In an earlier post, I raised the question: “have you been privatized?”  In that post, I focused primarily on the issue raised in Law and Revolution regarding the privatization of faith by restricting it to one’s personal life only and not permitting arguments from faith or religion into the public square.  Today, I turn to another type of privatization raised by Os Guinness in his excellent book The Call.

In an insightful chapter that is worth the price of the book alone, Guinness notes that we have enormous freedom today to pursue nearly any type of faith, belief, or religious practice that we please.  However, he rightly notes that this “freedom” can be deceptive.  It is actually, in his words, “limited and limiting (p. 165).”   [continue reading…]

This is a picture of Elijah, my firstborn son, taking his nap.  God has blessed me with six children.  Three girls first — Sierra, Alexis, and Victoria (“Torie”) — and then three boys — Elijah, Samuel, and Abraham.  Children truly are a blessing.  (Psalm 127:3-5)

I find one of the biggest challenges of my life is trying to balance all of my many responsibilities, duties, and obligations with being a good father.  One of the things that I have found that has helped me in that is a Yiddish song written in 1897 entitled “Mayn Yingele” (“My Little One”).  I have it on my computer and read it every so often.  It helps me remember to keep my priorities straight.   [continue reading…]

This strange-looking picture is of a page of one of the books that I have mentioned in several of my posts, Law and Revolutionby the late Harold J. Berman.  It gives, for those interested, an idea of how I read and mark-up a book.  More importantly, the green-highlighted quote is a powerful statement of why the church has ceased to impact the world in a fundamental way, and it is also a statement of why most Christians fail to live out their faith vibrantly in all that they do.  Os Guinness in his great book The Call uses the word “privatization” to refer to this phenomenon.  Thus, the question that serves as the title of today’s post — “have you been privatized?”  [continue reading…]

In these momentous times, we do need hope and change.  Not the type of hope and change that President Obama so masterfully sold to the American people to get elected–which is beginning to ring hollow–but real hope and real change.  A real hope in the future that makes a person want to get out of bed in the morning and work hard for real change that makes a difference in the world. 

I have written in a previous post of the momentous times in which we find ourselves, and I have suggested that the church must revive its interest in and focus on the central importance of the family in order to successfully meet the challenge of these times.  This post too answers the question “what is the church to do in these momentous times?” by suggesting that we need change and hope.

The Church Must Change Its Hopeless View of the Future

First, the church must change its hopeless view of the future.  [continue reading…]

“The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it!  The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose!  The law become the weapon of every kind of greed!  Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!
If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.”

These words begin a short little book on the law by a French economist, statesman, and author living in the early 1800s. [continue reading…]

The modern Western church tends to be overly pietistic. This often manifests in an attitude that says “if you really want to do God’s work, then be a missionary or a pastor.” Pursuant to this view, everyone else is a sort of second-class spiritual citizen, not really doing things that matter all that much for the Kingdom. The implicit message that comes through many times even in evangelical preaching is that if you are one of these second-class spiritual citizens, i.e., a non-missionary non-pastor type, then you should do whatever minor, secondary ministry God has given you, work hard at your “secular” job and make as much money as you can and live as frugally as you can, so that you can give as much money as you can to people who are really doing the Lord’s work.

Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales and now What’s in the Bible?, expresses his early understanding of this “truth” in Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story about God, Dreams, and Talking Vegetables. He writes: “I grew up in and around churches [continue reading…]

Many young couples dread the holidays because of the enormous pressure regarding visits with family.  This pressure often leads to fights over whether his family or hers gets Christmas Day, and whose gets Christmas Eve, etc.  This can often drive a wedge between young couples as they feel torn between their families.  In today’s Marriage Builders message, I discussed this difficult issue and others relating to what I describe as physically leaving and cleaving.  This is a part of the series that I have been doing ever since I started teaching in the Marriage Builders ABF class at Heritage Baptist Church.  I have done several “sub-series” in that long series, and this message is a part of the sub-series entitled Leave and Cleave.  You can click here to download and listen to the mp3.

The above is a picture of my third son and sixth child Abraham Rodney Chrisman.  It was taken on June 28, 2010, just after he was born.  He and his mother are doing great, and he is a blessed addition to our family, a true gift from the Lord.  (You can read my wife’s blog post about him here.)

Sadly, in much of America, Abraham would have never lived to be captured in a photo like the one above.  You see, when my wife was early in her pregnancy, a test revealed that she had elevated AFP levels in her blood.  Stating it very simply, this meant that there was a heightened risk of birth defects and other problems with the baby or the pregnancy.  One of the common birth defects discovered via this test is spina bifida.  (For more information on spina bifida, visit the Spina Bifida Association here.  As you will see there, spina bifida cases range from no problems at all to rather severe handicaps.)

Why do I say that he would have never lived to have his picture taken?  Because, in modern America, we have declared war on unborn babies with birth defects like Down syndrome and spina bifida.  When tests show a heightened risk for these conditions, huge numbers of Americans, often on the advice of medical professionals, now opt to abort (murder) the babies.  Albert Mohler has some great materials about this on his website here and here.

In fact, upon discovering the test results, our doctor in Lynchburg scheduled us an appointment with a high-risk OB practice at the University of Virginia Medical Center.  We were not encouraged to get an abortion there; however, before my wife even saw a doctor, she was required to meet with a counselor who appeared to be heading that direction.  She was very dour, somber, and hopeless.  When she saw the relative calm of my wife, she inquired as to whether my wife understood exactly how serious this is and how bad it could be.  My wife said that she did and that under no circumstances would we consider an abortion.  (If you are wondering where I was during all of this, I was parking the van and getting the other five up to the waiting room so that I could join her.)

After I joined her and we saw the ultrasound technician and ultimately the doctor, we were able to testify that we would welcome the baby into our family as a special blessing from God prepared just for us, regardless of whether he had a handicap.  To their credit at the OB practice there, once they saw our commitment to our worldview with regard to children and life, they never even so much as ventured in the direction of abortion talk again.  (But, the original counselor was still very serious and somber even after the ultrasound showed that everything was fine, her face being more appropriate for a funeral than a birth.)

Several more ultrasounds showed nothing to worry about, and we were eventually discharged from the care of the high-risk OB group.  Abraham Rodney was eventually born on June 28, 2010, at 9:08 a.m.  He was a little bitty guy compared to our others at only 5 pounds and 11 ounces, but he is eating and growing and doing great.  He is a special gift from God prepared just for our family.  May God give us many more.

Finally, he is also a living reminder of a battle going on in our culture–a battle between the idea of the goodness of children, all children not just “healthy” ones, and the culture of death.  The battlegrounds for this conflict are many, but one particular battleground is in the most sacred of places.  The place where God weaves together the tiny body for the new little soul–the womb (Ps. 139).  In America, ever more frequently this battle proves fatal for that new life.  It is a battle that we as Christians cannot ignore.  We must celebrate the goodness of all children, and we must encourage those among us to choose life, even if that life does not meet our subjective and often selfish standards of perfection.

The Sachsenspiegel (The Mirror of Saxon Law), circa 1220, states that “God is himself law, and therefore law is dear to him.”  I would have to agree that it seems God does nearly everything by law.  Everywhere you look in God’s creation, you will find laws there.

God built the physical world based upon laws.  The law of gravity, the laws of planetary motion, and the laws of thermodynamics are just some of the laws that humans have discovered to have been built into creation by the Creator.  Many more laws governing the physical world could be listed.

Further, God also ordered the spiritual realm by law.  For example, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb. 9:22b, ESV).”  The Older Testament sacrificial system made this law plan to the Israelites via types (think about the book of Leviticus,) and the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross served as the antitype demonstrating conclusively the importance of this spiritual law.

God has also made laws to govern the social institutions and interactions.  “Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church” and “[w]ives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” are laws that God has given to govern the covenantal relationship of marriage (Eph. 5:25a, 22).”  In the church, another covenantal social institution, God has legislated that “all things should be done decently and in order (I Cor. 14:40, ESV).”

Many more examples of God’s Law for the physical, spiritual, and social dimensions of life could be given; however, the examples given above are enough to make the point that the Sachsenspiegel is accurate in its assertion that law is dear to God.  He seems to have built it into everything He created.

Since law is dear to Him, and since He has seemingly built it into everything He created, we can safely assume that it is a part of His very nature and character, just like love and mercy.  Accordingly, we can agree with the Sachsenspiegel when it says that “God is himself law.”

Since God is in this sense law, and since law is dear to Him, it would seem that law should be very important to the Christian.  We should want to discover these laws and order our lives accordingly.  Again, an illustration might be beneficial here.  If you want to prosper and do well physically, it is important to understand the law of gravity.

If you are a parent of young children and live in a two-story house, you have likely experienced the law of gravity rather dramatically.  Young children, particularly boys, seem to need to learn the hard way that they need to walk down the steps—not jump—in order to arrive safely at the bottom.  This predilection often leads to some memorable falls.  The sound of a little human crashing down the steps tends to vividly make the point that it is important to order our lives according to the law of gravity!

Unfortunately, the age in which we live is very antinomian, which simply means that the spirit of the age is against law and indeed seems to hate law.  If God is himself law, then this is, of course, hatred of God.  Even the church seems to be saying of the laws of the Lord and His Anointed, we will “burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us (Ps. 2:3, ESV).”  Thus, we witness the devastating tragedy that those who comprise the bride of Christ are saying to Christ and to the world around them—“I hate my husband.”

So, that being said, how do you feel toward law?  In particular, how do you feel toward God’s laws?  Important questions to ask because they are better proxies for how you actually feel about God Himself than whether you got the “warm fuzzies” in last week’s worship service.  It is possible to have the “warm fuzzies” about a god while hating the true Triune God, who is a God of not only mercy and love but of law.