Daily Devotional

May 24

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in. due season we shall reap, if we faint not. —Galatians 6:9

Devotional:
But since no man in this terrestrial and corporeal prison has strength sufficient to press forward in his course with a due degree of alacrity, and the majority are oppressed with such great debility that they stagger and halt, and even creep on the ground; and so make very inconsiderable advances—let us everyone proceed according to our small ability, and prosecute the journey we have begun. No man will be so unhappy, but that he may every day make some progress, however small.

Therefore let us not cease to strive, that we may be incessantly advancing in the way of the Lord; nor let us despair on account of the smallness of our success; for however our success may not correspond to our wishes, yet our labor is not lost, when this day surpasses the preceding one; provided that, with sincere simplicity, we keep our end in view, and press forward to the goal, not practising self-adulation, nor indulging our own evil propensities, but perpetually exerting our endeavors after increasing degrees of improvement, till we shall have arrived at a perfection of goodness, which, indeed, we seek and pursue as long as we live, and shall then attain, when, divested of all corporeal infirmity, we shall be admitted by God into complete communion with him. Institutes, III, vi, v

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.
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An Open Letter to The Commentariat About Christian Education

According to a report in Stuff, [21st May, 2013] the Post Primary Teachers’ Association ["PPTA"] “outed” those organizations which had expressed interest in applying to become a charter school.  Your name, Angela (as PPTA President) was cited in that report. 

In particular you were quoted as opposing a situation where charter schools would be accepting state funding and would be teaching “creationism”.  (We note that “creationism” was undefined, either by you or the report, so we are left somewhat uncertain about precisely what approach to science you were opposing.)   You, Angela were quoted as follows:

PPTA president Angela Roberts said taxpayer cash should not go to schools teaching creationism.  “They have the right to teach that in their school, of course, but they have no right to do that with money for the public education system.”

We appreciate your fulsome defence of an independent school’s right to teach “creationism” because, in that case, the money comes from non-state, private sources–that is, parents and pupils.  You are very clear parents have a right to their beliefs and convictions in such matters and a right to ensure that their children are taught consistently with those beliefs. 

We note that your name, Chris (as Labour education spokesman) was also cited in the piece.  Your defence of parents rights is less fulsome than Angela’s, but at least you are willing to concede it has some weight and force. 

“Those are their beliefs – but the state should not be paying for it. Those parents and kids can choose to believe and to receive a religious education. But not to the exclusion of other sciences, and I think in this case that is really inappropriate,” Mr Hipkins said.

We are not sure what “other sciences” you believe are being excluded by the teaching of “creationism”, but in any event you believe that parents and children have a right to receive the religious education of their choice.  Of course, Christians have a biblical cosmology.  Unbelievers (that is, people who are not Christians) do not.  We are thankful that you are willing to defend the rights of Christian parents and kids to be taught a biblical cosmology as part of their schooling curriculum. 

We would like you to go further.  We would like you to be somewhat more consistent in your respective positions.  We would also like to enlist your help in supporting a just cause long overdue in New Zealand. 

Firstly, we recognize that the state in New Zealand is self-styled as a secular entity, without commitment to any religion.  We Christians realise that this actually makes the state a promoter of a very definite religion in its own right–the religion of secularism–which has its own cosmologies, axiologies, teleologies, and versions of metaphysics (as do all religions).  Secularism has its own appeal to ultimate authorities.  It is most closely allied to atheism, which is very clearly a “non-religious” religion in its own right.  All of that is fine, insofar as it goes.  But we would like you to be candid with us all about this.  The fact is state education system in New Zealand militantly imposes the religion of secularism upon its pupils–as your own remarks in the Stuff article bear witness.  You both know that this is the case, but public acknowledgement and transparency in the matter would help us all and would improve the quality of the debate.  It would also go a long way toward helping us find fairer solutions. 

Secondly, we would like you to clear up a confusion your remarks unfortunately generate.  We have a considerable number of  integrated schools in New Zealand, many of which are religious in nature.  Provided their charter warrants it, such schools are permitted to teach all of their subjects in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs.  They are funded by the state in so doing.  Should we understand that both of you principally oppose this situation and would support a “de-integration” of such schools?

Thirdly, we want to applaud your support of parental and pupil rights to be instructed in schools in a  manner consistent with their religious beliefs.  Angela, you go further and point out that this parental right exists only insofar as parents are paying for the instruction.  We are inclined to agree.  But here’s the nub of the matter.  Christian parents and pupils have money exacted from them through the taxation system to fund an education system that promotes beliefs to which they object–namely, secularism.  You, however, oppose having any of that money channelled back to schools that do not teach all subjects from a secularist perspective.

So Christian parents and their children are in an invidious position.  They are forced to pay for state secularist schools and you both agree that the state secularist education system should not support any other curriculum than those promoting the state’s secularist beliefs in every subject. Hence the militancy we refer to above.  So for Christians (and other religious groups) the state takes, but does not give back.  There is a grave injustice being perpetrated here.  We want to enlist your support in righting this serious wrong. 

There are two very simple, yet effective ways this might be done.   The first would be to introduce a voucher system for parents and pupils who conscientiously object to the enforced imposition of state secularism via state schools.  This voucher would be to the value of the annual per-pupil cost of educating a child in the secularist state system.  It could be redeemed at any registered private school or home school, which would then receive Ministry of Education payments to the value of the voucher.  This would restitute those parents and pupils which have had money unfairly exacted from them to fund a secularist state education system to which they conscientiously object. 

A second way in which this current inequity might be remedied would be to provide a special tax refund to all parents who send their children to registered independent schools or registered home schools to the level of the annual per-pupil cost of educating a child in the state system. 

Since you both express support for parental rights in the matter of teaching according to one’s religious beliefs, and you both object to the state secularist education system funding such teaching (at least in independent or partnership schools), either of the above solutions would remedy the very grave injustice that exists under the current system.  Both alternatives remove the injustice of conscientious religious objectors having compulsorily to fund an education system antithetical to their beliefs even while imposing upon them a double burden of having to fund an alternative education out of their own post-tax means. 

We thank you in anticipation of your response and support in righting this grave injustice in the current system.

Yours, etc.

John Tertullian

(Ed note:  we have sent this letter both to Chris Hipkins and Angela Roberts.  We will publish their replies in due course, if we receive any.)

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The Autocrat Accountants

Once government is ensnared in every aspect of life, a bureaucracy grows increasingly capricious.

National Review Online
May 17, 2013 5:00 PM

Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.” Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers. 

Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up.
But no doubt the fact that he’s wiretapping the Associated Press was also entirely unknown to him until he read about it in the Associated Press. There is a “president of the United States” and a “government of the United States,” but, despite a certain superficial similarity in their names, they are entirely unrelated, like Beyoncé Knowles and Admiral Sir Charles Knowles. One golfs, reads the prompter, parties with Jay-Z, and guests on the Pimp with a Limp show, and the other audits you, bugs your telephone line, and leaks your confidential tax records. But they’re two completely separate sinister entities. So it’s preposterous to describe Obama as Nixonian: Beyoncé wouldn’t have given Nixon the time of day.

If you believe this, there’s a shovel-ready infrastructure project in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. In April last year, the Obama campaign identified by name eight Romney donors as “a group of wealthy individuals with less than reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law, others have made profits at the expense of so many Americans, and still others are donating to help ensure Romney puts beneficial policies in place for them.” That week, Kimberley Strassel began her Wall Street Journal column thus:

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.
Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. . . . The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Miss Strassel wrote that on April 26, 2012. Five weeks later, one of the named individuals, Frank VanderSloot, was informed by the IRS that he and his wife were being audited. In July, he was told by the Department of Labor of an additional audit over the guest workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho. In September, he was notified that one of his other businesses was to be audited. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never previously been audited, attracted three in the four months after being publicly named by el Presidente. More to the point he attracted that triple audit even though Miss Strassel explicitly predicted in America’s biggest-selling newspaper that this was exactly what the Obama enforcers were going to do. The “separate, sinister entity” of the government of the United States went ahead anyway. What do they care? If some lippy broad in the papers won’t quit her yapping about it, they can always audit her, too — as they did to Miss Strassel’s sometime colleague Anne Hendershott, a sociology professor who got rather too interested in Obamacare and wrote about it in the Journal and various small Catholic publications. The IRS summoned Professor Hendershott to account for herself, and forbade her husband from accompanying her, even though they filed jointly. She ceased her political writing.

A year after he was named to the Obama Dishonor Roll, the feds have found nothing on Mr. VanderSloot, but they have caused him to rack up 80 grand in legal bills. This is what IRS defenders (of whom there are more than there ought to be) mean when they assure us that the system worked: Yes, some rich guy had to blow through the best part of six figures fending off the bureaucrats, but it’s not like his body was found in a trunk at the airport or anything, if you know what I mean, Kimmy baby. 

Mr. VanderSloot is big enough, just about, to see off the most powerful government on the planet. Most of those who’ve caught the eye of the IRS share nothing in common with him other than his political preferences. They’re nobodies — ordinary American citizens guilty of no crime except that of disagreeing with the ruling party. Yet they were asked, under “penalty of perjury,” to disclose the names of books they were reading and provide the names and addresses of relatives who might be planning to run for public office — a kind of pre-enemies list. Is that banana-republic enough for you yet? Not apparently for Juan Williams, fired from NPR for thought crime a couple of years ago, but who was nevertheless energetically defending the IRS exertions on Fox News on Thursday evening.

 Left-wing groups had their 501(c)(4) applications approved in weeks, right-wing groups were delayed for months and years and ordered to cough up everything from donor lists to Facebook posts, and those right-wing groups that were approved had their IRS files leaked to left-wing groups like ProPublica. The agency’s commissioner, a slippery weasel called Steven Miller, conceded before Congress that this was “horrible customer service” — which it was in the sense that your call is important to him and may be monitored by George Soros for quality control.

A civil “civil service” requires small government. Once government is ensnared in every aspect of life a bureaucracy grows increasingly capricious. The U.S. tax code ought to be an abomination to any free society, but the American people have become reconciled to it because of a complex web of so-called exemptions that massively empower the vast shadow state of the permanent bureaucracy. Under a simple tax system, your income is a legitimate tax issue. Under the IRS, everything is a legitimate tax issue: The books you read, the friends you recommend them to. There are no correct answers, only approved answers. Drew Ryun applied for permanent non-profit status for a group called “Media Trackers” in July 2011. Fifteen months later, he’d heard nothing. So he applied again under the eco-friendly name of “Greenhouse Solutions,” and was approved in three weeks.

The president and the IRS commissioner are unable to name any individual who took the decision to target only conservative groups. It just kinda sorta happened, and, once it had, it growed like Topsy. But the lady who headed that office, Sarah Hall Ingram, is now in charge of the IRS office for Obamacare. Many countries around the world have introduced government health systems since 1945, but, as I wrote here last year, “only in America does ‘health’ ‘care’ ‘reform’ begin with the hiring of 16,500 new IRS agents tasked with determining whether your insurance policy merits a fine.” So now not only are your books and Facebook posts legitimate tax issues but so is your hernia, and your prostate, and your erectile dysfunction.

Next time round, the IRS will be able to leak your incontinence pads to George Soros.

Big Government is erecting a panopticon state — one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It’s great “customer service,” except that you can never get out of the store.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn

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Daily Devotional

May 23

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. —Isaiah 49:15

Devotional:
“Shall a woman forget her child?” In order to correct that distrust, he adds to the remonstrance an exhortation full of the sweetest consolation. By an appropriate comparison he shows how strong is his anxiety about his people, comparing himself to a mother, whose love toward her offspring is so strong and ardent as to leave far behind a father’s love.

Thus he did not satisfy himself with proposing the example of a father (which on other occasions he very frequently employs), but in order to express his very strong affection, he chose to liken himself to a mother, and calls them not merely “children” but the fruit of the womb, towards which there is usually a warmer affection.

What amazing affection does a mother feel toward her offspring, which she cherishes in her bosom, suckles on her breast, and watches over with tender care, so that she passes sleepless nights, wears herself out by continual anxiety, and forgets herself! And this carefulness is manifested, not only among men, but even among savage beasts, which, though they are by nature cruel, yet in this respect are gentle.

“Even if they shall forget.” Since it does sometimes happen that mothers degenerate into such monsters as to exceed in cruelty the wild beasts and forget “the fruit of their womb,” the Lord next declares that, even though this should happen, still he will never forget his people. The affection which he bears toward us is far stronger and warmer than the love of all mothers.

We ought also to bear in mind the saying of Christ, “If ye, being evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more your heavenly Father?” (Matt. 7:11). Men, though by nature depraved and addicted to self-love, are anxious about their children. What shall God do, who is goodness itself? Will it be possible for him to lay aside a father’s love? Certainly not. Although therefore it should happen that mothers (which is a monstrous thing) should forsake their own offspring, yet God, whose love toward his people is constant and unremitting, will never forsake them.

In a word, the Prophet here describes to us the inconceivable carefulness with which God unceasingly watches over our salvation, that we may be fully convinced that he will never forsake us, though we may be afflicted with great and numerous calamities. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.
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Nothing Beside Remains

Violence between Muslims is exploding again across the Middle East–adding to the internecine destruction already taking place in Syria.  Welcome to the Arab Spring.  Hail the wonderful new beginning–at least as announced by useful idiots in the West, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom should have known better.  Ah, well–at least it generated a couple of headlines and photo ops. 

The most likely prognosis in Syria these days is that it is shaping up to devolve into three separate regions run by warlords who will (literally) snipe at each other in perpetuity.  The regions will be, respectively, one run by Assad and his Alawite and Shi’ite supporters; the second will be a territory controlled by the Islamist rebels, supported by Sunni nations; the third will be a region controlled by Kurds. 

The smartest thing the West has done in this conflict in Syria is not to get involved militarily (something for which we have Russia to thank).
  The moral obligation to provide humanitarian aid to refugees and the suffering, however, remains compelling.  As is normally the case, private (non-governmental) charities will do a far better job and will create less resentment, provided they are allowed access.

Meanwhile sectarian intra-Islamic violence is exploding across Iraq.  The account below comes from Al Jazeera:

Tribal leaders in Iraq are warning of war unless the country splits into a federation amid a deadly new wave of apparently sectarian violence.  Monday’s car bombings across Iraqi cities left at least 77 people dead and more than 240 others injured, police and medics say, pushing the death toll over the past week to above 200.  The worst attack occurred in Baghdad, where 10 car bombs struck open-air markets and other areas of Shia neighbourhoods, killing at least 47 people and wounding more than 150, police officials said.
In the bloodiest incident, a parked car bomb blew up in a busy market in the northern Shia neighbourhood of Shaab, killing 14 and wounding 24, police and health officials said.

The bloodshed still cannot be compared to what reigned during the dark days of 2006-2007, when armed groups carried out retaliatory attacks against each other in a cycle of violence that left the country awash in blood.  Even so, the latest attacks have heightened fears that the country could be heading towards civil war.

The havoc and devastation being wrought in people’s lives is hard to conceive.  Less dramatic, but equally sobering is a report in The Guardian about the future of Bamiyan province in Afghanistan. This will particularly interest our New Zealand readers because the NZ army has been primarily responsible for “nation building” in that province.  It has recently withdrawn (having experienced the loss of ten army personnel to insurgents) but making what appears to be significant progress in neutering insurgents and building up Afghani capabilities.  Its work has been hailed as a model.

But, as feared, these are just stories we tell ourselves for our own comfort.  They defy reality.  Here is a more sober assessment from Emma Graham-Harrison:

Bamiyan is a magical place, where the ghosts of long-lost power and opulence haunt a valley of spectacular natural beauty. Near the university lie the ruins of a citadel untouched since Genghis Khan sacked it in the 13th century, and although the giant Buddhas lie in fragments, frescos painted over a millennium ago still cling to corners of monastic caves that honeycomb the cliff around them.

It is also haunted by more recent spectres, memories of those killed in Taliban massacres barely a decade ago. Home to a heavily persecuted ethnic and religious minority, it has remained one of the safest places in Afghanistan, partly because the memory of that suffering fuels profound hostility towards the insurgency. . . . That was fine when Afghanistan’s insurgency was largely contained, Taliban fighters still focused on areas like Helmand, and Bamiyan was left to its peaceful existence. It was probably the only place in the country where diplomats wandered freely and met Afghans beyond blast walls and security checks that constrict embassy life elsewhere. Even soldiers visited spectacular historical sites in the area, confident they would not be targeted, unthinkable on any other base I have visited in Afghanistan.

So great was the sense of security that Bamiyan was chosen by Nato to be the very first place in the country where Afghan forces officially took over from foreign troops, although the ceremony in 2011 was just a nominal shift to pave the way for real changes this year. But since then the insurgency has spread and violence lapped steadily closer to this virtual island of calm, isolated by mountain peaks rather than water. First one, then both roads to Kabul became a dangerous lottery. The head of the provincial council, a popular man who had done much to help development in a desperately poor area, was abducted and slaughtered in 2011. A US engineer is among the many others killed on the roads since.  The security of the province itself was next to crumble, with fighters pushing in heavily from the east but also testing boundaries to the west. Half of the New Zealand troops killed in combat during the decade-long mission died last August in the Do Ab area bordering Baghlan province, and their April departure was six months earlier than originally planned.

For those left behind, the threat is tangible. “I don’t see any Taliban in Bamiyan, but when the foreign soldiers leave they will return and be strong,” said Haider Mohammad, a 37-year-old who sold souvenirs to New Zealand troops for six years. Watching as preparations for the farewell ceremony got under way, he added: “When they go, I will leave as well.”

One can only hope that these civilians may find some refuge and security.

But once again the New Zealand Bamiyan experience will underscore the reckless millenarian folly of trying to “nation build” halfway around the world in an Islamic “nation”.  At least the New Zealand government had the compassion and decency to allow its Afghani interpreters and translators and their families to settle in New Zealand as refugees, since they would have been one of the first targets of the Taliban had they remained. 

Meanwhile, what do we think will be the actual tangible impact of Western interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan in thirty years time?  Shelley’s immortal words will be a prophetic epitaph of that disastrous utopian adventure, we believe:
 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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Chasing the Laser Pointer Dot 

Education – Education
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, 17 May 2013

If I may, I would like to urge all Christians interested in the future of education reform to continue their hot pursuit of said reform, but not to do so like a kitten pursuing a laser pointer dot on the rug.

We live in exciting pedagogical times, and the arrival of many more options in distance learning via the Internet really is exciting — and promising. At the same time, people are still the same as they always were, and one of the things that people have always done with new technologies is draw false inferences. Sometimes the next big thing isn’t, as those with vintage 8-track collections might be able to tell you.

First adapters can be visionaries or idiots, and it is sometimes hard to tell. I say all this as a preface to some cautionary notes about our newest boom town in education. And please keep in mind that I am saying all this, not as a critic, but as a participant. Okay, if you want, you could make that a participating critic, or a critical participant.

In any case, in the middle of this start-up educational reformation, there is a lot of nonsense being spouted about the history of education, and we are unlikely to get the future right if we insist on getting the past all wrong.
One of the ways to tell the visionaries from the chumps is to look carefully at how carefully connected to the past it all is.

Southwest Airlines burst onto the scene the way it did because it was not really competing with the established airlines. Their business model was to compete with the Greyhound bus — to go after a clientele that had never flown before. The explosion of e-readers is turning out not to be the competitor of the book, but rather of the paperback. And . . . wait for it . . . distance learning of our modern, souped-up variety competes, not with genuine schools, but rather with libraries.

Lose you? Think of it this way. We have always had distance learning — that’s what a letter is, or a book. The original book of Ephesians was an example of divinely-inspired distance learning. For the Ephesians themselves, it was geographical distance, and for us in this generation it is geographical, chronological, linguistic, and cultural distance. There is a lot of distance between my thoughts and Paul’s as we contemplate together what is meant by all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places — and an enormous amount of blessing has crossed that distance nonetheless. So, in this sense, three cheers for distance learning. God loves it. But as He loves it, He knows what it is.

Not only have we always had such letters, books, and libraries, we have always had bookworm nerds who needed to get out of those libraries, and blink in the sunshine for a bit. They needed to go out to the sandlot with the other boys (other boys? what’s that?) and get clocked on the forehead with a sweet line drive. Do that boy a world of good. This is because community — the blessing of other people — is not something that can ever be dragged and dropped.

So let us think like adults, not children. Community means people nearby, and that means people needing to be organized. And organization in community is a mark of good discipline, not a mark of capitulation to Enlightenment categories. I have seen a goodly amount of recent chatter that equates any kind of age-segregated classroom learning with the Prussian model of education, where we make all the little children sit in straight-line rows, so that they can be made to sit still while our robotic educative arm pours knowledge into their wee heads. And seriously, the Prussians were pretty bad, while the early American education johnnies who wanted to be like them were really bad too. But God’s covenant people have had classrooms since the Jews established their first schools after the Babylonian exile, and Jesus graduated from Nazareth High. Every synagogue had as one of its officers a schoolmaster –a chazzan (Luke 4:20)– and for all these many centuries all of these covenant folks had only a passing knowledge of things Prussian.

The Prussians, being both modernists and Germans, a bad combination, tried to turn all classrooms into knowledge factories, and that was bad. But they didn’t invent the classroom from scratch, for pity’s sake. They didn’t invent kids learning how to stand in a line — and if they did, good for them.

If you sign up for one of the online classes that Logos Press is offering this fall (as indeed, I hope you do), everything hinges on what you are comparing it to. Is that class a wonderful, interactive textbook, or is it a two-dimensional classroom? If the former, it is really cool. If the latter, then it is a great temptation.

One of the central reasons it presents such a temptation is that it is really convenient — and one of the great blessings of community is that it is so inconvenient. Seriously. Your child has to be at the school by eight in the morning, even though he is not a morning person, didn’t have time for a balanced breakfast, and has to deal with other kids who are not as sweet to him as his mother is. That is why it is so good for him. There is a macro-lesson underneath all the other lessons when it comes to working inside the framework of an established school. That macro-lesson is that life is not all about you.
 
Is your car a really fast chariot, or a really slow airplane? When we make adult evaluations of education delivery platforms, we always must ask the basic question, “compared to what?” When I have to travel without my wife, today I can stay far more connected to her than I could do when traveling thirty years ago, for which I render thanks for the technology . . . but traveling without her is still for the birds. Compared to what?

Those who are using technology wisely are those who are using it to help them eventually connect with other people, in real time, on the ground. The goal is life together, and that means breathing the same air in the same room. It may take a while to get there, but that should always be the goal. In the meantime, I would much rather have my grandchildren studying in a good online course of study than in a bad brick and mortar school. This is for the same reason that I would rather have them go to a good library than to a bad school. Of course again. Remember, compared to what?

But anybody who might reverse this, walking away from a good school in order to chase knowledge “in the cloud” has already got his head in that cloud. He would rather read a book in the great cyber-library of the sky, especially if the book vigorously denounces Gnosticism, than to go out and deal with actual people on a daily basis — which necessarily elicits from us this thing called love.
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Daily Devotional

May 22

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient. —II Timothy 2:24 .

Devotional:
The servant of God must not strive, but be gentle and patient and fit to teach. Here we will conclude that they who give themselves to vain questions show plainly that they have no desire nor zeal to serve God. For though a man be never so wise, yet notwithstanding we must count him as a desperate devil if we see he does not have this affection in him, to serve God, if he have not this end and mark before him, to honor God.
And surely it is not without cause that it was said in an old proverb that learning in a man that does not rule himself aright is like a sword in a madman’s hand.

This is Saint Paul’s meaning, to point out all them that are given to contention, to the end that we may detest them, and abhor them, as men that seek not in any way to serve God. And why? For these are things that can no more agree together than fire and water, to serve God and to love contentions and disputations, which breed nothing but strife and debate. —Sermons

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.
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The Bible Belongs to Christ

A recent piece in the National Review Online by Dennis Prager has taken the National Church of Scotland to task for anti-semitism. That church has come out with a new report on Israel which Prager alleges represents “a combination of medieval anti-Judaism and leftist anti-Zionism”.  

We have not read the report (which has now been taken off the church’s website for re-editing) and we acknowledge that the Church of Scotland long ceased ceased to be a reliable guide on things taught in the Bible, having been racked with Enlightenment rationalism and humanist, epistemic autonomy.  Nevertheless, it is Prager’s rejection and rejoinder to the Church of Scotland’s report which is worth reflecting upon.  

There are at least three assertions made in the report which Prager reacts to:
  

The Church of Scotland report asserts that the Bible does not support the existence of a Jewish state: “There has been a widespread assumption by many Christians as well as many Jewish people that the Bible supports an essentially Jewish state of Israel. This raises an increasing number of difficulties.” 
It asserts that justice and the existence of a Jewish state are mutually exclusive: “There is a direct conflict of interest between wanting human rights and justice for all and retaining the right to the land.” 
It asserts that the Jews’ return to Israel has no Biblical basis.

Now, we suspect that Prager is engaged in a bit of hyperventilation at this point.

Let’s look at the first: that the Bible does not support the existence of a Jewish state.  That on the face of it seems perfectly reasonable, if the statement were a parallel to the following: “the Bible does not support the existence of the United States, or New Zealand, or France, or Zimbabwe.”  It is clear that the Bible does not in any sense support their existence by declaring that the above countries explicitly have a right to exist in and throughout history.  Yet indirectly the Scriptures supports all nations, acknowledging the existence of all nations and commanding them all to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.  (Acts 14: 16, 17; Acts 17: 26,27; & Acts 17: 30,31).  The modern nation state of Israel would be no exception.

However, it is this latter point that Prager would object to.  He does assert that the Bible names Israel–the modern nation state of Israel–as being explicitly commanded and warranted in the Bible.  (In fact, he would have to concede that in his view it is the only nation so named by God in the Scriptures as having an eternal right to exist, such that any who do not submit to Israel’s existence would be in rebellion against the commands and precepts of the Living God.)

The problem with Prager’s view (held, incidentally, by many professing Christians) is that it overlooks and obscures the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It ignores redemptive history.  Redemptive history progresses; Prager appears not to believe that it does.  For example, the sacrificial cult of Old Testament Israel has been abolished by God Himself.  Why?  Because it became obsolete and nugatory when Christ came and offered Himself as the perfect sinless atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.  Dietary laws have expired, at the command of God.  Christ declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19); the point and significance of such laws was to make nations Israel distinct from all other nations.  With the entrance of Christ into human history, such distinction passed.  Israel no longer was to exist as a distinct nation, since the Gospel was to go to all peoples.  That is the key significance of the vision given to the Apostle Peter in Acts 10.

Moreover, the Bible makes clear that Israel’s services of worship at the tabernacle and the temple were always but pale reflections of the real tabernacle and the real services of worship–in heaven.  Thence Christ, the high priest of the whole world, has gone.  Our temple, our Jerusalem is now the real Jerusalem, in heaven.   The Jerusalem of modern days bears no redemptive relationship whatsoever to the Jerusalem of the Old Covenant, even as other ancient holy sites do not (for example, the oaks of Mamre, Shiloh, or Eden.)

Prager also chooses to overlook the existence of the people of Israel in the land of Canaan was always conditional upon their obedience and faithfulness to the covenant.  The Scriptures are very explicit on this point: continuation in the land of promise was conditional upon obedience and faithfulness to God (Deuteronomy 28:15-68).  He also overlooks the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by Rome in AD 66-70 was explicitly pronounced by our Lord prior to His death as a divine judgement for Israel’s rejection of Messiah.

Redemptive history has moved on.  It is now in the hands of Messiah–the Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the King of all kings upon earth.  All strands of human existence, present and future are His domain.  All nations are commanded to bow to Him as their Lord (Psalm 2).  The ancient land of Israel has fulfilled its purposes in the plans of the Saviour of the world.

Where does this leave the Jewish people, as distinct from the modern nation state of Israel?  They are beloved of God for the sake of the fathers.  Yet–and here the Bible is explicit–a blindness towards Messiah has come over them, so that the Gospel may go to the Gentiles.  But that blindness will eventually be removed, and the descendants of Israel will come to embrace their (and our) Messiah (Romans 11).  Thus, along with all peoples, the Christian church is commanded to love and work and long for the conversion of all Jewish people everywhere.

Let’s turn to the second assertion made by the Church of Scotland’s article:  that justice and the existence of a Jewish state are mutually exclusive: “There is a direct conflict of interest between wanting human rights and justice for all and retaining the right to the land.”  

This is nonsense.  Prager is quite right to react against assertions such as these.  Historical grievances cannot be the animus for settlement of contemporary disputes.  Every nation upon earth is made up of people who have been displaced and unjustly exploited at some time in their past.  The fact is that the modern state of Israel exists.  How it came into existence is of little importance when it comes to making determinations about justice and human rights in the contemporary world.  We are to lay aside bitterness, grievances, hatred and seek reconciliation.  We are to forgive one another.  We are to struggle to let bygones be bygones.  That is the Christian ethic.  Where feasible, reasonable, and possible we are to encourage restitution.  We are to act lawfully now, not prosecute wrongs–real and imagined–that took place generations ago.  Thus, both Israel and Arab nations are to be called to submit to the Prince of Peace: His yoke is easy and His burden is light. 

The third assertion is as follows:  the Jews’ return to Israel has no Biblical basis.  This assertion by the Church of Scotland we believe to be absolutely correct.  It has no basis under the New Covenant.  But, so what?  The Pilgrims journeying to Massachusetts had no Biblical basis either, in the sense of being prophetically promised.  However, both the Pilgrims, and the Palestinians and Israel did then and have now obligations to obey the commands and meet the standards laid down in Holy Writ.  Therefore, whilst the Jews’ return to Israel had no Biblical basis (in the sense of a divine prophetic warrant),  modern Israel has an abiding duty to submit to its lawful, Biblical king–Jesus Christ–and to His commands and precepts. 

Now, we are well aware that the case we have made is not going to satisfy modern Israeli’s, nor Palestinians or Islamists, nor American Exceptionalists, nor for that matter (we fear) the Church of Scotland.  But given the persistent stubbornness of all the above to recognise Christ as their Messiah and Lord, that seems about right.

The Bible belongs to Christ, and Christ alone.  It is His Word.  It must not be misused in a vain attempt to provide warrant for our ambitions, quarrels, lusts and divisions. 

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