Frozen, Freedom and the Gospel

If you (like me) have a pre-teen daughter, you have perhaps seen the Disney movie Frozen. Almost certainly you have heard your daughter sing the movie's hit song, Let It Go (performed above by Idina Menzel).

Trevin Wax offered some great thoughts on the movie and the song in a post today at his Kingdom People blog. He points out:

Thousands of little girls across the country are singing this song – a manifesto of sorts, a call to cast off restraint, rebel against unrealistic expectations and instead be true to whatever you feel most deeply inside. What’s ironic is that the movie’s storyline goes against the message of this song. When the princess decides to “let it go,” she brings terrible evil into the world. The fallout from her actions is devastating. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me” is the sin that isolates the princess and freezes her kingdom.

He goes on...

 A popular idea in our culture is that there are only two ways to live:

1. Through authenticity, expressed in rebellion against cultural constraints
2. Through an ordered life, expressed in rule-keeping

Neither of these paths are the way to true fulfillment though.Wax concludes,

Christianity teaches explicitly what Frozen only hints at: salvation comes not through self-discovery or self-restraint, but through self-sacrifice.

All across the country, little girls are singing about self-discovery. Let’s make sure that after they see the film, they are given songs about self-sacrifice.

 Read the whole post here.

Sermon: Living as Sojourners and Exiles

Like most of us, I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about politics, government and the election. A week ago Monday I posted A Christian View of the Election...and the Four Years that Follow which was among the most widely read blog posts I've written. Then on Sunday I preached a sermon entitled Living as Sojourners and Exiles,dealing with how exactly we are to live as Christians in America. The following is an excerpt from it:

Freedom is among our most cherished ideals in America. And America has unquestionably blessed by God. Our standard of living and our set of freedoms are unparalleled in human history. For this, we have much to be thankful.

Even so, America is not the “City of God.” Rather she is the city to which we have been exiled. As such, we must heed the words of Jeremiah when he says, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find our welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7) But we must not make the mistake Mitt Romney made a couple weeks ago when he proclaimed that “this nation is the hope of the earth.” No! The hope of the earth is Jesus Christ and him alone. For there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. And when the Bible speaks of a city set upon a hill, it is not speaking of America, but of the Church – that Church which Jesus Christ builds and tells us that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it! (Matthew 16:18)

Let us therefore, like our father, Abraham “look forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God,” (Hebrews 11:10) for there is a day coming when “The kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever!” (Revelation 11:15)

So we trust not in earthly kingdoms or Presidents. Not in politicians, Democrat or Republican. For if you place your confidence in politicians, you will be disappointed. And if you place your ULTIMATE confidence in them, you will ultimately find yourself devastated.

Rather we trust in our King who has once come and who is to return! And as we await that return, we live as sojourners and exiles: People who are honorable. People under authority. And people who are free.

Click here to listen to this and other sermons of mine in their entirety.

Why Exactly Should We Oppose Blasphemy Laws?

(image source)

This past week, Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor in Iraq who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy, was acquitted and released after being imprisoned for nearly three years.

In the wake of this wonderful news, Russell Moore asked an interesting question in a blog post the other day: Why exactly should Christians oppose blasphemy laws. At first thought it would seem the answer is self evident: We should oppose them so that we have the freedom to worship God according to the Bible. But Moore states that we should be against all blasphemy laws, even those which favor Christians.

Fundamentally, this is because blasphemy laws and other uses of state power to enforce religious belief or worship are themselves a repudiation of the beliefs themselves. A religion that needs state power to enforce obedience to its beliefs is a religion that has lost confidence in the power of its Deity.

Christians should fight for the liberty of Muslims in America and around the world to be Muslims, to worship in mosques and to freely seek to persuade others that the Koran is a true revelation of God. This isn’t because we believe in Islamic claims but precisely because we don’t. If we really believe the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, we don’t need bureaucrats to herd people into cowering before it.

The gospel is big enough to fight for itself. And the gospel fights not with the invincible sword of Caesar but with the invisible sword of the Spirit. When we seek to freely persuade our neighbors, and not to coerce them, we are confessing that the Spirit of God is mighty enough to convict of sin, to pull down strongholds and fortresses of the mind and the conscience.

Click here to read Moore's entire post.