By reinforcing that true unity will only come as we adhere more and more closely to God’s truth—and, realistically, not fully on this side of glory—a church encourages discussion of what that truth entails for faithful civic engagement, rather than silencing such discussion in the name of unity and thereby enabling moral relativism. This approach encourages the church to speak boldly on issues where God’s truth is clear, or clearly applies.

Lord, please help our church not be divided over politics…
This seems to be a common prayer and sentiment in Protestant churches. It’s a noble aspiration, but if taken to its logical conclusion, it can discourage civic engagement on behalf of God’s truth.
Consider two different interpretations of this exhortation. One: that our congregations would adhere more and more closely to God’s truth, knowing that this is the only path to true unity. Two: that congregants would come to understand and accept that fellow members may vote and think differently on political and cultural matters and place unity above these disagreements.
To the extent that this second meaning is intended or presumed, we are playing with relativistic fire, despite how seemingly obvious and biblical this language might seem on the surface. It is easily construed as implying that one’s political affiliations and beliefs resemble one’s favorite ice cream flavor, that there is no higher, objective truth against which they can be evaluated, or that a church should never be in the business of endorsing moral positions. What follows from this is moral equivalency: who’s to say which party or system of belief has a greater claim to upholding biblical justice? An additional subtext is often that it’s more important that we all get along anyway.
This is fundamentally a Positive World message. When a culture holds a generally positive view of faith, faith-informed perspectives are prevalent and prominent in the public square. As a result, such views tend to be marbled into the platforms of different political parties and worldviews, as the Overton Window is generally favorable to these views. (Consider the once robust cohort of pro-life Democrats.) In this context, it is still dangerous to maintain the fiction of an absolute moral equivalency, but intelligent people can at least debate the merits of various political allegiances. But this is clearly not our present context.
This “unity over division” perspective also evinces a deeper category error. I will take great pains not to relitigate the Great Keller Debate of 2022, but the kind of moral equivalency this perspective fosters is manifested in calls for a biblical justice that transcend Team Red and Team Blue. The category error of this “biblical justice” perspective lies in placing it alongside Team Red Justice and Team Blue Justice as a third, better alternative. Consider what this presupposes: First, that “biblical justice” is not what faithful Christians have been seeking in developing conceptions of justice all along; and second (as a corollary), that “biblical justice” has been epistemically unavailable to these Christians but has somehow now been revealed to this select group of contemporary evangelicals.
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With Jesus as your High Priest, you are anchored behind the veil into the presence of God himself: anchored to his forgiveness, and anchored to his blessing, favor, and love. You are anchored there because Jesus is standing right there, representing you. He brings the blood of a sacrifice—his blood—evidence that your sins have been punished and dealt with. With Jesus as your High Priest you have absolute assurance that you are free from condemnation. And he brings to you, from God, abundant mercy, forgiveness, and life. 

Unlike our beloved Anglican cousins, Presbyterians don’t believe that it is right to ordain priests into the church. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t think that we need a priest. On the contrary, we most desperately need a priest! Not a mere human priest, however, but the one great High Priest, Jesus Christ.

For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. (Heb. 5:1-4)

First, what is a priest? A priest is a go-between, someone who represents God before humanity, and humanity before God. A go-between is needed because God is holy, and we are not.
The Holy God hates sin with a passion and breaks out against it with fierce anger (remember the Flood, the Ten Plagues, the Exile…). But we are sin-full. In the West Australian town of Greenough, constant strong winds have bent the trees to grow right-angled to the ground. Humans are bent by sin to do what God has forbidden, and to fail to do what God has commanded.
Sinners cannot stand in God’s holy presence without being destroyed.
This is why Isaiah said “Woe to me! I am ruined!” when he found himself in the presence of the “Holy! Holy! Holy! LORD Almighty!” (Isa. 6:1-5). This is why the Beloved Disciple, confronted by the Holy Son of God, fell at his feet “as though dead” (Rev. 1:17).
Sinful humanity must come to God to plead for his mercy and blessing. But how can we? It isn’t safe to be around him, since we would be destroyed in his presence like a tissue in a bonfire, like a comet straying near the sun, disintegrated to ashes by the nuclear heat.
God on his side longs to bring us grace, forgiveness, and blessing. But how can he? His holy presence would destroy us, we who are fouled black by sin to our very core.
Two nations are at war, trying with might and main to obliterate one another. If there is to be any dialogue, any hope of reconciliation, a go-between is needed: traditionally, someone from neutral Switzerland. We need a Switzerland: a go-between to approach God on our behalf, to plead for his mercy and blessing; and someone who can come from God to us, to bring mercy and blessing. That is what a priest is. He represents sinful humanity before Holy God, and Holy God before sinful humanity.
A priest must have two qualifications.
First, in order to represent humanity, a priest must be one of us. He must know what we know, he must have felt and experienced what we have felt, to plead for us from a place of personal knowledge and encounter. Yet, though human, he must be sinless, so that he can enter Holy God’s presence without annihilation.
Second, in order to represent God, the priest must himself be divine. A true mediator between God and man must himself be—a God-man.
A priest has duties to perform.
In order to reconcile Holy God and sinful humanity, the priest must satisfy God’s demand for the execution of just punishment upon human sin. God can no more overlook and disregard sin than a human justice can overlook premeditated murder. If God and humanity is to be reconciled, human sin must be dealt with.
How can God bless sinful humanity, when he must punish us? God in his wisdom and grace has provided a sacrifice: a means by which our sin can be punished in another, in a substitute.
Just punishment for our sin can be executed upon the substitute, so that we may instead be blessed. The priest can make this sacrifice, and then bring evidence to God that the sacrifice has been made, and that sin has been justly punished. The priest brings the blood of the slain victim: “Look, here is the evidence that this person’s sin has been punished, that justice has been administered.”
God sees the blood of the substitute, and his holy justice is satisfied. The person for whom the sacrifice was made is no longer the object of his wrath: for his wrath has already fallen upon the sacrificial victim.
Then God sends the priest back to the people he represents: to pronounce God’s forgiveness and favor, God’s promises and reassurance.
The high priest was Israel’s only priest.
This was the awesome office and duty of the Old Testament priest: he was a mutual representative of Holy God and sinful humanity; he brought bloody evidence to God that Israel’s sin had been justly punished; he took God’s blessing to Israel, whose sin had been lifted.
The singular magnificence of the dress of the high priest showed that he was actually Israel’s only priest—the other “ordinary priests” merely served as his assistants.
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The 47-year-old author and speaker is about as bad as it gets when it comes to his pronouncements about who we are, where we should be heading, and how we should get there. Simply offering a number of quotes from him will give us a real good heads-up as to where he is coming from, and just how very toxic his thinking can be.

One does not need to be a “conspiracy theorist” to know that there are some pretty evil people out there, some pretty evil groups out there, and some pretty evil ideologies out there. Many of us know about the Great Reset, the World Economic Forum, and Klaus Schwab. They would have to be high up on the list of those promoting evil.
One very influential and famous adviser to them is the Israeli philosopher, historian, transhumanist, homosexual and atheist Yuval Noah Harari. The 47-year-old author and speaker is about as bad as it gets when it comes to his pronouncements about who we are, where we should be heading, and how we should get there.
Simply offering a number of quotes from him will give us a real good heads-up as to where he is coming from, and just how very toxic his thinking can be. Some months ago he had said this:
If you go back to the middle of the 20th century … and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them. You don’t have any kind of future without them. Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population, because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people. https://francesleader.substack.com/p/yuval-harari-interview
And in his 2016 book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow he even speaks of a “useless class” of people: “In the twenty-first century we might witness the creation of a massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society. This ‘useless class’ will not be merely unemployed – it will be unemployable.”
Is he being merely descriptive or prescriptive here? Often in the name of saving humanity these folks will show their true colours as those who hate humans. And folks like this never seem to bother following their own advice. They want a massive cull in the human population, but for some reason they refuse to lead by example here.
And consider this video of him speaking that just recently came to light:
Many, maybe most legal systems are based on this ideal, this belief in human rights. But human rights are just like heaven, and like God–it’s just a fictional story that we’ve invented and spread around. It may be a very nice story. It may be a very attractive story. We want to believe it, but it’s just a story. It’s not reality. It’s not a biological reality. Just as jellyfish and woodpeckers and ostriches have no rights, homo sapiens have no rights also.” Take a human, cut him open, look inside. You find the blood and you find the heart and lungs and kidneys but you don’t find there any rights. The only place you find rights is in fictional stories humans have invented and spread around. And the same thing is also true in the political field. States and nations are also, like human rights, and like God, and like heaven, they too are just stories. A mountain is a reality. You can see it. You can touch it. You can even smell it. But Israel, or the United States, they are just stories. Very powerful stories. Stories we might want to believe very much. But still they are just stories. You can’t really see the United States. You cannot touch it. You cannot smell it. https://slaynews.com/news/wef-mastermind-human-rights-fiction-just-like-god/
He has been saying things like this for some time now. In his 2011 book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, he wrote:
According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created.’ They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be “equal.” The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a directly created soul, and that all people are equal before God. However if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation, souls, what does it mean that all people are created “equal”?
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