The Irish also had a hand in the recovery of education on the European continent in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. Having built an empire, Charlemagne realized that he desperately needed educated officials to govern it. So, he searched for the best scholar in all of Europe to head his educational reform program and found the Irish-trained Alcuin of York. Alcuin reintroduced liberal arts as the foundation for education in Europe. He started schools in monasteries, cathedrals, and even the palace itself. Alcuin also oversaw the systematic copying and preservation of any and all ancient texts that he could find. In fact, many of the oldest copies of classical works still in existence today date from copies produced under his direction.

The Christian commitment to advancing education is part of the historical record. While not wholly consistent in every time and place, the Christian view of life and the world (especially its view of a created, ordered reality and the divine imprint on every human person) has been history’s most fertile ground for advancing learning and knowledge.
In a Christian worldview, the value of education isn’t merely utilitarian. Instead, it grows from the rich soil of Christian beliefs: in a God who wants to be known, Who created an ordered and knowable universe to be stewarded by humans, to whom He gave the ability to learn and the capacity to use knowledge in His service.
That worldview framework has been uniquely fruitful for advancing education, even (and perhaps especially) at times of civilizational crisis. For example, during the decline of the Roman Empire’s authority in Western Europe, education went into sharp decline. Centuries worth of accumulated knowledge and learning were at risk of being lost forever, except In Ireland, where monks preserved learning that they’d later reintroduce to Europe.
Irish monks viewed the preservation of literature and knowledge as part of their task as Christian scholars and clergy. More than merely preserving learning, they innovated in the methodology of education. Up to this point, the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages were written in an unbroken stream of letters with no capitalization, punctuation, or word spacing. The Irish changed that and, in doing so, made writing a primary method of learning.
The Irish also had a hand in the recovery of education on the European continent in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. Having built an empire, Charlemagne realized that he desperately needed educated officials to govern it. So, he searched for the best scholar in all of Europe to head his educational reform program and found the Irish-trained Alcuin of York.
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In an age where fake news is rampant and governing authorities use scientific rhetoric to enforce their political agenda, we must remember that one of the greatest lies in our age is salvation via science. Christians have an obligation before the Lord to recognize false prophets and false promises. Lest our hopes be divided between Christ and creation, we must see what is behind the vaccine mandate mania of so many.

Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy,and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.— Isaiah 8:12 —
In our church, one of our elders often reminds us that Isaiah 8:12 is a verse that neither confirms nor denies the presence of a conspiracy. In our world there are many reports that are fake news, and because of that there are many who also discount true news. By the same token, there are reports that some label conspiracies that turn out to be true. And conversely, there are “true” reports that turn out to be false. In short, since the world fell by believing Satan’s Primordial Lie—“you can be like God”—we have lived in a world of lies, half-truths, conspiracies, and fake news. And in that world, the people of the truth must learn not just how to tell the truth (Exod. 20:16), but how to spot a lie.
In the original context of Isaiah 8:12, the Lord has told Isaiah to “fear God, not human armies” (G. V. Smith, Isaiah 1–39, 220). In the historical context, God has promised to preserve Judah, even if the king has foolishly rejected God’s help. In that context, the Lord says,
Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. 13 But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. 14 And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 15 And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.” (Isaiah 8:12–15)
In Isaiah 8, the particular sin is fearing man (i.e., human armies) instead of fearing God. But the enduring principle is fearing God according to what God has said. Again, in this case, God has promised a way of salvation, and Isaiah is calling the people to trust him and not human armies. In another context, however, fearing God might mean something else. In the case of Habakkuk, fearing God meant submitting to the coming destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. In the case of Jeremiah, fearing God meant surrendering to Babylon and not fighting God’s instrument of judgment, as strange as it was to do so. Accordingly, the command to fear God does not always have the same application for God’s people.
Put this all together, and it is a foolish principle to fear God and never recognize or resist the threat of bad actors. Moreover, it is a foolish principle to read Isaiah 8:12 and conclude that everything that people call conspiracy is errant. History teaches us that rulers plot evil schemes (i.e., conspiracies) and that nations conspire together to accomplish wicked ends. Even more, sacred history—the history found in Scripture—teaches the same thing.
Echoing the first sin, the number of times that God’s people have been lied to—by their leaders, by their neighbors, by their prophets, and by themselves—cannot be counted with both hands. While the law of God can be numbered on our fingertips, and digit number 9 stands for “Do not bear false witness,” the number of times God’s people have believed false witnesses is too numerous to count. And thus, we should learn from Scripture how God’s people have believed lies and become liars, so that we who walk in the truth would not believe lies.
The Sin of Believing Lies
Douglas Wilson wrote about this a few months ago, and ever since, his observations from Scripture have stuck in my mind. He observes that “Christians certainly know that it is a sin to go around telling lies, but not so many know that it is also a sin to believe lies.” In context, his argument is a response to the ever changing testimony of Anthony Fauci and the school of prophets who follow him. More germane to this post, however, is the biblical reporting that follows. He writes,
Our race fell into sin because they believed a lie (Gen. 3:4-6). The Roman Christians were told to be on guard against those who with flattering words deceive the naive. It is a sin to be naive like that (Rom. 16:17-18). The Colossians were warned against empty deceit (Col. 2:8). As condemnation, God sent a strong delusion on certain individuals so that they would believe a lie. This was because they refused to love the truth (2 Thess. 2:9-13). The Galatians were rebuked for believing falsehoods (Gal. 3:1). [And] Joshua and his men fell for the deception posed by the men of Gibeon because they did not consult the Lord (Josh 9:14).
Clearly, not believing lies is as biblical as not spreading them. And thus, discerning truth from error in the things we hear and believe and pass on is a Christian virtue. Not believing lies is not something that promises to be fool-proof, but it is something we are called to pursue. Speaking honestly about this, Wilson continues:
If we are going to be reasonable people, I think we have to allow for some instances of deception that can occur where the one lied to really is innocent—where an accomplished hypocrite manages to appear righteous before men (Matt. 23:28). But the passages cited above show that the deceived are frequently complicit in their own deception. They go along in ways they shouldn’t. This pandemic was just such a situation. Believing a lie is culpable when the levers and handles that the liar uses are themselves culpable—those levers and handles being things like fears, lusts, gullibility, ignorance, and so on.
We will pick up the pandemic below as an example of this principle that we must not believe lies, but for now I want to ground this principle deeper in Scripture and to find one example of spitting out fake news followed by another example of swallowing hook, line, and sinker. Ironically, this example is found in the same chapter (1 Kings 13) and in the same prophet (the unnamed man of God who warns Jeroboam of a coming judgment). I point to this example, because one of the best way to learn how to discern truth from falsehood is to watch how it is done and how it is isn’t. And when it occurs in the same person, it shows us how vulnerable all of us are to believing lies, even if we have a track record of truth.
So, without giving a full exposition, I will introduce the man of God who rejected one lie and swallowed another.  And from these two incidents, I believe we can find help for walking wisely in our day of secular sacraments and government sponsored scientism. Again, Isaiah 8 is correct: not everything you hear is a conspiracy, but don’t make the absolutizing error of believing that nothing is a conspiracy either. We must remember that no matter what we are told, fearing God is our first priority. And putting God first means, we must learn how to spot fakery, lest we become liars ourselves.
Rejecting Fake News, Swallowing Fake News, and Knowing How to Tell the Difference
In 1 Kings 13, we find an example of God’s man rejecting fake news, only to follow that brave act of obedience with an immediate denial of God, as he swallows up another false report. Here’s the plotline.
After Jeroboam, king of Israel, builds two altars with two golden calves in 1 Kings 12, the Lord sends a prophet to pronounce God’s judgment on Jeroboam’s wickedness. This prophet is introduced in verse 1 as the “a man of God,” and throughout, this title (“man of God)” is repeated fourteen times (vv. 4, 5, 6 [2x], 7, 8, 11, 12, 14 [2x], 21, 26, 29, 31). Peter Leithart has observed, this nameless man of God serves an archetype for the rest of 1–2 Kings (cf. 1 Kgs. 17:18, 24; 20:28; 2 Kgs. 1:9–13; 4:7; etc.). In these books, God continues to send prophets (men of God) to rebuke the wicked kings of Israel and Judah and call them back to the Lord.
In this first instance, the man comes to Jeroboam and announces that his idolatrous altar will be torn down (vv. 2–3). In response, Jeroboam seizes the prophet, but not before his hand is paralyzed and his altar is broken in two (vv. 4–5). Struck down, the king pleads for the prophet to pray for healing (v. 6). The man of God obliges and the king is healed. With self-interested gratitude, the king invites the man of God to dine with him, to which the man of God replies, “If you give me half your house, I will not go in with you. And I will not eat bread or drink water in this place, for so was it commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water nor return by the way that you came’” (vv. 8–9). So far, so good. The narrative reports that the man of God departs.
From these first ten verses, we see that the prophet discharges his duty, escapes danger, and avoids the temptation to dine with the king. Remembering the Word of the Lord, he retains his loyalty to God and refuses the king’s “gracious” offer. Though the prophet’s refusal might not seem remarkable, it does contradict human nature. Made in the image of a God, man aspires for glory; and made to rule over the earth, human nature aspires for dominion. Accordingly, any invitation to rise to the king’s table is naturally attractive (cf. Prov. 25:7). Therefore, it takes moral courage and genuine faith to reject the “treasures of Egypt” and invite reproach as a true follower of God (Heb. 11:25). Accordingly, such obedience depends upon rejecting false invitations by remembering what God has commanded.
In the last year, this has been more difficult than usual. Extenuating circumstances, i.e., a global pandemic, have invited churches and church leaders to gather online, abandon singing, divide the church into clean and unclean, and hide the image of God with various masking protocols. The rationale is that we are doing all of this out of love for neighbor, but in the process the command to love, which fulfills the law, has run roughshod over the law of God and Christ’s commands to gather (Heb. 10:24–25; 12:22–24), sing (Eph. 5:18–20), show hospitality (Rom. 12:9–21), visit the sick (James 5:14), and greet one another with physical affection (i.e., a holy kiss).
In short, unlike the man of God in his refusal to take the king’s meat, many in our day have followed the science and not followed a number of biblical imperatives.
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While certain forms of so-called “conversion therapy” are clearly, unquestionably to be denounced by the Christian, Canada’s new law intentionally undercuts every biblical mooring for even defining sexuality and gender. Churches in the United States have been called upon this Sunday to stand with our brothers and sisters in Canada whose faithfulness to the Scriptures has now been criminalized. Our session has prayerfully drafted the following statement.

The nation of Canada passed a law, Bill C-4, which went into effect January 7th; it bans all forms of what it calls “conversion therapy” which would seek to change, repress or reduce a person’s same-sex attraction or sexual behavior or their gender identity or expression if it differs from their biological sex. While certain forms of so-called “conversion therapy” are clearly, unquestionably to be denounced by the Christian, Canada’s new law intentionally undercuts every biblical mooring for even defining sexuality and gender. Churches in the United States have been called upon this Sunday to stand with our brothers and sisters in Canada whose faithfulness to the Scriptures has now been criminalized. Our session has prayerfully drafted the following statement:
All rejection of God’s voice involves irony: sometimes subtle; sometimes overt. We, your elders, grieve over the Canadian government’s recent legislation banning all forms of “conversion therapy” as it pertains to sexual deviancies, seeking to make unqualified, unopposed room in that nation for the sins of homosexuality and transgenderism. The deepest irony in this legislation is that the Canadian government’s alleged ban of all forms of conversion therapy actually and arrogantly prescribes conversion therapy upon Almighty God; i.e., the law demands that the eternal Creator of the universe, the Maker of every man and woman and of human sexuality, change his design for his creation in order to suit mankind’s sinful desires. And while seeming humble and open in its treatment of its citizens, the government calls all Christians in Canada to convert to the new societal norm; translate: the only legally opposable view is the one which gets in the way of the new, perverse societal norm. Whereas God created the state to exist in harmony with his church, Canada has criminalized those who seek to live peaceably under the reign of Christ and under the reign of civil government. Upon what basis does the Canadian government make its decree? Evidently upon the basis of “science.” But such heavy-handed “science” quickly discards scientific facts which do not comport with its biased stance.
Though the present manifestation of the Romans 1:18-32 spiral of sexual ethics in the West is deep and dark, any astute observer knows that there are still-deepening, enticing depths into which society can yet descend. If all conversion therapy is outlawed with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity, then where does this project stop? On its own terms, how does said ideology consistently reject, for instance, pedophilia and bestiality? How does it, with internal consistency, reject other forms of confusion and attempts at change which presently remain outside the pale of modern sensibilities? The answer of course is that it does not and cannot. For all the hubris behind our rebellion against God, we lack consistency of expression in our claims because deep down we know that such consistency reduces our claims to intellectual and moral absurdity.
We, your elders, know these tendencies all too well because we speak as fellow would-be autonomous sinners, and as sexual sinners at that. Only by God’s grace, we have sought his divine standard over us in the area of sexuality as with all other areas of life, asking the Holy Spirit to search us and know us and to expose our sin before him. God’s Word reveals how far short of his glory we fall. We mourn our own self-willed wisdom which is driven by our sinful passions and we rejoice at God’s converting grace in the wounds of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We call the Canadian government to repentance for its tyranny over Christian consciences under its care, and for its tyrannical and scientifically fatalistic treatment of those trapped in the sins of homosexuality and gender confusion. To those who will seek to lump our concern for God’s law and his Gospel with misguided, dangerous approaches to conversion therapy so that our God-centered concerns can be dismissed, we ask you to listen to our actual words. We join with Christians worldwide in praying for a faithful Christian witness on the part of the church in Canada, and in particular for ministers and church leaders who face persecution and reprisal for being true to the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We call all churches who tolerate sexual immorality and who rely on sophisticated, subtle word-smithing to redefine sexual ethics, while still appearing faithful to God’s Word, to repentance. Specifically, we call the Standing Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church in America to repentance for its recent decision which refused to discipline a self-identifying homosexual minister in her bounds. Such Christ-shaming cowardice on the part of this commission, to put it mildly, is of no help to the church in Canada at this time.
We call the western church to repentance for its grossly oppressive view of women through its indulgence of pornography and the ways in which women have often been made the victims of abuse even in allegedly Christian marriages. Surely the fact that the church of Jesus Christ, his very bride, is stained with all manner of ongoing, unrepented of sexual blemishes, in spite of the biblical call that such things not even be named among her, connects to and perhaps even largely explains the sexual chaos so rampant in the culture around us. May we all fall before God in anguish over every expression of sexual sin in our hearts, words and actions.
Further, we call ourselves and all creation to repentance for the idolatrous greed which always interweaves with sexual greed and discontentment. We call for repentance of the violence which often comes in the wake of sexual greed, including rape and murder of both the born and the unborn. In yet another grievous irony, the murder of the unborn in our society has been codified as a right, even assuming the dreadful misnomer, “health care.”
Our holy God’s watching eye is over all of us; he sees through our sin; he sees through our attempts to assuage our consciences as we project our guilt and shame onto others; he sees through our clever sophistry in which we seek to explain, rationalize and hide. Truly to see the guilt and corrupting power of our sin is to understand our need of God’s mercy. We implore the Canadian government to look to Jesus Christ who is a refuge for sinful men and women. He paid for the guilt of sinful legislation and for the guilt of sins of every sort in his blood when he bore away God’s wrath on the cross. As fruit of true repentance and faith, we call on the Canadian government immediately to amend her law in accordance with God’s Word.
We conclude with the centuries-old words of Dutch Reformed Christians whose legacy has blessed Canada for generations; we pray their humble resolve will be true of God’s people there in this present moment, come what may.  “They were willing and ready to obey the king in all lawful matters. But…rather than to deny the truth of God’s Word, they would… ‘offer our backs to stripes, our tongues to knives, the mouth to the muzzle, and the whole body to the fire…being ever ready and willing, if it be necessary, to seal [our faith] with our own blood.’”[1] And may all who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake avoid dour, self-righteous dispositions; rather, may you, in the words of our Savior, “rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Lord, have mercy; may his name be praised.
With Sincerity and Prayerfulness,The Elders of Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church – Tampa, FloridaDustyn Eudaly, Senior MinisterSteve Light, Associate MinisterDon Bennett, Ruling ElderDave Brittain, Ruling ElderGregg Fisher, Ruling ElderWink Hall, Ruling Elder
[1] R. Dykstra & M. Kamps, “Historical Introduction to Guido de Brès’ Letter to King Philip II of Spain,” Covenant Protestant Reformed Church,  https://cprc.co.uk/quotes/debresletter/ (accessed 20 January, 2022).
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