Volume 5: Issue 2 | April 2022
Fake Families
When people lose the real thing, they settle for fakes and may even forget they are fakes. Shishak, King of Egypt, took the gold shields in the Temple of God away from Rehoboam, King of Judah. So Rehoboam replaced them with bronze shields (I Kings 14:25-28). Baptists reject infant baptism, so they “dedicate” their children to God instead. And, as families disintegrate, people settle for Fake Families. What is a Real Family and what are Fake Families?
The Family Nucleus: Father/Mother/Children
In the beginning Adam was alone and that was not good (Genesis 2:18). How could he obey God’s command to be fruitful by himself? So God made a woman and brought her to Adam. Together they formed the nucleus of a family. They had children. Ever since, father/mother and usually children have made up the nucleus of a family. In families there is work, protection, and long memories, all in the context of loyalty, love, kindness, and trust – or there should be.
Whenever things needed a restart in God’s Providence, it began with a family: Noah, his wife, and their children; Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac; Amram, Jochabed, and Moses; Elkanah, Hannah, and Samuel; Jesse the father of David; and Jesus, raised by Mary his mother and her husband Joseph, along with Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Mark 6:3).
Around the nucleus of a father/mother/children family there is usually a larger or smaller cloud of relatives, including grandparents and grandchildren, uncles and aunts, maybe cousins, and in some societies relatives of sons and daughters-in-law.
Sometimes, of course, God does not grant to a husband-wife union any children, a situation universally viewed in the Bible as a tragedy. But even without the late birth of Isaac, Abraham and Sarah formed a family since every married man and woman lie at the heart of a family.
Damaged families remain families. Death takes a father and the children are left fatherless, their mother a widow. Mother and children are a family. Death takes a mother, leaving a motherless child. Children die. Polygamy in two forms, polygyny, and far more rarely polyandry, deforms families, but they are still families. The Bible contains many instances of polygamous families, none peaceful. Sometimes people ignore the relationship rules outlined by God in Ephesians 5: wives boss their husbands around, husbands are tyrants without love, and children dishonor their parents. They are still families. Some families damage themselves with hatred, shouts, anger, infidelities, and coldness, so that their college-aged children hate to go home for the holidays. But damaged families are not fake families.
There are broken families, the remains after father and mother divorce. In broken families, children usually end up living with their mother and seeing their father on some weekends. The heartaches of these families never ends, and the permutations of family that emerge are endless, for example, a daughter with two full brothers, a step brother and sister acquired when her mother remarried, a step sister and two step brothers when her father remarried, and two half sisters from her father and stepmother. The resulting blended families are very rarely the happy adventure portrayed in TV shows.
There are single parent families without any marriage behind them, a euphemism in most cases for a mother-child family. The children in such families face huge challenges, beginning with an early awareness that someone is missing: their father. Children often react to that absence with a deep anger. The single mother faces huge challenges in raising a child, or children, alone, challenges she knows she brought on herself by choosing to have sexual relations with a man outside of marriage. Although mother-child families look similar to a widow and her children, they have a different dynamic of guilt and blame that deeply affects the mother and children.
What does one call two men or two women who claim the status of marriage? “Gay marriage” is an invention of government overreach, in which it claims the power to redefine the age-old pre-political institution of the family. However, people throughout history have sometimes lived together and cared for one another. They are friends. It is a
twisted perversion of God’s plan to make sexual relations the basis of these friendships. Nevertheless, two men or two women (why limit it to two?) sometimes end up raising children. Monasteries and convents and orphanages have also performed that service. They are not families, but they do a central task of families, raising children.
Children have a deep understanding of how things should be. They came into being in the only way possible, by the sexual union of a sperm from a man and an egg from a woman. Children, even happily adopted ones, usually want to know their biological father and mother. They hate divorce almost as much as God does (Malachi 2:16). Condescending
propaganda that hopes to reassure them that they live in “different” families, contradicts what they viscerally know.
Family nucleus of father/mother and usually children, extended families, damaged families, broken families, blended families, and single parent families are all families. Children grow best, churches are strongest, and countries flourish where the basic family of father/mother/children predominates and where those families obey God’s instructions for family living. Church teaching, school instruction, popular culture, and social policy should all aim to promote such families.
And then there are fake families!
What are fake families? They are human relationships that do not have a man-woman and usually children bond at their center, but which claim to be family. The false claim to “be family” reveals how deeply we as a society long for what so many lack today.
Fake Families
Workplaces often advertise themselves as family. “We’re family here.” Untrue! You can’t get laid off or fired from a family, unless you count divorce as one partner firing the other. Too often bosses make demands on your loyalty and time that only a family should be allowed to make.
Workplace looms so large in American society that nearly all schooling aims to make you employable, equipped to work reliably for someone else. None of it aims any more to make you ready to form a real family, or take care of your own property yourself. Little of it aims to prepare you to form your own business, let alone profit from the wisdom of God’s Word and previous generations.
The government, and therefore professional economists, pretends that only work done at a workplace for money counts as real work. It only counts for them! Work done in a factory or an office or a hotel can be taxed. Workplace work is included in the economists’ abstraction, “Gross Domestic Product (GDP).” Work done in the home is not counted. Even work that tears people down grows the fictitious GDP: gambling in all its forms, vaping stores, the tobacco industry, and a lot of the social media among them. They provide tax revenues, after all, and usually profits to their owners.
Ironically, the work that keeps societies going from decade to decade starts with bearing and raising children, the family’s work. Family members do most of what is now called “childcare.” (They do most of the “eldercare” also.) Family members cook most of the food we eat, do nearly all our wash, and more or less keep our houses clean. They take out the trash. Tax collectors would love it if we did each other’s childcare, cooking, wash, and cleaning for money. Then they could tax it! Of course, in real terms we would then be poorer.
Factories and offices are efficient at making things for sale, but they are not family. Sometimes they become fake families. The more they take over family work, especially caring for children, the poorer we become in spirit and sometimes in real wealth.
God warns against letting working and gaining wealth take over your life (Proverbs 23:4-5, Matthew 6:23-24, Hebrews 13:5). Jesus warned against letting the pursuit of money in the workplace, wherever it is, become the purpose and goal of your life. You cannot serve God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24). Or, to put it differently, you cannot serve God and Career. We are warned. “The love of money is the root cause of all kinds of evil (I Timothy 6:10,17).” The workplace easily becomes a fake family. “We’re family here,” is never true.
Gangs become fake families. As one member of a gang put it succinctly in something I read recently, “We are like family. We protect each other and we steal for each other.” People who join gangs are often forced to join, but more often they are just lonely and lost individuals who have only a damaged and unhappy family to call home. God warns against
joining gangs (Proverbs 1:10-19).
Friendships can masquerade as family. The TV program “Friends” is one of many such shows that portray young adults living in a city, looking out for each other while living intertwined lives. But friends come and go. Like workers they can easily be “fired.” They are not a family. Nevertheless, a friend close by is of more use when trouble comes than a
brother living in Thailand (Proverbs 27:10).
Governments try to be family and make people as much as possible depend on them for food, clothing, housing, and everything. The notorious campaign commercial in 2012 called “Life of Julia” showed how the government walked with Julia and cared for her throughout her life from birth until death. Julia has a child, but no man. No problem. The government takes care of her. The commercial produced such an outcry that it was quickly pulled, but you can still Google it. Many of our rulers keep trying to expand the government into the sphere of family life, especially in the raising of children. Of course, governments raise children to serve the workplace and the state. God warned Israel that governments never stop taxing and taking, especially our sons and daughters (I Samuel 8:11-18).
Religious cults come and go. One sign of a cult is that it forbids its new members from maintaining old family connections. Some cults even forbid marriage and having children. Happily, cults like the Shakers that made great furniture slowly die out. Other cults kill themselves quickly, as in the horrifying mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. Cult members drank poisoned Kool-Aid and gave it to their children. Others, such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, retain enough good sense to last and even flourish, often encouraging family life. The “Shepherding” churches of the 1970s and ‘80s overstepped their bounds, with church leaders telling people where to live, whom to marry, and what jobs to take.
Yes, the Bible calls the Church the household of God (Galatians 6:10, I Timothy 3:15), just as it also calls it the Bride of Christ and the Body of Christ. But the Church does not replace actual brides or bodies or households. God’s three institutions that he gave to mankind to govern itself, Family, Church, and State, each has its own sphere of activity and authority. (See Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 124.) But all are under the authority of Christ. Therefore, Peter and the apostles defied the orders of the Sanhedrin, Israel’s highest legal court, not to speak about Jesus, saying, “We ought to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).” Children obey father and mother “in the Lord,” meaning both for the Lord’s sake and subject to Christ’s higher authority (Ephesians 6:1). Jesus himself refused to go see his mother and brothers one time when they called him to take him home (Mark 3:31-33). And the Bible warns against church leaders who assume greater authority than God has given them, warning that some will even forbid marriage (I Timothy 4:3).
There are other collections of people that claim to be “family.” However, the ones in our day that make the biggest claims are the workplace and the state. Christians have to resist their leech-like engorgement, lest they leave families starved of life and love – developments that in the long run will weaken both nations and workplaces.
What should you do if you want to fake-family-proof your children? We turn now briefly to an outline of how to tend the family as one tends a garden.
Tending Healthy Families
Gardens need fences, organization, weed pulling, and sun and water before there can be a good harvest of carrots and cucumbers. Families need fences, organization, regular weed pulling, and the sun and water of God’s Word.
God’s Fence Around the Family: The Ten Commandments make a fence around the family. Commandment Ten: Do not covet your neighbor’s wife. Wishing that you could have Billy’s mother, or Ted’s wife, will cast a pall of unhappiness over your own family. Do not do it. Commandment Seven: Do not commit adultery. Adultery destroys families. Commandment Five: Honor your father and mother. Failure there shortens life in God’s world. Commandment Four: Work six days a week, but on the seventh day let everyone rest and worship God. This commandment especially mentions different household members. It helps keep obsession with work and the love of money from distorting family life. Commandment Three: Keep your vows, including marriage vows, because God will remember them and punish their breaking even if people do not.
God’s Family Organization: Gardens need structure as well as fences. Vegetables must be planted in straight rows, seeds the right distance from each other. If you plant seeds wherever, they will grow wherever, ripening all over the place at different times and getting in each other’s way. Family structure is simple. Everyone has the attitude of submitting to
everyone else, beginning with the wife to her husband – not to all men, just her husband. Husbands must love their wives as Christ loved the church, and he must love her as much as he loves his own flesh. Parents teach their children in the fear of the Lord, and children obey their parents (See A Little Strength 5.1 for an explanation of this structure in Ephesians 5).
Weeding Out Sin: One must weed a garden. Not once, not twice, but often. In families weeds of bitterness, anger, pride, and just general meanness can grow. Then the families become terrible places. Solomon warns against such weeds. He grew up in such a family! “A wise son makes a father glad, but a foolish man despises his mother (Proverbs 15:20).” “Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife (Proverbs 21:9).” Lest we think that home troubles come only from wives and sons – Solomon writes to his son – there is the story of beautiful and wise Abigail married to the fool Nabal (I Samuel 25).
Watering the Family With God’s Word: A garden must have sun and water. From long ago, families that serve God have worshiped him as a family, watering their spirits with the Word of God and seeking the light of his favor in prayer. Abraham did so. Likewise Joseph took his family, including Jesus, to Jerusalem for the Jewish feasts. Fathers should take their families to church every week. If you are healthy enough to go to work or school, then you are healthy enough to go to church. And before meals, families should thank God for their food just as Jesus did with the five loaves and two fish (Luke 9:16).
Every family should gather daily to worship God. Family worship is easy once it is made a family habit: same place (I prefer the living room); same time (right after dinner together); same leader (father, or mother when father is absent); and same format (sing Psalm, read Bible chapter, kneel for prayer that father usually utters). Memorizing a passage of Scripture or the Westminster Shorter Catechism is also a great part of family worship. But don’t overdo it. Too much water can drown a garden, too much sun will scorch it, and too much family worship and father talking will overwhelm children.
Hospitality is God’s command to families. It lets outside friendships into a family, which should live an open life, not a secret one. Eating together with both friends and strangers strengthens families and, of course, extends the family’s kindness to others. Hospitality from a happy family can be extremely attractive to people from damaged and broken homes. Such people are especially vulnerable to the Marxist and Feminist lie that the so-called “patriarchal” family is a place of oppression and repression, the “root cause” of all unhappiness. A great way to confound that lie is to live with love and kindness in your own family and let outsiders see it.
Conclusion
Everyone notices sooner or later that his family is not perfect. Satan tempts us to blame other family members: husbands blame wives, wives blame husbands, children blame father and mother, father and mother blame children, brother blames sister, and so on. In every such accusation there is almost always some truth because the remnants of the old man of sin remain in every believer in this life. “What is wrong with my family?” A good answer that usually leads to at least partial improvement is, “I am.” “I am what’s wrong with my family.”
Imperfect as our families are, they contain more freedom and lasting joy than any fake family. They contain more security than the state can provide, and more joy than a workplace can offer. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil; for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).” Today the workplace and the state are the most dangerous fake families.
In your own families, keep pulling up the weeds of selfishness, secret sins like late night pornography, anger and strife and drunkenness. How can you pull them up? Repent before God and ask forgiveness of the offended family member or members. Trust in God. And remember and pray Psalm 127. Verse one in the King James Bible has been our family
motto since the day we married.
"Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it:
except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows:
for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:
they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate."
- Psalm 127
– Bill Edgar
What I Think I Have Learned from the Pandemic
(What Do You Think You Have Learned?)
We live in an extremely irreligious world. In previous eras, widespread illness and death made people remember God and ask, Is God punishing the world for its sins? What sins? How can we repent and regain God’s favor? In the face of natural disasters, those questions were common in pagan societies where people once believed in their gods, and in Christendom where the true God revealed in Jesus Christ had put those old gods to death.
Now we live in a third age when no one believes in the old pagan gods, whether Canaanite, Greek, or Norse. Few of us live with the awareness that the Living God actively rules his world, sometimes sending plagues and droughts to punish it and bring it to its senses, even directly killing the impious for their impiety (See I Kings 17:1, II Samuel 24:13, Acts 12:20- 23). Even seemingly devout Christians shy away from such thoughts. So our discussions about the Pandemic are not spiritual; they are strictly utilitarian, about quarantines, masks, infection rates, vaccines, and keeping the peace among people with different opinions about what should be done. I have learned that I am part of a very irreligious world.
Did the Pandemic originate in a wet market in Wuhan, China, or did it escape from a research laboratory in the same city? Either way, the Pandemic is God’s judgment on a wayward world, and it affects the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Without rejecting vaccines or masks, Christians should pray to God for the Pandemic’s removal while confessing our own sins and the sins of our nations. As in previous such widespread disasters, our political and religious leaders should call the nation to fasting and prayer.
Question: Will God keep sending new variants of this quickly mutating virus until we finally turn to him, even if only in a superficial way? (See I Kings 21:27-29 for how God showed mercy even to King Ahab when he humbled himself before God’s judgment.) Or will war and famine bringing more death follow the Pandemic (See Revelation 6)? I have learned that I can easily focus on secondary questions such as where the Pandemic began and lose focus on the more important question of God’s providential message in the Pandemic.
Do not put your trust in men, God tells us over and over again. But we keep doing it. “Trust the Science.” “Science is Real.” “Experts say.” “Research concludes.” These mantras all have the ring of faith: misplaced faith. The extremely well funded Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has shown itself to be a self-serving and confused bureaucracy throughout the Pandemic. Everyone paying even half attention knows how its advice and confusing recommendations have reversed course over and over again for the past several years, beginning with “masks are useless” to “everyone should wear a mask all the time everywhere.” Popularly elected governors sent infected people to nursing homes where many died. Misinformation censored by our tech overlords turned out to be true, and approved messages turned out to be misinformation. On July 4, 2021, President Biden declared independence from the virus. “Today, while the virus hasn’t been vanquished, we know this: It no longer controls our lives, it no longer paralyzes our nation, and it’s within our power to make sure it never does so again.” Then the deadly Delta variant hit, followed by the nearly unavoidable Omicron variant, killing millions more around the world. I have learned, again, that my trust in man should always be limited, a little skeptical even.
People who live by the Bible’s wisdom were able on the whole to manage the Pandemic better than those who do not. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).” Hardest hit have been people living alone who got seriously sick. Second hardest hit have been single parent families, meaning women with children but no husbands. When the schools closed, such mothers often faced a Hobbesian Choice: leave the children at home alone unattended or quit working. Faced with that “choice,” millions stopped working, leaving Wall Street Journal writers to bemoan how women have “left” the workforce [no they are still working, but not for money], thereby hurting the “economy [always a misleading abstraction].” Third hardest hit were isolated father-mother-children families. If both parents worked, one had to quit working, usually the mother, unless they were wealthy enough to hire help for the children. In a much stronger position were nuclear families that were part of an extended family living nearby. Grandparents could watch children. With even one sibling family nearby – meaning four adults – things could be managed in a mix and match fashion.
Children in extended families could be part of natural “pods” where face-to-face life could go on. When the statistics are gathered, these children will be found to have suffered fewer suicidal thoughts, less depression, and less loss of learning – that is, if anyone dares to gather and publish such statistics – than children from mother-child families and isolated nuclear families. Best off were extended families embedded in a church, where retired members could supplement the work of grandparents. Happily, I have lived the blessing of an extended family embedded in a church. I have learned again what I already knew from my years in Cyprus (1970-74) that such families are the most resilient when trouble comes. As it inevitably will.
Wise people learn from experience, and our whole country has just had quite an experience with this Pandemic. What have you learned from the Pandemic so far?
– Bill Edgar
Tired of singing the same dozen favorite tunes every Psalm Sing? Want some structure? With this issue, we introduce a new feature: Psalm Sings. Each one has served as the lion's share of an Elkins Park RPC monthly Psalm Sing, using The Book of Psalms for Worship (Crown & Covenant, 2009). We present the Psalms chosen by the leader and a few introductory comments. Any given theme could easily have more Psalm selections. Each of these Psalm Sings takes about forty minutes, with several favorites and prayer time filling an hour of worship.
– ed.
Psalm Sing: God’s Passions, People, and Purposes
The goal of this Psalm Sing is to worship Jesus Christ with Psalm selections that focus on themes that are constant in the Psalter but resoundingly absent from modern American worship songs. Michael J. Rhodes wrote an opinion piece for Christianity Today, arguing that when you read the Psalter and then read the lyrics to the “Top 100 Worship Songs,” there are some striking differences. It's a worthwhile read: www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/september-web-only/rhodes-ccli-top-25-worship-songs-singing-justice-songs.html.
1. The Top 25 Worship Songs Do Not Focus on the Poor (orphans and widows)
What about true religion? James 1:27
72E He Will Save the Needy
10B Rise Up, O LORD Notice in the last stanza, Bible verse 18: “Vindicate the crushed and fatherless”.
2. The Top 25 Worship Songs Only Present “Spiritual” Enemies
Consider these recent statistics of the persecuted Church
Every day:
13 Christians are killed worldwide for their faith
12 Churches or Christian buildings are attacked/vandalized
12 Christians are unjustly imprisoned/arrested, and
5 Christians are abducted
17C Arise, Confront My Foe
59A Free Me, My God Notice in the first stanza, Bible verse 2: “Deliver me from men who thirst for blood.”
3. The Top 25 Worship Songs Never Pose “Real” Questions to God
Plenty of people threw questions at Jesus as he walked through ancient Palestine. Why are American Christians so shy about asking questions of him now?
13B O How Long, LORD? Notice in the first stanza, Bible verse 1: “O how long will You hide Your own face from me?
74A God, Why Forever Cast Us Off?
4. The Top 25 Worship Songs Mention Justice all of Once!
The Psalter has various words for justice and judgment. One such word (mishpat) shows up 65 times in 33 different Psalms. Why should we preach, pray, and protest for justice without praising God for promising to bring it?
94A God, the LORD, from Whom Is Vengeance
9B Sing Praise to the LORD Notice the last stanza, Bible verse 19: “Let nations be judged in Your presence for wrong.”
5. The Top 25 Worship Songs Are Individualistic (No Covenant Community, No Family)
Rhodes didn’t note this; his focus was the absence of justice from contemporary Christian worship music. Perhaps if we remember that we are in covenant with the entirety of God's people we will be motivated to pursue justice for the weak.
122A I Was Filled with Joy and Gladness
128B Blessed Are All Who Fear the LORD'S Name Notice in the last stanza, Bible verse 6: “May you see your children’s children.” And of course, the Psalm concludes with a blessing for peace on the entire covenant community: “On all Israel be peace!”
– Hunter Jackson
Getting to Know You: Ryan & Kimmy Alsheimer, Walton RPC
Where are you (each) from?
We are both from little towns in “Upstate, NY” and currently live in Oneonta, NY. Kimmy is from Oneonta and always felt inclined to stay around her family. Ryan is from a little bit north of Oneonta (Westmoreland, NY to be exact). He moved to Oneonta for his undergrad, met Kimmy there, and they both decided to stay.
What did you believe about God growing up? (What did your family teach you? Did you go to church; if so, where?) Ryan was raised as a Roman Catholic and family church attendance was sporadic, but the overarching traditions and ideas were present in his family’s life. He was explicitly taught about the gospel a few times throughout his upbringing by one of his uncles, and a close friend who was the son of a local pastor. Their efforts planted seeds that the Lord caused to bear fruit while Ryan was in college. To directly answer the question, Ryan believed that God was a real and distant being who was pleased with people who followed the right rules, and disappointed with the ones who didn’t. A personal relationship with this God seemed unfathomable, and not necessarily desirable.
Kimmy grew up in a loving Christian family and her father has been a pastor in the same church for the entirety of her life. Through God’s grace and abundant blessings in providing for her in this way, she does not recall a time when she didn’t know God as her Heavenly Father.
Did things change as you reached high school and beyond?
Ryan found new ways to sin and try to enjoy a life without God. His greatest passion was music and playing in rock bands. His self-righteous heart was very concerned with making a reputation for himself as a person and musician. While going through a personal struggle as a teenager, he had an experience while reading the Sermon on the Mount where he felt a very real sense of compassion from Jesus Christ toward him. Ultimately however, Ryan left this experience alone, and continued identifying as a Christian while still living a life marked by unrepentant sin.
As Kimmy grew older she developed leadership gifts which offered her opportunities to help lead her high school youth group and college ministry group. As we know, our own hearts can often pervert God’s good gifts to us and make them into idols. In Kimmy’s case, her giftings and roles became sources of pride as she claimed ownership over the successful results of her ministry efforts.
This resulted in a self-righteousness that judged others who were not living the Christian life she thought that they should. In college, Kimmy was presented with the Calvinistic Doctrines of Grace by a childhood friend. This repulsed her. How could God be pleased with people who didn’t do anything to earn it? Eventually, by God’s working, she came to trust those Doctrines of Grace which have led to a freedom from her self-righteous heart, and have become a source of her joy.
What led you to God (if not already covered)?
After moving to Oneonta for college, Ryan experienced some personal turmoil through his parents getting divorced as well as a recent breakup with a long-term girlfriend. In a real sense, he felt the hopelessness of his self-righteous perfectionism which had failed him at this point. Through God’s providence, he connected with a Baptist college minister, who pursued Ryan and thoroughly explained the gospel. Ryan responded in faith and repentance, was baptized soon after, and started serving in various ministry opportunities.
Kimmy is blessed to have been led to God through the ministry of her family upbringing.
What led you to your current congregation?
It’s been a wild journey for us. Because of the gifts and passions that the Lord has given us, God has provided opportunities for us to serve in ministry together since before we were married. We served in college ministry together at SUNY Oneonta for several years while Ryan simultaneously took on a role as an associate pastor at Kimmy’s childhood church. After a few years serving as a pastor, the Lord sparked an intense season of study of the Bible in Ryan, through which he became convinced of Calvinistic doctrines. After some discussion with the elders of their church, it became clear that the Lord was calling Ryan away from pastoral ministry at this church and into a season of seminary study in order to prepare for an unknown future pastoral role. While Ryan was going through seminary, we spent three years at a church out of town worshiping and serving with a wonderful non-denominational Calvinist-leaning church. We spent a lot of time with our pastor and his wife as we were discipled by them in ministry. During this time, we both became persuaded toward Reformed Presbyterian theology through our study of the Word, prayer, and conversations with each other. Ryan was also occasionally serving as pulpit supply for a new Sunday evening worship service of the Walton Reformed Presbyterian Church, which they started in Oneonta in hopes that the Lord would launch a new church from it. After Ryan graduated from seminary, Pastor Bill Chellis of the Walton congregation offered Ryan an internship with the primary focus of helping to plant a new church in Oneonta. We took the summer to pray and talk through this, and felt the Lord’s calling and blessing in this direction. We became members of the Walton RPC in early October, and are ecstatic to be able to plant a Reformed church together in our hometown. It is literally a dream come true.
How has God helped you?
Our biggest struggle in our marriage has been having children. After we were married, we took five years to wait on children while building a direction for our future family regarding where we wanted to live, what we felt called to do as careers, paying off debt, buying a house, renovating, etc. When we decided it was time to have children, we struggled with an intense and painful season of infertility. After three long years of prayer, many doctors appointments, disappointments, and medical scares, the Lord graciously provided our son Jude in March of 2020! Jude is the sweetest
little guy and because of his little life, we are reminded daily of the grace, mercy, sovereignty, providence, and joy of God. We have been trying to bring Jude more siblings, which has unfortunately led to complicated medical situations with Kimmy’s body requiring multiple surgeries this year, and a miscarriage of our sweet Hannah over the summer. Even through these trials, God has helped us to stay (mostly) sane, to draw us closer together as a family, and to cherish the gift of life. Christ has been our joy and peace.
What are you most thankful for?
We are most thankful for Christ; the eternal life that He grants for our future, and the abundance of life that He grants to us now. We are also incredibly thankful for each other and our son. Our lives have been a little turbulent over the past few years, and through it, the Lord has brought us closer together. We are also extremely thankful that God has a plan to build a Reformed Presbyterian church in our hometown of Oneonta, and that He is able to use us in that work!
-- Ryan & Kimmy Alsheimer
Proverb Explanation: A Tale of Two Cars
"A soft word turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger."
– Proverbs 15:1
Wise people learn from others; some folks learn only from their own experience; fools won’t learn. Here is how a large friend of mine learned from experience that harsh words stir up anger. While driving to Penn State and keeping the speed limit, with his inspection up to date, he was pulled over by a State trooper. The trooper was looking for a car like the one my friend was driving. All he had to do was answer some questions, show his license and registration, and he’d have been on his way, but harsh words stir up anger. My friend greeted the trooper like this: “Whadya pull me over for? I wasn’t breaking the speed limit!” So the trooper said, “All right, buddy, out of the car.” Getting out, he “accidentally” bumped the trooper. That earned him, “Okay, up against the car and spread ‘em.” In the end, for resisting a police officer, he got a week in jail.
Here’s a story of a soft word turning away wrath. In 1970 my wife and I lived in Pittsburgh without a car. Then I got a temporary job teaching political science at Geneva College thirty miles away, meaning I needed a car three days a week, so a friend lent me his car. The first day I drove down the street we walked every day. Unfortunately, it was one-way, right past the police station. The ticket came in the mail: $55, a lot of money in those days, and a big chunk of our budget. So while I was at work, my cute wife, who looked about fourteen, went to the police station to pay the fine. The old officer at the desk looked at her, meekly ready to pay, and remarked, “That’s an awful lot, isn’t it.” “Yes it is,” she said, with just the hint of a quiver in her voice. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s just call it fifteen,” and he crossed out
the fifty-five and wrote fifteen.
Wrath comes everyone’s way. To turn it away, answer softly. To make it angrier, answer harshly. It’s simple. The trouble is we speak before thinking, with reflexive irritation, or defending our honor, or desiring to justify ourselves, or determined to dominate. Then we answer in kind and make things worse.
Does a soft word always defuse anger? Sadly, no! David’s gracious words to King Saul several times defused his anger, but only temporarily. When reviled, Jesus did not revile in return, even praying as he was crucified, “Father, forgive them (Luke 23:34).” The crucifixion went ahead.
“A soft word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” does not tell us which to aim at, turning away wrath or stirring it up, but it does tell us that in general to get more anger, answer harshly, and to turn away wrath, answer softly. Our choice, over and over again!
– Bill Edgar
Report of Atlantic Presbytery Meeting March 25-26, 2022
It is typical at the conclusions of meetings where major or difficult decisions have to be made, to sing Psalm 133:
"Behold how very good it is,
A pleasant thing to see;
When brothers join to live as one
In peace and unity."
Perhaps you have sung this at the end of your annual congregational meeting after hearing many reports, adopting a budget, and even considering improvements to your church property. This same Psalm is sung when teaching elders and ruling elders gather from a specific region to consider the work of the church for which Christ died.
Your church is in a group called the Atlantic Presbytery with eight other churches from New England to the Catskills and Poconos to southeastern Pennsylvania. What a great blessing and encouragement to know that we are not alone; if one church is suffering a difficulty, we know that help is available. Five of the churches are in major metropolitan areas and the other four are in rural communities. Elders from these nine churches meet together each spring and fall to care for them all. March 25-26, 2022, the Cambridge Church graciously hosted us.
John Edgar, pastor of the Elkins Park Church in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, served as the moderator. He did an excellent job of moving the delegates through the packed agenda by keeping us on topic but not rushing us through the work. It is a great blessing to recount the things God is doing among us. The elders from each of the member churches reported what has been happening and what they are seeking to do in the future.
David Klussman, the son of elder Mike Klussman, was introduced as a newly-ordained elder in the White Lake, New York church. We yearn to have more elders being ordained to take up the work of Christ’s church.
A matter of great concern was a resolution adopted last fall forbidding any elder in the presbytery to sign a letter for anyone wanting a religious exemption from the Covid-19 vaccine mandate. This resolution was rescinded because it had been adopted hastily and had greatly disturbed one church.
Students
The presbytery is entrusted with the duty of training men to be pastors. Stephen Sutherland from the Cambridge, Massachusetts church was commended to the presbytery to prepare to be a pastor. He is taking online courses from the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh. The Atlantic Presbytery, rather than the seminary, is responsible to see that he is prepared to be a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ryan Alsheimer passed two exams and Zack Seigman passed three exams. Ten exams are required before a church can call a student to be their pastor. Hunter Jackson was sustained (i.e., passed) in his tenth exam before the Presbytery, so he may now be called as a pastor. When that happens, he will have three more exams before being ordained. Obviously, it is a high standard for students to meet before becoming pastors.
One more student, Zach Dotson, expects to emigrate in May to Tasmania to become a pastor in the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia.
New Work Possibilities
We want to see more churches started in our presbytery. We heard of three possible places. Ryan Alsheimer and Elder John Cripps, from the Walton, New York church, are working in ONEONTA. Each Sunday evening, they hold a worship service in that town as well as prayer meetings and other activities through the week.
When the Covid-19 lockdown started, David Klussman invited friends and neighbors to his home in MOUNTAINDALE, New York. They longed to be with other people and began studying the Bible together. Not everyone in the group is trusting in Jesus Christ but they are learning about him. The mother of Hazleton Area pastor, Paul Brace, lives near the Delaware-Maryland border on the DELMARVA Peninsula. She is a member of a church that has been unfaithful to the Bible. She and some of her friends would like to be in a faithful church but they cannot find one in their area. Is this a place where the Atlantic Presbytery might start another church?
Improving Our Work
Rather than do things just because “that’s the way we have always done them,” we ask whether there is a better way that honors the Lord. Elders, like many people, can procrastinate. But if reports and requests are not available in a timely manner, the delegates are not prepared to do their work well. Steps were taken to establish deadlines so delegates can be ready for the work when we come together.
Between meetings, an Ad Interim Commission is appointed to address routine matters. Typically, the Session of one church has been appointed to be our Ad Interim Commission. We are not the only presbytery to do this, but in one presbytery this practice contributed to a significant problem.
We agreed to have elders from more than one church serve on this commission. At this meeting there were requests for large sums of funding. Instead of making spur-of-the-moment decisions on them we have formed a finance committee to examine these requests prior to meetings to consider the whole financial picture and provide guidance in making a budget.
Finances
The work of the Presbytery has many costs associated with it. The only income the Presbytery receives is from the assessment laid on each congregation: a dollar amount for each communicant member. In the last few years that assessment has been $40 per communicant member. There are 435 communicant members in Atlantic Presbytery. Thus, for a every $435 needed for the work, the assessment must increase $1. But at this meeting, requests for funding, along with the regular needs, totaled so much that the assessment to cover all costs would have been about $100 per member.
The Presbytery needed to do what every family and individual needs to do (and what governments and businesses should do) when expenses are greater than income: cut expenses and/or increase income. The Presbytery decided to do both. Some expenses were completely cut; others were significantly reduced. On the income side, the assessment has been raised from $40 to $55 per communicant member—a 37.5% increase.
As we sang Psalm 133 at the close of the meeting, we reflected on many ways the Lord had brought us through difficult matters to live as one. God has brought peace to his church. What a blessing!
– Bruce Martin
Book Review:
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self :
Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution
By Carl Trueman
Crossway, 2020
Trueman tries to answer this question: How has, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body,” come to seem like a reasonable claim? He answers, “Follow the thinkers.” He begins with the late 18th Century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He goes next to early 19th Century Romantic poets like the Englishmen Percy Shelley and William Wordsworth. Then come the heavy hitters of 19th Century thought: the English biologist Charles Darwin, the
revolutionary German economist Karl Marx, the mad German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. He ends up with weaker 20th Century writers like the sex obsessed Austrian Wilhelm Reich and the German Herbert Marcuse, of the Frankfurt School. Know these long dead European men and you will be
equipped to understand American Justice Anthony Kennedy’s infamous dictum in 1992’s Supreme Court Planned Parenthood v Casey decision – “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” – and the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision that discovered in the 1787 American Constitution the hitherto unimagined “right” of two men to “marry” each other.
The modern self midwived by these intellectual “stars” is an inward looking, self-defining, psychological entity, answerable not to God, tradition, other people, or biology. She/he/it/they defines its own “identity” and claims the right to tell her/his/its/their own “story,” skeptical questions forbidden. Those who refuse to cheer approval to someone’s “story” are ipso facto irrational bigots. “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body,” is a modern cry for liberation from a victimized individual, desperate to express the “real me.”
Although Trueman does not “out” these men’s personal lives, they each have their own story to tell, mostly of decency disregarded. Rousseau, the paragon of compassion and instructor on how to raise children, abandoned his own five offspring in the Paris Foundling Hospital. Sensitive Shelly treated his wife abominably. Marx was a mooch. Nietzsche famously went raving mad. Reich ended up a caricature, with his risible Orgone Box. (Trueman notes Reich’s oddity.) Charles Darwin seems to have been a decent man, kind and humble. Freud was dogmatic and could not abide being contradicted.
Occasionally, Trueman notes that there is more to the story than he tells in his follow-the- thinkers book. There is 1) the loss of natural law theology, 2) the Industrial Revolution’s elimination of gendered work, and 3) the amazing development of science and technology. This review will note a little about each of these three factors in turn.
1) Loss of natural law thinking has kneecapped the Christian Church in proclaiming basic truths that everyone knows, like sexual relations are for producing offspring, murdering innocent humans before they are born is evil, and people are either male or female. Why have we lost natural theology? Within the Reformed world, the intense dislike of natural theology by the Westminster Seminary Dutch professor Cornelius Van Til and the Swiss German neo-Orthodox theologian Karl Barth had something to do with that loss. Natural law theology, furthermore, requires reasoning. But Christian churches in America want personal experience and emotion. Seventeenth Century New England Puritans made a personal conversion narrative rather than adherence to the Christian creed the door to church membership. The contemporary Church still loves personal testimonies. And now we have amped-up praise bands to stimulate emotion.
Nevertheless, the turn away from natural theology is as unwarranted as it is harmful. The heavens declare the glory of God, even apart from the Scriptures (Psalm 19). God’s “invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made (Romans 1:20).”
Gentiles “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them (Romans 2:15).” God created the nations so “that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him (Acts 17: 26).” The Westminster Confession of Faith begins with the “light of nature” and “the works of creation and providence” that “manifest the wisdom, goodness, and power of God,” leaving people everywhere without excuse for not obeying and worshiping the true God (WCF 1.1).
2) While the Christian Church was turning away from natural theology, the Industrial Revolution was transforming work. Gender, a hard-to-read 1982 book by Ivan Illich, shows how work was once divided into men’s work and women’s work. Details varied greatly, even between neighboring valleys, but the big picture everywhere was gendered work. The Industrial Revolution replaced gendered with unisex work. Women man assembly lines, drive tractors, and are lawyers. Meanwhile, young men announce, “We’re pregnant,”— a biological impossibility – enter the delivery room, change diapers, and cook dinner. Every modern family now has to work out for itself what will be his work, her work, and our work. The disappearance of gendered work has produced the “human,” with some incidental biological variations having to do with bearing children. In everyday speech, “Parent” has replaced “Father,” and “Mother,” and that dreadful unisex verb “parenting” is now common.
3) Finally, modern medical technology has made it possible for men and women to present themselves as their opposites. Add testosterone to a female diet, remove breasts, perhaps do some genital surgery, and she can begin to present herself as a male. Never mind that every cell of her body still contains the female XX chromosomes, and her brain has irremovable female markers. Likewise, give some female hormones, suppress some male hormones, and perhaps do some genital surgery on a male, give him different clothing and a lot of make-up, and he can present himself as a female. Of course, surgeons, hospitals, and Big Pharma make a LOT of money on each “gender transition,” not to mention the money made by the counselors and psychologists who facilitate “transitions” and sometimes try to clean up disturbed psyches afterwards. Meanwhile, ambitious scientists with financial backing from Silicon Valley types are trying to figure out how to upload a human mind into the Cloud, where presumably it can live forever. What then becomes of the material that makes male and female?
Even as intellectual history, Trueman’s account of some long-dead European writers and the modern Self has some gaps. He does not attempt to describe and contrast the modern concept of the Self with what went before it. What was the pre-modern concept of the Self?
Neither does he attempt to explain why the writers he presents shaped the modern image of the Self rather than others. Why has the world not followed the 17th Century Frenchman Blaise Pascal or the 20th Century’s Englishman C.S. Lewis? In any event, we now live in a world where “God created man male and female…” (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 10) has become controversial.
Should Christians continue to insist on the fundamental and unchangeable man/woman distinction? Yes! “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created (Genesis 5:1-2).” God made Man male and female, just like God made Lion male and female. Those who consider the biological male/female distinction so unimportant that “man” can be severed from male, and “woman” severed from female, deny the importance of material reality. Ancient Gnostics viewed the body as the evil prison of the soul. Modern Gnostics view the body as the psyche’s tool, to be used for pleasure, or to be controlled and mastered so that it matches the psyche’s asserted “identity.” Certainly, matter and energy are not all that there is, but God made it, he made it good, he will redeem it, and like Jesus’ body, our bodies will be resurrected. Paradoxically, Christians today must say, “I am a Christian and therefore I am a materialist.”
Should Christians continue to insist on the fundamental and unchangeable man/woman distinction determined by the biological male/female difference? Yes! Babies come from the union of one male sperm and one female ovum and in no other way. Without babies human society comes to an end. Will a society that has lost the hunger for the union of male and female as one flesh continue to have babies? Not very many! (Christians who today want to be “counter cultural” should marry and have lots of children.)
Should Christians continue to insist on the fundamental and unchangeable man/woman distinction? Yes! The love between a man and a woman demands love between people who are same and different at the same time. The cry, “Why can’t a woman be like a man?” sung by Professor Higgins in the 1964 musical My Fair Lady, is a cry to escape the challenge of basic human diversity, male and female. We live in a world made by the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a mystery of eternal love dancing in unity and diversity. God made Man in his image and likeness, male and female, to enact a similar dance. Reducing Man to “human” rather than male and female produces an Image more like the unitary and undifferentiated Allah of the Koran, a god of singular power, rather than the Trinitarian Living God, a God of love.
Should Christians continue to insist on the fundamental and unchangeable man/woman distinction? Yes! A world where everyone is simply human is boring. The French saying has it right. Vive la difference!
What is to be done? At the end of his book, Trueman offers a few brief suggestions. Teach Christian doctrine, consistently, dogmatically, and thoroughly. Strengthen church communities. And so on. Preachers and theologians should recover a confident natural theology. And we need to explicate what male and female mean in a world where gendered work has mostly disappeared, and we need to turn the Church away from emotions-first
Christianity.
If you are up for the effort of getting a partial answer to how, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body,” has come to seem reasonable, then read Trueman’s book. His intellectual history is worth the effort. But bear in mind, there is more to the story than some obnoxious old European men.
– Bill Edgar
Understanding Isaiah 53:10 – An Email Conversation
"Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand."
- Isaiah 53:10
This recent email conversation was prompted by a question from a Jewish friend, and has been edited only to remove names. --Ed.
H: Dear Friends,
How do you interpret this verse? I’m looking at it in Hebrew and it is (seems) clear that it is talking about his seed, i.e. his children, grandchildren etc.
Best wishes
A: Philemon 10 has the idea that Onesimus is Paul's "offspring in chains." I think it's pretty common to think of the genetic link from teacher to student. When I was at Purdue one time, I saw a "family tree" of the current chemistry faculty, and their faculty advisors, and the advisors to them, etc...some traced their "lineage" back to Berzelius and Faraday. Jesus himself (the suffering servant himself) said, "and who are my mother and my brothers and my sisters?"
B: To understand the verse:
1. Look back at the earlier “Servant of the LORD” passages in Isaiah. For example, “I will also make you a light to the nations (49:6).”
2. See context in Isaiah 53, especially 53:8-9: the Servant died and was buried.
3. Recall that dead people do not have children.
4. But the Servant will have long life and many descendants.
How can all of this be put together? The Servant will suffer for the sins of his people, die, return to life, and have many children, including from the nations, together with great honor.
H: I’m sorry. Perhaps I don’t understand. Are you saying that Jesus will get married and have children?
A: I'm reminded of Nicodemus and John 3. So, no, Jesus never married nor did he have children, but his offspring, instead, are those who call him God and follow God's commandments loyally.
H: Thank you for all your replies!
B: See Romans 4. Abraham is the father of all who have faith like his.
H: I understand the explanation regarding the word ‘seed’ — but what about the next two words? In Hebrew they are y’arikh y’amim. My translation says “to prolong his days.” (I don’t know if the Septuagint has a different version)
Do you have a different translation— or a sense of the meaning of the text?
B: “Prolong his days” means long life as well as offspring after the Servant’s death. The Servant certainly has prolonged days after new life, even to life everlasting, the hope of the Pharisees, Jews, and Christians. The Christ is the “first fruits” of the resurrection Paul says. And in his prolonged days, he receives many children whom he even calls his brethren, from all tongues, kindred, tribes, and nations. It is happening now. We live in the last days, as has the whole world since Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
First Gospel goes to Jews who as a whole reject it. Then it goes to Greco-Roman world with power, the world whom the Jews called unclean. Then it goes to the tribes of the north in power, whom the Romans called barbarians. Then it goes to the blacks and the browns whom Europeans in their pride considered lesser races. And today it goes to the Chinese with power. The seed continue to grow in number, even while Christ reigns in power at the right hand of the Majesty until he comes again in glory and judges all people. That is the future of the world that God created and loves. Then come the new heavens and the new earth.
H: That’s really beautiful. Thank you!
B: The beautiful is also the good and the true. Hallelujah!
Question Asked Recently: Contraception
What does the RPC teach about contraception?
From an excerpt of a Bill Edgar talk at the International Convention, August 1, 2000:
Now what about families limiting the size of their inheritance of children? Here’s a question you may not want asked! Should you plan your family’s size, or should God do it? Or does God do it through your choices? In short, should Christian families practice contraception? I grew up in a neighborhood with many Catholic families – six, seven, even eight children. The Protestant families usually had two children, at most four. I thought contraception was only a Catholic issue, a matter of natural law theology. When I was in Seminary, I ran into my first Protestant who rejected contraception. He was an RP missionary [Sam Boyle] – with more than the respectable maximum of four children – who said to me one day, “I always thought it was right to leave the arrival of children to God’s Providence.” Startled, I investigated. Here’s what I found. Prior to World War I, the Christian Church taught with near unanimity that contraceptive methods in marriage are unnatural and immoral. Children are a blessing, God is sovereign in giving them, and a main purpose of marriage is to have children. That contraception is immoral, indeed obscene, was the teaching of practically the entire Christian Church. After World War I, Protestant churches, liberal and conservative, embraced the contraceptive ethic with little moral qualm and remarkably little theological discussion. I don’t know why. Within decades it forgot that it had ever taught anything else.
I will leave the question of the morality of contraception in marriage open. The RPCNA has no official teaching on the subject. But I will say this. Contraception is an ethical issue about which the church needs to seek the mind of the Lord.
Three things are clear: 1) The Christian Church until 1930 officially rejected contraception within marriage. In 1930 the Anglican bishops officially approved the use of contraception in Britain. Several months later, in March 1931, the National Council of Churches did the same in the United States. Nearly all Protestant churches followed suit, either explicitly or implicitly. J.C. Matthews, pastor of Southfield, wrote a lonely plea in the Covenanter Witness 6/5/1935 p 356, asking about the issue: how had there been such a collapse of Christian standards on the issue? There was no discussion in reply. 2) Many families through most of history in nearly all societies have practiced some form or other of contraception. This fact is the conclusion of demographers and historians. But in Christian churches they did so against church teaching. 3) God’s Word and our subordinate standards teach that one of God’s main purposes for marriage is having children to raise for him. Or, to put it another way, it is sinful disobedience to God for a married couple to refuse to have children, or to put it off for so many years that the time of childbearing has passed. Involuntary childlessness is always a tragedy and sorrow; voluntary childlessness within a marriage is sinful.
– Bill Edgar
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Authors in this issue
Ryan and Kimmy Alsheimer are members of Walton RPC and are working to plant a church in neighboring Oneonta, NY.
Bill Edgar is a retired pastor of Broomall RPC (Philadelphia) and the author of 7 Big Questions Your Life Depends On.
John Edgar is the pastor of Elkins Park RPC (Philadelphia).
Hunter Jackson is a student under care of Atlantic Presbytery and is studying at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is currently serving as pastoral intern at Elkins Park RP Church.
Bruce Martin is a retired pastor of Ridgefield Park RPC (New York) and resides in Elkins Park. He is the clerk of Atlantic Presbytery.