The Bible does not mention democracy. Christian faith is a completely adaptable faith in political terms because God knew his church would always be a minority. He knew that the people of Christ would have to be able to exist in a dictatorship as well as a republic, and everything in between. Because of this, there is no Bible passage on who we should vote for. We are left to theology and prudence: our best understanding of the implications of scripture and the wisest way to apply them.
This is relevant in the present American election. We have before us four unhelpful choices:
The most personally distasteful candidate of a major party
The most corrupt candidate of a major party
Three candidates that can’t possibly receive a majority of votes
In Part 1 of my letter, I talked about Paul’s teaching on the value of singleness. In order to understand how to live in our day and time, though, more needs to be said on the issue.
I’m told that one in seven people lives alone in the United States. That’s about 31 million today compared with four million in 1950. As your pastor, I need to say a number of things about this.
Part 1: Prolonged Singleness As a Non-Normative Blessing
In the most recent sermon from our Onwardseries, we considered the significance of the family within the kingdom of God, looking specifically at both marriage and singleness. Since churches are prone to giving attention to marriage and parenting to the neglect of singleness, even though single men and women make up a growing portion of our churches, I wanted to give some extra time to a Biblical reflection on singleness. Continue reading Dear single people, from your local pastor (Part 1)→
In the first week of our Onward series (based on the book by Russell Moore) Pastor Nic demystified the idea of the “kingdom of God” and set the stage for the following six weeks in which we look to the Bible to help us engage the culture without losing the gospel.
You can find the rest of the series on our website here.
As part of our Onward series, we’re taking questions from the congregation related to ideas that come up in our sermons, class, and small groups discussions. Some questions will be covered in our Engage & Equip podcast, and others will be discussed here on the blog, so keep your eye out for more posts in both places!
The founders of the United States asked the question, “Now that we have won our liberty, how can liberty continue, when no nation has ever been formed on the basis of liberty?” Our teachers in school taught us that they organized a government that had a declaration of rights and the separation of powers, both in federalism and in the division of the federal government. These were aimed at keeping any person or party from consolidating enough power to be tyrannical. They then formed a government just strong enough to prevent weakness from producing anarchy, which would cause people to call for tyranny in order to have peace and safety.
The Necessity of Virtue
Yet this was not the primary foundational conviction of the American fathers. All of our structures are built upon a more basic set of convictions about human nature. The fathers so assumed these ideas that they are rarely made explicit in their writings, but you can find evidence of them everywhere. Continue reading The Golden Triangle of Freedom→
Engage & Equip 