Our Lord declares in Matthew 10:29–31 that God cares even for the sparrows, yet He affirms, “Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” History has often contradicted this truth: for centuries in England, royal forests and game preserves placed deer and wildlife above the lives of common people farmers could not protect their crops from marauding deer, and better records were kept of the deer in Windsor Forest than of the human population. Oliver Cromwell was beloved by farmers for ending this unnatural priority; when Charles II restored the old order, animals again ranked higher than men. Puritanism fiercely protested such elitism, insisting that man, made in God’s image, is of infinitely greater worth than beasts or birds. Yet today, as faith in Christ fades, the same distortion reappears: many show contempt for their fellow men while lavishing tender mercies on animals and the environment, often proving cruel to people. God’s law calls us to care for creation (Prov. 12:10), but never to exalt it above humanity. Remember Christ’s words: you are worth far more than the flowers of the field, the wildlife, and many sparrows. This is the unchanging truth of God. #MoreValueThanManySparrows #MadeInHisImage #GodsCareForMan

In “Covenants and Law,” Rushdoony argues that the church’s abandonment of God’s covenantal law in favor of humanistic law has fueled the suicide of Western civilization by enthroning man’s autonomy—self-law—in place of God’s theonomy. He insists that law and grace are inseparable because every covenant requires law: God’s covenant with man is an act of sovereign grace in which divine law defines the life of grace, not its negation. By rejecting Biblical law, modern theology freed the state from accountability to God while demanding greater submission to civil authority, allowing positivist law to declare the state the sole source of justice. Rushdoony critiques figures like Kuyper for grounding civil authority in “common grace” while permitting autonomous lawmaking, a move that ultimately empowered revolutionary statism. Liberalism, pragmatism, and materialism then erased absolute values, replacing God with the state as lawgiver and paving the way for modern despotisms. True freedom, he concludes, cannot be found in free will, democracy, or pietism, but only in covenantal obedience to Christ, where grace and law stand together and “the Son” alone makes men free.

#CovenantTheology #GodsLaw #LawAndGrace #Theonomy #AgainstAutonomy #ChristOurKing #BiblicalCovenant #TrueFreedom

Through our taxes, we are unwitting patrons of the arts, funding millions for projects many consider frivolous or objectionable erotic shows, feminist journals, or ex-convict art programs while contributing to a growing national deficit that threatens economic stability and, ultimately, freedom. #ArtsFunding #TaxpayerBurden #FiscalResponsibility #StopWastefulSpending #ProtectFreedom

If you've ever paid an insurance premium without a second thought, have you considered what theological assumptions undergird the entire modern insurance industry? In this episode of Out of the Question, Andrea Schwartz and Pastor Charles Roberts explore a question most Christians have never asked: Does the Bible have anything to say about insurance — and if so, does what it says challenge the way we've structured our entire approach to security, health, and the future?

Drawing on R.J. Rushdoony's writings in the Institutes of Biblical Law, The Politics of Guilt and Pity, and his California Farmer columns, the hosts argue that the modern insurance apparatus — from Social Security to health insurance to corporate benefit packages — represents a massive jurisdictional transfer away from the family and church and toward the state and faceless corporate entities. Rushdoony's insight was not that all insurance is inherently sinful, but that when insurance becomes a substitute for the covenantal responsibility of families and churches, it reflects a humanistic reliance on financial security rather than faith in God's providence. The conversation ranges widely, from the biblical dowry system as a wife's original "insurance policy," to the deacons' fund as the church's proper instrument of charity, to the way birth control functions as a kind of insurance against God's sovereign blessing of children.

The distinction between insurance and assurance is ultimately the heart of the matter. Christians are called not to a reckless disregard for the future but to providential thinking rooted in obedience to God's law and trust in His promises. Whether you're evaluating your own financial arrangements or rethinking the role of family and church in bearing one another's burdens, this episode offers a framework you won't hear anywhere else. Listen and consider what it would look like to rebuild covenantal structures of care — starting now.

The United States was once non-interventionist in war while openly Christian in moral witness, earning global respect. Since World War I, however, it has shifted toward a crusading belief in political and military “salvation,” acting as a global enforcer rather than a moral example.

The Kosovo–Serbia conflict exposes this transformation: America now applies principles abroad it would never accept at home, revealing a fundamentally religious shift from Christian restraint to political messianism. This interventionist faith, the paper argues, is anti-Christian, replacing Gospel witness with power, and has cost the U.S. both moral credibility and global goodwill.

Today, the average Christian gives only about 3 percent of his income to the Lord’s work far less than the biblical tithe yet feels no guilt. Meanwhile, federal, state, and local governments take several tithes from us each year, and the IRS shows no mercy to those who withhold. Do we imagine God is more indulgent? Scripture warns otherwise: “Will a man rob God? … Ye are cursed with a curse” (Mal. 3:8–9). Haggai describes the consequences: “Ye have sown much, and bring in little… he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes” (Hag. 1:6). In these troubled economic times, many suffer, some with grace, others in blindness yet complain that God neglects them while they have long neglected Him, offering only scraps of time and money. Our Lord commands, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37). True love for God means giving Him our best, not our leftovers, with our time, our money, and our whole selves. Do you? #LovingGod #Tithe #GiveHimYourBest

This passage exposes escapism as a defining sickness of modern culture, tracing how the flight from reality has moved from the arts into the university, politics, and revolutionary ideology. It argues that true progress comes from facing reality honestly, while modern escapists especially political radicals seek to remake the world without first confronting the sinful nature of man, replacing responsibility with utopian dreams enforced by power. Using Marxism as a chief example, the piece shows how denial of original sin leads inevitably to tyranny, as abstract visions of equality and freedom collapse into despotism, terror, and the destruction of individuality, family, and productivity. Drawing on Dostoyevsky, Scripture, and history, it warns that every attempt to escape creaturehood and “be as gods” is not merely unrealistic but suicidal a flight from life itself. The conclusion is stark and biblical: only in Jesus Christ is man restored to his true calling under God; all other escapes from reality end in chaos, judgment, and death (Prov. 8:36).

Our attitude toward God’s law is tragically warped today we view it as a burdensome restraint on human freedom, when in truth it is a gracious gift of love from our covenant God. To the sinner it restrains evil, but to the redeemed it is the very path of righteousness and life. Psalm 119 reveals the heart of the matter: “Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage” (Ps. 119:54). Astonishingly, the Psalmist calls God’s laws his songs of praise zemir, joyful hymns of delight! Just as a godly America once gave its people something to sing about when doors were unlocked, crime was rare, and church was the heartbeat of the community so obedience to God’s law brings true peace, joy, and communion with Him and with one another. Sin destroys fellowship; faithful obedience restores it. The old hymns once sang, “The precepts of the law are right, and fill the heart with great delight.” If we could once again sing God’s law from the heart, we might again see a land whose joy is in godliness rather than in sin. #TheLawAsASong #Psalm119 #GodsLawIsJoy

The word “seizure” once meant lawful ownership and peaceful possession in old English law, yet today it signifies confiscation by force the very opposite. This reversal mirrors a tragic spiritual decline: when Christ ceased to be King in men’s hearts, “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25), and without godly restraint, power was used to rob rather than protect. Today we see the same drift: property owners face confiscatory taxes, crime, and hostility, while words of peace and love mask hatred and violence. No political reform can truly reverse this; only Christ can change hearts. He claims us as His absolute possession, bought with His blood: “Ye are not your own… ye are bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). When we cease seizing our lives from Him and return ourselves and all things to His lordship, He will restore what is rightfully ours. #SeizureAndProperty #ChristIsLord #BoughtWithAPrice

Failure is assured when a person insists on absolute independence denying all debt to God and man while continuing to blame others for every frustration and defeat. This spirit of self-rule, masquerading as strength, is in fact a disease of the soul that mirrors the original demonic temptation to be “as God,” independent of all authority. Such independence leaves a man enslaved to his own appetites, ruled by pride, lust, anger, and frustration, and haunted by insecurity and defeat. True freedom comes only when this false independence is surrendered, responsibility for sin is acknowledged, and Christ is welcomed as King. When Christ reigns, the believer is no longer trapped by his own weakness but lives under the power, protection, and unfailing success of God Himself, finding liberty not in self-rule but in joyful submission to the Lord of hosts.