The Cultivated Man

Learning from Paul not Plotinus

The great theologian, Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) once wrote:

Culture in the broadest sense is the purpose for which God created man after His image . . . [which] includes not only the most ancient callings of . . . hunting and fishing, agriculture and stock raising, but also trade and commerce and science and art.

We are accustomed to think of culture as that which is distinct from science, and which refers to music, literature and fine art.   The Biblical framework is much, much broader when it comes to culture.  From the dictionaries, it appears that the word “culture” first came into English in the mid-15th century from Old French, from Latin cultūra  a cultivating, from colere  to till.
  It also had a broader application from around the same time of “cultivation through education”.  Culture as the intellectual component of civilisation came into the language from 1805. 

Always, however, cultivation and culture was association with religious faith.  The word “cult”, meaning not a deviant form of a religion, but the system of religious worship has the same Latin root, colere.  In the Scriptures and the Christian faith, culture maintains this broad meaning and application, as reflected in the quotation from Bavinck above. Culture is the work and activity of cultivating the creation and it embraces all lawful and moral human activity in the world. 

The poet W B Yeats captured the moral component of culture when he wrote:

 “For without culture or holiness, which are always the gift of a very few, a man may renounce wealth or any other external thing, but he cannot renounce hatred, envy, jealousy, revenge. Culture is the sanctity of the intellect.” [William Butler Yeats]

The “cultivated man” is the sanctified man.  On the sixth day of creation, man received his calling to be immersed in cultivation.

Until the sixth day, God has done the work of creation directly.  But now he creates the first human beings and orders them to carry on where he leaves off: they are to reflect his image and to have dominion (Genesis 1:26).  From then on, the development of the creation will be primarily social and cultural.  It will be the work of humans as they obey God’s command to fill and subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28). [Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1999), p. 295.] 

 Christians sometimes go astray at this point.  They divide their existence into two spheres: the sacred and the secular.  The latter they share with all men, non-Christian and Christian alike.  The sacred, or spiritual they share with Christians alone.

This notion owes more to Plotinus than Paul.  This world is above all God’s.  He created it out of nothing; He sustains it and all that is in it.  Man is His co-regent, His co-creator, His co-cultivator.  Unbelievers do this out of ignorance and in spite of their rebellion.  They serve Him unconsciously and do His bidding still.  Believers are to work at developing and subduing the creation, conscious that they are God’s servants, doing His bidding, and acting as His co-regents, co-creators and His co-cultivators.  

Sin introduces a destructive power into God’s created order, but it does not obliterate that order.  And when we are redeemed, we are not only freed from the sinful motivations that drive us but also restored to fulfill our original purpose, empowered to do what we were created to do: to build societies and create culture–and in doing so, to restore the created order. (Ibid.)

As we engage in our vocation and many avocations we co-labour with Unbelievers and remain thankful that they are there.  We could not cultivate the world without them.  We are too few.  Eventually, however, Christians will greatly outnumber Unbelievers as the nations are discipled unto Christ.  For the present we are thankful that all men still do His bidding.  But the cultural works of Unbelief are never good enough; they are always incomplete and inadequate because they are not self-consciously done to the glory and praise of the Creator.  

It is a holy thing to dig ditches and drive buses.  It is high culture in action.  Knowing this fills the life of the Christian with a sense of great dignity, purpose and holiness.  All of life is sacred; no part is secular.  The six days of labour are just as holy and devoted as the seventh–even as it was in the very beginning. 

As we contemplate the year to come, let us be thankful that God has called us to another year of holy labour and service to Him.  Let us be thankful that God has called us to be cultivated men and women.

Can We Prepare Our Culture to Receive the Gospel?

[A powerfully prophetic call from J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) for intellectual engagement in the culture as a means of pre-evangelism–Ed. Hat Tip: Justin Taylor]

We are all agreed that at least one great function of the Church is the conversion of individual men. The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no labor-saving devices in evangelism. It is all hard-work.

And yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the gospel.
It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel.

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.

Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. . . .
What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassioned debate.

So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity. . . . What more pressing duty than for those who have received the mighty experience of regeneration, who, therefore, do not, like the world, neglect that whole series of vitally relevant facts which is embraced in Christian experience—what more pressing duty than for these men to make themselves masters of the thought of the world in order to make it an instrument of truth instead of error?

—J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” in What Is Christianity? And Other Addresses, ed. Ned Stonehouse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), pp. 162-163; emphasis added.

>A Real Family

>The Importance of Intergenerational Consciousness

“But by far the most important channel of transmission of culture remains the family: and when family life fails to play its part, we must expect our culture to deteriorate.  Now the family is an institution of which nearly everybody speaks well: but it is advisable to remember that this is a term that may vary in extension.  In the present age it means little more than the living members.  Even of living members, it is a rare exception when an advertisement depicts a large family of three generations: the usual family on the hoardings consists of two parents and one or two young children.  What is held up for admiration is not devotion to a family, but personal affection between the members of it: and the smaller the family the more easily can this personal affection be sentimentalised.  But when I speak of the family, I have in mind a bond which embraces a longer period of time than this: a piety towards the dead, however obscure, and a solicitude for the unborn, however remote.  

“Unless this reverence for past and future is cultivated in the home, it can never be more than a verbal convention in the community.  Such an interest in the past is different from the vanities and pretensions of genealogy; such a responsibility for the future is different from that of the builder of social programmes.”   

T. S Eliot, Christianity and Culture, (London: Harcourt, Inc., 1948), p.116

>Watermelon Green

>Global Swarming

Douglas Wilson

In the previous post on stewardship, one commenter asked a reasonable question. Why is it that I consistently use green as a term of contempt? And when do I, if ever, speak of the genuine demands of biblical stewardship in the environment? Consider this as a first pass in attempting to answer that question.

First, why is it that I regard a Christian’s baptismal vows, which renounce the devil and all his works, to include a rejection of being green, going green, or thinking green? Is it because I don’t like the color? Is it because my motto is “Earth first! We’ll pave the other planets later”? Not a bit of it. Scripture begins with a garden, and it ends with (green) garden city. Not only am I okay with this, but I regard it as every Christian’s duty to live in a manner consistent with that overarching vision. So why do I gag on “green”?

It is for the same reason that you would not catch me in a Parisian mob, yelling “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” even though all three of those things are good things. I am not pro-choice, even though choice is good. I believe that Christ came to liberate the proletariat, even though I would never speak of it that way. Virtually every instance of greenthink you will encounter today is watermelon green — green on the outside, red on the inside. The thing is a statist sham from top to bottom, a naked, violent and abusive power grab. The issue for me is coercion and violence, and has nothing whatever to do with their promise to change the weather, for Pete’s sake.

Here is their game. “What can we talk people into caring about, so that we may then manufacture a crisis in that area, using that bogus crisis to seize power through the mechanism of the state, with that power being all-encompassing?” If any Christians are hardy enough to object, they just throw the word stewardship at them. What I am throwing back at them revolves around an understanding that the devil is the father of lies, and when he lies he does so fluently, speaking in his native language (Jn. 8:44). Jesus, by way of contrast, told us not to judge on the basis of superficial appearances, but to make a right judgment (Jn. 7:24). It is not enough to say that “the nice man,” who seemed very concerned, told me CO2 is a pollutant, and that nice weather is pollution. I mean, crikey. The fact that people are just galumphing along with this is a marvelous thing.

So what do I urge Christians to do positively? The question is a fair one — it is not possible to fight something with nothing, and it really is necessary for us to set forth a positively vision, one that is distinctively Christian. So when do I do that? Whenever I am writing about the progress of the gospel toward that garden city, these are the terms I use. I speak of these things using the vocabulary of the cultural mandate, exercising dominion, postmillennialism, the kingdom, the lordship of Christ over all things, being fruitful and multiplying, and liberty. These things are my green.

What can we do to get from here to there? How shall we then live? We should love God and love our neighbor. We should do what God says to do in the Bible, which incidentally does not include any attempts to supplant God. We should get a job and work with our hands, for example (Eph. 4:28). We should not attempt to play God, realizing that He said that He would bring these things about gradually, as the yeast works through the loaf. As we learn how to worship Him more faithfully, and give ourselves diligently to the task in front of us (that which is near and clear), that is what He will use to bring about what He has promised. But our current attempts at “stewardship,” to use an example of my wife’s, is like a newborn demanding the family checkbook in order to make sure the phone bill gets paid.

Those secularists who want to play doctor and “heal the environment” are violating one of the basic tenets of the Hippocratic Oath — “first, do no harm.” In the mass of their movement, there is a great deal of gullibility, and at the top there is a great deal of evil. Christians have better things to do than tagging along behind them, trying to figure out a way to attach John 3:16 to one of the floats in their parade. For many Christians, cultural engagement is nothing more than taking whatever the world dishes up, and then trying to find a verse or two to decorate it with. It is like science fair projects in many Christian schools. Do the astronomy project, set up the display board, and then at the last minute try to find a verse with stars in it.

While on this subject, the problem with Chesterton’s vision of “three acres and a cow” is not that he desired such a society. Who wouldn’t want to live in the Shire? The problem is that, if we resist the temptation of keeping things “perfect” through coercion, in about three weeks there will be one industrious fellow with six acres and two cows, and another fellow, less industrious, a former farmer, who will be down at the tavern, drinking too much.

But my insistence that we not intervene in utopian ways now ought not to be taken as an indication that I think that everything is just fine the way it is. No — our world is broken, and the creation groans. As we do justice, love mercy, and walk with humility, God will use that to bring about His good purposes. This world will be restored, fully restored, and our labors in the present will be used by Him to contribute to that restoration (1 Cor. 15:58). This entire world will one day sparkle an emerald green.

But that restoration will not be advanced by blunderers, who call CO2 a pollutant, or tyrants, who pollute the land with the blood of innocents. Neither will it be advanced by those Christians who tag along behind such, thinking that they can become leaders by following.

Republished from Blog and Mablog

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>The True Superman

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:5

There have been those in the history of Western thought who have argued that Jerusalem has done a great deal of harm to humankind. In particular Nietzsche believed that Christianity had emasculated man and turned him into a wimp. Man needed to re-claim his rightful place in the cosmos which was to thrust his chest forth in arrogance and do battle, once again, with the gods.

Texts such as “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”, are usually seen in a Nietzschean light. This particular text is often seen as calling for a life of self-negation, a life of poverty, chastity, non-violence, and withdrawal from the power structures of the world. Francis of Assisi would be a typical exponent of this “ideal.”

But such interpretations or glosses miss the mark completely. First is the need to understand what is meant by “meek” or “humble”. Moses is declared in scripture to be the humblest man of his generation in all the earth. But Moses was a warrior, a leader, a commander, a judge, a lawgiver, a wielder of the staff of God and of divine curses and blessings. He defeated and annihilated Pharaoh and his armies singlehandedly. The contrast between Moses and the self-negation of Francis of Assisi could not be deeper or stronger. It is clear that the meekness of which the Scriptures speak is very different from what is commonly understood.

The term meekness here means to be under the authority, command, and instruction of God. In this sense it does indeed refer to the opposite of Nietzsche’s Superman—he with the swollen chest and the strutting step—for Moses and those to whom our Lord referred are people who live with bowed knee before the Almighty in reverent fear. They are not their own. They are bondslaves of the Lord Jesus Christ and bear His slave-yoke.

But in the world-view of Jerusalem and of the Scriptures to be under authority is to bear and exercise authority. When God commands no human authority can interdict. One of the most graphic examples of the meekness of which the Scriptures speak is given to us by our Lord before Caiaphas. There is a steely quietness, a resolution, a determined willfulness, a “setting of the face like a flint” over which Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate and their minions have no control.

Christ, as bondslave of the Father, is captive before Caiaphas, but is about to inherit the heavens and the earth. He will descend to Hell, and will be raised up to the right hand of God the Father, Almighty. All power and authority in the heavens and upon the earth is to be given to Him. We, as bondslaves of Christ, inherit in Him and with Him. As He rules, so we are ruled and rule in our turn.

The earth that is our inheritance is very tangible, here and now, and real-worldly. The Greek word employed by our Lord is the word from which we get “geography” and “geology” and “geo-physics”. It refers to the tangible material world. The bondslaves of Christ, the citizens of Jerusalem, inherit the Americas, the Indian sub-continent, Africa, Asia, the Southern Ocean—and so forth. As Christ’s stewards, they come to rule over the entire globe, in His Name.

Now this process is not yet complete. But it will be. This is as certain as Christ’s sitting at the right hand of God. Even as all authority in heaven and upon earth has been granted to Him, so through His servants on earth He will progressively implement His authority over all nations, until all are discipled and all are meek and all bow the knee to Him alone.

Thus, the meekness of which Jesus speaks, and upon which He bestows His blessing is meekness which carries within it the realities of power and dominion. Rule and dominion over self, so that heart mind and soul are progressively conquered for service to the Lord. Rule and dominion over family, so that children are raised after the image and character of Christ. Rule over extended families, so that the needy and the weak are nurtured and strengthened. Rule and dominion over scholarship, commerce, health, welfare, agriculture, the natural environment—as far as the curse is found.

We live amongst a people who see themselves as Nietzschean supermen. They strut, swagger, and lord it over others. They despise the weak and the down trodden. Their voices are like brazen trumpets. Their deeds are fell and hard. They forficate humanity into “us” and “them” and despise the latter.

But neither the earth, nor humanity belongs to them. In their dividing they shall not conquer. Christ alone has conquered through meek obedience to the Father, and has inherited all the lands of earth—all that is in them and upon them. We, His followers, walk in His train and summon all who will to share in His inheritance. Bit by bit the Kingdom comes and the curse removed.

>A City Set Upon a Hill

>The Gospel in Africa

Matthew Parris, is a seasoned journalist and politician. He is also a professing atheist. He recently wrote a piece in The Times entitled, As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. The by-line read: Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem – the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset

This is a remarkable article.

We reproduce it in full below:

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers – in some ways less so – but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There’s long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don’t follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds – at the very moment of passing into the new – that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It’s… well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary’s further explanation – that nobody else had climbed it – would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Matthew Parris joined The Times as parliamentary sketchwriter in 1988, a role he held until 2001. He had formerly worked for the Foreign Office and been a Conservative MP from 1979-86. He has published many books on travel and politics and an autobiography, Chance Witness, for which he won the 2004 Orwell Prize. His diary appears in The Times on Thursdays, and his Opinion column on Saturdays

This is a remarkable article because of Parris picks up what so many superficial commentators fail to see. The Gospel transforms hearts, minds, and lives before it transforms communities. But the overall impact is like no other. We loved the observation that people under the influence of the Missions and the Gospel stood straight, and walked tall.

Hat Tip: The Briefing Room

>Hitting the Shops for the Boxing Day Sales–Again

>The Idolatry of Debt

We posted recently on the rapidly increasing levels of national debt we are facing in New Zealand. The current account has been in deficit every quarter for over fifteen years; not only has the deficit been getting larger overall, but the rate at which we are getting into debt is rising. The question is begged as to why this should be so. What is it about Athens that makes modern society addicted to debt fueled consumption?

Not all Athenian societies are thus afflicted. Take Japan as an example. Japan is implacably non-Christian, yet it has a high savings rate. One reason is that the Japanese have no choice but to save. Given the Confucian ethic of filial piety that pervades the eastern world, most Japanese believe they have a duty to take care of their aging parents, as well as their children. There is no statist welfare system. So Japanese society feels compelled to forgo present consumption and gratification for the sake of providing for the extended family in the future. Filial bonds and family love is a powerful motivator to save.

Moreover, the knowledge that you face the vagaries of life without the “safety net” of statist welfare brings a certain sobriety into one’s spending habits. Fear is also a powerful economic motivator to save.

Thus, Japanese society maintains a high savings rate. But in the post-Christian western world, Athens is characterised by rising indebtedness, low savings, and spectacular addiction to consumption lifestyles. And this is pretty much universal in the west. Why?

The reasons are spiritual—that is, to do with the prevailing and predominant religion of the day. The West has, in its post-Christian garb, become a culture of entitlement. Beliefs in universal human rights have transmogrified into a world where people believe they are entitled to just about everything. I have a right not to starve—regardless of whether I choose to work or not. I have a right to a certain standard of living—and others (the state) has a duty to ensure that I get it. I have a right to a certain minimum wage, regardless of what value my work might create. I have a right to a certain standard of living regardless of my enterprise, thrift, work, or lack thereof.

Freedom to pursue has become a right to expect and demand from others. Wherever state welfare has been adopted in Athenian societies, savings rates are low, debt is high, and consumption is relentless. The deeply held belief that society will provide for my future, encourages reckless consumption in the present. Consumption can quickly become addictive: the discipline to deny oneself in the present for the sake of future advantage disappears, being replaced by a culture of gratification in the present.

How many people seek to deal with depression by gorging on food, or by buying goods? When times become harder, debt levels rise, rather than consumption reducing. Gratification in the present easily justifies increased debt in order to maintain consumption. The rights-based culture of entitlement readily sanctions such behaviour.

What this has produced in modern western Athenian societies is a rapidly widening ghetto culture. Sociologist Edward Banfield characterises the attitudes of people captive in metropolitan ghettos, who cannot get out of them. Read carefully the following description of the ghetto mindset:

At the present-orientated end of the scale, the lower-class individual lives from moment to moment. If he has any awareness of a future it is of something fixed, fated, beyond his control: things happen to him, he does not make them happen. Impulse governs his behaviour, either because he cannot discipline himself to sacrifice a present for future satisfaction or because he has no sense of the future. He is therefore radically improvident: whatever he cannot use immediately he considers valueless. . . .

Although his income is usually much lower than that of the working-class individual, the market value of his car, his television, and household appliances and playthings is likely to be considerably more. He is careless with his things, howver, and even when nearly new, they are likely to be permanently out of order for lack of minor repairs. His body, too, is a thing “to be worked out but not repaired”; he seeks medical treatment only when practically forced to do so: “symptoms that do not incapacitate are often ignored.” . . . .

The lower class household is usually female based. The woman who heads it is likely to have a succession of mates who contribute intermittently to its support but take little or no part in rearing the children. In managing the children the mother (or aunt, or grandmother) is characteristically impulsive: once children have passed babyhood they are likely to be neglected or abused, and at best they never know what to expect next.

The Unheavenly City, p. 61,62

The thing here is that this lower-class world view is increasingly becoming the world view of the working class and the middle class and the upper class. The ghetto mentality and attendant world-view is spreading rapidly—as lifestyles of the “not so rich and not so famous” are being fueled by instant gratification with material possessions, funded by debt.

We cannot see how Athens will get out of this vice—short of some great shock or desperate exigency, such as a world-war. The problem lies at the heart of Athenian religion.

The Christian, however, has been turned away from the idolatry of Unbelief. His heart has been changed by the Spirit of Christ. The idols of entitlement have been broken. The Christian sees himself as a steward under God—responsible to the King to administer all income and capital in His Name, and as He commands.

The Scriptures declare that debt is a form of slavery. The borrower is slave to the lender. (Proverbs 22:7) Debt restricts our ability to be free to serve God. Therefore the Christian is very cautious about debt, deeply reluctant to enter into debt contracts, and seeks to pay it down as soon as possible.

Secondly, the Christian knows that he has a duty to prepare for the future. He must lay up an inheritance for his grandchildren. (Proverbs 13:22) Therefore his work, thinking, planning must encompass at least four generations: he must take care of his own aging parents; he must provide for his own wife and children; he must prepare, plan, and work for the benefit of his adult children and their future; he must also extend his thinking out to how he is going to contribute to the lives of his children’s children. This is what it means to be a Christian man or woman: it is a duty and calling that is all consuming and completely demanding. But it is the Lord’s way.

Therefore, thrift and disciplines of long term saving characterise the Christian lifestyle and world-view. Because the Christian has a future and a hope, and he knows that the future is more important than the present, he is willing to sacrifice enormously in the present for the sake of the future.

Athenians have no future and therefore no hope. They have only the present. The idol of entitlement requires constant obeisance and worship: “I will have it; I will have it now; and you will see that I get it”. In the end, Athenian society will crumble into grinding, degraded impoverishment. Only the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ can prevent the inevitable outcome.

>A Prison Without Bars

>Maori and Family Violence

We have become immune to seeing the appalling statistics which shows a massive over-representation of Maori in acts of family violence. Nowadays, because of the dominance of egg-shell like political correctness, the uber-vigilance of the Human Rights Commission, the febrile superficial sensationalism of the media, and the overwhelming predominantly left-wing, statist, socialist orientation of the country’s universities, such statistics tend to be reported in small print, and then largely left. No-one wants to engage in commentary, reflection, or public debate. It is sort of like the embarrassing open secret that everybody knows, but nobody talks about.

An example occurred recently when Simon Collins of the NZ Herald was reporting on a recent University of Auckland study on the frequency of abortion broken down by ethnicity. The last line of the article said: “Maori women were much more likely to have suffered violence during pregnancy (22 percent) than Pacific women (7 percent), Europeans (6 percent) or Asians (1 percent).” Thank you, Simon. And now, the sports news.

A plethora of pseudo-explanations for this correlation between Maori and family violence has surfaced over the years, all designed to excuse it in some way or other. None has really captured the field. It would appear, however, that the most acceptable explanation to Maori themselves is “victimology”—that is, the cause of (and therefore the blame for) the grossly disproportionate over-representation of Maori in family violence statistics is that they had their cultural and societal roots stripped away from them by marauding European colonialism. The subsequent loss of cultural identity has meant that their traditional family structures were unable to sustain them: caught between two worlds, Maori have simply fallen apart, socially speaking.

A typical example of this ideology was provided by Tariana Turia, co-leader of the Maori Party, when, during the national furore over child abuse that surrounded the Bradford Bill, Mrs Turia blamed the predominance of Maori violence toward their children upon the missionaries of the nineteenth century. Apparently up until Christianisation, the Maori loved their tamariki and indulged them, not needing to correct them. It was the missionaries who persuaded Maori to use corporal discipline upon their children—thus, starting the descent into violence we see today.

This kind of blame shifting is as old as the Garden of Eden (“it was the woman’s fault . . . ; no, it was the serpent’s fault . . .”); it is part of the universal human condition of sin, so it should not surprise us to see it recrudescent here. However, such explanations or justifications for evil behaviour are acceptable only to the superficially minded or the guilty looking for excuses. “You have got to be kidding,” is the appropriate response.

So, let’s try to be a bit more profound than Mrs Turia, and offer some better analysis.

Firstly, we are convinced the problem is not racial. Race is a huge red-herring. To say that Maori family violence is a produce of race is to say that it is genetically in-bred into Maori. Some geneticists have claimed, in recent years, to have isolated a “violence” gene in Maori, or a genetic configuration that predisposes Maori to violence. Even if that were true such a gene would be ethically neutral; it is how it is channeled or expressed that is at issue here.

We have no doubt that if there is a “violence” gene, of itself it is an excellent thing. We have desperately needed warriors in the past (witness the Maori Battalion) and we will no doubt need them again. There are many historical examples of warlike peoples and warrior cultures—but they were not necessarily known for beating their wives and children. It is all to do with how the aggression is channeled and controlled.

Secondly, we do believe the problem is cultural. Culture is the externalisation of one’s world view. What you believe determines is the final determinant of how you live and act. Moreover, cultures are communal, not racial. When people believe together, when they share beliefs, their acting out of those beliefs becomes more overt and prominent because a belief held in common with a community is easier to apply and work out. The community encourages the practices, endorses them, approves them, and assists in them. World-views (and therefore cultures) are combinations of beliefs that are true and false, good and evil, correct and wrong. To the extent that a community “takes on”, then externalises, false, evil and wrong beliefs, its culture will be weak, sinful, and degenerate.

So, what might be some of the wrong, false and evil beliefs held in common amongst Maori communities and consequently externalised in their lives? (We should add that these beliefs are not unique to Maori—but are common to all mankind to one extent or another. Severe problems will only arise when such false beliefs are strongly held or widely shared in particular families, communities, or groups—whether socio-economic, ethnic, or geographic). We believe, in no particular order, the following wrong or false beliefs are reaping a bitter fruit:

1. Bitterness over historical injustices; grievances due to past events. Becoming a victim of injustice or hardship is universal throughout human history; bitterness over it is not. Virtually every people, every culture could find examples in their past when their ancestors were raped, pillaged, hounded off their land, and unjustly persecuted. It has been a universal human condition. But the vast majority of peoples and cultures moved on.

One only has to reflect upon the extreme deprivations and gross injustices inflicted upon the Scottish Highlanders and the Irish peasants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the British—even to the point where their culture was outlawed—to see that any historical deprivations experienced by Maori in New Zealand were neither unique nor particularly extreme. We mention the Scottish and the Irish deliberately, because within two generations they had scattered over much of the known world, but their subsequent cultural, social, political, and intellectual impact upon the world has been prodigious. (The Scots Highlanders are particularly instructive because of their warlike and violent history.)

These people “moved on”. Yes, what happened to them was grossly unjust. Yes, they lost family members to persecution, disease, starvation. Yes, their culture was oppressed and rent. Yes, they lost their ancestral lands. But they believed the future was more important than the past, and they left their homelands to grasp it–just as many Maori, incidentally, have left to grasp a better future in Australia. (We have not seen any research, but we would expect that were some credible work to be done, we would find that the Ngati-roo are far more future orientated than their families in New Zealand, and far less pre-occuppied with historical grievances).

The Scots and Irish did not believe (probably because they were not told) that they were victims who needed compensation. They did not allow themselves to become bitter. They went on, in their own way, to make a better living for themselves. One of the most debilitating false beliefs a person can ever entertain is that they are damaged goods because of what has happened in the past, and that they will therefore never amount to much, unless they are apologised to and compensated in some way. This false belief makes the past a prison.

2. A tolerance and acceptance of state welfare. Sir Apirana Ngata, during the parliamentary debates on state welfare when it was first introduced to New Zealand by Michael Savage prophesied that it would be the death of his people. He has been proven right. State welfare is a poison pill because it makes one economically, and therefore culturally, dependant. It enslaves. In fact, it is the worst form of slavery imaginable, insofar as the chains become internal not external; and the slavery is of the heart.

Under historical slavery, at least the enslaved could take a modicum of pride in what they did, what they achieved each day. State welfare enslaves without chains. It makes one dependant, and strips away even the self-respect that comes from the achievements of work.

State welfare has other destructive effects. It undermines and rots family structures. When men are on welfare, they become redundant and “past their use-by date” for the family duties and responsibilities. Their wives and their children will be taken care of whether they are there or not, whether they work or not, whether they earn a living or not. Moreover, since welfare is related to children and is child-based, mothers become the primary conduit of income into the family. The prevailing redundancy, irrelevance, and useless of men under state welfare is one of the most destructive influences upon social and family fabric.

To the extent that state welfare is more predominant amongst Maori communities, to that extent Maori families are weakened and torn apart. But, don’t blame the state welfare system: the blame needs to fall squarely on the false belief that accepting income from the state is OK. It’s not OK! It’s deadly.

There are many other wrong or false beliefs which are bearing rotten fruit amongst Maori people—leading to the over-representation in family violence, crime, and other socially destructive behaviour. As we said above, these false beliefs are not unique to Maori, they are not errors or weaknesses of race; they are, however, cultural falsehoods. They have to be addressed: clearly, firmly, unequivocally.

Who might address them? Clearly not the left-wing intelligensia. Clearly not the government and its various departments of state. Clearly not the media. These are all part of the problem. They largely share the same false world-view that is causing the problem. It needs to be addressed by individual Maori leaders who are prepared to stand up and tell the truth to their own.

We await more Maori leaders who will stand up and say, “It’s not OK to believe that you are disadvantaged and oppressed. It’s a lie.” Or, “It’s not OK to live on state welfare. It’s slavery. Get off it. Get a job.” Or, “It’s not OK to live in envy of successful family members. Imitate their example—sure—but it’s not OK to put the hand out to them.”

Those Maori who have stood up and spoken—and there are numerous examples—we believe are the true heroes and heroines of their people. We salute them, and hope that many follow in their train.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>The Blessing of God in our Labours

Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labour in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman keeps awake in vain.
Psalm 127:1

This is a wonderful text to remind us of the “true state of play.” What it tells us is that when I am building a house, there are really two people who are building it: myself and God. If God is not building the house in, with, and through me, then it is an utter waste of time.

Similarly when the watchman is patrolling the city, there are really two people who are on guard: the watchman and God. If God is not there, so as to be working in and through the vigilance of the watchman he might as well go to sleep.

This perspective, which belongs only to the citizens of Jerusalem, makes the Believer’s zeitgeist, or “way-of-looking-at-the-world” completely different from the Unbeliever.

In the first place, it tells us that all of life is holy. God actually does build houses and guard cities. He also feeds children, does accounts, and drives cars. He does these things in and through our doing them. As Luther used to say, when the milk-maid milks the cows, God is milking the cows.”

The pagan view is completely different. In the pagan view, both men and gods are on the same chain of being; the gods are merely a higher form of man. Thus, in Unbelief the gods are conditioned and shaped by the actions and re-actions of man. Similarly, man is conditioned and shaped by the gods. The gods do something and we react or respond.

For the Unbeliever, all existence is a matter of a co-operative enterprise between man and his gods (however they are conceived to be). Thus, when man does something, he looks to his god to do its bit. We do something, god makes a contribution, and together we achieve success. This concept is applied to the matter of salvation. We do some things which are right or good; we live a certain way; and we expect the gods will approve our acting in good faith, and meet us half-way, as it were, and deliver us or save us, or do for us whatever we are wanting them to do.

Thus, the Unbeliever might fast a bit, pray a little, or offer up a token of incense. In so doing, he is seeking to buy the favour of his god, so that the god will do its bit, respond, and give him what he wants. All superstitions work this way. Sadly there are not a few in Jerusalem’s walls who have brought the pagan zeitgeist with them; they have not yet grown out of it.

On the other hand, many Christians remain fundamentally confused about our work and God’s work and how they interrelate in another direction. They have come to realise that God is so great that He is utterly unlike them. They don’t want to trust their own work. Human labour they think is a “work of the flesh.” They think that all that they do is a waste of time; useless effort. It is not “living by faith.” Therefore, they think the best course is to “let God and let God take over.” At its most extreme, they would not pick up the hammer to build the house. They would sit and wait until God did it for them. They would sit down and not watch the city at night. If it stayed safe they would say, Look it was God who guarded the city. I was asleep.

Such believers are always decrying their own efforts; they are looking instead for the unexpected, the different outcome, the change of direction. When this happens they think that God, rather than they, is at work. They will give away their means of support and wait for someone else to provide for them—which they will claim had to be a work of God, since they had contributed nothing.

The biblical view is radically different from both these pagan perspectives. The Believer knows that God has both commanded that houses be built and declared who is responsible to build them. But more than this, every man who builds a house only does so by the power and work of God. As Paul said, “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Elsewhere, he is inspired by God to declare to the Philippians: “ . . . work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2: 12,13)

Notice the relationship: as the Philippians work out their salvation, God is working and willing in their work. Thus when we build the house we do so in faith, believing that God is building it through us; we look to Him to make our labour successful, that the house might stand. When Believers grasp this truth, they no longer remain confused over how much they should do, and how much they should expect God to do. They will work and act with vigor and diligence, since they will need to do it all. But as they labour, they work in faith, looking to God to work in their work that it might indeed be successful and stand.

This is why Jerusalem is such a dynamic and vital city. Its citizens believe and know that God is as work in and through their work. Not only is this inspiring—it also makes our labours a great joy and privilege.

>ChnMind 1.26 Common Grace and Universal History

>The Perpetual Restraint of Evil

And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.”
Genesis 8:21

In this series of essays, The Christian Mind: Foundations in Genesis we are seeking to document the foundations and structures which control human life and history upon the planet. We are looking at constitutive institutions―that is, those institutions which ineluctably and inevitably shape all of life and existence. Some theologians call these “creation” structures or “creation ordinances”.

If we as Christians are to think properly, to think God’s thoughts after Him, it is vital that we see the world as it really is, not as we would imagine or speculate it to be. This means that we need to ensure that our thinking is framed by the structures of creation itself, and by the institutions which God has appointed to structure all human existence. It also means that we will view the world in a radically different way from Athenian Unbelievers. Since Athenian Unbelievers currently predominate in our culture, what our culture accepts as “normal” and true is likely to be profoundly untrue and abnormal. If Christians uncrtically accept the dominant consensus beliefs of our day they will end up thinking the Devil’s thoughts after him.

The citizen of Jerusalem, then, has a duty self-consciously to sweep out the rubbish and mental detritus that are vestiges of Unbelief, and deliberately replace the furniture of the mind with biblical constructs, principles, truths, and institutions. As citizens of Jerusalem make progress in this housecleaning of the mind they become increasingly useful in God’s service. They also become increasingly powerful and influential in the Creation, since they are increasingly living in the real world—as it really is—not in the false, makebelieve world of Unbelief.

The modern Unbelieving Athenian Mind more or less denies the basic creational institutions are structures at all. All Unbelivers most certainly deny that the creation ordinances were ordained and commanded by the Living God. They may acknowledge the central importance and constitutive character of marriage, for example, for the survival of the species, for the psychological well-being of mankind, or for the foundation of society―but not as an ordinance appointed by God.

Consequently, the Unbelieving Mind has a tendency to view these creation ordinances (when they acknowledge and respect them) as habituated practices, relative to their time and circumstance. From time to time it becomes fashionable within Athens to attempt to do away with them, improve them, declare them obsolete, replace them with “modern, enlightened alternatives” or substitutes. Nevertheless, all such attempts fail; the basic structural realities of creation keep being re-asserted in all societies that continue because God rules the cosmos and the earth, not humanist, unbelieving man.

Evil in the human heart, the perpetual enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, idolatry, marriage, man being in the image of God, the seventh day of rest―all these, and many more, shape, condition, make, and mould human existence through the ages. We have said that one of these creational ordinances was appointed after the Great Flood of Noah. The antediluvian world was one in which sin was not restrained, but was allowed to come to its fullest and most consistent expression. The postdiluvian world is one where God governs the world, so as to restrain sin. This was necessary if the world and human history were to continue.

When we are considering the nature, state and depravity of man, therefore, we need always to keep two realities in mind: that man is evil and utterly depraved in every respect―on the one hand―and God rules over mankind so as to restrain and hold back man’s evil―on the other. It is natural that Athenians would distort these truths, reasoning from the empirical evidence to false, idolatrous conclusions. Seeing the relative good of mankind, from time to time, Athenian mythology proclaims the innate goodness, or the moral perfectability of man. The Unbelieving Mind is driven to this interpretation and conclusion for the opposite―whichis the actual truth―cannot be fitted into the Unbelieving Mind. It could not possibly be true. It is excluded from the outset. If man is the measure of all things―a belief which all Unbelievers cherish ever since the Fall―he must be innately good, by definition, insofar as good has any meaning at all.

However, the Scriptures repeatedly declare another, contrary, true view of man. In the antediluvian world, as it was about to come to an end, God declared that He had seen the wickedness of man; that it was great upon the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of the heart of man was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5) Note the generic term. God is describing mankind―humanity.

This incessant universal comprehensive wickedness of mankind did not end with the Flood. What ended with the Flood was God’s allowing such comprehensive wickedness to be expressed and institutionalised within human history. Mankind did not somehow become more righteous and less sinful after the Flood. Rather, the Lord explicitly declares that this was not the case. In Genesis 8: 21 He promises that He would never again destroy the whole earth on account of man. Now one might be tempted to draw a conclusion from that declaration that this could only be because mankind somehow underwent a moral transformation as a result of the Great Flood. But not so. God again declares, in the same breath as His declaration that He will not destroy the whole earth again, that the “intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”

The recorded history of mankind in Scripture is one of repeated sin and evil―even amongst the redeemed people of God. The Scriptures are relentless, if not ruthless, in recording the sins of the saints―almost matter-of-factly. David declares that sinfulness attended him from the moment of conception: “behold I was brough forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)

Jeremiah declares that the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:10). Psalm 14 pronounces that the sons of men (note the universality of the phrase) have all turned aside; there is no-one who does good, not even one. Paul takes up this text in his description of the universal degradation and evil of the entire race: “both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one.” (Romans 3: 9―18)

Why then does evil not fill the earth, as it did before the Flood? Because God restrains it, preventing man from maturing in evil, preventing man from being consistently true to his nature. This divine ordinance of restraining evil theologians call Common Grace, or Creation Grace, or Restraining Grace. It is a complex, mulit-faceted astounding work of God that goes on all the time. It means that the wicked are made to serve God, despite themselves.

In some forms, Common Grace punishes the wicked through the judgments of the civil magistrate upon criminals, thereby restraining wickedness. In other forms, it allows the wicked to reap the fruit of their wickedness so that they lose cultural power and influence over themselves, others and the creation. So the drug addict destroys his own life. The self-absorbed abort their own children, or choose to stay childless, cutting off their lines of descent, thereby dying out. The wicked flee when no-one pursues, says the Proverb, and consequently many Athenian Unbelievers are imprisoned and emasculated by one phobia or another.

Moreover, the dissolute wealthy are reduced to poverty and, thereby, cultural weakness. Yet again, the Unbelieving world is currently fixated with a cult of victimhood—which serves to ennervate and weaken and emasculate Unbelieving culture. In addition, when envy stalks a culture, becoming regnant within it, men become afraid to excel, fearing the rejection and hostility that will result.

The cult of Feminism has radically reduced the cultural influence and power of Unbelieving women. It has also feminised Unbelieving men, leading to their cultural emasculation as well. Modern theories of education—which have drawn upon a radically unbiblical world view—result in the institutionalised transmission of ignorance, leading to growing illiteracy and innumeracy. Cultural ennervation is the outcome. Terribly fashionable “rights-based” ideologies such as multi-culturalism lead to a dissolution of common beliefs, a loss of social coherence, and fragmentation—which, in turn, causes a culture to whither or even die out.

These cultural patterns of reaping the consequences of sinful living are not universally true―there are always exceptions. They are not universally true, because the Lord has decreed that His hand will be held back in final judgment, so that His purposes in human history can be realised and the glory of His Son can be manifested throughout all nations. Nevertheless they are true often enough to restrain and debilitate the influence of evil. The book of Proverbs provides repeated examples of how Common Grace eviscerates wickedness by causing it to reap its own fruit.

In the meantime, the wicked are so restrained in the expression of their sinfulness that they are made to serve God in being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth. They hunger, and so work and struggle to get food. They suffer loneliness and thus long for a life-mate and are restless until they find one. They shiver in the cold, and so labour to get wealth to protect themselves.

Basic instinctual drives are maintained by the Lord such that the Unbeliever still cares for his children, still loves his extended family, still respects his lords and governors to a degree, still has an affection for mankind in general. Not always. Not universally―but enough to ensure that the world does not destroy itself, and mankind continues to work at subduing the creation. These things are vestiges, remnants of a long-ago first parent; they are echoes of the Garden of Eden. They are not consistent with the true spiritual state of all men―which is to be enslaved to evil all the day. But the Lord keeps them within mankind, in his instincts, hungers, drives, and longings in such a way that sin is restrained and prevented from taking over everything.

Common grace makes universal history possible. It allows the world to continue, without end. It sustains the phenomenon of cause and effect. It helps gives all human history a universal meaning.

Without this wonderful work of God, sin would surely triumph. Hell would come upon earth. Or if it does, for a time, it integrates into the void, destroys itself, and life begins again. The Soviet Union under Stalin, Pol Pot, the unrestrained warlordism of Iraq or Darfur—these provide glimpses of what the world would become if the Lord were to remove His restraining hand.

The institution of Common Grace teaches us that man is not as wicked as he would be, if the Lord did not stretch forth His hand to restrain evil in his heart. The second implication is that Athenian culture is a paper tiger. Jerusalem is far more powerful and will eventually triumph over Athens. That City is always feeding upon itself, gnawing on its own bones, practising self-immolation, and engaged in acts of auto-cannibalism. Jerusalem, however, is fed by living waters and its fruit does not fail.

This certainty of triumph does not lead Jerusalem to engage in crass jingoism, however. For Jerusalem knows to the very core of her being that she exists solely by the grace and mercy of the Lord. When Jerusalem looks at Athens, engaged in its self-destructive immolation, she involuntarily cries out: “There, but for the grace of God, go I. Once I was blind, but now I have been made to see. Once I walked in those wretched streets, but now God has made me to dwell in a fair and pleasant land.” And her heart breaks with compassion for the lost in that wretched city.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Tearing Athens Down

Keep your behaviour excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

I Peter 2:12

In the apostolic and early centuries of the Christian Era the church was subject to the most extreme forms of slander. It was rumoured that Christians engaged in cannibalism during their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, of incest, orgies, and all kinds of immoralities. Our world is no different. Slander against Christians is the “name of the game.”

It is easy for citizens of Jerusalem to get upset at this treatment. Many feel compelled to correct the lies and slander. Wherever we have opportunity we should probably attempt to do so. However, we should always be aware that in these matters truth, sadly, is not the currency of the realm. The world is eager to believe the worst of Christians and the Church. In fact a virtual sure-fire way to amass great wealth is to publish a novel that alleges Christian conspiracies, cover-ups, lies, and distortions and it is almost guaranteed to become a best seller.

In our text of the week Peter takes it for granted that Unbelievers will slander our Lord, the Church and Christians and accuse us of doing evil. Thus they treated the Christ while He was upon earth; it has continued ever since. Regardless of what is said, however, the best rejoinder is continued excellent behaviour and good deeds. Ignore the slander; keep living the Christian ethic. Lyndon Johnson, hardly a role model for the Church we acknowledge—yet nevertheless offered some sage advice. He used to say, when confronted with outrageous accusations or slander, “There are some things you don’t dignify with an answer.” Christ’s directive to us is similar: don’t be distracted from the real task at hand, which involves living according to My commandments and instructions.

One thing we can be sure of: regardless of the slander, when God visits particular Gentiles He leads them to observe our lives and our good living is marked by them. Maybe the very slander has led them to take a closer look. They find the very opposite of what they had been led to believe. This shakes their unbelief and they begin to speak respectfully and appreciatively of what they see. They come to the point where they glorify God for what they have seen—and they, themselves, pass over from Unbelief to faith.

A striking example of this is afforded by the Philippian jailor. He, in his person and office, was a concrete representation of Gentile slander against Christians. But when the earthquake struck, Paul’s immediate response was to act swiftly to do good and prevent harm coming to the jailor by his own hand. It was indeed the day of visitation for this man. He asked Paul and Silas what he must do to be saved and he believed that very night. (Acts 16: 28–34)

There are two things God has put forth to break the world of Unbelief apart. The first is the proclamation of the Gospel. The second is the lives of Christians. Paul admonishes us not to lose heart in doing good—for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary. Therefore, as we have opportunity, we are to do good to all men, especially those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6: 9,10)

The Kingdom of God does not come by clash of arms, by imperious force, or by the sword. The Kingdom of God comes by God visiting people, so as to convince them of their sins and misery, enlighten their minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renew their wills, leading them to embrace Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. The means of their visitation—by which God comes to people to save them—are the hearing of the Gospel and the lives of Christians devoted to doing good to all men.

These weapons, despised as vanities and worthless by the world, are powerful for the tearing down of every fortress raised up against God and His Christ. These are the weapons which will break Athens apart in due time, if we do not lose heart or grow weary.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Can the Wicked Succeed?

Psalm 1 is like a song of Tolkien’s Bombadil, except it is the genuine article. It is a song of power which shapes the course of men and women in the world. It decrees and ordains divine blessing for the person who sets his heart upon the law of the Lord. This person will enjoy ever verdant fruitfulness of life. To use another Tolkien image, the righteous man blessed of the Lord dwells perpetually in Rivendell.

But the life course of the wicked could not be more different. They are like chaff which the wind dries away. Chaff is dry, dessicated, devoid of substance or life. It is without weight or significance. As the grain is tossed into the air, the feather-weight chaff drifts away.

In our post-Christian age the Lord’s people can be fooled into assuming that this state of affairs will last—that it will be more-or-less permanent. But Psalm 1 tells us otherwise. The strength of the wicked is a chimera. It is a paper tiger. The strength and influence of the wicked will end up being of no more significance or substance than chaff which the wind drives away.

Rather, the Lord knows the way of the righteous. He establishes it. He approves it. He blesses it. But upon the wicked He turns His back and they perish.

The wicked neither believe nor pray, so the hand of God is not extended to them. The wicked are increasingly absorbed with themselves and their pleasures; they cannot build anything of lasting significance. The wicked are focused upon the immediate present; they are unable to sacrifice to build for the future. The wicked no longer believe in marriage and family. Children are rug rats and, at best, a lifestyle choice. The lines of the wicked are growing increasingly thin and tenuous. The wicked no longer care about laying up an inheritance for their children. It is all about present gratification. The wicked cannot build up capital; it will be consumed—always consumed upon their appetites. The wicked are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The wicked increasingly integrate into the void.

The righteous, however, go from strength to strength. Adversity simply becomes the drawing back of the catapault to forge them further ahead. Working with the creation and its divinely structured order—rather than against it—they are culturally powerful. The Lord God watches over them to make it so. The righteous are filled with days of life—powerful life.

But the doors and gates of the Great City are always open, and the righteous are always urging the wicked to leave the way of blight and rust and mould, and come—come, now!—for why would you stay in the paths which have been cursed by God’s songs of power.