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Being the Church

Christians don’t pray

Who says that Christians don’t pray? Of course, Christians pray, don’t they? Isn’t prayer one of the essential characteristics of Christian life? Every time the family sits at a meal someone prays asking God to bless the food. When they go to church, the preacher prays and people bow their heads and join him in prayer, don’t they? What kind of nonsense is this to say that Christians don’t pray?

Wow, what a way to start an article! Let me see if I can explain.

*****

It is Friday evening and a missionary has come to your church to present the situation in Upper Castelia. He says that the national leaders are in some distress, the people are poor and mistreated, the missionaries are understaffed, and the government is refusing to grant visas to new missionaries. They are also having difficulty with their financial support. The people need Bibles, food, medical help, and national pastors. But his main concern is the need for prayer for the people. He asks the congregation to pray for him and his family as they will be returning to Upper Castelia Castelia next month.

The appeal strikes a chord in your heart and mind. You say to yourself, “By God’s grace, I will pray.”

As the pastor closes the service, he mentions the need to pray for “our sister Martha” in the hospital with cancer.

After the service you shake hands with the missionary and give his wife a hug. You whisper to them, “I’ll pray for you.”

You get into your car and drive through traffic rehearsing in your mind the words of the missionary. You are a careful driver but there are so many bad drivers who speed or forget to signal. And some guy seems to be glued to your back bumper. Aloud, you say, “Why aren’t there any police around to arrest him for tailgating? Drivers these days need to take a refresher course on driving courtesy.”

When you arrive home a little frustrated, you have things to do. The kids have to get to bed on time because Saturday is a busy day. After you tuck them in you can relax. This will give you some time to check a few things on Facebook.

A few hours later, you pull yourself away from the computer and turn on the television evening news. Looks like taxes are going to increase. Cost of living is up. There was an accident on the major highway. An offender was released on parole after serving only half of his sentence. The fire crews were called out to a blaze on Main Street. There’s a hint of some impending scandal in the government. The sports scores show that your team is not doing nearly as well as it should. Ahh, here’s the weather. Tomorrow is going to be pretty much the same as today with the slight possibility of precipitation.

After the news you tidy up the place, put the few empty snack dishes into the sink, yawn, and get into bed ... too tired to pray.

Saturday is another busy day. The children are up early. Bob needs a ride to sports practice and Barb needs to go to swim class. The Thompsons are coming over for the barbecue. You’re too busy to pray.

On Sunday morning you rush around getting the family ready for church. During the service, your pastor mentions the good meeting last Friday with the Upper Castelia missionaries. Yes, you silently agree, “We need to pray for them.” Apart from church, Sunday’s routine doesn’t differ significantly from the other days.

You said you would pray for the missionaries, but you haven’t. You are irritated by bad drivers, but you don’t pray for them. You are disturbed by what you hear and see on the news, but you don’t pray. You complain about the government, but you don’t pray. Since Martha wasn’t in church, you forgot all about her.

And I say, “Christians don’t pray.”

*****

I hate to say it (having been a pastor, now retired) but even some pastors don’t pray. They lead in prayer in church services, they pray at the bedside of suffering people, and they promise to pray for you. But with all the cares of the church, they don’t spend time praying in their offices or in their homes.

Again I say, “Christians don’t pray.”

Jesus prayed. Many times He went off alone to pray. The disciples watched the Lord pray and came to the realization that compared to Him they really didn’t pray. They heard the self-righteous prayers of the Pharisees, but Jesus prayed differently. They came to Jesus with a simple request: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). They wanted a life of prayer.

The Lord’s response was just as simple as their request. In the Sermon on the Mount, He told them to avoid the way that their leaders prayed. Then He gave them a template for prayer. You have probably memorized it. “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Matt. 6:9-13, NKJV).

The ancient Greeks argued about which was more important: form or content. To a thirsty person, form without content is like a cup with no water. Content without form is like a splash of water in the face. Both form and content (cup and water) are necessary. When it comes to a life of prayer, the same is true. The words and requests are the content, but the structure is the form.

A prayer list needs some structure. The Lord’s answer to the request of the disciples provides us with a very comprehensive structure.

  1. “Hallowed be Your name.” Begin with exalting God. When Jesus died on the cross, “the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matt. 27:51). And now we who believe in Jesus Christ have free access to God. We can approach God’s throne of grace boldly to “obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). Prayer, therefore, begins with adoration of God as your heavenly Father who invites you into His presence.
  2. “Your kingdom come.” Pray for the extension of the Lordship of Christ in the lives of your relatives, friends, and neighbors. Pray for missionary work around the world. Be specific.
  3. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God has set leaders over us so that His will might be done here. He has given the church pastors and elders to give spiritual guidance. Pray for them. We are to be subject to the civil authorities, too. Pray for teachers, police, firemen, wardens, medical people, employers, and political leaders.
  4. “Give us this day our daily bread.” Notice that our needs are not first in the list and it is not “my” need but “our” need. What are the daily needs of your family, church, friends, co-workers, and neighbors? The elderly need safety and health. Parents need wisdom.
  5. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” In the same way that we forgive others, we want God to forgive us. Remember the story of the steward who would not forgive the man who was under him although he himself had been forgiven a vast amount (Matt. 18:23-35). The man who has truly been forgiven cannot help but to forgive others. “Lord, forgive me for my sin.”
  6. “Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” This is a prayer for spiritual safety as well as physical safety for you and all those you know. We ask to be kept from temptation, including the temptation to waste our time that keeps us from our prayer time. Your temptation may be different from mine, so ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance for spiritual victory.

Early in our marriage, we spent a few days with my wife’s parents. Her father was a successful pastor. I asked my mother-in-law, “What is Dad’s secret?” She said, “I have patched the knees of his long johns many times, but I have never patched the seat.”

On a personal note, every day for the 60 years of our marriage, we have spent at least 30 minutes each evening as our devotional time. I will read about two chapters of the Bible aloud and my wife will follow along in her Bible, then she will pray aloud. The next night it’s her turn to read two chapters and I pray. We have read the Bible through cover-to-cover many times in many versions. We have several pages of prayer requests. Each page follows the pattern of the Lord’s prayer. May I encourage you to turn off the computer and the TV half an hour before bedtime. Dedicate that time to reading aloud and praying.

I started this article with the words, “Christians don’t pray” but after reading what I have written, I hope you can say, “Some Christians don’t pray, but with God’s help, I pray.”

John Barach has been a pastor and Bible college professor and still runs a biblical Greek tutorial website at GreekDoc.com. He and his wife look to celebrate their 60th anniversary in August.



News

Faded road lines symbolize faded Christian values

Having a hard time seeing the lines on the road? You aren’t alone. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is lobbying for changes to a rule from the federal government that has resulted in road lines that wear out after just a few months.

The edict, which first came from the federal government in 2012, and was updated by the Minister of “Environment and Climate Change” in 2023, pronounced that chemicals in the paint called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) had to be significantly reduced. They made this decision because VOCs contribute to smog. Smog can irritate eyes and throats.

But decreasing the VOCs meant that the paints simply don’t work like they used to. “It doesn’t stick as well, it’s not as reflective, and you can only paint in certain temperatures,” explained Tim Tierney, the chair of the city of Ottawa’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee. And as Clark Somerville, councillor for the Town of Halton Hills explained to the Globe and Mail:

“As the road painting is disappearing quicker, we are now spending taxpayers’ dollars to go out and repaint the roads more than what we had to before,”

But it isn’t just a matter of money. The current rules “create a dangerous, dangerous situation – not only for drivers, but pedestrians in intersections” noted Tierney.

In 2012, the year that the change took effect in Canada, the BC trucking industry saw a spike in complaints about line visibility. ”Drivers reported more difficulty finding roadway centre and edge markings — not a great situation for a loaded semi weighing up to 35,000 kilos,” explained John Ducker, writing for the Victoria Times Colonist. He also noted that the faded lines became the top complaint from motorists in the province.

So why is this being covered in Reformed Perspective? Because it is another example of how everything is fundamentally a worldview issue. God entrusted the civil government with the duty of restraining lawlessness and promoting good order (Belgic Confession, Article 36). Keeping lines on the road keeps vehicles on the road and protects human life. But our federal government doesn’t have any objective standards for what constitutes justice and good order. Reducing smog, even in the majority of the country where smog isn’t an issue, trumps safety on the road.

In many ways, the faded lines are an apt symbol of the faded Christian norms that this country isn’t interested in reviving, even to our own harm.


Today's Devotional

June 15 - Jesus, mediator of a better covenant (I)

“But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, insomuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.” - Hebrews 8:6

Scripture reading: Hebrews 8:1-6

Can you picture it? Moses is coming down from the mountain, and has been in God’s very own presence. But the Lord sent him back down. Why? As he comes closer to >

Today's Manna Podcast

Manna Podcast banner: Manna Daily Scripture Meditations and open Bible with jar logo

Do you seek Wisdom?: Ecclesiastes

Serving #874 of Manna, prepared by Ian Wildeboer, is called "Do you seek Wisdom?" (Ecclesiastes) and is based on 1 Corinthians 1; Proverbs 30.











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Assorted

Sparrow blessing

Mao’s “Four Pest Campaign” shows why a nation’s leaders need to be humble about their expertise, and about what they attempt ***** Most mornings I waken to the sound of sparrows chittering and chattering. Approximately twenty to thirty little house sparrows have a sun-up inclination to alight on one of the cedar bushes right next to my window. These sparrows used to reside in my laundry poles – winter and summer. They had their babies there and they slept there. They also poked out their gray, brown heads and white cheeks to assess me as I walked by on my way to the chicken coop every morning. Perhaps they now resent me as I cut down one of the laundry poles last summer. Feeling guilty about cutting down the laundry pole home, I fill the bird feeder with lots of seed. I have named eight of the songsters – Sam, Pete, Al, Rudy, Rembrandt, Ollie, William and Simon – and their daily, simple notes of joy give me pleasure and comfort. A father who loved sparrows My Dad told me that when he was a little boy, he learned to sing Psalm 84, especially verse 3, with great enthusiasm. He sang the Psalm in Dutch and the translated version of verse 3 reads: Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. My Dad, who was a wonderful story teller, went on to relate that he thought the word altars, which in the Dutch language sounds a lot like lanterns, meant that sparrows would eventually make their homes in the lanterns lining his street. Consequently, dressed in short pants and a blue jacket, he would stand for long periods of time underneath the street lanterns. He would crane his neck and gaze up at these lamps, hoping to see sparrows lay their babies in the lights. It never happened, but he was convinced for a long time that it would happen. The Chairman who hated them In 1893, seventeen years before my Dad's birth, Mao Zedong was born. Growing up to become the first chairman of the Communist Party of China (1935-1976), as well as being the founding father of the People's Republic of China, Mao had absolutely no respect for, or understanding of, the Psalms. Neither did he love the sparrow, that fifth-day creature which God had set in the sky to be a blessing to mankind. In 1958, the year my family immigrated from Holland to Canada, Mao Zedong, Marxist dictator of the world's most populous country, decreed that all the sparrows of China were to be killed. Ostensibly to help China leap forward economically and socially, he began a “Four Pests Campaign” (1958-1962) to eradicate, among other animals, the Eurasian tree sparrow. The Chinese Chairman, an unbelieving little man who did not comprehend that the sparse hairs of his head were numbered by God, did not know what he was doing. His proud slogan was: “Man must conquer Nature.” And, because of his campaign, the vast country and grand country of China, instead of leaping forward, began to leap backwards into famine and death. Matthew 10:29-31 tells us: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” That is to say, God's people are of more value than the sparrows; that is to say, God works all things out for His people's good. He cares for them. Besides the tiny, chestnut-crowned sparrow, three other animals were targeted in an overall elimination crusade. These three animals were the mosquito, the rat and the fly. Mao's reasoning was: mosquitoes cause malaria; rats cause the plague; and flies are a general nuisance. Sparrows were included at the tail end of the elimination list because they ate both grain and fruit. Chinese poster declaring war against the four pests: mosquitos, flies, rats, & sparrows Government didn’t know best Mao enacted a law in 1959 which made it mandatory for Chinese citizens to participate in the offensive against this common little bird, the sparrow. He had no idea that this little song-bird helped plants to grow. When the sparrow ate from plants, it passed on the seeds in its droppings. Mao didn't have a clue that these small twitterers also served as food for other larger birds and mammals, nor that they helped provide necessary fertilizer with their excrement for the plants on which they fed. Neither did the Chairman know that sparrows ate harmful insects. With the enacting of Mao's law to kill the diminutive sparrows with their kidney-shaped, black ear patches, the Chinese ecosystem and environment took a downward turn. The Chinese people took to arms. They were forced to do so. All over the country people banged pots and pans together to prevent the little birds from settling into their nests. The little “pests” were about twelve centimeters in length and weighed less than an ounce. There were numerous posters declaring war on the birds. Young boys and men fired at the midget flyers with guns and slingshots. Yelling and screaming crowds beat trees with long, wooden poles. As soon as any little creature perched anywhere, worn out by the riots below them, they would be harassed to such a point that they would drop dead from exhaustion. Exhilarated by what they thought was a great leap forward and constantly praised by the authorities for their diligence, people collected dead birds and tied their petite brown bodies together, forming feathery ropes of destruction. One small light in this fowl massacre was the Polish Embassy in Beijing. They refused to engage in the killing of the sparrows. A refuge for the remaining sparrows, the embassy was eventually surrounded by zealous Chinese citizens, who shouted and shrieked continuously. In the long run, the sparrows hiding in this small space also died. The Polish personnel cleared their area of dead sparrows with shovels. Instead of sparrows, locusts Psalm 102:7 reads: “I lie awake, I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop.” There were many lonely birds after Mao's feather massacre. No census of them was taken prior to their demise. But it is estimated that there were perhaps some six hundred million of them. Hundreds of millions were eliminated through Mao's campaign. The year after the murder of these birds began, insect infestation of field crops increased, the locust being the main predator. The locusts multiplied and ate everything in their path. Grain production collapsed and a famine began. All the places in which sparrows no longer chirped and chipped, had no cereal output. The Great Famine which ensued is not allowed to be spoken of in China. Rather, this desolate time is referred to as the “Three Years of Natural Disaster” or the “Three Years of Difficulties.” Yang Jisheng, (1940-  ), Chinese journalist and author, wrote a book entitled Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. First published in Chinese in 2008 (and translated into English in 2008), it chronicles the Great Famine and the Great Leap Forward. Although he was, for a time, a loyal Communist, the Tiananmen Square massacre destroyed Jisheng's faith in the Party. Mao’s arrogance killed tens of millions The horror stories chronicled by Jisheng are brutal and graphic. He records, among many, many incidents: a teenage orphan killing and eating her four-year-old brother the death of 44 of a village's 45 inhabitants and the consequent insanity of the last remaining resident, a woman in her 60s the torture and beatings and live burials of people who declared realistic harvests, who refused to hand over what little food they had, and who stole scraps or simply angered officials Jisheng wrote regarding his research: “I didn't think it would be so serious and so brutal and so bloody. I didn't know that there were thousands of cases of cannibalism. I didn't know about farmers who were beaten to death. People died in the family and they didn't bury the person because they could still collect their food rations; they kept the bodies in bed and covered them up and the corpses were eaten by mice. People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. In Gansu they killed outsiders; people told me strangers passed through and they killed and ate them. And they ate their own children. Terrible! Too terrible!” Devoting fifteen years to documenting this terrible famine, Jisheng catalogued a three-year catastrophe that is estimated to have taken 36 to 55 million lives across China. At the end of his campaign against the four designated pests, Mao Zedong ordered the vendetta against sparrows ended, replacing it with an operation against bed bugs. Eventually, the People's Republic of China had to import 250,000 sparrows from the then Soviet Union to stop the ecological disruption. After the sparrows had settled back into the country, the locust population was brought under control once more. Over a period of three years, it is estimated that one billion sparrows, 1.5 billion rats, 100 million kilograms of flies and 11 million kilograms of mosquitos were annihilated throughout China. Ecological and economic disaster jeopardized the very fabric of the country. Even as Nebuchadnezzar before him, Mao was deluded into thinking that he owned nature. Mao (in)famously quipped: "Make the high mountain bow its head; make the river yield the way." The truth is that Sinai and Jordan laughed at him and God held him in derision. Where is this mass murderer now? Conclusion In this day and age, when so much misery and terrible economic disaster looms and threatens to undo us, we do well to remember the sparrow blessing, the blessing which Jesus gives to all who acknowledge Him: “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.So everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before My Father Who is in heaven, but whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before My Father Who is in heaven.” – Matthew 10:30-33...

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Politics

Communism’s ongoing influence

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and many thought that Communism was over and done with. But even today its influence can still be felt, and as far more than an economic system. Communist and Marxist thought has shaped our culture. How so? Well, consider how the far left has long desired to overthrow the traditional concept of the family. Already in 1848, one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto called explicitly for the abolition of the family. Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.  on what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain.  Karl Marx divided the work into two classes: the ruling “bourgeois” class, and a servant “proletariat” class. The Communist Manifesto used this same terminology and claimed that: In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. The Communists were saying that a family made up of mom and dad and gaggle of kids is an elitist notion, and when the elites are taken down, this type of family will disappear too, to be replaced by the communal education and raising of children. The evolution of left-wing thought on how to destroy the family is chronicled by Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. His book Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage shows that the left originally saw heterosexual sexual freedom as the channel for undermining the family, and only came to accept homosexuality as a key plank later on. Russian Communism The Communism of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin viewed the traditional family as an oppressive capitalist institution that exploited women. They saw women as being confined to their homes taking care of children, while the men had jobs earning money. It was their view that under the capitalist system women were dependent on their husbands for survival and were stuck in their marriages as virtual slaves. The Communists had a solution. All children would be raised in government daycares and women could go to work in the factories. With such jobs, women would be financially independent of men and also free from the drudgery of taking care of children. They would be truly liberated from their bondage to man and child, since children would be raised by the state. As part of their “liberating” program, when the Communists took over in Russia, they removed the Russian Orthodox Church’s prohibition against divorce. A large number of divorces quickly ensued. Kengor notes, “The divorce rate skyrocketed to levels unseen in human history.” Besides making divorce easy, the new Communist government made obtaining abortions easy as well. The abortion rate skyrocketed just like the divorce rate. But after a few years it became apparent that the long-term stability of the Russian population was thus threatened. According to Kengor, “The toll was so staggering that an appalled Joseph Stalin, the mass murderer, actually banned abortion in 1936, fearing a vanishing populace.” He also banned homosexuality in 1934. Stalin’s abortion ban was lifted after he died and the Russian abortion rate quickly rose again. “By the 1970s, the Soviet Union was averaging 7 to 8 million abortions per year, annihilating whole future generations of Russian children. (America, with a similar population, averaged nearer 1.5 million abortions per year after Roe was approved in 1973.)” Communism USA The desire to abolish the family was embraced by Communists everywhere. In the United States, for example, many Communist Party members lived lifestyles that reflected their hostility towards the traditional family. Frequently this manifested itself in sexual promiscuity. Divorce and libertine views of sexuality were common among the Communists at a time when American society frowned on both. One of the earliest founders of the American Communist movement was John Reed. He is still a popular figure on the American left, and a laudatory 1981 movie about him called Reds was nominated for Best Picture. He lived a lifestyle in keeping with his anti-family beliefs: “The Communist cad and philanderer hopped from bed to bed, woman to woman, torpedoed marriage after marriage, and disseminated the venereal disease that made him urinate red and left at least one of his temporary girlfriends with inflamed ovaries requiring surgical removal.” The sexual promiscuity of most American Communists, however, was heterosexual because the Communist Party considered homosexuality to be bad. The new Communists This negative attitude towards homosexuality by Communists began to change due to the development of a related school of thought called the Frankfurt School. Originally known as the Institute for Social Research, it began work at the University of Frankfurt, Germany in the early 1920s. However, since many of the intellectuals involved were Jewish, they left Germany to set up at Columbia University in New York after Adolf Hitler came to power in the 1930s. The Frankfurt School intellectuals were Marxists who realized that Marx’s original prediction (that workers would revolt against capitalist society and create a socialist utopia) was not working. They developed a new or neo-Marxist theory that focused on cultural factors rather than economic factors as the key to revolution. As Kengor puts it, “The Frankfurt School protégés were neo-Marxists, a new kind of twentieth-century communist less interested in the economic/class-redistribution ideas of Marx than a remaking of society through the eradication of traditional norms and institutions.” The key to revolution, in this view, was the destruction of traditional Christian morality. Christian morality repressed people’s natural sexual appetites, and only by liberating sexuality from such moral constraints could people be truly set free. “The hard fact for these Communists was that at the core of Western civilization was a pesky morality derived from the Old and New Testaments, from the traditional family, and from tradition itself, an embedded understanding that freedom was not the license to do anything a person wanted, and the realization that one’s passions needed to be occasionally checked.” The change in emphasis from economics to culture also changed the focus on who was most important to reach with the new message. Early Communists focused on organizing the working class against business owners, but they were no longer relevant. Kengor writes, “Marx and Engels had organized the workers in the factories; the neo-Marxists would organize the professors and students in the universities.” Communists on campus Wilhelm Reich was one of the key intellectuals of the Frankfurt School. He was the person who invented the phrase “sexual revolution.” Prominent periodicals labeled him the “Father of the Sexual Revolution,” although he shares that title with infamous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University. Reich considered the traditional family, especially its patriarchal authority, as the chief source of repression in society. “For Reich, full communist revolution required full sexual license, including homosexual sex.” Another key Frankfurt School intellectual was Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse’s book Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud is considered by some to be “the Bible of the New Left movement.” Kengor summarizes the thought of Reich and Marcuse this way: “Both comrades-in-arms battled the ‘repression’ represented by traditional notions of morality, especially cumbersome sexual restraints. They felt that erotic desires needed to be unleashed rather than inhibited. Both men saw religion as repressive, though Marcuse went further, arguing that modern Judeo-Christian society had become ‘totalitarian’ in its suppression of man’s ‘natural’ sexual instincts.” Herbert Marcuse was very popular among university students in the 1960s and 1970s and his influence extended neo-Marxist thinking into segments of Western culture. In particular, leading feminist theorists of the 1960s and 1970s were imbued with Frankfurt School ideology, and feminism also considers the patriarchal family to be the main oppressive institution of modern society. The homosexual rights movement also fits naturally with the view that traditional Christian morality is repressive. Kengor writes, “The Frankfurt School cadre sought to reshape cultural views of sexuality via education, and… they have succeeded and continue to make astonishing progress.” Conclusion While many other groups have built on, borrowed from, and extended the family-undermining work of the Communists, their influence shouldn’t be overlooked. So how can we combat the cultural decay that these neo-Marxists and others have fostered? Well, we can sing the praises of the traditional family. Numerous academic studies have demonstrated that the ideal environment for a child to grow up in is a traditional family. Kengor writes, “Research has confirmed time and time again that the best situation for a child is a two-parent home with a mother and a father, which should always be the goal of any culture or polity.” However, as Kengor shares, “Nothing short of a major religious revival will save .” Political parties or leaders cannot bring back Christian morality to any of the Western countries. It appears that only a widespread repentance and return to God can restore the traditional family model in the West....

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History

Karl Marx: preaching a different gospel

To mark the 100th anniversary this month, of the Communist Revolution in Russia, we're sharing Piet Jongeling's brief biography of Karl Marx, first published 34 years ago.  **** Karl Marx was both an economist and a politician, but in fact he was much more than that. He was the founder of a new atheistic political religion, the prophet of a new world-to-come in which righteousness would dwell. Man in his own strength would bring this about. Marx proclaimed the coming of a new messiah, the proletariat, which through suffering and struggling would eventually bring salvation to the world. His message has had great influence, not only before his death, but especially after it. At present one third of the world's population lives under a political and economical system that can be called "Marxist" . This indication as "Marxist" is valid, even though there may be many differences between Marx's theoretical concepts and the practical application which the communist countries have made of them. Life story Karl Marx was born on May 2, 1818, at Trier, Germany. He descended from a long lineage of rabbis. His father was the first to break with that tradition. Instead of becoming a rabbi, he studied law and he broke with the Jewish religion. His mother was Dutch. When young Karl was six years old, he was baptized together with the other members of the family. That baptism, being a social affair, had little religious significance. It served only as evidence that the Marx family belonged to those modern Jews who favored assimilation and who desired to eradicate their cultural and religious heritage. Baptism functioned as a ticket of admission to European civilization. That could — as it did in this case — coexist with atheism in practical life. Marx Junior was uncommonly intelligent. He studied law and the history of philosophy in Bonn and in Berlin, and he received his Ph.D. degree in 1841 at Jena. After he was awarded his doctorate, Karl Marx became a journalist. Soon it became apparent that he espoused some very radical social and economic ideals. His paper, accused of inciting rebellion, was closed up. Karl Marx married a woman from an outstanding German family. Shortly after his wedding he fled to Paris. There he studied the history of the French Revolution. He got to know the French laborers in their often bitter poverty and in their just as bitter revolutionary zeal. Sometimes he lived in poverty himself, so as to gain deeper insight into, and firsthand experience in, the painful inequality and the depth of the social injustice of those days. When France also expelled him a few times, he fled back to one of the German states (the federal German state was not in existence yet). In 1849 he departed for London, where he remained living and working until his death in 1883. Turn socialism into a system Marx perceived very clearly that the society of his days was distinctively a class society, in which the working class was badly abused. He even invented a new name for this class: "the proletariat," people who have no possessions except their "proles" – that is, their children. It was Marx's intention to come to the aid of this oppressed bottom layer of society. He believed that socialism was the solution. But the socialism of his days was more of a golden pipe dream of the future than a usable doctrine and practice based on a principled structure. The road towards the ideal state had not been charted in a system that was methodically and logically acceptable. This bothered the intellectual in Marx. Rejecting this socialist romanticism as "Utopian Socialism," he developed a well-thought-out system himself in which he delivered the "proof" that the prevailing economic system, which he gave the name "Capitalism," was itself instrumental in unleashing the powers that would inevitably bring about the downfall of Capitalism and the victory of a new and superior system: Communism. The Communist Manifesto and Das Capital In 1847 Karl Marx and his German friend and spiritual brother, Friedrich Engels, drafted the Communist Manifesto. Published in 1848, it contained three main points: 1. Communism is a historically determined direction of society, a development which will unstoppably continue and whose eventual victory cannot be held back by anything. 2. The road toward that victory is marked by the class struggle, which, after an ocean of misery, shall lead to the great showdown. Capital and the means of production will accumulate in the hands of ever fewer owners. The proletariat shall encompass ever greater numbers, suffer more and more poverty, and so be better prepared and determined for the great battle. Eventually the proletariat will rob the last of the supercapitalists of their possessions. After the great expropriation for the benefit of all, the conflicts between the classes will disappear. 3. The proletariat must be well-organized in national and international societies, accept proper leadership, discipline, and order, and be able to act as one man. The Communist Manifesto thereby condemns the revolutionary movement of the anarchists which had a much greater individualistic character and would not accept a strict organization, a systematic approach to the problems, or subjection to a leadership. The Communist Manifesto was probably written mainly by Friedrich Engels, the son of a rich merchant and manufacturer. Marx and Engels were both gifted students of Hegel, the German philosopher. The two worked together for many years, and during this partnership, Karl Marx became more and more prominent. When the year 1848 did not bring the expected and hoped for breakthrough of Communism, Marx went back to elaborate on the thoughts developed in the Communist Manifesto. He attempted to place the Manifesto on a scientific footing in his trilogy Das Capital. The first volume came out in 1867. The second and third volumes were published after his death by Engels, in 1885 and 1894. Communism in theory and practice Now, this column is not the place for a detailed analysis of the Marxist political dogmas so a few broad outlines will have to suffice. Karl Marx has attempted to construct his study in a scientific manner and to base his conclusions on irrefutable evidence. This impressed a great number of people. The evidence that the communist victory was inevitable was backed up by a mathematical formula! Nothing and nobody could avert that triumph. Later thinkers have undermined this foundation of scientific irrefutability. They pointed at errors in the line of theoretic reasoning. But history has done greater damage to the system than the critics. Many of Karl Marx's predictions never came true. 1. The Soviet Union has had sixty-five years of experience with its "new" system. But although Karl Marx predicted that after a short transition period the state would wither away, the reality was that anywhere Communism took power, the state became stronger, harder, mightier, and more brutal: an all-oppressive dictatorship! Communism is nothing short of state Capitalism! 2. During this transition period, mentioned above, the dictatorship of the proletariat would have to be established to do its task of destroying the capitalist structures, until, after the last remnants of Capitalism had been eradicated, it itself would disappear. But in reality it was a dictatorship not of the proletariat but over the proletariat. And that dictatorship did not disappear. It is bent on self perpetuation. 3. Also in the countries where free enterprise prevailed (called Capitalism by Marx), things went clearly different from what Mr. Marx had predicted. In the previous century, during Marx's lifetime, there were admittedly very serious dark sides to the free enterprise system. However, social laws, social actions, and mutual consultation have brought about great improvements. That does not mean that the world has become a paradise. Sin keeps doing its work. There is much social injustice even now; violations are committed by employers and employees alike. But looking back at the past we must admit: the improvements are enormous. The material welfare of those whom Marx called "the laboring classes" is much greater than in the previous century. The "proletarians" are no longer the dispossessed. The wealth of the working people in the capitalistic West is considerably greater than is the case in the communistic East. And, more importantly, the Western people enjoy a relative freedom, while the Communist system of servitude takes away spiritual freedom, oppresses the church and church members, and places callous atheism high on the throne. A different gospel What the Red Revolution delivered was the opposite of what it promised. It is terror instead of freedom, serfdom under masters instead of equality, brutal force instead of brotherhood, and above all, the dread of the secret police. How could Karl Marx's doctrine then be so successful? It must be admitted that Marxism achieved great victories. One third of the world's population today lives under a political and social-economic system that is named after Marx. The reason is that Marx came to the world with a new gospel! It was the doctrine of self-redemption which he dressed in the shining apparel of scientific certainty. Marx, the man of Jewish descent, may have broken with the religion of Israel, but he was very well versed in it. His rich and impressive writing style betrayed the influence of the Old Testament. In his writings he has the grand manners of the prophet who proclaims to the people the glad tidings of forthcoming deliverance. The Jews had refused to apply Isaiah's prophecy of the suffering servant of God to Jesus Christ, the Savior. The rabbis applied this prophecy to the suffering people of Israel itself, so that its nation, through suffering, would gain deliverance for itself and so also for the world that surrounded its people. Israel was its own messiah! Marx adopted this model in a secularized format. For him the messiah is the proletariat. Through struggles and sufferings the proletariat shall redeem itself and the world and so bring into the world the eternal "peaceable kingdom." This alternate gospel with its false-religious message, with its inversion of Christendom, has cast its spell on many millions of people. It was not an unstoppable historic determinism that brought the victory to Communism. It was not an automatic, inevitable course of world events that led to the Red welfare state. Wherever Communism gained control it was always a power grab by a minority which used the confusion of wartime or national unrest to its own advantage. And once in power, it could only stay that way by keeping its weapons trained on the oppressed people. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany — there are many examples to illustrate this fact. Marx's style of writing is eschatological. He prophecies of a new earth, created and cleansed by man. From that time on, the history of mankind will find rest, because the final destination, the eternal wellbeing of mankind, has been reached. It was that prophetic zeal that attracted so many. Conclusion But how different was the reality! Sixty-five years have passed since the Red Revolution, and still the shining final destiny is far out of reach. This image of the glorious future is a fata morgana – an illusory reflection that recedes as one approaches it and finally dissolves into thin air. According to eyewitnesses, one finds very few genuinely committed communists in the East Bloc countries — percentage-wise, certainly far less than in the Western nations. There is little more than an outward conformation to save one's hide. Open protests will only pave the way to concentration camps, prisons, or, more recently, psychiatric institutions. The Red Bloc, with the Soviet Union as its core, has grown into a superpower, which, armed to the teeth, has become a constant threat to world peace. It is to be hoped that those people who are still free may find the fortitude to oppose that threat. The continuing de-Christianization has robbed the Western nations of their spiritual strength in the face of Marxism, or, at least, has seriously impaired it. If Marx could witness the reality of today, he would very likely be appalled by the manner in which his prophecies of the glorious future have been fulfilled in the drab present. But the negative forces which he has helped to unleash are continuing to have their impact, even now, a hundred years after his death. Piet Jongeling (1909-1985)  was a politician, journalist, and children's fiction author, and it is in this latter role that he might be best known to our readership, though under his pen name, Piet Prins. This article first appeared in the May 1983 edition....





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News

How should Christians celebrate the good Donald Trump has done?

Within the first two weeks of being inaugurated, President Donald Trump has: Signed off on the “Mexico City Policy” which bans federal funds from going to any groups that facilitate abortions overseas. Questioned the mainstream media as to why they don’t cover the annual, and massive, March for Life, which then embarrassed them into covering it this year Sent his Vice President to speak at the March for Life, who also, the night before, hosted a reception for 40 pro-lifers leaders in the White House. His campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, also spoke at the March where she declared the right to life “is a right, it is not a privilege, it’s not a choice. It is God-given.” Tweeted The #MarchForLife is so important. To all of you marching --- you have my full support! Nominated a Supreme Court justice that seems truly conservative (the judge, Neils Gorsuch, co-authored a book on euthanasia in which he wrote “all human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”) So what are Christians to make of the new President of the United States? This is night and day from what we could have expected with a President Hilary Clinton! And yet this is the same man who has show himself to be: Petty – a favorite pastime is coming up with silly insulting names for his opponents, like “Lyin Ted” and “Little Marco” Vulgar – with appearances in Playboy, and on the Howard Stern show, and a recording of him talking about sexually assaulting women A proud adulterer – in his autobiography he brags about the married women he has bedded So can we celebrate the good he does? Or is that, in the eyes of the world, going to too closely align us with him, and mar our Christian witness when he ends up doing something petty, vulgar, or faithless? To know how to act we need to recognize Trump for who he is. As Pastor Douglas Wilson has noted, the best biblical comparison is Jehu (2 Kings 9-10) who was used by God to punish Jezebel and Ahab’s house: was an instrument in the hand of God…At the same time, all was not entirely well. “But Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin – that is, the golden calves that were in Bethel and Dan (2 Kings 10:29).” In the same way, Donald Trump, in these actions for the unborn, has most certainly been an instrument of the Lord. But that doesn’t mean he is a follower. It doesn’t mean we have to go all in for him. Pastor Wilson writes: Political factions want everything to be a simple binary choice on the human level. You either are all in for Jezebel or all in for Jehu. What Scripture invites us to is qualified support, or perhaps qualified disapproval. So and so was a good king, but did not remove the high places. Jehu removed much that needed to be removed, but God brought judgment on him later because he did not do all that needed to be done. Our foundational allegiance is to God and His ways, and is not to be wholly given over to any man. There has been a lot to celebrate in the opening two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, so celebrate we should. But rather than focus on the man, let’s focus on what God has done through this man. When we give God the glory, no one will be confused about where our loyalties lie....

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Politics

First and Second Things: Power is a wonderful servant but a terrible master

Where have all the outspoken social conservative politicians gone? Can we find them amongst Canada's conservative parties? **** Sometimes there seems reason to hope. In Ontario, the Progressive Conservative's new leader Patrick Brown had a history of pro-life politics, and he once voted against gay marriage. Sadly, he was only a false hope; he's promised to protect the pro-abortion status quo, and now marches in gay pride parades. In BC, recently, there was one politician who spoke up when the province decided to add “gender identity” and “gender expression” to its human rights code. Laurie Throness quietly noted that he and others view gender as being fixed, not fluid. But while this lone voice did speak up, he wasn’t willing to vote against the bill. It passed with 70 votes for and none against – Throness abstained. How about Alberta? Surely in red-neck Alberta there must be an outspoken Christian politician? No. The two conservative opposition parties either won’t speak on moral issues, or agree with the governing New Democrats. The headline of a recent LifeSiteNews.com article put it this way: "No Alberta politician willing to stand up to NDP gvmt’s ‘totalitarian’ LGBT school agenda?" Why it’s so bad Why are Christians so badly represented? We might think it's because there are no Christian politicians, but that's not the real reason. There are plenty of Christian in the Ontario, BC, and Alberta legislatures. The reason we don't hear from them is because they are acting according to a set sort of strategy. They believe: If you want to make a difference, that's easier to do if you get elected. You can’t get elected if you take strong public stands on moral issues Ergo, it doesn’t make sense to take strong public moral stands. This strategy helps Christians get elected, but it's also why we can't find politicians speaking on abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, transgenderism, gay/straight alliance clubs, sex-ed curriculums and the issues that matter to us most. This is why no one is speaking up in Ontario and BC and Alberta and most everywhere else. For strategic reasons, our elected Christians are silencing themselves.  It's a catch-22: speak up and you won't get elected; don't speak up and you may get elected, but without any mandate to make change, so what's the point? Is there any way out of this seemingly no-win scenario? Put first things first Yes, if Christians voters and Christian candidates reorder our priorities. In his essay “First and Second Things” C.S. Lewis wrote about the damage that’s done when we start treating secondary priorities like they are the most important ones. He gave as an example a man who makes alcohol his focus. While alcohol can be a source of pleasure, that comes to an end when drinking becomes a man's priority. When he overvalues alcohol, then he’s liable to lose his house, his job, and maybe even his family. And, ironically, he'll even lose the pleasure he once got from drinking back when it was a minor matter to him. We need to understand that achieving power isn't our goal – it isn't a "first thing" for us. Our first thing is our message – the change we want to push for. Power, then, is a secondary thing to our message. We want to win a seat to have a platform from which to push for change. Power is a tool, not our purpose. It is an incredibly useful tool – having the platform that comes with being an MLA or MP means we could be heard by far more when we do speak out. But it is still just a tool, and only useful to us so long as we view it as a tool, and we don't overvalue it. If we make it our priority, that's when everything goes wrong. While power is a wonderful servant it is a terrible master. When getting elected is our first priority, then everything else – including our message – must serve that goal. That's when Christian politicians will silence themselves even when advocating for change was the original reason they got involved in politics. If winning is first it makes sense to stay silent on any issues that could lose us votes. In making power our first priority, we lose the ability to wield it in a useful manner. If we do win, we’ll be elected without any mandate for change. And we’ll still have reason to be fearful about talking on controversial issues because doing so will undermine our re-election chances. Like Lewis's drunk who in overvaluing drink loses out on all the pleasures of it, Christians who overvalue power lose out on the ability to use it. When our message is first So that's why there are so few Christian politicians speaking out: misordered priorities. What happens when we put first things first and bump power down off its perch? Then strange and wonderful possibilities present themselves! When our message becomes our first priority, then we can evaluate power, and the quest for it, in light of how it will serve our message. Then we compare it with the other tools at our disposal and evaluate them as to which will best help us be heard. Now, if seeking power requires us to stay quiet, then it seems quite likely some of our other tools are going to be better at getting us heard. But what are those other tools? Well, as we've seen over the last several years, a Christian lobby group - even a small one - can be very effective at getting our message out. Writing letters to the newspaper, talking to our neighbors, visiting MLAs and MPs in their offices, setting up large-scale demonstrations, and funding court challenges are all ways we can speak out loudly and clearly. Running for office is another possibility, so long as power remains a secondary concern. A candidate who isn't fixated on winning can be fearless and creative. That can be quite the contrast when his competitors are maintaining a strategic silence on all the controversial issues. I've been part of a losing campaign where the candidate was the subject of more than a hundred articles, endorsed by one of the city's daily papers, and the subject of TV news and radio reports. He lost, but his message was better served by a loud losing campaign than it could ever have been with a quiet winning one. What an impact a fearless politician can have! But you know what would be better still? Winning loud! It’s hard, but possible. And to see what can be done when a politician wins in a fearless fashion, we need only look at the example of Svend Robinson. This homosexual activist won a seat in Parliament and then used that platform to become Canada's most effective MP. He made his message his priority and that allowed him to use his power to full effect. As MP he advocated for homosexuality and for assisted suicide, and never stopped talking about what mattered to him most. He kept up the pressure, and despite only being a member of the opposition, he got the changes he was after because he would not be quiet. Parties are tools to use, not teams to join We can also learn from the way Robinson viewed his political party. While he was a long-time member of the NDP, he was not a team player. To him the party was another tool to use, not a team to join. It was valuable only is so far as it helped him be heard. Christians need to make this same shift in our thinking. In Alberta, BC and Ontario the most conservative parties want our help, and our contributions, and our vote. They want us to join their team... but they have no interest in representing our views. They are only interested in us in so far as we can be used to further their ends. It's time to turn the tables on them. We need to understand that political parties are only useful to us in so far as they can help us achieve our ends and further our message. Like Robinson we need to see them as a tool to use, not a team to join. If that seems disloyal, it's only because we're again mixing up first and second things. We join political parties as a means by which to do good and godly work – to speak in defense of what God holds most precious. That is our priority, and the party is only useful in so far as it helps us do what we've set out to do. We don't owe them anything. Opportunities to seize? Can parties today still be useful to us? Some certainly are not. On the federal level, the NDP and Liberals have shut the door on pro-life Christians. These are not tools we no longer have any access to. Provincially things are getting difficult too, but there may still be some opportunities. In Alberta, for example, we could target a riding the likes of Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock. It includes at least four conservative Reformed congregations and the current MLA is a Wildrose Party member Glenn van Dijken but no conservative (he supports Bill 10, which requires even private schools to create a Gay-Straight Alliance Club if a student requests it, and he doesn't support the unborn). If we stack the Wildrose nomination meeting with Reformed and other Christians, we would stand a good chance of replacing him. By picking our spots and focusing on locations that best suit our strengths, it's possible we could be loud and still win.  Then imagine the possibilities! For at least the next four years our winning candidate could make use of the platform God gave him to speak out fearlessly, repeatedly, winsomely, creatively and did we mention fearlessly? He could say what no other politicians today have the courage to say, speaking God's Truth to a nation that is in such desperate need of it! Conclusion In making winning our priority, we've made our message a secondary something to be sacrificed if it gets in the way. Since speaking out on abortion, homosexuality, or transgenderism does hurt at the polls, Christian politicians are silencing themselves on these and every other contentious moral issue. It's only when we listen to Lewis and put first things first, prioritizing our message, that we have any chance at being heard. Then a political candidate can speak without fear. Only then can he employ his creativity to present his message as loudly as possible. Only then will he dare address today's most controversial issues. He might not win; he probably won't. But win or lose he'll be heard by at least some. Win or lose the quiet Christian politician is heard by none....