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.
Posted by RC-Lisa Sproul on Saturday, January 23, 2021
Denominations, we are told, divide. We are told by apologists for the one true church, both the one true church that bows toward Rome and the other one, those who bow toward Constantinople, that our divisions are damning evidence against us, that we cannot possibly be true Christians because we are not united.
What is perhaps most maddening, at least about the latter group, is that they do not bolster their view with an appeal to tradition, but by turning to the Word of God. In what has come to be known at Jesus’ High Priestly prayer, Jesus Himself petitions the Father, “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one” (John 17: 19-21a). If Jesus asks that His church may be one, and if Jesus has now received all authority in heaven and on earth, then isn’t it necessarily the case that His church is one? And if we have many denominations, and many more truly micro-denominations (those little denominations that have only one church in them, the independents that may think they are avoiding the problem by being non-denominational), then manifestly we cannot be the church of Jesus Christ.
The first premise is, to my way of thinking, compelling. If the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, what must the prayers of Jesus avail? What He prays for He gets. The sleight of hand comes in the second premise. It comes by way of equivocation and question begging. Yes, the church must be one. But is being one the same thing as having the same guy sign all our checks? In the Roman Catholic religion we have everyone from a squishy pope, to the liberal Hans Kung, to devout laity, to old order Romanists who think the only trouble with Trent was that it didn’t go far enough, and the only trouble with the Reformation is that it didn’t wait until Vatican II. These are the folks more Catholic than the Pope. Are all these really one?
This, of course, isn’t a new phenomenon. The church at Rome has always had factions, divisions, differing views on this critical issue and that. That they remained one visible institution establishes exactly what? The one true church of the Eastern Orthodox has much the same problem. Every time you show them a church father teaching an ancient version of sola Scriptura, or a patriarch embracing Calvinism, they tell you, “Oh, that’s not the authentic tradition.” How can you tell the authentic tradition? By the convictions of the Orthodox guy you’re talking to at the time. I’ve even had the privilege of watching two “brothers” in this one pure tradition go at it like cats and dogs.
Unity then, cannot be found maintaining some form of institutional connection. If that were the case one could argue that all denominations that are part of the National Association of Evangelicals are “one.” Neither, on the other hand, is unity something utterly invisible. We can’t claim of our unity, “Well, it’s there, you just have no way of knowing. Trust me on this.” There is a visible unity of the church.
It is not in the Apostles’ Creed, but in the Nicene Creed that we confess that we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. What makes us one is that we are visibly, or perhaps more accurately, audibly, the apostolic church. Any denomination that upholds the essentials of the apostolic faith, is by definition, a part of the one true church. In fact, the only thing that can unite the church of Christ is the confession of Christ. I am far more tightly bound with Charles Stanley than even Hans Kung is bound with the Pope. I have a greater unity with some eighty-year old sister down at the local AME church than the Patriarch of the Serbian Church has with the Patriarch of the Greek church. She and I have the same Spirit indwelling us because, though we differ on many issues, we profess together the same faith. All that the patriarchs share is their delusions.
We can do better. We can bring into sharper focus the visible unity that Christ calls us to. But the pathway there isn’t by going to Rome, or to Constantinople, nor back to the mainline churches- all three of which have denied the faith. The pathway to unity is to hold with both vigor and precision to the essentials of the faith, and to show forth the love of Christ to those who likewise hold to that faith. Paul and Barnabas went their separate ways. They did not share a common strategy. But they separated in unity. They did so sharing the burden to preach Christ, and Him crucified. They did so as part of the one body of our Savior, whose prayers never return void. Our great High Priest has made us one, and nothing can, or ever will undo that.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a platform, a medium that was accessible by all, where differing opinions could be expressed? Where no ideology was privileged and no ideology suppressed? A kind of Mars Hill. One question though. Should this forum be public or private? If it’s private we have a problem. The owner would have the right to determine what, if anything crosses his line. If he allows people to agitate for genocide, if he leaves room for Neo-nazis, conspiracy theorists, child trafficking apologists, his customers might abandon ship. If, on the other hand, he doesn’t allow such things, suddenly the medium isn’t accessible by all.
Maybe then it would be best if this platform was owned by the government. That way no owner could determine what crosses a line and what doesn’t. But then you have this problem- the taxes I pay are being used to help propagate ideas I find reprehensible. Now Holocaust survivors’ taxes are building a platform for Holocaust deniers. Atheists are being taxed to pay for Christians to promote the gospel. Christians are being taxed to pay for atheists to evangelize their own unbelief. Child trafficking victims are being taxed to finance the propagation of the ideas of child trafficking apologists. Now what?
This conundrum, you may think, is being brought to you by the raging controversy over President Trump and the Sith Lords of Social Media. This controversy has revealed differing perspectives. A few of us want to do away with foolish public accommodation laws altogether so that decisions about who we want to do business with can be made freely. Crazy I know, letting people make up their own minds. A few of you believe the government should make all such decisions. Most of you hypocritically believe others should be forced to do business against their will and that you should not.
My point, however, is not about social media, or bakeries being forced to bake cakes for faux marriages. Rather it is about the largest platform in the country, which is controlled by the government, that actually exercises iron-clad control over content that is deeply offensive to many and that taxes citizens to pay for it all. It is the government school system. It is as if conservatives, fed up with Twitter’s silencing of opposing views are told “If you don’t like it, build your own social network.” And “Oh, by the way, we’re still going to make you pay for this social network.” Only this platform costs three-quarters of a trillion dollars every year. Trillion, with a t.
Conservatives are outraged over Twitter’s heavy-handed control over content, and at peace with the far more damaging iron-fisted control over education exercised by the government. We clutch our pearls over the President, the President I tell you, losing his posting privileges but think nothing of millions of little children being taught they are nothing but sophisticated germs, the fruit of random collisions of time, space and energy, being taught that they can decide for themselves whether they are little boys or little girls, being taught by the mere failure to mention His name, that Jesus doesn’t matter.
The Dark Lords of Silicon Valley are not to be trusted. They are disingenuous and diabolical. They are, however, mere teacup poodles nipping at the heels of liberty while the state is a rabid, steroid fueled Bull Mastiff. And we, fools that we are, think we can pet it into submission, train it into obedience, feed it into domestication. While its jaws descend upon our throats.
Yes and no. There is a perspective out there, driven I suspect more by psychology than theology, that looks down its nose at what is sometimes called “worm theology.” It suggests that we can be too down on ourselves, that looking too deeply into our sinful hearts is unhealthy and unbiblical. The Bible, however, gives a compelling portrait of our sinful nature before we are reborn (see Ephesians 2), and I would argue, after we are reborn (see Romans 7). To look more deeply into our sin is to look more deeply into His grace, and to respond more potently in love and gratitude. One thing most needful for me, and for the church in our age is a more honest, humble grasp of our own sin.
While it is likely not possible to overstate the scope of our sin apart from His grace (though it is possible to miss the blessing of that grace in stamping us with His image) nevertheless there is at least one way in which we can “over-repent.” We do so when we repent for things that are not sins.
There are at least two ways we repent for things that are not sins. First, when we in the church add to God’s law. The Pharisees, we remember, were infamous for what we call “fencing the law.” Here we take an actual law God has given, and to be extra certain we don’t commit that sin we make the law broader than God Himself did. The Pharisees were neither the last, nor the first to do this. Eve is the patron saint of this error. Remember when the serpent asked if God had forbidden Adam and Eve to eat of any of the trees of the garden she rightly replied that God had given them liberty to eat of any tree, save one. Her good beginning however soon came with a gloomy portent when she added, “Neither may we touch it.” God had said no such thing. Eve was the first to add to God’s law.
The second way we repent for things that are not sins is when we take on the burdens of the law from the world. They have their own law that often has little connection to God’s law. They are quick to condemn us, and sadly, too often we are willing to take on the stigma. Consider the tragic case of Joshua Alcorn. This young man some years ago took his own life, and left behind on social media his explanation for why. Joshua wanted to go through that process by which some men disfigure themselves and take in chemicals all designed to make him appear as a woman. His parents, professing believers, did not support either this process, nor the notion that Joshua was a girl trapped in a boy’s body.
The death is of course a terrible tragedy. The young man was struggling with deep despair. But the “lesson” we are called to learn, that too many professing believers have owned, is that Joshua is dead because of his cruel, narrow, believing parents. And we Christians are supposed to repent for our lack of understanding of those struggling with sexual identity. Trouble is, perhaps apart from Fred Phelps, I’m unaware of Christians lacking in understanding for anyone struggling with sexual identity or any other sin for that matter. I am aware that there are Christians, sadly too few, who are unwilling to call evil good in the boiling cauldron of sexual identity politics. The tragedy of the death of Joshua Alcorn was tragic because of Joshua’s death, not because we Christians won’t get with the program of our postmodern sexual free fall.
As when we in the church add to God’s law we end up distorting who God is, so when we embrace the world’s law as God’s law we do the same. We may weep for Joshua, and weep with his parents. We may not, however, add to or subtract from the law of God in the process. We have plenty of real sins to repent of without taking on the yoke of the contemporary zeitgeist. When we repent for things that are not sins, then we need to repent, for distorting the law of God, and therefore, His character.
