Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

so that you may be able to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12 2. This is resistance and reformation on the Fight, laugh, Feast Network.

It is one of the great ironies of our day that Christians can pray thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven and not actually mean anything by it.

Indeed, it is a stunning paradox that we can live as if such a prayer could not be answered.

Even worse, that we can live as if such a prayer probably should not be answered.

Thomas Chalmers, the great 19th century pastor, reformer, and educator asserted that pessimism

about the real, palpable, and demonstrable, transforming power of the gospel in history, ultimately engenders doubt

in the whole of the culture.

It is a doubt that has its nascence in over-spiritualizing the church, but that has its re-naceance in the under-spiritualizing of the society.

If Christians have come to believe, contrary to all of our creeds, confessions, and prayers,

that the will of God is irrelevant to our culture, is it any wonder then that our culture has accepted that proposition with all the

zeal of a new convert? Is it possible that our recalcitrance has led to their irreverence,

that our passivity has led to their lasciviousness, that our subjective approach to obedience has led to their

objective approach to disobedience, that our pessimism has led to their atheism? This bizarre twist

of fate is the result of an even more bizarre twist of faith.

The disconnect between Christianity and civilization is the fruit of a woefully deficient theology of covenant,

which has, in turn, produced a woefully deficient practice of the covenant.

Without covenant orthodoxy and orthopraxy,

it is inevitable that the church, and in turn the wider culture, will plunge into a pool

of concupiscence. At the root of this covenantal unfaithfulness is our misconception of God's redemptive purposes

in history. Our dreadful pessimism is clear evidence of the fact that we have simply

...