RC Sproul Jr

Reductio ad absurdum is a rather potent tool. You take the premises of someone’s flawed argument and push them to their extreme. Everyone can see it doesn’t work, and you’ve destroyed the argument. Consider minimum wage laws. As long as the legal minimum wage is below the market wage, no harm no foul. When it raises above the market wage it messes everything up. “But,” the economically illiterate cry, “everyone deserves a living wage. People need to make at least $15 an hour. Let’s pass a law.”

OK. If the law can create jobs that pay above a certain level, why stop at $15? Shouldn’t the government, if they really cared about us, make the minimum wage $15 million an hour? Whatever objection you have for the latter will apply to the former.

The same principle applies to tariffs. I admit they look like a brilliant idea, if you’re only looking at part of the equation (just like a $15 million an hour wage requirement). It’s terrible that those Japanese sell better cars for less money than American manufacturers. It’s evil that Canadian lumber costs less than American lumber. How dare those Germans build superior, cheaper cuckoo clocks to our American made ones? Something must be done.

You should be able to see the problem already. Tariffs are built on the premise that the way to prosper a nation is to have its citizenry pay more for inferior goods. If foreign goods, without tariffs, dominate a market, what explanation could there be other than the foreigners who made the goods do it better and/or cheaper? And wouldn’t it help the economy for us to buy goods that are better and/or cheaper?

But wait. There’s more. Every good that is imported to this country has a corresponding good that is exported from this country. Those trucks bringing lumber, those ships bringing cars and cuckoo clocks to the United States do not return empty. They return with the goods that Americans are able to produce better/cheaper than those nations that import our exports. Every job you “save” by driving out foreign competition is a job you lose for a company that beats foreign competition overseas. You are losing better jobs to save worse jobs.

Back to the experiment. If tariffs are such a boon to the economy, why these petty halfway measures of 25% or 50% tariffs? Why not charge Japan $1 million per car they wish to import here? Why not charge Canadian companies $1 million for every two by four they want to send here? Think of all the tariff income we’d bring in.

The free market is that market which will always and everywhere maximize prosperity. Every form of tinkering with it by the clumsy hands of government will throw sand in the gears, every, single, time. You might make a case that this form of taxation is less destructive than that form of taxation. What you cannot do is claim that any form of taxation creates a net gain for the economy. Tariffs are intrusive, expensive, oppressive government over-reach, something I thought we’d decided to put behind us.

This is part and parcel of what it means to love your neighbor. You don’t ask the government to make them pay an extra tax so that your business can beat his business. You encourage the government to stay out of your neighbor’s business.

Does God still speak to us? Of course He does. I have noted before that I have walked through a change in my thinking with respect to charismatic gifts. I once described myself as a leaky cessationist. I meant by that that in principle I agreed with the cessationist position, but that of course I need to leave room for God to be God. My own father experienced multiple unusual experiences where God seemed to be communicating to him. I now describe myself as a cautious continuationist. That means that I agree in principle with the continuationist position but leave room for a healthy skepticism of the often tough to swallow claims of some charismatics.

What I find interesting, however, is where both groups agree with each other. Precious few cessationists are water, or Spirit tight in their thinking. When my father would recount hearing God tell him, when he was a young teenager, and before he was even a believer, that He was going to send him around the world teaching people about Him, and that he should take Vesta, I don’t think even John MacArthur would wince. At least enough so you could tell.

At the same time, happily there are precious few charismatics in the world who insist that we all append their revelations to the back of our Bibles. Apart from cult leaders, charismatics agree with cessationists that the canon of Scripture is closed, that whatever experiences they may be having, it is not the same thing as what happened to the Apostle John on the island of Patmos. Even continuationists believe that infallible canon revelation has ceased.

Which means, doesn’t it, that we’re really not too terribly far apart? We all agree that God can, in one way or another, communicate to us. Even the Bible itself says that the Spirit testifies to our spirit that we really are the children of God (Romans 8:16). Not that God has children. Not that we are called to be His children. That we, we whose literal names are not literally in the Bible, are literally His children. That is God speaking to us.

Even cessationists believe that God continues to speak to us. Some of us believe He reveals things through dreams and visions. All of us believe in testing the spirits. Some of us believe we can feel checks in our spirits. All of us believe in being Bereans. Some of us believe we have been given a message God wants us to give. All of us believe we have heard, even if spoken from a man, a message that God wanted us to receive.

I believe sometimes people try to rationalize their sins or bolster their opinions by suggesting God told them something God didn’t tell them. Sometimes people try to hide from a message from God for fear that it might mean they have to repent. Or might make them look weird. I believe we should show the same grace we would like to receive to both kinds of people. I believe we should be careful how we speak, especially when speaking of how we believe God spoke to us. I believe we should be careful how we judge, especially when speaking of how others believe God has spoken to them.

Circumstances, under God’s sovereign hand, can and do change. The shadows have passed away with the coming of Jesus. The canon has closed. God, however, is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is there, and He is not silent.

It’s such a shame. We allow ourselves, when any blessing goes to eleven, to lose sight of the blessing it was at one. We are rightly amazed by His redeeming grace, that saved a wretch like me. We ought also be amazed by that grace that we dismissively call “common.” It is a good thing to distinguish these two kinds of grace. A bad thing to lose sight of that which they have in common, unmerited favor.

As I type I am chewing a bit of dried mango. I confess that, because it’s been coated with a bit of sugar, that it’s not a kale salad. Neither, however, is it a hot fudge sundae. It brings various nutrients into my body, fueling me for part of the day. But it is also delicious, delightful, divine. No it’s not God. But it is His gift, which I do not deserve. Unmerited favor, available for believers and unbelievers alike.

We not only could, but should, catalogue the innumerable such gifts we and our unbelieving neighbors enjoy. Sunshine, songbirds, and sweaters. Air conditioning, antibiotics and aluminum. Barbequed meats, boiled peanuts and baked brie. And like a jaded and sullen teenager we walk through this cornucopia of pleasures thinking nothing of it. We’re so busy grumbling about what we don’t have we miss out on what we do have.

What is heartbreaking is that we, recipients of His redeeming grace, are nearly as likely to miss His common grace as those who receive His common grace alone. Romans 1 reminds us we in our natural state do not acknowledge Him nor are we thankful (1:21). Despite being indwelt by His Spirit, we carry this sin into our new life in Him.

We are numb, dull of senses. We are dwarves in paradise who think themselves locked in a dark and stinking stable. The God we by nature flee from, hate, refuse to acknowledge, feeds us, cares for us, gives us life that we might heed His call to repent. He gives us snowflakes and raindrops, blue skies and cool breezes, sunrises and sunsets. He gives us sushi and ice cream, sausage and farm fresh eggs.

We who have received His redeeming grace have also received a profoundly potent invitation. He invites us to ask Him to bless us with wisdom, and gives to all liberally without finding fault (James 1:5). So let’s ask Him for the wisdom to see and give thanks for all that He has already blessed us with. For the wisdom to keep ever before us the shame of what we have earned, and the abundance of what we have been given. May our very faces, beaming with joyful gratitude, be the very light that draws in those who were chosen from before time.