Spiritual Coffee: A Beautiful Life Raising Kids with Special Needs - Feast of Theology with John Webster - Teaching Children Obedience Without Legalism

Here are three things worth feeding your mind. You can find prior roundups under Spiritual Coffee, and stay tuned for new installments later this week.

The Beautiful Trial of Raising Kids with Special Needs, Paul Martin reviews Andrew and Rachel Wilson's book The Life We Never Expected: Hopeful Reflections on the Challenges of Parenting Children with Special Needs. (TGC)
The Wilsons "are part of the leadership team at Kings Church in Eastbourne in the United Kingdom" and their parenting took a completely unexpected turn when "both their children (Zeke and Anna) showed signs of autism around age 3. It was regressive autism, meaning both had been meeting typical developmental milestones, but then started going in reverse." Most people flee from the idea of having a child with any developmental disabilities or special needs. The Wilsons seem to have done a remarkable job of both showing the beauty and hope involved in parenting these unique and precious children, while also being blunt and honest about the discouragement, difficulty, and demands. Consciously or unconsciously, most of us pin our happiness on having the life we expected. But there is a glorious and breathtaking part of experiencing God that can only be seen and felt by people who have surrendered and let God use them to humbly serve other lives. We usually fight tooth and nail against that surrender, and it is helpful to be shown the reward of what's on the other side by people like the Wilsons who have been taken there.

 "When you read The Life We Never Expected, you feel like you’ve been transported into the Wilsons’ living room to shoot straight with them about life and parenting—only with a twist. 

"God, in his great wisdom, saw fit to bless the Wilsons with two children with autism. It may be worth stopping here to say what autism is and isn’t. Some tend to think a few good spankings, more rigid discipline, and a parenting course or two will straighten things out, but you cannot discipline genetics. Autism is 'a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior.' Its cause is unknown, and it manifests in a variety of ways—Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified PDD-NOS, and childhood disintegrative disorder are all related disabilities on the Autism Spectrum." 

"Andrew isn’t ashamed to tell us how, when the second diagnosis came, he

was overwhelmed by the most sweeping, drowning sense of pain and anguish I had ever experienced, ran into the playroom, curled up on the floor, and wailed until I thought there was nothing left. It was, and still is, the lowest point of my entire life.

"That’s the kind of raw honesty that pervades The Life We Never Expected. And that’s what I loved most about it. There’s a kind of denial the Christian church tolerates when it comes to disability. We often ignore things that scare us or we don’t understand. The Wilsons, however, bravely invite us into their world to taste their anguish and joys.  

"This book is much more than a lament. It’s that, but it’s also a vivid description of God’s dependability amid the sorrow and chaos of disability."

Perfection & Presence: God With Us, According to the Christian Confession, John Webster (Carl F.H. Henry Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
Webster, a massively influential theologian, passed away last month. At that time I posted some links to articles detailing his life and contributions to Christianity. Here is a great chance to absorb some of his work through six audio lectures. And yeah, this is probably much more than one coffee break, but consider it a chance to stock up and take these in little sections at a time in order to reflect on them.

"Professor John Webster delivers a rich reflection upon the perfections and presence of God. The question at the center of this lectures series is the nature of human fellowship with God. The Investigation of the nature of this fellowship entails for Webster, a comprehension of the divine perfections and their relation to the Trinitarian relations and missions. From the nature of God, the Trinitarian relations and the nature of Divine presence more generally, it can then be understood more clearly what scripture means when it speaks of the Word becoming flesh. Webster offers, therefore, an extensive reflection upon the human history of the divine Word and the nature of his presence in the flesh. Finally, Webster moves to discuss the nature of the resurrected and exalted Lord’s presence, a presence manifest in his Lordship over his creatures and in the practices and Sacraments of the holy church."

Is It Anti-Gospel to Teach Kids Self-Control Before Conversion? - Owen Strachan (For the Church)
Valuable reflections from a remarkable theologian, who is also the president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (in other words, a man who cares very deeply about families and children). If we really understand the Gospel, then we know that obedience to God does not earn us salvation. Instead, obedience is frequently described in Scripture as "fruit." Fruit only grows on a tree that is already alive. Unless we are made alive by the Spirit, we cannot bring forth the fruit of obedience and good works. These things come after saving faith in Christ, not before. And the last thing we want to do is confuse our children by making them think that they have to "be good" in order to get God's approval, because that is the deadly peril of legalism. Strachan has a very practical answer for parents. Read on:

"No true transformation can happen without miraculous grace.  There is surely truth to this argument.  Without the gospel, we are slaves to sin.  We cannot conquer sin or master it; as long as we are unconverted, sin is in fact our master.  We need God-given faith in Christ to know true and lasting transformation.

"But I am wondering if, in highlighting this ultimate truth, we might forget a penultimate (secondary) reality.  It is good and well to train children, pre-conversion, in obedience and self-control.  If you do this in a way that indicates that successfully resisting a given temptation equates with the highest form of pleasing God, then that’s problematic.  In other words, if you train kids that doing right actions saves them, that’s tragic.  But it’s also tragic to not raise children to discern right from wrong and to think that they have no ability whatsoever to follow commands.

"If, though, you train children in good habits while always holding out the need for repentance and faith, I think you’re being a wise and godly parent.  The father who speaks repeatedly to his son in Proverbs clearly directs him to steer clear of sin.  The father is forming habits in his son, and those habits are not opposed to saving faith.  They are creating channels through which the life-giving water of the gospel will flow."

Spiritual Coffee: Christians, Don't Always Insist on Rights - The Eyes of Wendell Berry in Film - Southern Baptists Find Unity, Humility

Friday's roundup to help you set your mind on things above as we go into the weekend. As usual, I summarized why I think these are worth pondering, and included the quotes that left the strongest impression upon me.

Click on Spiritual Coffee for other good stuff from past posts.

Following Christ, Relinquishing Rights, Brett McCracken (brettmccracken.com)
I believe Christians must have this category in their minds: 'rights I have, but I will choose not to use.' That is what McCracken (a contributor for Mere Orthodoxy) is saying, making a simple but difficult point that Christians are not supposed to be concerned first with protecting the full use of their rights - whether it is the right to own firearms or the legal basis to keep refugees and immigrants from entering the country. With the religious liberty we have enjoyed in the United States being attacked with increasing ferocity, and other rights we are used to depending on being questioned or limited by a government we do not trust (regardless of who is in the White House), it is sadly very easy for us to get indignant and defensive. We often become very vocal about insisting upon total freedom to use our rights however we see fit. But this pattern of thinking doesn't fit the Scriptures. Although I don't agree with every example McCracken gives, and I think many Christians would not need to adopt them all, he does a very good job of confronting the un-Christian attitude of insisting on all of our rights.
Christians do have rights, and we do use them, but we don't need to be insistent about using them every time we have them. And we don't need to use them fully. We can (and should) give up our full rights on many occasions. The reason is that the Christian is supposed to be concerned first with showing what kind of hope we have in God and what security we have in heaven, not with guarding our own security and comfort on earth. Although McCracken didn't quote this, John Calvin summed it up in saying: "There is nothing plainer than this rule, that we are to use our liberty if it tends to the edification of our neighbor, but if inexpedient for our neighbor, we are to abstain from it." [commenting on 1 Cor. 10:23-24.] In other words, only make use of your rights if it will not cause your neighbor to stumble. But if it does, don't use them. "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another." (Galatians 5:13)

"The Christian way is to set our rights aside when they are an an impediment to the love and grace of the gospel, let alone when they endanger the safety of others. Does this mean we never appeal to our rights? No. Paul himself appealed to his rights as a Roman citizen when he was about to be flogged (Acts 22:25). Does this mean we fully surrender our freedom to believe certain beliefs and to live our lives consistently with those beliefs? No. But it may mean we exercise our freedoms more quietly or that we cede some of our freedoms for the sake of others’ flourishing. It may mean we open ourselves up to inconvenience and discomfort and pain.

"This is a hard truth for Christians, but it is a foundational truth in our faith. The New Testament is full of calls to follow Christ’s model of humble, self-effacing and status-relinquishing love (Phil. 2:5-8); to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21), to consider others more important than yourself (Phil. 2:3), to see freedom in Christ not as a weapon but as an opportunity to serve others in love (Gal. 5:13-15), to serve our neighbors before we serve ourselves (Rom. 15:1-3), and so on. 

"This is the upside-down, countercultural nature of the kingdom of God, and Christians in today’s world have an opportunity to reclaim our witness as emissaries of this “others before myself” kingdom."

The Eyes of Wendell Berry: A Cinematic Portrait of a Camera-Shy Man, John Murdock (First Things)
Author Wendell Berry is one of those writers (like Marilynne Robinson) who make a profound impact on many Christians, while transcending any categories such as "Christian fiction" or "Spirituality." Indeed, it would not be fair to label their work in any such terms. It is bigger than any narrow genre or category, and like authors such as John Steinbeck and Flannery O'Connor, we honor its ability to capture human life so completely by calling it "literature." I would like to be more familiar with Berry than I am, and so this brief introduction and the film it describes are very welcome.

"Berry, who lives life without a television or a computer, is about as un-Hollywood as he can be. Yet, the executive producers for Dunn’s labor of love were heavyweights Robert Redford and Terrence Malick[.]"

"Dunn’s film is not your run-of-the-mill biopic, and how could it be? Berry, though very much alive, agreed to participate in the project, but with the complicating condition that he would not appear on camera. The viewer sees recent interviews of his wife Tanya and daughter Mary, but the man himself is present only as a voice and in images from the past. With their differing views of progress, both fans and critics of this farmer/writer, who has done his varied work with draught horses and a 1956 Royal typewriter, will likely see his elusiveness as fitting. 

"The Seer centers on Berry’s debates in the 1970s with Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Butz had rural roots that rivaled Berry’s, but he came to see a decline from 45% of the population working the land at his birth to some 4% at the time of their encounters—what Berry labeled The Unsettling of America—as a positive development. 'Butz’s law,' which he formulated, was 'adapt or die,' and its measure of success was 'P-R-O-F-I-T.' 

"Berry is seen by many as a prophet of a different sort. Archival footage shows him—then with a full head of dark hair—acknowledging that he and Butz would likely never agree, because 'he’s arguing from quantities and I’m arguing from values.' For Berry, the calculus must acknowledge such incalculables as 'the Hebrew-Christian values' of neighborliness and kindness. He concludes, 'I don’t think you can love those old values and love what has come to be American agriculture at the same time.' It is a message that has permeated the more than forty books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry that have issued from his literary perch overlooking the Kentucky River."

Southern Baptists Elect Steve Gaines as President, Renounce Confederate Flag, and more.
The Southern Baptist Convention met this week to elect a new president and passed several important resolutions. Even if you aren't Southern Baptist (as I am not), this was a historic convention that affected one of the largest bodies of Christians in the United States. Here are a few reasons worth knowing, with some links for details:

• It's significant to know that the election for president, which was evenly divided on the first two ballots and was set to go to an unheard-of third ballot, was also a difference between those in the SBC who hold to Calvinist theology and those who fit with Arminian theology.
• Even more important, the election never went to a third ballot because J.D. Greear, pastor of Summit Church in Raleigh, NC, withdrew his name and pledged his support behind Steve Gaines before the Wednesday morning vote. It was an extraordinary display of humility and unity (he and Gaines met and talked it through and prayed over it the night before) that allowed the convention to move forward together. Here's Greear's explanation, a great example of seeking the good of Christ's body above your own plans or vision.
• The convention voted to renounce the display of the Confederate Flag, passing an even stronger resolution than the one initially proposed. Some may see this as long overdue, others may think it is out of place. But I think this needed to be said: wounds of racial distrust and historical disharmony need to be healed by demonstrations of humility and empathy with each other's pain. The speech by Dr. James Merritt urging that all the flags in the world are not worth the loss of one soul was a powerful moment that seemed to stir the convention to action. Russell Moore praised the decision and explained his support for it.
• A resolution on caring for refugees was passed as well. I hope the example this sets for the church and for individual Christians will help us be wise and generous in our political engagement on this issue in addition to acting it out in our churches and communities.
• Here is a link with a recap by the SBC of the convention, and here is a collection of video of the speeches at the convention.

Spiritual Coffee: When One Spouse Leaves the Church - Keeping a Tender Heart Toward the Hard-Hearted - Understanding Little Sisters of the Poor

Today’s three links to the best things I've come across in the past few days to feed a Christian mind and heart. Click on Spiritual Coffee for prior roundups to sharpen and equip your Christian thinking.

Blessed Are the Agnostics, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook (her•meneutics, Christianity Today)

Her husband gave up on the church; she stayed. Too often we act like we don’t see people struggling through things like this because we don’t know what to say or do. Listen to how she wrestled with her doubts, her husband’s soul, divided worldviews in parenting, and what she needs from the church. Candid and earnest. These are people we need to listen to and learn to welcome.

Not Hardening Our Hearts Against the Hard-Hearted, David Schrock (davidschrock.com)

Insightful and helpful reflections for understanding the blindness and self-deception in friends and church members who are caught up in sin. How to seek their hearts while guarding your own against becoming jaded or discouraged.

n.b. The quote from 2 Timothy 2:22-25 seems to be missing from the end, right before the prayer in italics. But it’s a perfect complement to the post, so read it alongside.

"When they harden themselves against us, we must pray. In love, our response must not be passivity but wise, repeated strategic appeals to that member of Christ’s body. Matthew 18 is not a quick pitstop that enables churches to get rid of unwanted sinners; it is a long, arduous pathway to restore those who have been and are being deceived by sin."

"Sin is irrational and causes the sinner to make statements and take actions that are mystifying. These words and actions are not “out of character,” as many like to put it. They are tragically “in character,” as indwelling sin comes to the surface. Hebrews 3 reminds us, every believer has blindspots and chambers in their heart which, when released, exude poison.""Often these well-versed believers will make these steps quoting Scripture on their way. We are a twisted bunch and none of us are immune from deception."

"Left unchecked, sin will always go further than we first intended."

"Sin is not innocent or accidental, it is the self-willed desire to go our own way and to persist on the road to destruction. Immediately, hardness of heart—anger in speech, isolation in action, unwillingness to listen, self-justification, and personal advocacy—occur. And more than occur, they increase. Like yeast, sin leavens the whole heart. And thus it needs to be opposed—both internally by the Spirit-filled individual but also externally by the church, when that individual is a beloved member of the church."

Little Sisters of the Poor – Thoughts on the Decision in the Contraception Mandate Case, Mark Movsesian (First Things)

Christians should understand the United States Supreme Court's decision in Zubik v. Burwell, the case involving Little Sisters of the Poor and the HHS Mandate that would have forced them to pay for contraceptives against their religious beliefs. This is a good summary. Some overall high points (from several sources):

• The Little Sisters asked to be exempt from being required to pay for health care plans that would include providing contraceptives to people, because their religious beliefs prohibit using contraception (additionally, many forms of contraception can act as abortifacients that can trigger rejection of a live embryo by the body after conception).
• The Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") mandated under the Affordable Care Act (commonly called Obamacare) that the Sisters must pay for the plans and ensure free contraception. No religious exemption was granted.
• The decision did not settle what kind of accommodation the Little Sisters should receive, but it is nevertheless basically a win for two reasons: 1) the Supreme Court did not say the Sisters can't have an exemption for religious beliefs, but actually sent the case back to the district court with instructions to have the Obama Administration find an accommodation that would fit the Sisters beliefs - which means the Court believes one is possible and that one should be made; and 2) the Sisters had been charged with very heavy fines in district court because they were not cooperating with the HHS Mandate to provide health insurance with free contraception, and the Supreme Court vacated all those decisions, effectively wiping out all the fines and penalties.
• The decision was unanimous. There was no disagreement indicated among the eight justices.
• Remarkably, President Obama came out the day after the decision with a statement applauding the decision as a victory for religious freedom, and the President said that there is no need for the Sisters and other religious groups to be required to pay for plans with free contraception, because employees can get free contraception in other ways.
• As Movsesian notes, it is odd that the President should take that position after his HHS has insisted for five years of litigation that employees have no other options for affordable contraception and that making the Sisters pay for it is necessary. It almost looks as if the administration's objective all along was not ensuring free contraception (which they now admit is already available in other ways) but overpowering religious objections to being forced to participate - a test of whether the government can get away with compelling religious groups to act against their beliefs if it wants to. Thankfully, the answer again is no.

Spiritual Coffee: Use What You Know - A Theology of Defeat - Freedom and Conscience Go Together

Today's three resources worth reading. Click on Spiritual Coffee for prior roundups to sharpen and equip your Christian thinking and enlarge your heart.

Put Your Knowledge to Work, Barnabas Piper (The Blazing Center)
A short but insightful piece of motivation to use what you know creatively and actively. Also an excerpt from a forthcoming book Barnabas Piper is publishing next year.

"If you have profound knowledge of life-altering genetic research and do nothing with it then it is worth less than if I use my sports trivia knowledge to spark a new friendship."

"we need to be able to see a truth and think of all the ways it might be useful – useful to connect to another person, useful to teach a child, useful to reveal something of God, useful to bring a smile to someone’s face, useful to help someone in need, useful to create something beautiful, useful to protect or defend truth. And this imagination, this curiosity, is what allows us to do with our knowledge."

Peter Leithart's Theology of Defeat, Richard Clark interviews Peter Leithart (Podcast from "The Calling" on Christianity Today)
Wrestling with the reality of failure and our own weaknesses has been a very personal journey for me, both spiritually and relationally. We almost all begin with the assumption we aren't supposed to fail, and the corresponding sense of crushing shame and worthlessness if we do. Scripture teaches the exact opposite, and I am always encouraged at seeing another theologian's analysis of the acceptance of failure with humility. Leithart shares his own personal journey as a young pastor in learning to let go of his need to be perfect and to cease feeling responsible for everything himself.

The Captain of Conscience, Jordan Ballor (Acton Institute)
This is clever, playful, and though-provoking. Ballor is usually insightful and entertaining at the same time. This is no exception. He examines the Civil War movie and the different worldviews of Tony Stark and Captain America to make a simple point: freedom of conscience and the individual right to choose - to act independently of some paternalistic government overlord - only matter and only work out well if the individual is anchored by virtue. If Captain America and his allies weren't driven by a strong moral code and conscience, they would simply be terrorists. Virtue and morality are indispensable to liberty.

Why I'm Having this Conversation: Thabiti, Voting, and Listening to Your Conscience

Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile’s statement this week that he will vote for Hillary Clinton in November – solely to protect against the election of Donald Trump – was predictably controversial. I believe it is also a crucial moment for Christians. That is not because I agree with him. I don't agree with the decision, but I already see Christians who have renounced Trump and the Republican Party beginning to form into reactionary camps, drawing hard lines they won’t cross. I suspect I will still disagree with him when all is said and done, but I would be a fool not to listen to him and consider his reasoning. His explanation demonstrates the need for us to re-examine how we balance and decide matters of conscience. (He addressed this directly here.)

The reaction against Trump is a victory for Christian conscience. I have been encouraged and hopeful in seeing so many Christians flatly refuse to support Donald Trump, even with what appears to be his firm hold on the Republican Party nomination. Seeing so many brothers and sisters in Christ who have otherwise been solidly Republican voters separate themselves from the GOP in this moment is a major change. I am proud to see us take a stand and declare that we believe in something more important than winning an election or riding the right coattails to power. Too many of us have put up with strange bedfellows and alliances of pragmatism in the past. It became all too predictable, and therefore automatic, that we would just vote a straight Republican ticket when push came to shove.

This decision to maintain our integrity over and above political expediency is a triumph of conscience and conviction. Matt Lee Anderson made the case for this as effectively as anyone. But one of the biggest mistakes we can make at this decisive moment is to hastily set in stone a new political litmus test: #NeverTrump is a place to start, but if we fracture into a bunch of rigid splinter factions now, we’re going to waste this watershed moment. Christians have a chance to unite together now; if we divide instead, we both destroy our ability to affect this election and doom our chances of developing a realistic and effective long-term political alternative. We need a re-envisioning from top to bottom of how we as Christians think about our political involvement. That’s not going to happen if we dogmatically shut down differences of opinion. We need to learn how to test each other’s consciences and question our own without silencing ideas and drawing battle lines.

Some of us are in serious danger of slipping in our convictions in reaction to crisis, running headlong from Trump into another ditch of compromise. The problem with taking a stand in matters of conscience is that your conscience is not always working properly. Tim Challies recently reviewed Andy Naselli and J.D. Crowley’s book Conscience and explained how Naselli and Crowley lead readers through calibrating their consciences. Naselli gives examples here from the Scriptures. Your conscience is supposed to check you when you are deviating from the Word of God and will of God, but sometimes your conscience doesn’t grasp those perfectly. Before we draw new lines and commit ourselves here, this would be a wise time to do a diagnostic check on our consciences and make sure they’re reliable. (If you prefer audio or video, Naselli explained his book and answered questions for almost two hours at this book launch event.)

Similarly, some of us have died in the wool convictions about what we won’t do or who we won’t work with politically, and it may be time to rethink those. We can easily forget that there is a hierarchy of principles and values – some things are so fundamental and important that they require us to be willing to sacrifice other things if we must choose between them. Others have made too many compromises and need to relearn where to stand on our core principles and convictions even if it means we lose in the political sphere. Winning in politics and government isn’t everything. There are both wise and foolish ways to do all of these things. Never has our need for an abundance of counselors been so clear. We need each other.

So this is my plea that we listen first, think carefully, and seriously re-examine our own consciences and assumptions about how to go about political involvement. This is a golden opportunity for Christian conscience and character to shine through. Let’s not waste it by trampling on each other’s consciences instead of sharpening and encouraging each other to stand on common ground.

Spiritual Coffee: The Simplest Way to Comfort Others - Biblical Counseling Is Everyday Church Life - Voting Your Conscience

Today's three resources worth reading, with a bonus link on conscience. Click on Spiritual Coffee for prior roundups to sharpen and equip your Christian thinking and enlarge your heart.

What Is a Dad to a Two-Year-Old?, Jonathan Parnell

Just wow. This is short but profound. What is the most important thing you give someone in comforting them? Being there. This captures it powerfully, and it applies to everyone, not just kids. Adults experience the same thing. I recall reading an experienced pastor's description of how he learned through awkwardness and speechless insecurity in a hospital room that what the patient really needed was just for him to be there. Don't shortchange the value of your presence and companionship. It's more important to give yourself than to know what to do.

Biblical Counseling: Getting Oriented, David Powlison (CCEF, Journal of Biblical Counseling)

(If that link doesn't load the PDF, use this one and click on the first article of the current issue.)

Biblical counseling is really just what Christians do for each other all the time when we listen, pray for each other, and help bear each other's burdens. We don't realize how often we are counseling, yet it should be everyday life in the church. Powlison gives a free roadmap for what biblical counseling looks like and how it helps take the truths of Scripture and connect the dots with a person's here-and-now challenges and needs. If you want to care for people well, this is a very valuable resource.

A Vote to Check Unpredictable Evil with the Predictable, Thabiti Anyabwile (TGC)

Pastor Thabiti gained a lot of attention earlier this week for announcing he would be voting for Hillary Clinton in November, because he believed Trump was much more dangerous. This is a very careful and thoughtful explanation of why he decided to do that - and see the next link for his elaboration on conscience. Although I disagree with his decision, I am very glad he is talking about it. I am posting this primarily because it challenges me and isn't exactly my way of thinking. Christians must avoid turning dissatisfaction with Trump into a new reactionary mindset that demands everybody handle it the same way. This conversation on working through our own consciences to reach a decision is important. Let's listen and not shut it down.

"For personal context, you have to consider my argument over the past several years. I’ve argued on principled grounds that I could not vote for anyone in the last couple of presidential elections because I found their moral positions on vital issues unconscionable."

"This election more than any other that I can remember has many Christians seeing with perhaps equal clarity the evil of both options. Many, as I would have for the past decade or more, are opting to sit this one out."

"If we’re not just being hyperbolic with the comparison, but we truly believe ours is a choice tantamount in our context to Stalin or Hitler, then the question is, How do you defeat them both? Both. Neither should rule. Either is bad for everyone.

"Honestly, I don’t know how you defeat them both. If there were a viable third party candidate, I’d quickly vote for them. I’m stressing “viable” not as a means of simply lapsing into some party loyalty. Remember: I have none. I’m stressing “viable” because I think the threat of either candidate is real."

"I don’t think the goal right now is merely a quiet conscience. I don’t see how such a goal can be met without abdicating a significant moral responsibility to oppose evil. It’s not enough to say, “I had no part in the evil.” We must actually resist the evil as best we can. We’re in that Bonhoeffer-like moment where we can choose peaceful exile in some Evangelical enclave or enter the fray bearing our cross."

"If a person can sit by peaceably while evil progresses, then they have a conscience problem of a different sort. It’s not the problem of seeming to actively support some evil by a vote, it’s the problem of a dull conscience that ignores evil. To seek a quiet conscience by not voting seems to me an abdication of moral responsibility. Better is voting third party or writing in."

A Quick Word on the Conscience and Christian Witness, Thabiti Anyabwile (TGC)

This is very good, and if you find it helpful (or especially if you don't), you should read this longer piece by Andy Naselli, who just published a book addressing every Scripture on the conscience.

Pastor Thabiti:

"many people think their conscience is the final arbiter of what’s right and wrong."

"To be clear, no one is arguing that anyone should “vote against their conscience.” What I’m suggesting here is that we have to have a biblical view of the conscience, inform it by the Bible, before we can act in ways that properly satisfy it."

"it’s not enough to simply say, “My conscience won’t let me.” We actually have to ask our conscience some questions about the whole counsel of God in our situation. We may still end up saying, “My conscience won’t let me based upon the word of God,” but that’s a better position than an implicit trust in one’s conscience"

"If we trust our conscience without inspecting it by the light of God’s word, then we’re closer to Gandhi in our view of the conscience than we are the Lord Jesus."