"Rejoice in the Lord Always"

"In everything give thanks"

"See what cause the saints have to be frequent in the work of thanksgiving. In this Christians are defective; though they are much in supplication, yet little in gratulation. The apostle says. "In everything give thanks" (1 Thess. 5.18). Why so? Because God makes everything work for our good. We thank the physician, though he gives us a bitter medicine which makes us sick, because it is to make us well; we thank any man who does us a good turn; and shall we not be thankful to God, who makes everything work for good to us? God loves a thankful Christian. Job thanked God when he took all away: "The Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1.21). Many will thank God when He gives; Job thanks Him when He takes away, because he knew that God would work good out of it. We read of saints with harps in their hands (Rev. 14.2), an emblem of praise. We meet many Christians who have tears in their eyes, and complaints in their mouths; but there are few with their harps in their hands, who praise God in affliction. To be thankful in affliction is a work peculiar to a saint. Every bird can sing in spring, but some birds will sing in the dead of winter. Everyone, almost, can be thankful in prosperity, but a true saint can be thankful in adversity. A good Christian will bless God, not only at sun-rise, but at sun-set. Well may we, in the worst that befalls us, have a psalm of thankfulness, because all things work for good. Oh, be much in blessing of God: we will thank Him that doth befriend us."

Taken from Banner of Truth's Puritan Paperback, "All Things for Good," by Thomas Watson, pp 62-63.

"Survival of the Fittest"?

Truth and Consequences
Social Darwinism
by Gene Edward Veith

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was never just about biology. Nor were its consequences just about religion. Rather, the origins and effects of Darwinism were largely cultural and moral.

Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859, which was at the height of the Industrial Revolution and the Capitalist Revolution. The dynamic free market economy, characterized by intense competition in which weak companies went broke and the strong companies thrived, had brought unparalleled economic and technological progress. It was a small step to speculate that animal species compete and progress in a similar way. What Darwin did was to apply the principles of free market capitalism to biology.

Immediately after Darwin’s theories were published, people were relating his biological theories back to economics and, more importantly, to ethics. Herbert Spencer, the great popularizer of Darwinism, coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” applying it not only to animals but to human society.

In the very works in which he explained Darwin’s scientific theories to the world, Spencer formulated what would be called “Social Darwinism.” To achieve social progress, according to Spencer, the fittest must survive and the unfit must die out. Efforts to help the “unfit” — charity for the poor, mental hospitals, government programs for the disadvantaged — actually interfere with social evolution and should be stopped. Meanwhile, unfettered economic and social competition will favor the “fittest,” who will usher in the next stage of human evolution.

At the same time, Darwin’s own cousin, Francis Galton, was arguing that natural selection had to do with who was able to reproduce. The “unfit,” he said, should not be allowed to breed. Only the “fittest” should be allowed to have children. Furthermore, it should be possible to breed these fit human beings for desirable traits, just as we breed domesticated animals. By sterilizing the unfit and selectively breeding the fittest, we can usher in the next stage of human evolution. Darwin’s cousin was the founder of the eugenics movement.

Friedrich Nietzsche took Darwinist moral ideas even further. Whereas Marx believed that Christianity was a way for the strong to keep the weak under control (the “opiate of the masses”) Nietzsche believed the opposite — that Christianity with its teachings of love and compassion enabled the weak to control the strong. Christianity made the strong feel guilty and manipulated them into supporting those who would otherwise die out. As Nietzsche writes in The Twilight of the Gods, Christianity upheld “the poor and base,” representing “the general revolt of all the downtrodden, the wretched, the failures, the less favored.”

Now that “God is dead,” Nietzsche said, mankind can evolve into the “Superman.” His virtue will not be compassion but cruelty. “It is not sufficient for him to be capable of cruelty merely at the sight of much suffering, perishing, and destruction: such a man must be capable of himself creating pain and suffering and experience pleasure in so doing, he must be cruel in hand and deed (and not merely with the eyes of the spirit).”

Whereas the Social Darwinism of Spencer, Galton, and Nietzsche applied mainly to individuals, other thinkers, noting that Darwin was talking about species and not just individual animals, applied natural selection to various kinds of human groups. Marxists believed social evolution would emerge from the conflict between economic classes. A new movement of nationalist scholars focused on the conflict between nations. The new “race scientists,” claiming to be more Darwinian by concentrating on biology, focused on the conflict between races.

In our own time, Margaret Sanger combined eugenics with racism, seeking birth control and sterilization for “inferior races,” becoming the founder of Planned Parenthood. Ayn Rand, the libertarian guru, embraced Spencer’s socio-economic program along with Nietzsche’s critique of Christian compassion with her “virtue of selfishness.”

But the most thoroughgoing Social Darwinist of all was Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi party carried racial theory, nationalism, eugenics, and Nietzsche to their logical conclusion and put them into practice.

As I document in my book Modern Fascism, the Nazi regime practiced both “positive eugenics” (breeding for positive characteristics) and “negative eugenics” (eliminating undesirables from the gene pool). In the former, couples with positive “Aryan” racial characteristics were mated outside of marriage. In the latter, a third of a million of the “unfit” were sterilized.

And then began the euthanasia program. In the so-called T4 program, disabled children, the mentally ill, the incurably sick, and the residents of nursing homes were euthanized. Portable gas chambers were engineered for the project. Larger models were installed in the concentration camps. At first, only prisoners who were “unfit” to work went into the gas chambers. Then the gas chambers were used on a larger scale to eliminate an entire “inferior” race.

All of this was for the Darwinist purpose of ushering in the next stage of human evolution.


Dr. Gene Edward Veith is academic dean of Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, and author of God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life.
The aim of Truth and Consequences is to help readers understand the broader cultural and historical implications of every theme Tabletalk magazine chooses to cover. Noted commentator Dr. Gene Edward Veith lends his talents to this column each month.
© Tabletalk magazine


From Ligonier Ministries and R.C. Sproul. © Tabletalk magazine.
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"God in the Wasteland" continued.......

I continue to be challenged by David Wells as he writes concerning the effects of modernity on our society and our churches. I wanted to share some more excerpts from the book that were particularly striking and current.
In these excerpts, Wells takes up the issue of the modern consciousness, or lack thereof, of God. He titled the chapter, "The Weightlessness of God", he deals with our modern distractions and our self-absorption which have had a dramatic impact on, not only on the unchurched, but also on professing believers.


"It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God's existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his command less authoritative than their appetites for afluence and influence, his judgement no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition we have assigned him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life. His truth is no longer welcome in our public discourse. The engine of modernity rumbles on, and he is but a speck in its path.

Few would deny that this is the case in our modernized society; it is less clear to many that it may also be the case, albeit in less blatant and obvious ways, in the church. Why is this so? One of the reasons is that it is always more difficult to perceive a pattern of which we ourselves are a part. We need the advantage of a little distance to grasp the meaning of complex events. We experience our own time as such a rich and intense confusion that it is not always easy to distinguish vices from virtues. The untrue appears true, the bad passes itself off as good, and often the trivial masquerades as important. This perennial difficulty is only compounded by the effects of modernity. The faster pace of life and the relentless roar of the media only heighten the confusion, and the unprecedented wealth of goods, conveniences, and opportunities with which modernity has showered us constitute a powerful incentive not to look to closely at its liabilities and biases.

God has not disappeared in the sense that he has been abducted or overwhelmed. He is not like a child snatched away while its parents were momentarily distracted. No, God is more like a child that has been abandoned within a family, still accorded a place in the house, but not in the home. Because the doctrine is professed, perhaps even routinely in creed or confession, it seems as if all is well. But it is like a house that gives no outward signs of decay even though termites have rendered it structurally unsound.

The growing weightlessness of God is an affliction that is neither peculiarly Protestant nor peculiarly Catholic but is the common form in which modernity rearranges all belief in God. It is an illness that has entered the bones of religious liberals and conservatives alike. Weightlessness is a condition, a cognitive and psychological dispostion. It can sweep through all doctrinal defenses because it is not itself perceived to be a doctrine. It can evade the best ecclesiastical defenses, sidestep the best intentions, and survive the most efficacious spiritual techniques because it is not recognized as a kind of belief. Although this weightlessness is not itself a doctrine, it has the power to hobble all doctrines; although it is not an ecclesiology, it can render all ecclesiologies impotent; although it is not itself a spirituality, all spiritualities are withered by its presence. Weightlessness tells us nothing about God but everything about ourselves, about our condition, about our psychological disposition to exclude God from our reality."

Corrie Ten Boom

If you look at the world, you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed. If you look at God you'll be at rest. Corrie Ten Boom, Nazi camp survivor"

(Below, an excerpt from Corrie's encounter with a man, at one of her speaking engagements, who was among the brutal guards at the concentration camp where she and her sister were held. This man told her he had become a Christian and desired her forgiveness.)

"Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself."

(More quotes from Corrie)


"There is no panic in Heaven! God has no problems, only plans."

"Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you."

Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way . . . God can give us the perfect way."

"Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see."

"Of The World"

I am currently reading a book by David F. Wells entitled, "God in the Wasteland".
In this book Wells discusses the weakening effects of modernism on the church.
He asserts that the "cultural corruption" of the church has led to a departure from the fundamentals of God's sovereignty and holiness.
He speaks of evangelicals as having become "heavily invested in the mindset of modernity, a mindset that Wells correlates with the biblical concept of the "world."

Below is an excerpt from the book:

"It is one of the remarkable features of contemporary church life that so many are attempting to heal the church by tinkering with its structures, its services, its public face. This is clear evidence that modernity has successfully palmed off one of its great deceits on us, convincing us that God himself is secondary to organization and image, that the church's health lies in its flow charts, its convenience, and its offerings rather than in its inner life, its spiritual authenticity, the toughness of its moral intentions, its understanding of what it means to have God's word in this world.
Those who do not see this are out of touch with the deep realities of life, mistaking changes on the surface for changes in the deep waters that flow beneath.
An inspired group of marketers might find a way of reviving a flagging business by modifying its image and offerings, but the matters of the heart, the matters of God, are not susceptible to such cosmetic alteration.
The world's business and God's business are two differant things.

The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is not inadequate technique, insufficient organization, or antiquated music, and those who want to squander the church's resources bandaging these scratches will do nothing to stanch the flow of blood that is spilling from its true wounds.
The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgement is too benign, his gospel is too easy, and his Christ is too common."

"Possessor of Heaven and Earth"

"A man who knows that he owns a tree and thanks you for the use he has of it, even though he does not know its exact height or the width of its spread, is better than another who measures it and counts all its branches, but neither owns it nor knows and loves its Creator. In just the same way, a man who has faith in you owns all the wealth of the world, for if he clings to you, whom all things serve, though he has nothing yet he owns them all. It would be foolish to doubt that such a man, though he may not know the track of the Great Bear, is altogether better than another who measures the sky and counts the stars and weighs the elements, but neglects you who allot to all things their size, their number, and their weight."
(Augustine)

The observations of Augustine remind me again that our God, who has made all things and sustains all things for His own glory, has not vacated the throne and is still the owner and disposer of it all! As the hymn writer asked: "Why should I be discouraged?" The response of an enlightened heart came: "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me."

"Practical Atheism"

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." (Psa.14:1)

There is much talk today of Atheism. I hear concern expressed with regards to such things as atheistic phrases on the sides of buses and billboards around the world.

These are certainly disturbing trends, nevertheless, I must respond to these concerns with a question: "Are these expressions of atheistic philosophy in word contrary to the overall human condition in practice?

In other words, is not man a practical atheist from birth? Does not the Bible describe the natural man as one alienated from the life of God and at enmity with Him?

The scriptures describe him as one who does not even want to retain the knowledge of God in his mind and when exposed to the truth seeks to suppress it.

Does not the above verse from the Psalms speak to us of man's evil heart? Out of this evil, atheistic heart flows the issues of life. So, what is it that flows from such an unbelieving heart?
Here it is declared that the outworkings of atheism are "abominable works" that show forth his unbelieving hatred of God.

Therefore, when we consider practical living, how many lives display what they profess to believe, that is, that there is a God who has given us life, who has given us direction for that life, and who rules over all things?

"And why call ye me, Lord,Lord, and do not the things which I say?"
(Luke6:46)

With this in view, is Atheism a minority report? Or, is it the testimony of the many, even among professed believers?

Is a phrase on the side of a bus really the issue, or is this simply a diversion that keeps us from facing our own "foolish" hearts and their outworkings of practical atheism?

My prayer is this: "I want faith in God to be expressed not just in my words, but also in my deeds! O' for grace to not display the attributes of a practical atheist!"