Irregular bloggers, of whom I am chief

In this past October’s edition of Christianity Today, there was a brief article entitled “The Death of Blogs” about… well, I’ll let you guess what it was about. Author Ted Olsen notes the immense number of blogs started, the immense number of blogs discontinued, and the fickleness of at least some of those who read them. Many bloggers (those who are read, that is) find it difficult to keep up a regular blogging schedule, and so lose readers as a result of their inconsistency. Many bloggers end up shutting down their blogs because of lack of readership.

I, however, have no intentions of doing that. I have a counter, so I know how many hits this page gets, which, as of late, is about three per day. I figure that’s three of my friends who absolutely love what I write and would rather remain anonymous, so I would like to thank all three of you, whoever you may be. And since you three are probably my friends, you know that I have picked up an extra day of work in recent weeks, and am in a Bible study on Daniel on Monday nights, plus a Bible study on Romans on Wednesday nights. This has resulted in blogging falling a few notches on the list of important things to do, though I will try to do better in coming weeks. For now, here are a few “here’s what’s going on in life” thoughts.

For those who haven’t noticed, I updated my links list a few weeks back. I cut out a couple of things, but I mostly just added a few. Most notable is the ever-hilarious engrish.com. Go there in much sadness, and have happy time.

I also included website related to the ministry of a local pastor named Roger Wiles. Roger is the pastor of Covenant of Grace Presbyterian Church (ARP) in Winston-Salem. He also has a weblog, which I’ve linked, as well as a local radio show, called Reformation Today, the website of which I’ve linked as well. Roger is a good man, as I’ve discovered in the few opportunities to speak to him. In a time when so many Presbyterian churches are sacrificing truth and godly practice in order to embrace the seeker-centered model of ministry, Pastor Wiles has refused to compromise on the essentials of the faith. He and the ministries he engages in deserve your prayers.

I added links to some other blogs and websites, but I’ll leave those for your perusal rather than discussing them in detail.

In our Bible study on Daniel, we are using an Intervarsity Press study guide by a fellow named Douglas Connelly. It is fairly well done so far, though very simplistic, as most study guides tend to be. I have been supplementing it with James Jordan’s commentary on Daniel, which, at about 700 pages in length, I hope to have mostly read by the end of the study. If I do finish it, it will be by far the longest book I’ve ever read, so it will be quite an accomplishment for me. I must add (in a fit of faux humility), however, that the print is rather large, and the appendices include about fifty pages of detailed dating and chronology matters that I intend to skip over. Nonetheless, it will be a task to be proud of (in that non-sinful, prideful sort of way, if you know what I mean). How much I will retain will be another question. Jordan is in one sense easy to read. In another sense, however, he is hard to read, in that it isn’t always easy to understand where he’s coming from. He has a certain grasp of typology and a certain set of assumptions he’s working with that, unless you’re tracking right in line with his thinking, can make him hard to follow. Doug Wilson once quoted one wit as saying of Jordan, “Sometimes you think he’s onto something, other times you think he’s on something.” Those are my feelings as I read Jordan. I often run into things he says that he doesn’t convince me of – sometimes I am later convinced he’s right, other times not. Nonetheless, he’s one of the most insightful scholars around, and reading his commentary on Daniel has been invaluable.

To illustrate his insight, here’s one from my current reading. When one pays attention, the reader of Scripture discovers quite a bit of scatological humor in Scripture. Sadly, this is usually veiled by the translator’s overly queasy pen. Daniel 5, which our group will be covering tomorrow night, contains such a passage. Belshazzar is hosting a feast, which, Jordan notes, is obviously a religious or worship feast, as indicated by the fact that he brings out the vessels of the temple to drink wine from and by the fact that he and his companions praised the gods in their drinking. (This is something hard to imagine for the average conservative reacting to the seeker model of worship. While the contemporary worship model makes use of the concept of “celebrating” in worship in an illegitimate way, this doesn’t mean that worship isn’t a celebration. It just means that Christians who prefer the contemporary model don’t know how to party.) A hand, the hand of God, appears, and writes on the wall (echoed, notes Jordan, in the case of the woman caught in adultery in John 8). We are told that “the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together” (English Standard Version). Jordan translates this thus: “Then the king’s splendors were changed in him, and his thoughts troubled him, and the knots of his loins were untied, and his knees were knocking one against another.” In a footnote, as well as later in the commentary, Jordan notes that the third phrase means that Belshazzar “wet his pants or dirtied his trousers, or both”, citing a paper from the Journal of Biblical literature by Al Wolters for support. Jordan also notes that the sequence of statements about the king’s physical and emotional responses parallel the structure of the metal figure (head, chest, loins, legs) in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter two. This is appropriate, as the fulfillment of the prophecy given initially in the dream, that the kingdom would be taken from the Babylonians (gold head) and given to another (silver chest and arms), was to be fulfilled that night, as Belshazzar was killed and Babylon was taken over by the Persian empire.

It is worth noting as well that if, as Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 indicates, the same kingdom held by the Babylonians was handed down all the way to the Romans, where it was defeated by God who set up an eternal kingdom, then the only eschatological system that comports with Scripture is Postmillennial Preterism.

This will have to do for now, though I hope to blog a little more regularly. “More regularly”, “irregular bloggers”… the scatological humor never stops.

More on Issues Etc.

Here's an interesting article on the cancellation of Issues Etc. and the political battles in the LCMS from the Wall Street Journal Online.

Issues Etc. Cancelled

I have just learned that my favourite online radio show, the LCMS-sponsored Issues Etc., has been cancelled. In trying to discover the reason, I found out that others in blogdom have already known about this and have been trying to contact those involved in an attempt to get the show back on the air. Here are a couple of links to check out if you’re interested:

http://talkingdonkey.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/issues-etc-gone/

http://bringbackissues.blogspot.com/

The Gradual for Good Friday

Reproach has broken my heart and I am full of heaviness and I looked for some to take pity but there was none and for comforters but I found none. Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow which is done unto Me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted Me in the day of His fierce anger. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes we are healed.

Hardware Mispronunciations, pt. 3

It’s been a while since I’ve done any of these, but here are a few more:

Concreek – concrete

Pacifically – specifically (not a hardware item, but a mispronunciation anyway)

Filter head screw driver – Phillips head screw driver

Backpack mower – backpack blower (one of my favorites)

Moss balls – moth balls

Air reflector – air deflector

Wheat scraw – wheat straw

Smacklin’ – spackling

Feedamice – feeder mice

Surgical outlet – the customer was apparently referring to a surge suppressor


I’ve got enough for one more list, so I’ll save the rest for later.

A big waste of time

So I was watching TV and decided to stop by the TV Guide channel to see if anything worth watching was on tonight, when I noticed that Big Brother 9 was coming on tonight. I’ve never watched more than ten seconds of the show, an excruciating ten seconds, I might add. It was painful enough for me not to return to it again.

But Big Brother 9… that means they’ve had nine seasons of it? They’ve been doing that crap for nine years?!? And people are watching it? My goodness. Our country is worse off than I thought.

Feasting on a mountain

I was reading today’s gospel text, John 6:1-14, when a couple of details of the text stood out to me as they never had before. John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand has two details that the other Gospel writers leave out in their accounts (Matt. 14, Mark 6, Luke 9). First, John mentions that “Jesus went up on the mountain”. Secondly, John notes that “the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.”

There are numerous parallels between this and other passages that John probably had in mind. Mountains are mentioned many times in Scripture, notably as places of worship. Among other things, John probably had in mind Moses’ receiving of the Law at Sinai, where Moses received specific instructions about the worship of Israel, and where the people sinfully ate in their worship of the golden calf (1 Cor. 10:7). Later in John 6, Jesus would show the people who followed him that they were idolaters just as those in Israel of old were (vss. 26 and following). Also interesting is John’s noting of the nearness of Passover. In Moses’ meeting of Yahweh at Sinai, Israel had just celebrated their first Passover feast, and so the connection with the golden calf incident is obviously intentional.

But the passage also brought to mind the setting of the Last Supper. John tells us of the celebration of the Passover by Jesus and his disciples (John 13:1. In fact, John notes the nearness of the Passover several times – John 11:55, 12:1 – suggesting that the feast of the Passover plays more than a passing significance in his thinking and writing). He does not show the connection between Passover and what we call Holy Communion (or Holy Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper – pick your own term) as the other Gospel writers do (Matt. 26, Mark 14, Luke 22), though the allusion to Holy Communion in John 6 has been noted by theologians through the centuries (vss. 53-56). Nor does John note that they celebrated the feast in an upper room (Mark 14:15, Luke 22:12). But this second aspect is worth noting in connection with John 6. While Jesus did not celebrate the Passover with them on a mountain, I think it may be reasonably suggested that in feasting in the upper room they were in fact symbolically feasting on a mountain, paralleling all the other passages dealing with mountains throughout Scripture. The fact that they also went out from there to the Mount of Olives would seem to relate as well.

Sometimes there are no shortcuts

Yesterday at work I overheard a couple of women talking about great Joel Osteen’s latest book is supposed to be. They only spoke of him briefly, expressing how much they love Osteen, before moving on to other topics. Whenever I hear conversations like that, I want to jump in, but often hesitate. I find when people latch onto someone like Osteen, trying to convince them that maybe he isn’t the kind of person they should be listening to is a difficult task. People become defensive when you attack their favorite icon, and often they take your words as an attack on themselves.

Osteen’s goal is in “encouraging” people and making them feel good about themselves, and people are responding in droves. As I’ve alluded to before, this is the same phenomenon that we’re currently witnessing with Barack Obama. He’s an inspirational speaker. He’s a good rhetoritician who speaks of hope and change, and no matter how vacuous the terms are he’s using, people love it. Osteen’s speech is equally vacuous, but the thousands of people who worship him hardly notice.

People of every time period want to be encouraged and want to feel good about themselves, but there’s something in the air in our own time and place that is making more people in want of these things. I’m sure a number of factors have contributed to the current zeitgeist, such as the state of war we’ve been in the past few years, attended by the increase of government intrusion into our lives in the name of “protection”, all of which has generally failed to provide the promised results. The shows on TV are more fast paced, violent, and profane. Even the TV news shows, along with the “reality” shows, are more negative than positive, carrying a sense of power and vindictiveness about them. And so when someone like Osteen comes along, smiling really big, and says lots of feel-good sorts of things, it shouldn’t be a surprise that people attach themselves to him in a emotional way.

For a lot of people, though, I would expect that Osteen provides them with a way of feeling good about themselves without dealing with their guilt. We all sin, even Christians, on a regular basis, and unless we are of the most hard-hearted of individuals, we feel guilty for at least some of those sins. We know instinctively that we can’t just sin without something being done with that sin. And there is a solution, only one solution, to that problem, and that solution is the saving work of Jesus Christ. It is in trusting in Christ’s work that we are saved, whether we are trusting in him for the first time or for the five thousandth time. I think a lot of people turn to Osteen because they haven’t heard the gospel. This should give us an impetus for evangelism in making sure those that we know not only see Christ in us, but also in telling the gospel whenever an opportunity arises.

Part of the blame, then, can rightly be laid at the feet of the church. This is true of the church in regard to her individual members, but also the church as an institution. As I have said in criticizing the institutional church before, so long as the church doesn’t preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, people will look elsewhere for answers for their guilt.

In our part of the country, we also have the problem of people simply misunderstanding the gospel and the character of God. Thanks to various false teachings, such as Weslyan/Pentecostal Perfectionism and Baptistic legalism, people can come to a number of wrong conclusions. For instance, with the kind of teaching that goes on in some Fundamentalist churches, one can easily come to think that God is cranky and stingy and really doesn’t want to forgive anyone. Or one can believe that God is ready to throw off His relationship with them the first time that person commits a sin. It is important that we emphasize the character of God, especially as expressed in the Gospel. People need to know that God isn’t fickle and petty like we are, but instead He overflows with love and forgiveness freely, not only because He is able to do so, but because He wants to.

I think, however, that the followers of Osteen have their own responsibility in this as well. If they turn to God as He requires, many know what this means for them – they will have to be accountable to someone other than themselves, and that they will have to repent of their sins. But this is not only what God requires of us. It is also what is good and right for us. And there is no other way than this to deal with our guilt. Sometimes there are no shortcuts.

So we all need prayer. Those of us who seek to represent Jesus Christ aright need prayer that we might do as we should. Those who idolize Joel Osteen need prayer, that they might turn from worshipping him to worshipping Jesus Christ. And Joel Osteen himself needs prayer, that he might turn from preaching a false gospel, to embracing and preaching the true gospel, which is the only gospel that is.

Melville on Theology

Good theology is like a good garden.

--Herman Melville, The Confidence Man

Hannity and Colmes

TONIGHT ON HANNITY AND COLMES: Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes will accomplish nothing of real value as they insult one another and talk over top of their guests, all while creating a sense of excitement to deceive you into thinking something important is happening. Don’t miss it!

Pietism...

...is driving 10 mph below the speed limit.

Preaching

I first left the church of my youth, a Plymouth Brethren assembly, in 1999. I had come to Reformed convictions through a few years of thought and study, and, after trying for awhile to be Reformed and remain in the Brethren church at the same time, I picked up my hungry soul, pulled up several years of roots (ecclesiastically speaking), and went in search of a church where I could plant myself and be nourished for some time to come.

I have been in my current church for over two years now and, while it isn’t really Reformed, I believe for the moment it is where I should be. I still visit other churches on occasion, though, where friends of mine attend. Between leaving the Brethren and the present day, I’ve been in a number of churches of a variety of theological traditions: Presbyterian, Lutheran, Evangelical Covenant, Christian & Missionary Alliance, Baptist, and Anglican. And through this experience, I’ve learned that one problem exists across the denominational perspective: there is a serious lack of good preaching and teaching.

I’m no pastor. And I’ve only taught on a handful of occasions. In spite of this, I recognize that preaching is a difficult job. In order to do either right, one has to spend hours of time preparing by reading Scripture, commentaries, and other theological literature. A properly trained pastor, I believe, should know Greek and Hebrew, and therefore be able to look at the relevant passages in the original languages. And then there’s simply the matter of time praying and meditating in conjunction with the sermon or lesson one is preparing. When one thinks of doing this in the midst of other pastoral duties and the other responsibilities of life, it is enough to make one want to pass the job on to someone else.

I’ve also never studied the theology and practice of preaching, so I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject. And if I ever have the opportunity to preach, I might end up resembling my own criticisms here. Nonetheless, I think the lack I’ve noticed is real. The problems vary from church to church, and the confessional stance can play no small part in the problems. If a church is Dispensational, for instance, the pastor in that church will almost inevitably misunderstand any passage directly related to eschatological matters. During the time I was in a Presbyterian church, I heard enough sermons about election that I didn’t care if I heard another one in my life. Also, no pastor knows everything. It’s easy for a theology wonk like myself to throw tomatoes, thinking he’s so much smarter than the pastor. We often aren’t as good at seeing our own faults as we are the faults of others. Through the years I’ve learned, I hope, a small measure of humility in approaching questions like this.

All this considered, I’ve come up with a couple of questions that I look for to be answered in each sermon I hear. For me, this isn’t the type of thing where I’m holding up cue cards and rating each sermon I hear. This is far more personal than that for me. It’s about whether or not I leave the church satisfied that I’ve been fed on Sunday morning. Because I consider it so important, these questions are ones that I believe each pastor should ask himself as he prepares his sermons.

1. “Am I saying what the text says?” or “What does the text say?”

This probably will seem on the face of it to be so obvious as to make you wonder why I would even mention it. And the reason is that so often the minister in question doesn’t do it. I’ve noticed this in churches I’ve been to, and in most of the preachers I hear on Christian radio. I was speaking with a friend about this this afternoon. He named a particular local preacher that has a radio show and who broadcasts his sermons on public access television. The fellow, like so many others, claims to teach the Bible “verse by verse”. But it is a false claim. I’m sure he thinks he is doing it – I wouldn’t try to impugn the man’s character. But he skips over verses as he is teaching, only seeking to bring out the points that serve his purpose, whatever that may be. The other mistake connected with this is the tendency to use the text simply as a launching point from which the pastor jumps into talking about whatever topic he wants to teach on. I’m not a big fan of so-called “topical sermons” for that reason. This is common in the Evangelical preachers I hear on the radio. Rather than talking their way through a passage of Scripture, difficult passages and all, they start in one text and move on to several after it in succession, using Scripture as a series of disconnected wise sayings. It is a result of American Pragmatism and the fragmented way of thinking we’re all guilty of. This is also a problem in Reformed circles, where we have a tendency to think of Scripture merely as a justification (pardon the pun) for our abstract theological systems. One of the most important things for us to learn in our day is that if God had wanted to give us either a systematic theology, or a book of moral instruction, He would have done it. But he didn’t. While the Bible has theology, and moral instructions, the book God gave us is bigger and more complex than that. If we don’t begin by preaching the way it speaks, then we’ve already begun on the wrong foot.

2. “Where is Jesus in this passage?”

There is a school of biblical interpretation called the Redemptive-Historical School that is known for placing this question at the center of its emphasis. For any who might be wondering, I’m not attempting to side especially with this school in bringing up this question since, as I mentioned before, I haven’t really studied preaching formally. Yet I think the Redemptive-Historicists are at least right in saying that this is a question that every sermon should answer. If Jesus could show his disciples on the road to Emmaus how Moses and all the prophets spoke of him (Luke 24:27), then that means he’s in there, wherever we look. This, in fact, is the point of the New Testament. Jesus fulfilled all of the Old Testament, and the New Testament writers spend all their time explaining that and showing how that shapes all of life. But pastors often seem scared of Jesus. This happens with those who preach in Fundamentalist form, where the emphasis is on my sin and my need to “make a decision for Jesus”. But Jesus’ attributes and work are almost incidental in sermons like this, because the sermon is really all about me. Then there is the tendency of pastors to gravitate toward the latter portion of each epistle, where the “practical” teaching is, and skipping over the first halves, which are more difficult to explain and understand, and which deal particularly with Christ’s person and work. But this is a case of our fragmented thinking again. When the NT writers wrote, they intended the first portions of their epistles to create the framework in which the latter portions should be interpreted. If we don’t read them that way, then we fail to understand fully what they were trying to teach.

I keep hoping one day to hear a sermon that’s just about how great Jesus is, but maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part. In lieu of that, I can still hope that preachers will begin talking more about Jesus. For my part, I get practicality all day long, because the world around me is full of it. Pagans love anything that will improve their lives, because all they really care about is themselves anyway. But it’s Jesus Christ and him crucified that I need to hear and see, if he really is to be the object of my faith. The fact that it’s him the world hates should probably tip us off to the fact that it’s him we should be obsessed with.

In closing, let me say that this is a fairly unread blog. I don’t know who reads it. And maybe out of those who do, not a one is a pastor. But whoever you are, let me ask you: do you think that I’m right in what I’ve written here? If so, I’d like to know. But if you don’t feel comfortable commenting, consider passing these questions on to your pastors or your elders. Unless someone starts the conversation about this, nothing will be done to improve things.

Pants Wars

I ran across the following bit of Star Wars humor as I was sorting out some old emails. I originally found it a couple of years ago over here.


Lines from Star Wars that can be improved if you substitute the word "Pants" for key words:

We've got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.

The pants may not look like much, kid, but they've got it where it counts.

I find your lack of pants disturbing.

These pants contain the ultimate power in the Universe. I suggest we use it.

Han will have those pants down. We've got to give him more time!

General Veers, prepare your pants for a ground assault.

I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.

TK-421. . . Why aren't you in your pants?

Lock the door. And hope they don't have pants.

You are unwise to lower your pants.

She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally Commander.

Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought on board.

You look strong enough to pull the pants of a Gundark.

Luke. . . Help me remove these pants.

Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.

That blast came from those pants. That thing's operational!

A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.

Don't worry. Chewie and I have gotten into pants a lot more heavily guarded than this.

Maybe you'd like it back in your pants, your highness.

Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially one. . . Your sister!

Jabba doesn't have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.

Short pants is better than no pants at all.

Occasional Riddle #7

Why is it that, in preparing to have company over, the goal is to make one’s house appear as if nobody lives there?

The state of theology in the Atlantic Coast Conference

From a sign in the audience at tonight’s Duke – Wake basketball game:

A DEVIL’S GOT NOTHING ON A DEMON!

This is what happens when a Baptist college goes liberal.

Lenten Freedom

I wrote this piece last year about this time, at the beginning of Lent, and since we are in the Lenten season again, I thought it might be appropriate to write a few more thoughts. My feelings and thoughts about the practice have not significantly changed since last year. I am still inconsistent in my Lenten observance, I still have a concern about legalism, and I still have a concern about the tendency to focus on one’s own piety rather than on Christ. This came up again for me as I was glancing back over Calvin’s comments on fasting in his Institutes, in book 4, chapter 12, sections 19 and 20. Calvin speaks of three errors in fasting: the error of fasting as a mere outward observance as divorced from inward repentance; the error of regarding “fasting as a work of merit or a form of divine worship”; and a third error, which Calvin explains as follows:

…to require it to be kept too strictly and rigidly as if it were one of the chief duties, and to extol it with such immoderate praises that men think they have done something noble when they have fasted. In this respect, I dare not wholly absolve the ancient writers from having sown certain seeds of superstition and having furnished the occasion of the tyranny which afterward arose. In them one sometimes comes across sane and wise statements about fasting, but later one repeatedly meets immoderate praises of fasting, which set it up among the chief virtues.

At that time the superstitious observance of Lent had prevailed everywhere, because the common people thought that in it they were doing some exceptional service to God, and the pastors commended it as a holy imitation of Christ. On the contrary, it is plain that Christ did not fast to set an example for others, but to prove, in so beginning to proclaim the gospel, that it was no human doctrine but actually one sent from heaven [Matt. 4:2]. And the marvel is that such sheer hallucination (which is refuted so often and with such clear arguments) could creep upon men of keen judgment. For Christ does not fast often – as he would have to do if he had willed to lay down a law of yearly fasting – but only once, when he girded himself for the proclamation of the gospel. Nor does he fast in human fashion, as would have been fitting if he willed to arouse men to imitate him; but he shows an example rather to transport all men to admiration of him than to arouse them with zeal to imitate him.

Calvin proceeds from here on in discussing the history of fasting in the church, but this section contains the part that really struck me. Let me say first that I think Calvin overstates his case when he sets Christ as Saviour as over against Christ as example. He is to be both for us. In fact, one of the purposes of the church calendar is that we might order our lives after Christ in a symbolic yet real way, and I think this is a good thing. Yet the problem in the church prior to Calvin had been exactly the opposite, that of neglecting Christ as Saviour in favour of Christ as example. This rang especially true for me, having observed Catholic and Anglo-Catholic practices over the past few years. It is understandable for one (whether clergy or laity) to look at the immorality of our society and think that the pressing need is to emphasize self-discipline and personal piety, or, as traditional Reformed and Lutheran dogmatics has called it, the Law. But as Calvin here points out, the real answer for lawlessness is the work of Jesus Christ, that is, the Gospel. That isn’t to say that the Law shouldn’t be preached. But the Law can save no one, not even Christians. Certainly, I can’t just ignore my sin. I have to flee sin. But the power to flee sin comes from the Gospel. We access this power by worshipping Christ. Christ’s first concern is that we, as Calvin put it, admire Him. Without adoring Christ first, and keeping Him ever before us in our thoughts and our hearts, our pursuit of holiness will be in vain.

In light of this matter of the centrality of the work of Jesus Christ, I was thinking of the following song the other day, entitled "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree". This is a song I return to often, especially when I find myself struggling with some sin or despairing over a sinful habit I can’t seem to kick. Notice the emphasis on resting in Christ. The songwriter, who is unknown, does not say, “I’m done with my former licentiousness, I will now get busy for Jesus.” He says, “I’m weary with my former toil, I will now rest in Jesus.” The point here is that Christ, and Christ alone, saves. This is not to say we don’t have to strive for holiness. But even my holiness isn’t my work; it is the work of a sovereign God. And when all is said and done, I will be saved, and it will be Christ who saves me. The words have been set to different tunes, but the tune I prefer is featured on the cd Faire is the Heaven: Music of the English Church, by the Cambridge Singers. In process of locating the words on the web, I found this video of the Choir of King’s College in Cambridge singing the song to the same tune as the Cambridge Singers. Those of you who are of a more scholarly bent might find it interesting that the tune is structured in a sort of chiastic fashion, with the first and fifth verses having only the melody and therefore being the simplest, and the middle verse being the most complex harmonically.


The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell,
His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Potty Humor of a Different Sort

Today after meeting a friend for lunch I wandered over to one of our local Barnes & Noble stores for a stroll among the books and magazines. My first stop as I entered the store, however, was the men’s facilities. As I stepped into one of the stalls and latched the door shut, I turned and was met with the sort of scribbled writing usually conjured by the less clever individuals of our society, often of the jilted lover set. It read “Call Alexis for…”, and the rest of the sentence, no doubt profane beyond what I would be willing to repeat, had been marked through to the point of illegibility. Above it and in its place another person had written “bad grammar and spelling errors.” That’s right. The entire sentence now read, “Call Alexis for bad grammar and spelling errors.” No doubt this was better than what Alexis had formerly been accused of. I was at that moment very glad to be the only one in the restroom, as I was barely able to keep my laughter at a sputtered giggle, having in mind the patrons sitting in armchairs amidst the religion section less than twenty feet away where they were, I’m sure, reading and meditating in deep spiritual ecstasy. What I really wanted to do was howl uproariously, but that would have made leaving the restroom embarrassing to say the least and would have called several of the employees to my presence in order to discover the cause of the commotion. Thankfully I had a good minute or so of muffled chortling before I heard the bathroom door open, at which point I stifled my sniggling with no small amount of concentrated discipline.

Only in Barnes & Noble would you find graffiti like that.

More on Obama

Barack Obama wins in Maine, and is closing in on Hillary very quickly in the delegate counts. I’m not particularly surprised. Hillary has always struck me as too fake and too, shall we say, tense a person to convince enough of America that she’s worthy of the office of president.

One thing that concerns me about the number of people voting for Obama, however, is the reasons that I often hear (both in one on one conversations and from individuals speaking on tv) people giving when asked why they think he’s a good candidate. The most common reason I hear is that they think he is a good speaker. They find him to be convincing and encouraging. Adolf Hitler was convincing and encouraging too, lest we forget. A person’s ability in oratory means nothing other than that he’s a convincing speaker. It says nothing about the value of the ideas he’s trying to convince you of. The saddest thing in my saying this, however, is that most people who would read this would think I was comparing Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama in a one to one correspondence, therefore implying that Obama is somehow a racist. It seems to me very obvious that he is not, and unless I were to say it that clearly, the aforementioned person who thought I was calling him a racist would miss it completely. So let me make it even clearer: Obama isn’t a racist. How’s that for clarity?

There is one other area in which Obama is very close to Hitler, however, and that is that they are/were both Socialists. But you can also list other Socialists with them, such as Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., John McCain, and Mike Huckabee. So the title of “Socialist” is actually of little distinction.

The other reason I hear people give for voting for Obama is that he’s black. That America has finally come to a place beyond its racially segregated days that a black man can run for president and have a very good chance of winning is a good thing. But to think that a person qualifies for president just because of their race shows the lack of wisdom that pervades our nation. It seems to me that it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself who said he longed for the day when a man would be judged for his character and not for the color of his skin. It doesn’t matter if you’re judging a person to be evil simply because of the color of their skin, or if you’re judging them to be good because of the color of their skin. The color of one’s skin still has nothing to do with whether or not they’ll be a good president. Therefore, those who vote for Obama because he is black are not only betraying the legacy of Dr. King and dishonoring him, they are in effect seeking to lead America back to the racist era that Dr. King fought so hard to bring America out of.

The wisest thing for one to do then is to find out what the candidates believe, to the best of your ability, and vote for the one you think will best follow the requirements of the office of the president. Inasmuch as that means upholding the Constitution, there is only one candidate qualified for the job, and that is Ron Paul.

But if that isn’t good for you, check out this page that features the positions of the five major remaining candidates side by side. Take note especially of the bracket labeled “Proposed Government Spending Changes”. While Paul wants to cut spending by $150 billion, Obama wants to raise spending by $287 billion. And that isn’t money that the government has stored somewhere in Washington. That means Obama intends to raise taxes. Here is the page the information was derived from. You will find the various spending analyses of each candidate broken down in detail on that website.

The Northwest didn't get the memo

Okay, let’s see if I’m understanding this right. Global warming is so serious that we’ll all be dead within the next hundred years, and yet there are record snows happening right now in the Northwestern states. Am I missing something here?

Obama, the Antichrist?

The mother of a friend of mine has determined that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. She comes from the sort of Fundamentalist background where they are sure that all the other books of the Bible are just there as precursors to the Book of the Revelation, which is where the real stuff happens. Considering the teaching on the subject of the End Times, it's understandable that someone could come to this conclusion. You just take a vague idea that the Antichrist will come from “somewhere over there” (you know, over there somewheres) and will be in a position of international influence, and match it up with Obama, who was born “somewhere over there” (non-Anglo name and all) and is aspiring for a position of international influence, and you get “Obama is the Antichrist”. God bless the poor woman. She means well. Nonetheless, mark reason number 666 as to why it was good for me to leave Dispensationalism.

Gimme yer stuff

“Thou shalt not covet” means that it is sinful even to contemplate the seizure of another man’s goods – which is something which Socialists, whether Christian or otherwise, have never managed to explain away.

-- John Chamberlain, The Roots of Capitalism

Emerging Silliness

I’ve had a few occasions over the past couple of years to dialogue with individuals that consider themselves to be in the “Emerging Church” category of people, dialogue which was both sad and humorous at the same time. In relation to the humorous aspect, this page is an incredibly accurate commentary on the Emerging church, not to mention hilarious. Here are a couple of my favourite posters from the page (but you really should check them all out):

Idolatry takes many forms, #9: Super Bowl Sunday, Or the Sabbath?

It is approximately 12:30 am on February 3, 2008, and that means according to standard time keeping, it is Super Bowl Sunday. This is one of the High Holy Days of the secular American religious calendar. Many of those in our country who would call themselves Christian and who would normally at least consider going to church a few hours from now will instead be preparing for the big party they will be participating in tomorrow. As the regular reader of this blog will suspect, it’s not something I’m particularly thrilled about. I don’t have anything against football. But I do have a problem with anything that tries to usurp the authority of Jesus Christ. Not only does the Super Bowl do that, but any sport played on the Sabbath Day does that. Having said that, though, the Super Bowl won’t actually be played on the Sabbath. It will be played on Monday Evening. I personally hold the view that, as Scripture says in numerous places, evening followed by day make one day (see, for instance, Genesis 1). And so I myself will probably be watching the game with a clear conscience. I don’t even see anything wrong with churches that will be having Super Bowl parties tomorrow night. Despite what some people think, Scripture nowhere requires a Sunday night worship service. And so I might even find myself at the local megachurch with my friends watching the game.

So how, if it isn’t being played on the Sabbath, does the Super Bowl interfere with it? In many ways. Coverage of the game will begin on TV in few hours, if it hasn’t already, and this will be a cause for many to not use the day as it is intended, as a day of rest and worship. The game will be a temptation, as I mentioned before, for many to skip worship to prepare for the parties they will be involved in. Many will no doubt go to the game or be involved otherwise (maybe even playing) who will forego observing the Sabbath for travel, work, etc. And sadly, rare will be the minister tomorrow morning who will be able to preach a whole sermon without making at least one reference to the game, therefore leading his own congregation into temptation and revealing where his own heart is. I don’t find these things reasons to not enjoy a game that, according to my own belief, will actually be played on Monday. Nonetheless, they are in themselves serious matters, and they are all brought about by a game that will be played, according to our society’s reckoning, Sunday night.

And there is the whole commercial aspect to this that irks me more than anything (yes, I said “irks”. I’m not exactly a dispassioned observer on this subject.). It used to be, less than thirty years ago, that almost nothing was open on Sundays (at least, here in the South). Almost everybody in our country observed the Sabbath at least to the degree of refraining from commerce, even if they didn’t go to church. Nowadays, it is even rare to find a Presbyterian or Reformed person, who have Confessions that require Sabbath observance, who actually believe what their Confessions teach or at least observe their teachings on the Sabbath.

But commerce rules our lives now, and it does so because we’ve let it. And one of the ways we’ve let it come to rule our lives is that we’ve let the market dictate how we spend our time, including letting it turn the “Market Day of the Soul” in to the “Market Day of Everything But the Soul”. It is, quite frankly, selling one’s birthright for a bowl of porridge. I long for the day when we return to the blessing of observing the Sabbath, assuming our culture will ever return to it. The blessings are immense for those who would honor God in this, but we will never experience them if we don’t trust God and obey Him.

As I was thinking about this, I was reminded of the following section from the book The Market Day of the Soul by James Dennison (whence I got the phrase, though Dennison actually took it from the Puritans). In his book, Dennison discusses the history of the debates on the Sabbath during the era of the Puritans. This portion shows how, when it comes to making excuses for things we want to do, whether they are wrong or right, there is nothing new under the sun.

The Puritans were not opposed to recreations per se. Lawful (“honest”) recreations were encouraged on the other six days of the week. Bownd’s remark was typical: “I am not of that minde…to thinke that men should never take their delight, and that all recreation were sinfull….” However, even honest recreations were to be suspended on the Lord’s day because they interfered with the proper sanctification of the Sabbath. The Puritans also cited Isaiah 58:13-14 in defense of their position; God had clearly revealed His opposition to taking one’s own “pleasure” on the Sabbath.

Some would counter the Puritan arguments with the observation that recreation was not possible on any day other than Sundays. The Puritan reply is significant: “If men will allow seruants recreations, let them allow part of their owne time, and be liberall in that which is their owne, and not in that which God hath giuen them no such warrant to bestow on their seruants.”

Labor was not to be exploited. Men were to be allowed honest recreations Monday through Saturday. Though the general rule was that Sunday was playday, people did find time for sport on week-days; witness Bridenbaugh’s remark: “…young men who would ‘endure long and hard labour in so much that after twelve hours hard work they will go in the evening to football, stoole ball, cricket, prison-base, wrestling, cugel throwing, or some such like vehement exercise.’”

Richard Baxter maintained that the argument from a lack of spare time on week-days was a “sad argument to be used by them that by racking of rents do keep them (labouring people) in poverty.” The Puritan protest against Sabbath profanation was also a protest against overwork on the other six days of the week.

[Quoting Baxter] “But the truth is, it is not the minds of poor laboring men, that are overworked and tired on week-days, but it is their bodies; and therefore there is no recreation so suitable to them as the ease of the body, and the holy and joyful exercise of the mind, upon their Creator, and their Redeemer, and their everlasting rest.”

Idolatry takes many forms, #8: God Is The God Of Politics

Immediately following the recent Republican debate in Florida, Mitt Romney received much attention for his expressed fear of having Bill Clinton back in the White House again. He went on to separate his approach to the various concerns of the day from Hillary’s, stating that he wanted to respond to her on the basis of her platform, not on the basis of her husband. Nonetheless, the statement for many couldn’t help but bring to mind Bill’s infidelities during his time in office. While Bill did admit he was wrong, it was only after he outright lied about it and was caught. And while I believe we must accept Bill’s statement of repentance as sincere, it doesn’t mean that he should be trusted in influencing matters of national policy again, which he would be undoubtedly doing were Hillary to win the election. Hillary’s policies are enough to keep me from voting for her, aside from the fact that I don’t believe, based on Scripture, that a woman should be in a position of authority like that. Combine this with Bill’s wickedness and the shaky family life manifested in all of this, and the Clinton’s are the last couple I want to see in the White House.

Since the debate, another well-known adulterer, Rudy Giuliani, has dropped out of the race. I rarely sit through even a few minutes of the 700 Club, so I don’t know who, if anybody, Pat Robertson has taken to endorsing since Rudy’s withdrawal. When Robertson first endorsed Giuliani, the Christian conservatives of the country were vocal in their disbelief that Robertson could endorse someone who is “pro-choice”. Robertson responded by pushing the abortion issue to the side and expressing his great concern over the “war against terrorism”. How the one issue could trump the other is beyond me, aside from my disagreements with Robertson over the war. More important to me, though, is Giuliani’s marital infidelity. How could a man who couldn’t keep his vows to his wife be trusted to keep his vow to uphold the Constitution? And how could this not concern someone like Robertson? This will continue to be an issue with Giuliani if, as may be the case, McCain wins the Republican nomination and chooses Giuliani as his Vice-President.

One thing that the Clinton – Lewinsky scandal proved, as does the case of Rudy Giuliani, is that for most people in our time, the character of a person is irrelevant. It is irrelevant in daily life, and it is equally irrelevant for those in positions of authority. Sure, there are things that a person can do that will destroy his chance of running for office – murder, for instance (that is, murder not sanctioned by the Government). But sexual immorality is largely considered a private matter and unrelated to one’s qualifications with regard to public office. I would disagree strongly with such a belief, and, more importantly, so does Holy Scripture and the God of Holy Scripture.

There are also other character issues involved that go relatively unaddressed, such as the fact that excessive taxation is theft, irresponsible fiscal policy is bad stewardship, and the Nanny State is forced slavery and an attack on the image of God in one’s fellow man. These are ignored even more than the issue of sexual immorality, but are equally worthy of consideration. But other than mentioning these in passing, I will have to reserve the discussion of them for another occasion.

On the basis of this, I offer the following quotes from the 19th century Southern Presbyterian minister Robert Lewis Dabney on a Christian approach to electing government officials. The third paragraph is especially of interest in the current debates, as it addresses the need for officials who are careful in the speed at which they send troops to war. Note also Dabney’s warnings of the judgment of God. For him, God was not to be reserved to some sort of religious realm, as distinct from politics or other social matters. God is the God of everything, and those Christians who would seek to put aside their faith when entering the “political arena” are, in effect, betraying the God to whom they belong.

Here, then, is a prominent duty, if we would save our country, that we shall carry our citizenship in the kingdom of heaven everywhere, and make it dominate over every public act. We must obey the law of God rather than the unrighteous behests of party, to “choose out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers,” of God will assuredly avenge Himself for our violated allegiance to him. The Christians of this country must sternly claim that wicked or reckless men shall no longer hold the helm of state; that political orthodoxy shall no longer atone for the worst offense against citizenship, a wicked life.

…When you elevate a bad man, you give to him a hundred-fold more power of example to corrupt your sons, and your neighbor’s sons by his evil acts. Those acts are a hundred-fold more conspicuous and more weighty to attract notice and imitation than if you had left him in his deserved obscurity. When you delegate your money, influence or civic power to a bad man, you make his wicked official acts and influences your own; he is your chosen agent, and acts for you, and be assured a jealous God will not forget to visit the people for the guilt thus contracted.

…And when the rash representatives in our halls of legislation and our newspapers shall have sown the wind, who will reap the whirlwind? When they have scattered the dragon’s teeth, who must meet that horrent crop which they will produce? Not they alone, but you, your sons, your friends and their sons. So that these misleaders of the people, while you so weakly connive at their indiscretions, may indirectly be preparing the weapon which is to pierce the bosom of your fair-haired boy, and summoning the birds of prey, which are to pick out those eyes whose joy is now the light of your happy homes. For your own sakes, for your children’s sake, arise, declare that from this day no money, no vote, no influence of yours shall go to the maintenance of any other counsels than those of moderation, righteousness and manly forbearance.

"Jane Roe" endorses Ron Paul

For those who have not yet heard... This past Tuesday, which was the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court Case that in effect legalized abortion in the United States, Norma McCorvey, who was the "Jane Roe" in that case, officially endorsed Ron Paul for President of the United States. McCorvey, who once was a Pro-abortion advocate, became a Pro-Life advocate a few years ago, and repented of her own involvement in the original court case of which she was a part. The endosement is an amazing development, and should be taken very seriously by those who believe the best defender of Pro-Life values to be one of the other candidates.

If you're interested in reading an official report about the endorsement, here's the one at the Ron Paul 2008 website, or you can simply Google "Jane Roe" "Ron Paul" and find other reports along the same lines.

Idolatry takes many forms, #7: Politics, Our Saviour

I’ve had a couple of friends over the past few years tell me that I should go into politics. I find this to be rather humorous. While I have been blogging a fair bit more on politics in recent months, the subject matter is one which I have generally despised the better part of my life. I have faint memories of my late father sitting down in front of the six o’clock news every evening without failure, and the experience left a sense which I still carry in my subconsciousness that politics are much ado about nothing. No doubt my reaction to it was partially because of the disinterest that a young child would be expected to have. And in spite of that lingering sense, I now recognize this attitude as wrong. It is a common truism that you shouldn’t mix religion and politics; it just so happens, however, that this truism is actually a falsism. It wasn’t until I came to recognize the inseparable link between theology and politics, or maybe better, between God and politics, that politics became at all interesting.

I find it telling that many Christians will strive to know the ins and outs of the current political climate, and yet despise the suggestion that they should strive to know the deep things of Scripture at least as well. Broadening the idea of Christianity beyond Scripture itself to include culture and history, I am also amazed at how many Christians will read long biographies of American presidents and the histories of wars, and yet would eschew any biography of the great pastors and theologians of the church and any history of Christianity at all. I believe this has been fostered by the concept of Statism that I have been critiquing here, and it has been encouraged by the overpowering Messianic State that we live with in the U. S. today. The idea of Statism is a Modernistic one, and one of its earliest and clearest expressions in the Modern era was in the French Revolution, where a religious state was specifically cast off in exchange for an explicitly secular one. And so the controversy carries on to this day on the place of religion in relation to the State. Yet what seems to be assumed at a deeper level by both sides is that it is the State that determines the issue. I would suggest, rather, on the basis of Scripture, that it is God who determines the issue.

Dealing with the prominence of politics in the Modern mind, Jedediah Purdy, in his book For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment In America Today, writes:

For more than two hundred years, politics has been among the great sources of inspiration and purpose, giving shape to many lives. From the radical period of the French Revolution onward there has stood the promise that politics can change the human predicament in elemental ways. Politics, on this promise, could erase all the foolish, cruel, maddening accretions of history and replace them with fair and humane arrangements where for the first time people would live as free as they are born. For both the revolutionaries whose ambitions convulsed the world and the crusading reformers of Britain and America, politics was the fulcrum on which women and men could move the lever of history. They need only a firm place to stand to take up Archimedes; old boast and move the world.

This extraordinary promise attracted the people with the greatest capacity and need for hope, the ones with the keenest sensitivity to suffering and cruelty and the strongest impulse to work against them. Politics was the means by which those who were most keenly aware of what should be could turn that moral truth into historical reality. Politics in effect took over the role of religion for many people in both this century and the last. It gave purpose to individual lives. Its aim of remaking the world carried the promise of redemption, both of whole societies and of the long labors of the individuals who worked to change them. Politics was the way to service, to heroism, and to sainthood.

Because its ambitions ran so far and so deep, politics posed questions that were inescapable for serious people. The questions of what sort of country to live in, what kind of men and women to be, how to work, and sometimes even how to love were all ones that politics promised – or threatened – to resolve. The German author Thomas Mann expressed a widely shared perception, which was sometimes reluctant and sometimes enthusiastic, when he wrote, “In our time, the question of man’s destiny presents itself in political terms.” Not acknowledging that truth meant avoiding the leading drama of the time.

I haven’t had opportunity to read Purdy’s book much beyond this point. In the next paragraph, he says that this idea of politics has largely vanished from the popular mind, as the general public has come to regard politics, and specifically politicians, with suspicion and doubt. Purdy’s book is a few years old now (written in 1999), and I wonder what he would say today. The current obsession over the coming presidential election would seem to indicate that whereas there is a great measure of distrust shown towards politicians, this distrust isn’t universal, and it is expressed toward the politicians, rather than toward politics more abstractly. This is especially true in Evangelical circles. The question for them doesn’t seem to be whether or not politics is trustworthy, but rather which politicians are trustworthy. Since the Reagan era, if not the Carter era, Evangelicals have spoken and acted as if all would be well if they could only get the right man in office, especially the Oval Office. This belies an implicit distrust in everything related to more directly to Christianity. Prayer is impotent, preaching the Word is ineffective, corporate worship is irrelevant. And don’t even ask about the Sacraments. Essentially, their behaviour communicates the fact that they don’t believe that God has control over anything. God, as it would seem, is either impotent, or doesn’t care. But since most American Christians believe Jesus is returning any minute now, one would understand why they think this way. “Things are growing worse and worse,” they say, misapplying the text. Why they continue to fight in the political realm so vehemently, then, is the question. One would think they would recognize how inconsistent this is with their end times philosophy. But they usually don’t, and I would suggest it is, once again, Statism at work that causes this.

Idolatry takes many forms, #6: Theological Agendas

Why one should assume that scholars are not interested in holiness I do not know, but it sometimes appears to be the case, just as pietists are not always interested in what the text actually says.

-- N. T. Wright, commenting on the variety of interpretations of Romans 7

Occasional Riddle #6

Why is it that in Protestant jokes Saint Peter is always the one standing at the gate of Heaven?

Idolatry takes many forms, #5: It Ain’t Always Been This Way

Speaking of the state of the Scottish church in the fifth century, John Howie, in his book The Scots Worthies, wrote the following:

The Pelagian heresy had now gained considerable ground in Britain; it is so called from Pelagius, a Monk at Rome: its chief articles are – (1.) That original sin is not inherent; (2.) That faith is a thing natural; (3.) That good works done by our own strength, of our own free-will, are agreeable to the law of God, and worthy of heaven. Whether all, or only part of these errors, then infected the Scottish church, is uncertain; but Celestine, then Bishop of Rome, embraced this opportunity to send Palladius among them, who, joining with the orthodox of South Britain, restored peace to that part of the church, by suppressing the heresy. King Eugenius the Second, being desirous that this church should likewise be purged of the impure leaven, invited Palladius hither, who obtained liberty from Celestine, and being enjoined to introduce the hierarchy as opportunity should offer, came into Scotland, and succeeded so effectually in his commission, as both to confute Pelagianism and new-model the government of the church.

The church of Scotland as yet knew no officers vested with pre-eminence above their brethren, nor had anything to do with the Roman Pontiff, until the year 450. Bede says, that “Palladius was sent unto the Scots, who believed in Christ as their first bishop.” (Bede’s Eccles. His. Lib. i. ch. 13. Buchanan His. Book v.). Boetius likewise says, “that Palladius was the first of all who did bear holy magistracy among the Scots, being made bishop by the great Pope.” Fordun, in his Chronicle, tells us – “that before the coming of Palladius, the Scots had, for teachers of the faith, and ministers of the sacraments, Presbyters only, of monks, following the customs of the primitive church (Book iii. cap. 8).

But we are not to fix the era of diocesan bishops even so early as this, for there were no such office-bearers in the church of Scotland, until the reign of Malcolm II in the eleventh century. During the first thousand years after Christ, there were no divided dioceses, nor superiorities over others, but they governed in the church in common with Presbyters; so that they were no more than nominal bishops, possessing little or nothing of that lordly dignity which they now do, and for a long time past have enjoyed. Spottiswoode himself testifies (His History, page 29), that the Scottish bishops, before the eleventh century, exercised their functions indifferently in every place to which they came. Palladius may be said to have rather laid the foundation of the after degeneracy of the church of Scotland, than to have built that superstructure of corruption and idolatry which afterwards prevailed, because she continued for nearly two hundred years in a state comparatively pure and unspotted, when we cast our eyes on the following times. (pg. 3-4)

For more on bishops, see this quote.

The Iowa Caucus

So Huckabee and Obama each came in first in their respective parties in the Iowa caucus. It’s exactly what I expected, though it remains disappointing. Both are socialists at heart, which brings up the statement Doug Wilson made a few years ago, that if the Democrats were to propose a bill to blow up the Capitol Building, the Republicans would counter with a proposal to phase it in over three years.

On the Huckabee side, he’s exactly what Americans generally want in a president. He smiles a lot, makes clever jokes, speaks in a very soft, effeminate sort of way, and promises that your country will continue to take care of you. And the fact that he’s a Southern Baptist minister is just par for the course, for the smiley, soft sort of fellow is the ideal male as portrayed by Southern Baptist culture. In essence, what America generally wants in the White House is an effete Southern gentleman. That was G. W., and his father, and the possibly-soon-to-be First Husband and former President Bill Clinton.

Then there’s Obama. He road to victory in Iowa, as Huckabee did, on the strength of his sweet, gentle smiles. But much credit is to be given to Oprah. Thanks to millions of shallow women everywhere, who know nothing of political theory because learning it would take, like, work and stuff, and who are naïve enough to follow their sinful feelings wherever they take them, Obama has a great chance of being our next president. Oprah has yet to promise a free refrigerator to everyone who votes for Obama, but she will certainly be glad to get you excited over him, for no apparent reason whatsoever, in order to manipulate you and a nation full of other willing slaves to vote for her candidate. Ladies, you can’t just trust somebody because they come across on TV as having a “great personality” or because some celebrity tells you to vote for him. Even celebrities have agendas, and those agendas don’t necessarily include your well-being.

Idolatry takes many forms, #4: The Religion of Scientism

Paul clearly believed that there had been a single first pair, whose male, Adam, had been given a commandment and had broken it.... Our knowledge of early anthropology is of course sketchy, to put it mildly. Each time another very early skull is dug up the newspapers exclaim over the discovery of the first human beings; we have consigned Adam and Eve entirely to the world of mythology, but we are still looking for their replacements.... The general popular belief that the early stories of Genesis were straightforwardly disproved by Charles Darwin is of course nonsense, however many times it is reinforced in contemporary mythmaking. Things are just not that simple, in biblical theology or science.

-- N. T. Wright, commenting on Romans 5:12

Idolatry takes many forms, #3: The Messianic State Revisited

One of the great farces of our day is the supposed “war on inflation” being waged by civil governments everywhere. In every continent, politicians pledge themselves to an all-out war on inflation, conveniently neglecting to state that the immediate cause of all inflation in the modern era is the increase of the supply of money and credit by the central civil or statist agencies. Inflation is an act of state, a very highly desirable act of state from the standpoint of politicians and the bureaucracy, because it increases vastly the powers of the state. The rise of the modern totalitarian state has its economic origin in the abandonment of gold coinage for paper money. As the creator of fiat money, of instant money by means of legalized counterfeiting of wealth, the state is always the wealthiest and most powerful force in society. As inflation increases, so too does the power of the state. Every civil government thus has a vested interest in inflation. For a state to halt inflation is to diminish its power. The cry, “Stop inflation,” is another way of saying “Castrate the state,” and no state or bureaucracy has yet favored its own castration.

Inflation is thus a way of life to the modern, humanistic power state, because power is its goal. The fundamental premise of modern political science is that the state is god walking on earth. This same Hegelian (and in origin pagan) doctrine is basic to Marxism, fascism, Naziism, democracy, Fabianism, and other modern political theories. It means that the state claims sovereignty, an attribute of God alone, and therefore claims the power to create. The result of this assertion of sovereignty and the power to create is fiat laws (laws with no basis in God’s law and purely arbitrary assertions of the state), fiat money (money created by state decree and having behind it the value of statist coercion), and fiat everything. Above all, it means fiat justice; justice ceases to be grounded in God’s being and righteousness, and is grounded instead in the arbitrary judgments and decisions of the state, its bureaucracy, and its agencies.

The more humanistic the power state becomes, the more it removes its law-making policies from the elective process. The goal of the humanistic state is to replace God as the ultimate power and authority over man, and hence it works, in the name of man, to separate itself from man. Most lawmaking in the United States is not an act of Congress, or of a state legislature, but of a bureaucracy which enacts vast powers unto itself through the Federal Register or in like ways. A sovereign power is always transcendental; it transcends those whom it governs. God is beyond man and nature and separate from them; hence we speak of the supernatural. Similarly, the would-be sovereign state seeks to be transcendental, beyond man in the name of man, and its rule becomes more and more a fiat and arbitrary rule.

The goal is total power; the key or the means is money, the creation of fiat money; in brief, inflation….

Inflation thus has a religious root. It is a consequence of the attempt by the state to play god and to resolve all human problems, not by religious and moral answers derived from the Bible, but from humanism. The state believes that, by playing god, it can abolish the problems of man and society. Instead, it aggravates those problems.

-- Rousas John Rushdoony, The Roots of Inflation

For the cat lovers...

moar funny pictures

HT: Barb

The Resurrection of Israel

So there’s a theory I’m working on with regard to the structure of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. The theory is that the epistle is, among other things, about the death and resurrection of Israel. Scholars like N. T. Wright, whose commentary I’ve been working slowly through, point out the recurring theme in the Old Testament of Exile and Restoration. We see repeatedly the exile of an individual or groups of individuals, which in time is followed by restoration, if not of those individuals, then of their descendents. Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden, and those who trust in Christ are restored to the Garden (Rev. 22). Joseph was exiled to Egypt, was later joined by his family, and the entire family of Israel was later restored to the land. Abram and Sarai were symbolically exiled to Egypt (Genesis 12), as a type of Israel’s later exile. One may also suggest that the sojourn of Elimelech and his family in Moab (Ruth 1) was an exile, which curiously relates typologically to Abram and Sarai’s sojourn in Egypt, as both families went to other countries as the result of a famine. Israel and Judah, after being brought back from Egypt, suffered exile again in the days of the divided kingdom because of their unfaithfulness. Elijah, symbolizing Israel, was exiled twice (I Kings 17 & 19). David, already anointed to become king, experienced exile as Saul chased him around the wilderness. David himself was exiled a second time, as a result of the rebellion of Absalom. And our Lord suffered exile in different ways, both in his forty days in the wilderness, and in his wanderings around the country prior to his entering Jerusalem.

A closely connected concept to this, I would suggest, is the idea of death and resurrection. Ezekiel makes this connection for us in the vision of the valley of dry bones found in Ezekiel 37. Speaking to Ezekiel, the Lord makes this explicit in verses 11-14. Death, we find, corresponds to exile, and resurrection corresponds to restoration.

Jesus Christ himself bore the sins of the world, and in so doing, specifically bore the sins of Israel. He died and was resurrected, and so was exiled and restored for the salvation of Israel as well as the world.

But here’s where Romans comes in. As I’ve been studying Romans, I was struck by the fact that in the first few verses of the book, Christ’s resurrection from the dead was specifically mentioned, whereas the circumstances of his death were completely absent. The fact that his death was by crucifixion (a point that we make much of in the modern church), along with the fact that his death was propitiatory, was completely left out. Now Paul elsewhere in Romans deals with Christ’s death in more detail (3:25, ch. 5), and so it isn’t as if Paul considers this a secondary matter. But I believe it is reasonable to suggest that Paul is stating the highlights of the epistle in these first few verses, as they read as a summary of his thought on a particular matter.

It was as I was studying ch. 4 that the idea occurred to me. Paul there rehearses the case of Abraham and his faith in God. Abraham believed God in a situation that seemed impossible, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. In verse 19, Paul says of Abraham, “He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.” Abraham and Sarah, as we see, were both well past the normal years of bearing children. Yet look at the language Paul uses to describe this. Abraham was “as good as dead”. Sarah’s womb was barren, that is, dead. Paul seems to be saying here, I would suggest, that in the conception and birth of Isaac, a sort of resurrection, a sort of life from the dead, took place. Resurrection is mentioned in regard to God’s character in verse 17, as Paul speaks of our God, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” That Paul is keeping resurrection in the forefront of his mind is also confirmed by the closing words of the chapter, as he speaks of Abraham’s faith: “It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Christ’s resurrection is mentioned twice within the same sentence, as if Paul wanted to make the point clear. God promised Abraham a child, Abraham believed, it was counted to him as righteousness, and God gave him a child. Through that child, Abraham would inherit the world. So how does this correspond to us? Paul does not spell it out fully here, but based on what he says here and later on in the epistle, I think we can determine what he is getting at. Those who have the faith of Abraham are his seed. God promised to Abraham and his seed the world (vs. 13). The summary is that we that have the faith of Abraham are heirs of the world, or, if you will, the cosmos (the Greek word for “world” here is, transliterated, “kosmou”, the genitive form of “kosmos”). And so when the passage is examined carefully, we find, rather than merely justification narrowly conceived, a Postmillenial dominion theology at its finest. It is important to point out, however, that contextually, both in this passage and in Scripture more broadly, this dominion does not come about through sheer power and through the forcing of one’s will upon another. This dominion only comes through death and resurrection, willing exile and restoration. Once again, Joseph leaps to mind.

I am still working my way through the epistle, and so a further explication of my theory will have to wait until later. One other important matter to point out regards the placement of Paul’s discussion of Israel in the letter. Rather than being a mere side note, as if Paul changes topics at the beginning of chapter nine, Paul’s discussion of Israel here is one of the major points of the letter, and belongs at the place Paul puts it according to the flow of the letter. Chapters nine through eleven are built upon the foundation that Paul lays out in all the preceding chapters. And essentially, Paul says this: God has made promises to Israel. Will He raise her from the dead again? Will God bring Israel back from exile once more? Paul essentially says yes, but the form Israel will take in her resurrection and restoration is different from what Israel might expect. Lord willing, I will discuss this at a later time.

Blog blah blah

Here it is, November 26th, and my last serious blog was almost three weeks ago. And, as is to be expected in the world of blogdom, the vast number of visits I formerly was receiving on this blog has ground nearly to a halt. But who can blame you? I wouldn’t visit a blog if there were nothing on it that I wanted to read.

But I have a valid excuse, of sorts. One of these past three weeks was spent at the beach, sans computer. Okay, so I only have a valid excuse for one week. But if you count the week before as preparation, and the week after as recovery, that takes care of all three, doesn’t it?

The truth be known, this is just a busy time of year. The shoe business has been especially overwhelming this year, and I find myself most evenings recovering from the day’s labors. But I have a job, which many people don’t, so I am grateful. I had my vacation, and then covered for a co-worker who was on vacation. Then there was Thanksgiving Day, on which, actually, I was sick at home and unable to join friends and family for the customary feasting and revelries. And Christmas chaos has begun, with me having done none of my shopping yet.

Our Bible Study group is working slowly through Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and I’ve been trying to devote most of my study and reading time to the Scriptures and books related to our study. I have still been finding time to work in other reading, mostly of a political nature. I have been reading slowly through Ron Paul’s book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom. If you are dissatisfied with the current field of candidates for president, you need to check out Ron Paul. I won’t take time now to discuss this further, other that to say no other candidate matches up to him, and I am extremely glad that we finally have somebody worth voting for. I had also begun reading Frederic Bastiat’s classic of political theory simply entitled The Law. And I had worked halfway through Anthony Flew’s book, There Is A God, which is Flew’s explanation of how he moved from being an atheist to being a theist of the Aristotelian variety.

I’m bad about not finishing books I start, and there are many others besides these that I have wanted to get back to, yet without success. But they will all have to go by the wayside for now. It looks as if I will be joining some other folks for a Bible study in which we will be studying the Book of Daniel. I haven’t even read Daniel in several years (yes, years…), and I’ve never studied it in any depth. When you grow up in Dispensationalism, as I did, and then leave it for Reformed theology, sometimes the last thing in the world that’s appealing to you is a book that your former co-theologisers majored on. But the more I’ve been trying to dive into the Old Testament, the more conspicuous it’s become to me that I need to study Daniel. So this is timely, or Providential, if you will. I just ordered this commentary, which I’m excited to dig into as soon as it arrives. And so with a Bible study on Daniel, and a Bible study on Romans, I’ll be feeling like I’m back in school, deadlines and all.

So, will blogging go entirely out of my life? No. I think what I will try to do is to blog shorter pieces, some only a few sentences in length, most of which will no doubt be related to what I’m reading. I’m constantly renewed in my amazement at how deep and complex the Scriptures are, and so I expect to have a lot to write about. And I welcome any comments that the reader might offer. I’ve had a great increase in visitors here, and I hope that will continue. But does what I’m writing make sense to you? Do you find it helpful? If so, or if not, I’d like to know. Don’t be afraid to speak out. I enjoy writing, but I want it to benefit others, too.

Idolatry takes many forms, #2: The Messianic State

Government schooling is inevitably an exercise in statist brainwashing, not genuine education; and it is hardly “moral” for a large gang (government) to (legally) rob one segment of the population, keep most of the loot, and share a little of it with various “needy” individuals.

-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Interpretation is Inevitable

A few years ago, I had one of those conversations that will stick in your mind forever and keep you scratching your head long after it is over. It was with an old friend, and the topic was eldership in the local church. He had been attending an eldership training class in our church, and we were talking about the qualifications required for one to be an elder as listed in 1 Timothy 3, specifically regarding the controversial phrase “husband of one wife”. There have been many readings of the phrase, some believing it forbids polygamists from becoming elders, while other believe it forbids divorced men from becoming elders. There have been other views on the passage, but our conversation was limited to this, as I held the former view and my friend held the latter. The conversation went as such:

Friend: I don’t know why so-and-so is taking the class. He can’t become an elder.

Myself: Why not?

Friend: He’s been divorced. He hasn’t been “the husband of one wife”.

Myself: I don’t believe you’re interpreting that passage correctly. The passage is referring to polygamists, not to those who have been divorced. Someone who has been divorced and remarried only has one wife.

Friend: No, you’re interpreting the passage. I’m just reading what it says.

Once I was done picking my jaw up off the floor, the conversation continued along a slightly different path. It wasn’t that I was offended at his statement. Like I said, he’s an old friend, and I don’t think anything he could ever do would offend me. But I had never heard such a ridiculous statement in my life. My friend, God bless him, isn’t a complete idiot, but he’s not exactly a Rhodes scholar, if you get my drift. This was simply a misunderstanding of language, and meaning, and, well, truth. But I thought that would be the last time I would hear anything like that.

And it was – until this morning after church, as I was carrying on a conversation with an older lady in our church. She likes to refer to herself as “an Episcopalian, Charismatic, Pentecostal Fundamentalist”, and the redundancy of including both “Charismatic” and “Pentecostal” in that phrase doesn’t seem to bother her in the least. We were discussing our former president Jimmy Carter’s masquerade of traditionalism, in the realm of politics, but especially when it came to his claims to be a good old Southern Baptist stalwart. This drifted into a conversation about what true fundamentalism looks like, including the idea of taking the Bible “literally”. I should have known I was in deep water at this point, but the reality of the situation slipped past me. As the idea of “taking the Bible literally” has been used as an excuse for all sorts of shoddy Scriptural interpretations in the past two hundred years, red flags normally start flying at this point for me. Blame it on the communion wine, but I didn’t see this iceberg coming. It happened a bit like this:

Lady: Have you ever read Isaiah?

Myself, in disbelief: Uhhh, yeah.

Lady: I read it forty years ago, and I knew immediately what it was about.

Myself, with bated breath: What’s that?

Lady: Isaiah talks about all the Jews living throughout the world and God bringing them back to their land. I saw God doing that and knew that’s what Isaiah was talking about.

Myself, with much hesitancy: I actually believe that happened two thousand years ago.

Lady: No, it didn’t. That’s never happened before in the history of the world, because nobody inhabited the United States back then. Jews would have had to have been in the United States for them to come back from all over the world.

Myself, in over my head: Have any Jews ever inhabited Antarctica?

Lady: I don’t know. The point is that that’s what Isaiah was talking about.

Myself, waiting for impact: I guess what I’m getting at is that there are different interpretations of that. Yours is a very new interpretation in the history of the church.

Lady: You don’t interpret the Bible. You just read what it says.

Myself, looking for an exit: Yeah…right…

Things fizzled rather quickly after that, farewells and other pleasantries dispensed with.

It’s a rather strange bird, this whole idea that “interpreting” is a bad thing to do. What surprised me in both these conversations is that both these people thought they weren’t interpreting the meaning of a text when they read it. But that, in fact, is all that is meant by the word “interpret”. And I can’t help but wonder where this confusion came from. Whatever its origin, it is a strong characteristic of Fundamentalist types. By Fundamentalists, I’m not referring, as the secular media does, to those who have some religious belief and actually live by it, even when it stands in stark contrast to the accepted practices of mainstream culture. I’m referring to Fundamentalist Christians, of the stripe that existed in abundance during the twentieth century, who think that they are able to understand everything perfectly and don’t think that they could actually be wrong about something. But Fundamentalists aren’t the only ones guilty of this.

Though many scholars have begun to recognize the error in it, most people are still living with the notion that there is actually such a thing as objectivity – that they can look at a truth claim and judge it in a perfectly unbiased manner. But this is false. Every person who has ever been born (apart from Jesus Christ) has a limited perspective and therefore never has all the information necessary to make an infallible judgment. Along with this, we are all sinners. Our motives are never perfect, and our sin is so deep we often don’t know when and how it shapes our thinking. Another way of referring to this is as the myth of neutrality. No one is neutral in their judgment, nor should they be. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and that is exactly the way God intends it. Our judgments, therefore, are to be biased towards what is true and good.

It’s this myth of objectivity that stands behind conversations like the ones I’ve just mentioned. These people have somehow come to believe that to “interpret” a text means to insert a meaning into a text that isn’t there – what scholars call “eisegesis”. They, however, believe they are pure in their desires and perspective (in contrast with everyone else in the world), and so they think they can perfectly understand the text apart from any outside influence, be it good or bad. The sad thing about this is that it is a subtle and devious form of pride.

But how can one break through the fog and help people see their error in this? I don’t know. These people have been shaped this way by factors in their lives that I could never determine or undo. There are aesthetic factors which, if we could pull these people away from, would cease influencing them in this direction. Polemically discursive news and talk shows, as well as Fundamentalist TV preachers, are central to this, but you can’t exactly change another person’s habits for them. When talking to people like this, I personally find I’m more on the listening end than the talking end, because it’s nearly impossible to get a word in. And certainly, God can break through to a person like this. I know my duty is to listen patiently, and to point out key errors like this as I have opportunity in such a way that the person feels respected and not rebuked or insulted. Beyond that, prayer, as well as the demonstration of a more humble approach to life, can do wonders in influencing others for the better. Change might not come as quick as we would like, but it will come as quickly as God wants, and as He is the only one who knows all, He knows what is best.

The Church is Full of Hypocrites...Or So They Say

One of the common reasons cited by people who don’t attend church as to why they don’t is, “the church is full of hypocrites”. It’s amazing how sayings like this get started and spread, just like urban legends do. I can’t help but wonder who the first person was to make this statement. And you can tell in each case that this wasn’t an original thought the person had, because it is always phrased in exactly the same way – “the church is full of hypocrites”. And to think Christians are the ones accused of being thoughtless in their adherence to certain beliefs.

There are a couple of responses I’ve found to this statement. The first is, “what better place is there for hypocrites to be?” This one might not fly with the average unbeliever, because they don’t really think the church is a good place to be, or else they’d be there themselves. Nonetheless, it’s a point well considered. If the church is the place to go if one wants to be cured of their sin, and hypocrisy really is a sin (as all sides seem to agree on), then hypocrites need to be in the church. One just can’t expect them to be cured of their hypocrisy overnight, however. Christians spend their whole lives being straightened out by God, and the thing isn’t completed until we die.

But there’s another response, and it gets more to the heart of what the person is implying when they make this statement. And that is to say, “There are hypocrites outside of the church, too.” What I find implied by the statement, “the church is full of hypocrites”, is two things. One is simply the idea that if Christians really believe what they say they believe, then they should live more in accordance with their beliefs than they do. This is a fair assessment. We North American Christians are doing a horrible job in the area of holiness, and the average unbeliever knows it, and has probably experienced it first hand on numerous occasions. Sometimes, this is simply that unbelievers think they know what holiness looks like, and when they see us failing to live up to what they believe our standards are, they think we are living hypocritically. This is true when it comes to things such as drinking alcohol, which, though certain Christian groups believe is sinful, actually is not. But these non-issues to the side, there are many areas in which we simply are failing to obey God, and we are failing miserably. This, despite their thoughts to the contrary, excuses no unbeliever for their failure to repent. When we all stand before God one day to give an account, all finger pointing will be dismissed outright as inadmissible. When God addresses me, he will hold me accountable for failing to demonstrate Christ to others. But He won’t dismiss anyone on that basis. All this considered, as John Calvin said, “We are all partly unbelievers until we die.” And since all sin exists because we fail to believe God, sin is inevitable. I believe God; therefore I seek to obey Him. But I struggle with unbelief, and therefore sometimes I sin.

But the other implication is that people outside of the church aren’t hypocrites. Just as everyone, both inside and outside the church, is at least partly an unbeliever, so everyone, both inside and outside of the church, is partly a hypocrite. Nobody ever lives 100% consistently with what they say they believe, and those who say they do are either self-deceived or outright liars. Inasmuch as we never know ourselves as well as we think we do, the former is probably the far more frequent occurrence. But hypocrisy is common in all people. Christian pastors preaching against adultery sometimes make the big mistake of sleeping with their secretaries (and hopefully are removed from office for it), and pagan relativists actually stop at red lights. Believers sometimes surf the web on company time when they know better, and non-Christians who believe it’s wrong to take illegal drugs sometimes give in to peer-pressure and find themselves at a party with a joint between their fingers. Hypocrisy is a common, everyday occurrence.

In conjunction to this, one gets the impression from unbelievers that those who don’t attend church are easier to get along with. I personally have found this, quite frankly, to be a load of, well, you-know-what (if you will pardon my brief departure from detached, scholarly discourse). Those who don’t attend church lie and steal. They cheat on their boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses. They are greedy, they abuse others, and they murder. In fact, they do every sin you can think of, and, from my experience, sin much more actively and freely than most every Christian I’ve known. To top it off, all these things create disharmony in their families and communities. Thus, to pretend that there is a world of non-believers out there just doing their own thing and not hurting anybody else is dishonest.

But back to the question of hypocrisy, why is it always applied to Christians, and rarely to non-Christians? Part of the reason is that Christians are so vocal in the so-called culture wars. And the liberal media has also done such good job demonizing Evangelicals that non-Christians act like we’re armed to the teeth and ready to start raiding houses at any moment. (In case you’re wondering, we aren’t.) Non-Christians are afraid that Christians are trying to take over society and enforce their moral standards on them. This is partly true, depending on which Christian group you’re talking about (some are trying to force morality, whereas some could care less what you do) and which moral standard you’re talking about. But those interested in enforcing Christian morality, so far as I know, are interested in doing so through legal methods. The point being that in such an atmosphere as this, where the church is pointing fingers at the unbelievers in the culture and trying to get them to “shape up”, the tendency by other believers is going to be to want to fire back with accusations. I, for one, would rather bring others to our side through persuasion than through hostile engagement.

Sometimes the person has had a bad church experience, as the increasing number of child abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church has shown us in recent years. To say this is understandable is an understatement. But I think if we were to ask around, we would find most everybody has had some sort of bad experience in the church, though some are much worse than others. The solution to this isn’t to escape the church for good, but rather to embrace it and seek to change it for the better. Once again, the world outside the church is full of hypocrites and wicked people, too.

But another reason why unbelievers respond this way is simply guilt. As Paul tells us in Romans 1, God has revealed Himself to all mankind and they have refused to serve Him. They see God in creation, refuse Him, and God gives them over to their sin. And so when unbelievers say things like this, it’s a smokescreen. It’s simply a way of masking their guilt. They know God calls them to obey Him, and by bringing up the church, we are simply putting before them the thing they’ve been running desperately from, and that’s God.

So, to you believers, don’t be afraid to engage a person when you meet a response like this. If you do, you’ll do the person a disservice by allowing their resistance to Christ to continue. Sure, there are plenty of hypocrites in the church. But, as true as this is, it excuses no one from repenting and trusting in Christ.

To those of you who would offer this as an excuse, you might put off the person who would share the gospel with you. But you aren’t fooling God. He calls you to repentance, and that for your own good. You can find salvation in Him – don’t resist Him.