In Titus 3, Paul offers what he calls a “faithful saying” a core statement of the Christian faith and it is strikingly practical. Believers are to obey lawful authorities, because the Christian way is regeneration, not revolution. They must be ready for every good work, speaking evil of no one, avoiding quarrels, and showing gentleness and meekness to all. Once enslaved to lusts, malice, and envy, they have now been justified by God’s grace, saved through Jesus Christ, and made heirs of His Kingdom and their lives must reflect that transformation. Paul links faith and works inseparably: hatred gives way to grace, and selfish living to active goodness. His concise statement of Christian duty is one the modern church urgently needs to recover.

This piece highlights the harsh realities widows face under federal and state property and tax laws. A Missouri widow, unable to operate her late husband’s farm machinery during harvest because it was tied up in his estate, was forced to hire help at additional expense. Laws and regulations, including estate and inheritance taxes, often treat widows as secondary to bureaucratic process, ignoring the years of joint labor they contributed. Even careful legal planning can fail, as tax laws are frequently revised. The author argues that these policies amount to a form of robbing widows, and questions why senior citizen organizations aren’t doing more to advocate for their protection. He calls for legislators to show genuine consideration for widows and orphans, emphasizing that death should be a time of mourning, not bureaucratic exploitation. #ProtectWidows #EstateTaxInjustice #DeathTaxes #PropertyRights #TaxBurden #LegalRedTape #AdvocateForSurvivors #WidowProtection #InheritanceJustice #FairLegislation

This position paper argues that the modern idea of “genius” is a revived pagan concept rooted in animism and hero-worship, in which certain individuals are treated as semi-divine figures standing above law, morality, and ordinary humanity. Tracing the idea from ancient Rome through the Renaissance and Enlightenment to modern revolutionary movements, the paper shows how the “genius” shifted from a protecting spirit to the artist, intellectual, or political leader who claims superior insight and authority over society. This myth justified the rise of heroic leaders and totalitarian figures whether artists, philosophers, or revolutionaries who viewed themselves as entitled to destroy existing culture, morality, and social order in the name of progress. In contrast, biblical faith rejects genius and hero-worship in favor of the callings of prophet, priest, and king under God, where authority rests not in personal brilliance or intuition but in obedience to God’s law-word, joyful service, and faithful dominion. The paper concludes that true culture and reconstruction will never come from the state or the self-appointed genius elite, but from Christians who labor steadily under God’s authority, knowing their work is not in vain.

#Genius #HeroWorship #ChristianWorldview #BiblicalAuthority #CultureAndFaith #ProphetPriestKing #AntiStatism #Reconstruction

The Carpocratians reshaped Jesus to suit their culture turning Him into a religious genius, rejecting the Old Testament, denying His uniqueness, and redefining justice as radical equality. By accommodating Christ to contemporary philosophy, they created a fictitious “modern” Jesus whose relevance vanished with the culture that produced Him.

This impulse is still with us. Whenever Christ is revised to fit the spirit of the age, faith is emptied of power. The answer then and now is unwavering allegiance to the whole Word of God and the true Christ it reveals.

Scripture uses the word righteousness to mean justice, revealing that a truly righteous people are those made just by God and committed to doing justice. Jesus blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and those who suffer for it because both pursuits display God’s grace at work. Yet many who demand justice want exemptions for their own sins and judgment only for the sins of others, resulting in lawlessness masquerading as rights and freedom. Protest, pressure, and power tactics cannot produce a just society. God’s way is regeneration, not revolution; justice in the world begins with righteousness in the heart. Only transformed men can build a transformed society, and only the grace of God can make a man righteous.

Rushdoony’s central claim is that culture reveals religion, most clearly through law and education. By these measures, modern society is humanistic, having confined faith to private worship while surrendering public life to the state. In antiquity this was normal: the state was the church. Rulers functioned as divine figures, and there was no separation of church and state. As societies abandon Christianity, they inevitably return to this pagan pattern by re-divinizing the state.

Against this background, Christianity was radically subversive. Paul’s command to pray for rulers (1 Tim. 2:1–2) challenged the belief that rulers were divine mediators. Even more explosive was the Christian confession “Jesus Christ is Lord,” which directly contradicted Rome’s required confession “Caesar is Lord.” This alone made Christianity a threat to the entire pagan order and explains the fierce persecution of the early church.

Rushdoony argues that pagan “freedom” was actually licentiousness leading to slavery. Ancient cultures used moral chaos ritualized in festivals like the Saturnalia to control people. Such chaos-worship is ultimately self-destructive, and modern society is repeating the same pattern. The ancient world was bankrupt when Christ came; likewise today, the only real hope is a return to Christ’s total lordship over all of life, not merely private belief.

In this episode of Out of the Question, Andrea Schwartz and Pastor Charles Roberts tackle an issue that quietly corrodes the health of the body of Christ: the failure to act when something isn't right.

Drawing from Deuteronomy 22:1–4 and R.J. Rushdoony's exposition on the liability of the bystander in The Institutes of Biblical Law (Eighth Commandment), Andrea and Charles explore how God's law places a clear obligation on believers — not merely to avoid wrongdoing, but to actively respond when they witness it.

The conversation covers practical, real-world dynamics within churches: the difference between gossip and a legitimate concern, who should investigate when something seems off, how the misapplication of the "two witnesses" requirement silences people from raising red flags, and the damage done when church culture prioritises reputation over justice. Charles and Andrea discuss how rampant individualism and ignorance of biblical law have left many believers without the tools — or the will — to address symptoms of serious problems before they become full-blown scandals.

They also explore how families and church leaders can cultivate wisdom to navigate these sensitive interpersonal situations — from inappropriate physical contact to the more subtle signs that something isn't right with a child or a fellow member. The episode concludes with a call to study and apply God's law as the foundation for true fellowship, justice, and restoration within the body of Christ.

Related Resource: R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, Chapter on the Eighth Commandment — "The Liability of the Bystander." Audio lecture available at Chalcedon.edu.

Proverbs teaches that when people abandon God’s law, they unintentionally praise the wicked they vindicate evil by sharing its contempt for God’s Word. Proverbs 29:18 adds that without God’s revelation, a people become “naked,” stripped of protection and left defenseless before danger and judgment. God’s Word is our only true covering, our armor against sin, folly, and destruction; to cast it aside is to run uncovered into battle. And those who do so not only embolden the wicked but make God their enemy. By contrast, those who keep His law are blessed, as Psalm 1 vividly declares. The choice before individuals and nations is stark: embrace God’s law and flourish, or forsake it and perish.

There is a world of difference between being alone and being lonely. Solitude can be a gift our Lord Himself sought it out in prayer but loneliness can strike even in a crowded room, when there is no true fellowship or shared purpose. Scripture addresses this ache directly, reminding us that covetousness and restless desire isolate the heart, while contentment and faith anchor us in communion with God. Because He has promised, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” we can boldly say, “The Lord is my helper.” The cure for loneliness begins not with more people, but with renewed faithfulness to the Lord: walking in contentment, forsaking the sins that estrange us, and entering into the peace and community that only His presence can give.

Antinomianism Attacked shows that Jesus’ conflict with the religious leaders centered on their substitution of human tradition for God’s law, a move that He identified not as faithfulness but as lawlessness. By exposing ceremonial washings and practices like Corban as man-made commandments that nullified God’s Word, Jesus declared that only laws planted by the Father have authority, and that both antinomianism and legalism rejecting God’s law or replacing it with human rules stand condemned. Against the Pharisaic belief that defilement comes from the environment, Christ taught that lawlessness flows from the human heart, making regeneration, not ritual or social conditioning, the true remedy. In this way, Jesus dismantled every attempt to evade responsibility before God’s law and made clear that any “Christianity” that rejects God’s law is no Christianity at all. #Antinomianism #TraditionVsScripture #LawOfGod #HeartIssue #JesusTeaches #BiblicalAuthority #Regeneration #FalseReligion #ScriptureTruth