Imagine six people, two fathers, two mothers, two sons. Two of the parents, we’ll call them the Sprouls, are Christians. Sinners to be sure, but by God’s grace, repenting ones. The other parents, we’ll call them Mr. and Mrs. Horace Mann, are non-Christians. This theological difference, of course, will impact all manner of convictions. Each parent, I suspect, would be saddened by the convictions of the other parents. The Sprouls would hope that one day all six would agree with them, that they would embrace the finished work of Christ. The Manns would like all six to agree with them, to embrace that glorious notion that we are cosmic accidents who will return to the dust. These are important, life-shaping issues that separate these two men. So what do we do, especially with these two little boys?
What I propose is that the Sprouls instruct their son in their faith. We are called, as Christians, to raise our son in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:1-4). If God should provide opportunity we would certainly welcome conversation with the Manns, in which we would call them to repentance and saving faith. If God should so bless we would then delight to encourage them to raise their son in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. But, if they will not, we are left to pray. As we would pray for their son. What we would not do is ask the state to regulate how the Manns teach their son. We would not insist that the boy must study the 10 Commandments and the Reformation. We would not threaten them that if they failed to meet our regulations we would require his son to be homeschooled at our house.
The Manns, however, all too often, have not been willing to reciprocate our broadmindedness. In their concern over what we teach our children, they are quite willing to have the state tell us what we must teach, and how long. Their perspective is not live and let live, but live like us, or else. Fail to educate in our home as they wish and we will be forced to send our son elsewhere to be educated as they wish. Sadly, however, they do not stop there. The Manns want still more. They want the authority to determine what and how our children must learn, and they want us to pay for the education of their own child. They aren’t saying, “Regulate the Sprouls, but leave us alone.” They are saying, “Regulate the Sprouls, and take of their wealth to finance our educational goals for our son. Tax their wealth to pay for our regulation to make sure their son is regulated as we see fit.” The Manns are the aggressors, insisting that the state force us to measure up to their convictions.
My hope this little illustration might help us see through the fog of battle in the education wars. It is true that Christians stand on one side, and unbelievers on the other. But we’re not asking for different versions of the same thing. We Christians are not asking, at least those of us who remember our calling to do unto others, to control the education of the children of our neighbors. We’re not trying to seize government schools for Jesus. Jesus doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t call us to take from our neighbor so that we might teach our neighbor and his children what they don’t believe. What we want is liberty. For ourselves, and our neighbors. We believe in the power of the gospel to change they world. They believe in the power of the sword. We are financed by the gifts of God given freely by His people. They are financed by forcefully taking from their ideological enemies. We are seeking to live by the golden rule. They want to control our children.
Thesis 59 We must seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.
It’s a pretty simple concept that we let slip too easily out of our hands, because it reveals our weaknesses. The concept is this- when the Bible warns us against something, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll be tempted to do just that. The point is not that we are so contrarian that when a new rule comes to us we just have to break it. Rather the point is that the Lord does not waste His holy breath on things we are not prone to falling into. He warns us against real dangers, that are dangerous to us.
In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus takes the time to redirect our priorities. He warns us,
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” (Matthew 6: 25-31).
There is plenty of encouragement for us here. We’re called to trust our Father, to rest in the glorious truth that we matter to Him. There’s a gentleness in this warning from Jesus, but it is a warning, a rebuke even. We worry about the things we ought not to worry about and fail to worry about what we ought to worry about. Francis Schaeffer suggested that the god of this age is “the god of personal peace and affluence.” And, like our fathers before us, we are masters at melding together the worship of the living God and the worship of the god of the age. Jesus is telling us to stop. He’s telling us to tear down the idols we have set up and serve, and to devote ourselves single-mindedly to the making manifest the glory of the His kingdom, to pursue obedience.
Reformation requires of all of us that we reform our value systems, that we toss overboard that which weighs us down, that we break through every barrier, including those that reside in our hearts. Reformation, in other words, requires that our hearts be re-formed by His Spirit, for His ends and to His glory.
Friends,
Tonight, 7 eastern, we continue our study, The ABC’s of Theology, looking at A is for Atonement. Need a basic refresher? Feeling a mite light in your theological credits? Better still, would you like to know God better? Join us online at RC-Lisa Sproul on Facebook Live, or in person at our home in Fort Wayne. All are welcome.
In the ethics class I teach I typically ask my students this question, “Should people be able to freely make their own economic decisions without the approval of the government?” Almost always the whole class responds “Yes.” Then I ask this question, “If I ask Bob here if he’d like to come clean my gutters, and that I would pay him $5 an hour to do so, and he agrees, should we be able to reach that agreement?” Almost always the whole class stays with “yes.” Then I point out what should be obvious, “Bob and I, as things stand today, could both be arrested for reaching that agreement. It is against the law for me to pay him $5 an hour and against the law for him to work for $5 an hour.” Suddenly, my students, most of them working entry level jobs, and entering the classroom all in favor of minimum wage laws are transformed into lovers of liberty. They see the affront to the dignity of us all that is inherent in such laws. That, however, is just one reason minimum wage laws are terrible.
That said, one common objection betrays an ignorance of how economics works. Many who are on the side of the angels in opposing such laws are on the side of the serpent in their reasoning. “If President Biden succeeds in making $15 an hour the minimum wage across the country it will cause all sorts of prices to dramatically rise. The Big Mac you may pay $5 today will suddenly cost $15. Nope. It won’t. The reason it won’t is because the price of a Big Mac has precious little to do with the cost to bring one to market. Don’t believe me? Try this experiment. Suppose instead of costs going up, they drop dramatically. Someone discovers a way to make Big Macs for 5 cents. Will the cost drop to 15 cents? Of course not. The Big Mac will fetch what it can from the market. That is, it’s sale price is determined not by its production costs but by the consumer. Just about no one would pay $15 for a Big Mac, whatever it might cost to produce one. Just about no one would sell one for 15 cents, whatever it might cost to produce one.
The reason this matters is because it gets at the real problem of minimum wage laws. They do not raise costs. Instead they price unskilled labor out of the market place. Just like no one would pay $15 for a Big Mac, no one would pay $15 for an hour of labor from an unskilled laborer. It has nothing to do with the kindness or cruelty of ownership, everything to do with the market for labor. The government, no matter how powerful it may be, hasn’t the power to make consumers value a good or service (including the labor of others) differently than they value it.
But shouldn’t a person be able to make a decent living working 40 hours a week? Says who? As a writer, one successful enough to have published more than a dozen books with legacy publishers, successful enough to publish thousands of articles over the course of the last 35 years I would guess I’ve earned about $100,000, not a month, not a year, but in total. That’s less than $3000 a year. Taking into account all the hours I put in in both research and writing, I’ve earned considerably less than $3 an hour. That is not a decent living and is the fruit of actual skilled labor. Why are my earnings so low? Because no one is interested enough in my writing to pay more for it. There is insufficient market demand for me to make a decent living working this job for 40 hours a week. That’s ok. The market doesn’t owe me a living. My publishers are not mistreating me. My audience isn’t cruel and uncaring. The only ones cruel and uncaring are those politicos who say to those whose labor the market values at less than $15 an hour, “No work for you.”
Once again a government power grab gets disguised as compassion. Once again the ones “helped” are hurt the most. Once again the correct answer is liberty.
Was blessed to be a guest on this helpful podcast. We covered whataboutism- what it is and what it isn’t. Check it out.
