Category: Family life

On 23 December 2022, I had a heart event. I did not have a heart attack. I did not have myocarditis. I had and have pericarditis. Now, the cardiologists tell me that in their field this is not uncommon to see. I suppose that piece of information was intended to make me feel better. You know … a case of bad news, good news. The good news is you don’t have this really really bad thing (Heart Attack). The bad news is you have this kind of bad thing (pericarditis). And one has to admit there is good news found in not having the really really bad thing.

However, this kind of bad thing is bad thing enough by itself but when combined with a  heart condition they reckon I was born with (aortic stenosis) it can begin to get disconcerting. Not to worry though because they also tell me that this is not that uncommon for Cardiologists to see as far as weird things being present in a human being.

On top of that one gets the random cardiologist who thinks that everything that has gone wrong with you means everything will go wrong with you and begins to tell you of the prevalence of aortic aneurysms with this condition as well the glories of open heart surgery and how easy the recovery from open heart surgery can be. My eyes were glazed over after that consultation.

It’s been quite a recovery ride and I suspect it may well continue to be quite a ride. They pretty consistently tell me that it will take at least 3 months to recover from this pericarditis. Some have even said 6 months. As I look back over the last month I would say that there is undeniable improvement from day one but I am impatient. I keep trying to push myself to do more than I should be, in order to prove to myself that I am getting better. (At least I have the excuse of one Cardiologist telling me to push through my exercise limits — a piece advice we learned later that is not shared by all Cardiologists.) As such, the last couple days finds me dialing my walking routine back from the 4.50 miles I was doing up to that point.

I have learned all over again about Doctors and Doctors offices and PA’s and NP’s and hospitals and how the WOKE agenda is affecting all that to the point of making me contemplate whether it is worse to deal with all the WOKENESS in the medical field or whether it is worse to have pericarditis. I can salute the cardiologists at the hospital as they refused the temptation to stick a needle in my chest to drain off the water from the heart that arises from pericarditis. They raised that as an option but counseled against it, believing that the water would subside on its own. I’d throw back a shot of whiskey in your honor guys except that pericarditis doesn’t like whiskey.

All of this, of course, has brought me to the place of being very intimate with my own mortality. When this condition was at high tide I was definitely beginning to contemplate my end. Now, I’ve had a couple close calls with death in my life and I’ve spent my share of time in hospitals in years past but not as from anything that was quite like this. This one brought me up short and shook me good — and I’m not easily shake-able.

The only way that I have been able to navigate the embrace of my own looming death (whether next week or in 20 years yet) has been to remind myself that my times are in God’s hands.

Psalm 31:15 My times are in Your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me. 16Make Your face shine on Your servant; save me by Your loving devotion.

I have had to remind myself constantly that;

That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (who of nothing made heaven and earth, with all that is in them;1 who likewise upholds and governs the same by His eternal counsel and providence)2 is for the sake of Christ His Son, my God and my Father; on whom I rely so entirely, that I have no doubt but He will provide me with all things necessary for soul and body;3 and further, that He will make whatever evils He sends upon me, in this valley of tears, turn out to my advantage;4 for He is able to do it, being Almighty God,5 and willing, being a faithful Father.6

Heidelberg Catechism 
Question/Answer 26

I have also learned that it is acceptable to be sad about and so mourn these kinds of events. Of course, very few people — even saints — want to die.  Most people desire to continue on with kith and kin. Some people want more life even if only to continue to being a thorn in the side of the enemies of Jesus Christ. As such, being sad at the possibility or likelihood of death is not necessarily sinful;

“It is not sinful to be sad . Blessed be God for that! Jesus wept. Tears have often been the food and drink of God’s people day and night. Sorrow is natural to men. It may become sinful, but it is not necessarily sinful. In fact, it is often a blessing, and does more good than gladness itself. Hear the wise man: “Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” The day of desperate sorrow seems to be reserved to the wicked (Isa. 17: 11). To saints, no night is without its morning. Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Blessed is he who has the hope of salvation to cheer him along!

The CREC crowd is out there insisting that when one is converted they are not only converted from death unto life but they are also converted from their old family to a new family discovered as and in the Church. Allow me to contend this is yet another example of grace destroying nature that is so ubiquitous in the CREC ecclesiolatry model that is owned by the CREC.

Below we find a Whitman’s sampler of quotes sustaining the claim above;

“I believe that familism is a pervasive error in American Christianity….In heaven, however, the family is not the nuclear, biological family. Jesus said that the natural family, not the state, would be the greatest enemy of His kingdom. The new family is the church. The parents are not the biological parents, but the elders of the church, who act for Christ. The natural, biological family is dead in Adam, and its children are born dead.”

James B. Jordan
(Biblical Horizons » No. 21: A Letter on Paedocommunion)

“Christian universalism takes concrete political form in a global communion of saints. It’s an ecclesial universalism. The bonds that connect Christians across national boundaries are deeper and stronger than bonds of blood or culture.”

– Peter Leithart
First Things — August 2022
Against National Conservatism

“Men and women are called upon to be separated from their natural identities as members of race and class and be given a new Spiritual identity by being added to the body of Christ in baptism.”

Mark Horne

“The Church is God’s greatest masterpiece. It is not a man-made institution; it is the creation of God the Father, Son and Spirit….The Church is made new by the Pentecostal fire of Acts 2. She is the undoing of Babel. Whereas in Babel God separated the families of the earth, in the Church Christ brings the nations of the earth together to form one holy and undivided family.”

The Church-Friendly Family
Randy Booth and Rich Lusk XVI
(This is from Uri Brito’s intro)

“We must affirm the supremacy of the Church among all the spheres and institutions of human life by placing ourselves within the life and mission of the Church.”

The Church-Friendly Family
Randy Booth and Rich Lusk XVII
(This is from Uri Brito’s intro)

“He even initially separates us from our family so that new families can emerge…The Church is an outpost of the kingdom of God. From there we are sent back to our families to establish outposts of the Church.”

Randy Booth and Rich Lusk
The Church-Friendly Family — p. 2

“We must come to see the Church as the primary family and our individual families as outposts of the Church…The Church, then, is the primary institution of society.”

Randy Booth and Rich Lusk
–The Church-Friendly Family — p. 20

“The Church is not an institution ordained to assist the family so that it can be a blessing to the world rather than a curse. The same is true for the State. The Church holds the place of primacy–always. If it is the Body of Christ, then there’s no other place for it.”

Randy Booth and Rich Lusk
The Church-Friendly Family — p. 21

First, we want to note that all of the above has a very Roman Catholic feel about it. Remember, Rome always insisted that were any Institution to have legitimacy it had to, in some fashion, come into the Church and so be under its umbrella of legitimacy. This kind of hegemony won its spurs when Henry IV went to Canossa to submit to Pope Gregory VII. There the Church had gained its primacy over the state and by extension over all things. The CREC looks to be demanding that the modern family go to Canossa to gain legitimacy.

Second, the admonition that we find in I Timothy 5:4f cuts against this ecclesiolatry model that is being pushed by acolytes in the CREC;

4 … But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

Note the centrality of the family in its proper role. The inspired Apostle is telling Timothy and the Church that it is the family’s natural role to be the first to provide for their own elderly over and above the Church.

Then there is the account in Acts 6 which demonstrates, just as I Timothy 5 demonstrates how much natural relations, not only character qualities, impacts the life of the Church and not the reverse of that which is being pushed by the ecclesiolaters in the CREC. Notice in Acts 6 that in the midst of conflict between ethnic lines (The matter of provision for Hebrews Jewish widows vs. the provision of Grecian Jewish widows in the Church) the Church chooses Hellenistic Deacons to address the needs of their Grecian widowed women-folk who were being overlooked (Acts 6:1, 5). This is communicating that family realities are not necessarily superseded once one is converted and comes into the Church.

Further the fact that the realities of nature ordained by God continue to have reality and impact in the Church is seen by the fact that women are not allowed to hold office in the Church (cf. 1 Cor. 14:34–35; 1 Tim. 2:12). and that quite without any denial that women have all the spiritual benefits of being united to Christ.

Indeed the centrality of the family as in its own nature sphere is not even eclipsed in the New Jerusalem where in the book of Revelation we see that the New Jerusalem is populated by the nations in their nations (Rev. 20-21). Even the resurrected and now glorified saints will not lose their familial or community identities that were characteristic of them in the fallen world (cf. Rev. 7:9). The nations as nations come walk in the new Jerusalem by the glory of God’s presence and light.

So, we see the error that the ecclesiolaters in the CREC are making in their hyper-prioritizing of the church. One is tempted to say that they are trying to immanentize the eschaton by pulling heaven down to earth but that is not even accurate as we see above since even in the eschaton the both family and church have an existence.

I am not familial-centric though that is what I’ll be accused of, but neither am I ecclesiocentric or an ecclesiolater. I believe that the Church and the Family are both ordained of God to work in a harmony of interest to extend the crown rights of Jesus Christ into every area of life. I believe the church and the family are the left leg and the right leg of walking the Christian life. Both are necessary and we are left crippled without both legs being the same length.

A state with the kind of power that the current state has, has little motivation to encourage sexual fidelity and numerous incentives to promote unchastity. Far from being the friend of families and family values, the Liberal state represents the most insidious threat to human flourishing ever devised. The real goal of the amoral-inclusivist liberal order is a Leviathan of disordered sexual relationships constructed out of the dismembered parts of its victim: the human family. In this manner the Liberal Leviathan State removes the threat of the institution of the family to its absolute hegemony. By insuring the breakdown of the family unit via sexual perversity and unfaithfulness the consequence is that the State becomes stronger and stronger as the institution of the family becomes weaker and weaker.