Author Archives: Rob Harrison

The Clinton-Obama rivalry continues

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When Barack Obama asked Hillary Clinton to serve as his Secretary of State, it appeared to be a move in true “team of rivals” fashion, very much in line with Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet choices: naming the woman who based much of her campaign on presenting herself as better qualified to handle foreign policy to the chief foreign-policy position in the government. It hasn’t turned out that way, though, as William Jacobson pointed out recently:

Week-by-week, world event-by-world event, the public humiliation of Hillary Clinton is taking place right before our eyes. Actually, not before our eyes. Hillary has gone missing.

There was a time when United States Secretaries of State were front and center in foreign policy making and implementation. Our first Secretary of State was Thomas Jefferson, and other historical luminaries included John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryant, and George C. Marshall.

In more modern times, names such as Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Condolezza Rice loom large in our psyche and history.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Who? Possibly the most marginalized Secretary of State in modern times. . . .

Obama doesn’t act alone in foreign affairs, but he certainly doesn’t act through Hillary. . . .

The treatment of Hillary Clinton by Obama to date amounts to a slow drain of Hillary’s political persona. The fearsome tiger now is a pussycat. . . .

If Hillary’s loss in the primaries was a body blow, being Secretary of State is like being bled by leeches. Hillary seems to know her political persona is being bled dry, but she feels no physical pain.

Tina Brown takes it a step further, writing,

It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa. . . .

It becomes clearer by the day how brilliantly Obama checkmated both Clintons by putting Hillary in the topmost Cabinet job. Secretary Clinton can’t be seen to differ from the president without sabotaging her own power. And ex-President Clinton has been uncharacteristically disciplined about not threatening the careful political equilibrium his wife is trying to maintain. . . .

Before she took the job, she was assured she could pick her own trusted team. Yet she was overruled in appointing her own choice for deputy secretary, Richard Holbrooke. Instead, she was made to take an Obama guy, James Steinberg, who had originally been slated to become national-security adviser. (Hillary took care of Holbrooke, one of diplomacy’s biggest stars, by giving him the most explosive portfolio—Pakistan and Afghanistan.) She lost the ability to dole out major ambassadorships, too. A lot of these prizes are going to reward Obama fundraisers instead of knowledgeable appointees like Harvard’s Joseph Nye, whom she wanted to send to Japan.

Even when there’s legitimate credit to be had, she remains invisible. Contrary to administration spin that Joe Biden played a critical role in the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, the vice president stayed opposed to Obama’s strategy. It was Hillary, sources tell me, whom the president relied on throughout the deliberations with principal national-security advisers to support and successfully argue his point of view. The need to paper over the difference between Obama and the vice president meant Hillary’s role went unacknowledged. . . .

You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she’ll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety.

It may well be, though, that she’s reaching her breaking point. Though the Obama administration has lined itself up firmly behind Kristen Gillibrand, Secretary Clinton’s successor in the Senate, to the point of trying to snuff a primary challenge from Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Bill Clinton agreed to headline a fundraiser for Maloney later this month. Ed Morrissey points out the obvious:

Clinton’s spokesperson claims that this doesn’t constitute an endorsement, but it’s hard to read it any other way. Clinton hasn’t campaigned for Gillibrand, after all. Since Gillibrand got appointed to replace Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Bill and Hillary have remained quiet about the seat—until now.

More recently, she handed Obama critics a strong headline while speaking to employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, criticizing the administration for its abject failure to find someone to run the agency.

Six months into the administration’s tenure without having appointed someone to the agency’s top spot, Clinton told USAID employees on Monday that several people had turned down the job due to overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements that she called a “nightmare,” “frustrating beyond words” and “ridiculous.”

She also said the White House had turned down her request to announce on Monday that someone—expected by officials to be physician and Harvard University professor Paul Farmer, who is well known for his work in Haiti—would be named to the post soon.

“Let me just say it’s not for lack of trying,” Clinton said in response to an employee’s question about the delay, despite her and President Barack Obama’s stated desire to have USAID play a bigger role in American foreign policy. “We have worked very hard with the White House on looking for a candidate who, number one, wants the job.”

The comment drew laughter from the audience, prompting her to say: “It’s been offered.” She then launched into a critique of the vetting process.

“The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare and it takes far longer than any of us would want to see,” Clinton said. “It is frustrating beyond words. I pushed very hard last week when I knew I was coming here to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and someone will be nominated shortly.”

“I was unable,” she said. “The message came back: ‘We’re not ready.'”

It will be fascinating to see how this all shakes out. After all, Sen. Clinton’s appointment was political in nature; her real utility to the administration isn’t her (relatively meager) foreign-policy credentials, but her political skills and support. (This is rather too bad; given that President Obama can’t seem to stop insulting people, it’s clear he could really use a foreign-policy ace or two at his side.) As Morrissey says,

If the politics between the two have stopped working, then Obama has no other need for Hillary. If Obama jettisons her, though, Hillary could turn into a formidable foe within the Democratic Party, and might wind up challenging an Obama re-election bid the way Ted Kennedy did to Jimmy Carter, which turned into a disaster for both men. How much defiance can Obama handle?

It will be interesting to find out.

Where have all the good men gone? Blame Roe, for starters

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Richard Stith, a law professor just up the road from here at Valparaiso, has an excellent piece in the “Opinion” section of the latest First Things entitled “Her Choice, Her Problem: How Abortion Empowers Men” (subscription required until the November issue comes out). It’s an argument that may seem counter-intuitive to some, but it is, sadly, all too true. As Stith writes,

This summer, President Obama proclaimed again that we “need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t end at conception. In a sense, of course, he is absolutely right. But the problem is that, in another sense, he is completely wrong: Male responsibility really does end at conception. Men these days can choose only sex, not fatherhood; mothers alone determine whether children shall be allowed to exist. Legalized abortion was supposed to grant enormous personal freedom to women, but it has had the perverse result of freeing men and trapping women. . . .

“Abortion facilitates women’s heterosexual availability,” [radical feminist Catherine] MacKinnon pointed out: “In other words, under conditions of gender inequality [abortion] does not liberate women; it frees male sexual aggression. The availability of abortion removes the one remaining legitimized reason that women have had for refusing sex besides the headache.” Perhaps that is why, she observed, “the Playboy Foundation has supported abortion rights from day one.” In the end, MacKinnon pronounced, Roe‘s “right to privacy looks like an injury got up as a gift,” for “virtually every ounce of control that women won” from legalized abortion “has gone directly into the hands of men.” . . .

That would be why, as Stith notes, “64 percent of American women who abort feel pressured to do so by others. . . . American women almost always abort to satisfy the desires of people who do not want to care for their children.” He continues,

Throughout human history, children have been the consequence of natural sexual relations between men and women. Both sexes knew they were equally responsible for their children, and society had somehow to facilitate their upbringing. Even the advent of birth control did not fundamentally change this dynamic, for all forms of contraception are fallible.

Elective abortion changes everything. Abortion absolutely prevents the birth of a child. A woman’s choice for or against abortion breaks the causal link between conception and birth. It matters little what or who caused conception or whether the male insisted on having unprotected intercourse. It is she alone who finally decides whether the child comes into the world. She is the responsible one. For the first time in history, the father and the doctor and the health-insurance actuary can point a finger at her as the person who allowed an inconvenient human being to come into the world.

The deepest tragedy may be that there is no way out. By granting to the pregnant woman an unrestrained choice over who may be born, we make her alone to blame for how she exercises her power. Nothing can alter the solidarity-shattering impact of the abortion option.

Dr. Stith spends the bulk of the article laying out the various ramifications of this reality, the various ways that it plays out. I would make only one correction to his argument: abortion empowers certain types of men, not all men. Specifically, it empowers the cads, the losers, the irresponsible, the promiscuous, the abusers, and those afraid of commitment. It empowers the worst in human impulses, and thus benefits guys who indulge those impulses, who want to take what they like without paying for it. Those who want to choose fatherhood, who want to take responsibility for their actions and choices, too often find themselves barred by the law from doing so.

We thus have a situation that favors “bad boys” over good people; we have a legal and social incentive to antisocial and irresponsible behavior. That’s a corrupting influence on our society, creating norms that skew young males away from responsibility and maturity, away from marriage and toward “playing the field.” In all seriousness, if young women want to know where all the good men are, one place to look is Roe, Doe, and their progeny; because of them, there are fewer good men than there ought to be.

 

Sgt. Darrell “Shifty” Powers, RIP

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I don’t know who wrote this—it’s making the rounds—but I thought it was worth posting:

We’re hearing a lot today about big splashy memorial services.

I want a nationwide memorial service for Darrell “Shifty” Powers.

Shifty volunteered for the airborne in WWII and served with Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Infantry. If you’ve seen Band of Brothers on HBO or the History Channel, you know Shifty. His character appears in all 10 episodes, and Shifty himself is interviewed in several of them.

I met Shifty in the Philadelphia airport several years ago. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I just saw an elderly gentleman having trouble reading his ticket. I offered to help, assured him that he was at the right gate, and noticed the “Screaming Eagle”, the symbol of the 101st Airborne, on his hat.

Making conversation, I asked him if he’d been in the 101st Airborne or if his son was serving. He said quietly that he had been in the 101st. I thanked him for his service, then asked him when he served, and how many jumps he made.

Quietly and humbly, he said, “Well, I guess I signed up in 1941 or so, and was in until sometime in 1945 . . . ” at which point my heart skipped.

At that point, again, very humbly, he said, “I made the 5 training jumps at Toccoa, and then jumped into Normandy . . . do you know where Normandy is?” At this point my heart stopped.

I told him yes, I know exactly where Normandy is, and I know what D-Day was. At that point he said “I also made a second jump into Holland, into Arnhem . . .” I was standing with a genuine war hero . . . and then I realized that it was June, just after the anniversary of D-Day.

I asked Shifty if he was on his way back from France, and he said, “Yes. And it’s real sad because these days so few of the guys are left, and those that are, lots of them can’t make the trip.” My heart was in my throat and I didn’t know what to say.

I helped Shifty get onto the plane and then realized he was back in Coach, while I was in First Class. I sent the flight attendant back to get him and said that I wanted to switch seats. When Shifty came forward, I got up out of the seat and told him I wanted him to have it, that I’d take his in coach.

He said, “No, son, you enjoy that seat. Just knowing that there are still some who remember what we did and still care is enough to make an old man very happy.” His eyes were filling up as he said it. And mine are brimming up now as I write this.

Shifty died on June 17 after fighting cancer.

There was no parade.

No big event in Staples Center.

No wall-to-wall back-to-back 24×7 news coverage.

No weeping fans on television.

And that’s not right.

Let’s give Shifty his own Memorial Service, online, in our own quiet way. Please forward this email to everyone you know. Especially to the veterans.

Rest in peace, Shifty.

The Heart of the Matter

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(Jeremiah 10:6-16; 1 Timothy 3:14-16)

A lot of people will tell you that Christianity is all about following a set of rules—the only thing that matters is that you do x and don’t do y. That’s always been a popular view. After all, if Christianity is just about measuring up to particular standards of behavior—whether it’s the “we don’t smoke, we don’t chew, we don’t go with those who do” variety, or the “be nice to everybody” variety, or whatever—then it’s easy to tell who’s a Christian and who isn’t; and perhaps even more importantly, it’s easy to look at yourself and tell how you’re doing. The nice thing about a fence, after all, is that you always know which side of it you’re on. Or perhaps I should say, one nice thing about a fence; the other nice thing is that you know exactly how far you can go before you’ve crossed it. The fence tells you what you can get away with, as much as what you can’t.

I suspect that was part of the appeal to the folks in Ephesus who were following the false teachers there; we know that the false teachers were quite strict in some ways, but it seems likely that they were quite loose in others, such that things like infidelity and drunkenness were becoming problems among the leadership of the congregation. More than that, I suspect it’s a lot of the appeal for people who have followed false teachers like that down through the ages, right up to our present day. As I’ve said before, the longer I do this, the more convinced I become that we really don’t want grace, and we don’t want to live by grace. We may say we do, and we may sing about it, but at some level, we’d rather live by some form of law. After all, if you ask the law, “How many times do I have to forgive somebody before I can give them the punishment they have coming,” the law will tell you, “Three times,” or “seven times,” or whatever; it will give you a standard you have a chance to live up to. If you ask Jesus the same question, he’s going to say, “Seventy times seven”—which is to say, once you lose count, you’re just getting started. Law gives you a limit to what you have to do; grace is like the Energizer bunny—it just keeps going, and going, and going, long after we want to quit.

The fact of the matter is, whatever version of the law we come up with, whatever standard of behavior we set, if it’s our idea and our standard, we’re going to start defining it as something we can meet, something we can live up to in our own strength; we inevitably make it far too small a thing. It sounds all very well to say, for instance, “Christianity isn’t about believing certain things, it’s about living a life of love”; but how do we know what love is? How do we know what it means to live a life of love? The classical Christian answer is to say that we know what love is because God is love, and because he has revealed himself to us in his word—in his living Word who is his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and in the words of Scripture, which his Spirit inspired to show us the living Word. Our understanding of love is grounded in the truth of Scripture, which shows us the truth of who God is, and thus what love is; we take our definition of love from these pages. If we set this aside, or say that those truths don’t matter, then we’re left to define love for ourselves, according to our own preferences, prejudices, and preconceived ideas; we get to decide for ourselves what’s appropriate and act accordingly, and then pat ourselves on the back for being such good Christians, without ever even asking ourselves what God wants us to do, let alone submitting ourselves to his will.

In the end, that leaves us in the same place as the false teachers who were giving Timothy such fits in Ephesus: elevating our own desires over the demands of the gospel. In this letter, as we’ve seen, Paul shows a fair bit of concern for what we might call “community standards”; some of the women in the church were offending the community with their dress, some of the leaders of the church were scandalizing the community with their behavior, so Paul tells them that what they’re doing is inappropriate. Why? Because the church needs to conform to the standards of the community? No, but because what they’re doing is hindering the preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ. If people are scandalized by the gospel itself, if they’re offended by the call to holiness—as many were then, and are now, and will be in every age until Jesus returns—that’s one thing; but if anything else gets in the way of the preaching of the gospel, then we need to set it aside, no matter what it might be.

We saw this in chapter 2, but Paul makes it explicit here. As he writes, he hopes to come to Ephesus soon to make these points to the church in person, but in case he can’t, he’s sending this letter—why? Because people in the church have forgotten what sort of behavior and what sort of lifestyle are appropriate for a member of the household of God. Any parent expects certain things out of their kids, and God is no different with us, but people in Ephesus have lost sight of this fact. As a consequence, their behavior is casting God’s name into disrepute. The church in Ephesus, like every congregation everywhere, is called to be a pillar and a bulwark of the truth, and they’re falling down on the job, betraying that truth by their behavior. Paul wants them to understand that they have a responsibility to fulfill, and they’d better start taking it seriously.

As every congregation needs to do, including us. We are part of God’s temple on earth—God makes his home on earth in us by his Spirit who lives in us—and that gives us a profound responsibility indeed. The mission of the church is to be a pillar to uphold the truth, and a bulwark to protect and defend it—to speak the truth to a world that too often doesn’t want to hear it, to proclaim and uphold the truth by our words and by our actions, to defend it against those who would rather attack it (and us) than listen. If at any time our behavior undermines or weakens the church, then we are threatening that mission, and we must stop. That’s why Paul rebukes men in the church for their anger and disputes, which were wrecking their prayers and disrupting their worship; that’s why he calls women in the church to restrain their use of their Christian freedom, since their behavior, too, was becoming disruptive. That’s why he rules out leaders who lacked the maturity to lead, because such leaders were drawing the church away from its mission and damaging its reputation in the community, undercutting its credibility in proclaiming the truth. Everything else had to be, and must be, secondary to the mission.

And if that mission was, and is, to uphold and defend the truth, then what truth is that? Some of us would probably start giving a list of details, but Paul goes right to the heart of the matter. “The mystery of godliness is great,” he says—which doesn’t, by the way, mean that it’s very mysterious; indeed, this is a mystery, something hidden from human sight, which has now been revealed. What has been revealed is very great—it’s something no human mind could ever have conceived, or would ever have predicted. That mystery is Jesus Christ—God revealed in human flesh, and the plan of God revealed in human history; and that truth is the truth we uphold and defend, that God was born as a human child. As the British poet John Betjeman put it, “And is it true,/This most tremendous tale of all,/Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,/A Baby in an ox’s stall?/The Maker of the stars and sea/Become a Child on earth for me? . . . No love that in a family dwells,/No carolling in frosty air,/Nor all the steeple-shaking bells/Can with this single Truth compare—/That God was man in Palestine/And lives today in Bread and Wine.”

That is the truth of which the church is a pillar and a bulwark—it is the truth which has been entrusted to us to proclaim to the nations, to preach in season and out of season, in every word we speak and every step we take; not that Jesus was a good man, or a kind man, or a great teacher, or a loving person, but that he was God in the flesh come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. It is the truth that when we look at him we see God, and that in him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And it is indeed a truth with which nothing else can compare, and one which is well worth giving our lives for; there is simply nothing we can do which is more important than to let people know that God became a human being, with human skin, human bone, a human mind and a human heart, for them, because he loves them, and to help them grow into a full understanding of what that means for them and their lives.

We’ve heard this so often that familiarity dulls the message, but stop and think about it and you’ll realize what a staggering thing it is: the God of all worlds and all ages, the God who created everything that is and who holds the universe in the palm of his hand, the God who holds all that was, and is, and is to come as a thought in his mind and who keeps it all going by his will, humbled himself to step down into the small space of one human body, living one messy human life, suffering one very messy human death—for us; and then he turned that defeat into the ultimate victory by rising from the dead, in his own power—for us. And then he ascended into heaven—for us—and did he send his angels to trumpet the news across the sky, so that everyone would believe? Did he write a message in the stars and blind the world with his glory? Did the voice that spoke the world into being announce his victory with a deafening thunder that would drive people to their knees? No; he rose from the dead, he returned to heaven, and he left that job—for us. In his great plan for this world, he left us to carry out that part, so that this wouldn’t all just be something God did to us—so that we would have something we could do; and while nothing prevents him from working directly, he lets us do it most of the time, leaving us with the responsibility to tell the world what he has done.

This is our job to do—not in our own strength, to be sure, for he enables and empowers us by his Spirit; but in our own lives, and by our own words and actions, to tell the world that God loved them in this way, and this much, that he sent his only Son into this world, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life. This is our job to do, and our song of praise to sing—with our words, with our voices, with our whole lives—for all the world to hear; it is ours, in the fullness of our hearts, to sing our great Redeemer’s praise, and to sing through all the earth the honors of his name. May our hearts be so full of praise that as we sing, we can only wish that we had a thousand tongues, a thousand voices, to sing his praise that much more.

Those who do not understand the past . . .

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A charismatic young leader, supported by a coalition of intellectual elitists on the one hand and a dependent underclass on the other, has gained control of the country. With each month that passes, the leader and his court reveal themselves to be more hostile to the interests of the middle class. Vast new spending bills are introduced to fund an extension of government power. New taxes of all kinds, the extension of old taxes to cover a broader array of goods and services, the introduction of stealth taxes and special emergency levies, the borrowing of vast sums of money: all of these excesses deeply disturb the public, especially the middle class who are asked to bear all the burdens, even as the abuses are cheered on by an foolish elite and an acquiescent underclass.

As if this were not enough, our young monarch has decided to conduct foreign policy in a suspiciously conciliatory manner toward declared enemies of the nation. Regimes with a history of supporting violence against the interests of the country are suddenly courted as if they were long-time friends. Organizations driven by ideological and religious extremism are “engaged” as if no stigma attached to their past and continuing conduct. Emissaries are dispatched to the most unlikely of foreign capitals to negotiate a policy of appeasement and conciliation.

Along with this, there is the troubling sense that the young prince’s values are alarmingly out of line with the moral and cultural views shared by most of the public. There are reports of lavish expenditures for entertainment, pilgrimages from the capital carried on at public expense, questionable advancement of favorites. There is the suspicion that, when he is not in public view, the young leader is indifferent at best to the deeply held opinions on faith, family, and patriotism that the public holds dear. Many would go further, believing that, when not on show, he and his consort mock these ideals.

Barack Obama? No, Charles I of England.

As any student of history can tell you, that’s not a happy comparison to make: Charles I‘s recklessness and arrogance ultimately drove him into a fight with Parliament, sparking a pair of civil wars that ended with his execution for high treason. Of course, a similar end to Barack Obama’s presidency is vanishingly unlikely—but as today’s Rasmussen tracking poll shows the Presidential Approval Index standing at -7% (30% of voters strongly approve of his performance, while 37% strongly disapprove), it seems clear that the president’s Charles-like path in office so far is having an analogous effect on his personal popularity and political capital. This suggests that he would do well to embrace the bipartisanship he once promised (back in those days before he could dismiss political disagreements with a curt “I won”) and moderate his policies, unless he wants to face the modern American political substitute for civil war—a popular revolt at the polls in the next election. Increasing numbers of people would agree with Jeffrey Folks that there’s good reason:

Today the power of the political elite in Washington far exceeds that of the court of Charles I, and we are in even greater danger of losing our liberties. John Milton was the great spokesman for the opposition during the days of Charles I, and Milton knew well enough what a tyrant was. “A tyrant,” he wrote, “is he who regarding neither law nor the common good, reigns only for himself and his faction.” Could there be any better characterization of the actions of the present administration in Washington?

Falling short

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Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 5
Q. Can you live up to all this perfectly?

A. No.1
I have a natural tendency
to hate God and my neighbor.2

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

This is what causes all the problems. This is what people don’t want to admit; but it’s true. Left to ourselves, we can’t live up to what God wants from us, because we aren’t bent to really love God or the people around us. We’re oriented all wrong; we need to be re-oriented and straightened out.

John Calvin at 500

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In honor of the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent article by Westminster-California’s W. Robert Godfrey entitled “Calvin: Why He Still Matters.” Here’s the beginning:

There can be no serious doubt that Calvin once mattered. Any honest historian of any point of view and of any religious conviction would agree that Calvin was one of the most important people in the history of western civilization. Not only was he a significant pastor and theologian in the sixteenth century, but the movement of which he was the principal leader led to the building of Reformed and Presbyterian churches with millions of members spread through centuries around the world. Certainly a man whose leadership, theology, and convictions can spark such a movement once mattered.

Historians from a wide range of points of view also acknowledge that Calvin not only mattered in the religious sphere and in the ecclesiastical sphere, but Calvin and Calvinism had an impact on a number of modern phenomena that we take for granted. Calvin is certainly associated with the rise of modern education and the conviction that citizens ought to be educated and that all people ought to be able to read the Bible. Such education was a fruit of the Reformation and Calvin.

Others have insisted that the rise of modern democracy owes at least something to the Reformed movement. One historian said of Puritanism that a Puritan was someone who would humble himself in the dust before God and would rise to put his foot on the neck of a king. Calvinists were strongly persuaded that they must serve God above men, and that began to relativize notions of superiority and aristocracy. King James I of England, who was also James VI of Scotland, once remarked as he looked at Presbyterianism in Scotland: “No bishop, no king.” If the Church is not governed by a hierarchy, certainly the political world does not need to be governed by a hierarchy either. Such Calvinist attitudes toward kings helped contribute to modern democracy.

Calvinism contributed to modern science with an empirical look at the real world. Calvin contributed to the rise of modern capitalism in part by teaching that the charging of interest on money loaned was not immoral. He was the first Christian theologian to do so.

When we look at that list—theology, church, education, science, democracy, and capitalism—here was a man that mattered. He had a profound influence on the development of the history of the West. But does he still matter? Should we care today to revisit John Calvin—who he was, what he thinks—and believe that what he taught is still significant, still valuable? Yes, he still does matter. John Calvin matters still above all because he was a teacher of truth. If truth matters, then John Calvin still matters because he was one of the great teachers of truth, one of the most insightful, faithful teachers of truth, one of the best communicators of truth. He was a teacher who had taken to heart the words of Jesus: “You will know the truth and the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

The bulk of Godfrey’s article, of course, is dedicated to expositing the truth of that last paragraph; I encourage you to read it. If you have additional time and interest, it’s also worth checking out Reformation21, which has a number of excellent pieces up in honor of Calvin’s 500th.

Christianity: a change of orientation

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To restate the typical presentation of the gospel slightly, each of us on this earth is born with a global orientation toward sin, which manifests itself in various specific orientations toward particular sins—some stronger than others, some wider-ranging than others, some more fundamental than others, but all of them representative of our general inborn orientation toward rebellion and wrongdoing.

Jesus Christ was God become human. He lived a fully human life, but without that orientation toward sin; he was perfect, oriented totally toward God and his goodness and holiness. As such, he was innocent of any rebellion and wrongdoing. He died on our behalf to take on himself and pay in his own body the penalty for all of our sin; he then rose again from the dead to break the power of sin and death over us; he returned to the throne room of heaven to be our advocate with God the Father; and when he had done so, he sent us the Holy Spirit to live within all those who follow him, so that we might always be connected to his presence and power.

As such, Christ is at work in his people by the will of God the Father and the power of his Holy Spirit to reorient us away from sin and toward God. The work of sanctification is nothing less than a total change of orientation, replacing the sinward orientation with which we are born, to which we are accustomed, within which our mental, emotional and spiritual habits have been formed, with the Godward orientation that is the way of Christ, which is the way of the cross.

This is hard. The grace of God is not about leaving us as we are, or making us comfortable, or protecting us from pain; this is one reason why we resist true grace and prefer a counterfeit of our own making. This is why, as Flannery O’Connor said, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” But as painful as it may be to allow God to change our orientation, it is necessary, because the orientation with which we’re born points us, in the end, to nothing but darkness and death. It’s only if our souls are turned, if God reorients us to himself, that we can find light and life in his presence.