Another commonly repeated, highly consequential lie is that there’s such a thing as “your truth” and “my truth”: Christian, your truth doesn’t exist. Your truth won’t bring hope or save anyone. … The Cross is the answer to every lie that tells me I can find everything I need inside myself. … The Cross is not just a symbol of salvation. It’s a place of rest. 

In her new book, author and apologist Alisa Childers targets the lies that often masquerade as cultural proverbs today. In Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, Childers offers just what the title promises. She exposes the bad ideas at the center of slogans we hear all the time. You can receive a copy of the book with a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just go to colsoncenter.org/august. 
Though the mantras that dominate our world can seem harmless, they are not. “Our culture,” Childers writes,  
is brimming with slogans that promise peace, fulfillment, freedom, empowerment, and hope. These messages have become such an integral component of our American consciousness that many people don’t even think to question them. … The problem? They are lies. 
In fact, Childers argues, slogans like “You are enough,” “authenticity is everything,” “Put yourself first,” “It’s all about love,” or “God just wants you to be happy,” commonly redefine words like love and hate and happy. What’s left is a modern-day “tower of Babel” (or “Babble”) situation where those with the most social media followers are granted authority and assumed to have expertise on life and how to live it.  
At the root of these destructive slogans is a view of the self. For example, Childers cites Glennon Doyle, whose New York Times No. 1 best seller Untamed centers around her decision to leave her husband for a woman she saw at a local zoo, all while quoting Carl Jung: “There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”  
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Some may not be used to thinking of God as an unmoved mover.  Yet is not the first cause of all things God?  If God is anything He is that.  But many more attributes may be derived from the unmoved mover being pure act, which will show that we are dealing with God. This is not accidental.  Just as the attributes of a thing derive from its kind of existence, so if God’s existence or being may be established and that it is of itself, or from itself (aseity), its absoluteness, indpendence and primacy being herein established, many of its attributes may be drawn out from this. 

Can God be Proven?
Can God be proven to exist?¹  The Bible says God is “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3) and “in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)  If this be true, as Christians believe, then it should be for all created things that their existence and continuance has no adequate or sufficient explanation or grounding in the things themselves, that is, in their own nature, but only because God wills them to exist.
¹ Francis Turretin (d. 1687), a pillar of Reformed Orthodoxy said, speaking for the Reformed: “Can the existence of God be irrefutably demonstrated against atheists?  We affirm.” Institutes, vol. 1, 3rd topic, question 1, p. 169.
If this be the case: (1) this should be able to be seen from examining the nature of things themselves and how they are caused, that is, by the light of nature (without Scripture), and, (2) from the characteristics of nature or its laws, God must be the only sufficient explanation, both in the orders of knowing and being,† for the existence and continuance at every moment for all created things.
† That is with respect to epistemology and ontology (or metaphysics).
This must be qualified just a little.  One would not expect from only certain properties of nature to be able to derive everything about God.  However, if such necessary derivations can be made, that which will be known of God will be distinctive to Him, showing that it is God one is considering.  This is what Rom. 1:20 says: “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.”  It is also what the Westminster Confession (1646) teaches.¹
¹ WCF ch. 21.1, “The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all; is good, and doeth good unto all;”ch. 1.1, “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable…”
About this Proof
No originality is claimed for the substance of this proof.  The general tenor of it derives from Aristotle, through Aquinas and most lately through Edward Feser.²  I have adapted it in my own style.  The Dutch reformed theolgian Peter van Mastricht (d. 1706) used a very similar proof.³
² Feser (b. 1968) is a professor of philosophy and an analytical Thomist.  Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God  Pre  (Ignatius Press, 2017), ch. 1, ‘The Aristotelian Proof’, pp. 17-68³ Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology (RHB, 2019), vol. 2, bk. 2, ch. 2,sect. 2, pp. 45-46.
You can call it “The Aristotelian Proof from Change,” though, it does not hang on Aristotle, Aquinas, Mastricht, Feser or myself.  It derives from nature itself, necessarily, and is able to be understood by any rational creature in any place at any time.  It is a universal testimony to God’s existence. (Ps. 19:1-4)
The proof proceeds by the way of causality, one of the three ways the Christian tradition has taught God may be generally known by.º  It does not start with things more fundamental and absolute in their being than God, and then derive from these God, who must be consequently lesser.  Rather, it starts with things less absolute and fundamental than God and works backwards, so to speak, by their necessary connection to Him, to show that an absolute God must be.  That is, the way of knowing need not always follow the priority or ultimacy of being.
º See ‘On the Three General Ways God is Known: Way of Causality, Negation & Eminence’.
It ought not to be thought this proof is the only way God’s existence may be demonstrated, as other aspects of being and creation, by their distinctive traits, may be expected to show further things about the character of our God.
First, 1. Preliminaries to the proof will be given, then 2. the proof will be proven, then 3. it will be shown that many more attributes of God may be derived from what has been proved, showing that it is God we are dealing with.  4. Two objections will be resolved, and lastly, 5. we will close.
1. Preliminaries to the Proof
1.1 Change
Change occurs.  Besides that we acknowledge and assume this in our daily actions (such as in reading this proof), and couldn’t live without doing so, to rationally deny change occurs, one would have to think of a reason for this, possibly another, and conclude that change does not occur.  This involves change.  That change occurs is undeniable; therefore it is true.
Change necessarily involves the actualization of a potential, that something has a potential for something, and that potential thing comes into being or is made actual.  That is, change cannot be sufficiently explained or justified apart from potentiality and actuality.  Potentiality and actuality must lie beneath all change, though they are metaphysical concepts which cannot of themselves be seen.
Change occurs, therefore potentiality and actuality exist, functioning in relation to each other.
1.2 Train Cars
A flatbed train car has much potential.  Given its axes and wheels it can roll down the railway.  It can also hold many heavy things on it off the ground.  Yet there are many things a train car has no potential for.  If you see bunny rabbits hopping around the car and hear violin music, you would look around for their cause because you know train cars can’t, by their nature, turn into bunnies or produce bunnies or violin music.  A metal train car doesn’t have those potentials, due to its unique nature in being a train car.
One may think perhaps: the train car could be melted down and turned into a metalic violin with metalic strings and produce violin music.  Perhaps it may, but then it wouldn’t be a train car (and you wouldn’t be seeing a flatbed and hear violin music at the same time).  If something is a train car, it can’t produce things beyond what its nature has the potential for.
If the car sits on a flat railway, how long will it sit there till it moves down the railroad?  Of course not until something else comes and pulls it along.  The flatbed has no ability or potential to move itself or to activate its own potentials.  Something else has to do that.
1.3 The Law of Causality
Say two train cars sit on the railroad next to each other.  Both have the potential to move.  Yet the potential of the one never moves the other.  Why?  Because the one flatbed’s potential to move is not actual; it is not actually moving, and that is what it would take to move the second flatbed, to activate its potential to move.
That one thing must be moved by another is not only a common observation all around us, it must be true for everything that has potential, precisely because something not actual cannot do anything.  A possibility does not exist as anything but a possibility.  These thngs must be true by the distinct natures of what potentiality and actuality must be.  The principle is called the Law of Causality:
Something potential can only be made actual by something actual.
This is not only universally true by empirical experience, but it must be true by definition from the laws that constitute nature, given change.  If change occurs, it must be done by something actual.  Something must bump into or pull the train car before it will move, because it has no nature or potential to move itself.
1.4 Ordered Series of Dependent Causes
In a train of many cars going down the railroad there is an ordered series of dependent causes: each car’s potential is being activated to move by the actual car in front of it in a series where one car is dependent on all those in front of it.  The train engine at the front is pulling all the cars after it; it is doing all the work in one respect, through the nature of those cars and their causal relations.
Of course we are not actually interested in train cars.  Each car stands for something that changes, namely any and everything we see around us.  Ordered series of various causes surround us, and we are part of them.
The issue we are getting to is not dependent on time, nor concerns change through time.  Take the series of train cars in a moment of time.  Each one still depends by way of causation and dependence on those in front.
Take a case where there is no movement or change through time: You may be sitting on a chair, which is keeping you off the floor.  The chair is being held up by the floor, the floor by the building supports, which are resting on the foundation, which is being held up by the ground.  The ground has more ground underneath it, and further factors are causing that ground to be the way it is, such as gravity and various forces science is concerned with.  Go as far along in that series as you can.  Here is a hierarchical series of ordered causes, always existing in our universe.
2. The Proof
2.1 The Problem
You see a clearing in the trees with flatbed train cars rushing through.  Seeing as a flatbed has no ability by its nature to move itself, what is moving each one?  You might say, “Well, the train car in front of it is pulling it.”  Well that is true, but that flatbed also has no power to move itself; what is pulling that one?
You look a little more around the edge of the trees and see several more train cars ahead in the line.  What is pulling those?  Each further car activating the potential of the one behind it still needs its own potential activated by another.¹
¹ If you don’t agree, try denying the Law of Causality above and see how that works out in daily life.  See Feser defend the principle in Five Proofs, ch. 1, ‘Common Misunderstandings’, pp. 38-68.
Clearly no finite number of flatbeds in the series is going to resolve the issue.  If there are 100 flatbeds, you will then need 101, then 102, 103, 104, etc.  You may think, “If no finite number of flatbeds will help, there must be an infinite number in this series, each further flatbed pulling the other.”  Yet if no flatbed by its nature has inbuilt power to move itself, neither does an infinite number or series of flatbeds.
Some may claim this commits the fallacy of composition, that the qualities of parts are not necessarily those of the combined whole: if each lego piece weighs one ounce, a wall of them does not weigh the same.  Yet not every composition of qualities functions the same.  If each lego is red, the whole wall of them is red.  What’s the only color of an infinite wall of red legos?
What kind quality and composition then are we concerned with?  If each flatbed has potential and therefore can’t move itself, and an infinite line of them is moving and changing, and thus has potential, it can’t move itself either.
Well, perhaps the infinite series of train cars is going in a circle.  That’s not going to work, for the same reasons.  The conglomerate of an infinite number of things that cannot move themselves still does not have a nature to be able to move itself, even in a circle.  So the flatbeds’ moving is left unexplained, as their natures, even strung together infinitely in whatever shape you desire, cannot account for it.º
º Turretin in addressing that a thing cannot be the cause for its own existence, which we will get to: “such a circle is impossible; for suppose it were true, it would follow that the same thing was made by itself and was the cause (mediately at least) of itself.” Institutes 1:170
But perhaps it’s a whirlpool, like the whirpool of secondary causes all around us.  What moves the infinite, whirpool of dependent causes (grant its existence for the sake of argument), if the whirlpool has nothing in it able to move itself and, as the whirlpool’s potential (which it must have, as it changes) must be activated by something outside itself?  Adding another whirpool, universe, dimension, finding of science, etc. is not going to help.
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Overtures 20, 21, 25, and 26 all call for changes to disciplinary procedures. Tennessee Valley also sent Overture 26, which proposes an amendment to BCO 32-19. Currently, when a person is charged with an offense and tried by his session or, in the case of a minister, by his presbytery, he may be represented before the court by anyone who is a member of the church or (in the case of a minister) another member of his presbytery. This overture proposes that the person charged would be allowed representation by any member in good standing in a PCA church. Tennessee Valley argues that small congregations or presbyteries may not include members who are well versed in PCA disciplinary procedures and so under the current provision might be underrepresented in a trial. The proposal does not alter the prohibition against employment of professional counsel. 

In the PCA, an overture is ordinarily a proposal from a lower church body to a higher body requesting the higher body to take some particular action. We’ve reviewed the first 19 overtures sent to the 51st General Assembly here and here. Since that time, 16 additional overtures have been sent to the GA.
Two of these new overtures address the subject of previously submitted overtures. Overtures 23 and 24 would amend BCO 13-6, 21-4, and 24-1 to require background checks as part of examinations for ordination to office and transfer of ministers into a presbytery, an issue already addressed in Overtures 6, 16, and 17. 
The proposed changes in Overture 24, from South Texas Presbytery, are identical to those proposed in Overtures 16 and 17, outlined in the previous update. This proposal calls for each presbytery to order and review background checks for minsters seeking transfer from other presbyteries and denominations, and for candidates for ordination under “specific rules and policies” for such background checks. Each session would be required to do the same for candidates for ruling elder and deacon. While the proposal does not specify details of the “specific rules and policies,” the overture does include suggested policies that presbyteries or sessions could adopt. The background checks would serve as part of the candidate’s/transferring minister’s examination in Christian experience (in the case of a candidate transferring from one presbytery to another or of a candidate for ruling elder or deacon) or acquaintance of experiential religion (in the case of a candidate for ordination as a teaching elder or a man transferring from another denomination). 
Overture 23 from Missouri Presbytery differs in that it includes items covered in the suggested policy of Overture 24 (who received the background check and who pays for it) in the proposed BCO amendment itself, as well as specifying that the background check be state and federal and fingerprint based.
Overtures 20, 21, 25, and 26 all call for changes to disciplinary procedures. 
Overture 20 proposes the most extensive changes, virtually reframing BCO 31, 32, and 35. The details of the proposed changes are too extensive to report in detail here, but the rationale for the overture summarizes them as retaining most of the current text with some additions throughout, relocating various items, and adding several new paragraphs concerning matters such as impartiality, reporting allegations, reporting the results of investigations, imposing non-censure suspension, and adopting closed session. 
Overture 20 was proposed by the session of Fountain Square Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis to Central Indiana Presbytery which rejected it. The Fountain Square Session then forwarded it to the GA under the provisions of the Rules of Assembly Operation (RAO) 11-10 which allows a session or individual to send an overture rejected by their presbytery to the GA provided it is accompanied by an extract from the minutes of the presbytery showing its rejection. 
Central Indiana Presbytery did approve and send Overture 21 to the GA, which would amend BCO 43-1 to extend the prohibition against complaints filed during a judicial case. The current BCO provision prohibits a complaint in a judicial case in which an appeal is pending. Overture 21 proposes this be extended to any point after the case has commenced (i.e., after the court has found a strong presumption of guilt), arguing that under the current provision complaints could delay a trial for a significant period of time. 
Overture 25 from Tennessee Valley Presbytery would amend BCO 31-2 which concerns the investigation of reports concerning a member’s character. This proposal would allow presbyteries and sessions to utilize “experienced or specially qualified outside parties or consultants” in such investigations as the circumstances warrant. Tennessee Valley argues this would clarify the paragraph, as some have argued that it restricts involvement in investigations to the presbytery or session conducting it. 
Tennessee Valley also sent Overture 26, which proposes an amendment to BCO 32-19. Currently, when a person is charged with an offense and tried by his session or, in the case of a minister, by his presbytery, he may be represented before the court by anyone who is a member of the church or (in the case of a minister) another member of his presbytery. This overture proposes that the person charged would be allowed representation by any member in good standing in a PCA church. Tennessee Valley argues that small congregations or presbyteries may not include members who are well versed in PCA disciplinary procedures and so under the current provision might be underrepresented in a trial. The proposal does not alter the prohibition against employment of professional counsel. 
Overture 22 from South Florida Presbytery seeks to remedy a potential inconsistency between BCO 8-7 and 13-2. BCO 8-7 locates a minister’s membership in the presbytery where he labors; BCO 13-2 says he is a member of the presbytery in which he resides.
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