Christians can never be “all in” on anything but Jesus. This puts the reflective person into a dissociative quandary. One’s occupation may or may not survive the refining fire of the eschaton, but it doesn’t make one’s job unnecessary. One’s employer may exist only because of the dysfunctions of a society or even due to injustice, but it doesn’t take away the duty of laboring as unto Jesus. One’s country may be unjust to others or to oneself, but it is no less a gift of God. We understand pilgrims to be those who go somewhere, but one can also be a pilgrim who stays and faithfully lives the awkward life given to us. Each of us bears not the spanner/lance/pen/keyboard/hammer/welding torch in vain.
Jon, I’m glad you’re posting again.
Thanks so much for the kind words! For a while there was a huge ecclesiastical penalty for discussing theology online. Then, naturally, arose a huge potential occupational penalty. At this point, I think a honest discussion of important things has to be attempted. In the last 10 years since I left the online discussion of theology there has arisen a really virulent kind of naturalism and what looks like 19th-century organicism. We have reformed people lauding natural theology in ways that don’t really seem to illustrate an honest wrestling with what Van Til was doing. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.