All right. I would like to welcome each and all of you here for the third evening, the third Thursday evening of the evening class at Mid-America Reform Seminary. My name is Mark Beach. I teach ministerial and doctrinal studies here at Mid-America Reform Seminary. Our two previous sessions, our evenings with two sessions each, we took up moral reasoning in the first session, and then we looked at question of Christian perspective or worldview in the second session of that first evening. Last week, in our first session, we looked at the current ethical problem of pornography in our culture, and then the more recent question of transgenderism. Tonight, we hope to look at ethical questions which Christians face, particularly in the matter of our perspective of cultural engagement. We're going to look at different perspectives, different models Christians have proposed for cultural engagement. I don't mean just political engagement, I mean just living your life. out in the world as a believer, a world that generally is an unbelieving world, or predominantly so. We hope to explore different models for that. And then in the second session tonight, look at strengths and weaknesses of the respective models we present. and also sketch out more recently in the face of believers in America and the North American and European setting feeling particularly vulnerable that the culture is even more hostile than it has been here before. And Rod Dreher presenting a view that he calls the Benedict Option. So we'll give some consideration to that as well. To begin tonight's show, we have a word of prayer together. We're thankful, Lord, for this opportunity to learn together, to explore issues that face believers in the world as we seek to serve you together. We know as we talk about different models, different church traditions, some critical remarks are made, but we know we're all your children seeking to live before your face and seeking to be faithful to you. May we learn from each of these models and grow together and be equipped, better equipped, to live our lives out in the world as your people. And so, Lord, we ask your blessing in all that we do this evening for Jesus' sake. Amen. Well, the big theme is Christians living in a sin-stained world. And we're only sketching out a few ethical questions. Next week, which will be our final session, set of sessions, we hope to look at the question of deception in our world and the whole struggle to live truthfully in a world of deception, and sometimes even how truth is used viciously. It's not just a matter of, there, I tell the truth, I never tell a lie, no matter what. Well, you can be very vicious and you can actually be one who helps evil along quite a bit if you practice truth with undiscernment. So we'll be looking at that next week. But tonight, this cultural engagement question. Frankly, I don't think this is spoken about very clearly from pulpits. I think we kind of imbibe of you in the church tradition. It's never like explicitly taught, unless perhaps you go to a Christian college and maybe in a philosophy class and it's articulated for you. But often it's not. But we all have a view nonetheless, and we've usually imbibed it in the church culture we grew up in. So we're familiar with intramural debates the church faces, like gender roles, the War Department of the church, music, special music, worship, protocols. More recently, every church has faced controversy about COVID protocols. Every eldership feels like they're beaten up on, and it's just like, well, join the club, because every other church is facing the same controversies. We know about doctrinal issues, but what about this, the debates that surround the church engaging the world? How do we, and how should we, engage the culture in which we find ourselves? Well, central here are questions of how you view human depravity. and its extent, and by extent I don't just mean in you, its extent as it bears effect within a wider society. It pertains to the role of common grace and its effects as well. The aim or goal or responsibility that the church has towards society at large. What's your role as a citizen, as a Christian, and what's the individual believer's role in this? And if you have a role, if you care about society's welfare, what authority do you go to? What governs this? What guides you, determines how you're going to make an appeal? to Christians living out in the world. So these are the topics and they're often discussed under the topic of Christ and culture. That's usually and then different models of Christ and culture. So you could say that's sort of the topic tonight. We address this issue mildly and kind of indirectly in the second session of our first evening together when we talked about worldview and differing worldviews. But that was just a short sketch. Given the nature of this class and what we're about, everything's a sketch. It's just a short outline. We can't dig in deep detail in one evening. But maybe we can get a picture of some of the models. I'm going to start with the Two Kingdom model, and specifically a more articulated reformed version of that model. Some recent reformed writers reject the idea of worldview. That's not in their purview. I will, as you already know, I do advocate the notion of worldview. And I think the idea seems incontrovertible in as much as everyone views life, everyone interprets life, gives it meaning and purpose through a lens or a perspective by which They articulate values and live out of them, out of a set of commitments. Perhaps they're analyzed, perhaps they're not. but that Nietzsche viewed life through a lens, and Lenin viewed life through a lens, and Abraham Kuyper viewed life from a lens. Those aren't the same worldviews. So I take this as incontrovertible. But instead of worldview, this model posits that the Christian lives a distinct life as a believer, as a member of Jesus Christ in the arena of the church, while living a common life with all human beings in the arena of the world, the common kingdom. Certain Lutheran writers were not afraid to talk about two hemispheres. These reformed writers talk about two kingdoms. two realms, a spiritual kingdom called the church, a common kingdom called the world. So when they talk about two kingdoms, they're not first of all talking about the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. They're talking about two ways God governs us in life. the church kingdom, the common kingdom. This two kingdoms model has both, as I said, a Lutheran and a more radical reformed expression. This model does have some reformed pedigree, but going back in history to its reformed pedigree, you need to understand it was a model expressed and practiced when Christendom reigned. which puts a little different twist on it. What about when secularism reigns, when total unbelief in humanism reigns? Well, that is the controversial question. So this model is not counter-cultural or transformative of culture, but embraces culture as a given to be occupied by the believer. with the unbeliever, with believers seeking to live well and do good to their neighbors according to the shared authority and standard of justice, Or we call it the court of appeal of natural law, which is discerned through reason, collective reasoning together, discovering truth, exercising wisdom, and getting on that way. Now, that's just a sketch. It's not the view I favor. So always the view you favor, you're going to be more sympathetic and defensive about. But I don't want to be unfair to it. And later, I'll talk about what I consider some of its strengths. The counter-cultural model, quite different than the above, it's explicitly counter-cultural, hostile in its disposition toward culture. It involves a posture of retreat from the world. Historically, this view has been most identified with the Anabaptists, and you want a more radical example of that, think of the Amish. communal living. That's a radical example of it, but it helps you understand it. There are other newer versions of this, including various forms of pietism, including reformed pietism, and many of us perhaps were raised with reformed pietism, and this feels comfortable to us, perhaps. Some called new monastics are tagged under this label. This model requires that believers live in the world, get on in the world, but avoid the worldly givens of the worldly culture as much as possible. So it has a little bit the aroma of taste not, touch not. Advocates of this view regard worldly culture as irreformable, The Christian life is split between the sacred world of Christian fellowship and worship and preaching and Bible study and prayer and all that, and the secular world outside of that. Outside of that is the secular world. Sometimes communal living is seen as an avenue to escape the whiter fabric of life out there in the world. And so you can go to different places that have those ancient colonies, you know, the Amana colonies in Iowa, for example. as remnants of that world. The more recently proposed Benedict option of Dreher is probably a very mild version of this, but he, in that little chart, I first placed it somewhere, but really he's nearer the center overall where he wants to land, I think. It's not, it doesn't aim to affect change in culture because they don't think that's possible. And so in that sense, it's certainly not transformative. Dreher is sort of indirectly and locally wanting to be transformative. So there's another model. And many of us, I think, were raised implicitly with this model. Then there's the cultural relevance model. Some are familiar with the old social gospel model, or at least you've heard of it, which was driven by classic liberal theology, or what's called neo-Protestantism, where a kind of cultural relevance prevails. some emergent church models and certainly back in the 70s and 80s when liberation theology was in its heyday, it fits under this model. This view was popularized in the United States by Walter Rauschenbusch. I always give students extra credit if they spell Rauschenbusch correctly and Schleiermacher correctly. Especially, this was set forth, not for, it's supposed to be forth, in his book, A Theology for the Social Gospel. For the Social Gospel. That dates all the way back to 1917. Now, Rauschenbusch lived and ministered among the poor And think of the many immigrant poor back at the turn of the century there in New York City's District of Hell's Kitchen. And what he saw is, yeah, they're all sinners. Yeah, they're guilty before God. But they have all these pressing problems. And he recognized, and this is one of the key features of social gospel, it recognizes that sin takes on social characteristics. Sin bears fruit in social institutions, in laws that are passed to advantage some and disadvantage others. And so that needs to be addressed practically and concretely as such. Now before you over-bristle at social gospel, and most evangelical and conservative reform people do, it's a curse word almost. Don't forget your Jesus Savior cared about starving people, hungry people, broken people, crippled people, blind people. So just slow down a little bit before you just get all your dupes up. Slow down just a tad and don't forget that this world is filled. Go to India. Go to all kinds of poor lands and places where they need the good news of salvation, but they also need clean water. They need good hygiene. They need medicine. And so the church is always astray when it thinks it's the gospel versus physical needs and justice and care. If you have to live under injustice, you're ready to get your guns out. Oh, but if someone else does, we don't care about that. I'm not saying I follow Rauschenbusch, I'm saying the question he raises is something we better raise. because it's part of faithfulness to Jesus Christ. So there's also milder versions of this view. But this view recognizes that sin is not solved by a sermon in church. You didn't solve the problem of chattel slavery in the United States. because a few Protestant ministers said, no, no, stop it. In fact, that one took a war of slaughter and we're still not over its repercussions. So, if you're going to act like sin doesn't have social, doesn't affect us socially and weave into politics, then why do you care how you vote? Oh, you do care how you vote. Oh, that's a sinful poll. Oh, so you do, too, care. Oh, thank you. Right. We need to get past a phrase, social justice, and put Christian content into it. So that's another model. Softer versions of this model, to be culturally relevant, wants to speak in an idiom so that worldly people who have no church background understand what we're trying to say to them. So, you know, the seeker-sensitive model and the megachurch model. is mildly part of this. Not because it's maybe robust on social justice, but it's robust in trying to be relevant enough to a culture to get what I'm trying to reach you. Okay, and then the last of these models. The transformative, or what I term, I don't care for transformative so much, because I think it's too optimistic, but Christ is king of all of life model. That, I don't care if you're optimistic or not, it's so. It's so. This one has, though, traditionally been labeled transformative, first associated with the Dutch Reformed theologians Abraham Piper and Hermann Bobbink, but later this model with less nuance and sometimes with extreme radicalism was commandeered, at least to a degree, with not a lot of sophistication, but it was commandeered by the religious right in the United States, the old Jerry Falwell days, you know, the moral majority. You know, some of them said, you're neither moral nor a majority, but anyway. And then there's also a small group of reformed people, and not always reformed, called Christian Reconstructionists or Theonomists. They would be a very small but radical version of transforming culture. Some transformationalists were also rather triumphalistic. That is true in the history of this movement. The Dutch legal professor, philosopher, Herman Dorybeerd, was of that ilk, that movement, the Christian Institute of Christian Studies. I don't know if that exists anymore in Toronto. The AACS, as it existed among Christian reform circles, was of all of this ilk. That 50s immigration from the Netherlands into Canada and the US, but particularly Canada, brought a lot of this more Doryavirnian to this model. It's, as I mentioned, there's theonomists who are typically post-millennialists. They await and see and anticipate a golden age to come in which, yes, culture will be drastically transformed and the mosaic civil legal codes will be reimposed upon world culture, if you will. That's why they get placed along this line and that little chart you have if you follow the line down. The further out on the margins you get where the lines go, the more radical the views. This chart comes from Keller's book, Center Church. That's where I took the chart. It's for classroom purposes only. And those of you live streaming, you do not have that chart. My apologies. So you just have to bear with us. But that chart then, What Keller is proposing with the chart is that the closer you get to the center and the values found within that center, which are very specifically humble excellence, common good, distinctive worldview, church's counterculture, that these, when they're put in a balanced, blended way, you end up in the best place. That's what he's pleading for there. This model, as I said, the more sober-minded followers of Kuyper and Bovink simply call Christians to faithfulness to Christ in the whole of Christian living because they recognize that Jesus as the Christ, as the incarnate Messiah, the one crucified, the one who sent the Holy Spirit, that one is the legitimate Lord of everything. Though as Lord of everything, it's also contested. The devil seeks to usurp what isn't his. So in any field of life, it's properly Christ. He's the creator. He's the one who puts it. He upholds it in existence. We only live and move and breathe and have our being in God. Nothing in creation just exists in itself. It takes the flexing arm power of providence to keep it in existence, if you will. And all that was made was through the word, by the word, and for the word, the Christ. John 1 and Colossians 1. And so this view is saying, OK, maybe I don't transform culture, but I should live obediently unto him because it's his. It's his. Who else would it be? Who made it? Who made it? He did. Whose is it? It's his. And so you serve and live for him. So there you have the models. You say, nice, nice, nice. But now we're going to seek to apply it concretely with a plumber. I deliberately picked plumber. Why did I pick plumber? Because those who dislike the last model always giggle at the notion of a Christian plumber. How ridiculous. Well, it's no more ridiculous than a Christian marriage. It's more ridiculous than conducting yourself Christianly on the golf course. But usually the way they giggle at it is, well, when you breathe, is there a Christian breathing? Isn't breathing breathing? Is there a Christian running, walking, sleeping? Is that not a human thing, you know? So it's just as ridiculous to talk about Christian plumbing. Well, is it? Let's find out. To get at this, let's look at the heating and plumbing business of this fellow. We'll call him Bill. He and his brothers own this plumbing business. He regards himself as a Christian, but depending on each of these models, how does he conduct his business? This gets into a very ethical set of questions. How should he conduct his business of being a plumber? Well, think about it. Plumbing business entails that he enter into contracts with believers and also with non-believers. to do the heating and plumbing. Let's say it's a new building project of a, I was supposed to strike the word old, an old retirement home. Well, just a retirement home. A big enterprise, right? A big building project. His business also brings him into private homes via house calls, repairing, servicing homes, businesses as plumbing or heating problems arise. In each of these scenarios, his work out in the world, out in the world, brings him into contact with non-Christian people, with human life under the sun, you could say, involving contractual relationships with other people, involving also an implicit fiduciary responsibility upon entering homes and making plumbing or heating repairs according to legal codes. building codes and the like, ensuring the safety of the work performed. Start messing with my furnace, that can get dangerous, right? Such that he and his business associates and employees act with responsibility and respect for the welfare of others. This sort of work out beyond the confines of Sunday worship is a big, fat part of this man's life. It takes up a lot more than just 40 hours a week. Now what does it mean to be a Christian conducting this sort of business? And of course we could apply this to appliance repair persons. I deliberately picked on certain things in this room. Appliance repair persons, physicians, nurses, sales persons of various products, lawyers, mechanics, coaches, airline pilots, teachers, farmers, along with the classic butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Now what about that? Well, let me explain what we're not talking about here. A Christian doing one of these sorts of occupations. What are we not talking about? Well, we're not talking about the physical mechanics of most such work. Whether you're a Christian or non-Christian, the mechanics does not vary or change, given your disposition of faith. Whether a person's an atheist or a Muslim, whether he's of this race or that race, you know, nailing a nail, screwing a screw in a wall, hooking up electrical line, making various repairs according to the code and what's requisite. That's the same. Yeah, obviously. We breathe the same. We run. We walk. We eat. That doesn't change. We're human beings. God ordered and made the world a certain way. But whose world is it? We'll go back to that one in a bit. So there are rules. There's physics of good plumbing practices that have been discovered and practiced over time. There's a collective wisdom and knowledge gained about that trade involving sanitation, the use of gravity because, you know, water flows downward unless you pump it upward. And that's part of plumbing too, pumping water in places and waste. The need for pipes to be suitable for handling such waste products and many, many other things like that. There are protocols and training and physical requisites for that work, just as there is for most vocations. This applies to being an auto mechanic. I mean, if you're a person who can't get a bolt that seems to be welded on, you can't pry it loose. Sometimes it does take a little brawn to do work like that. If you're given to not being able to take the sun, I grow faint. Certain occupations maybe aren't suitable for you. An NBA player does generally, most of the time, do a lot better if he has a height, a certain height advantage over most of the people in the room here, for example. That sort of occupation as an athlete Well this applies to intelligence about certain sorts of jobs too. We always trust the well trained doctor and lawyer who knows the law well or medicine and physiology and the recent drugs and techniques over against someone who is ignorant of that. We grasp that, and being a Christian doesn't make you smarter or stronger or more skilled or talented as such, no more than you breathe better than all the non-believers. I've been standing here breathing as a Christian, and a non-Christian just can't compete with my breathing. No, that's not in view, okay? Nor does it mean for plumbing you go to Bible texts about plumbing. For oven repair, I went to Bob. Because he knows that. I explained the condition, the state, the problem. I told him about the YouTube videos. And he helped diagnose with his expertise. Yeah, he's pretty sure it's that. He even had the part. It's not about going to the Bible for these sort of techniques. There might be some occupations where biblical principles might have an application in how you do something, apply something. But the mechanics of it, no. So it gets back to this question. Is it so ridiculous to talk about Christian plumbing? Well, yes, let's giggle too if we mean the mechanics of it. It's Christian versus non-Christian. But that's not what is meant. What about conducting your plumbing business Christianly? Is that impossible? Is it possible to do it un-Christianly? Is it possible to do it in an ungodly way, a sinful way? Well, certainly. in all kinds of ways. You use cheap parts. You don't follow the building codes. I smell gas, and your house blows up. Sounds like something wasn't exactly done with good respect. It can be human error, but it could also be deliberate negligence, right? I don't care. I'm lazy. I'm cutting corners. It can't have an ethical edge. Well, of course it can. Is there a part of our ethical life where Jesus doesn't matter? A no-Christ zone? You're not Lord over here. Oh, God is, but not Jesus. Well, I'm picking on the two kingdoms model at this point. where God is your Lord in certain areas, but not Jesus as the Christ. Well, I dispute that anyway, but they're also the ones who giggle a lot at this notion. doing plumbing work Christianly. So here's the question. Can't I go about this business with a set of motives and dispositions in my heart, with a view toward human beings and how I regard them as image bearers of God, even fallen image bearers, but need from me love, honesty, good work performed, et cetera, et cetera? Of course. And doesn't this help with God's care of the world and ordering of life? Until kingdom comes, I think it does. But there's models who say, no, there's nothing Christian about plumbing. The last model, Christ is king of all of life, says there is. Also what's not in view, and this needs to be made clear. We're not thinking here that in pursuing life out in the world and viewing it as serving God as a Christian, that that doesn't entail simultaneously that you can long for the life to come, long for the glory to come. It doesn't mean, oh, because I'm busy with Jesus and serving my fellow man and making a living under Christ for his glory, under his lordship, I just want to stay here and stand pat. Or I'm going to fix up life such that, well, who cares about the glory to come? No, we're designed for a new heaven and a new earth. And so we all have, or at least should have, an ache in our heart. We're pilgrims in that sense, wayfarers. We haven't arrived home. The heavenly mansions that Christ goes to the cross to prepare for us is on the way for us. So we're not yet home as such. Now, it's important when you lay that out, then you ask yourself the question, okay, I'm a plumber. The mechanics don't change. I can't go to Bible verses, obviously, for plumbing. That's not what the Bible's about. And I do long for the life to come. But I work out of the anti-Baptist, pietist model of my plumbing business. Now what? Well, this means you still conduct your business with a posture of wanting to escape the world. And that can go in two directions. But it can take a very countercultural, hostile disposition toward the world and even the people you do your business with. All those unbelievers, yuck. Well, some of them are yucky. I'm not denying that. And they're unscrupulous, but not all of them. Anyway, so you view your life out there as dirty. as worldly, as sketchy, a necessary evil, or merely as a means to make a living and obtain daily bread, something you have to do. This guy who owns this business might or might not posture himself with hostility. Or maybe he looks at his plumbing heating business as an opportunity to share the gospel. So he puts a Jesus fish on his business card. And every time he enters a home, You know, you got this gas leaker. Boy, this is plugged up bad. Seems like the whole world is plugged up bad. We need something to clear the way, just like in our hearts. We need Jesus. You find a way to witness to Jesus. So the business of plumbing is worldly. But by this means, I'll try to do something godly. And so I use that as a means to finally, that's not a good end in itself, but witnessing perhaps is. How do you like how I made my Jesus fish there? I thought it would be easy just to go online and find a little emblem of a Jesus fish. So if you find one, please send it to me via email. I was having a hard time finding a Jesus fish, so here's the best I could come up with. Anyway. So plumbing itself is not the Christian part of his business. Perhaps witnessing is. Or perhaps he looks at it this way. By means of this, I do make a good living. Do plumbers make a good living? And I can give, yeah. And I can give generously to kingdom cause. There's the Christian part that I give generously. But meanwhile, they kind of have to hold their nose. The Christian part of their life is worship, prayer, table devotions, daily personal devotions, Christian fellowship on Sundays. But the rest of their life, Now, again, perhaps you were raised with this model, not because anyone taught you this model that way. It was just how you were raised. It's how you thought of it. The relevant social gospel model. All right, I got this plumbing business. What about this? Well, here, he'll perform plumbing and heating tasks with a wider hiring than plumbing itself. This is page 20. He'll promote the welfare of life and society for social good. The mechanics of plumbing do not change, obviously. But instead of viewing plumbing as work, this work is worldly, it's viewed as an avenue to make a difference in the world, to help people where they live. to give them better plumbing. Perhaps he'll use the profits of his business to give to causes for social justice or improvement to neighborhoods. Perhaps he'll volunteer his business to do free plumbing work for impoverished people or at greatly reduced fees. and the like for financially challenged families. So he's conceiving of the plumbing work isn't Christian, but it's a necessary thing that people need, and my Christian disposition is to help them in their need. And so using this model, he might conduct his business accordingly. By the way, that's not just leftist. Someone can take this view in a more rightist leanings as well. One might look to help the poor and the underclass, but a more middle class set of values can be used as well. His business then is a means to a more different sort of end, maybe to give to political causes that now fit a more middle class set of Republican values, perhaps, to support gun rights or something like that. So what is my plumbing business about? Well, you know, it's to do good in the world to promote the kind of justice I value now. So now actually you do, this gets back to what I was saying, you do too care about social justice, you just give different definitions of what it is. That's why you vote the way you do. Plumbing's plumbing, but a person's plumbing business affords the opportunity to do some good in the world, however you might define that good. So when you're out and about in the world, plumbing isn't Christian, but it's a means to do some other sort of Christian thing, perhaps. Now, if it's a very radical version of this view, subversive to culture view, you might even use your plumbing business as a front. Looks like a plumbing business, but it's really, you know, part of the underground cause to subvert something, you know. But see, if you believe that's just and holy and right in God's eyes, well, now, there's your, there's the Christian part of it. That, you know, you're countercultural in that sense while you're being very relevant to a kind of culture you want to transform. Now last, not last, but third to last, second to last, I guess. Second, this two kingdom culture, the third model to look at here. All right, I got my plumbing business. I got my foot in the church kingdom. Gospel ethic, church life, Jesus is my Lord. I step out in the world, I'm under the triune God. He's the Lord of creation, but I'm in this world with everybody else in common. My plumbing business is no different than a non-believer's plumbing business. There's no such thing as Christian plumbing and non-Christian plumbing. There's good plumbing and bad plumbing. There's responsible plumbing and irresponsible plumbing. There's quality plumbing and lousy plumbing. But plumbing is plumbing. This model then, because of the two realms, says, as I conduct my business out in the world, the Bible doesn't direct me, but natural law. trying to use sanctified reasoning of what natural law is, and the wisdom I can collect not only about plumbing itself, but conducting myself in the world toward my neighbor and the like. Under this model, I seek to do good to fellow citizens, and I seek to do, if possible, the best I can. and hopefully I'll do it better than everyone else. I'm conscientious after all. The Christian owner of this plumbing and heating business is governed by this rule of natural law, as I said, and he recognizes that the civil authorities establish building codes and legal codes relative to plumbing and heating that he needs to adhere to and he's conscientious to do that. But Christ does not follow him into the world of cloning and that work. That's not Christ. He doesn't care about that. Christ has no stake in that. He's not worried about that. He's worried about his church, their sanctification, their justification, their forgiveness. He worries about making disciples. Now, as a Christian out in the world, That's over here, this is over here, governed. Now the way I describe this view is like scaffolding. Because the kingdom that endures and goes to glory is the church. But everything else is kind of in a supportive role. And I'm not saying they use this phraseology. It's my phraseology. I think it fits. When you build a high-rise, watch a high-rise go up in Chicago, you see all the scaffolding. But even a small building, even a big, long fireplace up to, you'll see scaffolding go up. as they do the work. The scaffolding is there to enable the work, the structure. And when the structure is done, what do you do with the scaffolding? You tear it down. That's sort of how this view views all of our stuff out there in the rest of life. It's a kind of scaffolding view. It's needed. It's serviceable. It's requisite. It's necessary for life to go on, for the church to exist, for a kingdom to come. This created order needs to be established, sustained through the Noahic covenant principally. Common grace needs to function to keep sin in check and the like. But meanwhile, The important work of church kingdom come can proceed. And when that has reached its fullness, the rest of culture and everything surrounding it is like scaffolding that can go to be tossed. It's discarded, essentially. So Christian plumbing, well, of course not. That doesn't carry on into glory. Only Christ and his church. The crisis king of all of life agrees with a lot of what's said there, but it disagrees pretty strongly against the scaffolding notion. So let's briefly, quickly, and then we'll take our 10 minute break, look at this crisis king of all life model. This model differs from all of the others in that it does see Christ himself, the Lord, the Incarnate One, Jesus, not just the Son of God abstractly, but the One who came as Savior, Him. It views Him as Lord of both creation and church, not just church. This Jesus as the Christ is Lord of creation and the church. Not just God is Lord of creation and Jesus is Lord of church, no, he's Lord of all. And thus this model conceives of the whole created order, including the church, as under the assault of the evil one and the kingdom of darkness. The fight isn't only in the church. Evil doesn't only affect the church. The devil doesn't wound and destroy only the church. He destroys and wounds the whole creation. He destroys marriages. He destroys business practices. He makes corrupt politicians with evil laws. He destroys human sexuality. He contests and corrupts as far as curse is found. And Christ comes to lay claim to what's his as far as curse is found. None of the other models, and certainly not the two-kingdom model, lays that sort of claim upon us. What some people don't like is, well, I don't like the notion I have to go about obeying Jesus all the time. Does that work for righteousness? No. I mean, didn't Christ fulfill all righteousness? Now you're saying I got to go out there and have a Christian plumbing business? Oh, it's exhausting. Well, is it? I thought you loved Jesus. I thought you're full of love and devotion. I thought He's your King and Lord. I thought that He's the very thing that pulses through your whole life, and that it's an honor to live before His face. He's done all for you, and now your life belongs to Him. I thought your only comfort in life and in death is that you're not your own. Well, if you're not your own, but belong body and soul, body and soul, in life and in death, What part of that isn't his? That's the whole point of that question and answer. All of it. All of it. It's not worth righteousness, it's just walking obediently, to be sure Christ has fulfilled all righteousness, but that's, oh, I just as well not live morally pure lives, sexually pure lives, because Christ fulfilled all righteousness. It doesn't follow. Of course I try to live faithfully. So this model is saying, I take my business, and similar to the kingdom model, the Putin model, It's to be used in service to human beings as image bearers of God. It's to honor God. It's to make use of the wisdom and the plumbing trade and the legal codes and obey to, as I said, this fiduciary responsibility. People are trusting you to do good work so that it's safe in their home to turn on the furnace and things of that sort. you're honoring people like that and you're seeking then to see that this too honors God wherever his children walk in his way in love and in devotion and in submission to him. See here's the big difference between some of these views in this view. Creation itself is Jesus. Creation itself is an arena that isn't foreign to kingdom come. New heaven and new earth. Resurrected bodies. These aren't foreign elements to spirituality. They're the warp and wolf of spirituality. God didn't make us angels. He made us physical beings with physical needs. That's fine. That's good. He said it was. And that means we also need to learn how to dispose of human waste and deal with sanitation and have good water. And our bodies get cold. And we need to make good use of energy resources. All of this isn't un-Christian. It's exactly Christian because it's creation. And he put it there. It's a whole reorientation. Instead of thinking the world belongs to something else. And when Christians are involved, it's foreign. We need to view it quite opposite. It belongs all to God. And when we're doing it, we're children in our own house, our father's house, doing his work. But most of us weren't probably taught that. And we were modeled for perhaps something a little different, so it sounds a little odd to us. But life itself comes under this kingship so that all the creation stuff put there by God through the word was put there by him, through him, for him. And that's why everything that was made was made by the word who became flesh. And that's why it belongs to him. If I make something, like a toy boat, and my sister steps on it and breaks it, that was mine. You broke it. I broke it, so now it's mine. The devil breaks it. It doesn't make it his. So why do we give the world to the devil? Let's give the devil to the devil. All right? All right? All right. Let's take our 10-minute break here, and then we're going to look at strengths and weaknesses of each model and get to this Benedict option thing. All right? Sorry I didn't let you have it. I'll start the next session with question time. How about that? All right. We're going to get started again. This will be the second session of our third evening. Welcome back, everyone. In this particular segment, we're going to look at strengths and problems of each model. I'm going to try to run through these quick so we have some time to talk about this Benedict option that's recently made a lot of, gotten a lot of attention. So some strengths of the countercultural or pietist model. Although I do have to say this, I was teased earlier today that my clothes made me look like the UPS man. Now, I appreciate the UPS, but I really didn't think I was a UPS man. Back to something, the strengths here of this Pietist model. Although this model reduces God's concern for the world to his church, which I don't think is true, It rightly recognizes that the thrones and powers of the world will always be hostile to the cause of Christ, and the church can't coercively overcome it. We're not going to win the battle against the world and its worldliness with human weapons, not even with philosophical weapons. We can use our intellectual gifts, and we can go out there and be faithful Christian people conducting our businesses in a faithfully Christian manner. But that's not, we're not the victors. Only Christ can grant victory. And we need to remember that. Otherwise we stop praying and stop thinking I can finesse my way to kingdom come. And you can't. This model, while abandoning culture to its own devices, which I think is a bit of a cop out, let the world go, it's a mess, you can't do anything about it. Nonetheless, it rightly calls the church to be truly the church. There is a lot you can't do, but we do have a responsibility as people in any given local congregation to be a godly community, a loving community. a community that is an oasis that's attractive, that's beautiful, that the world can look in on and say, I don't see a bunch of angry, judgmental, conceited Christians, but I see a community of people who really love each other, help each other, and care about broken people out there. It's desperately needed. And this model, I think, at least cares about that. This model rightly warns against or about the inherent dangers in the Constantinian era, wherein the church links up with the power of the governing authorities that be, but mostly accomplishes becoming worldly and compromised. We all want the state to be on our side. Right. to make laws that fit and suit us. And before you know it, we're a court in the state. But the state isn't as such a Christian institution. And the churches, many times, had a problem here. So you find different sorts of mainline churches, which is just the Democratic Party at prayer. And there's forms of the religious right that's just the Republican Party at prayer. But if you knew all these Democrats or Republicans, there's plenty of them that care less about the Christ, could care less. Don't mistake your Christ as King, who is King and who's Lord and knows all hearts. Don't put your trust in princes. The Bible tells you not to do that. And I think this model warns us of that, and we need that warning. The more Anabaptist version of this model calls for outreach to the poor and getting back to a rich liturgy forming strong bonds of Christian community. A lot of the Christian community we experience is cliquish, country clubbish. I have my little niche of friends in church, and that's who I care about, and that's who cares about me. But the church as a community suffers. This model is calling us to something better than that. Meanwhile problems. It tends to be escapist, not merely wishing to go to glory, which is fine, but in letting the world sink into the muck and sorrow of sin while passively watching, doing little to affect social change. It's not enough to say, well, I witnessed to them and they're coming to church, Well, Jesus still did care about their conditions, the crippled legs, the blind eyes, the hungry mouths. You have to care about that, too, if you love your... James tells us that. It's a very biblical theme to care about more than just getting people to glory. This model can be, or at least versions of it can be, weak that way. It tends to demonize modern business, capital markets, and governments. But there's a version of this Pietist model. Yeah, except when it's their business and investments making the money, and then, well, OK. It's uninterested in a proper use of and the inevitability of contextualization. Some people hate that word, but as soon as you stoop down and talk to a five-year-old differently than a 15-year-old and a graduate student in philosophy for a PhD, as soon as you change up your speech, you're contextualizing. We do it all the time. As soon as you learn another language from a different culture in order to bring the gospel, you're contextualizing. As soon as Paul says, I try to be all things to all men, so by all means I can win some, he's contextualizing. There's a dirty and over-contextualization and a misuse of the concept, but the concept itself, you're doing it whether you like the word or not. Anabaptistic versions of this model focus on horizontal sins, whereas reformed pietist versions tend to be legalistic, moralistic, and promote a doubting Christian Christianity. And why not? If you're legalistic and moralistic, it's not a big stretch to become doubting. Because if you're not looking to Jesus, if you're not a grace-driven Christian, even though you talk about grace and justification, but you're legalistic. You're better. Be better. Be more moral. Better, better, better, better. I'm not. You're not. You're not. You're not. Well, are you really saved? Are you really saved? Are you really saved? Am I? Am I? Am I? It's plagued swaths of the Dutch Reformed community and in parts of English Puritanism as well. The model conceives of belonging to the Christian community as coming before believing in Christ, which is quite backwards and undermines vigorous evangelism to the world. What that means is when you become like us, And you're sanctified like we are. Now you can believe in Jesus. But no one comes to Jesus that way. You don't get sanctified before you get forgiven. You don't get sanctified before you're justified. And this is when we approach the world as you're dirty out there. Clean up. Now come. Clean up. Now you're welcome. Clean up. Now come to our church. Be like us already. Now let me tell you about Jesus. It's awful, and it plagues pietism. What about the relevance model? Well, there's nothing good about that model. This model sees God at work out beyond the narrow walls of the church, and sometimes the culture at large, by God's grace, is ahead of the church in seeking to overcome stubborn culturally imbibed prejudices as such. Are many Christians facing their racism or sexism from carefully considered Bible study or from a society that has awakened them to inherited social sins? You see, we imbibe a culture. a whiter culture than a sinful. And the culture changes and the church sometimes is the slowest group within the culture to go, oh yeah, that's right. I mean, God doesn't only work in the church. God doesn't only work in Christians to make them great surgeons. He also works in non-believers to make them great surgeons that serves the rest of society. Would you rather have a Christian that doesn't know what he's doing with your heart or a non-believer who's expert? I'm going to take the non-believer who is also God's creature in God's hands, and God gave the gifts to do this. Well, so sometimes the world is out in front of us. Shamefully so. Not always. In many ways, it's way backwards, right? It's horrible. But sometimes it's out in front of us. This model is quick to use insights from the world, from science, medicine, psychology, ecology, business world, to bring the Christian message to ears that already understand that sort of language. This is a strength, however, that needs great wisdom and care and easily devolves into a weakness. So that, you know, you simply compromise and science, medicine, psychology, whatever is driving you rather than using it in a constructive, carefully Christian manner. This model cares about people outside the church. You can't fault them for that, they do. They care about people who aren't us. We tend to care about people who are us. When I say we, I mean the whiter, reformed, Presbyterian, conservative, creedal community, and a lot of evangelicaldom at large. They care about social issues. They care about poor people. They care about refugees. They care about battered women, drug addicts. People's lives are in a... A mess. Many middle class Christians are a bit like the Levite or the priest versus the good Samaritan. I'm on my way to church. I can't help that family. I'm going to worship. Ta-ta. Yeah, it's a little uncomfortable. This model warns churches to get out of their subcultures and hostility toward unbelievers and learn to connect with people unlike itself. I'm not saying all the ways they do that is to be sanctioned and agreed with, but these are traits that we can learn from. You don't have to be them, but you can learn from these traits and adapt it yourself. Some obvious problems. By adapting so heavily and readily to the culture, such churches are quickly out of date. When the culture shifts, these churches tend to be lax on sturdy doctrine, has no conception of a Christian view of the world versus a secular one, The antithesis is much truncated in this model. But as I said, it does have a sense of social sin that we could do better to articulate ourselves, not just like they do, but ourselves. These churches do little with the gospel and conversion to Christ and do more towards service projects, seeking justice. I think that's a problem. I mean, the gospel always has to be front and center, but the other stuff needs to come alongside of it. They do little to address personal moral failure, and they focus more on social sins. They care about social sins, but they don't care about the personal sins their parishioners are sinning. They contribute to social evils and misery. Some churches in this model with a more gospel intent are more doctrinally focused. These, however, tend to focus also with that on very entertaining worship experience. We live in a culture of entertaining worship. I think worship ought to be a meaningful experience, a meet God experience. It ought to have depth and rigor. But just feeling cool isn't necessarily a rich worship experience. It's just an experience. The model lends itself to blurring Christian distinctives. So what they do, is there anything Christian about it? What about the two kingdom model? I've picked on that model in various ways, but I do see things that need accent and you can agree with. This model rightly wants the institutional church not to lose sight of its principal mission to make disciples of the nations. They're a little worried that Christians get so concerned and they're out there Christian life living that you start to denigrate and water down the centrality of preaching and means of grace. Okay, that's an important warning, and let's see that warning. This model rightly recognizes that God is sovereign over the whole world. And as the triune God, he governs it, even where and before any Christian witness exists. And in a way, a covenant forms the basis of life proceeding forth from the destruction of the flood and common grace blessings or common grace grounds the blessings that mitigate sin, make life possible. I agree with that. I think that's right. It rightly fears that the relevance and transformation of this model may divert the church from its proper task of bringing the gospel to the world. This model advocates Christians performing their work out in the world with high standards. They don't regard the work as for Christ or have anything to do with kingdom to come, but they do think for the here and now it ought to be done well. And it rightly warns against triumphalistic traits in other models, particularly the transformationist model. I think we do run a danger of being triumphalistic, or we did back in the day. I don't think there's too many Kuyperian types who are very triumphalistic now in this culture. And it warns against some of the escapist traits in the pietist model. Well, what about the problems here? The two kingdom model gives more weight and credit to the function of common grace than the Bible does. I believe in common grace, but I don't think just right now there's as much common grace functioning robustly as there was 20 years ago, say. Common grace isn't always common, and it's not common everywhere all at the same time, to the same degree. Sometimes they make the world, they make the world, the common kingdom, too benign, as if it's sort of neither for Christ or against him. It's this sort of a gentle world out there. Well, hardly. Much of the social good that two kingdom people attribute to natural law and general revelation is really the clarifying fruit of the introduction of Christian teaching from scripture or the application of principles from scripture. And so special revelation has an effect on wider culture and society, too. They so cordon off the gospel and scripture to church life and keep it out of the public square that Yeah, I get I'm not a biblicist, and I'm not quoting Bible verses to fix everything. They're so afraid. No one listens to the authority of the Bible out there. Just leave it out. Well, so? They don't listen to the authority of the Bible. They're not going to listen to the authority of natural law, if you say it's from God. They'll say, well, I don't agree with that. Oh, well, you believe that only because you believe in God. I do sort of believe in that, but for a totally different reason. It has nothing to do with your Christian faith. In fact, I find it offensive that you've brought your Christian faith into this. So I don't agree that that's how it actually works. I think explicit scripture teaching and principles clarify natural law and help us understand it and apply it. This model implies that it's possible for human life to be conducted on a religiously neutral basis. I wouldn't say they go so far as actually say it's religiously neutral, but they kind of imply it. They just don't seem to fear the rigors of the antithesis that weaves its way through the whole fabric of life. I sometimes, when I read some of the writers there, it's like, have you been out among the broken world that's there? Do you know how broken people are, how vicious people are? I mean, what world are you thinking about? Have you been on college campuses where you can hardly admit you're a Christian? What world are you living in? So they do recognize that worldly wisdom is still God's wisdom, as the triune God. But they believe Christ is the incarnate one and ordered the church out of that. And I think that's quite wrong. The two kingdom model produces a form of social quietism, rather naive about how common the condom kingdom is in a woke culture versus a pluralistic and liberal one. Pluralistic and liberal one is Alan Dershowitz saying, or even Bill Maher saying, I disagree totally with what you're saying. You're a total ignoramus, but you should have the right to say it, and we can talk about it. That's a liberal pluralistic culture. The woke culture is shut them down, shut them up, box them away, cancel. model work with that? Because you said it's common. It's all fine. We're living together. I just think it doesn't have a proper antithesis. The two kingdom view contributes to a hierarchicalism between clergy and laity. And you say, where does that come from? Well, it's because in emphasizing the importance of ministry of the word and sacraments and so on and so forth, they tend to make Sunday the day, the only day, of nurturing grace and sanctification and strengthening in faith. It's the day of fellowship. Everything happens. Bam. on Sunday, and especially the official preaching, not Bible studies, not fellowship, not fun outings and church picnics. It's Sunday, the word, the sacrament, the absolution, bam! There's the grace imparted. It starts to take on a tange of ex opero operato by the act performed, the graces. admitted, given to you, bestowed. I think that's lopsided. And this view also views life now. Finally, important, it's a scaffolding life that finally does not follow the believer into glory, but is cast away. I don't agree with that. I'm not saying I know how to calculate all you know my dad was a contractor and no doubt he didn't do everything perfectly and maybe he didn't always conduct his business perfectly legitimately in a full christian orb sense i don't know but whatever he did the honor of christ himself what gets carried to glory as glory to god for a life lived under his care let god decide that but god will decide that and it is glory that Because it's the work of the Holy Spirit, and that's not a castaway! Don't tell me the work of the Spirit of Grace is a toss-out! I find it offensive. This life, toss it, and now we'll get to the next life, and there's the real one. No. This life matters. This life counts. And God's grace work in your life, in your social life, your public life, your marital life, your parenting life, your recreational life, his sanctifying grace work in your life will glorify him forever because it's his work of grace. That's never a throwaway. So. Now what about the Christ as king over all of life model. Well, it too has strengths and weaknesses. Its strength is its holistic and integrative, because there's one king and Lord we serve, the Christ. And He follows us and is with us by His Spirit everywhere we go. We're never disunited to Him. There's never a no Christ zone we enter. Jesus, you don't apply here. You don't count here. No. No way. This model recognizes both personal and social sins, that human gravity makes its way and brings brokenness and misery into life, not only personally, perhaps there first and principally, but also in family life, business life, political life, economic life, media life, entertainment life. and that there's evil political structures and ideologies. That's social, not just personal. And that's to be contested. This model cares about creation and the fullness thereof. It enables the Christian pilgrim to live life as continuing the mandate to be fruitful and multiply. No, we're not going to fulfill that righteousness. Christ is our righteousness. But that doesn't mean I don't continue to be fruitful and multiply. I think we still care about water and air quality. You want to drink crap water? You want to breathe poisonous air? I've never met anyone who wants to. You want to drink leaded water? I don't think so. You care about medicine and developing the creation's potential to heal diseases? I think you do. That's creation mandate. You care about Will children be nurtured by parents who love them and educate them? That's part of the good order of creation. And it's how it ought to be. Wherever you can say how it ought to be, how we're designed for, Christians want to labor and make life become how it ought to be. Oh, will ushering kingdom come now? but we're on the right trajectory. We're not in opposition to Christ, but we're in the trajectory he calls us to. I'll be faithful, let him give the increase and receive the glory. And so this model calls for obedience, not as fulfilling righteousness in Jesus' stead. He's the last Adam who does that. But in him, we inherit all blessings, but because we belong to him, we can walk. Call our obedience meager, call your plumbing business pathetic, pathetically obedient to the Christ. Okay. But Lord, it was for you, to your honor and glory. As pathetic as it was, it was for you. Let him forgive your good works. Calvin has this phrase, even our good works need justification. I love that. Give me your best stuff. Hit me with your best shot. Oh, that needs some big dose of forgiveness. Now I'll reward it. It's rewarded from grace. That's very comforting. Now, some problems. Worldview can sometimes be taken in too cognitive a way. It feels like an egghead kind of way of presenting truth. Some of it's advocates. Some have underappreciated the institutional church. You're a preacher. You do Sunday stuff. All I do is the real cultural transformation stuff. It's the important stuff that you do. amidst some of that in the history of this movement. Some of its later advocates then were triumphalistic, self-righteous, and overconfident in how they could change society. Well, look at society. How have we done? It can put too much stock in politics to change culture. We've got to get involved in politics and change the culture, the religious rights like that. We're going to get involved in politics and we're going to transform the culture. We're the moral majority and we're going to make it happen. And then we put our confidence in princes. No, don't do that. And it's naive about how power corrupts. All right. Let me pause and see if you have any questions. What have I been saying? And we're going to look very briefly at this Benedict Option thing. Well, the Benedict option has grown out of what we've detected in culture is the growing hostility toward Christian faith and traditional liberal pluralistic values that have long characterized Western culture, especially here in the United States. And with the advent of a woke culture of intolerance, there is a growing concern that the church and Christians are facing overt persecution. And in view of that, how ought believers to engage such a culture? Ron Dreher has written a book, The Benedict Option, in which he hearkens back to St. Benedict with the rule of St. Benedict, a monastic order that he put in place after the fall of the Roman Empire. or at least the western part of the Roman Empire, was greatly compromised. And this order brought about a kind of discipline of Christian learning, training, teaching, prayer, work, fellowship, community. And monasticism, medieval monasticism in general, helped preserve learning. throughout the West so that there was something with the rebirth of Renaissance, which is really, it will take us too far afield, but that's, there was a lot happening before the Renaissance. But nonetheless, the short version of it is monasticism kept faith in the game and kept learning in the game. and kept civilization and order in the game. And as he sees the barbarism that's coming, and the intolerance, and a new kind of swallowing up of Christianity, and the persecution that comes with that, he's saying we perhaps need to go back to something like the Benedict option as we await a new Benedict that God will send to the church to show us a way forward in the face of a culture that was once greatly influenced and affected by Christianity and now has its dukes up, its claws out, its teeth bearing overtly against it. And he's also aware that many Christians in different places in the world have long been facing such a hostile culture. Chinese Christians, Christians in Muslim lands, and in North Korea and various places, there's Christians who have and are currently facing great opposition. It's we Western, spoiled, rich Christians who it's only now, what? I could actually have to suffer for my faith. I can't get that job because I'm a Christian. I can't get into that school because I'm a Christian. I can't go into that career because I'm a Christian. I can't send my kids to do this. They can't get these. All because you're a Christian. You're intolerant. You're a racist. You're a sexual bigot. You're narrow-minded. You're a fool. You're everything that's wrong. You're the reason why this culture has its systemic sins and problems. And you're on the outs. I'm oversimplifying. But that's something of a version of what he's talking about. And so in his book, he says that we need a strategic withdrawal. And that's where it feels like the countercultural model We need to withdraw from culture strategically to fortify and strengthen Christian faith and live within shared commitments of community. Now, some of what he proposes felt to me like what the Dutch Reformed community was like maybe from the 30s through the 50s, something kind of like that, where Hey, where do you do business? In fact, I remember these conversations with my wife's in-laws and the like, not my in-laws. Well, you know, he won't buy John Deere. Well, I do buy John Deere. And I was told I have to buy international because, you know, our church member, he's an international guy, and you got to buy international, not John Deere. Well, I'm a John Deere guy. I know I'm buying from the unbeliever, but I'm a John Deere guy. I'm not going to buy international. Well, he's a Christian. He goes to our church. You've got to buy our national. All right. You know, I've teased my wife, I'd rather buy tires from the non-Christians, so if something's wrong with him, I can really chew him out. He goes to my church, and it's like, I've got to take communion with a guy who gave me rotten tires. Tongue-in-cheek. This actually happened to Dr. Venema. That's why he bought tires from this Christian company, and they were cracked and old and stuff. Your problem, not mine. Anyway, what we're saying here is we need, one of the big tenants is the church needs to become truly a godly community. And it needs to have a sense that we're not that. We have this in a superficial way. We pray they don't. They play golf on Sunday. We don't. I mean, it's all kind of. checkbox. They carouse and drink too much, and we don't do that. They get divorces easily and have sexual affairs, and no one in our church does that. Oh, sorry, I messed up on that one. What he's calling for is that we It would be a bit more like the Orthodox Jewish community where they live next to each other. They go to the same school. They buy from each other. They support each other. They know it's a hostile world out there. They need each other. They protect each other. They're helping each other. They have each other's back. A little bit like an immigrant community when it's starting to make it. And they realized, we're going to get on in the city. Boy, Chicago used to be very much a city of ethnic communities, right? The wooden shoe community. They supported each other. But this has all become rather dispersed. I mean, it's still, the Dutch reform still has some of what he's talking about. Like we have Christian schools, but he would challenge us, yeah, how Christian are your Christian schools? How Christian are your Christian colleges? What are they really about? Making money. Being successful. Get out there. Arnold, man, you know, make the box. So he's not saying there's no Christian colleges. You know, I don't know what he'd think about Wheaton or Calvin or Doerr or whatever. I don't know. But he's saying don't just suppose because it's called a Christian college or a Christian high school, a Christian school, that it is that. He wants us to, are we really, does it reflect divine grace of the gospel? He's concerned about what he calls little o orthodoxies, which means Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, where we have this broad Catholic agreement of basic orthodoxy. We're gonna have to be co-belligerents together in this hostile culture and help each other. You know, we've had our dukes up with each other vis-a-vis doctrine, but when we're facing this enemy of unbelief that wants to swallow us up, then we need, we can fight those fights later, but we have this fight together now. So we need to be allied in that way. He thinks and argues that with regard to politics, we need to just give up on national politics. We, long ago, have lost the culture war. Roman Catholics need to see it. Orthodox need to see it. Protestants need to see it. we cannot look to a figure in a political party to save us. It's not going to happen. And so this is why he says we have to prudently withdraw, but enter local hands-on politics, school boards, you know, city village governments, PTAs, anything like that. where we can locally still matter, where we can locally still get next to neighbors and say, come on, you know, right? Because nationally, we've lost that. Meanwhile, we invigorate ourselves as we prepare, as we live in what he might even call a kind of village, because it's going to take a Christian village to protect our youth and to nurture our youth in the faith to keep the faith in a world like this. no more, oh yeah, I send my kids to church, they hear some sermons, they go to public school, they imbibe that stuff all the time, and those secular kids, you know, have all their pornography on their phones, and they're sharing it, you know, in third, fourth, fifth grade, and you wonder how, why your son isn't interested in church, or isn't living a godly life. He's calling for us to wake up and pay attention. The world has changed, and we're living like it hasn't. And because it's changed, we have to change and regroup, re-fortify what we are about. Now he actually, he's a bit transformationalist. He fits over in that model, because he does want to see us enter some local politics. And he does care about the social order, he's not just saying escape from it, he's saying no, we need to try to make a difference in it where we can. So in that sense he doesn't fit in that new monastic model over there. He also sort of fits over into a transformationist model. He says the Christian home needs to become a kind of domestic monastery. By that he does not mean patriarchalism where dad is priest and minister and family is church. There's that sort of patriarchalism that way that some of us deal with in our churches. But he is saying the family needs to really care about the sort of peer group our kids have. It needs to be a godly place where kids learn scripture, they learn Christian values. And that means, this is where he feels more pious again, that means shut off the TV set, turn off the cell phone, get rid of the laptop. You need to cut ties with your addiction to social media because it's coming into our homes galore. And it's shaping minds and hearts. So some of his vision here is rather radical. at least from how we have been living. If you can't form a classical Christian school that's quite godly, then you need the home school. He says regarding work, You know, we're going to have to relearn trades because we're going to be kept out of various facets of the corporate world and much of the white collar world and the union world there too. where if you're not woke, if you don't agree with these cultural values, you're canceled and despised and not allowed to make a living. So some of this starts to remind you of some of the suffering Christians had in some of the churches of Christ letters. He's saying, get ready to be persecuted. Get ready to take suffering, something the Western church hasn't done because you're not ready or you're going to refuse to burn incense to Caesar. Buckle up. And he views the LGBTQ plus agenda as probably that which is the most particular way you get canceled or regarded as beyond the pale. And interestingly, he makes the point that the church needs to face the cultural sex problem and the cultural tech problem. The sex problem, and all of these points you could talk at length about, but the church on the one hand was so Victorian and prudish that it had some wholesomeness there. It had no way to It was embarrassed by the topic, virtually. And then the aftermath of sexual revolution sort of left us back in the dust, and the world perceives us as so backward in this area. And so prudish that we're going to have to learn to address this responsibly. And also the tech problem, because this is a new seductress. It's not saying tech is bad as such, but the way it's used and the way it's practiced and imbibed is bad as such. And anyway, I don't want to overdo my time here. So I've skipped some parts, but that gives you a very rough sketch of his option. And I'm curious what sort of questions or observations this elicits from you. Time for a question or two, if you have any. Do you think there's a cultural shift afoot? Do you feel less comfortable in the last couple of years, the last two, three, five, than you did 15 years ago? I do. I think I do. Yeah. What I don't know is whether this is a pendulum swing that is just a swing, and it's going to come swinging back, or it's going to hang out there and stay. It is a shift. We're not going back. Since you've kind of seen where culture has gone, how fast, if it is going to stay, how fast do you think it's going to get to that point? Where it will just stay and not come back, you mean? Yeah, like how fast is it going to get to the point where it's like, this is where it's at? Well, I don't see Hollywood and the media in the corporate world. Well, the corporate world maybe, only because you know, it is driven somewhat by dollars and cents, the bottom line. So it's possible to see it gear back and not be quite so aggressive that way. And the whole transgender thing is a big cultural swing. I don't know, there's, creation has a way of kicking back, right? And the AIDS epidemic, which most afflicted the gay community in the 80s, not only that, but a much higher percentage there, it did affect and bring a retreat of how aggressive the promiscuity, the aggressive promiscuity was pressed back for a time. But it didn't bring a change. So if I had to predict, I think the pendulum will swing back some. It's not going to stay as radical. It might get a little more radical and swing back. But it's not coming back over here. I think that's here to stay. The other part of it is. America at least has a lot of laws and there's courts and legal proceedings where a lot of these things can be challenged. And that's going to decide where it ends. how far the pendulum stays. Because some of this stuff, you lose, the Supreme Court says you lose, and now, you know, I heard on the news today they're starting this movement to add justices to the Supreme Court. It's in its initial stages. If they're successful in that, then you probably have lost the war, I suppose. But, you know, you also start to wonder at what point, quite apart from Christian persecution or being disenfranchised and losing rights, at what point is the cultural stress is such that And it takes a lot, but if people don't have bread in their mouths and are desperate, that's when bullets fly. And truly, that's a war. And it's certainly not because they're ticked off because I lost rights. It's when life is so desperate, they don't have bread in their mouths. Their children are starving. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. I'd love to use that one when I'm teaching doctrine of freedom, different versions of freedom to guys, you know? You got the Libertarian notion, you got the, you know, these views, and then there's this one by Kris Kristofferson. Of course, the young guys, so many of them, I don't know what that is. Well, she's the one who made the song famous, but Kris Kristofferson wrote the song. Yes. When I say Janis Joplin, there's always someone in the office. But it was Kris Kristofferson when I say Kris Kristofferson. But it was Janis Joplin. So Kris Kristofferson and Janis Joplin. Any other questions or comments? Yes, sir. Is there something to say for Christians encouraging lesser magic? to protect our citizens? What was the first part? I missed the very first phrase. Do you think Christians should have urged them to do that? That's a good question, because the way the Reformation was pulled off was that local magistrates basically rebelled against Roman authority. and protected reforms within the church so that they could proceed. There would have never been a Protestant Reformation without God also working through the civil magistrates to, or lesser magistrates, princes in various provinces. to secure it. Calvin actually argues in his Institutes that it is the responsibility not for citizens to rebel against injustice, but for a lesser magistrate to rebel against injustice. a higher magistrate when it's doing injustice. So that's a very interesting question and nobody wants ever to see war. You think you do until it's happening and then you wish it never was so. If you take any lessons from the Spanish Civil War, which in some respects was the war of Catholicism, traditional Catholicism, against a secularization of Spanish culture. It wasn't only that, but the lines got somewhat drawn that way. That was a horrific war, and Franco probably wouldn't have won without the assistance of the Nazis and their planes and bombing and the like. Horrific. That's a society still healing from the Civil War, so you certainly don't want that. I hope these problems can be resolved through our court system and that Christian rights and liberties and a more pluralistic, liberal, in that sense, culture, set of values prevails where we can coexist. But a woke culture won't allow coexistence. So it will bring stresses finally in which there will be unrest far, far greater than the little riots in cities we've seen. That's how I view it. But I'm no prophet. But that's my opinion. Well, with respect to the Benedict Option, he doesn't think nationally you're going to win that battle. As far as the Second Amendment and a collection of Americans having .30-30s, .30-06s, a very small handful of them having AK-47 style weapons and the like, and they're going to take on an army, that's a joke. Little people skirmishing from their neighborhoods have no concept of what a tank does to a house. I'm shooting my little .30-06 at your tank and they shoot a shell in your house, you're dead. So I frankly think that's a little naive. If you had a war like that, it would have to be because of a slice of the army, that war with a different slice of the army. But it sounded like at the end there, that person was leaning the other way. Should we be teaching church people to become more passive is what he was saying. Yeah. Oh, okay. I wasn't exactly sure where he was going. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is if we think we as a group of Christians can take up our little 357 magnums and fight a war against a government using an army, it's a joke. That's my point. You're just naive about war and what real war can do and what big weapons can do. Have planes bomb your house. I'm sorry, your 357 magnums, nothing. But that's quite a different question about gun rights and self-protection against thieves and burglars. We can't fight a war with the little weapons we have stowed in our homes, is my point. Because the weapons that win wars is a lot more than just pistols. But the passivity, he's saying, yes, we need a passivity with respect to national politics and quit putting our hope in that. We are persecuted. It's going to shrink. It's going to get worse. We're not going to win there. You don't have to agree with him. I'm saying I do. But this is what he's saying. And he does a lot of interviews with those in the know. And they say it's going to get worse, and we're going to lose more rights this way. And so he's saying the Christian community is going to have to learn to live as a persecuted community in a hostile culture, like Chinese Christians know how to do, what Christians did behind the Iron Curtain and the like. And he's saying buckle up and get ready for it. Accept that. I don't know if he's right. He certainly has sold a lot of books, so it sells books. I'll say that much. Did you have a question? I don't know if it's a question or a comment. Yeah, it sounds like that's where we're at. As far as like with all the CEOs and the tech companies and stuff, we're trying to push out small businesses when we've got this big conglomerate. Right. People are more forced to buy from just big companies. Right. Because you know the thing that happened in Georgia recently with them lying about what the voting law actually said? reminded me of what happened here in Indiana several years ago with the Freedom of Religion Act, when Thomas was still the governor. Because at the time, I was disappointed in him for backing down. Because I thought he'd run that bill, and I thought he was backing it. And the state senators and state reps had already passed it. But anyway, it was when the CEO of Target, CEO of Walmart, CEO of Andy's List, was the final puncher in a critique on their freedom of religion. Yeah, that act wouldn't force Christians to perform services. No, it was to protect Christians. Well, yeah, protect them. It wouldn't require them, that is, being forced to do certain things for certain people. He uses that, with other illustrations, to say, well, that's the point that we've lost. So you think you're going back, you're going to win that. You're not. So buckle up. That's his point.