Category Archives: the law of God
‘Sexuality is Like Driving a Car’
“Having a sexual drive is like being in charge of a car; we need to know how to handle it if we are to avoid causing mayhem. As a powerful river needs banks to keep it on its course and prevent it from ruinously flooding what is around it, so our sexual drive needs strong boundaries if it is not to cause untold misery in the lives of those around us.” -Stanley Grenz, Sexual Ethics: A Biblical Perspective
Cultural Observation: Sex
“Sex has become the wallpaper of our culture.” -Naomi Wolf, “The Porn Myth”
Love is Always Costly, But It’s a Cost We Want to Pay…
“Think of what happens when you fall in love. Your love makes you eager for acceptance from the beloved. You ask, ‘Do you want to go out?’ or maybe even, ‘Will you marry me?’ What happens when the answer is ‘Yes?’ Do yo say, ‘Great! I’m in! Now I can act any way I want?’ Of course not. Now you don’t even wait for the object of your affection to directly ask you to do something for them. You anticipate whatever pleases and delights them. There’s no coercion or sense of obligation, yet your behavior has been radically changed by the mind and heart of the person you love.” Tim Keller, The Reason for God, pg. 183
Religion vs the Gospel: Social Impact
“Religion and the gospel also differ fundamentally in how they treat the Other–those who do not share one’s own beliefs and practices. Postmodern thinkers understand that the self is formed and strengthened through the exclusion of the Other–those who do not have the values or traits on which I base my own significance. We define ourselves by pointing to those who we are not. We bolster our sense of worth by devaluing those of other races, beliefs, and traits. This gospel identity gives us a new basis for harmonious and just social arrangements. A Christian’s worth and value are not created by excluding anyone, but through the Lord who was excluded for me.” Tim Keller, The Reason for God, pg. 181
God or Idolatry
Simone Weil:
“One has only the choice between God and idolatry… If one denies God… one is worshipping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them.”
as quote in Tim Keller, The Reason for God, 166.
Berkouwer on The Two Kingdoms
“This Divine economy [God’s design for the State], since Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God, is subject to the power of Jesus Christ, the glorified Lord. Through Him, the Father rules all things. His ascension, then, is of decisive historical significance. Though the establishment of the state is not christological but Trinitarian, the victory of Christ becomes a crisis for the state–and an intensification of the call to service. The kingdom of God has come with decision, and in this decision and the authority of Christ implied in it, all attempts by the ‘powers’ to gain autonomy are revealed as senseless. Nothing can triumph over this kingdom; neither the presumptive powers of the earth, who refuse to acknowledge their limitations, nor the powers ‘of the air’–powers concentrated in one power, in the power that fell as lightning from heaven when the kingdom of heaven triumphantly approached (Luk. 10:18). The decision still falls in government decisions for or against service to God.
This is not to say that only a Christian government is a valid government. When the cause of the Christian state is pleaded, it is not meant that only Christian government constitutes true government, nor that the Church should involve herself in government, but simply that, in the light of the Gospel, the state should be understood as servant, and that it should recognize and operate within its Divinely imposed limits. In the service of justice, which is continually menaced by human sin and by demons, the state makes a path through an ordered world. The state is not to be despised as being of trifling and external significance in the rule of God. To despise the state is to despise the state is to despises the Noahic covenant, is to underestimate the cross which restores and reestablishes God’s justice and law in the redemption of the world.” G.C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God, 118-119.
Berkouwer on the Limits of Obedience and the Purpose of Authority
“This suggests, in turn, that obedience to government also has its limits. These limits become evident whenever the Divine authority that rests on human shoulders is misused. (This danger exists not only for government, but also for other bearers of authority, such as parents. Parental authority can also be demonized. Parents can misunderstand their calling and forget that theirs is a given and responsible authority.) The government can throw off its responsibility and became a power without service, a tyranny denying its own boundaries, boundaries to which Paul so clearly points in Romans 13 (cf. vs. 4). This defiance is certainly inspired by demonic influence, but on the human level, it in itself progresses to an exaggerated tension with and opposition to the economy of God.” -G.C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God, pg. 118.
BW COMMENT: Berkouwer’s parenthetical comment about the authority of parents is interesting. How many of us understand that our authority over our kids is God-given and not absolute? At some level, we all do, I suppose. And yet, put it differently, and maybe we realize we can forget that there are boundaries: our authority over our kids is given for a specific purpose. That purpose is to produce responsible (and hopefully, Christian) adult people. Phrased that way, one can see how easily our views of parental authority slip into other modes of power–something more despotic, just like what Berkouwer describes as happening in the State sometimes.
A Pilgrim's Theology 