Many churchgoers treat God the way they treat an insurance agent: they believe Him only on matters like Heaven, hell, and salvation, but refuse to believe in Him as Lord over justice, law, sovereignty, and predestination. They pick and choose what they want from Scripture, imagining God sells “policies” they can accept or decline, while rejecting the parts that offend modern sentiment such as capital punishment or the abiding validity of His law. But God is not an agent we consult only when convenient; He is the One who bought us with the blood of His Son, and we are His, not He ours. To believe God only where we agree with Him is to despise Him. He does not exist to serve our preferences we exist to hear, obey, and serve Him as Lord.

Psalm 37 speaks directly to the believer’s struggle when the wicked prosper and the righteous seem hindered, calling us not to fret or grow resentful but to trust the Lord, commit our way to Him, and wait patiently for His providence. David reminds us that apparent injustice is temporary, that God’s judgment is certain, and that true peace belongs not to the powerful or prosperous but to the meek those tamed by God, resting in His will. This psalm gives us four clear duties: do not fret, trust in the Lord, wait patiently, and continue to do good. In so living, we find a peace the world cannot give and inherit true life now and forever, for “the meek shall inherit the earth.”

Biblical rebukes and excommunication are not institutional tools to protect the church’s prestige but covenantal acts aimed at restoring God’s order in faith, morals, and authority under His law. Rebuke is the first step of correction, grounded in Scripture and applied relationally, while persistent rebellion whether false doctrine, immorality, or refusal to fulfill basic covenant duties like family provision and just wages leads to rejection and excommunication. The church’s discipline addresses real-life obedience, not merely church offenses, because God’s Kingdom, not the institution, is the goal. Within a biblical view of government, self-government and family responsibility are primary, the church exercises moral and spiritual jurisdiction, and the state is only one limited sphere among many. Where men deny God’s law in conduct, discipline must proceed; where they repent, restoration follows always in submission to God’s authority rather than human preference.

#ChurchDiscipline #RebukeAndRestoration #BiblicalLaw #Excommunication #CovenantalAuthority #ChristianEthics #KingdomOfGod #BiblicalGovernment"

The belief in secret, unseen rulers controlling history is a way of avoiding responsibility. Scripture teaches that all men already know the truth of God but suppress it in unrighteousness (Rom. 1), choosing instead to be their own gods (Gen. 3:5). The real “strings” are pulled from the fallen human heart, not by hidden elites.

Modern philosophy from Kant to Hegel reinforced this evasion by teaching that reality conforms to human consciousness. As a result, people live in fiction rather than truth, preferring imagination, feelings, and narratives to God’s revealed Word. This produces moral blindness, denial of sin, and a habit of blaming others rather than repenting.

Christ alone rules history: “the government shall be upon his shoulder” (Isa. 9:6). To hunt conspiracies instead of confessing sin is itself rebellion. The problem is not invisible rulers it is fallen man refusing to rule himself under God’s law. Redemption begins when we stop blaming others and submit to Christ the true King.

In Easy Chair 146 (May 14, 1987), R.J. Rushdoony argues that a culture survives only when it honors both past and future: despising the past makes a people rootless, while losing a God-given vision for the future leaves only nostalgia—relics without meaning and prosperity without purpose. He warns that this same past-orientation infects churchmen who cling to “security” instead of obeying Scripture’s mandate to advance God’s Kingdom, using history as a cautionary tale: the medieval church allied with fading rural power while the city rose, helping set the stage for an urban Reformation; later, Protestantism resisted the Industrial Revolution and lost relevance to modern city life. Rushdoony then condemns Liberation Theology as Marxism baptized—replacing conversion and discipleship with revolution—and calls for a recovered biblical outlook marked by an eschatology of victory, where faith supplies both continuity with our fathers and confidence to build a future on God’s terms. Along the way, his reviews expose the moral confusion of sentimental liberal “compassion,” the shift from responsibility to blame in modern culture, the dangers of hyper-emotional “enthusiastic religion,” and the self-defeating absurdities of subsidy politics—each example reinforcing his central point: without Scripture’s authority, societies drift into fantasy, guilt-religions, and control schemes; with it, they regain meaning, mission, and direction.

#EasyChair #Rushdoony #ChristianWorldview #HistoryAndFaith #PastAndFuture #EschatologyOfVictory #Discipleship #LiberationTheology

Not long ago people commonly told pastors, “I’m not needed,” because the great fear was to be useless; today, the complaint has shifted to “I’m not happy,” while idleness itself has become a prized goal. Modern man seeks happiness while avoiding the very things that produce it work, responsibility, godliness, family, and obedience to God’s law so it is no wonder that unhappiness has multiplied. Scripture shows that makarios, the word for “blessed,” also means “happy,” revealing that true happiness is a byproduct of being rightly related to God and faithfully doing what He calls us to do. I have known people surrounded by hardship who nevertheless lived joyfully, like an elderly widow who, despite blindness, strokes, and deep disappointments, radiated gratitude and faith. She never said she was unhappy; she thanked God for what she still had. Happiness is not found by chasing it, but by walking in blessedness: “Happy is that people, whose God is the LORD” (Ps. 144:15).

Gideon returns at sunrise — the sun in his strength, the embodiment of Deborah's blessing. He grabs a literate teenager, takes down the names of all 77 elders of Succoth, and metes out targeted, proportional, covenantal justice with thorns and briars. The tower of Penuel comes down. He stands face-to-face with the men who killed his brothers, asks his son to strike — and the boy freezes. A study in biblical justice, fatherhood, and the manhood that has to be forged, not inherited.

In “Exaggeration and Denial” (Chalcedon Report No. 422), Rushdoony argues that modern relativism, grounded in the myth of neutrality, has corrupted truth by treating all claims as morally equivalent and by forcing the media to give equal weight to unequal realities. This false balance produces a destructive cycle in which facts are exaggerated to provoke outrage or denied to blunt moral judgment, all under the guise of objectivity. He insists that the twentieth century’s vast record of mass murder by Turks, Nazis, and Communists cannot honestly be disputed, yet modern consciences, numbed by scale, are tempted either to inflate lesser atrocities or to deny greater ones altogether. Against both exaggeration and denial, Rushdoony appeals to the Ninth Commandment, which demands truthfulness regardless of political or emotional goals. When truth is subordinated to shock value or ideological utility, historical revisionism sets the stage for future atrocities by raising the threshold of what counts as “evil enough” to matter. The real danger, he concludes, lies in a culture that treats God’s law as merely one opinion among many, thereby forfeiting any fixed moral standard by which truth and justice can be upheld.

A farmer complained that his prosperous neighbor “felt too good” for him, yet the real issue was not the neighbor’s pride but his own lack of humility. Though raised in a wealthy family, the farmer had wasted forty years repeating the same mistakes, refusing correction, and ending life with nothing, while the neighbor once poor had worked hard, sacrificed, built a thriving farm, educated his children, and lived responsibly. The complaining farmer hid behind the slogan, “Every man is as good as the next,” but what he really meant was that he would not learn from anyone. Solomon teaches that “before honour is humility” (Prov. 15:33; 18:12); no one can grow while always justifying himself. Only when a man, like Bernard Baruch, stops blaming others and asks, “Where was I wrong, and how can I correct it?” does progress begin. We all need more humility, for some people are wiser, more disciplined, and more diligent than we are and the wise learn from them.

Faithful pastors often spend less time on the great doctrines of the faith and more on untangling personal problems, because sinful man is always more interested in himself than in God. These problems usually spring from two forgotten truths: people are sinners, and we ourselves are sinners. Salvation does not remove all sin from our lives, and when we expect perfection from men rather than from God, we invite disappointment. Even trivial matters like whether someone did or did not receive a wedding invitation become occasions for offense, because sinful hearts can milk trouble out of anything. The remedy is simple: “It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes” (Ps. 118:9). When others hurt or disappoint us, the deeper issue is that we have placed our trust in people instead of the Creator. We live best with others when we remember that all of us, saved or unsaved, are still capable of thoughtlessness and sin. Much modern pastoral psychology falters because it forgets this reality: personal problems often arise from neglect of God and misplaced confidence in man. Our trust must be in the Lord.