Our lives in society ought not to be characterized by trying to get ahead, trying to advance our own agenda, or trying to do what’s best for us; our goal in society ought to be to submit ourselves to the needs of others—submit to governing authority, submit to our employer, submit to the needs of others in our families.

Why is it so important to have our motivation right about how we live in society? Why is it important that we don’t try to motivate ourselves and others with grand ambitions of societal transformation?
First, God never promised grand societal transformation, and so if we make that our goal, it can lead to deep discouragement. I know some people who are very active in trying to push for massive social change, and they’re some of the grumpiest and at times angriest people I know. Why? Because they’re not seeing results. They’re discouraged. They may see little advances here or there, but certainly not the kind of massive social change they think God has promised them. And often times, those kinds of people end up burning out. How many big-name Christians have we seen burn out and fall away from the faith in just the past several years? God never commands us to do massive, amazing, earth shattering things in society. He commands us to be holy and faithful.
Second, when societal transformation is our goal, we inevitably lose our mission as the church. If our central mission as a church becomes anything other than making disciples—and even as individuals, if our central mission is grand societal transformation, history has shown that we end up losing the gospel. But if our goal as churches is making disciples who are holy and faithful in society, and if our goal as individual Christians is holiness and faithfulness in society, then we just may have at least a small influence.
Third, when societal transformation is our goal, we fail to recognize the value of the “ordinary”—common vocations and ordinary people. We tend to buy into a celebretyism that praises the larger-than-life people and undervalues faithful, ordinary people. We want heroes, when we should deeply value regular, faithful fathers and mothers and grandparents and pastors and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Friday, May 19, 2023
Politics is just as self-evidently important from a biblical perspective as it is the case that the Bible is not a detailed manual for political action. If the Bible speaks to living together with others in society (which it does) it speaks to politics.

The Bible is not a political manual, which is obvious on a moment’s reflection. Many Christians—including influential pastors and scholars—emphasize this today. They are not wrong to do so in the abstract, although there are two fundamentally divergent paths that are usually taken once this platitude leaves one’s lips. Some say (or at least live as if it is true) that because the Bible is not a political handbook Christians should not get involved in politics; their lives should be about spiritual things.
Others, although agreeing that the Bible wasn’t written to give us a detailed blueprint for political action today, go in a completely different direction: Christians should indeed care about politics because the state is an important divine institution in the world. Recognizing that the Bible isn’t written to provide detailed instructions for things like precise tax rates, exact immigration quotas, percentage of GDP to be spent on infrastructure, military strategy, and so on, they turn instead to arguments from natural law, the voice of conscience, and even simple observations about governance derived through trial and error over many centuries.
I am firmly in this latter group. And yet I still recognize that the Bible has much to say about the state, which God created for the good of humanity. Scripture does this in a variety of ways. In the next article I will work through what I take to be the building blocks of a Christian approach to politics. I’ll do so by looking at God’s purposes for the world as seen in the opening chapters of Genesis, where we encounter man’s divine mandate to rule over the world God made.
But for now we must begin with a definition of politics. I take mine from the great seventeenth century Protestant political theorist Johannes Althusius (Politica 1.1-3):
Politics is the art of associating men for the purpose of establishing, cultivating, and conserving social life among them. Whence it is called ‘symbiotics.’ The subject matter of politics is therefore association, in which the symbiotes (= “people who live together”), pledge themselves each to the other, by explicit or tacit agreement, to mutual communication of whatever is useful and necessary for the harmonious exercise of social life. The end of political ‘symbiotic’ man is holy, just, comfortable, and happy symbiosis (= “living together”), a life lacking nothing either necessary or useful.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Monday, May 30, 2022
I would anticipate that within five years we will witness a significant disruption across all major representatives of the Christian faith. The fault lines will run between those who find a way to accommodate to the world’s terms of good citizenship and those whose fidelity to Christ will lead to varying degrees of internal exile within this earthly city. The former will ultimately accept the collapse of biblical anthropology, repudiating its implications for sexual morality, for human identity, and for addressing the various socially constructed problems we now face, such as those of race and gender. The latter will maintain Christian teaching and be decried as being at best naïve, at worst bigoted.

Archbishop Chaput recently wrote that holiness, above and beyond all other things, should mark the church and her members. It was an encouraging reminder that, in an age when church leadership is often characterized by bureaucratic skills rather than piety, the Lord has yet a few who have not bowed their knee to the various Baals of efficiency, wokeism, and wonkery. And though the archbishop did not make this point explicit, it is clear that holiness is a corollary of a high and orthodox doctrine of God.
At this moment in time, Christian churches face an unprecedented challenge. Western nations have (with few exceptions) experienced the collapse of the broad moral vision that made them coherent entities. This collapse means that even the most basic terms of membership in wider society are increasingly antithetical to the most basic terms of membership in the church. Some deny that this is happening, but they tend to be those who enjoy what we might term “progressive privilege”—temporary protection from the left’s culture warriors because they engage in ritual acts of Christian self-loathing and focus only on the doctrines that comport nicely with whatever is the bien-pensant penchant of the day. But the changeling morality of the secular elite is a fickle mistress. Progressive Christians will learn, as did the liberal Christians of a previous generation, that conceding too much is never enough for Christianity’s enemies.
I would anticipate that within five years we will witness a significant disruption across all major representatives of the Christian faith. The fault lines will run between those who find a way to accommodate to the world’s terms of good citizenship and those whose fidelity to Christ will lead to varying degrees of internal exile within this earthly city. The former will ultimately accept the collapse of biblical anthropology, repudiating its implications for sexual morality, for human identity, and for addressing the various socially constructed problems we now face, such as those of race and gender. The latter will maintain Christian teaching and be decried as being at best naïve, at worst bigoted.
How should we prepare to stand in the face of what is to come? I agree with Archbishop Chaput that holiness and devotion must mark the church’s witness. After all, if we do not take the faith seriously, how can we expect others to do the same? Furthermore, holiness is not simply, or even primarily, an apologetic strategy. It is in part a response to the doctrine of God. Only when we grasp this can we truly place our own lives in perspective and anchor our faith so as to resist the cultural moment. If our imaginations are not fired by the greatness of the eternal communion with our glorious God that will be consummated at the end of time, then the problems of this present age will loom large and always threaten to overwhelm us.
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