The Divine Comedy by Dante

A "review" of a monumental classic like Dante's Divine Comedy may be an exercise in hubris that lands me in a "bolgia" of the Inferno. After finishing all three volumes, Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise), I feel compelled to respond in writing to complete my enjoyment, but realize I have nothing profound to say. Here are some observations, humbly offered.

The Divine Comedy is epic because it offers a complete worldview, capturing the totality of heaven and earth from the Medieval perspective in a personal story. Dante integrates the Biblical and classical worlds by including Abraham and Aristotle, the Blessed Virgin and the gifted Virgil in their proper places. The virtuous pagans are consigned to limbo, yet their philosophy and mythology and proto-science reach up to heavenly realms. It is a fusion of two streams of civilization, the Greek and the Christian, with unambiguous priority given to the latter. Contemporary Christians do the same as we explain and integrate Freudian psychology, Marxist theory, secular science and rock music by a Biblical standard. We expend immense effort trying to preserve the good and reject the bad. History will judge if we fare better.

The Divine Comedy is moral because it provides Dante a vehicle to critique his society and contemplate a righteous life. The rebuke of popes and emperors is scathing. Those who suffer in the Inferno are punished by being given over to the evil they pursued in life. We should tremble at final justice. Dante subscribes to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, but Protestants can understood it as a metaphor for sanctification in this life, a hopeful battle against sin by joyfully accepting its temporary consequences because, unlike the Inferno, God works it for our good. This optimistic moral vision extends beyond the personal, foreseeing revival in the Church and the rise of good government. Evil fails and good succeeds, both in our personal lives and in society.

The Divine Comedy is transcendent because it captures the human desire for complete happiness and full understanding. It ends with Dante seeing the turning of planets driven by the love of God, an ultimate satisfaction made possible in the presence of God, and a wondrous gaze into the Triune essence of God. We are created for such things and should not settle for the small and the selfish. If it awakens an inner whisper "What if this could be true?" then Dante has successfully reached across the ages. But if we dismiss this as Medieval superstition and religious ignorance, then we are left with our convenient but barren world, where our technology allows us to click on the latest Netflix Original but won't bring us the satisfaction and insight that Dante believes is possible.

Never Trump

Although a political conservative and consistent Republican voter, I have not voted for Trump and, after watching the first Presidential Debate of 2020, have decided to not vote for Trump. Add my name to the "Never Trump" column, not as an ideological commitment, but simply as a fact. I will have never voted for him. This is why.

First, abortion. The Culture War will be won with character not politics. Overturning Roe does not end the bloodshed. Its repeal allows South Dakota and Mississippi to outlaw abortion, but allows, even encourages, California and New York to continue. The actual number of abortions may not decrease and the cost of victory would be endorsing a man who exemplifies the Sexual Revolution's degradation of women and marriage. Who can calculate the unintended consequences? And it's not obvious that these originalist, textualist justices will actually overturn Roe, with its decades of stare decisis. The true precedent for overturning abortion is the Early Church ending infanticide and the exposure of infants in the Roman Empire through its own moral lives and theological convictions. Ending abortion and repealing the Sexual Revolution requires a change of heart, which is not compatible with an ends-justify-the-means rationale.

Second, the Constitution. Trump shows a lack of conviction about his oath to "protect and defend the Constitution". Like Obama, stretching back to Woodrow Wilson, Trump shares the imperial view of the Presidency. He feels entitled to "get things done" by executive order if Congress doesn't "act". It's true that he hasn't done that much, for which I'm grateful, but he would if he could. And that paves the way for a future President who actually has ability. We need a President who humbly serves the country by executing his or her office as laid out in the Constitution.

Third, Black Lives Matter. All Americans should care about the hopelessness and violence in our inner cities. The progressives are fanning Marxist flames and peddling the false hope of revolution. They are not helping. But Trump's partial, sometimes indirect, endorsements of white nationalist groups is too frequent to be accidental. You can't be the law and order candidate and play with verbal matches next to that gasoline. We need a President who believes in liberty and justice for all, who champions equality under the law, and who "takes Care that Laws be faithfully executed" in our land.

Fourth, conscience. If I vote third party, or write-in, or decline to vote, I am not implicitly voting for Biden. I reject the binary choice. I may never have the decisive vote on any matter, but a lifetime of voting my conscience makes a difference. There is a time for transactional thinking, picking the lesser of two evils, but this is not it. Our democracy will survive Trump or Biden. It survived Obama and would have survived Hillary. Our ideals are stronger than either major candidate in 2020, so it's best to follow my conscience and be Never Trump.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell is the classic allegory of the false hopes of Soviet Communism. The sympathetic story of the animals who hope for a ideal farm, run by animals and for animals, turns into a nightmare of oppression by the pigs who become their new masters. It was a prescient and insightful book which deserves to be cherished by freedom loving people.

The book shows the evil of propaganda, revisionist history and twisted laws. We feel for the hardworking, long-suffering Boxer who gives his life for the farm, and are repulsed by the selfish, heartless pigs who are ready to take advantage of him.

However, there are some glaring shortcomings of the book.

The Animal Farm run by the pigs is no better than the previous Manor Farm run by the human, Mr. Jones. But in the final chapter Orwell has the farm being still successful by those same human standards. Being written in 1945, Orwell does not anticipate the failure and internal collapse of Soviet Communism 40 years later. The farm actually becomes a model of productivity and efficiency to the human-led farms around them, albeit at the expense of the lower animals. The last paragraph, where Napoleon is caught cheating at cards, may be a hint of that future collapse, but it is only a hint.

Orwell also offers no counter philosophy that proves why the pigs are wrong. They are inherently smarter and more capable than the other animals. The reader feels a moral revulsion that they would use their abilities to take advantage of those less intelligent than them, but Orwell has nothing equivalent to the theologically-based statement in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The raven is the sole religious figure who talks of the glorious Sugarcandy Mountain, but he is a crackpot and simpleton who offers no real help to the suffering animals and gathers no following.

Finally, Orwell does not show any of the lesser animals actually standing up to their oppressors. There is no hope for another revolution to reject their new pig overlords. The reader comes away convinced that the first revolution was a failure, but does not see any way out of the current situation.

Out of an Abundance of Caution

In March 2020, COVID-19 panic hit the US with surprising speed. In weeks prior measures were already being taken, but then President Trump declared a national emergency followed quickly by Governor Newsom declaring daily-escalating shelter-in-place orders in California. We all stayed home, waiting for the viral wave to break over us. The rationale was that temporary drastic measures were necessary to keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed like they had recently been in Italy.

At that time, the virus was an unknown danger. Six months later, it's safe to say we know quite a bit more about it, and what it has exposed in our culture.

A month after the lockdowns began, major news outlets reported on antibody studies performed by respected institutions like USC, Stanford, Northeastern University and others. They independently found that the virus had spread through the population 10, 20 or even 50 times greater than the "confirmed cases" on the John Hopkins dashboard website. When I heard this, I told my children that the panic would be over in a week because the virus was confirmed to be not nearly as deadly as initially feared. Instead of a 5% or even 2% mortality rate, it was 10, 20 or 50 times less. Worse than the flu, but not a deadly pestilence that demanded shutting down the economy.

I still remember the dejected feeling several days later reading follow-on news reports that interpreted those same results, not by concluding that the virus was not as deadly as we feared, but that the contagion was far worse than we knew.

In the initial weeks we were given conflicting advice regarding masks. The US Surgeon General tweeted that we should not buy masks because they are ineffective and because medical professionals needed them. The obviously duplicity can be forgiven because everyone was scrambling then, but months later the mask/no-mask debate has been fully integrated into our progressive/conservative culture war.

So, as a conservative, here are a few lessons I've learned.

The seeds of COVID-19 fear were planted well before the virus came. For years, we've been helicopter parenting our children because of the low-percentage chance that a child molester may be stalking our city playground. We've sanitized commercial kitchens from the residual presence of peanuts because a small number of our people may have a deadly reaction. And we started offering gluten-free communion options to our congregants because - well, I still don't know the rationale for this one. I'm realizing that our ability to assess risk and responsibility has not kept pace with the explosion of news and opinion offered by the Internet. 

Our new moral reasoning that brought ethically-sourced seafood, fair-trade coffee, and reusable shopping bags is now been applied to a contagious disease. People are driving in their cars by themselves with masks on and no one is telling them that there's no point. Others are wearing gloves while pumping gas and no one is re-iterating the CDC's updated advice that the virus is unlikely to be transmitted on surfaces. Instead of reasonable measures which respect individual freedom and common sense, we have fear-mongering and moralizing in the name of science, regardless of actual effectiveness. I'm realizing that while science is a powerful tool which can bring wonderful benefits, it can be easily co-opted for political purposes when used as a moral cudgel.

Finally, the massive outlay of cash by the Federal Government has completely pummeled what remained of fiscal conservatism. We have no idea what the future cost will be as our national debt climbs ever higher, but we convince ourselves that there will be no cost or that the uber-rich will pay. The government showered unemployment benefits on low wage workers, and weeks later our streets explode with Marxist fervor. If the Progressives succeed in tearing down the free-market system that has been built over the past several centuries, the ruin and misery felt by all people, rich and poor, regardless of skin color or political affiliation, will be immense. I'm realizing how precious and fragile our system of liberal democratic capitalism is.

We continue to respond to the coronavirus out of an abundance of caution, thinking that the risks are obvious, the science is clear, and the costs are worth it. But it seems we all have a lot more learning to do.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Graham Greene's 1951 novel The End of the Affair tells the story of Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Mills. Bendrix is searching for love, but only finds an unresolved love/hate with Sarah, a married woman whom he can never have because she will not leave her husband Henry. Sarah is also searching for love, and finds her way back to Christianity and the Roman Catholic faith of her mother and her own childhood.

The book turns when Sarah is shocked back into belief by the miracle of answered prayer. Bendrix lies lifeless under the wreckage of an exploded German V1 bomb. In book III, chapter II, her diary records her prayer when she sees his body, "Dear God, I said - why dear, why dear? - make be believe. I can't believe. Make me. I said, I'm a bitch and a fake and I hate myself. I can't do anything of myself. Make me believe" and then "Let him be alive, and I will believe." Moments later Bendrix gets up and she knows that she must leave him and return to God.

Her faith is simple but fierce. She is vulnerable to superstition, but is also able to resist Bendrix's pursuit of her. Her death is hastened by exposing herself to the cold rain in a desperate attempt to pray in church.

In the last chapter, Richard Smythe, an outspoken atheist whom Sarah meets following her affair with Bendrix, experiences a type of conversion through the miraculous healing of his disfigured cheek. Sarah's belief was indirectly strengthened by listening to his arguments against God, and this foreshadows what is about to happen with Bendrix on the next page.

Bendrix realizes his hatred of Sarah reveals his hatred of God. He hates or rather fears the fact that anyone, even Sarah, can leap from immorality and unbelief directly to sainthood. In the final chapter he rants, "What I chiefly felt was less hate than fear. For if this God exists, I thought, and if even you - with your lusts and your adulteries and the timid lies you used to tell - can change like this, we could all be saints by leaping as you leapt, by shutting the eyes and leaping once and for all: if you are a saint, then it's not so difficult to be a saint." Bendrix is rejecting grace: that God loves and saves sinners, that a Christian does not stand before God in his own righteous but only in the righteousness of Christ, purchased on the cross, received by faith alone and not by works.

Yet even his hatred of God reveals a nascent belief. He concludes his rant with, "I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed." And the book ends with utter loneliness: "O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever."

But like Richard Smythe, Bendrix indirectly argues for belief. One cannot finish the story, after being captivated by Greene's characters and plot, and side with Bendrix. He have to hope that we don't end up like him, which means we have to hope in God.

How do we get justice?

In the wake of George Floyd's tragic killing and the unfolding protests and riots, I'm told that "White Silence is White Violence". There's some truth in that - that I have an obligation to speak when I see injustice and that not speaking is a form of complicity.

I could speak about pragmatic or incremental ways to improve things, and I believe there's lots of common ground across the political spectrum on those, but no one wants that. The cry is for justice - to finally and forever put things right. No more half measures that don't solve anything.

So I feel compelled to speak about how we find justice. This is what I believe.

First, I believe all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. These are Christian ideas that come from God's Word and are the surest rejection of racism. All people are created by God, bear the image of God, and have equal dignity and value. You can't reject the Creator and still have a solid claim that all men are equal.

Second, although people are created in the image of God, we are all sinful. Ever since our first father and mother fell, all human hearts are full of hatred, greed, pride and selfishness. It spews out in every direction. In general, any accusation you can make about the wickedness of white people is true. It is also true of black people, people from China or India or wherever. The human race is fallen. This is the deepest explanation of the violence of a white cop on a black man and the mobs torching their cities in response.

Third, God is still ruling and will one day bring perfect justice. At the Last Judgment, God will make everything right and punish all wickedness. The problem is that I won't be able to stand in that judgment. There is much wickedness outside of me, but also much wickedness inside me. I have hatred, greed, pride and selfishness and it comes out in every direction in my life.

Fourth, the only way I can stand in that judgment is by the sacrificial death of Jesus my Savior on my behalf. While God is just, he is also loving, and he showed his love and justice by sending his own Son to die in the place of sinners like me. Jesus was an innocent man killed by the Roman police of his day. God satisfied all justice, leaving no wickedness unpunished, yet made a way for sinners like me to know his love. He reconciles individuals to himself, and he reconciles groups of people who are hostile to each other, Jew and Gentile, black and white. If you want to see perfect justice in the world today, powerful enough to heal all division, the only place you can look is the cross of Jesus Christ.

Finally, for those who have been forgiven and know his love, we are given changed hearts to love our enemies as Christ loved us and to sacrifice our lives and he sacrificed his life for us. Christian do not do this perfectly. It is easy to label us as hypocrites because we are sinners saved by grace. Our prayer is that God will work out his love and justice, bought and paid for at the cross, through sinners like us.

This is the Christian faith. It is what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed. It is what many African Americans believe, in a greater percentage than white Americans. It was believed before America was founded and the scourge of American slavery was started, and it will be believed after America is dead and gone. By God's grace that won't happen soon.

Letter to Anja on her graduation

Anja,

Your mother and I are very proud of you on your graduation day. You have grown into a strong, capable, fun-loving and beautiful young woman. You are insightful and articulate, which means your talent will be in demand. You are kind and understanding, which means you can develop many strong relationships. You have been blessed, and we are blessed that you are our daughter.  We're excited to see you go to ACU, yet sad that you won't be filling our house with joy as before.

As you head out, here are three passages from God's Word to keep in mind:

Job 39:19 "Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane?"

You have grown to love horses, but remember where they came from. God not only designed them, he also delights in them. The best way to enjoy them, and anything else in life, is to remember your Maker and their Maker.

Psalm 147:10-11 "His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love."

Just like God made the horse, God also made you and gave you many talents and strength. But his delight is that you fear him and put your hope in him. You are poised to accomplish many things and go many places, but the final measure of your success is already right in front of you. Learn to fear the Lord and hope in him and you will do well.

Revelation 19:11 "Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war."

Every time you saddle up, you are in good company. Your life is ahead of you. Enjoy the ride!

We love you, Anja. Congratulations on your graduation from VSA.

- Mom and Dad

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection by Thomas Chalmers

Thomas Chalmers was a Scottish pastor and professor in the first half of the nineteenth century. "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection" is a sermon preached during his many years of ministry. Here are some comments to help explain it. You can read it here:

https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/Chalmers,%20Thomas%20-%20The%20Exlpulsive%20Power%20of%20a%20New%20Af.pdf

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” - 1 John ii. 15.
This is the Scripture passage for his sermon.

"THERE are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace..."
He argues that human nature is not able to simply stop loving of the world, but it must be replaced a greater love, namely, the love of God. Only a new affection for God has the power to expel an old affection for the world.

"The misery of such a condition is often realized by him who is retired from business"
He gives many examples of how a person cannot simply stop a pursuit. It would leave him empty and miserable. Instead, a person will always replace a former pursuit with some other pursuit.

"It is this which stamps an impotency on all moral and pathetic declamation about the insignificance of the world."
It's pointless to reason with people about the evils of worldliness in order to make them change. You may be right, but no one will actually give up their worldliness until you show them something more attractive to pursue.

"Its desire for one particular object may be conquered; but as to its desire for having some one object or other, this is unconquerable."
You may give up your desire for money, but only by replacing it with a desire for power. The object of the desire may change, but the desire itself remains constant.

"To bid a man into whom there has not yet entered the great and ascendant influence of the principle of regeneration, to bid him withdraw his love from all the things that are in the world, is to bid him give up all the affections that are in his heart."
He applies this insight into human nature to effective preaching of the Gospel. Don't try to convince people to live godly lives if they don't yet know God.

"The arithmetic of your short-lived days, may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding - and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness..."
On Sunday morning, you may feel swayed by the preacher...

"But the morrow comes, and the business of the world, and the objects of the world, and the moving forces of the world come along with it - and the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have something to grasp, or something to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral necessity to be actuated just as before"
But the necessities of Monday will come and drive out that feeling very quickly.

"Beside the world, it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world and with this peculiarity, which is all its own - that in the Gospel do we so behold God, as that we may love God."
God is more attractive than the world because God made the world and through the gospel we can behold and love Him.

"Thus may we come to perceive what it is that makes the most effective kind of preaching."
He is arguing against the moralists who preach obedience to God's law and not the love and knowledge of God himself.

"Let him be but a faithful expounder of the gospel testimony unable as he may be to apply a descriptive hand to the character of the present world, let him but report with accuracy the matter which revelation has brought to him from a distant world - unskilled as he is in the work of so anatomizing the heart"
A good preacher tells the good news accurately, even if he isn't a skilled psychologist or insightful cultural analyst.

"No wonder that they feel the work of the New Testament to be beyond their strength, so long as they hold the words of the New Testament to be beneath their attention"
The moral demands of the Bible are impossible to those who disregard the person and work of Christ in the Bible. We love Him because He first loved us.

"The man who believes in the peculiar doctrines, will readily bow to the peculiar demands of Christianity. When he is told to love God supremely, this may startle another; but it will not startle him to whom God has been revealed in peace, and in pardon, and in all the freeness of an offered reconciliation."
But the opposite is also true. Those who believe the Gospel see the moral demands of the Bible as being right and good.

"Separate the demand from the doctrine; and you have either a system of righteousness that is impracticable, or a barren orthodoxy. Bring the demand and the doctrine together - and the true disciple of Christ is able to do the one, through the other strengthening him."
The demand of Christian obedience can only come after the doctrine of Christian salvation.

"Thus it is, that the freer the Gospel, the more sanctifying is the Gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he renders back again."
If the gospel is preached as a gift of grace, received only by faith, it moves us more to godly living. If we mix in some obligation of works, it corrupts our motivation and does not lead to greater godliness.

Did Jesus know all things or didn't he?

Jesus was a man. With respect to his mind, he grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52) and learned obedience (Heb 5:8). Jesus was also God. With respect to his mind, he knew men's thoughts ahead of time (John 6:64) and could see things from far off (John 1:48).

How do we reconcile this? Here are some failed attempts, 3 ancient and 1 modern:

Apollinarianism	One person of Christ had a human body but not a human mind or spirit.	Jesus had to be fully and truly man to represent us.
Nestorianism	There are two separate persons in Christ, a human person and a divine person.	The Bible never presents Christ as two people. He is always "I" and never "we".
Monophysitism (Eutychianism)	Christ had one nature, a fusion of the human and divine natures.	Christ is neither God nor man but some third thing.
Kenosis theory	Jesus emptied himself of divine attributes	A misreading of Philippians 2:7

The church resolved this with the Definition of Chalcedon in AD 451. It states that Jesus is truly God and truly man, two natures in one undivided person, the property of each nature being preserved.

This was rejected by the Oriental Orthodox churches (e.g. Coptic, Armenian). They prefer the term miaphysitism, which is a more subtle non-Chalcedonian term than monophysitism, "mia" being less emphatic feminine Greek word (Wikipedia).

Explaining the significance of this, Grudem says, "One nature does some things that the other nature does not." Jesus slept in the boat and held the universe together at the same time. Grudem also says, "Anything either nature does, the person of Christ does." We can say that Jesus died on the cross without limiting this to only Jesus' human nature died on the cross. As an undivided person, Jesus died, so it is correct to say that God the Son died.

This extends to Jesus' mind. For discussion: Would Jesus have been fully human without having a human mind? Would Jesus have been fully God without having a divine mind?

  

Now, read Mark 13:32. How should we understand this? How should we not understand this? Why is this important to consider?

But it leaves us with profound mysteries, but Christians submit themselves to the authority of God's Word as his self-revelation. We would expect that a transcendent God would be beyond our ability to fully understand.

Notes for Community Group, largely drawn from Chapter 26 "The Person of Christ" from Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology

Children's Ministry Q&A with Elders

Here are questions our parents are asking the church elders tonight in a Q&A session. I'm writing and publishing my answers beforehand so that I can improve the clarity of my thinking and speak more concisely.

Q: How can we use wisdom and protect our children, while allowing them to enjoy the benefits of social media?

What benefits are we talking about? I'd keep children off of social media, other than contacting family through your own accounts and with your direct supervision. There are benefits, but it requires self-control and discernment that only comes with maturity. Delay getting a smartphone for as long as possible and allow them to grow and mature without the pressure of navigating the Internet on their own.

Q: How would you encourage families with young children to prioritize their family while also seeing the importance of sacrificing in order to serve others (within or outside the church)?

We aren't really helping anyone in the church if our own family is in disarray. And spending lots of time together as a family without going to church teaches your children that church isn't an important part of your life. So you want to find ways to bring the two spheres together and not look at them as competing priorities. Drive to church as a family; don't take two or three cars because it's somehow more efficient. Be less eager of attending church events on your own and be more eager to attend church events when you can bring your children. Have dinner together as a family as much as possible, then occasionally invite others from the church to join you.

Q: What are some helpful ways to teach our children the theology of suffering while we live in such an affluent culture?

First, they need to see it in our own lives. We can't impose anything on our children that we are not doing ourselves. And I would focus on the idea of discipline and denial of the flesh, something we can actively pursue, and not suffering, which comes only from the hand of God.

Christians should not consume all the digital entertainment that the world produces. Most of it not only corrupts your soul and mind, but it also sucks up vast amounts of time that can be spent on other things. Saying no to Netflix is a type of suffering in this culture.

Prioritizing church life is a type of denial. You have to give up something in order to attend all public worship services, stay for Sunday school, come back for Lord's Supper Service. You may not be able to join a sports team or watch a game live.

Finally, children should be working hard at school. If your child finds school easy or boring it's in your control to find them something challenging.

Q: Any recommendations on ways to include young children (5 and younger) in serving?

Include your children in as many parts of church life as possible. For the youngest, have them attend the worship service. It's hard work (for them and you) to sit there for an hour. But they are serving the congregation by modeling the importance of worshiping God and sitting under the authority of the Word.

Q: What have been some of your favorite devotionals to do with young children? As a family?

I used a variety of children's Bible, then switched to just reading and paraphrasing the Bible directly. I'd recommend getting there as soon as possible. I would open the Bible, then tell the story in my own words, reading bits and pieces. It requires you to really know your Bible and gives you a chance to do the explaining.

Q: Any tips on preparing our children (and ourselves!) to enter into school where they will be exposed to more worldly opinions/ ways different families handle discipline and parenting?

Like delaying social media, I would delay the time when your child sits under the teaching and instruction of a godless school system and either unbelieving or spiritually-gagged teacher. Try to find a way for your children to be in a Christian school where teachers are able to give honor to God and explain history and literature and science from a Christian perspective.

When the day comes that they take courses from an unbeliever, it should be your goal that you have covered all the ground first. You want to have discussed Darwinian evolution, or arguments for atheism or religious pluralism, or the worldview that sees homosexuality as a lifestyle choice - you want to have those discussions first. They need to be able to interact with the world on all these matters, but instead of being swayed by the appeal of culture, you want them to benefit from the truth of God's Word and the wise consideration of thoughtful Christians like yourself.

Q: In addition to discipline, what ways would you suggest to help children grow in not complaining or talking back?

First and foremost, don't complain yourself or talk back to your spouse or anyone in authority in your life. Whatever you say or do, your children are most likely to do what you do.

When you do complain in front of them, make a point of confessing your sin and asking for forgiveness. You are not modeling perfection. You are modeling faithful living, which always including confession and repentance.

That said, when it's time to correct complaining, do it calmly and clearly. Don't just snap at it and go on. Stop what you're doing and address it directly. Look for natural consequences as much as possible. For instance, if they complain about dinner, they don't get dessert.

After that, don't dwell on it or bring it up again, which would build resentment (and is a form of complaining yourself).

Q: Children can often respond more quickly to dad’s authority than to moms. How can parents (particularly dads) help uphold/encourage mom's authority?

Dad needs to back up mom as she manages the household on his behalf, and mom needs to show that she submits and needs dad's authority for the moral direction of the house. If there's tension between mom and dad on this structure, the kids will intuitively sense it and exploit it. If the child obeys dad but doesn't obey mom, then he or she isn't really obeying dad. They are just manipulating the situation to get what they want. Read 1 Corinthians 11:3. So I would focus on your relationship as husband and wife and let that authority naturally spill over into your children's lives.

Are some sins unforgivable?

Question from the youth group to the church elders: Are some sins unforgivable?

Yes. Jesus says there is an unforgiveable sin. In Mark 3:29 he says, "But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin." 

But what exactly is it? In this case, the Pharisees heard Jesus’ teaching and saw Jesus’ miracles, and they were experts in the Scriptures which predicted his arrival, but when he came they not only rejected Jesus but said he was working with the power of Satan. So it was a whole-hearted rejection in response to an extraordinary amount of gracious revelation by God.

On the other hand, the Apostle Paul was a Pharisee who also rejected Christ and blasphemed God. Yet God graciously convicted him of sin and brought him to repentance and faith (Acts 9).

I don’t think we can figure out exactly what the unforgivable sin is. Jesus didn’t spell it out in detail. But it should make us very sober that a person could arrive at such a place.

And if you are sober about this you’ll be asking, "Have I committed the unforgiveable sin?" The unbelieving Pharisees wouldn’t have even asked this question because they were so confident of their righteousness. So if you are asking the question, it’s a good sign that God has given you a humble and repentant heart. God promises that "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Rom 10:13). God delights in forgiving all repentant sinners (Luke 15).

But we should never take his grace for granted. We can’t play around with sin thinking we can always repent tomorrow. The day may come when you have become so hardened and blinded by your sin that you no longer want to repent, which is a horrible place to be (Heb 12:17).

How do you know the Bible is true?

Question from the youth group to the church elders: How do you know the Bible is true?

I’d like to start by answering a similar question in reverse: How do you not need to know the Bible is true?

If you are convinced that Darwinian evolution and the laws of physics and theories of multi-verses can explain how we got here, then you have no reason to believe the Bible. If you can look at the most intricate biological system or the most picturesque landscape and are confident that it just happened by no cause and for no reason, then you have no need for the Bible. And no explanation of why the Bible is special will compel you.

On the other hand, if you think there must be a creator, then that changes everything. You can’t get something from nothing. And if you think a bit more, you realize you can’t get the personal from the impersonal, so the only way to explain us as persons, with morality and rationality and language and artistry, is if the creator is personal. And if there’s a personal God, then you can expect that he would communicate with the persons he made. And if God is going to communicate, then you need to ask if there is any place or time in human history where it appears that God has communicated. And now you can start asking serious questions about the Bible.

And once you start asking serious questions, you’ll see there’s no book like it.

It spans thousands of years of time, across many major civilizations verified by archaeology.

It was written by dozens of men, yet has a consistent story that traces from Genesis to Revelation.

It contains prophesies of historical events which are fulfilled hundreds of years later in its history.

It describes the human condition perfectly: that man is created good but has fallen into sin. That man is like God yet separated from God.

And it presents a Savior who is unlike any other. The main reason to believe the Bible is to read it and meet Jesus. He doesn’t present himself as a moral teacher or a wise man or a leader of men. He presents himself as the Savior of the World: the sinless man who lays down his life to save sinful humanity and to redeem all creation for himself.

If you don’t meet Jesus and aren’t compelled by the force of who he is and what he did, then you can always find some technical reason to dismiss the Bible. But once you see the power and beauty of who he is, you learn the treasure the Bible as God’s Holy Word.

Will the Book of Revelation happen in our lifetime?

Question from the youth group to the church elders: Do you suspect what is prophesied in Revelation will happen in our lifetime and if not then when?

The book of Revelation is very hard to interpret. The main themes are clear, like the victory of God, the defeat of Satan, the hope of the saints and the despair of the lost. If you were a 1st century Christian facing persecution from Rome, this book would have given you great comfort. However bad Caesar’s soldiers and lions were, Christ was coming soon and all the powers of this world and hell don’t have a chance against him.

But Christians differ wildly on how to pin down exactly what the symbols mean and where the timeline of the book fits into world history. So I’ll give you a few standard options, then I’ll tell you what I think.

There are four basic views:

• Futurist – The book talks about events that are still in the future for us. They will all happen at the end of this world.
• Preterist – The book talks about events that were in the immediate future for 1st century Christians, but are largely in the past for us. Much is about the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
• Historicist – The book talks about the history of the church over the centuries, including major conflicts like the persecution by Rome, the spread of Islam, the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, etc. 
• Idealist – The book is not talking about historical events at all, past, present or future. We should read it as a story and pull out the spiritual themes.

So, what am I? I’d consider myself a "partial preterist", but I’m unclear how partial I am. I think in chapters 13 and 17 John is talking about current events in the Roman world with thinly veiled language. The original readers would have understood the Roman Caesars he was calling out.

Next, I think the Great Prostitute of chapter 17 may be a symbol of unbelieving Judaism, which hints that chapter 18 is the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, not the destruction of a future world system. Check out 11:8 which clearly identifies "the great city" with Jerusalem, not Rome.

However, I’m still a futurist for other parts of the book, especially at the end. I think chapter 20 talks about the church age which is still ongoing and chapters 21 and 22 are still in the future. And for that, I would follow Jesus’ words, "Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come." It could be very soon, even in our lifetime.

Book Review: Desiring God, Piper

In 1986 John Piper wrote Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist as a new perspective on orthodox Christian theology. A hedonist is someone who lives for pleasure, which Piper argues is true of all humans. Instead of denying and resisting our longing to be happy, he writes "we should seek to intensify it and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction." But what is the most satisfying, beautiful, desirable thing that exists? It is God himself!

With continuous exposition of Scripture, Piper shows that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. The call to believe in God is a call to delight ourselves in him. Our worship of God is the joy of tasting and seeing how wonderful He is. In each chapter Piper shows how service, money, marriage, missions and all of life is transformed by delighting in God.

Ultimately the philosophy of Christian Hedonism is grounded in the sovereign pleasure of God. Psalm 115:3 says, "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases." We were created by a happy God who works all things for the praise of his glory and who graciously calls us to enjoy him forever.

If you think books on theology are dry and dusty, be careful picking this up. You may not be ready for the shock.

Book Review: Adopted for Life, Moore

In Adopted for Life, Russell Moore presents a Christian vision for adoption. He shares from his personal experience adopting two of his boys from a Russian orphanage and also from his training as a pastor, Bible teacher and leader in the Southern Baptist Convention. Moore asks, “What if we as Christians were known, once again, as the people who take in orphans and make of them beloved sons and daughters?”

Moore draws theological parallels between the Gospel story and the adoption of orphans today. He identifies the satanic scheme at play in Herod’s bloodthirsty slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem as well as America’s abortion culture, and then contrasts that to Joseph’s willingness to be an adoptive earthly father to Jesus.

The book has helpful advice and challenging questions to consider if you are thinking about adoption or foster care yourself, but is also beneficial if you would like to better relate to those who have adopted or have been adopted. It is a call for each of us to be like God who is a father to the fatherless and to love the orphans among us.