Archive for the ‘Vision’ Category

A Creed Outworn

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

A worldview helps us make the critical decisions, which will shape our future.  I want to talk to you about what the vision, mission, and purpose of FSATAT (For Such a Time as This).  The For Such a Time as This (FSATAT) exists to love and  to glorify God, to help fulfill the Great Commission,  to affirm,  to encourage, to equip, and to empower parents and teachers to educate  and to disciple their students with excellence.  We are not merely a home school, or any school support resource—we want to participate, even in a modest way, in the coming revival/renewal we see coming to this nation!

In fall, 2011, I received my alumni magazine Harvard Divinity Today, Vol. 7, Number 3. I must admit reading the Today is not exactly the highest priority to this “alumni” who really reserves his allegiance to Gordon Conwell Seminary, but something caught my eye.  “HDS [Harvard Divinity School] to Expand Program in Buddhist Ministry Studies” caught my eye.  Silly me—I thought John Harvard bequeathed money in 1636 to found Harvard to prepare “men for Christian ministry.”  Can you imagine what John Harvard would say if he knew his endowment spawned a special Buddhist ministry program? Oh my.

But that is only half of it.  Buddhism—a sort of higher consciousness atheism—is no religion at all.  It has no formal priesthood, no serious understanding of soteriology (salvation) or redemption.  Buddhism is pretentious humanism; it has no serious belief in the supernatural.  It is a banana split of human effort but hardly a sugar cone of metaphysical reality.  No really ministry can occur without evoking the presence of a reality outside human existence, so, really, “Buddhism ministry” is an oxymoron.

Well, that is one reason FSATAT (For Such a Time as This) exists.  2013 religious America invests a lot of resources—a generous donor gave $2,500,000–to enable Harvard to do something that cannot be done—equip Buddhists to do ministry. But isn’t that the sign of the times. An erstwhile classmate of mine, 150 years ago, now deceased of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson, hardly a champion of Christian orthodoxy, but very much a vintage Harvard Divinity School man, speaking to the 1838 HDS senior class, in Divinity Hall, down the hall from where I lived, warned “One would rather be `A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,’ than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature, and finding not names and places, not land and professions, but even virtue and truth foreclosed and monopolized.” Virtue and truth are rarely discussed in 2012 America.

But virtue and truth are very important to For Such a Time as This.

What really matters to FSATAT? What is our vision? What are our core values?

  • The family, whether it is with a single parent, or two, is the God breathed entity that God has ordained to nurture, to equip, to challenge this new generation.
  • We value life and abhor any political or social policy that seeks to take life away.
  • We encourage parents to raise a generation who is not afraid to be overcomers in an increasingly hostile culture.
  • We urge families neither to conform to, nor to run from, secular culture but to transform this culture in the name of Christ.
  • Like Deborah’s generation in Judges 5:11, we seek to share Christ at the watering holes–cultural creating centers of this society.
  • We hope to establish an alternative culture/society of hope to this society of hopelessness so that His Kingdom might come on this earth as it is in Heaven.

 One final note.  Education is the most personal of  human experiences and belongs first to the Creator God, and then to his designated authority. Therefore, FSATAT strongly advocates and encourages parental input into education.  FSATAT passionately encourages full time home education but understands that public and private education, in some cases, is necessary, and even desirable.  We therefore support all education endeavors!

 Finally I need to say one more thing.  FSATAT is not interested in retreated from Post-Modern, secular, Post-Christian American culture. We are afraid of no worldview.  We will not pretend we serve any God but the awesome, omnipotent God we serve!  We are servants; we will die daily for one another.  But we will not participate in the culture of fear that is so pervasive in our nation. We intend to, and we encourage you,  neither to conform to, nor to run from, secular culture, but to transform this culture in the name of Christ. The newsletter encourages parents to raise a generation who are overcomers in an increasingly hostile culture. The newsletter is part of establishing a culture of hope and confidence so that Christ’s Kingdom might come on this earth as it is in heaven.

 In the months and years ahead we appreciate your prayers and support!