Case Thorp

How long has it been since you’ve heard a sermon from your pastor on Noah, the ark, and the flood? It seems the only place I hear about Noah’s journey is when my children bring home from Sunday School crafts depicting the ark full of animals, two by two.

As the Supreme Court reconvenes this week, it will take up several key court cases that deal with gender. While many of these questions have been with us for quite some time, technological advances and our cultural progression has brought these issues to the forefront for all of society to consider.

Please take the time to listen to this podcast with Case Thorp and Brandon Queen, the host of The E.A.R. podcast, on Common Grace. Among other things they discuss common grace as a tool for common ground. Below are a variety of link options for your listening pleasure.

To combat the cultural disobedience and dualism that plagues the American church, common grace provides six practical benefits for individual discipleship, and for the local church with her role in the public square (the first three come from the Christian Reformed Church’s 1924 Synod statement and subsequent revisions.)

The riches of our tradition and the renewing work of the whole gospel offers hope. Not a shallow, fleeting feeling of optimism, but rather the hope of Christ that brings to bear the power of the Almighty so that we might be a redeemed people who have been charged with bringing about redemption in this fallen place and in our fallen state. It is this life sustaining, transformational hope where we must find our rest. It is our only true path out of the valley. The Reformation tenet of common grace contributes to a needed correction towards obedience.

There are, no doubt, numerous deficiencies in the church, her leaders, and this author as a result of cultural disobedience. One of the devastating effects of disobedience results in functioning dualism that is crippling the church’s understanding of herself, and her role in society—not to mention confusing and frustrating the public square. We will see how the doctrine of common grace is uniquely able to sweeten the bitterness of such dualism.

Our hope rests in the purposes for which we were created—to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And such hope is realized when church leaders, with humble hearts fresh with words of repentance, embrace God’s work of common grace as the common ground of the public space.

For too long, some American Christians have explicitly suggested or subtly assumed that God’s goodness and grace was reserved for those with saving grace. Non-believers were corrupt, without hope, and therefore the work of their hands less good and capable than that of a Christ follower, the thinking goes. In this blog series we are going to explore this dynamic, how it hurts the cause of becoming a vigorous church that contributes to the public square in a relevant and productive fashion, and ways to re-learn common grace for today.

On Case Thorp’s recent trip to Scotland, he came upon this amazing stained glass window at Stirling Castle—Holy Rude Church. This window was dedicated to the Merchant Guild. By clicking on the audio bar below, hear an explanation of its origins and meaning from Brian Morrison, an elder in the Church of Scotland. Enjoy the incredible workmanship reflected in the artistry of this stained glass…what a thing of beauty!

“It’s not enough to just build tools. They need to be used for good,” said a repentant and scared Mark Zuckerberg before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees. Facebook embodies today’s cultural zeitgeist, and its disregard for privacy coupled with its mammoth influence have caused our nation to question how its unhealthy practices are impacting culture. Makoto Fujimura, surely, is pleased with Zuckerberg’s comment, as he has painted a vision for such and more in Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life.