The Christian Studies Blog

Philip Vick, Austin Grad's newest Living Stones Award recipient, has always felt called to serve the church, he says. 

Currently, he's an elder at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio where Max Lucado is the Senior Teaching and Equipping Minister.  Philip and his wife, Donna, began attending Oak Hills Church in 1989, and he says it was an honor to be asked to serve in the eldership role.

As a church elder, Philip is often called to offer pastoral care including prayer and spiritual counseling.  Philip also serves in the praise and worship ministry.

When Christianity appeared on the scene in the ancient Mediterranean world, its pagan residents were suspicious about this new faith.  Of their many concerns, perhaps the deepest fear was that Christians were socially subversive, that they were, as the Thessalonian mob put it, “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).  Good social order, from the family unit all the way up to the Empire itself, was felt to be threatened by a group of people who marginalized physical family and king in favor of spiritual family and King.

This is why the New Testament and early Christian apologetic writings go out of the way to show that Christians are law-abiding citizens.  For instance, in the book of Acts, it is usually the persecutors, and never the Christians, who are disobeying Roman law.  The “household codes” in the New Testament epistles urge mutual love, respect, and submission—good order, not chaos—within the nuclear family.  The principle of submission to proper authorities is reflected in the fifth commandment’s injunction to honor father and mother.  It is extended by Paul in Romans 13 when he commands submission to the governing authorities, as to God.  The New Testament is clear: it is the Christian’s duty to obey the law of the land.

But is Christian civil disobedience ever justified?  Is it morally permissible for a Christian to disobey the civil government?  If so, then under what circumstances? 

How do we know a blessing when we see one? What does it look like when God comes to one’s aid? These are the questions I would like to explore in this post.

Typically, we assume that a blessing is easy to spot. It’s a no-brainer. Just look at what feels good! Blessings are what happen when your boss gives you a raise, or a big return comes back on an investment. God is blessing a person when her stocks are high and his cholesterol’s low, when their childrens’ teeth come out straight, and they grow into adulthood with two well-defined eyebrows. Blessing equals comfort, ease, and social esteem. Period. Or, does it?

Flannery Mary Catherine Phillips entered this world on November 30, 2012. Her mother--our daughter, Elizabeth--turned 39 just nine days later. This long awaited gift from God arrived in Cambridge, England, so it was over two months before her grandmother and I could touch her.

I was able to hold her; Janet, who would succumb to cancer only a few days later, was too weak. But they met--and they responded to each other.  

I wrote the following poem around December 7, a week after the birth and a week before we got Janet's diagnosis. 

What is scholarship, whom does it benefit, and what is needed to produce it? Questions like that come up now and again in the life of a seminary, perhaps especially when a faculty member goes on “sabbatical” — an unusual benefit of employment as a professor, not much seen outside a school or, occasionally, a church. One might reasonably wonder, Why pay someone to go off somewhere in seclusion from students and co-workers and read and write? To answer that question requires answering the questions with which we began.

I was granted a sabbatical in the spring semester of this year, and thanks to the generosity of Austin Grad and the Justin Paul Foundation, I’ve just returned from a period of study in Cambridge, England.