I sure is nice to be home for a while. I love to travel, but being home for about 12 weeks straight will help prepare me for the upcoming competition season when I’ll be gone a lot of the time again. I will post the tournaments I’m heading to as I get them set up. I am finishing up some food for a catering job this Saturday for a very dear friend’s wedding. Then I have my World Schools Debate camp the week after that, but this will be in my neck of the woods, so I get to go home every night.
One of the things I will be focused on with my World’s team is being able to argue from a Biblical perspective. All debaters in both leagues should be able to this as well. Figuring out how to teach this effectively has brought about some loss of sleep. Not horribly, but some none-the-less. Then about a week ago, it hit me as I lay sleepless in bed. I got so excited about it, I was up the rest of the night. In my camps I had already been doing some of this, but the actual rhetoric and terms I was using didn’t quite convey the whole idea. Then the word “design” stuck in my head, and that completed what I needed.
God designed the world in a certain way. And when He created all things, all of His design was put into creation as well. And part of the Creation Mandate was to figure out everything God had already put into the system. All of the scientific laws were there, we are called to discover what God put into creation and then live by them. Part of the discovery comes with the Scientific Method where we propose a hypothesis, develop reproduceable experiments, and see if our hypothesis is deemed falsified. Each time the experiment works under multiple circumstances and many experimenters, the hypothesis, is not falsified, becomes a theory, and eventually a law. We ourselves never create the law, we discover a law God already put in place.
God also just tells us some things outright as some things are better if not left to chance. The way we set up our families, businesses, churches, and civil governments are just a few of these things. There are many Bible passages that deal with how God says we are to treat these areas of our lives, and when we fail to follow God’s way, or even try to alter them to fit our ideas of how it could be better handled, things go wrong quite quickly.
For instance, God sets up the family with the man (husband/father) as the head. His job is to train and oversee the training of the family is loving God with every aspect of our being; heart, soul, mind, strength. He is also to provide for the family financially and spiritually. When his kids get out of line, the Bible prescribes the “rod of correction” as the official tool of discipline. I know that is controversial these days, and I have gotten some push back from well-meaning parents who believe this to either be archaic, or not really what God meant in the first place. However, a close inspection of the words used indicate actual physical punishment as God’s way of discipling children. Most of you know families where there is little to no discipline, and you have seen how their kids act. In most cases, it is not pretty. Again, God’s way is the right way.
And when we come up with an idea of how to do things a little differently, there can be some really intense consequences. We saw this with Saul and how he was supposed to totally wipe out the Amalekites with all of their livestock and their king. Saul didn’t do this, and as a result, God rejected him as king. And, the Amalekite king, Agag, even though he was eventually killed, had descendants who tried to wipe out the Children of Israel when Haman, the Agagite, wrote the decree in the Book of Esther.
I’m in 1 Chronicles now, and there is a repeated story from Kings that depicts this idea well. When David became king and his kingdom was established, he had it in his heart to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. King Saul, who had no regard for the Ark, lost it to the Philistines in battle, and when it came back, it stayed on a farm for many years. So, David was very right in wanting to bring it back. God was the true King of Israel, and His throne was the Ark. So, David wanted to make this a really big deal. So, he had a new cart made to carry the Ark back to Jerusalem with singing and dancing all along the way. Everything was going well until they got to the threshing floor of Chidon, the oxen stumbled and the cart jolted and the Ark was in danger of falling off the cart. Uzzah grabbed the Ark to keep it from falling off, and God killed Uzzah on the spot for touching the Ark.
David was not happy, and was a bit angry with God. I mean, this was a huge celebration David had set up to honor God as the true King of Israel. They ended up leaving the Ark at the farm of Obed-Edom for three months. And David wondered and asked, “How can the Ark be brought to Jerusalem?” He should have asked that question up front. You see, God had already set up the rules for transporting the Ark. And David finally read the rules, and saw what was needed. He had the right heart to bring the Ark of God to Jerusalem, but was doing it from his own idea of how to transport it. God had said that the Kohathites were the tribe of Levi that was to handle the most holy things of the Tabernacle. They were to carry the Ark on their shoulders. No other way was prescribed.
In 1 Chronicles 15:1–5a, it says
“David built houses for himself in the city of David. And he prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched a tent for it. Then David said that no one but the Levites may carry the ark of God, for the Lord had chosen them to carry the ark of the Lord and to minister to him forever. And David assembled all Israel at Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the Lord to its place, which he had prepared for it. And David gathered together the sons of Aaron and the Levites: of the sons of Kohath, Uriel the chief…”
When he did it the way God designed it to be done, it went very well for all. This is the same way we should approach all of life. We need to look at how God designed things to work, then follow that design. God had a reason for setting things up the way He did. Nothing is arbitrary. There is a plan and purpose for all things. We may not know exactly why, but we are told to follow God’s ways. And we know from Isaiah 55 that His ways and thoughts are higher than ours, as high as the heavens are above the earth. And that’s a long way.
What I will be doing with my Worlds team is have them discover God’s design for governments (family, business, church, civil), as well as economics, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and many other things. Once they know the design, they will see and be able to argue that when straying from God’s design, things will go wrong. And we will see that in all of creation. Look around at the world. All of the problems come from people rejecting God’s design and His plans. People come up with their own ideas of how things are supposed to work, and they end up believing the deception of Eve. They are all asking the same question, “Did God really say…?” And when they reject God, they reject His design, and it will ultimately not go well for them.
For all of you Speech and Debate students, as well as all of the parents, I urge you all to find God’s design. It’s all over His words in the Bible. This is the chief place to discover it, and not reading how God set things up can have huge consequences. Not convinced? Just ask Uzzah and David.
Amen
If you enjoyed this content, you can sign up to receive this and more to your inbox every Monday by becoming a Monument Member. Learn more here.
