Self-reliant Christianity is a dead end. It will lead to eternal, spiritual death. However, we have a better way. All who have true union with Christ will live a life pursuing communion with him. Jesus wants us to know we are weak so we can find our strength in our communion with him. 

In America, it is common to believe that we can achieve anything we put our minds to. Young children imbibe this self-help gospel throughout their earliest years. Parents fuel this mentality by spending exorbitant amounts of time and money helping their children build a successful life based on the fallacy that their hard work and willpower are the ultimate means of their favorable outcomes. None of this is inherently sinful, and we shouldn’t be overly cynical. Hard work, dedication, and diligence are virtues our children and grandchildren need. Yet, when these achievements become their hope, they are blind to the innate weakness found in every one of us.
Like our children, we love to feel strong, too. We desire to stand on our own. We love to marvel at our accomplishments. Can we agree that the hustle culture led to the burnout culture we are facing today? Yesterday’s productivity culture ended up crushing us. We lose our humanness when we refuse to see our weakness. Instead of creatures reliant on the God who gives rain for the grass, seeds for the birds, and dens for the lions, we frame ourselves as little gods who can get on without relying on others.
We don’t say these things out loud. That would be far too crass. Instead, we mumble, “Give us this day our daily bread” as we dash out the door to work—daily bread in hand as we go make money to buy more. As strong as we feel, Jesus wants us to know that we are weak, and he wants us to see that weakness is a prerequisite for true spiritual growth.
Self-Reliant Sanctification Doesn’t Exist
Jesus uttered some of the sweetest words in all Scripture when he said, “I am the true vine” (John 15:1). At first glance, this sounds odd to those of us who haven’t grown up near grapevines. Yet, both in Jesus’s day and in Mediterranean culture today, grapevines produce the fruit needed to make the antioxidant-rich wine found around dinner tables and in churches. Jesus couldn’t be clearer: if the branches of a grapevine aren’t attached to the vine, it is impossible for them to produce fruit.
Christians, we are the branches and Jesus is our true vine. Let those words steep in your heart. Absorb the scent and taste of those words deep into your soul. It is impossible for us to bear spiritual fruit apart from Jesus because self-reliant sanctification doesn’t exist. We won’t even be truly concerned with fruit-bearing and spiritual growth if we aren’t abiding in him.
We may be concerned with keeping up appearances. We may desire to check off the spiritual boxes on our productive Christian to-do lists. We may even desire to please God by obeying his commands. But when we aren’t abiding in Christ, we are living an oxymoron.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Dr. Julie Ponesse |
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Religious persons today are a threat, but not to public safety as the narrative instructs us. They are a threat to the idea that the state is to be worshipped above all else, to the religion that’s trying to take their place, to the idea that it’s possible to find a compelling and complete sense of meaning outside of the state.

Religious leaders like Artur Pawlowski who question COVID-19 health restrictions are a “threat to public safety.” Or so the criticism goes.
After giving a sermon in February 2022 in Coutts, Alberta, in which he urged trucker convoy protestors to “hold the line” in their efforts to safeguard freedoms, Pastor Pawlowski was arrested, denied bail, and imprisoned for 40 days until the decision was unanimously overturned by the Alberta Court of Appeal in July.
According to the 2021 World Watch List compiled by the advocacy group Open Doors, there were two important persecution trends in 2020: the number of Christians killed increased by 60 percent, and governments used COVID-19 restrictions as an excuse for religious persecution.
Facial recognition systems, for example, were installed in state-approved churches in China, allowing churchgoers to be tracked and punished, and India’s nationalist Janata Party encouraged the persecution of Christians by sanctioning Hindu extremism. In Canada, a country that used to be a safe haven for the persecuted, pastors are being ticketed and imprisoned for holding religious services, and religion, itself, is slandered in the COVID narrative, associated with poor research, misinformation, and right-wing politics.
Our treatment of religious persons seems to be non-fictionalizing Orwell’s totalitarian state, Oceania, in which atheism is compulsory and religious belief is a crime (one of the crimes to which the hero of 1984, Winston Smith, confesses).
In Orwell’s superstate, atheism is not only essential to “the Party’s” absolute power, but it is compelling. According to Orwell’s dystopian fantasy, human life is meaningless because individuals will always die; but by joining the Party, they become part of something more enduring than themselves. Totalitarianism—I use that word intentionally—offers a way to rescue themselves from the threat of absolute nonexistence.
In any totalitarian state (including the one we are inching towards), citizens are divided and polarized. There are the believers and the non-believers, the members and the outliers, the chosen ones and the sinners. The followers believe above all else in the ability of the state to achieve a kind of utopia. They follow the state’s commands, not because of their evidentiary reasonableness but because their commitment to the project requires unquestioning allegiance. The sinners are heretics who stand in the way of safety and purity. What appeal have reason and freedom and autonomy when stacked against effortless and guaranteed immortality?
Today, many people are turning away from personal religion toward state-led science, which is presented as being more sophisticated and more aligned with truth. But totalitarianism is not an alternative to religion; it is secularized religion, as Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt wrote, and its appeal is spreading across the globe at a head-spinning rate.
Totalitarianism replaces personal religion with the idea that we can find meaning not in God but in ourselves, in a group of human beings. “The State takes the place of God,” wrote Carl Jung, “the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship.” The slogan of Oceania’s Party, “Freedom is slavery,” could easily be the slogan of Canada’s ruling party today. (And dare I mention the sign above the gate at Auschwitz “Arbeit Macht Frei” [“Work Makes One Free”]?)
In the totalitarian state, the methods of religious enthusiasm and evangelism are deployed to convince the masses that the dream of a perfectly pure, progressive state—a heaven on earth—justifies any limitation of personal freedom. And so, the punishment of dissidents—via mandates, surveillance, imprisonment, and possibly even extermination of individuals or groups—is considered acceptable or even noble.
Read More
Related Posts:

O15 was one of three overtures presbyteries considered in 2022-23 on the topic of sexuality. Overture 29 (O29) and Overture 31 (O31) passed in a supermajority of presbyteries and will come to the floor of GA this summer, where a simple majority vote of commissioners will amend the BCO with their language. Two sexuality overtures—Overture 23 (O23) and Overture 37 (O37)—failed to reach the two-thirds threshold in 2021-22.

With the Presbyterian Church in America’s 2023 General Assembly quickly approaching, I thought I’d take one final look at the presbytery votes on Overture 15 (O15). In total, 81 presbyteries have recorded votes on O15, with the overture receiving a majority vote in 48 presbyteries, 11 shy of the two-thirds threshold needed to bring O15 to the floor of GA this June.
Comparing O15 votes to last year’s sexuality overtures
O15 was one of three overtures presbyteries considered in 2022-23 on the topic of sexuality. Overture 29 (O29) and Overture 31 (O31) passed in a supermajority of presbyteries and will come to the floor of GA this summer, where a simple majority vote of commissioners will amend the BCO with their language. Two sexuality overtures—Overture 23 (O23) and Overture 37 (O37)—failed to reach the two-thirds threshold in 2021-22.
A scatter plot is a helpful graph for quickly considering how a vote on one overture compared to a vote on another overture. The figure below plots six scatterplots, with each dot representing a presbytery. Presbytery votes on the 2021-22 overtures are plotted on the horizontal y-axis: O23 in the first column and O37 in the second column. Presbytery votes on the 2022-23 overtures are plotted on the vertical y-axis: O31 in the first row, O29 in the second row, and O15 in the third row. The red diagonal line indicates parity; presbyteries falling on this line voted exactly the same on one of last year’s overtures as they did on one of this year’s. Presbyteries above this line had a greater percentage of officers supporting one of this year’s overtures relative to either of last year’s overtures.

Two quadrants are of greatest interest. The top left quadrant (with green dots) plot presbyteries that voted against an overture last year, but flipped to support it this year. The bottom right quadrant (with red dots) plots presbyteries that voted in favor of an overture last year, but flipped to oppose it this year.
By the number of green dots, it is clear that O29 and O31 were highly regarded, even by presbyteries voting against sexuality overtures last year. With only one exception (Platte Valley, which passed O37 last year but did not pass O31 this year), presbyteries either had the same outcome or flipped to support this year’s overtures.
O15 did not follow the same pattern as O29 and O31. Presbyteries landed much closer to the parity line, indicating that many voted on O15 similarly to how they voted last year. The plot also features a mix of green and red dots, revealing that there were many presbyteries that changed their vote from last year’s overtures to O15.
A Sankey plot is useful for visualizing trends for how presbyteries may have shifted votes. It shows the proportion of presbyteries passing sexuality overtures in each year, as well as the paths presbyteries took from year to year. The plot below shows that votes on O15 were largely predictable. Presbyteries that supported both O23 and O37 last year tended to pass O15, while those that opposed both O23 and O37 tended not to pass O15.

Minority Report signers and recorded negative votes
Previously for The Aquila Report, I examined O15’s progress based on commissioners who recorded negative votes against O15 at PCA GA 2022, as well as commissioners on the Overtures Committee who signed the Minority Report that brought O15 to the floor of GA. The bar graph below replicates my previous analysis, but with final data.

Over four-fifths of presbyteries with Minority Report signers (in favor of O15) passed O15, while just less than half of presbyteries without a Minority Report signer passed O15. In contrast, just less than half of presbyteries with a recorded negative vote (against O15) passed O15, while four-fifths of presbyteries without a recorded negative vote passed O15. The data, in my opinion, reveals two competing opinions within the PCA on whether the sexuality issue among ordained officers has been resolved.
Looking ahead to GA 2023
This summer, the Overtures Committee will consider five overtures that take up the issue of sexuality.

Overture 9 from Arizona Presbytery would amend the BCO by adding the following paragraph to Chapter 7: “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.”
Overture 16 from Catawba Valley Presbytery would amend the BCO by adding the following paragraph to Chapter 7: “Men who describe themselves by any biblical sin (such as listed in 1 Cor. 6:9-10, ‘Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.’) are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America. Instead, they describe themselves by 1 Cor. 6:11, ‘And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.’”
Overture 17 from the Session of Meadowview Reformed Presbyterian Church would amend the BCO by adding the following paragraph to Chapter 7: “Men who refer to a particular sin struggle as descriptive of their personhood, being, or identity are disqualified from holding office in the PCA.”
Overture 23 from Mississippi Valley Presbytery would amend the BCO by adding the following line to 8-2: “He should conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in his descriptions of himself, his convictions, character, and conduct”; and the following line to 9-3: “conforming to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in their descriptions of themselves, their convictions, character, and conduct.”
And finally, Overture 24 from Chesapeake Presbytery would amend the BCO by adding the following line to 8-3: “As those who are to be examples to God’s flock that is under their care, and who are to watch their life and doctrine closely, elders are to understand, describe, and define themselves in light of their union with Christ as justified and holy children of God. They are to guard against setting a damaging or confusing example to the flock by describing or defining themselves by their sinful desires (e.g., from 1 Corinthians 6:9,10 (ESV)… ‘the sexually immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers,…’ etc.), but rather are to endeavor by the grace of God to confess, repent of, and mortify sin and sinful desires, and to present themselves and those entrusted to their care as instruments of righteousness to God.”

Overtures 9, 16, and 17 follow the pattern of O15 this past year by seeking to add a paragraph to BCO 7. Pray for the men of the Overtures Committee (as well as the PCA!) as they take up these matters in June.
Matthew Lee is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fayetteville, AR.
Related Posts: