They have treated My people’s brokenness superficially, claiming, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they acted so abhorrently? They weren’t at all ashamed. They can no longer feel humiliation. Therefore, they will fall among the fallen (Jeremiah 6:14-15, source Holman Christian Standard Bible 2003).

Our culture has disavowed shame as being always bad, and to be avoided. We seem to see shame as a false and invalid feeling. That weeping prophet Jeremiah describes our state more accurately.

Shame has been renounced. It has been forgotten. All feelings are equally valid in such thinking. The thinking is wrong. (Actually, it’s more accurately termed thinking avoidance.)

Shame can help us recognize our sin and need for a holy God.

That’s the problem. We don’t want that reminder.

Our lack of shame is probably a contributing reason Christ-Mass is more sentimental silliness (or brutal battles for meaningless merchandise) than reflection on the reason for the Incarnation: our relentless rebellion.

(Small church building in north Idaho near where my maternal grandfather’s body was laid to rest years ago)

December 21, 2011

Each year at this season my love for the language and meaning of the first chapter of John is renewed. The Word (Christ the Messiah) is described as being “full of grace and truth”. That phrase has me captured.

When it comes to balancing grace and truth, humans have a hard time. We go to one side or the other.

Truth often suffers as we wander off into realms of a “grace” that ignores or at least diminishes truth. Sometimes the quick rejoinder of “We are not under law now; we are under grace” carries an undercurrent: ”Don’t bring up any uncomfortable truth here”. It’s as if we don’t want to hear what the unchanging God of Truth has said about certain subjects.

Grace often suffers when we become so harshly devoted to the truth we shun or look down on those who don’t quite make our standards. Forgiveness wanes. Walls between congregations and between individuals are bricked into place. After all, my version of the truth is The Truth.

Years after His birth, He said He came to testify to the truth. Jesus was full of both grace and truth. He taught that one quality does not have to rise above or diminish the other.

Too bad we don’t listen better.

Some Tea Party and Republican individuals have said we cannot afford the time now to deal with social issues. They say it is immediately imperative to deal with the economic illness first. Then we’ll get to the secondary (by implication) moral issues.

I think they have it backwards.

We are surely in deep economic trouble because of our disregard for the Word of the Lord. (See Deuteronomy, toward the end of the book.) We have disregarded Him for so long that there’s nothing we could anticipate other than economic disaster. Moral issues cannot be separated from economic ones.

The truth is: We cannot afford the time to deal with economic issues until we repent of our rebellion against Almighty God and return to His ways. If we do not, then what we’ve seen so far is mild compared to the losses that are coming. Further, there is no other fix for the economic nightmare spawned by people who think man is god. Can you shake your fist in the face of the Almighty and expect his rich blessing?

Those who believe our main problem is economic do not understand the times nor the Almighty with Whom we will all deal sooner or later.

October 1, 2011

Earlier this year, we heard a lot of hoopla about the huge “spending cuts” our Congress and President were proposing. When I looked into it, my gizzard was stirred, and I wanted to write, but life intervenes, doesn’t it?

I have time now.

Why is it that when we hear pontification out of DC about spending cuts, that to which they refer is not a spending cut at all, but a reduction in the formerly proposed rate of increase? In other words, “we were proposing to grab more money at a rate of 6% over last year, but now it’s only 5%. Cheers everybody! We have just presented a spending cut!”

Congressional pats on the back all around, please!

The “spending cut” that was rolled out to the nation earlier this year, in somber, grandiose tones, was $38 Billion. To you and me, that sounds stupendous. Finally, they are doing something about this preposterous profligacy. Finally.

Wait a minute. The budget at that time was 3.5 Trillion. Trillion.

The interest on our debt was essentially the same figure. 3.5 Trillion.

I emphasize: Trillion.

We could spend our entire annual budget, to the last penny, on the interest on that debt! The entire debt would still be hanging on our necks (although “debt” itself is a deceptive term), and we’d also have no money. At all. For anything.

What fraction of the proposed budget of 3.5 Trillion is the Greatest Spending Cut in History of $38 Billion? Show of hands, please?

It’s 1%. And we were hearing that it’s the “largest cut in history”? What does that say about the way our Congress views responsible use of money? Not to mention that the “cut” was probably only a reduction in the size of the increase they wanted to slam down on the populace.

The 111th Congress added more debt in their 2 years of infamous existence than the first 100 Congresses did.

All. Put. Together.

(They even outdid the 110th Congress by more than double, which had, until then, held the ignominious record. I bet they aren’t happy about being eclipsed so soon.)

Two Hundred Years of debt accumulation outdone in just 24 months! How proud of themselves they must have been for such a staggering accomplishment. All for the Good of The People, of course.

And this midget 1% cut is historic?

Taken in perspective, it’s kind of like planting a sapling after having burned all the forests west of the Mississippi.

Extremism, along with its permutations, is a word tossed about with casual abandon and regularity today. It’s like all sides have read the memo dictating its use.

Muslim extremists

Right wing extremists

It’s a good word to minimize truth. It’s a good word to marginalize people and issues.

Are not Muslim “extremists” actually the truest Muslims? Are they not the ones most like their founder, Mohammed?

Constitutional “extremists”, like the ordinary citizens who have been drawn to the Tea Party movement (energized by one spontaneous speech during a nationally televised newscast), are the ones who believe the things the Founders and framers of the Constitution believed: Government should be strictly limited, and in this system, they govern by our permission.

Why is it that people who have conviction and adhere to the principles and ideas of the originators of their movements are called extremists? I think it’s because people don’t want to acknowledge the truth.

People are saying that those who believe we should live by the Constitution of these United States, with its very limited government, and that we should stick with the vision of the Founders, are extremists.

That’s akin to saying that people who think we should use only gasoline in gas engine cars are extremists.

There’s no need for me to multiply words here. The leaders and theologians of what’s quite possibly the most effective church in the land speak well enough.  Just believe what they themselves say. More eloquence and clarity would be hard to add. We right-wing round-the-bend rubes don’t need to foam at the mouth. Just take these clergy-types at their own word.

First to the podium is Charles Potter,  former honorary president of the National Education Association:

Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?

(Charles E. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion”, 1930)

I’ve said for a long time that every school is a religious institution. Looks like I’m not the only one who sees that.

Hear now from humanist John Dunphy:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being … The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing the classroom instead of the pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level – preschool day care or large state universities.

(The Humanist, Jan/Feb 1983)

He sees what many don’t see, that the issue of education is a battle for the future of mankind. Ideas have consequences. Neutrality is a myth, but it’s an effective one, because lots of people believe it.

Remember Benjamin Bloom, the “father” of outcome-based education?

By educational objectives, we mean explicit formulations of the ways in which students are expected to be changed by the educative process. That is, the ways in which they will change in their thinking, their feelings, and their actions.

(Taxonomy – Handbook I – pg. 26)

Just what is that humanist religion? Read from the Humanist Manifesto:

“Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modem science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values…. Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now…

“Religious humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human fife. The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and institutions with a view to the enhancement of human life is the purpose and program of humanism. Certainly religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, ecclesiastical methods, and communal activities must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows, in order to function effectively in the modern world.”

More could be added. These preachments are the proverbial surface scratches. The message is clear.

There’s an established religion in these United States. It’s been so for a long time. I think those who shrill the most loudly for “separation of church and state” don’t mean this church.

My worldview places the fellowship of believers-in-Christ – the church – as essential to life. I made a comment once on my desire to see church “done” differently. Someone asked me to elaborate. The elaboration follows. The first phrase that came to my mind, and which I said out loud when asked to elaborate, was: “It would be less safe”.

It would be more organic. It would be less oriented to principles and programs and more oriented to relationship, prayer, and waiting on the Spirit. It would be primarily a cell church. The life of the body is in the cell. The health of the body is only as healthy as the cells. The life of the church would be in the cell. The church is only as healthy as the cells. (If I were asked to strip away everything the church does, leaving only one thing, it would be – guess what? – the cells.) That is, small life-sharing groups.

Credit to: www.wallhighway.com

I think I’d have 3 to 12 men – elders, and my main task would be to spend time with them individually and corporately. This would be one of (eventually) many cells. The main agenda would be discipleship – the Word of God and prayer.

We’d be trying to understand and practice what it means to be a man, husband, father in our world. We’d be equipping them to carry out the God-given task of shepherding their families. Their primary elder task would be: find at least 3 and no more than 12 men and do the same thing, in their way and in keeping with their personality, schedule and gifts. Our elder meetings would be primarily for prayer, mutual encouragement, and reporting and sharing about how it’s going with their 3 to 12 men. (Jesus limited Himself to 12; why should we attempt more than that?)

We’d encourage families to bring into their homes, as much as practical, children of those who don’t have yet the advantage of parents who raise their kids for Jesus, and model Christian living.

Corporate gatherings would be along the lines of what has been called “open church” – open worship, open sharing, open ministry. It wouldn’t be an “audience” on Sunday mornings. We’d attempt to practice “the priesthood of the believer”. Spectator Christianity advocates wouldn’t be comfortable.

I Cor 14:26 – “When you come together, everyone has something to contribute: a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation, etc…” We’d try ways to enable that to happen. We’d quit depending so much on the up-fronters and a set (and too often depressingly predictable) program.

Acts 13:1 – “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul…’” Prayer would be a central focus, and so would getting direction from the Lord in prayer gatherings. It wouldn’t be just up to a small group of guys, although the elders I describe above would be very much involved in prayer as well. Some – maybe most – church decisions might come out of such extended and intentional prayer gatherings.

Eph 5:19-20 – “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs…” Tertullian (very early Christian guy) describes meetings he was in: “In our Christian meetings we have plenty of songs, verses, sentences, and proverbs. After hand-washing and bringing in the lights, each Christian is asked to stand forth and sing, as best he can, a hymn to God, either of his own composing, or one from the Holy Scriptures.”

I think if we did this for awhile we’d no longer have the challenge of finding a man courageous enough to talk to God, actually out loud, with other people around. You don’t produce “real men” by making them sit in rows and listen for 70 years. You do so by having them stand up and proclaim boldly what’s in their hearts and in the Word {among other things}!

There might be a different family group or individual (or more than one) each week who brought a special presentation – testimony, Scripture teaching, song (including original songs), poetry, ministry report, drama, home-made video – for the encouragement and edification of the people and praise to God. They would know at least a month ahead of time in order to prepare.

Everyone has at least one sermon in them, and I’d find ways for each person to share theirs – a “5-minute sermon” spot. Teaching could be generously passed around among the elders and other family heads as they matured.

There’d be times to share needs, not only for prayer, but also for practical response – maybe right there in that service or before the day is out. We’d ask God to help us find ways to get rid of as many “laymen” as we could by stretching them into speaking words of their own into the life of the church, and moving on from there – becoming ministers.

(Imagine a home where only the father is allowed to speak freely. In response, when directed, the mother and kids chant in unison. They can speak individually only when specifically permitted to do so. Why does the family of God function that way?)

My attempt to “do church” would seek to change that.

We are handing over our future – our safety – our livelihoods – our very existence – to our enemies. They must be laughing up their sleeves.

How did we attain this level of insanity?

financial-jihad–how-radical-islam–through-wall-street–threatens-americas-families-and-freedom#

It always befuddles me. People who have risen to the top, and gained much personally in so many ways, want to diminish or destroy the near-genius system of government which enabled them to do so well. Is there no wisdom in the streets? Well, on reflection, yes. There’s a lot of wisdom in the streets. Where it seems to have disappeared is in the hallowed halls of Washington. We have people ensconced who seem to have no regard for history and no understanding of human nature. I find that these quotes, and there are many others out there, speak very clearly to the present day’s insanity.

“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.” –John Marshall

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” –George Bernard Shaw

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. … Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve. But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another… Then abolish that law without delay; No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.” — classical liberal Claude Frederic Bastiat

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”  –Vladimir Lenin

“Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.” — Thomas Jefferson

Send your senator, your representative, your President, a copy of the United States Constitution and pray for daylight.

Illustration from Patriot Post

patriotpost.us

I sometimes read newspaper editorials. One by Mr. Leonard Pitts caught my “highly evolved” eye some time back; it’s been on a back burner ever since. In the article Mr. Pitts tried to make a case for allowing only science to speak in the broader culture on matters of our beginnings and how we got here. He stated that attempting to “undermine” the teaching of Darwin’s theory with any idea of intelligent design would be a step in a campaign to turn out “stupid kids”. In other words, kids taught to believe in origins of other than naturalistic evolution are stupid. We gotta keep things neutral; get that religion out of the classroom!

There are no neutral schools. Every educational institution is a religious one. It’s inescapable. Neutrality is a myth and is impossible. That is because the people running every school, college, or university have a belief in an ultimate authority: whether God, gods, the State, their own unapproachable brilliance, or whatever else. The only difference is what faith is being propounded. (I suspect the State and personal unapproachable brilliance are the main competitors to the God of the Universe. Poor hapless competitors.)

Mr. Pitts said Intelligent Design is a faith, which, in his opinion, means it must be banned from the classrooms of any but smart kids. Consider: evolutionism likewise is a faith. The beginnings of this universe are not repeatable. Not observable. No one alive was present in past eons when the worlds were formed and the species came into existence. So “science versus faith” is an invalid argument. They are both faith systems. However, scientific investigation can lead to evidence for the efficacy of either.

Real scientific inquiry is resulting in Darwinism falling out of favor. With scientists. Increasingly they are having to grapple with great holes, and with the shortcomings of Darwinism’s ability to explain really anything. Mr. Pitts regards Intelligent Design as “not science”. He must have been astounded at the news of Antony Flew, a prominent British philosopher who was considered the world’s best-known atheist, when he said the following: “My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species … [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.”

The whole foundation of science coming into being was the fact that men knew there was observable order in the universe, which would be the natural result of an Intelligent Person bringing it into existence. There is noticeable intricate order and design. Christendom was the birthplace of science, and provided fertile ground for its growth. How ironic that people working in that discipline now want to disallow the very root and ground for the existence of their calling.

Regarding the idea that educational systems recognizing Intelligent Design will produce “stupid kids”, can anyone, even a looney bin dweller, come up with a more stupid statement than this one by Dr. (notice – Doctor) Richard Lewontin, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University? “It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door” (Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 28). Aahh, now we are getting somewhere! We have reached the heights of intelligence! (Did you notice that we who hesitate to go along with a philosophy where you have to make up the facts and concepts as you go to fit the pre-determined conclusion are named “the uninitiated”? “Step right over here to be initiated into the ‘Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts, My Mind’s Made Up’ Club! You too, can excel in self-deception!”)

Let’s ponder: is  Lewontin’s pronouncement expressive of philosophy or of science? Please tell me. Quotes from committed Darwinists revealing similar presuppositions can be multiplied. (They are people of faith too, though I admit I’m a skeptic: I don’t possess the great squeeze-your-eyelids-hold-your-nose-and-take-a-leap faith it takes to swallow what they teach.)

• Which is more  “stupid”: to believe that the eye happened randomly over millions of years because of molecules in chaotic motion, or that Someone had understanding about light and prepared an organ to receive and process it? (In the first case, I wonder what those poor blind creatures did for eons, waiting for the beneficial mutations that would finally result in that very complex organ, so they could finally find a bite to eat. Or an eat to bite.)

• Which is more stupid: to notice design in all directions, and conclude there is a designer; or to decide ahead of time, as Lewontin does, that “there can’t be a designer because we have decided we don’t want to deal with one, and that settles that.” How scientific, Mr. Zoology Professor.

I don’t know if Lewontin went to school in Kansas, which is one place Mr. Pitts said is campaigning to turn out “stupid kids”. The statement, however, is one an educated fool might make. (A truly Intelligent Being wrote in His Book about people who “professing themselves wise, become as fools”.)

• Which is more stupid: to observe, record and report actual events in nature, or to glue dead peppered moths to trees to teach kids, in their biology books, an untruth that the “scientists” themselves know is untrue (otherwise they wouldn’t be making stuff up to “prove” their miserable point)? Once again, Science reigns supreme! Forgive me for not emitting loud cheers.

Just to be consistent in regard to Mr. Pitts’  feelings about “science” versus “faith”: It surely cannot be true that the article I read in the paper that morning was put together by any intelligent being. It had to develop over time by random movements of electrons in a word processor (which, by the way, had to come into existence by random molecular movement and beneficial mutation), because we can’t allow a “writer’s foot in the door”.

It’s exponentially much more likely that this very elemental thing happened (the writing of a brief article by random naturalistic matter-in-motion), than that the entire universe in which we live and which we are seeking to know came about by that same process. Get some random movement and mutation going, and eventually there you are: an editorial. Time is our friend. Oh shoot, let’s make it even easier. Throw in a monkey jumping on the keys, just to speed up the process! (There are deadlines, after all.)

A self-consciously committed Darwinist is compelled to believe that. Is he not? I’m a lot more inclined to give the God of the Universe credit for intelligence and the ability to design, than certain Possessors of Doctorates who seem to think design is only random at best.

Let’s hope those Kansas kids (and more) remain just stupid enough not to follow such anti-logic. I hope I’m that stupid, too.