Following Christ as the Church Militant

 

Following Christ as the Church Militant --By Joe Boot 

An urgent warning to the clerics and parishioners

Christian thinking must be concerned with actually following the Christ of Scripture and having His Word dwell and abide in us by His Spirit. Submitting oneself to being a humble follower doesn’t come easily to anyone – especially cultural leaders, thinkers and apparently bishops. This was evident in the recent diabolical and self-immolating ruling of the bishops in the Church of England to formally bless same-sex relationships in the churches, all in the name of the love of Jesus. The human inclination is always toward autonomy, preferring to live the illusion that we can ‘legislate’ for ourselves; to be a king without a country in the rootless despair of defiance is the preference of our rebellious age. 

Being a professing Christian in the church does not remove the temptation or inclination to strike out alone, to follow our own desires or those of our culture, to live by our own priorities and to set aside the awesome and all-consuming call to be a disciple of Christ; to come and die in order to truly live.  Kneeling as a living sacrifice sounds incredibly painful and involves a transformation of the heart which implies the pain and suffering of rejection by a world conformed, in the final analysis, to a very different spirit. But the divine midwife insists this is the only way. We must be reborn, transformed, and given a new heart, a new mind.

As Christians we may claim to follow Christ, but the lifelong challenge in developing a truly Christian mindset requires regularly asking ourselves if we have followed Him far enough? Have we been to Jordan and seen the dove descending, but hung back from the mountain to avoid His exposition of the law and radical insistence that only those who teach that law are great in the Kingdom? Have we fallen asleep in pious satisfaction at the gates of Gethsemane, or lingered from a safe distance at Golgotha, never making it to the slopes of Olivet or to the upper room in Jerusalem with the dancing flames of fire?  Is it possible that we are not yet Christian enough?  It is all too easy to follow Christ only as far as is convenient, till the tarrying is just too tiring. If we only follow Christ part way, then we are uninvolved in key aspects of the drama and miss the significance of God’s full act in history.

The entire work of Christ in all His offices must become contemporaneous with us if we would truly be transformed by the renewing of our minds. It is not sufficient to appreciate Christ washing Simon Peter’s feet at the last supper as a model of service if we refuse to see Him, let alone join Him, where the bloodied Stephen saw Him – exalted in heavenly places, standing up from his seat of total authority at God’s right hand.  Unambiguously, we must see Him as priest on the road to Calvary, but we must also recognize Him on the footpath to Emmaus as resurrected Lord – the gardener of creation among Arimathea’s roses – if we are to truly follow Christ and know the renewal of our minds.

In a hostile context, the temptation is to follow Him just as far as culture permits. When the storm rises, dread grips us and we hear His call to step out of the boat and walk upon the Word – despite the wind and waves of the world’s antagonism – we suddenly become hard of hearing. And if we will not hear that Word over the inimical clamour of idolatry, we certainly cannot then speak it.  If our cultural moment is allowed to determine how far we follow Christ, then we cannot follow Him at all.  We may perhaps hear Hosanna’s from a distance, but we won’t be found stammering with the doubter, ‘My Lord and my God!’  We may even be permitted by our age to stand near the wooden cross of a brave martyr, but not on the mountain of ascension with the ruler of the kings of the earth.

The sad end of hearing and heeding only the word our culture will permit is first an unwillingness, then a tragic inability, to speak the whole counsel of God as faithful prophets. As priest and prophet Christ was hated, knew the world’s enmity, and warned that the spirit at work in the children of disobedience would naturally hate His followers also. But we cannot follow our Prophet nor share in His sufferings if we refuse to prophesy. Many contemporary priests would rather predict with Balaam to preserve their living than stand with Elijah against Baal. It is certain an ass has spoken with more wisdom in the annals of prophetic utterance than many English bishops – hirelings who would flog the meekest of God’s prophets if they could for hindering their progress in vexing the people of God. Like powdered-wigged courtiers fighting over who will fetch the king’s chamber pot, much of the church simply courts the culture – ingratiating themselves with the influential, the powerful, the professors, even senior clergy who have whored themselves to the spirit of the world.

The moment that God’s people call a truce and reach a settlement with the spirit of the world, the mindset of the age, is the moment they abolish the Christian mind and overturn true Christianity. The kingdom of God is indeed in this world, but not of it; it is surely present here, but it is not from here – its power, authority and mandate derive from a transcendent source. In history, the church is always the church militant, not the church triumphant. The struggle will continue over our graves till the King comes who will open all graves. We are called to victory, not to peaceful collaboration.

When the church says ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace and signs a treaty with a rebel world, it pretends to be the church triumphant, and pretends that the struggle against lawlessness and spiritual darkness is complete – but before the consummation of Christ. It is a tragic irony that those who preach righteousness and hope for history through following Christ to the uttermost, bringing them into direct conflict with the world on the frontlines of battle, are charged with ‘triumphalism,’ whilst popular collaborators who claim neutrality with the world, making a compact of surrender or privatization to the applause of culture are thought pious and realistic. In reality, they are triumphalist – seeking to immanentize a false eschaton by denaturing the faith, abstracting it from the affairs of daily life and coating what remains in honey so as to avoid any bitter taste in society’s mouth – for a church no longer at war is a church triumphant.

https://www.ezrainstitute.com/resource-library/blog-entries/following-christ-as-the-church-militant/

 

 

Resurrecting Liberalism

–by P. Andrew Sandlin

Modern conservatives know that they're actually old-time liberals and should reclaim the term.

Liberalism, the Roots

Liberalism is a dirty word to many conservatives — Leftists, too. The latter now prefer to be called “progressives.” This is welcome news for thoughtful modern conservatives, who know that they themselves are actually old-time liberals, and we should reclaim the term.

Liberalism is the application of the Protestant Reformation to politics, and wedded to the conservative wing of the Enlightenment. Luther and Calvin’s recovery of the biblical truth of the individual’s responsibility before God unencumbered by the interposition of the medieval church soon found a parallel in the individual citizen’s liberty from an oppressive state and hereditary monarchies, strangling economic guilds, and suffocating clannishness. Individuals were rightly obligated to state, family, church, and business, but they were largely set free to follow the dictates of their own conscience, and gain the benefits, or suffer the consequences.

Spheres of Liberty (Liberalism)

Three main spheres of that liberty are the religious, political, and economic. Religious liberty means the liberty to worship God (or not worship him at all) according to the dictates of one’s conscience. It means there is no tax-financed national church into which one is born coterminous with the state. It means not that the state is religiously neutral (an impossibility) but that the state doesn’t get involved in church disputes or privilege a single denomination. The state enforces the moral law of God appropriate to its sphere and leaves the rest of Christian practice (or no practice) to citizens. This moral law as it relates to civil legislation is narrow — basically protecting life, liberty, and property, in language popular at the War for Independence. The state is not designed to make people good Christians. That’s the job of the church and family.

Next comes political liberty. Liberalism reversed the traditional priority of politics: the individual exists for the purpose of the nation or state. For liberalism, by contrast, the state exists for the purpose of the individual, to protect his liberty. “Governments are instituted among Men,” the Declaration of independence says, to “secure … Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” If the state doesn’t protect these God-given rights, there’s no reason for its existence. This was a breathtaking philosophical shift in the history of politics, but it has given the West the greatest measure of freedom in world history.

Finally, consider economic liberty. Liberalism observed how the so-called divine right of kings and intergenerational aristocratic rights had imperiled private property for much of human history. The strong owned property and created laws to forbid the competition of honest workers and investors. Liberals knew that property was an extension of the person. What we own is part of who we are. Individuals must therefore be free to work and get and barter their own property. Because it is theirs, and not another’s, they will treat it more carefully and respectfully. When liberalism sparked widespread economic liberty, the West over time developed such wealthy societies that were seen nowhere previously.

Liberalism, inspired by Reformational ideas, gave us a free, peaceful, prosperous, world. This is the world into which those of my age and older were born. We are its beneficiaries.

Liberty (Liberalism) Under Assault

It is now under withering assault, first by Leftists and, sadly, also by some misguided conservatives.  

Leftists are at heart utopians.1 They (1) believe they know what the perfect society should be (egalitarian: no sexual, religious or economic differences); they (2) are confident it can be realized; and they (3) work to make it happen. But this society isn’t compatible with liberty. When people are free to act as they want, even — perhaps especially  — within the realm of God’s moral law, they won’t seek utopian egalitarianism. Therefore, they must not be granted the liberty to act. Political authority should be in the hands of those who have society’s best interests at heart — Leftists, of course. This is an updated form of Marxism called Cultural Marxism. Not just economics but all of life must be equalized by the enforced power of the state. This is why all modern Leftists must be statists.

But, increasingly, not only Leftists. Some social conservatives, correctly alarmed at the moral decadence of our society — abortion, homosexual “marriage,” pornification, transgenderism, transhumanism, for example — incorrectly blame liberalism, that is, they blame liberty. Their attitude is: “If there were less liberty, there would be more virtue.” They want a society of politically enforced virtue; they want to enforce the virtue. In this, they’re no different from Robespierre, Lenin, and Pol Pot. They only disagree on how to define the virtue.  These conservatives are sometimes called “integralists” (if Roman Catholic) or “post-liberals.” Liberalism, they assert, has failed. What they really mean is: liberty has failed. They want the power of political coercion to correct this problem.2

They fail to understand that liberty is itself a virtue.3 A free society can become an unvirtuous society, as ours has, but this is due to men’s depraved heats, not to liberty. They have failed in the culture wars — abortion was nationally legalized for nearly 50 years, though thank God, removed last week from judicial to legislative jurisdiction; homosexual “marriage” has been nationally legalized; and the rights of children to try to change their “gender” have been solidified. But these were not first Leftist political victories. They were Leftist cultural victories later easily codified in politics.

Resurrecting Liberty (Liberalism)
To resurrect liberty, therefore, we must work to restore a godly culture. That culture will eventually work its way into politics, not vice versa. There is no more pressing character quality in reviving liberty than individual responsibility. Anti-liberal thinking stresses group or identitarian dynamics: your meaning in life is rooted in your sex, or your race, or your economic status. You are a captive to that identity, and that identity excuses your privations and failures. If you’re a woman, “the patriarchy” has held you back. If you’re black, “white supremacy” has oppressed you. If you’re homosexual, a “heteronormative” society has prevented the exercise of your full potential.4

In the Bible, we’re all created in God’s image and personally responsible for our actions. We may not enlist the coercive state to redress our grievances of being a woman or a Hispanic or a lower-middle class citizen. We must recognize that while all of us have confronted hard, unforeseen circumstances, we should take it as a rule that we are today where our own decisions have brought us. We are not victims. We should have the liberty to decide — and live with the consequences of our decisions.

Liberalism is the political philosophy that allows us to make and live with our decisions. The state will not save us. It will protect our life, liberty, and property. It will not protect us from our bad decisions, from ourselves. Liberalism takes seriously man created in God’s image and therefore free within God’s cosmic order. Man’s primal calling is to exercise dominion over the creation within that order (Genesis 1:27–30). No political system has been better than liberalism at providing man the freedom to fulfill that task.

To resurrect individual responsibility under God’s authority is to resurrect liberalism.

1 Thomas Molnar Utopia, the Perennial Heresy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967).

2 For a definitive refutation of the charges against liberalism, see Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1993).

3 Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1996).

4 Of course, male and female and black and white are rooted in our created being. Homosexuality is a perverse invention.