Redefining biblical doctrine to suit what we personally think is loving, gracious, or kind is wrong. Christians are called to love others. They are also called to kill sin in their lives and support fellow believers in godliness with all gentleness and compassion, not to give in to sin and pronounce it as good.

Many Christians today seek to love those who feel judged by the words they find in the Bible. People search the Scriptures in an attempt to prove that certain beliefs they want to hold—or certain actions they want to keep doing—are okay in God’s sight. Lifestyles Christians previously and universally viewed as sinful according to the Bible are now increasingly tolerated, accepted, and even celebrated.
Yet, things that make us feel good are not always good for us. In her Gospel Coalition article, “Love Your Neighbor Enough to Speak Truth,” Rosaria Butterfield writes:

The supernatural power that comes with being born again means that where I once had a single desire—one that says if it feels good, it must be who I really am—I now have twin desires that war within me: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Gal. 5:17). And this war doesn’t end until Glory.

The Christian life is a struggle, because now there is new spiritual life where there was once just the flesh. This flesh, which God originally made good, is now corrupted because of Adam’s disobedience and fall in the garden of Eden (Gen. 2:16–17; 3:1–19). The Holy Spirit now indwells all believers and is doing the work of sanctification in their lives. This is a lifelong process of dying to the flesh and living unto God.
It is not easy to give up the things in life that we love, but if they are opposed to God’s will, this is what Christ calls us to do:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matt. 10:37–38)

Love and keeping Jesus’ commands go together. Jesus told his disciples:
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When you turn from sin to Jesus, you are not only repenting today, but you are also investing into repentance for tomorrow, and next week, and a year from now. Saying “no” to sin today makes it easier to say “no” to sin tomorrow.

It’s happened to me more times than I can count. I’m sitting with a man who has given in to sexual sin for the majority of his life. He’s tried many things to stop, but he keeps failing to say “no” to temptation. He’s fighting to believe that victory is possible, but he feels weary and scared. Teetering on the edge of hope and despair, he asks me a simple question: “Does the battle ever get any easier?”
While simple questions rarely have simple answers, David Powlison was fond of saying, “[There is a] simplicity on the far side of every complexity.”¹ So the simple answer to this question is, “Yes, the battle does get easier.” However, in order to understand what that really looks like, we need to wade through the complex depths of the human experience.
The Battle Has a Context
In humility, we always need to treat each person as a unique individual, and that requires great attention to the details of their lives. I always want err on being slow to speak and quick to listen. I want to assume that I don’t know what this person needs unless I first get to know them. I want a holy curiosity about his or her life. I don’t just want to know about his sexual sin. I want to know about his family, his childhood, his hopes, his disappointments, his suffering, and his understanding of the world, God, and himself.
As I get to know someone more intimately, I begin to understand in greater ways the functionality of sexual sin in his life. I see more and more the specific false promises that sin has tailor-made to fit someone’s particular desires and weaknesses. Consider the complex algorithms employed by modern social media giants. How is it that Facebook knows exactly what advertisement will hook you? It’s because Facebook has studied you. Facebook knows your heart based on what you click on and how long you stay. Sin operates in the same way. The battle is so difficult partly because you have an enemy who knows exactly where you are weak. Sin preys on its knowledge of your life, your sufferings, your heart, and your desires, and it exploits them.
Growth in the battle against sexual sin requires an increasing self-awareness of your own life experiences and how they have shaped you. Your enemy knows your weaknesses. Do you?
The Battle Has a Past
If we’re honest, we often live our lives thinking only about the present, and sin capitalizes on this short-sightedness. If I only think of life in 24-hour chunks, then what’s the big deal about eating one or two donuts? No problem, right? But what if I eat two donuts every day for a whole week? That’s 14 donuts. What if I eat that same amount for an entire month? Now you’re looking at close to 60 donuts! It’s not hard to see that this kind of lifestyle will lead to major health problems down the road. The problem is that you can’t simply stop eating donuts one day and then pretend like you didn’t eat donuts every day for the past 10 years. The effects of those 10 years will linger and perhaps have lasting, lifelong consequences.
We reap what we sow. In Galatians 6, Paul doesn’t sugarcoat the impact of years of sowing into fleshly desires. He writes, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption” (Galatians 6:7–8). Sin has a corrupting impact on our hearts and minds. Every time you give in to sexual temptation, you are sowing seeds of corruption. Think of it like an investment. Sexual sin isn’t just an isolated event. Giving into temptation today makes it harder to resist tomorrow. And science has now definitively shown how habitual pornography use in particular actually rewires your brain to make you that much more prone to return again and again to your sin.
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There are few safe havens for thoughtful people in today’s world; few forums where curious folks and creative thinkers feel comfortable enough voicing certain questions or contrarian thoughts. Church, let’s seize this opportunity, inviting our secular neighbors into what once was, and can be again, the world’s most electrifying intellectual community.

Free thinking, fearlessly open dialogue, a willingness to voice unpopular ideas: these are increasingly endangered species in a society ever more surveilled by Orwellian thought police. A new, fundamentalistic secular religion has emerged, with tenets that demand total adherence. To question the logic of any aspect of this secular creed—for example, a statement like “transgender women are women”—is to be branded a hateful heretic. Books that logically challenge prevailing orthodoxies are being banned by Amazon. There are countless more examples.
You know it’s bad when atheist hero Richard Dawkins is disowned by an atheist organization (which explicitly defines its purpose as including advocacy for “freethinkers”) over a tweet where he (very cogently) questioned the new orthodoxy on transgenderism. Rather than engaging Dawkins’s entirely reasonable tweet on its own terms, the American Humanist Association saw it as grounds for retroactive cancellation. Nothing says “advocacy for freethinkers” like canceling someone for a thought that goes against the grain.
In a strange twist, Christianity—long accused of being narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, and afraid of difficult questions—has the potential to fill a growing void in Western culture. In a world where we increasingly walk on eggshells—unsure when, if, and how we’re allowed to speak publicly on contested issues—Christianity can become a grace-filled haven for curious questioners, doubting dissidents, and anyone seeking truth in a world where partisan narratives take precedence.
In short, Christianity has an opportunity to again become the most fertile intellectual ground—as it was for most of the last 2,000 years (until fairly recently). Why? Because a truly fruitful intellectual culture must be built on unshakeable, transcendent foundations—which Christianity has in God’s Word. Without this, all discourse about “truth” is arbitrary and devolves into power struggles. All claims become mere ammo for inflicting injury on one identity or another, rather than bricks for building in a shared intellectual project.
Scriptural Foundation Should Inspire Intellectual Curiosity
The secular approach to discourse results only in deconstruction—as we’re seeing. With no ability to gain consensus on truth, secularism can only cancel, condemn, ban, silence. It’s fundamentally destructive. But the Christian approach can be constructive because there’s a solid foundation on which to build. This is why, in my “Wisdom Pyramid” rubric, Scripture is the foundation. God’s infallible Word functions both as a horizontal, “solid ground” foundation and as vertical scaffolding, keeping the structures above it rightly ordered. We can build knowledge using all sorts of materials—books, the arts, nature/science, reason, community, lived experience—but none of it will be structurally sound, in the end, unless it is built on an unshakable foundation.
God’s objective, transcendent, true-for-everyone Truth is not a constricting, check-your-brain-at-the-door truth. It’s a liberating, world-expanding, galvanizing, purposeful truth that gives a common vocabulary and telos for intellectual pursuits. As Jesus says, it’s the truth that “will set you free” (John 8:32). This liberating truth is what inspired the founding and flourishing of Oxford, Harvard, and most of the great universities. It’s the truth that undergirded the world-changing discoveries and revolutionary ideas of Johannes Kepler, Nicholas Copernicus, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, and many others. It’s the truth that, for countless artists, writers, and philosophers, provided life-giving illumination and impetus to explore.
As C. S. Lewis famously said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.”
God’s Word is the settled truth that unsettles our intellectual complacency and compels us to plumb the world’s mysterious depths. It’s a framework through which we can read and study widely and know how to evaluate the relative merits of an idea. It gives us bearings to navigate a fallen world glutted with ideas—some true, some false—in a way that doesn’t turn into a nomadic, frustrating wander.
Challenges for the Church
In recent history, though, many Christians have failed to see Scripture as the catalyst it should be for profound intellectual energy and curiosity—and that’s a scandal.
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What we are experiencing is not the rise of new idols. It is rather the metastasizing of the idols which we have permitted out on the high places for years. Saying that you will not offer their drink offerings of blood is good, but it is not enough. It is time to cut down the groves. And set up altars over every square inch to the living God.

R.C. Sproul once said, “The cultural revolution of the 1960’s was similar to the French Revolution in that its goal was to bring radical change to the forms, structures, values, and ethics of the status quo. It sought to bring in a New Age with the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Now the dawn of the New Age is long past. Aquarius is now at high noon.”[1] He wrote those words only six years ago, which means that Aquarius is still at high noon. It means that the dawning of the Pagan Age is still long past. Sproul’s words beckon the question, “Why did it take Aquarius reaching high noon for the Reformed and Evangelical Church to get so hot and bothered by it?”
You can see the growth of the New Religion in covenantal terms (Adam, Abraham, Moses, David). The cultural revolution of the 60’s was the Adamic Administration, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with hippy love.” John Lennon supplied the Abrahamic promises—
Imagine there’s no heaven. it’s easy if you tryNo hell below us, above us only sky 
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only oneI hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one
I have spoken of the recent rise of Social Justice as the Mosaic Administration of Paganism. The New Religion has reached its Mount Sinai, and down from that unholy mountain has come the creature-law of intersectionality, critical theory, and all of that social justice tomfoolery. Adherents of the new religion have heard, and they believe, that if they simply obey these laws, then they will enter the Promised Land. A significant step toward a Pagan Davidic Administration can be seen with the recent Orwellian governmental tyranny as the state begins to enforce iniquitous and arbitrary standards. Some Christians are already denying any necessity for human law to accord with divine revelation and preparing to obey whatever despotic mandates civil authority decrees. The point is, we are a good deal down the line and if you’re going to fight well, then it helps to know where you are on the battlefield.
Over the past few years, the Evangelical and Reformed world has been full of debate, literature, conferences, and statements surrounding social justice, critical theory, wokeness, etc. It is clear where some leaders and organizations stand. It is not entirely clear which side of the fault line others are on. Neither is it clear, depending on how broad you draw the lines, whether the woke or the un-woke have more numbers. But, it is clear that you could now write the book Not Woke Church and likely sell a good number of copies. In the first place, let us praise the Lord. Amen to the church identifying idols and staying away from them. And in the second place, caution is in order. For there is now a market for Not Woke. And Big Eva knows a market when she sees one.
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Political leaders desperately need to know just how important this matter is, and that countless Australians—be they Christians or not—are greatly upset by this new medical discrimination taking place, and with a new group of health untouchables arising as a result.

We all need to get behind this vitally important Declaration:
A brand-new Declaration from Australia brings together biblical injunctions with modern-day concerns about medical apartheid. Addressed to the Australian Prime Minister, and written by three Queensland pastors, it speaks about the very real worry of vaccine passports and the damage they will do to a free society.
I have often addressed both aspects of what is found in this important Declaration. I have written about the need for watchmen which we read about in Ezekiel 3 and 33. Here is one of those pieces.
And I have written numerous articles warning against health fascism and the creation of a new medical underclass because of vaxx passports. See here for example.
The ever-helpful website Caldron Pool was the first to break the story, so let me quote from a new article Ben Davis has just produced on this important Declaration:
Timothy Grant of Mount Isa Baptist Church, Matthew Littlefield of New Beith Baptist Church, and Warren McKenzie of Biota Baptist Church said they penned the letter after it became clear there were few people resisting the developing medical two-tiered society.
“Part of me had been waiting for more experienced and more senior pastors or denominational leaders in Australia to speak up about what was happening,” co-author, Pastor Littlefield said. “But it was becoming clear this wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
“I knew many Christians were confused by this,” he said. “They want to know what pastors are thinking. So many people have heard Christians argue in apologetics that the Church has done much good for society, and now when so much is happening, the Church appears silent.”
Caldron Pool deserves a lot of credit for hosting this Declaration on its site and for making it widely known. And it is already going great guns, with over 450 church leaders having signed it, along with well over 3000 other Christians. But let me quote here from select parts of the actual Declaration:
The Ezekiel Declaration
Watchmen, It’s Time To Speak
To the Honourable Scott Morrison,As Christian leaders, you should be aware that in accordance with scripture we regularly pray for “and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:2).
We do write however, to you regarding a matter of significant concern. Namely, the proposed introduction of ‘vaccine passports’ into Australian society. For many Christian leaders and Christians, this is an untenable proposal that would inflict terrible consequences on our nation.
We should initially note that we are not the first generation that has been confronted with the question of ‘vaccine passports.’ Writing in 1880, aware of the challenges that a smallpox epidemic brought to society, the Christian theologian Abraham Kuyper wrote, “Vaccination certificates will therefore have to go… The form of tyranny hidden in these vaccination certificates is just as real a threat to the nation’s spiritual resources as a smallpox epidemic itself.” -Kuyper, A. 2015. Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto. (p. 249). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
Between 1901 and 1905, Abraham Kuyper would hold the office of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. He evidently understood that a ‘vaccine passport’ would represent a measure that was equal to if not worse than an epidemic itself through the oppressive control over people’s lives. As Christian ministers, we would also agree with Kuyper’s analysis on such a measure, and for several reasons.
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The judge noted that any loss of First Amendment freedoms, “for even minimal periods of time,” is “irreparable,” and that “similarly situated employees” in the district already have been “chilled from speech” because of the administrators’ actions.

The Virginia Supreme Court on Monday affirmed a lower court’s decision to reinstate Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary School, to his position after Loudoun County Public Schools suspended him for expressing his views on the board’s transgender agenda.
The district has been ground zero in America for the fight over transgender mandates in public schools in recent weeks, and just days ago formally adopted a policy demanding adherence to the socio-political agenda.
The lower court had ruled Cross’ suspension was likely unconstitutional as it was because of his speech, which is protected by the First Amendment. The school then appealed to the high court.
“Teachers shouldn’t be forced to promote ideologies that are harmful to their students and that they believe are false, nor should they be silenced for commenting at a public meeting,” Tyson Langhofer, counsel for Cross. “The lower court’s decision was a well-reasoned application of the facts to clearly established law, as the Virginia Supreme Court found. But because Loudoun County Public Schools is now requiring all teachers and students to deny truths about what it means to be male and female and compelling them to call students by their chosen pronouns or face punishment, we have moved to amend our lawsuit to challenge that policy on behalf of multiple faculty members. Public employees cannot be forced to contradict their core beliefs just to keep a job.”
The board’s new dictate forces all school district students and staff to refer to “gender-expansive or transgender” students using whatever pronouns they can choose.
In response to the board’s adoption of the mandate, several other teachers are being added to the case as plaintiffs.
When the lower court ordered Cross reinstated, the district near Washington, D.C., decided to double down on its punishment, filing the now-unsuccessful appeal.
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Written by A.W. Workman |
Tuesday, September 7, 2021
We are not off-track and unfit simply because the work often feels like working cursed soil in a desolate land. No, this is the nature of the work itself. Deprivation before honor. Sweat before victory. Toil before the harvest feast. That is the kind of suffering that leads to faithful men who teach others also.

The normal work of discipleship is a type of suffering. This, according to Paul in 2nd Timothy 2:2-7.
[1] You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, [2] and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. [3] Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. [4] No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. [5] An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. [6] It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. [7] Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.2 Timothy 2:2-7, ESV
Notice how verse two, which discusses the entrusting of Paul’s message to other faithful men, is immediately followed by an exhortation to share in the suffering of Christ. Along with the local brothers with whom I attended an exegesis and preaching workshop this week, I had been assuming this mention of suffering here referred to persecution. But our cohort leader helped us to see the kind of suffering meant here is illustrated by the three examples of soldier, athlete, and farmer – all examples which emphasize the costliness of hard work and discipline. The costliness of steady, focused, tough labor. Not the costliness of persecution. That was an eye-opener for me, and a timely word.
Yes, elsewhere in 2nd Timothy persecution is mentioned, but the immediate context of these verses suggests that Paul has the suffering of discipline in mind. The kind of discipline and hard work that comes with entrusting the gospel message to faithful men who will entrust it to others also. Like a faithful soldier, a disciplined athlete, a hardworking farmer. This is the suffering of sweat, long hours, and extended seasons of toil.
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And so does rejection of a gay self-conception united to one who is united to Christ. We cannot be those who apply good and necessary consequence to our doctrine, yet refuse to apply it to our ethics. Even though in this life Christians still battle and experience temptations and sin, such sins do not define us anymore. Those things are who we were, not who we now are. What defines those of us who have been washed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is that we are in Christ.

This year, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will once again be addressing issues pertaining to human sexuality in the church. This is because sexuality has become one of the primary points of conflict between the church and the culture of this age and, rather than being conformed to the world, the church of Christ must stand firm upon the truth of God’s word. One of the many questions facing the church today is whether or not a Christian may identify with a homosexual or transgender self-conception. More simply, can a Christian identify as a “gay Christian”? While there have been many excellent resources written on this topic, to my knowledge, none have interacted directly with the interpretative principle of “Good and Necessary Consequence.” When viewed through the lens of good and necessary consequence we will see that for a Christian to adopt a homosexual or transgender self-conception is an unbiblical contradiction in terms and must be rejected by those who view scripture as the only rule of our faith and practice. So, it is helpful to begin with understanding this principle.
Historically, Reformed Christians have adhered to and applied Scripture in accordance with a principle known as Good and Necessary Consequence. This is the approach to Scripture that teaches that we are to believe and obey not only those things that are explicitly stated, but also that which may be deduced or inferred from Scripture as a necessary implication. The Westminster Confession of Faith says, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (WCF I.6, emphasis mine). Some doctrines and commandments are spelled out for us, while others are implied or systematically pieced together. For instance, there isn’t a single verse citation we could make to spell out the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet by good and necessary consequence we rightly deduce that there is one God who exists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are the same in substance, equal in power and glory. This same principle that leads us to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity likewise has led Reformed churches throughout history to believe in and practice infant baptism, the regulative principle of worship, and Sunday as the Christian’s Sabbath. None of these doctrines are explicitly spelled out in the New Testament, yet we believe they are rightly deduced from Scripture by this principle of good and necessary consequence.
This principle can be demonstrated in numerous places in the New Testament, but the clearest example can be seen in Jesus’ dispute with the Sadducees found in each of the synoptic Gospels.[i] In Matthew 22:23-32 the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with a hypothetical scenario involving the obscure case law of levirate marriage, hoping to demonstrate that belief in the resurrection is ridiculous. Jesus’ response to their denial of the resurrection was to quote to them Exodus 3:6 where, when speaking to Moses at the burning bush, God introduces himself by declaring “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” With this single quotation, Jesus demonstrates that “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” and silences the Sadducees. Jesus proves that there is a resurrection by citing the fact that God introduced himself to Moses by saying “I am the God of Abraham,” and not “I was the God of Abraham.” His entire argument hinges on the conjugation of one verb in the present tense instead of the past tense, which is sufficient to demonstrate the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
Significantly, the passage from which Jesus quotes, Exodus 3, isn’t explicitly about the resurrection – it’s the call of Moses to be Israel’s deliverer. The passage doesn’t even mention words like “resurrection,” “heaven,” “hell,” “soul,” or “eternity,” all terms we associate with the resurrection. And yet Jesus’ rebuke of the Sadducees is to say, “You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” This harsh rebuke demonstrates that this is not merely a principle for Jesus alone to use in interpreting Scripture, but one he expected them to have applied as well. No Christian has a right to object, “If you can’t show me the Bible verse that says it, then I’m not required to believe or obey it.” On the contrary, if a truth or commandment may be proven from Scripture by good and necessary consequence, then yes, you are required to believe and obey it.
As Reformed Christians, this is a principle that ought to be kept in mind as we consider the question of a Christian’s identity. At the 47th General Assembly of the PCA, the assembly voted to declare the Nashville Statement to be a biblically faithful declaration on human sexuality. And yet, there were many who objected. Particularly, one stated reason was opposition to Article 7’s denial which reads, “We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.”[ii] Put simply, the Nashville Statement says that it is unbiblical to identify oneself as a “gay Christian.” While this statement is not explicitly spelled out for us in any one verse, it does not need to be because it is rightly deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence.
One of the places we see this most clearly is 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Paul writes, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (NASB). Notice the way Paul speaks of these Christians in verse 11. You were these things. Significantly, Paul does not merely say you used to practice these things. He goes beyond that and addresses their identity. It’s also significant that Paul says “you were” and not “you are.” In Greek the imperfect indicative ταῦτά τινες ἦτε makes the statement even more forceful, highlighting the radical change that has now taken place through union with Christ. The descriptions of verses 9 and 10 are who these Corinthian Christians were, not who they now are.  And this is a vital distinction. In Jesus’ own rebuke of the Sadducees this same kind of distinction was sufficient to demonstrate the resurrection of the dead and warrant the harsh rebuke that his opponents did not know the Scriptures. God is the God of Abraham. And who are Christians? You were adulterers, homosexuals, drunkards, and covetous, etc. And by good and necessary consequence the text teaches that this is not who a Christian now is. This is because to be washed by Jesus Christ cleanses us from more than just legal guilt. If you have been washed by Christ, you have a new identity.
This is why it is correct to say that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception or identity is unbiblical. As Reformed Christians, we cannot be those who apply the principle of good and necessary consequence to our doctrines of God, worship, and the church, and yet fail to apply it to our ethics.
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[i] For a full treatment of good and necessary consequence, see By Good and Necessary Consequence by Ryan McGraw (Reformation Heritage Books).
[ii] You can access the full Nashville Statement here: https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement/

The City of Man and the City of God cannot be collapsed into one another without compromising the latter’s identity and mission. Coercing the world into the Christian faith contradicts its teaching regarding free will, while accommodating the City of God to secular beliefs risks undermining, if not vitiating, Christian doctrine.

In the second century, the Greek philosopher and anti-Christian Celsus warned: “If Christians refuse to perform the usual sacrifices and to honor those who preside over them, then they should not be allowed to be emancipated, marry, raise children, or fulfill any obligation in public life.”
For a good Roman citizen, such an opinion made sense: the preservation of the Pax Romana depended not only on the military’s might and citizen’s virtue, but the appeasement of the gods who protected and blessed the empire. By refusing to offer oblations to the pantheon, Christians threatened to throw the entire social order into chaos. “It only remains for them to go far away and leave no posterity behind. In this way such scum will be completely eradicated from the earth,” declared Celsus.
There are signs that some inhabitants of the formerly Christian West are beginning to think similarly. In 2013, British professor Richard Dawkins provocatively claimed that the kind of “religious indoctrination” impressed upon the young by their parents amounted to child abuse. Almost a decade later, such opinions are less unusual. Parents who shield their children from transgender ideology or critical race theory are censured as bigots whose parenting choices are harmful. In 2019, a presidential candidate endorsed financially punishing institutions who refuse to support same-sex marriage, while books that reject the dominant narrative on sex and gender are delisted and defamed. Those who refuse to bow to the twenty-first century gods of sexual and racial identitarianism must be rebuked, canceled, and banished to the margins.
French historian and philosopher Étienne Gilson (1884–1978, a member of the Académie française who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature) saw this crisis coming long ago. Apart from his impressive academic credentials, Gilson was also involved in the attempts to remake Europe in the wake of the devastation of the Second World War. He served as a member of the French delegation in creating the UNESCO Charter and took part in the 1948 Congress of United Europe in The Hague. A newly published translation of his The Metamorphoses of the City of God illuminates the origins, story, and timeless tensions between what St. Augustine termed the City of God and the City of Man.
The City of God and the City of Man
In response to Celsus and other ancient critics of Christianity, many early Christian writers argued that, while it was true that their refusal to participate in Roman religious rites represented a new civic reality, the Christian faith was a blessing rather than a threat to the empire’s survival. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian all made such arguments. “Caesar is more ours than yours, for our God has appointed him,” declared Tertullian, and Christians “do more than you (Romans) for his welfare.” Or, as Gilson writes: “The best thing that can happen to the Empire is that Christian teachings be faithfully observed.”
Much of the reason for this has to do with the nature of Christianity itself. Gilson explains:
The God of Christians requires them to do for love of him what they lack the strength to do for love of their country. Thus, amid the universal shipwreck of morality and civic virtue, divine authority intervenes to impose frugality, continence, friendship, justice, and harmony among citizens, so much so that anyone who professes Christian doctrine and observes its precepts will be found to do for the love of God everything that the mere interest of his fatherland would require that he do for it. . . . Have good Christians, and good citizens will be given to you in addition.
Counterintuitively, the transcendent quality of Christian belief and practice—which directs the worshipper to the eternal—serves as an unparalleled motivator for civic virtue.
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The secular vision of equality is fighting against the reality of God’s world. It will be forced to try and smash the family, because that’s the source of inequality and difference. So, as Christians, we have to take the family seriously, now more than ever…Jesus Christ is rebuilding a family, an organic, inter-connected, inter-dependent humanity, where all are welcome, all have a place, and where great glory and honour is to be found, not by merit, but by grace. This is a great opportunity for the church to showcase and invite people into a very different vision of humanity.

In 1516, the Dutch scholar Erasmus wrote a book called The Education of a Christian Prince. He wrote it for the Spanish Prince Charles, advising him about how to rule. It contains this line:
“it is not equality for everyone to have the same rewards, the same rights, the same status; indeed this often results in extreme inequality” p.72, Education of a Christian Prince. 
Erasmus’ vision of equality is very different to the vision offered us by secularism today, where statistics of inequality in education, income, and health automatically represent injustice. I think Erasmus’ vision is much closer to the Bible’s.
biblical equality
The Bible’s vision of “equality” is glorious. The doctrine of man taught in Genesis chapter 1 dignifies every human being (Gen 1:27). Many in the Ancient Near East believed that only kings and princes were the “image of God”. But God’s word democratises the concept – from the drunk in the gutter, the embryo in the womb, the enemy in combat, through to the rich and powerful (James 3:9). Jesus’ famous parable of the Good Samaritan taps into this same truth, as he instructs us that even my enemy is included in the list of neighbours I am to love (Luke 10:29ff).
Clearly, the true religion of Israel and the coming of Jesus Christ has unleashed powerful equalising forces into this world. Paul uses the concept of “fairness” to argue for redistributing goods within the Christian church (2 Cor 8:13-14). He argued masters are to treat their slaves “justly” and “fairly” (Col 4:1), profound concepts that still underlie ideas of a minimum wage and workers’ rights today. Jesus causes goods to flow between people in a very different way to both feudal and capitalist economies (Acts 4:32, 34).
secular equality
There’s no doubt that the secular vision of “equality” draws deeply from these Christian roots. After all, it’s not obvious that being committed to Darwinism and the “survival of the fittest” gives any real grounds for a vision of “equality”. You won’t find equality touted in ancient paganism. But secularism is offering us a distorted, somewhat grotesque, vision of the Bible’s equality. It’s an atomised, statistical version of humanity, as opposed to a corporate and organic vision.
unequal families
A key thing missing in this vision is family. Between individuals and society there is this mysterious thing called “family”. No two families are equal. Families have histories and exist through time. No two mothers or fathers are the same. They have different grandparents and different great grandparents. Their geography is different – growing up in the countryside is not an equal experience to growing up in a big city.  No two children born to those parents are the same. They have different physiology, and DNA, with the specific opportunities and disadvantages those particular bodies create. Childhood experiences differ between families – attitudes towards cooking and diet, health and hygiene are different. No amount of social engineering can erase that family history.
What’s more, families accumulate things over time, and they pass these things on to the next generation. This is called “inheritance”. It’s no surprise, therefore, to see a celebrity like Daniel Craig say “inheritance is distasteful”. In an interview, he’s stated that he doesn’t intend for his children to get his Bond millions. If we’re all inherently independent individuals, then why should one child stand to gain from what an adult has done? Families introduce inequality!
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