The Bible tells us about the beginning of history by giving an account of the creation of the world (Gen. 1–2). It tells us about the goal of history by telling us about the new heaven and the new earth to come (Rev. 21:1–22:5). We ourselves, and all the things and events around us, dwell in the time in between. The events in the in-between times have significance. That significance comes from God. Events unfold from an origin shaped by God. And they all have purposes, because they lead forward to a goal shaped by God. Each event happens in accord with God’s plan (Isa. 46:9–10; Lam. 3:37–38; Eph. 1:11). Each event is known by God from all eternity, because it is planned by him.

Is there a distinctively Christian approach to history? And if so, what does it look like in practice? How should we think about history? How should we write about history? How should we read critically the historical accounts of the past? How should each of us think about his own personal history and the history of relatives and friends?
Everyone participates in a single large historical stream of events, traveling from past to future. So does it make any difference what one believes about the events? As we read the Bible, we find that there are several ways in which God guides us to think in a distinct way about history.
Meaning
Our beliefs about history make a difference because everyone wants to find meaning in history. If there is no God, if each of us is just atoms in motion, there is no overall meaning. All of it is “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”1[1] Out of his own mind, each person can still try to invent his own personal meaning for himself and for his surroundings. But deep down he is aware that it is his invention. It signifies nothing, ultimately, because in the end we are all dead. Such a picture is bleak.
By contrast, the Bible indicates that events have meaning, given by God. We ourselves are human beings created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27). We have significance as persons. God is personal, and he has created us as persons. We are to live in fellowship with him.
The Bible tells us about the beginning of history by giving an account of the creation of the world (Gen. 1–2). It tells us about the goal of history by telling us about the new heaven and the new earth to come (Rev. 21:1–22:5). We ourselves, and all the things and events around us, dwell in the time in between. The events in the in-between times have significance. That significance comes from God. Events unfold from an origin shaped by God. And they all have purposes, because they lead forward to a goal shaped by God. Each event happens in accord with God’s plan (Isa. 46:9–10; Lam. 3:37–38; Eph. 1:11). Each event is known by God from all eternity, because it is planned by him.
In sum, we can have meaning in our lives because God gives meaning. Christians, unlike many other people with different views, believe in a God of meaning. This is important even when we cannot presently discern the meaning.
God’s Control
One primary principle is that God is in charge of events, both big and small.
[God] removes kings and sets up kings.—Dan. 2:21
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.—Matt. 10:29–30
His rule is comprehensive:
Who has spoken and it came to pass,unless the Lord has commanded it?Is it not from the mouth of the Most Highthat good and bad come?—Lam. 3:37–38
As a result, Christians have a source of security. The universe is under the control of our loving Father. His control is thorough and meticulous. We need to acknowledge his sovereignty and to give him thanks: “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:18).
History involves events, persons, and the meanings that belong to them. All three—the events, the persons, and the meaning—come from God. All fit together into a coherent whole, because there is only one God who rules over all (Ps. 103:19).
God’s Purposes
If God is involved in everyone’s life, in all circumstances, what are the implications? The first implication is to acknowledge his presence and to be aware of his presence. But how? There are two extremes to avoid.
Overconfidence about Purposes
One extreme is to be overconfident that we can know and discern God’s purposes in the details of events. The Bible tells us about God’s overall goal and his overall purpose, to “unite all things in him [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10). It also indicates that a prime means for moving toward that goal is the spread of the gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . . ”(Matt. 28:19). But what about the particulars? People sometimes make confident pronouncements. For example, Job’s friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—thought that they knew the reason for the disasters that befell Job. They said that the disasters showed that God was punishing Job for some particular sins for which he needed to repent. But the book of Job as a whole shows that they were wrong in their supposition. Likewise, when the disciples inquired in John 9:2 about the man born blind, they supposed that either he or his parents had sinned and that the calamity was the result of the sin. But Jesus answered that it was “that the works of God might be displayed in him” (Job 9:3).
God’s purposes are deep. We are not God. We need to recognize that, although God always has his purposes, many of those purposes in their details are hidden from us.
Read More

As Christians we must ask what the future holds. At the end of the Sixties Revolution, Jungian psychologist and Gnostic spiritualist, June Singer, wrote a 1997 book ‘Androgyny: Towards a New Sexuality’. At the end of the Sixties Revolution, she saw and affirmed that the spiritual age of Aquarius was also the age of “androgyny” (the blending of male and female in bi-sexuality, homosexuality and transgenderism). She also correctly predicted the coming cosmology of a “new humanism,” a radical rejection of the biblical God and the cosmology of the Western Christian past.We now see the far-flung effects of what Singer saw so long ago. 

The Queering of the American Child: How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids by Logan Lancing and James Lindsay
A Definition of Queer Theory
I looked forward to reading this book’s definition of Queer Theory (QT) and its effects on our children. (QT refers to “queer homosexuals” and LGBTQ ideology.) I hoped the book would give clarity to a movement that exposes LGBTQ+ thinking, which justifies disordered sexual practice among children as well as adults.
A definition of QT appears in the Introduction. QT seeks to “push children to destabilize tradition, eliminate social norms and poison their minds…(ix).” The book denies the value of trangenderism (xvi), as well as recent theories of gender and gender identity (xviii). Apparently, this is a conservative book. A decidedly gay reviewer states that: 
…there is nothing in this book that is accurate, it’s full of hate mongering, misinformation and propaganda. It promotes a Christian white nationalist agenda and is harmful to every LGBTQ person. 
This is indeed a book of conservative convictions except in one area—it justifies homosexual practice. The author defines “queering” as the rejection of anything normative, including binary sexuality (that is heterosexuality) (99), and shows how Drag Queen Story Hour affirms this destabilizing effect on children. Lancing’s theory is that when a society has not agreed on reasonable, healthy sexual norms and behaviors, then unreasonable and unhealthy ideas will fill the vacuum—like men becoming women. But Lancing wants to grant that homosexuality is part of normative living. He states: 
Queer Theory has nothing to do with being gay or lesbian. Gay identity…is rooted in the positive fact of homosexual object-choice…(proposed as) a stable reality.[1]
Citing gay author, David Halperin, the book accepts homosexuality as a positive (thus normative) stabilizing factor in a child’s mind, unlike the noxious results of Queer Theory (114-15). Unfortunately, many conservative thinkers consider homosexuality in exactly this way.
The Idol of Our Time
As this book shows, our culture does not know how to deal with LGBTQ reality, which it seeks to normalize. In her Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, Rosaria Butterfield calls LGBTQ+ ideology “the idol of our time.” Her Lie #1 is “treating homosexuality as normal.”[2] Progressives and many conservatives happily affirm this lie. Carl Trueman wrote recently, 
In the coming decade every single church still calling itself Christian will face a choice: Do we follow Scriptural revelation, or the Sexual Revolution? The cross, or the rainbow flag?[3]
Many evangelicals fail to realize this stark choice. Evangelical pastor, Ken Wilson in his influential book, A Letter to My Congregation (2014) states: “We’re all—male and female—part of the bride of Christ.” He adds: “Maybe we are being asked (by the Spirit) to relax around gender distinctions a little (my italics).”[4] “Evangelical” Preston Sprinkle, a well-known exponent of the so-called Side B position on homosexuality, holds great influence on the student ministry CRU. He states: “I would say being same-sex attracted, while being a part of one’s fallen nature, is not a morally culpable sin that one needs to repent for.”[5] Modern culture, like certain evangelicals, normalizes and justifies gay behavior. This was not always the case.
As late as 1960, all fifty states maintained laws criminalizing sodomy. But things are changing. A strong majority of Americans now says that homosexual relations should be legal, and that the lifestyle is acceptable.[6] “Nearly every major U.S. brand promulgates the LGBT agenda.”[7] The government’s Center for Disease Control gives further present acceptance of LGBTQ practice: the number of LGBTQ students went from 11 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021.[8] During the 2023 American baseball season, the Los Angeles Dodgers honored, not merely featured, an LGBT activist group, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, composed of men dressed mockingly as Catholic nuns.
This lifestyle affirmation became more formal at the end of 2023, with the “Proclamation on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month.” President Joe Biden declared the month of June to be a time for all Americans to “recognize the achievements of the LGBTQ+ community, to celebrate the great diversity of the American people, and to wave their flags of pride high.”[9]
It is little wonder that the LGBTQ community is coming for our children. Lesbian author Patricia Nell Warren put it most succinctly: “Whoever captures the kids owns the future.”[10] The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sings:
“We’re coming for your children.
“We’ll convert your children
Happens bit by bit
Quietly and subtly
And you will barely notice it…
You won’t approve of where they go at night.”
This agenda operates against the backdrop of a new movement called MAPS, Minor Attracted Persons, that is, pedophiles. Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates, has invested tens of millions of dollars into a radical nongovernmental organization: The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which is endorsed by the World Health Organization, a group pushing for young children to be considered “sexual beings.”
Read More
Related Posts:

We make choices and experience feelings, and our choices shape our feelings and our feelings shape our choices. This is how God made us, and this is how he is remaking us in the image of his Son. With our new hearts and transformed minds, we willingly offer our bodies (including our passions) to God as our spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1). We put off the old man, with its desires and practices, and we put on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator (Colossians 3:10).

This is how God made us, and this is how he is remaking us in the image of his Son. With our new hearts and transformed minds, we willingly offer our bodies (including our passions) to God as our spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1). We put off the old man, with its desires and practices, and we put on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator (Colossians 3:10).
Which is more revealing of the “real you”: your spontaneous and unguarded emotions, or your purposeful and intentional choices? Put another way, which is more fundamental to who you are: the feelings that spontaneously erupt from your heart, or the choices that you intentionally make?
At Bethlehem College & Seminary, I teach a class called “Foundations of Christian Hedonism.” Alongside the Bible, we read Piper, Edwards, Lewis, and more. We talk about the supremacy of God, the indispensable importance of the affections, the Christian life, and pastoral ministry. I love it.
One stimulating aspect of the class is identifying tensions and disagreements between our favorite Christian Hedonists and wrestling together with them. Last semester, we discovered a seeming dissonance between how Piper talks about feelings and how Lewis talks about the will.
Piper’s Grief
In chapter 3 of Desiring God, Piper explores “Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism.” In doing so, he accents the importance of feelings, emotions, and affections in worship.
Piper emphasizes that genuine feelings are spontaneous and not calculated. Feelings are not consciously willed and not performed as a means to anything else. He gives numerous examples of feelings — hope (that spontaneously arises in your heart when you are shipwrecked on a raft and catch sight of land), fear (that spontaneously arises when camping and you hear a bear outside your tent), awe (that overwhelms you as you stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon), and gratitude (that spontaneously erupts from the heart of children when they get the present they most wanted on Christmas morning).
“Feelings are spontaneous, unsought, unplanned. They are our immediate and natural reactions to reality.”
The most poignant example of spontaneous feeling that Piper describes, however, is the grief that poured from his heart when he received the news that his mother was killed in a car wreck. In that moment, “The feeling [of grief] is there, bursting out of my heart” (91). No planning, no performance, no decision — just emotion and feeling. And here’s the crucial bit: “It comes from deep within, from a place beneath the conscious will” (91).
Lewis’s Prayers
At the same time, we were reading Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm. In Letter 21, Lewis discusses the frustrating irksomeness of prayer and the nature of duty. One day, when we are perfected, prayer and our other obligations will no longer be experienced as duties, but only as delights. Love will flow out from us “spontaneously as song from a lark or fragrance from a flower” (154). For now, we contend with various obstacles and impediments.
Even still, we have rich moments in the present — “refreshments ‘unimplored, unsought, Happy for man so coming’” (156, quoting John Milton). But then Lewis makes this statement:
I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling. (157)
In other words, our best prayers may be the ones we pray even when we don’t want to pray, when our prayers are not riding on positive feelings toward God, but are actively, deliberately trying to overcome resistance within us. The will, Lewis might say, rises from deep within, from a place beneath even our feelings, proving who we really are at bottom.
Clarifying the Tension
We can see the tension, can’t we? Are feelings deeper than the will (as Piper says)? Or is the will deeper than feelings (as Lewis claims)?
Before evaluating, we need further clarity. We can begin by noting key areas of agreement. First, both Piper and Lewis agree that we ought to distinguish feelings from the will.
Second, they seem to agree about some of the key differences between feelings and the will. Feelings are spontaneous, unsought, unplanned. They are our immediate and natural reactions to reality (like birds singing and flowers blooming). The will, on the other hand, involves intention, planning, choice, and execution.
Third, both Lewis and Piper agree that the will and the feelings ought to be viewed in some sort of hierarchical arrangement, with one being “deeper” than the other.
Read More