Echoes in Eternity

"Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?"

Imagine if Christians actually acted like they believed Paul was serious when he wrote that in 1 Corinthians 6...

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

"Gambling ought never to be an important part of a man's life. If it is a way in which large sums of money are transferred from person to person without doing any good, then it is a bad thing. If it is carried out on a small scale, I am not sure that it is bad. I don't know much about it, because it is about the only vice to which I have no temptation at all, and I think it is a risk to talk about things which are not in my own make-up, because I don't understand them. If anyone comes to me asking to play bridge for money, I just say: "How much do you hope to win? Take it and go away."" - C.S. Lewis

This is a great piece by Raquel Welch (yes, THAT Raquel Welch) on the regrets of a 1960's sex symbol and how today's promiscuity is worse than anyone from her "free love" generation expected or imagined.

Seriously, folks, if an aging sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it's gotta be pretty bad. In fact, it's precisely because of the sexy image I've had that it's important for me to speak up and say: Come on girls! Time to pull up our socks! We're capable of so much better.

Doug Wilson constantly talks about how media (movies, books, etc.) are the primary mode of education in today's world, and how few people recognize that fact. They watch movies or read books thinking they are purely entertainment when, in fact, most are educational tools at best, pieces of propaganda at worst. And not just the Inconvenient Truth's of the world. Some have socio-political messages, others wash the viewers' brains with subtle relational morals. But almost all teach something. Which brings me to this great article on the topic of emotional porn. Everyone knows how to recognize visual pornography, but few know the emotional kind when they see it. And it's just as dangerous, if not more so. Wilson has been recently writing against the emotion variety found in the Twilight series of books/movies, pointing out how it encourages girls to enter abusive relationships. But you can find heart porn with a couple clicks of the remote every night as well. Men, guard your hearts and your homes. This may mean asking your wife (or kids) to stop watching or reading certain things.

Kids eventually understand that pumpkins don’t turn to glass carriages and Fairy Godmothers don’t grant wishes, but many girls never grow out of the idea that one day they will be rescued from reality by some magic and a fictitious prince. And little boys never live up to the fantasy of the mind or that they’re supposed to be that prince and that their spouse is an all-fulfilling princess.

Next time you’re thinking about seeing a movie, be aware of what’s pulling you toward it. If you decide to watch it, recognize the moment when you feel the emotional reinforcement of fake love. And when you walk out, recognize what you now hope for and expect.

Heavenly Father, we come before You today to ask Your forgiveness and seek Your direction and guidance. Lord, we know Your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good," but that's exactly what we've done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.

We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it moral pluralism.

We have worshiped other gods and called it multiculturalism.

We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.

We have abused power and called it political savvy.

We have coveted our neighbors' possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our fore-fathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us oh God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.

Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by You, to govern this great state. Grant them Your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of Your will. I ask it in the name of Your Son, the Living Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

- Prayer given by Pastor Joe Wright in 1996 to the Kansas House of Representatives

Here a couple worthwhile reads on the In Character online journal, one on the lack of embarrassment in today's culture and the other on the need to be a gentlemen before being a scholar.

"I was trying to mold God into what I wanted Him to be - which is so arrogant - instead of submitting myself to Him and allowing Him to mold me into the person He created me to be." - Kathy Ireland

Recently, I've been thinking about how comfortable a Christian should be with their doctrine. I don't mean how confident he should feel. I believe Christians should feel a reasonable level of confidence in their doctrine as long as it is solidly and historically built on Scripture and they are willing to reconsider it if given Biblical warrant. What I mean is this: is it a good thing to be personally comfortable with your theological beliefs? Or, should your doctrine make you squirm sometimes? I would say yes. A Christian should not be perfectly untroubled in their natural self with some of the ideas of God shown in Scripture. But rather than undermine our confidence in them, it should strengthen us to know that it isn't of our own longings that we come to them. If a belief is counter-intuitive to what one would expect or hope to see in Scripture, then in most cases it's all the more likely to be true.

Of course, all of this hinges on the doctrine of human depravity. If our flesh is not sinful and rebellious and our moral compasses are not utterly broken, then doctrinal discomfort may be a warning sign rather than a confirmation. But, if we are morally destitute and spiritually dead on our own, then it would make sense that we would have a natural inclination to wince at certain doctrines. As John Calvin himself said about the doctrine of election, "I confess that this decree must frighten us."

In another sense, however, we should be comfortable with our theology. After all, Paul says something similar in 1 Corinthians 1:18-24. For those stuck in their sinful flesh, they will understandably find the Gospel and related doctrine foolish. But to those who are saved and have the Spirit of God, it will be wisdom surpassing all wisdom.

This thought was brought to bear just this morning as I read a letter written to Brian McLaren which he then posted on his blog.

[R]ather than accept the idea that Christ is so violent that He feels compelled by His own internal moral character of punitive justice to punish sinners by torturing and tormenting them ... literally without end, I would reject Christ's authority in this matter altogether by assuming the theologically liberal view that He made an outright error in the accuracy and validity and veracity of His teaching in this matter. This is justified by asserting that Christ was also human and could and did make mistakes in His teaching because in becoming human, one of His divine attributes that He gave up was His omniscience and infallibly [sic]. This is referred to as the Kenosis theory of the Incarnation based on the passage where it says Christ "emptied" Himself in the incarnation. I can not be a Christian [if] I must believe that I must believe that hell is literally never ending suffering for people who are kept in existence, alive and conscious of their torment literally forever. Even it means that Christ will condemn ME to hell for believing as I do, I find it impossible to believe such a morally repulsive and repugnant doctrine. THIS WOULD INDEED MEAN GOD IS MORE VIOLENT THAN ANY HUMAN COULD EVER BE AND TURN GOD IN TO A MALEVOLENT BEING WHO IS FUNDAMENTALLY HOSTILE TO HUMAN BEINGS WHO ACTUALLY HATES US.

Clearly, the author views himself as the ultimate authority on all things moral. And as such, he thinks that his doctrines must make him comfortable. Unwittingly, he has given himself over to idolatry, fashioning a god that looks remarkably like himself and subverting Genesis 1:27. It is not for the clay to become the potter.

Stories like this one of a Christian wife and mother leaving her husband and child for another man and so many like it (it would take more than my twenty fingers and toes to count all of the Christians I've personally known who have had their spouse leave them - and in some cases, a number of children - for another person) make me wonder what the foundational problem is in so many Christian marriages. If this were merely a problem among unsaved men and women, no big surprise. But it's an epidemic among Christians (or professed Christians, at least). And in my personal experience, it's primarily a case of a wife leaving the husband for another man (or woman). I wonder if there is a root cause (besides individual sinfulness) behind it. Is there a systemic problem in American churches that this is somehow a reasonable thing to consider? I cannot fathom what kind of mindset would lead someone to do this. I certainly understand the sinful propensity to be unfaithful... but for the grace of God there go us all. But what makes someone take the additional step of not only cheating on your spouse but utterly deserting him (and your children) as well? I'm at a loss at how one allows this evil thinking to creep in.

I wonder if there is a systemic problem in the American church, and if so, is it this: the idea that God is primarily focused on making His followers happy and content in this life, and He's fine with whatever means we use to attain that happiness and damn the consequences. We see this most obviously in the so-called Prosperity Gospel churches, but I am certain it has subtly crept into most traditional, Gospel-centered churches as well. Now, in many cases, the churches where these unfaithful deserters attended have probably not taught anything like this type of specious self-centeredness. But maybe they haven't done much of a job teaching AGAINST it either; that's more likely the problem. After all, the culture is teaching it. I don't think you could go a day without seeing an example of the secular culture promoting individual "freedom" and self-expression as moral virtues. But what is the Church doing to actively counteract that? We need pulpits grabbing people by the collar and screaming "HEY DOOFUS, GOD DOESN'T REALLY CARE ABOUT YOUR FLEETING HAPPINESS, HE CARES ABOUT YOUR HOLINESS!!!!!!" Okay, in some cases maybe without the screaming or name-calling.

This message needs to be particularly focused on Christian women, who, more so than today's men, get constantly fed the self-centered, emotionally-based drivel about personal happiness, self-esteem, and fulfillment. "Be happy," "find your purpose," and so on ad nauseam. Your "purpose" is to honor God, not yourself! Our culture at least still has some vestiges left of responsibility when it comes to men (if it had been the husband who left in the aforementioned story, the law would have required that he at least pay child support), but for women, society pretty much eschews any idea of personal responsibility. If a woman doesn't "feel" her "needs" being "met," she's perfectly justified to meet them somewhere else. I wonder if the Church has just become an outpost of this same mentality. If so, couching it in spiritual terms and (weakly) supporting it up with Scripture merely serves to make people twice a child of Hell than they would have been if left to their own devices and the societal forces around them. People need a counter-cultural Christianity rather than a sub-cultural one.

Crazy.

[UPDATE: Wilson adds more to his train of thought here.]

Doug Wilson has an excellent post on the differences between reasonable, morally-defensible taxation and taxation which amounts to theft.

I thought it would be good to set down some basic principles on the subject. This is to prevent the "guiding principle" from becoming a charge of theft for any tax I might find distasteful.

1. The point is not that taxation is theft, but rather that taxation can be theft. Obviously, in Scripture, there is legitimate taxation (Rom. 13:7), which would not be theft, and illegitimate taxation, which is (Matt. 17:25-27). If that is the case, then there is a line that a state must not cross, and it is incumbent upon both rulers and citizens to know where that line is, and why it is there.

2. In biblical law, the fact that the civil rulers can steal is indisputable. Ahab stole Naboth's vineyard (1 Kings 21:7), and it would not alter the facts of the case if it had been done under cover of zoning regulations or land reform.
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3. If a state can steal, then the question becomes "how do we tell?" Anybody who wants to give the authorities an automatic pass because what they did was perfectly legal is a naif who ought to have his drivers licence revoked. Anybody who resents giving any portion of his income for legitimate civic purposes is a scofflaw. So, where is the line?

4. The line will of necessity have to be enforced by the rulers of the people, and this is why one of the first principles is that the rulers of the people are not qualified for their task unless they are men who hate covetousness (Prov. 28:16)
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5. Determining the line between legitimate taxation and illegitimate thieving taxation is not necessarily an easy task. It can be complicated. I acknowledge that it could be a challenging task for men who fear God. And so this is why we must be led by men who fear God. And it is also why I deny that it can be done by our current gaggle of miscreants, buffoons, knaves, poltroons, scoundrels, and then, of course, there's the Democrats.

6. One approach to answering the question would be Samuel's dire warning to the Israelites, when they asked for a king "like the other nations." He said that if they did that, the result would be an unthinkable level of taxation . . . at ten percent. And here we are, looking back longingly at ten percent levels like they were the leeks of Egypt or something. When the state takes more than ten percent, then the state is claiming more than God claims in the tithe. When this happens, if the state has not done something overweening or despotic, then wait ten minutes.

7. While the ten percent ceiling is a good rule of thumb, a better approach would be to measure by what God tells the civil government to do. The state is God's deacon (Rom. 13:4), and God never leaves His deacons without instructions. A deacon is, by definition, under authority. We should measure his appropriations and expenditures over against what he was told to do. When servants use the master's resources for tasks unassigned by him (Luke 12:46-47), what is the result? When the Lord comes back to evaluate His deacons in the Congress, what will He do? He will not be indiscriminate; the punishments will fit the crimes.

8. The assigned task that was given to the civil rulers was to punish the wrongdoers (Rom. 13:4). It most emphatically was not to level the economic playing field. Anybody who can read the New Testament and think that it is the under-deacons role to preemptively make sure that the servant with ten talents is left with only three, and the one who hid his one talent is given two more to hide, is radically out of touch with the spirit of the Bible.

9. The U.S. Constitution is an "express powers" document. With regard to the risks involved in letting sinful men rule over other sinful men, this is a wise and biblical approach. It means that those who rule can only do what was laid down for them beforehand to do. That which is not required of them is prohibited to them. This is in the spirit of the Bible -- civil rulers can rule, and they can tax us for that rule, and in exchange, they need to be able to show us from the Bible how that task they have undertaken is legitimate.
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10. In the Hebraic parallelism cited above (Prov. 28:16), a prince who does not hate covetousness, besides ruining himself, is also oppressing the people. And when it comes to understanding the nature of this oppression, trust the feedback you get from a welder who attends the academically-disreputable tea parties, and not the sycophantic musings of the prince's hired economic brains, who can write learnedly of this and that. Oppression is as oppression does.

Doug Wilson had a good post earlier this week on how Christians can and should first address the problem of entitlement politics.

So here is a very practical personal step that every Christian who is concerned about the future of our nation can take. This is something that is within reach. It does not depend upon some political upheaval across the continent, and so there is no need to feel helpless. And if you do not take this step, then you are a companion to the destroyers in Washington. They continue to represent you, and they are representing you well.

Inside your family, have you borrowed money and not returned it? Have you busted things and not made it good? If the thing you busted belonged to anybody outside the family, would you have felt the need to make it good? But not here? Have you frittered away what your mom gave you for other purposes, and consoled yourself with the fact that "it is no transgression"? Have you been sloppy with the property interests of anyone close to you, because they were close to you?

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?

Brian McLaren has rightly been excommunicated by Christians for his latest heretical piece of garbage. He responds to the negative reaction to his book with a piece on the Huffington Post. He explains the reaction from Bible-believing Christians this way:

[Christians'] consciences are in conflict with their beloved religious authority figures on several key issues -- ten of which I raise in my book -- but they continue to press the punishment button when instructed to do so.
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I'm a Christian. I love God, Jesus, the Bible, prayer, worship, serving others -- the whole package. But when my conscience tells me that I'm hurting people by complying with religious conventions, I don't keep pressing the button. I start asking questions. That's why I wrote my book, and that's why I'm willing to get into trouble for it.

So, basically Christians who speak out against him are not authentic nor do they actually believe that he's wrong, but they are just listening to their leaders (or are one of those power-hungry leaders themselves) rather than their consciences. He represents the conscience of all Christians, apparently. That's not condescending at all.

He has declared war on the Church, so war it is. Not one faithful Church should allow him inside their doors, not one faithful Christian should waste another breath debating him (not that he ever is willing to debate, since debate is sooo modernistic). As Jesus said, he should be treated as a first century Jew would treat a tax collector or Gentile... avoid him and the idolatry he promotes. It's no coincidence that those idols are the environment, homosexuality, slander, Palestinian terrorism, etc. When God turns you over to a debased mind like Paul speaks of in Romans 1, He usually sends you all the way. He doesn't just confuse your conscience like a magnet does a compass. He takes your moral compass and shatters it. Reject Him and He doesn't just say "ah, okay, have a nice life." He REJECTS you.

Pray for McLaren, but don't eat with him.

Dalrymple has an excellent article at InCharacter.org (which, by the way, is a "journal of everyday virtues"; sounds like something worth reading regularly) on the difference between self-respect and self-esteem.

When people speak of their low self-esteem, they imply two things: first, that it is a physiological fact, rather like low hemoglobin, and second, that they have a right to more of it. What they seek, if you like, is a transfusion of self-esteem, given (curiously enough) by others; and once they have it, the quality of their lives will improve as the night succeeds the day. For the record, I never had a patient who complained of having too much self-esteem, and who therefore asked for a reduction. Self-esteem, it appears, is like money or health: you can't have too much of it.
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The problem with low self-esteem is not self-dislike, as is often claimed, but self-absorption. However, it does not follow from this that high self-esteem is not a genuine problem. One has only to go into a prison, or at least a prison of the kind in which I used to work, to see the most revoltingly high self-esteem among a group of people (the young thugs) who had brought nothing but misery to those around them, largely because they conceived of themselves as so important that they could do no wrong. For them, their whim was law, which was precisely as it should be considering who they were in their own estimate. It need hardly be said that this degree of self-esteem is certainly not confined to young thugs. Most of us probably suffer from it episodically, as any waiter in any restaurant would be able to tell us.

In short, self-esteem is but a division of self-importance, which is seldom an attractive quality. That person is best who never thinks of his own importance: to think about it, even, is to be lost to morality.

Self-respect is another quality entirely. Where self-esteem is entirely egotistical, requiring that the world should pay court to oneself whatever oneself happens to be like or do, and demands nothing of the person who wants it, self-respect is a social virtue, a discipline, that requires an awareness of and sensitivity to the feelings of others. It requires an ability and willingness to put oneself in someone else's place; it requires dignity and fortitude, and not always taking the line of least resistance.
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Self-respect requires fortitude, one of the cardinal virtues; self-esteem encourages emotional incontinence that, while not actually itself a cardinal sin, is certainly a vice, and a very unattractive one. Self-respect and self-esteem are as different as depth and shallowness.

But, O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the mind... (Jeremiah 11:20)

I was reading Jeremiah this morning and came across the above text. Repeatedly throughout Scripture, God reminds us that He's not about having a bunch of empty-headed mystics who have passion for Him and are sensitive to His Spirit but are doctrinally foolish, just as He isn't looking for stoic followers who have no love for Him or His Word. He doesn't just test the heart to see if His people have passion, He also checks if they understand the Truth. In John 4:21-24, Jesus told the woman at the well that while she indeed worshiped God, she still worshiped wrongly because she didn't know God or the truth about Him. And God applies this standard to all of life, not just our worship of Him, since everything we do in life is ultimately either godly worship or idolatry. That's probably what Paul was getting at in 1 Corinth. 3:14-15: passion will only get you so far. If what one does and thinks is not built on Christ, it will warrant no reward in the next life. That doesn't mean that one loses their salvation over being a foolish, double-minded Christian, but it does mean that he will get into heaven by the skin of his teeth. God is merciful to that which is done in ignorance (Romans 14:5) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't correct that ignorance when we see it, either in others or ourselves. How much more fruitful can that person's life be if they worship God in truth as well as Spirit?

A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed.

- C.S. Lewis

I just finished watching "The Stoning of Soraya M." It's a film based on the true story of an Iranian woman stoned for a made-up charge of adultery because her husband wanted to divorce her so he could marry a young girl instead. Besides giving a close-up and unflinching look at a world much like that into which Jesus stepped a couple millenia ago and the vileness that surrounded Him, it also has heart-rending lessons to be learned about gossip, integrity, faithfulness. It's hard to watch, but one that must be seen by Westerners. You hear a lot of protests about the sex trade industry these days (and rightly so), but most of the people talking the loudest about that particular moral decay will rarely render a peep about the stoning, murder, and general abuse of women in Islamic countries. Perhaps that is out of ignorance or cowardice. If the former, this movie will do wonders for opening the sanitized eyes of soft Americans everywhere. See this film, and tell your friends about it!

But don't watch it with just a "look at what those evil, backward Muslims do to each other" mindset. Consider that while we may not stone each other and our culture may not put adultery so high on the moral weakness list that we execute because of it (instead, it's probably now just above not recycling), we still attack and accuse people with our thoughts and have a new set of social dos and don'ts to abide by. We don't gather our victims in the town square, but we certainly speak evil of them in the shadows and when the threads of civilization get strained are perfectly capable of monstrous behavior. Our dead don't lie in the street to be eaten by dogs; they just get dumped in the garbage by so-called doctors and abandoned by self-absorbed "parents." Our victims would count themselves lucky to live to the age of Soraya M. And somehow we dare consider ourselves the enlightened ones.

I posted this a little over a year ago, but it is such a good explanation of a Christian political worldview and so important to raising a culturally-prophetic generation of Christians, I thought I would post it again.