Jubilee Journal-Spring.pdf

THE JUBILEE JOURNAL Spring 2022

IN THIS ISSUE: Celebrating The Resurrection www.thejubileeschool.com

A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION OF THE JUBILEE SCHOOL & CONCORDIS EDUCATION PARTNERS

CONTENTS Celebrating the Resurrection 4

Family Matters Obedience & The Pleasure of God 8

Worldview & Culture Celebrating the Resurrection 11

U.S. & World History The Things We Weren't Told About Isaac Newton 14 & 17

Let's Debate (Pro & Con) Should Christians Use Social Media?

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Books to Read Good Dragon Stories 22

More Books to Read Competing Spectacles

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Family Matters Obedience & The Pleasure of God

By Kellen Meyer

Simply put, a professional is someone who performs a particular task for money. An amateur (if we only consider the root meaning of the word) is someone who performs a task for the love of it.

And of course, you could be both—loving what you do and doing what you love. Eric Liddell’s legacy was one of doing what he loved, and loving what was right in front of himself.[1] He loved God which meant that he loved obedience to God even when it was difficult. He looked at his giftings as opportunities for obedience. For feeling God’s pleasure. He ignored peer pressure and personal weaknesses. When he became a famous rugby player, he used his fame for speaking opportunities to share Jesus with the hundreds that came to see him (even though he was a shy man by personality). When he was racing, he would encourage and shake hands with his competitors, then run with joy, and give God the credit for his success. When God called him to oversees missions in China, he went, leaving behind all the popularity which the world offers to Olympians. And even when the “flying Scotchman” was locked up in a Japanese prison camp, never to see his wife and daughters again, he saw it as a gift. God gave him speed. God gave him fame. God called him to China. And now God gave him the gift of incarceration. Eric had a unique opportunity to be an encouragement to some two thousand other prisoners: someone to be a father to dozens of parentless children in horrible living conditions. He died in that prison camp at 44 years of age, known to all as “Uncle Eric”—a man who ran God’s race well, feeling God’s pleasure, seeking the crown of righteousness (2 Timothy 4:8).

I. Knowing God’s Call What induced Eric to change from being a student, to an Olympian, to an overseas missionary? How did he know that God wanted him to make such drastic changes in his life?

Practically speaking, the answer to Eric’s success lies in living out Proverbs 3:5-6: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. (NKJV) In this Proverb there are three commands followed by a result clause. The first command is that we must trust our Lord Jesus with every inch of ourselves. To really trust Jesus fully, we must believe two things about Him: that He is powerful, and that He is good. We cannot rely on someone who is very sweet but unable to help, and we cannot rely on someone who is able to help but doesn’t care. So who is Jesus?

Do you believe He makes the sun rise, bumble bees fly, and electrons dance? Do you believe He came to die for you, that He sings over you, and has fashioned all your days (yours personally) even before you were born? (John 3:16; Zephaniah 3:17; Psalm 139:16) Do you trust Him? Is He both good and powerful?

“GOD MADE ME FAST. AND WHEN I RUN, I FEEL HIS PLEASURE. ” ~ Eric Liddell

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The second command, in verse 5, says that we must not rely on our own understanding or perception. Notice, this is not a prohibition against using the wisdom God has given you, rather it is a prohibition against trusting in it.

Eric spent months training and competing to go to the Olympics to run in the 100-meter race, only to discover that that race was scheduled on a Sunday. Eric believed God would have him honor Sunday as the Lord’s Day by not running, even though it would mean wasting his training, losing an opportunity to win, and being thought of as a traitor instead of a celebrity by his countrymen.

So, regardless of the consequences which were obvious from a human level, Eric demonstrated his trust in God by obediently resting on Sunday.

The result of his obedience was that God was publicly honored, and Eric was permitted to run the 400-meter on Monday instead. And even though the 400-meter wasn’t the race he had trained for, Eric both won that race and set a new world record. So trust in God, and not in yourself.

The third command in the Proverb is essentially the application of the first two commands: we are to acknowledge God in all of our ways. Having a God-centered orientation is the natural result of trusting in God and not in ourselves. We must maintain a particular attitude toward God with all of our plans and undertakings. Again, Eric demonstrated this well when he said, “God made me fast.” Not only did he trust God’s wisdom in His commands, Eric also acknowledged and committed his obedience to God, expressing gratitude for everything—pleasant or difficult.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to consider how you think about your time. Each morning you wake up with an idea of how the day will go, what you will accomplish and how long it will take. You probably have similar goals for your weeks, months, and years.

Then, when your wife needs your help fixing the plumbing, or an old classmate calls you up for marriage advice, or your four-year-old writes on the wall with a Sharpie—all events that were not part of your morning plan—the temptation is to grumble; to ask God why He has not acknowledged your Google calendar.

Rather, the right response is to welcome the schedule adjustments because you trust the One who made them. When Eric was confronted with the fact that he was going to a concentration camp, he joyfully committed his imprisonment to Jesus. This new development meant he would never walk his daughters down the aisle, he wouldn’t grow old with his wife, and he would lose everything else in this life. But he could be sure of one thing: God was directing his path.

II. The Pleasure of God Every Christian wants what Eric Liddell experienced, namely, to feel the pleasure of God. You can’t study Eric’s life without wondering what was the prize he was after? Gritted teeth or a stoic indifference might be able to carry you through a prison camp and dump you across the finish line, but what is it that could make a man like Mr. Liddell thrive in this kind of trial? It can only be the pleasure of God. Jesus said that a life of obedience—a life directed by God—results in abiding in His love: His pleasure (John 15:10).

Those who believe this, who act on it, will discover they have glimpsed the greatest prize of all—God Himself, and Christ’s joy within themselves (John 15:11). Christ’s joy fills you up.

In this glorious state, the fearful future becomes an exciting opportunity to invest the talents God has given you.

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So what about you? Has God made you fast? Has He given you a husband to honor, or a wife to love, or children to train? Do you have a trial or illness in which you can acknowledge or glorify Him? What has He gifted you with? How are you honoring Him with your gifts? Commit your time to Him, release control to the One who owns the future; don’t miss out on the blessing of simple obedience in the next duty in front of you. And don’t fear. God has gifted and tailored your race to match you, His child, and He has equipped you for it. So, use the wisdom He has given you. Cast your cares on Him (1 Peter 5:7). Then keep running His race with all your might—feeling His pleasure.

[1]The details of Eric Liddell’s life were taken from his biography as retold by the Unshackled radio drama: program numbers 3529 and 3530 which aired in 2018.

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Worldview & Culture Celebrating the Resurrection By pastor stuart w. bryan Even before our fathers and mothers developed their celebrations of Christmas and the Incarnation of Jesus, they routinely celebrated Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

As we prepare to celebrate Easter, it is always worthwhile to ask, “Why is the resurrection of Jesus so important?” So what, He rose from the dead? What relevance does His resurrection have for our hope of life after death? Many Christians find it difficult to answer such questions. We know Jesus’ resurrection is important; but how does it shape our view of life after death?

There is significant confusion.

Now it is no surprise that people in the world are confused about what happens after death. As our society has become increasingly secular and godless, its analysis of death has become increasingly vacuous and shallow.

Watch a movie which includes a funeral scene and its message will be one of two things. On the one hand, some declare that death is no big deal; it is just a normal part of life, one of the cycles of existence. Henry Scott-Holland (18471918) preached at the death of King Edward VII (1):

Death is nothing at all. It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I and you are you, and the old life we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow…”

Both these tendencies reveal the inability of our society to deal meaningfully with death – on the one hand closing its eyes to the awful reality of death and, on the other, using death to justify hopelessness and hedonism. If we are to be a light in this darkness, then it is critical that we clearly grasp the Christian hope in the face of death.

Unlike the world, we do have hope. And that hope is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is one attempt to deal with death: death is nothing at all! But most realize that that is a lie. They have faced the grief of loss; have felt the tears rolling down their face while some fool says, “Death is normal.” They have struggled with heartache and despair. They know that death is a big deal; it is an enemy; it is not normal and right. But though they see the ugliness of death, they have no hope. “All this proves,” so they say, “is that life is meaningless. Here we are; life has no point; it all ends in death; so seize the day while you still have it. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.”

Unfortunately, it is precisely at this point that many modern Christians stumble. Our hope, far from the sure and certain hope proclaimed in the New Testament, is often flabby and speculative. When confronted with the stark reality of death, when asked about the nature of the Christian hope, many Christians declare, “Jesus has risen from the dead, so we can be sure that we shall go to heaven when we die. Heaven is our hope.”

This is the most common Christian response to the evil of death. Perhaps it is your response and you’re wondering why I seem to be critiquing the idea.

Isn’t heaven our hope?

"Let us feast, let us rejoice, let us dance, let us thank God for His goodness, and let us use our bodies to glorify Him." 08|

You might be shocked to learn that the answer to that question is, “No.” While heaven is a biblical concept – as Paul says to the Corinthians, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8) – heaven is not our hope. The Scriptures do not urge us to set our hope on going to heaven when we die. The immortality of the soul is not our hope.

So what is? Our hope is the resurrection of the dead. Our hope is that one day Christ will return in glory to raise His people from their graves and that we shall ever dwell with the Lord body and soul (Jn 5:28-29; 6:37-40). That is our hope. As Paul writes to the Roman Christians, “we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the…redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope…” (Rom 8:23b-24a). Likewise, Paul reminds the Corinthians that “the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord [Jesus] and will also raise us up by His power” (1 Cor 6:13b-14). So Paul tells us in Phil 3:11 that his goal is to “attain to the resurrection from the dead” because the end of human history coincides with the return of Jesus in glory “who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil 3:21).

Heaven is not our hope; the resurrection of the dead is. Does that surprise you? Well, you are not alone.

In fact, the extent to which this is misunderstood is truly astonishing.

Several years ago, the British scholar N.T. Wright published a book entitled Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.

ABC News interviewed Wright at the time and made the following comments (2): “In a radical departure from traditional belief, Wright says that Christians are not ultimately destined for a spiritual place called heaven. He says that at the end of time as we know it, God will literally remake our physical bodies and return us to a newly restored planet.” (2) In other words, ABC News declares, the resurrection is “a radical departure from traditional belief.” But here’s a question: when we recite the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed, what do we confess about our hope for the future?

Our hope for life after death? We confess to believe in “the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.” We do not confess to believe in the immortality of the soul or the glories of heaven. Heaven is not our hope!

Sharing the resurrection of Jesus is! The resurrection of the dead is of the essence of the Christian faith. We do not teach the immortality of the soul; we teach the resurrection of the body.

Why? Because Christ is risen from the dead! If we are not raised, then Christ is not raised; and if Christ is not raised, then our faith is in vain (1 Cor 15:13-14).

A de-emphasis on the resurrection of the body will inevitably end with a deemphasis on the historicity of Christ and His resurrection.

1 "Death is Nothing at All." Henry Scott-Holland c. 1910 https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/death-is-nothing-at-all-by-henry-scott-holland 2 ABC News. Bishop's Heaven: Is There Life After the Afterlife? https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaithMatters/story?id=4330823&page=1

A de-emphasis on the resurrection of the body will also end with a denigration of God’s creation.

The resurrection is God’s stamp of blessing on the created order and the promise that the created order will continue throughout eternity (Rom 8:18-25). Matter is good – the resurrection is God once again looking out on His creation and seeing that it is very good. And this means that our bodies are good – God has given our bodies to us precisely so that we can enjoy him and glorify him with them.

What we do with the body, therefore, is of paramount importance. It is not just our souls that matter. Remember Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power…

Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God’s” (1 Cor 6:13b-14, 20).

So as you prepare to celebrate Easter this year, let us remember that Easter is the center of our Christian Calendar.

The resurrection proves that the other days are worth celebrating and reminds us of the glory that we ourselves shall inherit. So let us feast, let us rejoice, let us dance, let us thank God for His goodness, and let us use our bodies to glorify Him.

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U.S. & World History The Things We Weren't Taught About Isaac Newton

by Daniel Finley

Everyone's heard the story: Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree when an apple hit him on the head and suddenly, he understood gravity.

This delightful story is nothing more than an urban legend, but it illustrates how pervasive our impressions of Newton are, and how little we actually know about how he made his greatest discoveries.

We tend to reduce Newton to his achievements in physics and mathematics, but he was actually a broad scholar with wide-ranging beliefs and interests.

He studied chemistry, philosophy, physics, theology, mathematics, and really, any problem he found interesting. As Dr. Mitch Stokes says in his biography of Newton (1): “Newton endeavored to a great, comprehensive system of the world – from the solar system to the fundamental nature of matter to God’s work in redemptive history."

As significant as his scientific accomplishments are, he wrote more on the Bible than on physics, and spent much of his professional life as an alchemist, studying gold and working in the British mint.

There is a consistent theme to his questioning. He believed that God had encoded the world with an underlying pattern, and it was his job to break those codes, like a master cryptographer. Newton’s work was driven not only by his belief in an underlying, God-created order to the world, but also by his belief that part of worshipping God was discovering this order and knowing Him through it.

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NEWTON’S EXPERTISE IN ALCHEMY AND METALLURGY EARNED HIM THE ATTENTION OF THE KING WHO MADE HIM MASTER OF THE ROYAL MINT FOR CLOSE TO 30 YEARS. IN THAT TIME, NEWTON HELPED SET THE RATIO OF GOLD IN BRITISH COINS, MADE BRITISH COINS HARDER TO COUNTERFEIT AND MANIPULATE, AND SET ABOUT REPLACING ALL COINS IN CIRCULATION. Isaac Newton and the Philosopher’s Stone It's hard for us to imagine that the "father of modern physics" Isaac Newton would have been an alchemist because we associate alchemy with lunatics and magic, but in Newton’s day, alchemy (coming from Arabic, literally meaning “the chemistry”) was a field with some respectable researchers.

However, even in Newton’s day, there was a fringe element to it. Newton sought to divorce alchemy from its magical tendencies and make it about discovering the underlying nature of all matter. In The Religion of Isaac Newton, Frank Manuel writes: “Newton tried to de-mystify alchemical ideas, which were difficult to comprehend because they were enshrouded in mythic and symbolic language. In immersing himself in lengthy treatises on philosophical alchemy, he was looking for keys to the world of nature, preserved in cryptic Religio-scientific formulas and allegories. But he did not find ultimate truth there…”

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To Newton, discovering the meaning behind the symbols of nature would lead to profitable development for mankind. Understanding the nature of matter would allow for the manipulation in almost miraculous ways. In his words: “For Alchemy tradeth not with metals as ignorant vulgars think…this philosophy is not of that kind which tendeth to vanity and deceit but rather to profit and edification inducing first the knowledge of God and secondly the way to find out true medicines in the creatures…so that the scope is to glorify God in his wonderful works, to teach a man how to live well, and to be charitably affected helping our neighbors.”

Newton’s work in alchemy led to contributions in the field of chemistry, which he included in his seminal work, Optics, published in 1704. Newton owned the largest library of Alchemical books in Europe when he died. His alchemic studies led to his expertise in metallurgy which allowed him to make one of his biggest contributions to humanity at the time: a new gold standard.

The Creation of the Gold Standard In his short book, The 21st Century Case for Gold, George Gilder says that, instead of alchemy, it is more accurate to say Newton practiced anti-alchemy.

He wanted to prove that it wasn’t possible to create gold out of other metals. It was a common belief in Newton’s day that gold could one day be manufactured, which would preclude it from being a reliable store of value.

Newton proved that gold could not be replicated and so was a suitable store of value across space and time, what we now call a “hard” currency.

Newton’s expertise in alchemy and metallurgy earned him the attention of the King who made him Master of the Royal Mint for close to 30 years. In that time, Newton helped set the ratio of gold in British coins, made British coins harder to counterfeit and manipulate, and set about replacing all coins in circulation. Newton was also charged to stop “clippers” who shaved off unnoticeable slivers of silver coins in order to make new ones, which caused debasement of the currency.

Newton’s efforts in all these ventures led to the creation of the classical gold standard, under which the global economy thrived for 200 years. By giving British currency a solid basis, he primed the little island for its global trade network and empire.

For his contributions both to the Mint and to science, the Bank of England from 1978 to 1988 issued a series of banknotes with an image of Newton with a telescope, prism, and the solar system he helped demystify and decode (2).

Prophesy and the Bible Perhaps the most surprising thing about Newton is that he spent more time and effort writing about the Bible than he did about physics and mathematics. To modern people especially, that seems off the beaten course for Newton. Wasn’t he a scientist and physicist who was interested in understanding the way the world worked? Why did he spend so much time writing on the Bible?

It was not only because Isaac Newton was a devout Christian, but also because it was in keeping with his belief that God had encoded His mysteries through symbols and imagery. Newton thus spent a lot of time writing about Biblical prophecy. Just as he wanted to use the symbols of mathematics to break the code of physical phenomena, he wanted to break the code behind Biblical prophecy.

In his essay, “Newton the Man” John Maynard Keynes writes, “He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty – just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz.”

It was Newton’s belief in an underlying order to the universe that led him to investigate it so closely. Newton did not look at prophecy in the Bible or theology as separate from his work in natural history philosophy. To him they were all connected, they were all related and they were all conducted by deciphering the system of symbols God had left for us.

Newton wrote millions of words on the Bible, more than on any other subject.

Newton did not publish any books on theology while alive, but two were published after his death in 1727. The two books were the "Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended" and "Observations Upon the Prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John."

Conclusion Newton is best remembered for his work in physics and mathematics, but it’s important to remember his other contributions as well. He researched alchemy and chemistry but wrote most extensively on the Bible. He helped put the money of England on sound footing and created, accidentally, the classical gold standard.

Newton had a broad, wide-ranging intellect that was not content being pent up in only one field. He wanted to discover God’s underlying order in the universe. Because God created the world as an engineer creates an engine, Newton knew there must be an underlying way to unravel, understand, and use what He made: “And Newton reveled in this userfriendliness. He depended on it. The world was full of mysteries, but mysteries put there to be solved.

Newton was a detective in a world that was far more than it seemed…”

Dr. Mitch Stokes

His belief in the ultimate order and beauty of the universe, which he learned from Scripture and other ancient authors, combined with his devotion to God, drove him to research more and more the mysteries that presented themselves to him. He was determined to unravel the meaning of God’s code wherever he found it.

To Newton, knowledge of God’s world was knowledge of God and acquiring it was a form of worship. And with that definition, it is no wonder that despite all his enormous contributions, he ended his life feeling he had learned so little: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” (3)

Special note and thanks: The bulk of the research and information in this short article came from Dr. Mitch Stokes’ book Isaac Newton from the Christian Encounter Series. You may find his work here.

1 Stokes. Isaac Newton. Thomas Nelson Publishing. 2010.

2 Banknote image. http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/denom_guide/nonflash/1-SeriesD-Revised.htm 3 Brewster. Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 407

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Let's debate Should Christians use social media?

GNOASIS

by Rusty Olps

We were created social beings. Big Tech tapped this truth and created an anti-social “community” that has made them more money than many nation states will ever see.

This pseudo-community feels social. It involves the digital representation of actual, other people. Communication is occurring on these platforms. Pictures of real people are being posted. But, it’s a deep perversion of true, human social interaction. It’s designed that way. Created by a parody of god to be a parody of the church and ultimately a parody of Eden, an inhabitable, virtual paradise. It’s called Gnoasis.

In Gnoasis there is a demanding god. His church of subscribers is unified by the platform (Facebook, YouTube, etc). The platform creators are the god, the creator of the world in which the subscriber exists. In his world, the fantastic Gnoasis, we must abide by his rules and the rules of his church and her priests.

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The commandments of this god are these: 1. The greatest commandment is this: Thou shalt express thyself. Self-expression is a sweet aroma to me. Nothing else matters.

2. The second great commandment is like unto the first.

Consume the self-expression of others: often, with relish, with contempt, with praise and clappy hands.

3. Thou shalt give thy time and attention to the images and the words, for thy god receives money for thy commoditized attention. Thy addiction is a service unto me and to those who serve by self-expression.

4. Thou shalt love thy neighbor if thy neighbor is like thee.

5. Thou shalt disdain thy neighbor when they are not like thee. Mock such a one, and hold them in condescending contempt, for homogeneity is good. Narrow and simple shall be thy identity - an echo of who thou already art.

6. Thou shalt signal thy virtues. To signal thy virtues is to be virtuous. It is all that is required to be virtuous, for my yoke is light.

7. Thou shalt trust in my priests, who maintain my altar, and give to them the first fruits of thy commodified attention. They are silent, but they are ever watching.

8. Thou shalt not express complex or intimate communications; these are an abomination to me.

Simplicity and artificiality shall adorn thy words and images.

9. Thou shalt be angry, divisive, and objectifying of others and thyself, for these attributes create polarization and polarization makes my kingdom grow. If thou art poor at this attribute, then be not disheartened, for many are good at it, and these saints need thy virtue signals.

10. Finally, thou shalt avoid the devil. Thou shalt know the devil by his attributes: He shalt require of thee intimate, complex, diverse, physical relationships involving such offenses of reality as eating, crying, face seeing, touch, laughter, and otherwise life outside of Gnoasis.

Social Media, whatever it is, is not neutral. Some say it is. They say it’s like a tool – it just depends on how you use it. Let me grant that for a moment. It is like a tool. A tool owned by woke anti-Christians that isn’t used so much as inhabited. This tool makes its use a saleable commodity. This tool also destroys community and encourages superficiality and the rank polarization of society; and upon using it often enough, it will become addictive.

Hmmmm. Maybe it’s like whiskey instead of a hammer.

More dangerous to the user, more addictive. Though for the analogy to work its use must be hourly, and its every use a little dopamine rush. Also, every sip puts money in the pockets of Big Tech, and the network you help facilitate pushes this super booze on others all the time.

So, you’re a dealer as well as a consumer. I guess it’s neutral like that is neutral.

Maybe the best analogy is pornography, which is of course a tremendous application for social media. A picture can’t be moral or immoral, technically, any more than a good Anatomy text. The sin is only in the intentions of the creator and the use of the consumer.

Pornography is certainly addictive, thrives on twodimensionality, destroys community, etc. Yes, I think that is the best analogy of a neutral medium like unto Social Media.

I’m purposefully giving my critique a religious flair because I think the offenses of Social Media are so morally loaded. And the very nature of this false god is akin to actual heresies, such as Docetism. Docetism was a Gnostic heresy that alleged Christ never had a real body. Social media has created disembodied communities: the anti-church. Social Media is the latest and greatest creation of Gnosticism. The Gnostics wouldn’t have believed their dream could ever have been realized to this extent - abstraction from one’s body, the avoidance of others’ bodies, an inhabitable gnosis! The great Gnoasis, an edenic land of virtual inhabitation.

The crux of Christianity is body. Incarnation. It’s God in a body on a cross – bleeding, naked, heaving, and dying.

Metaphysics and physics touch at the cross and are forever unified in Jesus. To incarnate, to touch, to eat and drink and procreate and feel the impact of your words on a face – to embrace the power of physical relationships – that is reality. In reality we gauge the harm of our words in real tears, the seduction of our temptations on actual and fragile eyes and minds.

We see the color leave or flush on human skin. We suffer with the suffering with tears and mucus and bodies wracked and tremulous with emotion. We mend relationships with humiliating apologies and put the favor of others at risk for the sake of peace. And we do it all as an exclusive gift to the other, not for public consumption and the approval or disapproval of the world.

Social media is impersonal, illusory and dishonest. It cancels individuals, fosters loyalty to influencers, encourages negativity and detraction and thrives on polarization. It sells your attention to the highest bidder, creates a feedback loop with algorithms that serve up your prejudices and preferences, making you an absolute tool to the system and its creators and its advertisers.

When people get unplugged from Gnoasis, reality hits them hard. Like Neo in The Matrix, they have to deal with dirt, love, blood. And sometimes they can’t handle it. They can’t go back to the Matrix, because they can’t immerse fully again. Their self-awareness is permanent, and they realize their life has been virtual. And the vacuous despair that ensues can lead to suicide.

Social media objectifies people by reducing them to their views, especially their most polarizing and negative views. Negativity, controversy, polarization all promise big payouts for those making their living in Gnoasis.

It forces multiple personalities. No one is real. No one reflects on their faults or takes pictures of their ugliness. It’s an unwritten law.

It’s addictive. That science is old now. IT IS ADDICTIVE (1). Do you want to be an addict?

It’s a fad. The anti-social media movement is well under way. Sam Vaknin famously likened social media to a self-limiting virus (2). So, it’ll be around forever, like a virus, but weaker over time, preying on weaker and weaker people. The old and the young will suffer most.

Social media is art. And it’s super ugly. Memes, emojisnothing that will last. Nothing as spectacular and real and lasting as the worst postmodern art.

Social media has adulterated language, and even our ability to use language generally. We use shorter and more truncated language and value impact over beauty.

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So, unplug yourself from the Gnoasis, and pour yourself into this embodied, complex, interpersonal life in the real world.

For further reading: Alter, Adam. Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. Penguin Books, 2018.

Crouch, Andy. The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place. Baker Academic, 2017.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological System. Translated by Lisa Richmond, Wipf & Stock, 2018.

Koch, Kathy. Screens and Teens: Connecting with Our Kids in a Wireless World. Moody, 2015.

Lieberman, Matthew D. Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin, 2010.

---. Technopoly. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

Struthers, William M. Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain. Inter-Varsity Press, 2009.

1 Alter, Adam. Irresistible. Vintage, 2017. And a bunch of other works and studies!

2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmXcjvL9VSc

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Let's debate Should Christians use social media?

Yes, Christians Should Use Social Media

by Daniel Finley

Throughout history, God has given His people what they need at the right time. When the Moors invaded Christendom, God raised up Charles Martel. When reform was needed, God provided first the printing press, and then Martin Luther to challenge the Church in his day. When experts said the earth couldn’t support more than one billion people, God gave us new farming methods and technology that had never existed and that helped us grow more than enough food for over eight billion.

Looking back, it seems silly to think that social media is something to tempt us rather than a tool God has provided in His providence.

As the world centralizes, as governments seek to control information through corporate media outlets, God has provided the most powerful tool against censorship that has ever existed. It is another Guttenberg press moment – for those willing to seize it.

That’s why there’s been so much attention on who controls it recently. That’s why they try to tweak the algorithms in a way that can control the minds of the public and manufacture consent. Sometimes they are successful. And sometimes the tide of human ingenuity and the spirit of freedom are too much.

Social media is a medium of infinite possibilities: we can use it to build the tower of Babel, or to be fruitful and multiply across the earth. It comes down to how we are willing to use it.

God never gives us what we expect - think of the Jews who rejected the Christ because He was not a political Messiah. And so the sentiment against social media is understandable, especially given the negative impacts we can see.

Here are a few reasons why some Christians, not necessarily all, should be engaged on social media.

Standing Up for Truth CEOs and Presidents have tried to control social media, and though they influence it, it is too large for them to control. There are a slew of citizen journalist stories that broke and went mainstream thanks to social media: the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China, the proliferation of Critical Race Theory, the DOJ designating parents at school board meetings as terrorists, the sexualization of students as young as 5 or 6 in public schools - all these and many other stories that were later confirmed only saw the light of day because of social media.

The Trucker Convoy in Canada, whether you were for or against them, was organized on social media and represent the ability of regular people to mobilize against a government that is hostile.

In the future, social media may be even more censorshipresistant as “Web 3.0” develops decentralized platforms that can’t be arbitrarily controlled.

Social Media will be used to spread information - whether true or false. We’ve seen governments use it as a means of control and individuals use it as a tool for freedom. Given what is at stake, Christians need to be at the forefront of the fight, developing a healthy philosophy of social media, advocating for just regulations, influencing the top platforms, and supporting alternative new ones that will be more censorship-resistant.

Christians can no more turn their back on social media than they could have turned their back on the printing press.

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Just as the printing press put the Bible in more Christian hands, so too can social media spread His word farther and better. It’s used to raise funds for missionaries, record and distribute sermons, quote and encourage with the Bible.

It’s not a fad that’s going away. Platforms like Substack are revolutionizing how news travels, and blog and podcasts have led a renaissance of thought that shape our culture, and we are commanded by Christ himself to be in the world - though not of it.

Created to be Creators Because we are created in the image of God, we were created to be creators, and social media is one of the best places to fulfill that calling. More than ever, we have the ability to shape the world, and to do so from where we sit.

When you help a small business or a brand advertise on Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook, you are shaping the stories and values that people hold. Christians have made amazing resources to encourage the saints on Facebook, they’ve used Signal and Telegram to communicate when governments cracked down on them, and they’ve built coalitions and communities across the world to support one another and bear each others' burdens.

It’s not just about changing the world. Maybe you use it to see what needs you can fill in your church or get the latest recipes and designs from Pinterest. You might be networking for a new job and learning a new skill on Twitter, creating an educational or powerful channel on TikTok simply by having fun. Maybe you enjoy getting lost in deep and well-researched threads on Quora, Reddit, and Facebook. These are all positive ways to interact with the world on Social Media and shape it for the better. Neglecting it isn’t a form of faithfulness any more than burning the talents God gave you is righteous.

There are some legitimate critiques of social media, of course, but none would preclude a Christian, in the freedom Jesus gives, from engaging in it, if they are called to and able to. Here’s a few common objections and how to answer them.

“It’s addictive.”

Most people know it is addictive, and are taking steps.

Professors write books about how to break the addiction, and even Apple and Samsung have built-in tools in their devices to break addictions.

As people get used to social media and understand its dangers, they will adapt to using it effectively and responsibly. Christians are to demonstrate self-control and discipline, and social media use is no exception.

“It’s Fake” Most people understand that social media interaction is not the same as in-person interaction, and would prefer real-world, face-to-face interaction. (Look at the success of Zoom, for instance.) What social media gives us is communities that didn’t exist before. People from all around the world collaborate on the same projects, forming communities that may easily become more powerful than nation-states. People make friends they otherwise never could - and often translate those into in-person interactions that could not otherwise have happened.

“It Causes Sin and Depression” Social media doesn’t cause envy, greed, lust, depression or other sins. It amplifies what is already in us, the same way the Law of God provides the opportunity for sin by giving us the commandment (Romans 7:10-11). Social media isn’t holy, like the law of God, but just as Paul’s conclusion isn’t that the law is evil because it causes us to sin, so we shouldn’t reason that social media is wrong because it sometimes brings out the worst in us. Social media is a mirror that will reflect back to you your intentions and heart, teaching you to guard it carefully.

Conclusion Not every Christian should be on social media. But every Christian who does use it, needs to learn how to mindfully interact and engage on it, and we need to use wisdom and discretion when allowing our children to use social media.

But outright banning it or claiming that social media itself is evil would be to fall into the gnostic heresy that this world is evil and we must escape to a purely spiritual realm. It’s to be so heavenly-minded that we are no earthly good. Jesus says we have to learn to be in the world, but not of it, as shrewd as serpents yet as innocent as doves.

God has given us an amazing place to create and speak and stand for truth – now it is time to rise to the challenge and accept what He has given us, to His glory.

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Books To Read

Good Books on Dragons Farmer Giles of Ham, The Reluctant Dragon, and The Book of Dragons Reviews by Brian Marr

"Let's look for dragons," I said to Pooh.

"Yes, let's," said Pooh to Me. We crossed the river and found a few"Yes, those are dragons all right," said Pooh.

"As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.

That's what they are," said Pooh, said he.

"That's what they are," said Pooh.

"Let's frighten the dragons," I said to Pooh.

"That's right," said Pooh to Me. "I'm not afraid," I said to Pooh, And I held his paw and I shouted "Shoo!

Silly old dragons!"- and off they flew. ~Excerpt from "Us Two", A.A. Milne

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If you’re looking for good books, sometimes you just want an honest fairy tale that will appeal as much to the children as to the adults. These three books are all great for that.

The first is Farmer Giles of Ham, a tiny short story written by J.R.R. Tolkien, and not nearly as well known as it deserves to be. Perhaps Peter Jackson can do us a favor and make another trilogy out of it. In the story, the homely Farmer Giles one day shoots a giant with his blunderbuss and acquires fame throughout the whole town.

At first the farmer relishes his fame, but when a real live dragon comes into the neighborhood, Giles finds himself conscripted by the king to bring the dragon to justice, and the story goes as one might expect.

The cool thing about this story is that it really captures what we want dominion over the beasts to look like. We want to talk with animals and have them still keep their scaly foreignness. The fight at the end, though a bit farcical, is fun.

Throughout, Tolkien keeps the tone light and his dry British humor will give both you and your kids something to laugh at. It’s interesting that Tolkien makes sure that the dragon remains wicked and crafty to the end, but the real villain of the piece is the king who is eager to tax his subjects, but not brave enough to fight dragons for them. Tolkien’s sympathies are clearly with the commonsense people who are in more touch with reality than with interferers and busybodies. At one point the king gives Giles a sword:

The Book of Dragons is a little book by Edith Nesbit, author of many other children’s stories such as Five Children and It. Of the three books reviewed here, Nesbit is the longest, the driest, and sometimes the most sentimental. However, her book is also the cleverest when it comes to jokes and plot contrivances, and so if you are reading this aloud to your kids, you’ll also be entertained. While Tolkien and Grahame are basically riffing off fairy stories in the end, Nesbit is actually telling fairy stories about children conquering dragons. She too has some political barbs to throw:

“To tell the truth the King had never used the sword himself. It belonged to the family and had been hanging in his armoury time out of mind. The armourer could not say how it came there, or what might be the use of it. Plain heavy swords of that kind were out of fashion at court just then, so the King thought it the very thing for a present to a rustic.”

Read Farmer Giles of Ham for Tolkien’s politics, if nothing else. Sometimes Farmer Giles is paired with Smith of Wotton Major, which is quite alright, but Smith of Wotton Major is a very different kind of story which is more allegorical and less child-friendly.

Kenneth Grahame is rightly famous for his Wind in the Willows, but I enjoyed The Reluctant Dragon just as much. In this short story, a shepherd boy finds a dragon just relaxing on a hillside. This dragon has survived its peers by not bothering with pillaging and burning, and instead it spends most of its time thinking and writing poetry and enjoying three square meals a day.

“The papers would not call them dragons, because, of course, no one believes in dragons nowadays—and at any rate the papers were not going to be so silly as to believe in fairy stories…. They breathed fire and smoke, as all proper dragons must, but still the newspapers went on pretending they were lizards, until the editor of the Standard was picked up and carried away by a very large one, and then the other newspaper people had not anyone left to tell them what they ought not to believe.”

We have truths more important than dragons to write about nowadays.

Nesbit’s dragons are many things, but mainly they are pests, which perhaps is exactly what real live dragons would end up being if they came to this world. In one particularly visceral story, dragons of various sizes pop up all over England, and it’s the small ones that bite you and set things on fire that are the real problem, not the big maneating ones. Nesbit has written other books that I highly recommend (my favorite is The Treasure-Seekers), but I had never read this one until I was looking up other dragon stories, and I can honestly say that I would like to read this aloud someday. This was my favorite of the three books because it had the most surprises, but you should get all three books if you can and read them to your children, and laugh.

One can imagine this dragon messing about with boats with Mole and Rat. Of course, dragons have a reputation to keep up, so when the knight St. George arrives to deal with the non-confrontational aesthete, the boy manages to arrange a staged fight between the two. By the end of the story, St. George and the dragon also share a tight friendship.

This dragon is a bit effete, but when I realized that this is exactly the same homely world as Wind in the Willows, bound by the same type of friendship, I enjoyed the story and characters a lot more.

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More Books to Read A review by Brian Marr

COMPETING SPECTACLES

by Tony reinke

It’s a rare twenty-four hours that I don’t look at a screen of some sort. We spend so much of our time, whether working or recreating with pixelated images that many of us cannot imagine a different kind of life. Imagine going without the internet, or movies, or your phone, for a week. It’s not easy if you try.

In this short but thoughtful book, Tony Reinke considers one aspect of our brave new world: spectacles. What does Reinke mean by spectacle? It’s all too familiar: “For this project, spectacles is confined to its second meaning: a moment of time, of varying length, in which collective gaze is fixed on some specific image, event, or moment. A spectacle is something that captures human attention, an instant when our eyes and brains focus and fixate on something projected at us” (p. 14). Reinke offers a catalogue of the spectacles on which we feast our eyes in the twentyfirst century: social media, gaming, entertainment, advertising, the news, pornography, etc. I found a lot of this section of the book pretty familiar. Reinke spices it up with thoughtful writes (Jacques Ellul, Ray Bradberry, Camille Paglia, et al.) but if you have been paying attention to what technology is doing to us, the first part of the book will not tell you much that you did not already know.

In the second part of the book, Reinke hits his stride. He points out that, though we may not think of it that way, the cross of Christ is a spectacle, the greatest spectacle ever put on display. Although intended by the Romans as a masochistic spectacle of Roman might and intimidation, through Jesus’s death and resurrection, it became a spectacle that transformed the world. Reinke is not thinking visually of the impact of the crucifix. In fact, he points out that visuals can be deceiving.

“Bible movies and cinematic recreations of the cross add nothing to the spectacle of the cross and too often take away from it, leaving us with graphic imagery of man’s defeat and physical torture but deflating the spectacle of its most striking glories—unable to depict for the screen Christ’s divinity or his unique work as atoning priest, Serpent smasher, cosmic warrior, forerunner of the second exodus, and alpha of the new creation” (p. 85). In an age of The Passion of the Christ and, more recently, The Chosen, such words are apt. But more importantly, the cross is a spectacle because, as Paul put it, “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Gal. 3:1). Reinke interprets this spectacle as the “bold and clear preaching of the cross” (p. 84), which is “a spectacle for the ear, not a spectacle for the eye” (p. 85). Reinke here is being a good Protestant. Often, it is the ear, not the eye that is the organ of the imagination.

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In the most theologically rich section of the book, Reinke channels theologians like Calvin and Jonathan Edwards to explain how Christians can set our minds on things in heaven. For Reinke, we are presented with two theaters: the theater of sin on earth and the theater of Christ’s glory (p.

88). Reinke does not say that we are simply to withdraw from this world and its spectacles. One of my favorite moments in the book that let me know Reinke was a real person, and not just a theology nerd, was his description of attending X Games in person. He says he could enjoy them because “I was there to experience it in a way that I did not expect too much from it … I experienced it for what it was: a thrilling day of games. But I could also see through it. I walked up to the hologram of this culture’s spectacle and my hand pushed through it and behind it all, I could see a greater glory for which the glory of these athletes could only faintly echo” (p. 109). For Reinke, proper maturity is not in simply turning away from the culture and its spectacles, but to not give them our hearts.

Rather, the problem with our spectacles is the sinfulness of the human heart, and the only solution is to change our desires so that we set our minds and hearts on Christ. This section of the book is very theologically dense, and so anyone not familiar with basic Reformed or Lutheran theology may be lost, but for those familiar with the basics, there is much food for thought here.

“In the digital age, monotony with Christ is the chief warning signal to alert us that the spectacles of this world are suffocating our hearts from the supreme Spectacle of the universe” Reinke is concerned that our spectacles drown out Christ.

As he puts it, “In the digital age, monotony with Christ is the chief warning signal to alert us that the spectacles of this world are suffocating our hearts from the supreme Spectacle of the universe” (p. 143). Obviously, for people like you and me who find so much of our identity in movies, stories, and social media, this is a great opportunity to take stock of how we are spending our time.

I personally am surprised at how regular I can be with my podcasts and how irregular with hanging out with this or that friend, and it’s something I should change.

Reinke is to be commended for writing such a thoughtful book. If you want to be reminded to pursue Christ without being guilted, pick it up today.

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Look for our next issue Summer 2022