The Real Truth

I was listening to a conservative radio talk show the other day and the host was saying liberals talk a lot about solving economic problems to cover up their social agenda. That spurred me to think along these lines:

They also do that to cover up their control. While maintaining that they are NOT controlling, they really ARE. But that is also happening in many evangelical churches right now. The most "hang-loose, tolerant" evangelcials are in actual reality, the most controlling. Have you seen some of the membership requirements in some of their churches? Many require an absolute 10% tithe no matter what, never talking ill of the leadership (which in actuality means never disagreeing with them), being in church every Sunday and so forth. In addition to all fo this they have the legalistic requirements of a "do this or else you aren't spiritual" system.
I'm wondering how long their young adult followers will stay with them until the awful realization sets in that not only have these churches hidden the gospel and lied to them about many things (such as to how to really help the poor), but also the realization of how controlled they really are. I give it about 4-5 years until the whole thing implodes like a house of cards.

The sad thing is....will there be any good churches for these poor people to go to? Right now, it's getting more difficult to find a good church as they get scarcer and scarcer.

Look at this Sign

Read this sign in front of a church in England. Read it for a long time and really think about it. To me it was life-changing

Another Alternative to Legalism

When people are hurt by legalism, there are two reactions. One is to just stay and try harder to follow the legal rules imposed. But the other reaction, the one we are seeing so much of today, is to get angry and then from there go into rebellion. That leads one away from the true faith and into a more humanistic liberal Protestantism which has its own set of rules to be followed, or worse into cultic groups which are extremely legalistic. So, when choosing either to stay under legalism, or to rebel against it, both paths lead to more legalism and a loss of freedom of soul.

There is a third alternative. I believe that in order to get out of legalism, people do go through several stages. First an angry stage, and then for many, a rebellion stage. However, they must not stay there but move on to the more mature last stage. This stage is defined by understanding why rules are there and if God says they apply to him/her. In other words, the mature Christian doesn't flip out and get angry, but simply understands that any part of law that is important to God will be worked through and in the person. This affords the person to relax a bit and decide for themselves what to do in each situation. Many of the old legalism was wasn't that bad, but came out of the wrong theology. For example, isn't it good for body (health), soul (emotions, mind) and finances to not drink alcohol? To not smoke? To not gamble? And what about the example set for the person's children? Maybe the parent can handle these things, but when the child sees this as "normative," might they become addicted? And what about second-hand smoke from the parent? Perhaps our legalistic forefathers weren't so dumb after all. The primary problem with them was the mix-up of justification with sanctification, very similar to Roman Catholicism. In other words, if you don't "follow the rules," you lose your salvation....uh....no.

So, perhaps we need to rethink this whole matter of legalism and our reaction and approach to it.

Who are the REAL Intolerant Ones?

Here is an article from The Australian on Richard Dawkins’ recent tour at Melbourne.


"The bestselling author of The God Delusion was similarly fawned over by the Australian media, which uncritically lapped up everything he said.

This was even after (or perhaps because) he referred to the Pope as a Nazi, which managed to combine defamation of the pontiff with implicit Holocaust denial.

By comparison, Family First senator Steve Fielding may feel he got off lightly when Dawkins described him merely as more stupid than an earthworm.

For someone who has made a career out of telling everyone how much more tolerant the world would be if only religion were obliterated from the human psyche, Dawkins manages to appear remarkably intolerant towards anyone who disagrees with him."


We ask again......who are the REAL intolerant ones?

The Red Tory

David Brooks, today in the New York Times Op/Ed page, writes about a British professor at the University of Cumbria named Phillip Blond. Blond has some ideas that many here want to see implemented. However, since we have what a man in my Contemporary Issues class calls "the gang of two" (the two political parties), it would be doubtful to see Blond's ideas implemented. Perhaps we do need a Thuird party. But that is a very controversial idea, since many don't think a third party can win. Blond calls his movement The Red Tory. Here are some snippets of Blond's ideas via Brooks' column,


Blond argues that over the past generation we have witnessed two revolutions, both of which liberated the individual and decimated local associations. First, there was a revolution from the left: a cultural revolution that displaced traditional manners and mores; a legal revolution that emphasized individual rights instead of responsibilities; a welfare revolution in which social workers displaced mutual aid societies and self-organized associations.

Then there was the market revolution from the right. In the age of deregulation, giant chains like Wal-Mart decimated local shop owners. Global financial markets took over small banks, so that the local knowledge of a town banker was replaced by a manic herd of traders thousands of miles away. Unions withered.

The two revolutions talked the language of individual freedom, but they perversely ended up creating greater centralization. They created an atomized, segmented society and then the state had to come in and attempt to repair the damage.

The free-market revolution didn’t create the pluralistic decentralized economy. It created a centralized financial monoculture, which requires a gigantic government to audit its activities. The effort to liberate individuals from repressive social constraints didn’t produce a flowering of freedom; it weakened families, increased out-of-wedlock births and turned neighbors into strangers. In Britain, you get a country with rising crime, and, as a result, four million security cameras.


Blond wrote in Prospect magazine in February 2009,


Look at the society we have become: We are a bi-polar nation, a bureaucratic, centralised state that presides dysfunctionally over an increasingly fragmented, disempowered and isolated citizenry.....The welfare state and the market state are now two defunct and mutually supporting failures.


Brooks writes that Blond lays out three big areas of economical reform:
remoralize the market, relocalize the economy and recapitalize the poor.


I went to amazon.com to research any book Blond had written and found a brand new book written by him entitled Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix it. I found it's in paperback and will be out in April. They haven't posted a price yet but since it's in paperback I would imagine it's not too expensive. I think I just might buy this book when it is published as I'm continually looking for ideas to help the poor which this book seems to do, as opposed to the same-old tired cliched rhetoric of the liberal Protestants and emergents as to how to achieve this.

The link at amazon.com about this book can be found here.

The Two Views

The two views of today's Evangelicalism seem to have coalesced into a more Calvinist viewpoint vs. a more liberal-Protestant-type view. These two views are very clearly presented in a recent Christianity Today magazine article. The key phrase in this article, in my opinion, is below:


Christ did not die for us because we are valuable; we are valuable because Christ died for us.


The article is by Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today magazine, and is entitled, Love Needs No Reason.

Interpretation is the Key to How Liberals and Conservatives See the Constitution

I think I've found a big key to understanding how liberals on one hand, and conservatives on the other hand, interpret the Constitution. Conservatives call themselves "historicist interpreters," and liberals including President Obama call themselves "living interpreters." If you look at various historical periods and look at how texts (both written and spoken material) were interpreted, you'll find there are basically three interprettions and possibly a kind of fourth as a subset of the third one, in each era (although in some eras two types were adopted).

The first interpretation is called Author Interpretation. In this one, a person reads other works by the author, studies his or her life and reads anything written by the author about the text being studied.

The second interpretation is Text or Textual Interpretation, which deals solely with words and meanings within the text.

The third one is Reader Interpretation, which basically says that the other two don't really matter as the reader will bring his or her own biases, knowledge, etc. to the text. Linked to this one might be a fourth, Community Reader Interpretation, in which you look back to what members of your historical community think and feel. By communities it is meant groups you belong to--your ethnic/racial group, your family, your town/country, groups you are a member of like religious groups, political parties and social groups like Kiwanis, soccor Mother's club, etc.

Conservatives tend to adopt the Author's Interpretation when making sense of the Constitution, while liberals tend to adopt the Reader Interpretation, and at times the Community Reader Interpretation. So, conservatives will often invoke the thoughts and ideas (and even the religous ideas) of the men who wrote the Constitution while liberals bring it up today where the Reader is. They are calling themselves (their style is Reader Interpretation), Living Constitutionalists. On the other side, the conservatives are calling themselves Historicist Constutionalists.

Hope this helps.

Great Article in CT

For the past few years, Christianity Today magazine has been a hodge podge of doctrine. However, once in a while there is a great article and this is the case in this month's issue (march, 2010). On page 23 is an article entitled, The Mind Under Grace: Why Theology is an Essential Unit for Spiritul Growth by Darren C. Marks, professor of theology and Jewish studies at Huron Unviersity College at the University of Western Ontario. This has to be the best I've read on the necessity of doctrine along with praxis (practice, deeds, works, etc.) The thing I like about this article is the lack of hyper/heavy Calvinism in it. It seems that today the only people concerned with good doctrine are the Old Calvinists, New Calvinists, Young Calvinists, "Cool Calvinists and other assorted Calvinists. It isn't that I mind reading all the stuff from the Calvinists but I would hope that others would have something to say on this important subject too. I don't know if professor Marks is a Calvinist or not and I really don't care. The point is, it isn't loaded up with heavy Calvinist doctrine overshadowing everything else. The reason I like this is because for younger Christians too much Calvinism miht have a tendency to turn them off of theology all together. In fact, that is happening isn't it?

You can read this great article here.

Not "Social Justice"...Again....

Glen Beck (I don't have cable so I've never watched him, so please don't think I'm a fan of his..I am neutral) has warned Christians about going to a church that talks a lot about social justice. Of course the "new" evangelicals are tearing their hair out and screaming and yelling that basically Beck is crazy. Perhaps not so crazy. He talks about "social justice" being a code word, and it absolutely is. I am sick of going to evangelical churches that were once aligned about what Jesus did at the cross and now are centered around "social justice." The dirty secret that you never read is this: these "new" liberal Protestants (because that is basically what they've become) never bring social jsutice to anyone and never really help many poor. Sadly, it has come to Wheaton College. Of course the leaders try to explain that the social justice they are peddling is not related to Marxism in any way? Oh? Here is what Wheaton's provost, Stan Jones, said about this,

In a response, Wheaton College provost Stan Jones said the Rios show "significantly misrepresented how social justice is addressed at Wheaton College":

We equip our students to think carefully and biblically about issues of justice, and encourage them to commit to act justly throughout their lives as defined by a biblical worldview … There is an enormous difference between recognizing as a justice issue of concern to God the tragic state of so many rural school systems and inner-city school systems that serve disproportionately minority constituencies, on the one hand, and a radical, naturalistically-driven call for Marxist redistribution of wealth on the other.

It's one small step from the type of social justice they are talking about to a more Marxist structure of government. After all, who is going to pay to improve the rural and inner city schools? Do the Wheaton students know that these schools get tons of federal money each year through Chapter I, as well as other federal and state programs? I guess not. Read a post I wrote called "The Willing Fools". Meanwhile, more Willing Fools join the "cause."

How Satan Works

I read a great post about the Yalta Agreement at the end of WWII, carving up Europe between the Allies and the Soviets. Here is a paragraph from this post to tantalize you into reading the whole post.


President Roosevelt (who had become a paraplegic) had a daughter named Anna. She met and married a man named Colonel Dahl. Colonel Dahl’s assignment was to push the President’s wheelchair everywhere –even to the bathroom. He and the President were almost inseparable. However at the Yalta Conference, armed Soviet soldiers prevented the Colonel from accompanying FDR into the meeting. The President could only be accompanied by his Aid. Who was this Aid? His name was Alger Hiss, later identified as a Communist Spy.


After the short description of the Yalta conference (part of which is above), the blogger goes onto show how satan was in all of this and how he works. This has to be one of the best descriptions of how satan works I've read. Here's the whole post. Please do read it all.



http://everydaychristianfamily.com/the-yalta-agreement/

The Liberal/Conservative Circle?

I'm going to change direction slightly here and try to write mroe often than I have lately. In addition to the usual "what's happening in evangelical land" posts, I will also be writing about "what's happening in our country and the world, espcially as it affects Christians. So, here is the first post of that genre,


I love to read Camille Paglia. Here's a sample.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals?.......But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.

She always calls it like it is.

(Source: http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/index.html)


I also loved Barry Goldwater for the same reason. You might think this is terribly incongruous. An oxymoron. Have you ever watched the McLaughlin Report? It's a panel discussing news topics with the requisite two liberals and two conservatives. But, this panel is great because they have one really true far-out liberal(Eleanor Clift) and one really true far-out conservative (Pat Buchanan). The other two are just a plain liberal and a plain conservative (actually a neo-con). But here's the really weird thing. Many times Clift and Buchanan agree with each other and disagree with the other two. This is showing me that perhaps at each end of the conservative wing and the liberal wing, there is more agreement than we thought. In other words, instead of a line with more radical liberals at one end and reactionary conservatives at the other end--is it actually a circle?

Quote of the Week

Embracing the Cross of Christ
By A.W. Tozer


Let us plant ourselves on the hill of Zion and invite the world to come over to us, but never under any circumstances will we go over to them. The cross is the symbol of Christianity, and the cross speaks of death and separation, never of compromise. No one ever compromised with a cross. The cross-separated between the dead and the living. The timid and the fearful will cry Extreme! and they will be right. The cross is the essence of all that is extreme and final. The message of Christ is a call across a gulf from death to life, from sin to righteousness and from Satan to God. The first step for any Christian who is seeking spiritual power is to accept his unique position as a son of heaven temporarily detained on the earth, and to begin to live as becometh a saint. The sharp line of demarcation between him and the world will appear at once--and the world will never quite forgive him. And the sons of earth will make him pay well for separation, but it is a price he will gladly pay for the privilege of walking in fruitfulness and power.