the Contender

The Danger of Friendship with Heretics – Thoughts Following T.D. Jakes’ Trinitarian Confession at the Elephant Room 2

2012-01-30T01:34:00.003-06:00

Over the course of my relatively short life, I’ve had the opportunity and privilege of being friends or having some level of positive relationship with both men and women who don’t always agree with me (shocking, I know). Almost all of my Christian friends and I would likely disagree on some aspect of doctrine or application. This sort of tolerable and brotherly disagreement is to be expected inside of close friendships and your own local church body, I suppose.

There are other Christian friends of mine whose doctrinal differences are so important, so far reaching to all areas of faith and life that church fellowship is all but impossible. In fact, my oldest and best friend and I likely could not handle going to one another’s home church for too long. He’s a dear brother in Christ, a trustworthy proponent of the gospel message, and a very good friend, but for better or worse, as men of conviction we could not be members of the same local church fellowship.

The above two scenarios are examples of Christian brethren disagreeing on things while still being Christian brothers and sisters. However, there is another scenario where this is not the case, and I have (or have had) several relationships where I would categorically describe my friend as a heretic, apostate, false teacher, or a combination of some or all of those labels. These same friends may make the same categorical characterizations of me too (that’s only fitting, and I’m not offended by that) if they have any room in their theological framework for someone to disagree to the point of being a heretic.

Usually when I have a close friend, or when I am otherwise closely connected to someone who falls into this final category, it has been my desire and obligation to seek to confront the other person with the hope of winning a brother/sister by “snatching them out of the fire” (Jude 23). Direct confrontation with the desire and goal of correction and restoration is the only truly loving action that one can take. As one who has actually confronted friends (who, like me, confesses faith in and salvation from Christ) on issues of such a foundational nature as those doctrines that literally define the Christian faith, I have a little experience and knowledge of what I am writing.

I can think of a few instances where I desired – almost to the point of feeling compelled – to confront someone regarding the core doctrines of the Christian faith. This was, again, not a Christian confronting a professing pagan, Hindu, Muslim or follower of some other world religion. I was confronting a professing Christian. But this same person’s confession of faith was, in my estimation, so sub-bibilcal that it was not actually a Christian faith. Denying doctrines on the same level as the exclusivity of Jesus Christ was what was to be the focus of our discussion. And therefore, I was genuinely concerned for the salvation of these individuals.

Working up to my meeting (usually I was able to have more than one face to face interaction), I attempted to prepare for all of the relevant issues that I wanted to address as well as any issues or rabbit trails that I thought would be brought up by my friend. In every instance, there were the pre-meeting jitters of nervousness – concerning both a desire to not go through with this confrontation as well as a desire to not make a complete fool of myself and so badly represent the faith that I was trying to defend. There were real stakes to these discussions. No quick quips or vacuous slogans would suffice. The friend I was going to meet was, in every instance, intelligent, thoughtful, deliberate, and well read enough to make me feel rather inadequate. Plus, regardless of where or how our relationship began (co-worker, family member, church member, or whatever), I genuinely liked or loved these people.

Shortly after the initial discussion with my friend (and this is the case for almost every time that I’m recalling), I can remember thinking to myself, “is the difference that we have really that significant?” Or I would think, “maybe I was wrong in my estimation of the severity of his/her error.” Or, more to the point, “maybe this isn’t enough to get bent out of shape over.” I believe that in every one of these initial meetings where both myself and my friend had remained convinced of our separate and mutually exclusive conclusions, I left the meeting with some doubt or downplaying of my own concerns.

Upon reflection and further counsel with other believers following these interchanges, the concerns that had initially brought me to the point of confrontation were re-validated and the answers or defenses given by my friend were still seen to be as hollow now as they had been during our meeting. I had not wavered on my concerns because of the argument given by my friend for his side of the argument, but I had still hesitated...for hours or days even…at least on the severity of the situation at hand.

This hesitation didn’t come because there was substantive clarity given to the issue at hand where we both were shown to be on the same page. Even if a cursory statement of belief was made that we both could agree to, that didn’t (or wouldn’t) help. With the larger issue at hand, that cursory statement of faith didn’t help at all to deal with the issue at hand. For instance, if the issue were one of the exclusivity of Jesus Christ for salvation, a simple affirmation by both parties that “Jesus saves” or “Jesus saves the repentant sinner who comes to Him in faith” does not put the issue to rest because it doesn’t address the other issues. For instance, one issue would need to be specifically addressed would be the validity of other methods or means of salvation in other religions (or whatever).

So what was the reason that I hesitated or wavered on my conviction of the eternal importance of our differences? Well, the major one (at least) is that I really, really liked this person. In every instance, I really liked the individual that I talked to. And the confrontation only did more to make me really like this person. He was very nice and friendly and not at all a fire-breathing anti-Christian raving lunatic. He was polite. He and I had a pleasant exchange. We laughed at different times in our conversation when one of us would say something funny. And we found that we agreed on various other important issues – philosophical, social, and theological.

This was dangerous. The danger was in liking my friend and theological combatant too much…or at least more than I valued the truth and integrity of the gospel of Jesus Christ and His revealed Word enough to press forward with a difficult, and often uncomfortable line of questions and discussion. Had I been around a dozen or more men who, like myself, liked my friend and could agree with him on so many other issues, laugh together at funny things, and express simple skin-deep affirmations about the issues at hand, then perhaps even today I would not count that conversation as one that falls into this extreme category where division is heresy.

And here is where maybe, just maybe, I can have an insight into why Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald (and others) gave T.D. Jakes the right hand of fellowship at the Elephant Room Conference and essentially said that the doctrine of the Trinity – while confession is required to have full access to our gathering – is really not definitional of the Christian faith so much so that a denial of it is to deny Christian faith and posses something that is entirely non-Christian. The conversation this surrounded the interchange between Driscoll, MacDonald, and Jakes left me with the distinct impression that oneness theology may be wrong, but it’s no more wrong and no more of a problem than disagreements about whether women can be elders or the method of baptism.

Furthermore, in many of the comments about the Elephant Room 2 written/spoken by the participants or panel members, there was a general attitude of “Man, Bishop Jakes is a really great guy.” He was nice, friendly, personable, and otherwise a person that you can get along with. And I wonder if that level of friendship skewed the opinion of Driscoll, MacDonald, and the rest of the men in the same way that I experienced during my interaction with my heretic friends.

Whether or not T.D. Jakes is a Trinitarian or not – I honestly don’t know. He said “yes” to Mark Driscoll’s line of questions, but even his clarifying comments left me wanting further clarification. I can tell you this, that if a former member (much less a leader, and much much less a Bishop) of an anti-Trinitarian church wanted to speak at or become a member at my local church, there would have been more pointed questions about affirmations of the Trinity and denials of the oneness understanding. Lovingly and firmly asked, to be sure. But they would have been asked.

Throw my 2 cents into the whole discussion…but that’s what it is.

Random thoughts Related to Reverence

2011-11-18T15:16:00.005-06:00

“Establish Your Word to Your servant as that which produces reverence for You.” (Psalm 119:38)

One of the objections that I have had in the past regarding worship services is that there seems to be a lack of reverence in the worshipers or in the place of worship. This idea may have come from the laid back atmosphere in many churches where every 3rd person seems to have a cup of starbucks or caribou coffee or is too busy tweeting something to really put all of one’s focus on God.

When I was in college, our choir toured in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic and visited (and sang in) many cathedrals. It impressed me then, and still does today, that everything - from the design of the building itself to the interior art work - was done intentionally to communicate something about God, the parishioner, or something else important. Comparing that to the large multi-purpose facilities where the worship hall doubles for a basketball court makes for quite a stark contrast.

And while I think that it is a good idea, a very good idea, to ask the question of what our building (the actual structure), the layout of our services, the seating, or whatever says about God, about us, and about what we are doing, I don’t think that we need to burn down our current building and start over (well, not for this reason, anyway). I also don’t think that the answer is that we need to have Cathedral-ish buildings complete with statues and stained glass windows (although, those should make a comeback). Likewise, I don’t want to wholly dismiss or deride the idea of large multi-purpose facilities as houses of corporate worship. We need to be willing to both ask the question and then provide an answer to that question about what the building communicates about who we are, who God is, and what we’re doing. Because whether or not we intend to say anything by what we do or how we do it – we do.

As for reverence, well that is something that no building can instill in a person. A building may be able to the reverence that is already in a person, but I’m not sure how much it would truly detract from that same individual. True reverence comes from the Word as the Lord establishes it in us and to us. And it is that reverence that can transform any building - from a cramped and broken down barn in rural Russia or a Cathedral in the middle of Europe, to a multi-purpose building in the US – into a beautiful and reverential place of corporate worship.

Walking in Righteousness

2011-11-08T14:12:00.002-06:00

“Oh, that my ways may be established to keep your statutes, then I will not be ashamed when I look upon all of Your commandments.” (Ps 119:5-6)

So many times in life, the choices that I face and the cares of the journey can consume and overwhelm me. The opportunity to bring shame to the name of my Savior in how I work through those times is very real, and while my desire is never to give mockers cause to profane the name of the Lord, sometimes my lack of action, or my foolish action, gives them that very opportunity.

I have been thinking about these verses in Psalm 119 for quite a while, and by God’s providence I am also studying/teaching through 1st John in Sunday school. One of the issues in 1 John is the discerning between those who walk in the darkness and those who walk in the light (1 John 1:6-10). John describes these two groups in various ways and he gives examples for characterizes either category. The consistent theme is the distinction between Christians and non-Christians; between possessors and mere-professors.

This distinction is key when, at the end of the 2nd chapter and continuing to the 3rd, John describes the various groups as those who practice righteousness or those who practice sin and lawlessness. While only Jesus truly practiced righteousness perfectly, the Christian is to be characterized by righteousness where as false professors are not. It was this idea of practicing, or habitually continuing in, righteousness that drew my attention to Psalm 119:5-6.

I will not ever perfectly practice righteousness, and while my status before God is not determined by that, it is very comforting to see and know that if my heart and desire is to be conformed to Christ then He will establish my ways. So even when I sin and do give cause for others to mock my savior, this will not be what characterizes my life. And more than that, my heart and mind will (hopefully) be quickly made aware of my sin so that I might run to my savior, who is my advocate and my propitiation, so that as I respond to my own sinful behavior, I might display the righteousness and glory of God in and through my own sin and failing.

“I shall give thanks to You with uprightness of heart, when I learn Your righteous judgments. I will keep your statutes; do not forsake me utterly.” (Psalm 119:7-8)

Sunday Night Reflections

2011-06-26T23:59:00.002-05:00

We have been studying the gospel of John in the Sunday school class I teach, and this week we looked at John 15:19-27. In this text we are shown how the fallen world system and its people will relate to the disciples of Christ and that we can know what to expect because of the way that they treated Christ Himself. In my lesson preparation, I was struck by a few things that made this a very beneficial study for me.

The first thing that helped was outlining the passage according to the relationships between those in view. Now, this may not be the best outline, but it helped put things into perspective.

1. Disciples Relationship:

a. To the world (18-21)

b. To Christ (20-21,27)

2. Christ’s Relationship:

c. To the Father (21,23-24)

d. To the Spirit (26)

3. Unbeliever’s Relationship to the word and work of Christ (22,24-25)

a. Spoken to them (22)

b. Worked among them (24)

To say the least, the world was antagonistic to Christ. So a Christian following in the footsteps of Christ will be loving, kind, and Christ-like…and the world will be hostile towards the Christian to the degree that we are conformed to the image of Christ. This is not a reason to be cavalier and thoughtless about preaching the gospel which must have as its precursor a no-nonsense look at sin. We must be wise and sensitive in how we do this, but we must not be timid to the point of not bringing up sin.

This was a good reminder and encouragement to me.

The second thing that was really an encouragement was something that I had not seen in this text before. It came directly from outlining the section according to the relationships in view. Putting it simply: the descriptions of how the Christians relate to the world or the world relates to them are rooted in the intra-action of the Triune God.

The Trinity is not a theological issue that is divorced from everyday life and experience, it is essential for properly understanding our relationship to the world as it is laid out in this text.

To God alone be the Glory!

humbled by an (almost) 8-year-old

2011-06-23T11:30:00.003-05:00

“1 Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, 2 like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, 3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” (1 Peter 2:1-3)

In our home, nap time is a critically important time for everyone. With four children under eight (and one on the way), it is no understatement to say that it is almost more important for parental sanity than it is for the demeanor and physical needs of our younger children. A difficult situation presented itself about a year ago when our eldest no longer needed a regular nap in order to make it through the day.

My wife did a few things to augment Micah’s (my eldest child) nap time, one of which was to make sure that he would read his Bible for either a certain length of time or until he finished a full chapter before reading other books, playing Angry Birds on my iPod, or whatever. So this has been his pattern for quite some time. For a while he was trying to read through the Bible in a year, but he found that too big of a challenge for his reading abilities. But rather than get discouraged, he continued to read and usually chose his sections on his own.

I began noticing that he would tell us that he read Psalm 117 quite regularly. It wasn’t until he informed me that Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the whole Bible (only two verses) that I began to get a little suspicious.

“Hey, if I’ve got to read one chapter (even a few times each day), why not make it the shortest one so that I can do other fun stuff.” That was what I imagined his thought process to be – it would likely have been my own in his position. So, one day last week I decided to talk to Micah about it and told him that he should read more than the shortest chapter.

To my shock – and my extreme joy – he said that he’s been memorizing it. So, I opened up his Bible, and asked him to recite it for me. And he did. And he did it almost word for word perfectly. Not for Awana shares, trips to the kids’ prize box, or any other external reward offered to him – but because he wanted to.

Praise the LORD, all nations; Laud Him, all peoples! For His lovingkindness is great toward us, And the truth of the LORD is everlasting. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 117)

And when I asked him about this, he said that he’d already moved on to the next shortest chapter (another Psalm) and was working to memorize it.

What sheer joy this brings to my heart.

As a father, my hope and desire is for my children’s salvation. My hope and desire is that their new birth would be evident by many things, one of which is their desire to know God, His Word, and to serve Him.

I am overjoyed at my son’s initiative, implementation, and continuation of his own devotional plan that fits his personality and his abilities.

I am deeply humbled and challenged by my son’s initiative, implementation, and continuation of his own devotional plan – especially as it comes to memorization – because it shows me just how much better I could be doing.

Soli Deo Gloria

why my ministry will never be relevant for ‘today’s’ pop culture

2011-03-18T16:07:00.000-06:00

relevant – as I understand the cultural/Christian working definition it is the assertion that for a church to be relevant the messages need to be sound-bitable and have catchy titles that relate to the people while using movies, TV shows, sports events, or current events as spring boards to communicate them.

Here are a few reasons for why I can’t imagine ever being able to be relevant like that:

1. Quite frankly – simply thinking about trying to keep up with all of the stuff that’s out there makes me tired. But I’d not only have to keep up with what’s out there, I’d have to do that and be able to craft a Bible study, sermon, or Sunday school lesson out of what was going on. With the time and effort that I (try to) put in to any given lesson for pre-school kids, college students, or whomever, I can’t imagine adding a whole other critical process into the mix.
2. $$$ Cha-ching $$$ - To be up on the culture like that, and to truly be relevant, I’d have to:
a. watch movies the week they come out (or at worst, in the first two weeks), and that’s $10 or so if I go by myself and don’t have any snacks
b. watch some (if not all) of the popular shows on TV, and to do that I’d need to have some high-end TV package…and they aren’t cheap
c. listen to the current most popular music in who knows how many genre’s (I’m sure that even my genre category titles are a decade out of date), and downloading songs gets expensive even at $0.99 or $1.99 each
d. read all of the books, papers, blogs, that come out on any number of subjects (tech, theology, philosophy, current events, etc). Even with a Kindle, that’s very pricey and time consuming.
e. listen/watch all of the popular to the talking heads (serious or satire) who keep me up to date with current events around the globe and what I should think about them
f. keep track of which celebrity was arrested for doing what, or which one yelled at their kids on a voice mail, or who is getting a divorce and why, or whatever…and that costs me ounces of sanity with each dumb story

I’m sure I missed some, but I couldn’t afford one or two of those, much less all of them.

3. Time? Who’s got the time? – I’m a husband, a father, a committed member of my church, a deacon, a (part-time) seminary student, and…oh yeah, I work full time too. And that’s just the stuff that I’m obligated to do – privileged to do too, yes, but if I don’t work hard on any one of those things up there, there are pretty serious consequences.

Now you may agree or disagree with the lists that I’ve given above, and you likely have things you could add to them. Some might say that I’m stretching ‘being relevant’ to an extreme, but I don’t think so. In order to be relevant in my ministry I would have to be very diverse in what I take in. There’s not just one stream of modern pop-culture in my world, country, city, or area. What’s relevant to the single-mom who’s a new Christian is different from what’s relevant to the 80-year-old widow who has been a Christian longer than I’ve been alive. What’s relevant to the out-of-work father is different than what’s relevant to his teen-age kids who always have their iPod headphones on. And not everyone is interested in or will watch every TV show or movie (or any TV show or movie), so I need to know what is going on in the romantic comedies, the sit coms, the adventure stories, the sci-fi epics, the family programming, and the sports events.

Because the moment I claim to be relevant but I miss where group A or person B is at or what they like – I’ve lost them. Or if I get them the next time, I’ve lost another group who could care less about this other thing.

The only way to be relevant to the hippie, the druggie, the church choir member, the pastor, the child, the father, the president of the United States, Ghengis Kahn, Stalin, Hitler, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, the Pope, or whoever is to get to the root that everyone has in common. And that’s not found in pop culture. That’s not the latest gadget. That’s not the latest book. That’s not the economic crisis or a natural disaster. It’s this: man is sinful and wretched, God completely holy and loving, and sinful man deserves God’s wrath, so the God Jesus lived and died as a sinless man and bore the wrath of God for sinners. And by repentance of sin and faith in Christ, a sinful man’s unrighteousness is replaced with the perfect righteousness of Christ Jesus, and now the redeemed sinner lives in light of God’s grace and love and imperfectly strives to honor the one who saved him.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Even in a Sandbox while Playing With Frogs…

2010-07-01T18:22:00.004-05:00

People who have known my wife and I during her many pregnancies find it fun to guess the name of the soon-to-be-arriving addition to our family. After our first two sons, Micah and Noah, people began to see a pattern and would have fun guessing names. Well one of the criteria that I would consider is what the name means or who has had the same name in the past. And when it came down to selecting Noah’s name, I was not primarily thinking about his name-sake’s building, populating, and sailing of the ark, but I was thinking about how Peter described Noah as “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Pet 2:5).

My one and only main hope for all of my children is that the Lord saves them. All of the other hopes of a father are there – health, safety, success in life – but that one is primary. And by the grace of God, both of my oldest boys have made positive professions of faith. Last year Micah and I witnessed to one of his little neighborhood friends. Micah was helpful and active in the conversation, and that was very encouraging. Today I was talking to my wife and she relayed a story that she learned about today but it must have occurred yesterday. Hannah (almost 3) relayed the story that Noah had gone up to a neighbor boy and said the following, “You believe in fake gods but you need to believe in Jesus.” Now this friend is a little Hindu boy, and during our Bible time in the evenings we’ve talked about many things – one of which is that some people and some of our friends don’t believe in the real God.

Upon hearing this, she checked it out with Noah and found that the story was, in fact, true. Stephanie then encouraged Noah to be direct, but ask his friend if he knew that Jesus could forgive his sins if he repented and believed in Him. Noah’s reacted by saying, “Okay, I’m going to do that right now!” He marched outside, went to the fence, and talked to his friend. Now his friend reacted like most people do and didn’t want to hear about Christ, and I was pleased to hear that Noah was not downcast at this rejection by his friend.

So – back to the name – I’ve always hoped and prayed that Noah would not only believe in Christ but that he too would be a preacher of righteousness. Not that I have a 30 year plan laid out for him to get him into a pulpit somewhere, but my desire is that he would be a preacher of righteousness wherever he is. Whether he ends up in working in a factory or sitting behind a desk of a large corporation or anything else; wherever he goes, my desire is that he be a preacher of righteousness while he’s there…even, and especially, in a sandbox while playing with frogs.

Soli Deo Gloria

“Lost” – I should not have been surprised

2010-06-30T11:32:00.004-05:00

For the sake of online courtesy – this post contains spoilers - so if you, like one of my co-workers, haven’t yet watched the finale and still plan to…first of all, don’t, but secondly if you will – then don’t read this post.

I started to write a little commentary on the finale of Lost the day after it aired but I put off completing it because I wanted to get the pics shown below (screen shots saved as jpgs from when I DVRd the show) to go along with this post. And then, life and other things demanded my time, and so here…finally, I am completing my thoughts.

For about the last 5 years I have been a fan of the TV show Lost. I started watching it when the first season was re-run before the beginning of season 2 and thought it was captivating and entertaining. There has always been the theme of good vs. evil, light vs. dark, faith vs. reason present in the show, and so it was of no surprise that there were religious and philosophical themes that played out heavily in the show, even imbedded in the names of the characters. Many of the character’s names are associated with varying social, religious, or scientific historical figures: John Locke, Daniel Faraday (for Michael Faraday), Desmond Hume (for David Hume), Christian Shepherd (was a drunken philanderer), and Charlotte Lewis (for C.S. Lewis).

Also, as best as I can remember, the only explicitly religious (in the sense of organized religion) characters were Roman Catholic (Charlie was devout before drugs, Ecko pretended to be a priest, and Desmond had formerly been in a monastery). There are probably more, but these are the ones that I thought of off hand. And as far as religious themes go, several of the main characters had a significantly relevant history (back-story) with the Roman Catholic church. But aside from these nods (or jabs, depending on how you look at it) toward Christianity, nothing about the idea of faith in the show was really compatible with Christianity. And what I mean by that is that there was nothing Christ-focused about the faith of the show, and in this way I believe that the show was utterly hostile to true Christian faith.

Now, I was truly a fan of the show and liked the sci-fi themes and mystery, but I remember the first time that the characters found something from the Dharma Initiative that I groaned inside because I knew that dharma is a Hindu concept, and I was not excited to see Hindu themes in the show. But going forward, there were references to religion, faith, and destiny that were ambiguously tied to religion (if they were even connected that much). So when the finale ended with all of the main characters meeting in a church that has symbols from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and many other religions before Christian Shepherd opens the doors to the sanctuary for them to be enveloped in a bright white light I should not have been surprised. I think I can sum up my thoughts with the same words that I spoke to my wife just after the final scene. “Really… Really? So I’ve watched six seasons of Lost for an ‘all-roads-lead-to-the-light’ universalistic spiritual resolution?” My whole way of thinking about the show has been irrevocably tarnished by this blatantly anti-Christian conclusion to the story. My main problem now is a personal and introspective one: why did it take this slap-in-the-face of the finale to make me see (or at least to stop denying) how anti-Christian this show was?

Now why my revulsion hit a high point at this event and not at other ones during the series – I don’t know. Perhaps my reaction was more acute because this seemed to be the most blatantly obvious commentary by the writers on their religious worldview that they had for the show. Until the finale, the religious stuff was all background to the story, but in the finale it took center stage and became the story.

But even if the final scene of the finale (pictured above) wasn’t a Coexist love fest of ungodly spiritualism, the prevalence of ambiguous faith and mysticism should have been enough to have me tune out long ago. As captivating and fun as the show was, the philosophy communicated is at odds with everything that I stand for.

I was shocked and upset by the conclusion of Lost, but I am now more frustrated that I was shocked by it. I should have seen it coming, and I should have not subjected myself to the wasted hours of mind-numbing amusement (a = not; muse = think) over the past five years. This gives more weight to my thoughts of unplugging from TV and movies almost completely. There is very little that is positively worth-while, or at the very least harmless, that I can watch if I’ve actually thought about it before hand.

Imputed Righteousness and a Joyful Marriage

2010-06-03T09:28:00.002-05:00

What would it be like if you lost the ability to filter your thoughts before they came out of your mouth? Anyone who knows me may wonder if I suffer from this at times because I choose to say what is on my mind…even if it is uncomfortable or unpopular. Those closest to me would tell you that when there’s an elephant in the room – it’s almost like I can’t not talk about it. And that is true enough.

Seriously though, what would it be like if that ability to filter our thoughts was lost and we said whatever flew into our brain? I was watching an episode of House this weekend where just such a thing was going on. The guy in the story was systematically driving his coworkers, family, and even his doctors away because he couldn’t filter the vile, mean, perverse thoughts he had. He couldn’t even sugar-coat what he was saying to make it seem better.

At one point near the end of the show, the man’s wife was in the room with him (she was a wreck after hearing scattered bits of his thoughts for the past few days) and was just asking him all of the questions that she could in order to hear all of the unfiltered and hurtful things that he would say. Her response to this was that she was hurt and felt betrayed. My response was to yell at the TV, frustrated with the woman because if the marriage was going to be ruined, it would be because of what he said and because she wouldn’t be patient and understand that even she has thoughts that would be hurtful to him.

The very next day after having watched this show, I began reading John Piper’s Counted Righteous in Christ which is one of the required books for my systematic theology class this summer. In the first few pages Dr. Piper made a very profound application of the doctrine of Christ’s imputed righteousness.

What makes marriage almost impossible at times is that both partners feel so self-justified in their expectations that are not being fulfilled. There is a horrible emotional dead-end street in the words, “But it’s just plain wrong for you to act that way,” followed by, “that’s your perfectionistic perspective,” or “Do you think everything you do is right?,” or hopeless, resigned silence. The cycle of self-justified self-pity and anger seems unbreakable.

But what if one or both of the partners becomes overwhelmed with the truth of justification by faith alone, and with the particular truth that in Christ Jesus God credits me, for Christ’s sake, as fulfilling all his expectations? What would happen if this doctrine so mastered our souls that we began to bend it from the vertical to the horizontal? What if we applied it to our marriages?

In our own imperfect efforts in this regard, there have been breakthroughs that seemed at times impossible. It is possible, for Christ’s sake, to simply say, “I will no longer think merely in terms of whether my expectations are met in practice. I will, for Christ’s sake, regard my wife (or husband) the way God regards me – complete and accepted in Christ – and to be helped and blessed and nurtured and cherished, even if in practice there are shortcomings.” I know my own wife treats me this way. And surely this is part of what Paul was calling for when he said that we should forgive “one another…as God in Christ forgave you; (Eph 3:32, ESV). I believe there is more healing for marriage in the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness than many of us have even begun to discover. (John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? P.27-28)

If you think that the person you love the most doesn’t have to filter out crazy random thoughts about…well, anything, you’re wrong. From anger to lust and more, all people have to filter their thoughts. The presence of horrible thoughts that come into your mind are not necessarily indicative of the person you are, it’s what you do with them (or how you get rid of them) that is more revealing. But as Dr. Piper brings out, even when your loved one speaks or acts in a way that is unfulfilling or hurtful, having a view of your own position in Christ before the Father will help you to love the other person in-spite of their practical shortcomings.

I echo Dr. Piper’s sentiment in that I am sure my wife treats me in this way and I hope she would say the same about me. I am very certain that even though I wouldn’t have put my finger on this doctrine as what contributes to my healthy and joyful marriage, I believe that it makes absolute sense.

We dare not abandon the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Why Any Church that Has Bono Speak Related to Christianity has Discernment Issues

2010-05-26T22:38:00.003-05:00

Dr. Ergun Caner, Liberty, and Credibility

2010-05-21T16:24:00.004-05:00

There has been quite a lot of back and forth surrounding Dr. Ergun Caner, president of Liberty Theological Seminary. If you haven’t heard of the issue (and that wouldn’t be overly surprising), here’s the basic issue: Dr. Ergun Caner has talked publicly, on many occasions, about his youth and how he grew up as a serious or devout Muslim, including wearing Muslim garb and other such details, before his conversion to Christ as a young teenager.

Why is this a problem?

Well the problem has been catalogued by Dr. James R. White on his blog (also an important post was made by a blog contributor, Turretinfan, to this whole discussion). Dr. White’s contends (and I agree) that he can show factually that Dr. Ergun Caner has lied about his story – where he grew up, what he was like, how devout of a Muslim he was, and other things. Similarly, he has lied about who he’s debated in the Muslim community as well as other issues showing an apparent lack of proficiency in understanding the Islamic religion enough to debate it. This is also a problem because Drs. Ergun and Emir Caner have risen to some prominence since 9/11 because of their reputation as Islamic apologists and former Muslims. The primary concern of Dr. White (and myself) is that if Dr. Ergun Caner is exaggerating (at best) or blatantly lying during his public speaking (for whatever his reason may be) and ties that in with his gospel presentation, that it sullies the gospel and calls into question everything he says. Christians or other westerners who are ignorant of Islamic teaching or who are unaware of Dr. Caner’s history may be unaffected entirely by this problem. But the Muslims who are aware of their own religion and come to understand that the details of Dr. Caner’s life have been altered – for whatever reason – will understandably call all of what he says into question.

But this is not the primary point of my comments here. Again, I think there are serious issues that need to be addressed by Dr. Caner & Liberty Theological Seminary. In fact Liberty is investigating, now, Dr. Caner’s comments as they indicated in a public statement here. But it is the final comments from their chancellor that concern me:

“Liberty does not initiate personnel evaluations based upon accusations from Internet blogs,” Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. said. “However, In light of the fact that several newspapers have raised questions, we felt it necessary to initiate a formal inquiry.”

You don’t have to be part of the bloggosphere for long to know that there is a ton of garbage out there. And there are all sorts of unfounded attacks on persons, institutions, traditions, or whatever that deserves nothing more than to be ignored. And that is what seems to be the vibe from the chancellor’s comments. Now I’ve seen and heard the instances that Dr. White has brought up and what he’s put on his blog, and it is anything but crazy, fictional and wild-eyed ranting. Why should Liberty have waited until the secular media got their hands on this story before investigating when Christians have sought these answers for far longer? Why should it take a media event to get Christians to examine one of our own if there are actual issues that are raised with facts to support them?

Whatever the outcome of the investigation by Liberty, I fear that much damage has been done to the body of Christ. Many will blame men like Dr. White for being relentless in his demanding truth from Dr. Caner. But why should truth be so hard to mine from a Christian, much less a Christian leader, much less the president of a theological seminary.

I hope and pray that the truth comes out, and that the parties (whomever they may be) who have sinned in connection with this will be open, honest, and repentant so that the gospel may be magnified.

Woodland Hills Church Has A Different Gospel

2010-05-12T13:55:00.004-05:00

On 4/25/10, Dr. Greg Boyd (senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church) contrasted the gospel as he understands it with the gospel that “is probably the most prevalent version in America.”¹ Now even though his articulation of the gospel which focuses on the penal substitution understanding of the cross of Christ was presented with a straw-man setup, he was clearly distancing himself from it.

What straw-man did he use? Briefly: his characterization of God the Father as only angry, his comparison to being put in the garden as putting a cookie in front of a child and telling them not to eat it” ² , that the nation of Israel was an attempt to “try to fix the problem” by “giving them a bunch of rules” but this plan failed³ , and that Christ coming and dying to appease the wrath of the Father was “plan b”. ⁴ Now this may be how open theists who reject penal substitution articulate the gospel, but it is not a gospel summary that not many other than the most flippant of relevant church type pastors would characterize in this way.

Dr. Boyd then went on to say, “I submit to you that while that version of the gospel I just gave you bears some resemblance to the true gospel, it’s actually a rather gross distortion.” ⁵ What is missing, or what is wrong, with the gospel that Dr. Boyd opposes so greatly? He begins to explain it by saying that the fall of Adam is all about changing our worldview from a covenant worldview to a contract worldview. Boyd sees the covenant worldview as one of an undifferentiated universal love and the contract worldview as a quid pro quo worldview that is concerned about rule breaking. He then summarizes the problem inherent with the theology of penal substitution in this way,

“[In the version of the gospel that I reject] we make God out to be the accuser…so we cannot see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ because we’re seeing God as the accuser. Which means that we’re seeing the accuser as God. And who is the accuser? It’s Satan, and that’s been his plan all along – he wants to be God. So if he can get these miserable subjects to think that he is God, then he’s accomplished that.” ⁶

As best as I can tell from listening and re-listening to this sermon, at best Dr. Boyd just said that I (because I believe in penal substitution) worship a satanic image of God. At worst, he says that I actually worship Satan. Either way would put Dr. Boyd and me on different sides of the Galatians 1 divide.

Disagreeing with Greg Boyd is not and cannot be seen as an intramural disagreement among Christians. Greg Boyd says the gospel I believe in and proclaim is a gross distortion of the true gospel. Either Greg is a heretic or I am – there are no two ways about it.

“⁶ I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; ⁷ which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! ⁹ As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! ¹⁰ For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.” (Gal 1:6-10)

Soli Deo Gloria.

¹ Quote begain around 10:12 into his sermon
² 10:20
³ 10:39
⁴ 10:50
⁵ 11:00
⁶ 26:25

Agreeing with Dr. Boyd - Well, Sort of...

2010-04-27T16:14:00.004-05:00

“If you get that God is love then you will realize why it is impossible – impossible, metaphysically impossible – for God to stop loving you on the basis of something you did or on the basis of something you’re doing or on the basis of that deep dark vile secret that you’ve got that no one knows about.” Greg Boyd, "God is Love" preached 4/18/2010

I whole-heartedly agree with this statement by Dr. Greg Boyd! This is a very important statement for me, because in the past I have been very critical of Dr. Boyd and his views. So to make absolutely clear what I mean, let me say a few more words. I completely agree that the Christian, the one who has been regenerated and saved by grace through faith in Christ, is totally secure in the love of God and there is no possibility of God stopping His love for this person on the basis of anything that is done or said.

But, Greg Boyd was not saying this. He was saying that God is disposed to all people (Christians and non-Christians, friends and enemies of God) of all time in this way. The paradigms of eternal reward for those counted righteous in Christ and eternal conscious torment for those who maintain their own righteousness are thrown out as unbiblical and atrocious. There is no eternal punishment for the wicked. You see, as far as Dr. Boyd is concerned, there is no more twisted view of a God of love than the one who eternally sets people on fire.

(Oops, I guess I don’t agree with Dr. Boyd after all. Or perhaps, I agree with Dr. Boyd’s statement the way that Dr. Boyd agrees with any statement in the Bible – ripped out of its context….)

But doesn’t God hate the sin in your life? Dr. Boyd would say that He does, “but if He hates all of that, and He does, it’s because He loves you.” Remember, Dr. Boyd is saying that this is true both for the rebel and for the friend of God. Becoming a friend of God will not change how much He loves you, but you will start to “have some benefit in your life.” In his elaboration on this topic, Dr. Boyd refers to the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary and says that He died for us while we were “lost” but doesn’t define (in this sermon or any I’ve heard, anyway) who the lost are or what it means to be “lost”.

In the historical sense, and I would argue that it is the Biblical sense as well, this word has referred to those people who were dead in their sins and under the impending condemnation of God (think “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” by Edwards). But this cannot be the meaning for Dr. Boyd since there is no impending condemnation for anyone. I didn’t know that Dr. Boyd had slipped further off of orthodoxy than his view of God’s openness. But leaving the issue of Open Theism aside for the moment, Dr. Boyd seems to be referring to a modern form of the heresy of universalism. This view is called the “wider mercy” view of God and His salvation.

I hope I’m wrong about this – but this heretical view would fit right in with other modern “evangelicals” like Tony Campolo and Rob Bell.

To My Friends:

Please – if you attend Dr. Boyd’s church please hear me; you must leave. I beg you.

Whatever good Dr. Boyd does, says, or encourages know that his theology is toxic and it is not Biblical. This is no small division as one over speaking in tongues today or on issues that good Christian theologians can disagree. This stance (again – I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am) takes Dr. Boyd out of the true Christianity and puts his “gospel” on the level of any other false and non-saving religious message.

“⁶ I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; ⁷ which is really not another ; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! ⁹ As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!” (Gal 1:6-9)

Falling Out of a Tree & Comfort from Above

2010-04-20T18:34:00.001-05:00

Last night my four-year-old was exuberantly climbing a tree in our yard. He was so excited to show me how high he could go and he really wanted me to be proud of him for his accomplishment – and his expectation wasn’t disappointed. I think all fathers who love their children are excited when the children are excited about newfound skills, talents, or knowledge.

Well, getting down was a cinch…the first time. The second time he climbed up and then got down, he slid a bit too fast and received one long thin scrape on his inner forearm. This scrape set the next hour (or so) in motion. The initial crying in pain, the terrified sobbing at not wanting to have the scrape properly washed, the crying in (somewhat) imagined pain at the ever-so-gentle washing of the scrape, and the unstoppable sobbing for now real reason afterward.

It was very difficult to see my son go from excitement and joy to pain and fear. I know from experience that tree-climbing cuts are plentiful and a bit painful, but nothing serious enough to warrant the awe inspiring display that they usually do. I know that the cut hurts, and when you’re a child with a cut – the world seems to come to an end because this is the worst thing that could happen at this time. But I also know that he’ll be okay, that I am here to make sure the cut is properly taken care of, and that this is such a small thing in the scope of his life that to become overly exercised about it is unnecessary.

In the above experience, I was the father and I was able to calm my child because of who I am and because my son loves me, listens to me, and believes in me.

However, I’ve been dealing with my own scrape on the arm, as it were, and I am no less extreme in my reaction to it. The world seems to be closing in and this scrape is causing an internal, yet still somewhat of an all-consuming and hysterical, reaction of stress and anxiety. My heavenly Father has sent His Spirit into the world, and His ministry is present in times like this. Among other things, the Spirit is here to comfort the believer in times of trouble – even when the trouble may be imagined or accentuated because of my own imperfect and sinful response.

I can praise God today for the lesson that He is teaching me in this juxtaposition of my internal struggle and the minor scrape that my son received on his arm. Also, if nothing else, the scrape that my beloved son suffered last night has been used by God for my good and His glory (Rom 8:28) as it is helping to cause my eyes to focus heavenward. My son may never know how his scrape was the event that God used to correct his father’s heart. But the fact that he is unaware of how his painful situation has caused me to praise God and how it has influenced my teaching and leading of him is yet another lesson to me. These lessons are both all the more important as I deal with my own scrapes and cuts as I journey through this life.

Soli Deo Gloria.

I'm a Christian and I'm Not Sorry

2010-03-23T13:28:00.005-06:00

As part of the facebook world I am privy to the random thoughts and life updates of over 400 of my closest friends. This morning, I saw a video posted of a young man reciting a poem with the title, “I’m a Christian and I’m sorry”.

I listened to it, and I must say that as shocking as it was to hear the f-bomb twice, I was more shocked at hearing the same Christian bashing lines of thought that you hear anywhere else.

You can find the video on youtube, but I transcribed (as best as I could) the words of the poem so that I could better interact with it (transcript is below). I felt compelled to respond, so I have written this post (not even close to poetry) called, “I’m a Christian, and I’m not sorry” and it is below the transcript the poem.

I am a Christian.
I’m sorry

I’m sorry for the way that I come across
So fair and fake friendly and full on my self so judging your spiritual health by the words that you say and the way that you dress and the things that you do
Or maybe just judging you

I’m sorry for the way I live my life.
So confident of my own beliefs that I would never think to think about thinking about yours

I’m sorry for the wars
Iron clad crusaders mounting steeds and drawing swords with such spirit but the spirit…
[something about the spirit being out and the sword of the spirit was the word]
…but the word was with God and the word was God and they preached this as they marched on the holy land.
Singing and praying
And killing and slaying.
And preaching and healing
And raping and stealing.
It’s ironic that they lined their pockets in the name of God
Just like the priests who lined their pockets in the name of God.
Just like the people you can’t stand because they always raise their hand and spread their faith and hate and judgment in the name of God.
I’m sorry that I take the name of God in vain – or rather I’m sorry that I stain the name of God. Defending my selfish actions and selfless actions pertaining to the will of God.

I’m sorry for being intolerant.
For trying to talk down to you, for trying to talk over you, for not letting you talk.

I’m sorry for not walking the walk. For being a hypocritical critical Christian. Criticizing your lifestyle while my own lifestyle styles itself like the televangelist’s hair. All slick and sly and slippery…(something about a syllable sliding into your ear)…but that’s my greatest fear.
That the steps I take won’t match the words I speak so when I speak all you hear of me is a weak hypocritical critical Christian. Doing one thing and saying another. Loving my friend but hating my brother – it’s a show.

I’m sorry I get drunk on Saturday’s and go to church on Sunday’s to pray for my friends who get drunk on Saturday’s.
And on that note I’m sorry for making the church about the pews and the cross and the steeple, because the building is not the church; the church is the people.

I’m sorry that I hate you because you are gay.
I’m sorry I condemn you to hell because you’re gay instead of loving I junp to hatred. Mouth open and tongue preaching, eyes open but not seeing that you are the same as me just a F****** human being.

I’m sorry that I only hang out with Christian friends and we only do nice Christian things like pot luck dinners and board game nights. While in the night a man beats his girlfriend again. Another homeless man dies again. Is this the that my own pride has been but here I am with my same friends again but see what I always forget is that Jesus didn’t come to hang out with the priests and the lords, no. He hung out with cripples and beggars and whores.

Love.

I’m sorry for history. For native tribes wiped out in the name of the church. Lodges burning. Stomachs churning and yearning for justice as mothers, screaming and bleeding, pleading for their young ones are dragged away to church schools where they were abused.

I’m sorry for the way that I refuse to learn your culture, instead I just came to spread the gospel - and the plague.

I’m sorry that I stand at the front doors of abortion clinics screaming at fifteen-year-old girls as they enter instead of waiting at the back door to hug them as they leave.

I’m sorry for taking my wars and my faith to your lands when historically your lands is where my faith was born. And in the face of the storm I realize that if God is Allah and Allah is God then why are we shooting instead of sharing? Why are we launching instead of learning? Why are we warring instead of walking together? Why are we taking instead of talking together? Why are we bombing instead of breaking bread together? You see I think looks down and He’s sad. And from His right hand throne above, Jesus asks “where is the love?” And if it takes Wil.I.Am and Justin Timberlake asking the same question for us to start asking the same question then where the f*** are we headed?

So I will take this stage to be my chapel and this mic to be my confessional, and in the presence of God and of you, the blessed, I confess I am a Christian. I’m sorry.

- A poem by Chris Tse

I’m a Christian and I’m not sorry.

I’m a Christian and I’m not sorry.

I’m not sorry for the way I come across. When I’m being friendly, I’m not fake – I’m genuine. If you think its fake, I’m sorry, but it’s not.

I’m not sorry that the way you speak communicates something about who you are to anyone who is paying attention. I don’t judge your spiritual health by the way that you dress, but the things that you do and the things that you say communicate a lot about you in the same way that what I do and say tells you a lot about me.

I’m not sorry for the way I live my life or for the tenacity with which I hold my worldview. I’m so confident in my beliefs that I will try to understand the beliefs of others in order to show their deficiency. But more than that I want to tell you of the Perfect Savior and the Holy God who is present nowhere else than the very gospel that other worldviews do not have.

I’m not sorry for Christians in the middle ages. I’ve read Foxes Book of Martyrs and I know how the Christians – the true Christians – were treated by the same Roman system that is responsible for all kinds of evils. I’m just sorry more people either aren’t willing or aren’t able to separate Christians and Christianity from the Roman Catholic Church, the associated monarchical system, and the abuses, perversions, and heresies that were hand in hand with that union.

I’m not sorry for being intolerant…because I’m not. Intolerance doesn’t allow others to speak. And unless I’m living in a parallel universe, those who oppose Christ and Christians have the primary positions on TV, Radio, Hollywood, Broadway, newspapers, and other forms of communication. I don’t seek to shut others down from saying what they believe; I just want the ability to do the same.

I’m not sorry for trying to live and be as Christ wants me to be while failing every day. That is how the Christian life is described in the Scriptures. And there are a great host of Christians who were the same type of “hypocrites” that I am. Look at Paul – he didn’t do what he wanted to do and longed to be free of the body of this death – but he was a true and genuine Christian. I, a Christian, don’t revel in nor seek to not repeat my failures, but I do not deny them or cover them up either.

I’m not sorry about greasy televangelists – I’m righteously angry toward them. They pervert the name of Jesus to line their pockets. I pray that God would have mercy on their souls now so that they can repent of their ill gotten gains, their filthy luker, and their hell-wrought theology. Otherwise they will be judged and condemned by God after they’ve enjoyed their short time on earth.

I’m not sorry that I don’t get drunk. I feel bad for non-Christians who drown themselves in alcohol, and I love and pity them and want them to be set free in Christ from their bondage. I am sorry for people who claim to be Christians but are in an unrepentant cycle of willful sin and very well may truly be non-Christians who are deceived into thinking that they have been forgiven.

I’m not sorry for seeing the importance of gathering together with other believers to hear the Word preached, to worship the Lord in singing, and to find ways to serve one another and others. And I’m not sorry to do that in a building that we try to keep clean and in good repair.

I’m not sorry for telling people that “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,” nor those enslaved to “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor 6:9 & Gal 5:19-21). All sinners are human beings, and all human beings are sinners, except Jesus Christ the righteous. And all human beings are wicked and are sure to be condemned by God unless Christ saves them through the power of His gospel. And as much as I don’t like it when what I say makes people upset or frustrated – I’m not sorry if this offends you.

I’m not sorry that I am pro-life and want to stop women from paying others to kill their children. I’m not sorry that I know and love women who have had abortions. I’m not sorry that my church reaches out to women in situations like this to love them and to share the gospel with them.

I’m not sorry for sending missionaries out into the world to spread the gospel. I’m not sorry that Christians are going into hostile lands where men, women, boys, and girls are killed, beat up, abused, and persecuted for the sake of the gospel.

I’m not sorry for distinguishing between the Allah of Islam and the God of the Bible. They are not the same. Believing in one is not believing in the other. I’m not sorry for being clear where the Bible is clear.

I’m a Christian and I’m not sorry.

Greg Boyd makes my logic hurt

2010-02-22T14:00:00.003-06:00

Apparently I must have had the need for some sort of self flagellation because I found myself listening to recent podcasts from Woodland Hills Church. I was listening to Dr. Boyd’s recent sermons because, I must confess, I’m awfully curious to find out how he deals with the Crucifixion of Christ and the doctrine of justification when he comes to that part of Luke’s gospel. I also read Dr. Boyd’s blog or listen to his sermons to keep some tabs on one of the twin cities emergent-style leaders as well as for a quick reference to all things open-theistic. One of my most recent encounter with a wacky view of Dr. Boyd’s was when he articulated something that I called “The reverse psychology of Greg Boyd”. No, I’m not kidding. (link)

The messages that I listened to today were, if nothing else, what I have come to expect from Dr. Boyd’s preaching and theology. However, my point of logic-ache is not primarily directed at his poor treatment of “so that the Scripture would be fulfilled” references in the gospels or his Kingdom, open theism, or Christus victor Theologies. In his sermon about Judas Christianity, Dr. Boyd used a personal illustration to articulate his point. A few years back, an organization was requesting that pastors sign a petition to send to President Bush to oppose a two-state solution to the problems in Israel and Palestine. Boyd understood the petition as coming from those Christians who believe that the nation of Israel will have a future roll to play before Christ returns. Boyd then articulated his response to that petition with the following statements,

“We who are called to be peace makers in the name of the Peace Maker are preventing peace from happening. Two problems with that at least. One is that it is never good to set political policy on the basis of your interpretation of the Bible. Secondly, if it was prophesied and fated [that Israel would return to the land in the course of events related to the 2nd coming of Christ], then God really doesn’t need your help now, does He? So if God wants to take care of it, let God take care of it – stay out of His business [responded to with loud applause from the congregation].” (WHC – Lessons from the Betrayer, 2/7/10, comment ends @ 39:19)

Once again, my contention in this article is not with his theological stances that I object to, it is primarily with the statement, “that it is never good to set political policy on the basis of your interpretation of the Bible.” I’m sorry…what? Now I am not in favor of creating a Christian government or monarchy as in the kingdom of old, so don’t mistake me. The only way that laws will be changed for the better is if the hearts and minds of the voters are changed and renewed, not the other way around. But, Dr. Boyd, upon what basis ought Christians make decisions, political or otherwise? Should my decision on whether to support or oppose legislation be based on everything except my understanding of the Bible? Do you do that with “justice” issues? Do you, or would you, leave your doctrine at the door when it comes to voting or making decisions about taxation, racism, murder, or theft? Do you really want Christians to check their theology at the door and vote? Really? Wasn’t your rejection, Dr. Boyd, of the very petition you referred to in your illustration based in your theological conclusions of what the Bible says about love, peace, and eschatology?

If anyone objects to my criticism as being too harsh or that I’ve taken Dr. Boyd’s statement out of context, I think you’d be wrong. Dr. Boyd’s comment was in the context of rejecting a political petition that was by individuals who I can only assume were pre-millennialists. And Dr. Boyd’s own eschatology is, roughly (as I understand it) that the kingdom needs to come to earth through a peace and love, but regardless his eschatology is not the same as pre-millennialists. That means that Dr. Boyd did the very thing he urged others not to do – he took a political stance based on his theological convictions which are based on his understanding of the Bible.

Simply put – it is ridiculously non-Christian to urge Christians to refrain from making political decisions based on how they understand the Bible. The only sure guide we have to make decisions – whether they are, political, moral, social, economical, or relational – is Scripture. And in order to use Scripture, we must interpret it. Therefore, it is always the best idea to base your decision and your input into a political policy on your interpretation of Scripture. That does not mean that every single individual will have the same conclusions. This just means that interpreters are fallible but it doesn’t invalidate the principle of using the infallible guide.

Did something change with broadcast TV standards when I wasn’t looking?

2010-02-08T13:06:00.000-06:00

I try not to watch too much TV, but honestly I watch way too much for all that I’ve got to do on a daily basis. But be that is it may, did I miss something? I had the Superbaal on yesterday while my family and I were cooped up in the house but I noticed that the 3rd Matrix movie was on at the same time. Now, I’ve never seen that movie before. I saw the first one in the theater and may have been the only one that I know who found it unentertaining and I was very thoroughly unimpressed. Well, I don’t know why, but my wife and I ended up getting the 2nd movie on DVD. We watched it once – and only once – and it was worse than the first one. It was at that point that I told my wife that I was not going to waste money to get the third when it came out even though there was a small part of me that wanted to see how the story ends (I’m usually a sucker for sagas). So when I saw that the local Ion Television channel was running this movie during the weekend, I decided to set my PVR to record it and watch it. Hey, it’s free, so I’m not out any money, right?

The movie was horrible, absolutely horrible. I didn’t know if I could like it less than the first two, but I most definitely did. I fast-forwarded through the emotional (anti) climactic scenes of the movie because they were just…unbearable. The death of Neo’s girlfriend, the final stand of the man-robot-guys (seriously…seriously?), and the triple or quadruple fake ending of the final duel between Smith and Neo were so over done and tiring that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

But my primary concern is not over the worthlessness of the movie, and it was most definitely worthless, or over the fact that it was an absolute life-draining waste of time even though I fast forwarded through some of it. My primary concern was the many times that I heard hard profanity and blasphemy on broadcast TV. I must admit, to my shame, that much of the casual and ordinary blasphemy that so dominates TV and other media now hits a callous point in my mind and heart when it should disturb me greatly enough to turn off whatever program I’m watching. So that is a different issue that I’ve got to look into, but I was totally shocked to hear compound blasphemous swearing on broadcast TV.

In case my terminology befuddles you, a compound blasphemy would be any curse or exclamation that uses the name of God along with another course or curse word. The last time I checked, I thought that these phrases were not allowed on broadcast TV. Whether or not that has changed in the TV standard books, I don’t know, but I was unaware that I would be hearing what I did. I know that cable channels have different standards, but I thought there were still some restrictions on broadcast TV.

Those who know me know that my wife and I very vigilantly monitor the programming that my children watch because we’re very aware of much of the corrosive and cancerous effect that TV (or other) garbage has on the mind and heart, and we desperately want to reduce that whenever possible when it comes to our children. But now, I am seriously reconsidering the radical notion of completely dropping TV. I’ve often wondered about what men did 100 years ago when they were trying to calm a screaming baby? I sit in my comfy chair in front of the tube, turn on something for the light and noise in hopes that it will lull my little guy to sleep, and that’s that. What did they do? I don’t know, but I bet I could tell you what I’d end up doing. A fair more amount of praying for my family and other things, singing to my son more, or so many more things. Sure, I’d probably have to work on my patience during those times, but seriously…what am I giving up and missing out on because of the convenience and seduction of TV?

If I decide to get rid of TV, it wouldn’t be a financial motive because I don’t pay $50 - $100 per month for TV now. It would be a health issue because I don’t want to be more calloused to important things than I already am and I don’t want to miss out on the opportunities for really important things.

I don’t pipe sewer water into my home because I like the feel of cool liquid at times, so why do I bring the TV in? I’m really starting to seriously ask that question again.

Haiti, the economy, and the grace of God.

2010-01-20T17:27:00.001-06:00

I cannot imagine the reality of the horrendous devastation, tragedy, and horror for the many people on the ground in Haiti. Even from the little coverage that I have seen and read, the situation is truly one that does not remind me so much of Katrina, but of the Boxing Day Tsunami. I am thankful that I have been emotionally spared from the actual individual stories of survivors who lost their families. I only have to think about what a ruined state I would be propelled into if my wife and children were suddenly and violently taken away from me in order to emotionally identify with those who are actually experiencing this nightmare.

Domestically there are many individuals and families who are in the throws of financial and economic distress. Some people are suffering because of poor choices that they have made (or are continuing to make), some are suffering because of the loss of work, but regardless of the reasons why people are in financial peril, their individual fears and problems are no less real. And even though I have not personally experienced the loss of employment, of savings, of a home, or of other related things, I can easily see how difficult and stressful that situation would be for anyone – much less for a guy who has a wife and four children.

So how does the grace of God relate to these situations? To me?

Personally, I have been spared from these problems. Sure I feel some of the residual effects of them – especially the financial woes of the economy (who doesn’t?), but I have not been directly hit by either of these two things at this time. So for me, personally, God’s grace may well be in play in the fact that I have been spared. But I think God has been even more powerfully gracious to me than simply by keeping me from those problems.

Trying to be a good husband and father I regularly examine my families finances, spending habits, saving habits, and giving habits. I had noticed several months ago that spending had to be dealt with, and so my wife and I really have buckled down and became much more spending conscious. Well, it was in one of these regular self-examinations that I saw all of the same information that I’d been examining for years in a relatively new light. The numbers and percentages were basically the same as the ones that I had been looking at for a long time, but something was different in the way that I was seeing them…and let me tell you, it was not a pleasant view. This realization sent me into a minor tail-spin of calculating, re-calculating, brainstorming, and general stressing out that lasted for about 12 hours. I had (and still have) no answer for some of the dilemmas that I now see, but God is gracious….

By the time it was time to put my children to bed, I asked my four year-old to grab the Bible that we use for our Bible time and give it to my six year-old to find Proverbs 30. Once he found it, my blessed wife, assuming what I wanted to talk to the children about, encouraged him to read the underlined verses. This is what he read,

“⁷ Two things I asked of You, Do not refuse me before I die : ⁸ Keep deception and lies far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches ; Feed me with the food that is my portion, ⁹ That I not be full and deny You and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’ Or that I not be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God.” (Prov 30:7-9)

God’s grace is evident by helping me to see the instability of the financial towers made by men and to realize that my trust (to any extent) in them is futile and ultimately a form of idolatry. My little wake-up call helped me to see where I have placed my trust in things and now I am allowed me an opportunity to deal with the heart of the matter – my misplaced faith. I can, and need to, totally trust the LORD in all things as it relates to money, health, natural disasters, or whatever. God’s grace to me in this situation is showing me an area of sin that needs to be dealt with, and then being present to help in my mortifying of it.

God’s grace is also evident in the Haiti earthquake or the financial problems for those who have been most drastically and hardest hit, both for those who are Christians and those who are not. Unless a person’s life has been taken by God’s hand in the disaster in Haiti, this is a time where His grace is being displayed to all. It is not only a display of God’s grace when He spared all those who were not killed in Haiti or that He spared from being crushed by the financial crisis. It is God’s gracious act toward those who have lost homes, loved ones, or livelihoods because God has brought them to a place where they are stripped of all things that they cling to for security and hope and shown them the utter weakness of those things. And a brush with your own mortality (even if you come by it vicariously over the TV) is a gracious act of God. When we contemplate our very existence, we are brought straight back to the questions that the Bible specifically addresses.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” (Matthew 10:29)

Whether it is the crashing of your bank account or the crashing of the building you’re standing in, nothing happens apart from the plan and will of God. For those who die without Christ, it is an act of judgment. For those who survive without Christ, it is a display of God’s grace. For those in Christ, whether they survive or perish, we know that God works all things together for our good and His glory.

Soli Deo Gloria

the gift of faith

2009-12-11T17:44:00.001-06:00

“They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.” (1 John 2:19)

For about the last four years (as I remember my line-in-the-sand in conjunction with the birth of my second son) I have been an ardent advocate of the truth that faith in Christ, true saving faith, is a gift that is given to some, the elect, and not to others. When stated clearly like that, it can be a bit…uncomfortable or controversial inside of the church. But that is where I stand on the basis of Scripture.

And by the grace of God, I have been saved for over 20 years. By the grace of God I have been spared from emotional, physical, and spiritual pitfalls and trouble. The Lord has spared me from certain things and disciplined me out of love for other things when I sinned. The older I get and the more I work with and study in the church, the more I am convinced of the truth and glory of the fact that true saving faith is a gift from God which He imparts to the elect.

I fully and whole-heartedly acknowledge and glorify God in the fact that I am certain that the only reason that I am a faithful, yet constantly warring with sin, disciple of Christ is that God has given me new life and faith to believe in Him. And because it is a gift from God, it will not fail. Because my faith is a gift of God, it will continue and endure forever. For if my faith fails and I deny Christ or deny the true doctrines of salvation for the apostate doctrines of men that mingle human works with the work of Christ, this will begin to show that John’s words would apply to me.

…so why am I blogging this (after months of silence)?

I want to get back into writing (published or not) my thoughts and meditations. It is a very helpful tool for my own growth and development that I have missed of late. And let’s face it – life’s not going to get less busy ever, so I gotta kick it into gear now.
Sometimes I take things for granted – health, life, faith, house, job, you name it. Well, today I am intentionally not taking the faith that was given to me for granted.

Soli Deo Gloria

A Summary of my view of The Shack

2009-08-26T02:11:00.002-05:00

The following is the final paragraph of my paper (still in rough form at this time) on the theology of God in The Shack. I will post more at a later time, but this sums up most of what I believe about this popular book:

This book is not a Pilgrim’s Progress for our generation (as Eugene Peterson claims). If anything, it may have the effect of pushing many people into a heretical view of God when Pilgrim’s Progress encouraged devotion to the true God. And if the current acclaim for The Shack is that it gives readers a whole new perspective of God or that it changes how they understand God, then this much can be sure: whatever that reader’s previous understanding of God was before reading The Shack, he is now more fully embracing a non-Biblical and soul damning view of a god who not only cannot save his soul, but does not exist.

Tornado in Minneapolis: Boyd & Piper Could Both Tweak their Responses

2009-08-21T18:19:00.003-05:00

I make my comments regarding the tornado, where and when it happened, and who has made what comments very carefully knowing that my own comments are equally (if not way more so) dissectible and wrong on a point or emphasis here or there.

You can read the comments of Dr. Piper and Dr. Boyd and in it you will find more details surrounding the tornado in Minneapolis, its timing and place relative to the ELCA conference. But in a snapshot, here’s how I understand what the events were:

The ELCA was going to have a vote regarding human sexuality in its denomination, and this vote was to take place at the very church and the very time when the tornado hit and broke its steeple.

Dr. Piper laid out his thoughts for why there is some precedent for stating the following:

Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.¹

Dr Boyd’s comment about why this happened is very different:

I have an alternative interpretation of tornado behavior to offer. They have nothing to do with how pro-gay or how sinful people are and everything to do with where people happen to live. Tornadoes strike Oklahoma frequently because it’s located in a place where hot and cold air currents tend to collide frequently at certain times of the year. Much less frequently, the same thing happens in the Twin Cities. Why can’t we just leave it at that?²

My brief thoughts about Dr. Piper’s comments:

I think that Dr. Piper’s comment is off specifically related to his use of the word “was” instead of “might have been”. We can only interpret Scripture definitively. Natural disasters or murder (or whatever else) is not subject matter that we can answer the specific question of why it happened. We can, and should, uphold the big answers the question. The big answer, as I understand Scripture, is that God will be glorified and that His purposes will be accomplished in this world. I can say that definitively, but I think that we must be careful by saying that this tornado was for a certain specific purpose and not another.

My brief thoughts about Dr. Boyd’s comments:

Dr. Boyd stressed that the issue is not with how sinful people are, but where they “happen” to live. I stress the word “happen” because he went on to specifically objects to John Piper’s use of the Biblical example of Jesus rebuking the storm as evidence that God controls all of the weather by saying the following:

Even more interesting, Jesus “rebukes” the storm by commanding it to be “quiet.” The Greek term used here literally means “to muzzle” or “strangle,” and its the same word he sometimes used when confronting demons. The implication is that, far from suggesting that Jesus controls all storms, the passage actually suggests that at least some life-threatening storms have a demonic power behind them that resists God’s good purposes (for a fuller discussion on this, see Boyd, God at War [IVP, 1997]).³

I have not read Dr. Boyd’s “God at War” book, I believe that I understand his presupposition and thinking. Effectively God doesn’t control those things in the purposeful way that John Piper sees. For Dr. Boyd natural disasters are random and catch us off guard…but God didn’t know that they were going to happen either or He couldn’t (or didn’t) control them. For Dr. Boyd, the future is not something that is knowable by God.

I have understood his openness theology as it relates to human decisions but never in relation to natural disasters or the weather. But I suppose one has to go along with the other because it may be possible that man could alter the climate and weather (I don’t know Dr. Boyd’s position on this one, so I’ll leave it at that). However, I fully disagree with the presupposition that acts, natural or otherwise, in this world are truly random as they relate to God and His purposes.

I think that Piper is correct in his understanding that God has a purpose in all suffering and all disaster, but I think that he (and we) go too far when we ascribe what the exact purpose was. To speculate what it might be is another ball of wax, but we are better off there than to be dogmatic about the exact divine purpose of an event.

The question is not whether or not there was a purpose in the tornado that hit the ELCA church, the question is what was the purpose. And the definitive answer is the same as it is to the question of why tornados came through my neighborhood last year – I don’t know. And to ascribe a particular reason goes beyond our ability to understand natural revelation and events, but to ascribe that there is no purpose at all and that things just randomly happen apart from God’s divine purpose is to misunderstand God’s special revelation.

That’s my two cents.

Soli Deo Gloria.

¹ http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1965_the_tornado_the_lutherans_and_homosexuality/_
² http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/did-god-send-a-tornado-to-warn-the-elca/
³ Ibid.

Kicked Out of Como

2009-08-15T11:53:00.002-05:00

Last night my brother-in-law asked if I wanted to go out witnessing to people at Como Zoo today. I sooooo wanted to go, but today has been booked up for me for a while what with studying for seminary and preparing a sermon for Sunday (I know...not going out evangelizing because I'm studying is pretty lame, but its my only day off to study before I preach 3 weeks in a row and have a paper due for Seminary right after that).

Well, I am sitting at my desk working when my brother-in-law calls me. It's about the time when he said he'd be leaving anyway and so I excitedly ask him how it went. His answer was, basically, that they just got started singing a few hymns and then were asked to leave because "we don't allow this here."

So a small group of Christians were asked to leave a public place (I don't believe Como is privately owned) because they're singing a few hymns must have offended people (and apparently 93X was playing on some speakers there - go figure).

Well, if nothing else - I'm not going to miss the next time!

Shack Thoughts #2 - God the Father is Not Mrs. Butterworth

2009-08-13T13:38:00.003-05:00

“Am I supposed to believe that God is a big black woman with a questionable sense of humor?” ¹

As a matter of fact, yes. In this novel Mr. Young portrays God the Father, for the most part, as “a large beaming African-American woman” named Papa.² It is in this context, where not only the Father is portrayed as a woman but the character of the Holy Spirit is a slight Asian woman named Sarayu, that Mr. Young goes to great lengths in an attempt to justify his creative license in not wanting to reinforce a stereotype that the Father would resemble Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. I too would like to dispel the notion that God the Father is a white-bearded grandfather in the sky, but not by replacing Gandalf with a character who resembles Mrs. Butterworth.

Although this issue of the incarnation of the Father as a woman originally was of high concern, I was shocked at how accustomed to reading feminine pronouns attributed to either the Father or Spirit and how little they seemed to bother me as the book went on. I must have been most of the way through the book before I realized at how desensitized I had become to constantly referring to Mr. Young’s version of the Biblical God as “she”. This was even more infuriating to me when my primary purpose in reading the book was to examine and critique the theological content. How much more would a casual reader, who is engrossed in the story and not intending to examine its theology, be desensitized to the conception of God as a woman? It is both because of the grievous nature of this characterization of God and its desensitizing effect that it has upon the reader that this is the first primary theological issue that I will examine.

There may be few things that are as clearly stated in Scripture as it relates to how we are to picture God than His command in the Decalogue: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.” (Ex 20:4) The word idol, or graven image, may make one think only of worship and so it may be easy to divorce the Mrs. Butterworth-like incarnation from the second commandment because she’s not a statue and there is no real worship service directed at her that occurs in the book (although there are “devotions” where the Shack-Trinity³ talk of their love for one another).

It may further be argued that my objection would not be raised if the Father and Spirit’s characters were male instead of female, and honestly that may have been the case. Others may continue to object because there is not this kind of uproar over the symbolic depiction of Jesus Christ as Aslan in the Narnia series. This objection is true for me personally in that Narnia didn’t cross my radar in such a way so as to raise my concerns, but that doesn’t change the fact that it still may well be, and I think that it is, a violation of God’s Word to depict Him in that way. So in the cases where I have been silent when God is depicted wrongly in fiction, I take responsibility for not responding when I was exposed to it. However, the fact that objections were not raised in the past does not excuse or give a pass to The Shack.

The point is that Exodus 20:4 does not limit objectionable images or likenesses to that of a specific characterization (i.e. Gandalf, Aslan, Papa, etc.) or substance (wood, gold, stone, etc.) and Christians should ardently object to any creaturely characterization of God the Father or the Holy Spirit. In their commentary on this commandment, Keil and Delitzsch compare the command given with Deuteronomy 4:9ff where Moses reminds the people that when they were given the Ten Commandments they “saw no form—only a voice.” (Deuteronomy 4:12) They go on to say that the specific terms used to describe the graven images “are to be understood as referring to symbolical representations of Jehovah.”⁴ In other words, artistic license – even if it is not for the primary purpose of pagan-type worship – is not a valid shelter for this type of characterization of God the Father or the Holy Spirit that we have present in The Shack.

And I would further add that if we do need to anthropomorphize the Father, Son, or Spirit at any time that we should first and foremost be very careful when we do so. And if we still feel confident to tread these waters and somehow express what God is like, we must do so only in the language and context that the Scriptures present God in. There are plenty of ways that God’s character and attributes are shown in Scripture, and we should be very careful to limit our characterization of Him to the way that He has provided for us.

To close out my thoughts on this particular part of this issue, I want to look at Christ’s words lest people object to my using only using the Law and not the New Testament.

²³ “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. ²⁴ "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23,24)

I submit that the characterization of God the Father as Mr. Young does in his book violates both verse 23 where we are to worship God in truth and verse 24 where we are plainly told, “God is spirit.” And by definition, spirit is not something that we can put tangible/human substance to. But furthermore, Jesus says that true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth…and the truth that we have is the Scriptures themselves and what they say about God.

“Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” (John 17:17)

Finally, and briefly, I want to address the fact that the author did choose to have the two members of the Shack-Trinity incarnate as women. First of all, the way in which God has chosen to refer to Himself in the Scriptures is by using masculine pronouns, never feminine. There are a few instances where an action of God is compared to something feminine, but that is hardly a warrant to anthropomorphize or incarnate God as a woman. One of the more common texts that may be brought up to object to what I’m saying is Matthew 23:37 where Jesus is lamenting over the false teaching of the Pharisees,

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.” (Matt 23:37)

You see – Christ Himself depicts Himself in a feminine way in this verse. Well, that is what some would say to add validity to the feminization of God in their overall theology or in their ability to have God be a woman in their fictional book. I, however, would like to point out the phrase “the way a” which is also rendered “as” in various translations. Jesus is not comparing Himself to a hen, He is comparing His desired action to that of a hen – there is a big difference. Furthermore, the feminine characterization is not even of a mother or wife…but of poultry. I certainly hope all Christians would object to a fictional characterization of God as a chicken, but you never know these days.

¹ William P. Young, “The Shack” (Los Angeles, Windblown Media, 2007) 88-89.
² Ibid. 82.
³ I cannot, in good conscience, refer to the characterization of Mr. Young’s god in The Shack simply as the Trinity because that term actually means something in the history of Christianity. I will deal with this at a later time and why I am so adamant about my concerns here, but that is why I must use this term to refer to the Mr. Young’s created god.
⁴ Keil, Carl Friedrich ; Delitzsch, Franz: Commentary on the Old Testament. Peabody, MA : Hendrickson, 2002, S. 1:396

The Reverse-Psychology Hermeneutic of Greg Boyd

2009-08-11T12:51:00.004-05:00

Surprise, surprise…I disagree with Greg Boyd...again.

On the face of it, I believe that Greg Boyd’s view of God, if I understand the openness theology correctly that men like Dr. Boyd hold to (i.e. that God knows everything knowable, but that future events are not knowable, therefore God doesn’t know the future), is such a change in the understanding of who God is that he has departed from what can be considered an orthodox theology and is a heretic.

That being said, I would like to address a few of his points from a recent blog post “Jesus’ Repudiation of Old Testament Violence” and then in a separate entry, I’ll offer a few counter thoughts that directly apply to what seems to be the issue when people try to reconcile what they understand as the difference between the vengeful and violent God of the Old Testament and the meek and peaceful Jesus of the New Testament.

From Dr. Boyd’s Blog –

I haven’t been following his blog, but the title of his recent post caught my attention. Apparently he has been blogging about “the problem of reconciling the Old Testament God of war with the God of the cross revealed in Jesus” lately and, for the life of me, I don’t understand how a Christian scholar doesn’t more easily see the resolution to this question. But I guess, there is no reconciliation needed if you properly understand both the Old Testament and New Testament, God, and salvation…but that is where my later thoughts tie into this issue.

Dr. Boyd references Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew when He addresses the Law and its standards,

³⁸ "You have heard that it was said, `AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.' ³⁹ "But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. (Matthew 5:38,39)

The Biblical context for the eye-for-an-eye standard is found in Exodus 21:23ff and Leviticus 24:17ff and in both cases Moses is writing about legal standards of governing the people. In other words, this is the law given so that an offender would know what his punishment would be if he were convicted of fighting and hurting or killing another (the person in view in Exodus is a pregnant woman’s prematurely born child). If the child is stillborn or dies because of the premature delivery, then the attacker’s life is forfeit. If the child is injured in any way, then you are to deal with the attacker in the same way – if the child loses an eye then so does the attacker.

²³ "But if there is {any further} injury, then you shall appoint {as a penalty} life for life, ²⁴ eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, ²⁵ burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Ex 21:23-25)

I sincerely reject Dr. Boyd’s categorization of the Law here merely as violence and not as an act of justice for the wronged. On a side note, those concerned with social justice seem most blinded to actual justice in the punishing of criminals…but again, I digress.

This is the standard in their justice system, their penal codes. The parallel passage in Leviticus is the same, but it includes the gracious provision,

“There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the Lord your God.” (Lev 24:22)

This was the law of the land, regardless if you were the poorest of the poor or if you were the richest of the rich or even f you were an outsider. As I understand Jesus’ audience at the time and His words “do not resist an evil person” correctly, then He is not talking about the correct application of the Law as it was to be applied under the rule of Moses and the judges or the kings. Christ is not talking about legal punishment, but about the attitude of the one being offended. If someone is going to take something from you, your attitude as the offended party should not be to resist or fight back, but to give it to them. Christ is not revoking the legal standard or chastising the Old Testament Law in any way. Whatever else may be true of Jesus’ words here to the assembled masses, He is not repudiating the Old Testament Law and its “violent” punishments, although again – I object to the way that Dr. Boyd has categorized this.

Furthermore I think Dr. Boyd does a disservice to the Bible and to his readers in the way that he strings together his various comments. He begins with the punishment of an eye for an eye with its command to show no pity comparing it to Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek (where Dr. Boyd’s asserts that Jesus is telling people to show pity, something the text does NOT say) right before this amazing quote,

“the Old Testament allowed Israelites to hate their enemies and sometimes command them to slaughter them”

Thus, whether intended or not (c’mon, I don’t believe it was unintentional) he is further arguing for the vile nature of the “violence” of the punishments for criminals by linking it to the phantom idea that the Old Testament allowed people to hate their enemies. Yes God did command the utter slaughter of Israel’s enemies primarily in the conquest of the land, that is true. But to say that the “Old Testament allowed Israelites to hate their enemies” without trying to qualify what that means is utterly reckless. Hatred for hatred’s sake was never condoned nor was allowed as some non-wrong in Scripture. There is hatred of God’s enemies because God’s wrath was against them, holy indignation, righteous anger – but not a self-centered hatred of others because of a personal reason. Shame on you, Dr. Boyd.

Regarding Dr. Boyd’s comments relating Jesus’ rebuking of Peter:

Peter is rebuked for striking the ear off of one of the men coming to arrest Jesus because, as Dr. Boyd says, “Peter drew his sword in self-defense — acting in accordance with Old Testament norms.” Old Testament norms?!?!? So Dr. Boyd must believe that He would be Scripturally bound to not defend his wife or children from a rapist or murderer. I sincerely hope that he is hypocritical in his statement here, and that is no joke.

Leaving aside the issue of self defense and whether it only has its basis in “Old Testament norms” or is a belief that is consistent with the New Testament, why was Peter scolded? In both Matthew 26:53 and John 18:11, the reason given is so that Scripture would be fulfilled (Matthew 26:53) and that God had prepared this to happen (John 18:11). That is why it was wrong for Peter to come to Christ’s aid at that time. I am again amazed at the reckless mishandling/avoiding of the direct context of the situation he’s talking about. And by the way, Dr. Boyd, don’t forget to read Luke’s gospel where just before Jesus is arrested He tells the disciples to take a sword when the go out, and if they don’t have one now – to get one (Luke 22:36-38).

And finally, Dr. Boyd leaves us with his teaser thought on perhaps what may be going on in the Old Testament with the violence that is in there.

“Is it possible that some divinely inspired material is not supposed to reveal to us what God is like but what he is not like? Is it possible that some material is inspired precisely because God wants us to follow Jesus’ example and repudiate it?”

I’m not sure where to even begin in commenting on this bizarre hermeneutical idea. But I will deal with the example that he brings up; Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. In an effort to give some sort of footing for his crazy “I commanded those people to do things that were wrong to show you that they were wrong” hermeneutic, here’s his explanation of what was going on in Abraham’s head.

“Abraham believed God told him to sacrifice his child, yet he trusted that God was not really like the bloodthirsty Canaanite god Molech and thus would not make him follow through with his request, even though he had no choice but to move forward in obedience. He trusted that God would supply the commanded sacrifice, if only at the last minute (Gen. 22:8).”

Perhaps I missed something in Genesis 22:8, but Abraham’s comment was “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Now whether or not Abraham had any thought that God would miraculously have a lamb appear for them to use, or if he was looking forward to the coming Messiah, or if he was referring to the fact that God would provide the sacrifice – in Isaac the miraculously born child, this text doesn’t specify. But Scripture does tell us what Abraham believed, and that is found in Hebrews 11.

“19 He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.” (Hebrews 11:19)

I think that it would be more Biblically consistent to say that Abraham believed that since God commanded him to sacrifice his son and he also knew that this son was the promised heir and fulfillment of God’s promises who had to be alive to do those things, then if God made him sacrifice his son He would also raise him from the dead. Hebrews is clear that Abraham’s faith was not in God to provide a substitute lamb at the altar, but for God to raise the dead! Now whether or not these thoughts crossed Abraham’s mind or similar prayers came across his lips, we aren’t told. To base a theology of reverse psychology on this text, or to use this text as a proof text for this wacky idea, is as foolish as…well, it’s as foolish as open theism. So I guess it’s par for the course.

Soli Deo Gloria

What I’ve been up to in recent days…

2009-08-07T12:45:00.004-05:00

Other than working, playing with my 3 older children, holding my 6 week old, trying to be a blessing to my tired wife, and studying for Seminary (attempting to, anyway) – including reading a book with an overly heretical view of God in it (well, that’s last post and some upcoming ones)…what have I been doing?

Well, a friend of mine happened to be getting rid of his 55 gallon fish tank at the same time that I was thinking about getting a big one…so I was SUPER blessed to get this tank which came with three bottom feeders and two red tinfoil barbs. Well, in the transition between locations, trying to clean the tank, and figuring out how to put other fish in the tank – one tinfoil barb died and one was donated to a pet store.

So now, we no longer have two enormously large fairly aggressive fish that would have eaten any smaller ones we got…we kind of splurged and got some fun fish. We wanted a fun and multi-colored variety of fish in the tank, and so here is what we have. I hope to figure out how to take pictures of our actual fish in our tank…but there is an art to taking those pictures that I am not in possession of at this time.

Here’s the list of the fish we have:

1 inherited Plecostomus bottom feeder

2 other Catfish bottom feeders we inherited

3 Dalmatian Molly

3 Black Molly

3 Balloon Molly

3 Sunburst Wag Platy

3 Silver Molly
3 Red Velvet Swordtail
3 Electric Glowfish (these are SWEET LOOKING!!!!)

4 Guppies (3 female, 1 male so as not to “tire out the females”)

28 total fish that will hopefully produce more (and not just Guppies, hopefully).

I know that the guppies will multiply like…well, guppies (the rabbits of the sea), but I figure the various omnivore fish that I have will help keep that under control for a while, anyway.

The kids love the fish, and I’m psyched about it because I am (eventually) going to build it into the wall that will separate the study (my office & Steph’s craft area) from the TV area when our basement is finished.

Initial, Partial, and Rough Thoughts on The Shack

2009-08-04T17:16:00.003-05:00

So I realize that my commenting on The Shack is like much of what contemporary “hip” evangelical Christianity does when trying to be relevant to the modern culture – I’m commenting on a book that has been a humungous seller and influence in the modern Christian community. However, now that I think about it, my comments are not like Evangelical Christendom trying to be hip in the fact that The Shack was published 13 months ago while much of culturally relevant Christian stuff lags years or decades behind the culture…but that is not my main point, only an observation.

Before I even write down my rough and preliminary thoughts on The Shack I feel compelled to explain just exactly why I decided to read it. Soon after the book was published I began to hear reports of the serious theological concerns based on the contents of the book related to the doctrine of God and so I decided to find out what the concerns were. I read or listened to the commentary of a few Christians who I greatly respect for their theological commentary related to this issue. Each of these individuals raised the same concerns. Following reading the commentaries on the book, I began to warn friends and relatives to be very wary of The Shack because of the (sometimes) subtle but very serious theological problems in it.

But in doing so I never made the claim to have actually read the book myself, but I was taking the analysis from good and Godly men and women who had read it and raised some good questions and serious concerns. I guess I am not overly surprised at the fact that one of the chief responses that I received from those who love the book was something to the effect of, “You really cannot comment on what the book says if you have not read it yourself.” While I understand the objection raised, I utterly reject it as a valid argument against my stating or defending my concerns. And here’s why….

Have you ever read Hitler’s Mein Kampf? If so, have you ever read it in the original German? Have you heard, read, or seen any summaries or descriptions of what the content and context of Mein Kampf is? Do you have any opinions on what Hitler wrote in that book? Or better yet, if someone asked you whether you thought that Hitler’s Mein Kampf was a good book or a bad book, what would you say? Even if you haven’t read Mein Kampf but you’ve learned enough about what it says, you have the basis for an opinion and a valid enough reason to voice that opinion.

Now, granted, the comparison is very extreme and I am not suggesting that The Shack and Mein Kampf are the same or that their authors are similar or anything like that. The point is simply that to say that one cannot or should not have an opinion on a book unless they have read it themselves is ridiculous. The argument could further go to the requirement to read a book in its original language, or to read all of the source documents that someone used in writing a specific book on a subject, and on and on.

It is totally acceptable, and a wise use of time, to find sources that you can trust (by researching them and testing what they say) and take what they have to say about an issue into consideration when you form an opinion without having read the book, watched the movie, or whatever.

So with what I’ve seen documented about The Shack and the problematic things that it contains, I see no reason that I must read it myself in order to be concerned about its content or before I warn others about it based off of the work done by others who I trust. I decided to read it as part of a project for theology to, in essence, answer the question “What is the doctrine of God in The Shack?” And in order to speak more thoroughly, I am reading it for myself.

My Initial, and brief, thoughts – having read 1/2 - 2/3 of the book so far.

All three members of the Trinity are shown in actual human form and they all eat meals together. My understanding of Biblical theology is that the only member of the Godhead who ever took human form is the Son (see John 1:1-14; Hebrews 1 & 2). I understand that some see various Old Testament examples of God showing Himself to men as Theophanies (God the Father) whereas I see them all as Christophanies (God the Son). There are many reasons that I would say this, but in short it seems to me that one of the distinct roles of the Son is that He is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15) to men whereas the Spirit and the Father are spirit, they do not have bodies.

I don’t have the quote in front of me at this point, but there is a scene where the Character of God the Father, Papa, the African American woman, shows her hands and the main character sees scars on her wrists (page 95 or 96). This goes hand in hand with the first problem listed above, but also it brings into question just exactly what does this mean. And since no further is given (at least as far as I have read), the imagery links the Father with being on the cross which is where the Son received His marks as we see in the Scriptures. A historical example of this type of theological stance is called Patripassionism that says the Father was crucified. Orthodox and Biblical theology rejects that and, rightly, labels that heresy.

“When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human.” (p. 99) This is such a muddle, it’s almost hard to know where to begin. But this gets at the whole continuing problem of the blurring and muddling of Trinitarian doctrine. The only incarnate one is the Son. Neither the Father nor the Spirit “became fully human”. But this is not supportable by Scripture nor is it good creative license because of the fact that it is contrary to Scripture.

“We are not three gods, and we are not talking about one god with three attitudes, like a man who is a husband, father, and worker. I am one God and I am three persons, and each of the three is fully and entirely the one.” (p. 101) Okay, now this is just as convoluted as the previous statement. Let me summarize. Hank Hannegraaff, the Bible Answer Man, summarizes the proper distinction in Trinitarian theology when he says that the Trinity is “one what and three who’s”. In other words, proper doctrine affirms the shema (Deut 6:4) in that there is only one God – true monotheism, and that is the “one what” – the what = God. Proper theology also understands that the Father is not the Son who is not the Spirit who is not the Father, and yet they are all God and all eternal. This is the “three who’s”. But what the author of The Shack is saying in this quote is first that he is explicitly denying modalism with the first sentence, but then completely botching it up and confusing it with the second. The character of God the Father is speaking when saying, “I am one God” somewhat affirming the shema, but then goes on to say, “I am three persons”. When one of the members of the Trinity says “I am three persons” that just doesn’t make sense. The one person of the Father is not the other two persons of the Son and the Spirit.

The simple fact that the Father and the Spirit are incarnate as women is really troubling. While I had initially felt that the Trinitarian confusion (much of that is noted above) would be paramount in my concerns, the simple volume of times that God is pictured and referred to as a woman simply makes me very troubled. While the author goes to some great length for why God would have chosen to do this in his novel, the simple fact is that God always portrays Himself and describes Himself with masculine pronouns. There are a few examples in the Scriptures when describing an action of God that feminine language is used, the most notable in my mind being Matt 23:37, but even then it is describing an action using a female bird and not a human woman. It would be no more proper to refer to God as poultry based on this verse than it would to refer to Him as a woman based on this verse. And when I see the movements in various denominations to blur the distinctions between men and women, and even openly referring to “God our Mother” in some hymns in these churches, this is no small or insignificant issue.

There will be more to come as I finish reading the book and continue to study the various Trinitarian and other issues that are raised by it. And I say this simply because of the books depiction of the Trinity in a convoluted and contradictory nature along with blatantly changing how the Triune God of Scripture portrays Himself by portraying the Father and Spirit not only as female but as incarnate human women.

Dr. Tiller’s Murder

2009-06-01T11:02:00.002-05:00

Dr. Tiller was a murderer. That is how I understand what he did and who he was. The United States legality of it matters not to me. Abortion is murder, and he was a high profile murderer of the unborn.

However, regardless of my view on who he was and what he did...

His murder in his church this weekend is appalling and a gross act of murder on the part of the individual and is not something that any pro-life Christian should ever condone. Anyone who claims Christian faith and condones this murder or commits a similar murder has a good deal more to worry about than the legal ramifications, but a murderer will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 John 3:15) unless he is saved and changed by God. And that change comes with repentance.

To the Tiller family:

May God grant you grace in this time of weeping. I pray that the Spirit would console you and that you would see the gospel clearly in this time of grief. I pray that you would be able to find peace that only Christ in His saving mercy and grace can provide. While I strongly opposed what Dr. Tiller stood for and did, I am truly and genuinely sorry for the loss of your beloved husband, father, and grandfather. I, along with my three children and wife who is 9 months pregnant, will be praying for your family in this time of sadness and loss.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090531/ap_on_re_us/us_tiller_shooting

One Upon a Time, A Heretic Came to NWC Chapel…

2009-04-30T12:45:00.003-05:00

I believe it was in ‘97-‘98 or ‘98-‘99 school year that we had a chapel speaker come to my Christian college. I was a freshman or sophomore when he spoke, and he is one of the speakers that I clearly remember, and that was at least a decade ago, but this is one of the speakers that I remember. The speaker was a young(er) man who made three statements to open up his message to the student body, and I will paraphrase from memory what was said:

One: tonight hundreds of children are going to bed hungry. Two: you don’t give a damn. Three; most of you are more concerned that I said “damn” than the fact that hundreds of children are going to bed hungry.

Now to be fair, I cannot remember if the subject of the first statement was hunger, death, disease, or something else. But what I do remember that the first statement was something along those lines – it could have been something to the effect that people are dying and going to hell, but I do not believe that was the case. Regardless, it appears that the speaker was right – I did care more about the second of his statements than the first. Not because profanity in and of itself is more concerning to me than caring for people, but if someone gets up in a pulpit and uses foul language that I do not expect from a gospel messenger – of course that is going to cause me to pause and give me concern.

But then, Bart Campolo, the speaker I am referencing, is not a herald of the gospel. He is not an evangelist or a minister or a missionary. Technically you have to be a Christian in order to be any of these, and Bart Campolo is not. He is a heretic.

I do not say this because of his statements from chapel 10 years ago that I remember somewhat foggily, nor do I say it because of my similar conclusion about his father, Tony Campolo. Here is my reason:

In an article posted on his blog on January 10, 2008 (and apparently published in Youth Specialties) he was responding to a letter from someone concerned how Bart could believe in the god and the bible. He wrote that his “most cherished ideas about God are supported by the Bible” but that “they did not originate there.” He then begins to paint a picture of a cosmic dualistic battle where his god is nothing near the omnipotent and sovereign God of Scripture. He is well aware of this fact, to which he wrote,

Unfortunately for me, God may be very different than I hope, in which case I may be in big trouble come Judgment Day. Perhaps, as many believe, the truth is that God created and predestined some people for salvation and others for damnation, according to His will. Perhaps such caprice only seems unloving to us because we don’t understand. Perhaps, as many believe, everyone who dies without confessing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior goes to Hell to suffer forever. Most important of all, perhaps God’s sovereignty is such that although He could indeed prevent little girls from being raped, He is no less just or merciful when He doesn’t, and both those children and we who love them should uncritically give Him our thanks and praise in any case.

My response is simple: I refuse to believe any of that. For me to do otherwise would be to despair.¹

As if this blatant heresy is not bad enough, and denying the exclusivity of Christ is heresy of the first order, he goes on to write this:

Of course, to believe in God the way I do is to change the rules of ministry, and especially of youth ministry. I still convince young people to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour, but not because I’m afraid God will damn them to Hell if they don’t. On the contrary, I want kids’ to follow Jesus because I genuinely believe it’s a better life. Eternity aside, I want their lives to be transformed by God’s truth right now, for their sakes and for the sake of all the hungry and broken people out there who need them to start living His disciples. After all, the sooner we all start following Jesus by feeding the poor and freeing the oppressed, the sooner God’s will will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. But most of all, I evangelize people because I know they are my loving God’s beloved children, and I don’t want them to live a minute longer without knowing too that most wonderful fact of life.²

If Bart is not a blatant example of a knowing and willful wolf in sheep’s clothing, I do not know who would be better to fill such a category. He admits that he doesn’t hold to the orthodox Christian faith, but yet he “evangelizes” young people to “accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour” when he doesn’t believe that this is necessary for someone to do in order to be at peace with God. One wonders what a “gospel” message would sound like coming from Mr. Campolo.

But I do not know what is more disturbing – the fact that he believes this and has gone on record with his blatantly heretical beliefs or that Christian colleges still invite him to speak. He came to my school in the late ‘90s, and I do not know what his position would have been back then. But he is currently on a list of chapel speakers (along with his father, Tony Campolo) at another Christian school where many people I know have gone.

Where is the discernment in Christian institutions?

The school I am referring to is one that I found by googling “bart campolo chapel” and it was the second hit on the list. Northwestern College in Orange City Iowa…sad, very very sad.³

¹ http://www.bartcampolo.com/blog/index.php?paged=3

² Ibid.

³ http://www.nwciowa.edu/chapel/

Thoughts from Leviticus 2

2009-04-22T11:59:00.002-05:00

I elected to take a class on the book of Leviticus at seminary because of all of the books of the Bible, Leviticus is on a short list of the books that are more difficult to read or study because of the information contained and the way in which it is presented. My hope in taking this class would be to increase my understanding of the book so that I could read it and learn from it better. And while I am not currently done with the class yet, I must say that I have been very blessed by more of a thorough study of the book.

One of my tasks is to write some papers relating to some subjects of the book, and I thought that since the first five or six chapters tend are the foundation for the book and the whole sacrificial system that we see in the Old Testament, I have decided to write on four or five of the sacrifices shown there. Most recently I have been looking at the grain offering

The Component of the Offering:

While the primary component of the Grain Offering is fine flour, the offerings were additionally to include oil, frankincense, and salt. It has been noted that frankincense was not only added to give “a grateful perfume”¹ to the offering, but it also acted as a fuel accelerant which aided the burning of the offering. The salt added symbolized the offering’s “durability or eternality”² and its preservation from corruption of the thing offered and implied God’s faithfulness to the “eternal permanence of the holy covenant of salvation into which Israel has entered with God.”³ Both leaven and honey are explicitly restricted from being included in the offering. One possible reason for this is `that both of these materials are “prone to ferment and decay” and would mingle corruption with the preservative of the salt and thus “change the nature of the offering.”⁴ Another reason is these materials were used in offerings to pagan deities during that same time, and their omission would clearly distinguish offerings to the LORD from offerings to false gods.

Practical Application:

In some of the reading, there were comments about the ways in which this might be applicable to us, and I believe it was Rooker who noted that we might be wise to resist the incorporation of things into our worship for the same reasons that honey or leaven were not allowed into this sacrifice. So the question is in what way would we be able to apply this type of standard to our worship settings today?

Perhaps the best way that the exclusion of honey and leaven may be more applicable to today’s Christian worship that I have come up with has to do with what we bring into the worship setting. In a day and age when many churches in the United States offer their version of a risqué sermon series on sex with each seemingly trying to be more shocking than the one before it, I have many reasons to object to this on a number of levels. But one specific level can be that since the culture is so sex-centered – between the enormous industry that is Internet pornography and other adult entertainment operations – that I believe that we are embroiled in our own version of the fertility cults and religions when the ancient world worshipped Baal or Ashtoreth.

Therefore on this basis, it would be a direct application to say that we should go to great lengths to abstain from course or risqué use of sexual content in our gatherings because this is what the world already worships and we do not want to confuse worship of the Lord Jesus Christ with something that is crass and vulgar. Not that this type of subject matter should never be addressed or that it should be completely off limits, it is the way in which we address such things that, in my view, might be objectionable on the basis of the pattern seen in the grain offering’s regulations as they related to the cultures surrounding Israel.

Just a few thoughts.

Soli Deo Gloria.

¹ Kellogg, Samuel Henry (1839-1899). The Book of Leviticus. In The Expositor's Bible, ed. By W. Robertson Nicoll. p 71

² Mark F. Rooker. Leviticus. New American Commentary. Vol. 3A. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000. p 98

³ Kellogg p. 75

⁴ Rooker p. 97

The Blessings of "Bible-Time" with my kids

2009-04-15T13:27:00.001-05:00

I have been blessed with the opportunity to have evening before-bedtime Bible-time become a habit with my children. So much so that my kids practically stage a coup if we just sing and pray without reading if it is too late in the evening. Now I think that any child would have a desire for the consistency of a bed-time routine regardless if you read Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, the Bible, or something else – but I am very grateful that my children have become accustomed to the Bible reading and look forward to it, and they do not really have a spoken desire to read something else.

Now if that isn’t sweet enough that my kids love Bible-time, they also love to talk about the Bible and ask questions…and that is where I am really pleased. Bible-time, in my house, is not just a time to read the stories of David and Goliath, Samson, Daniel and the Lions Den, and the birth of Jesus, but it is a time of teaching them big truths for their little hearts and minds to wrestle with. I might mention how I deal with some of the subject matter later (like the doctrine of the Trinity) and how I address it with them or what some of my goals are, but for now let it be known that we deal with some pretty heavy stuff for almost 6 year-old and a 3 ½ year old to wrestle with.

Although the nightly Bible-time that we have is very consistent, my preparedness for each time is not very consistent. I’m not saying that it is imperative that I need to study for hours each day in order to teach my children the evenings lesson (not that it would be a bad thing to do this and it would definitely be beneficial), but if we’re going to read the Bible (which we normally do) usually we read what the kids request. Noah might say, “I want to read Abraham” – this means…anything where Abraham is mentioned, and so the field is pretty wide open – and Micah might say “I want to read something that we’ve never read before,” so the field is wide open but it has lent to my not preparing anything. What I always prepare to do is to get the gospel message of their sin, God’s anger at sin, their just punishment before God, who Jesus is, His death and resurrection, and salvation grace through repentant faith – to get that message to them nightly. Now, this is no small thing, for these are the subjects that they must deal with first before any other level of teaching or application can be addressed. But, I did not like that I was walking in unprepared to deal with whatever we might read…so I tried something new yesterday.

The day before we’d read a little bit in Luke 2 about Jesus staying at the temple and interacting with the teachers. I told the boys that the next night we’d read about John the Baptist. So the next morning I read Luke 3 to be thinking about what we’d read later in order to be prepared. Now, I am not sure of which factor played the bigger role, but between having the Scripture on my mind during the day and the questions of my boys – I was greatly blessed by our Bible-time.

So without typing out our conversation (a conversation between a daddy and two small children is hard enough to follow when you’re present), suffice it to say that some of their questions, my answers, and the application of bearing fruit in keeping with repentance (Luke 3:8) and those not bearing fruit being cut down and thrown into the fire (Luke 3:9) were, I trust, helpful to their little minds and hearts as well as provoking me to want further study and understanding on some of the things in this text.

I don’t know how we would have progressed had I not been a little prepared for that specific passage, but I do know that having been prepared I was blessed more by reading and talking about the Word than other times.

…who’d’a thunk it?

So tonight – we’re reading about the baptism of Jesus. Fun stuff!

Soli Deo Gloria.

Resurrection Sunday School Excerpt

2009-04-14T23:41:00.001-05:00

the Power of God in Conversion

2009-01-27T16:17:00.004-06:00

I'm reading some old Baptist confessions for one of my Seminary courses, and I came across this article of the 1646 London Baptist Confession of faith. I thought that it was just a beautiful statement:

XXIV.
Faith is ordinarily begotten by the preaching of the gospel, or word of Christ, without respect to any power or agency in the creature; but it being wholly passive, and dead in trespasses and sins, doth believe and is converted by no less power than that which raised Christ from the dead.

Rom. 10:17; 1 Cor. 1:28; Rom. 9:16; Ezek. 16:16; Rom. 3:12, 1:16; Eph. 1:19, Col. 2:12.

Was Original Sin Wiped Away at the Cross?

2008-11-30T21:36:00.003-06:00

I have recently had the pleasure of interacting with a gentleman and his wife in the comments section of one of my older posts. In the original post and the comments, two issues have come up that are causing concern. The first is how I articulate God’s disposition to the sinner when I say something similar to, “God hates the sinner.” The second surrounds my contention that children, from conception, are guilty before God and deserve – deserve – an eternal punishment for our sin in Adam. And the gentleman has come back and stated that it is his belief that original sin was ultimately dealt with on the cross and that we are sinners only when we know right from wrong and choose wrong.

So, in an effort to more fully answer this objection, I am dealing with it here. I will, in effect, be trying to answer this question: Did Jesus’ death on the cross forgive the personal effects for all of humanity of Adam’s sin? In a request for Scripture passages that would positively affirm the position that original sin has been dealt with for all men, I was given the following Scriptural passages that I will deal with: John 1:29; Romans 5:12,13, and Hebrews 9:26.

The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

I must honestly say that I was shocked to see this text used to prove the above assertion. No where does this text or the surrounding context specify that the singular use of the word “sin” refers to original sin. Actually, in this context one could just as easily use this verse as a proof text for universal salvation (God forgave all men of all sin for all time so that all will go to heaven) just as easily as my commenter has used it to fit his presupposition to make this verse say that original sin is what the “sin of the world” was that forgiven of all men.

It is true that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – yes and amen. But we must look through the rest of the Scriptures relating to His ministry as the sacrificial Lamb to find out exactly what was done for whom. John 1:29 is not a passage proclaiming that Jesus’ death forgave original sin for all men of all time. There is no basis in the context to make this assertion.

Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. (Hebrews 9:26)

The context of the above passage in Hebrews is the author’s argument for how Christ in His ministry and sacrifice supersede and replace that of the old Mosaic covenantal system of priests and sacrifices. The old system had a high priest enter a “mere copy” of the holy place and sacrifice with blood not his own on a “year by year” basis, whereas Christ went to the true holy place with His own blood to make His sacrifice once. It seems to me that the context here is referring not to a specific individual sin that was put away, but the fact that sin was put away by His once for all sacrifice, and therefore it does not need to be repeated. Furthermore, the context of Hebrews 9 and the work that is being done is about accomplishing eternal redemption.

and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:12)

Hebrews 9 is a great place in Scripture to look at for the singularity and the finality of the sacrifice of Christ for the salvation His own, but is not saying that Christ was manifested to put away original sin for all men of all time by the sacrifice of Himself. To make that statement would do great disservice to the text and be rending it out of context.

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned-- ¹³ for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. (Romans 5:12,13)

In the first few chapters of Romans, Paul goes to great lengths to show how all humanity has sinned. And Romans 5 helps us to put our understanding of sin and death in a comparative context with salvation and redemption. Adam’s sin was imputed to all men, and thus all men are guilty. Christ’s righteousness was imputed to all men who have faith and their sin is imputed to Him, and those men are now not guilty (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21).

The imputation of sin that seems to be in view in this passage is the sinning against the Law of Moses, and this seems to be brought out in the next verse when Paul writes, “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” In other words, even though the Mosaic Law may not have been individually transgressed by babies in the womb (those are the ones who die who have not sinned on their own in the likeness of Adam), but they die because they are guilty of sinning in Adam – original sin. Death doesn’t occur except where sin is, and babies die before they can overtly sin. Therefore sin must be reigning in them because of their father Adam and the sin that we are guilty of in him.

John Piper gives a good illustration as to why we should understand the “all sinned” in verse 12 as being original sin or “all sinned in Adam” instead of “all sinned individually”.

Let me try to illustrate what's at stake. If you say, "Through one man sin and death entered the world and death spread to everybody because all sinned individually," then the comparison with the work of Jesus could be, "So also through one man, Jesus Christ, righteousness and life entered the world and life spread to all because all individually did acts of righteousness." In other words, justification would not be God's imputing Christ's righteousness to us, but our performing individual acts of righteousness with Christ's help and then being counted righteous on that basis. When Paul saw that as a possible misunderstanding of what he said, he stopped to clarify.¹

Original sin was not universally dealt with on the cross for all people of all time so that babies are born without original sin. We are conceived in sin (Ps 51:5) every thought of ours is only evil and sinful (Genesis 8:21). The sin of man is dealt with in Christ Jesus on the cross and is applied by faith to those who repent of their sin and trust in Him. However lovely and loveable our children are when they are born, our children are born with original sin and with only the propensity to desire and act upon that sinful nature.

The next common question has to do with babies and what happens to them when they die. To be sure, I don’t have as solid of a case to make for them, but I can tell you that on the basis of what I see in the Scriptures, namely 2 Samuel 12:23, that there is some distinct gracious mercy of God extended to children who die in or before infancy.

¹ http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ScriptureIndex/10/22_Adam_Christ_and_Justification_Part_2/

So many things to be thankful for…

2008-11-26T15:12:00.005-06:00

***For those of you reading this note in facebook – I make it a point NOT to send out notes to everyone or to invite you to a ton of groups or things, but I really wanted to share this one with you all. God bless you.***

Thanksgiving is always a time to look around my life and really take into account what I am blessed with and what I am thankful for. There are so many things that I feel blessed about that it is kind of hard to put them into writing…but I’ll try. So, in no particular order (except saving the best/better for the last), here is my thankfulness list for 2008:

1. I am thankful for my job. Now, because this is #1 doesn’t mean that it is the most important thing in my life. But I must say that God has truly been gracious to me with how my job life has gone. I have had the same job since I graduated from college, and although it is not a glamorous job or something that I even went to school to study for, it has allowed me many blessings. My wife stays home with our lovely children – this is a priceless benefit of any job. But that fact coupled with the fact that I leave my work at work and I work only about 40 hours per week is an immense blessing. I have the energy, time, and the sanity to pour my heart and soul into my family and my ministries. Praise God for the blessing, as long as it lasts, of the job that I have now.

2. In so many ways and for so many reasons, I am thankful for my wife. I am so thankful for her for all of the things that she does and for all of the ways that she contributes to the family. But this year, I am especially thankful for her, in a special way. This year we were able to do something that we have never been able to do before – get away for a weekend without children. I know – married for the better part of a decade is a long time to go without a vacation from the kidos. But it was during our time away that we were able to enjoy coffee without a time limit, dinner without constantly encouraging our children to actually eat their food (novel idea, I know), and hours on end of uninterrupted (even though interruptions can be, and very often are, joyous) conversation. It was so great to enjoy time with my wife just as husband and wife, not as parents, but just as the two of us. And for all of you who may have lamented about a lack of things to talk about other than children on outings like this – I can tell you that we did not suffer that problem. I love our children, but I love my wife most of all. I am so thankful to have been blessed with a lovely and beautiful bride who compliments the best things about me and corrects some of the worst.

3. I am thankful for my little daughter, Hannah. Now, she is only just under 1 ½ years old, but she is coming into her own. It is amazing to see how much of a personality you can really see in such a young child. It is cute to see that she loves to sit in her chair and look at books by herself as much as she loves to chase (to the best of her abilities) her older brothers to play with them. However, in a selfish note, I must say that I am most thankful for the way in which she says good-bye to me as I leave for work and the way in which she says hello to me as I return home. About one month ago she began to join her brothers in their silly dash to give me hugs and kisses both when I leave and arrive from work. She doesn’t much go for kissing anyone, but sure enough, if I ask her for a kiss when I get home…daddy gets a big slobbery kiss from his baby girl.

4. Noah. My sweet, loud, happy, accident-prone, unstoppable (except by stationary objects) freight-train of energy son – I am so thankful for him. So many things about this boy of mine make me smile. It is no small thing to say that he is truly a mini version of myself – in many of the good and bad ways, I might add. But one way that he is truly a blessing, and it is this that I am particularly thankful for today, is his love of all things musical. I suppose that this would be something cute in any child, but the songs that he loves and the songs that he sings are not normal children’s songs. He has been known to start singing, out of the blue, a song while we’re in the car. At night time, my boys and I will read the Bible, tell a Bible story, pray, and sing. To my frustration at times, the favorite thing that my sons like to ask is for me to sing a song that “they’ve never ever heard”. So, after exhausting a lot of songs from my youth, I sang one in particular that he really, really liked. So much so that he requested it for a while thereafter. But a few months later (it must have been) when we hadn’t sung that song with any frequency for quite a while, my son began singing this song at the top of his tone-less lungs while we were in the car. I love the fact that he loves to sing and loves music in general.

5. Micah, my oldest son – what a year have I had in regards to thankfulness with him. Micah has always been our sensitive little guy. He’s always been aware of things seemingly beyond his age. But ever since he was little, we have shared the gospel with him – day and night, in all sorts of activities, venues and opportunities. And it was only a few weeks ago that my son, on his own accord, told me that he wanted to repent of his sins and believe in Jesus. Stephanie and I have labored long and hard in sharing the gospel with him, and I was overjoyed to be able to be with him when he vocalized his desire for salvation. Time will tell of the truth of his profession and the reality of his salvation – but I praise God for his soft heart and his child like desire for salvation.

And it is in this same stream of thought that I must share the final (for this little note) things that I am thankful for:

We took a family picture in early October. It is a great family picture – if I do say so myself. But only a few days ago, Micah painted and drew a picture of our family to give to me to bring to work. That is the next picture you'll see. Now, other than the marks of a perfectionist artist (the two scribbled out characters), you may notice the fact that there are seven people on the right but only five on the left. We found out a few weeks ago that my wife is pregnant with our fifth child – yup, our fifth child. We lost our second while he (I always call that baby “he”) was in the womb. We don’t make a point of drilling that fact into our children’s heads, but whenever someone close to us has lost a child, it may come up. So as far as Micah is concerned (and me too, for that matter) we have a family of seven now; five in the picture on the left, one in heaven, and one in his mommy’s tummy. I am thankful that my son has this personal perspective on life at this age.

6. I am thankful for the blessing of yet another child. May God grant health and safety to my child now, and grant faith and repentance to this child at day in the future.

7. Above all and overflowing to all is my thankfulness to the God and Father of my LORD Jesus Christ, to His Son for His justifying work, and to the Spirit for His sanctifying work. Soli Deo Gloria.

Bearing Unjust Treatment for Christ’s Sake

2008-10-07T14:43:00.002-05:00

“¹⁸ Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable. ¹⁹ For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. ²⁰ For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. ²¹ For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps,” (1 Peter 2:18 – 21)

This is probably my first “real time” blog entry. What I mean by that is that I am writing my thoughts and reflections about an ongoing situation (however minor this current situation is). My hope is that my meditation on this subject matter will cause me to react rightly, and better than I have already, regarding the outcome of this situation. In all things, I want to reflect the reality that Christ’s righteousness is mine and my life is His, so I need to act and react in ways that honor and glorify my Lord.

Here is the short (and detail-less) version of the story:

Last week I was told by my boss to stay a little late at my job and there was nothing for me to do. When I checked my time card today I found that I was not paid for the extra time that I stayed at work. I didn’t do any work, but I was instructed to stick around for a specific period of time by my boss. I was informed by my scheduling and payroll manager that I would not be paid for this time, regardless of why I stayed late, because I was not doing actual work.

After my initial outburst of frustration following reading the memo from my payroll manager, I went over to discuss the situation with her. She was understanding of the situation, but not optimistic that I would receive payment for the, now disputed, time. I thanked her for continuing to investigate this and then went and “vented” my frustration to a co-worker.

Now, I am back at my desk and I thought of Peter’s words about bearing unjust suffering well as a testimony to my faith in Christ. So, without a doubt, I blew it when I went to find an outlet to complain to my coworker. I sinned in my attitude and in my thoughts, even if my words did not seem foul on the surface.

I now have a choice to make. I need to purpose in my heart and mind to act and react in a Christ like and Christ honoring way to the final decision (whatever it is) regarding whether or not I will be getting paid for this time. If I am paid, glory to God! I will be rightly compensated for what I was requested to do by my employer. And if I am not paid, praise to Christ! I will be wronged by my employer, but I can bear this unjust treatment in a way that displays my “set-apartedness” in Christ.

JEPD Theory, headphones, and Caffine

2008-09-26T11:04:00.002-05:00

Studying Higher Criticism and the wacky JEDP theory late at night (late for me, anyway) can make me a bit...loopy.

I guess it is fitting, though, because the whole Documentary Hypothesis is loopy to the core.

Did Moses Write Deuteronomy 34?

2008-09-25T13:29:00.009-05:00

Until recently, I had always heard and accepted that Joshua probably wrote the end of Deuteronomy. This is said because this chapter includes details about the death and burial of Moses, and Joshua, as Moses’ successor, would have had the knowledge and position to write about the end of Moses’ life.

Well, I recently read the paper, “The Authorship of Deuteronomy 34: Moses or a Redactor?” by William D. Barrick. This paper was presented at the Evangelical Theological Society in November of 2001, and in it the author was appealing that Mosaic authorship of the entire Pentateuch (Gen 1 – Deut 34) be a boundary for this body. I think he wrote it knowing that this was a tall order and he approached the issue with good humor in noting that his opponents (those who hold to Joshua or someone else writing Deuteronomy 34) might liken stalwart proponents of Mosaic authorship of this chapter to “the soul-mate of a ‘flat earth’ theology/science.’”¹
There are three primary (although there are more, for sure) arguments given for why Moses was not the author of Deuteronomy 34, and they are basically this:

There are timing issues in the text that do not seem to fit right if Moses is the author.
There are references to the division of the land of Canaan that was not a reality until after it was conquered and recorded in Joshua 13-19.
There are references to Moses, his ministry, and his works that seem to be best understood as someone, later, eulogizing Moses.

I found that the most compelling reasons to find that Moses is not the author of Deuteronomy 34 coincides with the least satisfying response, and this has to do with one of the timing issues in this chapter. I see no real problem with Moses being able to pen the story of his own death as it would happen in the all-to-near future for him. Since God wanted that included in the Scriptures, He could inspire the man who was going to experience it to write about it. The real stickler of a problem comes later in the chapter,

“The Lord buried him in a valley in Moab, opposite the town of Bethpeor, but to this day no one knows the exact place of his burial.” (Deuteronomy 34:6)

“No other prophet has been able to do the great and terrifying things that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”(Deuteronomy 34:12)

In both verse 6 and 12, there is the sense of a significant time gap between the life of Moses and the writing of the thoughts. A long time wouldn’t necessarily need to pass before someone could realistically pen that “to this day” no one knows where Moses is buried. However, it seems that a longer time would be needed for the same author to write a statement that no prophet “has been able to do” the things that Moses did. Because there is no grammatical or linguistic reason that the actual language of the chapter gives so that, and there is no Biblical witness to the fact that Moses didn’t write this chapter, I have decided not to place too heavy a weight on this temporal objection. My answer to this objection is almost dismissively simple; if God wanted the account of Moses’ death and burial recorded, and if God wanted to include in His revealed Word that Moses would be a singular figure among the prophets of Israel, He had every opportunity and right to have Moses himself pen the words of Deuteronomy 34.

The second major objection to Mosaic authorship is found in how Moses refers to the unconquered land of Canaan.

“…the Lord showed him the whole land: the territory of Gilead as far north as the town of Dan; ² the entire territory of Naphtali; the territories of Ephraim and Manasseh; the territory of Judah as far west as the Mediterranean Sea; ³ the southern part of Judah; and the plain that reaches from Zoar to Jericho, the city of palm trees.” (Deut 34:1b-3)

The objection basically says that the lands of Canaan were only divided up during the conquest (see Joshua 13-19); Moses would not have been able to gaze at the different territories that he was not familiar with and that had not yet been settled. I think that this objection loses much of its value when we see that Moses had at least some prior knowledge as to the specific inheritance for each tribe. Just before the account of his death, he blessed Naphtali in order that they might “take possession of the sea and the south” in Deuteronomy 33:23. He also references Israel’s blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim in Genesis 48:22 indicating that they will receive “one portion more than your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow.” Then there is the recon and report of the 12 spies recorded in Numbers 13-14. There was some understanding of the land and its fortifications and other of its characteristics was gained from their expedition that Moses definitely had been made aware of (and had had plenty of time to think about while wandering in the desert for 40 years). These instances of knowledge of the land and foreknowledge of some details of the inheritance seems to be sufficient evidence to enable me to refute the objection that Moses would not have had sufficient knowledge of the allotted inheritance of the 12 tribes to make the statements in verses 1-3.

The third primary objection to Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy 34 has to do with the grandiose language used to characterize Moses’ ministry and his relationship to the Lord. The thought is that Moses would not have referred to himself in the third person nor would he have spoken of his relationship to the Lord in the way that he did. First of all, Deuteronomy 34 is not the singular instance where Moses would have used described himself in a perspective other than the first person (see Numbers 11:11; 12:17). But if I were taking position against Mosaic authorship stating that he wouldn’t have referred to himself with such majesty, I would begin by mentioning that Paul referred to himself as the chief of sinners. And if Deuteronomy 34 was written by Moses, would he be referring to himself with such a self-important attitude that set him apart from the other prophets who would come after him, both in powerful works and in his closeness to God? Of course, the answer to this rhetorical question would be “no”. But I submit that this is not the best way to examine the text at hand. One of the primary phrases that objectors use to make their argument is,

“¹⁰ Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, ¹¹ for all the signs and wonders which the LORD sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants, and all his land, ¹² and for all the mighty power and for all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12)

If this is an example of the type of language that is too self-complimentary for something that Moses would have said about himself, then what are we to do with Stephen’s defense before the high priest? In his defense of Christ as Messiah, he quoted Deuteronomy 18:15 where he indicates that Jesus is the prophet who Moses said would come after him who Moses indicated would be “like me.” This verse, as it is used by Stephen, directly relates Moses to Christ in this manner, and it is surely more of a grandiose statement than those referred to in this chapter by those opposed to Mosaic authorship.

It seems to me that the arguments against Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy 34, other than the objections about how Moses would have referred to and characterized himself, are basically anti-supernaturalistic in nature. These objections seem to come from a mindset that is influenced, at least in this case, by naturalism. Because it seems that the objection is basically that Moses couldn’t have known or wouldn’t have known the necessary information needed to catalog the events. This is done in direct contrast to the basic nature of divine revelation. Divine revelation is, in the God-breathed Scriptures, is the revealing of what was previously unknown, unknowable or hidden. Furthermore, objections to Mosaic authorship are not based on the overall Biblical witness or the grammar used in this specific text as compared to the rest of the Pentateuch.

I am not saying that all people who oppose Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy 34 categorically reject the supernatural, far from it. But I am saying that the primary objections, as I understand them, come from the same presuppositional basis, at least in this isolated case, as do the empiricists rejections of all miraculous or divine action in the world and in the Scriptures.

¹ William D. Barrick, “The Authorship of Deuteronomy 34: Moses or a Redactor?” presented at the ETS Annual Meeting, Nov 14-16,2001, P. 17

Click here to read the paper that I wrote for my Old Testament Introduction class.

God Created Me This Way…

2008-09-22T14:51:00.004-05:00

On Friday, September 12, 2008, former Christian artist Ray Boltz publicly announced, among other things, that he is a homosexual and he has been all of his life. I skimmed through the article in Washington Blade and wanted simply to comment on one particular thing that he said regarding Christianity and his now open homosexuality and how they are mutually exclusive. While the genesis of my comments are specifically related to Mr. Boltz’s comments regarding his sexuality and Christianity, my comments are not only applicable to people who may be homosexual in their inclinations. So, in other words, practicing homosexuals who erroneously want to call themselves Christians are not the only ones who should be upset and offended by what I’m going to say.

Ray Boltz made several comments regarding who he is and how he views himself in relation to his continuing confession of being a Christian. However, it was the final thing that he was quoted as saying in the article that held my attention and has given birth to my comments.

“This is what it really comes down to,” he says. “If this is the way God made me, then this is the way I’m going to live. It’s not like God made me this way and he’ll send me to hell if I am who he created me to be … I really feel closer to God because I no longer hate myself.”¹

In other words, Mr. Boltz believes that God made him and intends him to be gay, so his decision to live this way – true to who he is – will not cause God to condemn him to hell. If God created him with a specific type of sexual inclination, and his continued attempts to suppress it for decades has not caused it to wane in its ferocity but instead it has continued with vigor, then he should not feel ashamed of it, nor should he feel that his claim of being a Christian will be rendered void by living out his natural inclination. With all due respect, I must, on the basis of Scripture, patently reject this logic and. I don’t see any consolation in Scripture for the person who claims to be a Christian but yet lives a life of unrepentant and blatant sin.

The problem with Mr. Boltz’s theology (as stated above, anyway) is that he doesn’t understand the depravity of man; neither generally with the entirety of humanity nor specifically with regards to himself. I am becoming more and more convinced that a misunderstanding of sin – its effect, scope, and result – leads to so many of the problems and inconsistencies that we see in theology. Furthermore, I think that this error is surpassed in its potential damage only by errors relating to Scripture (denying its sufficiency, inerrancy, inspiration, etc.) and errors related to the Person of Christ Himself.

Mankind, as a whole, is born in sin and is completely and utterly defiled because of our sin in Adam. And because of our sin in Adam, all of the parts of our being have been corrupted from the perfect and sinless model of our first father. In other words, God made a perfect creation but we have corrupted it. So, in a sense, it is both true and untrue for Mr. Boltz to say that “God made me this way” relating to his sexuality. God did not create man to be homosexual, but God did create Ray with the sinful proclivity that lends itself towards homosexuality. This neither justifies Ray, or anyone, in rebelling against God’s command to abstain from that kind of activity, nor does this render God as being unjust or as being unfairly malicious in His eternal condemnation of men and women who practice such forbidden things.

Because if one reads the Scriptures consistently in the way in which they intend to be read (as being a perspicuous divine revelation), there is no way to avoid the condemnation of any sexual activity (mentally or physically) outside of the bounds of monogamous heterosexual marriage between one male and one female. Would it would be wrong if, and I doubt that Mr. Boltz or his “church” body would not disagree with me on this even though they may reject the analogy, after decades of marriage to one woman that produced four grown children, I decided to leave her and go off to engage in all sorts of sexual encounters with as many women as I was able to. If so, then why?

I’m an average man. And any honest hetero-sexual man that I have ever met has desires and tendencies to have as much sex with virtually as many different people as you could imagine. Why should I not go out and live in a lifestyle of free love? That is where my natural proclivities point me? And based on Mr. Boltz’s summarization of his situation, there are no Scriptural grounds upon which to condemn my promiscuous lifestyle. This is done to the utter disregard of the Scripture when it is clear that fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God, and neither will the homosexual!²

So, whether you’re a homosexual ex-Contemporary Christian recording artist who has just decided to come out of the closet or whether you’re an average Joe who has decided that warring against the constant bombardment of sexual thoughts is foolish because “God made me this way”, and you’ve decided to live out your natural desires for sexual fulfillment – you are giving evidence that you have not been born again and that you do not love Christ Jesus at all. You love what is plainly called sin in the Scriptures more than you love the God of the Scriptures.

Christians sin. Some Christians have homosexual attractions and desires. All Christians have natural desires that are contrary to the Biblical call for holiness and purity. All Christians war against these sins, and we die still in the war against our sinful desires. Whether we die in while losing a skirmish or standing on a mountain of triumph, we’re still in the fight.

Those who leave the fight, give up the fight, deny that there is a fight and utterly forsake the call of Christ to war against the sin that is present in the flesh give evidence to the fact that they haven’t been redeemed by Christ. It is impossible for man to resist his natural inclinations in the way that Christ calls us to. It takes a supernatural victory and the alien righteousness of Christ to first make war and then to continue that war on the flesh throughout the remainder.

¹ http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/9-12/arts/feature/13258.cfm

² I should note that when I use the term homosexual, as I did in this sentence, the meaning is that of a practicing homosexual in the same manner as I would say that the fornicator is someone who is actively fornicating in their life. For a man to be tempted with thoughts of homosexual sin or heterosexual sin and his response is to war against it, this does not make him a homosexual or a fornicator in the sense that it would be evidence of not being a Christian. The man who is tempted with the same sins and gladly runs his mind in this sin or acts out on these sins is the one who is giving evidence to possibly not having been justified.

Blasphemy? Really?

2008-09-12T18:49:00.002-05:00

A while ago (a long while ago, actually) I did a little study on the “queen of heaven” as it relates to Roman Catholicism’s exaltation of Mary and if that has any relevance to the pagan goddess mentioned in Jeremiah 7:18. The conclusion that I came to is that I’m not willing to say that the same spirit that was being worshipped as the “queen of heaven” in ancient times is modernly incarnated in the Roman exaltation of Mary. That being the case, I view the modern Marian devotion more similarly to run-of-the-mill idolatry that has always plagued man in his sinfulness.

So, I wrote my thoughts and made a summary video of it to put on youtube and there ended up being a fairly lively discussion in the comments section of the video. Recently I have pretty much left that video and the comments alone…until I saw this comment:

"O teach me Holy Mary
A loving song to frame
When WICKED MEN blashpheme thee
I'll love and bless thy name"

Now, this comment from “Rapture1987” was part of a stanza from a hymn to Mary. The primary thing that the commenter wanted to get across was that I am a wicked man because of my comments against the unholy and blasphemous exaltation of Mary. But what caught my attention is that this hymn ascribes the charge of blasphemy to those who dare challenge the exaltation of Mary in Roman Catholicism.

Now, I make the charge that the exaltation of Mary and the veneration of her is blasphemy simply because doing so either gives her attributes that are for God alone, or they make her the recipient of prayer or praise that is due to God alone. I submit that I do this on the basis of the Scriptural precedent that worship and praise and prayer is only to be addressed to God and to Him alone. It is quite a different thing to accuse someone of blasphemy against a person. That charge, I think, goes more to validate my concerns and objections to the elevation of Mary, but furthermore, it may lend credence to those who see the Marian elevation as nothing less than her deification in Roman dogma.

And now, based on this comment and the fact that it was a quotation of a Marian Hymn, I am more convinced that the true deification of Mary is where the modern Roman push will end up, even if that is not the intention of the majority of those who are promoting the fifth Marian dogma. Now, it may be that the hymn writer and the commenter have no real understanding of what they are saying when they accuse men of blasphemy when they attack Mary, but they should know better.

I did a quick concordance search on the word “blasphem” (this was to include both forms of “blasphemy and blaspheme” and I came up with 41 different results from the NASB. Now, granted, this is not an exhaustive study of the Biblical understanding of blasphemy, but it is a quick and cursory look at how the Holy Spirit used this word in God’s revelation to us.

The overwhelming majority of the Scriptures clearly indicate that the offended party in the act of blasphemy is God. The only time in the Scriptures that I could find that where the object of the blasphemy might be found in 2nd Samuel. This is during the account following David’s sin with Bathsheba and Uriah.

"However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die." (2 Samuel 12:14)

Now, although it seems quite clear in the larger context that it was the Lord who was the recipient of the blasphemy of His enemies, this verse itself doesn’t say “…occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme the LORD….” I don’t think that there is any other way that one could interpret the text other than to say that the blasphemy was against the LORD, but others might argue otherwise.¹ The other 11 times that the charge of blasphemy was named in the Old Testament, it was specifically listed as being against God Himself. However, there is one verse where the sin of blasphemy was attributed to a human party as well as to God. And it is this Scripture that needs to be addressed, I think.

Then they secretly induced men to say, "We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God." (Acts 6:11)

The context here is the testimony, trial, and martyrdom of Stephen. How is it that Stephen was blaspheming against God and Moses if blasphemy is an offense only against God? Well, first of all, the revelation of the Old Testament, specifically the Pentateuch, was referred to as the Law of Moses (see, among others, Joshua 8:31-32; 23:4; Judges 4:11; 1 Kings 2:3; Ezra 7:6; Malachi 4:4; Luke 2:22; Acts 13:39; 15:5; 28:23; 1 Corinthians 9:9). And in this way, one could be said to blaspheme Moses by contradicting the revelation that God had given to him in the Law. And in the account of Stephen, he only used Scripture to point to Christ. He did not attack Moses or their perception of Moses as the most righteous man who intercedes on their behalf before God.

But even if one was to argue that the Jewish officials were accusing Stephen of blasphemy against the person of Moses instead of the Law, I don’t see a precedent set here that we could then use to apply in the case of Marian opposition. And there are three main reasons for why there is no problem with this accusation. First of all, this would be the single time in the Scriptures where the charge of blasphemy was attributed to an assault on a person instead of God. Secondly, this charge is made by those people who have rejected the incarnate Christ Himself and who schemed and “induced” men to make this accusation against Stephen. In other words, this is not the best crowd to look to for a correctly interpreted understanding of the Scriptures to make a precedent in this area or for honesty in their actions and accusations. And thirdly, this verse is nothing less than a single vague reference to a possible offence of blasphemy against a person and not against God alone, and so it should by no means be a verse we look to in order to expand the otherwise clear definition of blasphemy in the Scriptures.

It is on the basis of the Scripture’s use of this term and concept that I defend that the sin of blasphemy is only against God. Men who mock a gospel preacher may mock the man while they blaspheme God. And it is in the same vain of Biblical precedent that I reject the accusation of blasphemy against Mary. Mary is not God, therefore she cannot be blasphemed.

But if Rome wants to defend her Marian dogmas and charge those of us with blasphemy who challenge them for being extra-biblical and a satanic exaltation and veneration of her, they have no biblical ground to do so. And I would further state that the accusations of blasphemy against Mary, intentionally or unintentionally, ascribe a measure of deity to her based on how this word is used in Scripture.

My Roman Catholic friends, I urge you to see this exaltation of Mary for what it is: idolatry and subtle deification of a created being. Defend your dogmas, if you like, but know that their defense is not one that can be done from a consistent interpretation of Scripture.

Soli Deo Gloria.

¹ I include this little caveat primarily because many of the opponents of Sola Scriptura (Roman apologists and adherents) believe that the Scripture must say certain things with the exact words that they think that it should in order to uphold our doctrinal conclusions. So, even though the inspired Scripture doesn’t include the “the LORD” after the word “blaspheme”, a fair reading of the text would come up with that interpretation.

Baptism of Repentance for the Forgiveness of Sins

2008-08-12T10:42:00.004-05:00

How did people in the Old Testament have their sins forgiven? How is all of the stuff with the temple, and the stringent requirements that God gave in the Old Testament reconciled with grace through faith in the New Testament? These two questions are answered in very different ways depending on the person asked. The ways that this question is answered varies as much as the people asking it do.

One of the ways that this is answered is by saying that salvation was always by grace through faith (cf. Eph 2:8, 9) and not by works of the Law (cf. Gal 2:16). This happens to be what I see as clearly taught in Scripture, but others see the picture a bit differently. Another view is that the Jews in the Old Testament were saved by a combination of faith and works, and since the coming of Christ, all men are still saved by grace through faith and works. Other schools of thought would hold to a mish-mash assortment of views of varying consistencies that include a dual covenant (Israel is still saved by nature of being Israel, and the gentiles are saved by faith) theology, a hyper-dispensational theology that espouses a works righteousness salvation of the Old Testament and a true grace salvation of the New Testament, and many many more.

In a very roundabout way I came to deal with the question of salvation in the Old Testament, or under the Old Covenant, while studying for a Sunday school overview of John the Baptist. John the Baptist is one of the figures in the gospels who does not get too much attention by the Biblical writers or by the church. Most Christians will know that John was a relative of Jesus, that he was the promised forerunner of the Messiah, that he baptized Jesus, and that he was martyred by Herod. This is a fairly good and complete summary of who John was and what his mission was, so I didn’t want to focus primarily on these issues. What I wanted to investigate was the content, the message, of John the Baptist.

Have you ever noticed it when you gloss over a passage quickly when it seems to say something that you don’t agree with or when you simply don’t understand it? Perhaps I’m the only person who has done this, but I was definitely guilty of that in the past when I’d read a description of John’s message and ministry.

“John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mark 1:4)

I believe that the New Testament teaches baptism, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins, however the way that Mark formulates John’s message seems to combine these three things in a way that flies in the face the doctrine of justification by faith alone. It was this text that prompted me to study John the Baptist in hopes of coming to see how best to understand this text in light of the rest of the Scriptures.

Checking the other three gospel accounts gives some clues as to what the message of John was even if there is no point by point theological statement written down.

“¹⁶ John answered and said to them all, "As for me, I baptize you with water; but One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷ "His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." ¹⁸ So with many other exhortations he preached the gospel to the people. (Luke 3:16-18)

In this passage I didn’t even focus on verses 16 and 17 except for the context of what John said. It was verse 18 that grabbed my attention. John was preaching the gospel, or at least what Luke identified as the gospel at a later date. I think that it is important to know that Luke, like the other New Testament writers, refers to the message of salvation from the condemnation of God as the gospel. Furthermore, Luke uses this word to summarize what Christ Himself was proclaiming during His own ministry. So whatever we say about John’s message, we cannot say that it differed from that of Christ’s own message.

“⁷ He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.” (John 1:7-8)

The apostle John understood and related the message of the Baptizer to be one that pointed to Christ and was clear enough so that “all might believe through him.” This would not be possible if John the Baptist was making people a slave of the Law or tradition in order to bring about salvation. The facts that the ministry of the forerunner to the Messiah was to clear the path to Christ and that John’s message was shown to be in harmony with the message of Christ Himself should erase any fear of a proclamation of baptismal regeneration from Mark 1:4. There is still one more Scripture that I had not looked at in this context before, which really captured the truth that John’s message was one that lined up not only with Christ, but also with the apostles.

“²⁴ Now a Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus; and he was mighty in the Scriptures. ²⁵ This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John; ²⁶ and he began to speak out boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. ²⁷ And when he wanted to go across to Achaia, the brethren encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him; and when he had arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace, ²⁸ for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.” (Acts 18:24-28, emphasis mine)

I wanted to emphasize the later part of verse 25 but also include 27 and 28 because of the more complete context of Apollos’ early faith and ministry. Notice that before Apollos had been baptized in the apostolic ministry, he was “speaking and teaching the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John.” In other words, Apollos had come into contact with the ministry of John the Baptist and had been baptized by him (cf. Mark 1:5). This may have happened during one of the many Jewish feasts where the faithful would make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate and worship.

John’s message was clear enough and direct enough that Apollos truly was able to “believe through” John’s preaching (cf. John 1:7) but then was not present during the further ministry of Christ, or at least not surrounding the time of the crucifixion and resurrection. The reason I say that is that if he were around, he would have experienced the baptism of the apostles and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

If Apollos was proclaiming the falsehoods concerning Christ and His role as Messiah, he would not have been “speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus”. So the fact that Apollos was accurately teaching the things concerning Jesus without any apostolic instruction but only with the teaching from John the Baptist is a great testimony for the content of John’s teaching. John the Baptist was truly making the paths straight to the messiah, and Apollos is an example of the fruit of his ministry.

Reflections on Isaiah 53:6,10

2008-07-29T13:16:00.008-05:00

T.U.L.I.P.

In an effort to set up my thoughts and reflections on Isaiah 53, I am going to provide some of the context around what led me both to study it, wrestle with the seeming paradox in it, and finally come to my personal conclusion as to how we should understand the Isaiah 53:6 in the context of the rest of the chapter.

Even before I really made a personally motivated effort to memorize Scripture on my own, I knew these verses. Now, I may not have remembered the exact reference right away, and I knew what verse 5 much better than verse 6, but I could come close to quoting these verses for you. And it was with this in mind that I planned to study Isaiah 53 to teach in Sunday school. In the past I’ve spent weeks on studying a single chapter, but because I didn’t have that luxury this time, I planned on briefly looking at some of less familiar parts of this Messianic prophesy. My goal was to simply wet the appetites of the class into looking back at this passage with a revitalized sense of awe that may have been diminished because its familiarity.

In my grand design, I wanted to end the last few minutes of the class dealing with verse 6 and how we should understand what “the iniquity of us all to fall on Him” means. I had planned the majority of my time with looking at Christ as the once for all sacrifice as contrasted to the ongoing priestly sacrifices, what “His offspring” and “prolong His days” (v.10) means, or even how it is so important to note that “the Lord was pleased to crush Him” and “if He would render Himself (as) a guilt offering” (v.10) showed both the willingness of the suffering servant and the pleasure of the Father.

We began by reading 52:13 – 53:12 out loud, and when we were done, I asked what impressed them or stuck out to them from what we had just read. Now, I thought that someone would bring up something form verse 10, or something relating to the silent lamb before the slaughter (v. 7) and that is where we would begin the lesson. It was a good idea until the first, and only, person to answer my question referred to verse 6 and marveled at how awesome it was that Christ bore all of the sins for everyone whoever lived.

Now I had a problem. This is exactly the issue and mindset that I wanted to deal with, somewhat briefly, at the end of the class. Primarily I wanted to deal with it briefly because of the potential powder keg that discussing my conclusions on this verse might lead to. What I mean is this: at this time, I don’t necessarily believe that Isaiah 53 teaches the doctrine of particular redemption (limited atonement), but I believe that the correct understanding of it would lead one to think along those lines. And from my experience in preaching anything that touches on the doctrine of election, much less on the doctrine of limited atonement, the reaction could be less than hospitable and even cause enough discord as to motivate people to leave the fellowship of our local body. This is not to say that I will not say what the Word is saying in a particular text or situation, but I am very aware that I must be delicate because it is not my place to be so “controversial” as to motivate people to leave be cause of me.

So when the observation was made that this verse said that all people had their sins placed on Christ, and He paid for them all, I reluctantly took the carrot and decided to begin to look into what this verse means in the context of the rest of Isaiah 53. So without further ado, here are my reflections on Isaiah 53:6 when taken in context (specifically verses 11 and 12).

“⁵ But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being {fell} upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. ⁶ All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” (Isaiah 53:5,6)

When looking at these verses, my initial gut reaction is to take them to mean exactly what the words plainly say. Namely, that Jesus bore the punishment for everyone’s sins to bring us all to peace with God because everyone of us have gone astray, but God has caused all of our iniquities to fall on Jesus. I don’t think that I go too by saying that this is the general understanding of the majority of Christians when looking at this verse in the same way. I don’t know if I heard this from someone, or if is simply what I have thought in the past, but these two verses come across almost as the equivalent of Romans 3:23 in the Old Testament. In other words, just as Romans 3:23 (built on the context of Romans 1-3) shows the universality of the sinfulness of man, this verse is portrayed as doing the same thing in the Old Testament.

I had believed that exact thing until studying this chapter for this lesson. It was not verses 5 and 6 that caused me to be up way to late struggling with how to understand it, but it was when looking at these verses in light of verses 11 and 12 that I almost pulled my hair out.

“⁶ All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.

¹¹ As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see {it and} be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.” (Isaiah 53: 6,11 emphasis mine)

The language of “all”, “our”, and “many” may have caused some initial confusion, but in the past I had just understood them to be referring to different groups and had no problem with that. All people are sinful but only those who have faith in Christ will be justified. There is no problem with this because that is the glorious truth of the gospel. However, the problem that I encountered came from fact that the context indicates that those whose sins Christ bears will be justified, but if all people’s iniquities fall on Christ then all would be justified. In other words, then all people everywhere would be saved. Not that I would oppose universalism if the Bible taught it, but it blatantly does not. So how can I understand this in context?

Even though we understand that we are justified and connected to the death and resurrection of Christ through faith, Isaiah doesn’t address that. He simply states that “the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him” and that the “Servant justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.” So, as I understand it, whether the “all” of verse 6 and the “many” of verse 11 refer to the exact same people or not, neither can be referring to all people of all time because the Bible is clear that many people will be eternally condemned.

My concern was not that this text somehow teaches universalism, my struggle was how to understand this passage consistently so that it said what I know the Bible teaches elsewhere. And the first thing that I was drawn too was the pronouns used throughout the chapter. Isaiah uses “our” (1,4,5), “we ourselves” (4), “we” (5), “all of us” (6), “each of us” (6), “us all” (6), “my people” (8), “many” (11,12), “their” (11) to describe those to whom the action of the Suffering Servant relates.

At first, the “my people” from verse eight seems to be the best clue as to who Isaiah is writing about here. I believe based on Isaiah 52:14 as well as 53:8 that “my people” refers to the nation of Israel, God’s covenant people. But that still doesn’t resolve the “all” verses the “many” problem that we get from verse 6 and 11. And unless “all” refers to all Israel and “many” refers to the number of descendants as related to the rest of humanity, I don’t think that identifying “my people” is the final key to unlocking the who’s who of Isaiah 53. And I say that because of what we know; we know that much of Israel is and was apostate, and we also know that salvation came to the gentiles in Christ. So, my dilemma continues.

After more searching and scouring of the passage for another clue as to what might be the best key for understanding the “many” against the “all” language, I reread and reread the chapter and surrounding context for some help. It wasn’t until after having read it many times that I again noticed that the first possessive pronoun used in chapter 53 was used in verse 1, and it was the word “our”.

“Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1)

I believe that it is this verse, this statement or lament of Isaiah, which gives the key to understanding and making sense of the rest of this chapter. And the question that I think is important is this: who is the “our” that proclaimed the message that was to be believed? This is not the nation, it cannot be. The nation rejected God and rebelled against the laws of God and of worshipping and following Him alone from the very Exodus from Egypt. Because of their constant rebellion and hard hearts, God sent prophets who were to call the nation back to the Lord. We also know that there were devout priests and other people who remained faithful to God during the rampant apostasy of their land (see 1 Kings 19:14-18).

It seems best to understand the possessive and inclusive pronoun “our” in verse 1 as well as “each of us” and “all of us” in verse 6 to refer to those people who were proclaiming the Word of the Lord. And for lack of a better way to categorize them, I’ll call them the prophets, even though this group would include more than those who wrote the prophetic books in the Old Testament. Isaiah wasn’t commenting on the general sin of Israel in verse 6, he was referring to the faithful group of prophets who proclaimed the message. Remember, this is the same Isaiah who lamented his own sinfulness before the throne of God,

“Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5)

If Isaiah is referring to those faithfully proclaiming the Word of the Lord to the nations when he says “all of us” and “each of us”, then who are the “many” in verse 11? It seems best to understand the “many” in God’s ultimate redemptive sense. In other words, it is not simply the faithful among the prophets of God to Israel and Judah that He will save, but He is the savior of the gentiles too. The prophets knew this well, and that is why Jonah fled; he did not want God to be merciful to the Ninevites, even though he knew that He would be.

So in this case, “many” is actually a larger group than “all of us” is. Everyone who has been justified by faith is included in the “many”, but only Isaiah’s contemporaries proclaiming the Word of the Lord at that time would be included in the “all of us”. I could even be convinced that “all of us” refers to all of the believers of the message, not just the proclaimers of the message, in Isaiah’s time and in all time. And in this case, the “all of us” would include the totality of those chosen by God, and the “many” would refer to their numerical value.

This understanding of who the various groups are allow us to interpret Isaiah 53 consistently in its context as well as in the broader context of the Bible’s teaching on salvation. All of those people who have their sins imputed to Christ will be justified by His righteousness, and there will be many people who come from every tribe, tongue, and nation who receive God’s gracious gift of salvation through Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria

When Debates Go Bad...Very Bad

2008-07-21T12:46:00.001-05:00

James White debates Nadir Ahmed (Muslim apologist) in 2008 over whether the New Testament is reliable.

I watched this debate in its entirety, and I can say that I have never seen anything like it. This was infact a non-debate. The reason being that the Muslim apologist refused to stay on subject, answer questions, or follow the debate rules. Furthermore, Mr. Ahmed was asking for evidence regarding the validness of Paul being a "prophet" but would not even listen to anything that James would say.

Truly, the only thing about this debate that is worthy of remembering, at least from the things that Mr. Ahmed said, was this clip of him calling out a member of the audience in very "Jerry Springer-ish" way.

Yikes.

Praise God for the Bible and for men who can keep their composure much better and much longer than I can.

2008-07-16T14:17:00.000-05:00

“I cannot help but stop for just a moment and remind us that it is not a gospel that does not explain to men and to women and to children why they’re under the wrath of God. Don’t tell me that you’ve preached the gospel to someone when you have not followed the apostolic example and explained, first and foremost, that we all stand justly condemned before a holy God. If you have not proclaimed that, you have not proclaimed the gospel.” - James White, 2008 John Bunyan Conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82_3HVNqsTc 2:34 ff.

Baby Steps From Orthodoxy to Heresy

2008-07-07T15:01:00.005-05:00

Whenever the Scriptures are misused, it grieves God and all of His children. As one of those children, I initially have a two-fold thought on this matter. First of all, I realize that I am imperfect, quite flawed, actually, and I have misused Scriptures in the past. Worse than that, I am sure that I will misuse Scriptures in the future. I have not done so intentionally, and I will not do it intentionally in the future, but even though I cannot think of a specific example, I am sure that this is a true description of me. The second thought that I have is one of indignation and anger that the Word of God is distorted by careless, immature, or malicious individuals when they use a Scripture to state as a fact what that Scripture, or perhaps even the Scriptures as a whole, does not teach at all.

And it is in the mindset of my two-fold reaction that I hope to address misuses of Scripture. First of all, if I am approached with an example of where I have used a Scripture out of context in order to support a theological conclusion (whether my final conclusion is Biblical or not, it makes no difference), I hope and pray that I will quickly have a humble attitude to investigate the issue to see if I am at fault. And once I become aware of an occurrence of out of context proof texting, then not only will I not use the text in the same incorrect manner, but I will do what I can to rectify my previous use of it in that manner.

My hope and prayer is that my Christian brethren will do the same. However, since we are all sinful, there are verses and issues that will not be given up easily or at all. Even if these misuses of Scripture are for theologically true issues or issues that are false but not at the level of being heretical, it is still a very troubling and problematic activity. If a text can be twisted out of context and accepted to affirm something that it doesn’t, even if that affirmation is not heretical, what is to stop the next person who wants to twist it even further?

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

When I have researched and discussed the issue of female pastors, Galatians 3:28 is the verse that is used, along with other vague references and elusions to women, to argue the point. Furthermore, the passage in Galatians is the primary Scriptural cudgel that is used to bat down the opposing arguments. Proponents of female pastors and elders basically see this verse as washing away the distinctions of men and women as it relates to pastoral ministry. But along with the gender neutralizing application that is taken from Galatians 3:28, those who advocate female pastors from the Scriptures are quick to site the fact that there have been female prophetesses (Ex 15:20, 2 Kings 22:14, Luke 2:36, Acts 21:9), a female Judge (Jud 4:4), and a female member of a prominent husband and wife team that helped Apollos (Acts 18:24-28). However, without the glue of the above interpretation of Galatians 3:28, these examples don’t teach us anything about the role or qualifications of elders in the church, they are simply examples of what women had done under the Law and during the transitional time of the early church. But even the examples of prophetesses in the New Testament are not listed as elders or pastors, and that must not be overlooked or brushed under the rug.

So the question that must be addressed is this: does Galatians 3:28 teach the washing away of gender distinctions in the church, or at least regarding the issue of elders and pastors in the church? My answer is simply and quickly that it does no such thing. First of all, Paul’s letter is primarily addressing the issues raised because of the Judaizing false teachers who were teaching that one must follow the law as well as have faith in order to be saved. Paul’s pronouncement of this idea as anathema in the first chapter is one of the harshest in all of his letters.

So when we arrive at chapter three, Paul is now trying to give a presentation about the correct use or function of the law since following the law has no part in our justification. And it is in the context of the proper understanding of the law that we find Galatians 3:28.

²² But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. ²³ But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. ²⁴ Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. ²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. ²⁶ For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁷ For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:22-29)

Verses 24-26 make it clear that Paul is referring both to who can be justified and how they can be justified. And the answer is that there is no racial, class, or gender disqualifiers for justification that occurs by faith. Forgetting that Paul’s parallel statement in Colossians 3:9-11 doesn’t mention a distinction between male and female. Even if Paul would have made the same “neither male nor female” statement, the context in Colossians is about the renewal that believer’s experience who have been justified by faith and not about serving in the church.

Another textual objection raised in this text, but in my experience much less frequently, is that we are all, male and female, “heirs according to promise”. The promise that we are heirs to in Christ is the promise made to Abraham and not one of temporal gifts or service in the church. Being an heir in this sense is saying that we receive the promise that was made to Abraham and passed down through Isaac, Jacob, and the nation is one of salvation (see Galatians 3:6-9).

But one proponent of the egalitarian view made a very wild “logical” continuation of applying Galatians 3:28 “only to salvation.”

“If Galatians 3:28 only refers to salvation, then we would have a difficult time defending the inclusion of the gentiles in the leadership roles of the church. Let me explain what I mean.

What if someone said that only the Jews were to rule, and all the gentiles had to be subordinate? After all, weren’t all of the books of the Bible written by Jews? Weren’t all of Jesus disciples Jews? Jesus never appointed anyone who wasn’t a Jew to a place of authority in the church.

Is that Biblical? It may sound logical because these are the same arguments that have been used against women. But the wall of separation has been taken down in every case.”¹

The proof-text that is used here referring to this dividing wall that is broken down and that the speaker relates to the roles of men and women in the church is Ephesians 2:14-16. While the verses do talk about breaking down a barrier and making the two into one new man, the context is about the Jews and the gentiles, not men and women.

One of the explicit qualifications given for the role of elder or overseer is that the person must be a one woman man. The language is clear that the individual must be a man, not simply a person who is devoted to one other person. He doesn’t say that the elder or bishop must be a good looking man, a black man, a white man, a young man, an old man, a Jewish man (Israelite), or a gentile man; he just says that he must be a one woman man.

Galatians 3:28 does not overrule or even clarify the male qualification for being an elder or bishop when Paul announces that there is no “male or female” in Christ Jesus. Paul is responding to the heresy of the Judaizers in Galatia and their insistence that you must add law-keeping to faith, especially circumcision, in order to be saved. And there is no distinction because of pedigree, gender, or social status. Conversely, when Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus, he was giving positive instructions on leading in the church.

We must be careful not to confuse the Scriptures in their application. Even though it is my conviction based up on the Scriptures that it is wrong for a woman to be a pastor or teacher of men, it is not heresy (not by a long shot). That being the case, using Galatians 3:28 as a verse that breaks down gender distinctions when this passage says nothing of the sort can open it up to further abuses. What context is to stop someone from making the positive case for committed Christian homosexual relationships? Of course the Bible explicitly refers to one man and one woman for marriage, but if there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free man, male or female in Christ Jesus, who are we to stop two loving people from being married?

There are always a few baby steps from orthodoxy to heresy, and we must be careful to school the steps of faith that we take by the Word of God in its proper context.

¹ Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free? part 7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCUFC1ss-Dw&feature=user

The Good-O-Meter

2008-07-07T15:01:00.001-05:00

Okay, so normally these types of videos don't impress me, but this one was different. And I would have done things a little different by adding a person saying "I prayed a prayer when I was a kid" or something like that, but otherwise it was good in showing the imputation of Christ's righteousness to our account.

SOLI DEO GLORIA!!!

God is No Respecter of Persons

2008-06-19T11:54:00.001-05:00

For there is no partiality with God. (Romans 2:11)

Over the past month or so, I have seen this verse used to defend the idea that those who haven’t heard the gospel of Jesus Christ may still be covered by the blood of Christ even though they would not have placed their faith in Christ. I have also seen this verse used as the primary Scriptural cudgel used to attack the “demonic doctrine”¹ of predestination. In either occasion in my experience, when it comes down to it, the issue that is being defended is the free will of man to choose God apart from divine sovereignty.

This verse seems to be utterly debilitating to the doctrine of election if, as the King James Version puts it, “there is no respect of persons with God” means that God gives all men everywhere from all times the exact same ability and opportunity to respond to the gospel. Whereas the individuals who I have seen use this verse may not have stated their position in just this way, the issue remains the same because users of this verse for this reason hold that God would be a liar if this were untrue. And I agree, if Romans 2:11 means that all people everywhere for all time have the same opportunity and ability to respond to the gospel, then God would be called a liar if the doctrine of election were true. But is that what this verse is saying?

In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul is making the case that all men everywhere, in fact, have not honored God as they ought and therefore do not measure up to God’s standards. In fact, the summary of Paul’s argument up to that point is one of the most memorized verses in the New Testament,

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

Paul goes into great detail as to why man is in this predicament, whether or not he’s heard the law of God before, and the end result is the same; Man falls short of God’s perfect standard and is justly under condemnation because of what we have done. And moving forward from Romans chapter three, Paul begins to unfold the great doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works of the law or any human righteousness.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

With the general flow of the first few chapters of Romans established, we now have the perspective to look at Romans 2:11 to find out if using this verse to proclaim or defend the more Arminian understanding of the doctrine of free will. In the whole flow of the first few chapters of Romans, Paul is not addressing the issue of election or free will; he is making the case for the universal depravity of mankind. He does address these issues in detail, specifically in chapters eight and nine, but that issue has not been introduced in the first few chapters.

In the first 17 verses of chapter one, Paul gives his salutation and opens his letter with some statements concerning the gospel and the fact that it is the power of God for salvation for all who believe (Romans 1:16). Paul also gives us glimpses of the gospel in chapter two when he admonishes us that it is God’s kindness, tolerance, and patience that lead the sinner to repentance (Romans 2:4). However, what Paul is saying in verse eleven is made very plain with the immediate context of that verse.

9 There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 11 For there is no partiality with God. 12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; (Romans 2:9-12)

Paul’s statement about God showing “no partiality” or being “no respecter of persons” (KJV) is a statement regarding God’s judgment on mankind. Furthermore, I submit that he is saying that all men stand condemned by God in this text even though verse 10 speaks of God giving a positive reward to those who do good. The reason is that in just a few lines, Paul quotes the Old Testament stating that there are none who do good, and his conclusion is that all men fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and the penalty of this offense is death (6:23).

It is true that God doesn’t discriminate on account of race, gender, or social status when it comes to salvation (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11). In other words, being a woman, a slave, a barbarian, or a Jew doesn’t disqualify you from the God’s promise to forgive your sins if you repent of them and trust in His son. This is not either affirming or discrediting the doctrine of election, it simply affirms that there can be (and there will be) people of every tribe, tongue, and nation in Heaven with Christ (Rev 5:9).

It is also true that Christians are not to show partiality in regards to Christian fellowship. One believer is the same as the next. James condemns showing favoritism for a rich man over a poor man in the gathering of believers. Again, we are all of equal worth in Christ Jesus, and we must not discriminate on account of social status, ethnicity, or gender when it comes to our fellowship.

In short, the truth that God is no respecter of persons is in no way related to the doctrine of election, whether you agree with that doctrine or not. This verse is explicitly talking about the universality of judgment and condemnation of mankind on account of sin. This is seen from the surrounding few verses as well as the overall argument that Paul is making in the first three chapters of Romans.

¹ TheVineRhyme, “Predestination”, youtube video. 0:40 – 0:54. Uploaded on 5/21/08. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YirjO7e8i8

Unreliable Cultists and the Mormon Jesus

2008-06-19T11:50:00.000-05:00

Over the past few weeks, some missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have been coming around my neighborhood. Each time that they’ve come around, my wife has just happened to be outside and I’ve either been putting my boys to bed or not at home. According to my wife, their conversations have been pleasant and she’s held her own recognizing some of the subtleties of their language as being concerning. For instance, nearing the end of one of their conversations she said, “You know, there’s nothing better than talking about Jesus” to which they responded by saying, “Yes, there’s nothing better than talking about the church.”

Now, I don’t know all of the reasons for them to make the distinction that they did, but perhaps it was because my wife had been defending historic Christian doctrine about Christ and salvation in the midst of their heretical characterizations of Him. But wherever the conversation went on those two days, my wife said one thing on both occasions. “My husband would love to talk to you.”

It is true that I enjoy talking about Christ and the gospel. Most often these conversations are with my wife, my children, my brother-in-law, or a few of my Christian co-workers. But I’ll also try to talk about Christ and the gospel with co-workers who aren’t Christians as well as anyone else who’ll engage me in a conversation. This is not to say that I do aggressive street evangelism to strangers, but I will take any conversational open door that comes my way. I don’t say this to impugn street witnessing, but as a self-impugning confession that I truly want to change. Because, hey, there’s nothing wrong and almost everything right with politely asking someone to talk, and then witnessing to them in a reasonable and gentle way.

After the last conversation with my wife, the Mormons made an appointment to come back to my home this past Tuesday evening at 7:30 PM so that I could talk with them. When my wife informed me of this arrangement, I was both excited and a bit nervous. But, when Tuesday rolled around I was reading Colossians and studying up on what the Bible says about the eternality of Jesus Christ so that I could have those verses fresh on my mind to counter the Mormon assertions that Jesus is a created being.

We setup a patio table in our garage (in case of rain), setup four chairs, and even made some lemonade so that we could all sit comfortably while we tried to convert each other. But 7:30 came and went and there were no Mormons sitting at my table telling me about the fact that there are still prophets today. My wife and I were getting disappointed, but I made the comment that perhaps these young men were still on Utah time, and so 7:30 on their watches would be 8:30 on ours. I didn’t really think that was the case, but I was really looking forward to speaking with them. Well, once 9PM rolled around, it was a pretty fair certainty that they were not going to show up, and we packed away our gear and retreated to the mosquito-free inside of our home.

While I was preparing to discuss some of the more troubling aspects of Mormon theology, I really had only a few goals for our conversation. I wanted to give some Scripturally sound answers to their assertions about their understanding of Jesus, grace, works, baptism, salvation, and God. They believe that Jesus is their savior, but the Jesus they believe in is not the Jesus revealed in the Bible. They believe that they’re saved by grace, but they confess that they’re saved by grace “after all that we can do”. In other words, they’re saved by their works. This is evident when you pose the “knife in the back” scenario.

The “knife in the back” scenario is simply that you set the stage that you’re a man who has a knife in his back, and you’re going to die in minutes. You confess that you’re not religious, but you’re scared of going to hell. Then you ask for them to tell you what you can do to escape hell. I’ve posed this to Mormons in the past, and their reaction is very telling. The last time that I did this, the young men said plainly that you can’t be saved in three minutes. The obvious biblical rebuttal to their assertion is the account of the thief on the cross or Jesus’ parable of the tax collector and Pharisee at the temple.

But even more important than the truth that their salvation method is wrong is the truth that their Jesus is wrong too. They believe that Jesus is the firstborn son of the former man Elohim. They believe that Jesus, like Elohim before him, was born as a man who then was exalted to deity and given his own domain to rule as god. The Bible is emphatic that Jesus existed from the beginning (Isaiah 9:6; John 1:1; 8:58) and was not created. He is the first-born of creation (Col 1:25) in that He has power over creation and is the pre-eminent one. The Mormon Jesus is not the same as the Jesus of the Scriptures. Believing in the Mormon Jesus will not save anyone any more than believing in a fictitious 11th century red-headed Viking warlord named Jesus who lived in Scandinavia. That fictitious person isn’t the savior of mankind, God incarnate, and neither is the Mormon understanding of Jesus.

He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. (John 5:23b)

Even if the Mormons had a perfect doctrine (which they don’t) of salvation that was by grace through faith alone and not of works, they would be left unsaved because they do not place their faith in the truly revealed Son of God.

Is the Atonement of Jesus Christ Limited?

2008-06-10T07:11:00.004-05:00

T.U.L.I.P.

"I had rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody..." - C.H. Spurgeon

"...the Arminian view of the atonement can be compared to a wide bridge that extends most of the way across a river." - Loraine Boettner

The video correctly states that the "L" in the Reformed acronym is the most missunderstood and potentially offensive part of reformed soteriological theology. It is primarily because of this doctrinal conviction on the part of historic Calvinistic theology that the presense of four-point Calvinists is prolfic.

It was my struggling to understand this doctrinal statement that kept me "in the closet", as it were, for a few years when it cam to being openly Calvinistic. Even though the quotes that I have written out are in the video, I believe that some of them pack such a punch that they need to be restated. That is true for proponents of a particular redemption as well as its oponents. If I could summarize the objection in my mind that continually led me to question my tendencies for believing in a general atonement, it would be the issue that a steadfast Arminian raised.

many Arminians whose theology is not very precise say taht Christ paid the penalty for our sins. Yet such a view is foreign to [historical] Arminianism, which teaches instead that Christ suffered for us. Arminians teach that what Christ did He did for every person; therefore what He did could not have been to pay the penalty, since no one would then ever go into eternal perdition. - Dr. J. Kenneth Grider,

The Ruin of Sin

2008-05-28T12:47:00.000-05:00

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:23)

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

I am becoming more and more convinced every day that the root cause of so much faulty theology comes from a misunderstanding of the sinfulness of man. Whether my wife is talking to the Mormons that came to my door on Sunday evening while I was snoozing with my boys (I’m so proud of her), or whether you’re talking to a Jew or a Muslim (or any other religious affiliation), or if you are simply talking to a post-modern atheistic secular humanist who believes that religion is the cause for all of the problems of the world, the root cause of all of their false concepts of life and the afterlife come from a view that man is inherently good, or at that man is at least naturally neutral.

I am also becoming more and more convinced that a misunderstanding of man’s sinfulness is the root cause of various deviations inside of orthodox Christian theology as well as the fact that it is also a primary cause, while not the only cause, in the divisions between orthodox Christianity and false religion under the guise of a form of Christianity; Roman Catholicism would be the primary example, while it is surely not the only occurrence, of a truly false religion that masquerades under the guise of Christianity. Whether from Rome or a random preacher’s desktop computer, when men hold to the view that man is somewhat good or capable of good things on his own, they usually mess up the doctrine of salvation and consequently do not understand the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

I have heard (and read) men of many different stripes inside of Christendom make the mistake of commending to man some ability to do something truly good when the men they are referring to have not been transformed by the saving power of Christ that is received through faith. And it is a fundamental denial of the ruin of sin that lead men to create new ways for good people to get a “fair chance” before God. If we understand that there are no good people and furthermore that there is nothing innately good about any human and that all people are unrighteous and wicked to the core of their being, we then see the message of the cross in the correct way.

As a side note, I don’t believe that the errors of the anonymous Christianity as seen inside of protestant circles or the same types of theologies inside of Roman Catholicism come from a purposeful intent to destroy the gospel of God (for the masses, anyway). This error basically holds that there is, or must be, a way that a loving God has set up for those who have never heard of Christ to still be saved. And I believe that the majority of unbelievers, as well as believers, who sit in the pews each week and are sympathetic to this idea, seem to be motivated by the desire to preserve the justice of God. I believe that this is the reason why some less mature or Scripturally ignorant Christians might be wooed by this idea. But I would be amiss if I didn’t mention that while this might be a factor with unbelievers, a primary reason would also seem to be one of self preservation. You see, unbelievers still have the unmitigated guilt of their sin to deal with, and whether they are in a Christian church or not, this fictional possibility helps to soothe their own consciences with the hope that they might qualify for it if their professed faith is false.

The problems that come from a watered down view of the sinfulness of man and the indistinguishable idea of the ability of man (to do truly good things) very often result in views of salvation that are contrary to the gospel. Now, whereas many of my brothers and sisters in Christ are Arminian in their theological persuasion and they will disagree with me on some of the issues surrounding the doctrines of grace (a.k.a. Calvinism), they would ultimately hold to the correct understanding of the ruin of sin. They hold to the position that every man is able to receive salvation by faith in Christ, but it is not anything good about that man himself that lends to his salvation.

The reason for the importance of this doctrine is not in the fact that it is fun or that it makes people feel good to be made very aware of the fact that, just as the famous song says, we are all wretches because of our sin. Neither is it is not a reveling in the imminent damnation of the vast majority of humanity. It is a bold proclamation of the utter ruin of mankind so that Christ will be seen as the most beautiful and glorious Savior that He is. When you have a watered down view of sin and your own sinfulness, then you only need a watered down Christ to save you or to help you save yourself. The Bible doesn’t speak of Christ as a “kind of” or “mostly” savior; He is the perfect and ultimate savior of a ruined humanity. And it is only by faith in Him as He has been revealed through the pages of Scripture that we can be saved from the ultimate ruin of the wrath of God.

Steven Curtis Chapman, Cinderella, Tragedy

2008-05-23T12:17:00.003-05:00

I was running on my treadmill yesterday when I heard on the news that Steven Curtis Chapman's 5 year-old daughter was accidentally killed by her brother.

I first heard the song "Cinderella" following the birth of my own daughter in the summer of 2007. I remember telling my wife that it was the first song that I ever had that "butterfly kisses" reaction that daddy's get when thinking about their daughters...I was a weeping mess.

Now, hearing the tragedy in his family and finding out that 1/2 of the inspiration for this song was his daughter, Maria, who died on Wednesday.

God's grace is sufficient...it is the only thing that can sustain and encourage a family in this time.

(This video was made well before this tragedy)

Marriage, Cartoons, Ice Cream, and Beer

2008-05-16T14:05:00.003-05:00

If there was any doubt of the truth that American culture is in a downward freefall toward unfettered debauchery and smut in our society, then May 15th, 2008 was a day that pushed those doubts farther and farther out. I am not a conspiracy theorist, so I don’t think that the three things that I am referring to were orchestrated by any one evil mastermind in a corporate office somewhere. However, I do believe and know that there is a demonic lord of the world whose plan is to further corrupt the world and saturate it with unclean and sinful things. So, in that sense, they are all connected.

Marriage:

SAN FRANCISCO , CA -- California's Supreme Court declared that gay couples in the nation's biggest state can marry -- a monumental but perhaps short-lived victory for the gay rights movement Thursday that was greeted with tears, hugs, kisses and at least one instant proposal of matrimony.¹

Same-sex Marriage is already legal in Massachusetts, so it was really only a matter of time before this happened again. I’m not surprised that it happened, nor shocked where it happened, but I am upset and concerned that it did happen. The Bible is clear that marriage is between one woman and one man, and this covenant lasts for a lifetime. But when Christians have an equal or higher number of divorces on average as the culture at large, we’ve got a serious marriage problem in our society, but more importantly in our church.

As far as the cultural impact on my society, I am very concerned about this ongoing issue. Leaving aside the fact that homosexuals have the exact right to marry in every state that heterosexuals do; one man can marry one woman. There is no distinction or discrimination on account of your sexual orientation. Leaving aside what this will mean for the raising of children in a same-sex household, the amount of children who will be impacted in homes and schools where this life-situation will necessarily be defended and validated is enormous. But this will definitely speed up the time when it will become illegal hate speech for Christians to declare that homosexuality is a sin condemned by God. It is not the only sin, or the grossest of sins, but it is a vile sin nonetheless. And when it is declared hate speech, it will be prosecutable by law. And this, my friends, is what primarily concerns me. The gospel will begin to be shut-up from the public square under force of law. We will still preach it, but our own families will suffer the retribution of our apostate society.

Cartoons, Ice Cream, and Beer:

Starbucks logo has always had the extremely subtle hint of nudity, I grant you, but their newest version of their logo takes all hints out of it. I find it very concerning that the breasts of a woman are exposed on the logo of a company that is known for its business’s saturation level in our society. I know full well that pornography is more readily accessible to anyone because of the Internet. I also realize that pornography and other lewd activities, like strip clubs and the like, are more accepted in our most tolerant society. This sexual de-sensitivity has gotten to such a point that sex sells everything; from cars to TV, and from coffee to ice cream. And this is just the latest in the over-stimulation and de-sensitization of our society towards sex and nudity.

Our culture is getting so bad, that the flirtatious game of a young girl (grade-school aged) that she plays in the presence of her mother in order to get a free ice cream doesn’t only get aired, but I haven’t heard any outrage over this. In the wake of the Miley Cirus “sex symbol” scandalous photographs, I would have thought that the latest Dairy Queen add would have been more condemned. And for those people who might think that I’m overreacting to this commercial let me ask this: would you want your third-grade daughter playing that sort of sexually charged game to get free ice cream? Would you want your twenty-year old daughter playing that sort of card to get free stuff? Ever wonder where the sexual inhibitions that leads to hooking up and Girls Gone Wild begins? Apparently, it begins at Dairy Queen and Starbucks now.

Not only is the over-tolerance of sexuality and nudity getting ever more pervasive, but so is foul language. A recent commercial for Amstel Light’s prominently used a play-on-words to be catchy for their new add campaign. It goes like this: Amstel Light is apparently made in Amsterdam. “Amsterdam” ends with in “dam” which sounds just like “damn”. Damn is a word that is considered course and has, to the best of my knowledge, not been allowed to be used on TV advertising. But good ‘ol Amstel Light found a way to swear and get it past any censorship. The final line of the commercial is, “One Dam Good Bier”. This, of course, makes no sense if we understand the word “dam” as it is spelled. However, if we understand it in its common usage in our culture as well as the meaning conveyed in this commercial, it makes sense. Its course and foul, and it is on your TV.

Starbucks, Dairy Queen, and Amstel Light didn’t come up with their advertising in a vacuum or in a culture that had not been heading in this direction for some time. Still, when you look at the pervasiveness and acceptance of all things sexual and course, how then can the claim be made that we are a mostly Christian nation. We might have been at one time, but we’re not now. I guess that we still might be a Christian nation if you define “Christian” the way that most of the evangelical world does. With the foul mouthed preachers, the sermon series’ on sex that could well be defined as soft-porn, and the increasing amount of alcoholic saturation of churches, whether it be churches in active bars or beer at bible studies or church events, perhaps America is a Christian culture. Its just that the Christianity of our culture is devoid of Christ and His sanctifying power.

May God have mercy on us.

¹ http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/national_world&id=6144920

An Ancient Idolatry Clothed in Modern Attire

2008-05-14T15:19:00.005-05:00

“The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and {they} pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me.” (Jeremiah 7:18)

“From the earliest ages of the catholic church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother's solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.”¹
- Pope PIUS XII, 10/11/1954

I have never been a big fan of the Roman Catholic doctrine, adoration, and veneration of Mary, the mother of our Lord, but I must say that I was shocked recently when I was directed to the book of Jeremiah. In chapters seven and forty-four, Jeremiah points out the idolatry of Israel in their worship of a false god referred to as the queen of heaven. Realizing the inflammatory nature of pointing to this correlation between the pagan religion and the Roman Catholic Church’s view of Mary, let me first articulate what I am not saying today.

I am not saying that the Roman Catholic veneration of Mary is the same as the worship of the pagan goddess listed in the Bible. I think that it is reasonable to draw the conclusion that the goddess in view in the context of the Old Testament is most often referred to as Ashtoreth. Whereas Ashtoreth was a fertility goddess and her worshipers often included sex as a part of their ceremonies, those devoted to Mary are influenced more toward celibacy. Primarily due to this difference, I believe that for one to draw the conclusion that simply because the names are the same in both cases that therefore the object of adoration is the same, is not, I don’t think, warranted.

Having that out of the way, I think that the Roman Catholic doctrine and subsequent veneration of Mary is nothing less than idolatry, but I don’t believe that the same goddess is in view as the one worshipped by Israel and the surrounding nations. Even though Roman Catholics have been relentless in their attempts to de-idolatrize the specific acts of venerating saints and relics, but above all the veneration, or hyperdulia, of Mary, I am unable to see how the line that they draw actually makes this type of veneration not a form of idolatry.

Before that, however, Roman Catholics defend the use of this title for Mary because even though it was used to address a pagan goddess, the title “king of kings” was ascribed by Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar. But in the very same sentence that Daniel gives this title to the king of Babylon, he puts him underneath the God who gave him his power.

³⁷ "You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory; ³⁸ and wherever the sons of men dwell, {or} the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given {them} into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. (Daniel 2:37,38a)

Daniel was not ascribing worship to Nebuchadnezzar, nor was he offering prayers or burning incense to him. He was interpreting the king’s dream, and in the context of this interpretation, Nebuchadnezzar is seen as the chief king of human kings while making it clear that he is compared to the One who gave him his power. Furthermore, even if the reference to a pagan deity did not bear the title of queen of heaven in Scripture, the justification of elevating anyone to the status of queen has no basis in Scripture. One example (the only one I could find) of proof texts given for this by Roman Catholic apologists provided Ephesians 2:12, Revelation 1:6 and 5:10 as the defense of the general queenship of Mary. But when you read them, these references say nothing about men and women being kings or queens (in fact, I have no idea what the relevance of Ephesians 2:12 is, look it up), but that we are a kingdom of priests. We are a kingdom of priests, not priests who are kings. The only other reference that seemed to be used to argue the Roman Catholic point that I could find is from Jesus’ words in Matthew 19,

And Jesus said to them, "Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matthew 19:28)

If this verse applies to all believers (as I tend to think that it does) and if it is not simply the apostles of Christ (as it may), then Mary would sit on a throne judging the tribes, perhaps the one right next to me. But this does not declare that those who sit on the thrones will be kings, but that they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel. We cannot and must not be sloppy or free-handed with our theology.

In one attempt to show the supposed absurdity of objections with the general idea of veneration (that are far more in scope than simply in applying to Mary) such as my own, things like the bronze serpent that Moses had made and the Cherubim on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant are brought up as examples of images used in a similar way as the Roman Catholic Church uses relics and upholds certain saints. The most compelling Scriptural argumentation in favor of the Roman view would be those that deal with the bronze serpent that Moses constructed so that the people could be healed from their present affliction.

Moses constructed this serpent at a time when the Israelites were complaining, yet again, about their food and their plight and complained against God and Moses. Because of this, God cursed them and sent venomous snakes into their camps to afflict them,

⁷ So the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us." And Moses interceded for the people. ⁸ Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery {serpent,} and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live." ⁹ And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:7-9)

God commanded Moses to construct an image and He commanded that if any Israelite were bitten by a snake that they could look up at this raised up image of the serpent and be healed. But whether it was the supernatural healing from snake bites by looking at the serpent or the supernatural passing-over by God’s killing of the first born because of the Lamb’s blood on the door of their homes in Egypt; the power of God that He displayed both in healing and preservation had no relation to anything intrinsically holy with the things themselves. And this was made even more clear by the fact that when the nation worshipped and burned incense to the statue instead of God who used the statue, it was destroyed with the Ashtoreth poles and other high places during Hezekiah’s purge (cf. 2 Kings 18:4).

Similar to the bronze serpent, any adoration or veneration of any relic, saint, or of Mary that draws any attention to the object or persons themselves and away from God in Christ is also idolatry. Was Mary blessed and honored to have been chosen to give birth to our Redeemer? Yes. Were Joseph and Mary especially blessed and chosen for their part in raising Jesus in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Yes. But does this elevate Mary to some queenly role in the heavenlies because of her own virtue and grace that her own suffering merited at the foot of the cross? No. And I say without any hesitation that this veneration, whether dulia or hyperdulia, is an idolatry and a heresy. Because it is simply, at its core, an elevation of a mere woman to a level that must be described as being at least goddess-like. This special veneration, or hyperdulia, of Mary as the Queen of Heaven (among other things) is not the exact equal of the pagan devotion to the queen of heaven as described in Isaiah, but it is an ancient idolatry clothed in modern attire.

“For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 1:25)

Mary is not the Queen of Heaven, nor is she the Spouse of the Holy Spirit as Roman Catholics like to refer to her. She is, as I am; a sinner made a saint by the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. She is no more a saint deserving of hyperdulia (or any dulia) than I am.

¹ This statement was given at Rome, from St. Peter's, on the feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the eleventh day of October, 1954, in the sixteenth year of Pius’ Pontificate.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_11101954_ad-caeli-reginam_en.html

Faith in Christ, Faith in Christ, Faith in Christ...

2008-05-08T12:47:00.002-05:00

This is the 4th video response to a preacherman777's youtube comments about a possibility of salvation through CHrist's blood apart from faith in Christ.

This discussion was the catalyst for my anonymous Christian post a few days back.

Yoga is Religion

2008-05-08T12:22:00.003-05:00

I posted this in response to a news story in my area that indicated that a local grade school (one very close to my home) was having teacher led yoga in the classrooms of 4th graders. Only four days later did I receive a response from my local school. The response answered that the school in my neighborhood is not the one featured in the news story, but doesn't elaborate on whether or not Yoga is going on in my school.

I have replied again (as of today) requesting if yoga is going on at my neighborhood school. And if it is, I have requested information about its use.

more to come...

Salvation Outside of Faith in Christ?

2008-05-05T15:06:00.005-05:00

“Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6)

"And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)

A modern heresy is gaining traction with popular “evangelical Christians” and churches that seem to be more likely to grab onto Christian fads and trends. These men, who are neither truly evangelical nor truly Christian (for one must first be a Christian in order to be evangelical), are promoting a view of the saving work of Christ that has been described by one proponent as the Anonymous Christian (also called “wider mercy”) view. Whether or not this idea first gained popularity in our modern time based on the influence of any one man, I do not know, but I have found it significant that Karl Rahner, a Roman Catholic theologian, put forth his view in this way,

“We prefer the terminology according to which that man is called an ‘anonymous Christian’ who on the one hand has de facto accepted of his freedom this gracious self-offering on God’s part through faith, hope, and love, while on the other he is absolutely not yet a Christian at the social level (through baptism and membership of the Church) or in the sense of having consciously objectified his Christianity to himself in his own mind (by explicit Christian faith resulting from having hearkened to the explicit Christian message) We might therefore put it as follows: the ‘anonymous Christian’ in our sense of the term is the pagan after the beginning of the Christian mission, who lives in the state of Christ’s grace through faith, hope and love, yet who has no explicit knowledge of the fact that his life is orientated in grace-given salvation to Jesus Christ.”¹

While Karl Rahner was a Roman Catholic, ideas that are similar to his have been spewing from the mouths of self professed evangelical leaders and found their way into the theologies of much of modern Christendom. I have personally heard Tony Campolo make comments that put him into this same category of validating the “anonymous Christian” type of theology. Furthermore, the famous “coexist” slogan that was made popular by Bono of U2 fame has a similar theme. This view of the anonymous Christian, as it seems to me, jumps way past the bounds of orthodoxy and right into the heresy of universalism or some form of it.

To put this concept another way; someone who has never heard the gospel, or perhaps they have heard it but they haven’t been won over to believing it yet, but they live in some sort of moral way, they have been (or will be) effectively covered by Christ’s atoning work even though they would not claim to believe in Christ or know about Him. Furthermore, they would even forcefully claim to not believe in Christ as He is revealed in Scripture. This is, on its face, an affront to the exclusivity of Christ, and proponents of this view would be ambivalent as to whether a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, or a practitioner of another religion would be condemned because of his or her sin. These post-evangelical theologians attempt to lean on God’s love and His grace as an all enveloping crutch while using their own unwillingness to pass any clear judgment on anyone based on the Scriptures that teach the exclusivity of Christ as their cudgel. They lean on a misunderstanding of God’s grace and God’s love and, in so doing, they distort and destroy the very attributes that they look to. For God’s love and grace are revealed in His Word in relation to His holiness, judgment, and wrath. All of these attributes have parameters that we have been made aware of in the Scriptures. Therefore declaring that the saving grace of God might be applied to some or to all men outside of exclusive expressed and evident faith in Christ is a travesty that destroys the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints.

Now while many people (I don’t know if I could say “most” with any sense of conviction anymore) inside of evangelicalism would find the above type of anonymous Christianity to be nothing less than a heresy, and rightly so, there is a subtle cousin of this same theological construct that exists within what would seem to be an otherwise orthodox paradigm. This takes the doctrine of the exclusivity of Christ and seems to hold it up when declaring that practitioners of other man-made religions are condemned because of their sin. However, when it comes to the subject of those people who have never heard the gospel, they seem to get wobbly in the knees and attempt to make some provision for those men to be saved other than by grace through faith in Christ.

This may sound like a harmless and loving type of minor theological view to hold, and I’ll grant you that when compared to the blatant heresy of full blown anonymous Christian view it does seem rather harmless. However, claiming that there is a way of salvation other than by faith in the revealed Son of God that may be possible for the unreached heathen to qualify for, again cuts the legs out of the exclusivity of faith in Christ and the power of His gospel.

“²³ ...He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. ²⁴ Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” (John 5:23b-24)

And while the first generation of those who hold to this view perhaps may have no other doctrines altered to the point of heresy, I am very afraid that those who follow after them and grab hold of this false application of the need for the gospel to be preached in order for men to be saved will be all the more likely to embrace an anonymous Christian view of the gospel which is no gospel indeed.

And for those men, I feel somewhat hesitant to say, I cannot imagine that they understand Christ and His sacrifice aright. And if you don’t understand the Son rightly nor understand correctly what He has done, you will not be saved from your sins.

"He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." (John 3:36)

The Son commands repentance and faith in Him. That command has been made, and man must respond rightly to that command or be subject to the wrath of God. All men everywhere are subject to the wrath of God and are only delivered to have peace with God (cf. Romans 5:1) through faith in Jesus Christ.

¹ Rev Norman Wong Cheong Sau, “Karl Rahner’s Concept of the ‘Anonymous Christian’ An Inclusivist View of Religions” http://www.ttc.edu.sg/csca/CS/2001-Apr/Norman%20Wong.pdf (quoting: Karl Rahner, “Theological Investigations Vol 14” translated by David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976), p 283. )

Click here to find my youtube dialogue (video & audio) with a proponent of the lesser view.

Limited Depravity Leads to an Earned Eternity

2008-04-11T14:00:00.004-05:00

There is a very dangerous and deadly error that creeps into theology when natural man is not seen as utterly, completely, and totally sinful in both nature and desire. Not all natural men manifest the same degree of evil as others do; some are morally and socially good, even very good, but all men in their own natural state are utterly and completely sinful in both their desires and their actions.

This doctrinal understanding is commonly known as total depravity, total inability, or something along those lines. It is my contention that the Bible unquestionably teaches this truth in detail starting in the time of the Great Deluge (Genesis 6:5; 8:21) throughout the narrative of the nation through the psalms and prophets of the Old Testament (Isaiah 64:6), and from the teachings of Jesus (Matthew 19:17) through the New Testament letters (Romans 1-3). I also believe that great harm is done to the gospel and the cohesive nature of the Scriptures when the Bible is contorted and over-contextualized so as to say that if the specific audience of a prophetic writing or psalm was a certain group of people, then nothing, not even the inspired writers of the New Testament, can clearly articulate a fuller meaning that was missed by the original audience for centuries.

This ugly error has two sides that disturb me in different ways. The first problem with the rejection of total depravity is the thought and staunchly held belief that man is not completely bad; that he has not been utterly ruined by sin. The second error, which is the true nature of this objection, is that man is truly good or righteous in some way and to some degree.

I was listening to the respective debaters’ own radio shows the day after the debate between James White and Steve Gregg when I heard a most astounding thing come out of the lips of Mr. Gregg. A caller named David, who seemed to be fairly ambivalent and didn’t hold to a Calvinist position or Mr. Gregg’s position (I would suggest that this type of person, by default, would usually be in Mr. Gregg’s camp), asked Mr. Gregg about the doctrine of total depravity. David made the statement that no one, not even Godly men in the Old Testament, were righteous apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ and that, if they were truly saved, they too were saved by faith. Mr. Gregg then responds by saying,

“But there are men in the Old Testament who are described as righteous; people like Job.”¹

In the exchange that followed, the caller goes on to make a point that men can seem good or righteous in comparison to the world system if they are “graded on a curve”, but this is not equivalent to the righteousness of God.² And in a further attempt to defend his doctrine of limited depravity, Mr. Gregg said the following,

“[Paul] is not making absolute statements about all people. Although the language sounds absolute, they are coming from poetic passages that are full of hyperbole; exaggerations. The same Psalm that says there are none who seek after God, the psalmist says these bad people; they eat up my people like bread. Well, that’s a poetic non-literal statement. Even later on in one of these quotes he says the poison of asps is under their tongues. These people don’t have snake venom in their mouth, its hyperbole and also it says in this passage “their feet run to shed blood”. Well, I don’t have very many non-Christian friends whose feet are running to shed innocent blood. Its true that some people do, but this is not describing every person.”³

David, the caller, then asked a very important and clarifying question. He said that if, in fact, Job really was righteous, would he then have had the need to be saved through faith? It was Mr. Gregg’s response to this part of the question that literally took my breath away,

“Well nobody is totally righteous, and if the psalm is simply saying that nobody is as righteous as they should be and nobody seeks God as much as they should, nobody does it all the time, then of course that would be true of all people.”⁴

In essence, what Mr. Gregg is saying here is that no one is totally righteous, but everyone has the possibility of being somewhat righteous apart from God. I don’t know how else to interpret the context of his entire answer to this line of questioning. His first few comments about Job and his being called righteous slid right on by me the first time I heard them. I didn’t really like some of the way that he phrased his thoughts, but they weren’t overly alarming in and of themselves. But, when taken in the same context as his statement that “nobody is totally righteous” implying that there is a degree of righteousness that some people do have on their own, this is a clear affirmation of human ability which he would call libertarian free will.

The problem with the type of mindset that goes along with libertarian free will is this: in this system, the individual sinner then cooperates with God, with the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and with Christ in His atoning work to end up being saved. So that the result will be that this same individual will then be able to look across the chasm that separates heaven and hell and legitimately say,

“I am so thankful to me that I was not as foolish and stubborn as those fools. I was wise enough to see the light. I was open enough to the gospel. I chose to make Christ my Lord. I did this because I was smart enough to understand the issues, weigh the evidence, and make a choice. They were not. Those fools had just as much of a chance as I did, but they were to stubborn, they were too foolish, and they were too lazy to really apply themselves. I am now in the inheritance that I deserve because of my own aptitude for understanding God and His plan.”

Whether or not Mr. Gregg would ever say this, and I don’t believe that he would, in fact I think that he would be appalled at the very thought of saying this, I still submit that this fact remains the same; a view of man’s sin that is one of limited depravity logically leads to the view that the same person earns their own eternity with God in heaven.

May it never be.

¹ Steve Gregg, The Narrow Path Radio Program (TNP) 4/10/08 30 (or so) min in

² “Graded on a curve” was an inserted comment by Steve Gregg during his caller’s comments. TNP 4/10/08 30 (or so) min in.

³ Steve Gregg, TNP 4/10/08 30 (or so) min in

⁴ Steve Gregg, TNP 4/10/08 32 min in

The Definitive Mover

2008-04-10T07:51:00.002-05:00

After listening to a debate over the sovereignty of God in salvation, I am more convinced than ever about the fact that the doctrine of sin and man’s condition in sin is absolutely fundamental to having a correct perspective of and theology of salvation. The reason that this is so fundamental is, I believe, because the doctrine of sin must be understood before salvation can truly be understood. I am not saying that someone is not saved or cannot be saved if he or she has an inconsistent or a less-than-totally-true understanding of man’s state in sin. At the very least we must understand our sinful condition enough to see our dire need for the grace of God in Christ. All true Christians must understand, believe, and confess that all people everywhere are sinners and need God’s unmerited favor received on the basis of faith alone in Christ crucified.

That being said, I have many brothers and sisters in Christ today, as well as throughout the ages of faith, who ardently disagree about the extent of natural man’s fallen state. One side of the disagreement hold that man is totally dead in sin and unable to do anything at all, even have and express saving faith in Christ, to effect his eternal life, apart from a distinct and effectual act of God on this man’s behalf that God does not do for all men. The other side drifts away from the previous positions to varying degrees, but would hold (on some level) that man is truly sinful and justly under the condemnation of God, but he possesses the inner ability to savingly believe in Christ on his own accord apart from a specific work of God in his own life that is not present in everyone else’s life.

I believe that the root issue here is not God’s election of some men to salvation and not electing others. I don’t believe that the root issue is even the effectual nature of God’s grace that He bestows upon those whom He saves. The root issue is the sinful nature of man insofar as much as it is this doctrine that makes the statement of who is the definitive mover in the salvation of the individual.

I said above that there are, and have been, many godly men and women who would not understand man’s sinful state in the same brilliant colors and contrasts that the Bible paints it in. However, the fact that there are godly men and women bought by the blood of Christ who don’t see the complete sinfulness of man and his utterly corrupt and depraved nature that totally effects every fiber of his being in an ultimately definitive way does not for one second boast as a proof that their view on the sinfulness of man is correct. Likewise, the fact that so many pillars of the faith, both in antiquity and in modern times, believe and have defended the totally depraved nature of man in sin that holds his will utterly under the yoke of the slave master of sin does not act as the ultimate trump card for the validity of this view.

And it is in light of this conviction that some of the comments on the debate between Steve Gregg and James White on God’s sovereignty in salvation were truly shocking. During one of the least productive exchanges in the fourth installment of the debate, Mr. Gregg is attempts to show a problem with the doctrine of total depravity as traditionally understood in Calvinist and reformed camps by looking at the first chapter of Romans.

“I would think that Dr. White’s view is that all unbelievers are born with their hearts darkened. He describes them as dead in sin and darkened in their hearts, there imaginations and so forth. I don’t find anywhere in the Bible that states that this is the birth condition of every man. I do see Paul saying that there are certainly many men, and he’s talking about them right here, who have known the truth and they’ve rejected the truth and as a result, darkness has come upon their hearts. I believe this is true in virtually all of the passages that talk about total depravity, at least that are used. The reason that I wanted to ask some specific questions about a passage, and in my opinion why Dr. White didn’t want me to do so, is because it does not allow the Calvinist to simply rattle off passages and say “see there”. For example, when Dr. White gave his original argument, he talked about the state of the antediluvian people, that the thoughts and imaginations of their heart were only evil continually…. He used a lot of Scriptures, which the Bible directs towards certain audiences and says, “this is true of them”. But if we look at the context of each of these, we find that it’s a specific group of people. If we want to exegete the passage, we can’t go to Genesis 6, or Jeremiah, or these passages and find a place where it is saying that all human beings fit this category.¹

Quite frankly, I am not sure how one can actually read the context of the first eight chapters of Genesis and come to the conclusion that “the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5) or “the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21) are anything less than a comprehensive statement about the whole of humanity. I’ll grant that the first statement was made about the pre-flood people who were virtually totally rotten and unredeemed, so I can understand how someone could take the universality of Genesis 6:5 and think that it referred to all “unsaved” people, even if that conclusion is wrong. But when Genesis 6:5 is put next to 8:21, I think that the sweeping statement made by God concerning man’s condition is an utter condemnation of all individuals. God even makes the point of noting that the intent of man’s heart, not just his action, is evil from youth.

Again, I say, that I am utterly convinced that one of the most important and fundamental theological issues that Christians need to understand rightly is that of man’s state in sin. Getting that right doesn’t ensure that your other theologies will always be correct. However, getting it wrong virtually ensures that you will be incorrect on other very vital theologies. I don’t think that getting the doctrine of the depravity of man wrong, saying that he’s not totally depraved from birth, will lead you away from understanding justification by grace though faith alone; but without properly understanding the depravity of man, then there is no need for the complete and utter grace of God in salvation because faith can, and does (in their view), come from the individual and is not a gift of God Himself (cf. Phil 1:29). If man is not depraved, then I am the definitive mover when it comes to my salvation, and not God. This is a horrible and grace-destroying belief that is a scourge inside the body.

May God open the eyes of the Body, not simply as a whole, but as individuals, to the truth of our depravity and the glorious pervasiveness of His grace and His glory.

¹ James White vs. Steve Gregg, Debate day 4, 4/8/08 (emphasis mine)

Men Love Their Jesus Idol, But Hate the Lord Christ

2008-03-25T11:58:00.004-06:00

³ But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? ⁴ Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (Romans 2:3,4)

There seem to be two great follies that man is guilty of during his life, and a third folly that has the exact opposite result as man would intend. And each of these follies gives birth to a type of vanity when they are played out in each of their own circumstances.

It is folly for men to pass judgment on the transgressions of others and yet believe that the things that they do in secret will avoid any prosecution. For if, with our own skewed vision and sense of justice, we can see the transgressions of men and bring them to account, how much more would the creator of all things, Jesus Christ the Son of God, be able to see, expose, prosecute, and convict you of your secret transgressions. It is this inner knowledge and understanding of the character of God that causes men to hate Christ and His church.

Oh, yes, men like an idea of Jesus or of the church that doesn’t compromise their own life-style or vices. They rally around this man called Jesus, and they sing praises of the great religious and pious man, or of the social revolutionary, or of the man whom they shape into filling any one of their own pet social or political causes. The true Jesus who is revealed in the pages of the Bible was a religious and pious man whose teachings did lead to social change, but this is only a fragment of the picture of the Biblical Jesus. One other portion of His divine portrait is His illuminating light on the sins of men. And it is this that causes men to love their Jesus idol but hate the Lord Christ. For men hate Him and loved the darkness of their own sins because their deeds are evil (see John 3:19).

Men who want to focus on social justice, to the extent that they ignore the teachings of sin and salvation or simply water down what the Scriptures say about His eternal righteousness, run to the beatitudes and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount for their purely social manifesto. However, it is in this same book leading up to this same sermon that John the Baptist, who Jesus hailed as the greatest of the prophets, made this declaration concerning the two ways in which God will deal with humanity,

“His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:7)

And when men find themselves under the judgment of God, they recoil and feel wrongfully assailed. This is the pride of vanity to believe that, even though the weight of evidence is utterly against them, they still perceive that they are being wrongfully singled out or that their good intentions are not being accurately weighed in the balance. But if this judgment begins to fall upon this man during his life, he is blessed! Because it is this judgment that can bring a man to understand his sin and see his need for the Savior. It is a measure of God’s grace that He brings sins to light and yet graces the man with time with which he could repent of those sins and fall prostrate before the Savior.

It is folly to for men to experience the blessings of God in life and breath, and even more so, but not exclusively, in prosperity and peace, but yet not acknowledge that they are the recipients of God’s blessings. When men find themselves in any state of temporal blessing, they hail themselves as being wise enough or shrewd enough to have attained such affluence, or they praise the gods of luck or fortune for their luxury. Either way, it is vain pride that sees a privileged position in life and gives praise or thanks to self or the randomness of life. If men find themselves in prosperity, they should see and know that the blessings that we receive in this life are expressions of the kindness of God that should lead us to repentance.

⁷ Two things I asked of You, Do not refuse me before I die: ⁸ Keep deception and lies far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion, ⁹ That I not be full and deny {You} and say, "Who is the LORD?" Or that I not be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God. (Proverbs 30:7-9)

It is folly for men to believe that their heart and their good intentions will be a witness in their defense when they stand before the Lord. Whether men are blessed with affluence and the blessings from God that demonstrate His exceeding kindness or whether they are blessed with suffering to show God’s judgment and righteous accounting, man will always believe that his heart and intentions are good. Most men will not assert their perfection, but will excuse the varying degrees of fault as being normal or human. But this perception will be shown as folly by God because the conscience of man will testify against the man in the courtroom of God. The heart of man will show the consistent transgression of God’s eternal and holy standard.

Whether you have prosperity or poverty, freedom or bonds, health or sickness, God is giving you a measure of His grace; both in the fact that you are drawing another breath and that He is kindly revealing truth about Himself in a very applicational way. To be sure, men cannot be saved in their circumstances alone. For how would they know to call on Christ? God in Christ must be proclaimed through the Scriptures, whether read or heard through a preacher, and only then will man have the knowledge of how one is saved. Without the Scriptures, men only know enough and are given enough revelation to justly condemn them before the God of the Bible.

A Glorious Intersection

2008-03-21T15:19:00.003-06:00

As Christians, we know and we praise God that on a Friday like this almost 2,000 years ago, our Savior – the God Man Messiah, Jesus Christ of Nazareth – was cruelly beaten, tortured, mocked, humiliated, and died. He died the death of a criminal as an innocent man so that as a criminal, I could be treated as an innocent man.

So many blessed and glorious things that intersect with one another come to mind whenever I think about the cross: justice and mercy, wrath and grace, condemnation and pardon, love and hatred, death and life. One of the things that brought this to mind, of late, was an evangelistic talk by Louis Giglio. In it, Giglio attempted to give his audience some perspective as to how big God is by putting the earth in perspective with some of the known universe. According to Giglio, if the earth were the size of a golf ball, then the biggest star that we are currently aware of, Canis Majoris, would be comparable to the size of Mt. Everest.¹ His point was that sin tends to puff us up and make us feel important and powerful, but simply putting our earth in its proper place in the created (known) cosmos, as far as its relative size, should dissuade us from that type of haughtiness.

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host. (Psalms 33:6)

It was Christ Jesus who called all things into being by the power of His Word. But it was this same star-breathing God who humbled Himself even to death on the cross. So what could be grander than the glorious intersection of supreme authoritative and unstoppable power with abject torture and mockery?

The glorious restraint of our God is evident in many places, but perhaps nowhere is it more poignant than when our naked Christ was hit, spat upon, whipped, and mocked. Yet, the same restraining power and grace of God that was displayed during the construction of the ark was present again on the day of the cross. Christ would not have had to call for legions of angels to come to His aid; He simply needed to decide to destroy His torturers and they would have been utterly consumed. But it was because of His glorious restraint, for the joy set before Him, that He endured the cross to justify many (cf. Isaiah 53). That God Himself would endure vile torture by His own creation for the glory of God is simply amazing. It is equally amazing that, as a result of His obedience, death, and subsequent total victory, He also accomplished the redemption of men. Soli Deo Gloria.

But thanks be to God that that’s not the end of the story…

¹ There is some dispute in the scientific community as to the size of this star. Some estimates make it 1/3 or the size that puts it in this proportion, and I am not nearly knowledgeable to venture a discerning opinion one way or the other.

Video Commentary

2008-03-21T13:32:00.004-06:00

I have recently begun a trial run for a new addition to this blog. I am going to do a video commentary on some issues or topics that present themselves to me instead of writing them. My intent and hope is that this will be truly supplemental to the written portion of my blog because I have benefited greatly in spiritual growth from the thinking, reading, studying, and refining of what I have written on this blog in the past two-and-a-half years.

Frequency:

I hope to update the video commentary once a week or so. But, like anything else, this is only a rough plan and not a rigid schedule.

Placement:

The Video commentary will be prominently placed at the top of the body section of my blog. However, in order to not give the appearance (or less of a one) that the blog is not being updated, I have opted to hide the video player by using a button like the one below. Please click the button below for information on how to operate it.

I have already posted the first video commentary, and you can view it by clicking on the “EJ’s Video Commentary” button near the top of this page.

a message for all of my peeps with birthdays...

2008-03-19T07:17:00.004-06:00

Did the Bereans use Coliseumpedia?

2008-03-17T15:25:00.006-06:00

I recently heard Tony Jones being interviewed on our local Christian radio station in the twin cities. I must say that prior to hearing this interview I had not read anything written by Tony Jones or heard him speak, I may have heard him referred to by others, but none of the specifics of any of these references ever managed to stick in my memory. The only thing that I knew going into listening to this interview was (a) his name, (b) his affiliation with Emergent Village, and (c) that he is, apparently, a big name in the emerging church movement.

There were many things about the interview that caused my blood pressure to rise and caused me to scratch my head, both at Tony Jones and at the apparent unpreparedness of the hosts who, for the most part, don’t seem to agree with much of what the emergent movement stands for. But before I get into the main concern that I have with this interview, I must make a few preliminary comments. Tony Jones seemed to use the same types of thought question evasion and debate tactics that I have heard before from Doug Pagitt, who is another emergent leader and happens to be a leader at Tony Jones’ church.

As a matter of fact, Tony Jones was asked basically the same question that Todd Friel (“Way of the Master Radio” host) asked Doug Pagitt, and it was this: can or will a Muslim go to heaven? Both Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt recoiled from answering this question by stating that they didn’t want to engage in a question regarding some hypothetical person. Jones went on to say that if he could have a conversation with this person and find that this person rejected Jesus as the incarnate Son of God, then he would be able to take a position stating that this person was going to hell. Even as frustrating as this kind of answer was to me, it was better than Pagitt’s response. Pagitt would not even truly engage the question on that level because he was reluctant to agree that heaven or hell were actual real places or states of existence in the afterlife as the Bible describes.

But getting back to Jones; why was his desire for personal conversational confirmation of what an individual Muslim may or may not believe about Christ to be frustrating for me? Simply put, if Tony Jones doesn’t understand that anyone who would consider themselves to be a Muslim therefore implicitly rejects the idea of the incarnation or of the Triune Godhead, then what in the world does he believe that Muslims believe about Jesus? I am not an expert on Islam, but I have never found any sect or any division of Muslims who would hold to an Islamic faith but also believe that Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Godhead.

I would even make the argument that anyone who would hold to something even close to the true nature of Christ would be associated with Christen-dom, even if only loosely. That being the case, even many groups inside of Christendom do not understand Christ rightly (I have argued in the past and I will continue to argue that believing in the wrong Jesus means that you are still in your sins). Historically speaking, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses have always been considered to be cults, but now those lines, at least as far as the culture is concerned, are even being blurred to the point of no distinction. But even if we maintain the understanding that these false religions are not truly Christian, we still have to contend with false and heretical understandings of Jesus Christ inside of our ranks. Oneness Pentecostals reject the Trinity and believe that Jesus is the Father is the Holy Spirit with no eternal distinction in their persons. We can’t even get all who call themselves Christians to pass the Jesus test that Tony Jones wants to personally give to any and every Muslim before making any definitive statement about their eternal inheritance.

Furthermore, show me one religion or a group of people who believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal God, that He condescended to be incarnated as a man, that He claimed to be (and truly is) the only way of salvation and reconciliation with the one and only true God, and you will find a Christian.¹ You will not find a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Baha’i, or anyone else. It may seem laughable that I even feel like I have to make this point, but this is an example of the knots that need to be untied when dealing with many people who would be in liberal (in interpretation, not necessarily in political affiliation), or emergent, Christianity. And this type of convolution or blurring the truth of Scripture is, in fact, possibly one of the largest problems with the emergent church.

And it is at this point that my absolute frustration because of the “same old, same old” from the emergent stream of thought turned into something more…focused. After hearing the entirety of the hour long interview, I can safely say that I was aghast by the way in which Tony Jones seems to view the substance of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, and the way of interpreting Scripture. When Tony Jones was asked about what his ultimate authority is, he responded in this way,

“The ultimate authority is God as incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ and represented in the teachings of Scripture.”²

He then went on to clarify his statement by making the meaning of what he had just said more ambiguous that it previously was.

“At every one of those steps, there are multiple interpretive steps that need to be made. How was Jesus representative of God? Christians have been debating that for 2,000 years. How do you faithfully interpret scripture as the inspired word of God? Christians have been debating that for 2,000 years.”³

Tony Jones seemed to clarify his statement of what the ultimate authority by referring some of the debates that have gone on inside of Christendom throughout its history. However, by design, he refrained from making a clear statement about which views inside of the history of the debates of the church correctly understand Christ and the teachings of Scripture. Is the Gnostic understanding of Christ and the Scriptures just as valid and true as the Judaizers or of the Biblical teachings contained in the Pauline letters? Is it just as valid to follow the interpretive methods of Athanasius as it would be to follow in the steps of Pelagius or Arius? As inclusive and intelligent as this type of position appears on the surface, after any quick examining of its substance, it is nothing more than a hollow nothingness of a statement. It lacks any clarity at all. He might as well as said that the ultimate authority is whatever you want it to be. Because, at the end of the day, that is what it ends up being with this perspective.

And when Mr. Jones was asked whether he agreed with a specific statement affirming the inerrancy of the Bible in its original autographs, he did not agree. Furthermore, he dismissed the very idea of affirming something intangible as being ridiculous. Regarding the autographs (the original writings of the Bible), Tony Jones stated that since neither he, nor no one else in the modern world, has ever seen the original writings of the Bible, how could he make a statement affirming what they said?

“I would not affirm a statement about something that no one has and no one has ever seen. It’s a purely hypothetical statement.”⁴

Again, this may seem to be intelligent and a good position for a Christian to take, but this further compounds the problems with Tony’s ultimate authority. He can’t affirm anything about the inerrancy of the Bible; therefore its role as ultimate authority is compromised. And furthermore, if the question that needs to be asked to a Muslim relates to the person of Jesus Christ, how in the world could you ever say that the Muslim has a view that is wrong if what the Bible itself says about Christ is possibly wrong?

And finally, Mr. Jones went from a vague statement of authority, to questioning the reliability of the only real source (both the autographs that we don’t have and the manuscripts that we do have) of that authority, to then having a complete mob-rule mentality when it comes to communicating the truth of Scripture.

He builds his case for a non-authoritative model for preaching by stating that heresies and cults don’t come from a discussion group atmosphere. According to Mr. Jones, cults and heresies come from figures like David Koresh or Jim Jones.

“I know that when David Koresh got to the end of a sermon, he never was like, ‘Ok, what do you all think about that?’ Jim Jones didn’t open it up for discussion time. He said, ‘ This is it, I preach to you with absolute certainty. I am the messiah. That’s how cults start, that’s how heresies start. When conversation is closed off and there is a single person or an oligarchy, the ruling few of an elite class, who say, ‘we have the Spirit, you don’t. We’re the only ones who get to interpret Scripture. All of you sinners out there, all of you people out there who are struggling with whatever you’re struggling with, you don’t get to. That’s the problem.”⁵

I have two major problems with what Tony Jones stated. First of all, how does he “know” what David Koresh or Jim Jones did or didn’t do at the end of every one of their sermons? Why should I believe him? What source material is he using for his conclusions? And since I have never seen all of David Koresh’s sermons and I wasn’t there in the Wako compound, how can I know for sure what he did or didn’t say or do? The second problem is Tony Jones’ mixing of the heresies and cults. I think that he is right about the formation of cults, but heresies do not always begin from a singular authoritative figure. They may be first promoted by one man or a small group of people, but they eventually become popular with the masses who, individually, may or may not necessarily be directly associated with the initial purveyor of the ideas. This is fairly a specific distinction, but it is supremely important because we should never be so foolish as to think that heresies only (or even primarily) come into play because of the presence of one dictator-like church boss.

And in an answer to the problems with having any type of authority or authoritative interpretation or communication of what the Bible does say about anything that he had attempted to bring out, Tony Jones puts forward his own idea of how the truth of the Bible should be communicated in sermons.

The sermon [at Solomon’s Porch] is written, is developed, by a group of people on a Tuesday night called the Bible Discussion group, and anyone in the church is able to come – gay, straight, ya’ know…gambling addict, glutton, you name it – they can all come. And they, for two-and-a-half or three-hours, talk about this passage of Scripture that we’re going to be preaching about on Sunday. And it really is an open-source, wikipedia, kind of way to come up with a sermon. And then whoever is charged that week, most often it’s Doug [Pagitt], the “pastor”…they take that and they kind of boil it down to about 30 minutes. And then, at the end of that 30 minutes on Sunday evening, it’s opened up to everyone in the congregation.

We’ve got people at Solomon’s Porch who’ll sit there with their laptop open on their lap…talk about keeping you honest when you’re preaching, their googling what you’re preaching about and looking it up on Bible web sites, wikipedia, and everything else. And people will say, ‘Hey I found this, what do you think about that?’ or, ‘that reminds me of this verse, let me read it to you…”.⁶

So, both in preparation and in presentation, wikipedia and potentially any other web site or author, has as much influence on the message as the Bible does. And anticipating a question about his wikipedia hermeneutic that wasn’t asked by the interviewers, he said,

"There are people who are still going to want to go to the encyclopedia Britannica because it’s some dude who’s got a Ph. D. from Oxford who’s going to write the definitive entry on Jesus Christ, or the Viet Nam war, or what have you. There are others of us, and I count myself among this group, who I trust the crowd at wikipedia where there are thousands of people editing the entry for Jesus Christ, or the Viet Nam war. I trust the crowd more than I trust the one guy with the Ph. D. from Oxford."⁷

Perhaps the best commentary that I can give to the main thrust of his above thought is to quote someone else.

"Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information."⁸

The first quote was from Tony Jones, a seemingly intelligent and spiritually mature member and leader of the emergent church movement, and it was said with seemingly a straight face communicating what he really believes. The second quote was from the NBC sitcom “The Office” as stated by the fictional bumbling buffoon, socially inept, and otherwise disaster of a boss named Michael Scott. He also made his comment in utter sincerity, but it was done so in the context of the program to show the utter foolishness of someone using wikipedia for the very reason that Tony Jones lauds its virtue. Whereas that makes the comment on “The Office” funny, it makes Tony Jones’ comments very tragic.

Finally, Mr. Jones’ statement, “I trust the crowd more than I trust the one guy with the Ph. D. from Oxford” was very tragically revealing. It was the wisdom of the crowd, rather than the God ordained authority, that led Aaron to make the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. It was the wisdom of the crowd that led ten brothers to abduct their brother, sell him into slavery, and lie to their father for decades stating that their brother was dead. It was the pressure from the crowd, not an individual, that led Peter to act hypocritically around gentile believers in the young church. It was the judgment and fury of the crowd that called for the execution of the innocent Son of God.

Church leaders are never above question. We must be Bereans when it comes to anything that anyone says about God. Did the Bereans use coliseumpedia or the writings of Plato or Aristotle to test find out if what Paul was saying was true? No, they used the Scriptures. We should use the Scriptures, for they are inspired by God for all things concerning doctrine, life, and godliness (cf. 1 Peter 1:1-3; 2 Timothy 3:15,16). Modern scientific theory does not trump the Scriptures nor does it guide our interpretation. The Scriptures help us in understanding the natural world as well as our place in it. Psychology does not trump the Scriptures, nor do the theories of any psychological school of thought guide their interpretation. The Scriptures help us to understand the inner workings of the mind, knowing the inner workings of the mind does not give us a better insight as to what the Scriptures mean. Scripture interprets Scripture. We just need to be humble enough to see its clarity and teachable enough to change our minds lest we profess to be wise, but truly be fools.

¹ And notice that I did not make any statements about man’s sinful nature, the substitutionary atoning work of Christ on the cross, of salvation by grace alone through faith, or any number of other key Biblical truths. Because, if I did, they would become the focus of discussion other than my main point – anyone who affirms Jesus, His deity, and His claims falls into the category of Christendom, if not Christian.

² Tony Jones interviewed on KKMS Live with Jeff and Lee, 3/10/08 (hour 3).

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ http://dunderball.com/?q=taxonomy_menu/4/85

Blessed Diversity or Money Changers in the Temple?

2008-03-14T14:13:00.002-06:00

On leap day (yeah, I know it’s been a few weeks) my wife and I were blessed to have someone watch our children for us while we went on a date. Our date was nothing extravagant, but if you have (or have had) multiple little children, any excursion without children is extravagant. We went to Subway for dinner and enjoyed some uninterrupted conversation, we then went to Barnes and Noble to look for some books, and then we ended our evening relaxing for a bit at Caribou Coffee.

Our date was wonderful with but one exception. The reason I wanted to go to a book store was to look for a pulpit Bible to use when I’m preaching. The nearest Christian book store was too far away for us to get to, and so the nearest Barnes and Noble had to do. I should have been prepared for something frustrating, but I truly wasn’t. After overhearing a nice, sweet, grandmotherly lady ask a sales associate where to find a book about “The Secret,” we made our way to the religious section.

When I then made it to the few cases of Bibles (four side by side cases), I began to get increasingly disgusted. If I had been able to find what I was looking for, I would have found an NASB about the same size as my current one (perhaps a bit bigger) but with no cross-references or footnotes of any kind. I was not overly optimistic about being able to find one, but I thought that I’d give it a shot. It wasn’t the fact that I didn't find what I was looking that disgusted me; it was what I did find that disgusted me.

Now, remember, that Barnes and Noble isn’t the main place to go peruse all of the various editions and choices for Bibles. They did have a decent selection of sizes, fonts, and other packaging-type variations for some good translations (KJV and NKJV mostly), but they had a ton of other things that just started to turn my stomach. I noticed and counted 40 different versions and editions of the Bible. Here’s a list of the variations that I noticed:

Divine health NT (magazine Bible)
Becoming 2 (NT magazine)
Becoming 2008
Sanctuary – a devotional bible for women
Catholic Women’s devotional bible
Women’s Devotional Bible NIV
New Women’s Devotional Bible
Family Life Marriage Bible
Today’s Devotional Bible
Mom’s Devotional Bible
Recovery Devotional Bible
Couple’s Devotional Bible
The Devotional by Max Lucado
Women of Faith Study Bible
Maxwell Leadership Bible
The Everyday Life Bible:
The Power of God's Word for Everyday Living
John MacArthur Study Bible
Billy Graham Training Center Bible
Sportsman’s bible
Military Bible
Life Principles Bible
Literary Study Bible
Illustrated Study Bible
Harper Collins Study Bible
Essential Study Bible
NIV The Learning Bible
TNIV /The Message Parallel
Archeological Study Bible
New Extreme Teen Bible
NIV Student Bible
College Devotional Bible
Youth Walk (NIV)
Teen Study (NIV)
Student’s Life Application Bible
Catholic Teen Bible
Aspire – the New Women of Color Study Bible
Ultimate Teen Study Bible
Discover God Study Bible
Dead Sea Scrolls Bible
Daily Study Bible for Women

I think that I am just sick of the way that the Bible seems to be dealt with so casually that so many different people are trying to “corner the market” on certain demographics to make a profit on their cleverly marketed Bible. That being said, I am not taking a complete shot at the idea or presence of study Bibles as a whole or even at most of these individually. I happen to think that study notes are helpful (as commentaries are helpful), and if you can find a Bible that has study notes by a trusted group of theologians or an individual pastor or theologian (i.e. MacArthur, Scofield, Geneva, etc.), the notes can be very useful.

One of the chief things that got to me was the intense amount of variations done by the same group. Now, I like to read the NIV. I don’t preach from it or use it as my primary source for study, but I do enjoy the reading of it to help me get a grasp on some things. That being said, just of the ones that I noticed at Barnes and Noble, eleven of them were variations of an NIV Study Bible.¹ Now, my concern is not with any one specific edition or study Bible, but I have to wonder what deep and meaningful differences could there be between the “Women’s Devotional Bible”, “New Women’s Devotional Bible”, and “Mom’s Devotional Bible” (perhaps you could even through in the “Women of Faith Study Bible” too). Yes, there are probably some differences, but how much different could they be? They’re all directed toward the same group of people and they’re all in the same translation. So what is the deal? Furthermore,

Almost more disturbing than the variations on study Bibles for women that the makers of the NIV put out is the fact that there are so many for various life situations. I envision a mom wanting to encourage her family in spiritual matters picking up her “Mom’s Devotional Bible” during her own private quiet time (the old “Women’s Devotional Bible” and even the previous upgraded “New Women’s Devotional Bible” are now relegated to the back of a bookshelf), but then when she wants to do a devotional with her husband, they both pull out their “Couple’s Devotional Bible”. Later that same day when it is time to do the family devotions, they all pull out their own “Daily Walk” family devotional Bibles.

I can’t, nor would I want to, judge any one person’s motivation for compiling a study Bible or devotional Bible. I have tried very hard to attempt to think that whenever any one of these study and devotional Bibles were put out, it was with the utmost respect for Scripture and a desire to correctly and effectively articulate and explain what God meant by what He said in His Word. So not judging the motivation of the producers, I do want to sit back and ask a question of the situation: just how much of the motivation to make different Study Bibles for teens, tweens, teen guys, and teen girls was based on the almighty dollar instead of the Almighty?

I have concerns with study Bibles in general (I’ll deal with that at a different time), but is it possible that the truth of the Bible itself is getting lost in the shuffle of all of the accessorizing, marketing, and general commercial exploitation of the Scriptures? I praise God that someone may be brought to salvation by reading through a “Divine Health” New Testament. Like Paul, I want rejoice that Christ is preached – whether it is done in pretense or in truth. But, how much of the muddled state of Christendom today is focused more on the packaging, the benefits, and the various life applications of the Bible instead of the God of the Bible Himself.

In my home, we have two children’s picture Bibles, a story-book Bible, two or three Study Bibles, and probably a dozen or so other versions of the Bible. I love the fact that both of my boys have a Bible that they can carry to Church (initiating habit forming behavior), that they can look at and “read” without my concern that the pages are going to rip too easily, and I love that they can associate with different stories. My oldest son usually turns to the page in his Bible that pictures the back of Jesus’ thorny crowned head to hear about Jesus when we sit down to read from his Bible. I have benefited in reading from the various translations that I have and studying what various theologians and commentators have written in order to expound and articulate what God meant by what He said.

So, again, I am not taking a shot at all different types of ways to communicate the truths of the Bible to different ages of people. I am just unsettled that as a prosperous society, we have produced a huge store of Bibles that, by the way that they are marketed, become outdated and somewhat useless for a new circumstance in life. There is a large difference in the understanding of a three, four, or five-year-old child and that of a man or woman at the prime of his or her mental acuity, discernment, and Spiritual growth. I understand that. And there seems very well to be a place for Biblical materials printed that are written at their level of understanding. But if that gets to a point where a child “needs” a devotional or study Bible for a pre-teen, then a tween, then a teenager (different for girls and boys), then (maybe finally) a college student, I am concerned that the focus tends to be more on the packaging and the commentary rather than on the substance. Is this multiplicity of editions of the Bible an example of a God honoring and blessed diversity, or is it a modern day example of money changers in the temple?

This very well could be a worthless rant of mine. I don’t think so (obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have written it), but I am willing to be persuaded that my concerns are overblown. May the God of the Word move my heart (and your heart) to become evermore in need of the substance of His Word so that we can know and understand more about the God whom we serve.

¹ Women’s Devotional Bible, New Women’s Devotional Bible, Family Life Marriage Bible, Today’s Devotional Bible, Mom’s Devotional Bible, Recovery Devotional Bible, Couple’s Devotional Bible, Women of Faith Study Bible, NIV The Learning Bible, Youth Walk, Teen Study

"Good Night" with my boys (AUDIO - LISTEN NOW)

2008-02-28T21:33:00.009-06:00

My nightly routine consists of driving home, coming inside the house, and getting mobbed by Noah asking me to play hide-and-seek (“pay hy-deek”). Well, we eat dinner, play, and do various fun things before bed time.

Stephanie normally puts our daughter down and I put the boys to bed. At bedtime, we pray, sing a song, and a set of normal questions are asked and answered (water, food, books, etc). But last night, a great thing happened. You see, sometimes there are breakthroughs or moments that bring so much joy that…it just makes being a dad so much fun. All of it is great, but the part that made my heart sing with proud-fatherly joy was about half way through when I was singing to Noah.

So tonight I did the same thing, only I brought my iPod with the recorder adapter to capture it. You can listen to it and share my joy below.

Now, I must apologize, because for some reason the recording sometimes jumps and skips a few seconds. I’m trying to figure it out, but until I can get a better recording, here’s something that, I hope, will make you smile. So, if you here the skips, it is not because of editing, its because of the recording.

Praise God for little children.

- by the way, the recorder was in the breast-pocket of my shirt...so the kids didn't know what was going on...for most of the time, any way.

Roman Catholicism, Salvation, Fellowship, & Growth

2008-02-27T09:22:00.001-06:00

Given how I understand the Scriptures and what they say about salvation in Christ, a question was recently posed that caused me to pause a bit.

Question: Can someone be saved in the Roman Catholic Church?

In order to answer this question, I will have to break it down, a bit. The first issue that I want to address is the gospel message itself. The gospel message of salvation is one that undeniably received by the individual through faith by the means of God’s grace (cf. Ephesians 2:8,9). Roman Catholicism not only rejects this doctrine, but denounces the requirement of “faith alone” as heresy. Roman Catholicism sets up a system where the individual cooperates with Christ in various ways that actively keep him saved or can place his salvation in jeopardy. So if it were ever unclear (now or before) as to what my thoughts are regarding the matter, let me say this: true Roman Catholicism does not communicate or preach the gospel message of salvation in their liturgy, their sacraments, their books, their sermons, or in their religious hierarchy up to and including the Pope. Theirs is a false system of works based righteousness that offers no salvation, no justification, no peace, no hope, and no deliverance from God’s wrath.

Can someone be saved (i.e. get converted) in the Roman Catholic Church?

The above being the case, I do believe that a person can be truly saved by God’s grace through faith while inside of the Roman Catholic Church, and I will give three reasons for my answer.

Reason One: Hypothetical

If someone attends a dreadful church that doesn’t preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, would it be possible for that person to get saved? I have heard some stories where people were attending churches or gatherings of ministries like T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, and others. Now I understand that these two individuals are not Roman Catholic, but they are also not orthodox in their theologies about God. For instance, Benny Hinn has repeatedly gotten in trouble for promoting the “little god’s” theology that seemed to first hit the radar on the November 6, 1990 TBN Praise-a-thon. Sadly enough, Hinn is not alone, I have heard contemporary prosperity preacher Creflo Dollar make very similar allusions.

T.D. Jakes, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t believe in or preach this doctrine, and that is good, but another doctrine that he doesn’t believe in is the doctrine of the Trinity. Suffice it to say, if you don’t have the Son then you don’t have the Father either. And if you’re preaching a Jesus that is not the Second Person of the Trinity, you might as well be worshipping Oprah, Buddha, or a used up Kleenex. But, I have heard enough stories of people coming to Christ through these men’s ministries to make me believe that it has, and can, happen. And if it can happen in a setting where the hearer is told that they are a little god or where the Triune God is denied, why could it not happen in a gathering where neither of these abhorrent false doctrines are preached?

Reason Two: Historical

Now, I admit that my first reason is very flimsy and I would never make the same assertion if that were my only basis. My second, and most brief of the three, reason that I believe that someone can be saved in the Catholic church has to do with the testimony of history. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers were Roman Catholics before they broke from Rome during the Reformation. Exactly what positive influence may have been derived from the apostate Roman Catholic Church is hard to tell, but the fact that they were in the Catholic Church at the time of their conversion is undeniable.

Reason Three: Biblical

My final reason, and really the only reason if you really boil them all down, is that I believe the Bible holds that you can get saved in the Roman Catholic Church. Again, the prescribed and official method of salvation that the Roman Catholic Church preaches is false, faulty, and will not save, but I am not referring to that. We know that men are saved, regardless of when they live, through faith in God. And that faith is not a vague or mere mental assent, but a true repentant trust that places all of that person’s eggs in one basket. So, how can my two seemingly contrary beliefs coincide? Simple.

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

Simply stated, man needs to be presented with the Word of God, and once he has heard the Word, faith is possible. And I submit that if the Word of God is simply read or heard, even in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church where its application and interpretation is contorted and twisted by the priest, that it is God-glorifyingly possible for someone to be transformed, and made new.

It is the hearing of the Word, whether it was at a Benny Hinn miracle crusade, a “Woman Thou Art Loosed” T.D. Jakes conference, a Roman Catholic Mass, a good gospel preaching church, or (read) on a blog like this one that is the means by which man receives faith from God in order to believe in His Son.

Question: Can someone be saved (i.e. come to salvation by grace through faith) in the Roman Catholic Church?

Answer: Yes. Wherever the Word of God is read or heard, it is possible to be saved.

Can someone be saved (i.e. remain in fellowship and grow spiritually) in the Roman Catholic Church?

This is a completely different spin on the same question. I believe that a born again believer can attend Roman Catholic Mass, but like any true new believer, they will desire the Word. And in studying the Word, they will come to see more and more things about the Mass and other Roman Catholic practices and doctrines that are in direct opposition to that of the Scriptures. And just like Martin Luther, John Calvin, or any other figure from history or from our contemporary time, I believe that when this happens something must give. There will be either the allegiance to the familiar establishment or allegiance to Christ and His Word, but not both. If a believer leaves the familiarity of the Roman Catholic Church to find a home in a Bible preaching church, that would be the ideal and (I would assert) normal occurrence. But, is it possible that someone who is saved may remain in faithful attendance to a Roman church? The answer, I believe, is yes. But similar to someone who doesn’t study their Bible and adhere to its admonitions and continues to attend T.D. Jakes church or some other non-gospel preaching fellowship inside of Christendom, this believer will be prone to be led astray and be misled and be tossed about by every wind of false doctrine (cf. Ephesians 4:14).

Question: Can someone be saved (i.e. remain in fellowship and grow in holiness) in the Roman Catholic Church?

Answer: Yes and no. I believe that a true Christian can remain in the fellowship at a Roman Catholic Church, but their growth will be stunted at best because they will either (a) not be consistently fed with the truth of God’s Word rightly understood or (b) they know the truth of God’s Word rightly understood but foolishly choose to stay where their Lord and Savior is not lifted up rightly and thus remain in a more immature state for longer periods of time.

I believe that if someone is truly saved and growing in the Lord, they will find it (at best) very difficult to remain inside of the Roman Catholic Church. But if that true believer is not feasting on the Word to know right doctrine, they may remain in the church and be tossed about as a child by the waves of false doctrine in that fellowship.

Granted, some of the above thoughts of mine are more conjecture and extrapolation than exegesis. So, if anyone has any Biblically based concerns as for why I am totally wrong or simply off a bit here or there, please enlighten me.

The only thing worse than finding out that you have held wrong thoughts, opinions, or theologies even after you’ve given them considerable thought is never finding out at all.

Encouragement and Consolation in Christ

2008-02-26T12:50:00.004-06:00

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, (Philippians 2:1)

The second chapter of Philippians opens with this verse, and there are two hugely important things about it in the first two words. First of all, “Therefore” is a word that makes it abundantly clear that what is now being communicated is based on what was said in the past.¹ Specifically here, Paul is tying his upcoming exhortation to his call for correct Christian conduct that began in Philippians 1:27. Secondly, “if” sets up an “if…then” construction for Paul’s argument (even though the “then” is implicit rather than explicit). But this is not a question or a possible set of circumstances that he’s dealing with. Paul is setting up a rhetorical question that should be understood as saying “because there is encouragement in Christ….”

The word encouragement (translated as “consolation” in the KJV and NKJV) is a word that is similar to word translated as “Comforter” in reference to the Holy Spirit elsewhere in the New Testament. And in a similar way, the meaning of the word “encouragement” here carries a “coming alongside of” someone in order to give them assistance by offering them comfort, counsel, or exhortation. The fact that Christ indeed has come alongside of the believer is undeniable. And it is from our shared experience with Him and His perfect example for us that we can obtain great joy and encouragement.

In Matthew 10:24,25 and John 13:13-16, Jesus shows us by His own example what we should expect in trials and He shows us how we should serve one another. It is because Christ gave us the supreme example of the righteous undergoing persecution and of the overqualified or the over-dignified condescending to do a lowly or menial task of service that we can find great encouragement from Him. He’s been here. He was tempted in every way that we are tempted and He served His disciples in ways that were “less than” His status demanded of Him. He endured the normal and every day woes of a sinful world. He had loved ones die. He was betrayed by a close friend. He was hated on account of His Lord. And whenever we encounter the trials, persecution, and, as we saw in verse 27 of chapter 1, suffering for the sake of Christ, we can take great comfort and be incalculably encouraged by the fact that our Lord endured the same before us and that He has promised to keep us through it by His own power.

⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. ⁶⁹ We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68,69)

Peter was asked if he too would desert Christ, and he responded with a resoundingly clear and beautiful testimony of the fullness truth that we have in our Lord. It is with the same spirit of Peter’s response to Christ regarding His sufficiency, I think, that Matthew Henry wrote regarding our encouragement and consolation in Christ when he, rhetorically, asked, “If we have not consolation in Christ, where else can we expect it?”²

We have no other source of saving, lasting, or infallible truth, and we have no other source of immeasurable, sufficient, and consistent comfort that can be found in Christ through His Word and His Work (specifically, His work on the cross following a perfectly righteous life). And consequently, we need to look at Him for both truth and encouragement.

And flowing from the encouragement that we have in Christ, we are also the beneficiary recipient of the consolation of His love (2:1b). The word translated as “consolation” (or “comfort” in KJV, NKJV, and some others) is closely tied to the word translated “encouragement” or “consolation” in the beginning (2:1a) of this verse. I wouldn’t say that these terms and ideas are completely interchangeable because they are not synonymous, but they are closely related by the way that Paul uses them here in a way that makes them virtually indistinguishable. This “consolation of love” carries the idea of a sincere word spoken in love and in the consoling of a dear friend in a difficult time.

The love that is being communicated here is the self sacrificing, God honoring, self-depreciating, lay-your-life down, father to son, brother to brother, husband to wife, sacrificial love that saw its fullest expression in Christ when he defined this love as He died on the cross for us. But the cross was an even greater picture of love than if the picture were of a father dying for his child, or a picture of a marine falling on a live hand grenade that dropped into the midst of him and his comrades. They gave up their own lives to save the lives of the ones they loved and who, presumably, loved them. The cross is a greater picture because we were not friends with God when Christ died in our place. I was alienated from God and an enemy of God in my mind through wicked works before Christ saved me. (Colossians 1:21 KJV) Moreover, the enmity was mutual; I was God’s enemy because of my sin, and I hated God because of His righteousness and holiness. This is the canvas for the glorious picture of the love of God in Christ that was painted in blood.

My friends, do not look to gain encouragement, exhortation, or comfort from any self help book, seminar, or some other means. In fact, don’t even primarily look to your church, godly spouse, or best friend to receive these things. The fellowship of the church and of godly friends is a means of grace in that we can receive encouragement, exhortation, and comfort from them, and that is one of the ministries of the church body. But the comfort and encouragement are only displayed, at best, in a diluted and second-handed way. Look to Christ, first and foremost, for your encouragement, joy, comfort, and exhortation. Look to Christ through His Word and the power of His Spirit to find the epitome of encouragement and the comfort of love that any mortal can ever experience.

But with that said, don’t look to Christ in order to receive these blessings. For if that is your goal, then it would be close to idolatry or similar to only loving my wife because of what she does for me. Look to Christ, dwell on Christ, and savor Christ because He is worthy to be looked at. Look to Christ because He is so gloriously gracious and merciful, and because He is so unparalleled in His righteousness that He is due all adoration and all love and all praise. That is the correct context for a Christian to find our comfort in Christ.

¹ Just ask yourself, “What’s the ‘therefore’ there for?” and you will be in a good position to better understand the full extent of what is being said.

² (from Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1991 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.)

Re-inventing a Shattered Wheel

2008-02-24T01:13:00.002-06:00

¹⁶ "Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ' Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.' ¹⁷ "You fools and blind men! Which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold? ¹⁸ "And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering on it, he is obligated.' ¹⁹ "You blind men, which is more important, the offering, or the altar that sanctifies the offering?” (Matthew 23:16-19)

For seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and consecrate it; then the altar shall be most holy, and whatever touches the altar shall be holy. (Exodus 29:37)

How foolish was it for the Pharisees and the other teachers of the law to have made a distinction between swearing by the offering on the altar and swearing by the altar itself. And even if they had made swearing by the altar or the temple as the one incurring a binding obligation, they still would have missed the point because they didn’t go back to where the holiness and sanctity for anything originates.

So many people see the foolish and wicked behavior of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day or the Israelites in the desert and their constant rebellion and lack of faith. Likewise, many people see or the shortcomings of Peter or Thomas in their actions and words before the Lord, but miss the fact that it wasn’t just Peter or Thomas who made bold or seemingly foolish statements, but when Peter declared his allegiance to Christ in the garden even though it would take him to death, “All the disciples said the same thing too.” (Matthew 26:35)

It is with a similar mentality that so many see the blatantly foolish, wicked, proud, braggadocios, or sinful behavior in others, but do not apply the same lens to examine their own faith. Just like the Israelites who so quickly detested manna, we are so quick to complain about the taste, presentation, or timeliness of the food that we are provided on a daily basis. But even worse than that, it is the rampant popular idolatry that places anything and everything in entertainment, technology, and even pious activity on a platform that receives preferential time and treatment over the Lord who provides grace for our entertainment, who sustains our world and its technologies, and who should be the prime focus of any pious activity.

If I read my Bible only so that I might be able to teach or preach a sermon, what value does it have? Which is more important, a crafty sermon that can move the emotions of the hearers, or the Spirit-enabled, Scripture-fueled, Christ-centered, God-glorifying sanctification, and the overflowingly contagious love for God of the preacher? Man made self-centered ideas of how life and religion should be conducted are nothing more than re-inventing a shattered wheel. The result, not the product, is the only thing that doesn’t change.

An Alien Desire

2008-02-23T00:55:00.002-06:00

for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13)

I am working on my first sermon in Philippians chapter two, and I want to glorify God through the depth of His Word. It is nearing the “wee” hours of the morning on this Saturday, and I have been reading through the first few chapters of Philippians for a few hours in an attempt to gain a deeper feeling for what the meaning of this text is. I don’t know how many times I had read through the second chapter or what translation I was reading when I felt like I was slapped upside the head with this verse.

Paul here is writing to believers and encouraging them in how to live and act in fellowship by conforming to Christ in His supremely glorious example that He has set for us. And it is in this context that, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul made a plain declaration of why believers want to do things that are glorifying to God as well as why we actually do them. Namely, God Himself is at work in me in order that I might desire to work for His good pleasure and so that I might actually do that work that I now desire to do.

Praise God for His divine sustaining and enabling mercy that causes my will to be conformed to His desires and that moves me to act in obedient response to His alien desire that is now residing in me.

For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. (Galatians 5:17)

Oh God, that You would break down my fleshly desires and reservations that war against Your Spirit’s work in my soul that I might live in obedience with greater fervor, greater frequency, and greater faith.