The year 2003 will be remembered for many things. For the purpose of this blog, let me just focus on Christianity and the state. In terms of this issue, we can boldly declare that 2003 was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.
It was the best of times because God raised up a mighty standard in the person of Chief Justice Moore to remind us of the historic doctrines of interposition, the authority of God over the state, and the necessity that believers give their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for Christ. It was the best of times, because for many 2003 was the year of epiphany — a time when politics and political wranglings were set aside to return to first principle. The blinders were removed from the vision and thinking of many Christians — and the light that they saw was not only beautiful, but liberating. It is beautiful to see the providence of God in a nation, His laws, and the hope that we have when a dedicated minority remains faithful. But even more than beauty is the liberation one feels when you are no longer a slave to compromise. This great epiphany has resulted in many Christians desiring to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, but throwing off the chains of partisanship, and once again acting like people who are Christ’s representatives on earth. This means proclaiming truth and holding leaders accountable whether they are a D or an R or a G or an I or a C.
But it was also the worst of times. Amidst the backdrop of heroism of the few, was the shamful behavior of others. I am not referring to the world of the ACLU and their minions, but to those who professed the name of Christ, and who used this profession to criticize the heroes of the day, to reject the faith of our fathers in favor of pluralism, and who fundamentally conceded the war before the first missle of freedom was even deployed.
I am grateful for this recent article by R.C. Sproul, Jr., on the compromise within that camp of believers known as the Reformed. He correctly observes that all such compromise leans to the Left, and that those who obsessively desire to sit at the table, and forget God’s proverbial admonition that they put a knife to their necks, ultimately have neither a place at the table, nor a message worthy of emulation.
Finding a “Reformed” Place at the Table
By R.C. Sproul, Jr.
It’s not easy getting a place at the table. The masters of the feast are a rather particular bunch, who, for all their broad-minded posing, don’t much care for our kind. Still, every now and again, someone makes the grade. You can always spot this person, because of the way the powers-that-be speak about him. Senator So-and-So, once considered to be a knuckle-dragging rube, is now described as having “grown.” Strangely they never grow up, they always grow to the left.
The pattern is so obvious that others are taking note. The fine art of positioning, of framing oneself, has become a veritable race to the left. The President started it all by pronouncing himself a “compassionate conservative.” Compassionate apparently means supporting the right of some women to murder their children, being for free trade, except for his good friends in the steel industry, and socialized drugs for the grey voting block, I mean, the greatest generation. He likewise has taken the same bold stand with respect to his “faith.” He’s a Christian, all right, but one who thinks Islam, that religion of peace, worships the same God that I worship. (You can’t blame the guy. After all, how faithful can he be expected to be to Jesus, since he has to be everyone’s president?)
It doesn’t surprise me that such passes for wisdom in the Stupid Party. What surprises me is that it is all the rage among Reformed folk, even among what was once the hard right. “I believe in God’s law. No other standard, and all that. But I’m not one of those cranky folks no one can get along with. Heck, just so you’ll know how mature I’ve become, how I’ve learned the hard realities, I voted for abortion-loving, sodomite-embracing Arnold.” Or worse still, “Oh yes, I’m deeply committed to the Reformed faith, same as I’ve always been. Why, I even bravely said so to my Cathodox brethren the other day at our power meeting.”
I sympathize with this point of view, or rather with those who hold it. When your reason for being is to get a place at the table, and to show others how to do the same, but your constituency is on the right, all that’s left for you to do is to claim to be right to your friends, while “growing” left for your masters. And then you teach others to do the same. To put it another way, you cross land and sea....
To put it still another way, because you are so desperate for that place at that table, you end up telling the real Master of the real feast that you can’t make it right now — but you’ll come as soon as you can.
R.C. Sproul, Jr. is the editor of Tabletalk magazine, a pastor of Saint Peter Presbyterian Church in Southwest Virginia, and the director of the Highlands Study Center. Best of all, when he’s not busy teaching, playing with the children, churning butter, or tending to the chickens, he is making his widely-acclaimed homebrew.
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