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

The American church is lazy. For far too many years it has rested on the power of the State instead of the suasion of the gospel message to enforce its morals and standards. That worked just great (outwardly at least) as long as the State saw eye-to-eye with the church on matters of human sexuality and sexual expression, marriage and family, abortion, Christian prayers (as if there is any other God upon whom one could call) in the public square, the education of children in the public schools, and so forth.

But something happened after World War II. Actually that war, and the one before it, changed just about everything in our culture. After a war that killed upwards of 50 million people and destroyed countless lives and entire cities, is it any wonder that many men and women emerged from that war disillusioned with all things religious?

The mainline churches had been proclaiming for years that we were about to enter the millennium of human peace, progress, and prosperity, and then the world experienced back-to-back world wars where the blood of the young, especially young men, was poured out on the soil like water, or like the drink offerings of ancient sacrificial rituals.

And the evangelical churches were little better. They, for the most part, sat in their churchly tombs licking the wounds they had sustained in their conflicts with the mainline ones. They did very little in the way of scholarship (look at what all that learning did for the skeptics of the mainline and for the Germans in general), They interacted cautiously if at all with other evangelicals (the risk of contamination you know), disdained the public square (they were all going to hell in a handbasket), and generally just sang the hymns of a more vital past, congratulated themselves on their doctrinal purity, and waited for Christ’s return when he would destroy everyone but themselves.

Into this vacuum created by a moribund mainline church and a fearful evangelical one stepped a defiant secularism. Religion had proved a failure, philosophy a ruse. The secular would create a new society based on two seemingly opposed concepts: radical individualism and collectivism. Radical individualism: my body, my choices. Abortion, birth control, sexual expression, music, dress, Anything and everything that restricted my individual choices will be rejected as old-fashioned, hegemonic, oppressive. Let Freedom Ring!

At the same time, ideas like nationalism, patriotism, ethnic identification and pride (on the part of majorities), were all seen as threats to the very survival of the race. War is hell, and no one knew it better than those who emerged from the shelters of WWII. So they created, on a grand scale, international institutions designed to restrict national identity for the greater good. Here come the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Geneva Conventions, the Warsaw Pact, and so on, and so on, and so on.

The changes secularism brought about were gradual at first. Bible reading disappeared from the classroom. Then prayers. Birth control as a woman’s choice, then abortion as a hidden Constitutional right. Laws against what had long been held as moral perversions were declared unconstitutional infringements on individual liberty. Finally, the bedrock institution of society, marriage, was radically changed. In the quest for individual freedom, gender, the most important identifier of our humanity after being human itself, is seen as a barrier to self-identity and is being “abolished” from public discourse.

And now the church finds itself floundering about looking for a foundation upon which to stand. That which was born countercultural has become culture driven. Having seen public support for its moral principles evaporate, it doesn’t know how to respond. It has absorbed so much of the world about it, it finds it difficult to impossible to resist it. It loves the world; how is it to say, don’t love the world? The modern church hasn’t taught its members to think and act biblically. Don’t blame the people in the pew. It’s not their fault their pastors are preaching on how to be financially successful, or how to make a success of that second marriage, or how important it is not to be critical of others life choices.

In more ways than one, this is the best of days for the church. This is even better than the times of the early church. We have, each and every one of us, access to the bible – our own bible – in more translations than we can ever read or study. We don’t have to rely on oral traditions passed from pastor to pastor; we’ve got the Word as close to the originals as we can get. We have access to commentaries, biblical scholarship, great preaching, bible study aids, all these things that, with the amplification of the Holy Spirit, are meant to make us strong Christians who can live the love of Christ in the world -any world.

So the church is no longer the alpha dog in the social pack. It no longer has the State to enforce its beliefs on the rest of society. It’s flabby, and it’s ill-informed. But it is not left an orphan. These are times in which the church can excell. It can excell because it has the Truth. And it can excell because its master is God Incarnate, the maker and ruler of heaven and earth.

Motherhood can be easily divided into three phases.

The first phase is the easiest: conception, gestation, and birth. All it requires is a fertile woman and a willing sperm donor.

The second phase is the most difficult: the socialization, education, and spiritual formation of her children. This phase is often farmed out to other care providers: daycare, nannies, schools, youth pastors, gurus, Sunday Schools, etc. Mothers who place their children in other hands for this phase miss the joy and satisfaction of being the primary educator and character developer of their children.

The third phase is the most enduring: the mentoring of her adult children. If a mother has established a close teaching relationship with her children during their childhood and adolescence, her role as counselor/encourager and wise friend will last until death separates her from them.

Motherhood is awesome!