How Big Government gets bigger
While society insist God is dead, we know Man was made for worship, and it shouldn’t surprise us then, when the godless go looking for a god. In the face of uncertainties, sickness, or in fear of death, when they are confronted with their own powerlessness, they’ll look for someone or something more powerful to come to their aid.
So what is this god of our secular age? In many cases it is our government, expected to care for us from cradle to grave. But like any false god, it keeps failing to deliver on its promises. What would you do if your false god failed to deliver? In the past maybe they’d have made a bigger idol. Today we give it more control and more money.
The first three gents below are, as far as I know, not Christian. They offer only practical explanations for government’s expansion. Walter Williams offers a little something more.
- “’Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguard of individual liberty have eroded. And once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist.” – Friedrich Hayek
- The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.” – H.L. Mencken
- “It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion…. People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we’re compassionate we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.” – Penn Jillette
- “We are becoming a nation of thieves by trying to live at everyone else’s expense. We have lost our moral mooring and the Church is partially responsible by failing to uphold its beliefs. One of the 10 Commandments says, ‘Thou shall not steal.’ Now I am fairly confident that God did not mean, ‘Thou shall not steal – unless you get a majority vote.’” – Walter E. Williams (1936-2020)
Brilliant books needed
“We do not need more people writing Christian books, what we need is more Christians writing good books.” – C.S. Lewis
Brilliant books to bring back
Some years back evangelist Ray Comfort outdid himself by publishing 8 books in a single year! And to make this feat even more impressive, the topics covered an incredibly diverse range. Some of the titles include:
- What Science Can Do to Stop the Aging Process
- What Man Has Learned from History
- Evidence for Atheism
- How to Be Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams… and what you can do to make sure you will always have it
- Scientific Proof for Evolution
- Everything Man Has Learned About Women
As you might have guessed already – the last title pretty much gives it away – the insides of each book were completely blank. Comfort followed up his cute gag with a gospel message on the back of each book that was relevant to that particular book’s title – these were actually giveaway tracts, with titles, and a joke, that sure got people’s attention. They all seem out of print now, but can we agree he needs to bring them back?
How in the world did we get here?
That question is the title of an absolute must-read book by Rev. Jim Witteveen. It is a question that’s also answered, in a different way, by the 3 quotes below.
- “Religion begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.” – Cotton Mather
- “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.” – G. Michael Hopf
- “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.” – Hosea 13:6
But that’s just the problem. What’s the solution? That gets offered up in Deut. 8:10-14, where Israel is warned to not let the good times have them forgetting the Lord their God, so, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He has given you.”
Gratitude – to the God who gave us everything – is the answer to Man’s inborn bent towards arrogance.
Sometimes God does want us to see the behind-the-scenes
We often won’t understand what God is doing, and how He is making use of the tragic happenings in our life for our own good. But sometimes He will give us a peek. Joseph Bayly, one of my favorite Christian authors, shared one such peek in the introduction to a short book he wrote titled simply Heaven. He wrote about how, when their adult son died unexpectantly, he and his wife received some comfort from a poem sent to them by the young woman their son had been planning to marry – their daughter-in-law-to-be. The poem was “New Year, 1945” and was by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famed German pastor, and was written for his own fiancée just three months before the Nazis killed him.
Then, 12 years after their son’s death, and 30 years since Bonhoeffer died, the Baylys received a letter from a Massachusetts pastor who told them of a seriously ill woman he’d been visiting regularly in the hospital. And one day he’d given her an early version of Joseph Bayly’s Heaven book. He shared that she’d stayed awake the whole night reading it, and told the comfort she’d gotten from it. And soon after, she died.
“The woman, the pastor added, had emigrated from Germany after World War II. She was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s fiancée, for whom the poem which had comforted the Baylys had been written.”
What do we want to be “effective” at?
When it comes to Christians in the public square, we’ll often offer up a Christless case. We’ll stand against:
- Abortion, because the unborn feel pain
- Transgenderism, because it’s ruining girls’ sports
- Pornography, because of the women and children being harmed
We’ll be sure to oppose what God opposes, but we’ll also be sure to do so for conservative, and not any sort of explicitly Christian, reasons.
Why? To be more effective. Who in our godless culture wants to hear the godly position on anything? So how can we convince the other side if we offer up arguments they won’t even listen to?
That sounds reasonable… until we remember why we were created. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism declares right there in answer #1, there are two reasons God created us. Our purpose is “to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” We can’t do the first – we can’t be effective at that at all – if we don’t dare raise His Name. As to the second, the world won’t be able to experience that unless God’s people are willing to share His good news. So, as has been said, better the world, rather than God, be offended with us, so let’s get glorifying!
Train up a child in the way he should go…
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is well known for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and has been described as North America’s most important theologian. But what’s often overlooked is the enormous impact he had simply by being a father. He and his wife Sarah had 11 children and, when a study was done a century and a half after his death, back in 1900, there were a lot of notable figures among his 1,394 traced descendants. Charles Colson shared some of Edwards’ descendants’ accomplishments:
“…there have been 13 college presidents, 86 college professors, 430 ministers, 314 war veterans, 75 authors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 66 physicians, and 80 holders of public office. That includes three U.S. senators, seven congressman, three mayors, three governors, a vice president of the United States, and a controller of the United States Treasury.”
As Colson concludes, “Don’t tell me teaching biblical worldview to your children isn’t important!”
On atheism
“The difference between atheism and believers is this: You blame others (God, religion, faith, etc.) for your problems, and we blame ourselves. You want revolution, we want repentance. You want control, we want contrition.”
– Joel McDurmon in The Return of the Village Atheist
A dad dictionary, G to R
I’ve collected and refined these over the years, and look forward to the day when I can regale my kids with the complete alphabet’s worth.
Gossip: A person who will never tell a lie if the truth will do more damage.
Hypochondriac: Someone who won’t let well enough alone.
Inertia: Resisting arrest.
Jellyfish: The natural predator of wigglyworms.
Kleptomaniac: One who helps himself because he can’t help himself.
Lymph: To walk with a lisp.
Mosquito: An insect that makes flies tolerable.
Nap: A little sleep that makes a big difference.
Opportunist: A person who, when they fall into a river, starts taking a bath.
Pessimist: Someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
Questions: What we have every time a chicken crosses a road.
Redundancy: To be repetitive. See also Redundancy