Iron Ink

A Blizzard Of Government Schooling Quotes

You would never be able to convince most Christian families to send their children 6-9 hours a day to place that explicitly taught Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism. Yet, Christian families will send their children today to places where it is explicitly or implicitly taught that parents are stupid, that Christianity is oppressive, that alternate sexuality is a positive good, that diversity is ideal, that man is the measure of all truth, that redistribution of wealth is only fair, that a theory of science which takes more faith than believing in some animistic tale where some god was split in half to form the heavens and earth is true, that man is essentially good, and truth is arrived at by counting noses.

Try and convince people today that Government schools are the equivalent of the houses of the National Deity and even otherwise solid Christians will scoff at you and mock you. Go to a family reunion and mention the wickedness of government schooling and just watch the claws and fangs come out of people who supposedly love you.

People will typically respond that there are many “Christians serving in our Government schools.” While that may be true I refuse to concede that those Christians serving in our Government schools are Christians who are pursuing the life of the mind. No Christian who understands what it means to have a muscular Christian worldview could work in the Government school systems w/o working as a double agent trying to sabotage the system they were working in. We must keep in mind that great preponderance of Christians working in Government schools were educated in Christ Hating colleges and teacher colleges. As such they have imbibed a pagan worldview and have given it a coat of Christianity to sooth themselves.

Christians do you desire Reformation and awakening? Then you must educate yourselves and educate your children. You must begin to teach yourselves the basics of a Christian world and life view. Molech must be cut off at the knees.

Here are a flurry of quotes on government schooling. Hat Tip to Mark Chambers of putting these all in one place.

“Give me your 4 years olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

Vladimir Lenin

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”

Adolf Hitler

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being… The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing the classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level – preschool day care or large state universities.”

John Dunphy on the purpose of humanist education.

“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

Charles F. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion” 1930

“Every child entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well–by creating the international child of the future.”

Psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, Addressing 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar

“The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else… Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.”

H. L. Mencken Raconteur & 20th Century Libertarian Man Of Letters

“Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your child away at his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated, but more often implied, that the state, through its agents, know better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your parents, your community, your local traditions and that your child will be better off so adopted. By the time the child returns to the family or has the option of doing that very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger to them. And why not – in the key hours of growing up strangers have raised the child.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ&feature=related

“Faith in the wonder working powers of education has proved to be one of the most durable components of liberal ideology … Yet the democratization of education has accomplished little to justify this faith. It has neither improved popular understanding of modern society, raised the quality of popular culture, nor reduced the gap between wealth and poverty, which remains as wide as ever. On the other hand, it has contributed to the decline of critical thought and the erosion of intellectual standards, forcing us to consider the possibility that mass education, as conservatives have argued all along, is intrinsically incompatible with the maintenance of educational quality….

Universal public education, instead of creating a community of self-governing citizens has contributed to the spread of intellectual torpor and political passivity.”

Christopher Lasch The Culture Of Narcissism – pg. 125, 130

“Contrary to what many Christians have been led to believe, there is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ education. All education is religious and conveys a worldview, and there is no more important decision that we make as parents than how we educate our children. Unfortunately, Christian parents allow an aggressively anti-Christian institution to form the minds of their children, and the fruit of that choice is bitter. The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families leave the church within two years after they graduate from high school; only 9 percent of evangelical teens believe that there is any such thing as absolute moral truth; and, our children are being forcibly indoctrinated to believe that homosexual behavior is acceptable.”

Bruce Shortt The Harsh Truth About Public Schools

“…where the Holy Scriptures do not rule, there I advise no one to send his son. Everyone not unceasingly busy with the Word of God must become corrupt; that is why t…he people who are in the universities and who are trained there are the kind of people they are. For this no one is to blame with the training of the youth. For the universities ought to turn out only men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, who can become bishops and priests, leaders in the fight against heretics, the devil and all the world. But where do you find this true? I greatly fear that the universities are wide gates of hell, if they do not diligently teach the Holy Scriptures and impress them on the youth.”

— Martin Luther

“The public school is a substitute institution for the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church of the middle ages and is a thoroughly medieval concept. A single culture is demanded, and the public school must create it. Hence, every group believing in and seeking to control that new leviathan and grand monolith seeks control of the public school.”

R. J. Rushdoony Intellectual Schizophrenia – pg. 50

“The major offensive against Biblical faith began with the statist take-over of education and its conversion from a Biblical to a humanistic orientation. Modern statist education is intensely religious, but its religion is humanism, and its goal is the conversion of youth to the faith of the state and faith in the humanistic state.

The power of the state has been greatly enhanced by the take-over of education. The child was re-shaped in terms of statist premises and statist loyalties and expected to be a ready martyr for the state and its warfare. Nothing has contributed more to the rise of the state and its power than the statist school, and nothing is now more destructive to it. Whether in the Soviet Union or the Western world, the product of the state school is increasingly a lawless moral and political anarchist who is as hostile to his country as to God.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Chalcedon Report No. #92
April, 1973

“The hatred of excellence is very real. Everything that points to the world of the mind and to the discipline of an ultimate moral law is despised and hated. If good and evil are valid and basic categories of thought, then the idea of an elite is inescapable. The idea can be abused, a wrong kind elite fostered; but, despite this, the concept of excellence remains.

John Dewey, however, objected strongly to orthodox Christianity because of its commitment to the ideas of right and wrong, heaven and hell, the saved and the lost, and he objected to it on the grounds that it fostered the idea of a ’spiritual aristocracy.’ ‘I cannot understand,’ said Dewey, ‘how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed.’ More than one generation has been reared on Dewey’s philosophy. Having denied the validity of standards above man, it looks for vitality from within and below man.”

R. J. Rushdoony Noble Savages – pg. 130

“Christianity must be a present element of all the training at all times, or else it is not a true and valuable education. The human spirit is a monad, a single unit, spiritual substance, having facilities and susceptibilities for different modifications, but no parts. Hence, when it is educated, it is educated as a unit. The moral judgments and acts of the soul all involve an exercise of reason; so that it is impossible to separate the ethical and intellectual functions. The nature of responsibility is such that there can be no neutrality… between duty and sin. It follows that any training which attempts to be non-Christian is therefore anti-Christian. God is the rightful, supreme master and owner of all reasonable creatures, and their nearest and highest duties are to him. Hence to train a soul away from him is robbery of God. He has not, indeed, committed to the State the duty of leading souls to him as its appropriate task. This is committed to the family and to His church. To educate the mind without purifying the heart is but `to place a sharp sword in the hand of a madman.’ Practically few do recognize and obey conscience except those who recognize the authority of the Bible. There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity.”

Robert L.Dabney Discussions Vol. IV (1870)

Public education is anti-Christ. It is the catechetical arm of godless government. It is an idolatrous institution, aggressively hostile to your faith. Its intention is to purge the knowledge of Christ and Christianity from the minds of your children and own them for the god called State. In lectures given prior to 1890 A. A. Hodge made the following predictions.

“A comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which the sin-rent world has ever seen.”

That is exactly what has happened. With the exception of a few men like Hodge the pulpits of America have been filled with men who have repeatedly proven themselves to be incredibly ignorant and agonizingly dull. Obviously ignorant of the religious nature of all education and steeped in the godless idea of neutrality Minsters have failed to open the eyes of Christian parents to the dangers and has even defended the right to sacrifice their children on the educational altar of state. And after having sent their little ones to the enemy to be educated they are puzzled over why they are leaving the church. Such appalling stupidity. God help us.

Mark Chambers
Homeschooling Father of Three

Random Thoughts On The Skivvies Bomber

1.) The attempt to bring the aircraft down was done on the day the West celebrates the birth of Christ. The attack was, thus not only an attack on the America, but it was an attack on the Christian faith as well. Now, America hates being thought of as a nation influenced by Christianity but clearly Muslims understand that this is a war between faiths and as difficult as it is for some of us to understand why Islam views America as “Christian” it is none the less the case that they do. The Muslim attack on America on Christmas day is proof that they were not only striking at the nation but also at what they perceive to be the nation’s faith.

2.) When the first news reports came out it was clear that the media was attempting to shield the Muslim connection. For the first 12 hours we kept hearing about the perpetrator being Nigerian but not a peep about how the Nigerian was a Muslim. This desire to tamp down the Muslim connection is consistent with the way the media covered the Muslim mass murderer who shot up the Army base in Texas. There is clearly an attempt by the media and the Obama administration to prejudice Americans against being prejudice against the faith system that is informing those who are seeking to kill them.

3.) Every time there is a terrorist attempt the consequence is to turn the screws on the American people with more and more invasive control procedures. Every time there is a terrorist attempt the consequence is that more power is ceded to the Federal Government to treat American citizens like criminals. However, at no time following a terrorist attempt does the State do anything to genuinely provide the common defense. As one obvious and glaring example, if the State was serious about catching bad guys and making air travel safe they would cease and desist with the silliness of treating a 85 year old white Caucasian grandmother as the same terror risk as a 25 year old Muslim Arab. If the State was serious about catching bad guys they would start profiling with the purpose of singling out flying Muslims for more rigorous shakedowns before boarding aircraft. It seems the only entity that ends up profiting from these failed attacks is the Leviathan State.

4.) Obama, in his nearly one year as President has seldom failed to get before a camera at every opportunity to speak his mind. On this incident though it took Barack Hussein Obama three days before he released a statement. What are we to make of this comparative silence on Barack Hussein Obama’s part? Remember this is the same guy who, after hearing about the Muslim shooting on the Texas Army base could only say, “we must not jump to conclusions.” Between that statement, and his comparative silence in this event, and the current administrations kiss butt attitude towards the Muslim world one can only conclude that our President with a Muslim name favors Muslims more than he does Americans.

5.) Janet “Butch” Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, initially insisted that in light of the Christmas attempted bombing it could be seen that the system worked. This is like saying that a high priced security system worked because someone who just happened to be passing by tackled a departing thief as he was leaving with the loot. It is difficult to imagine Napolitano saying anything more stupid then “this attempted bombing proves the system works.”

6.) The flying public are partly to fault for allowing the state to treat them like sheep. They are not so much concerned about stopping terrorism as they are concerned about “feeling safe.” If they were concerned about stopping terrorism they would begin to demand that their representative quit with the political correctness and would likewise demand legislation to start rolling that would forbid Islamic influence in America. If the flying public were concerned about having their privacy invaded when flying they would tell the Feds to drop all the dragoonish behavior at the airports and start concentrating on those who fit a criminal profile.

Charlotte Christian Reformed Church Christmas Liturgy 2009

*–Congregation Stands

Prelude — Miss Sarah Bacon

*Call to Worship Psalm 92:1-4

1 It is good to give thanks to the LORD,
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;
2 To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning,
And Your faithfulness every night,
3 On an instrument of ten strings,
On the lute,
And on the harp,
With harmonious sound.
4 For You, LORD, have made me glad through Your work;
I will triumph in the works of Your hands.

Invocation

Creedal Affirmation — Belgic Confession Of Faith Article X

Christmas Worship

Brothers and Sisters our Psalter’s Church Order informs us that “Worship services shall be held in observance of Christmas” as well as other high days on the Church calendar. The conducting and attendance of such services provide one objective marker for us as well as those outside of the faith that we are a Christian people. By the conducting and attendance of such services we testify to all who have eyes to see that our understanding and celebrating of Christmas is distinct from the modern pagan who has reduced Christmas to crass materialism or a one size fits all “Happy Holidays.” By the marking of such days as Christmas for worship the ebb and flow of our whole lives, year in and year out, are Christ formed and Christ shaped by a calendar itself formed by Christ. Finally, our gathering gives us one more opportunity to publicly placard Christ as the only hope for the weary, the heavy laden, the alienated and the Christian.

On this Christmas Eve then, we gather together once more as Reformed Christians have done for centuries, and as the ever swelling numbers of newly converted will continue to do until our Lord Christ shall return. We do so to mark the birth of our Lord Christ and to together offer up praise that he made Himself of no reputation in order to glorify the Father, save His people from their sins, and to lead them from triumph unto triumph until the Kingdoms of this world increasingly become the Kingdoms our Lord. In keeping with the purpose of our gathering let us confess our undoubted Catholic Christian faith

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead;

He ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost;
the holy catholic church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting.
Amen.

Prayer

Benevolent and Sovereign Father, we thank thee for thy eternal covenant that predestined the coming of your Messiah for the redemption of the world. We thank thee that thou promised the Messiah upon mankind’s rebellion to reverse the effects of our treason. We exalt thee that thou deigned to gain your victory by crushing the serpent’s head and by destroying his people. We are humbled Father by how you ordered redemptive history so that coming of Christ was articulated by the patriarchs and prophets who spoke of the coming of your Messiah. We thank thee for all in Holy Scripture that limned the coming of Christ and we thank you that after ordering history for the coming of thy eternal Son in the fullness of time our Lord Christ came as one born under the law.

Father, we come humbly before to thank you for your faithful Church — that ark of Christ — which was guided by your Holy Spirit to embrace the full divinity and humanity of Christ while affirming his singular person. We thank you for your faithful Church that continues to speak Christ to us today and we ask of you Father that you would continue to build up your faithful Church so that future generations will have the nativity of Christ set before them in all its saving splendor that thy name may be honored among men. In the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, who taught us to pray, saying,

Our Father, who art in heaven: Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

*Hark The Herald Angels Sing Brown Hymnal 184

Old Testament Reading — Isaiah 9:1-6

Strings Trio Bacon Family

New Testament Reading — Luke 2:1-14

*Come Thou Long Expected Jesus Brown Hymnal 168

Epistle Reading — Titus 2:11-14

Joy To The World — Brown Hymnal 171

Offering General Fund

Offertory Mrs. Linda and Miss Rachel Bacon

Offertory Thanksgiving Adapted from the Book of Common Worship, 1906

O most merciful and gracious God, from whose open hand we all have received much: We ask you to accept this offering of your people. Remember in your love those who have brought it. Remember also those persons and purposes for which it is given. So follow this sacrifice with your blessing that it may promote peace and good will, and advance the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen!

Homily — Jesus, The Fulfillment Of God’s Promise

*Silent Night (Candle Light) 195 Brown Hymnal 316

*Benediction 2 Corinthians 13:14

A Messiah For The Nations

Five scenes that cover our glimpses into the early life of Jesus. Five statements that some aspect of the Old Testament was fulfilled in this early life of Christ. Five indication that Matthew wants us to know that Jesus is not just the end of the Old Testament story as His recording of the genealogy indicates but more importantly five literary hints that for Matthew Jesus is the Old Testament come to bloom. With his close attention to Jesus fulfilling of the OT Matthew is telling us that Jesus is not only the completion of the story but also that the OT declares the promise which Jesus fulfills.

Ill. — Plant that has not bloomed yet

i.) The assurance to Joseph concerning the child conceived in Mary (1:18-25 corresponds to Isaiah 7:14).

ii.) Jesus birth in Bethlehem (2:1-12 corresponds Micah 5:2)

iii.) Escape to Egypt and return (2:13-15 corresponds to Hosea 11:1 which is a reference to God having brought Israel, his son, out of Egypt at the Exodus).

iv.) The murder by Herod of the boys in Bethlehem (2:16-18 corresponds to Jeremiah 31:15 which is a lament for the Israelites who were going into exile.

v.) The settlement of Jesus family in in Nazareth (2:19-23 corresponds to no one OT text but rather a smattering of OT illusions.)

In the OT, as we have seen, God has declared His purpose to Redeem a people to be a light to the nations whom He intends to Redeem via His people’s witness. In the OT he has put this promise to Redeem a people on display in a plethora of different hints, metaphors, types, historical events and fore shadowings to and through Israel. For those w/ eyes to see the OT is a book that is like a great symphony where a theme has been developed and played over and over again in minor chords but now that theme is rising to its crescendo in the major chords so as to relieve the tension that has developed in the work.

I.) Matthew’s Concrete Intention In His Choice of OT Scriptures As Applied To The Messiah

Note that there is a geographical sense that comes out in Matthew’s Old Testament Scriptures. Matthew’s OT texts explains how it is that the Messiah who was born in Bethlehem ended up in Nazareth, after a stay in Egypt.

If you will remember there had been some debate between Christians and Jews whether or not a prophet could come from Nazareth (John 1:46, 7:41ff). What Matthew’s fulfillment passages do is they show that the Messiah was indeed born in Bethlehem as Scripture called for and that the Messiah ending up in Galilee after a stay in Egypt was what the OT Scripture taught should be expected. So, by doing this the “fulfillment” passages serves the same end as the genealogy passage and that is to portray Jesus as the completion of God’s story and the fulfilling reality of what God promised in the OT.

But we can press this geography motif a bit more. If we look at the geography as a whole that Matthew gives us in chapters 2-4 we see that either by His travels or by His reputation Jesus had an effective ministry which spanned the whole of the ancient boundaries of the Old Davidic Kingdom (note esp. Mt. 4:24-25). Matthew is telling us that the one who was the greater son of David who was the promised Messiah King of the Davidic line has a claim was wide as the ancient kingdom of David itself.

And the focal point of that ministry is the region of Galilee and that it should be expected to be so Matthew vindicates by quoting Is. 9:1-2 in Mt. 4:13-16.

“In the past God humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentile, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan.

The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light,
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.”

So, by giving this geography lesson Matthew has corroborated the point of his genealogy lesson in Chapter 1. Both the history lesson by way of completion and the geography lesson by way of fulfillment give us “King David’s greater Kingly Son claiming his Kingdom.”

Now just as the genealogy is not only particular but also hints at the universal ramifications with its inclusion of the Gentiles with its listing of the Gentile mothers so there is a geographic counterpart. True Jesus is the Greater son of David but also true this greater son of David is visited by Kingly Gentile ambassadors from the East who pay homage to their greater King but also the Greater son of David, with His court, pays visit to to Egypt in the West. The stories, in their geography, thus embrace both extremes of the OT world — east and west. Even further both regions are included within various OT prophecies concerning the extent of God’s work of salvation.

for example Is. 19,

23(A) In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria,(B) and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

24In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria,(C) a blessing in the midst of the earth, 25whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt(D) my people, and Assyria(E) the work of my hands, and(F) Israel my inheritance.”

Matthew is telling us here that God’s purpose for Israel, and for the Messiah who would embody Israel, was the blessing of all the nations.

And this takes us back to Jesus as the son of Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

Matthew, then, who writes the most Jewish of the Gospels wastes no time at all going all global on us. He wastes no time telling us that when the Messiah came He received Eastern visitors bearing Kingly gifts who paid Him homage, and was personally, if only temporarily, a resident in Egypt.

Beyond this the worship that the Magi bring is almost certainly an echo of Psalm 72:10

May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands
render him tribute;
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
bring gifts!

And this is reminiscent of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. In addition the gifts of Gold and Frankincense recall Is. 60:1-6 where they are brought by kingd, from Arabia, to greet the dawning of God’s new light in Zion.

1Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
2For behold, darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will be seen upon you.
3 And nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your rising.

4 Lift up your eyes all around, and see;
they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from afar,
and your daughters shall be carried on the hip.
5Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and exult,
because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall bring good news, the praises of the LORD.

Through his use of geography Matthew clearly wants us to see the Messiah as not being a provincial Messiah but rather a Messiah for the nations. Matthew desires us to see that the salvation that God had promised was a Salvation while starting with Israel is not complete until it expands to cover the globe. The theme we find throughout the Scriptures that Israel is God’s people for the sake of the nations is re-articulated here by giving us a Messiah who is the faithful Israel and son of God who accomplishes what unfaithful Israel failed to accomplish as God’s son.

Now the point of application that we must not miss is that the Church is now the Israel of God and the Church is that institution that is saved for the sake of bringing the Gospel to and living out the Gospel before the nations. The Church is now a Kingdom of Priests and as we are now prophets, priests and kings under sovereign God our purpose is to apply what Christ has accomplished in the establishing of His Kingdom.

Christianity Is The Life Of The Mind

I had a discussion recently w/ some peers on the whole Head, Heart, Hands thing. There was a consensus reached among them that one could start w/ any of the three and end up arriving at all three. I disagreed and disagree. I kept insisting w/ my friends that this is a trichotomy that makes no sense for if we think God’s thoughts after Him (Head) the heart (emotions) & hands (service) will follow like heat and light follow fire. There is no need to pursue Christian emotion (heart) or Christian duty (hands), for when we are thinking God’s thoughts after them these will inescapably follow. If they don’t follow then we aren’t thinking God’s thoughts after Him.

A counter example was raised using the hypothetical person who has a great deal of “head knowledge” but does not serve his fellow man. The solution for this man, it was offered, was that he needed to jump in to some Christian duty. However, can it honestly be said that a person who has “head knowledge” and has either no passion for Christ or service unto Christ really has knowledge? I would contend that our hypothetical person has a desperate need to know Christ if his “knowing” Christ yields no passion or service. The problem of this hypothetical person isn’t that they have “head knowledge” it is that they don’t know Christ, and launching them into some kind of Christian service or urging them to have proper Christian emotions is not going to fix what is wrong with their Christianity.

Thinking Christianly always results in proper affections and rigorous duty. If it doesn’t then one isn’t thinking Christianly. The cure for the person who is stone cold emotionally is not to get them to gin up their emotions. The cure for moribund affections is to know the Christ of the Scriptures. How could anybody be without religious affections who genuinely conversant with their sin and misery and the deliverance they has been granted by Christ? How could anyone not have compassion on people who does not know how much compassion Christ daily has for them? A proper heart disposition is impossible apart from the mind being tutored by Christ, but if the mind is tutored by Christ the heart will always be right. It is not possible to seek Christian emotions apart from the mind for emotions are but the residue of a mind properly oriented. If one has the right mind one will have the right emotions. If one doesn’t think Christianly then it is a guarantee that they will feel pagan(ly).

Christian duty (hands) can not be Christian unless those hands are first instructed by a Christian mind. Lot’s of good works might be done but if those works don’t have the mind of Christ behind them they are just so much chaff. This needs to be articulated repeatedly given the great problem the Church currently has with the Social Gospel. Many people tend to think that if they do good deeds they are Christian. Now, doing good deeds is better than doing bad deeds but good deeds are only genuinely good when they are directed by the mind of Christ.

This idea of majoring on the feelings or the doing absent majoring on thinking rationally is what has led the church to to value the “experiential” and the “emotive” above all else. Currently Christianity is flooded and defined by Pentecostalism and Charismatic-ism. This is a consequence of people not valuing the life of the Christian mind and the result is that the church in the West is irrational, insipid, and irrelevant. Certainly the experiential and the emotive have a important and significant place in the Christian life but the genuine articles will never be reached apart from the a Christian mind that learns Christ by thinking God’s thoughts after Him.

I am reminded of this when I hear of Reformed Churches explicitly teach that the heart is more important than the head and where Pastor’s believe that much of Christian truth is paradox and should be considered “mystery.” I am reminded of this when I constantly hear that “what is important is a right heart and not right doctrine,” as if a heart could ever be right absent of right Christian doctrine. I am reminded of this when it seems that the people who have the most difficult time finding a Church home are people who are interested in prioritizing the life of the mind.

The church is in desperate need of being sanctified and set apart unto Christ. This will never happen if the Church doesn’t once again return to the life of the mind. Not the life of the mind that leaves people cold and sterile in their faith but the life of the mind that floods them with Christian affections and emotions and gives them a mad desire and zeal to do all that they do to the glory of God.

If we horizontalize this and put in terms of human relationships it certainly is the case that I don’t approach my wife the way a Scientist approaches the object under his microscope but neither do I expect to increasingly love my wife unless I increasingly know my wife. Fitting emotions for my wife and duty towards my wife are dependent upon me knowing her better and better.

In the end the head must be right for the head is the engine that pulls the cars of emotion and duty. Orthodoxy ALWAYS leads to orthopraxy. Where it doesn’t the problem is the absence of orthodoxy. One can only fix the absence of orthopraxy by the re-establishing of orthodoxy.

Scripture teaches that this is eternal life “to KNOW God, the only true God and Jesus Christ who thou has sent.”

Scripture teaches,

This is what the LORD says:
“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,

24 but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,

Scripture admonishes us to have this mind in us that was in Christ Jesus. Scripture teaches that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Scripture admonishes us to take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. Proverbs is a whole book dedicated to getting wisdom.

Now certainly, emotions and duty are absolutely necessary but they only come where the mind is been set ablaze by Christ.