Webinar on When to Disobey the Government

Note that I'm not endorsing everything that will be said on Friday, especially since in their email promo said that the men hold different positions. But the NCFIC has been holding weekly webinars on things like dying and death, the priority of public worship, etc. This week's is on when to disobey the government.

Unintended but Culpable Consequences of Deifying the State

Many believers in my nation are increasingly, justifiably furious at the expansion of tyranny in recent days. What was originally an attempt to keep medical resources from being saturated has become the wildest of goose chases, with increasingly prodigal wasting of life and livelihood to secure little or no ultimate benefit.

But what many believers aren't recognizing is that this—as bad as it is—is not itself the great problem, but a small consequence of a much greater problem. To use the current, "viral" language, the current destruction of life and livelihood by the state is not the disease, but a symptom of a more complex and deadly disease.

The symptom may be a moving target with unintended consequences. But the disease is the deification of the state—with inevitable consequences.

Faithful Christians Make the Best, but Sometimes the Most Annoying, and Even Occasionally the Most Dangerous, Citizens

I saw someone link to [this article] via social media today. I began to comment, but as often happens with me, it would have ended up being something of a "thread hijack," so I decided to do the polite thing and post here instead. (Perhaps the "wise" thing would have just been to select all and delete, which is my default way to end typing a comment, so I hope that I am not being a fool.)

First, the idea that the government can save everyone is a tremendous arrogance before the face of God, which violation of the first commandment was one of the most frequent and greatest charges against the nations in Scripture

Illegitimate Destruction of Life, and a Suggestion of What to Do about It

As of this afternoon, our county has had 34 cases. 30 have recovered, none deceased. That means we have four cases remaining. It is good to give the benefit of the doubt to those who weigh lives against livelihood. But it is also good to recognize that the reason that it is called "livelihood" is because Scripture equates it with a man's life.

Virtual Worship Assemblies More Viral Than Virtuous

A word to brother pastors.

I sympathize with the desire to provide the worship experience, as closely as possible, for those who cannot physically assemble. Hopewell had been doing this, long before covid made it cool, for just a few shut-ins or frequently providentially hindered (feeble, distance drivers, etc.).

Spiritual Inoculation Is Not Innocuous

We live in an age in which churches are like restaurants—one can try a different one every week and never run out. If the menu changes at your favorite, you can just hunt for another that is more like the old menu, maybe even a little further in the same direction. The problem is that the vast majority of what's out there either is not Christian at all or has just enough of the gospel for someone to be converted, but the church itself is not saturated with the knowledge of Christ, the love of Christ, the teaching of Christ, the means that Christ has appointed.

Encouraging Authorities to Submit to Christ in the 5th, 6th, and 8th Commandments

May the cost of the "cure" send us to the Cross

All that has been done in the advance of tyranny and decline of the economy will have an astronomical price tag in lives. Not just lives by which these are means that they ended early, but lives that are destroyed even in the midst of the living.

Apart from the grace of Christ, millions will come to the provocative conclusion that Solomon suggests for the godless in Ecclesiastes 6:3–6,

"If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with goodness, or indeed he has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better than he—for it comes in vanity and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness. Though it has not seen the sun or known anything, this has more rest than that man, 6 even if he lives a thousand years twice—but has not seen goodness. Do not all go to one place?"

Your Face, O Lord, I Will Seek

We ought to tremble
In this time when many are alarmed at earthly things that are happening, we ought to tremble with dread at a spiritual thing that isn't happening.

We have been shifting from God to man
For generations, churches have lost the true sense of the reality of God among us.

Less and less, have we sought His involvement or offered that which pleases Him; more and more, we have innovated to involve more men and please more men. It has been a long, slow, slouch toward functional atheism in how we handle the things of God.

If ever there was a time to reverse the shift, this is the time