“An Elemental Moral Code”—Hugh Heclo

| | BibleMesh, Culture, Ethics, Politics, World Religions, Worldview
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Hugh Heclo, a professor of political science at George Mason University, argued at Harvard University in March 2006 that American democracy depends upon Christianity. Politically, morally, and socially, the doctrines of the Christian faith nurtured democracy. While many grant that religion in general is an important cultural foundation, Heclo asserted that Christianity specifically is a religion well suited, even today, for freedom. He explains why in the following excerpt from his book Christianity and American Democracy. Christianity and democracy share a common enemy: hypocrisy.

[T]raditional Christianity comes with an elemental moral code that helps stabilize and order an otherwise chaotic democratic society. It teaches people to be honest rather than lie, to be fair rather than cheat, to keep rather than break promises, to shun selfishness, and all the rest. Of course, there are many citizens who try to behave morally without the Christian God, or any god at all. And certainly there are many immoral Christians. The point is that traditional Christianity makes it its business to ferret out religious hypocrisy. Given the temptations to misuse freedom, it is likely one will be surrounded by a democratic society that simply works better if it has citizens in it who not only try to do the right thing but who know why, because of the teachings of their religion, they are under a personal and higher obligation to actually do it.1

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1 Hugh Heclo, Christianity and American Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2007), 236-237.


“Laziness Never Leads to Godliness”—Donald Whitney

| | BibleMesh, Scripture, Worldview
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While serving as a pastor in the Chicago area, Donald Whitney completed the doctor of ministry degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and penned Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, which was widely distributed by both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Promise Keepers. Since then, he has authored five other books, with forewords from such evangelical leaders as J. I. Packer, John MacArthur, and James Montgomery Boice.

In recent years, Whitney has been a professor of biblical spirituality at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, and at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he now serves. As his web site, www.biblicalspirituality.org, reveals, he has an extensive speaking and writing ministry, and as the following selection from his first book indicates, he makes no apology for his crowded schedule. He argues that a serious Christian is typically a busy Christian.

I’ve come to the conclusion that, with rare exceptions, the Godly person is a busy person. The Godly person is devoted to God and to people, and that leads to a full life. Though never frantic in pace, Jesus was a busy Man. Read Mark’s gospel and notice how often the word immediately describes the transition from one event in Jesus’ life to the next. We read of Him sometimes ministering all day and until after dark, then getting up before dawn to pray and travel to the next ministry venue. The gospels tell of occasional nights when He never slept at all. They tell us He got tired, so tired that He could sleep in an open, storm-tossed ship. Crowds of people pressed upon Him almost daily. Everyone wanted time with Him and clamored for His attention. None of us knows “job-related stress” like the kind He continually experienced. If Jesus’ life, as well as that of Paul, were measured against the “balanced life” envisioned by many Christians today, they would be considered workaholics who sinfully neglected their bodies. Scripture confirms what observation perceives: laziness never leads to Godliness.1

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1 Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991), 236.

Biblical Insight: The Faith and Hope of a Christian

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10:39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation.

Hebrews 10:39-11:2 (ESV)

In the darkest moment of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Sam, the hobbit, looks up into the poisonous skies of Mordor, and receives an unexpected comfort. “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”1 For the first time in days, Sam curled up into a deep untroubled sleep. He once again had the strength to endure.

This story of little Sam being heartened by the star is so poignant because it resonates with the Christian experience. Every Christian knows what it is like to want to give up, to lay down the sword and just surrender if that will quiet the world’s constant battering. The early Christians who read the book of Hebrews knew that feeling well. With some of their brothers in prison, others being plundered, and others probably dead, they were ready to quit—to throw up their hands and go back to being safe, innocuous, government-protected Jews (10:32-35). The author of Hebrews, however, would not let them. Endure, he told them, because you know that God has promised you victory (10:39).

To the author of Hebrews, faith is more than the instrument of justification (though it is certainly that as well). It is the very ground of the Christian’s endurance, his reason for pressing on in the face of the most dreadful hardships. The apostle does not expect his readers to simply “gird up their loins” and tough it out. They would endure because their faith gave them assurance—beyond any shadow of doubt—that the salvation they hoped for would eventually come. It gave them proof, however unseen, that God would fulfill His promises (11:1). This was the same faith which allowed the heroes of the Old Testament to stake their lives on God’s promises, even when the realization of those promises was nowhere in sight (Heb. 11). Bolstered by such faith, the Hebrew Christians, like the saints who went before them, could face their persecutors with firmness, reliability, and steadfastness. Theirs was not an empty hope. It was a hope rendered secure by faith.

Celebrating people of faith as Hebrews 11 does would have been unthinkable in pagan Greek culture. To fashionable Greeks, faith was the last mental stronghold of the uneducated, who blindly believed things on hearsay without being able to give precise reasons for their beliefs. The pagan observers were astonished by the willingness of Christians to suffer and die for the indemonstrable. Today, faith is still an enigma to most. The world sees Christians suffering ostracism, ridicule, poverty, even death, and they call it “foolishness.” They wonder why people would endure such suffering for a “fable.” But for those who actually endure the suffering, take the contempt, and make the sacrifices, it really is no mystery at all. They endure because they know by an unshakable faith that in the end their suffering is only a small and passing thing: there are promises and rewards laid up for them forever beyond its reach.

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1 J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (New York: Ballantine, 1965), 211. In other editions, see book 6, chapter 2.


A Theology of Work—Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823-1886)

| | BibleMesh, Culture, Theology, Worldview
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Archibald Alexander Hodge was a leading Presbyterian theologian and denominational statesman in the nineteenth century. The son of Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge carried forward his father’s legacy in his role as a professor at Princeton Seminary and a trustee at Princeton College.

As the industrial revolution was changing the nature of America’s economy, A. A. Hodge challenged the idea that “ministry” was restricted to clergy and denominational officers. All of a person’s work should be presented as a holy sacrifice to God. Specifically, the Princeton theologian sought to disabuse Christians of the notion that a Christian could separate his life into two spheres: a private life of piety toward God and a public life of secular values and practices. According to Hodge, one either should demonstrate his obedience to the Lord in the marketplace or he should not accept the name Christian.

A Christian is just as much under the obligation to obey God’s will in the most secular of his daily business as he is in his closet or at the communion table. He has no right to separate his life into two realms, and acknowledge different moral codes in each . . . The kingdom of God includes all sides of human life, and it is a kingdom of absolute righteousness. You are either a loyal subject or a traitor. When the King comes, how will he find you doing?1

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1 A. A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology (1890; reprint, Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 280-281.


Care for the Poor in the Weekly Worship of the Early Christians—Justin Martyr (c. 114 – c. 165)

| | BibleMesh, Church History, Philosophy, Worldview
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Justin Martyr was a pagan philosopher who converted to Christianity. Once a prominent thinker who taught in many of the great urban centers of the Roman Empire, he was eventually executed because of his faith. In his “First Apology,” Justin defends Christian truth and practice in a letter to the Emperor Antoninus Pius. In this passage, he describes in detail the activities involved in the weekly worship of the early Church community. For modern readers, it may be astonishing to see both the simplicity and the priorities of these forerunners as seen in their weekly Christian gatherings. They read Scripture, the pastor (here translated as “president”)1 gave a brief homily of application, they celebrated the Eucharist, and took up an offering. What is interesting about that offering, however, is where the money went. It was primarily intended to care for the poorest and weakest members of society.

And we afterwards continually remind each other of [our common faith]. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.2

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1 The word “president” in this passage almost certainly refers to the chief elder or pastor of the congregation.
2 Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985), 185-186. In other translations see chapter 67.


The Glorious Love of the Father—Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

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By the age of twenty-one, Charles H. Spurgeon was arguably the most popular preacher in London. His passion and gift for proclaiming the gospel did not limit him to pastoral duties within one congregation; rather, they stimulated him to found Sunday schools, churches, an orphanage, and the Pastor’s College.

Possessing a simple yet profound understanding of how God views His children, Spurgeon would often proclaim the Church glorious. In two sermons on Luke 15:20 titled, “The Prodigal’s Reception” and “Prodigal Love for the Prodigal Son,” he tells how the Father looks upon and receives His child who is in sin—a picture of how Christ transforms wretched sinners into His bride, the Church, purified. The grace of God, explained “The Prince of Preachers,” produces a grateful people who stand ready to “face the world” and serve their Master with joy.

“He fell upon his neck and kissed him.” This I can understand by experience, but it is too wonderful for me to explain . . . I can understand how God manifests his love to a soul that is washed in Jesus’ blood, and knows it; but how he could fall upon the neck of a foul, filthy sinner as such! There it is—not as sanctified, not as having anything good in himself, but as nothing but a filthy, foul, desperate rebel, God falls upon his neck and kisses him. Oh! strange miracle of love! The riddle is unriddled when you recollect that God never had looked upon that sinner, as he was in himself, but had always looked upon him as he was in Christ; and when fell upon that prodigal’s neck, he did in effect only fall upon the neck of his once-suffering Son, Jesus Christ, and he kissed the sinner because he saw him in Christ, and therefore did not see the sinner’s loathsomeness, but saw only Christ’s comeliness, and therefore kissed him as he would have kissed his substitute.1

God on the neck of a sinner! What a wonderful picture! Can you conceive it? I do not think you can; but if you cannot imagine it, I hope that you will realize it. When God’s arm is about our neck, and his lips are on our cheek, kissing much, then we understand more that preachers or books can ever tell us of his condescending love.2

God’s people do not always know the greatness of his love to them. Sometimes, however, it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. Some of us know at times what it is to be almost too happy to live! The love of God has been so overpoweringly experienced by us on some occasions, that we have almost had to ask for a stay of the delight because we could not endure any more. If the glory had not been veiled a little, we should have died of excess of rapture, or happiness. Beloved, God has wondrous ways of opening his people’s hearts to the manifestation of his grace. He can pour in, not now and then a drop of his love, but great and mighty streams.3

It is a hard thing for a man to confess Christ if he has not had an overwhelming sense of communion with him. But when we are lifted to the skies in the rapture God gives to us, it becomes easy, not only to face the world, but to win the sympathy of even those who might have opposed themselves. This is why young converts are frequently used to lead others into the light; the Lord’s many kisses of forgiveness have so recently been given to them, that their words catch the fragrance of divine love as they pass the lips just touched by the Lord. Alas, that any should ever lose their first love, and forget the many kisses they have received from their heavenly Father!4

When God takes men from being heirs of wrath, and makes them heirs of grace, they have just as much privilege at the first as though they had been heirs of grace twenty years, because in God’s sight they always were heirs of grace, and from all eternity he viewed his most wandering sons.5

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1 C. H. Spurgeon, “The Prodigal’s Reception, Luke xv. 20,” Miracles and Parables of Our Lord, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 377-378.
2 C. H. Spurgeon, “Prodigal Love for the Prodigal Son, Luke xv. 20,” Miracles and Parables of Our Lord, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 382.
3 “Prodigal Love for the Prodigal Son,” 383-384.
4 Ibid., 391.
5 “The Prodigal’s Reception,” 380.

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