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R. J.: That’s a wonderful thing to have a framework or perspective from which to view tragedies like that, but some people would say, “I’m glad that works for you, but it doesn’t work for me.” What would you say to somebody like that?

Charles: I would say try it. A French philosopher by the name of Pascal once said (it’s called the Pascal Wager) “…if I believe in God and in the end find there is no God, I’ve lost nothing because I’ve lived a better life, but if I do not believe in God and in the end find there is a God, I’ve lost everything.” I would say try it; it works.

R. J.: How critical is this?

Charles: Extremely! If we say we believe something about God that God doesn’t say about Himself in the Word, guess who’s wrong. We have to work constantly because a kingdom disciple is someone Jesus said must take up His cross daily and follow Him. We must die to ourselves and live to God. This is a process of learning to think God’s thoughts after Him as the Apostle Paul instructs us to do in 2 Corinthians 10:5: “Bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” All the different religions and all the different cults and occults have grown out of man thinking His thoughts about God and the supernatural rather than what God says about Himself.

R. J.: I guess we like to say, “this is what I think about God” without thinking of what God thinks! But that involves a lot of thought. What would you say to somebody who says, “I’m too old to do that kind of thinking or I’m not educated. Do I have an out? Can I say then that I don’t have to think?”

Charles: When Jesus said, and He was quoting the Old Testament, that we’re to love God with our mind, heart, body, and soul I don’t believe he gave a retirement age to that. As I was telling you earlier, God has been dealing with me as I’m getting older on how to deal with this biblically and the prayer of David in Psalm 71 has been so meaningful to me. He says, Lord, as I am getting older and my hair is turning grey, give me the strength to continue to communicate to the next generation who you are. In Western culture young people are really reaching out for a relationship with older people to help them understand life because life is very confusing and very perplexing. They need the wisdom of older people to help them and yet I find many times that older people are pushing younger people away and not reaching out to them. They need our help, teaching them the biblical perspective regarding life and reality.

R. J.: That leads us to an important question. What would be essential elements of looking at life from a biblical framework? What are some things that go into that framework? Some hooks to hang your coat on?

Charles: First, you have to start with a right view of God. If you have a wrong view of God everything else is going to be off base and this is why I say it’s very important to study the Scripture and to be in situations where you’re taught the Bible. This is what makes the church so important because one of the main roles of the church is to teach God’s people His word so they in fact can be kingdom people. Second, a right view of creation. God is the creator of all things and that includes who we are as human beings. The Bible says we are made in the image and likeness of God. John Calvin, said in his book, The Institute of the Christian Religion, that the most important thing we can know in life is God. [We also must] know ourselves, but we cannot know ourselves unless we know God. We must have a right picture of God, if we’re to understand who we are as His image bearers. A third ingredient is to understand that God’s good creation, beginning with man, fell into sin, which touched every part of God’s creation; the physical world around us, as well as our own lives. Sin not only affected our relationship to Him but our relationship to one another. The fall helps us understand why things get so mixed up and broken and why so many people are hurt with life because they don’t understand what the fall into sin did but it’s not hopeless. The fourth ingredient is to understand why Jesus Christ the Son of God came to earth to die on the cross to redeem us from sin; to begin to restore and bring healing to the broken relationship that we have with God; to reconcile us to God and to one another and to understand the world around us. The fifth is our commitment to grow in Christ, and by that I mean being transformed. If we really believe in something it will affect our lives. Oftentimes our faith in Christ doesn’t seem to change our lives the way it should because we’re not making a conscious effort to grow to think God’s thoughts after Him and we’re left [on] our own. We have to realize that being a kingdom disciple with a world and life view involves being transformed. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12: 2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may know the will of God.” Kingdom discipleship is aimed at transforming the way we think because the Bible says as we think, so are we. We live what we think we are. The sixth ingredient is to realize that this life has an end. Christ is coming again and He will create a new heaven and a new earth. We do not believe that presently we’re in heaven. As the writer of Hebrews says we look for better things to come and we do hope in the return of Christ who will create a new heaven and a new earth. This has to be an ingredient because we can become so attached to this world that we can really believe this is really our home when in reality this is not our home. God made us for eternity, not to just be on Earth.

R. J.: Let me go back to your book. You said that your hope in making disciples is that Christians will come to see the importance of thinking, making decisions and choices and living from an eternal perspective. Would this perspective be the kind of mentality expressed in a song like “This World Is Not My Home” or would you say there is a bit of a difference?

Charles: “This world is not my home” doesn’t mean that we can withdraw from the world or move into what we call Christian ghettos, and only talk to one another. Christ said, “go into the world,” but we need to go into the world equipped. You see, we have an enemy, the Devil, who is powerful and very deceptive. He is always trying to draw us away from God. We need to be aware of his devices so we’ll not fall into his frame of thinking. The antithesis is that we must be consciously thinking of decisions we have to make and the relationships we have. It’s about God. We have to make those decisions beginning with God so we keep those things in perspective. When we do we realize it’s important to live life to its fullest right here and now but this is not our home. As the writer of Ecclesiastes says in the closing chapters, a Christian must learn to live with eternity in his heart so we realize this is not all there is.

R. J.: Now to shift gears, you said something about falling into certain traps and that is the problem we face today. We are called to live a biblically world view but there are so many things that impact us and seek to drive us away from that perspective, if you will, crack our spectacles. Would you say then that the decisions we make and how we live need to be guided again by that framework but it’s a theological framework? You seem to be saying all of us, even though we’re not pastors or church workers, all of us need to be doing theology.

Charles: Certainly! We need to teach our young people how to think properly about God. In the States, I often work with those involved in youth ministry. They often look for books and material talking about dating, drugs, sex and all the things young people are dealing with. I tell them the first thing they need to deal with is who God is and who they are because of Him. When it comes to those relationships or drugs, they need to address those issues from the perspective that they belong to God. I can’t do with my body whatever I want to do. I can’t take drugs if it’s going to harm me. I can’t get involved in premarital sex because God says not to do that. We have to start with the youngest [children] teaching our children to think biblically and theologically.

R. J.: We can’t get away from it; we have to think. We come back to the challenge of thinking. You mentioned, apart from reading your book, which I definitely recommend to our listeners, we need to teach our young people to think. What else do we need to do? As a pastor like me, how can I teach my people not only to hold to the principle but how do I teach the principle and how do I pass it on to them? What are some things I could do concretely to pass it on?

Charles: I would say that if the younger generation does not see truths working in our lives, they’re not going to be as open to embracing those truths. “Show me” is what the young people are saying. “Show me what you say about God is real and true and makes a difference in my life or can make a difference in my life.” We need to spend time with one another and become living examples of what we believe. They need to see and the world needs to see what we believe does make a difference in our lives.

R. J.: That is why the church has been marginalized in many areas because we say one thing but we don’t live that way. In marginalizing our faith, we become marginalized.

R. J.: Any parting words?

Charles: My prayer for you in Jamaica, as well as for us in North America, that God would create a great revival of thinking about the Christian life with the challenge to be kingdom disciples committed to doing all to the glory of God.

R. J.: Thank you very much, brother. It has been a pleasure.

Let me go one more step, and on this one I will tread lightly – preaching. How many of you pastors have your sermons thought through for the next year? If not, why not? What is it you are trying to accomplish? What really scares me about well-meaning preachers is when they say to me that they believe they are discipling their people through their sermons, and no more is really needed. That scares me because you have already told me that you do not have a plan for where your sermons are going. You have one ‘goal’ for this sermon and another for the next. If your people don’t know your objective for this sermon, how can you ever expect that they will figure it out when you haven’t? This is not discipleship; this is a hit-and-miss approach to simply giving out disconnected information, with no thread being given to help the people tie it all together! This again is like the teacher you would not send your children to.

If we analyze our church programs today, my educated guess would be that we would find a very active church with many enjoyable programs. But what is being accomplished towards true discipleship? You will find Sunday school and other times children and youth meetings. What coordination is there between these groups? Are the youth leaders sitting down with the children’s leaders to see what the other is doing? Do they plan in such a way that if a child was to be in those groups for several years they would receive a well rounded, well planned, training enabling them to know, be, and do something for the sake of God’s Kingdom? Isn’t this what we demand from our schools? Then why not for our churches? Do we not think that discipleship is as important, or, better, more important than what they learn in the schools?

Do you pastors know what curriculum is being used in your Sunday school – or if there is one? If you do not, then how can you be sure that what is being used does not contradict your teaching from the pulpit? Is your Sunday school using several different curricula? Why? The fact is that every curriculum generally has a different philosophy of what it wants to cover and when. The use of multiple curricula could easily mean the same material is covered several times instead of a pattern allowing a child to progress from one stage to the next in a logical sequence. In order to teach “line upon line and precept upon precept,” we believe that pastors, the church’s teaching elder, needs to know and review what is being taught in the churches! Christian Education and Publications and its Great Commission Publications curriculum can help you with this.

What also concerns me is the trend going on in our colleges and seminaries. One will start a youth leaders’ program, and another a children’s leaders’ program. These are nice, and they are the popular trend, but there is one ingredient missing. There seems to be no one teaching these leaders that their groups are part of a whole church. Instead, we are encouraging programs that will be simply doing their own thing. This teaches the groups to think individualistically instead of being a part of the whole community. Do you want a church where everyone does what is right in his own eyes, or one that is united and striving to serve Christ’s Kingdom, together? Coordination of CE and discipleship is essential for producing kingdom disciples.

Who is being trained to pull together all the different ministries in your church to make sure they are all following the overall stated purpose of your church? If every ministry in your church is allowed to continue going in its own direction, then what is being accomplished? Do you really know what is being accomplished or what method of evaluation you use to determine if you are doing what you believe you are supposed to be doing? If you don’t, then you need to ask if anything is being accomplished to disciple your people and enhance the Kingdom of God. Simply being an active church with many programs does not mean that anything is being accomplished. Don’t confuse busyness with growth.

One last question, how does all this fit with your church’s mission or purpose statement? Does your church have such a statement? This statement tells everyone why your local church exists and what it is trying to accomplish. If you don’t have such a mission statement, then it becomes difficult, if not impossible to know what you are accomplishing. In working with local churches over the years, CEP has insisted that churches not evaluate their programs but rather the results of those programs. Many “good” programs do no always accomplish a worthwhile mission.

These are straightforward questions, but they are meant to encourage you to raise the questions that need to be asked in every church – and often. In all the time you have been in your church, can you really say your people are being discipled (educated/trained)? If you think they are, on what do you base that assessment? Think about it!

Take an example from our American early history as it relates to social justice. A case in point is slavery. Some of the criticism, and not always without some justification, has been aimed at Christians for supporting the “institution” of slavery. Some well known Christians such as Jonathan Edwards actually owned slaves. How could that be? Did they not think that slaves were human beings made in God’s image? If so, why did they not react against it? If you travel throughout the south and visit some of the old churches built back in early American times or read some of the older history books dealing with American history, you find that slaves were included in the church and given assigned places to sit and worship, along with the rest. Slavery was not seen as an issue that was connected with the spiritual and religious part of life. Slavery was primarily viewed as social or political issue and because the church failed to understand the kingdom concept and the church’s role in the kingdom, a tragic war was fought in the 1860’s from which our country has never repented or recovered morally and spiritually. As a matter of fact in many incidences, it was Christian against Christian in that terrible war.

If a proper biblical understanding of the church and the kingdom had been in place things might have played out quite differently. I agree with Dr. Harry (Skip) Stout of Yale University both in a conversation with me and later reflected in the book Religion and the American Civil War, that religion was the energy behind that Civil War, and we failed to repent.

The following timeline shows some of the major influences that have contributed to the downward spiral:

The real issue is: should the institutional church inject itself in the broader kingdom realm, particularly politically and socially? Or should it withdraw and focus internally and exclusively on the organized church? And is that the only alternative? It would not be too difficult to demonstrate that the failure to understand and apply the church and kingdom concept drove many to a more liberal view of Christianity by focusing on the broader kingdom thus taking the church, as an institution, into the broader realm, creating a great rift within the organized church, especially among those advocates of church and state separation.

The church’s role is to disciple its people with a kingdom focused world and life perspective who in turn realize you cannot separate religion from any part of life, because that is who we are, made in God’s image. Christians are not to be discipled to withdraw from the world, though they are called to be different and to have a different agenda in this world. Christians, trained, discipled, and equipped, are to move into every area of life, as the salt and light, as ambassadors of Christ seeking to make a difference in those areas. If people like John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Carl Henry are correct that there are no areas of life disconnected from Christ, then we must reflect that in our lives. We must be trained in the Word of God, which is the basic step toward developing a Christian mind that knows how to think, reason, and apply God’s Word in all of life. The church must prepare us for that responsibility. There is no legitimate dualistic philosophy of life where Christ is concerned. God is the Creator and Redeemer who permeates all of his creation and generally he does that through Christians.

William Wilberforce is a good example. He did not do what he did in the name of the institutional church but in the name of Christ the King. He set out to abolish slavery in the British Kingdom and stuck with it until that happened. It was the Christian religion, applied to that area of life, that set him on his course with the determination and commitment to end that sinful institution. He did not do that in the name of the church but rather in the name of Christ the King and Lord.

I think of another illustration that grew out of a discussion in a recent sunday school class. In discussing the topic of human rights and justice, the teacher raised the question, “What was the word that caused so many problems for President George W. Bush?” The answer was “crusades.” That word was offensive to Muslims because of their understanding of the historic crusades in the middle ages. As the discussion progressed, I thought, Dr. Billy Graham has conducted numerous evangelistic crusades around the world. Criticism about “those crusades” were not heard, at least in the same way. If that is true, I ask why? The difference was the individuals involved. President Bush is a political figure with a political agenda, according to his audience. Billy Graham is a religious figure who used the word crusade with a spiritual vs. a political connotation. For a Muslim and from their world and life view, they saw the whole picture and were threatened by President Bush, but not necessarily from Graham. He represented no militant, political agenda with his crusades. In most other countries of Eastern orientation, people’s worldview incorporates religion and politics in a symbiotic relationship. European countries and especially America, embrace more of a dualistic separation of the two, following an Aristotelian and Acquinas model of dualism. This really became clearly evident in the late and early parts of the 1700’s and 1800’s.

If you have a biblically based kingdom perspective, you cannot leave God out of any area of life, education, science, economics, politics, law and any other area. “In all things,” said Paul, “Christ preeminent” or present. We are to seek first his kingdom in all things.

When we refer to kingdom education, we are including all of the above. As we do, we are attempting to avoid a dualistic approach that makes a distinction between religious education and that which is not religious. The kingdom of God includes light and darkness. It includes the kingdom general areas of life and the kingdom special areas. For example: mathematics would be a kingdom general discipline and Bible study would be a kingdom special activity. While our attempt is to talk about kingdom education as our paradigm, we will have to learn all of God’s truth, from both general and special revelation. That paradigm includes how that is done plus the relationships necessary to make it effective in its mission.

We should be careful in discussing Christian education lest we fail to distinguish at which level or from which perspective we are speaking. While every aspect of Christian education should be biblical, i.e. consistent with the Word of God, there is a broader aspect of Christian education than biblical data which I why we prefer Kingdom education as our nomenclature.

Within the kingdom of God model, which represents both the broad (general) and the special definition or we could say, the formal and informal approach to Christian education, God is the ruler and the sovereign over all.

Within His all encompassing kingdom there are various spheres o areas over which He rules as Lord. As Abraham Kuyper and later Carl Henry were famous for saying, there is not any area of life over which Christ has not said “mine.”

A second aspect of kingdom education is that it is all inclusive in its subject matter. The church has a primary role of teaching God’s special revelation in a way that will enhance, encourage, and implement the learning process from a whole life perspective. While the church focuses its teaching primarily on the Word of God, because of the church’s centrality within the kingdom, it must teach the Bible in manner that demonstrates Christ’s sovereignty and Kingship over his kingdom and the source of all truth. Actually the church, along with the family and the school, are to see the wholeness of God’s truth. For example: The Bible is not intended to be a textbook on mathematics or science but what is taught, studied, and learned in those areas must correlate to or not contradict wha God’s word teaches, thereby giving us in God’s Word a foundational base for al learning.

By “the kingdom” I mean the rule and reign of the sovereign God over all things. Presently, it is a spiritual vs. a geographical rule and reign. This present concept of the kingdom foreshadows the final stage of the kingdom initiated with the return of Jesus Christ the King at which time the kingdom will not only encompass the spiritual domain but will also be realized as a place, called the new heavens and new earth, rev. 21.

Also, we understand from God’s revelation in the scriptures, while the kingdom of God encompasses all things, the church has a special but restricted spiritual mission to make kingdom disciples by teaching people to observe and live obediently in all things and in all areas of life that Christ has commanded. It is restricted in the sense of mission and assignment. unlike the church’s role, the kingdom of God includes the public square and every other area of life. This means that Christianity is the religion of the kingdom including the church, but as a religion, Christianity is broader than the institutional church. The church is the body of Christ, an organized organism, according to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. The term institutional church refers to the organization of that body. In early America when reference was made and correctly understood, church and state separation referred to the organized or institutional church. The Westminster Divines, who authored the famous Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, indicated only two areas in which the organized church should enter the broader kingdom realm, as far as rule and politics are concerned. one allowance is proactive while the other is reactive. This is spelled out in chapter 31 of the WCF: “synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way humble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.”

Originally, the phraseology “church and state separation” did not mean a separation of state and religion. rather it meant the organized or institutional church and the state.

The contention is that if there had been a biblical understanding of the kingdom of God, the church and the state tensions, schisms, and confusions could have been avoided or at least more clearly understood. By the way, that is not directed simply to those who are not part of Christianity or the church. What has happened due to a lack of kingdom world and life view perspective is that Christians have embraced a dualistic philosophy that characterizes-western culture which separates the natural from the supernatural, faith from fact, the secular from the sacred, the spiritual and the natural, the secular from the religious. How that tends to play out in the above scenario suggests that religion belongs to the supernatural realm. Things like politics and science belong to the natural realm. Values and beliefs belong to the upper spiritual realm while science, fact, and history belong to the lower natural realm and never should the two meet. How this has played out, especially in American history, has created much confusion. Does the institutional church become involved in the political realm or does the church remain silent about political and social issues?

In application we need to understand the relation and roles of the church and the kingdom. We must understand the relation of Christianity to all of life. We must understand how the church and individual Christians or groups of Christians are to relate to the public square. And, we must further free ourselves and our western culture from the dualistic philosophy that continues to keep us from the wholistic total kingdom world and life view of Christianity. The prophet Micah has written, “He has told you o man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” We understand that Micah did not for that to apply only to the organized church, but all of life, the kingdom, as well.

Another example developed at the recent (2009) General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America. The Assembly was presented with an overture requesting it to address the President of the United States regarding homosexuality relating to the military. The Assembly declined to respond in the affirmative to the overture concluding that it was not an extraordinary issue. According to the church’s constitution, namely WCF 31:4, it could have legitimately responded by doing just what the overture asked. some believed that homosexuality with its many significant implications on the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man as God’s image, as well as the institution of marriage, was indeed extra-ordinary and were disappointed over the Assembly’s action. I mention this not to re-vi sit the arguments raised but to demonstrate the two options before the assembly. Christianity is about the Gospel, but the Gospel is the good news of the kingdom and not simply man’s salvation and his relation to God. Christianity is a world and life view with a kingdom focus, and the church has the assignment of making kingdom disciples to help its people develop a Christian mind capable of dealing with all types of moral and ethical situations plus how to think biblically about them.

We must wake up to the fact that the church’s role is to disciple its people, the body of Christ, to live in the kingdom realm “24/7” and remember that there is no area of life over which Christ has not said “mine.” Our responsibility is to proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom in its fullness. Another way of stating this-the organized church has the Lord’s assignment to disciple the body of Christ, his people, in order that they may live for him in all of life throughout all the world. We have and will continue to pay a great price, if we fail to understand and apply this to all of life.

If we are on target with our understanding of a kingdom disciple, namely one that is transformed by changing the way he thinks (rom.12:2) by intentionally thinking God’s thoughts, (2 Cor. 10:5) then to exclude God from any area of life as does the dualistic model of secular and sacred, church and state separation is dangerous. We will never fully serve our sovereign King and Lord because we will not have the Christian mind that knows how to think and act in a transforming way. And, unless God is our predicate of knowledge and basic reference point, we will have a faulty view of life and reality because as the Psalmist says, “In his light, we see light.”

I have been challenged reading Hunter Baker’s book The End Of Secularism (see book reviews) in which he has clearly opened the notion that secularism’s approach leaves God out of the picture. While showing this historic phenomena such as the struggles between the church and state, the pope and the king, etc., he has applied it to the u.s. today and “the naked public square” as the late John Neuhaus described it. Following the dualistic thinking route, politics and science are neutral topics and should not be impacted by religion or God. Hence Americans have bought into the notion that God and the state do not intermingle. But as Baker concluded in the last paragraph of the book, “removing God from our public deliberations doesn’t help us focus on the things we have in common. The truth is that the great majority of us have God in common. God matters. He matters in how we think about human rights and civil rights. He matters in how we think about bioethics and in helping us to know how far we dare go. He matters in how we treat criminals. He matters in the decisions we make about the economy and in how we go to war. In order to preserve our freedom to talk about him in all that we do, even in politics, we need only respect others by seeking to persuade rather than to coerce. Surely that is preferable to replacing the organic heart of our civilization with a mechanical one.” Pluralism yes; dualism and secularism no! Need more be said?