School is in Session, Lesson One: Transformed Thinking
Many of you are thinking about wrapping up the school year, preparing for your summer breather. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but the Friedrich household believes in year-round education, and I’m summoning the class to summer school. Warning: mixed metaphors ahead!
There was a time when we referred to ourselves as “conservatives.” Such labels can be useful for sorting out our thinking and helping us connect with like-minded folks. That’s why we half-jokingly use the term Prairie Muffin to explain our views on biblical family life. However, rather than simplifying our lives, such labels are often casualties of the great hollowing-out of the cultural soul. Meanings become muddled as labels are latched onto by those to whom they don’t really apply, but for whom the labels are a useful tool to further agendas. Others wage propaganda campaigns to discredit those who carry certain labels (Prairie Muffins have experienced this as some mock their convictions about family and biblical roles). It can be very confusing.
So, we don’t use the conservative label often anymore. It may be that our political views over the past 15 years of political involvement have shifted. A friend who was once a California assemblyman told us that he doesn’t believe that the “left-right” spectrum is the way to gauge one’s political stance; he believes the scale should be defined by “tyranny” at one end and “liberty” at the other. So rather than saying that we have shifted more to the right, it would be more appropriate to say that we have scooted closer to the liberty end of the scale.
We also are further from some who call themselves conservatives because they have made an even bigger shift, going the opposite direction on the “tyranny-liberty” scale, building their political houses on the shifting sands of pragmatism. From seeing the current inhabitant of the White House through rose-colored glasses which have blinded them to his trampling of the Constitution, to making cultural accommodations in order to keep a “place at the table” (licking the few crumbs that are dropped to keep them begging for more), conservatives have been subsumed by a cultural and political fervor that has veered far from the biblical foundations most of our forefathers painstakingly preserved for us.
It’s time to build on a better foundation, upgrade that eyeglass prescription, switch restaurants: pick your metaphor, but consider toward which end of that scale you are tipping.
I plan to address more of this boring but necessary subject of government and politics in weeks to come. Notice I didn’t call it a “necessary evil.” After all, God did institute civil government for the benefit of men, and the limited responsibilities of that government are delineated in Scripture. Before your eyes glaze over, consider how the monster has managed to break the chains of its limited responsibility and why it affects your life. Are you concerned about the possibility of your sons and daughters being drafted? Do you wonder how you are going to support yourself (and possibly your elderly parents) when social security finally tanks? Do you notice the rapidly increasing intolerance for Christianity, in the name of tolerance? Do you think you will be able to continue to educate your children at home without government intrusion…what about your grandchildren? Do you worry that your children are being too influenced by the depraved dominant culture and that you are not up to the task of passing on your faith and convictions to them? Are you wondering why the church seems impotent in the face of this decay, and bemoan the fact that Christians seem to be compromising more and more with the world?
My children and I recently collected several caterpillars and watched them spin cocoons, then had the privilege of seeing some of them open to reveal the moths that had metamorphosed. Being good homeschoolers, we read books about moths and butterflies to complement our impromptu project. We read about the monarch butterfuly who is the queen of the butterfly world and the most recognizable of the species. Rather than spinning a silky cocoon, the monarch sheds its skin several times, then attaches itself to a twig with a clever little loop and performs one last wriggling dance, shedding its old skin to reveal a chrysalis underneath, where it hides until its transformation is complete.
Most of us (and I include myself) are such slaves to the culture in which we reside, that we become acclimated to our old skin when we need to be shedding it to reveal the new creature we have become and are becoming when we are in Christ. We are to shed the old way of thinking that clings to us:
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. ~Romans 12:2
Before we were in Christ, the only way we knew how to live was based on selfish pragmatism. Whatever worked “for me” was the path of least resistance and the “obvious” route to take, because as far as we were concerned, there was no God Who controlled events or Whom we could trust. Now that we are saved through Christ’s blood and belong to Him, we know that God is the Hand that directs events great and small, but in everyday life we don’t always act like we believe it.
God’s Word is both simple and complex. Of course, millions of words have been written exploring the themes and theology contained in the Book of books, and a lifetime of searching its depths will only scratch the surface. Yet it is simple and straightforward; God has made clear in the Bible the essential things we need to know in order to obey and honor Him. It tells us that we are to teach our children His law (Deut. 6:7). It tells us that children are a blessing that comes from Him (Ps. 127:3-5). It tells us that stealing is wrong (Ex. 20:15). It says that women are to be keepers at home (Titus 2:5). It says that if we love Him we will keep His commandments (John 14:15, 21, 23).
This is foundational to my warning not to build your house on the shifting sands of pragmatism. God’s Law-Word is what tells us how to please God. When we obey Him He is pleased with us and He blesses us (see Deut. 28). But how many times do we read the simple commands and precepts of Scripture, then flatly refuse to obey, saying, “Yes, but…” Fill in the blank with your own special circumstance. Here are a few of my own excuses: not enough money, not enough energy, not enough time, I’ve tried that but it didn’t work, I’ve done that so let somebody else do it now, that won’t work during this day and age, nobody does that anymore, if I do that then this horrible thing will happen to me…
Notice a theme? All my excuses are me and my hubris evaluating God’s commands and passing judgment on them. Each time I do that I am denying God’s existence and His ability to work His purposes through my obedience to Him. I have become a practial secularist. Sometimes I do tentatively obey, but then become angry at God when the “results” of that obedience are not the smooth sailing that I expected, forgetting that the difficulties I’m having may be part of His blessing me by refining me and making me more fit for His service.
I sense some students nodding off in the back row, so I’ll try to tie this lesson together and give you your homework.
One of my favorite bloggers, Dave Black, mentioned a poem that was quoted in an article by Ravi Zacharias. I found the article and it has some astute observations about the cultural quandary in which we are now entangled. It made me think about how often we have good intentions about serving God, but when we try to do it on our own terms it leads to disaster. Your homework assignment is to read this article. Here’s a teaser paragraph to entice you to read, referring to a tragic incident Dr. Zacharias knew of:
Anyone who has experienced the immediate or even delayed consequences of a tragic act or event, knows the horror of such a feeling, from which no amount of human ingenuity can bring about an undoing. The most agonizing effect of such irreversibility is the very humbling fact that it was human finitude that brought about the consequence in the first place. It is not my intention to drag this experience into a particular debate on a single moral issue in order to prove one viewpoint or the other. I only share it because in this nightmare of an event, every individual and societal struggle that we as a civilization now face seems crystallized, and the powers of our institutions seem powerless to find a unifying solution. For here, “religious beliefs” collided at cross-purposes with career goals. Here, Church and State met with equal dismay and sorrow. Here, private solutions sought escape from public castigation. Here, technology goaded a mind into a high-risk decision. Here, expediency compromised wisdom. And here, human sovereignty was left crushed by its own hands. In short, the confrontation between religious belief and a preferred lifestyle left a bloody trail.
Maybe you’ve shed some labels like we have, but it’s more important to shed the old way of thinking that ignores the God Who is real. He really expects obedience from His people, and He expects that we will trust Him for the ability to obey Him and for the results of that obedience. Those cultural woes won’t improve until God’s people are faithful to this simple precept.
