Calm Down, It’s Only Letters

Time is short. You have much to repent for. Don’t put it off any longer. You know what it is and what God requires.

Anne

I’m currently reading your book “Standing on the Promises,” and there are several places where you seem to argue that God will *always* save children who are parented obediently in faith.
For example, you write, “Under the promised grace of God, fathers can control whether or not their children grow up to walk with God,” and, “Children of obedient believers will become believers.”
I want to specifically contrast this view with comments by CREC pastor Rich Lusk, who wrote: “Covenant succession teaching needs to be emphasized today because so much of the church, even the Presbyterian and Reformed segment of the church, has completely neglected this biblical theme and the officer qualification. While parenting is not a crap shoot, in which there is no relationship at all between faithful kids and diligent parenting, neither is faithful parenting some kind of iron-clad guarantee of faithful children. God’s providence is more complex than that.” I find myself in enthusiastic agreement with Lusk’s views (strong expectation, strong covenantal norm, but not an absolute guarantee), yet I sense you go further than this.
My question is this:
Is there any real-world case you can envision where parents could stand before God on the last day and truthfully say, “We were faithful in our parental calling, while believing and trusting God,” and yet one of their baptized children is eternally lost?
For example, consider the case of a believing couple who faithfully parent their children, but who both tragically die in a car crash when the children are young. The children are then raised by unbelieving relatives and ultimately perish outside of Christ. How do you diagnose such a situation?
I am intentionally probing at the edges and boundaries, as I am attempting to more precisely and accurately understand your view. Thanks in advance.

Rob

I have been mostly educated in a dispensational understanding of Scripture. As I have followed you and others I am more convinced of the covenant view, but I would like a better understanding. Is there a book or multiple or lectures that you would recommend so that I can get a better understanding of covenantal theology?
I appreciate your ministry immensely. I have followed you on and off since you spoke at a Desiring God conference when Father Hunger was coming out. I have been following you and your ministry more closely for the last few years. Thank you for boldly standing for the truth and encouraging me to do likewise.
God Bless.

Luke

Is Paul’s referencing Demas in his letter to Timothy . . .”Demas has forsaken me having loved this present world” sufficient for preachers to conclude that Demas was apostate?
This is the stance taken by the vast majority of Christian ministers.
I read it like this. ‘ Demas took leave of Paul (not Christ ) to go to Thessalonika, because he valued his life. The others went elsewhere.” How does one get apostasy out of that?

Ian

Thank you for this response, I think it is helpful and moves the conversation forward.
To me, I think the question of whether states (and implicitly any covenantal groups) can be treated as a body for moral purposes, as moral agents or actors, is far and away the most important point raised here, and deserves a full-length treatment from you and maybe others in your circle.
One key thing that I would highlight is that DeYoung appeals not to Scripture or historical doctrine (which would broadly refute his position) but to the sensibilities of modern Christians.
First, it should be acknowledged that the Scriptures overwhelmingly treat cities, people groups, and other units as moral agents which God deems to be collectively responsible for the actions of the group, including many actions which could only have been taken by the leadership. And God acts, and DIRECTS HIS SERVANTS to act against groups as groups (see the extermination of the Canaanites, etc).
The ultimate issue that I see here, is that DeYoung’s framework would dramatically impact the traditional understandings of both Adam’s sin, and Christ’s redemption.
Under DeYoung’s formulation (like all liberal formulations) the imputation of Adam’s sin to his covenantal heirs is merely some arbitrary exercise of divine judgment, and likely a gross injustice.
Likewise, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is now also on shaky and idiosyncratic grounds. Instead of being an invocation of the basic principle of human society and relationships the Deep Magic that holds together our world, it is a one-off imposed on the world for inscrutable and ineffable reasons best left to Professional Theologians (TM) to discern from their ivory towers
DeYoung does us no service and great harm in this formulation, and I think that this issue of whether and how collections of individuals can come to act and BE JUDGED BY GOD as groups IS the key issue that we have to get clear on, before the conversation can move in a productive way.
DeYoung seems to have an implicit concern that Christian evangelicals who “make God happy” will be lumped in with the sinners in the day of judgement. Studying this might lead to the exploration of why the founding fathers found it so necessary in the light of covenant-breaking behavior that they engage in the political act of a Declaration of Independence.
I also would love to see your excellent wit, engage with the question of whether the Biblical prohibitions on usury, slavery for longer than seven years, alienation of inheritances etc . . . might constitute a very effective way of criminally restraining the excesses of mammon worship.
Anyway, I appreciate your work on the subject.

Gregory

Can you, by chance, make a book recommendation for someone who deeply struggles with the idea of God loving them? Typically anyone in the Reformed realm has a tendency to wipe their glasses on their sweater vest and proceed to lecture you about how deep of a sinner you are for your ungrateful attitude, but there’s gotta be something out there somewhere. Many of us have not had loving family or anything that resembles an easy time being alive, and some condensed biblical truth would be a blessing.
Thank you,

H

Please clarify—Is Hell annihilation or eternal suffering? I know Pastor John MacArthur believed the latter. But I just watched a video by Edward Fudge who believes Hell is the annihilation of the condemned.
I appreciate your advice. Thank you.

Steve

It seems like Nick Fuentes is getting a lot of air time lately. I’m not asking you to interview him or have time to talk with him. I have a feeling you’re the kind of person who, if you wanted to talk to somebody, you would have done it by now. Rather, I just want to know your thoughts on him, who he is, and what he believes? I literally know nothing, and it seems like every time people talk about him, something new comes up, and I never know what to think. Then again, that seems to be the way with most folks on the internet nowadays. Thanks for all you do, ‘preciate you!

NN

I’m a long-time reader and admirer. I had a question about what to my eyes is a glaring strategic omission on your part. I may be missing it somewhere, if so please point me in the right direction.
Moscow has staunchly resisted the shift to “blame the Jews” rhetoric, sometimes at the cost of being labelled the Woke Right, and losing partnerships some of our otherwise politically aligned former allies. Some of these are (presently) lost causes due to man-centered attitudes of their hearts, seeking genetic explanations for hamartiological problems. The Gospel is proclaimed to all men, first to the Jews, and all that.
The necessary but unfortunate result is that Christian leaders such as yourself are placed in the exact shoes you suffered under for most of your ministry, somewhere adjacent to thought policing. “Moderate” Christian leaders have derided you for uttering shock quotes that had to be said back then, when you were edgy, up until five minutes ago when you told the Internet it’s sin to hate Jews, and are now woke. Nowadays, the perception these dissident folks on the right have is that you’re shaming them for “noticing.”
It seems like a rather Jupiter-sized lost opportunity on your part not to kill two birds with one stone. While it is sinful to blame “The Jews” for all the high wickedness coming from whoever the Deep State Globalists are—their power drunk abuses of humanity being a moral crisis, not an ethnic one—we actually have a publicly guilty-as-charged enemy to the Lordship of Christ that explains at least part of this bizarre power struggle. To whom do I refer? Perhaps there is a better label that would not mistakenly associate them with our naive Premill friends. We have elected officials in power who openly serve at the behest of distinctly proclaimed tenets of theonomically justified Christian Zionism. Emphasis on the “Christian” part, because if you’re a descendant of the Jews and also a Zionist, that sounds a lot like you being Japanese and believing Japan should make a subordinate out of China. Your views may not be renovated by the Lord Christ, but neither has your pagan heart been. Our quarrel is not with fallen Japanese supremacists or Jewish Zionists, but with so-called “Christian” servants of a foreign center of power not beholden to Christ.
Here I refer to Ted Cruz, who tells us that since elected, he wakes up everyday and asks himself what he is doing for Israel. Who vindictively lashes out at Nick Fuentes—a 27 year old who has no elected power over anybody—calling him a Little Nazi. Yet he pales in comparison Lindsey Graham, who has bequeathed us with perhaps the most oxygen-absorbing soundbite of our lifetimes, which you can listen to for yourself here:
Lindsey Graham, neither Jewish by descent nor religion, raised in a good old southern schoolhouse and taught the Bible as a wee lad, wants us to believe that “killing all the right people” and “running out of bombs” on behalf of Israel is what makes our Lord Jesus Christ glad. He is echoed by congressman Randy Fine, who never sleeps better except when bathed in the blood of Palestinian infants:
In the absence of Graham’s public denunciation of Congressman Fine, we would naturally lump this infant child in with all the right people we’re killing in our God-glorifying support of the civil rulers of Israel. And unfortunately his attitude represents the majority leaning of our elected government officials. Unlike our side, who hastens to point fingers at the Woke Right or the Dank Right, these folks seem to be missing the ability to call anyone in their camp out no matter who atrocious their statements are. And as you have reasoned many times in your ministry, staunch public opposition to one side and blissful silence toward another is telling, hence why it remains awkward that Kevin DeYoung won’t decry the disturbing views promulgated by bloggers at the Gospel Coalition.
Unless we are really only concerned about Jew-hate, but Palestinian-hate is the Lord’s work by His good and faithful defenders of Israel, why on earth would we *not* pursue hard after Christian Zionists? They’re not ethnically defined, so we can neatly avoid that pitfall. They represent shared opposition between ourselves and a lot of seemingly well-meaning folks who have been lured away into this fad of viral anti-Jewish rhetoric. They wield massive power right now. They’re capable of so much influence over our government that they can put 20-somethings like Fuentes on the no-fly list and freeze their bank accounts. This Deep State maneuver is probably the sole reason for his skyrocketing popularity, and if we don’t want more of his kind staging a hostile takeover of the movement, we will need to take note of who is party to this unlawful abuse of our citizens and hold them to account. At the very least, Christian Zionists are complicit because, while they dramatically revile Nick on the floors of the Capitol, they launch no investigations into his tax-subsidized abusers.
Moreover, their ideology itself is a direct competitor to Christian Nationalism. They have their own objectivity of a covenant they’re investing our land’s treasure toward, but it’s not ours. We can’t both repair the ruins of our own nation to the glory of Christ, and be smitten with the object of establishing greater dominance for Israel in the Middle East. Not right now, at this critical juncture. We need turn to gratitude toward Jesus Christ that we even have a nation with borders exclusively, so we can pump water out of this sinking ship until we patch the numerous hull breaches. Squandering our diminishing time and power as an elected official to bind the consciences of millions of Americans unto enriching our overseas ally is madness. Or, it is treason. It is a unique form of evil, akin to allocating USAID money to fund the promotion of the glories of transgenderism in Namibia, as you eloquently put it. It would be a very different discussion to be had someday which allies we can lift up with us once we are not 40 trillion dollars in debt and mired in child sacrifice.
Perhaps there’s a different argument to be had regarding our allies in an age of a restored Christian America, but right now, the drooling, slavish devotion Christian Zionists grant to civil Israel is, to borrow your phrase, an absurdity not to be borne. Granted, we would need to attack with all necessary qualifications, not mis-labelling our fellow folks of Jewish ancestry, nor our lone bulwark of Premillienials. If we hit this political breed of Christian Zionism accurately, we conveniently assault a target that will grant a sorely missing point to our estranged friends on the right, assuming their hearts are Christ’s but their minds are misguided. It may aid in peeling them off of the anti-Jew bandwagon back to our platform. And the attack need not even be all that edgy. The winning argument to be made is simply: until a laundry list of other issues are resolved over the next several generations, Christian Zionism is not a national interest for policy or civil action whatsoever, not a valid talking point in U.S. politics, and anyone promoting it needs to be shut down, or they need to see the light and publicly own that they sent our life rafts to our friend’s yacht while our ship was sinking and our people drowning. After that confession, it would be incumbent upon each pardoned individual to regain our trust.
At the same time, an opportunity is to be had to our offended Dispensational brethren. To those who fire back at this reasoning, the question must be put: even if Dispensationalism were true, why would God be now incapable of defending Israel as He did in the days of Exodus, and why must Israel instead lean on America as it once did to the staff of Egypt, whose sharpened end pierced through Israel’s leaning hand? Should we not look to America’s own revival before even discuss the possibility of being a godly aid to Israel? Because right now, we are a textbook Old Testament pagan nation, Moloch festivals and all, that Israel would turn to for aid while running away from the living God. And that earthly support in the stead of YHWH never turns out well for them by my reading.
Would this line of argumentation not be multiple wins from all angles? Standing up to current power abuses while remaining winsome to those lured into sinful ideologies? Given the possibility of helping bring the dissident right back to sanity as well as standing up to traitorous magistrates, this seems like an angle we should be accused of never shutting up about. As in, keep striking that rock. If you only post 3 blogs, you’ll only win 3 elections. That sort of opportunity. Perhaps my view is missing crucial flaws, but out of all the major issues we could tackle, this lunatic servitude to foreign interest presents an understandable stumbling block for those on the right who are already convinced of many of the other difficult truths the rest of America reviles. If we can grab Catholics by their baptism, why can we not also grab dank edgelords by our mutual opposition to the Christian Zionists? Along the way, both of them need to hear the same Gospel and be freed from the same bondage. Of course their hardness of heart will cause some to double down but for the grace of God. Yet if such a strategy opens a door for others to turn to Christ, it’s hard to grasp why you would fail to prioritize that opportunity.
Thanks,

Patrick

Seeing the Robert Netzly Man-Rampant episode led me to buying his book which eventually led me to reading his book which has now led me down the rabbit hole of rethinking every investment we have. I’ve already moved about 30% out of traditional mutual funds and Roth IRA toward Biblically aligned EFT’s. I have hesitated to withdraw amounts that would result in 10% early withdrawal fees, like from traditional IRA’s or the mutual funds that would result in significant tax implications due to capital gains, but still considering if the Lord would have me do that immediately after the start of next year. How do you counsel families and business owners in your church who are trying to make a change toward being biblically responsible in their personal investments and any employee benefits they offer to employees? Could this be a rich young ruler or Zaccheus situation for many American Christians? Deuteronomy 23:18 seems to tell us exactly what God thinks of making money off of any major social media company that offers pornography on their platform: “You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog (male prostitute) into the house of the LORD your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are an abomination to the LORD your God”

Jason

Our church has recently started having women read the Scriptures before the sermon. What would be the best argument against this practice?

Anonymous

Many thanks for the years of wisdom imparted to my and my family’s benefit.
In your Doug Reacts response to Sam Harris’s thoughts on your interview, you mentioned the possibility of “some cotton plantation owner in 1850 to own slaves to do exactly what the Bible says to do and be walking with God.” Please reconsider whether Exodus 21:16 (below) would make this a very unlikely possibility, if not an impossibility, since nearly 100% of those enslaved at that time had either been kidnapped from Africa in the slave trade, made illegal in 1808, or were the descendants of those who had been kidnapped. Slave owners in 1850 rather than “walking with God” would be those in whose “hand” the kidnapped victim or victim’s descendants were “found” and subject to the death penalty under Exodus 21:16. Equity would seem to dictate application of this sanction for owning and profiting from the original kidnapped victim and their descendants. At the very least, if not the death penalty, the owner of the kidnapped person and of their descendants should be stripped of ownership under an equitable application of Exodus 21:16 just as a buyer does not retain ownership of stolen goods simply because he bought it from a pawn shop. Thank you for considering,
Exodus 21:16 “He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.”

Christian

I’ve noticed a lack of writings from just about everybody on the subject of female use of pornography. I even could not find any evidence from a man of so many words as yourself. Any resources you know of and would recommend?

Logan

How does your church “do community groups?” I think I have read you somewhere talk about the importance of having a small group in order to be known in, if the church becomes so large that it’s not really feasible to know everyone. Is this supposed to be an organic operation? Do you have staff at your church that help get new families connected? I go to a larger church and they have a “groups pastor.” Right now we have so many people coming that aren’t plugged in to a small group that they are asking existing homegroups to consider splitting up to make space for the new people. What are your thoughts on this? Also, are small group “leaders” a kind of pastor? What should a small group even be? In some ways it feels like our small group is a “church inside of a church.” We sing hymns together, we pray together, we talk about the weekly sermon or what we are reading in the Bible, and we share meals together. I’m curious what you think.

JC

I have a question about some videos in which prominent Jews admit that their kin are responsible for building, or founding, or starting leftist movements.
I’ll provide some examples below but let me say this first. These admissions seem to contradict the notion that Jews are a “high-performance people,” specifically your assertion that, “when they’re good, they’re really good, but when they’re bad, they’re really bad.” This seems to be a means to neuter the conversation, to insist that we must weigh the good and the bad. But there’s a difference between being a part of the left, for which nearly every nation is implicated, and building the left. The latter is far worse than the former, and, I would say, goes far beyond the classification of “really bad” or even “really, really bad.” Do you agree with that? Finally, given such a pedigree, of what use is it to bring up those things that are “really, really good”? What could possibly outweigh founding the movements that actually destroy all that is good?
In 2021, Dennis Prager famously said that every ism except Naziism was founded by Jews—humanism, Marxism, environmentalism, feminism, socialism. (He’ll also say that those responsible for such movements abandoned orthodox, monotheistic religion.) In 2018, World Jewish Congress published a short video with the hashtag, #JewishandProud, where a young woman explained that Jews were pioneers (pioneers!) in gay rights and civil rights, and that such pursuits were consistent with their main goal in Jewish eschatology, known as tikkun olam. Finally, this year, on a panel debate concerning the place of Zionism in the far left, Batya Ungar-Sargon called the separation between leftism and Zionism “appalling” because, as she said, Jews built the left, the New Deal, the labor movement, and so forth.
Thank you for reading this far, and I am eager for your response!
For the King,

Chris

This isn’t an email about a blog, I just didn’t know how else to contact you.
I just finished your book Evangellyfish and I wanted to pass along to you how much I thoroughly enjoyed the read.
The book was great. The different thoughts, desires, and motives of the individual characters were so well-drawn out. I felt like I was reading the characters as much as the actual story.
Have you been influenced at all by Tom Wolfe?
I just wanted to say thank you and perhaps press you for another novel in this vein.
Thank you again,

Alex

Regarding your recent Ask Doug (‘Struggling to Conceive? Advice for Couples’), could you elaborate on your answer to the adoption question please?
It sounds as though you are saying it’s unwise to adopt unless one already has a good parental track record. Where does this leave infertile married couples? Does longing for children of one’s own exclude you from considering adoption because it might be for the wrong reasons?
Lastly, can you point us in the direct of any useful articles or books that address the subject of adoption?
Many thanks,

Nick & Nora

I appreciate your efforts to guard the mantle of Christian Nationalism against Ethno-Nationalism. I might have a little more regard for the brothers in the latter camp (and I do contend they are brothers) than you do, but I share in your aversion of the latent fascism that is becoming more and more candid and forthright from their outlets. My apprehensions are not so much from the racism simplicitur, but from the inevitable consequences of their ideas in the civic sphere. If the Ordo Amoris requires us to prioritize our obligations based on consanguinity (rather than covenantal proximity à la Galatians 6:10) and a nation is just a meta-family (rather than a federation of households), then the civil magistrate (particularly the uber-based Giga-Chad Christian Franco these gents yearn for) is not merely Pater Patriae, he’s Pater Familias. We’re his children. The Daddy State. Add to this the Carolinian idea of Wolfe and others that the state is a creational institution operating under a normative principle and charged with being the agent of taking dominion rather than a remedial and ministerial institution ordained in the Noahic Covenant and operating under a regulative principle to avenge wickedness, and, boy oh boy, get your goose-stepping boots on. Hold my beer, Mussolini. Do you see the recipe for tyranny and the abject erosion of God-given liberties? Formal racism is not good, but we’ve got bigger problems with these ideas.
But might I suggest to you that there exists a system of Reformed civics that you might consider leaning into in your polemics? National Covenanting. Ya know, like the Covenanters. I’m invoking works like Messiah the Prince by William Symington. Brian Schwertley also has a good book on National Covenanting. Given your Scottish Presbyterian bona fides, I’m sure you’re familiar with this specific stream of Christian political theory. But I’d love to see you draw from it more and take up its mantle more explicitly. If you do, you will catch grief from the nationalists about how a covenantal nation is just another way of saying a propositional nation, and how covenanting is just a baptized version of liberal contractarianism (they’ve got it bass ackwards—Locke is bastardized covenanting). All that nonsense. But I want to respectfully suggest that Canon gave too much ground on Christian Nationalism by letting Wolfe write its definitive explanation. Consider doing with Christian Nationalism what you did with FV a few years back. “No Mas.” I heard a wise man once say that if you’re reciting Shakespeare on a stage with 12 clowns, the audience sees you as the 13th clown. The Christian Nationalism stage is filling up Hegelian, Thomistic, and Fascist clowns, some of them clownier than others. The good and right things that you are saying are more in line with the ideas of National Covenanting. That’s the Biblical framework for having Christian nations. Lean into that. Own that title and all of its Puritan and Covenanter baggage. And have someone discerning like Pastor David Reece on Man Rampant to discuss these ideas.
In Christ,

A Covenanter

I hope you’re doing well. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I have picked up, and have been thoroughly enjoying, your book “Confessions Of A Food Catholic.” I find the topic to be simultaneously amusing, and extremely pertinent. I’m on Chapter 10, wherein you have been touching on food allergies/sensitivities, real and, most importantly, made up. I grew up during an era where it was increasingly en-vogue to not consume products of a certain kind. This was because people claimed they had sensitivities to ingredients in food that “have always afflicted people (dairy, gluten, etc.)” Over time, this turned into the purity spiraling I now see on social media; those very ingredients which people said not to eat turned out to be extremely healthy (overeating steak, butter, raw milk ice cream, etc.). Who would’ve thought?
My question isn’t about food, you’ve already obviously written a whole book about it. I’m using this as an example, rather, to relate it to a similar, but unrelated topic: that of mental illness. Obviously, I wouldn’t say certain mental illnesses/special needs/diagnoses don’t exist—they obviously do. Rather, I’m speaking more about the seemingly endless list of people who have boutique mental illnesses, almost as many “sexualities” that exist out there now (which, now that I think about it, are probably related). In my teens to early adulthood, loads of people were coming out saying that they “have anxiety,” “have depression,” or have some other boutique mental illness du jour. It made it quite difficult to fellowship with/show hospitality to many of these people, as their list of requirements grew more extensive the longer you knew them. It became apparent that their “anxiety,” for example, was their way of not dealing with besetting sins, and rather coddled them.
I’m curious, have you written a book on this topic just yet? If not, is there one which you’d recommend?
Thank you for your time!

ON

I am looking for Doug Wilson’s book “And It Came to Pass.” Is this book still printed or could it be soon?

Greg

On a mostly unrelated topic, I wonder if you’ve given advice before to people who would like to replicate some of what y’all have done in Moscow to “take over” their own towns in similar fashion.
Just starting to dream…

Andrew

This is in regards to church membership. I always appreciate your insight and I most often agree with much of what you have to say. I’m reformed, post-mil to the core and have been my entire life. When it comes to “church membership” though, I can say I’m not seeing things the same way as you are. I’ll try to keep this brief, but here are my thoughts, that I have spent a long time thinking about, studying the Scriptures, talking with people, etc.
1) As Scripture defines member, which it uses often, exegetically, I am a member of the church, of the household of God, through my baptism and ongoing faithfulness to the covenant God has established with me. All sermons I have heard or read my entire life have taken the position that this is in reference to the saints, not simply those on a roster.
2) There are no Scriptures, through exegesis, that requires an oath or vow with a local congregation or session. At least I haven’t been able to find one yet.
3) The reasoning that is most often used for vows, as you have, is that there needs to be oaths or vows in order for the session to effectively rule. I view this argument as pragmatic and somewhat speculative, which I will get to later. As a great preacher once said (who happens to be my brother-in-law Phil Kayser), start with exegesis before going to the pragmatics.
4) Given points 1 and 2, the implication of the tradition of “church membership” is that I firmly believe it undermines God’s covenant as signified by Baptism. We were attending a Reformed Baptist church for a period of time where we could not become a “member” due to our paedobaptist convictions. We wanted to visit a Reformed Presbyterian church who served communion every week. I called them about this. They indicated we could not partake of communion because we were not “church members.” This to me is an usurpation of God’s covenant by the tradition of men. We have been members of other churches that limit the ability of congregants to use their gifts and abilities in the church until such time as they become “members.” This to me also is another usurpation of God’s covenant. We knew of a family that was attending Piper’s church back in the day and came to paedobaptist convictions. Some PCA pastors wouldn’t baptize their children because they were not “members” of their congregation. I found this deeply disturbing (this was probably the first crack in the wall of “church membership” for me).
5) Regarding vows and oaths with a local session and congregation, I have practical concerns with this, aside from little to no exegetical basis for it. I am bound by God’s covenant to obey my elders because I am a covenant member. If I’m a regular attender and I am in sin, I fully expect the elders to exercise their authority and address the sin. They don’t need my permission, through a church vow, in order to rule. Should it be done by the local elders? Sure. Can other elders step in and tell the local session that something needs to done? Absolutely. See I Cor 5. Paul didn’t ask if the man involved with incest was on a roster. He said to the elders, I’m hearing about this sin, he’s in your midst, deal with it.
6) Secondly, if I make a vow with a local session and congregation, what happens over time if the session is made up of new elders and the congregation turns over. Is my vow still in force? Who have I made the vow with? This is problematic to me. And I would suggest to not use the reasoning that the vow is before God. My covenant with God, or rather God’s covenant with me, is signified by my baptism. When I stand up before a congregation and make church membership vows, it’s not just God that I am making a vow with, or the universal church.
7) Following this, I do have probably a more expansive view of elder rule. The elders need to shepherd those who are in their midst. If someone is a regular attender, faithfully participating in the activities of the church, the elders should know them. Similarly, say that someone is a regular attender and their kids are misbehaving in church. Do you think the elders have absolutely no authority to work with this family, just because they aren’t on the roster and haven’t given their permission for the elders to rule over them, because they haven’t made a vow? I take a very different view and believe the elders absolutely have authority to deal with this.
8) Conversely, I’ve been involved in Reformed churches my whole life. My dad was elder. I am an elder. And “church membership” has done nothing to foster shepherding in the church. It’s not a roster that will facilitate true shepherding, it’s shepherds that have the heart for shepherding. And a shepherd that has a heart for shepherding, and a church, shouldn’t need a roster. Somethings very wrong if the church has to look at a document to figure out who the elders should be shepherding and need to be involved with.
Lastly, I did not intend on starting down this road questioning vows and oaths to a local congregation. I was in your shoes for most of my life. But my sons, who are now all adults, who I trained by God’s grace to study the Scriptures as the rule for life, when we started talking about church membership, they challenged me regarding the biblical basis for it. After much prayer, study, and discussions with my sons and others, I reached a different position than the position I grew up with.
So, these are just some quick thoughts that I hope you will find beneficial. They’re maybe a little disconnected, but hopefully you will get a perspective from those who aren’t quite aligned with where you’re coming from, a position reached through much prayer, searching of Scriptures, and seeking out wisdom.
In His Service,

Lowell

In your book “Get The Guy”, you mentioned that a guy should be “well endowed” enough to satisfy the girl. Can you elaborate more on what this means? Then depending on that answer, if a guy sees himself as not “well endowed,” is this a case of “play the cards you’re dealt”, or is there a way to get a better hand?

Jared