The Pope is calling for an International Pluralistic religion, centered around himself. It is not difficult to see where this is all going, since he himself makes that clear; “It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.”

On 6 March, 2021 the Pope officially launched his new religion. Well, its his same religion, come out of the closet.
It is clearly Universal in scope, calls for a single Congregation of religions, and places himself as the universal Roman head of it. It was held at great risk in war-torn Iraq, in the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldeans. The Vatican has been repairing the Ziggurat at the cite of the ancient city since 1999 just for this event. It hosted the leaders of most of the world’s religions.
The speech is in line with The New Catechism of the Catholic Church, which embraces all the world’s religions as paths to the same end; paths to the same god. The only religion specifically to be excluded is one which does not recognize that the Pope is the Head of the Church, and the Russian Orthodox.
The Pope is calling for an International Pluralistic religion, centered around himself. It is not difficult to see where this is all going, since he himself makes that clear; “It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.” The Roman Catholic doctrine of economic Distributism is clearly the end he proposes. What is Distributism? According to their website, it is a lot like Communism, Socialism and Marxism.
The question Bible-believing Christians face is this; how can one who speaks like the Pope does in this speech, at the same time believe even the most basic teachings of the Bible? Can such a person still be said to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Apostle’s Creed and give a speech like this?
Dear brothers and sisters,
This blessed place brings us back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions.
Here, where Abraham our father lived, we seem to have returned home. It was here that Abraham heard God’s call; it was from here that he set out on a journey that would change history.
We are the fruits of that call and that journey. God asked Abraham to raise his eyes to heaven and to count its stars.
In those stars, he saw the promise of his descendants; he saw us.
Today we, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with our brothers and sisters of other religions, honour our father Abraham by doing as he did: we look up to heaven and we journey on earth.
We look up to heaven.
Thousands of years later, as we look up to the same sky, those same stars appear. They illumine the darkest nights because they shine together.
Heaven thus imparts a message of unity: the Almighty above invites us never to separate ourselves from our neighbours.
The otherness of God points us towards others, towards our brothers and sisters.
Yet if we want to preserve fraternity, we must not lose sight of heaven.
May we – the descendants of Abraham and the representatives of different religions – sense that, above all, we have this role: to help our brothers and sisters to raise their eyes and prayers to heaven.
We all need this because we are not self-sufficient.
Man is not omnipotent; we cannot make it on our own.
If we exclude God, we end up worshipping the things of this earth.
Worldly goods, which lead so many people to be unconcerned with God and others, are not the reason why we journey on earth.
We raise our eyes to heaven in order to raise ourselves from the depths of our vanity; we serve God in order to be set free from enslavement to our egos, because God urges us to love.
This is true religiosity: to worship God and to love our neighbour.
In today’s world, which often forgets or presents distorted images of the Most High, believers are called to bear witness to his goodness, to show his paternity through our fraternity.
From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters.
Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion.
We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion; indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings.
Let us not allow the light of heaven to be overshadowed by the clouds of hatred!
Dark clouds of terrorism, war and violence have gathered over this country. All its ethnic and religious communities have suffered.
In particular, I would like to mention the Yazidi community, which has mourned the deaths of many men and witnessed thousands of women, girls and children kidnapped, sold as slaves, subjected to physical violence and forced conversions.
Today, let us pray for those who have endured these sufferings, for those who are still dispersed and abducted, that they may soon return home.
And let us pray that freedom of conscience and freedom of religion will everywhere be recognised and respected; these are fundamental rights, because they make us free to contemplate the heaven for which we were created.
When terrorism invaded the north of this beloved country, it wantonly destroyed part of its magnificent religious heritage, including the churches, monasteries and places of worship of various communities.
Yet, even at that dark time, some stars kept shining.
I think of the young Muslim volunteers of Mosul, who helped to repair churches and monasteries, building fraternal friendships on the rubble of hatred, and those Christians and Muslims who today are restoring mosques and churches together.
Professor Ali Thajeel spoke too of the return of pilgrims to this city.
It is important to make pilgrimages to holy places, for it is the most beautiful sign on earth of our yearning for heaven.
To love and protect holy places, therefore, is an existential necessity, in memory of our father Abraham, who in various places raised to heaven altars of the Lord.
May the great Patriarch help us to make our respective sacred places oases of peace and encounter for all!
By his fidelity to God, Abraham became a blessing for all peoples; may our presence here today, in his footsteps, be a sign of blessing and hope for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the whole world.
Heaven has not grown weary of the earth: God loves every people, every one of his daughters and sons!
Let us never tire of looking up to heaven, of looking up to those same stars that, in his day, our father Abraham contemplated.
We journey on earth.
For Abraham, looking up to heaven, rather than being a distraction, was an incentive to journey on earth, to set out on a path that, through his descendants, would lead to every time and place.
It all started from here, with the Lord who brought him forth from Ur.
His was a journey outward, one that involved sacrifices.
Abraham had to leave his land, home and family.
Yet by giving up his own family, he became the father of a family of peoples.
Something similar also happens to us: on our own journey, we are called to leave behind those ties and attachments that, by keeping us enclosed in our own groups, prevent us from welcoming God’s boundless love and from seeing others as our brothers and sisters.
We need to move beyond ourselves, because we need one another.
The pandemic has made us realise that “no one is saved alone”.
Still, the temptation to withdraw from others is never-ending, yet at the same time we know that “the notion of ‘every man for himself’ will rapidly degenerate into a free-for-all that would prove worse than any pandemic”.
Amid the tempests we are currently experiencing, such isolation will not save us.
Nor will an arms race or the erection of walls that will only make us all the more distant and aggressive.
Nor the idolatry of money, for it closes us in on ourselves and creates chasms of inequality that engulf humanity.
Nor can we be saved by consumerism, which numbs the mind and deadens the heart.
The way that heaven points out for our journey is another: the way of peace.
It demands, especially amid the tempest, that we row together on the same side.
It is shameful that, while all of us have suffered from the crisis of the pandemic, especially here, where conflicts have caused so much suffering, anyone should be concerned simply for his own affairs.
There will be no peace without sharing and acceptance, without a justice that ensures equity and advancement for all, beginning with those most vulnerable.
There will be no peace unless peoples extend a hand to other peoples.
There will be no peace as long as we see others as them and not us.
There will be no peace as long as our alliances are against others, for alliances of some against others only increase divisions.
Peace does not demand winners or losers, but rather brothers and sisters who, for all the misunderstandings and hurts of the past, are journeying from conflict to unity.
Let us ask for this in praying for the whole Middle East. Here I think especially of neighbouring war-torn Syria.
The Patriarch Abraham, who today brings us together in unity, was a prophet of the Most High.
An ancient prophecy says that the peoples “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”.
This prophecy has not been fulfilled; on the contrary, swords and spears have turned into missiles and bombs.
From where, then, can the journey of peace begin?
From the decision not to have enemies.
Anyone with the courage to look at the stars, anyone who believes in God, has no enemies to fight.
He or she has only one enemy to face, an enemy that stands at the door of the heart and knocks to enter.
That enemy is hatred.
While some try to have enemies more than to be friends, while many seek their own profit at the expense of others, those who look at the stars of the promise, those who follow the ways of God, cannot be against someone, but for everyone.
They cannot justify any form of imposition, oppression and abuse of power; they cannot adopt an attitude of belligerence.
Dear friends, is all this possible?
Father Abraham, who was able to hope against all hope, encourages us.
Throughout history, we have frequently pursued goals that are overly worldly and journeyed on our own, but with the help of God, we can change for the better.
It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.
It is up to us to appeal firmly to the leaders of nations to make the increasing proliferation of arms give way to the distribution of food for all.
It is up to us to silence mutual accusations in order to make heard the cry of the oppressed and discarded in our world: all too many people lack food, medicine, education, rights and dignity!
It is up to us to shed light on the shady maneuvers that revolve around money and to demand that money not end up always and only reinforcing the unbridled luxury of a few.
It is up to us preserve our common home from our predatory aims.
It is up to us to remind the world that human life has value for what it is and not for what it has.
That the lives of the unborn, the elderly, migrants and men and women, whatever the colour of their skin or their nationality, are always sacred and count as much as the lives of everyone else!
It is up to us to have the courage to lift up our eyes and look at the stars, the stars that our father Abraham saw, the stars of the promise.
The journey of Abraham was a blessing of peace.
Yet it was not easy: he had to face struggles and unforeseen events.
We too have a rough journey ahead, but like the great Patriarch, we need to take concrete steps, to set out and seek the face of others, to share memories, gazes and silences, stories and experiences.
I was struck by the testimony of Dawood and Hasan, a Christian and a Muslim who, undaunted by the differences between them, studied and worked together.
Together they built the future and realised that they are brothers. In order to move forward, we too need to achieve something good and concrete together.
This is the way, especially for young people, who must not see their dreams cut short by the conflicts of the past!
It is urgent to teach them fraternity, to teach them to look at the stars.
This is a real emergency; it will be the most effective vaccine for a future of peace. For you, dear young people, are our present and our future!
Only with others can the wounds of the past be healed.
Rafah told us of the heroic example of Najy, from the Sabean Mandean community, who lost his life in an attempt to save the family of his Muslim neighbour.
How many people here, amid the silence and indifference of the world, have embarked upon journeys of fraternity!
Rafah also told us of the unspeakable sufferings of the war that forced many to abandon home and country in search of a future for their children.
Thank you, Rafah, for having shared with us your firm determination to stay here, in the land of your fathers.
May those who were unable to do so, and had to flee, find a kindly welcome, befitting those who are vulnerable and suffering.
It was precisely through hospitality, a distinctive feature of these lands, that Abraham was visited by God and given the gift of a son, when it seemed that all hope was past.
Brothers and sisters of different religions, here we find ourselves at home, and from here, together, we wish to commit ourselves to fulfilling God’s dream that the human family may become hospitable and welcoming to all his children; that looking up to the same heaven, it will journey in peace on the same earth.
Charles d’Espeville is a Minister in the Reformed Church in America.

Arizona Presbytery approved an overture at its January 19,2023 meeting, asking the 50th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America to “Amend BCO 7 to Codify the Biblical Standard for Church Officers Related to Human Sexuality”

In 2022, the 49th General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) , approved sending Overture 15 to the Presbyteries to consider ratifying wording for BCO 7-4. Amendments to the Book of Church Order (BCO) require that 2/3 of the Presbyteries give their assent to proposed overtures. Overture 15 failed to receive the necessary votes. This overture presents new wording for BCO 7-4 for the 50th GA to consider at its June meeting.
Overture 9 presents proposed wording to amend BCO 7 by adding a fourth paragraph on qualifications for church office. The overture presents some underlying reasons in its request to GA: It states that, “the preservation of chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior in oneself is an indispensable duty and qualification for office (1 Tim.3:2; Titus 1:5-9).”
It adds further, that “in the beginning God created them “male and female” after his own image and likeness and ordained the first marriage and family consisting of one man and one woman in sexual union, establishing the divine intention for human sexuality (Gen. 15 1:27-28; 2:24; 4:1).”
And furthermore, “any expression of sexual attraction or sexual intimacy that is not directed toward the fulfillment of a lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is contrary to nature and to nature’s God (Lev. 20:15-16; Rom. 1:26-27; Col. 3:5; 20 WLC28; WLC139; WLC148).”
The overture then proposes this wording to be added as BCO 7-4: “Men who deviate–whether by declared conviction, self-description, lifestyle decisions, or overt practice–from God’s creational intention for human sexuality are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.”
An overture is a means by which a Presbytery can bring a matter to the GA for consideration. This overture will be considered by the 50th PCA General Assembly at its meeting in Memphis, Tenn., June 12-16, 2023.

OVERTURE 9 from Arizona PresbyteryTo 50th PCA GA“Amend BCO 7 to Codify the Biblical Standard for Church OfficersRelated to Human Sexuality”

Whereas, the sins of officers are more heinous by virtue of their office (2 Sam.12:7-9; Ezek. 6 8:11-12; Rom. 2:17-24; Gal. 2:11-14; Jas. 3:1; WLC 151); and
Whereas, the preservation of chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior in oneself is an indispensable duty and qualification for office (1 Tim.3:2; Titus 1:5-9); and
Whereas, in the beginning God created them “male and female” after his own image and likeness and ordained the first marriage and family consisting of one man and one woman in sexual union, establishing the divine intention for human sexuality (Gen. 15 1:27-28; 2:24; 4:1); and
Whereas, any expression of sexual attraction or sexual intimacy that is not directed toward the fulfillment of a lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is contrary to nature and to nature’s God (Lev. 20:15-16; Rom. 1:26-27; Col. 3:5; 20 WLC28; WLC139; WLC148):
Therefore, be it resolved that The Book of Church Order Chapter 7 be amended such that a new paragraph, BCO 7-4, be added, to read as follow: (new words underlined):
7-4. Men who deviate–whether by declared conviction, self-description, lifestyle decisions, or overt practice–from God’s creational intention for human sexuality are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Adopted by the Arizona Presbytery at its stated meeting January 19, 2023Attested by /s/ RE Richard Wolfe, stated clerk
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Written by J. Chase Davis |
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
On our heavenly pilgrimage, we don’t settle for the ghettoization of Christian communities….We stand ready to defend our own with all the biblical masculine virtue we have to throw ourselves into the battle wherever it rages. We march forth, taking ground; we live with strength and courage because the Lord is with us. We don’t aim to lose. We aim to win because our victory is secure in Christ. 

[American Reformer] Editor’s note: The following is a lightly edited version of a speech delivered at the Burn the Ships Conference in Boulder, Colorado on July 27, 2024.
In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.—C.S. Lewis
Because modern Christians have been taught and believed lies about reality, they have completely misunderstood the nature of reality. One of those lies involves the nature of our heavenly pilgrimage, or our spiritual life. We have been taught that our heavenly pilgrimage is solely immaterial or “spiritual.” Meaning that the things that concern our pursuit of Christ are only immaterial concerns or soul level questions. I believe two tools have been used to reduce our heavenly pilgrimage to such a state. First, the induction of egalitarianism and, second, its subsequent demonic sister, the vice of tolerance.
Egalitarianism
Here, we are not merely talking about the theological concept of egalitarianism. We are talking about that, but it is much bigger than that. In our day, there is a wildly held falsity propagated about the nature of reality and mankind. This is the notion that we are all equal, all people and all cultures are equal. We are told that all people are equal in any and every way.
In more conservative contexts, this is sometimes laundered under biblical teachings about the imago Dei. In more liberal streams, it is glossed over with verses about there being neither male nor female, no Greek or Jew in Christ. We are taught to believe that men and women are equal in any and every respect. The worst stage of this cancer has been revealed in transgenderism, thinking that men can become women or women can become men. No longer, we are told, is there any biological reality to maleness or femaleness. It is all a social construct.
More broadly, this falsity flies under the radar, using verses such as “judge not” when referring to various cultures. We are told that we cannot judge the morality or immorality of any culture or people other than our own. Why? Because they are only doing what they have been taught how to do. We are told that if given the same opportunities and privileges, they could be successful; in fact, they might even be better than us. All cultures are equal.
Closer to home, we are taught to feel an inherent shame about our very biological makeup as men. Your testosterone is not given by God, but instead a cancer you must rid yourself of. Your assertiveness and aggression are not Christlike. Your confidence and desire to win is anti-biblical. Your willingness to fight is not reflective of the meekness of Christ. On and on, they drone.
This is the lie of egalitarianism that even among men, there is no one better or worse, no one stronger or weaker; we are all one and the same. And Christians have bought this lie hook, line, and sinker. But nature abhors a vacuum, and all men know this is a lie. When you play a game of pickup basketball or throw the football, you remember the old ways. And the old ways are designed by God. Like a dog who instinctually chases a cat, even the most effeminate man will somehow discover a prior to undisclosed masculine drive when he enters the area. Because God designed men to be this way. Christ did not come to obliterate your masculinity, and he did not come to lower your T-level. Grace does not destroy nature. Christ came to restore your manhood.
Egalitarianism reduces Christianity to a consumer good. By twisting the Bible into an egalitarian framework, we have deceived ourselves into thinking that Christianity is just one option among others, which are all equal. The Christian religion is just believed to be another option among many. We adopt the anti-Christian ideal of principled pluralism and subjugate our religion to market demands. Our churches become branded such that we compete with others, not in terms of holiness or excellence but in programs and marketing. Christians themselves conceive of the church in market terms, determining the goodness of the church only in terms of success in reaching the lost.
Tolerance
The second lie is what I call the vice of tolerance—we have represented Christianity in terms of its emotional effect on other people, namely pleasure. Therefore, if people have a negative emotional experience or feel pain from our witness and our journey to the heavenly city, then we assume we must be doing something wrong. Why? Because Jesus is not mean.
We have remade Jesus in our own image regarding what it means to be a good person. There is a version of Christian tolerance that is virtuous, but today, that is not what is lauded. Instead, we see hypocrisy from those who claim tolerance and yet display nothing but contempt for Christians, particularly Christian men. It is good to overlook an offense. It is good to live in peace and harmony. This is a blessing from the Lord. But the enemies of God do not intend to live in peace and harmony with you.
G K Chesterton wrote, “Tolerance is the virtue of those who believe in nothing.”
Excessive tolerance or the vice of tolerance is more tempting than intolerance. Why? Because the coward risks no pain. It is a vice of pleasure. The person guilty of the vice of tolerance risks nothing and, therefore, can gain nothing. But they can at least preserve some sense of pleasure in knowing that they don’t have to endure pain, whether the pain of social ostracization or the pain inflicted on someone else by openly disagreeing with them. In a culture of pleasure and decadence, the idea of ever causing any pain to someone else, like what they call emotional distress, is seen as wicked.
Much of our conception of our Christian witness and sharing the gospel cannot fathom this reality today. The idea that we should cause another pain in what we tell them is seen as anti-gospel. We live in a world obsessed with pleasure. Avoid pain at all costs. Comfort by any means.
And yet, the comfort we truly need only comes from God, who comforts us with his salvation and presence. And we can only receive that comfort by facing the pain of our condemnation and the reality of our human condition apart from God. We rightly conceive of the gospel as good news. But there is no good news to speak of if people have no concept of there being bad news. The good news of the gospel is not perceived to be good if people have no familiarity with what is bad, to begin with.
There is no gospel without pain. Without pain, the news we share is simply one option in the marketplace of ideas at best. But to preach the gospel, people must hear the law to understand their standing before God. There must be condemnation in order for there to be reconciliation. This is not legalism. This is just faithful gospel preaching.
It is not cruel to speak the truth about sin plainly. In fact, to avoid speaking about sin plainly leads people to hell. Yes, this will create enemies. That is part of the deal when you come to Christ. You will have enemies. There will be people who hate hearing the good news. The aim is not necessarily to make enemies for the sake of making enemies. The aim is to proclaim the truth of God, knowing that enemies will be made. And we should pray for our enemies, especially by praying the imprecatory Psalms.
Christ says that we will have enemies, but because of these lies of reality, egalitarianism, and the vice of tolerance, which create what we might refer to as an unreality or anti-reality version of Christianity, we cannot even conceive of other people as enemies. After all, who are we to judge?
What a pox on this house of ours. We have twisted ourselves in knots to butcher the Bible to justify pacified men, a pacified church, and, therefore, a pacified society that is easy to control. We submit to the yoke of tyranny, so long as we can just conveniently order something to our doorstep. Christ did not die for his church to be pacified. He died for his church to march to the beat of his drum as we go forth into the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey what He has commanded. But we have traded this vision of the church at war for a utopian vision of a pacified church filled with pacified men, just hoping if we are winsome enough, they won’t take our children from us and put them on puberty blockers.
This was one of the critiques Nietzsche made against Christianity, or his conception of it at least. For many, Christianity has become a pacifier, like you would give a baby. Churches gather in the name of self-soothing. Sermons cater to people’s felt needs. Worship services are created to fill one with good emotions that soothe one from the pain of life.
Nietzsche saw this. He conceived of a concept called ressentiment. This is the concept that if one is filled with such jealousy because of an inferiority complex, one becomes hostile to others. Furthermore, projecting their own insecurity, they will conclude that those who are superior to them are morally repugnant and inferior themselves. To understand Ressentiment, you must understand master and slave morality in Nietzsche. He’s telling a story about the origins of humanity that challenges Christianity.
It goes like this. There were people, and the bigger, stronger people took from the little weak people. Think like Conan the Barbarian. These bigger strong people Nietzsche conceived of as masters and the weaker people he conceived of as slaves. The master conceives of the good and not good in different terms than the slave. What’s good is getting food, being stronger, getting women. What’s not good: not eating, being smol, not getting women. This is the mindset of the master for Nietzsche.
When the master sees the slave, he doesn’t even think of the slave. “I don’t even think about you.” When the master encounters another master, they admire them, even if they end up fighting each other. The master, this big, strong brute, might give things to other masters to show his power.
How do the slaves feel? The slaves are naturally conflicted. Why? The slaves also think that getting food, house, and women are good, BUT they look at the master and think he is bad because he wants what they want, but the slave cannot prevent it. The master takes what they have, and they can do nothing to stop it. They are filled with resentment. The slaves can’t see the desires in their hearts as naturally good because the master has the same desire. The slave can’t look at another slave and respect them.
This resentment leads to slave morality. Master mentality honors who you are and your natural goods. Because it is good to get food, be strong, and get a wife. Slave morality looks at good things and is suspicious of them. They can’t imagine life as a master because they resent the master. They hate that the master is strong, gets food, and gets the woman. They resent him and create an entire moral framework to justify it. They end up filled with jealousy and contempt for anyone with money, power, and sex.
Nietzsche thinks the world is filled with slave morality and hatred of anyone who is rich, powerful, and competent. And he says that the point at which the slaves began running society began with Christianity. He suggests that Christianity creates this slave morality because in his day the liberal churches were doing this. They were creating entire theological frameworks based on sentimentality, not reality. Of course we as Christians not believe this, but his critique based on the evaluation of many churches and Christian men seems to have some truth to it.
This slave mentality leads people to build the world around them in such a way to accommodate their slave morality. They build a cage to cope and seethe with their conception of reality. They will construct a reality in which they can cope and seethe in their resentment. Slave morality resents those with money, power and success. In fact, from many pulpits and articles you would get the idea that Jesus does not want you to have money, power, success, or find a wife. We are told that being like Jesus means the only good thing to do with power is to give it away. The only good use of our natural God-given ambitions is to avoid them because they might become an idol. And that you should just settle for singleness.
Boiling under the surface of all of this, many Christian men live with a disquieting resentment. They are taught to hate themselves and deny how God made them all in the name of following Jesus. Is it any wonder that men oftentimes want nothing to do with a church that, by all accounts, hates them? Rather than encouraging men towards excellence, churches often just teach men that they are defunct women. Men are taught that they are spiritually deficient if they didn’t cry during church or talk about Jesus as they would a boyfriend.
This all creates a pacified church obsessed with soothing our pitiful state. In the name of egalitarianism and the vice of tolerance, Christian men are deceived into thinking something is wrong with them in their creational design.
Because of this anti-reality teaching, egalitarianism, and the vice of tolerance, Christians live in the undesirable state of having no principles on which to fight, no enemies who they are to fight, and therefore can not even fathom praying the imprecatory Psalms, much less being animated by Christian virtue and honor in manly warfare in our pilgrimage to the heavenly city.
Instead, our heavenly pilgrimage is conceived exclusively in quietist and anabaptist terms. This is not a call to arms or a call to revolt. It is simply to say that everyone who came before us had no qualms conceiving of reality according to God’s design. I often wonder about the fortitude of the men who came before us, who took up arms against a British Empire that was far less tyrannical than the American empire. It bothers me when I look around; we seem to lack the moral conviction and clarity that the men who came before us possessed.
It was common in the old days to understand that Christians, churches, and Christian societies would have enemies that must be defeated. The Puritans often provided a type of chaplain service to their town or colony before they went to battle. Even today, Christian chaplains pray for their men’s success on the field of battle. In sports, chaplains pray for the success and victory of their football team.
We must recover and appreciate these simple acts as reflections of what we should be doing in all of life, whether in business or politics. We must recover a martial spirit of victory or death. We must embrace the conflict of a world that wars against the Creator. And to that, we must reject egalitarianism, which flies under the guise of feminism most prominently, and reject the vice of tolerance. We must embrace God’s design for the world. God’s world is built hierarchically. And it is built to flourish where wickedness is not tolerated, and righteousness abounds.
In a world of hierarchy, there will be conflict. There are tribes and factions, some stronger and some weaker. God’s Word maps onto reality and describes how to navigate these waters. However, the utopian egalitarian vision of the world in which everyone is equal in any and every respect also produces conflict. But because it is not reality-based but a fantasy, Christians are often at a loss as to how to navigate the conflict because the Bible assumes hierarchy, not egalitarianism. It would be like trying to look at the rule book for golf when you are playing football. You won’t succeed. Many Christians struggle and fail in their heavenly pilgrimage and all that it entails because rather than conceiving of the world according to God’s word, they have assumed the lies and tried to apply the Bible to the lie. They try to apply God’s reality to anti-reality and wonder why they fail. They assume they are playing a sport the Bible was not created for. We accept the rules of the enemy and wonder why we fail. In the worst cases, the Bible becomes a manipulative cudgel to suppress the actual conflicts we need to have. Now, instead of making war against Satan and his demons, we are called to monger peace, avoid conflict at all costs, play nice, and never offend anyone. What man would be drawn to such a religion?
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