500, Part 8: The Gospel, A Summary

I want this to be a hopeful post, but it will not begin that way.

Paul Washer once said, "No one can bear the preaching of the true gospel; he will either turn against it with the fierceness of an animal or be converted." That is where this post is going.

The problem most people have with understanding the gospel today is that they don't understand the nature of human sin. If human beings are merely bent, then all they require is straightening. If a man's only disease is headache, then the solution is cheap. In the end, a low view of sin necessarily involves a low view of the gospel. It is not good news; it is only helpful news.

So what is the problem? The problem, stated bluntly, is that we are far worse than we think we are. The first effect of the fall upon the psychology of mankind is a false appraisal of our fallenness. We came to believe that we are not really all that bad, even with the long ignominious history of our race to challenge that assumption. We even came to believe that we are getting better, "evolving." If a savior is required, it is only someone like those found on youtube or via podcast, someone to unlock our personal power, someone like Joel Osteen or Tony Robbins or Jen Hatmaker. Jesus is merely the best therapist and life coach out there, and that is how he saves. Everything is inverted from the true gospel. Jesus and Jen and Joel and Tony all give us tools to save ourselves, and salvation means crushing it in business, relationships and cross fit. This is both idolatry of the first order and a works system of salvation that effectively destroys anything unique about the Christian religion.

The Scriptures proclaim that we really are dreadful beings, capable of staggering wickedness. Sorry, that statement is too abstract. I am a dreadful being, capable of staggering wickedness. Do you believe that about yourself? If you don't, then the gospel simply cannot speak to you. It will never break through.

The single greatest proto-evangelium (first appearing of the gospel) in the Old Testament is Isaiah 6. There Isaiah is confronted with the blazing inferno of God's holiness, and he knows he is undone. He can no longer play the silly game of comparing himself to others. He cries out to God, "Damned am I, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips."

And notice this is the first step in true conversion. Terror! Not cool and detached respect. Isaiah experiences soul shattering horror. Think of the moment of greatest, most paralyzing fear in your life. Now increase it by a factor of a million. Isaiah cannot move. He cannot make himself okay to be in the presence of God. He cannot seek refuge in the pathetic claim of comparative excellence. He is ruined, and so is everyone else! Every unclean thing is kindling before the raging cauldron of God's just wrath.

It is while Isaiah is in this helpless condition that God moves. A burning coal is taken from the altar and it is used to touch his lips. He is made whole. Instead of destroying Isaiah in the fire of His holiness, God assures Isaiah that instead the holy fire will purge him of what makes him unholy.

This is an elegant picture of the gospel, but it is not particularly clear as to how Isaiah is saved. For that, the world had a wait until the "mystery hidden in ages past" became fully revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And so what are the core ideas of the true gospel?

1a. Regeneration

This I place as 1a because of the Arminian and Calvinist controversy. But I need to say it firmly that the Reformers believed that "new spiritual life" was granted logically prior to faith and repentance. Calvinists place regeneration first in the ordo salutis (the order of salvation). Another way of seeing this is that an individual is given new life so that he might believe. The Calvinist would say that no man can even take his sin all that seriously until he has been regenerated.  It is not a question that this post will pursue further.

1. Human sin

As we have already seen, it is not enough to suggest that human beings have a minor problem. They are enemies of God. They are in wholesale rebellion. They have accumulated a ledger of crimes against the high king of heaven, and have ignited His righteous fury against them as a result.

In what ways are we sinners? We all sinned "in Adam" due to his poor representation of us. This is known as the "federal theory" of sin. Many balk at this because they think that perhaps they would have represented the human race better. But surely Plantinga is correct in suggesting that it is at least logically possible that in no possible world, and with no human representatives, would there be a totally faithful representative. Adam failed us, and God did not compel his failure.

But we are also Adam's seed. Adam was spiritually changed in the fall, and he transmits this change whenever he reproduces. If he had not fallen, he would have produced unfallen children. Because he fell, he produces fallen children; children who carry within them the same spiritual death that exists in Adam.

Finally, we are sinners actually. There is not one of us who is not amassing a long ledger of sins that God must in righteousness punish.

In these ways our problem is literally damning, and we can do absolutely nothing about it! We have every cause to fear God as Isaiah did!

2. Justification

This term is a legal term. It carries with it the idea in modern juris prudence of "acquittal." In the Christian doctrine of salvation, it means that God has proclaimed the sinner righteous, or guiltless, in the legal sense.

Perhaps the best way to capture the idea is a courtroom scene. God holds the long ledger of my sins before me, and pronounces his judgement. It is a sure and binding judgment. There will be no lawyering my way out of this sentence, no complex arguments as justification for my crimes. I did them, and no one in the whole of the universe is to blame except me! There I stand, guilty, stripped bare of any words, any excuses, any elaborate rationalizations. And then the judge says, "I proclaim you guiltless." "You are free."

3. Substitution

Why did the judge not give me the punishment I deserved? Because Jesus, who volunteered for this work before time began, was willing to take on human flesh, live a perfect human life and then take my place before the judgment bar of God. He was willing to give me his legal perfection and take upon himself the accumulated guilt and punishments associated with my sins. As Fred Sanders puts it, this was a communal work of the Trinity from before the foundation of the world. God was not surprised by the fall, but it requires the whole counsel and infinite resources of the Trinity to effect the salvation of any man.

The reason God can proclaim us guiltless is because Jesus was willing to accept the full conditions of absorbing our guilt. The demands of God's own character for just retribution for sins are fully met by Jesus at the cross.

4. Imputation

When Jesus volunteered to take my place at the cross, and when I by faith receive that gift, a great transference occurs. Imputation is a term more closely associated with economics than with the law. The idea is that Jesus' righteousness was credited to me while my sins were credited to him. This is what it means when the Scriptures refer to him "becoming sin for us." He was sinless, and so the only sins he can carry are the imputed sins of others.

5. Propitiation

Propitiation carries with it the idea that Jesus endured the full thermo-nuclear blast of the accumulated anger of God at humanity for their sins. Please note that this is another reason Jesus had to become a man. God is not mad at the abstract concept of sin rather than sinners! One answer to the idea that "God loves the sinner and hates the sin" is the cross. Sin didn't die at the cross; Jesus, the sin-bearer, did. Apparently even God cannot simply disentangle sin from sinners and kill it as a doctor would remove a tumor and kill it. Human beings face the wrath of God for human sin! That will either be the sinner or the Substitute.

The Scriptural phrase here is, "it pleased God to crush him." I always found that phrase difficult to understand. Why does God the Father take pleasure in crushing the Son? There are at least two good responses to this question. The first is that God surely takes pleasure in justice. C.S. Lewis' Great Divorce paints a picture of hell that is utterly fascinating, but one of the most fascinating things is that there is pleasure in God's judgment. Even the people of heaven know that God's good character is being wholly expressed in the punishment of the wicked, and they take pleasure therefore in that punishment. Perhaps that is one way to look at the cross. Jesus willingly accepted this position because in the end it glorifies God! The full justice and mercy of God are opened up in all their sublime glory to the watching universe at the cross.

It also pleased God because of the prize. In the merciful counsel of God, He has chosen to save a corrupted enemy race for Himself. This also displays His glory to the universe because no other being   can do what is required to save mankind. Indeed only God can so love as to soften the malicious and rancorous heart of man through salvation.

6. Faith

The best simple definition is "trusting God." We look at these things revealed in the Scriptures and in our spirit we trust Him. There is no need for a "sinners prayer." No need for a few choruses of "Just as I Am." No need for a series of emotional manipulations at church camp. It is a simple and singular matter of subjective trust. When an individual trusts in Christ alone for his salvation, all the benefits of heaven are lavishly conferred. (Or, for my Calvinist friends, because the benefits of heaven have been lavishly conferred, one believes.)

And when the broken man, humiliated in his shameful sin, aware of his unworthiness, keenly aware that he should be banished and punished, reaches out the beggarly empty hand of faith, he finds that what he grasps is nothing less than everything good and glorious in the universe in Christ. He knows he deserves nothing, and yet he is given everything.

When I say that "I stand in a new position before God," it means the astounding truth that a worthless enemy of God is now accepted as a son! I am given everything that belongs to The Son, including all of His righteousness and all of His eternal merit. That is who I am! Please hear this! I did not accept Jesus, as though I merely broadened my peer circle graciously to include Jesus. I am accepted by God in and through Jesus Christ! I am regenerated, justified, standing forever in imputed righteousness as the process of my sanctification is worked out in time.

7. Sanctification

Christian perfection is simply this: Christ has given me both legal and actual perfection. Legally, I am justified. But the acquitted sinner is still the same man he was before. He is still capable of leaving the court room and doing the same things he did before. Organically, his justification does nothing to change him.

Christian sanctification is the answer to this, and it begins in regeneration (see above). The sinner is given a new heart. In short, he is brought back to life spiritually. By faith there is a union with Christ that is invasive, destructive, transformative. Violence is being done quite literally to our old fallen humanity. Romans 6 is perhaps the best description of this process. We are dying, but after the likeness of Christ's death. He is destroying the old that he might rebuild. Sanctification is the process of this death and restoration, and it culminates in our literal death and resurrection.

So, let us state it again. Let it sink in and reorient everything! You are (assuming you are in Christ by faith) legally and actually perfect. You stand utterly forgiven for all sins from the time of your birth to the time of your death. God can find no cause to move against you in justice. Jesus has already endured that punishment for you. And the work God has begun in you He will complete. He has pledged not just any resource to guarantee this end. He has brought you into union with His own Son, so that in Christ your sanctification is secure.

The word that captures this staggering truth was uttered by Jesus at the cross. Tetelestai! It is finished. Everything that needed to be done to finally and completely conquer evil in your heart was done at Calvary. Christian sanctification is merely this reality unfolding into your speech, your treatment of others, your joy, your everything.

8. Redemption ethics

Christian ethics is totally inverted from the normal pattern of ethics in other religions and in general secularism. We do right not to climb arduously towards perfection, but because we are already perfect in Christ. It is a becoming of what we are. The analogy I like to use is that of children of genius. When they are inarticulate, incontinent babies, they certainly don't act like geniuses, but that genius is nevertheless latent within them and only awaits maturation and its fullest expression. In the same way, Christ has already granted to us moral perfection in and through Him. We are merely growing into the perfection that is already ours!

Every other system of ethics the world over is precisely the opposite of this. There is a threshold of reward or blessing that must be crossed by hard performance. One labors under a burden of fear of failure indefinitely until that magical threshold is reached and then one is worthy of the blessings that come. The Christian is set truly free from such a burden.

And so things come full circle. We now no longer need to fear God. In fact, we need fear nothing at all in the whole of the universe. God has told us that we need not fear Him, and so we need fear nothing else. Yet the Scriptures proclaim, "work out your salvation in fear and trembling." What can it mean? Our salvation must always be worked out in the context of where we would be without Christ's work on our behalf. There must always be the lively impression of that initial fear, from which we have been set free. Perfect love has driven out all fear.

And our fear is converted from terror to the practical fear of what God is doing to us, to our old sinful selves. The answer is perfectly clear. We will not survive this. He loves us too much to let us survive.

An Apologetic for My Testing Procedure

My testing procedure is about preparing students for the self-governance of college and adult life. I give two rigorous, comprehensive exams over the course of each semester, which put high demands on students to "hold on" to the information from moment one to the last. Here I want to offer a philosophical justification for this procedure, assuming it is needed:

The Philosophical Presuppositions...

One must ask a series of preliminary questions and offer reasonable answers to them in order to successfully answer the question of testing. For example, one should ask what one believes about human nature, and how that impacts testing. If a person believed, for example, that people are basically good and only lack knowledge, then of course that would change everything about the testing process. Testing would be more about curing ignorance than about discipline or consequences.

Related to this, one wonders whether testing is a reflective and revelatory process primarily or a learning process primarily.

To what extent should students adjust to the demands of their teachers or vice versa? And why?

If students are given every reasonable opportunity to learn and most do not learn, can that be the fault of the students alone? Is such a thing even possible? Many times in education, when a test is given, and a majority of students miss a question, there is an assumption that the problem was with the test.  But surely it is at least possible that the problem is with the majority who didn't take ownership of the learning process. What are we to make of these questions?

Do tests really provide the best appraisal of learning?

If individual learning styles are different, should each test be different, catered to the needs of the individual student? And how can this be done with "mass produced" education? Perhaps if education would take seriously the individual needs of each student, then there would be no standardized tests like the SAT, or even the bar exam.

It seems to me that there will be wild differences of opinion with respect to most if not all of these questions. And thus it falls on the shoulders of individual educators to provide the rationale for their process.

What follows will be my philosophy on this...

1. The student is to adjust to me, not the other way round (at least on balance).

One reason I test the way that I do is because I insist that the student reach to the level of my demands. Surely professors and employers will expect the same thing. If I had no other rationale for this testing procedure, then this would be enough.

I am the one in this classroom who knows the content, and I know what mastery looks like. It is not just that students, and even administrators in many cases, don't know the subject (one would presumably expect that); they don't even know how to know it or how to assess when they know it as a high school philosophy student should know it.

Education requires an act of trust. One must see the teacher as an authority. This of course can be abused, but there is a risk in education and in the hiring process. One has to assume that the teacher, especially those with a respectable track record, should be given the latitude to teach, and consequently that there is no reason to begin with a critical spirit on this issue.

2. I want a comprehensive and grooved kind of learning, and not mere compartmentalized steps of learning.

Another reason for doing two long and demanding tests rather than several smaller ones that might scaffold to the bigger tests is that the larger exam demands more of a student in terms of long term integration and synthesis of the information. I cannot accept the partitioning of knowledge that comes with multiple major assessments, but more importantly, I cannot accept the grade buffering. Since students are motivated by threat of punishment or promise of reward, they think in terms of grades. If there are several tests, then the test category is diluted. Failure in the comprehensive exams will be much more costly without multiple exams, and I want it to be costly.

Perhaps one could suggest that I should do more to help students absorb all the content for these exams. What usually accompanies this is a stern reminder about the nature of a college class versus a high school class. Ok. Let me list what I do to help students learn the material required in the comprehensive exams:

a. I clearly communicate that a large portion of the grade is based on comprehensive testing. Students are not surprised by this, at least not in terms of basic knowledge of the expectations.
b. I coach students on how to study for my exams.
c. I upload the teacher notes for the course during review season.
d. I provide the full lectures for the core material via my blog.
e. I give little homework.
f. I counsel students that the homework for the class is preparation for the exams.
g. I give detailed study guides for my exams.
h. I conduct a review game in which nearly all questions for the exam are reviewed.
i. Note: There are various other assignments that can buoy the grade, but no student will earn an A if he or she does poorly on the exams, and will likely struggle to pass. In many college classes, they would simply not pass if they failed a major assessment.

So then the question is a simple one: If a student fails a test, or even if several students fail a test, given all of these opportunities listed above, what can we conclude? One conclusion is that my way is not working. Another conclusion is that some students are not working my way! It really is very simple. Students that learn comprehensively earn A's. Students that don't learn that way struggle.

I believe firmly that students are to adjust to me and my requirements. My requirements are just, well reasoned, and they are for the good of my students. Yes, they are demanding, but achievable, even for average students. But there is no easy way through, no short-cut. Students will have to press through a season of strenuous effort to reach the goal. But I am teaching eternal truths. Can I expect any less from them?

Jesus himself gave us this example. Yes, he came to people where they were and spoke their language, but not to stay there! Did he adjust to them in the sense that he adopted their wisdom and their morals and their standards of life? No! He lowered himself so that he might raise them up. In fact, he promised to give them help to no other end. They were to "be perfect as my heavenly father is perfect!"

So, yes, within reason we adjust to our students. We meet them where they are, but only so that we can lead them elsewhere. Along the way, some students will find that the journey is too demanding for them and they will follow another path. We must let them go. Jesus let the Rich Young Ruler pursue his folly. Even Jesus gave tests that young people failed! Please notice that Jesus didn't fail them; he only allowed them to fail.

3. It is not as easy to cheat.

Another reason to do larger exams is that it is practically impossible to cheat, either through memory or looking or cheat sheets or any other way. Of course I don't assume that students will cheat, but that gets us back to the philosophical questions already raised. If a student can more easily cheat, and he is another depraved human being, will he?

4. College tests like I do, and not in the scaffolded manner of many high school teachers.

Even before college, the SAT is an experience in the kind of testing I do. The only assessment process that approximates the SAT is perhaps the PSAT, given the junior year of high school. But these are tests that are meant to assess for long term absorption of vocabulary, logic, reading, math, etc. There are no steps to this test because the entire academic journey is the series of self-managed steps to it. Even if a student retests, the only way he can improve is if he manages to master the skills required on his own before the next test.

Why do college professors test as they do? Some of it is simple logistics. It is quite difficult to test hundreds of students multiple times in a semester. But it is also because they expect that young men and women should be able to process and maintain a lot of information over a long period of time without multiple intervening steps managed by the professor. If the student requires the multiple intervening steps, then he can manage those steps on his own.

Perhaps another way of looking at this is simply to suggest that both models acknowledge that a person arrives at a particular skill through a process. The college professor demands that not only the skill be scaled by the student, but also that he scale the process by which the skill is scaled. The professor may still provide the resources for the process, but the student must manage his way through it. Many in high school education today want the process to be managed for the student so that it is guaranteed that he will learn the skill. What never seems to occur to these teachers is that by doing things that way, we teach not just the skill but also a particular process is acquiring skills. In other words, we teach the student that he can expect others to lead him though all the necessary steps in the learning process. That surely doesn't seem to reflect either the college world or the professional world.

Now one may respond by saying that, "these students are not in college yet." That is true, and that is why I do the various things listed under #3. No college professor is going to play a review game with students or give the kinds of study guides that I give. Just as parents must lead a child from external discipline to internal discipline, so must teachers.

5. Life tests like I do.

In life, we are not given highly managed, "see how you are doing," scaffolded steps to success all the time. I think of my first teaching job, and the overwhelming "sink or swim" feeling involved. Yes, my education somewhat prepared me for this, but there was still a leap that forced me into self-reliance (including relying on myself to seek out the help I needed). When it comes to a first job, giving a speech, playing a demanding opponent in sports, suffering, doing something inventive, or the birth of a first child, life often merely tests how we have managed the process of our own preparation rather than giving us indefinite safe experiments in preparation. Real life pushes people. It is risky and demands a response of attentive urgency. My testing procedure helps students see this.

6. I still affirm that failure must be a live option in education, because it is deeply instructive.

Life involves risk, especially the risk of failure. Much of the educational world is moving away from even the possibility of failure. Private schools are obviously tempted in this regard, because, after all, why would parents want to pay for a kid to go off to a difficult school and fail his classes? Perhaps that is exactly what parents should pay for if they want to teach their children!

I maintain that no student will ever fail my exams unless one of two realities obtains: One, he is not capable; or two, he did not work as he ought to have worked. And both are valuable things to learn.

On the first point, some think I am harsh. But this has always puzzled me. Why believe that simply everyone will be capable of performing well in high school philosophy? Once a baseball coach accused me of failing my students because I wasn't finding a way for all of them to succeed. I took the easy way out with my exams, he said. He boasted that a good baseball coach can get the most out of all of his players, and has to use the unique talents of all to form a team. I asked him if he cut players before the season began, and that question abruptly ended the conversation. All I am suggesting is that failing grades are sometimes our way of cutting students. Hopefully we don't have to do it often, but it should always be an option. Why? Because it educates!

7. It forces students to manage their time.

Recently students asked me to postpone my mid-term because I had originally scheduled it during "Powder Puff" week. That week makes academics a mere distraction from real school life (sarcasm font). So I pushed the exam back one week. Some students still failed, and in some cases miserably. Now again, the fact that the exam is extensive requires a student to manage his study time to be progressively building towards a full integrated knowledge of the course material. If a student takes the approach that most do, which is to "cram" at the last minute, then he or she will fail.

So, the question is, why did those students fail, when I had given them an extra week to study for the exam? Do I even need to answer the question? They hadn't learned material from week 1 in week 1, and then again in week 2, and in week 3, all the way through to week 9. They know, in theory, that what they do every week will affect what they know in week 9, but they don't act like they know it. And that requires testing to help them see it clearly. But at least their Powder Puff cheer won, and no one can take that away from them.

8. I have 20 years experience of this working for my unique talents and style.

When I say that it "works," what I mean is that it works in the ways that I want it to work. It exposes students who are not capable (a tiny minority) and those that will not do the work (a larger minority). And it also engraves certain truths on those that engage in my process. It has a lingering affect beyond this class for those students who do things my way. And finally, my process deeply prepares my committed students for the rigors of college life. Time and again, I receive testimony that my class is one of those classes in school that prepared them well for even the most demanding of colleges. I have to believe that the rigorous nature of my exams has something to do with that.

God Thinks You Are Amazing, And So Do I, Satirical Interview Series, Part 1

This week our interview series takes us to New York, where we meet up with motivational speaker and celebrity Christian, Clancey Devereux. Her new book, titled, God Thinks You Are Amazing, And So Do I, just landed on the New York Times best seller list.

Monomaniac: Tell me, Clancey, what is the problem with American Christianity today?

Clancey: People believe in God, but they no longer believe in themselves. They no longer seize their internal divine energy and live authentically. They live in hovels of self-regret and self-abnegation because of confining and constraining theological systems. If all of us could see how resplendent we are, how we all pulsate all through with vibrancy and authenticity and beauty and color and love, then we could seize our birthright.

Monomaniac: I don't mean to be rude, Clancey, but I may need some help understanding what you just said.

Clancey: Our task is to scale the heights of Olympus, or perhaps the heights of Sinai. Many, perhaps even you, are still mired in the Catacombs of your own shame and regret and judgmentalism, shut off from love, shut off from people. No world crusher, such as I am, can find such places accommodating. They are too small for us. Are you not suffocating in your tiny world of theological correctness?

Monomaniac: I don't think so... Again, please help me to understand what you are saying. I have perhaps been raised in a different tradition than yours, so pretend you are evangelizing me to your brand of Christianity.

Clancey: You see, that is exactly my point--I'm not evangelizing anyone to anything! There are no brands of Christianity! I want to bring people back to themselves instead of the constant beggarly search for some leader to make everything easy. All the world's religions and peoples deliver to us stories, like premature babies of an endangered species, tenderly born into our care. It is our charge to nurture them, to embrace them as though we alone can provide them the breast. They mature to full blossoming only under our care. You would not commit infanticide?

Monomaniac: Um, well, no, but... you said you are a Christian. What do you think of those Christians who seem to think you are a heretic for saying that Jesus is only one of many "ideas impelling us toward love and authenticity."

Clancey: (Pausing) (Deep Pondering) F--k them! That is what I say.

Monomaniac: Yeah, F--k them! Christians are pretty judgmental! I mean lots of things work if you want to "seize the day" and "kill it" and "own it" and "crush it" in your relationships and in your work and your service and in cross fit and the like, am I right?

Clancey: You are mocking me. How adorable. I love you anyway (Hugs me for an uncomfortable duration).

To answer your cynicism, I just want it to be about love and building a life story and not rules and exclusionary judgments. I'm done with it! I've had it with Christians policing my behavior. Jesus embraced prostitutes and beggars and tax collectors. He embraced and validated their stories. He didn't hold people accountable! Today we have a whole professional contingent of pseudo-scholarly critics. When will they feed the poor? When will they step away from their studies for awhile to go out and do the good Jesus asks us to do? When will they stop critiquing my theology and start living like I do?

Monomaniac: Can I ask a question, delicately, that may seem confrontational?

Clancey: If you must.

Monomaniac: Do you think your disgust for the "theological caste" (as you call them in your book) is anything like a moral judgment? Do you think that you are correct and they are not? Are you validating their stories? Perhaps their passionate interest in Biblical theology is their authenticity, yes?

Clancey: I see what you are trying to do. You are trying to play linguistic games with me. It won't work. Look, you strike me as one of the members of this theological caste. What has drawing lines and condemning people ever done for you? Look to the people, as Jesus did!

Monomaniac: Do you think that Jesus first "looked to the Father," and then "looked to the people?" Did Jesus find the Father in the people? Or did He find the people in the Father? And did Jesus encourage people to express their authentic selves, or did He pledge to absorb the wrath of God justly leveled against them for their miserably sinful selves? Did He offer the slightest promise that people could live worthily without Him?

Clancey: What?

Hybels and World Leadership

I recently listened in to a leadership conference. The evangelical leader was careful to communicate that the millions of people worldwide listening to the web simulcast were from various religious traditions, and some were wholly without faith. The curious thing is that there was an emotionally gripping song and poem to launch the conference that passionately engaged the audience in the core problems facing our world today. The leader of the conference assured us that we would disagree on faith issues, perhaps, but one thing we could agree on is that sound leadership was required to navigate the tumultuous waters ahead. Apparently this sound leadership could come from anyone with any worldview. It was in this moment that I saw the great apostasy of our age in more vivid form than I ever have seen it.

There is no need for Christ when one considers the problem of world leadership. Jesus may be another source of leadership principles, but one need not follow him in order to lead others.

Surely there is a place in this world for learning how to lead people. I don't want to say that all of what we heard was a waste of time. But this was a Christian leader indicating that leadership was the solution to the world's problems. Could it not be the case that many in the world are being lead quite well towards glorious achievement without Christ, even in churches? Again, this sounds a bit like Lewis and his observations about education. Lewis made it clear that quality education is often cited as the solution to the worlds problems, when in actuality it can make "clever devils." Perhaps conferences of this sort are only enabling leaders to be "effective devils."

It is easy for us to mix up the first things for the secondary and tertiary things. Bill Hybels has done this in a way that is more obvious to me than anything I have seen in years. He even had the audacity to make the claim that great leadership helps us to get to our desired ends, whatever those ends may be. This only moments after making the claim that the world is crying out for quality leaders to solve real problems like poverty. So which is it? Do we need leadership to better ends, or better leaders to help us secure any ends? What was irresponsibly missing from this whole conference was any indication of the true end of leadership. What are we leading people towards? It is a leadership conference that leads people only to leadership itself. That is to say, it is a leadership gathering that offers no leadership!

The implicit and sometimes explicit "truth" we were given was this: We are not telling people what they should lead people towards. We are training them in the skills of leadership itself, so that they can lead them to whatever end they desire. This is analogous to saying in education that we just want students to think, but we don't want to tell them what to think. Make them better thinkers; they will decide what to think about. Education, just like leadership, is not an effort to persuade people as to the truth of the ends of education. Does this not sound a bit like having people just run around on the athletic field while being totally unconcerned about the goal? The important thing is the activity and not the ends; the journey and not the destination; the becoming and not what one becomes.

Meditation on Contentment

 "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13

There is a common sentiment today that says that contentment is being at peace with who you, but not necessarily with your circumstances or experiences. Accept yourself, but don't accept your station in life. Be okay with who you are, but don't be okay with where you are. Is it possible that these people have it exactly inverted? Could it be that contentment is accepting where you are, but not who you are? Could it be that true contentment is being at peace with your life circumstances, but never being at peace with who you are--that is, your state of moral, intellectual, relational and emotional development? Could it be that this notion of accepting ourselves is yet another example of the culture's runaway narcissism?

It seems to me that the only contentment available to the Christian as it relates to the self is total confidence in Christ and no confidence in the self. I am at peace with who I am only insofar as I am assured that Christ's perfection is granted graciously to me by his singular work in my behalf. Were it not for this assurance, there could be no peace, no quietude of mind and soul, about my desperate condition. This other, and obviously worldly, confidence begins with a sinful person's generous and illusory appraisal of himself. Given enough time, he deceives even himself about his standing. He may still affirm the need to learn French for life enrichment purposes, but when it comes to his moral condition and the condition his personality--the core of who he is--he is quite sure that he is as finished as he ever need be.

The odd thing about this worldly contentment is that it thrives off the inherently counter-intuitive claim that I am "okay the way I am." The reason I call this inherently counter-intuitive is because of the testimony of Romans 1. We are without excuse. We all know that we have not arrived--that indeed there is perhaps a lifetime of moral development ahead for us, and we even suspect that a lifetime of development will not necessarily do much to make us appreciably better people than we were before. But surely in our hearts we know that while this may be true, it cannot be okay. How can one be content (in the sense of accepting and being at peace) with deeply broken humanity? As the introductory passage indicates, the apostle Paul said that he had learned to be content in all circumstances; not that he was content with himself.

But the contented modern narcissist is okay with who she is! She pretends that this stagnation of the self is wholly acceptable; that it is just "who she is." Her soul no longer needs to be in motion towards some truer moral center, for everything now orbits her. She has "suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness" by denying the testimony of her conscience that she is not "okay the way she is." She is changeless, and now it is her expectation that the universe change to suit her needs. Her activity is not towards some higher goal or principle or God. Her activity is towards an endless dance of the new; new experiences, new conquests, new emotions, new companions, new purchases, new gods even. In short, her soul is motionless while all spins around her. She has become the center of her own universe.

But there are those whose lives have little external stimulation, but whose souls are furious cauldrons of constant creative activity. I think of Lewis' description of his life as one lived "in dark rooms with endless dusty books." He was silent. He was alone. And yet all the silences and all the spaces were filled to overflowing with magic and near suffocating wonder. These are people who listen to God in the stillness, and because of it they can find no circumstance that is richer than the stillness. And because of it they restlessly pursue the One who changes them at every encounter. God has met them in their simple worlds, and because of it they are in a state of metamorphosis. Others sense the lifelessness of their own souls, and so they work at filling the externals with endless variety.

Consider Paul, boasting of the joy of Christ in poverty and prison while there are so many bored and disillusioned rich people all over our world. No one would call these people idle, but that is precisely what they are in the most important ways. Their "acceptance of self" (their brand of contentment) is little more than metastasized idleness. In all of their busyness, they are vacuous people. Their days are filled and their souls are empty.

Here is another way to think of this. Are you ready to die, even if you are relatively young? The worldly man who defines contentment as peace with self but not peace with the externals will never be ready to die! There is always a new experience, always a beach in Italy that was missed, always a new way to fill the yawning and itching boredom.

But if one possesses an eternal perspective in which Christ burns so brightly that all other worldly pleasures lose their vibrancy in comparison, then one can say truly that one is ready. The man or woman of contented faith in Christ is not ready for death out of some sense of perverse self-abnegation or lack of ambition. It is not that those content in Christ are sad and empty and that is why death seems appropriate. It is quite the opposite. What has life on this earth failed to provide? It gave Christ and the promise of new life, and that is enough.

Perhaps that phrase captures the essence of contentment. Is it enough? Is your life circumstance, which is filled to overflowing with Christ, enough? Is what has been provided for you in Christ enough? You may not be enough as you are, but you know that you are "hidden in Christ," and He is most certainly enough. Do you believe that He is enough to make you enough for God? And do you know that every resource of the eternal sovereign has been pledged to make you whole? Is that enough? Is the promise of heaven enough? Or must one have another trip, or thrill, or another thing to be whole?

Again, The Problem is the Philosophy

Christians are up in arms about the Transgender bathroom problem, and they should be. But the problem is the secularist philosophy that gave rise to this new sexual revolution. The odd thing is that many of these Christians now upset about the transgender issue had no problem with the legalization of gay marriage. They have nothing to do with each other, right?

The first sexual revolution was about women's rights, to vote, to work for equal pay, to be treated with respect. This new sexual revolution seeks to end the notions of male and female altogether. The first sexual revolution fought for the dignity of women; this new revolution would wholly obscure the meaning of womanhood altogether.

The country's runaway secularism can only lead down this path. When the view of reality is that we are ultimately purposeless convulsions of matter, then there will clearly be no changeless personal ground for any ethical sentiment. In other words, when the vision for a society informed by an unchanging ethic is lost, one is left to look to secularist visions of the morally evolving society. We are now far too evolved, far too forward-thinking, to accept the defining strictures of some ancient religion. In its place, or perhaps (to be more dramatic) upon its ashes, we erect the enlightened secular state, either right or left.

In such a state, human reason determines all. But human reason, lest we forget, gave us the gulags. It gave us Hitler. It gave us the French Revolution. It gave us its most cherished offspring: Utilitarianism. It gave us war upon war and compromise upon compromise. It gives us fragmentation.

Douglas Wilson was precisely right on this. If one holds that matter is infinitely malleable, then that view of reality translates downstream in one's ethical practice. If nature can provide us various permutations of matter, with no particular plan or purpose, then surely we can impose our subjective plans or purposes upon matter, and the mindless universe is not going to put up any resistance. We can make ourselves to be man or woman, god or animal, one or three. If in fact nature is infinitely malleable, and nature makes no preferences, then of course I can treat it as such. I can define and redefine various phenomena, such as the "one man, one vote" concept. Perhaps I determine that some men are more intelligent and ought to be given two votes. Or, to be more respectful of current societal norms, we can call it the "one womyn (one who presents as a woman), two votes" principle. If any minority feels discriminated against, then they should merely identify as the prevailing cultural class, and insist on being treated as such. If one can identify as man or woman, then surely groups can identify as minority or majority, depending on the need of the moment.

Of course the enlightened secularist worth his salt knows that I am arguing in something of a circle. Even if the Bible should become the source of societal cohesion, it still must be understood by reason, and so reason is still the foundation, or so it is claimed. But while that seems a "gotcha" moment, it is not the whole story. It is true that I am guilty of circularity, but the secularist has it wrong about the center of the circle. I grant that I am guilty of circularity, but I affirm a divine circularity. That is to say, I believe that God's reasoning through His Word (The Logos) and His active Spirit in His Church provide a clear and unifying set of propositions sufficient for the moral guidance of the whole world. If we have a disagreement, I say that the Bible as interpreted by Spirit filled believers will find core agreement. That is a circularity, but it is preferable, and far more successful at escaping the death trap of relativism, than the secularists circularity of human reason. He says human reason will provide the answers, but then we are led to endless parsing, endless quarreling, which he says will be solved again by human reason, which turns out to be mere force in the end. To find proof of this one only needs to look to the long history of the dictatorship of human reason. After all, the gulags were indeed quite persuasive.

In short, both sides argue in a circle, but my circle is a centrifugal and gravitationally ordering phenomenon while his circle is solipsistic and suffocating in its ultimate subjectivity. My circle grabs hold of the world to set unity and diversity in tension. His circle grabs hold of everything, a black hole collapsing all things and leaving a cosmic wasteland in its wake. The mind of God can only give rise to a symphony; the mind of man cut off from God can only give rise to cacophony.

Gay marriage, gender atomism and transgender bathroom policies all are notes in the crescendo of the cacophony.

The Fading Christian: Part 2

This will be a difficult read for some parents and pastors, and perhaps even for some college students who identify as Christians. I have been involved in Christian education for many years, 19 to be specific. If I could rank the many lessons I've learned over these many years, the most important lesson would be the following:

All of the teaching in the world towards Christian truth is wholly futile if it is not brought into a larger network of redeemed Christian relationships, with books, art, committed Christian parents, community and all. In other words, the child must find his or her way into truly Christian community, but not just any community; he or she needs a community that is committed to the kind of Christianity that is richly grounded in the truth (Scripture) and imbues every aspect of life, from the mind down.

In other words, the Christian school may be crucial, perhaps even necessary in cases, but it is not sufficient by itself.

Think of it this way: A nominally Christian family sends their kid to the local Christian school because they believe the education will be better and because they don't like the alternatives and because of "the morals," whatever that means. The kid enters the school, but his attendance to the school does nothing to derail his runaway progression towards utter secularization (that is, a life that is practically without reference to Christian thought patterns). He goes to church here and there, but it is probably a church that is itself largely secularized. He attends his Christian school, but approaches it as most students do--that is, an obstacle to what he wants, which is what everyone else in his culture wants (that is, goals that are wholly without reference to Christian thought patterns). He jumps through the academic hoops, plays the game, cheats where he can, and learns precious little about a total Christian perspective on life, though he is probably daily exposed to such a thing.

Truthfully, there is nothing that presents a serious challenge to the prevailing secularization of this young man's life, except perhaps 5 hours each week; hours that are drowned out beneath the sound of his phone, iPad, computer, television, ear-buds and friends, who are themselves clones of their decidedly secular culture, and many of them claim to be Christians as well.

Perhaps the reason for this trajectory in his life, which got started when he was quite young, is that he saw nothing to compete with it, perhaps didn't even see an alternative at all. Perhaps he was never remotely exposed to a distinctively Christian community with a robust intellectual and cultural life. He didn't see it in his home or his church. He was perhaps exposed to many who felt Christianity, but none who allowed Christianity to orient the mind, the soul and the body in dynamic ways. What does Jesus have to say about the way I dress or the way I converse with people or the way I conduct my education? Such questions probably never even enter his neatly sub-divided mind, where Christianity is quarantined behind a safe partition, lest it endanger his commitment to the excellent life of, well, whatever his friends and music define "excellence" to be.

The timeline of this young man's life is such that there really is little hope for him, outside the grace of God. He grew up going to church, but these isolated hours were only brief interruptions in the process of his true habituation before the golden idol of entertainment. He was efficiently and completely programmed to think like everyone else around him, for homogenous thought is surely necessary for economic and cultural unity with the dominant secular culture. He went from watching to acting things out that he watched, and so did his friends. They rehearsed the thought patterns, content and manner of the things they watched on their endless screens and heard in their uninterupted music. That is why they are all materialists, relativists and worshippers of creation rather than creator. That is why they are conformed and not transformed. Then he went to the Christian school, where many of his teachers also act out the thought patterns of the secular world and the school itself does much to mimic the world, but this time in a "Christian way." Then he went to youth group at church, where the youth pastor works much harder to secularize the gospel than to bring the gospel to the secular. He comes away from youth group with the curious impression that the unpardonable sin is boredom, or perhaps uncoolness. Then he graduates from his Christian high school, and quickly learns that keggers are more fun than church--that is, he discovers that blatant secularism is really a form of refreshing honesty, and the fun really begins. He now seeks authenticity rather than holiness, and as such he hangs on to a Portlandia version of his former Christianity, but he is now so isolated, jaded and thoroughly cynical that he ends up worshipping his own critiques of Christianity rather than Christ himself.

By now he is twenty-five, has a job and a wife he found in the secularized culture. Like him, she has little time or interest in Christian thought patterns, though she still loves her Jesus. Her Jesus never judges! They are clinging to some vestige of their former Christian identity, but their whole life together is a daily microscopic fade away from the holy. Eventually they have kids, and because of his past he wants to bring his kids to church, but again he does little to interrupt the real, strong, unremitting secularization of his own kids. What he never suspects in the whole of the process is that he probably never was a Christian in the first place. He was a secularist all the way through, given enough of Christianity at a young age to thoroughly inoculate him against its influence. His Christian school and its attempt at putting up some dam in him against the current of cultural secularization was washed asunder by the torrent long ago. All that remains is a ruin that he refers to often as his Christian faith, and indeed he would be deeply offended if anyone ever suggested that he wasn't a Christian. Give him a few more years and perhaps he won't be concerned about that either.

Step back into his timeline for a moment again and consider the parents of this lost soul. His self-professed Christian parents and his Christian church don't know it, but they raised this secularist. They certainly would be offended at the suggestion, but look at the facts. What can define a secularist better than the neatly compartmentalized Christianity of this young man as he grew up, where it is his secular friends and secular entertainments that dictate the boundaries of his Christianity. These influences will be sovereign over Jesus and his role in life rather than the reverse, and he will never suspect that this entire perspective is antithetical to Jesus from the first.

His parents are perhaps only to be blamed in the way that a sheep is to be blamed for producing another sheep. Many of these parents are not likely to be people who see Christianity as a thing that threatens everything, that claims everything. They are likely people who merely "expose" their kids to Christianity while assuring all the life and leisure conditions that will teach them secularism with an efficacy that rivals any brainwashing or indoctrination that one could find in the history of the race.

And that is why I feel that my work as a Christian educator is often a journey into futility. Now all would be hopeless if not for grace. God breaks through in people's lives. He is raising a remnant of people who will receive his word as truth and live accordingly. It remains to see how great this remnant will be.

Why Christian Education and Not Public Education?

Why are Christian schools better than public schools? Several reasons:

1. The Christian worldview makes sense of education.

Let's be clear about something; there is no separation of church and state in education. There is only a systematic replacement of the Church of Jesus Christ and His influence for the faith pronouncements of naturalists/postmodernists and their influence. It is not as if there are no religious/philosophical presuppositions informing the work of public education in the absence of Christianity. Christianity can no longer bring its influence into public education while postmodernism, materialism, methodological naturalism founded in metaphysical naturalism and even Marxism enjoy unbounded access to the children of this nation. As it turns out we want every "church" but Christianity (well okay, Islam's not allowed either!)

A case in point: Let's say students are discussing World War II in history class and a particular student has the audacity to ask, "What if Hitler had won the war? In that state of affairs would the Nazi's have had the right to establish their moral claims?" Fascinating question. How on earth is a teacher going to answer this question without offering some presuppositions concerning what he or she takes to be morally right or wrong? If the teacher says, "Well sweet ignorant Johnny, that is a moral question, and we can't address those questions here," then what are we to think about such a teacher? Does she not know what is morally right? Is it a matter of opinion (which incidentally is a moral position)? Is she suggesting that we can only know the brute facts of history but can't interpret them morally (which is also a moral position)? Should the teacher abdicate to Johnny's parents if they are skinheads or if he belongs to a racist church? 

This idea of separating religious/moral/philosophical ideology from the "real work of education" is as silly an idea as has ever been suggested in human history. At least earlier thinkers knew you couldn't separate philosophy/religion and politics, so you better be absolutely certain that the set of ideological assumptions motivating education is of a sublime quality. Just because at times people have been wrong in the principles they chose doesn't mean it is preferable or even possible to wholly eliminate ideological assumptions from the realm of state affairs, especially in education. 

What has happened in American culture is simple. We have replaced a superior set of philosophical guiding principles for an inferior set in the interest of "separation of Church and state," and that is why it is becoming increasingly difficult to motivate a lifestyle of thoughtful inquiry anywhere in American life, but especially in the public school.

Here is a short list of the corrosive ideas deeply cherished in modern public education that Christian schools (good ones) unilaterally reject:

a. Truth is elusive and evolving and thus there can be no final epistemological (truth and knowledge) framework in education; and as such the various subjects are brought together in one place by nothing more than the administrative contrivance of an institution (a notion I will call the "multiversity").

The Christian school of course favors a theological/university model in education, in which theology serves as the unifying interpretive framework, suffusing the whole educational enterprise with purpose and harmonizing all subjects within a comprehensive search for the Truth.

b. Education is not about finding "The Truth" (after all, what can that even mean?), but about exploring the diversity of human perspectives and joining the conversation.

The Christian school promotes the quest for truth as central to our identity as human beings. We set forth our desire to know God, know His world, find our place in His world and serve His world to our utmost.

c. Certainty amounts to intellectual immaturity. A deep respect for ambiguity expresses the eclectic and tentative nature of intellectual maturity.

The Christian school boldly proclaims certainty in areas of certainty, and boldly promotes the search for certainty in areas of uncertainty.

d. The discovery of "Truth" is not sufficient to motivate a desire for education; personal pay-off in the form of specialization is the only practical motivator in the educational program.

The Christian school suggests otherwise--namely, that personal pay-off is an insufficient principle by which to motivate true learning. The Christian school seeks to inculcate a desire for truth, and secondarily to equip students for future careers. We want hyphenated people--that is, theologian-businessmen, theologian-farmers, theologian-doctors, etc.

e. Human beings and indeed human minds are unintended by-products of the mindless, purposeless and wholly natural process of evolution. Wind the clock of evolution backwards and start it up again and a wholly different creature with wholly different capacities would have emerged.

The Christian school says that human beings have dignity over against the whole created order as beings made in God's image.

The choice really is simple. If you want your children exposed constantly to these five ideas, then by all means send them to the local public school and attempt to stem the tide of this eroding influence at home.

2. We cooperate with local parents and not distant bureaucrats. 

The state determines the curriculum of the the public school and not the parents. If the state says that students are to be taught "tolerance" (according to a particular moral ideology), then the parents must accept this, or protest it without much hope of changing anything. If a state is liberal in its leanings, then the various policies it adopts concerning the education of the masses will be imposed on segments of the population that are not liberal and don't want those values merely imposed upon their children by the majority. One way to deny the state its power of indoctrination is to remove students from state public schools and place them in the local private school, where the desires of parents will be heeded and where the parent is heralded as the ultimate educator.

The Christian school still says that the parents know how to educate their children better than the political intelligentsia does, and seeks the approval ultimately of the paying parent rather than government officials.

3. The Christian school provides a more liberal education.

I recently asked an atheist whether he would like his daughters taught some of the arguments of the best Christians. He said that such a program would "of course" be a violation of the separation of Church and state. I told him that his response is classic narrow-minded parochialism, but this time it is not Christians arbitrarily excluding the challenge of naturalism, but naturalists arbitrarily excluding the challenge of Christianity. In the interest of education, don't we want our children exposed to the best ideas? I went on to tell him that I expose my students to the ideas of atheists like David Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, and modern atheists like Christopher Hitchens, Victor Stenger and Edward Tabash. In short, at the Christian school, I am not afraid to teach my students the best of atheism because the best of Christianity can effectively answer the best of atheism. Surely such an approach is a more "liberal" approach than the closed-minded, isolationist program of the public school. The public school student doesn't hear a bias towards a particular position amid several presented. He is presented with only one!

The fact is that many graduates of liberal universities are not very liberal. They have never been exposed even to rudimentary challenges against secularism while the graduates of many Christian schools have wrestled with the best of modern secularism firsthand and are prepared to address it thoughtfully. My students can tell you the best challenges against Christianity. I wonder how many public school kids could tell you the best Christian challenges against naturalism or against the prevailing relativism within the public school culture.

On the one hand this is to the Christians' advantage. In my experience, because of their lack of training, the typical product of the secular university cannot withstand even elementary challenges from a well trained Christian. They merely assume that the pronouncements of their professors or the cultural axioms ingested by the majority of their peers are sufficient to quash all intellectual challenges to secularism. As it turns out, they usually can't even counter the second tier questions of philosophically trained Christians. These people honestly think it is acceptable merely to uncritically brush Christianity aside as a "remnant of the past," because, after all, that is what all the sophisticates are doing. No wonder Christianity always wins when truly thoughtful Christians are pitted against thoughtful unbelievers. The fact is that atheists are not exposed to enough of Christianity to debate effectively against it.

Meanwhile my students train in evolution, naturalism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, postmodernism, etc. in order to engage the most important ideas of the day comprehensively.

4. The environment is more conducive to learning rather than cultural indoctrination.

It seems that one of John Dewey's ideas was to cloister teens together in learning communities so they could socialize and educate each other. In one sense, Dewey was right. High schools certainly are places where a form of education is utterly efficient and unchallenged--namely, homoginization. Everyone becomes exactly the same as everyone else! It creates equilibrium and not tension. Because the teacher has become largely an accessory in the public school, which is now only a context for the youth sub-culture to train each other in language, dress, music, movies, values, lifestyle, love, the purpose of education, etc., adults have virtually lost any capacity to challenge the uncritical assumptions of the youth sub-culture. If you doubt this, ask the average teenager to discuss various facts concerning his sub-culture and then ask him to discuss various facts concerning biology, history or philosophy, or even the culture of his parents. What he rehearses consistently with his peers will become readily apparent in a matter of seconds. Or better yet, show up to a public school during lunch and listen to the casual conversations of the sub-culture and you will see that what I'm saying is manifestly true. Many public school kids today are for the most part utterly cut off from knowledge of anything outside of their tiny world. Everything else is frankly irrelevant.

In the private Christian school, at least this notion of culture isolation is consistently confronted in classes where teachers are not vastly outnumbered. In the Christian school one can seriously challenge the idea that the teen sub-culture in America is the pinnacle of human civilization.

5. Christian schools are more successful at the work of real education.

It is clear that public schools spend more to educate individual students than Christians schools do. And Christian school teachers are remunerated for their services at a much lower rate than public school teachers, especially when one considers the impressive retirement advantages and health care benefits afforded to those working in public schools. And isn't it odd that Christian schools are also obviously more successful at training students to be thinkers and lifelong learners. And perhaps it is too simplistic to suggest that this is because they can select their student bodies from among the rich. I think it is the other way round--namely, families see that the Christian school develops thoughtful young people and so they select the school, removing their kids from the public system that would stultify their growth.

Christian education prepares students for the world and also for careers while giving students a vision of truth that inspires a lifelong desire for knowledge. 

6. There is a deeper concern for what becomes of students in the Christian school.

In fairness I know that many public school teachers care deeply about what becomes of their students, but I think any public school teacher would be hard pressed to make a case that the local public high school more consistently expresses a deep love for students than the local Christian high school. Some of this is a matter of simple numbers. How can teachers really care for students in the context of mass produced education?

The best Christian schools feel like an extended family, and students sense that teachers take a sincere interest in their futures. The teachers I've known in private schools are consistently available to students who have needs as well. And it should also be noted that in the best Christian schools, discipline is seen as an expression of love. In point of fact the best way to convince a student that he doesn't matter is to let him have his way without resistance. Christian high school teachers do not see themselves as friends to students, but they are friendly and compassionate authorities in the lives of students.

In conclusion then, it is fascinating to see the present desire in our country to reform public education. Obviously that indicates that many in this country see public education as seriously broken. We see this desire for reform expressed in films like Waiting for Superman, a documentary about problems especially in inner city public schools. Curiously absent from these films is any assessment of the prevailing worldview that informs the present educational enterprise in America. The thesis of the cultural intelligentsia is that the problem is a union problem, a teacher competency problem, a political problem and a money problem. In Christian schooling we know that the real problem for public schools is the godless worldview that controls these schools. As long as the public school system tacitly assumes that students are accidents of evolution destined for annihilation, they will struggle mightily to provide a rational foundation for education. Unless and until that is fixed, no amount of money or skilled teachers will fix this problem. The problem is not with the various elements of an otherwise good system, but with the system itself. The problem is not with the paint and carpet; it is with the structure of the house. Clearly repainting the cracks in the walls of a house is foolish if the reason for the cracks is a broken foundation. 

Godless America; The Trump and Clinton Binary

America is not a Christian nation. Of course this is only a generalization. No nation in the New Testament era can be "Christian;" only individuals gathered as the Church can be, and nations can be relatively influenced by these people. As a case in point, consider the founding of this country. No thinking person can deny the Christian influence of America's Christian founders and the influence of the so called "Judeo-Christian Ethic" upon the development of America. Many, like Dinesh D'Souza, for example, are infatuated with the idea of America, often speaking of it in almost worshipful terms. And please understand, I am not anti-American, but I also have different expectations of the land of my birth.

Donald Trump's ascension to the head of the Republican party is, in my estimation, a fulfilled prophecy. The Jeremiad is perhaps tiring for some, but does that count against its truthfulness? For years, American Christians have identified with the Republican party, almost to the point of seeing it as a symbiote. But this belief in the symbiotic relationship between Republicanism and Christianity is exposed by the ascension of Trump. It is quite clear that Republicanism can live independently of Christianity, or at the very least it can lord over various Christian ideas and use them for, well, "creative" purposes.

But there are many who think that this will be the cause of some evil. They are exactly wrong. It is only the effect of some evil. Trump can rise to power within "Christian America" precisely because America has lost its religion. Perhaps it never fully possessed it. In a democracy, the leaders are an expression of the will of the people. In that sense, just like in the case of the culture wars, we are getting what we want. Review with me the issues of gay marriage, abortion, the sexual revolution and the general loss of the culture wars. The reason we are losing the culture wars is because self-professing "Christians" are converting to a more enlightened, eclectic form of "Christianity," if they are not leaving the faith altogether. The great apostasy of our day is curiously not perceived as a loss; after all, people still identify as Christians. But this is the day and age when anyone can identify as anything, and it is their subjective "identification" that constructs reality. If a man can identify as a woman, then why can't a secularist identify as a Christian?

The other program is the compartmentalization of committed Christians. They often reason that since America is not a Christian nation, then we can vote according to our other instincts--perhaps our instinct for self-preservation. What has politics to do with Jesus, after all, etc.? But notice that the secularist who wants Christians to "shut the ___ up" can be as pleased with this outcome as any other. What will be offensive about our "private" Christianity? These Christians think that peace with the world is friendship with God. When their children and grandchildren have grown, they will see what they have won by abandoning the fight for their culture. The frightening thing is that perhaps by that time they will like it.

From my perspective, Trump's rise is the most obvious modern proof of American godlessness (either through resignation or blatant compromise). This is the day and age of the godless Republican. God is not needed to defend American supremacy! God is not needed to project strength! God is not needed to create wealth and defend it. Isis does not require some Christian solution. Isis requires incendiary devices. Instead of denying religion because it is seen as an opiate to numb the worker, we now deny religion because it is seen to be an opiate to numb the ruler. For rulers like Trump, religion is a unifying moral mythology, but human reason is its master. Strong and smart rulers will tell us what it means rather than it telling the strong and smart what their duties should be. The slow inversion is now complete. The godless have become gods of an America of our their own making.

This is the day and age of the godless Ayn Rand variety capitalist set against the godless socialist. For men like Trump, wealth is for the strong and hard working; it is a matter of the Darwinian struggle. Weakness is exposed and eliminated, as nature intended. According to this alpha model, America is becoming the prize of the weakest and most foolish among us. The strong are being strong armed by the majority into compliance with their wishes through various wealth transference schemes, like Obamacare. All of this can end when the Ubermensch determines to be the Ubermensch. Of course the Clintons and Sanders of the world only answer this with power as well; in their case the power of the Proletariat, which is just a many-headed Ubermensch. Nobody knows how to argue the truth anymore. We are living in Nietzsche's world and not even the deist Jefferson's anymore. Perhaps we found our way to Nietzsche's world because we passed through Jefferson's.

History tells us that people will follow the Ubermensch, or the majority, even if both are deeply morally flawed. Why? Because of the demand for godless practicality. Prayers from the feeble don't seem to produce "substantial" effects, but the Trumps and Clintons of the world promise to offer a close substitute. They will protect the people, and give them jobs, and secure their advantages. They will exert power for immediate advantage, provided they win of course. They will do what God has shown a disturbing disinterest in doing--our will!

This election gives us a strange dichotomy: a choice between a strong man who will give us advantage and safety, and a strong woman who will give us equality of resources. Depending on where the voter is coming from, it is all about what the strong can give us and not about what we are trying to build together. Is there such a thing as a shared national vision anymore? We are left with the godless ethics of egoism writ large. One party seeks power by pandering to the egoist needs of the bottom; the other seeks power by pandering to the egoist needs of the top. Who will win is not clear. But God has clearly lost. Or put truly, America has clearly lost by establishing a two party egoism, with a range of egoist options between.

Let us end on a positive note: the good news is that the people of God can now get to the business of being the Church. Going forward it will be impossible to conflate the purposes of America with the purposes of Christ's Church.

Dare I Boast of a Perfect Team

I've worked with the same people for 10 years now. I write this post to celebrate something so rare and so special that it may be difficult for me express it in words. I am part of a team, the Bible department at Bakersfield Christian High School, that may very well be a perfect team. Lately I've been thinking carefully about what makes this team so unique. But I also sought out their help to record these essential traits of our team.

1. We are brought together by a mission that is bigger than either our relationships or our individual goals or the sale of some educational product.

This may sound strange, but I can look into the eyes of my mates in the Bible department and see the pain there when our students do not receive the truths we communicate to them. When some of our alumni drift from the Christian faith, we are wounded by it. We feel deeply motivated by a sense of unified purpose to passionately convey the Biblical Christian worldview to our students. I know that at the beating heart of each of my friends in the department is a desire to know God and to call attention to Him, and to do it winsomely, artfully, graciously, relentlessly. If you want your child to know Christ and see hearts aflame with His gospel, then expose them to these people!

Of course we must have some agreement on the essential articles of the Christian faith that we hope to convey, but what is even more striking is that we share a desire to do it in a particular way. Each of us has rejected a merely pietistic (emotional and devotional) approach to our subject area. We insist upon the highest standards of academic rigor and accountability. Our students will know this information even if they come to reject it. We will not abide the thought of any student passing through our classes confident in his or her ignorance excuse for unbelief. We want them to believe, of course, but we want them to believe something that is doctrinally rich, even distinct, even antithetical to all other ideas.

Simply stated, the truth binds our hearts and our mission together. Each day we arrive at a finite time and place in Bakersfield, California, with all our limitations, to do the glorious work of heralding God's truth, bound together by what I can only describe as a profound sense of supernatural unity, sacrificing private ego and agenda in order to do something far more significant than the private good of any individual in the group. We have a share in the boundless purposes of the Almighty, and nothing is treated as mundane!

2. We trust each other deeply.

Over the years we have shared much together. Life in this fallen world is difficult, and none of us are guiltless, but it is an enormous comfort to go to work at a place where I know people will love me and pray me through the adversity that comes in life and in the classroom. At various times all of us in the department have struggled in life or in the classroom, and at times in both. During these dark seasons, we have never judged each other, never left each other alone. I've heard soldiers speak of the almost supernatural bond of friendship that is forged in the crucible of battle, and when I hear them speak this way, I think of my friends in the Bible department. Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it is an ongoing battle nevertheless, and we have all been wounded and we have all been the strength needed by the other.

When we have needed to share intimate things, nothing is ever shared outside the inner circle of our department. There is absolute and unwavering trust within our ranks. It is my only experience of Christianum Contra Mundum. We are a team of Christians against the world!

3. We have an appreciation of difference that does not compromise unity.

We have talented people, and I can honestly say that each person in our department celebrates the talents of the others without envy. When one does excellent work, everyone has a good word of encouragement. We are each others greatest fans.

My colleagues have genuinely challenged me as a scholar and as a rhetorician. We have fine thinkers and fine communicators in our department, and this provides a kind of friendly competition. It moves me to read and to craft quality lessons to try to keep up with their excellence. And I know that this "iron sharpening iron" environment, and the healthy competition it inspires, is enjoyed by all in the department. Surely all of us are aware of situations in which people find the exquisite competence of others a threat to their egos, and this results in destructive political intrigues in a work environment. I praise God I have never seen anything of the kind in the Bible department at BCHS.

Another area of significant difference that could cause irreparable fractures in our team is in the area of doctrine. We are represented by significant differences in doctrine in our department. We have people from an Assemblies of God background, a current Anglican, a Nazarene, a lapsed Nazarene (me), a Molinist and two Calvinists, though one of the Calvinists is less perfect as a Calvinist than the other (again me). Needless to say we have had a few fine discussions, but our commitment to our larger unifying purpose, and our commitment to the family of God (each other) is greater than our differences, and so we simply discuss them and then leave them to the ministry of God's Spirit in each others lives. None of us have an ego so fragile that we must have the validation of either universal agreement or dominance in debate. And all of us know that the only reason we can so operate is itself due to the grace of God at work in our midst.

4. Our team members have a sense of humor.

Doubtless no one laughs as much as we do, and often we laugh at ourselves. One of our members accidentally assigned an art project on the wrong passage of Scripture one year. The teacher in question meant to have students illustrate some innocuous story about David, but accidentally had them illustrate David's killing and circumcising of the Philistines for the hand of Michal. I assure you, that is the gift that keeps on giving.

Another teacher yells at students whenever a tour of prospective students comes through (it is all set up in advance).

Another teacher sings happy birthday to students in a way that can only be described as utterly manic.

Another yells passages from Leviticus in an obnoxious Scottish accent.

And all have mastered the spiritual gift of sarcasm.

Our department head has told us many times that we must "take our God and our doctrine seriously, but we should never take ourselves too seriously." I've never seen a group of people practice this axiom so perfectly.

5. We are led well.

The last thing the leader of our department wants is uncritical allegiance, and that is precisely why he has earned our allegiance.

He is a man of uncommon intelligence, but also uncommon gentility, humility and empathy. He leads a group of excellent educators, but he knows how to get the most out of them, and how to love them into being a team. He knows when to encourage, when to offer insight, when to coach. He is firm in his opinions and leads by example.

He is a more consistent example of godly leadership than any person I have ever been exposed to in all my years in Christian service. He is everything you want in a leader in Christian education. He possesses an obvious passion for Christ and His larger kingdom purposes. He has a clear vision of the role of Christian education in that larger universe. He communicates these things well. He loves and unites the people God has given him to advance eternal purposes at the Christian high school.

If you want to know the secret to forging a team like this one, it all begins with the leader.

6. These are people of simple brilliance.

Each of these teachers is bright, even very bright. And yet no one in the department thinks of himself or herself as a first tier Christian researcher. We know too much about the renaissance going on right now in Christian theology and philosophy to think that. But each one of us is perfectly situated to provide quality mediation to young people. My colleagues communicate biblical theology, systematic theology, philosophy and ethics with stunning delicacy, accessibility and clarity. To listen to them makes one wonder what is greater; to be able to discover great truths, or to be able to explain great truths to 15 year olds and thus to be used to ensure the next generation of Christian thinkers?

Finally, let me just say that my experience among these extraordinary people, indeed the extent to which we have joined in the mission of the ages together and our effectiveness as a team and the deep bonds of sacred friendship we share, has led me to dread the day of our inevitable dissolution as a team and our bitter parting.

I say to any who would dare join us or dare replace one of us, of what mettle are you made, and do you count yourself worthy to join such a gallant band? Any who would dare boast of qualifications or dare affirm worthiness in answer to this brings to us nothing of the humble gratitude daily exhibited by this imperfect but divinely empowered group of simple people.

Bring with you, if you would join us, fitting excellence upon excellence, but more importantly bring that quality of grace, impossible to quantify, that pulses with unmistakable vibrancy in the hearts of Amy Pitcher, Dustin Adams, Jeff Ward and Randy Martin.

In the final analysis, of course this is not a perfect team, but I defy you to find one better.

* I also want to offer thanks to Dan Cole, the visionary administrator who assembled this team. It was his conviction that leadership in the Bible subject area is essential to the character of a school that made this special team possible.

Lessons of Divorce

This January was the 1st anniversary of my divorce. Time is not always a gentle healer. But I have learned a few things over the course of time.

I'm not alone in divorce, obviously, and I feel a certain kinship with my fellow divorcees. There are more than I thought. Many are Christians, married for many years, and now thrust into the pain, and shame, of such a public failure.

The first thing I have learned will sound like frivolous self-abnegation, but it is merely the truth: I am pretty jacked-up. The truth is that I am unwell in various ways. Before my ex-wife discovered this I was aware of it, and fought against it, by God's grace, for all the years of my marriage. But marriage teaches us, and divorce certainly has reinforced it, that human flaws are not so easily mended. Some are merely held at bay for periods of time with intense, but ultimately feeble, moral discipline. I think this serves to drive us to something beyond mere moral discipline.

They say we must "believe in ourselves." We are to move forward with confidence that someone will love us in spite of our flaws; that indeed we should love ourselves in spite of our flaws. But that is incomplete counsel! It suggests the we need not, or cannot, change; that therefore it is the duty of the world to change around us. But the only solution to my significant flaws is the penetrative grace of the Almighty. To Him, and to Him alone, do I cling. Divorce has driven me to the place I should have remained from the beginning, and that is utter dependence on God's all sufficient grace. But grace is not just a balm in time of trouble. It is purifying fire as a solution to trouble. It is trouble as a solution to trouble, and it promises the more intense trouble of life altering change. In the end, I trust that He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it.

The second thing I have learned is that sometimes we just make stupid choices. We are not merely rational beings. We have emotional needs. Men and women alike are motivated to seek companionship and comfort. My marriage was not entered into by two mature people, fully understanding the gravity of the commitment, though we persisted in marriage for 21 years. We were married at age 23, and only after knowing each other for a relatively short period of time. We were friends, and then engaged for 9 months. We thought we knew each other, but our failure was that we didn't know ourselves. We didn't know how we would be with the other person over time. We just were not particularly compatible, and if we had been wiser we would have seen it. I seem to remember now that there were others who saw it, and so delicately tried to address it with us that we missed their attempt to wake us up to the fact. It was perhaps even obvious to everyone but us.

The third thing I have learned is that forgiveness includes moving forward without need of blame. Whose fault was our divorce? At this point I don't even care! I don't see the wrong anymore, and I don't think she sees my wrongs anymore either. It is just a fact in the records of our memories. It seems to me as fruitless to dig up old sins in marriage and assign blame for them as it is to flagellate oneself for sins committed as a teenager. Learn from them, yes! Feel anything about them, or let me captivate, or in any way shape the future beyond what they already have? In the words of Paul, "Heaven forbid!"

The fourth thing I have learned is that the most loving thing you can ever say to someone is that you don't need them, but you intensely desire them. This is a point with sufficient theological and personal complexity, so let me unravel it for a moment.

When I say that I don't, or never did, "need" a spouse, I only mean that in the most fundamental sense. I only mean it in the sense that I don't need another human being to "complete" me as an individual. The love deficit in my life, and my own sinfulness and incompleteness, are not solved by adding another sinful and incomplete human being to it. Christ alone can make me as an individual whole. In point of fact, Christian marriage is supposed to be a union of two people in whom Christ is operating to make each whole. They are not providing for each other what only Christ can provide. They are only sharing with each other the overflowing love of God born in their hearts by faith.

When one partner, or both, looks to the other to "complete" him or her, in the sense of making him or her whole, then idolatry follows. One has placed a burden on the other person that only God in His infinite power can shoulder. This can only crush the one on whom the burden is placed, and deeply disappoint the one placing it there.

But here is where this matter gets complicated. God in wisdom made us, in His original design, for a spouse. In creation we were built for a deep spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual bond with another individual for life. He said that it was not "good for Adam to be alone." Prior to the fall, when human beings were whole, they needed each other in this sense; in the sense that, in order for total unity and diversity to be experienced, they required marriage. If we are going to experience the depths of God's design for community in marriage, then we need a spouse. But in a fallen world where Christ has supplied our individual needs in redemption, and has drawn us directly into communion with Himself, the further communion of marriage and family can be superfluous for those left single in this world. In other words, if a person, as a result of this being a fallen world, never marries, then God's extravagant love in Christ will supply all the compensating graces necessary.

But even those who are called into marriage by God must note this well: It is only two whole people who can truly be unified in the manner that God designed. Their first need even in their need for marital union will always be in Christ!

The Fading Christian

Christian kids, or others for that matter, leave the Christian faith gradually. They drift. As Eliot once put it, they go out not with a bang, but a whimper. I've spent a few years thinking about this process, and I now think I can generalize about the steps in the process of drift.

The Center...

My own kids show me what the center looks like. They love Christian school, Christian songs and Christian stories and Christmas with a passion unrivaled. They demand that we pray before bed and keep dad accountable to kind speech with their sisters. They write notes telling me how much they love God and Jesus and how they love Church. Their world is filled with the magic of belief. Christianity is their atmosphere, and their joy seems so full as they breathe it in.

They even talk about how bad it is that people say bad words or do unkind things. They confront their friends about these things with childlike exuberance. Even when something goes wrong and they do something that must be punished, they recognize the severity of it. It pains them to let daddy down, and more importantly, to let God down. They take sin seriously and feel it deeply when they do it.

One can only see their Christian experience as pure, even naive, authenticity and totality.

Step One... Commitment to Sin...

This is not meant to be a judgment, but a mere recognition of fact. We are all committed to our sinfulness. Since our sinful desires stay with us through life, we always struggle with them. The Christian is given assistance in resisting, but it is always a battle. And frankly, at times it seems that no assistance is being given at all.

A thought begins to germinate, ever so gradually, below the surface. "Perhaps it is really quite natural to desire these things. Perhaps it is unnatural to resist them..."

Step Two... Aesthetic exhaustion...

Put simply, the maturing church kid now is simply bored with Christian music and Christian preaching and Christian art of all kinds. He can't even say why. If you were to press him about why Christian art is bad, he couldn't tell you anything of substance. It is just a mood. His mood has shifted from Christian music, for example, to his own ephemeral preoccupations. Of course, this means that Christians don't get to speak into his heart or mind. He has removed his attention and tuned it to various decidedly non and even anti-Christian voices.

Step Three... Moral exhaustion...

He now moves from thinking that perhaps his sinful desires are natural, to being exhausted with the Christian message of moral resistance to them. He has made the attempt, however feebly, to resist his own sinful tendencies, and has not succeeded. His new influences have shown him a kind of audacious freedom in doing things he once knew were wrong. He is now able to laugh at these behaviors, often with his new friends.

Then he steps into his church to hear the pastor condemn his actions, and now he no longer feels conviction; instead, he feels exhaustion. He is simply tired of hearing this message. There is only one solution.

Step Four... Leave the Church...

He stops going to church. The art is boring and so is the message. He is put off by the constant moral badgering.

He is probably a freshman in college now, and free to sleep in on Sundays. No one on his dorm hall is interested in going to church, so it becomes the most natural thing in the world to have his "day of rest." He is taking a sabbath from sabbath.

Step Five... Circle of influence changed...

By systematic steps, he is no longer in any appreciable orbit around Christian things or people. He doesn't read Christian literature. He doesn't listen to sermons. He doesn't pray. He doesn't hang out with Christians. Church is irrelevant to him, though he would still claim at this point to be a Christian. He boldly asserts that "one need not go to Church to be a Christian." Other pious rebels affirm him in this, and they shuffle back to the kegger.

Where once his atmosphere was Christian art, themes, stories and people; he is now in a decidedly different atmosphere. His friends are, simply put, much cooler than Christians. They are authentic, bold, interesting and broad-minded people. They judge no one, except the judgmental. Jesus is literally totally undetectable in his new circle of influence, unless you count his hipster friend Jesus from Spain.

Step Six... Values assimilation...

He now thinks like everyone else on the campus. He affirms gay marriage, but can't say exactly why. He likes socialism, legalization of drugs and pacifism, but can't argue them with any rigor. He loves all the art, culture and general priorities of his contemporaries. He lives like them, talks like them, parties like them. He is a clone. All his uniqueness has been summarily beaten into conformity. Where once he embraced the foolishness of the cross as his wisdom, now he simply acknowledges the foolishness of the cross.

Step Seven... Ridicule those "Christians"...

He is now the "new" kind of Christian, which is to say that he is totally secularized. He has now almost completely forgotten the Bible. Occasionally he quotes it, but only to mangle its teaching. He is a vague "theist," still clinging to his childhood emotional connections to the Christian faith. But when he becomes honest, he will realize that he is no longer a Christian, and perhaps never really was. What he has always done is to adjust to the climate. When that culture was Christian, he was a Christian. When it became secular, he became secular. He is a product of his environment, and nothing more. The curious thing is that all the while he claims a vigorous autonomy. He is his own man. He is not owned by anyone.

But when his friends come around and mock the Christian faith in various ways, he joins right in. We Christians are, according to his new friends, backward, unscientific and hypocritical. We caused the bloodshed of the world. We fought against scientific development. We live in the ideological fog of "white privilege." If we could have our way, we would take peoples rights from them and slavery would return. We believe in a dusty old book that encourages polygamy, genocide, xenophobia, homophobia, classism, fantasy and simple-mindedness. He has made a complete journey away from Christianity. He has become worse while thinking that he is getting better.

(Note: While a person is in the process of drift, there needs to be an intellectual justification for it. In my experience, most reach for the "search for truth," or "search for self," or "disillusionment" paradigm. And they use this paradigm because it gives them the assurance that they are in control of the drift. But I want to suggest here that most people have their thinking on this inverted. They think that their search or disillusionment is the cause of the drift. I think it is quite the opposite. My convictions on this come from my theology and my own experience. Convoluted intellectual rationalizations often come after moral compromise. Romans 1 would agree with me here!)