Saturday Selections – May 3, 2025

Be Present  Reformed rapper Propaganda with a message that'll hit everyone hard: "I guess you could say I've been through a divorce now – me and my phone are no longer married." p.s. "finna" means "going to" An encouraging message for Canadian Christians after election night The same God who promises to turn everything to our good (Romans 8:28) was sovereignly in control when Mark Carney got voted in. So we know this is right, and to our benefit, even if we don't understand... at least in full. One possible benefit – an evident silver lining – is the 90 pro-life MPs that RightNow says were elected. Pro-life candidates are banned from the NDP and Liberals, so these must all be Conservative, and 90 out of the 144 elected Conservatives is quite the sizeable segment. And being in opposition can be freeing, as it may allow these MPs to speak against government abuses more openly than they'd ever be allowed if they were government. Maybe some will start talking about the unborn, not just to fellow pro-lifers, but to the muddled middle who might yet be convicted of the wickedness of this slaughter. Encouraging coverage of ARPA Canada This week ARPA Canada got to make a presentation in the BC legislature with around 20 MLAs present, and this mainstream media account covered it straight up. Want to improve your life? "Open the Bible at least four times a week." Stop valorizing doubt! (10-minute read) As Trevin Wax notes, "Honesty about our doubt is a virtue, but it’s the honesty that’s commendable, not the doubt itself." Syncretism is a pressing temptation As Pastor John Van Eek notes in the video below, syncretism is the mixing of any two (or more religions) to form a completely new religion. Or to put it another way, Christianity plus anything isn't Christianity anymore. In the past God's people might have mixed their true religion with Baal worship, but today's syncretistic temptation involves a very different religion: secularism. In the public square, the demand is that Christians limit ourselves to sharing a logical, scientific, or maybe "common sense" perspective, but never an explicitly Christian one. Now, Christianity is logical, and lines up with science (when properly understood) so this might seem a demand we could accommodate. But when we understand that the secularism making these demands holds that man's reasoning is the source of all knowledge, including what is good, right, and meaningful, then we can see how secularism is another religion. And then we can also start to see the syncretistic element here. If Christians agree to act and argue as secularists do – with no mention of the God we were created to glorify (WSC Q&A 1) – then even when we are pursuing good ends, like fighting a trans agenda or trying to stop abortion, we are doing so by mixing secularism with our Christianity. And then is that Christianity still? ...