Echoes in Eternity

Doug Wilson makes an astute observation.

We are told that the problem with the residents of Sodom is that they were seething with hatred and were willing to engage in violent sexual acts. And we are told this by people who are seething with hatred...

Now they have come for the Happy Meals. This is the sickening money quote:

"This will be a sign to the fast-food industry that it's time to phase out its predatory marketing to children at large."

I suppose Ronald McDonald will soon be joining Joe Camel in the dustbin of politically incorrect mascot history. It's interesting to note how the health quacks gets increasingly more intolerant of their targets as those targets try to placate them. McDonald's has done wonders at making their food more health-conscious, and this is what happens. This is generally the case with all leftist movements... one cannot satisfy them unless one destroys itself. The acceptance of homosexuality is a perfect example. First the "gay lobby" claimed it just wanted to be tolerated and accepted, now it wants to keep Christians from being allowed to adopt. It is no coincidence that this Happy Meal crackdown has begun in San Francisco.

More intolerance in our universities...

It won't stop at "just marriage."

Prop 8 went down to defeat (for now) in the courts yesterday. This is a huge case as it will make or break every other state law currently on the books defining marriage as between a man and a woman. If this brick falls, the entire wall is demolished.

Here is a good analysis of the foundational issues at hand.

The more interesting question is why gay marriage is so fashionable. The elites of society strongly support it, and many who nominally oppose it (e.g. President Obama) simply say that in order to protect their political careers. And these people support it so strenuously because it gives them the victim group they need to silence Christians. They are already committed to the philosophical basis of homosexual marriage, and live it out in their lives. They fornicate, commit adultery, divorce, procure abortions, despise masculinity and (especially) femininity, treat children like luxury items, etc… However, this menagerie of sins isn’t enough to explain their views, since these sins are hardly restricted to the modern elite. The crucial difference is that the modern elite is passionately committed to justifying all of it. They do not repent. Far more precious to them than their education or career status, or their fashion, or anything else is their moral superiority. They want to be selfish (especially with regard to money and sex) without feeling guilty. So they embrace the politics and morality of the gesture–saving the planet from global warming by buying a Prius, or shutting down timber mills, or blathering about diversity–while being thorough selfish in their personal lives.

Consequently they cannot bear criticism, whether implicit or explicit. Having no concept of repentance, they cannot admit their sin. The parts of their political and social outlook that they are most passionate about are those that assure them that they have done nothing wrong, and that seek to silence those who say otherwise. And they do seek to silence Christians. It’s no accident that they compare us to those who opposed interracial marriage–they want us banished just as thoroughly.

The opposite of this is not the philosophy of the righteous, but that of the sinner. I don’t want to base my philosophy on my own righteousness, because that’s a very small quantity. Rather, I want to face up to my own sinful nature and actions, and, recognizing that sin in thought and deed is the common lot of man, construct political philosophy accordingly {emphasis added}.

Ted Haggard has started a new church just down the road from his old one, four years after being caught going to homosexual prostitutes for drugs and sex. Based on this Wall Street Journal article about his rapidly growing church, it doesn't sound like he has really understood the gravity of his sin or the freedom offered from the Gospel. In fact, this article combined with some prior comments I've heard from him suggest that he listened to all the wrong counseling in the years since his fall.

Mr. Haggard plays up his new regular-guy image. At the picnic, he asked a friend whether anyone noticed he had said "hell" in the sermon—and not in a Biblical context.

"I cuss now," he said proudly.

Mr. Haggard said he believes people trust him more as a pastor since his spectacularly public fall. Strangers, he said, keep pulling him aside, asking advice about their personal struggles.

"It's amazing. People tell me everything," Mr. Haggard said. "That never happened when we were respectable."

Now, it is certainly true that churches can fall into the trap of viewing the pastor as saint. But this seems more along the lines of the pop cultural idea that authenticity is the most important value in life. As long as you're sincere and genuine, it doesn't matter what you do or say. Of course, such thinking usually ends just short of giving Hitler a pat on the back.

Throughout his "recovery," I've seen and heard little from Haggard that put the focus on anyone but himself... certainly Christ wasn't given much of a nod. May he yet realize where his righteousness truly comes from.

This is amazing. Take a minute to consider the social consequences of this in the long-term...

Jennifer Knapp in 1998

It's time
To get down on my knees and pray
"Lord, undo me!"
Put away my flesh and bone
'Til You own this spirit through me Lord,
Undo me.

- "Undo Me"

Lord, come with your fire,
Burn my desires; refine me
Lord, my will has deceived me
Please come and free me
Refine me

- "Refine Me"

Knapp in 2010

Even though they say we have fallen
Doesn’t mean that I won’t do it twice
Given every second chance
I choose again to be with you tonight

– “Fallen”

Sorry I ever gave a damn
Sorry I even tried…
If it made a difference
I might grin and take it all in stride
Walk an extra mile just for your pride

– “If It Made a Difference”

I know they’ll bury me before they hear the whole story…
I know they won’t care to chalk it up to a mistake
Or, God forbid, they give me grace
Well, who in the hell do they think they are?

– “Inside”

As most Christians probably know by now, Christian musician Jennifer Knapp "came out" as a lesbian recently as she began to promote her new "Letting Go" CD, which just released today. I came across the lyrics to several of her songs this morning which you can read above. Gone are the worshipful lines and pleas for spiritual sanctification. Instead, Knapp's lyrics seem full of anger, rebelliousness, and pride. She has chosen the cares and lusts of this life over the eternal rewards of the next. May she yet repent and let Christ truly undo her.

She and Ray Boltz are only the beginning of what promises to be many "Christian" artists publicly and proudly falling for the desires of this world. What is particularly sad in their cases is that both Knapp and Boltz weren't the ones you'd expect to fall. As opposed to so many of their contemporaries in the CCM industry, they were lyrically solid and seemed well-founded on the Gospel... which I suppose is a good warning to all Christians that right doctrine alone won't protect you when Potiphar's wife comes knockin'.

Doug Wilson has a helpful critique of something Pastor Tim Keller said recently. Wilson wonders if Keller is presenting the Gospel completely if he ignores an elephant of sin in the room. What is interesting is that by ignoring sexuality, Keller actually sets sin up as unequal, whereas Wilson treats it all equally when he says that it all must be addressed. By not recognizing that people need just as much freedom from enslavement to sexual sins as other sins, Keller unwittingly supports either the idea that people don't need redemption and freedom from those particular sins, or that Jesus is unable (or uninterested) in freeing them in those cases. Either way, it puts sexual sin on a reverse pedestal from the one Scripture puts it on.

But what this does is raise questions about evangelism, faithful witness, and moral courage. It raises questions about the strategic value of an evangelistic and apologetic strategy that is not prepared to confront, directly, some of the central sins of the people you are addressing.

And by "confronting sin," I do not intend to commend the kind of preaching that gets its jollies from calling other people sinners. That is a problem, but it has to be confessed that in this age, this era, it is not our problem. We should want to preach about the central sins because as preachers of the gospel, we have scattered through the dungeons, with our gospel keys. In that circumstance, why wouldn't we want to unlock the biggest and thickest chains?
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If a surgeon wants to do gospel work on the heart, he has to first open the patient up -- and nothing will do for that but the knife of the law. Without that, evangelical preachers are reduced to applying their treatments of the heart through various forms of accupressure.

Relevant gospel ministry, relevant evangelistic ministry, is willing for the rich young ruler to go away saddened. It is willing for riots designed to get you and your message out of town. I have written recently about the utter irrelevance of an undue concern for relevance. Out of all the practicing homosexuals in Manhattan, are there none who want to hear liberty proclaimed to the captives? Out of all the professing Christians who struggle with same-sex temptations, should they not be able to hear clear, biblical instruction about what they should do with their temptations? Would that not be relevant?

Doug Wilson has an excellent piece today on the role of the Church in transforming culture.

The bottom line issue is this. If the Church is not transforming the culture around her, then the culture around her is transforming the Church. There is no static equilibrium point. That means that the Church will either be prophetically addressing the problem of homo-marriage, or it will be in the process of adopting homo-marriage herself. Either the church will speak about the carnage of abortion, and God's hatred of it, or the church will be in the process of bringing that hated object into the sanctuary.

God did not send His Son into the world to form and establish the Church, in order that this Church could float through the world like a ghost.

This is an interesting article.