Fighting for the Foundations
When we turned loose of the American dream this past August—really all the way back in May—we proceeded on faith that God had told us to go and do three things, and that He was going to make a way for us because He is the Waymaker.
He has done precisely that. Except He hasn’t done any of it the way we thought He was going to do it.
Since we departed the bleak shores of the American dream, we have done what we could with what we have:
to wake up the church,
enjoy our family, and
begin making the vision real by starting with content.
That is, we've been writing it down so that the one who reads it can run with it.
In the beginning I prayed for a lot of physical and logistical stuff that made sense to me, but if living through the past six months has done anything in me, it has served to demonstrate how much I have yet to learn of the Kingdom. I have blogged about how we must reckon with God’s purpose before we can see His power, and I’ve mentioned at least once how expectations are premeditated disappointments. Now, I’m beginning to see convergence in all these seeming diversions.
I have too often prided myself on how quickly I obey once I understand what God is saying to me. But pride is a terrible motivator, and is God in a hurry? Is He in danger of running out of time? Is He at all like a Marine Corps drill instructor?
Given the events of the past six or seven months of our lives, both as individuals and as a family, I’m convinced that it’s sometimes better to watch and pray (to wait) than it is to jump at the word go. The difficulty is knowing when to do which.
And, considering our position as citizens of this once-great (and by the grace of God perhaps one day great again) nation, I’m convinced that God must know what He’s allowing and that He must know what He’s doing.
Most of our guides today are willfully blind, and the people perish as a direct result. The church seems to be imploding in the whimper of flapdoodle that is the virtual meeting. But if trusting God through the unknown and the potential end of the world was good enough for Gideon in his day, it’s good enough for me. I admire Gideon because, reluctantly or not, he stepped up when God called him to do so. And that’s always what we at WhiteNoise have understood our response is to be, even for the past six months or so. And even if it hasn't seemed like much.
Too often I have sought results above all else; I’ve tried to draw straight lines across the map when the most sensible thing to do was to be still and wait for the Way to illuminate the way, however convoluted and scenic and indirect and inefficient.
The diversions in life can be those easy-to-blame inconveniences we hate so much; those embarrassing obstructions we can’t go around or ignore. There are a lot of them out there right now, and I plan to address as many as I can in this blog (which is gonna be a long one). But we have to know and we must reckon with the fact that obstacles have a God-designed purpose for us. The best way through isn’t the fastest or the prettiest. The best way through is one step at a time as God reveals what we need, and we listen as we go.
It’s the busted plays in the game that make victory matter even more. It’s the scenic route I want anyway. You can have the Interstate, the chain restaurants, and the tourist trap gift shops where all the flavor has been sucked out in the pursuit of ultimately destructive, anti-creative sameness.
I want salt. I want light. I want to suck the marrow from the bone, to really live. I want that even if it means I’m a failure by every standard but the One who matters most.
Fear
Pastor Matt Williams at Vertical Church in Boise preached a message on the fear of God this past May that featured an acronym of FEAR that I really like.
Faith in God’s existence
Experience His grace
Awe of His being
Resolve to do His will
It is because I fear God that I have tried my best to prove the Truth not just with my lips but with my life, especially at major turning points. I have faith in His existence, I experience His grace every day, I am in constant awe of His being, and I continually resolve to do His will. That’s why I live like I do.
For the Christian, nothing is held in reserve.
In my life, whenever God seemed to be moving me deeper into all that He’s had for me, I haven’t held back. Nothing has been off limits, including my service as a Marine, the woman I married, our two boys, my career choices, endeavors in business and in ministry, our places of residence, all of our income streams, and other life-defining stuff like that. Covenant relationships have remained, but not much else. We travel light in regard to our worldly possessions, and certainly my pride has been crucified enough times that it has no right to exist anymore. Somehow I keep finding things to be ashamed of, though, and that’s when I start gathering the hammer and nails again. I think a lot of Christians talk about surrender but don’t live it. They don’t really want to; they don’t see the value in it, at least in relation to everything that keeps them high. I think it’s because too many of us are really not in love with Jesus, we’re in love with the world. And we're proving it right now.
I used to get this feeling that I was being observed, and that there was a fair contingent of observers who wanted to see me fail, whether miserably or spectacularly. That was years ago. Now I realize I’m just not that important to most people, and I have enjoyed the ignominy. I have a new feeling now, though. I believe that this place of obscurity is going to give way to larger influence at some point, and then there will be pressure. Part of me realizes that I’d better toughen up if God’s going to give me a glass house to live in. If that happens, I know I’ll have to live the same way then that I live now: one day at a time, one step after another. What I don’t look forward to is being on the receiving end of how quickly we who call on the Name of Christ crucify each other. It has happened to many other men God has called into leadership. I suppose that, too, though, will be a reason to rejoice; to be found worthy to suffer. It just sucks that so-called Christians can be such cannibals.
I’m uncomfortable writing these lines. While I don’t know entirely why, I think part of the reason is because I’m saying stuff that should be right out in the open spaces of our dialogues but isn’t because political correctness took the fire out of the church many years ago.
A Primer on Worldview
The way you look at the world is your worldview. I happen to believe, and my belief has been tested and proven over many years, that God is sovereign. That means He’s in control. That means He initiates and allows various events that, because He has all knowledge and all power, make perfect sense to Him but not to me. And since there is nowhere He is not, He sees everything. And since He is good and does not change, I can trust Him. And since I can trust Him (and for many other reasons besides), I worship Him, not just with my words and my songs but with my decisions. The gospel is preached with words but proven with lives. This is my worldview.
Since I see things this way, I have certain values. Certain characteristics are highly prized; they’re praiseworthy. I engage the discipline of cultivating them, not only in my relationships but also in myself. Humility, service, deferment, integrity, honesty, purity, stewardship, authenticity of heart and motive, soundness of body and mind, solitude, dedication, grace and forgiveness not only for others but also for myself, liberty, personal responsibility—I could go on, but you get the idea—these are all character traits I find highly valuable and strive to cling to in my daily life. Why? Because these are some of the attributes of God. They show us what God is like.
And since I adhere to these values, I find sometimes that they don’t just inform how I see the world, they influence how I think. As a result, they make a big difference in the decisions I make. They make a big difference in the stands I take too.
There is another way of looking at the world, and it plots in opposition to everything I hold dear. This other worldview shifts its positions depending on the situation at hand. It will lie and cheat to get ahead. It is prideful, lustful, boastful, greedy, dishonest, defiled, opportunistic, unsound in both body and mind, and instead of deferring fulfillment through patience, it prostitutes itself and everything over which it has any influence for instant gratification. And while it is indeed dedicated, it is dedicated to itself, which is why it usually produces desolation, emptiness, and anxiety in its adherents. Instead of binding itself to grace and mercy, it has bound itself to its own definition of justice, and it endlessly shouts about it. Instead of looking on the heart, as God does, this worldview sees and worships only appearances, the visible things. The demographics, if you will.
I take my stand in total opposition to this way of thinking and this way of seeing the world. I have been opposed to it from my earliest awareness of the conflict between me and it, and while I have not always been able to express the fulness of my hatred for it, I’m seeing pretty clearly in 2020 just exactly why I hate it so much. It’s because it reminds me of the enemy of my soul. He was called Lucifer once, he has been called the dragon and Satan, the father of lies, the accuser, and the deceiver. I hate him with every fiber of my being, and one of the biggest reasons I hate him is because I have to live under his influence every day. He is the tool through which mankind fell, and he is one reason why the Lover of my soul endured and overcame pain, torture, death, and the grave. This accuser is the reason I and others like me must endure the pain of self-crucifixion every day, for his legacy has embedded itself in my flesh like the tares planted by an enemy in a field of wheat. I groan for the day when the angels will come and gather him and his fruits to the fire prepared for them. And I yearn for the day of regeneration, when even my flesh will be changed in the blink of an eye, and death and the grave will be hurled into the lake of fire.
The real danger in the difference between these two worldviews—the first being Christian and the second being Satanic—is that they are not mere abstractions. They actually touch down and find expression here in the temporal realm, and if you have eyes to see these familial resemblances as they cross over from the supernatural to the natural, they are painfully obvious. If you can’t see these, you will prove your blindness through denial and mockery, because as I.A. Richards said, “Contempt is a well recognized defensive reaction.” He was right.
The Satanic worldview is self-exalting. This is why the billions-of-years molecules-to-man evolutionist, the atheist, the Marxist, and the Nazi are bedfellows. None of what they believe, none of their religion, has a basis in fact; none of it has ever been proven. They are theoreticians, and the only way they can proclaim the greatness of man is by trampling the genius of God. The founding fathers of this nation pressed in to the truth and found the self-evidence of this fact: all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. The Satanic worldview opposes that truth by saying that the State gives us our rights and that some individuals (the powerful ones) are “more equal than others.” The evolutionist and the atheist are one in completely eliminating God from the world He made, and their poison has infected the educational curricula of our children for generations now (thanks to the State, again). The Darwinian insists on the utter devaluing of all life through his "survival of the fittest" dogma, and he makes interpersonal civility impossible through the perpetually re-spoken lie that there are racial differences between any two human beings that happen to differ as to the amount of pigment we carry in our skin. These leftists ensure that we can never heal from past social wounds by revising history, by denying that we are one race (the human race), and they divide us along ever splintering lines based upon our gender, sexual deviance, and the politicization of almost literally everything. The leftist has murdered tens of millions of unborn children, even harvesting their body parts and selling them to researchers who then offer stem cell “cures” for the living, a macabre and unconscionable irony that would damn every participant if not for grace. Through all these atrocities, the Satanic secular humanist shouts his own success in the face of both Truth and evidence, and progress for its own sake continues to devour even the remnant, now dust and ash, of a culture once noble but now disgraceful and lost.
But the Christian’s faith is founded on the Rock of Christ, the Person who is Truth, who does not change, and who therefore ensures that the truth remains Truth absolutely.
The Christian is capable of self-government because he is a law unto himself; he is restrained by a conscience that has not been seared.
The Christian does not look on the appearance of a man and is therefore estranged from racist thought.
The Christian strengthens himself in the Lord and therefore does not need the State to be his god.
The Christian finds fellowship and brotherhood in the gathering of the saints and therefore does not need socialist safety nets and the outrageous taxes that fund them.
The Christian values life because he understands that each of us is made in the image of our Creator and Sustainer, and he therefore knows that death is a tragedy and not a mere happening.
The Christian understands too that when the State enacts arbitrary edicts that prohibit our physical gathering to worship as we have been commanded to do in Scripture, he must defy the State and obey his God. The Christian is commanded not to forsake the fellowship of the saints, to pray within that fellowship through the physical laying on of hands, and he knows these commands cannot be obeyed through software. Further, he sees the prohibition of these Biblical commands for what it is: a blatant attack on the church.
The Christian knows this because his citizenship is neither temporal nor natural but everlasting and incorruptible; he is hidden with Christ in God.
The Christian does not fear death.
This is what makes him truly dangerous here.
Those who glibly mob downhill toward judgment and the second death in Satanic self-obsessed self-service know nothing of what makes fearlessness possible: faith.
All of this matters more than you know. It matters how you think. It matters how you decide to live. It matters how you see the world. It matters how those convictions find expression in everything God has placed within your reach and influence. You cannot glide through your one-shot life thinking that truth depends on the situation you’re in. Truth is absolute because He is a Person, and that Person is everlastingly alive. For the remainder of the Age of Grace, He waits, offering up Himself as the answer to every question, the resolution for every failure, the healing balm for every wound. The Christian knows these things to be true by experience, and his life is dedicated to the proposition that the Spirit of God, alive and active as Immanuel, can work through a redeemed human life to redeem another, and yet another, until time itself has passed away.
This requires faith.
The Satanically minded man cannot pass beyond the little he has managed to become dimly aware of in his darkened mind; he scoffs at eternal supernatural realities and chucks them in a box marked THEORETICAL or SPECULATIVE. He knows nothing of evidence.
And this is where we stand today in America. The Satanically minded man has enthroned himself above education, arts & entertainment, science & technology, the economy, communication, and the bureaucracy of American government. Depending on your perspective, the church and the family have been infiltrated too. What does it mean for we the actual, living (not the solely institutional) church? And how does that affect WhiteNoise going forward?
Emphasis Added
Let me start here with some of the warning signs I’m seeing right now. The other day I attended an event that really surprised me for how deeply it affected me.
It was just an informational meeting for a youth mentorship program, but as the organizers called the meeting to order, they directed our attention to the flag on the back wall. We placed our hands on our hearts and we recited the pledge of allegiance together. I was struck. I realized that I had probably never said the pledge with my sons, that I personally hadn’t said it for years, and further—I had chills. This is one of those things that’s been missing, I thought.
I think it’s a great example of how isolated we have allowed ourselves to become. And how we've been emphasizing the wrong things.
Covid lockdowns have brought the desolation of isolation right into our individual souls. It’s obvious that we’ve been dehumanized by Covid protocols this year. And no, Jesus wouldn’t have worn a mask; He would’ve rebuked fear and healed people. I just roll my eyes at people telling me what Jesus would have done when He’s a total stranger to them. I don’t mind wearing a mask if it's going to do anything helpful. What I have a problem with is how masks dehumanize us, how they isolate us, how they objectify us and stoke fear, judgment, and downright unneighborliness in a society that had already moved way too far in that direction before the spring of 2020.
I believe that the vast majority of American citizens don’t see the world the way our leaders do, and the difference between us, the fruit that we bear vs. the fruit that they bear, is taking a giant pickaxe to the primary fault line in our national identity.
One day a couple of generations ago, a small group of powerful people outlawed prayer in school on the basis of religious freedom. Really? How does that work? Wanna explain that one to me? I still don’t know how we were foolhardy enough to fall for such a twisted misrepresentation of reason. But adherents to this worldview have made much quieter revolutionary moves since. One of them was to remove the pledge of allegiance from our schools. Should I also mention how our national anthem has been silenced? Some other time, perhaps. The thing is, I remember reciting the pledge every day when I was a kid, right before classes started. And I remember how much it meant. Now that I have an American family of my own, it means much more.
The pledge of allegiance represents common ground for a nation that proudly acknowledges its heritage as a melting pot. It should be impossible for the United States to exist, given all of our diversities. But if the common ground is large enough, and if we regularly remember it, we should be indivisible.
One of our biggest common threads here in America has always been liberty. Socialist nonsense, whether under the hammer and sickle or the swastika, proven the world over to be a categorical failure, is threatening to obliterate even the tatters of what little we have in common anymore.
When we confess as a populace the greatness of our common ground (rather than endlessly harping on the things that divide us, as has become the new normal), we find power and inspiration in the bonds of citizenship and brotherhood, and there is lift and encouragement. When we stand together we remember that we are one nation under God, and we confess every time we pledge allegiance to this republic that here there is liberty and justice for all. For all.
Confessions like these will heal our nation.
These are the things we need to major on, not the alleged automatic heritable racism of all white people, not our political differences, and certainly not the socialists’ Satanic alternative renderings of our history. All these things can do is give birth to desolation, destruction, and civil war.
Think about it: these campaigns to end racism, as they endlessly state the problem with phrases like “it takes all of us,” or “end racism,” or even “black lives matter,” will never produce closure or healing. I believe it’s because they’re not intended to do so. Any society that refuses to quit rubbing infectious grit in its wounds will never be able to heal.
This is common sense. And it has become singularly uncommon.
Continually emphasizing where we’ve gone wrong guarantees a continuous lack of wellness. We will never get past what divides us until we rediscover what unites us. Picture a small but powerful bunch of grasshoppers who don’t want the ants to realize that they outnumber the policymakers, the bureaucrats, the politicians, and the officials by at least ten thousand to one.
The attacks have been subtle; you have to be paying attention.
This year, they’ve taken our liberty, our jobs, our fellowship as believers, our worship in song, and they even tried to cancel Thanksgiving in Chicago and Oregon. None of it has been legal. When I look at the stats, I wonder if Covid has been anywhere near as dangerous as the seasonal flu. And I wonder, if nothing had been done to stop the sky from allegedly falling this past spring, would we now be experiencing this second wave of Covid? Did the powermad powergrab make the pandemic worse? We’ll never know. But why must everything be shut down anyway? Why couldn’t we have simply instructed every at-risk individual that their very life was in their own hands, that it was on their honor to self-quarantine? Wouldn’t that have been a whole lot less destructive, invasive, and damaging? Granted, the individual would've had to have taken responsibility for himself.
Perhaps that’s too much to ask in 2020. But I believe that’s another conclusion we’re meant by our blind guides to come to, and I resist it because I believe in the irresistible Kingdom of God, the light of the world, and the Holy Spirit indwelling His church. Surely we would have been able to make a self-governing, individual-honoring Covid solution work. It is impossible, apparently, for a gaggle of faithless socialist bureaucrats to have faith in the American people.
I look at how Big Tech has benefitted from the Covid lockdowns, too. Boy howdy, has it been a banner year for companies like Amazon, Uber, Zoom, and others like them. I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy, I’m just saying that these firms have made a lot of money this year, and isn’t it interesting. That’s all.
Am I the only one who has noticed how much power these big tech companies have? I mean, not only has our government overstepped its authority with mask mandates and shutdowns that have no legal basis but also huge companies like Facebook, Google, and even Costco have enacted arbitrary policies that violate liberty, curtail free speech, and suppress a healthy, functional society—all under the guise of protecting us and supporting our health. Am I the only one who thinks that’s really backward and dysfunctional? I’m just thinking critically and asking the questions a good journalist ought to ask. Not that I would call myself by such a filthy moniker.
And I have another question: If for decades the all-powerful Keepers of the Facts, the Guardians of Journalism and Newsworthiness have been contemptible propagandist disciples of Joseph Goebbels all along, why should we suddenly believe them now as it pertains to Covid? If the news has been a lie since before Walter Cronkite sat behind a televised desk, why is it now supposedly truer than the gospel and untainted of all bias? These are the same people trying to get us to believe that there is no such thing as truth.
Wait: we’re not supposed to believe there is such a thing as absolute truth, but we are supposed to believe the news is the absolute truth?
This is just one reason why we the church must rise up and speak Truth and light to a world utterly devoid of both.
The Try
I have certain pat explanations that I occasionally trot out for how seemingly inconsistent my resume is. One of them is that even though I may look like a pinball, I’m unafraid to try things. I try things all the time, and I have raised my children into this ethos: all I want is for you to try. I believe that’s a song the Father sings over us; I believe that’s His heart for us. Especially in the wilderness times. Know this: the try is set apart from outcomes. They have nothing to do with each other.
Try does not equal desired outcome.
Try equals congratulations, you tried; now, what did you learn?
Paul said that he abstained from judging himself. In the context of playing the comparison game, which never ends well, that’s an apt strategy for life. Like C.S. Lewis pointed out, if a game is to be played, it must be possible to lose it. I can’t reap a single benefit from comparing myself to others.
I’m not the guy who works a job for a lifetime and settles into retirement and dies in his sleep. I’m a sojourner, I am made to travel light. I am an airhorn in a quiet library, and for too many years I have been uncomfortable with it. I’ve observed the Potter’s hand upon my frame and too often questioned the wisdom of His design.
For too many thousands of miles I drove my truck through dark nights, peering through the snows at warmly lit houses, and I wondered what expressions of love rested golden there in the soft light of “home.” I wondered why I longed so deeply for “home” but couldn’t define what it meant, at least for me.
I don’t know if it’s a curse or an irony for the sojourner to suffer homesickness above all other sorrows. What I do know is that he longs not for a resting place here but instead in incorruptible realms, where once he is home, he will be home forever.
Welcome to the Grand Opening of Pandora’s Box
Maybe that’s what I’m feeling as I write this. Maybe 2020 has peeled the curtain back a little too much for me—for any of us who are paying attention—to remain comfortable. We can’t go back to our comforts; we cannot unsee what has been revealed. We pray, we intercede for a nation that suffers internal ravaging at the hands of hideous traitors, men and women who swore oaths to first do no harm, to protect and defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic and yet have become Big Pharma Candymen and Captains of High Treason.
The people suffer, and God sees it.
We are a nation in need of leaders who are reluctant to wield power, leaders who are eager to sacrifice and to serve, not to abuse their power and privilege.
We are a nation so throughly drugged by the propaganda of advertising that we do not know the difference between what is marketed as entertainment and what is marketed as news.
We are a nation fractured, lost, both incensed and ambivalent, ready to ignite or implode; I don’t know which. I don’t see a peaceful place in it for me anymore, and I thank God that I am a citizen of heaven. And I’m of a mind to contend now for eternal things. Before it’s too late.
I just don’t buy any of it anymore, whether it’s the news they’re selling, the putrefaction that is the American dream, or this repellent fear that has gripped us and has nothing to do with faith, grace, reverence, integrity, or public safety.
The very culture has become Satanic. That is, by its endless prostitutions to its own glory, it has been purged of all of it.
I gladly stand apart from all that it is, grateful that God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
I see parallels in history that frighten me. America may stand now where Germany stood in February of 1933, when the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag and blamed it on their opposition so that Hitler could rise to German omnipotence (or so he thought). America may stand now where Russia stood in October of 1917, when civil war broke out because of irreconcilable differences in ideology and philosophy, of all things.
Such regrettable stupidity.
I don’t want a revolution. I don’t want death and bloodshed. I want justice. The problem is, sometimes you have to walk through death to get to justice.
That’s what Jesus did, and the servant is not above his Master. Still, let the ideologues foment violence and riots, let them burn the cities; I want none of that. I don’t know what to do with an enemy that refuses to stop telling anyone who will listen that the Truth is a lie and that their lies are truth. Or worse: that there is no such thing as truth.
We stand on dangerous ground because we haven’t just devalued life in America today, we have devalued death. We now believe that if a human being dies, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just lights out, game over. We don’t understand—nor have we come to grips with—the fact of hell. If life is a game, we can lose. Losing doesn’t just mean the game is over, though. Losing means eternal agony. This culture has lost touch with consequence.
Therefore idiots with loud mouths, who have rewritten our history so that we can no longer learn anything from it, use words like revolution with breathtaking indifference. The modern disease is apathy, and it is going to be the death of many if we don’t discover a way to repent here in America, and very soon.
My assignment is to wake up as many as possible before the drug—the strong delusion God promised—takes full effect and the masses fall into irrecoverable slumber. Again as C.S. Lewis pointed out, “You have never had a conversation with a mere mortal.” All will rise again. The only question is to what. Some will rise to everlasting life because we are found in Christ. Those who are not will rise to judgment and the second death, which you don’t want to even begin to imagine.
The Blessing of Covid
This virus everyone hates is a blessing? Come on, Chris. That’s not funny.
Wait for it. I’ll make my case.
I thought the speed with which the global media’s messaging was rolled out this past spring was at least a little suspicious. We had just learned about this Covid thing and were just beginning to grasp what it was supposed to be, then a week or two passed and suddenly we were supposed to embrace the new normal; all of a sudden the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, and unlike the SARS or H1N1 crises, all of a sudden we have to shut down the global economy? None of it has ever passed the smell test. It was just too quick, too polished, too ready and too organized to be authentic, at least from my perspective. And though I’m one of the few saying it, I know lots of people are thinking it. I just get a sense about it.
Covid has actually been a huge blessing though, if you think about it properly. One of the biggest is what it has done for the American family, at least from a certain perspective. And that perspective is that there is always something we can be thankful for. And yes, I have an example.
I know that for us, once we saw what the aforesaid prescribed bulldoze of the new normal was going to do to our kids at school, we decided to pull the ripcord and just do our best to teach them from home. I quickly saw how the normalization of masks, plexiglass shields, and an irrational fear of germs and disease was intended to warp the healthy development of my children and remake them into the State’s desired citizen-product. We had nearly finished the 2019-20 school year, having completed all the weekly packets of assignments the teachers sent home, when I found out they weren’t even bothering to grade anything we did. Public school; demonstrably pointless. And not just pointless, but harmful.
I think at least some parents are beginning to realize the depths of futility and hypocrisy to which our schools have sunk today. Teachers’ unions and secular humanist/leftist (man-centric/Satanic) worldview curriculum have gutted our schools of meaning and purpose, and from kindergarten to grad school, most educational institutions are, in my opinion, simply turning out drones and cogs for a system that must disintegrate if we could ever begin to think for ourselves again. The always-on media blitz in everybody’s pocket guarantees that the desired propaganda stays front-and-center, that we’re constantly reminded that we’re either a bunch of terrible privileged racists, entitled victims waiting for reparations, or nameless numberless consumers. Covid has helped me to see it clearly, and I am grateful.
I think it’s plain to see that the culture of tolerance is so intolerant that they’ve finally begun to overplay their hand this year. I’ve seen enough nonsense in the school system to convince me, I’ve heard enough from the people who are in it who struggle daily against the tentacles of bureaucracy, spending all their strength just trying to get to the kids and make a difference. These noble few toil in obscurity absolutely in spite of all the rules, regulations, and pitfalls of policy the Marxist and the Nazi have set against the mortal dangers they fear most: exceptionalism and reason.
The only rational response for most of us is to pull our kids out of that mind mill and keep them home, open a history book that tells the truth, and open their minds to the possibilities of liberty and justice for all.
We’re even enjoying spending more time with our children. I get the feeling that we’re not supposed to do that; that this isn’t one of the intended outcomes for the year in which Covid attacked.
They’ll Always Be the Redskins to Me
The culture of tolerance is so militantly racist that it projects its racism onto the populace. These Pharisees of tolerance are so intolerant that, if we don’t immediately acquiesce to their demands and redefine our relationships according to their rules—all of them unscrupulous, illegitimate, and unacceptable—we’re immediately condemned.
My, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black.
The tolerance culture is so intolerant that it has declared war on all white people because we’re white. Thank about that for a moment. Maybe even reread it, and then try to deny it.
Wait; aren’t we supposed to celebrate diversity? Why then are all white people born racist, hateful, guilty, misogynistic, homophobic, patriarchal, and privileged? How can I be hated for traits I did not choose, which have very little to do with who I actually am? And am I supposed to only have white friends and only do white things and think white thoughts? If so, is that what tolerance means? Are me and my all-white friends sitting around laughing it up about how we, because of our outrageous choice to be born white, have never experienced hardship, prejudice, discrimination, poverty, disease, homelessness, loss, the shame of drawing public assistance, the stress of student loan payback because we didn’t qualify for a grant based on our race or sex, the insecurity of being uninsured, joblessness, bankruptcy, or given our lives in our country’s defense so that others could enjoy the benefits of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
They stole Biblical marriage from us, redefining it as deviant and hateful, even as rape. They stole fatherhood from us, insisting that patriarch and masculine are offensive words. They stole the Redskins from us too, and they’re so tolerant that they didn’t even bother to give them a replacement name.
Did these geniuses ever stop to consider that a football team might have been named what it was named not as a denigration but as a celebration of the culture and people it had been named for? Why do they assume every one of us is just as demented as they are?
But I’d like to predict what’s next for the NFL, and that’s this. The Kansas City Chiefs will have to be renamed. Their logo is an arrowhead. That is obviously both racist and offensive and should be confiscated from them with all speed. Their name, too, which goes without saying, must be seized. Why shouldn’t we have another Football Team?
But that’s not all. Buffalo Bill Cody, the namesake of the Buffalo Football Team, not only killed native Americans but fought in the Civil War, and that’s dangerous, you guys. It’s dangerous for actual history to come up for air in this culture. But even more importantly, Buffalo Bill Cody actually shot and killed buffalo. How hateful is that? Something must be done.
I would like to propose an obvious solution. We need to proactively rename every team in the league after a vegetable. Every single team. Turnips, Parsley, Cilantro (unless that's also somehow racist), whatever. I would love to watch a Sunday afternoon game at that point, especially if the Seattle Brussels Sprouts wear their color-rush unis. Brussels sprouts, especially when they’ve been in the oven for an hour, are such a nice shade of green.
But what am I thinking? The damage that would do to vegetable rights is unthinkable. I guess it's back to the drawing board with that idea.
The Point of No Return
God’s love and wrath are one. And if that doesn’t produce awe in your soul, I beg you to beg God for what the Puritans called “the gift of tears.” You can’t repent whenever you choose to. It is a gift from your Maker and Sustainer. We must be very careful, America. I pray we’re not too far even now, but what do I know. I’m just a guy who’s noticed some things over the years and started to put them together, and the only thing that makes me remarkable is that Jesus can have all of me, anytime, anywhere. I wonder if you could say the same; that you’re so totally surrendered to Him that you no longer belong to yourself.
I’m still trying to make sense of our past six or seven months here at WhiteNoise. I only have glimpses right now. It has been a costly journey, but we have lacked nothing. And when God does a deep work in me, I have deep fellowship with Him.
And here are a few more things I know: We didn’t start WhiteNoise to become famous, to write hit worship songs, publish bestsellers, or raise money. We’re part of the church, but we’re not doing the de rigeur run-it-like-an-entrepreneur (but not for profit) thing most parts of the church seem to be on about these days. We do not seek any man’s praise. We are not living our lives so that we can submit them to any man’s judgment. We started WhiteNoise because God gave us no other choice than to obey, on faith and little else. I believe, and I don’t care what the optics happen to be. The way God is doing it is just fine and will continue to be so.
I noted one recent morning on one of my walks that we often qualify our decisions by saying, “That depends.” When we do this, we are waiting to find out something that will better inform our decision. This is why situational ethics only looks rational to a mind that doesn’t know everything—indeed, that has rejected the truth for a lie—and doesn’t have access to the wisdom of God.
Man knows just enough to get himself into trouble. We have been given enough rope to hang ourselves. Too often, we use it to hang our brothers instead.
We do this because, hopeless hypocrites that we are, we cannot see ourselves.
Jesus solved this riddle for us. He showed us that the only rational response to the light is to run to it, especially if it means hanging our flesh on a tree. Daily. When we wait for God, we are waiting for Him to reveal enough truth that we are enabled to make good decisions based on what we understand so far. I cannot therefore look back in regret and use what seasons past have given me as ammunition to defile those very seasons with doubts or what-ifs.
I’m convinced that there are two basic postures we can take before the Great White Throne: We can cry either justice or mercy. If I stand before the Judge on that terrible Day talking about justice, it will not go well with me. What I intend to do is fall on my face and plead mercy. Just like I do every day down here. Until then, literally the sum total of my ambition is that the Father would fulfill John 5.19 in me too, and as completely as possible.
I live like I do because I fear God. The outcomes of my life have little to do with me or what I can do and are entirely in His hand. Sometimes I can make sense of these things. Only He can make it a beautiful sound. Only He knows how to weave it into the tapestry He’s been working for millennia.
Still, I have questions.
Going with Two Tenths?
I’ve been wondering lately about—and if you’ve been following along from the beginning back in August of this year, you may have noticed—a few maybes. You have to read between the lines to be able to see these, but they are there nevertheless, begging various questions.
Like maybe we didn’t hear God.
Maybe we got two tenths of what God was saying and went in advance of the timing and purpose.
Maybe we were wrong.
Maybe we veered into sin and punishment.
Maybe it was warfare that scuttled us.
Abraham and Sarah no doubt wrestled these thoughts. But I’m here to tell you, I know for a fact that God honors your yes when you give it, and there is no such thing as waste in the Kingdom. So let’s take these in reverse order.
First, nothing is scuttled. The Kingdom can’t be stopped. If it seems to be delayed, it isn’t. God has His reasons for tarrying, and they’re all good. He does what He does with information I don’t have. I trust Him. He is the Big Boss.
Which brings me to warfare. It’s real. However, the battle is already won. We fight from victory, not for it. It’s just like the enemy to attack after the treaties have been attested and signed. What I mean is that, in the age of grace, which the life, death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus ushered in, God is working in and through His church to set the stage for the final smackdown. There are ancient principalities that refuse to acknowledge the victory that has been secured, and they must be defeated, but greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.
Did the devil try to kill my son at that skatepark in Lincoln City? I don’t know, but will I waste time and energy worrying about Satan and all of his ridiculousness? I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction. No, I run to Jesus. Some of us make too much of an enemy that has already been defeated, and they tread perilously close to idolatry, at least as far as I’m concerned.
How about error, sin, and punishment? I’ll take that. I’m far from perfect. Passionate as I am about these things, I am also teachable, which means yeah—I believe God takes corrective actions in my life from time to time. Is that what’s going on in our lives right now, as we wait for what we believe God said He would do? Is there a delay because we were naughty? It’s absolutely possible, but I also know that God has never called a finished, perfected man into His service. Even Jesus learned obedience through the things that He suffered. And none of it was about earning the right to move forward.
Were we wrong? When I finally know all things, I guess I’ll shoot you an email. I’ll tell you this: For years, I’ve lived in such a way as to prove with my life that I’d much rather live like I don’t have rights than trip over rights I don’t actually have. I haven’t hesitated to take big risks, ask unanswerable questions, defer desires, give away opportunities in favor of obedience, and pray that God doesn’t prosper me because I’d rather receive an incorruptible reward than take one sip from the witch Luxuria’s nightmarish cup.
What I have had to do is lots of work on my dysfunctional understanding of what fathering really looks like. Therefore, I resist characterizing God as eager to punish us. If He’s eager to do anything, it’s to show mercy. I was raised in an environment in which the father (and the step-mother, frankly) thought it was the parents’ mission to “break the spirit” of the children. It was an instant-obedience-at-any-cost environment. As a result, I’ve spent my adulthood recovering from my childhood. I’m 45 years old and just beginning to live. Thank God for the late bloomers, the rejects, the strugglers, the outcasts, and those of little faith (you don’t need much because faith is powerful stuff). We know what perseverance is. My sin, my wrongdoing, and my just punishment—when they come up—make me want to sit and wait in the tension for what God would speak in the still and the small. God has settled these things in eternity. Silence the voice of the enemy.
As to the other questions, I won’t leap to conclusions about any of it. That’s one reason I haven’t published a whole lot of blogs lately. I’m taking a lot of walks and thinking. I’m waiting. I’m listening. And God is obviously speaking because this blog post almost needs chapters. Okay, it really could use chapters. God speaks because He lives, and there is no other. I have determined that I will confirm that He has said what I believe I heard Him say before I run off to “do something for Him.”
He doesn’t need that.
He doesn’t need anything.
Yes, the need is urgent, but God isn’t in danger of losing anything if, like Gideon, we err on the side of wisdom (caution?) and ask for confirmation about a thing that seems a little big for us. Maybe WhiteNoise should have done that to begin with. But mercy and grace don’t mean you get a re-do. We can’t go back, and I don’t want to. I'm learning sufficiency in this place. And it feels priceless.
It was never our ambition to nearly lose our firstborn son to a skatepark accident. It was never an ambition for me to see the fear in my youngest’s eyes as it dawned on him that there was a raging forest fire not ten miles from where we were staying in Oregon. And I never thought, Hey, it would be great if I could be unemployed for more than half of 2020. I’m sure I have more questions than you do.
But what if we didn’t hear God? What if we did only hear part of what He’d said? What if we launched prematurely? I shrug, honestly. One, if any of these are in fact true, can I do anything about it now? Two, if I go there, I’ve played what-if. That game has no winners. These questions are all nonstarters, at least for me.
What I want to do is proceed by faith from where we actually are and give no place to anything else. I’m not saying I don’t want to calibrate our heading properly. I believe in the value of that. What I am saying is that some questions are best left unasked, especially in the holy place. And I sense that God has brought us through everything He’s brought us through in order to get us here.
So here is greatly valuable.
It cost us dearly to get here, so I won’t allow myself to think of antecedents as mistakes.
Besides, God uses all of it, so the word mistake is irrelevant for the heart that has come to maturity, whose love has been tested and proven. Jesus settled all outcomes with His advent, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. When He comes again it will not be to complete any undone work but to seal the work He has already done, and that’s why He will manifest as the Lion, not the Lamb.
What matters to me most now in regard to our trajectory is answering these questions:
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Answering those questions will take time. The test is that we would be found faithful in the waiting, the watching, and the walking. We’ll be doing all of those. Meanwhile, a few thoughts on what God is speaking to us lately:
Life in and out of the overlap
Each person that God has made is one of one; there are no duplicates. This is testament to the power and genius of God as well as to the value of human life: even if we weren’t made in the image of the Infinite God, if each human life is a unique combination of DNA, it is priceless. This is part of what makes death a tragedy. It also lays bare the hypocrisy of a culture that talks about celebrating diversity with its filthy lips while savagely murdering unborn children with its bloody hands. If a human life is worth celebrating, it is worth celebrating. Full stop.
Every man and woman who has ever drawn breath is a glimpse of the attributes of God, however imperfectly and incompletely expressed. And in His church, we who are born not of the will of man but of the Spirit aren’t just an expression of what God might be like. We are the actual Body of Christ in a world desperate for Good News. This is why it is so important that, as we mature, we bear an abundance of fruit for our King.
And if, as we have already agreed, each of us is unique, it stands to reason that each of us has a (subtly) different mission while we’re here. Even in the highest expression of fellowship and unity under the sun, the covenant union of one man and one woman—marriage—there is a riot of diversity. This is by design.
Picture a Venn diagram and you’ll get this: even in the lifelong union between a man and a woman, it’s not only permissible but desirable for each member of the “one flesh” to have its own specialty. Where the man and woman diverge from what they hold in common they express their utter uniqueness, and where they converge or enjoy overlap there is a beauty of fellowship that is outmatched only by Christ manifest in His church.
Convergence, too, is a state of awareness (or so I’ve understood it to be), the final stage at which leaders finally grasp their ultimate purpose and begin to apply it. I think I’ve begun to understand mine, and the reason I say that is because I feel old sensations in a new context.
For instance, I now walk with a profound sorrow because of how closely the Father has drawn me to Himself. I have seen things I cannot unsee, not only about God but about myself and the world I sojourn across. This produces a deep disquiet, an ache, even a longing for all that my faith tells me I have been given on deposit in Christ, and even more that I have not yet begun to imagine. Yet because Christ lives in me there is joy inexpressible, and it more than offsets the sorrow.
They intermingle, though, in very powerful ways. They make peace with each other in perhaps a comparable way to how mercy and justice meet in the Person of Christ Himself.
This is why it is true that with man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. This impossible admixture of opposites at peace with one another is like fuel for the fire of God within me, and though I can’t—or won’t—say precisely what it is with words, I believe that I know that I know that I know now both who I am and why I have been placed here. Time is a gift that will testify to the veracity of these things.
And if the scenic route of the past six or seven months is what was required, and since God wastes nothing, it’s worth it. I’m not my own.
Making Peace with the Design
God gave us a picture in Scripture of how absurd it would be for a pot-in-progress to speak out in contradiction or protest from within the midst of the guidance of the Potter’s hand. Far be it from me to argue with God about why He made me. Or to what purpose. Or indeed, how He is shaping me even now.
This may be a scandal, but as I grow in Christ I find that even the so-called best things in life don’t satisfy. I see that Mr. James May has bought half a pub, for instance, and I acknowledge that for him it is a lifelong dream fulfilled. I congratulate him. But I can see in his eyes on YouTube that it hasn’t fulfilled what he really longs for; what we all really long for. Most of us never come to a place where we can actually express the truth. I think perhaps the closest we can get is to confess that we believe in the One whom the Father sent. And it means that not even wedded bliss, not even fatherhood, not even half a pub, can ultimately satisfy.
When I was a child, my home was blown apart by infidelity. My earliest memories bear deep hammer blows that to this day mark me with how empty a home wrecked by sin can be, and the manner in which some of the adults involved chose to solve it only served to continuously wound and break the remnants into ever smaller and unrecoverable splinters. It’s not lost on me that I see the state of our nation today as pretty much the same. But as a result of that early trauma, at around age two, my earliest central motivation was to build a family for myself, a family of my own, because my home had been destroyed. Every girl I met was a potential candidate for the founding of my own perfect replacement for the broken home I was raised in, and that dysfunction took decades of searing pain before it burned to ash.
By the grace of God, I have been blessed with an exceptional home in my wife and children; it is well beyond brick and mortar and well beyond what I could have asked or imagined. Yet the longing for home remains. I take that as a gift. I take it to mean that I will only ever find peace in Jesus Christ. I will never be home here in this fallen world, not now that I have been activated into the same old rugged grace that made David a man after God’s own heart, that Paul clung to and contended to preach, that the reformers risked their lives for, that the patriots of the young American colonies bled and died to bequeath to their posterity, and that God renews for me with every sunrise.
It would be wrong for me to require anything of God or to dictate terms to Him on how He ought to use April and me together. I have my strengths and weaknesses, as does she. Perhaps going forward I may be less involved in music making. Part of me grieves that, if it’s true, but who am I to argue if God is instructing me to lay it down? Should God call both me and my bride to the same exact thing for the rest of our lives? Are we to be carbon copies of each other and compete to see who best fulfills the mission brief for our particular model? That wouldn’t be the perfection of love. That wouldn’t be beautiful symmetry, it would be boring and even a little monstrous.
Far better to leave the design in the Designer’s hands. My role is not to cast vision from down here but to give obedient expression to what He reveals from on high.
More in common than not
I don’t know who I’m encouraging with this, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a married couple to be gifted and called to different and complimentary things. You may find that even though you have your differences, you have more in common than not. God is both creative and unstoppable.
For April and me, worship is that thing we hold in common. For years, she and I have worshiped together and loved it, and we’ve been a package deal as worshipers, through music, everywhere we’ve gone. It has found expression in (subtly) different ways every time. Most often, she leads and I’m her drummer. I’ve been known to co-lead on a song or two and even play bass (which is great fun). I’ve stepped in and stepped up where there has been a need, especially in the past year or so.
But it took a season of groundbreaking these past six months for me to be able to fully understand His intent and to make peace with it. In essence, I understand now that she leads worship in song, and I lead worship in word, whether spoken or written. Both forms are valid, and both reach those whom God has predestined to be reached by each of us.
C.S. Lewis refused to take the bait whenever he was offered an opportunity to speak about anything controversial, especially if it was theological. He said that if the church needed to do anything, it needed to nail down what we all can agree on, not dither about with all that divides us. It is the same in a marriage, and it is the same in a nation. Too many of us expend too much energy on the nonstarters. We need to come toward what John Wimber called the “radical middle” and champion our wide places, our common ground. When this becomes clearly reasonable to us, we must realize along with it that all celebrating diversity can ever do is further splinter an already divided nation. A body cannot function properly if its members are constantly obsessing over what distinguishes them from each other. The only way forward, toward brotherhood, harmony, and peace is for us to major on the things that unite us as one. That’s what e pluribus unum means, and it is not only instructive for the church but also for each man and woman joined before God in covenant marriage. We all have our differences, but we have much more in common than not.
Preparation and Waiting
No one has immunity from the wait. Waiting is universally loathed by all men, but especially the immature. It is a built-in feature of all that God has designed for us under the sun. Seeds take time to germinate. Work takes time to come to fruition. Buildings take time to build.
A subtle shift in perspective makes time not an enemy but a gift. Space in which to work. This is good.
The Christian sees much more clearly than the unbeliever does because he is not only able to look forward with the eyes of faith (where the unbeliever has no vision) but also to employ hindsight (which the unbeliever has, although augmented by neither faith nor mercy) under the guidance of his Father (to Whom the unbeliever has no access). Therefore, being not of this world, the Christian is uniquely equipped for navigation—whether he stays or goes.
There is much about timing in this concept.
Faith isn’t some magical power of foresight or a mystical ability to overcome anxiety. When God reveals Himself to a man or woman, a transformation takes place. They have a confidence they didn’t possess before. Where before they would have struggled to see, now they trust.
It is possible to demonstrate a lack of trust through overeagerness. That is, I can, by exemplifying an instant-obedience-to-orders ethos, betray the fact that my heart lacks enough trust to wait. It does require trust to go, but I’m finding out that staying—waiting—takes a whole different level of faith (demonstrated trust). And that’s okay; we learn as we go—or wait—here.
God spoke to us in August of 2019 that the following twelve months would be a season of preparation for us. I took that to mean that something potentially enormous would happen in August of 2020. It did, but it was nothing I would have asked for. What I can see now that I could not see then is God actively working in our lives to grow our faith. Specifically for me, that means cultivating trust. I can see now that preparation, trust, and other good things take time. That means waiting.
If I Knew Then What I Know Now
I was 30 in 2005. I was reminiscing on a recent walk that I was a totally different man then. They say youth is wasted on the young, and they’re right. It’s also true that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Oh, how I squandered it! If I could go back, I wouldn’t just have a nice little sitdown with my younger self, I would slap the taste right out of my younger mouth. The past 15 years have been instructive. They were so instructive that I’m looking over my shoulder a little for the 60-year-old version of me. If I manage to learn as much in the next fifteen years as I learned in the previous fifteen, the 60-year-old me should wring my 45-year-old neck.
One thing I’ve learned is that it’s no use looking back in regret. There’s nothing to be done but plead mercy over that mess. And then plead grace over the now and the not yet. I draw my next breath by grace and mercy.
And the tough stuff in life can be a gift, but you have to let it be. There are times when the gate to Boot Camp swings open and the drill instructor beckons us in. It’s our decision whether or not we submit to the suffering that’s required to make a man out of us, but once we do, irrevocable things begin to go into motion. We don’t see the benefits of Boot Camp until we step off the other side of the parade deck in our dress blues, having earned the title few others have ever earned.
Or even wanted, frankly.
Nobody wants to suffer. We run from pain out of self-preservation. Once we put a few miles on the clock, though, we begin to realize there’s no escape. All we can do is—perhaps—engage the pain on our terms. That is, we can confront it proactively rather than be victimized by it. There will be no escape from it, though. And it’s universal principles like this that boggle my mind when I think about how so many people live like they aren’t true when they so obviously are. Whenever I stand in front of a camera to preach what God has given me, and whenever I stand on a stage to do the same, I remind myself that there is nothing good in me apart from Christ, that there’s one reason I can stand: because He took the fall. He was bruised, he was beaten and tortured and murdered, He became sin.
Walking with a Limp
My mentor says that you can’t really walk with Jesus unless you’re limping. That means you have to have gotten real with Him at some point and really had it out with Him; wrestled with Him like Jacob did. That’s how you get to the other side, where He changes your name.
I’m convinced that He likes a man who is willing to lay it all on the line with Him. I did that recently. Again. This time, He took me to a place I hadn’t ever allowed Him to take me. As a result, I am so changed that I feel like I just got saved.
And I have literally, physically, been walking with a limp lately. I didn’t think I’d need a cane at 45, but for about a month, I did. I was doing my usual roadie thing, packing up our gear after a worship session, when I moved wrong and something went thunk in my spine. After four adjustments at the chiropractor and a whole lot of physical rehab, the pain has become manageable enough for me to run again on most days. I think I overdid it the other day on a short run by finishing with a sprint though because the pain returned for a while, albeit in one of my hamstrings.
It’s a powerful object lesson because while it is true that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, it is also true that He said, “apart from Me you can do nothing.” Walking with a limp is all about finding balance, you see, and sometimes God rewrites all your rules. I say rules, but I mean assumptions, don’t I? Yes.
The chiropractor told me that I needed to keep moving if I was going to heal, no matter how bad it hurt. My first walks with that pain were short and required a cane. On one occasion, I couldn’t even get to the end of the driveway. But I took what I could get; I moved as much as I could and never sat down; I always stood to write and still do, most of the time. After a few weeks, on one walk I tried breaking into a little jog. It was bearable. I didn’t seize up. I did that a few times on subsequent walks, until one day I suited up for a run once again. It had been more than a month. The run went well. In one recent week, I nearly ran sixteen miles, eclipsing my previous ten-miles-a-week norm. But every time I go out, whether to walk or to run, it hurts now. I mean, it always has; it’s just that I feel a little more fragile now. And I’m chasing the pain around in my body. Sometimes it’s the back, sometimes it’s the hammies, and sometimes it’s the knees. It’s becoming familiar.
I’m not a pro, but I find that it helps to think of myself as an athlete.
The athlete is intimately acquainted with pain. It’s not just a way of life; it’s a consequence of the life he chooses. It is a result of the choice he has made to discipline his body in the pursuit of better form, higher performance, personal excellence, all of those motivational poster cliches. The athlete doesn’t see pain as an adversary. If it’s not a friend, it’s at least the opposite party to an armistice, and there is an abstinence from declaration of war. It is the same for us in our duality when we walk with Jesus. Too many of us, myself included for too many years, don't walk because we don't want the shame of a limp. We're not invested in the full process; we expect Him to one day level us up to the point where the pain finally quits.
That’s not how it works.
Instead, we chase the pain around in our flesh as we do what we can with what we have, and we need God to bridge the gap constantly between what we can manage and what He has called us to do in His name. As we join with Him in the work (His work, not ours) we find not that the pain goes but that our tolerance for it—indeed possibly even our taste for it—increases. Because His death is inseparable from His life, we drink it all and find that the light always overcomes the darkness.
There are moments of ecstasy as we surpass with ease barriers that had heretofore swatted us backward. There are revelations of glory as we from time to time see the bigger picture from the summits of our lives, and those are really good. But it is a far better thing I do when I dig in the dirt of the valley, doing what I can do, then behold—God gives the increase. I don’t need a mountaintop to see God because He reveals Himself anywhere He wants, anywhere we need Him to.
Hope
What would I say to a world in desperate need of hope? I would say this: you need to believe in Jesus. That’s the work that He said the Father has for us; simply to believe in the One He sent. Nothing more, nothing less.
There is no elusive answer, no dark solution we need to excavate and bring to the light of man’s understanding. Fact is, the answer has been right in front of us all the time. The Answer can never be moved. But time will come to an end one Day.
Most men reject Him now because they love the darkness and they think they can defer consequence. But there will come a time when darkness becomes eternally obsolete. Things whispered in the dark will be shouted from rooftops. All who have loved the darkness with their lives will regret their choice, even make their hatred of the Most High—and their agony—eternal.
All I can do for now is live like I believe it, and believe that it matters.
With a certain hopeless perspective, I can look back on the past six or so months and lament about all of my self-perceived failures. That’s the perspective that’s ready to give in to the rewriters of history, the hatemongers who, because of their racism, assume that everyone else must also be incurably racist and therefore reprogrammed to think of honest history as offensive. That perspective is, to use one of their buzzwords, “unsustainable.”
I would say it’s untenable. There’s no life possible in it.
I’m sick to death of these Pharisees, these offspring of Satan, assuming that because they’ve slithered out the same old propaganda tens of millions of times, everybody’s with them. We’re not buying it anymore, and really some of us never have. The stench coming from their self-obsession, their worship and fear of man, is obvious.
I prefer the perspective that trusts in the God who has always come through for His people, who indeed came through in Christ and settled accounts with all challengers from the beginning to the end. There is no one like Him. I am found in Him, and all my efforts to follow Him, however spastic or magnificent, are like filthy rags. Thank God Jesus makes all the difference for those who call on the Name.
Only Yahweh Saves. There is no other. Even in America today.
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