Habakkuk’s Resolve

Habakkuk 3:17Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. 19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.

Here we have, in my estimation, one of the most beautiful prayers in the OT. Certainly it is one that I have turned to repeatedly in my own life. It is one I reference almost weekly in my long prayer when I pray; “In wrath remember mercy.” (Hbk 3:2)

Habakkuk was the prophet of resolution. He stared face flush into the pit of coming darkness and standing resolute He makes the good confession of faith. He was a philosopher, like Job, examining the mystery of God’s ways with men. Like the Psalmist in 73 he is asking the question “why do the wicked prosper,” and like that Psalmist he finally is able to see that, in the words of Longfellow,

Though the mills of God grind slowly

Yet they grind exceedingly small:

Though with patience He stands waiting,

With exactness grinds He all.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Retribution

And in that conviction here in this passage Habakkuk makes a prayer/confession that regardless of the visible circumstances he will look and consider that which is unseen but even more certain. He lifts his eyes above the smoke of battle that sees a crumbling agricultural social order infrastructure and says, “I shall be not be moved in my confidence nor undimmed in my joy, that God shall have the final word. Though all may disintegrate around me yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my savior.

Truly all our joy is, to be in Him in whom is all Good, who is all Goodness and all Love.

And Habakkuk had a good reason to think that the destruction he posits could indeed come to pass. The context of the book finds God raising the wicked and ruthless Chaldeans up in order to be His rod of punishment against faithless Israel.

Tyranny, chaos, and lawlessness were rampant in Judah. The wicked leaders of Judah had raised up strife and contention (1:1), oppressed righteous people (1:2, 13), lived in open sin (2:4, 5, 15, 16), worshiped idols (1:4, 14, 15). Habakkuk’s time was dark. He faced a complete and utter disregard for God’s law, the certainty of a pending invasion, contentiousness among the people of Judah.

The book opens with Habakkuk complaining about wicked Judah and God responds… “Not to worry. I’ve got this. Indeed, my solution is bringing in the Chaldeans to have His judgment upon Judah. In vs. 12-17 of Habakkuk the prophet is aghast at such a prospect. He, understandably finds that a case of going from the proverbial frying pan to the fire.

Habakkuk found God’s ways here difficult to understand and justify in his thinking, though he learns in God’s second soliloquy (2:2-4) that God will bring about His justice in His good time. The prophet learns;

“God has all the ages which to demonstrate his justice. The testing of time will reveal what men are, as fire separates gold from dross. The Chaldeans may prosper in their wickedness for a season, and seem to triumph over a people more righteous than they. Yet they carry in themselves ‘the germs of certain ruin.’ The years, which are the crucible of God, will make manifest the essential weakness of an ungodly people.”

Harrell

Then in the rest of chapter 2 following 2:4 God pronounces a series of five woes on the wicked. That is then followed by the anthem of praise and resolution in chapter 3 that we are looking at.

As we come to these verses we are looking at a grizzardly old prophet rocked by the circumstances of life, standing alone as living among a defiant people creating and bending to a wicked social order with the only prospect in his pocket that all of that was the good news.

But amidst all the uncertainty there remains one place and one place only to stand and on that one place he resolves to be unmovable. And that one place to stand is the certainty of the reality of God.

And so he becomes a hero for us today in the words that follow.

I.) Note first Habakkuk’s technique in overcoming

Habakkuk talks back to himself.

We’ve talked about this before here over the years but it is worth repeating. Habakkuk is in danger of being governed by his fears of what might happen to him in the future. He is understandably uncertain and we might even say fearful. Who wouldn’t be? He has been doubting God’s wisdom and sovereignty and ability to deliver him in his circumstances.

And here if vs. 17 he begins to take himself in hand and he begins to talk back to himself. You see don’t you, that Habakkuk is, as we might say, “getting a grip on himself.” He is finding his voice of courage to drown out his voice of fear and doubt. He says that come hell or high water, no matter if the very worse I can imagine could happen, I am not going to give up my confidence in God. I am not going to allow it to steal my joy in God my savior. I am not going to allow it to steal my ability to rejoice.

This technique of talking back to one’s self is found all throughout the Psalms. We see in Psalm;

43:5 – Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.

Psalm 42:5

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.

Psalm 42:11

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.

Fellow saints we need to learn this technique because should we not learn to talk back to ourselves, I can promise you we will certainly be overcome by our fears… fears which in the times we are living in — times not greatly different from those of Habakkuk – we will surrender to despair or perhaps worse yet we will compromise our convictions for a little relief.

As a Pastor I have to repeatedly tell people to not listen to their fears. I have to tell them to talk back to themselves with the truths about God’s character.

I tell the young lady who has unjustly lost her job that God has not abandoned her and she needs to talk back to herself that truth.

I tell the spouse that is going through divorce for cause that they must talk back to themselves regarding that God still loves them for the sake of Christ.

More than once I have had to tell parents who have lost a child or who have had a child born unhealthy that they must talk back to themselves and not allow their understandable discouragement be the louder voice.

I tell them, as I must often tell myself repeatedly, that we can yet still rejoice in God.

Now, I would not suggest this is easy. I doubt it was easy for Habakkuk but it was needful all the same. And speaking of personal experience if we don’t talk back to ourselves we are sure to sink in the slough of despond.

II.) Note Second the resolve in the Prophet Habakkuk

We are no longer an Agrarian people and so we have a hard time understanding the scenario here that the prophet paints.

3:17Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

This is a description of full and final desolation. This describes apocalypse of death and famine. The closest I have read on this in my life is what happened in the Holodomor. This was the political starvation of the Christian Ukrainians by the Atheist Jewish Bolsheviks in the 1930s when millions of people were purposely starved to death in order to bring them into subjection.

From my reading, starvation is a slow, torturous and particularly painful death. Yet despite the prospects of such a possibility what the prophet resolved on doing, when all nature and every seeming hope is dead is to say, “I will rejoice.”

This is supernatural. Almost beyond comprehension. And yet we have other accounts like this that come down to us from history. One I have told here before;

An old covenanter father and son during the 17th century Bishop Laud persecutions found themselves arrested and imprisoned. One day in the dank, cramped, filthy, and vermin filled cell the authorities came for the son. Hours passed until the door opened again and something was tossed in the cell. Covered with clothes the old father peeled back the clothes to see what it was that had been tossed only to discover his son’s severed head.

His response was as an example of talking back to himself was

“This is from the Lord…. it is good it is good.”

I can truly say that I do not have that amount of faith – of Habakkuk or of the Covenanter. I can only pray that should such a day come I would be given the grace to have that kind of faith to anchor myself in the real reality of God that lies beyond desperate and dreadful circumstances.

Of course all this is anchored in that foundational biblical and Reformed conviction that God is sovereign. If we can not convince ourselves of that… if we must put limits on God’s sovereignty, if we are not convinced that circumstances are beyond God’s control, we will not be able to talk back to ourselves, we will not be able to have this theocratic optimism that we find characteristic of Habakkuk and characteristic of our Reformed Faith & Fathers.

We can have no resolve… no grit … no ability to rise above our circumstances, our setbacks, or our challenges unless we believe in God’s sovereignty.
We see this in what we finally note here

III.) The Prophet’s Vision of God

In this section we see that Habakkuk escapes the thoughts of sufferings of this life to believing joy in God.

He speaks here of God as “The Sovereign Lord,” and it is this understanding of God that is the source of Habakkuk’s immeasurable joy.

He is rejoicing as vs. 18 says … “In the Lord, the Unchangeable God, “who is and was and is to come,” the great I am. He is rejocing in, as he says, “the God of my salvation.”

Here we hear the echoes of the name of Jesus for the name Jesus means Jehovah is salvation. Augustine even notes here;

Augustine, de Civ. D. xviii. 32:

“To me what some manuscripts have; ‘I will rejoice in God my Jesus,’ seems better than what they have, who have not set the Name itself (but saving) which to us it is more loving and sweeter to name.”) “in God my Jesus.” In Him his joy begins, to Him and in Him it flows back and on; before he ventures, amid all the desolation, to speak of joy, he names the Name of God, and, as it were, stays himself in God, is enveloped and wrapped round in God; and I((the words stand in this order) “and I in the Lord would shout for joy.”

Augustine, following some manuscripts thought the Habakkuk text should read; “ I will be joyful in God my Jesus.”

Let us turn our attention then to vs. 19. which also speaks of Habakkuk’s vision of God.

19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.

The idea that God is to make his feet like hind’s feet (the feet of deer) refers to swift footed, which was a qualification of a warrior (II Sam. 1:23, I Chronicles 12:8). This swiftness of foot enabled the warrior to make a flash attack upon the enemy and then to pursue him vigorously. Habakkuk uses this expression for the fresh and joyous strength in God, which Isaiah refers to “rising up on eagle’s wings.”

Habakkuk uses this phrase to point to the reality that God gives His people the victory over the enemy.

Keil and Delitzsch offer here that this phrase regarding deer’s feet

“Simply denotes the ultimate triumph of the people of God over all oppression on the part of the power of the world, altogether apart from the local standing which the kingdom of God will have upon the earth, either by the side of or in antagonism to the kingdom of the world.”

If this is accurate then Habakkuk is breathing a theocratic optimism here. He has seen God high and lifted up and He knows that He knows that God is going to give the victory in His time.

And here we find the basis of our eschatological optimism. There is no conquering ourselves or our enemies apart from a confidence that when all is said and done in space and time history, God wins.

If a man becomes what He believes then being confident that God is going to make us warriors by making us swift footed to pursue and conquer the enemy is foundational to our faith.

The bottom line is, is if our theology teaches us we will be conquered and lose then our believing that will make it a self-fulfilled prophecy. Habakkuk does not allow us to go there and despite the heavily majority report on this subject that rebukes us postmill folks on this, my word is … fear not, for God will make us swift footed to conquer them also.

Conclusion

A sermon like this needs to be preached because the church is currently being sifted and that sifting work is going to only increase in the days ahead. Western Civilization and the Christianity that created it are being attacked in every corner. God’s people are being squeezed increasingly regarding their Christian convictions. Friends correspond with me telling me how they have to keep their Christian convictions on the down low if they are to survive in their work place. Parents come to me weeping that if it is found out what their Christian convictions are they may well lose their children in custody issues before a hard left judge. Churches by the droves are abandoning the historic Christian faith that their father at all times and in all places once embraced in favor of a egalitarian Marxist version of Christianity.

We are being sifted. I don’t know where this ends but I do know that if any of us are to survive this we must be able to pray like Habakkuk. We must be able to have the vision of God that Habakkuk had. A vision that says that come hell or high water I am not quitting on God. I will rejoice in God my Jesus – my salvation. I will continue to look past the seen and felt hardships of battle and will see the unseen …. the Sovereign Lord (who) is my strength.

Our Father of Job had this same spirit. Job could write along with Habakkuk, “Though He slays me, yet I will trust in God.”

If I stoop

Into a dark tremendous cloud,

It is but for a time; I press God’s lamp

Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late,

Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day.

Robert Browning

Paracelsus

Leithart’s Analysis On The Reasons For Trump Support Are Wrong

Peter Leithart is one of those “dumbest smart people who have ever lived” types. Over here he moves in the opposite direction of Occam’s razor seeking to complicate what is profoundly simple, trying to explain why Trump remains so popular among elements of the Christian community.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/02/why-trump-is-still-wildly-popular

Trump remains popular among middle class, rural, blue-collar, white Christians because those middle class, rural, blue-collar, white Christians for primarily one reason and that reason is because the middle class, rural, blue-collar, white Christians believe (rightly or wrongly) that Trump is the man who is going to keep them from continuing to be vomited upon by the Uni-party globalists that now occupy Washington. This voting bloc is supporting Trump because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that he is the embodiment for who they are. This voting bloc believes (rightly or wrongly) that Trump is the vehicle through which the Christian values of Nationalism, particularity, opposition to crime, and the requirement to be armed,  will be returned to and sustained.

Instead of realizing this simple reality Leithart goes on and on with the “scapegoat who refuses to be the scapegoat” metaphor. He waxes eloquent citing French scholar Renee’ Girard.

Trump is also being supported because the establishment DC uni-party hates him so thoroughly. This voting bloc supporting Trump can smell and feel the vitriol and animus glowing from the Trotskyite Republicans and Stalinesque Democrats and because this voting bloc has the same feelings towards the Trotskyite Republican party and the Stalinesque Democratic party the best way to show their animus is by wildly supporting Trump. This wild support of Trump is animal defiance to the uni-party coming from the voting bloc of which we are speaking.

One doesn’t have to reach for Girard or scapegoats to explain the wild support for Trump among Christians.

Leithart writes errantly,

“American society is at a critical moment. It’s not exactly a war of all against all, but a war of faction against faction against faction against faction. And, just as the script prescribes, one faction trots out an orange-haired scapegoat, President Donald Trump. For many of our elites, Trump is a mortal threat to democracy, the chief source of disorder, the mobilizer of the deplorables. Remove him, and peace will flow like a river. One man must be destroyed to save the polity.”

The error in the above is found in Leithart’s belief that “for many of our elites, Trump is a mortal threat to democracy.” I do not believe that is true. What many of the elites are afraid of in point of fact is that their own threat to Republican form of government is threatened by Trump. It is true that  many of our elites say that they believe that Trump is a threat to Democracy but we need to keep in mind here of the old Alinsky principle that holds to accuse your enemy of what you yourself are guilty.  It is the elites who are a threat to our Constitutional Republican form of government but what better way to mask that then to blame Trump of the same thing. The elites are afraid that somehow Trump is an end to their desire to absolutely control American society. Our elites desire to implement a social credit control system on America such as is found in China. Trump is a threat to that program.

So, Leithart’s analysis is just in error because he over complicates the painfully obvious. Christians are wildly supporting Trump because they believe the uni-party desires to destroy them and, rightly or wrongly, the voting bloc we are talking about wildly supports Trump.

I write all of this as one who has never voted for Trump, nor ever will vote for Trump because I do not believe about Trump what many of those Christians who wildly support Trump believe about him. I do not agree with their wild support but I understand it and sympathize with their support. After all, who wants to die when a possible champion might take up your cause against a powerful enemy?

And make no mistake about it… the uni-party in DC desires to snuff out the MAGA crowd, and especially all those Christians who are wildly supporting Trump.

The Consequences of Speaking Out Loud in Public What is Known to be True

Excerpt from a Tucker Carlson interview;

For example, there is a guy, Richard Frye — he is one of the top autism researchers in the world — and he has admitted, ‘Hey, all of us top autism researchers that vaccines cause autism but we’re just not allowed to talk about it. And so Richard Frye will never publicly talk about that vaccines cause autism because if he did his funding would go away and so it is a matter of self-preservation. He basically has to remain silent and he can do his work to combat autism but he just isn’t allowed to tell the world that vaccines cause autism. But he makes a decision, and his decision is based on sort of a risk benefit.

The reasoning is; ‘If I tell the world that vaccines cause autism, I am caput in terms of being a researcher’ he’ll never get any dollars of funding again, and I can’t help my patients. They’ll take my license away. They’ll take my funding away. They’ll destroy me. I will not be able to contribute any more as to what the cure is. So he basically remains silent for self-preservation. Now if he, and all of his peers were to get together in unison and say; ‘ ‘hey vaccines cause autism. We are the 20 top researchers in the world and we’re telling you vaccines cause autism. We need to stop this (denial). We need to let people know we need to let people know of the connection. That could possibly change everything or it could result in those twenty researchers essentially being disenfranchised, being kicked out of their jobs, not being able to help autistic kids anymore and so it is a risk for them and they don’t play the risk.

Steve Kirsch
Entrepreneur/ Researcher  

Now what Kirsch notes above is interesting and worth a post by itself but that will have to be done by some Medical Doctor who knows about vaccines and autism. The direction I want to take this is the sociological implications of this statement. If what Kirsch says above is true about hard science matters like the connection between vaccines and autism (and later in the interview he goes on about the connection between Covid vaccines and health related crisis after receiving the covid vaccine) then how much more true is this kind of phenomenon for matters that are likewise clearly true but are only historically substantiated and not scientifically substantiated?

There are now two long books that I know of which substantiate exhaustively, via the quotes of the Church fathers from history that Christianity and the Church has always, without reservation, embraced and taught some form of the doctrine of racial realism. Here is a link to the most recent release;

Yet, if one agrees with the Church fathers on this issue, nay, especially if one quotes the Church fathers on this issue one is a pariah in the conservative ecclesiastical community. Like the connection between vaccines and autism, the connection between kinism and Church history is indisputable and so unchallengeable.

But none of it matters. As Kirsch notes about Scientists working on autism and seeing a connection between vaccines and autism, so churchmen today dare not make a connection between church history and .ethno-nationalism without being utterly ruined.

I know of some cases where clergy are like the scientists that Kirsch describes in the quote above. They understand that kinism is the Biblical norm and what the church has believed in all times and in all places where God has granted the Church orthodoxy and yet they refuse to say that racial-realism is what God’s word teaches for fear of being destroyed. So, I get from them the assurance that they agree with me but they dare not say so publicly lest they be destroyed.

It is madness to believe that God’s Word and church history confirms something but that you dare not say out loud what God’s Word teaches for fear of the consequences. This used to just be called cowardice. I’m sure that instead the folks in question would prefer to use the word “prudence.”

Dabney & Calvin On God’s Approval Regarding Slavery

Most clergy read out Dabney from being highly estimated because of his views on slavery as seen with this quote;

“Moses legalized domestic slavery for God’s chosen people, in the very act of setting them aside to holiness.

Christ, the great Reformer, lived and moved amidst it, teaching, healing, applauding slaveholders; and while He assailed every abuse, uttered no word against this lawful relation.

His apostles admit slaveholders to the church, exacting no repentance nor renunciation. They leave, by inspiration, general precepts for the manner in which the duties of the relation are to be maintained. They command Christian slaves to obey and honor Christian masters. They remand the runaway to his injured owner, and recognize his property in his labor as a right which they had no power to infringe.

If slavery is in itself a sinful thing, then the Bible is a sinful book.”

R L Dabney
Life of Lt Gen Thomas J Jackson

But if we are going to toss Dabney on the bonfire of our cultural vanities we need to be willing to throw Calvin there as well;

“Here a question arises, Is perpetual servitude so displeasing to God, that it ought not to be deemed lawful? To this the answer is easy — Abraham and other fathers had servants or slaves according to the common and prevailing custom, and it was not deemed wrong in them.”

“That since God permitted the fathers to retain servants and maids, it is a thing lawful; and further, as God permitted the Jews also, under the Law, to bear rule over aliens, and to keep them perpetually as servants, it follows that this cannot be disapproved.”

“And still a clearer evidence may be adduced; for since the Gentiles have been called to the hope of salvation, no change has in this respect been made. For the Apostles did not constrain masters to liberate their servants, but only exhorted them to use kindness towards them, and to treat them humanely as their fellow-servants.”

“If, then, servitude were unlawful, the Apostles would have never tolerated it; but they would have boldly denounced such a profane practice had it been so.”

“We hence see that the thing in itself is not unlawful.”

Interestingly enough, in SwordSearcher Bible software, these six paragraphs are missing from John Calvin’s commentary on Jeremiah 34:8-9.  It is fairly obvious that the reason why they are missing is that Calvin, like Dabney after him, would not have supported Jacobinism or abolitionism in the form that it took.

It is criminal for publishing houses to just delete whole sections of author’s works because they don’t find them tasteful to their zeitgeist palates.


Helping Out Darryl Gnostic Hart

DGH wrote,

After a visit to my father at his local hospital, I had a worldview moment. What should have alerted me from the outset was the name of the place – St. Mary’s. But then I noticed that the spiritual services wing of the hospital had dropped off for him a brochure about their activities which was included with information about television channels and daily menus – talk about trivializing the eschaton. But the kicker was the crucifix in my dad’s ICU room. Shazzam!!! That’s a whole lot of idolatry for a man who is on a heart monitor.

Bret responds,

First we are sorry that Darryl’s Father is ill. It’s always difficult when our parents get to this age where we are watching them deteriorate in health. We trust Mr. Hart (Darryl’s Dad) will rally.

2.) It is true that the crucifix is idolatry and I’m fairly confident that the hospital staff wouldn’t object to your removing it in favor of a non-crucifix cross, or even a blank space on the wall.

Oh … and it would be a whole lot of idolatry even if Darryl’s Dad was not on a heart monitor.

DGH writes,

But is Roman Catholic medicine really any different from Reformed medicine or even – dare I say – secular medicine. If worldviews go all the way down to the very tips of our toes, and if we can’t escape the claims of Christ in any parts of our lives, can I really look the other way in good conscience when entering a hospital room that displays an image of Christ on a cross?

Bret responds,

1.) The old proverb that “even a blind old sow, finds and acorn once in-a-while” applies here. No Biblical Christian (worldview Christian) believes that false worldviews get it perfectly wrong always, all of the time. We merely believe that they have in their worldviews significant contradictions. As Bahnsen offered, “I don’t doubt that you can count. What I want to know is if you can account for your counting given your worldview.”  So, Roman Catholics have medicines that work? No one ever doubted it. Even brothel workers can wear lovely evening gowns, but underneath it all they remain brothel workers.

2.) Worldview types often speak of the fact that the unbeliever is often involved in felicitous inconsistency. This accounts for Rome or other theological dispositions stumbling and getting some medicine matters correct. Medicinal Rome has snuck in some stolen capital from Biblical Christianity to get their Christ denying worldview off the ground. See Van Til’s, “Mr. Black, Mr. Gray, and Mr. White here.” So, Rome’s medicine works in spite of their world and life view and not because of it.

3.) Hart uses that word “secular” above, when he mentions “secular medicine.” If by secular he means a medicine birthed without theological a-prioris and faith commitments then of course his idea of “secular” is a myth. Does he doubt that? Perhaps, in the future, should he have heart problems like his father, Dr. Hart would consider consulting a animist Shaman, or a third world witch Doctor for all his medicine needs, or, he could consult a Western Medical doctor who also believes that boys can be born in women’s bodies. Worldview doesn’t affect how medicine operates? Methinks that the inability for many professionals in our health fields to authoritatively be able to answer “What is a woman,” kind of pulls the plug on Hart’s theory that “Worldviews don’t effect medicine.”

Maybe Hart, upon contracting a fever, would like to have a Doctor pull out leeches in order to bleed him so that he may be cured?

4.) Then there is the issue of Math. Math is, in and of itself, subjective right? If anything proves that worldviews don’t matter it is Mathematics right? Well, until you start attending Harvard and realize that there is a chap there who is teaching that 2+2 can sometimes = 5.

Kareem Carr Explains Why 2+2=5

Then of course there is Hinduism and math. If, as Hinduism states, all is one, then how does mathematics get off the ground? (And let’s not even talk about how believing “all is maya,” affects mathematics if Hindu math was consistent with their worldview affirmations.)

DGH writes,

And then there is the concern for quality of health care. If Abraham Kuyper was right that Roman Catholicism “represents an older and lower stage of development in the history of mankind” and if Protestantism occupies a “higher standpoint,” shouldn’t my dad try to find treatment at a Protestant hospital? Kuyper, by the way, wasn’t real complimentary of Roman Catholicism on science either.

Bret responds,

It certainly is the case that if presented with two hospitals having the same type of quality of care, I would definitely recommend Mr. Hart Sr. to go to the Protestant hospital.

I can speak to this point with some experience. This past year, as some of you know, I underwent open heart surgery for a valve replacement. The Doctor I was assigned was top shelf, in terms of reputation, but I knew little of his faith or theology. I had a whale of a time trusting myself to this process because of this. However, in God’s incredible providence a Christian cardiologist who has 20 plus years of experience contacted me. I took nearly everything Dr. A, who was doing my surgery, immediately to Dr. B (the Christian) to confirm every step of the way? Why? Because I trusted implicitly the knowledge of Dr. B, as existing in His Christian world and life view vis-a-vis not being sure of Dr. A’s world and life view. These things matter.

DGH writes,

It could be that I have once again misunderstood the claims of neo-Calvinism and that some algorithm exists for taking the gold of scientific advances from the dross of defective worldviews. But it could also be that the language of worldviews and the difference they make for every aspect of human existence is overdone, simply a rallying cry for inspiring the faithful, but not anything that would prevent my father from receiving treatment from unbelieving nurses employed by Roman Catholic administrators. Then again, the power of modernity is stunning, making all of those religious claims about connections between spiritual and physical reality look fairly foolish – as if a creed actually produces better medicine.

1.) I think it much more likely that Dr. Hart misconstrued as opposed to “misunderstood.” Because this is God’s world it is impossible for the Christ hater to get it perfectly wrong all the time, and so, as said above, they do import Christian worldview capital into their Christ-hating worldview in order to get their Christ hating world and life view off the ground. Some in Science do try to be consistent in their Christ hating worldview. Consider Lysenkoism for example. However, more often than not the Christ-haters are not as consistent as Lysenko was and they do import gold into their dross.

This isn’t that difficult for a Ph.D. like Hart.

DGH writes,

I mean no disrespect to the neo- Calvinists and their epistemological purity. But if they could help me out on this one, I’d be grateful. Does a Reformed worldview really make a difference for modern medicine and the ordinary decisions a sick believer must make in seeking a physician or hospital – under the oversight, of course, not of the elders but the insurance company?

Bret responds,

And as we have seen, the answer is resoundingly “yes, a Reformed worldview really does make a difference for modern, pre-modern, and post-modern medicine and the ordinary decisions a sick believer must make in seeking a physician or hospital.” For example, if Dr. Hart has any little ones in his life that he loves, I trust that if the little tyke complains of a belly ache they don’t take him to a modern Doctor who will tell him, “This clearly is a sign that the child is having unresolved gender issues.”

So here I finish, being happy to once again, to help Dr. Hart out on this one. I trust the good Dr. realizes that I also intend no disrespect to the neo-Gnostic Calvinists in our midst.