Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government . . .,” wrote John Jay in Federalist Paper number two. He would go on to become the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Nations require government. Thus, it is our duty as Christians who care about our nation to care about government. There are good ways and not so good ways to go about doing that.

In this series, we have been talking about the 7 Mountains of influence. I have reserved government for my closing article as politics is downstream from culture. Government is not the first mountain if we were to prioritize them, but modern thought would have us believe it is the first and only mountain and that all rises or falls with it.

My goal is not to dissuade believers from their civic duty to be informed voting citizens. Proper political participation is part and parcel of a citizen’s responsibility in a free nation. My hope, however, is to help release some of the pressure of our death grip on politics as the only or primary means in which to see a nation reformed.

Prayer and political participation in the coming elections are essential, but the outcome of this election will not be the end of America nor its salvation. Life in this nation will go on. Politics may run one direction or another, but the heartbeat of our nation rests with the culture of the people. Government is only one-seventh of the institutions that make up a nation, if we see it as the only mountain, we neglect the other six and leave them in darkness.

Nations have faced far darker times and have come back into the light of truth. America has faced far darker times lest we forget the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and the Cold War. We are not in a day where our time of history will claim a name such as these.

Just the same, government is an important sphere of society. For some of us, our only connection to the government mountain will be as good voting citizens. But the possibilities of engagement do not stop there. Here are some ways that we can be actively involved in the government mountain.

• Pray for your local, state, and federal government leaders
• Volunteer to serve a local candidate in his or her campaign
• Volunteer to serve at a voting precinct
• Get to know your local leaders (chief of police, sheriff, city council, school board leaders, mayor, delegates, etc.
• Attend your local city council meeting
• Run for office
• Work for someone who is in office
• Serve in the Armed Forces

If the government mountain is where God has given you your assignment, embrace it. If it is not, do your due diligence as a good citizen and give your own assignment the attention and passion it requires. Nations need everyone in their right place. Your place will always loom large as the most important place to be but remember everyone else needs to be where they are called to be. Only together will the seven mountains of culture be reformed to create a great nation.

“He who loses the arts loses the culture,” wrote Francis Schaeffer. Art carries within it the worldview of the artist. It often communicates in the form of a story or through imagery. Both normats draw upon the senses in a way that circumvents our resistance to the worldview being communicated.

When the predominate worldview is Christian, Christian thought is shaping the culture. But when the art is not Christian in content, a foreign worldview is making its mark on culture. What we are going for is not Christian art, but art that is developed from a Christian worldview. It expresses beauty, goodness, and truth in excellence. It is not always message centric. It does not speak only when it communicates a message of salvation. It communicates when it illustrates beauty, family, life, glimpses of heaven, or the glory of God revealed in creative excellence.

Art may look like a beautifully hand-crafted dining room table. It may be a quilt, a scarf, or a deliciously designed cupcake. It may be a commercial on television or a radio broadcast. It may be a film or an album. It could be a novel or even a comic book.

We err when we reduce what is good art to that which is akin to a Christian tract. A film made by Christians is different than a Christian film. The former will show the glory of God within the art whereas the latter usually seeks to demonstrate God’s glory based on the impact of the message on the audience. When art is exemplary God is glorified. Good art taps into the majesty and creativity of the Creator. It awakens the heart to reflect on the beauty of creation.

During the time William Wilberforce worked to end the slave trade, a craftsman named Josiah Wedgewood design women’s jewelry with a symbol of freedom for the cause of ending slavery. The Abolition Movement also had posters placed around the city with the same symbol. This began to communicate a counter-cultural worldview that opposed the slave trade through visual art.

Within the seven mountains, art and entertainment are a cultural influencing force. Like the other mountains, the goal is not to control the mountain, but to disciple it. To do so, we need to go into Hollywood, Broadway, and Nashville among other artistic cities of the world. We cannot resign ourselves to subculture Christian art, as we have a calling to mainstream art that is enjoyed throughout the world.

Serving in this mountain can take any number of forms from direct artistic work to indirect work serving artists. One may be serving as an artist: actor, playwright, screenwriter, makeup artist, costume designer, set designer, writer, painter, weaver, sculpture, song writer, musician, graphic designer, jeweler, etc. For indirect influence in the arts one may be the administrative assistant, proofreader, housekeeper, pastor, mentor, counselor, or financier serving within the arts and entertainment mountain.

If this is the mountain of culture where God has called you, ask Him where your position is in this mountain and begin to pray for an invitation into that position. Meanwhile prepare for your calling. Educate yourself. Get around like minded people. Find others who have a similar calling and collaborate on how you can best be of service to the art world in your city or nation. Learn all you can about your calling to prepare for your contribution to the creative arts mountain. Look for the invitations of the Lord as you step from bread crumb to bread crumb into your position. He will make your path straight.

Education is the mind of a nation. It is the institution which transmits the knowledge of generations into the present youth of our nation. It is to communicate discriminately what is worthwhile and of good repute. All education is not equal. Good education develops out of a biblical worldview deriving from applied theology.

What we want in our nation is education that enables a people to self-govern – to lead themselves in the ways of truth. We want education that equips citizens to use their God-given talents and abilities to contribute to the life of the nation. Good education should produce scientific breakthroughs, brilliant businesses, well-learned educators, skillful artisans and musicians, and governmental servants of good conduct who have a healthy worldview. It ought to produce great agriculture, industry, technology, and innovation. It should grow national prosperity. It should ensure a sound justice system.

Within the 7 Mountain Framework, the Education Mountain encompasses the education of the entire nation. As Christians, we tend to self-preserve. Our educational worldview may not extend beyond protecting our own children’s education. We may homeschool our children or put them in a great Christian school. These are noble sacrifices for Christian parents to make. It ensures that our lineage is provided a quality education founded in truth. But the next step is to serve the next generation in our nation.

Discipling the education mountain will require Christians to work in mainstream education. This will include teachers, principals, coaches, curriculum writers, textbook writers, school board members, etc. The goal is not to control education. It is to disciple it. Let truth be its master, not Christians.

The same applies to higher education. Post-truth philosophy abounds in our nation’s universities, especially in the humanities courses such as English, History, Art, Philosophy, Sociology, and Psychology. These are overrun with professors who cannot profess truth for they operate in a post-truth worldview.

I once sat in a history class at my university listening to my professor lament plagiarism as a moral wrong. She had been impressed upon by the school to lecture on the moral depravity of plagiarism to her class. Her class responded with a myriad of reasons for plagiarism being excusable. She was aghast. This is the same professor who had told our class all semester that there is no truth and no way to know history. She failed to see the contradictions of her worldview. I could get angry and think she is purposely indoctrinating her students into a moral malaise of relativism. However, I know that she is only teaching what she believes to be accurate and fails to understand the consequences of her worldview.

If I harbor anger toward those in education as people who are intentionally teaching falsehoods to unsuspecting youth, I will believe Christians are victims unable to ever reform our national education. Instead, I can rest assured that truth is not common sense and people who do not have the truth do not in fact have it. They are not people who know the truth and choose to teach lies instead.

Without the Bible as true revelation informing us of what is true, you have no foundation on which to base the existence of truth. The world will only move farther away from what is good education without Christians shining the light of truth into the darkness of what has become our nation’s educational system.

As Christians, some of us, but not all of us, are called into the mountain of education. For some that will be serving the children of believers in Christian schools or educating children at home. For others, it will be serving inside the schools and universities to make an impact on our nation’s education at large.

Maybe you are homeschooling a child who will one day become an educator. Your job is fanning that flame of passion in that child. Perhaps you are paying tuition for your child who will one day grow up to write the nation’s text books. Knowing that the education mountain is for the flourishing of the entire nation will help you parent those children in their vocational callings. The work of reformation is multi-generational, but it starts today.

Journalism is the voice of a nation. It can be a clarion call of truth, or it can be a cacophony of lies. More often it is a mixture of truth and lies all competing for dominance. In a post-truth nation, how does truth win when we are rapidly losing sight of what truth is?

            We argue about bias. The problem is not bias, but worldview. No one can report bare facts. The goal is not to inform the public of the most basic of facts devoid of any critique or opinion. Journalists are speaking to the nation about the nation. The media is to be the guardians of liberty. They are a check and balance upon the powers of government. Journalists are employed to inform the people of whatever must be communicated to an educated citizenry who desires to know.

            Journalists are not to be promoting a party, but a nation. Truth is their duty. Honesty, their badge of honor. If you have not seen the movie The Post, I recommend it as a great film about the commitment to truth in journalism. It must all be laid on the line in a newspaper’s commitment to printing the truth. It is not about entertainment, but responsibility. It is not about what sells, but what must be made public.

            We live in a day where “fake news” is the buzz word of our times. However, if we eschew journalism altogether, we will create another blunder. A nation needs its media. It requires its reporters, newspapers, journalists, news correspondents, etc. When we disregard its value, we participate in its demise.

            Instead of giving up on the Mountain of Media, we are to go into the darkness carrying the light of the Kingdom. Christians are called into mainstream media. We cannot remain isolated in Christian news. The nation needs salt and light. It is not just the believers who need the media, it is the nation and the world.

            Darkness is wherever believers are not being salt and light. We cannot blame the darkness for their lack of light. We are the light of the world. We are the salt of the world. To be the salt and light we must go into the world. Go therefore, Jesus said. Be in the world and not of it. We cannot do that from subculture Christianity. We do not need more Christian news agencies; we need more truth agents in mainstream media.

            We may be surprised to find there are Christians already in media who are waiting for more to come and join them in promoting truth centered journalism. We are not attempting to take over the media. We want to serve the media. We want to bring truth to the Media Mountain, not control. Discipleship creates the supernatural reign of truth, not the natural reign of people controlling other people. If we are serving truth well, people will want what we are offering.

            The goal is not to demean media and remove its influence but shift its influence to a projector of truth that dispels the lies of the enemy over our land.  

Families are the indispensable support to a nation. Healthy families secure a healthy nation, but when a nation’s families break down so does the infrastructure of the nation.

I’ve worked as a paralegal in the field of family law for almost two decades. I know the ramifications of failing families all too well. Divorce has a huge economic effect upon the family. Two parents who were working together to maintain one home, now meagerly maintain two. Children’s futures become compromised. Grades slip. Behavioral problems increase. Debt mounts. Houses are foreclosed upon. Bankruptcies are sought. Legal bills pile up.

The consequences affect the family for generations and mount exponentially throughout the nation. Fatherless children. Motherless children. Latchkey kids. Economic hardship. More reliance on the State for economic aid. Compromised inheritances.

Divorce impacts the care one can give to his or her aging parents, or, at times, the care they will one day require. How many parents, stepparents, and estranged parents can a broken family support? How much can be saved for the future when the needs of the present are pressing down on the family?

Some family units never entered the protection of marriage. When they split, there is no equitable distribution of assets and no spousal support. Some have never had a family structure. The economic struggle is heart wrenching. The broken homes suffer for lack of a biblical family structure.

Today we compound this national crisis with the entrance of same-sex marriage. Broken homes have soared to a new level as children are brought into these unorthodox relationships. It is too soon to calculate the statistics of what this new break from biblical tradition will create in our nation.

The challenges a nation faces in the home span the gamut from poor parenting, poverty, fatherlessness, divorce, serial divorce, adultery, fornication, children born outside of marriage, same-sex marriages, unhealthy married life, and more.

Even the nations school system suffers as they cannot educate children properly without the aid of a stable home and parental involvement.

Discipleship becomes paramount for the family mountain. Discipling the family will be a labor that comes from the other mountains and into the family. The worldview of what makes a family is primarily taught through the mountains of education, church, family (we teach it in the home intentionally and by example), and through arts and entertainment. The family mountain is also a large contributor to discipleship in all areas of life. When the family is healthy it operates to disciple a nation of people in truth. When it is not healthy it contributes to discipling a nation in lies harmful to the nation.

No matter what kind of family we currently have, we can move closer to a more biblical idea of family. Past mistakes do not prevent us from moving toward greater alignment with truth. There is no perfect family, but there is a healthy standard and the closer we come to it the more we are doing our part to make a great nation.

Business is the economic engine of the nation. Much is being written on this subject as ministry is expanding into the marketplace. Business, in the context of seven mountains or discipleship of nations, is not a new territory for evangelism, but a forgotten territory for discipleship.

Success in business requires a certain adherence to timeless best practices deriving from the Christian worldview. The Protestant work ethic and successful enterprising of Christians led to healthy national economies and systems of banking. Christian principles of business create prosperous nations. Where these are lacking, poverty abounds.

It is interesting to note that a large portion of the best-selling business books are written by Christians. This does not mean you have to be a born-again Christian to have a good business. Nor does it mean that the highest grossing businesses in America are Christian organizations. Instead, it means that leaders in business borrow from the Christian worldview to create lasting business legacies.

The reason it is a forgotten territory is that we have lost the theology of biblical theology applied to business which creates and sustains healthy business organizations. For the longest time, we ignored the marketplace. The only thing that mattered was Christians serving in the Church mountain. The marketplace became reduced to how one earned a paycheck in the secular world.

Today there is a resurgence of Christian interest in the marketplace. For some, this only means evangelizing people through business or at work. For others, it means that the marketplace is where money is made to support Kingdom endeavors. We are not quite arriving at where we need to go in terms of discipling a nation.

Business matters because God cares about all areas of life. He cares about how we go about creating architecture, engineering, electricity, automobiles, the constructions of roads and highways, technology, science, industry, agriculture, banking, the housing market, and so much more.

The truth of Jesus Christ does not just save our souls, but entire nations. There is no secular sacred divide. Truth matters in every way conceivable that it can be applied to everyday life here on earth. An electrician is not just important because of how much money he makes for the Kingdom, but in how well he lays the electrical lines throughout residential or city property. The electrician gives light, heat, and air to the people so they can do their important vocations which also matter to God.

The Lord’s work is done on farms, hospitals, schools, banks, retail spaces, and military bases. The list is endless. Business fuels the life of a nation.

Discipleship in business is returning to the theology that business matters for business sake and for the sake of the nation. A business may disciple its employees or may disciple through its industry like advertising or journalism, but the institutions themselves need discipleship.

The idea behind the business mountain in the seven-mountain template of discipling nations, is that business is a mountain to be discipled and it is a mountain that disciples a nation. No longer can we afford to see it as only a financier of Kingdom work, for it is Kingdom work.

In many ways, religion is the most important of the Seven Mountains. A nation is shaped for better or worse through its religious worldview. All the other mountains are products of how well or poorly that worldview works in those institutions of culture. Even its lack of involvement has drastic ramifications in those institutions.

The common view in the American Church is that the other six mountains operate as secular institutions. We have lost sight of our history which illustrates a Christian theology behind each sphere of society. The Founding Fathers applied Christian theology to government. The Puritans applied it to education. We learned economics from the Dutch who applied biblical theology. It is interesting to note that we originally named our economic capital, New Amsterdam. Family, of course, followed biblical theology in law and practice. Moreover, the Church had great influence over what came out of Hollywood in the early days.

Notwithstanding, we practice another biblically applied theology enumerated in our Constitutional Amendments of the freedom of religion. It took centuries to develop, but freedom of religion derives from Christian theology. No other religion provides such freedom. One may object that secularism is the great tolerating worldview, but to quote reformer and author Vishal Mangalwadi, “secularism is a Christian heresy.” Secularism borrows heavily from the Christian worldview. It is a weak offshoot of Christian theology cut off from the tree. It is a dead branch blowing in the wind. It only tolerates that which does not object to its dominance.

Despite its weakness, we often fear its darkness instead of realizing the strength of the light bursting forth from truth which we carry. We are the torch bearers of truth and yet we think the world a formidable opponent instead of a lost generation which needs Kingdom truth restored to all its decaying institutions.

The task is not too great. History is replete with testimonies of cities and nations turned around with true discipleship. The darkness is never more powerful than the light of truth. It does not matter if that darkness is Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, etc. It does not matter how small the group of believers who wishes to disciple a nation is, if they are in proper proximity to that which they wish to disciple. A whole nation can be transformed by the number of people who can fit in a small living room.

The Church’s role is not to be wrapped up in the business of all the other mountains. It is to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry in all the other mountains. There is a good place for separation of Church and State, but not for separation of God and State. Truth matters to government just like every other mountain. The Church serves in a different capacity than the State, but it disciples people who work in government. We are not merging institutions; we are restoring truth to each institution in its proper role in a society.