A life that seems to have no interest in Christ and his church nor pays any heed to his commands is not a living, active faith promoted from within by the Holy Spirit. It is a non-existent faith. It is belief that some words you said years ago is good enough to deal with your sin once and for all and to secure a place in Heaven for you. I’m afraid that isn’t a teaching you will find anywhere in the Bible. Apart from ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and telling people otherwise is not loving them, it is actively encouraging them on their way to a lost eternity.

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard a story approximating the following. Somebody has grown up going to church, hearing the gospel and made a profession of faith or prayed the sinners prayer. They apparently go on with the Lord for a bit until, eventually, drifting away from the church and Christ. If pressed, they might still say they believe, but there is absolutely nothing about their lifestyle that gives any indication that this is any more than mere words. For many, there isn’t even a claim to love Jesus.
This sort of story does the rounds and few Christians wouldn’t be able to tell you of one they know about. But I have also noticed, with troubling frequency, how many people under those circumstances still want to insist that person is a believer and belongs to the Lord. There is no sign of fruit, no evidence of belief and often no understanding of the gospel. But nonetheless, we still hear that the Lord still has them, for some reason. This concerns me deeply for two reasons.
First, it doesn’t do anything to help those people come to Christ. If we continue to affirm that somebody is a believer who has clearly departed from the faith, we are doing nothing other than comfort that person all the way to perdition. In all honesty, I cannot wrap my head around why you would want that for your family and friends. Why would you want them to go on in the false belief that they’re alright as they are by telling them the profession they made years before – despite every evidence to the contrary that it ultimately wasn’t genuine – are somehow still believers?
If we claim to love our family and friends, we surely can’t be content with affirming them in beliefs that are actively damaging to them. They don’t need our reassurance that they’re safe in the Lord; they need the gospel. They need to hear that they aren’t okay and, if they carry on as they are, they will remain outside of Christ and face all the disastrous consequences of being so. To comfort somebody as a believer, to affirm faith that clearly doesn’t exist, does them no favour at all. It is actually damaging the very people we claim to love.
I have heard similar things said to comfort believing parents regarding their unbelieving children. But again, it might feel nice to tell people that the Lord still has their children, but we don’t actually help them or their children by pretending it is so. Instead, helping people see the reality of the situation – that without ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and that is effected by the Holy Spirit, who is obviously absent in the heart of someone who has no concern for holiness – means they can continue to hold out the gospel clearly to those who need to hear it.
I appreciate with family and friends it is not always the easiest thing to do. Especially if the gospel is considered to be something we have heard hundreds of times before and have no interest in it.
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If classical Christian education is to survive, it has to reject the foolishness of our age and embrace Christ’s way alone. Christ’s church favors neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free…We are Christ’s. We are classical. Those who want to be loved by the spirit of our age will become intoxicated by it, and slowly die of its poison.

It’s been a good year for classical Christian education. New school starts are up threefold, a book on classical education became No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and on Jan. 26, Fox Nation will release season two of a popular series on classical Christian education, “The Miseducation of America.” Of course, with growth comes attention. What is unusual this time is that someone with ties to our movement — one of our own — draws focus to a growing divide.
On Jan. 12, in the online journal Current, Jessica Hooten Wilson asked, “Is White Supremacy a Bug or a Feature of Classical Christian Education?” It should come as no surprise that, within her mainstream academic ecosphere as a scholar at Pepperdine University, she gets pressure. “I experience regular pushback from those who perceive [classical Christian education] as white, Western-only, and male-dominated.” Her thesis is: “If the classical Christian school movement is to survive — let alone flourish — we must oppose all forms of racism and misogyny and stand with the beauty, goodness, and truth that we hold up for our students.” I’ll take her up on that charge.
Hooten Wilson is a staccato note at the end of a new tune within our circles. Her article praises those groups she believes are taking the right steps. So far, I’ve heard no one publicly state the thesis so clearly as she does: “We should peruse the authors of the works and, if applicable, the editors or introductory writers to ensure an assortment of voices … as well as an equality of both sexes. If we look at the table of contents of a textbook or a reading list for a semester and find not a single woman or person of color in that list, then that curriculum is misrepresenting the classical Christian tradition.”
Choosing the Classical Canon
For the better part of three millennia, philosophical, theological, and literary authors labored to create the classical canon, representing countless cultural influences. Over much of this same time period, learned scholars have made lists of those that deserve “canon” status. It is unclear if there are minorities or women in Cassiodorus’ list of authors (400 A.D.), or Leonardo Bruni or Battista Guarino’s lists (humanists from the 1400s) — they don’t use those categories. Mortimer Adler and his team of about 40 renowned scholars chose the most widely recognized list of books in our time based upon their contribution to “the great conversation.” Adler’s merit-based criteria required a work to have changed the course of history and to have developed the collective Western mind. What Adler’s team did not do is look to race or sex as criteria.
The Western classical tradition has long included people of every race and sex in a particular way: The tradition deals with a body of texts that address the universal truths about the human condition, rising above our culture’s current quest to silo everyone into an intersection of identity.
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The history of Ukrainian Christianity is as complex as its political history. Sixty-seven per cent of the population declare themselves to be Orthodox believers, 2.2 per cent Protestant, 9.4 per cent Byzantine Rite Catholic, 2.5 per cent Islam and 0.4 per cent Jewish. Only three per cent of the population profess to be atheist. It is against this background that this week’s events are unfolding, and we are asked to pray.

Ukraine is an amazing country with – in contrast to the revisionist version recently espoused by Vladimir Putin – a long history. It is the second largest country in terms of area in Europe – Russia being the first. At over 600,000 sq km it is 30 times the size of Wales (apparently Wales is now the standard by which we measure any country!).
A nation of 43 million people, it has been declining for some time – losing over 300,000 people per year due to emigration and a low birth rate. In 1995 there were 52 million people. The poverty rate has been increasing rapidly and currently stands at around 45 per cent. The median salary is only $775 a montth,,
Ukraine is generally regarded as being the spiritual mother of Russia, with the Rus coming from Kyiv during the 10th and 11th centuries – hence Putin, the great Russian nationalist, being so interested in it. The mass baptism of Vladimir the Rus and his people at Kyiv in the Dnieper in 988 is regarded as the foundation of the Russian Orthodox Church, and indeed the foundation of Russia.
Kyiv is central to the Orthodox Russians – and therefore to Russian nationalism. Putin seems to be a genuine believer in that. If you don’t grasp the almost religious significance of Ukraine to many Russians (who also make up 18% of the population) then you will not understand why Putin is so desperate to keep Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence, and away from the West.
Whether the Mongols, Poles, Lithuanians, Ottomans, Germans or Russians, Ukraine’s history is one of invasion and domination by its neighbours. Now this invasion has been added to the list.
Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, Ukraine has not found it easy. Widespread political and economic corruption has weakened the country – and arguably made it easier for Russia to invade.
The history of Ukrainian Christianity is as complex as its political history. Sixty-seven per cent of the population declare themselves to be Orthodox believers, 2.2 per cent Protestant, 9.4 per cent Byzantine Rite Catholic, 2.5 per cent Islam and 0.4 per cent Jewish. Only three per cent of the population profess to be atheist.
It is against this background that this week’s events are unfolding, and we are asked to pray.
As always in the age of the internet, it is far too easy for people to suddenly become experts on the subject of the day. Twitter soundbites, TikTok videos and Facebook memes turn many of us into ‘know it alls’. But, as is usually the case, things are much more complex.
I am not an expert in Ukrainian history, and I don’t pretend to understand everything that is going on; but as someone who has preached in the country, my heart sank when I saw the news.
In the midst of all the confusion there are some basic lessons for us:

War is normal for human societies

These past couple of years after almost a century without a major plague in the West, we have reverted to the norm of having plagues. In the same way, after 70 years without a major war in Europe, we have now returned to the ‘norm’ of the past centuries.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is showing up the weakness and instability of the West

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 some in the West assumed it was ‘the end of history’ and that mankind had evolved to the extent that ‘superior’ Western values now reigned supreme. Now we know that is not true. The Russians know that no Western power will send troops to fight for Ukraine. And they will have factored in the economic sanctions and they have built up a reserve of over $600 billion.
After Russia’s defeat in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union was fatally wounded. The embarrassing, hasty retreat of the US from Afghanistan told Putin that the West was weak. There are many things I would disagree with the former President Trump about, but in this area, he was correct – the over reliance of European nations on the US for defence has resulted in a weaker Europe and as a result when the US weakens, the chickens come home to roost.
Only France has any significant military resources. The Chief of Germany’ Army tweeted this week: “The Bundeswehr, and the Army that I have the privilege to lead, is more or less stripped bare. The options that we can offer politicians to support the alliance are extremely limited”
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