Tag: Worldview

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Lord's Day Liturgy

They Would Be Dead by Now

Many people are alive today who, had they been living even 100 years ago, would be dead by now. What I mean is that many hurt, weak, sick, or diseased persons are able to be healed, strengthened, cured, or at least treated or relieved today for things that would have likely caused their death a century and more ago. We have done a lot things, including modifying food and developing medicines, that have made it so that we see a lot of people with a lot of problems, but at least they are still alive. Allergies aren’t good, but they are better than death. Does this matter? Should we care?

Research doctors, practicing physicians, and other medical personnel have a worldview. Every man has a worldview though that doesn’t mean that every man lives out his worldview consistently. Nevertheless, in general, keeping people alive belongs with those who believe that living is worth the cost. More than that, finding ways to treat the underdeveloped, the elderly, the chronically sick, and the terminally ill belongs with those who believe that God does not despise persons in those conditions. He cares. So should we.

Paul uses this argument figuratively related to how we treat one another in the Body of Christ. All the parts need one another. “[T]he parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Corinthians 12:22). We are connected so that “if one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

This analogy depends on the reality that a personal God created persons and cares about persons. If we are artifacts of ebullient goop that couldn’t contain itself, and if our best hope is abstract progress, and if the strong should be selected to survive, then we should, in order to be consistent, kill babies in utero who appear to be damaged, we should pull the plug on the geriatrics who’ve used up their usefulness, and we should leave the weak and sick to fend for themselves. The weak are like weeds sucking away nutrients for the healthy blades.

We ought to be thankful for the cultural effect of the doctrine of creation by a personal, Triune God and the doctrine of His gospel. Though it is slipping, we have the remnants of our fathers’ beliefs that living is better and treating the weak and sick is worth it. We ought to proclaim the glory of the Creator and the Christ. We also ought to match our attitudes accordingly toward those fellow image-bearers who need help.

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Every Thumb's Width

To Force More Perfect Union

Abraham Lincoln did not have the chops to unite the Union peaceably. Part of his problem is that he loved the Union too much.

Caveats, qualifications, and disclaimer: I did not pay much attention in school as a kid. I am not a historian or a politician or a librarian. I have only read about 100 pages of Lincoln’s speeches in this collection. I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect those of my employer.

So I said that Lincoln did not have the chops to hold (or reunite) the Union together apart from force. He used the tool he had, the Army, and set a precedent of Federal preeminence. His example also demonstrates the failure of secular philosophy to consolidate a diverse people.

Lincoln was not a Christian. He spoke about God but he did not worship the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit. He valued religion only to the degree that it wouldn’t alienate voters. He said,

I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. (55)

His first inaugural speech as President revealed that he didn’t serve God, he served the Union. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have served God by serving the Union, but that wasn’t true for him. He valued the Union above all and he vowed that he would do whatever was necessary to defend it. He personally wished for abolition but, as long as the Union survived, it didn’t really matter to him if every slave was freed or if no slave was ever freed. Liberty was a great idea until it threatened his precious.

When his god was attacked he fought back. The sovereign Union punished any who questioned it starting with South Carolina. The Constitution framers wrote of their desire “to form a more perfect union.” Lincoln chose to force one.

He took over a country in tension and he knew there were problems. Yet he used his rhetorical skills to persuade his opponents only for a while. Because Lincoln did not worship the triune God of the Bible, he did not have faith or hope in a good God which would have enabled patient work for a resolution that may (or may not) happen decades later. He could not see far enough ahead to pray for worshippers who would be Christlike disciples who would educate the next generation.

Lincoln said that he knew the appropriate political process.

[B]allots are the rightful, and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. (314)

Apparently he didn’t even have time to wait for politics, let alone trust anything or anyone greater.

The idea of the Union was most important. He failed to appreciate that the Union consisted of States, and the States consisted of persons. He couldn’t see it, and ended up trying to build a Union around an abstract rather than on persons or God Himself. His “success” not only left us with a heritage of overreaching presidents but also of people expecting the Federal government to rule them regardless of the brutal measures used to enforce unity.

Because Lincoln did not worship the triune God he could not see all men of all skin colors as image-bearers of God. Slaves were still property to be priced and restitution provided to their owners. Slaves only counted as 3/5th of a free man for representation purposes. Free men themselves served to fight. If they were ground up in war on behalf of the Union, so be it.

Lincoln talked about using tools other than force in order to avoid more bloodshed (363) but he couldn’t pull it off. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Spirit can create true and willing unity. We will not have a perfect union apart from submission to the Lord first. This means that obedient Christians are free to be the best citizens whether the Lord grants us obvious success, sooner or later or never. Lincoln had no such confidence.

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A Shot of Encouragement

There Is No Spoon

More from Saving Leonardo about the inevitable results of a man’s defective theology proper:

When artists were persuaded that nature operates by blind, undirected processes—-with no overarching purpose, order, or design—-then consciously or unconsciously they began to express that worldview by refusing to impose any order or design on their starting materials….If the universe does not have an author, if it was not created by a supreme artist, then what basis is there for humans to create works of art? (158)

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Every Thumb's Width

Why Work?

I highly recommend this article by Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work?” She wrote it in 1942 in the middle of WWII. She touches on war, economics, advertising, vocation, contentment, dualism, and the church. Though I think she misses the disciple-making opportunities and obligations of every Christian worker, she punches much of our selfish and shoddy labor in the throat. She also puts worship at the head of every production line.  

The end of our work will be decided by our religious outlook: as we are so we make. 

I especially appreciate Sayers’ questions that blame the Church’s moral-gnostic message for much of the confusion and careless work among Christians.

How can any one remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly – but what use is all that if in the very center of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad carpentry?

If you have half an hour and if you’re interested in further developing the full-orbed, Kuyperian-Calvinist, image-bearing worldview (for yourself or for your kids and grandkids), then these pages will be well worth your reading work.

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Calvinism as Guaranteed Fellowship

On Calvinism as a life-system, or worldview, that explains how men relate to God’s eternal purpose:

Calvinism takes its stand with a fundamental thought which is equally profound. It does not seek God in the creature, as Paganism; it does not isolate God from the creature, as Islamism; it posits no mediate communion between God and the creature, as does Romanism; but proclaims the exalted thought that, although standing in high majesty above the creature, God enters into immediate fellowship with the creature, as God the Holy Spirit. This is even the heart and kernel of the Calvinistic confession of predestination.

In other words, our enjoyment of eternal life is part of God’s eternal plan to share His eternal life with us. Among other things, His eternal life is Triune communion, and Calvinism summarizes His intent to share communion with men. This is good news, and it is the “mother thought” of all God’s “heroes and heralds.”

[P]redestination was inexorably maintained, not for the sake of separating man from man, nor in the interest of personal pride, but in order to guarantee from eternity to eternity, to our inner self, a direct and immediate communion with the Living God.

—Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 21.