You will never obtain anything in this world more valuable than what you lose by forfeiting your soul. Yet, like a madman who has escaped from the asylum, we scour the middle of the freeway looking for lost pennies. What are these compared with our very lives? What are a few gold coins compared to our souls? The world and all its desires are dust, rotten trash, a loathsome disease compared to riches you already possess by virtue of being a creature with a soul.

One great feature of modernity, from Satan’s standpoint, is the sheer rejection of the soul. We live in a world stupefied by the material. Ask ten people on the street about their souls — if they don’t wonder aloud, “What does this babbler wish to say?” (Acts 17:18), they will tell you that if they do have a soul, they have not thought much about it. Even ancient pagan philosophers wrote dense treatises on the soul, but the mass of men today live as though they are soulless. And yet these same people investigate the silliest things under the sun. If anything is worth thought, is it not your soul? “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).
Yet perhaps this treacherous thoughtlessness is not so novel. John Bunyan (1628–1688) could plaster this over our age as well as his:
[The soul] is neglected to amazement, and that by the most of men; yea, who is there of the many thousands that sit daily under the sound of the gospel that are concerned, heartily concerned, about the salvation of their souls? — that is, concerned, I say, as the nature of the thing requireth. If ever a lamentation was fit to be taken up in this age about, for, or concerning anything, it is about, for, and concerning the horrid neglect that everywhere puts forth itself with reference to salvation. (The Greatness of the Soul, 105)
Hell is being filled not so much with a shaking fist as with a shrug. How little thought, how little attention, how little time or effort is paid to eternity. Many a sinner today thinks thoughts of his everlasting soul as deep as his belly button. His neglect offends both God and his own well-being — he suicides the immortal part of him by his thoughtlessness. If Jesus’s question was needed then, it is needed all the more now. Dip it in fire, carve it in granite, engrave it upon the conscience: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37).
Three Lessons on the Soul
Do not pass on from his question. Answer it. What does it profit you to amass all this world has to offer you — if the genie emerged to grant your deepest wishes — if in the receiving you let slip your soul? Too many live for the world and whisper, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God will say to him on that dark day of judgment, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you” (Luke 12:19–20). If your soul be lost, all is lost, for you are lost.
Adrift in a naturalistic and atheistic West, you may need help considering the immaterial and immortal self. Satan the destroyer blinds man to the glory of Christ, but also to the glory of souls. Many do not know Jesus and do not want to know Jesus because they do not know what a soul is and what it means for it to be lost. Dear reader, do you know what it is to possess a soul? Do you know what it is to lose it? Consider then your own soul’s importance through three comparisons.
1. Your soul is greater than safety.
We need to study this before we are tested on it: your soul is worth any suffering to keep.
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The problem is paying homage to Christianity while denying the truth of its teaching.  That is what public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson or Douglas Murray do.  Even when you find Peterson speaking positively about the Bible, it is as a Jungian who reduces the Bible to a grouping of myths that represent archetypes found in all religions.  Biblical stories are mere allegories for Jungian psychology.  Similarly, Christians have become all too familiar with conservative politicians who speak highly of the Bible but show no saving faith. This is worse than the radical left.

This week, David French said he will vote for Kamala Harris to teach conservatives a lesson.  The lesson has something to do with Trump and cultural Christianity.  That means it has something to do with conservative Christians thinking the Bible should influence politics.  
How should the Bible influence the political realm in our day? Even asking that question is enough to have a liberal call you a white nationalist. That shows us that the radical left is out of the debate.  Any serious thinker knows that our beliefs affect our culture, and just as not all beliefs are true, so also not all cultures are equal.  The radical left tells us they also believe cultures are not equal because they continually insult Christian culture and say it is fair game for attacks and destruction.  
Serious Christian thinkers know that we live in a pivotal age.  The next few centuries will depend on what happens now. Just as the Peace of Westphalia formed the modern state and shaped the modern world, so too we are now deciding if Christianity and the Bible will have any influence on America at all.
It’s been some time since we had a political leader who could show the difference between true and false religious beliefs. It’s been some time since we expected a political leader to be able to do that. We’ve had presidents who will say they are Christians of one denomination or another. Sometimes, they give us cause to doubt them. But our public face since WWII has been that religion is a personal opinion, and we can’t know the truth of the matter. 
I believe that it is in response to this that conservative Christians are attracted to Trump and defending cultural Christianity.  Trump defends the idea that America has done good in the world and is worth protecting and preserving.  Almost all, if not all, of what he wants to preserve are the contributions of Christians.  Christians are so used to being the accepted whipping boy that this approach is refreshing.  However, I believe that the defense of cultural Christianity is a losing strategy, and I suggest we can do more than defend cultural Christianity and the Bible as a great book of Western Civilization.  We can do more even within the existing pluralistic society and be consistent with the First Amendment.  
Christians know we live in a pluralistic society, and we value the First Amendment. Neither of those things changes the formative role of the Bible in American history. The Bible teaches us that creation declares the eternal power and divine nature of God so that unbelief is without excuse. The United States was founded on such beliefs about creation. The Declaration of Independence rests its arguments on foundational claims about God and man by relying on natural theology.  Our system of checks and balances recognizes that humans are sinners and cannot be given too much power. And the First Amendment protects our right to rational debate and evangelism, and affirms our need for church.  
The radicalism of the French and Communist Revolutions says that humans are basically good and can build a utopia through merely materialist philosophy.  They teach that man is at his best without church, God, or redemption.  The radical left today also pushes those same ideas, which are contrary to the American founding philosophy.  The radical left has become such a clown show (late-term abortion, fear of homophobia, infinite genders, “whiteness” scare, DEI, and so much more) that it would be funny if it weren’t deadly serious.  In contrast to that pandemonium, any coherent Christian praises cultural Christianity.  
However, to defend cultural Christianity simply as the best of Western Civilization won’t work.  It promulgates a longstanding problem that is responsible for how we got into this mess in the first place. 
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In the PCA, we have rules to prevent us from taking that easy, pragmatic approach. In the PCA we have all agreed on a “due process” to deal with problem people (see BCO 29ff). This procedural, constitutional method is both relational and loving, and it is biblical (cf. Matthew 18:15ff). It preserves the rights even of the “difficult” person to make his case and enables the elders to shepherd that allegedly difficult person to the glory of Christ. Because of our polity and necessary due process, we are required to actually do the hard work of shepherding and discipleship.

On August 11, 2024 I marked 11 years of ordained ministry in the PCA. With each passing year, I grow more grateful to God for the PCA and for preserving me in it.
I was reflecting recently on the blessings of PCA polity and culture. Someone once quipped about the PCA: “she is full of pastors who want to be lawyers and lawyers who want to be pastors.” Whether meant as a pejorative or as a compliment, it’s true!
Each year at PCA General Assembly, there are numerous constitutional and procedural questions. And whenever there is controversy, numerous men head for the microphones with their “Blue Bricks” and iPads in hand to remind us of the appropriate procedure or requirement from our Form of Government or Rules of Assembly Operation.
In the PCA, we believe polity is important because it comes from our King. This is reflected in the beginning of our Book of Church Order:
Christ, as King, has given to His Church officers, oracles and ordinances; and especially has He ordained therein His system of doctrine, government, discipline and worship, all of which are either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary inference may be deduced therefrom;
It is a blessing to serve in a denomination with “polity nerds” like Jared Nelson, Scott Edburg, and Ben Ratliff who have kept us entertained and informed with a whole podcast dedicated to the principles of our polity and the foundations of Presbyterian Church Government.
Robust Polity is Loving
It is the prerogative of Church courts to establish polity in accordance with God’s word. In the Westminster Standards, we confess:
It [belongs] to synods and councils, ministerially, to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of His church (WCF 31:2)
While the PCA has been criticized for being overly strict in its adherence and commitment to procedures and polity and for not being “relational” enough, I do not think those criticisms are reasonable. In fact, I think those sort of criticisms misunderstand what it is to be “relational.” Our polity exists for “the better ordering of public worship of God” and the “better…government of His Church.” Following the rules we have established and agreed upon is the loving thing to do.
The polity of a denomination determines how the members of that communion will relate to one another. They are the rules we agree to follow together. These rules provide a level, clear, and fair playing field for all people and parties. The same rules apply to me as a pastor of a small church of about 100 people as apply to David Strain, David Cassidy, David Hall, or David Barry all of whom pastor much more significant congregations in the PCA. The fact they pastor flagship congregations gives them no more right or standing in the Church courts than have I!
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Like any practice, catechesis can develop in unhealthy directions. It could end up fostering a “worksy” understanding of the gospel, in which you’ve got to be old enough, mature enough, “good enough” to belong to Christ. This is the exact opposite of what the gospel is saying. But if we ignore this category of “the simple”, and don’t learn to call the group to leave this stage behind, we will also face the danger of failing to encourage vibrant faith. According to the Book of Proverbs, the “simple” don’t just need affirming as they are, but instruction in the gospel, to lay hold of Christ, who has laid hold of them in the covenant of grace.

Are you simple? 
Some people identify themselves as “simple”. I have a friend who often quotes Winnie the Pooh to describe herself: “I’m a bear of very little brain”. It’s true that some Christians have a gift of making the Bible complicated. I’m sure I’ve preached sermons which have soared over the heads of the listeners. It’s easy to get our audience wrong. And, in my experience, complexity is usually a sign that you don’t understand a subject very well, rather than that you do. 
What’s more, Jesus delights to bypass the educated; he reveals himself to “little children” (Matt 11:25). God specialises in humbling the wisdom of the wise (1 Cor 1:19). There is a good, healthy kind of simplicity, that looks away from self and casts us completely on Christ. David famously said: “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me” (Psalm 131:1). A key part of God’s grace is that it’s not awarded to intellectual high-achievers. Many godly grannies have understood the Bible much better than clever theologians in university departments. 
But, in the book of Proverbs, “simple” is not an adjective but a noun. The “simple” are a particular group of people, mentioned 14 times. The term doesn’t describe their intellectual capacity; these aren’t people who got “F’s” in their exams. Rather, to be “simple” is a moral term; it’s a spiritual condition, and it’s not healthy. Some translate it “gullible”. It means being easily misled. Bruce Waltke puts it like this:
“Though intellectually flawed, the [simple]… are the mildest sort of fools, for they are malleable, are capable of being shaped and improved by the education process (1:4; 8:5; 12:25; 21:11), and still have hope of joining the company of the wise (cf.1:22; 9:4). Both Wisdom and Folly compete for their allegiance (ch.9). But until they opt no longer to remain uncommitted to wisdom, they are wayward” (Book of Proverbs, chapter 1-15, NICOT, p.111)
So, the “simple” in Proverbs describes the naïve youth, like Simple Simon of the nursery rhyme.
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Each day and experience is designed by our Father to “work together for good” and accomplish His purpose to “conform us to the image of His Son.” But the most dramatic metamorphosis will come soon when we are transported out of this sin-wrecked place, either through death or Christ’s soon-coming. John states that “we do not know what we will be like,” but there is something breathtaking that we do know: “We know that we will be like Him!” (vs. 2)

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 John 3:1-3)
It’s an honor for me to be J.T. Elliff’s son. Admittedly, he chose to have children but he didn’t know quite what he was getting when he got me. But it has been my honor and joy, for almost 73 years now, to be the son of J.T. and Jewell Elliff.
With God the Father, it is different. God knew EXACTLY what He was getting—warts and all—when He brought me into His family. What is amazing is that, for some reason, He chose me to be His son. When you stop and ponder this for a moment, it’s one of the most humbling, awe-inspiring truths in the world.
We’re Different
The Elliff family is different. Some would even say, “weird!” But we are who we are, made so by a combination of genetics, life experiences, backgrounds, heritage, and a massive dose of God’s grace.
Those of us who are God’s children are not like the rest of the world. God inhabits us.
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If you think you might be called to pastoral ministry or if you’re struggling in your current pastoral assignment, don’t let fear sidetrack that calling. Look to all the privileges and benefits of pastoring while also acknowledging that hard things will happen. You’re not afraid of hard things, I know, but the unexpected hard things could threaten your joy and effectiveness. The Lord is ready to sustain you, providing much joy even amid many sorrows – but you must learn to lean on him.

Preparing to enter vocational ministry is an exciting adventure. You feel a sense of calling – a strong desire to pursue a path filled with meaning and fulfilment. You’re going to get paid to do what you’ve been trained to do, and what you’ve been trained to do is also what you love to do.
What could go wrong? Plenty, as every experienced pastor knows.
Uncovering Common Pitfalls in Ministry
The Duke University study which found that 85% of those who train for full-time ministry are out of ministry within five years likely needs some adjustments and clarifications. Even if the number is closer to 75% or 50%, the point remains: there are significant gaps in our current process of vocational ministry preparation.
In my numerous interactions with pastors, particularly those 10-20 years younger than me (I’m 49), common themes emerge in their stories. They mention feeling unprepared for the fierce conflicts, experiences of betrayal, personal attacks, and rumour campaigns. They are blindsided by people who lead from the shadows and hold power because of their family’s name and influence.
In most cases, the training these younger pastors received was good, but it failed to prepare them for the most difficult parts of ministry. For example, they were not made aware of the unique strains that ministry would put upon their marriages. And they weren’t alerted to the fact that betrayals in ministry are inevitable and that with each betrayal, they would be tempted to distrust and become more guarded.
These are not mere or slight “distractions” from the good work they were trained to do. They are debilitating experiences that hinder pastors’ ability to perform effectively by consuming significant portions of their time with unexpected and unprepared-for challenges.
The Critical First Five Years
I’m convinced this is the story for many who don’t survive the first five years. Numerous competent young pastors find themselves disillusioned, not only with ministry but with life in general. There must come a shift in the training of prospective pastors and a greater emphasis on care and mentoring for those already in pastoral positions.
Challenges in the areas in which pastors are not trained inevitably prevent them from ministering capably in the areas in which they are. Young pastors burnout generally not because regular preaching and teaching are more difficult than they expected, but because these activities too often happen under the immense stress of sharp conflict that is unexpected. The “unexpected” part is the key.
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We are weak and unable. As much as we strive forward, we fall back. We try to be perfect right now, not realizing that in his goodness and wisdom God is patiently transforming us throughout this life—it is a process that takes time and dependence on God, with patience and the faith that unites us to Christ (2 Cor. 7:1). Holiness is a gift from God—it is his fruit in and through his people who are rooted and living in Christ by faith.

The word of God places holiness in a very prominent place when God reveals that his people are to strive for holiness, “without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). If we want to see God, to live in his presence in heaven forever, we must possess holiness. But what exactly is holiness, and how do we obtain it?
Holiness Is the Fruit That Shows the Image of Christ
Besides being justified in Christ, believers also receive the gift of sanctification. They are set apart as holy in the sight of God (1 Cor. 6:11; 1 Pet. 2:9), and the Holy Spirit also works in the lives of believers in their sanctification, a process of dying to the old self and living unto God. Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God,” according to J.C. Ryle (Holiness, p. 42). It is a desire and ability to love God by keeping his commandments, namely obedience. It is a visible display of God’s grace in a person’s life, the fruit that shows the image of Christ that is being renewed in his followers.
Being of one mind with God means “hating what He hates, loving what He loves” (Ryle, p. 42). But, holiness is no small endeavor because it is a battle—hating the sin that remains in our flesh while loving the Lord, who draws us by his love to faithful obedience grounded in gratitude for God’s great salvation in Christ Jesus. The aim of God’s work of sanctification is holiness.
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At this point in time, one may legitimately ask just how sharp the dividing line remains between “Side A” and “Side B,” when it seems almost no expression of gay identity is out of bounds for Side B Christians. This question was openly raised in a Religion News report last year, in which Collins suggested some in the Side B camp might feel they have more “shared ground” with “Side A people who are Christians” than with more conservative same-sex attracted Christians, some of whom might have roots in the old “ex-gay” movement. Collins is not alone in comfortably referring to people on Side A as “Christians.” Wesley Hill has a similar stance toward affirming fellow Episcopal priests, even saying he “could be wrong” in his own commitment to the traditional sexual ethic.

In 2018, Wesley Hill published a report in First Things on a movement that claimed to be breaking new ground in the Christian discourse around faith and sexuality. It was the inaugural year of the Revoice conference, which billed itself as an ecumenical orthodox space for same-sex attracted Christians who wanted to honor a traditional sexual ethic, yet believed the Church’s approach to the issue needed to be rethought—“revoiced.” Such Christians needed more than a “vocation of no,” Hill argued. They needed a way to integrate their sexuality into their Christianity. They needed a “vocation of yes.”
Carl R. Trueman was an early critic of the Revoice project, although he was sympathetic in theory. Despite some concerns, he hoped the movement would self-correct and mature in response to good-faith criticism. But following a World magazine report on the conference’s 2022 convention, Trueman offered a less than favorable updated assessment: So far from self-correcting, the movement had ignored its critics and taken on board all the trappings of sexual identitarianism, from “preferred pronouns” to queer theory to the splintering of attendees into “affinity groups” based on their particular orientation. Cautiously hopeful as he’d once been, Trueman could no longer see anything to salvage. Besides all this, the conference’s inaugural host church, Memorial Presbyterian, recently voted to leave the PCA amid swirling controversy around its LGBT community outreach and its openly gay lead pastor, Greg Johnson.
The speed of this decline naturally prompts a question: Was there ever anything to salvage? In its current incarnation, are we witnessing a radical moral turn? Or are we witnessing the inevitable end of an inherently flawed project?
Before the first Revoice conference, Wesley Hill and Ron Belgau co-founded the group blog Spiritual Friendship in 2012, where they developed their new philosophy together with an ecumenical group of contributors. Catholic writer Eve Tushnet also contributed thoughts at her Patheos blog. As a shorthand for groups with divergent views on the topic, they used the metaphor of a record’s “A” and “B” sides. “Side A Christians” believed God would bless their gay relationships, while “Side B Christians” pursued chastity, some through heterosexual marriage, but most through celibacy.
Yet, even in celibacy, they proposed that they could still accept and sublimate their sexuality as a kind of gift. Perhaps they could even recover a covenantal model of “spiritual friendship” that would offer a chaste relational substitute for marital permanence, even if both parties were same-sex attracted. Tushnet, who first coined the phrase “a vocation of yes,” has recently written about her own exclusive commitment to another woman, the sort of commitment she has argued can strengthen a gay person’s walk with God. They openly identify as “a lesbian couple.”
In developing this philosophy, various Side B writers have rejected the idea that homosexual temptation is uniquely disordered. In his 2017 book All But Invisible, Revoice founder Nate Collins argued that the word “disordered” should apply equally to any sexual attraction outside monogamous male-female marriage. That same year, future Revoice collaborator Gregory Coles published his memoir Single, Gay, Christian, in which he speculated that his homosexual proclivity was not even a result of the Fall. Meanwhile, Hill, Belgau, and Tushnet all consistently normalized certain manifestations of same-sex desire, blurring the lines between proto-romance and “spiritual friendship.”
This normalization has been succinctly crystallized by Revoice charter speaker Grant Hartley, who has asserted explicitly that not all same-sex romance is “off limits” in a Side B framework, only same-sex sex. He goes on to elaborate that some “Side B folks” might “pursue relationships with the same sex which might be called ‘romantic’—the category of ‘romance’ is vague.” Hartley first provoked controversy with his inaugural Revoice talk, endorsed by Hill, which proposed that Christians could mine gay culture for “queer treasure.” For example, he analogizes “coming out of the closet” to death and resurrection. Even in spaces like a gay club, he feels a sense of “homecoming.”
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Fraser and his wife have been involved with crisis pregnancy centers, and he cites Care Net (which operates pregnancy centers in the United States), Avail NYC in New York, and ProGrace in Wheaton, Ill. as models for approaching abortion at the level of the individual heart. “This is where lives are being saved and the life-changing gospel is being proclaimed, as the basis of a transformed, life-affirming society, practicing the politics of the cross.” Spiritual and moral transformation of society is essential.

Pro-lifers saw the Dobbs decision, which sent abortion law back to the states, as a victorious step in the quest to curb the sin of abortion. In Evangelicals and Abortion: Historical, Theological, Practical Perspectives (Wipf & Stock), pastor and author J. Cameron Fraser makes the case that while political action is important, it’s not sufficient. “What is needed more than legislation and education is a societal change of heart, coupled with perhaps greater humility, realism and Christlikeness in pro-life advocacy,” he writes. “The evangelical approach to abortion should be one filled with the gospel, and full of love, grace and mercy.”
Fraser is a Christian Reformed Church pastor who approaches his material from the Reformed perspective, rejecting the essentially non-Christian view of social justice as an end in itself. He was born in Zimbabwe, grew up in Scotland, trained and lived in the United States, and has ministered mostly in Alberta, Canada.
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Within such a post-truth society, the most countercultural thing that Christians can do is refuse to play the game. Whatever the world may pretend, we know that reality is a very stubborn thing, and it can only be evaded, not twisted into whatever shape we wish. Thus, even if others insist on casually lying to you or about you, you can still choose not to make any claims whose veracity you cannot vouch for with a straight face—however much you may feel they are true.

If you grew up as a Christian in the 1990s or early 2000s, chances are you were exposed to Christian worldview training that warned against the dangers of postmodernism. We were told that postmodernists did not believe there was such a thing as absolute truth: At best, all truth claims were relative, reflecting perspective and bias. At worst, they were just assertions of power by elites seeking to reinforce their privilege.
By this definition, we’re all postmoderns now.
Whereas some progressives were ideologically committed to this “hermeneutic of suspicion,” imbibing it from philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Richard Rorty, conservatives learned their suspicion from experience. As James Davison Hunter writes in his new book, Democracy and Solidarity, “Conservatives … looked around them and saw universities, news organizations, and even the new social media websites—all the proud inheritors of the liberal discourse tradition—cheerfully employing every tool at their disposal to restrict the range of acceptable opinion.” Truth claims, many of us concluded, were mere power plays.
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