A Commendation to God’s People at Our Savior in Hartland

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I must confess that our “The Body of Christ and the Public Square” conference (which we just enjoyed yesterday) is both a highlight and a burden for our lives each year. It’s a burden because much work is necessary for its success. We plan all year for a single day’s labor. Precious time and resources are given. Sweat is spent. In short, it does not happen unless we fully put our backs into it. For me, its burdens include occasional verbal beatings from friends and foes alike. To be clear, I’m not complaining. This is one of the price tags attached to the chances I take. Thomas Jefferson said something about how anyone who assumes a public role must inevitably consider himself public property. I get it. Anyone putting himself out for public consumption should expect to be chewed on from time to time. I certainly get my fair share.

Pondering the highlights, I assure you that our conference efforts always prove themselves well worth the exertion. Over the last ten years, spanning twenty educational events, big and small, this congregation’s determination to communicate a right understanding of Church and State engagement has been unquestionably fruitful across countless denominational boundaries. Without being too bold, I dare say the handful of Christians who call Our Savior in Hartland, Michigan, their church home has influenced local and national landscapes in ways few other churches of a much larger size can claim. This isn’t boasting. It is a fact. God has used these efforts to effect significant change while holding the line on what’s good.

Along those same lines, I suppose it isn’t far from some who volunteer at the event to thank God for the unique opportunities to work alongside guest speakers most folks only know from a distance. For example, my son and future daughter-in-law shepherded Riley Gaines through her time with us, ensuring she made it to and from the event. I can understand the excitement of being near one of history’s boldest. Even better, something must be said for building genuine relationships with national policy architects and influential newsmakers. After the conference, I spent a few hours at my basement bar with Dr. James Lindsay. We chatted about anything and everything—politics, philosophy, theology, you name it. It was indeed an exceptional time, feeling more like minutes than hours. We parted company as new and better friends, intent on reconnecting whenever we might find ourselves within one another’s vicinity.

Of course, as starstruck as anyone might be with these folks, we don’t idolize them. If there’s anything I’ve learned from these relationships, they are people like the rest of us. Nevertheless, I also know that to live according to the tenets of faith (1 Timothy 2:2-6), ultimately protecting the Church’s freedom to preach and teach the Gospel apart from the shadows, these people are part of the calculus in twenty-first-century America. They’re included in Saint Paul’s phrase “πάντων τῶν ἐν ὑπεροχῇ”—all who are in high positions (1 Timothy 2:2). To influence them is to influence the public square and, as a result, to have a role in steering the outcome of the game. To what end? Again, to the preservation of what Saint Paul continues to describe in verses 2 through 4: “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

We’ve been blessed with those relationships as an organization, so we form, maintain, and enjoy them accordingly.

As the pastor at Our Savior, I’m glad for God’s people here. Seeing your vigor in all of this certainly makes me smile. Moreover, your joy in the task is one of the reasons I’ll likely continue to take the punches. Your joy brings me joy. Truly. You’re forever proving their commitment to Christ. For one, you’re miles beyond mere words. You’re not willing to simply rah-rah from the bench, saying to those who need help, “Be warm and well fed” (James 2:16-17). You’re in the game, and you’re playing hard. With or without accolades, you’re moving the ball down the field in ways that serve even your detractors and will resonate for generations.

Unfortunately, as I’ve already hinted, we often do this to our peril. I’ll give you an example.

I had a conversation yesterday with someone who, no matter how gently she explains religious liberty’s benefits to her liberal family members, is viciously attacked as a mean-spirited and bigoted conservative who wants to force her opinions on others. I did what I could to encourage her. Apart from sharing God’s Word relative to the matter, at one point, I shared a thought Ralph Waldo Emerson once penned. He wrote about how there will always be a certain meanness to conservatism. Unfortunately for conservatism’s opponents, the meanness always comes bearing superior logic and facts. In other words, it brings truth. Relative to her conversations with family members, confining someone with anything will always seem restrictive, inhibiting, and mean. Still, as mean as truth’s confinement might seem, it’s good.

What’s more, the only people we should trust are the ones calling to us from within truth’s boundaries. Those people are not trying to keep us from living; they’re beckoning us to a life endowed with the greatest access to truth’s arsenal of facts—to what makes truth true. As biblically conservative Christians, we have this in spades.

Quite simply, truth—whether it be moral or natural law—is unphased by opinion; or, as I heard first-hand from Ben Shapiro long before it ever became a bumper sticker, facts don’t care about your feelings.

This congregation gets it. You know it isn’t an easy road. Still, it’s a road you want to travel because you know the One who is Truth in the flesh—Jesus Christ. He is the way of eternal life. Those who cling to Him have been set free from Sin’s foolish desires to trust anyone or anything beyond truth’s borders. You want others to know this, so you do what you can to preserve the Church’s freedom to preach and teach it. Our conference is one way you do this.

By the way, we’re already taking aim at next year’s effort. As was mentioned yesterday at the conference’s end, it looks as though Tucker Carlson will be with us in October of 2024. And Jim Caviezel is in tow for an after-Easter event of some sort. I haven’t sorted the details yet, but rest assured that I will.