Cries from the Pit
Jesus voluntarily plummeted into the chasm we had created so that we would not need to. In bearing the wrath due our sin on the cross, He gave us access to Himself; not just for the sake of eternal life with Him, but also access to Him from the deepest of life’s pits.
It has happened to the best of us. You’re walking along, mentally distracted by the task at-hand, when your foot lands on unsteady ground. You shuffle a bit to catch your balance or even trip altogether. Most of us get a bit red in the face, subtly look around to assure ourselves that no one saw what just happened, and go on our way with a bit of a lighter step.
Life can feel the same way: going about our routine and encountering circumstances that shake us or trip us up. Then, ever so often, there are life events where describing it as a slip does not seem to do it justice. It’s more like the earth opens up and we fall headlong into a circumstantial pit, out of which there is no easy escape…
The pit is a place all-too familiar in this broken world and it goes by many names. David called it “the valley of the shadow of death,” (Psalm 23:4) Jonah called it “the deep,” (Jonah 2:3) and Peter called it “the fire” (1 Peter 1:7). The pit is a place of suffering, longing, and hurt—it is dug by the shovel of fallen creation, sin, or Satan.
Scholars are not settled on what sort of pit Heman the Ezrahite had fallen into to produce a psalm like the one we read in chapter 88. It is one of the only psalms that does not seem to have a shred of hope in all its lines. Commentator Derek Kidner opens his insight regarding Psalm 88 with, “there is no sadder prayer in the Psalter…” Yet from its raw depths, we are able to mine five nuggets of pure gold that help us understand how to respond in a pit of our own.
I. Direction
The psalm begins with the line, “Incline Your ear, O Lord, and answer me.” From the midst of the pit, Heman looks to the Lord. He realized that when someone is in a pit, help does not come from within, help does not come from around; help comes from above.
Too often, our initial reaction from the pit is to rely on our own strength to claw our way out. We may also try to look around and elicit the help of those in the pit with us. Make no mistake: God calls us to be people of action and to bear one another’s burdens. However, the direction Heman exemplifies is that we are to first look up and cry out to the One who can help.
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How We Got Here
As we read the pages of church history, we will first see the reverence our predecessors had for the Bible and their view of its complete truthfulness and unadulterated authority. We will also be led back to the pages of the Bible itself, back to the Word of God, the Word of truth for all ages.
If you read church history, you have seen it all. That’s not entirely hyperbole. Many of the challenges and questions we face in the church today have been met by past generations of believers. Did not a wise man once say, “There is nothing new under the sun”? This holds true regarding the doctrine of inerrancy. In 1979, Jack B. Rogers and Donald McKim wrote a book titled The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach. The central idea or thesis has come to be known as the Rogers/McKim proposal, which is this: The Bible is authoritative in matters of faith and conduct, but it is not infallible when it comes to historical or scientific details. Further, the doctrine of inerrancy is an innovation of the nineteenth century. Rogers and McKim argued that the Princeton theologians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most notably B.B. Warfield, created the doctrine of inerrancy, which teaches that the Bible is entirely without error in all that it affirms.
The Rogers/McKim proposal was a counterpunch to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy from 1978. That statement was the work of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), led by such figures as R.C. Sproul, Edmund Clowney, J.I. Packer, James Montgomery Boice, and others. The council produced a statement of five short paragraphs, a list of nineteen articles of affirmation and denial, as well as three pages of further exposition.
The Chicago Statement
The Chicago Statement was presented over four days in late October 1978 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The leaders of the ICBI signed first, then the others at Chicago; 268 signatures in all. In the ensuing weeks and months, hundreds more signatures were added from across the nation and around the world by representatives of numerous denominations, ministries, colleges, and seminaries. Over the next decade, the ICBI published books and booklets, sponsored conferences and meetings, and promoted the doctrine of inerrancy in the church and in the academy.
If you were to poll the attendees at the summit on inerrancy in Chicago, you would likely find that they had indeed been influenced by B.B. Warfield and the other Princetonians. It was Warfield, after all, who helped the church by offering a very straightforward and simplified argument for inerrancy.
Medieval philosopher William of Ockham is known for his principle of parsimony, or simplicity. The argument with the fewest assumptions is the better argument, the principle states. The argument that does not rely on a complex web of arguments and sub-arguments is the better argument. Warfield used Ockham’s razor well. The simple, but not simplistic, argument he made was this: If God is the author of Scripture, then Scripture is true.
We would use the theological terms of inspiration and inerrancy here. If the Bible is the Word of God, if it is the inspired text breathed out by God, then it stands to reason that it is true. If it is inspired, it is inerrant. This simple but precise argument is the gift of Warfield to the church.
The Chicago Statement expands on this basic argument and, quite importantly, draws out the boundary lines of what inerrancy means and what it doesn’t mean through its nineteen articles of affirmation and denial. The Chicago Statement sustained an entire generation in the battle for the Bible. It lent stamina to the theological conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention as they entered the arena in their seminaries and denominational agencies and structures, to the theological conservatives in Presbyterianism and in other traditions, and to many other evangelical leaders.
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How Our Universities Became Sheep Factories
My own university, Cambridge, wants academic staff to undergo “race awareness” training. This advises you to “assume racism is everywhere”. Attendees are also reminded that “this is not a space for intellectualising the topic”. You might have thought “intellectualising” — ie thinking about — it is the kind of thing Cambridge academics should do. But don’t feel bad about getting that wrong; or at least, don’t feel bad about feeling bad: we are also told that these sessions aim at “working through” the feelings of shame and guilt that you might have on your journey in “developing an antiracist identity”.
A joke about education in Soviet Russia:
– My wife has been going to cooking school for three years.– She must really cook well by now!– No, they’ve only reached the part about the Twentieth Communist Party Congress so far…
Maybe it’s not so much funny as telling; but what it is telling of is the hijacking of a non-political activity — cookery, but it may as well be biology or history or maths — for a political end.
That end was not (or not only) to stuff your mind with state-approved facts (“facts”); it was to fashion a new man. Enthusiastic about “progressive” causes, responsive to peer pressure and ready to join in exerting it, and completely self-righteous, Homo Sovieticus would be the raw material of the Marxist New Jerusalem. As Stalin put it when toasting tame writers: “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.”
Communism has passed away. But the production of souls, or rather their engineering, survives in the capitalist Anglosphere. In our Higher Education sector it doesn’t just survive — it thrives, in the form of political indoctrination passed off as “training” or “mission statements”, specifically on the Thirty-nine Articles de nos jours: racism, unconscious bias, transphobia and the rest of it.
St Andrew’s, for instance, insists that students pass a “diversity” module in order to matriculate. Questions include: “Acknowledging your personal guilt is a useful starting point in overcoming unconscious bias. Do you agree or disagree?” The only permitted answer is “agree”. But what if you don’t feel, and don’t want to accept, personal guilt for anything? What if you think (like Nietzsche) that guilt itself is counterproductive? As one student aptly commented, “Such issues are never binary and the time would be better spent discussing the issue, rather than taking a test on it.”
My own university, Cambridge, wants academic staff to undergo “race awareness” training. This advises you to “assume racism is everywhere”. Attendees are also reminded that “this is not a space for intellectualising the topic”. You might have thought “intellectualising” — ie thinking about — it is the kind of thing Cambridge academics should do. But don’t feel bad about getting that wrong; or at least, don’t feel bad about feeling bad: we are also told that these sessions aim at “working through” the feelings of shame and guilt that you might have on your journey in “developing an antiracist identity”.
It isn’t just Cambridge and St Andrews. There is anti-racism or “unconscious bias” training being offered to, or more likely thrust upon, staff and/or students at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Goldsmiths, KCL, Liverpool, Oxford Medical School, Sheffield, Solent, Sussex and doubtless hundreds of other universities and departments across the country.
It isn’t just training either. The very purpose of a university is being redefined. You might think they exist to conduct teaching and research. That would be naïve. Most universities now routinely call themselves anti-racist institutions, where this means: actively campaigning for a political end. For instance, Sussex says: “[a]s an institution we must actively play our part in dismantling the systems and structures that lead to racial inequality, disadvantage and under-representation”. Bristol expects all its members to “stand up” to racism “wherever it occurs”.And on modern definitions, it may occur more often than its perpetrators or victims have ever noticed. For a thoroughly representative example: one Cambridge department tells students that expressions of racism include “beliefs, feelings, attitudes, utterances, assumptions and actions that end up reproducing and re-establishing a system that offers dominant groups opportunities to thrive while contributing towards the marginalisation of minority groups”. Notice that this definition is effectively suppressing beliefs (not just behaviour) on the vague and possibly intangible basis of whether they “reproduce a system”.
Now imagine being a clever, white 18-year old, not at all racist and not at all privileged either, away from home for the first time, in a lecture or class in (say) sociology, or politics, or philosophy, where a lecturer asserts, perhaps quite aggressively, that white people are inherently racist.
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It’s “Very Good” To Be A Woman
We can shout to the heavens how excellent and wonderful it is for women to be women! And by women, we are talking about Biblically defined womanhood! We are not celebrating the perverted, diminished, and hollowed-out femininity the world has championed. We are celebrating the God-ordained, glorious femininity that is beautiful and wholly pleasing to God.
You Can’t Talk about That…Watch Me
In clown world, you cannot speak to me unless you agree with me. And you certainly can not speak intelligently on a topic unless it comports with your personal experience. For instance, a white person could not and should not opine about a topic like racism these days because they obviously have no experience with being oppressed (as assumptions go). At best, she is a closet white supremacist, and he is clearly sitting advantageously atop the oppressor mountain (as assumptions continue). According to our new class of social and moral philosophers, the melanin-challenged among us could not possibly have anything to add on such a subject because they have been blinded by decades and centuries of toxic advantage and privilege. If you disagree with such pitiful logic, it is just your white fragility barking.
The same is true when a man opens his Bible and studies a topic like womanhood. He may be learning the truth from the very designer of women, but his opinions are somehow invalid because he has no experience of being a woman. This kind of abysmal logic comes from a feministic culture that no longer knows what it means to be a woman. Now, women can have penises, men can have babies, and groomers who wear dresses can disrobe and flash their genitals in front of little girls, all in the name of womanhood. Perhaps, even a white male pastor, looking at what the author and perfecter of femininity has to say about it, could offer a clearer picture of a woman than the so-called experts. Just maybe.
Putting Forward the Question
The question “What Is a Woman” has more recently become a viral topic on social media since the Daily Wire decided to make their signature documentary “What Is a Woman” by Matt Walsh free on Twitter. The documentary explores that very question, “What is a woman” and allows various representatives from clown world to hang themselves with utterly ridiculous propositions. For that reason, it is a must-see.
Yet, other than a last-second quip by Matt’s wife that a woman is a “Human biological female,” the documentary utterly fails to answer its own question with any sufficient treatment. Therefore, I would like to offer a Biblical case for what a woman is and why womanhood is a very good thing.
What Is a Woman?
From the moment we open the Bible, we are bombarded by what a woman is. According to Scripture, a woman is a special creation (Genesis 1:26) endowed with blessing, significance, and value by the creator who sculpted her in His image (Genesis 1:27-28). In that image, she has been made equal in personhood to the male God called her to correspond with, yet she is made distinct from him in her body, role, and rank.
The Woman’s Body
Regarding her body, she was made to be visually stimulating to her husband. The Bible does not present an androgynous woman who binds her breasts and wears men’s clothing; in fact, it forbids such a thing ( Deuteronomy 22:5). This is because feminine sexual beauty, when rightly expressed in the confines of covenant marriage (1 Timothy 2:9-10), is a beautiful and glorious thing. Take, for example, Adam. When he stirs from a deep siesta the Lord God put him into, He awakens with blissful delight to behold a woman’s naked body (Genesis 2:23). She was made lovely, with softened curves and rounded thighs (Song of Solomon 7:1) that will intoxicate her man, and leave him ever satisfied with her breasts all his days (Proverbs 5:19). Far from being a repulsive aspect of masculinity, male sexual attraction for his wife is part of a woman’s glory. The man is not deviant for desiring his wife, and she is not sensate when flaunting her naked body in front of him to cultivate his desire. She receives affection and attraction from her husband in a way no one else can, and he covenants to cling to her, protect her, provide for her, and love her all His days (Genesis 2:24).
This is why the Bible says it is not good for the man to be alone, because when the man is alone, the woman is left unprotected, unloved, and unprovided for. Instead, her radiating beauty is meant to allure him and then tame him to become more than a man. In her love, he becomes a gentleman, a provider, a father, and a companion. Through her womb, she will bring forth legacies of people who will subdue the earth per God’s perfect vision (Genesis 1:28) and bring manifold blessings to her husband (Psalm 127:5).
Neither the man nor the woman could accomplish God’s plan independently. But through distinct yet equal giftings, they cling to one another in blessings; she becomes the man’s helper (Genesis 2:18), and together they become fruitful, multiplying, ruling, and subduing to the glory of God. In this sense, she was made for man, to help execute the vision he will be held accountable to the Lord for, not vice versa (1 Corinthians 11:9).
Women are also made with a body that can produce children. She has a monthly menstruation that men cannot have, signifying her ability to bring life, even from the throes of death (Leviticus 15). During ovulation, a woman’s sexual drive increases as a way of helping her become pregnant. During conception, she will take a single sperm cell and transform it into an eternal living being (Psalm 139:13), which demonstrates part of the miracle of what it is to be a woman. She takes the small blessings a man gives her, and she multiplies them across the whole of her life. And while the delivery of those children has become arduous and painful because of sin (Genesis 3:16), the woman has a unique and hormonal ability to forget her pain the moment the child is born (John 16:21). After the delivery, the breasts that were used to satisfy her husband, now nourish her infant babes physically from the milk God has made for her to produce (1 Thessalonians 2:7). And, in her mothering, she develops an extraordinary love for her children, that even their father cannot fully comprehend (Isaiah 49:15) that will cause her to give up everything for the blessing of her children. Her body was made for her husband and her children, and from her body, a multitude of blessings flow out to everyone around her.
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