Every once in awhile it is good and right to think about what you believe and why. This is what I believe.

I believe in the God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. My belief structure is build directly upon my knowledge of God. I recognize my knowledge is incomplete. There is so much more to know about God than either nature or scripture reveals. But nature reveals enough about God for me (and you) to know that he is and that he is of awesome power and benevolence. And the scripture reveals enough to know how he who made all things orders his universe and our lives.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God, the Son of God, the Son of Man, my savior. I don’t have to look any farther than my own brokenness to know I am in great need of One to stand in my place: a Kinsman-Redeemer. And it is in Jesus, God’s Christ (Messiah), that mankind has one who rightfully takes his place as the head of the race and mediates between a broken humanity and a perfect God. If I would be delivered from “the body of this death”, I need look no further than to look to Jesus, for there is none other who can deliver my soul from hell.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit (blessed Trinity) applies both the saving grace of God at the cross and the transforming power of the new birth to my broken and rebellious soul making me both a member of his family and one who delights in his presence.

I believe God made us male and female and that any variation from that pattern is not an expression of our individuality but of our brokenness. I further believe that the celebration of that brokenness is merely a further revelation of humanity’s rebellion from the rule of God in this world – thank you, Adam and Eve.

I believe the life-long marriage union of a man and a woman is a sacrament, a divine ordinance, through which God’s creative power is expressed. God made Adam and Eve perfect but incomplete. He made them to be completed only in union one with the other. In the physical and spiritual union of marriage God has given us a power akin to his own: the power to create other human beings. And just as he created Adam and Eve in his image, we create children in our own. And, alas, because of the brokenness given to us by Adam and Eve’s rebellion, we create broken people. But in those broken offspring, even though the image of God has been defaced by our sins and the sins of our ancestors (thank you A & E), the image of God is still present in the human race. Any other marriage union, be it the serial polygamy commonly practiced in western nations, or the more modern homosexual marriage, while legal under the laws of the nation, cannot participate in the sacrament of marriage under God.

I believe the world we see and enjoy is temporary. It will pass away.

Even though I know this world is not permanent, I believe it is important to not disengage from the world and retreat until its destruction. Hence:

I do not believe modern-day Israel is a restoration of the covenant people of Israel. That status is reserved to the Israel of God: Jesus Christ, and by extension, the Church. Thus I believe politicians who believe our national safety before God lies in protecting Israel at all costs to be a delusioned threat to our nation.

Neither do I believe that America holds a special place in the affections of God. God does have a special people: those who constitute his Church in America and around the world. Yet it is true that a nation’s prosperity and longevity depend upon its allegiance to the General Revelation of the sovereignty of God declared in nature: Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. Nation’s that willfully reject God’s rule will in turn find themselves rejected and cast upon the trash heap of history. The clearer the revelation of God’s character and rule that a nation enjoys, the quicker its demise when rejecting that revelation.

Well, that’s a start. I believe many other things – some rightly, some in need of revision or rejection – but first and foremost, I believe God loves his creation to the extent that he was incarnated in the man Jesus, lived for me the perfect and sinless life of which I am incapable, bore my sins upon the cross, took me in himself in a manner beyond my comprehension into heaven itself, and will return to give me a perfected and sinless nature in a perfect and sinless body. Solus Christus!

Sign me,

Dale, Contra Mundum