Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
The person thinking about IVF or wrestling with whether to use preferred pronouns as demanded by his or her employer needs to know how to make a decision that could well be costly and painful. We need good Protestant ethicists who are able to come up with solutions to the various challenges that we face, solutions rooted in our Christian understanding of what it means to be human. 

Most Americans are in favor of abortion under certain circumstances. This is not all too surprising when one considers that, for many, the values and practices of the sexual revolution are an intuitive part of daily life. This is due in large part to the common intuition that human beings are autonomous, unencumbered individuals whose primary purpose is the pursuit of personal happiness. The widespread acceptance of no-fault divorce was the harbinger of many great changes, from gay marriage to transgenderism to the shift in abortion rhetoric; what was once a “necessary evil” is now a “reproductive right.”
The immediate question for many is what will happen after the November election. It’s unlikely that the U.S. will have a strong pro-life option at the ballot box, at least one with a credible chance of power. Beyond that, however, lies a real pedagogical challenge for the churches, particularly the Protestant churches. In times past, the moral intuitions of society at large and those of the Protestant churches (at least the orthodox ones) were largely consonant with each other. The churches taught, for example, that homosexual practices were wrong, and that tracked with the general outlook of the culture. The reasoning in each case might well have been very different. The churches no doubt looked to biblical texts; society perhaps operated with the residue of such an approach, a form of “cultural Christianity.” But the result was that the churches never really had to do any significant thinking in this area. The culture carried the issue.
Today the situation is far different. In the space of a few decades, the moral intuitions of society have not simply parted company with those of Christianity—they have come to stand in direct opposition to many of them. That changes the pedagogical dynamics of church life. The churches now need to teach Christian ethics more explicitly and more thoroughly, because that is where the wider culture will challenge Christian discipleship most powerfully. Indeed, it is already doing so, and orthodox Protestantism seems ill-equipped to address this.
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Neo-Marxists are re-creating history, inventing a new language, targeting the Christian family, and are seeking to eradicate the two sexes that God created in the Garden of Eden. Children are being chemically castrated and physically mutilated in order to change genders. A justice who sits on the Supreme Court who cannot define what a woman is.  This is the tip of the iceberg, and worst of all it is seeping into the church through false guilt and misplaced pity.  Or, perhaps, and just as dangerous, your church may be ignoring this monster altogether claiming that they are being faithful stewards by concentrating on “spiritual” matters.  

The Protestant Reformation was one of the paramount events in the history of the world.  The Westminster Confession of Faith may be one of the greatest man-made documents ever prepared by the church.  The doctrine of justification by faith alone is the crux of our hope in Christ.
Contrary to what I witnessed a number of years ago, Reformed churches today have become uncompromising in teaching and protecting the great truths coming out of the Reformation period. Only a few decades ago, there were just a few of these churches, at least in the South.  I am a witness to that, having been ordained for over fifty years.  Indeed, every generation must be diligent in protecting these truths because every generation produces its own heresies. If the Reformed Faith is not aggressively taught, it will be lost. Reformed churches will die.  I have witnessed this too.
However, if we remain in the culture of the Reformation period without expanding our defense of the faith against modern insurgent movements bent on destroying our beloved church, then we are in great danger.  We are failing the very people over whom we are called to be shepherds.
Sitting through presbytery ordination examinations for these last fifty years, it has become obvious to me that there is a major flaw in the seminary education of our young men preparing for the ministry. They have no knowledge of that which is a real and present danger.  Later as pastors, they don’t read outside the box of what they were given in seminary.  It’s not what you hear from the pulpit that is the problem.  You are probably hearing orthodoxy every Sunday.  It’s what you don’t hear from the pulpit that concerns me.
The greatest threat to our nation and to the modern church today is Neo-Marxism.  If you do not know what that is, then someone has failed you in your Christian walk. With all due respect to my godly brethren in the pulpits, probably your pastor will be hard-pressed to explain it.  Neo-Marxism is the great white elephant in the room.
Neo-Marxism is a religion.  It is the most dangerous modern enemy seeking to destroy Christianity.  It has infiltrated almost every institution in America from modern universities to the civil government. It is capturing our public education system.  It is foundational in courses taught in graduate business schools.  Results based on Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) scores set the religious direction of our corporations.  It is the religion that undergirds three of the largest investment institutions in the world – Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street.
Neo-Marxists are re-creating history, inventing a new language, targeting the Christian family, and are seeking to eradicate the two sexes that God created in the Garden of Eden. Children are being chemically castrated and physically mutilated in order to change genders. A justice who sits on the Supreme Court who cannot define what a woman is.  This is the tip of the iceberg, and worst of all it is seeping into the church through false guilt and misplaced pity.  Or, perhaps, and just as dangerous, your church may be ignoring this monster altogether claiming that they are being faithful stewards by concentrating on “spiritual” matters.
Seminary instruction is heavy-weighted on the side of soteriology and missiology.  There are no classes on Neo-Marxism.  The very weapons that seminary students need to fight against the modern tenets of Satan are avoided. It’s the great failure of American Christianity.  The reasons for this failure are numerous, and I cannot go into those here.
This is a diatribe. It’s not an introduction to a book.  It’s really not a short article written for edification. It’s one way to handle my immense frustrations with the modern pulpit. Remember, I have been in the pulpit myself for over fifty years.  Maybe that gives me a right to say what I am saying.  What better way to conclude this short diatribe than by a quote attributed to Martin Luther.
“If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.”
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
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“In faithfulness you have afflicted me” (Psalm 119:75). For when our training in righteousness has done its sanctifying work, one of the peaceful fruits is that we learn to joyfully trust the Father’s hand because we’ve learned to trust the Father’s heart.

Scripture tells us that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). But have you ever received a good gift from the Father that arrived in a package that appeared to be anything but good?
Jesus came into the world to make the Father known to all whom “he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12, 18). He came to help us “see what kind of love the Father has given to us” (1 John 3:1), that “as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13). He wanted us to know that the Father abounds “in steadfast love and faithfulness” toward us (Exodus 34:6).
This is why, when Jesus promised us, “Whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (John 16:23), he made sure we understood the Father’s heart toward us:
Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:7–11)
It’s an astounding promise of astonishing goodness and faithfulness: “For everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:8). Why? Because our Father wants our “joy [to] be full” (John 16:24).
However, Jesus, of all people, also knew that some of the good gifts our loving Father gives in answer to our prayers — some of his best gifts, in fact — arrive in painful packages we don’t expect. When we receive them, we can be tempted to think the Father gave us a serpent when we asked for a fish, not realizing till later the priceless goodness of the gift we received.
Why would the Father do this? As just one in the great cloud of God’s children across the ages, I can bear personal witness that he does it so that our joy may be full. And I’ll offer that witness here, with the help of one of history’s most beloved pastors and hymn writers. Because both he and I know how important it is to trust the Father’s heart when we’re dismayed by what we receive from his hand.
Near Despair an Answered Prayer?
John Newton was the godly eighteenth-century English pastor most famous for penning the hymn “Amazing Grace,” which describes the best gift Newton ever received from the Father: the forgiveness of his sins and eternal life through Christ.
But at times he also received, as I have, gracious gifts from God that amazed him in a different sense. He expressed this amazement in a lesser-known hymn, “I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow,” which begins,
I asked the Lord that I might growIn faith and love and every grace,Might more of his salvation know,And seek more earnestly his face.
’Twas he who taught me thus to pray;And he, I trust, has answered prayer;But it has been in such a wayAs almost drove me to despair.
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