Write, Brother, Don’t Keep It to Yourself!

“Mr. Marinov, can I share a few things with you that I have observed, in connection with something you said in your speech?”

I was approached by this man right after my speech on the defense of property rights at the American Vision Super Conference. The man – I’ll call him “J.” for I don’t know if I can share his name here – looked a little younger than I and he was insistent; he knew he had something important to say, and he was willing to wait until I had the time to sit down and listen to him. He patiently waited until I was available. Then we grabbed two chairs and we sat in the corner of the bookstore at the Conference. And he started talking.

I wasn’t prepared at all for what I heard. I thought he’d just have the general stuff like most comments about the general topic of my lecture; or maybe he’d just ask a few questions to clarify something I said that wasn’t clear enough to him.

J. took one sentence of my lecture – where I talked about God providentially bringing the original owner of a piece of property to it and delegating ownership to him. He said, “I have run into an interesting variety of this principle on my job, and I want to share it with you.” J. turned out to be a land surveyor in Florida. He obviously knows his job in detail, he cares for his job, and he loves his job. You can see it by the passionate way he talks about it. But there was more.

J. explained to me the problems with land ownership in Florida. Florida was originally claimed by the Spanish Crown. Then the Crown made land grants to families, which was the legal basis for the original ownership of land in Florida. Then what was by law owned by the Spanish Crown, was bought by the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government honored the original grants but it also started making its own grants to soldiers of the War for Independence, and later of the War Between the States. Then there were other types of ownership as well, falling under different legal rules and regulations concerning owning property. I am not sure if I grasped all the details, or if I could grasp all the details. And my point is not to discuss them here. J. knew his stuff in detail, and he was an expert. I could see that.

But there was more.

Then J. started sharing how our Christian worldview affected the defense of property rights, the property taxes, the government grants, etc., etc. And this is what was amazing to me: J. not only knew his job well, and he not only believed in a comprehensive Christian world and life view. He was also careful and willing to study it and apply it to the specific situation God had put him in, and apply it to the very small details of his work! In things that only a very special professional like him could know, J. was making the connections to the worldview others have been preaching and teaching for decades now.

We didn’t have too much time to talk in more detail. But I thought about J. on the way back home. J. knew details about a field that was his own field. He knew it, and he loved it. And he also studied the comprehensive worldview of the Bible. And he made one more step that a precious few make: He applied it to his situation.

I didn’t know what to say about the specifics of his ideas. But I knew one thing:

He must start writing.

And I told him so. I told him he must build his own blog, or his own web-site, or invite others like him and discuss issues of land ownership, land management, property rights, property taxes, government land grants in a way that is consistent with his moral convictions and his knowledge of the comprehensive worldview that the Bible gives us. He must make his findings and knowledge known to others. J. must do for his professional area what no other Christian can do, and no other professional would do.

There are thousands of Christian men like J. They are professionals in their fields – law enforcement, education, transportation, business management, you name it. They have strong Christian convictions, and they are familiar with the comprehensive world and life view of the Bible that American Vision, Chalcedon, Vision Forum, Institute for Christian Economics, and other organizations have been working to promote for decades now. Some of them may have seen the applications of the worldview to their specific fields. Some of them may have something very important to say that no one else has.

Start writing. It is so easy now. You can create a blog; your own blog with discussions and debates and possibility for other like-minded professionals in your field to join and write and discuss. You can use your professional everyday experience as the basis for your observations. You can build your own online “practicum” for others to learn and to follow. You can start discussions in your field if no one has started them yet. May be it isn’t your job, may be it is your town or your community that can teach us all how to apply the Christian worldview. There is something you know better than the rest. It doesn’t matter if you are a good writer or not; and it doesn’t matter whether your style is pleasing to the general public. Just start writing; someone needs you knowledge, and someone needs your application of the Biblical worldview to your field.

If you are not comfortable starting something of your own yet, go to www.GaryNorth.com. Read what Gary North says on the very home page of his website:

Get Rapid Answers from Experts. Share Your Best Ideas With Others. Remember: In Some Field, You Are an Expert. This Is a True Community Forum. We Help Each Other.

This is an invitation – an invitation to learn, an invitation to teach.

The Christian reconstruction of our society will be effected by those thousands of professionals who are willing to learn, and then write in their specific areas. Thousands of small articles and blog posts that will create the intellectual and practical climate for the society. A climate that will encourage Biblical solutions in every little detail of the life and the work in our society. A Christian society is not a society where everyone is Christian; it is a society where every solution to every problem is sought and found in the Bible and in the framework of its worldview.

So, J., if you are reading this, start writing, Brother. Don’t keep it to yourself. Who knows whether you haven’t attained your professionalism for a time like this?