Trinitas Blog

The Apostle Peter probably shocked his contemporary audience when he declared them “a royal priesthood” in 1 Peter 2:9. Can you imagine his converted Gentile audience, who had known only the rule of kings for their entire lives, now hearing themselves described as royalty for the first time? They must have thought, Huh? You talking to me? But then, maybe we react the same way to Peter’s message today. Just like those Gentile converts, we too are royalty. We are kings and queens in the kingdom of God, serving under the True King, Jesus.

The Christian faith is not based on karma or coercion. It is instead a faith of hope. Faith in Christ is the knowledge of and belief in the truth and effectiveness of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. The knowledge of these things and belief in them give us hope for our own resurrection and ascension that we might spend eternity with God. Hope. Faith in Christ gives us hope, and that hope should change us.

“Let Your mercy, O LORD, be upon us, just as we hope in You” (Ps 33:22).

We are living through a difficult season. Few of us have actually been sick or have family and friends who have been sick, but we know of others—friends of friends, perhaps—who have been sick. Some have recovered, experiencing mild symptoms if any, and some have passed away. There is an actual physical illness among us, but there is also hysteria and chaos, whether intended or not, that make the situation far worse.

David’s rhetorical question from Psalm 11:3 has been heavy on my mind for several weeks: “If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?” Last week I urged readers to faith even in these troubled times when it seems certain that the foundations of all we know to be true are being destroyed. I am confident in calling God’s people to faith because verses 4 through 7 of Psalm 11 remind us that God is still in control, He is still the standard of righteousness, and He loves His people who perform righteous deeds. I encouraged readers to marinate themselves and their children in God’s word as a way of increasing faith.

Any sane person consuming news media during this first half of 2020 is likely to feel discouraged right about now. A pandemic would be more than enough to cast a pall over any year, but the response to the pandemic of 2020—politicized as it has been—has in some ways been worse than the virus itself. Add to all that uncertainty the civil unrest of recent days and the surprising Supreme Court rulings of last week, and we have more than enough reasons to think all is lost.

I met the most amazing young woman last week. She is a graduate of Baylor’s Honors College, specifically the Great Texts program, and is two years into her teaching career at Live Oak Classical School in Waco, Texas. It is not uncommon for classical educators to meet at conferences in the summer, but coronavirus has cancelled any such opportunities for the summer of 2020. Fortunately, this young lady is the niece of a Trinitas parent and was present at a social gathering to which I had been invited.

The “Preacher” in the book of Ecclesiastes is adamant about there being “nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). Yet, the whole of humanity, or so it seems, only sits up and pays attention at the promise of something new. Don’t get me wrong, we certainly are introduced to new i-phones with some regularity, and every fall without fail new car models are unveiled in Detroit. Fashions are renewed every season, and some of us can hardly wait to see each season’s new look on the runways or in stores. No, I think it is unlikely the wise Preacher doubted the progressive nature of invention; rather, he speaks of something deeper.

As quarantine restrictions begin to ease all over the world, we should be able to start making some observations about how our weeks of sequestering have affected us. Oh, I don’t mean to enter the conversation about whether quarantining has worked to “flatten the curve” or whether it was the right or wrong action to take or what it has done to the “Economy.” I mean only to make a prediction about how staying locked in our houses and away from the world has affected our humanity.