Echoes in Eternity

Bring on the Yankees!

The Wall Street Journal points out just how idiotic the Cash for Clunkers program ended up being (not that any conservatives are surprised, we all predicted this).

This is such a great picture...

Dalrymple wrote an excellent piece this week regarding one effect of the hate-crime legislation (and the accompanying idea of protecting certain groups ahead of others).

[T]he seriousness of an offense committed in Britain now depends upon who the victim is. If a person is not of an identifiably protected group, he or she is not entitled to police intervention against abusive stone- and bottle-throwing youths. He is not entitled to protection at all.

The Guardian’s article appears to accept that such behavior, so long as it targets a member of an unprotected group, is merely undesirable—“anti-social” rather than obviously criminal. The rule of law is fast evaporating in Britain; we are coming to live in a land of men, not of laws.

Or is he just a Christian who sees things in a unique way? Phil Johnson over at Pyromaniacs attempts to answer that question based on a recent interview that Rob Bell did for the Boston Globe. In it, Bell says the following:

Q: OK, how would you describe what it is that you believe?
A: I embrace the term evangelical, if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That's a beautiful sort of thing.

Q: Is religion a part of that?
A: At the heart of the Christian story is resurrection, the belief that this word is good, and that, as a follower of Jesus, a belief that God hasn’t abandoned the world, but is actively at work in the world. Even in the midst of what can look like despair and destruction there is a new creation present.

There you have it, the gospel to Rob Bell is rank moralism, nothing more. Al Mohler recently wrote this on the false gospel of moralism:

In our own context, one of the most seductive false gospels is moralism. This false gospel can take many forms and can emerge from any number of political and cultural impulses. Nevertheless, the basic structure of moralism comes down to this -- the belief that the Gospel can be reduced to improvements in behavior.

Sadly, this false gospel is particularly attractive to those who believe themselves to be evangelicals motivated by a biblical impulse. Far too many believers and their churches succumb to the logic of moralism and reduce the Gospel to a message of moral improvement. In other words, we communicate to lost persons the message that what God desires for them and demands of them is to get their lives straight.
...
The seduction of moralism is the essence of its power. We are so easily seduced into believing that we actually can gain all the approval we need by our behavior. Of course, in order to participate in this seduction, we must negotiate a moral code that defines acceptable behavior with innumerable loopholes. Most moralists would not claim to be without sin, but merely beyond scandal. That is considered sufficient.

Moralists can be categorized as both liberal and conservative. In each case, a specific set of moral concerns frames the moral expectation. As a generalization, it is often true that liberals focus on a set of moral expectations related to social ethics while conservatives tend to focus on personal ethics. The essence of moralism is apparent in both -- the belief that we can achieve righteousness by means of proper behavior.

The theological temptation of moralism is one many Christians and churches find it difficult to resist. The danger is that the church will communicate by both direct and indirect means that what God expects of fallen humanity is moral improvement. In so doing, the church subverts the Gospel and communicates a false gospel to a fallen world.

The Gospel is not "come be a better person and save the environment while doing so." The GOSPEL is "come die to yourself and self-wrought mortification and put your trust in Jesus, that you might truly live." Rob Bell denies this gospel and thus denies Christ.

He also denies God's sovereignty and omniscience:

Q: What have you learned from thinking about suffering?
A: For a lot of people, dominant questions center around, ‘Why is this happening? Why me? Why now?’ Unfortunately, the religious voice often enters into the discussion at an inappropriate time – ‘God just planned this.’ Really? Your God planned this, not mine.

This is just more of the Open Theism that is so rampant among today's Christians. "God doesn't control every little detail, He just adjusts to changing circumstances on the ground." Deism is what I call it. Or, as Phil Johnson says in his post:

Bell has no agenda to "restore the true meaning" of the term evangelical, much less encourage a revival of true evangelical belief. In fact, Bell has made a career of attacking historic evangelical convictions—laying siege to the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the wrath of God against sin, the authority and perspicuity of Scripture, the necessity of the virgin birth, the coherence of the biblical testimony about the Resurrection, the exclusivity of Christ, and whatever other historic Christian doctrines Bell finds politically incorrect.
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If any popular figure "in the evangelical movement" (or on its copious fringe) deserves the label "heretic," it is Rob Bell. The guardians of evangelical politeness don't like that kind of candor, but when a secular newspaper like The Boston Globe is publishing pieces implying that the best, most promising alternative to right-wing civil religion is a mish-mash of Open Theism and performance art—and that whatever "evangelicalism" is, it must be one or the other of those two abominations, it's time for people with historic evangelical convictions to speak up clearly and make the biblical message heard again.

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Here's a bit more from pastor-blogger Jared Wilson. The highlights:

The problem with Bell's definition [of evangelical] is not that it outlines a practical faith or that anything he's highlighting is bad or wrong, only that what he outlines contains no object of faith and highlights work to do rather than work completed. And I don't know about you, but work completed is always better news than work undone.
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Jesus doesn't need you or me to be embarrassed for him or his followers. He doesn't need our help. We don't have to butter people up before we bring him out. He's not a time share or Amway or something.

If I get hit by a bus just after preaching a Jesusless exhortation to hold hands and be sweet to change the world with positivity, you have my permission to wish the bus had hit me before I preached.

Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! And woe to you too, Rob Bell.

Hmm, I hope they figure out a way of catching this besides strip searches...

Here is a report put together highlighting the positions and views of more than 700 scientists, all of whom have worked for the United Nations with regards to climate... so much for consensus.

"The world is waiting, pregnant with the possibility of another future than
wars and rumors of wars." - Shane Claiborne

Is this true? Does history or the Bible lead us to believe that there could be a future on this planet where war is a thing of the past? Or is Claiborne...

"Red, yellow, black and white, they are equal in his sight"

My parents just returned yesterday from a vacation to the UK. During their time there, they came across an elderly woman who had fallen on the side of a street. A few people were crowded around her, while she lay bleeding profusely from a head wound. My mom, a nurse, proceeded to begin CPR on the woman with the "aid" of someone who claimed to know CPR. The injured woman had no pulse and was not breathing, just to give you an idea of how serious the injury was. Shortly thereafter, the ambulance arrived (after two other ones had driven by). That's when everything went downhill. First, the EMTs showed little urgency in their care, taking their time getting to the injured party. Second, they had almost no clue about what to do. My mom had to continually remind them to keep doing the oxygen "bagging" and chest compressions, and they were greatly distracted by the head wound and bandaging it up when it was obviously not the most important issue at hand. Lastly, they had a defibrillator (which has a much higher percentage of success than just your basic CPR) but it was in the ambulance and they didn't go get it, nor did they immediately take the woman to it. My parents don't know what happened to the woman, but it seems highly likely that she did not survive. To be fair, the woman may have died no matter what care was provided her, but it is no understatement to say that the trained professionals paid to care for her did little to save her.

My mom also had an opportunity to talk with a group of women at a Bible Study over there and health care came up. She mentioned some of the typical things women get regular checkups for. For example, they were amazed that here in America, women begin mammagrams at age 40, while in Britain, they don't start until age 50. Same thing was true for a few other tests; the British are advised to wait a lot longer than Americans to begin preventative testing. She told them that when a government is paying the bills, it will obviously limit "unnecessary" testing and procedures to as few as possible. They said they didn't realize that Americans got such good care.

So now Christian apologetics is illegal in Britain.

HT: Steve M.

A great post on why Christians should not support a distributist economy like the Jews had with the year of Jubilee and what not in the OT.

Here's a great little article on how even the global warm-mongers are now admitting that the earth hasn't warmed in over a decade and how they aren't intellectually honest enough to admit that this puts a big damper on the likelihood they have any clue what they're talking about when it comes to climate as a whole.

Personally, I think a homeless bum on the street has a better chance of predicting the global temperature for the year 2035 than the James Hansens of the world. I said a few years ago that they would be proven wrong shortly, and so they have. Unfortunately, because they have the media behind them still, they are able to still somewhat spin this as a "just a pause" situation. However, thankfully more and more people are seeing through the lies, deception, and really bad science.

Here is an excellent post on the differences between Michael Jordan's acceptance speech into the NBA Hall of Fame and David Robinson's speech. Below you can view the two speeches. Jordan's is breathtaking in its self-indulgent, vindictiveness, while Robinson's displays the grace and love that defined his career.

Matt. 19:30

Almost half of American doctors would consider retiring or quitting medicine if Obamacare passes... I thought the White House was claiming that doctors were behind the bill. Oh well, just more lies from Obama, nothing new.