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.

Hardware Mispronunciations, pt. 2

Here are a few more:

Roach Defoggers – roach foggers

Flexible Duck Hangers – flexible duct hangers (I know, the “t” in “duct” is almost silent, and so maybe this one isn’t legitimate. But the thought of “flexible ducks” is just too funny to pass by.)

Profane tanks – propane tanks

Stubs – studs

Cylinder blocks – cinder blocks

Masonite bits – masonry bits

Light Stick Department – fluorescent bulb department (?)

Racket – ratchet

Humourous – humus

Cow Compound – cow manure

Cadillac Converter – catalytic converter

Spastic Moss - Sphagnum Moss

Saliva Rocks – lava rocks

Spazling – spackling

Protane tanks – again, propane tanks…

Anglo-Catholicism and Homosexuality

While perusing David Virtue’s website last night, I ran across this essay discussing the link between Anglo-Catholicism and homosexuality. It originally appeared in the journal Victorian Studies, which is published by Indiana University Press. While the connection between Catholic practice (whether of the Roman or the English variety) and a more effete sensibility has been apparent to me for some time, I was surprised upon reading this essay at how explicit a connection there has been historically since the founding of the Tractarian movement. Anglo-Catholics might not like it, but the essay is well documented, and I think the author argues his point quite well.

There are a couple of caveats I would like to offer, however. Upon reading the article, one might be left with the idea that any interest in aesthetic matters and ritual automatically leads one towards homosexuality. On the contrary, men are often drawn towards ritual, and this has nothing to do with any latent or explicit homosexual tendencies. Rather, it is because ritual, when done right, conveys a sense of honor, or of nobility, or of respect. This, in the church setting, is usually described with the word “reverence”, though the word is more vague than we often recognize, and is sometimes used to describe a type of worship that I would prefer to call “dead”. What men long for is a sense of honor, and they will be drawn towards ritual that has that ethos about it. This is often implicitly acknowledged in our culture. When, for instance, was the last time you saw a military recruitment commercial on TV that used a Barbara Streisand song as background music? Or, for that matter, a Vineyard worship-style song? Men find in military ritual a sense of honor symbolically conveyed. This is also demonstrated in the vast ritual practices of predominantly male groups such as the Freemasons.

Also, one could read the essay and come away with a sense that the rise of homosexuality in Western culture was solely the result of the rise of Anglo-Catholicism. But sin is simply more complicated than that. Wherever there is a failure in a culture, the blame falls as much on the family as anywhere else, and primarily that on the failure of fathers to rule their homes in love. Nonetheless, the connection is clear, and Anglo-Catholicism is no doubt to blame for part of the problem.

I found the following advice, cited in the essay on page 23, which was taken from “an influential guide for Anglican confessors” to be worthy of some comment. When instructing confessors on how to deal with those who struggle with homosexuality, the guide states that the “only treatment lies in the strengthening of the will to resist temptation.” But how does one strengthen his will? Unfortunately, we don’t have the context of the statement with which to clarify it. Nonetheless, I think it is telling. So often, in dealing with any sort of temptation, we think, on the basis of supposedly reliable counsel, that this is the way to go about it – just pull yourself together, and everything will be okay. Anyone who has tried to follow this advice knows how fruitless it is. And if what the manual means is that one must flee temptation, as Scripture puts it, then that is true enough. But there are a couple of other indispensable things one must do in order to flee temptation. One is simply the worship of the Triune God. When Paul, in Romans 1, discusses the descent of humanity into sin, he points out to us that it began with a failure to worship God and to give God the glory. All the other sins that Paul lists were merely derivative of these twin failures. So if one wishes to avoid any sin, he must begin by worshipping God and actively giving Him glory. The other solution to temptation is simply the right use of the thing we’ve been misusing. In the case of sexual temptation, the solution to sexual perversion is sexual activity as God intended it within the confines of marriage. While there are sins for which the solution is simply self-deprivation from the thing we are misusing (drug addiction, for instance), things don’t “not exist”, and neither can we. If we must remove something illicit from our lives, we have to replace it with something licit. If we don’t, we will inevitably replace it with another illicit thing. Both means of dealing with temptation are a latent admission of our non-independence, the admission of which John Donne made when he said, “no man is an island”. We are creatures of God, and as such are dependent primarily on Him. But we are also dependent on other of His creatures as vehicles of His grace, whether it be food for nourishment or spouses for procreation – or, for that matter, either one simply for the enjoyment of life. Such is idolatry only when they are enjoyed outside of the boundaries the Creator has set for them.

Hardware Mispronunciations, pt. 1

Several years back, I went to work for a small, family-owned hardware store, where I worked for about a year and a half. For a long time before my going to work there, they had been keeping a list of mispronunciations of products asked for by customers who came into the store, plus mispronunciations of other related things. I had the privilege of adding to that list during my time there. Some of them are downright hilarious, whereas some are just weird. I’ve been planning to post some of those on occasion, and here are the first few of them. Enjoy.

Strews and boats – screws and bolts (this one was rather common)

Dog change – dog chain

Exceptional – receptacle

Garden tilter – garden tiller

Benolia – linoleum

Scream wire – screen wire

Chalking – caulking

Tile gout – tile grout

Crematic tile – ceramic tile

Scrubbery – shrubbery

Manantha paint – enamel paint

Rockwilder – Rottweiler

Tweedle nose pliers – Needle nose pliers

Potty soil – potting soil

Collard pins – cotter pins

Ron Paul, on baseball and Congress

I do believe that if the Democrats and the Republicans played more baseball and legislated a lot less, the country would be much better off. I am convinced the annual baseball game played by the Republicans and the Democrats must be considered one of the most productive events in which the Members of Congress participate.

-- The Honorable Ron Paul, before the House of Representatives, September 19, 1984

Idolatry takes many forms, #1

Liberals hate conservatives and conservatives hate liberals, and that makes both feel good about themselves.

-- Richard John Neuhaus

Leftist Consumerism #2

Our local Barnes and Noble stores have Starbucks Coffee shops in them, and as a coffee addict, I’ve been known to get a cup of coffee or two while perusing the shelves. It has increasingly been a struggle, however, as I’ve become aware of Starbucks’ involvement in some less than honorable social practices. Starbucks, I've learned, is notoriously sympathetic to the extreme Left. The newspapers they sell are leftist in their ideology. Starbucks has been known to support gay pride parades and other aspects of the homosexual agenda. And chances are slim that, among the CD’s they sell in their stores, you’ll find Handel’s Messiah or contemporary Christian artists like Third Day. Artists known for their anti-Christian lyrics, like Dave Matthews, however, are there in abundance.

But, knowing all of this, I was still surprised to discover the messages they’ve been printing on their cups and the ideas they were promoting through them. How, as a reader, I have never read what’s on the cup of coffee they give you, I don’t know.

My co-worker had stopped by Starbucks on the way to work the other morning, and she had bought latte’s for both of us. And so the day was starting well until I read this:

The Way I See It # 247

Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.

- Bill Scheel, Starbucks customer from London, Ontario. He describes himself as a “modern day nobody.”

I was surprised. I couldn’t believe that Starbucks would be so brazen in publishing an attack on Christianity like this. And if I were Mr. Scheel, I personally wouldn’t want my ignorance spread throughout the world like this. To assume that faith in God is contrary to being consistently cognitive is to reveal a lack of knowledge of the Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition. Many have come to faith in Christ simply because of the historical evidence and Christianity’s logical coherence. In fact, Christianity is a religion built on the verity of historical claims. And to assume that we have the ability to inside ourselves apart from God to overcome difficulties is to assert quite a bit of over self-confidence, which many a dead humanist could testify against, could they communicate with us.

My co-worker was as shocked as I was, so we were intrigued to find the quote on her cup:

The Way I See It # 250

In reality, hell is not such an intention of God as it is an invention of man. God is love and people are precious. Authentic truth is not so much taught or learned as it is remembered. Somewhere in your pre-incarnate consciousness you were loved absolutely because you were. Loved absolutely, and in reality, you still are! Remember who you are!

- Bishop Carlton Pearson
Author, speaker, spiritual leader and recording artist

I’ve heard of Pearson before, but knew nothing about him. According to his website, he is promoting a “gospel of inclusion”, which is just a modern way of saying that all those passages in the Scripture that teach a literal Hell to which all the unrepentant will be sent when they die are simply untrue. Historically this has been called Universalism, and historic Christianity has, for the most part, rejected it as heresy. In fact, Pearson’s website notes that his viewpoint on Hell has been deemed by his Pentecostal colleagues to be heretical.

Pearson seems to have other errors besides this one, as indicated by this quote from his website:

" Since we came from God, we are made of the same substance as Divinity. "

Yet Scripture says Adam was a created being, made of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). And while God gave Adam life, to say that we, who are descended from Adam, are made of the same substance as Divinity, is to claim something contradicted by Scripture. God repeatedly sets himself apart from man throughout Scripture as a unique being and reminds us that we aren’t Him, but are rather created by Him. This statement instead sounds like the sort of statement one finds in Eastern philosophy, the kind that Pearson seems so intent on merging with Christianity, as he understands (or misunderstands) it.

I have a hard time understanding how one can say hell is “an invention of man” when God clearly teaches us this through His word. And if truth isn’t taught, then why does Pearson bother to teach? And what “pre-incarnate consciousness” is he talking about? This is something that is nowhere found in Scripture. There is no “pre-incarnate consciousness”. Eastern philosophy teaches this; Christianity does not.

But this is clever on the part of Starbucks. Find a guy wearing a clerical shirt who calls himself a Bishop and masquerades as a Christian minister and put a quote by him that clearly contradicts Christian teaching on your cups.

So am I suggesting, as Evangelicals often do, that we should boycott Starbucks or Barnes and Noble? No, not exactly. History has proven that boycotts accomplish little. Evangelical Christians from the ‘80’s through today have tried to power corporations into submission through boycotts, and it has proven largely ineffective. I’m not saying that you as an individual might not want to take your business elsewhere. As I said, it’s a struggle for me. I do regard the two companies as different, however. With Barnes and Noble, the increase of purchases of books and magazines that promote a more Biblical worldview might cause B & N to increase the prominence of better books on displays and on shelves. Ron Paul’s book might just make it onto the “In the Media” display, for instance. With Starbucks, however, it’s different. There’s no such thing as Christian coffee. They don’t provide a better choice when it comes to newspapers, and I doubt they’ll be sponsoring majoring Christian events any time soon. And while I like a lot of the music they sell, and wouldn’t have a problem buying it (somewhere else, that is), they are promoting a worldview that is the problem. You the consumer have to make your own decision on these things.

There is a bigger issue here, though. How do we as Christians change society? It isn’t through boycotts. As Paul spoke of the Jews, “For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24). And the same is true today. If those who aren’t God’s people speak ill of God, it is because of a failure on the part of God’s people. If we fail to worship God properly, if we fail to give him the glory and praise He is due, if we fail to show love and mercy as he does, and if we fail to live holy lives, then we will continue to fail to influence society for the better. If, however, we begin to do these things, God will honor our deeds, and blogs like this one won’t need to be written any more.

Leftist Consumerism #1

A friend of mine gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card a couple of weeks back that’s been burning a hole in my pocket, so I got the notion in my head yesterday that I needed to use it to buy Ron Paul’s book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom. I was surprised when looking on the B & N website, however, to find that they didn’t have any in stock. This is a major Republican presidential candidate for the ’08 election who has published a book this year, and they didn’t have it in stock. How strange. “Could it be that they sold all their copies immediately upon Paul’s win in the debate last week?” I thought to myself. There’s no way of knowing, I guess.

So I visited Amazon.com out of curiosity. Not only did they not have any listed in stock, they didn’t even show they could order new copies. And so the story gets weirder.

I was going to be out near one of the local B & N’s, so I thought I’d stop by and see if they had any of them. And sure enough, back in the corner in the “Politics” section they had two copies.

But what surprised me the most met me as I was walking up to the checkout. It was a display table in the middle of the aisle marked “In the Media” (which it was quite literally. But I digress). And what was on that table? Obama? Yes. Hillary? Of course. Ron Paul? Noticeably absent.

Is this how you spell the word “bias”?

If you want to buy the book, you can get it here. They’re actually interested in selling it, and I imagine they won’t have to special order it for you.

Ron Paul, the GOP's black sheep

I was amazed this evening as I was watching Hannity & Colmes at how quickly Sean Hannity dismissed Ron Paul’s decisive win at the GOP debate the other night. Anybody have any ideas why so-called conservatives are so quick to dismiss Paul? Is it because these so-called conservatives are really about big-spending and centralism and Paul isn’t?

For those of you familiar with the Constitution Party, you might find the comments on their website about Paul interesting.

Pick your method of indoctrination

ABC Family, that cable station that barely shows anything suitable for a family to watch, has showed The Sound of Music several times over the past couple of days. Aside from the songs carrying some seriously humanistic messages (“I have confidence in me”, “Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good”) I like the movie. I blame it on repeated watchings through middle and high school chorus classes. Just don’t tell any of my male friends that I like it, okay?

It’s rather interesting timing, coinciding with the beginning of the government school year as it has. Did somebody mention fascism? Oh, right, I did. Good thing we don’t deal with that in the U.S. today. (That’s sarcasm, folks.) In case anyone was wondering, the Von Trapp children were homeschooled. (That’s not sarcasm.)

I had forgotten the repeated line of Herr Zeller, Hitler’s lackey – “Nothing has changed in Austria.” Shades of Animal Farm. Orwell certainly knew what he was talking about.

You know the sad thing about channels like ABC Family? They might show a good movie occasionally like The Sound of Music. But if I had a family, I couldn’t let them watch the channel simply because of the commercials. I don’t feel so good about watching them myself.

“I must have done something good” – or was that, “I must have done some supererogatory works”? You know, the Roman Catholic theme is beginning to become clear…

Scriptural Speculations 3: The Heavenly Boaz

When one comes to a conviction that the Eucharist plays a more central role in the worship of the church than is typically practiced in Evangelicalism, it’s amazing how frequent one finds bread and wine together throughout Scripture. In a singles’ group I’ve been attending on Sunday evenings, we recently finished up a study of the Book of Ruth. But the relationship of the following verse to the Eucharist didn’t occur to me until the other day:

And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. (Ruth 2:14)

In the context, Ruth has gone to glean in Boaz’s field in order to provide for herself and Naomi. After working through the morning, the workers have broken for lunch. Boaz wasn’t required to provide for her lunch too, only to allow her to glean after his field hands. But he not only tells her not to go to any other field to glean (2:8-9), but he also calls her to sit and feast among his servants, in essence treating her better than her status as a poor person of the land would dictate. The similarity with James’s instructions on loving one’s neighbor (James 1:27 – 2:17, as well as other verses in James’s epistle), not to mention Jesus parable of the wedding feast (Luke 14:7-11) should not go unnoticed.

But in addition to this is the appearance of bread and wine in the passage. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, we shouldn’t suppose that he was starting all over with elements that had never been seen in the history of Israel before. God not only foreordained the appearance of these things in the history of Israel, but allowed them to appear in the Hebrew Scriptures for all to see.

The last phrase in the verse also signals us to Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand (Mt. 14:13-21; Mk. 6:30-44; Lk. 9:10-17; Jn. 6:1-13) and the feeding of the four thousand (Mt. 15:32-38; Mk. 8:1-10). The fact that the crowds, like Ruth, are described as being “satisfied”, as well as the comment that in each case there was food left over, suggests not only that the Gospel writers were intending to point out the parallel with Ruth’s situation, but that God Himself intended the similarities.

We might also note the number of baskets of food left in each case. In the feeding of the five thousand, there were twelve baskets left, no doubt pointing to the twelve tribes of Israel. In the feeding of the four thousand, there were seven baskets left, no doubt pointing to the seven day week God had instituted in the creation, and specifically to the Sabbath rest God had given to the world and which he had especially given to Israel. Incidentally (or Providentially), when one adds the one ephah of barley that Ruth gleaned in ch. 2 (vs. 17) with the six “measures” (presumably also ephahs, as the word describing the measurement is absent in the Hebrew) of barley that Boaz gives her in ch. 3 (vs. 15), we find that Ruth gains seven measures of barley from Boaz.

“But there is no wine at the feeding of the five thousand, or at the feeding of the four thousand,” you might be thinking. True enough, and that’s why Jesus’ discourse on being the bread of Heaven (John 6:22-71) is so important. This takes place the day after Jesus fed the five thousand (Jn. 6:22). Jesus criticizes the people for seeking Him only because he fed them and not because He can give them eternal life. But most significant for our discussion is that Jesus, toward the end of his discourse, tells the people that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life (Jn. 6:53-56). In that our Lord referred to the cup as his blood in the institution of the Supper, we can be assured that his words here are meant not only to point back to Old Testament passages like the one we find in Ruth, but also forward to his institution of the Supper.

As Boaz became the bridegroom of Ruth, so Jesus came as the Bridegroom of his New Israel (also in John, 3:29). And just as Boaz called Ruth to feast with him, so our Boaz calls us to feast with Him.

Greek Festival

For those of you who live in the Greensboro, NC area, the Greek Festival at the Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church will be Friday September 14th through Sunday September 16th. For specific times, see the church website here. It’s a great time of becoming acquainted with various aspects of Greek culture – food, music, dancing, art, and worship. As one who believes that American culture is fairly vacuous in comparison to older traditional cultures like that of the Greeks, I have often found the beauty of Greek culture to create a measure of jealousy in me, such that I understand why a Protestant might jump ship and head to the Orthodox Church. (Yet the truth of Scripture has kept me from making such a leap.) So check it out, and be sure to take the tour of the church while you’re there.

In honor of the festival, let me share one of my favourite prayers from A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers. It is entitled “Prayer for the Acceptance of God’s Will”, and is attributed to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow:

O LORD, I know not what to ask of thee. Thou alone knowest what are my true needs. Thou lovest me more than I myself know how to love. Help me to see my real needs which are concealed from me. I dare not ask either a cross or consolation. I can only wait on thee. My heart is open to thee. Visit and help me, for thy great mercy’s sake. Strike me and heal me, cast me down and raise me up. I worship in silence thy holy will and thine inscrutable ways. I offer myself as a sacrifice to thee. I put all my trust in thee. I have no other desire than to fulfil thy will. Teach me how to pray. Pray thou thyself in me. Amen.

Politically Incorrect Guides

I’ve talked to a handful of people recently who have been reading some of the books from the Politically Incorrect Guide series. While I haven’t looked at any of them myself, the reviews I’ve heard have been more than favourable. So I was quite glad when last night on Book TV on C-Span 2 I discovered presentations from two of the authors from that series. The first was from Elizabeth Kantor, the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, and the second was from Carrie Lukas, the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism. Both talks were sponsored by The Eagle Forum, a conservative pro-family group I had not heard of before. And both talks were very interesting and informative, not to mention being a nice contrast from the liberal indoctrination and otherwise unintelligent babble found on TV. Ms. Kantor’s talk is free for the viewing on Book TV’s website, so I highly encourage any and all to watch it. It doesn’t appear that Ms. Lukas’s talk is up yet, but it may be added in the future, so keep your eyes open for it. Those of you who take a special interest in women’s issues will find Ms. Kantor’s talk as informative on these matters as Ms. Lukas’s, as Ms. Kantor briefly addressed the view of women in Western thought as it has been historically expressed in Western Literature.

There was also a presentation this evening by Christopher Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. I haven’t watched that one yet, but here’s the page for those interested.

St. Jerome on Apostolic Succession

While surfing the net a couple of months back I found this interesting quote on the website of New Life Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Midland, Texas. As you’ll see, it is a quote from St. Jerome on the matter of the Apostolic Succession of Bishops. It is quite revealing, as Jerome here argues against the idea that, since the founding of the church, bishops have been ordained by other bishops as set apart from presbyters or priests – in other words, that the bishopric is an entirely separate office from the presbytery, and that the presbytery is derived from the bishopric, rather than the other way around. And this from the guy who translated the Latin Vulgate. It’s a wonder he ever became a saint and a church father.

We read in Isaiah the words, "the fool will speak folly," and I am told that some one has been mad enough to put deacons before presbyters, that is, before bishops. For when the apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops, must not a mere server of tables and of widows be insane to set himself up arrogantly over men through whose prayers the body and blood of Christ are produced? Do you ask for proof of what I say? Listen to this passage: "Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons." Do you wish for another instance? In the Acts of the Apostles Paul thus speaks to the priests of a single church: "Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." And lest any should in a spirit of contention argue that there must then have been more bishops than one in a single church, there is the following passage which clearly proves a bishop and a presbyter to be the same. Writing to Titus the apostle says: "For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain presbyters in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God." And to Timothy he says: "Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." Peter also says in his first epistle: "The presbyters which are among you I exhort, who am your fellow-presbyter and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: feed the flock of Christ' ... taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly, according unto God." In the Greek the meaning is still plainer, for the word used is episkopountes, that is to say, overseeing, and this is the origin of the name overseer or bishop. But perhaps the testimony of these great men seems to you insufficient. If so, then listen to the blast of the gospel trumpet, that son of thunder, the disciple whom Jesus loved and who reclining on the Saviour's breast drank in the waters of sound doctrine. One of his letters begins thus: "The presbyter unto the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth; " and another thus: "The presbyter unto the well-beloved Gains whom I love in the truth." When subsequently one presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest, this was done to remedy schism and to prevent each individual from rending the church of Christ by drawing it to himself. For even at Alexandria from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves and set in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one of themselves whom they know to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what function excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter? It is not the case that there is one church at Rome and another in all the world beside. Gaul and Britain, Africa and Persia, India and the East worship one Christ and observe one rule of truth. If you ask for authority, the world outweighs its capital. Wherever there is a bishop, whether it be at Rome or at Engubium, whether it be at Constantinople or at Rhegium, whether it be at Alexandria or at Zoan, his dignity is one and his priesthood is one. Neither the command of wealth nor the lowliness of poverty makes him more a bishop or less a bishop. All alike are successors of the apostles.

St. Jerome to Evangelus, Letter 146 - http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm

A couple of websites, in my absence

I’ve had little time for blogging as of late, so thank you to those of you who continue to visit. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some more writing before too long. For now, here’s a couple of my favourite websites, in case you want to check them out.

Issues Etc. is a radio show that airs on KFUO am in Missouri. It’s hosted by Todd Wilkins, a minister in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. (Some of you might know it’s former host better – Don Matzat, author, LCMS minister, and sometime Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals board member.) Wilkins & co. address theological issues, as well as a host of cultural and political issues from a Lutheran perspective, and they interview a wide variety of guests along the way. They air four times a week live, with the Sunday evening show being syndicated (so it might even air on one of your local Christian stations). And they archive everything they do, so if you miss it, you can go back and listen to it later. I’ve been listening to it when I’ve been eating or just bopping around the house doing various things. It’s quite enjoyable, and it’s one way for me to catch up with the latest national and international news that really is worth hearing about without turning on the idiot box and filtering through all the garbage. Among the recent topics, I think my favourite was Wilkins & co.'s visit to Joel Osteen's church (July 17).

And for something on the humorous end of things, not to mention politically incorrect, check out Engrish.com.

Martyrdom

When Christ calls a man, he bids that man to come and die.

-- World War II martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The latest issue of Christianity Today features a short article (less than a page long) on the martyrdom last April of three Christians in Malatya, Turkey. German missionary Tilmann Geske, local pastor Necati Aydin, and former Muslim Ugur Yuksel were assaulted, tortured, and murdered by a group of Muslims. The article, interspersed with several verses of Scripture about the necessity of a Christian’s suffering for his faith, was well written and inspiring.

Nonetheless, there’s one problem I have with it. It cleaned up the facts of exactly what happened in the death of these men. The article says that they were tied to chairs, “stabbed…slowly and deliberately”, and that then their throats were slit. This is all true, but the most gruesome details were left out. Here they are, for those with the stomach for them:

[Details of the torture–
* Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur’s stabs were too numerous to count. They were disemboweled, and their intestines sliced up in front of their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were destroyed. Fingers were chopped off, their noses and mouths and anuses were sliced open. Possibly the worst part was watching as their brothers were likewise tortured. Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, heads practically decapitated.]

A fair bit more than what CT presented, isn’t it? The question I’m asking is this – why leave out the details? They would offend some, certainly. And maybe the reason why CT’s writer (whose name is not with the article) would leave out the details is the same reason I would signal my reader in advance that they are about to read something that not all can handle. But why not signal the reader just as I did? It could just be that the writer was attempting to present the facts in a narrative fashion, and including such details would have seemed out of place. I suspect, however, that something else is going on here.

Let’s be frank here. Most American Evangelicals are pansies. We walk into our Christian Junk Stores and the hallucinogenic smell of perfumed satchels with Scripture verses emblazoned on them waft into our nostrils while we fill up our baskets with the latest cheesy Christian t-shirts and plastic inspirational dust catchers. Somehow, we aren’t any holier for all of it, and I can’t help but think that it does more to separate us from the heart of our faith than anything.

On the other hand, we live in an extremely violent culture. I’m more amazed each day at the lengths that TV shows will go to as they push the edges of accepted decency. This is especially true on the 24 hour a day news channels, where they seem to compete constantly over who can create the greatest sense of excitement and thereby deceive you into believing that what they are really presenting to you is “news”. Every time they say, “What we are about to show you may offend some,” they know there ratings are about to go up, which is really what it’s all about for them.

Christians watch these shows, and so violence is nothing new for them. And it’s also true with movies. I’d dare say most Evangelicals have seen Braveheart, and so, while Wallace’s torture and death scene was not very explicit, the rest of the movie was. On top of this, most people probably know something of the historic practice of drawing and quartering. And for those who haven’t seen Braveheart, most certainly have seen Mel Gibson’s more recent film, The Passion of the Christ.

This leads us back to the history of martyrdom in the church. Anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time in the Evangelical church, I would think, would know something about martyrdom. Sadly, the presentations I’ve met with having grown up in the church have often been sanitized. Hearing about those who were martyred generally involves the following: the person is captured and killed, end of story. To mention that they were tortured was an extra step that was usually left out. But, once again, those who are martyred usually suffer much, much more.

And so I see the church’s treatment of martyrdom, and of violence in general, to be somewhat contradictory. We’ll watch it on TV or in the movies, where we’re able to view it from a distance. We can remain uninvolved and unaffected. This way, we can say we’re addressing it without there being any cost to us.

But the heart of the Christian faith is entirely different than what we often treat it as being. N. T. Wright addresses this in his book What Saint Paul Really Said:

It is an obvious truism to say that the cross stands at the heart of Paul’s whole theology… We are in danger of being lulled by this constant refrain [of the importance of the cross] into insensibility to what Paul was actually saying – and, equally importantly, was heard to be saying in the world of his day. Crucifixes regularly appear as jewellery in today’s post- Christian Western world, and the wearers are often blissfully unaware that their pretty ornament depicts the ancient equivalent, all in one, of the hangman’s noose, the electric chair, the thumbscrew, and the rack. Or, to be more precise, something which combined all four but went far beyond them; crucifixion was such an utterly horrible thing that the very word was usually avoided in polite Roman society. Every time Paul spoke of it – especially when he spoke in the same breath of salvation, love, grace and freedom – he and his hearers must have been conscious of the slap in the face thereby administered to their normal expectations and sensibilities. Somehow, we need to remind ourselves of this every time Paul mentions Jesus’ death, especially the mode of that death.

Paul, as did the other writers of Scripture, recognized that there are far more important questions than whether or not our sensibilities are offended. The more I’ve read Scripture over the past couple of years, the more it has occurred to me how often the faithful men and women of Scripture went out of their way to offend people. Certainly, it was never being offensive simply to offend, or as an attempt to control and manipulate others (say, in the way the marketers of Christian merchandise attempt to do). Rather, it was to bring to light the evils of sin and to lead to salvation. Nonetheless, they were offensive, and Scripture presents this as being something worth doing at times in order to accomplish God’s will. As Paul himself tells us in 1 Corinthians, the cross itself is an offense.

In American Christianity, we have a hard time imagining that following Christ could include such commitment or result in so gruesome a death. But for those who through the centuries have sought to obey God’s word, this has often been their end. One of the most violent deaths in the history of the church that I know of is that of the Scottish Covenanter martyr, David Hackston. Hackston stood with the Covenanters and fought against the king’s dragoons during the Killing Times of the 17th century. After a time of resistance, he was captured and carried to Edinburgh, where he received his sentence:

That his body be drawn backward on a hurdle to the Cross of Edinburgh; that there be a high scaffold erected a little above the cross, where in the first place his right hand is to be struck off, and after some time his left hand; that he is to be hanged up and cut down alive, his bowels to be taken out, and his heart to be shown by the hangman to the people; then his heart and his bowels to be burned in a fire prepared for that purpose on the scaffold; that afterward his head be cut off, and his body divided into four quarter, his head to be fixed on the Netherbow, one of his quarters with both his hands to be affixed at St. Andrews, another quarter at Glasgow, a third at Leith, a fourth at Burntisland; that none presume to be in mourning for him, nor any coffin brought; that no person be suffered to be on the scaffold with him save the two ballies, the executioner and his servants; that he be allowed to pray to God almighty, but not to speak to the people; that the heads of [Richard] Cameron and [John] Fowler be affixed on the Netherbow; that Hackston’s and Cameron’s heads be affixed on higher poles than the rest.

Jock Purves, from whose book Fair Sunshine I am taking this account, goes on to describe the execution:

Already dying from his ghastly wounds, he was led away to suffer. While great crowds looked on, there was done upon him by the hangman a gross, painful barbarity not mentioned in his sentence. Then he endured with firmness and patience the cutting off of his hands, but, the hangman having taken such a long time to hack off his right hand, he asked that his left hand might be taken off at the joint, which was done. With a pulley he was then pulled to the top of the gallows, and when choked a little was let down alive. The hangman then with a sharp knife opened his breast, and putting in his hand pulled out his heart. It fell upon the scaffold and moved there. The hangman picked it up on the point of his knife, and, carrying it around the scaffold, he showed it to the people saying, ‘Here is the heart of a traitor.’ Patrick Walker says that it fluttered upon the knife. The rest of the sentence was duly carried out. The free grace of God was glorified in David Hackston, so that whoever thinks of him must think of his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, too.

The most amazing thing is why the Covenanters died. They opposed the King’s attempts to require certain worship practices and a certain form of government in the church. These died horrible deaths over Sunday worship and church government, and we have a hard time getting out of bed to go to church anywhere on Sunday morning. We are a sad lot.

But are the details in describing a martyrdom really necessary? Certainly, not every detail needs to always be shared. Even in Purves’ account, he speaks of a “barbarity” that he declines to mention more specifically. And one can also either grow numb to the violence through excessive exposure, such as is caused by violent entertainment, or simply grow to delight in it, which is a horrible thing in itself. Nonetheless, to always refuse to speak of the details is to ignore the fact that following Christ is to “participate in his sufferings”. Christ suffered because there is sin in this world, and we will suffer in some small measure in Christ’s name for the same reason. The details remind us that we are still in a sinful world, a world that is yet to reach the fullness of redemption. We can rest assured, however, that this redemption will come, as it was accomplished through the suffering of the God-Man, Jesus Christ our Lord.

George Grant on the Call to Dominion

We are not to stop with simply telling the nations that Jesus died for the sinner’s sins. We are to demonstrate Christ’s lordship in our families, in our churches, in our work, in our communities, and in our cultures. We’re to make disciples who will obey everything that He commanded, not just in the hazy zone of piety, but in the totality of life. This is the thrust of the Great Commission. It is the spiritual, emotional, and cultural mandate to win all things in the name of Jesus. And though we know that only Christ Himself can fulfill that mandate in its entirety at the close of history, our duty is but to trust and obey. We are to occupy until He comes. The tendency of modern Christians to sidestep all of the implications of the Great Commission except soul-saving has, in stark contrast, paved the way for inhuman humanism’s program to afflict the helpless and crush our liberties and despoil our culture. We tend to be very quick to point the finger, and say, “Oh, woe is Washington! Oh, woe is Hollywood!” – when, in fact, it is our unbelief, our refusal to actually believe that God expects, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” to be answered in the affirmative. We have reduced the Gospel to snatching a few brands from the flickering flames of perdition and, as a result, virtually all Christian influence has been removed from the world. There is little or nothing to restrain the ambitions of evil men and movements. It is no wonder then that whole cultures, whole nation states, set themselves to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God’s counsel goes unheard and unheeded because we don’t really believe that Jesus is Lord.

- George Grant, from a lecture entitled “Ruling All the Earth”, given at the Highlands Study Center conference, “For the Beauty of the Earth”, April 2, 2004.