Tag Archives: sex & gender

The Myth of White Evangelical Racism

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Jesus was Jewish

There can be no such thing as an evangelical Christian who is intentionally racist. This is true in the same way that there are no Muslim pig farmers, or Mormon brewpubs. Or vegan cannibals. Or feminist sex traffickers. You get the idea.

These things are not merely unlikely – they negate the very definition of the concept.

I recently read an opinion piece by a professor, Anthea Butler, suggesting that liberals should stop puzzling over why evangelical voters are (supposedly) so pro-Trump despite Trump’s flagrantly unchristian behavior. Her answer to this puzzle is simple:

We’re racists.

Professor Butler has a history of making ridiculous and extreme claims, but nonetheless, NBC news saw fit to give her false assertion a hearing. It’s a serious accusation, so just in case anyone is inclined to believe her, I’d like to explain why her assertion can’t be true.

It must be the case that Butler, and others riding the racist-labeling bandwagon, simply don’t know what an evangelical follower of Jesus is. Hopefully the following will be helpful.

Well Understood, Not Secret, Not Mysterious
By definition, evangelicals, white or otherwise, are followers of Jesus who consider the Bible to be authoritative. Look up “evangelical” in a dictionary if you doubt this. At the risk of sounding snarky, this means that they seek to follow what Jesus and His apostles taught in the Bible. If they don’t, then they are not evangelicals. They are something else.

But does the Jesus of the Bible have anything to say about race and racial superiority?

Yes. Tons, actually.

It so happens that Jesus’s greatest commandment and His “great commission” utterly rule out intentional racism. In fact, the defining statements of Jesus and His apostles, and their descriptions of where human history is heading, simply do not allow followers of Jesus to be racists. A racist may attend church, but to the extent that he or she harbors beliefs of racial superiority, he or she is not following Jesus. He or she is following someone else.

The clearly stated aims of Jesus presuppose racial inclusivity and equality. Here are a few indisputable examples:

The Greatest Commandment:
“…Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:36-40).

The Great Commission:
“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:18-20).

Jesus’s Final Prayer for His Followers, Past and Present:
“I do not ask for these [1st c. disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me… I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:20-23).

Paul Affirming that Social & Biological Distinctions are Obliterated in Jesus:
“…for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26-28).

Paul’s Statement of God’s Ultimate Plan for Human History:
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:7-10).

John’s Revelation of the Future Age to Come:
“…After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’… For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7:9-17).

For the evangelical follower of Jesus, unequivocal biblical statements like these must settle the issue.

Angel, Evangel, Evangelical, Evangelism
Notice the Great Commission verse about making disciples of all the nations. This undertaking of making voluntary disciples is called “evangelism.” The word “evangelist” literally means “bringer of good news,” (from eu- “good” + angelos “messenger”).

Notice how the word “evangelism” is part of the word “Evangelical”? That’s because Evangelicals are supposed to be evangelizing – spreading the good news of how Jesus has invited all of humankind to be restored to relational unity with God.

Furthermore, biblical evangelism is not about making brown people Western and white. Jesus specifically commanded that His followers spread His invitation to people of different ethnicities. Here’s a statement the resurrected Jesus made before His ascension:

“…and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Notice the progression: his disciples congregated in Jerusalem. The news then spread to the whole region of Jewish Judea. Then to the Samaritans, who were historically looked down upon as “half-Jewish.” Then to all the nations of the earth, including every “race.” There is simply no getting around the fact that God wants to include all people groups in His kingdom.

How Jesus Abolished the Notion of Racial/Ethnic Superiority
Perhaps the most stunning development among the first (Jewish) followers of Jesus is the fact that the (Jewish) apostles officially, as a matter of conscious policy, extended the invitation to salvation to non-Jews. This was a completely unexpected development coming from a group of Jewish followers of the Jewish Messiah, and it was not without some controversy. You can read the whole debate in the book of Acts, chapter 15.

Clearly, everyone assumed that non-Jews who wished to become followers of the Jewish Messiah would have to first become Jewish, and follow the Torah of Moses. However, through a series of signs from God, and as a result of seeing the ancient Hebrew scriptures in light of the actions and words of Jesus, the apostles reached their revolutionary agreement: the gentile nations could enter into Jesus’s new covenant and kingdom, as uncircumcised gentiles!

This development was so unexpected that the apostles thereafter referred to it as a “mystery,” meaning that it was unforeseen, and not clearly explained previously in their Jewish Torah and prophetic writings. Here is one example of (Jewish) Paul speaking of this “mystery”:

“When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:4-6).

Pretty clear.

The racially and ethnically inclusive nature of the message of Jesus is not optional. It is not a modern, liberal reading of the scriptures. It was there from the beginning. Any racism in the church of Jesus is a corruption of what Jesus taught. Even the Torah teaches that “all the families of the earth” descended from the same two parents (Gen 3:20; 9:18,19; 10:32). The gospel writer, Luke, affirms this in Acts 17:26.

Of course, one is free not to believe the Bible. My point here is not to prove that the Bible is true. My point is to prove that one cannot truthfully say that the Bible promotes racial superiority of any sort. In fact, the very concept of “race” is man-made, not biblical. There is no white supremacist version of evangelicalism.

History Cuts Both Ways
Historically, there certainly have been white church goers who have misused the Bible to justify slavery and racism. Those people have gone the way of the buffalo. Anthea Butler even acknowledges that the Southern Baptist denomination has repeatedly apologized for and repented of past evils. “But” she says, “statements are not enough.” Her proof that Baptists are insincere in their denunciations of past racial sins? They opened their 2019 Annual Convention with a gavel that was owned by the founder of their seminary, and who was also a slaveholder.

I would expect her to be more concerned with groups that were formerly openly racist, but that continue to exploit and decimate the black American population in the present. An example comes to mind:

For some reason white Darwinian “progressives” get a pass for misusing science to justify racism in much the same way that religious people misused the Bible to justify racism. During the early 1900s, there emerged a popular eugenics movement in America and Europe that was concerned with preserving (white) racial purity. It was a terrible and oppressive Orwellian episode of our history. Some 75,000 “unfit” Americans were forcibly sterilized in the name of racial hygiene and human betterment.

Margaret Sanger, founder of what is now Planned Parenthood, was on board with the eugenics movement. It’s difficult to prove whether or not Sanger was an overt racist, but in her autobiography she reports making a favorable impression at a speaking appearance to the wives of the KKK. She also welcomed Klansman and popular white supremacist author, Lothrop Stoddard, as a co-founder and board member of her American Birth Control League, (renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) in 1942).

Lothrop Stoddard, Margaret Sanger's racist colleague
Stoddard’s most popular book. He also published eugenic articles in Sanger’s magazine, Birth Control Review. A content analysis reveals that the magazine’s overriding concern was not women’s autonomy, but societal improvement.

Today, PPFA enjoys a solid “progressive” reputation as it renounces Sanger’s racist/eugenicist statements, just as evangelical denominations have renounced past racial sins. The difference is that PPFA continues to disproportionately terminate black lives, today.

Black women buy abortions at a rate 5 times that of white women, according the Guttmacher Institute. The reasons are unclear. Regardless, the American black population is significantly smaller than it would otherwise be if not for Sanger and PPFA, America’s largest abortion seller. Bishop Larry Jackson claims, “If we [blacks] had not aborted our children, we would be 30%, not 13%, of the population”.

I can’t prove that widespread black abortion also disintegrates belief in the sanctity of black human life in the black psyche, but I can’t imagine how it would help.

Having said this, I don’t believe that pro-legal-abortion ”progressives” are intentionally racist. But I would arguably be far more justified in leveling that accusation against them than those claiming that evangelicals are racist. Maybe both “progressives” and conservatives should focus on cleaning up their own houses when looking for racists to call out.

None of us lives out our compassion perfectly. All of us – white, black, or brown – harbor prejudice that we must work to overcome. We’ll all be more successful if we work together to overcome it.

What Revelation Does For Us

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biblical revelation - knowing God's will

I spend a fair amount of time online, perhaps more time than I should, dialoging with atheists and “skeptics” about worldview issues. It’s one of my favorite things in life. It helps me to see outside of my own frame of reference, and to understand my own beliefs better.

It causes me to empathize with those who see things differently than I do, and to take more care in how I present my beliefs. Sometimes it even moves me to change the way I think about an issue.

I’ve been doing this for several years now, and over time I’ve seen how rare it is for anyone on any side of any issue to be logically persuaded into changing his or her beliefs. This is true regardless of how ridiculous those beliefs might be, whether it be belief in a flat earth or a belief that life on our planet accidentally arose from non-living matter. I’ve come to suspect that we humans generally don’t believe things for logical reasons – instead we tend to use logic to justify what we want to believe, at least when it comes to the macro questions.

If one is clever enough, one can justify almost any belief.

To complicate matters, no one gets the luxury of 100% certainty that their worldview presuppositions are true. This is true of both theist and atheist, though atheists/materialists tend to strenuously disagree that their presuppositions rest on faith and dogma. But they do, and it is a simple matter to prove it.

Some recent conversations have set me to thinking about the role of biblical revelation in living a life where decisions proceed from belief. The question of whether or not the Bible actually is God’s revelation to us, and whether it is trustworthy, is another question. For the scope of this brief post let us assume that the answer to that question is “yes.”

Revelation describes the shape of reality
Revelation does many things for us. Perhaps most importantly, it gives us a linear, progressively unfolding story of God’s interaction with humanity throughout history – His “spiritual history” of humanity. As such it reveals and affirms very specific details about God that we could not otherwise know. It gives us an objective standard against which we can correct our misconceptions (2 Tim 3:16). That is immeasurably valuable.

But revelation gives us an even more basic picture. It authoritatively tells us the shape of the reality of our physical world, including our own inner makeup, and also gives us specific social structures that God designed for us. This enables us to have the confidence to pour our lives into the right things.

None of this is as obvious as it might seem. Especially today. For those without this transcendent authority, our already broken world is becoming even more confusing.

What once were considered the most basic facts of life are now being thrown into question. I see intelligent, well-intentioned people who are interested in fairness, justice, and compassion, bobbing like corks in an ocean of rhetoric, falling for unproven ideologies in the name of the fairness and compassion that they seek. Nowhere is this truer than in the issues of sex, gender, marriage, family, and parenting.

I contend that, apart from revelation, we can’t know true and compassionate answers around these questions.

As sex, gender, marriage, family, and parenting are redefined by secular culture, we are all going to have to independently choose what we believe is the compassionate course. Neutral ground is disappearing. Many in this culture will come to the end of their lives to find that they poured their lives into a course that they thought was compassionate, but which turned out to be harmful to children, and thus to the whole society.

Sex, Gender, & Revelation
Let’s see how this works using as an example what was, until very recently, arguably the most basic fact of human sexual reproduction – the concept of male and female. It’s difficult for me to believe that there is a serious movement to blow up this concept, and even more difficult to believe that so many young people are actually buying into it. But here we are.

The new claim is that “sex is what’s between your legs; gender is what’s between your ears.” The idea is that a person may have a perfectly functional male body, but if that person believes himself to be female, then he is in fact female and this is not to be questioned. This is a new idea.

To clarify, I do not dispute that gender dysphoria is a real thing, and I don’t believe it is something a person chooses. There is no question that “trans” people have existed throughout history around the world; sometimes thought of as a “third sex.” But the existence of trans people does not prove that a person can be biologically male, yet female in actuality because he thinks he is. There has been no new scientific discovery proving that such is the case. No one knows for sure what’s going on here. This belief is part of an ideological movement that seeks to establish the idea of gender as a fluid spectrum with an unlimited number of manifestations. (Google Postgenderism).

By contrast, the creation story in the Torah states that God made human beings male and female. Jesus affirmed this idea. Followers of Jesus can therefore have the confidence that this is the shape of reality as God created it. This renders the fact of gender dysphoria to be a manifestation of our broken world; a world which Jesus came to restore to unity in truth. A person whose mind tells them they are the opposite gender from that of their physical body is experiencing a profound separation. We should love such a person no less than we would love anyone with any other type of disability.

Revelation enables us to land on the side of compassionately affirming reality as God intended it. To seek reconciliation and community to every extent possible. To confidently teach and model to our children the truth about God and His creation.

Other matters that matter
There are other foundational truths which secular culture is attempting to obliterate. Revelation enables us to cut through the rhetoric and commit ourselves to a good course. This is critical for parents as we have small people in our care.

By revelation we can be sure that marriage is not merely an artificial cultural construct, but something ordained by God at creation and affirmed by Jesus. Lifelong, sexually exclusive, monogamous marriage between a biologically unrelated adult male and female is God’s design for human flourishing. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or “natural.” That doesn’t mean it always works. But I think it does mean that we’re not free to redefine something that God has clearly defined.

By revelation we can have a working “self-knowledge” regarding what is natural and what is supernatural. In a world that tends to equate what is natural with what is good, we can have clear direction as to what impulses to put down and what impulses to act on. Being born of and led by the Spirit gives us clarity for living life. Revelation affirms for us how that should look. In the brilliance of Gods plan, revelation shows us not a written code to follow, (that was Mosaic Covenant,) but instead offers us the good news of the possibility of internal change.

Finally, by revelation we can be sure that God created us for loving relationship, and that life is about relational unity – first with God, then with others. This helps us to make life decisions and daily choices about where to spend our time. To remember that people are more important than things. To invest in our children yet without making family into an idol. To bother to reconcile broken relationships. To not live in relational isolation from other human beings.

I’m grateful for God’s revelation to us because life can be confusing, and false voices can sound surprisingly convincing. Life will be hard whatever we choose. My hope for all of us is that we may find over time that we didn’t fight and struggle toward a goal for our entire lives only to find that we were fighting against the true shape of reality; that we missed the end for which we were created. May we pour our lives into pursuits that bear fruit for life. May God lead you into life!

Katy Faust is My New Hero and Role Model

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marriage equality debate

“If I have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” – 1 Corinthians 13:1

From the get go, I intended to steer clear of politics in this blog. But I want to share a video today that I hope will be inspiring to people of any political stripe. I think Katy Faust is a breath of fresh air, and her perspective has very much to do with families and, specifically, children. So I hope you feel my decision to share this is appropriate. Katy is certainly an inspiration to me.

Because life is all about love.

And speaking of love, that’s the theme of my soon-to-be-released book, Bear Island. I had hoped to release it in April, but I’ve simply had too much on my plate. It won’t be long though – I’m starting the very last watercolor illustration today.

Here is a rough shot of the illustration that I finished last night
bedtime storyBut back to Katy Faust.
This post is going out the day after oral arguments were made at the Supreme Court regarding same sex marriage. Anticipating this, several weeks ago, Katy submitted a letter to the court, entitled, Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent. I felt Katy’s contribution was brilliant, articulate, insightful, and compassionate.

Katy is uniquely positioned to speak to the subject as a person who was raised by her mother and her mother’s long-term female partner. She openly loves her mom and credits her with being an exceptional parent. Yet as Katy came of age and had children of her own, as she watched her own husband within their family dynamic, the complementary and irreplaceable role of both a mom and dad in child-rearing became increasingly clear to her. Looking back on her own childhood, despite the love and care that surrounded her, she couldn’t deny that she had a longing for her mom and dad to love each other, and her, under one roof as a family, as all children do.

Katy now contends that “children are the reason government has any stake in this discussion at all.” She disagrees with the “wrongful message that all children need is two stable loving adults, which is statistically not the case.” She states, “When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this.” Katy continues:

Like most Americans, I am for adults having the freedom to live as they please. I unequivocally oppose criminalizing gay relationships. But defining marriage correctly criminalizes nothing. And the government’s interest in marriage is about the children that only male-female relationships can produce. Redefining marriage redefines parenthood. It moves us well beyond our “live and let live” philosophy into the land where our society promotes a family structure where children will always suffer loss.
(From Dear Justice Kennedy.)

What is especially inspiring about Katy is the love she has for the gay community, and her willingness to reach out to people who consider her an enemy. To me she embodies the biblical admonition to speak the truth in love. I’m not talking about loving merely with thoughts or words, but with her time and actions. You’ll have to listen to the video to see what I mean.

Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, Katy’s example will remain relevant to the church. The church as a whole hasn’t been very good at loving its gay neighbor, and yet, loving people is supposed to be the distinguishing mark of who we are and what we do. Whether or not the “marriage equality” movement actually believes their own accusations, what is most often said about opponents of the redefining of marriage is that they are hateful. Stated. Every. Single. Day. I don’t believe it’s true, but somehow they’re not feeling the love. We need to get better at this.

I stumbled across the following Youtube video of a TV show that I’d never heard of, interviewing Katy Faust. It’s 25 minutes long, but if you care about this issue, I think it’s definitely worth watching.

I hope you are enjoying the springtime. Hopefully, my next post will be announcing a new book release!

Biblical Worldview for Kids

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Christian worldview books for kidsIn doing an online search for biblical worldview, I get the impression that most people think of worldview as a topic for adults. Yet as parents, consciously or not, we are shaping our children’s view of reality in our world every day. I say this is a good thing, and that we should be intentional about it!

Wouldn’t it be ideal if we could impart a true and sustainable view of reality to our children that would serve them well for the rest of their lives? A worldview that won’t need to be traded in later for something truer, better, and more compatible with the real world?

I think that’s precisely what a biblical worldview is: a view of reality that is true; that works in the real world; that is based on our Creator’s revelation to us about His world. How could such a view be improved upon by finite minds attempting to figure out the shape of reality based on their own incomplete understandings?

A worldview is a lens through which we view the world. No matter who we are, we all bring beliefs, assumptions, and preconceptions to our understanding of the world. Some of these beliefs are legit. Some are not. As followers of Jesus, we can expect that the Bible will give us true presuppositions that will far surpass those derived from a strictly materialist viewpoint. Despite expectations to the contrary from my Bible skeptic friends, the case for the reliability of the Judeo-Christian scriptures is stronger than ever in the 21st century.

But how does a biblical worldview affect our day-to-day living? Following are just a few examples of truths from the Bible that must shape the way we live as disciples of Jesus. These concepts can easily be imparted to children.

First, a brief reminder about how the Bible is written.

Biblical revelation is both linear and progressive
It is important to recognize that God’s revelation in the scriptures is linear and progressive. That is, certain truths were not known or understood under the Torah of the Mosaic covenant that were understood later under the new covenant of Jesus. This is not to say that the earlier writings contain falsehoods, but that the new covenant of Jesus was new in substance, not merely in time.

One clear example is that the terms of the Mosaic covenant made no promise of a resurrection and an afterlife. The promises to Israel under the Mosaic covenant were physical in nature. So the writer of Ecclesiastes could correctly ask, “Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?” (Ecc 3:21.) The idea of an eternal soul had not yet been clearly articulated in the scriptures. Even at the time of Jesus this was not a settled question. The Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection, because they held to the written Torah only. It was Jesus who first spoke plainly about resurrection and eternal life.

It is important to remember that revelation in the Bible is both linear and progressive because Bible critics often attempt to discredit a biblical worldview by offering spurious arguments. For example, critics charge that a biblical worldview would require believers to execute adulterers and homosexuals. But the Torah was given uniquely to ancient Israel until the time was fulfilled for something better to appear. Paul explicitly states that the Torah was a “custodian” until Jesus came bringing salvation and new life in the Spirit (Gal 3:23-29; Ro 7:4-6; 2 Cor 3:5,6.) Read as a whole, the scriptures simply do not allow the random taking of Old Covenant commands, out of context, and applying them to a New Covenant situation.

Having said that, there is much of value in the Torah that we should impart to our kids. Here are a few worldview-shaping ideas:

Creation
The first few chapters of the Bible say much about the shape of reality in our world today.
1) Human beings were created, male and female, in the image of God. We are not an accidental result of mindless evolutionary processes. Therefore, all human beings have transcendent, innate value by virtue of bearing God’s image. This concept alone is worth the price of embracing a biblical worldview.
2) We see that being in the image of a triune God also means that we are relational beings. Even though man existed in paradise and in companionship with his Creator, God still declared it “not good” for him to be alone (Gen 2:18.)
3) We see that God designed the binary, heterosexual reproductive system in humanity, and called it very good (Gen 1:27-31.)
4) We see marriage described as the creation of a new family unit, with “oneness” as the ideal (2:24.) This unity in diversity is yet another reflection of God’s image.
5) We see that there was both work and rest before the fall, therefore both are good and have their place.

Fall
The Fall of humanity into a state of separation from God is central to understanding the human condition and the world we live in. Because of human sin, with the Fall, disunity, death, disease, violence, and corruption entered the world. In the Bible, everything that follows the Fall is part of the story of God making a way to restore humanity to relational unity with Himself.

Flood
The Noahic flood demonstrates that our Creator has the right and the will to judge evil in His creation. The flood described in the Torah would’ve been the most unforgettable and horrific catastrophe in human history, permanently altering the surface of the earth. There are some 500 legends from around the world that speak of a great flood, many of which bear similarities to the biblical account. There are millions of land and sea creatures buried in layers of sediment all over the world – an observable testament to this event.

Israel
With Abraham, and then Moses, the establishment of Israel shows that our relational Creator has taken initiative to establish covenants with humanity. Israel was created to be a blessing to the nations and to point to the one true God (Gen 12:2,3; Lev 26:45.) God has not left humanity to fend for itself, but has prepared the world for salvation through Israel. Through foreshadowings in the Torah and through Israel’s prophets, God promised that a Messiah would come from Israel who would bring salvation to the world and set up an eternal kingdom.

Savior
Jesus fulfilled these messianic promises, bringing salvation to humanity, and establishing a New Covenant and the promised kingdom of God. By His sacrificial death on a cross Jesus perfectly satisfied the judgment of God, while also perfectly expressing His love for humanity. This salvation and entrance into His covenant and kingdom is by faith in the work of Jesus, through spiritual rebirth. It is received as a gift undeserved, not as something God owes us.

Faith
Contrary to the claims of “New Atheism,” biblical faith is not “belief in spite of evidence” (Dawkins.) This may be true of other types of religious faith, but biblical faith is not described this way. Biblical faith is relational and evidential – it has an object, God, and He goes out of His way to demonstrate His trustworthiness. So the idea of faith being “the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11) does not teach us to ignore observable evidence. Rather, read in context, one sees that this passage gives historical examples of people who believed what God had promised despite circumstances that made it difficult to trust Him. The point is relational in nature. There is no conflict between biblical faith and rationality.

Love
Love must be foremost for anyone embracing a biblical worldview. The Bible describes God as love, and as light in whom there is no darkness (1 Jn 1:5; 4:8.) Jesus declared the greatest commandment in the Torah to be love for God, and then love for neighbor, saying all of the Torah and the prophets depend upon these two commands (Matt 22:36-40.) He stated that the way people would recognize His disciples would be by their love for one another (Jn 13:34,35.) He claimed to have existed in perfect love with the Father before the creation existed (Jn 17:23-25.) His chosen apostle Paul exalted love above all else in His New Covenant writings. Paul stated that he would be nothing, and would gain nothing, without love (1Cor 13:1-3.) He called love the fulfilling of the Torah (Ro 13:8-10.) We are to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15.) We are to walk in love, in the example of Jesus (Eph 5:1,2.)

Worldview and the critical role of kids’ storybooks
Storybooks are one of the best ways to instill a biblical worldview in small children because stories can show them, rather than merely tell them, how the world works. Stories engage the whole person – mind, will, and emotions. By engaging the mind and the heart in a non-abstract and enjoyable way, stories reach the deepest part in all of us. Bullet points and abstract principles do not engage the emotions. Stories do. And they stay with us. If you would like to be notified of new, creative storybooks for kids that are designed to instill, reinforce, and normalize a biblical worldview in the children you love, you can sign up on the homepage of this site.