Freedom does not mean the same thing to everyone. In practice, there are two opposing definitions: freedom from law (lawlessness or antinomianism) and freedom under God’s law. Modern culture increasingly defines freedom as the right to reject all restraint justifying theft, immorality, censorship through “heckling,” and even silencing opponents while calling this lawlessness “liberty.”

Biblically, however, lawlessness is slavery. Jesus teaches that those who sin are slaves to sin, and that true freedom comes only through Him, resulting in obedience to God’s law as a way of life (John 8:33–36). A society that rejects God’s law in the name of freedom inevitably moves toward chaos and tyranny. False freedom leads to bondage; true freedom exists only under God’s righteous law.

Scripture is clear: real faith never stays invisible. Faith without works is dead because God’s grace actually changes people, producing obedience as naturally as fruit grows on a living tree. To excuse a life of unrepentant sin by claiming a “right heart” insults God by denying the power of His regenerating grace. When God moves, the impact is unmistakable far greater than any earthquake or storm. A living church is made of changed people, and where true faith exists, it reshapes lives, churches, and even the world.

Rushdoony frames Richard III as a classic “loser” smeared by the winners—Tudor propagandists (amplified by Shakespeare) shaped the enduring villain myth—yet argues the historical Richard was neither hunchback tyrant nor proven murderer, and even his enemies’ behavior (notably Elizabeth Woodville’s later trust of him) undermines the nephew-murder charge. Set in a brutal Renaissance England of collapsing feudal loyalties, corrupt churchmen, and extravagant nobles grinding the poor, Richard’s brief reign is presented as an attempted Christian reconstruction: statutes in English, early printed laws, strong protections for justice, decentralizing power to local rule under God’s law, curbing abuses, aiding the middle class, equitable taxation, and a king who toured to hear common appeals—so that, the lecture claims, ordinary people “never had it so good” as under his three years. His personal piety and moral exhortation contrast with court decadence, but loneliness, tragedy, and political betrayal at Bosworth (Stanley and others joining late) lead to his death and the rise of Henry Tudor, ushering in a harsher, more centralized regime; nevertheless, Wycliffe’s Bible and Lollard influence persist underground, preparing later renewals of reform and liberty. #RichardIII #EnglishHistory #TudorPropaganda #Shakespeare #WarOfTheRoses #ChristianReconstruction #BiblicalLaw #Justice #Liberty #Decentralization #Wycliffe #Lollards #Renaissance #ChurchCorruption #BosworthField #HenryVII #Providence #Dominion

If Christ is truly King of kings and Lord of lords, why does so much of the modern church operate as though His reign is deferred, limited, or irrelevant to the world beyond personal piety? When Chalcedon's founder R.J. Rushdoony wrote that "the church could not hope in time to rule the world if it could not rule itself," critics objected not to the church's failure at self-governance but to the very idea that Christians have any business exercising dominion in the world at all. That reaction reveals just how deeply the Great Christian Surrender has taken root.

In this episode, Andrea Schwartz and Chalcedon vice president Martin Selbrede unpack his essay "The Great Christian Surrender" from the July 2026 issue of *Arise and Build*. Selbrede argues that the church has embraced defeat through multiple avenues — deferring Christ's kingship to a future return, restricting His lordship to the spiritual realm, or attempting to advance the kingdom through humanistic power grabs. Each of these errors discounts the omnipotent work of the Holy Spirit and replaces the biblical model of faithful obedience with either passive resignation or worldly power politics. Drawing on Zechariah's vision of smiths and artisans who quietly confound the enemies of God, the example of John Cotton in New England, and the Puritan unleashing of the priesthood of all believers, Selbrede makes the case that kingdom advancement comes not by might or political power but by the Spirit working through faithful families and individuals who refuse to limit the Holy One of Israel.

The conversation presses into what it means to be "more than conquerors" — not merely defeating opponents but transforming former enemies into willing citizens of Christ's kingdom through conversion. This is a call to reject the council of despair preached from too many pulpits and to take up the proper weapons of reconstruction: faithfulness to God's Word, generational investment, and confidence in the Spirit's world-transforming power. Listen and be challenged to ask whether you are conquering or surrendering.

John Donne understood how easily the human mind drifts even in prayer but Scripture gives a deeper assurance: God’s people persevere, not by their own steadiness, but by His power. Left to ourselves, we wander, lose focus, and drift like sand, but God completes the work He begins and keeps His people to the end. This divine perseverance gives history meaning and direction, countering the pagan idea of endless cycles and aimless change. Because God governs and sustains His people, life and history move toward His purpose, and progress is real not because of man’s constancy, but because of God’s faithfulness.

This excerpt confronts modern relativism as a deliberate “flight from knowledge,” tracing how thinkers like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and others helped popularize a pragmatic, positivistic mindset that denies absolutes, distrusts certainty, and replaces the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of utility and control. It argues that this spirit now dominates education, philosophy, semantics, and even the church shifting learning from knowing reality to manipulating it, and turning religion into a tool for personal success or social engineering rather than worship and submission to God. At bottom, the author contends, relativism is not intellectual humility but a strategy to evade the inescapable testimony of creation and conscience to God: because every fact is God-created, true knowledge inevitably points to Him (Ps. 19:1–3; Rom. 1:19–20). The result is social unraveling hatred of law, responsibility, family, and loyalty because the “self as god” cannot tolerate binding obligations, only relationships of use without duty. The piece closes with a stark conclusion: men cannot escape God or the knowledge of Him (Ps. 139:7–12), and the end of the flight from knowledge is either repentance and true understanding in Christ or the unavoidable knowledge of judgment, when every knee bows and every tongue confesses Jesus Christ as Lord (Phil. 2:10–11).

Hindsight often masquerades as wisdom, but knowing outcomes is not the same as giving wise counsel before decisions are made. True wisdom doesn’t sneer at past mistakes it learns from them and shapes better judgment for today. Without faith, hindsight becomes arrogance and foresight impossible. Scripture reminds us that God works even our failures for good, overruling what we could not foresee. Real wisdom sees both past and future through God’s sovereign hand, trusting that His purpose prevails in all things.

A man ruled by fear cannot live in the present or face the future, and so he escapes into fantasy, dreaming of a painless tomorrow where responsibility, judgment, and consequence no longer exist, yet this dream world is only the refuge of sinners unwilling to face the truth about themselves as creatures under God. Such fantasies whether personal or political reject causality, deny judgment, and attempt to outlaw God Himself, but they only deepen fear because they are rooted in evasion and guilt. Only the man who confesses his sin and lives by the grace of God in Jesus Christ can face time honestly past, present, and future because judgment has been borne for him and death itself has been conquered. Living in reality under God, even amid trouble, is far better than the false comfort of sinful dreams, for the Christian knows that God reigns in the real world and therefore can meet each day without fear, saying with confidence, “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24).

R.J. Rushdoony and Otto Scott examine the pitfalls of free trade, protectionism, and modern economic policies. Rushdoony notes that free trade presupposes a rational and moral world, ignoring cultural, political, and ethical realities, and argues that no economic system can succeed if the people are corrupt or morally deficient. Scott emphasizes that historical context matters: nations like the U.S. grew through protected industries, hard work, and cultural cohesion, while modern assumptions of universal rationality and economic fairness are misguided.

True freedom is not license or lawlessness it is liberty under God’s law. History shows that societies which redefine freedom as moral autonomy or sexual license end in tyranny, while Biblical freedom places limits on power, protects property and family, and restrains the state. Israel’s law sharply limited civil and religious authority, grounding liberty in God’s sovereignty rather than human rule.

Biblically, freedom is moral and theological before it is political. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Liberty flows from obedience to God, not rebellion against Him. When societies deny God, the state fills the vacuum and becomes a god itself taxing, regulating, and controlling all of life. Freedom will not be restored by policy alone, but by a renewed faith that recognizes God as the true Author of liberty.