How and Why to Run the Christian Race
We must run with the utmost self-discipline.
The noble Isthmian or Corinthian games were usually hosted near to Corinth, and those who competed in the games, whether running or wrestling, were not to indulge themselves in gluttony and pleasures, but were to be temperate in all things, bearing all things, in order to win the conqueror’s crown. In those games, the runners and wrestlers accustomed themselves to a most temperate diet, by way of preparation for the race. The winners in those games were crowned with laurel, or ivy, or honoured with some similar reward.
In the same manner, the Apostle wants Christians to be most moderate in how they use the things of this world, and to abstain from anything at all that might stop their progress, or hinder them in their warfare.
All this is in order to obtain an “incorruptible” crown, that is, an eternal one, laid up in heaven for all who strive lawfully, and finish their course. Christian wrestlers expect a more noble crown than that corruptible one, won by those who participate in the such sporting events.
We may follow Paul’s own example in running the Christian race and acting the part of a champion, and smiting his adversary certainly and seriously. Paul says he earnestly “keeps down” the body (v.27), the body of sin, and the old man, and the lusts of the flesh, in order that they would be slain. He kept his body (properly so called), by virtue of spiritual discipline, to be subject to his spirit. We should do the same thing. The Apostle nurtured his body in such a way that in labours, and watchfulness, and fastings, it would hold out in its duty, and not be drawn away by passion from the Spirit., and so that the body of sin (as much as lay in him) would be destroyed.
Paul’s purpose in “keeping down” the body of sin, or the old man, was, “lest, if I should live in a different way than I advise others to live, I should be a castaway, or blotted out as a hypocrite from the number of the saints.” “Therefore you do the same thing that I do,” Paul says, “and to the same end.”
When he speaks of “castaways” here, the Apostle does not contrast it with being elect, but with being approved.
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Marriage Is Not the Goal of the Christian Life
Our focus should be on loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. That is true whatever our marital status might be. We should not see marriage as the end goal of our lives; we should instead be asking, “How do I serve and glorify God best through my marriage?” Marriage can be a great platform to serve God and other people rather than a selfish end in itself. While there are many ways to answer this question, let me just give you a few to think about.
When people get married, you often see a familiar pattern emerging. Instead of spending time with their friends as they used to do, all of their time is now devoted to their spouse. They stop going to parties and their previously-large social circle begins to shrink. It is this phenomenon that the Skyhooks sang about in their 1975 song “All my friends are getting married”:
Well all my friends are getting marriedYes they’re all growin’ oldThey’re staying home on weekendsThey’re all doin’ what they’re told.
There is something good about devotion to your spouse, of course. And being married will undoubtedly change the way your social life works. Yet this complete withdrawal into a marriage “bubble” reveals something about our hearts. It is like the goal in life is to be married, and once that goal is achieved, you can just enjoy it and work hard on it. Everything else now becomes a distant second place.
Do you see the problem with this? The goal in life for Christians should not be to get married. Marriage is a good gift from God, sure. But so is singleness, in a different way. Marriage was never supposed to be the ultimate thing. Marriage itself is supposed to point to the love of Christ and the church.
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How Can I Know What’s True?
Written by Gabriel N.E. Fluhrer |
Monday, November 6, 2023
The Bible is not a textbook of science, math, physics, or art. However, it gives us the only worldview that ultimately makes all those things possible. In other words, the Bible not only teaches us ultimate truths about man, the world, salvation, the future, and a host of other subjects that make up a worldview, it also gives us the very principles by which we can know what’s true. One more caveat. We will never believe the Bible is true unless we are born again.“How can I know what’s true?” It seems like a simple question. But with the advent of social media, “fake news,” and a multitude of competing voices, it can be hard to discern the truth. But there is good news. The Bible tells us that we can and must know what’s true.
Looking to the Scriptures, theologians have discerned two different ways we can know what’s true. First, we know what’s true through general revelation. This term refers to what God has revealed in His world and in us (Gen. 1:1, 28; Ps. 19:1–6; Ps. 139:13–14; Rom. 1:18–21). Interestingly, this conviction about general revelation led to the scientific revolution. Biblical Christianity provided a worldview that encouraged mankind to investigate the world around us with the firm assurance that because the God who made it and upheld it is true, we could discover what’s true.
But we do not learn what’s true just from investigating the world around us. We also learn the truth by using our minds. This is another aspect of general revelation. Since man is made in God’s image, we can, as one theologian put it, think His thoughts after Him. So, we use the laws of logic, mathematical laws, laws of physics, and so on to discover truth.
Second, we know what’s true through special revelation (Ps. 19:7–11; Isa. 8:20; John 17:17; 2 Tim. 3:16). This refers to the way in which God has revealed Himself in His Word. Of course, God spoke other words to His prophets and Apostles that were not recorded in His Word. But the special revelation He wanted us to have, He has preserved for us in the Bible.
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Decadence and Desire
If young people are taught to look at history only through the lenses of power and oppression, they will conclude that power and oppression are everything. Conversely, let them be introduced first to the genuinely great historical deeds, philosophical ideas, literary creations, and works of art of which humans have been capable. Then they will discover the ideals that moved our predecessors.
Decadence, in the sense of sustained, apparently irreversible decline, is a notoriously slippery concept. When considering an entire culture or society, so many metrics can be used, so many different aspects can be assessed, that one should be wary of making overly general claims.
Nonetheless, it seems hard to dispute that in recent years our society has been plagued by what could be described as multiple institutional failures across completely different fields. Political institutions, like Congress and the two major parties, are broadly viewed as seriously dysfunctional. Public education is in a deep crisis in many parts of the country. Public health institutions did not fare well during the pandemic. The mainstream media are widely distrusted. The military has lost much of its prestige. The leaders of large corporations like Disney and Boeing have proven to be corrupt or incompetent. Many professional societies seem to have become hostage to political interest groups. Even Scientific American is no longer “scientific.” The list goes on and on.
One can certainly argue that these failures are counterbalanced by some success stories, but it is hard to avoid the impression that there is a pattern of widespread institutional decline. Time will tell whether it amounts to long-term decline, but for now, we can ask whether any common factor unites these disparate phenomena.
Explanations for Institutional Decline
Both the political Left and Right have their favorite explanations. The Left tends to blame “neoliberalism”; allegedly, the shift toward market-based solutions and privatization, which started with Ronald Reagan, weakened America’s public institutions, both by depriving them of funding and by fostering a selfish and individualistic mindset. The Right typically counters that the weakening of traditionally liberal institutions like academia and the media is self-inflicted and due to extreme politicization, which alienates them from the public they ought to serve and makes them the playground of a new, highly ideological elite.
In my opinion, the two explanations simply illuminate two different aspects of the same phenomenon. On one hand, today’s great private economic powers are perfectly comfortable with progressive political ideology. On the other hand, the progressive professional and managerial classes are perfectly comfortable with, and benefit from, advanced capitalism, and liberal intellectuals give it ideological cover. Political polarization is deep, but as far as the elites are concerned, right-wing “market” ideology and left-wing “woke” ideology are not in serious conflict. As many surveys have shown, the Western ruling class is “socially liberal and economically conservative.”
I would say, then, that the root cause of social decline today is the prevalence among our social elites of what could be called “bourgeois individualism,” be it in the traditional economic-libertarian form or the more recent progressive-politicized version. In this view, people pursue only their private interests along different tracks (either raw accumulation of financial resources, or accumulation of cultural, bureaucratic, and managerial power) and society suffers. As Blessed Antonio Rosmini once wrote in The Philosophy of Politics,
when society has reached a stage when the immediate object of the masses is no longer social, but private—a period when the only stimulus to action is selfishness…society exists only accidentally, that is, it does not exist as a result of any force it receives from the spirit of its members, but solely as a result of the material solidity of its constitution—in other words, through its inertia. It stands like a stiffened corpse ready to fall at the first blow.
A Return to Ideals: A Solution to Institutional Decay
This answer, however, is not completely satisfactory. At the very least, one needs to ask a further question: how did we get to this point? Is it a matter of a purely moral decay, in the sense that people have simply become worse, more selfish?
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