Wyatt Graham

Faith | Books | Culture

The “Demos” and The Truck Convoy

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As the truck convoy made its way to Ottawa, it planned a pit stop right next to where I live. I decided to check it out. I do not know what I was expecting. But here is what I saw: Canadians streaming down the streets with Canadian flags, in vehicles, and all protesting for their freedoms. 

I also saw F Trudeau flags. Later, I found out that some nearby also had upside-down Canadian flag(s). Elsewhere, some protestors used other gross and unacceptable symbols. As Pierre Poillievre said, however, one must avoid guilt by association. That some used unacceptable images and behaviour does not invalidate an entire group. 

Despite these negatives, the protest that I saw mostly comprised passionate Canadians. There was a sense of patriotism, excitement. After living in a Canada that has felt beaten and broken, the optimism felt right. [Read more…] about The “Demos” and The Truck Convoy

The Metaverse Promises to Disconnect Us from the Stability that Points to God

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Facebook, now Meta, promises to create a metaverse. The metaverse will allow us to experience a life beyond what is possible for us now. We can instantly communicate with anyone in the world. We can constantly see and experience new things. Information and data will be accessible to us in new and visually pleasing ways. 

Recently, a buyer spent $450,000 to purchase a plot of virtual land next to SnoopDogg in the latter’s virtual world. It is not as though the transition to the metaverse will be difficult. During the pandemic, days of Netflix and video games were the norm. Already, people play online games, creating communities (or clans). They spend hours a day on it. The digital world becomes their real world. 

The same sort of thing already happens on social media. Many of us spend hours on Instagram and TikTok and other platforms. We live for the like. We live to see another short video to entertain us. A whole culture has popped up through YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. It is the real-life of many, the life that feels closest and most important. 

The metaverse adds a new way of living in the digital world. The transition will not be difficult, as long as the technology works. We already live in a time where material objects have been replaced by digital technology. [Read more…] about The Metaverse Promises to Disconnect Us from the Stability that Points to God

Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America (a review)

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Crawford Gribben’s work Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America makes sense of much of contemporary evangelicalism and the political mood of much of North America. Gribben spent a number of years interviewing, reading, and analyzing those who play a part in Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (the book’s subtitle). 

Christian reconstruction refers to a broad group of people who want to reconstruct society around biblical law, or at least a Christian culture. Douglas Wilson might be the most popular member of this movement today. That said, he himself does not own the theonomist label, even though he affirms a debt to the thinking of R. J. Rushdoony. That latter founded the modern theonomy movement. 

Gribben then describes a diverse set of people who have moved to the Pacific Northwest (Idaho area) to resist the coming decline of American culture in the hopes of rebuilding a better life afterward. It is a strategic retreat to combat the coming decline. Yet this reconstruction hopes in a better future, and so it carries postmillennial eschatology.  [Read more…] about Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America (a review)

Owning Less, But Experiencing More: A Theological Crisis in the Making

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We are becoming a nation of mobile-renters. We have joined a gig economy. We use ride-shares. We rent office space. We rent housing. We rent mobile offices. We own less and less—we do not even own our e-books and e-media which often revert back to the copyright holder at our death. A video game no longer has a box. It is a digital download. 

The World Economic Forum tells us we will own nothing and be happy. Ida Auken said, “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.” Or as their marketing said, “You will own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”

Governments have done little to avoid this future. The Canadian government has promised $10 a day of childcare. This makes it easier for both parents to work, which they will have to do in order to pay for the taxes to support childcare. Single-income families will not be able to afford houses. And if both parents work, there is less need to have a standard home. Besides, who can afford one? Renting is the way to go. The USA has likewise pulled back on supporting families through financial support for children or support for longer maternity leave. 

The way in which we work has also contributed to this alienation from home, possessions, and family. For most of history, agricultural workers worked as a family. Everyone worked at home. Husbands and wives with children in appropriate ways supported the family. In the Roman era, many businesses were part of a residence. So a husband might work at the front of the home, a wife inside the residence. They partnered in appropriate ways. 

But now the nature of work, a movement from working with our hands to work with our digits—pressing buttons, digital work—has alienated us from the land, the fabric of the world around us.  [Read more…] about Owning Less, But Experiencing More: A Theological Crisis in the Making

On God’s Law in Nature

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The reformed or Calvinist thinker Johannes Althusius (1557–1638) identified natural law (or common) as that law which God inscribed on the heart. Hence, it is common to all people, as God’s law in nature. God then uses our conscience to excuse or excuse us (Rom 2).

It is important to realize that this is the near-universal view of reformed thinkers from Amandus Polanus to John Calvin to whomever.

Natural law is not some law inside nature and apart from God, as Rushdoony believed, but rather it is the law of God inscribed upon our hearts as Paul the Apostle believed (Rom 2:14-15).

Where the rubber meets the road, however, is when it comes to obedience to God’s law. [Read more…] about On God’s Law in Nature

Do We Have Souls and Bodies?

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Most people believe in something like the soul. We know we live embodied lives. We also recognize that when we die, our bodies decompose. So if we live on, we live on without the body in some sense. Christians believe, however, in the resurrection of the body when we will once again reunite with our (then) immortal and incorrupt bodies. 

But about in the meantime? What has the apostle Paul been doing for 2,000 years without his resurrection body? In what way or form has he lived? Some might say, he has not lived since his soul has merely slept, unconscious of life, until the resurrection. But that simply won’t do because of how the Bible talks about life, death, and life after death.  [Read more…] about Do We Have Souls and Bodies?