In December 2016, I published a commentary entitled, “Will the Trump Revolution Bring Real Change?” I said it would not unless one thing happened that Trump could not do. It did not. With President Biden, God has given our Country another crack at it.
 
In the 2016 commentary, I asked this question: “Will [Trump’s] presidency prove to be merely a ‘bookmark’ that only halts, for a time, our national journey toward social and fiscal bankruptcy?”  
 
I said the answer to that question depended on how we handled the principle that undergirded the French Revolution and was now “the prevailing principle in America.” 
 
For articulation of that prevailing principle, I turned to the words of a notable Dutch politician Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, who, in the mid-1800’s, wrote:
 

The Revolution’s principle is the idolatrous worshipof humanity; man recognizes no one but himself as sovereign, nothing but his reason as light, nothing but his will as the rule; he worships man and dethrones God.[i]

 
Then I wrote:
 

[U]ntil that principle changes, perhaps we should not expect any real change in America or in Europe. Partisan powers that at root embrace the same principle cannot really arrest the direction in which we’re headed; our momentum cannot therefore be forward, but only back and forth. As van Prinsterer said, “the only antidote for systematic unbelief is faith,” faith in the “God of nature, history, and the Gospel.”

 

If van Prinsterer is correct, and I believe he is, then the question isn’t whether Mr. Trump will bring about the change we need, because he can’t, but whether the Church will be ready to speak the Truth that both the individual and the majority, the ruler and the ruled, the employer and the employee are under the sovereign authority of the Triune God. (emphasis added)

 
From my perspective, the church was not ready, at least when gaged by the response I generally got (there were exceptions) when I spoke about the need to respond to the God-denying arrogance of a U.S. Supreme Court that thought it could redefine marriage. It did not seem ready when I spoke to the governor and the legislature last year about using the Ninth Amendment to assert against the Supreme Court the duty of civil government to secure the right of all persons, born or unborn, to life because life springs from God’s decree, not that of the Supreme Court. Instead, with respect to abortion the route chosen was to ask the Supreme Court at what gestational stage (among ten or so) it would let state law protect life.
 

Let me put it bluntly: The United States Supreme Court thinks it is God, the author of life, the definer of human sexuality, and the creator of marriage. The church at large and Christian politicians, on the whole, seem to give greater obeisance to the Court’s words than to God’s and to accord to the Court and its lower court minions (federal district courts) more authority and power than the judicial branch actually possesses, whether considered constitutionally, fiscally, or physically.
 
Now I will be even more blunt: For too long I have been part of the problem. I realized almost thirty years ago that I saw issues “in bits and pieces,” as the late Francis Schaeffer said[ii], but until last Sunday I still did not realize how much I still saw everything else in bits and pieces. I was not as God-centered in my thinking as I thought I was. And until today (Wednesday) I did not realize how little I really valued the glory of God, though I had convinced myself that what I was doing was for the glory of God.
 
President Biden, with his onslaught of executive orders and his views on life and human sexuality, along with those same views in Congress, is giving Christians another proverbial “bite at the apple” of putting the truth about God and the truth of God above a fear that simply seeks some measure of accommodation and safety.
 

To better understand what I mean about my thinking not being God-centered, I invite you to watch this 5-minute video I recorded last Sunday when it hit me. 
 
As to how my legislative work too often obscured the glory of God, I will address that at our soon to be announced state legislative briefing.
 
And if you want to explore with me what real change that is reformational, not revolutionary, looks like, I invite you to join me each Friday for the series I’m doing on the podcast, God, Law & Liberty, that I have entitled “Hope and Purpose.” I hope you will join me as I work that out. Today I speak to how the two kinds of political conservatives most prominent today are not what we need and why they cannot bring about the change in direction that is needed.