Pen and Plow

I'm Dreaming of a Rushed Christmas

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 15:17:57 GMT

Christmas Is Over Too Fast And That Exposes What We Really Worship

Christmas Day has passed. I have a couple relatives that pride themselves on how fast they can pull all the decorations down. Going so far as to begin packing things up even before the wrapping paper debris is cleared. The radio stations have moved on. Emails are piling up. Meetings are back on the calendar. For many of us, the most significant event in the Christian year is treated like a one-day interruption to the real business of life.

And this year, for reasons I can’t quite name, I'm feeling that loss more acutely.

The historic Church has always known something our modern culture has forgotten. Christmas is not a day. It is a season. A month of fasting, working, and preparation followed by twelve days of feasting, singing, telling stories, lingering, and letting the wonder of the incarnation settle deep into the bones.

We rush past it now. And in doing so, we reveal something uncomfortable about ourselves.

The Forgotten Shape of Christmas

Historically, "Christmas" begins on December 25 and runs through January 5, culminating on the 13th day (Jan. 6) in Epiphany. "Advent" prepared us through fasting and longing. Christmas answered that longing with joy, abundance, and rest.

This older rhythm once shaped not only churches, but cultural imagination. It is why the great Christmas stories assume time, leisure, and lingering. In A Christmas Carol , the story does not end on Christmas morning. It unfolds across days of feasting, reconciliation, generosity, and restored fellowship. Scrooge does not merely wake up changed. He spends days proving it, visiting, giving, eating, rejoicing. Christmas reforms his calendar before it reforms his character.

The same is true in American literature shaped by Christian memory. Washington Irving’s Old Christmas Essays describe households thrown open for days at a time, tables continually reset, work suspended as a matter of moral imagination. In Little Women , Christmas is not a one-day emotional peak but a season of visits, gifts, meals, and slow restoration of family bonds. These stories assume something we have lost.

Christmas, as a concept, takes time.

The logic is profoundly human and profoundly biblical. We do not merely acknowledge Christ’s coming. We celebrate it. We dwell in it. We let time itself bend around the reality that God has taken on flesh and now reigns as King. In Christian cultures, work slowed. Feasts multiplied. Families gathered again and again. The calendar itself preached, "Christ has come. The world is changed. You may now rest."

Contrast that with our present reality. December 26 feels less like the second day of Christmas and more like an overdue Monday. The stories we tell no longer assume lingering joy, because our lives no longer make room for it.

Even modern Christmas movies accidentally confess this loss, though they do so with a mug of hot cocoa and a knowing wink. The formula is always the same. A frantic professional woman or emotionally unavailable man is trapped in a soul-crushing job, allergic to small towns, and far too busy for joy. Christmas is an inconvenience. Family is complicated. Feelings are inefficient.

The plot then requires a forced slowdown. A flight is canceled. A car breaks down. A snowstorm intervenes. Providence, disguised as bad weather, drags them "home" kicking and screaming. They rediscover meals, conversations, fireplaces, and eye contact. This is all well and good. But notice the punchline. Everything must resolve by Christmas Eve or Christmas Day itself. One kiss. One reconciliation. One perfect dinner. By December 26, the spell is broken. The town fades. The tree comes down. The credits roll. What now? Presumably, everyone goes back to their email inboxes and quarterly goals, now emotionally refreshed but still calendar-converted. Even Hallmark knows Christmas requires a pause. It just has no idea what to do with the second day of Christmas. We have retained the sentiment of Christmas while abandoning the structure that once made that sentiment plausible. And sentiment, unsupported by time and practice, cannot survive for long.

Calendars Are Not Neutral

We like to imagine that calendars are practical tools, value-free and neutral. They are not. Calendars catechize. They teach us what matters. What we schedule tells us what we love. What we refuse to interrupt tells us what we worship. America’s calendar tells a clear story. We have holy days (the root words of "holidays"), but they are thin. Christmas is tolerated, not enthroned. It must fit between fiscal deadlines and productivity metrics. The faster we can get back to “normal,” the better. And normal, in this case, is work. Money. Output. Efficiency. This is not accidental. It is theological.

We have a national god, and his name is Mammon.

Here is the deeper problem. It is difficult to imagine an annual season of Christian celebration when we have already surrendered the weekly one. Before the Church ever learned to feast for twelve days at Christmas, she learned to stop every seven. The Lord’s Day is the basic unit of Christian time. If we cannot pause weekly to acknowledge Christ’s kingship, it should not surprise us that an extended season of feasting feels impractical or indulgent.

Honoring the Sabbath is not a stuffy law obeyed with a sigh. It is not spiritual legalism or nostalgic traditionalism. It is a feast. A weekly celebration of resurrection. A declaration that Christ reigns and that we, His people, are not slaves. The Lord’s Day says something radical every week. We stop because the King is on His throne. We rest because the work that truly matters has already been accomplished. We gather not because God is needy, but because He loves His people and delights to meet with them.

A church that treats its weekly services like they are an optional inconvenience to the otherwise important work, school, and sports calendars of its congregants will inevitably treat Christmas the same way.

The decline of Christianity’s cultural influence in the United States is often discussed in terms of politics, doctrine, or demographics. Those matter. But beneath them all lies something simpler and more insidious. We stopped living like Christ is King of time.

When Christians allow the calendar to be dictated entirely by economic urgency, we silently confess that Christ may reign in our hearts, but not over our schedules. Not over our businesses. Not over our national rhythms. Our children notice. So do neighbors. So do employees. A faith that never interrupts the workweek begins to feel ornamental. Optional. Private.

Here is the irony. We cannot actually escape the old rhythm. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is famously dead. People are traveling. Offices limp along. Emails go unanswered. Meetings are postponed. Productivity drops whether we admit it or not.

We already have a lingering cultural pause from days gone by. We just refuse to name it.

What if, instead of pretending this week should be “normal,” Christians claimed it as what it already is: A season set apart. A time for feasting, hospitality, worship, storytelling, and rest. Not laziness. Celebration.

It is worth noting that even in a thoroughly commercial culture, the instinct to protect Christmas lingers. This year Mr. Capitalism himself, President Donald Trump, moved to give federal employees Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after Christmas off, it was a small tip of his hat to something true.

Christmas is not a speed bump. It is a season.

The state may stumble toward this instinct for pragmatic reasons, but the Church should embrace it unapologetically for theological ones. Christians are often uneasy with feasting. It feels indulgent. Unproductive. Slightly embarrassing. Scripture disagrees.

Feasts mark victory. Feasts announce abundance. Feasts declare that the King has come and the famine is over.

The incarnation is not an idea to be acknowledged. It is a reality to be celebrated. God has taken on flesh. Heaven has invaded earth. History has turned a corner. A one-day holiday cannot bear that weight.

A Call to Reclaim the Calendar

At this point, it feels a little bit like I'm firing a red-rider at a panzer.

But (PEW! PEW!) this is not primarily a call for new laws or national mandates. It is a call for repentance and imagination.

Christian fathers and mothers should reclaim the Christian calendar in their homes. Mark the days. Keep the Lord’s Day holy as a delight, not a burden. Let Christmas spill past December 25. Teach children that time itself belongs to Christ.

Christian business owners should have the courage and faith to structure their companies around Christ’s calendar, not merely Wall Street’s. A protected Sabbath and a twelve-day Christmas season signal something powerful to employees.

We work for more than profit. We answer to a higher King.

Churches should stop treating Christmas like a finale and start treating it like the opening movement of a long, joyful song. Nearly two full weeks of services, meals, prayers, psalms, and fellowship would preach more loudly than a thousand slogans.

For my part, I find myself waging a quiet, almost imperceptible rebellion against all of this. Nothing dramatic. Nothing loud. Just stubborn faithfulness. I keep giving gifts after December 25. I keep saying "Merry Christmas" long after the culture has moved on. When someone asks how my Christmas went, I answer, “I’ll let you know when it’s over.”

We have scheduled family gatherings throughout the season, not just for one compressed day. Meals. Evenings. Christmas hymns. Time that lingers. Time that feels inefficient. Time that reminds us that Christ did not come to fit neatly into a planner.

It is not a protest meant to scold anyone. It is simply a refusal to rush past what deserves to be lingered over. A way of teaching my children, and perhaps reminding myself, that Christmas is not something we get through. It is something we inhabit.

If calendars shape loves (and they do), then I want my calendar to preach, even in small ways, "Christ has come. The King is here. The feast is still going."

Calendars shape loves and loves shape lives.

If Christ is at the center of the calendar, He will not remain at the margins of culture for long. Time itself will bear witness. Children will grow up assuming that Christ’s reign is normal, public, and celebratory. Recovering the twelve days of Christmas begins with recovering the weekly joy of the Lord’s Day. From that foundation, the larger feasts make sense. The Church does not need to invent new rhythms. We need to remember the ones we were given, and to live like the incarnation actually changed the world.

Because it did.

Isaiah 9:6–7

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (ESV)

The Friendship Reset: Midlife, Maturity, and the Gospel

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 02:11:35 GMT

Not long ago I pulled out our wedding album. I had not looked at it in years. My younger son, Spurgeon, was asking questions about the day, so I sat at the kitchen table and flipped through the pages, pointing out faces, retelling stories, laughing at how young we looked.

Then I came to the photo of my groomsmen. Eight men stood there shoulder to shoulder with me, all of us young, confident, and certain we would walk through life together. These were the brothers I thought I would grow old with. These were the men I could not imagine losing touch with.

But as I stared at that photo, the realization settled on me with surprising heaviness. Out of the eight, I only maintain meaningful contact with one of them today.

One.

The rest have faded into the background of my life like landmarks. Some conflict, but not a great deal. Mostly miles added, convictions deepened, seasons changed, kids grown, jobs shifted, and proximity dissolved. The men who once stood beside me at one of the most significant moments of my life had quietly drifted into other circles, other priorities, other worlds. I have drifted too.

It is strange how a single picture can tell the truth you never stopped to consider. Back then I mistook proximity for loyalty, constant fun for constancy, and shared youth for shared conviction. We were in the same season, so we believed we would stay in the same story forever. But middle age knows better. It reveals that many friendships from youth were built on the scaffolding of convenience. When life moved on, the scaffolding fell away, and so did the friendship.

As I stared at those faces in the photo, I felt a tug of sadness. But alongside that sadness came clarity. Those men were not impostors. They were not disappointments. They were simply fellow travelers for a particular stretch of road. Our lives had overlapped, not intertwined. We had stood in each other’s weddings, but we had not forged the kind of friendship Proverbs describes. We had never built the long-term habits of candor, prayer, and counsel. We loved each other, but we did not really sharpen each other. The fact that only one remained was not a failure of affection. It was a revelation of depth.

When you grow up in modern America, friendship is simply assumed. You inherit it. You do not choose it. Public schooling creates an artificial ecosystem where proximity does most of the heavy lifting. Your friends are simply the other kids who live in your zip code and ride your bus. You bond over superficial commonalities because you all share the same cafeteria, the same geometry homework, the same Friday night lights. Friendship in youth is built on convenience and context.

Nothing becomes very different in early adulthood. You enter the survival years. You get married. You bear children. You work long hours. You fall asleep during movies. You lock arms with whoever is also drowning in diapers and debt and exhaustion. The similarities are comforting. They feel like solidarity. But very often it is not friendship in the biblical sense. It is trauma bonding. It is the camaraderie of fellow soldiers ducking their heads in the same trench.

You do not have the time, energy, or maturity to ask the deeper questions. You do not stop to consider whether these people actually share your loves, your convictions, your vision of the good life. You are simply busy. You gravitate toward the people who are in your season because proximity and survival make the choices for you.

Then something changes. There are some challenges no one warns you about when you are young. Middle-aged friendship is one of them. No one tells you that this will be one of the quiet crises of your late thirties and forties. You drift into it the same way you drift into adulthood itself: slowly, unconsciously, and without a plan.

Middle-aged friendship usually does not die with a bang. It dies with a full calendar. With one more rescheduled dinner. One more “we should get together soon.” One more group text that never quite lands on a date. Your children grow. They become more independent. Your career stabilizes or shifts. The fog lifts. One day you wake up at 40 and realize most of the people who know your stories do not actually know your soul. They were simply there when you happened to be young. You are surrounded by people you have known for years and yet you do not truly know them. Worse, you realize you are not deeply known.

In many cases the glaze of youthful ignorance dissolves and you see plainly what you did not have the margin or maturity to see earlier. Some of the people you once considered "close as a brother" are not aligned with you in the things that matter most. The political trivialities, the moral divergences, the theological differences, the lifestyle misalignments, the work ethic gaps, the seriousness about life, marriage, holiness, and responsibility, all become unavoidable fault lines. The people you once considered to be like family are busy or drifting in directions you never intended to go. You are left holding a quiet, unsettling realization:

I do not know how to build the kind of friendships I actually need.

And then the deeper ache comes. You begin to understand that your time is not elastic. Your soul is not bottomless. Friendship is a limited stewardship. And you do not have unlimited space to carry one-sided friendships, low-commitment acquaintances, or people who do not choose you back.

Middle-aged friendship forces you to see something you could not see before. True friendship is not defined by who has been around you the longest, but by who is willing to walk with you with constancy, candor, and counsel. The book of Proverbs becomes painfully practical in this stage of life.

“A friend loves at all times.” Proverbs 17:17

“A friend sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24 (second half)

“A friend wounds faithfully.” Proverbs 27:6 (“Faithful are the wounds of a friend…”)

“A friend gives earnest counsel.” Proverbs 27:9 (“…the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.”)

“A friend sharpens you.” Proverbs 27:17 (“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”)

This is not proximity. This is intentionality. It is effort. It is choosing.

Mel Robbins helpfully frames the "three pillars of friendship" as proximity, timing, and energy. These help explain why young friendships form so easily and why midlife friendships break so suddenly. Proximity fades as families move, schedules tighten, and obligations multiply. Timing diverges as some raise toddlers and others launch teens or start over in their careers. Energy shifts when beliefs sharpen, habits change, or one person grows while another stays still.

In youth, you assume friendship. In middle age, you discover its real cost.

I think it would be more accurate to call Mel's formula the "three pillars of companionship." Scripture pushes the definition of friendship deeper. You cannot have many true friends. Companions are plentiful. Friends are rare. Friendship requires discovery and forging. Discovery is the foundation. It is the moment when two people say, “You too? I thought I was the only one.” Forging is the lifelong work of commitment, vulnerability, rebuke, availability, and shared counsel. The three biblical pillars are affinity, intentionality, and sacrifice.

This is where midlife friendship becomes spiritually dangerous. It's easy to become bitter. Easy to resent people who do not reciprocate. Easy to hold on to relationships that should be allowed to die a natural death. Easy to become cynical and self-protective.

But, when you see the biblical vision of friendship, you feel two things at once: longing and crushing inadequacy.

Longing, because true biblical friendship must be fought for and is hard to come by. 

Inadequacy, because we recognize we have not been the friend we long to have.

This is why the gospel matters for friendship.

Jesus Christ is the friend Proverbs points to. The friend who always lets you in and never lets you down. The friend whose wounds heal rather than harm.  The friend who cleaves to you at infinite cost.  The friend who faced hell rather than lose you.  The friend who does not flatter you, but sanctifies you. The friend who knows you fully and loves you still.

His friendship frees you.  It frees you from needing other people to carry the weight of your identity.  It frees you from being paralyzed by rejection.  It frees you to love without fear.  It frees you to choose friends wisely and release friendships graciously.  It frees you to become the kind of friend you have always needed but rarely been.

Middle-aged friendship is difficult because it is the first time in your life that you must build friendships deliberately rather than inherit them by accident. It is the stage where you must confront yourself, your habits, your selfishness, and your relational immaturity. It is the place where Christ’s friendship becomes not a doctrine to be recited, but a lifeline to be held.

And it is also the place where the church becomes radiant. Christian friendship is where two people share the deepest affinity possible, the love of Christ, and yet can be gloriously unlike each other in almost every other way. Christ opens up friendship across age, personality, income, ethnicity, background, and temperament. This friendship is engineered by a sovereign Host who chooses the guests for His feast. You have not chosen one another. He has chosen you for one another.

Oddly enough, the ache of that wedding photo has become a gift to me. It has cleared space in my soul. It has reminded me that losing proximity is not the same thing as losing love. It has reminded me that Christ is still writing the story, bringing into my life men who share not only my past circumstances but my present convictions and future hopes.

Middle age strips away illusions. It shows you that convenience was never covenant. Proximity was never loyalty. Shared circumstances were never shared convictions. It is painful, but it is also purifying.

Because now you can choose.  Now you can love with intention rather than accident.  Now you can build friendships not from survival but from wisdom and joy. If you feel the ache of friendships that have faded, do not mistake it for failure. It is the Spirit clearing space. It is maturity arriving. It is the Master Gardener pruning so that true fruit can grow.

To my middle-aged brothers and sisters…step into this season with courage that flows from your faith.  Choose well.  Love deeply.  Speak truthfully.  Invest in the few who invest in you. And remember this:

Before you ever forged a single friendship on earth, Heaven forged one for you.  The Son of God walked into Gethsemane and up the hill of Calvary so that you could sort out mere companionship from covenant friendship.

Let these four words come straight out of heaven and sink deep into your soul:

You are not alone.

And because of that, you are free to become the friend your future friends will thank God for.

Gentle Pulpiting

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 15:12:41 GMT

Soft Parenting and Soft Pulpiteering: Two Orchards, One Root System

A tree is known by its fruit. That is how Christ tells us to judge a thing. Not by its mission statement. Not by its sentimental ideals. Not by how carefully its practitioners speak about it. Look at the fruit. Look at what it produces. That is the truth.

I’ve had ample opportunity to walk through the orchards of the modern home and the modern church, I find the same mushy harvest in both places. Soft people who expect authority to bend toward them. Congregations trained to wilt at the slightest moral demand. Humans shaped by softness who insist that softness is the highest virtue. I myself have not been unscathed by the state of the orchards. I have ruined my supper more than once gorging on their rotten fruits.

Let me show you what I mean.

Scene One: Aisle 7, Where Civilization Goes to Die

Imagine yourself in the grocery store. You turn a corner and stumble into the ritual of the gentle parent, which looks something like a hostage negotiation carried out in soft pastels.

A boy, no more than five, is screaming like a feral howler monkey over a bag of fluorescent sugar rocks. His mother crouches down as if approaching a wounded forest creature.

“Honey, use your words. Tell mommy how you feel right now.”

How does he feel? Judging by the kicks landing on her kneecaps, he feels like unleashing a coup. Mom offers options, as gentle parents do. “Would you like this snack instead? Or this one? Or we can go home and talk it out?”

The boy responds by attempting to claw her face.

The problem here is not gentleness; it’s confusion. She is trying to apply grace to a moment that is begging for law. She’s using a diffuser where she needs a paddle. She’s whispering therapy into the void while her son reenacts the French Revolution.

And here is the crucial line: Kids raised this way grow into adults who expect every authority, including pastors, to cater to them exactly the same way. The home trains the palate. And we’ve trained a generation to prefer spiritual baby food.

Which brings us to the pulpit.

Scene Two: The Whispering Pulpit and the Cult of Holy Niceness

Many modern pulpits preach like that mother kneeling in aisle 7. The pastor steps up with a tone softer than velvet and twice as flimsy. His sermon floats along like a dandelion puff: pretty, inoffensive, and entirely allergic to landing anywhere specific. No named sins. No pointed applications. No confronting the actual lives, of the actual people, in the actual community sitting right in front of him.

Instead, no matter the tightness of his exposition, no matter the number of hours he spent parsing out greek/hebrew sentences, he’s going to serve up the same five food groups of “gospel-centered” mush:

You need to love Jesus more.
You need to pray more.
You need to read your Bible more.
You need to feel God’s presence more.

You need to come/give to, and/or serve in his church more.

This is Christianity for people whose main spiritual battle is vague discouragement.

Meanwhile, their marriages are cracked, their sons are addicted, their daughters are drowning in self-hatred, and they’re all being discipled more by TikTok than by Titus. But the gentle pulpit cannot call anything by its name. It prefers abstraction because abstraction never hits anyone between the eyes. And so congregations remain in a perpetual adolescence, enthusiastic about “my spiritual journey,” thin-skinned as butterfly wings, and allergic to anything resembling correction. Lewis called them “men without chests,” upper brains full of theological trivia, lower guts full of religious emotion, and nothing in between to bind the two into courage.

These men are not rare. In fact, they flourish under gentle pulpiting like mold in a damp basement. The next time you are in Louisville, take a stroll at Southern Seminary on a crisp fall morning. Drink in the spectacle. The campus is full of polite, high-achieving, chestless seminarians, growing like orchids in the meticulously climate-controlled greenhouse of evangelical gentility. Or as my favorite baptist Jerry Dorris puts it, the place is practically sustained by “ seminary sugar mammas, ” a pietistic welfare system that rewards soft-spoken fragility and punishes conviction with a raised eyebrow. I watched more than once, a man with a chest come under church discipline (in a church pastored by professors) for getting a little too outspoken about CRT, feminism, or reformed political theology.

The Fruit Never Lies

A tree is known by its fruit. Gentle parenting yields adults who don’t respect authority unless it whispers sweetly.
Gentle pulpiting yields Christians who don’t obey Scripture unless it arrives scented with lavender. If the sermon dares to call out pornography, feminism, laziness, materialism, cowardice, bitterness, or gossip, specifically, concretely, it’s considered mean. If a pastor applies the text to the headlines, he’s being “political.” If he says anything sharper than a marshmallow, the email inbox fills up by Monday.

The fruit never lies.

Soft pulpits make soft saints.
Soft saints make soft churches.
Soft churches crumble into spiritual adolescence.

Yes, There’s a Ditch on the Other Side

Some pastors overcorrect and turn the pulpit into a partisan teleprompter. Every sermon becomes a State of the Union. Every text gets dragged into the outrage of the week. This too is folly. But at least it has testosterone. Still, it cannot form mature Christians because it replaces discipleship with adrenaline. It gets cheap amens in middle America because it testifies that the real problem with the world is "out there." Rather than avoiding the individual and household sins of a congregation, this approach shifts the blame altogether. The end-result is the same: no one repents.

This sort of blame shifting produces Nick Fuentes types. Men who look anywhere and everywhere for answers to why their life sucks, rather than just checking the most obvious place: the mirror. If it's everyone else's responsibility, it can't be mine. Yet, responsibilty is exactly what a boy must take on to become a man.

What Shepherds and Fathers Must Learn

Paul told Timothy that a man must prove himself in his home before he proves himself in the church. Why? Because the home is where a man learns the sacred dance of law and gospel.

A father must discipline and delight.
Correct and comfort.
Command and embrace.
Say “no” with authority and “yes” with generosity.

Pastors must do the same. Not the soft, whispering vacillation of gentle pulpiting. Not the feverish bark of political pulpiteering.

But the steady, straight-backed, warm-blooded authority of a shepherd who knows who he is, knows what the Word says, and knows how to apply it to the real world his people wake up to every morning. For those searching for a new "third-way" here it is, long-cut. Get yourself a big pinch, pack it in tight, and make sure you inhale.

Soft Parenting Makes Soft Churches

Because both are allergic to the same thing: authority.

Gentle parenting treats authority as a suggestion.
Gentle pulpiting treats Scripture as a sentiment.

Both raise people who believe all power must come with a padded surface and a soothing tone.

But Christ is not a therapist with a Galilean counseling license.

Christ is King.
King over children.
King over households.
King over pulpits.
King over headlines.
King over nations.

Soft pulpits collapse in soft times.

We are not living in soft times.

It’s time for pastors to command and guide like fathers.
It’s time for Christians to obey like disciples.
It’s time for households to raise oaks, not orchids.

And it’s time for the gentle pulpits of our age to give way to the full-throated, steel-spined, grace-and-law proclamation of the risen King.

The Table, the Voting Booth, and the Shrinking Gospel

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 10:56:45 GMT

How 9Marxists Learned to Fence Out Kids and Vote In Pagans

As I logged on to socials the day after the election, I was less than surprised to be reminded of Mark Dever’s reaction to previous election cycles with a tip of his hat to multi-faith democracy: “I’m a fundamentalist Christian, but I’m happy to have Muslims, Jews, liberal Christians, and non-religious types in our government.”

Dever, bless his “Reformed” heart, is the headmaster of the 9Marks school of ecclesiastical scrupulosity where every doctrine is ironed flat, baptized in lukewarm water (at the appropriate age of course), and served with a polite nod. He has spent years teaching that the church must be as pure as the driven snow, which apparently means keeping believing children off the sled until they’re old enough to file their own taxes.

I must confess: back in my cage-stage years, I was a proud alumnus of Dever’s School of Ecclesiastical Sterility. The tidy logic of it all gave form to what evangelical mush had left behind. It felt safer to doubt my children’s faith than to risk presuming upon grace. I examined them with a skeptical squint, telling myself I was protecting the purity of the church, when in reality I was protecting my own sense of control. I patted myself on the back for being a careful, reasonable Baptist when what really existed was a dad with more logic than love and no good answer to the question: “What is the whole bible trying to communicate?”

And here’s the problem: when you excommunicate the covenant kids from Christ’s table, you will eventually invite the pagans to rule your nation’s table.

Same hermeneutic, different restaurant.

All through Scripture, God understands mixed company. He called Abraham and his offspring. He fed the Passover lamb to households where toddlers asked, “What’s this all about, Dad?” (Ex. 12:26). He made sure the whole congregation of Judah men, women, and “little ones” stood before Him (2 Chron. 20:13). When the Spirit fell at Pentecost, Peter didn’t say, “This promise is for you and your youth group when they’re seventeen.” No, he said, “For you and your children ” (Acts 2:39).

In short: God keeps dragging kids to the family table of remembrance, often in spite of us.

I can hear the gasps of my respectable brothers as they clutch their 1 Corinthians 11 pearls. My over-simplified version of the argument goes like this: “Paul said examine yourself, and little Timmy can’t define justification yet.” But Paul’s rebuke was never about immature intellects; it was about bloated bellies. Some saints were getting sloshed on communion wine while others went hungry. The “unworthy manner” was snobbery, not infancy.

Paul’s fix wasn’t “install a theological bouncer at the door.” It was “wait for one another.” The solution to arrogance isn’t exclusion, it’s repentance. The only people in this instance Paul would have us keep from the table are the unrepentant gluttons ( a nd probably the one who tries to keep back believing children from table fellowship with Christ. See Matthew 19:14), not the baptized six-year-olds who believe Jesus loves them and don’t yet know how to spell propitiation.

When Jesus broke the bread and said, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” He wasn’t instituting a private mystical moment; He was inaugurating a family meal. Remembrance, biblically speaking, is not closing your eyes and thinking hard about Calvary until you feel something. It’s covenant renewal putting God’s faithfulness on public display.

So when we tell our children, “Not yet, honey, Daddy’s communing with God right now,” we are catechizing unbelief. We’re teaching them that Christ’s body is too holy for covenant kids and too polite to overturn Pharisaical tables.

From the Lord’s Table to the Statehouse Table

Now trace the line. If we can’t discern who belongs at the Supper, we won’t discern who belongs in the Senate. The same logic that withholds bread from the confessing kindergartener, will hand a gavel to the God-hating politician.

Scripture doesn’t blush about this. Civil rulers are to be “men who fear God” (Ex. 18:21). The king must be one “from among your brothers” (Deut. 17:15). The magistrate is “God’s servant” (Rom. 13:4), not a neutral technocrat managing a cosmic HOA. When the righteous rule, the people rejoice (Prov. 29:2). When the wicked rule, we get congressional hearings and inflation.

Dever says he’s fine with pagans in power. Of course he is. His theology is perfectly domesticated for it. It’s more smoke billowing from an already raging fire. A privatized, pietistic gospel produces privatized, pietistic citizens. And privatized citizens elect godless bureaucrats who privatize your freedom right into oblivion.

This is what happens when the gospel is treated like a spiritual vitamin instead of a Kingdom proclamation. We baptize as few as possible, we commune as seldom as possible, and we expect as little as possible when it comes to Gospel power redeeming fallen creation. Then we with glazed eyes wonder why the culture has gone feral.

The apostles didn’t preach, “Receive Jesus into your heart and mind your own business.” They preached, “Jesus is Lord, therefore repent, be baptized, and obey Him in everything .” That’s corporate. That’s public. That’s political.

Our forefathers bled for a republic under God because they actually believed in a God who ruled. Today we shrug and vote for whichever pagan promises not to burn the flag too often. That’s not humility; that’s theological anemia.

A Modest Proposal

Maybe, just maybe, we should stop handing out the Supper like it’s a post-doctoral degree and start giving it like it’s a covenant meal. Maybe we should raise our kids expecting the shockwaves of resurrection to shake through their very bones. Maybe we should elect rulers who fear God instead of those who fear the latest poll.

Because here’s the thing: the gospel doesn’t stop at the threshold of your soul. It wants your dinner table, your town, your legislature, and your nation.

It wants everything.

And if that sounds too public, too political, too earthly , remember this: Jesus didn’t teach us to pray, “Thy kingdom stay in heaven.”

Alma Mater and the Moral Imagination of Mt. Vernon, Indiana

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:09:13 GMT

The Latin phrase alma mater means “nourishing mother.” It’s a beautiful and sobering thought. It implies that our educational institutions are not mere dispensers of facts, but mothers in the truest sense: they feed, nurture, and form the minds and hearts of our children.

A child will always become, in large measure, what he is nourished by. The content of that nourishment, the ideas, values, and worldview imparted, becomes the substance of the soul. This is why Martin Luther, the reformer, famously said, “I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme.” He understood that education is discipleship, and that to entrust a child’s formation to an institution that cannot distinguish light from darkness is to hand them to a mother who nurses them on poison.

Mt. Vernon’s Confusion

The Mt. Vernon School Board recently reaffirmed its decision to allow an LGBTQ+ student club to meet on campus, defending the move as a matter of fairness and legality. In their statement, they equated the LGBTQ+ and Friends club with groups like Boys of Faith, Girls of Grace, and PAWS Wrestling, as if all were morally and educationally equivalent.

This reveals something much deeper than a policy decision. It shows that those entrusted with shaping the next generation cannot tell the moral difference between a group dedicated to physical discipline or spiritual formation and a group centered on adolescent discussions of sexual identity and preference, often without the guiding influence of mature adults.

This is not neutrality. It is moral blindness. When those who claim to “nourish” our children cannot distinguish between food and poison, the community must take notice.

Christians, You Are Responsible

Parents, particularly Christian parents, cannot shrug at this. You are responsible for what nourishes your children, body, mind, and soul. To send them into an environment that celebrates confusion and calls it compassion is to surrender your God-given duty to disciple them in truth. You are not powerless. You are called to shepherd your children’s education toward truth, goodness, and beauty. Given recent events, here is the hard truth staring you in the face: You can’t depend on the “nourishing mother” of the public school to feed them rightly.

Education that was once rooted in shared moral foundations, has become a mission field, or worse, the battlegrounds for the moral imagination of the young citizens of our community. The issue before us is not merely the existence of a club. It is the philosophy of education that now animates my alma mater , a mother who feeds, but no longer nourishes.

Christians, it is time to remember that neutrality in moral formation does not exist. There are only two tables: the Lord’s, and the world’s. Your children will be nourished at one of them.

Psalm 23 - Hymn Sing Sermon October 2025

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:42:36 GMT

The Father Who Never Comes Home

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 23:35:27 GMT

SNAP, TANF, and the Death of the Christian Household

While political positioning and debate roars over budgeting the trillions of dollars that flow through Washington, balances are running out on federally funded welfare programs like SNAP and TANF. Any mention stirs a lot of emotion — and rightly so. For many families, these programs have provided food, stability, and relief in moments of real hardship. Single mothers, widows, and children should never be mocked for seeking help. They are often fighting to survive in a world that has already failed them.

But while compassion for the struggling is essential, the crisis behind these benefits runs far deeper than any economic policy. The very existence of such programs on a national scale reveals a spiritual and structural collapse: the deliberate dismantling of the family, the destruction of masculine virtue, and the rise of Big Government as a counterfeit father.

The System That Broke Men

The disappearance of fathers from the home did not happen by accident. It was engineered.

For the last half-century, a coordinated assault — legal, cultural, and spiritual — has targeted the biblical model of manhood. No-fault divorce made the covenant of marriage disposable. Abortion culture stripped men of both responsibility and authority over their own offspring. Pornography numbed masculine strength and distorted male purpose. Feminism, in its modern, secular form, turned cooperation into competition and branded leadership as oppression.

Meanwhile, the culture declared war on everything masculine. Strength became “toxic.” Discipline became “abusive.” Headship became “patriarchy.”

And when men, demoralized and disempowered, began to falter under this assault, the same system that broke them stepped forward to replace them. The state said, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the family.” And with that, government became the provider — but without the heart, holiness, or covenant of a true father.

The Counterfeit Father

The federal government now functions as the nation’s husband and father. It sends the check, sets the rules, and defines the moral boundaries. But unlike a real father, it does not love. It does not teach. It does not hold anyone accountable.

A father says, “Do what is right and I will bless you.”
The state says, “Do whatever you want — I’ll pay for it.”

This is not compassion. It is control disguised as care.

Scripture paints a very different picture of true fatherhood:

1 Timothy 5:8 – “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
Ephesians 6:4 – “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
Psalm 68:5–6 – “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home.”

It is God who provides for the fatherless — and He does so through families, the church, and Christian community, not through bureaucracies.

Mercy Without Covenant

To be clear, mercy is good. There are mothers and children who have survived because trillions of tax dollars have flowed into federal welfare programs since they were codified in 1964. But the question is not whether help should exist — it’s who should give it , and on what foundation .

When mercy comes from the state, it arrives without relationship or responsibility. It’s provision without discipleship, aid without accountability, grace without truth.

The early church’s generosity looked nothing like that. In Acts 2:44–45, believers shared what they had, meeting needs face-to-face. Their compassion was covenantal — rooted in holiness, relationship, and repentance. It was personal and moral .

When the state becomes the dispenser of mercy, compassion gets detached from character. The result is dependence without dignity — a system that feeds bodies but forgets souls.

The Lie of Radical Individualism

Ironically, while big government promises communal care, it actually produces radical individualism.

When fathers are removed and the state steps in, people learn to live disconnected from the natural bonds of family, church, and neighbor. They become dependent on programs but detached from people.

We were never meant to live that way. God’s design for human society is covenantal interdependence:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” – Galatians 6:2

That kind of dependence isn’t weak — it’s holy. It’s what happens when families, churches, and communities function as God intended. But the state, in trying to play father, has taught us to trust bureaucracy over brotherhood.

Mercy Without Morality, Provision Without Purpose

The welfare state offers bread, but no brotherhood. It sustains life, but never strengthens it. It promises equity, but destroys the institutions that create true equality — marriage, fatherhood, and faith.

Every check from Washington comes with a hidden message: You don’t need men. You don’t need the church. You don’t need God.

But in trying to be father, the state has only proven it can never love like one.

Rebuilding the House

The solution is not cruelty or indifference — it is reconstruction .

We must rebuild what the state tried to replace:

Fathers who lead and protect.
Mothers who nurture and build.
Churches that disciple and provide.
Communities that care and connect.

The welfare state filled a vacuum it helped create. Now it’s time to fill it again — not with programs, but with people; not with dependency, but with discipleship.

Big Government didn’t just step in when fathers disappeared. It made fathers disappear — and then offered itself as the solution.

It broke men through law, culture, and propaganda. It disarmed families through incentives that reward dysfunction. And it told mothers and children to look to Caesar instead of Christ

But Caesar cannot love you. He cannot raise your children. He cannot build a home.

Only God the Father can.
Only families can.
Only the church can.

The Fruit and the Tree: Why Our Community Can’t Thrive Without Our Roots

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:19:25 GMT

A Sober reflection on moral consensus, public schools, and the fading spiritual foundations that once gave small-town America it's strength.

A couple of days ago, I added fuel to an already raging fire by prompting a conversation online about a topic that’s stirred up a lot of emotion in our community — the existence of an after-school, student-led LGBTQ+ club at a local junior high for children as young as ten. A fellow alumna offered a thought that received a lot of positive reaction from “conservatives”:

“I firmly believe our schools should focus on education — reading, math, science, and preparing kids for life — not introducing social or political topics that children are far too young to process… Let kids be kids. That’s what has always made our hometown strong — families raising children with faith, values, and community at the center.”

Her words were heartfelt and true. I replied — and pushed a little:

“Love your heart. This worked great even 25 years ago when we were in school because there was still enough of a moral consensus that the center could hold. ‘That’s what has always made our hometown strong — families raising children with faith, values, and community at the center.’ This is an innately Christian sentiment. It’s the apples. The tree is Christianity. You can’t have the fruit without the tree.”

The Fruits We Love Come From Roots We’ve Forgotten

When one talks about “faith, values, and community,” we’re describing the fruit of a moral and spiritual foundation — one that was built not on vague notions of goodness, but on the living truths of the Christian faith.

For generations, even those who didn’t personally follow Christ still lived in a world shaped by His teachings: that human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), that love is patient and kind (1 Corinthians 13:4), that truth matters (John 8:32), and that parents bear the primary responsibility for raising and shaping their children (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).

Those beliefs formed the soil of our communities. They made our schools safe, our neighborhoods trusting, and our families resilient. But over time, we’ve tried to enjoy the fruit without tending to the roots.

We still want kindness, respect, and freedom — but we want them without the moral authority of Scripture. We want community without covenant and virtue without God. Jesus warned us about this very thing when He said, “Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit… every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 7:17–19).

Cut off the tree, and the fruit inevitably rots.

Why the Center Cannot Hold

My friend’s comment reminded me of a time — not that long ago — when even if people disagreed about religion or politics, there was still a shared sense of right and wrong. The “center” held because it was anchored in something transcendent.

But as the poet Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” When truth becomes subjective, when the fear of God is replaced by the fear of offending, the center collapses. The moral consensus dissolves, and suddenly we’re arguing about whether 10-year-olds should be given taxpayer-funded space (and a shout-out in the morning announcements) to subject their still-forming sense of identity to adult topics about sexuality — instead of learning how to multiply fractions, play chess, or score touchdowns.

The prophet Jeremiah said, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). That’s where we are — trying to patch over deep spiritual decay with nice slogans about tolerance and inclusion, when what we really need is repentance and renewal.

A Story from Home

I remember my own junior high years — before smartphones and social media, before every issue became political. My twentieth high school reunion was just a matter of weeks ago, and the prevailing sentiment as we looked through pictures of dances, spirit days, and hair with too much product was this: “Simpler times. Wish we could go back and cherish a little more just how good we had it.” The educators cared not just about grades but about character. I have lasting impressions of teachers constantly challenging my complacency, rebuking me for sinful behavior, and refusing to make excuses for inexcusable behavior. Our families and community, even if imperfect, knew there were boundaries that protected innocence. There was a moral consensus that understood that youth are full of folly and that there was a publically funded community project to separate them from that folly. It was called "school".

That wasn’t accidental. It was the residual blessing of a society still influenced by Christian conviction. Churches were more full. Parents prayed. It was taboo to mock the Bible — Scripture was respected, even by those who didn’t open it often.

That moral capital has been spent — and we’re shocked that the center is wobbling.

Planting the Tree Again

We can’t just lament what’s being lost. If we want those wholesome “apples” again — strong families, moral community schools, safe neighborhoods — we’re going to have to replant the tree.

That starts in our homes. In how we talk with our children about truth and love. In how we model grace and courage. It starts when fathers take up spiritual leadership both around their table and in the community, when mothers shape homes around faith, and when communities stop outsourcing morality to government institutions.

Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). The solution isn’t nostalgia — it’s renewal.

If we abide in Him again, the fruit will return. The peace, the unity, the strength of our hometowns — all of it grows naturally when the roots are deep in Christ.

A Final Thought

We don’t restore our communities by winning Facebook arguments or school board debates alone. We do it by faithfully tending the tree — in our own hearts, homes, and churches.

As Psalm 1 says:

“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.”

If we want that kind of fruit again, we must return to the source — not just to values but to the God who gives them.

Enemy and Escort

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 11:31:34 GMT

Enemy and Escort - September 26, 2025

Y ou wait at the edge of every green pasture,
shadow stretched across the pilgrim path.
I hate you, my greatest foe,
last adversary to be undone,
a tyrant who for ages
has mocked the dust of Adam.

And yet—
beyond the swollen river,
beyond the cold and trembling ford,
the gates of the Celestial City rise.
Faithful saints, in their final crossing,
feel the flood seize them,
but hear voices from the shore:
“Be of good courage,
the King Himself has passed this way.”

So I walk with you, strange companion,
hating your touch,
yet needing your hand to take me home.
I call you enemy.
Destroyer, you rend body from the soul,
and tear what was once whole.
I call you servant,
for you usher through the veil,
laying down the final burden,
opening the final door.

Christ the King has conquered,
yet He calls still to enter by the grave,
to step into the dark
and find it filled with light.
O mystery:
that what slays me
is what saves me,
that what robs me
is what carries me
to the throne of Him
who swallowed death in victory.

I hate you, yet I embrace you, my enemy and my escort.

What Time is It? Sept 25' Hymn Sing Sermon

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 11:37:53 GMT

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