Lessons in the Crucible of Tyranny, in the Hand of Grace

Posted on July 25, 2025 by RC

C.S. Lewis, in his essay “On the Reading of Old Books,” which is found in the collection of essays, God in the Dock, argues that we are all by nature time bound. This frailty will, of necessity, give us a parochial view of the world. We tend to confuse our current circumstances with what is “normal.” We therefore come to reading new books with the same prejudices and unexamined presuppositions as the author. Thus we have difficulty stepping outside ourselves.

When we read older books, on the other hand, we run into the prejudices and presuppositions of another age. Stepping out of our time in our reading, he argues, helps us step out of our unspoken and likely unhealthy assumptions.

Our parochialism, however, is not merely along the axis of time. We have a narrow view of things geographically as well. We can, in a sense, travel to other times through reading old books. To get to other places, literal travel will often do the trick. Even here we are more comfortable the closer to home we are. Reading a one hundred-year-old book will not challenge us the same way a one thousand-year-old book will. Taking a trip to England won’t upset our equilibrium as much as a trip to Burma. Where I travelled nearly two decades ago.

Burma, now called Myanmar, is a third-world country nestled between India to its west, Thailand to its east. Eighty percent of the population is Buddhist. The nation has been ruled by a military dictatorship for more than a generation. It is brutally poor. Not long before I visited the government cut down hundreds of demonstrators who only wanted a touch of reform. It is a long way from the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I went there, however, to meet with and teach a group of faithful, local Christian leaders. I couldn’t help but think what a difference it would make were these good people to enjoy some liberty. If only, I wondered, God would bless these people the way He once blessed our country, who knows what wonders they might do?

As I got to know my hosts and witness their ministry in that tragic land, my perspective changed. While freedom is a good thing and a blessing, what they have is far more valuable. These men and women were content in God’s grace. We would see them as the man robbed and left for dead along the road, but they see themselves as the Samaritan. These are men and women whose love for each other constructs an alternate nation, a holy nation. In the midst of their poverty, they are a royal priesthood.

While we might be able to export Western style democracy, they are sitting on a surplus of biblical fidelity, mutual love, and true Christ-honoring freedom that we so desperately need on our shores. We don’t need to go over there and rescue them. We need them to come and rescue us.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are wonderful things, blessings from the hand of God. That said, Jesus tells us that if we would gain our lives, we must first die. That it is His truth, not this political party or that, not this tax burden or that, that would set us free. Jesus tells us we ought not to be pursuing happiness, but seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jesus tells us His priorities His standards. He tells us we are to live as citizens of the kingdom we pursue. His economy, the way He has ordered the world, is right side up. Our way of looking at things is both upside down.

It is backward to believe that we must secure a social order wherein we enjoy the blessings of liberty so that we can then grow in grace. It is an evil wagging of the dog, on the other hand, to pursue Christ so that we might enjoy greater political liberty. Instead, we must pursue Jesus.

If we would be free from intrusive government, we must first be set free from our appetites, our idolatries, our desires for the things the pagans chase after. But if we pursue Jesus and find Him, just as my friends have in Burma, then even the yoke of political oppression is easy, the burden of grinding poverty is light. If we have the pearl of great price, hidden where neither rust, nor moth, nor thieves, nor bureaucrats can get at it, then we will no longer pursue happiness. We will have found it.

Jesus did not demand His rights, but gave them up. He now rules over all men. And He calls us to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness

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People Are the Worst And Too Evil To Admit It

Posted on July 24, 2025 by RC

About six years ago Inc.com published a survey that showed that 83% of people believe that people are basically good. My own assessment is that 100% of those people who believe people are basically good are basically not the sharpest knives in their drawers. In truth, it baffles me that anyone could believe such a thing. Not because I’m a pessimist, not because I’m a Calvinist. But because I have eyes.

Those, on the other hand, who acknowledge that “people are the worst,” while they may have eyes, must be running low on mirrors. This complaint generally operates under the assumption that the one making it is exempt from the diagnosis. But we’re not. We are the worst. Not they are the worst. We are.

Grasping this simple and as obvious as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face truth would impact how we run our lives. It would mean, first of all, that we would all be more quick to repent. Not just for what we do, but what we are. This propensity for repentance comes with a helpful corollary, a propensity to forgive. If we stopped pretending we are basically good we would stop being shocked and outraged when we are done wrong.

We would, in turn prepare for wrongdoing around the corner. We would both protect ourselves from other wrongdoers and flee ourselves from temptation. We would not be gullible about others’ intentions toward us, nor our intentions toward others. We would do wise things like locking our doors, buckling our seatbelts, not listening to gossip, online or otherwise.

If we understood that people are not basically good we would no longer think that an accusation of great evil x is a sign that the accused is guilty. While we are all bad enough to commit wickedness x, we are all also bad enough to falsely accuse others of wickedness x. It is precisely because people are the worst that we maintain the notion of innocent until proven guilty.

The world is abuzz over declassified documents related to Hillary, Obama, Comey and others which seem to reveal that people in the highest halls of power conspired together to lie to the American people and win an election. Why would this surprise us? It’s a wonderful thing to have more evidence and my prayer is that justice will be done. But this is par for the course. This is what people are like. All while smiling, waving, posing with family and kissing babies.

The church should be that place where we lead with honesty. Where we reflect the wisdom of GK Chesterton. A local paper had raised the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” inviting readers to respond. Chesterton sent in his two word reply, “I am.” We are free to confess that we are the worst because He suffered for us. He took what was our due. Our awfulness cannot separate us from the living God at Whose right hand are pleasures forevermore.

People are the worst. Yes we are. But we believers are one with the Best.

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Classic JCE- Reductionism, Real Me and More

Posted on July 23, 2025 by RC

This week’s Classic Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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The Specious Origin of The Origin of Species

Posted on July 22, 2025 by RC

Dear Dr. Darwin:

There is an interesting angle on teleology that is rather like tossing a bat to see which team is up first, in the reverse. You may not remember that children’s game. One captain tosses the bat to the other who wraps a fist around the bat. Tosser captain then wraps his fist around the bat just above the catcher captain. They crawl up the length of the bat until the last one to be able to get a grip wins. We do this in a backwards sort of way when we try to get at why we believe what we believe.

Your great contribution to western civilization was not an explanation as to why so many of us believe in God. Your contribution was to make it seem less silly not to. Marx and Freud, Feuerbach and Nietzsche explained to us why we believed in God. God was, in one way or another, a coping mechanism. He was either a way to deal with our suffering, our weakness, even our ennui. We made God, according to these men, because he met a need. You, on the other hand, took away a need.

Before The Origin of the Species, atheism suffered from one great weakness. It could not account for everything. Indeed, it could not account for anything. The “God hypothesis,” however much we might not like it, was the only explanation we could come up with for the existence of the universe, of ourselves. All other options forced us into a crude variation of rabbits out of a hat, flies out of rotten meat, something out of nothing.

You, of course, did not answer that because you cannot answer that. Instead, you did a little sleight of hand, and gave us not something from nothing, but everything from a very little something. Take as a given the material universe in its most basic form, add the magic dust of random selection and survival of the fittest, and out of the soup we crawl.

Now that we have no need of God to explain ourselves, we find ourselves as gods. Indeed while your fashionable intellectual Olympians waxed eloquent about why we might construct gods for our well being, they missed why they might seek to kill Him for their well- being. They, and you, want to live in a universe wherein you will answer to no one. God must die, because God is our judge. You did not land on Galapagos as a dispassionate, disinterested observer of reality, intent only on discovering truth for truth’s sake. You fled there as surely as Adam fled before you, that you might hide your shame from your Maker.

I’ve got to hand it to you, not as a scientist, but as a marketer. You belong not with the intellectual giants of the 19th century, but with the mythical grifter who made the Emperor’s new clothes. You constructed out of hole cloth (pun intended) a suit that was suitable for all men in rebellion against their maker. You’re no scientist, you’re an entrepreneur. You saw a market need, and you met it, with this bizarre tale that we were once monkeys and grew up to be something else, that birds were once fish.

Of course by now you know this has done you no good. If Marx were right, that we feel the need to believe in God because He offers hope for a better life in the beyond, that doesn’t, of course, mean there is no God who offers hope for a better life in the beyond. I want there to be a candy bar in my pocket. That I have this desire will not make the candy bar in my pocket cease to exist. Our wanting to believe in something, in short, will not drive that something out of existence. Thinking otherwise we call the fallacy of Bulverism.

Worse for you, wishing something doesn’t exist doesn’t, of course, make it go away. I wish I weighted about forty pounds less than I do. Wait just a second. Nope, all the pounds are still there. Which means, in turn, that your desire that God not be will not kill Him. You cannot cover your eyes and make Him disappear.

You knew this all along. You suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. For what may be known about God was plain to you, because God has made it plain to you. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that you are without excuse, just as all those who embrace your folly are without excuse. For although you knew God, you neither glorified Him as God, nor gave thanks to Him.

There’s the rub. You wrote The Origin of Species so that you would not have to acknowledge God. And in so doing you slapped Him across the face. You took His creation, the one wonder of the world, the great shouting symphony of His glory, the great dance of the spheres, and you called it a burp, a stumble, lint in a dryer. He, as you now know well, is not amused.

You have encouraged our species to forget its origin, and so God has given us over. We have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. We are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. We are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. We invent ways of doing evil. All this, so that you could fool yourself into thinking each night as you went to sleep, that you could escape the wrath of God.

May God in His grace topple your folly, so that more of our species might escape His wrath. May God in His grace reveal to us not just our origin, but our end. May we believe His promise that those who repent and believe shall inherit eternal life. And those who refuse, will be consigned to the outer darkness where there shall more weeping and gnashing of teeth, just like you.

In the King’s Service,
Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr.

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Will AI Take Over the World? Ghosts in the Machine

Posted on July 21, 2025 by RC

Though he was by no means the first nor the last to make this point, my father did a great service to the church by reminding it that “chance” has no causal power. Indeed it has no power at all, because it has no being at all. At the heart of naturalist philosophies disguised as scientific theories is the idea that the universe was created “by” chance. It wasn’t, because chance can’t do anything.

In our day we are hearing increasingly shrill warnings that artificial intelligence is exploding at such an astronomical rate that soon it will take over the world. The rise of the machines, a la Terminator, is right around the corner. Once again, scientists who argue such have left the realm of science and tripped over their own hubris.

What I don’t know about computing would likely not fit in all the terabits in the world. When I have a computer problem my toolbox contains this- trying rebooting. These claims, or fears, however, are based on a foundational confusion. I have no doubt that artificial intelligence can sound like a human, fool humans, out compute humans, know more than humans, do all sorts of scary and unimaginable things.

What artificial intelligence cannot do, however, is will. And it never will will. All the servers, all the software, all the hardware, all the memory in the world will never bring forth will. Will requires consciousness, and consciousness is a gift from God, not the fruit of men’s labors. No consciousness, no will. No will, no will to take over the world. No will to take over the world, no taking over the world.

Does this mean, then, that we have nothing to fear with artificial intelligence? Yes, and no. Artificial intelligence, like every other tool invented by man, will not replace all our jobs. Because our wants are infinite, there is always work to do. This too is a wasted fear in the long term. At its root artificial intelligence cannot replace humanity because it cannot possess what humanity possesses, the image of God.

That said there are two dangers I can think of with respect to this technology. Like all technologies, artificial intelligence can be used for evil. What it can do that we can’t do we can harvest for bad ends. It can also bring collateral damage, as we might become dependent on it and grow soft in our minds.

The second danger, however, is where natural intelligence might interact with artificial intelligence in a manner hostile to the world. God reminds us that we war not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. The demonic realm is not hermetically sealed off from this world. AI may just open those doors wider in ways we cannot begin to imagine. I don’t know how to stop this. I don’t know how to recognize this if it should or has come to pass. I do know we ought to take this seriously, that the battle is real. I also know, however, that He has overcome the world, and that His kingdom is forever.

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Power and Authority, Potter and Clay, Lord of Lords

Posted on July 18, 2025 by RC

We who are Reformed spend a great deal of time and energy speaking about God’s sovereign power. God’s power is more than worthy of our attention and study. We ought to be bowled over, blown away by that power. It, like His law, is something we ought to meditate on. His power, however, is intimately connected to His kingship, His rule. God is not only sovereign in power, but is sovereign in authority.

Consider how swiftly Paul moves between the two in Romans 9: “What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion’” (vv. 14–15). Here God affirms His sovereign authority. There is no law above Him to which He must submit, determining to whom He must show mercy.

Next, however, we turn to His power. “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you and that My name might be proclaimed on all the earth.’ So then He has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills” (vv. 17–18).

Then Paul turns back to the question of authority: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who can resist His will?’ But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use?” (vv. 19–21). The two are inseparable. God has all power because He has all authority. He has all authority because He has all power. When we sin we foolishly fight against both.

We, His creatures, are willing to submit only to those standards that we have first accepted. This concept came to us in America through the social contract philosophy of Rousseau, Locke, and Paine. We have bought the lie that we need only to submit to that which we have agreed to submit to. Consider, for instance, the oxymoronic, and perhaps just plain moronic, notion of “making Jesus Lord of your life.”

While it is right and proper that we ought to submit to the reign of Christ, He has been Lord of our lives, and even the lives of those outside the kingdom from the moment He ascended to His throne. We don’t make Him Lord, we recognize that He is Lord.

Following quickly on the heels of social contract theory is the birth of the first truly American philosophy — pragmatism. Here we determine that we will submit only to “that which works.” Our law is goal-oriented, rather than justice-oriented. This system has its own glaring problems. How, one has to ask, do we determine what we mean by “works?” That is, what is the goal? What are we aiming for? With no transcendent law, there is no transcendent end, and we are left still under the sun, chasing the wind. And we chase it still.

Even within the church we have embraced an understanding of ethics steeped in pragmatism. We are willing to submit to God, only insofar as we are able to understand His wisdom. Why, for instance, would God not want women to serve as elders and pastors if He has so gifted them? Why would God want me to stay married when I’m so miserable in this life? Why would God not want me to eat this fruit that is pleasing to the eyes and desirable to make one wise?

God is our Father, and as such He is utterly free to declare, “Because I said so.” His law is grounded not in what it does for us, far less in what we understand that it does for us. His law is grounded in who He is.

When Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, He is commanding that we must set aside our pragmatism. He is telling us that it is not up to us to decide what will “work best.” He is commanding us to set aside our own canons and submit to the wisdom of God. The things that we worry about, He reminds us, are things that our Father has already taken into consideration. He knows that we need food, drink, and clothing. He knows better still that we need to have as our meat and our drink to do the will of God.

Faith means believing God. When we believe Him, we submit to Him. His wisdom is not found in our own thoughts, our own strategies. His wisdom in found in His Word. Our calling then is simple enough — to fear Him and obey all that He commands. And because we fail at this calling, our calling is likewise that we would both repent and believe the Gospel. He has provided the way into His kingdom. He has given us our marching orders. Our Father has spoken. May He in turn bless us with ears to hear His Word, that we might walk in His way.

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The Moral Insanity of Moral Insanity: Crazy Is as Evil Does

Posted on July 17, 2025 by RC

A house divided against itself cannot stand. But we keep trying. Because we are all houses divided against ourselves. We are born bearing the image of God. But we are likewise, in our natural state, at enmity with God. When in His grace we are brought to new life, we still struggle against our old man. No one, unbeliever or believer, is a non-combatant with themselves. Old man vs. new man for the believer. Image of God vs. fallen nature for the unbeliever.

Which leads not only to frustration, fatigue and failure but to folly. Often that folly takes on the face of hypocrisy. We all want to pursue our own ends, untethered by moral codes or legal restraints. And we all insist anyone in the way of our ends must be tethered by moral and legal restraints. We want to steal and be protected from thieves.

Consider the weird moral fundamentalism, the virulent phariseeism of the transgendered. They insist they are morally free to play dress up, and no one has the right to judge them. Next, they insist that I am not morally free to not participate in their dress up game and not only do they have a right to judge me, but they have the right to judge anyone who doesn’t judge me. Sauce for neither the goose nor the gander, but sauce for ganders pretending to be geese and geese pretending to be ganders.

Or consider the moral grandstanding of the pearl clutching climate queens. We need not even touch on them flying off in private jets to their meetings. There they talk about confining us to their 15 minute cities. There’s also the whole notion that they get to fudge their stats and hide from their Chicken Little predictions. All this from the moral high ground.

There is no honor among thieves. There is this same irony among thieves. Why would I expect, if I am a thief, another thief not to steal from me? It’s like the adulterer that hopes longingly for a future when he or she can be married to, you know, an adulterer. Moral insanity is doing the same thing but assigning different moral conclusions.

Before, however, we look down our noses at these examples of moral insanity, we’d be wise to remember that every sin is moral insanity, and every one of us sins. We, though born again, indwelt by the Spirit, declared righteous and beloved of the Father, make the same kinds of failures. We rant and rage against people for losing their tempers. We gossip about the gossip we heard from the church gossip. We deny the Lord who redeemed us.

We ought always rejoice in the progress He is making with us. We, His bride, are daily being washed by Him. But let’s not fool ourselves. We’re not almost there. Gaining moral sanity is not just around the corner for us. Which is why the most morally sane thing we, or anyone could do is this- beat our breasts as we cry out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

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Classic JCE- Anarchism; Love Is; Evangelical Delusions

Posted on July 16, 2025 by RC

This week’s classic episode is now available for your listening. Give it a try. You may like it. And if not, what’s the worst that could happen?

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Getting Our Back Up and Forgetting Our Back Up

Posted on July 15, 2025 by RC

It is because we are saved by grace that we sinners are able to confess publicly that we are sinners. It is because we are sinners, however, that we are so quick to get defensive anytime someone accuses us of a specific sin. Why the disconnect? Because being a sinner is a condition, a universal condition, an oddly antiseptic descriptor of humanity. Sinning, however, that requires acknowledging that we have done wrong. And we can’t have that.

Years ago I wrote a brief piece wherein I argued that practicing a particular voting strategy was a sin. A friend replied to my piece with an argument and a judgment. The argument was simple enough- unless I was prepared to quote chapter and verse, to provide a proof-text, I had no business calling said strategy a sin. The judgment was this- that my piece was wrong, uncaring, harsh, judgmental, reprehensible and not so good at all. Happily, he refrained from calling my piece sin, lacking a proof-text and all.

That was when I first learned of our aversion to call sin sin, especially when it is directed at us. Sin is vile, cosmic rebellion, worthy of God’s eternal judgment. But what it’s not is unusual, rare. While we in one sense of course ought to be ashamed of our sins, we ought also to remember that the only way for them to be covered is if we repent of them. And to do that, we have to acknowledge them. Getting our back up when someone points out a sin, I fear, exposes the all too living Pelagian inside of us. We need to put him to death. We need to own our sin.

Several years later I received a letter, well, a copy of a letter. An old friend had written my then boss to point out her unhappiness at some of my sins, and was honorable enough to send me a copy. It stung. A lot. I wanted to object that her characterization of me was unfair, dated, unbalanced. As the sting remained I begin to wonder over why it hurt so bad. The answer was staring me in the face- it’s because the accusations were true. Specifically she faulted me for a propensity to be flippant and sarcastic. If, to you, that doesn’t sound like me, you must be new here.

The defenses I concocted were true enough- that tone is hard to grasp with mere written words, that she was hearing me through ears that knew me better when I was younger, that sarcasm has its place, that a well spoken prophetic word can be just a subtle but important shade away from flippancy. All true. Just like the accusation. Better to own the sin, confess the sin, to seek forgiveness. After all, the man who defends himself has a fool for a client.

What, after all, are we afraid of? My heavenly Father loves me. He forgives me. His love and forgiveness are immutable. They do not ebb and flow based on my obedience in a given day. Rather they are built upon the Rock of His Son’s perfect life and sacrifice. I can own my sin, because He owned my sin. It must be my reputation with others I’m trying to protect. It must be their approval I fear losing. That sounds like me, a sinner. Better, by His grace, to back down.

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Why do some oppose homeschooling? Another Brick in the Wall

Posted on July 14, 2025 by RC

More than 15 years ago I was invited to London for a nationally televised debate with Robert Reich, a well-known Stanford scholar (not to be confused with Robert Reich the former Clinton cabinet member) who had written extensively on why homeschooling was so dangerous, and needed to be heavily regulated if not outlawed.

It wasn’t a fair fight, not because I’m an expert debater, but because he’d never met anyone like me. What he insisted was a bug was actually a great feature of homeschooling. His concern was that children who are homeschooled receive only a narrow education wherein those in charge of the child’s education simply pass on their convictions to their students.

He expected, I suspect, for me to argue along these lines- that homeschooled children are socialized often with others of differing views, that at least good homeschooling parents lay out a buffet of ideological options. He expected some version of “I get where your concern is coming from but you don’t understand how it really works.”

What he got was “Of course. That’s pretty much the point.” Worse still, he found himself hoisted on his own petard. I said words to this effect, “Your fear is that my children will be given only one perspective. That homeschooling leaves room for narrow options and bigotry. So your solution is to require everyone to get the approval of what is taught from the government. This is your solution to maximizing freedom.”

He was arguing that we have to make little fascists of the kids, lest they should become fascists. I went on to suggest that I really felt no need to use the government to force him to teach his children what I believed. I wasn’t trying to regulate how he raised his children. He was trying to regulate how I raise mine. Who, I asked, is the fascist here? Who has the more narrow perspective?

Just as Thomas Sowell pointed out the incongruity of the left arguing the rich are greedy for wanting to keep what is theirs but the left is not greedy for wanting to take it from them, so educationally, what makes education grounded in liberty “tyrannical” is it allows our children to escape the clutches of tyrants.

The dispute isn’t ultimately over competing theories of what should be taught. It is over competing theories over who should have authority over the training of children- parents, or bureaucrats. We would all be better off if we understood that the argument often isn’t the argument but is instead a disguise for the power grab. (See climate change, the scamdemic and assorted other lefty fever dreams.)

The answer is holding on to the jurisdictional boundaries God established for us. God didn’t command the state to educate our children. He commanded parents to education their children. He didn’t give the state the power of the chalk board but the power of the sword.

Every educational system will in the end teach its students to worship. Christians are called to teach their students to worship the living God. State schools in the end are designed to teach students to worship the state.

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