at hand. Nevertheless, we combat institutionalized injustice by guaranteeing justice for individuals, not groups. Furthermore, we cannot provide equality of results, only equality of opportunity. Imagine how powerful the State must become to guarantee equality of results? This is exactly the legacy of the USSR and all of the civil rights abuses—millions dead, enormous human tragedy, and people enslaved for nearly a century. Open your eyes, America; this horror-show is knocking at our door.
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“Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.” -Ephesians 4:28
I have written extensively concerning care for the poor (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and of course, here). The reason that care for the poor must follow after a robust theology of work is that it is from private earnings that voluntary donations are made to care for the poor. To put it another way, one must work and then have something to share. Relief for the poor must be voluntary, not coerced, or it is not truly generosity. Capitalism has improved the lives of almost everyone on the planet.
In the early church, Christians were selling their lands and goods in order to share with other Christians in need (see Acts 2:45). All of this was voluntary, motivated by love and compassion. The early church continued in this way, holding their own possessions loosely and with an eye on the needs of the Christian community as a whole. Christians would “from time to time” sell a piece of land and give the proceeds to the church to distribute unto the needs of the church at large (see Acts 4:32-37).
Nothing in the text suggests that anyone was forced to do this, but that it was the overflow of generous hearts grateful to be saved by Christ. Then we read of Ananias and Sapphira who also sold a piece of land and brought some of the money to the Apostles. They lied about how much the sale was because they wanted to appear to be generous while still retaining some of the money. No problem would have arisen from this situation if they had not lied. Peter said to them, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?” (Acts 5:3-4).
I write all this to illustrate the point that care for the poor arises out of the fruits of productive labor; furthermore, it must remain voluntary for it to be an act of charity. If I threaten to clobber you over the head with a caveman’s club if you do not give me your money, it makes little difference what I do with the money afterward even if I give it to my poor friend so he can buy noodles. One can never call coerced transactions charitable. They are extractions or extortions, but never an act of generosity.
That being said, Christ has saved my life and therefore, I owe Him my life as a debt. He has become my Lord and Master because I have submitted to His lordship over me. He is my king. Jesus is an absolute monarch, but He is so very benevolent that His “yoke is light,” especially in comparison to the slavery to sin from which He set me free. Therefore, whatever demands Jesus might make on me, I am honor-bound to comply.
Jesus once told a rich young man to sell everything and follow Him (see Mark 10:17-31). This young man was too possessed of his possessions; they held mastery over him. “No one can serve two masters,” Jesus said (Luke 16:13, Matthew 6:24). For this young man to follow Jesus and thereby receive eternal life, he had to lose a master to gain a master. He chose to serve the master of money and damned his eternal soul. Jesus can make any demand on me that He chooses, and I must comply. But only Jesus has this power over me. I have other obligations, to love my wife, to obey civil authority, to worship with the church every Sunday and more, to tithe, to read my Bible, etc., but all of these duties and obligations arise from my acceptance of the Lordship of Christ.
It is from the Lordship of Christ that I take seriously the command to care for the poor. Unless I become convinced that some specific action is required of me, I am able to decide how best to go about making provision for the poor. To put it another way, I might feel in my heart certain compassion for someone and take that as communication from the Holy Spirit to do something specific. I am then responsible to do so.
I recall on one occasion, I felt that God wanted me to give a missionary $50, but I only had $30 at the time (I was still a broke teenager). I shrugged off the suggestion since I obviously didn’t have the money, I plucked a book from my shelf and a $20 dollar bill fell to the floor. I do not believe it was supernaturally minted, but rather that I had long forgotten that it was there. The timing of the circumstances made a lasting impression on me to always respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Even if I do not sense supernatural guidance, however, I still have an obligation to care for the needs of the poor—especially those who are in the household of believers (see Galatians 6:10). I am able to use my reason to make solid lasting plans to not only meet the short-term needs of the poor, but also their long-term needs. We must teach the poor how to care for themselves. In so doing, we transform a negative situation into a positive one. I have always found joy from seeing someone on welfare subsidies come to Christ and be discipled in the proper use of money. To watch them no longer need welfare and to become a productive person who is then a giver to others and a supporter of the church is a tremendous blessing.
In our care for the poor, we must constantly guard ourselves from two conditions: apathy and creating dependency. Apathy is not caring enough about the condition of the poor to make a difference in their lives. Creating a condition of dependency is scandalous. Giving someone cash is almost always a way to create a dependent. Meeting a specific need is better: paying their heating bill, buying a bag of groceries, etc. The potential to misuse cash is too high. I am not talking only about someone using it for booze, gambling, or drugs, although that is a possibility, and in our society these are the main causes of poverty.
Sometimes poverty comes from just not knowing how to manage money or the proper value of things. Once, I helped a man get out of jail on the condition that he would get a job and remain in a counseling relationship with me. He did get a job, and the first paycheck he ever had was entirely blown on the stupidest things. I recall that he bought three ball point writing pens for $45. I explained that he had higher needs than expensive writing pens and that he should return them to the store. “I need some good pens,” was his stubborn reply. Of course, it was his money. But giving him more of it was not his greatest need, obviously.
Constant reader, avoid apathy and create no conditions for scandal. Be smart in your giving and always give as unto the Lord. Tithe, support the mission of the church, and get advice. And, if you see that your helping is actually hurting, please change your strategy.
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“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” -John 5:17
Socialism kills. Socialism equals starvation. Europeans have forgotten that painful lesson which they seem destined to relearn. South America has been suffering from the socialism disease and Marxist theology for decades—it is a sickness unto death unless they wake up to Biblical theology. America has been flirting with socialism since FDR, but her immune system has been compromised by crony capitalism for so long she has almost no resistance to the socialist plague.
It seems appropriate to directly confront socialism in this introduction to the element of work in social ethics, because private property is directly essential to any theology of work. The Marxist revolution in Europe preaches that the fruit of all labor belongs to everyone (and usually superintended by the state). However, when people cannot keep the fruit of their own labor, they tend not to work as hard. Lack of productivity is a perennial pestilence. The United Soviet Socialist Republic attempted to solve this problem through forced labor. It was a disgraceful way to treat their fellow human beings.
This is not the American legacy. Socialism was first tried in America in 1607 in the Jamestown colony. The bulk of the persons who settled the area were considered indentured servants and their labors were considered public property. People seem to always want to live on the labor of other men. However, the settlers did not work very hard since they were not allowed to eat the fruit of their own labor. The colonists forgot the Biblical admonition, “Do not muzzle the ox while he treads out the grain, and the worker deserves his wages” (1 Timothy 5:18).
The result was starvation. Even though the land was incredibly fertile and fruit and game abounded, they were starving. David Boaz chronicles the “starving time” and the fact that the institution of private property changed all of that in his blog for the Cato Institute here.
The point is that the reward of labor belongs to the laborer. This countermands slavery, obviously, but it also countermands socialism. Also, if a person chooses to sell his labor for whatever price he can get, that is between himself and whomever agrees to buy the labor. If the buyer of labor (employer) profits exceedingly from the labor he purchased, that is perfectly acceptable. Perhaps the one selling his own labor will realize the true value of his labor and only agree to sell more of it at a higher price. That is also perfectly acceptable. Underneath either of these voluntary agreements is the foundational notion that I own my own labor.
The fruit of work consists in three states: past, present, and future. Past labor has achieved my current position, whether good or bad. Past laziness results in present lack; past diligence in present abundance. To swoop in and lay claim to my property (money, land, goods) is to steal my past. To enslave me and force me to work or lay claim to my current labor in any way is to steal my present, that is to steal my liberty. To steal my life is obviously to steal my future. Life, liberty, and property are inseparable. For a further development of this idea please read this.
Work and reward are inseparable. That is why I have so often said that socialism cannot be Christian, because it assumes that society has the ultimate rights of property, not the individual who actually does the work. I would hasten to add that if you sell your labor, you agree to work for a wage. If you provide labor to build, say, a dam, you don’t own the dam—you own the money that was traded for your labor. Makes sense, right?
“If you don’t work, you don’t eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). The results of your work or lack thereof are your own. If you fail to sow, you shall also fail to reap. The nobility of Europe developed the idea that work was an aspect of the Fall. But work was not a part of the Fall, nor was it the result of the curse. Toil was part of the curse, but not work. Adam worked before the fall (Genesis 2:15). He named all the animals if you recall (Genesis 2:19).
Work is an essential part of what it means to be fully human. God gave us the mandate to tend the earth. Profitable, rewarding work is part of our DNA as human beings. When God remakes the heavens and the earth, He will remove the toil from our work, but he will not remove work from our lives—thank goodness. Can you imagine an eternity of sitting on clouds playing a harp? I want to explore the universe and terraform planets. How about you? What will you want to do for all eternity? What will be your work?
This is a brief introduction to the category of work in a comprehensive social ethic. If you are familiar with Catholic Social Teaching, you will realize that I inverted the order of work and care for the poor because our ability to care for the poor arises out of our work ethic and we feed others from the fruit of our own labor. We don’t steal the productivity of others to give to the poor. We give to them from our own productivity as we feel led. We don’t feed the lazy—but we care for the unfortunate. Till next week—fair well. Do good work. Eat, drink, and be merry.
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The world in its infancy knew only one God. He created and ordered the world and all was very good. He walked the earth and everything hummed with worship. But the sky darkened with the devil’s lie, and Adam believed that he too could be a god (Genesis 3:5). Man reached for the forbidden fruit, sunk in his teeth, heard the snap of its flesh giving way, and he swallowed it—hook, line, and sinker. Since that very moment there have been two authorities at odds: God and man, theism versus humanism, God’s rightful authority versus humanity’s usurpatious designs.
No matter how many layers of complexity and nuance one adds to this simple description, it remains basically accurate. The discrepancies in the public arena are exacerbated by the differences in these two foundations. If one believes in God, they will look to Him for objective truth and revelation about the human condition. If one believes that there is no God or that he is completely uninvolved in human affairs, they will conclude that we are on our own and any solutions to the human condition are going to have to come from us. Plainly, these competing religious postures have political implications.
Politics and religion will always intertwine. Humanism is a religion (no matter how much atheists claim it isn’t) in that it is a system of belief that requires a philosophical posture. Religious or irreligious categories inescapably bleed into the public square. Certainly, religious believers can assert that politicians must be honest because the Bible says so. Do believers have to concoct some secular reason to justify truth-telling? What if such secular reasoning is not strong enough to compel individuals (or politicians) to tell the truth?
As Neuhaus has argued, public life must be informed by some set of ethics. Humanistic ethics are always only a social convention. They are ultimately grounded in the opinion of human beings. Nazis believed Jew-hating to be a virtue, and they were voted into power—legally. They legislated their version of morality. Were they wrong? Of course, they were! But they are only shown to be wrong when judged by objective Christian standards.
The concept of “contemporary morality,” is in vogue. The idea that all morality is a social convention erases any idea of objective moral standards. Social ethics grounded in secular humanism will always be subjective. Better hope your personally preferred party stays in power by whatever means necessary or you could be in serious trouble.
By removing religion from the public square, there is no longer anything transcendent to prevent politics from becoming a god unto itself. Not only does this destroy religious expression, but it also destroys politics because nothing higher than political power is believed to exist. What should be a marketplace of ideas becomes a mob war of various parties vying for a monopoly share of government. All that remains is an oligarchy of nihilists – politics descends to rats in a cage, devouring and being devoured.
The political elite grasp for power and then jealously retain it. George Orwell wrote constantly about the temptations the State has toward totalitarianism. In his novel 1984, Orwell explains State power grabbing with the admissions of its main statist representative, O’Brian. O’Brian says, “Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever."
Christianity, in contrast, is grounded on the objective revelation of God’s character as revealed in the Bible. Nefarious men have used the institutions of Christianity to further personal power, but these goals are illegitimate and not properly Christian. Jesus did not grab for power; He did not allow Satan to gain the world for Him in trade (Matthew 4:8-10). Rather, Jesus surrendered His life as a ransom. God saves those who believe Him and judges those who reject His rightful place of authority.
The terms of God’s covenant remain unchanged yesterday, today, and forever: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). This is as unalterable as the foundations of the universe, as immutable as 5+2=7. Man, for his part, continues to deify himself. He rises, shakes his fist toward heaven and utters in Milton’s famous words (Paradise Lost, lines 105-111):
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me.”
Man exults in his own rebellious power. He does not have authority to contradict the creator, yet he has the ability, for now, to do much as he pleases. What pleases human beings is to play at being God. Psalm 2:1-6 says:
The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
‘Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.’
The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.
He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.’”
The foundation of a virtuous public square then must be based on God’s unchanging character. When good behavior and action becomes habitual, it becomes character. Habituated good character is virtue. In the social confusion beginning in the wake of WWI, Western society began to reject character as the most important possession of an individual and especially politicians. Performance ousted character as primary. Today, it seems easily accepted that the personal character of politicians (Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, for example) can be deeply flawed, and yet they are elected because Americans care mostly about results.
In a results-oriented schema, the divide between the humanist and the theist becomes even more grossly conspicuous. Since Jesus Christ orders the universe (even though creation is at odds with him at this moment) and the basis of virtue is God’s character, let us hold ourselves and those who supposedly represent us to that high standard. There can be no greatness without character.
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A proper hierarchy of social ethics must rank the institution of family second, immediately after the Imago Dei (Image of God). The family is the first institution created by God. Moreover, it is the institution closest to the individual. God seems to have ordered society with three different spheres of authority: family, church, and state. The Bible says, “The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1). He gives each sphere a different responsibility and authority to execute that responsibility.
For example, He gives the state the responsibility to “punish the wrongdoer” and “commend those who do right” (Romans 13:4, 1 Peter 2:14). The idea is that God is sovereign over even pagan rulers, and He uses them for His ultimate purposes even when they abuse their power. This does not mean that God endorses whatever civil authorities do, but that He uses them. Growth of state power tends to outstrip its actual authority, and that is when it is appropriate to resist tyranny and to civilly disobey. But even in our civil disobedience, we should also recognize the transcendent authority of God behind even bad leaders, which will ultimately all be brought down when Christ sets up His kingdom and authority over all the earth (Daniel 2:34-35). To execute these responsibilities, God gives the state a sword (Romans 13:4).
The church is another sovereign authority established by God. The Apostle Paul charged the elders of the church of Ephesus to “keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Hence, elders are to keep watch over the people in the church. The Bible also tells Christians to “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you” (Hebrews 13:17). To execute this responsibility, the elders of the church have the authority to expel someone from the church if they refuse to repent.
The family is structured similarly. God has instituted it as a sovereign sphere of authority. The fifth commandment is “Honor your father and mother” (Exodus 20:12). God has instituted the family as an authority directly, as neither an arm of the state nor as an arm of the church. The family constitutes its own sphere: “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:3).
God has placed within most people a deep love and concern for their children’s well-being. They are literally an extension of husband and wife into the future. The tools that God gives to parents to execute their responsibilities are love and discipline. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1).
Bind them always on your heart; fasten them around your neck.
When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you;
when you awake, they will speak to you.
For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light,
and correction and instruction
are the way to life.”
(Proverbs 6:20-23)
Some overlap exists between these spheres, but each must retain their God-given boundaries and responsibilities. The family is the most vulnerable of the three and therefore needs special protection. The state will always protect itself and expand its power as it has in every society since the beginning.
We see the Leviathan of State assuming authority and control over every area of our lives today. It does not submit to God and therefore acknowledges no boundaries. It is destroying the law in every area, but especially attacking the family. Progressive economic policies have destroyed the middle class all through the 20th century even until the very moment I write this. Marriage law, divorce law, homosexual “marriage,” child protective services, adoption law, government schools, etc. are vastly stripping away the ability of the family to function as God intended.
In this short introductory blog post, I can only point out the parameters without filling in much detail. However, the main area where the family has sole authority is in the education of the children. The church is the main ally of the family, and can help with instruction; however, the parents are responsible before God for the education and discipline of child-raising.
In Deuteronomy 6:4-7, God makes a covenant with the family. He gives to parents the responsibility to teach that covenant to the next generation. God owns the children! He has established the family for their care and education. Read more about that here, here, and here.
Sphere sovereignty is the basic form of American government and life. It is the basic view of Christians. But because we have drifted so far from God and His Bible, the state has assumed for itself the role of god in our lives. But that is next week’s blog post. Blessings, constant reader.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
