Lust for Power Becomes a Powerful Lust

When the self and the state supplant Christ as moral authority, the law becomes "do whatever you like as long as you don't put your neighbor in physical danger." As Anothony Esolen says, this means we will be ruled by our appetites (Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civ.).

Why the Modern State is Jealous of the Ancient Church

Charles Matthews, on the latest Mars Hill Audio Journal, points out that the modern nation state has made the church an offer. It offers the church "freedom" if it would understand itself as a denomination within the overarching category of the nation state. Christians needs to politely say, "No deal!" And consequences be damned. This is because the Bible calls the church "a holy nation" and anything less is bowing to Nebuchadnezzar and no true freedom (2 Peter 2:9).

The state makes this offer because it feels threatened by the absolute loyalty Christians are called to give to Christ. It is also jealous of the church's God-given role in the world. In other words, the state wants absolute loyalty and to do everything Christ has called the church to do, like mercy ministry, which it calls welfare. The modern nation state wants us to believe that there's a political remedy to our every ill and has gotten the church to abdicate its vocation to heal these diseases.

Douglas Wilson has pointed out that, in a sense, every state is a theocracy. The state either points the way to the true God, false gods, or puts itself forward as god. I would argue that the modern nation state of America has done the latter. The neutral secular state is a myth. Cavanaugh in his Migrations of the Holy has pointed out that the we have assembled the largest military in the history of the world in order to propagate our homemade religion here and abroad.

We must love our nation enough to want it to be just.

Writing for the Word

Wordsmithy | Why Christians must write, and what they must write about | Doug Wilson from Daniel Foucachon on Vimeo.

Christian Comedy

The ancient pagan worldview said, "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die." Jesus said, "Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." Anthony Esolen points out that the pagan worldview is tragic, but the Christian worldview is a comic (Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, 95-96).

Not Caring What Anybody Thinks

I preached on Reformation Sunday in Muncie, IN and in chapel at Heritage Classical on Reformation Day. I came to the conclusion, based on Romans 1:16-17, that once you know you have God's righteousness you don't care what anybody thinks. That's what gave Luther courage to defy the two super powers of his day:

[Since you desire a plain answer I will give it] Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other God  help me. Amen.

Then I ran across this on Blog and Mablog:

Courage . . . is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry . . . If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinions, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them" (Phillips Brooks, as quoted in Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 300).

Annus Significans

1831: Year of Eclipse by Louis P. Masur
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Start with a solar eclipse, add Nat Turner's slave Rebellion, Charles Finney's revivals, de Tocqueville's travels, the Trail of Tears, nullification debates with John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and the octogenarian John Madison, Audobon's birds, a cholera epidemic, a pinch of Transcendentalism, then shake violently and you have the most important year in ante-bellum America.


Masur brings in Frances Trollop, Beaumont, Tocqueville, the British Hamilton, and a host of others to show us as a nation living numerous contradictions, such as liberty and slavery, law and Indian removal, the rise of the Democratic Party led by King Andrew I, and the celebration of nature and industrial revolution. Tocqueville shows us to be a nation of conquerers who thrive on instability and are driven by the profit motive. Individualism, rugged and revivalistic, was running rampant and would eventually redefine democracy as the pursuit of personal preference.


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