Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self
Accurate self-knowledge is essential but not sufficient for deep and lasting change in ourselves and our counselees. As Calvin taught in the 16th century, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
Every counseling model seeks increased and more accurate self-knowledge as one of its aims. Everyone agrees that poor self-awareness and self-deception hinder personal growth. But not everyone agrees on what that self-knowledge looks like or how to attain it. Let’s look at two different models of increased self-knowledge.
Secular Theory (CBT)
Positive psychologist Christina Wilson, PhD, writes, “Self-knowledge is essential for personal growth, decision making, and accurate self-assessment. It is the opposite of ignorance and helps us make sense of our experiences. Importantly, self-knowledge is an essential tool to help in the change process. Change is hard. It requires intentionality and courage.”[1] So, if “self-knowledge is an essential tool to help in the change process,” how does one attain self-knowledge?
Author and counselor Meg Selig shares the following strategies[2]:
- Listen to compliments and absorb them.
- Notice your emotions.
- Notice what you are thinking.
- Become friends with your mistakes.
- Keep a journal or take time to reflect.
- Listen to other people, but make and live by your own decisions.
- Talk to a therapist or counselor.
- Try personality or temperament tests.
- Practice assertiveness.
- Surround yourself with good people who accept you and foster your growth.
While there are some helpful ideas here, it’s clear in secular counseling models that self-knowledge is attained intra-personally (from oneself) and inter-personally (with a little help from your friends), but there is no vertical dimension. The very concept of secular means worldly—there is no necessary reference to God. This is “the wisdom of the world” (1 Cor. 1:20-21), which the apostle Paul says is ultimately foolishness. Therefore, worldly self-knowledge alone is ultimately futile in the counseling process.
John Calvin
Reformer John Calvin had a very different idea about attaining self-knowledge. In chapter 1 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, he writes,
“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves…Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.”[3]
While Calvin would agree with our modern psychologists that self-knowledge is essential for human growth and flourishing, he would disagree that self-knowledge and wisdom for living can be attained from a merely secular framework. Calvin recognizes that knowledge of self is inseparable from knowledge of God; in fact, self-knowledge is impossible apart from God since humans owe their very existence to God, and the most important characteristic of a human is that he/she is created in the image of God.
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The Great Reset is a Sneaky Cultural Revolution
The Great Reset will destroy our present culture (social justice and Critical Race Theory), ensure that our children master the new one (global citizenship skills), and give us a newly-minted myth for us to believe (why the Great Reset will save us all). Yes, the Great Reset is a social, cultural, and religious revolution. It is dangerous to Christians everywhere.
The World Economic Forum (WEF)[1] says that now is the time to replace our current economy with “a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.”[2] According to its leader Klaus Schwab:[3]
To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism….
[T]he pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.[4]
However, this plea has also been called an agenda for tyranny. The foreign minister of Brazil addressed the United Nations to say:
[T]otalitarian social control is not the remedy for any crisis.
…
Those who dislike freedom always try to benefit from moments of crisis to preach the curtailing of freedom. Let’s not fall for that trap. Totalitarian social control is not the remedy for any crisis. Let’s not make democracy and freedom one more victim of COVID-19.[5]
What is this Great Reset? We’ll find that it’s yet another attempt to establish socialism. In this scheme businesses will be persuaded to voluntarily accept government control. We’d silently shift into accepting a socialist economy, along with the rest of its agenda, without even realizing it.
This article will approach the Great Reset in this manner:Remind us that the Bible judges socialism and finds it wanting.
Describe the main components of the Great Reset.
Show how it’s being brought to us by evangelizing the willing, and coercing the unwilling.
Discuss approaches for opposing its goals and its evangelism strategies.Socialism and Christianity don’t mix.
The Great Reset has a sneaky idea. “Woke” company managers will convince their shareholders that the government, along with social activists, must be given veto power over what the company does. Even though no law requires this surrender, the shareholders will be pressured to recognize their new masters.
This demand for corporate change amounts to a cultural revolution. Business managers, shareholders, and the general public are being conditioned to accept community control over companies. We’re being led into economic socialism without them even using the ‘S’ word. After all, the dictionary says that socialism means community control:
socialism: n. 1. a theory or system of social organization in which the means of production and distribution of goods are owned and controlled collectively or by the government.[6]
Before we examine the revolutionary Great Reset, we need to remember what God says about government, property, and ownership. That’s because the Great Reset demands socialist change. And socialism not only steals people’s property, but also their freedoms.
Regarding property and ownership, God’s quite OK with people owning things. And if some of them become billionaires then good for them. Property and ownership are explored in the author’s article Is Capitalism Immoral? Here are some of its highlights:God gave Adam and Eve the right to own things.
Mankind practiced capitalism from the very beginning.
The New Testament affirms private ownership.
It is OK to be wealthy.Some people claim that Christianity endorses government socialism because the early church in Jerusalem practiced communalism. However, their sharing was strictly voluntary. Again, from the article:
Early in the Jerusalem church its people pooled their goods for the common good, selling property and land for the needs of the saints (Acts 2:43-45; 4:32-35). Yet communal life wasn’t the norm for Christ’s church. For example, Paul encouraged to the Corinthian church to prepare a gift they promised for the benefit of the Jerusalem church (1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8:2, 6-8). If the Corinthians were living communally then Paul could have simply asked the elders about the gift. This means that members of a congregation may choose to act communally, but they aren’t obligated to do so.[7]
People have the right to either keep their stuff or give it away. But when a government insists that we share, especially with itself, that’s called taking or stealing.[8] Socialism, along with its communist endgame, insists that individuals have no property rights, and that everything belongs to the community. When government and activist “stakeholders” claim the right to control a business, they’re using the socialist playbook to steal from the business owners.
Although the Great Reset seems to concentrate on economic matters, its goals also require a cultural reset. Ever since Karl Marx published his books, socialist advocates have waited for an opportunity like this one. The Great Reset implements a socialist culture, having these features:Hatred towards God. Socialist theory says that that there is no God. Serving the community of mankind gives meaning of our lives.
Removing the religious. People who believe in God are enemies of socialism. They must be pursued and marginalized, even extinguished.
Preventing reactionary thought. Lest people get dissatisfied with socialism, a socialist state must identify possible internal enemies. This means continual spying on its own citizens.Lots has already been written about how these socialist “features” repress individual freedoms. Rather than repeat those arguments here, look to those articles. For example, the author has these previous articles on socialism and Christianity:
The Great Reset is just repackaged socialism, and it’s dangerous to Christian culture. Even so, we still must learn something about it. We must be familiar enough with it its terms to recognize when it’s being pushed upon us.
The Great Reset in a nutshell.
The World Economic Forum conferences, sometimes called the Davos meetings,[9] attract a lot of billionaires, political leaders, and social activists.[10] Having invented the Great Reset, it isn’t surprising that their speeches keep circling back to it. The Great Reset has these basic components:
WEF chief executive officer Klaus Schwab described three core components of the Great Reset: the first involves creating conditions for a “stakeholder economy”; the second component includes building in a more “resilient, equitable, and sustainable” way—based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics which would incorporate more green public infrastructure projects; the third component is to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” for public good.[11]
Through the “stakeholder economy” and “equitable and sustainable” components, businesses are to bind themselves to the overall plan. The technology component describes what governments will do to innovation when, and if, they get control of everything else. We can ignore this component for now.
According to the WEF, countries should put aside national interests and cooperate as one. As Schwab said at the 2022 World Government Summit, “Our futures are intrinsically connected and that requires collaborative responses.”[12] This echoes the United Nations plans of Agenda 21 / Agenda 2030 / Sustainable Development Goals,[13] which also call for refashioning a new society and a new economy.[14] Broadly speaking, both the UN and the WEF want a socialist command economy accompanied by vast social changes.
The Stakeholder Economy steals control of businesses.
In the “stakeholder economy” shareholders technically own a business but can’t direct it. Decision making is surrendered to outside parties.
Underpinning the notion of “stakeholder capitalism,” a concept that has taken the C-suites of some of America’s largest companies by storm, is the idea that a company should be run for the benefit of all its “stakeholders,” a conveniently hazy term that can be defined to include (among others) workers, customers, and “the community,” as well as the shareholders who, you know, own the business. It’s a form of expropriation based on the myth that a corporation that puts its shareholders first must necessarily put everyone else last. … Stakeholder capitalism is not only a threat to private property, but also, by not much of a stretch of the imagination, to individual freedom.[15]
Once the company commits to pleasing these outside parties, it’s effectively giving them veto power over company decisions. The community now controls the company. Note that because these stakeholders aren’t shareholders, they’re playing games with other peoples’ money.
Schwab says that stakeholder capitalism “would not change the economic system, but rather improve it to what he considers to be ‘responsible capitalism’.”[16] Responsible capitalism covers the same ground as stakeholder capitalism:
Responsible Capitalism requires a fundamental integration of the needs of the wider community, care for the communities in which the business operates, environmental initiatives and support for the arts and culture, with the business’s goals and processes. Above all, it is about how successful business leaders apply the principles of moral and social responsibility in the running of their business, combining social commitment with business acumen and innovation, and building a coherent philosophy in which the company’s success is judged over the long-term by criteria that include sustainability, equity, and moral justice as well as standard financial benchmarks.[17]
When the community looks to a business to act as its nanny (“care for the communities”), provide it with entertainment (“support for the arts and culture”), and act as a soldier in the culture wars (“sustainability, equity, and moral justice”), then that business has been expropriated from its rightful owners to become a toy, a misused community plaything. That’s a long way from the idea that “the business of America is business.”[18]
Justin Haskins, writing for The Hill, calls these changes global socialism.
At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government officials and activists announced a proposal to “reset” the global economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government programs.
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, in an article published on WEF’s website. “In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
…
Or, put another way, we need a form of socialism — a word the World Economic Forum has deliberately avoided using, all while calling for countless socialist and progressive plans.[19]
Through stakeholder capitalism, Schwab and the WEF want businesses to become community-controlled cultural warriors, expending themselves for the sake of a socialist future.
Measuring your wokeness through metrics.
Schwab’s second core component is “building in a more ‘resilient, equitable and sustainable way’ – based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”[20] ESG metrics are presently just a public relations gambit. That is, some advocacy outfit publishes rules that it thinks a targeted company should live by. This campaign works when:Company management already conspires with the advocates.
Company management is afraid of losing public opinion support if they do fight.
Company management is weary of fighting.Of course, even when a company gives in it doesn’t win. The metrics will continually be changed, pushing businesses to fulfill new political goals. Says Schwab:
The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.
…
Rather than using these funds, as well as investments from private entities and pension funds, to fill cracks in the old system, we should use them to create a new one that is more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.[21]
These business incentives will be things like “meet these metrics or there’s no more financing, no more approvals for you.” ESG metrics are social and political, not measures of good financial performance. As example, here are some proposed metrics:Measuring your greenhouse gas emissions
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How Do I Face the Deaths of Others?
Death is about separation. Our hope is about reunion. Soul and body will be forever reunited, gloriously. The believing dead and believers who are alive at the second coming will be reunited, and all believers will be gathered to Christ, forever. Our hope reminds us that death is not the final word. In the providence of God, it is one step toward the grand accomplishment and realization of God’s purpose to gather His people to Himself in Jesus Christ. This hope cannot but transform our experience of grief. We certainly grieve in view of the tremendous loss that death has brought into our lives, but we grieve in view of the blessings that are sure to come.
When considering death, what is our hope? Strictly speaking, our hope is not a what but a who. It is Christ Himself and all the benefits that we enjoy in Him. Hebrews tells us that we have a “hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf ” (Heb. 6:19–20a). Ralph Wardlaw’s well-known hymn praises “Christ, of all my hopes the ground.” Our hope is in Christ, and our hope is Christ.
In particular, the “blessed hope” of the believer is the “appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:13–14). Our great hope is the return of Christ in glory. Every Christian eagerly awaits the return of Christ and the full experience of eternal life in Him—this is our “blessed hope.”
Encourage One Another with These Words
What does this hope look like when we mourn the loss of believing loved ones? How does this hope give us comfort and strength in such times? How can we help our fellow believers to lay hold of this hope in their grief?
Paul’s words to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 answer these questions. While it is difficult to sort out all the details of what was troubling the Thessalonians, the main lines are clear. This is a young church, and many of its members have been recently converted from gentile paganism. Their believing loved ones have died, and they do not know how to respond biblically. Paul is concerned that they will lapse into the familiar cultural response of “griev[ing] as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13).
In this passage, Paul applies the truth of the gospel to the Thessalonians’ mourning. The gospel does not do away with our grief, but it transforms our grief. Paul is going to explain how that is so. There is a direct, practical component to Paul’s teaching. Paul expects the people of the church to “encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:18). He wants them to take what he says in verses 14–17 and to share these truths as means of comfort to fellow believers in need. This duty does not belong simply to the elders, deacons, or especially mature Christians. It belongs to all believers. We need to gather up the truth of these verses so that we may minister that truth to hurting believers.1
Paul offers at least five lines of comfort and encouragement to grieving believers.“We believe that Jesus died and rose again” (1 Thess. 4:14).
The first comes in verse 14: “We believe that Jesus died and rose again.” Paul here makes three points. First, Jesus has died. In His death, He conquered death. Jesus paid the penalty of sin that merits death, bore the curse of the law on behalf of sinners, and propitiated the wrath of God. Second, Jesus rose again. After three days in the grave, Jesus was raised to newness of life. His body, transformed by the Spirit, is glorious and fit to dwell in heaven. Possessed by the Spirit and possessing the Spirit, our risen Savior shares the Spirit with us, giving blessing, life, and glory to us by the Spirit. Raised from the dead, Jesus gives us every assurance that we will one day be powerfully and gloriously raised from the dead also. Third, Paul reminds us that “we believe”—that Jesus has died and been raised. Paul is saying more than that we assent to these historical facts as facts. We do assent to them, but we have also placed our trust in Christ as Savior and Lord to accomplish the same for us. Our whole lives are lives of faith in Christ, crucified and raised from the dead (2 Cor. 5:7; Gal. 2:20). Because it is true that Jesus died and was raised from the dead, and because we have put our trust in Him as Savior, we have the comfort we need to grieve in hope and to help our brothers and sisters do the same.
Believers who have predeceased us are “the dead in Christ” (1 Thess. 4:16).
The second line of comfort and encouragement is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:16. Believers who have predeceased us are “the dead in Christ.”2 Even in death, the believer remains united to Christ. Death has not destroyed the bond between that person and Jesus Christ. The whole person remains united to Christ—soul and body. His soul has immediately entered the presence of Christ, which is “far better” (Phil. 1:23) than even life in Christ on earth. He has entered his reward and rest. His body rests in his grave as in his bed, awaiting resurrection dawn. Surely our union with Christ affords us great hope and comfort when we mourn the loss of believing loved ones.
“The dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16).
Paul’s third line traces a timetable of future events. He says that “the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16) and that this will happen immediately after the return of Christ (“for the Lord himself will descend from heaven,” (1 Thess. 4:16).
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Is Our Kingdom Failing His Kingdom
Church planting is all about dying to self. It means leaving something comfortable and which we love [don’t plant a church, or join a plant, because you are unhappy with where you are] to start something new. It means labouring with a smaller team, a smaller budget, a smaller leadership, and having to establish all the things that already existed in the established church. Planting is all about dying to self not just for the planted church but for the planting church, it ought to experience the same dying to self. And yet so many churches who are planning to plant seem to want to do so without dying to self.
I’ve tried to bite my fingertips to stop me from writing this but I can do it no longer. I’ve tried to restrain the overwhelming tide, tried to stem the pent up frustration, sought to pray it all through with a view to not posting this, but it just has to be said. We, the UK church, have a problem. I don’t mean the church nationally (it does but that’s beyond my purview) but the evangelical church in the UK.
Our strategies are in danger of killing the gospel. Our kingdom building is in danger of obscuring his kingdom because we haven’t built on gospel rich, early church, dynamics. We don’t give away we hoard. We don’t give to where we see need, we give to where we think need is based on our blinkered models and strategy. And the lost in the UK are suffering for it. What a tragedy it will be if it is not Jesus kingdom we build but our own, limited not by his riches and desire to bless his praying dependent people who ask for things beyond our imagination, but by our stunted sight based strategy.
Jesus kingdom has a shape to it, a shape he exemplifies. It’s a kingdom that’s exemplified in his life. It’s marked by a overwhelming concern for the glory of the Father at cost to self because of a conviction that his will is best and his glory matters more than anything else for the whole cosmos. It is marked therefore by a dying to self, a descent into death, that others might be raised to life in him as they are snatched from the very jaws of hell and reconciled to God as his Spirit-filled sons and daughters. It’s a kingdom exemplified by the risen Jesus sending out his disciples to do what he did in dying to self in order to go to the world dependent on the Father and filled with the Spirit. It’s further exemplified by his using the persecution of a rapidly growing church in Jerusalem so that they die to themselves and are flung out into areas of Judea and Samaria; who are needy and thirsty for the life giving water of Jesus Christ in the gospel.
As I look at the church in the UK I don’t see masses of dying to self, as I look at myself I see a reluctance to do so too, or at least a desire to set a limit on how far Christ can ask me to go down into his death with him. So as I write this I’m wrestling with it too. Let me give you some examples of where I see this problem at play.
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