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As a Christian are you bored? There should be some things that bore you, but are you bored by the right things?

Activists for Christian aid charity World Vision, wearing masks of G8 leaders, carry fake sacks of money in their recreation of “The Italian Job” in Rome July 6, 2009. The leaders of G8 and G5 countries will attend a summit in L’Aquila July 8-10. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/topnews/picture?channelId=5003&currentPic=23&picId=10760156

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out,” that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. Acts 3:19

Our God is so gracious that even after we have rebelled against him, he not only wipes out our sins, but he also goes on to give us times of refreshing. Now this phrase, “times of refreshing,” encompasses quite a bit, including the return of our Lord, but it also seems to include a sense of spiritual refreshment that comes to the individual believer. Think back to when you first came to know the Lord. The burden of your sins were heavy upon you as you felt the curse and judgment they demanded. Then someone pointed you to Christ, and through faith, your sins were washed away. Then, do you remember what followed? Do you remember being refreshed as the Joy of the Lord became your strength? The world was just a little brighter, the mountains where a bit more majestic, and the burdens of the world seemed lighter, because you knew nothing could separate you from his love.

What we experienced during these times was the Holy Spirit’s work, as he bore witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16). As Paul told us, even if the outward man is perishing, the inward man is being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16), because even in this fallen world, the Spirit has been given to us as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come (2 Cor. 5:5). As he works in our life, our spirits our refreshed knowing that our sins can no longer condemn us because of Christ’s work, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever when this life is through.

There are, however, times in the believer’s life when this refreshing may fade. If we begin to turn our focus to the things of this world, whether its vanities or trials, there is an intimacy with Christ that can be lost; much like when Peter was walking on the water and turned his eyes away from Jesus. Maybe you are finding yourself in that place right now. Something has caught your eye that is luring you away from the Lord, and seeking first the kingdom of God is no longer your main desire. Maybe the straight and narrow is not as appealing to you anymore because some lesser light has stole your heart as it offers you more than it can actually provide. The problem with this is that you are being tempted by your own evil desires, and when it is conceived it will give birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown gives birth to death (James 1:15). As this process is taking place the Holy Spirit grieves within you, and there can be a dimness that can come back to your eyes as you once again try to shoulder the weight of this world without Christ’s abiding presence. So much so, that at times you can begin to wonder if you were ever a child of God to begin with.

It is at this point, that the enemy begins to mock you for taking the bait, and begins to tell you that you’ve gone too far and that you have never been his child. But the Spirit of God, who has never left you, has many ways of stirring you to remembrance of the times of refreshing you once had. He does this for at least two reasons, first to remind you that you are his child and give you strength as you deal with the sin in which you now find yourself entangled, and second, to call you to repentance, because the times of refreshing can be experienced again.

If you find yourself in this situation, and the joy of your salvation has been eclipsed by the cares and sins of this life, remember the times you once had with your Savior. By doing so you can be confirmed that you are his child, and you will hear the call to repentance saying, come back to your First Love, and as you “draw near to me and I will draw near to you” (James 4:8). And if you have never come to Christ for the forgiveness of sins, you too can have your sins wiped out, that times of refreshing may come.

Doug Eaton

What in the World is a Sacrament? (Audio) Click link

The two Sacraments are Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, or Communion. But the interpretations of these two great events can differ wildly even within the orthodox Evangelical environment. Is anything “spiritual” actually happening when we come together for Communion? Does “Do this in remembrance of me.”, imply that the ritual can be reduced to a mere memorial? Since we are not under the ceremonial law, why these ceremonies? What about the “elements”? For 1900 years the churches used wine. Is grape juice acceptable? What about Pepsi and cookies? Should everyone be invited to participate? Or just Christians? How will we measure who the Christians are? Profession of faith? Church Membership? Is Baptism the cause of salvation? A means of salvation? A sign of salvation? Irrelevant to salvation? Should only adult professors of belief be baptized? What about the little children? What in the world is a sacrament seems like a simple enough question but the answers can get very complicated.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=371:what-in-the-world-is-a-sacrament&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

Christopher Neiswonger, Lindsay Brooks, and Pastor Kent Moorlach of Communion Presbyterian Church of Irvine CA

In the book of Hosea, God had strengthened the people and they turned around and used that strength to sin against Him. We do the same thing when we sin.

God Bless,

Doug

It was just reported that Michael Jackson has died after going into cardiac arrest.  During this time our hearts, as Christians, go out to the family and his children.   To reflect on such an event as a believer is sobering to say the least.  To reflect on the death of anyone would do the same, but there seems to be something extra when it is a person like Michael Jackson.  To imagine that even kings, even if they were just the “King of Pop,” will one day stand before the King of kings, should cause us all to pause and reflect for a moment on our lives.

Scripture tells us that it is appointed once for a man to die, then the judgment (Heb. 9:27).   All men, even those who seemed to have the world by the tail for a time, are subjected to it.   What is more troubling for the Christian who considers such an event, is to see how many people are still clamoring to have what Michael had at the height of his fame, knowing that many fail to see how quickly these kingdoms will come crashing down.

There is no doubt that fame has engulfed many to the point that it seems to have consumed them, and it should not be surprising when we consider that scripture tells us that “the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest” (Isa 57:20).  Even if we end up with all that we dreamed of in this world, unless Christ is our treasure we will not find the rest that seems to be eluding us (Matt. 16:26).   In fact, we often impale ourselves with many troubles as we pursue it (1 Tim 6:10).

There is a restlessness in the human heart as Augustine pointed out when he said,  “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”  This restlessness comes from the fact that there is a knowledge of God written on our hearts, and in our sinfulness we want nothing to do with it (Rom. 1:18-20).  It is from this point that our pursuits for peace take us everywhere except the one place we would be able to find it.

In our sinfulness we reject God, knowing that we have violated his ways (Rom 1:32), and to cover up that knowledge, we tend to work even harder to find things that can distract us from that truth.  In it we tend to go further and further down a path of vanity, for all is vanity apart from Christ (Ecc. 1:2). 

From here we create our own standards of what we think a good person ought to be, but even by our own standards we fail to measure up.  Only by deceiving ourselves are we able maintain any level of respectability and righteousness.  Often during these pursuits, we find ourselves engaging in all kinds of aberrant behavior simply trying to measure up to our own standards.  In it, we are clinging to our own righteousness in order to appease the God we know is there.  For many, even in their suppression of the truth, will create a God to their liking and will try to appease him (Rom 1:23), but the God of scripture tells us that all our righteousness is like filthy rags, and he wants nothing to do it them (Isa. 64:6).  But, praise God, He then goes on to tell us of the remedy that he has offered in Christ Jesus for all of us have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God (Rom. 3:23) .  You see, God the Father sent his son to die upon the cross to bear the punishment for all who will believe in Him (John 3:16) in order to bring us into a right relationship with Him and give us the peace we are seeking. 

As was mentioned before, it is appointed once for a man to die then the judgment, but the only way anyone will be able to stand in the judgment is if they are in Christ, because he is the only one who has lived a truly righteous life and paid the penalty for our sins (Acts 4:12), and if we are not in Christ we will have to pay our own penalty for sins.  This truth applies to all men and women, whether rich or poor, famous or unknown, loved by the world or not.

To paraphrase John Donne, when we hear that someone has died and we wonder for whom the bell tolls, there is a sense in which it will always be tolling for us.  It is a constant reminder of our own frailty, telling us to be cognizant of our own end, and to ponder what awaits us afterward, and whether or not we are living life the way it should be lived; to the glory of God (Psalm 39:4).

God Bless,

Doug Eaton

Adultery: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Just gave his press conference about his ongoing affair with a woman from Argentina. He said that he had been in counseling with clergy about the matter for the last 5 months. His wife already knew about it and he said they were trying to work it out. More to the purpose of this blog, he spoke a lot about the laws of God. He said, “the laws of God are not oppressive rules”, but “are always put into place for our own protection”. He also said that the laws of God were absolutes and that he had been attending Christian bible studies. Any of that relevant?

So lets’ get to a few specifics… should he resign as the Governor of South Carolina because he has been committing adultery? No. Why not? I think the more pressing question would be why should he? Is there a standing law in the state of South Carolina that people caught committing adultery should quit their jobs? What about special ones for elected officials? What he has shown is that he should not have been elected, but elected he was, and there really isn’t any legal basis for either quitting or being fired. What about the moral basis? Well what kind of moral basis do we need for people to quit their jobs? Is there some public standard for that kind of thing? I’d like to see the list. “If people do A, B, or C they should quit their jobs”. I’d like to see that. What about the extreme indignity and betrayal to the people that elected him, especially since he ran as a Republican and Republicans are known for being moral and upstanding citizens? If the people of that elected him wanted to force people out of office for this kind of thing they should have said so before they hired him, and those of you that think the Republicans are known for being moral or upstanding citizens are out of touch with reality. Sexual immorality is no more common with Democrats than with Republicans; they are all together politicians and generally untrustworthy types of folk. (Since Libertarians define themselves by their God given right to sexual immorality I guess they are in their own category here.)

So should we elect people to public office that are sexually immoral? No. Of course not. Being sexually immoral is not a special category of immorality and should be taken as general representation of the person’s personal character as a whole. It is an expression of the basic commitments to which they hold and how they interpret themselves and other people. It also says a lot about how they view pleasure and what they are willing to do to enjoy themselves. More than this, if they are willing to harm myriad other persons in order to pursue their own desires what does it say about their character in general? There is nothing that is more indicative of a person’s thinking about human relationships than their sexuality, and that is why when men cheat on their wives, or visa versa, they are telling you that their most powerful commitments are compromise-able and easily cast aside, and that, for almost nothing.

So we have all kinds of reasons to not take as friends, or ministers, or elect as office holders, or hire as employees, or work for, sexually immoral people. They have already telegraphed what they are about on a most intimate level. I know it’s horribly provincial and unfashionable to say that sexual immorality is one of the most immoral things that a person can do, with the greatest negative effects upon the self and the society, but I can say it because I am not running for office.

An example of the effects of sexual immorality upon the larger society…

A man cheats on his wife with another man’s wife; the other woman gets pregnant; She then must decide whether or not to kill the child through abortion; the husband of the pregnant woman finds out and commits himself to revenge against the adulterous man through violence; The adulterer’s wife finds out from the offended husband and sues for divorce fighting in court for sole custody of their four children ages 3 to 16 who now are subjected to public shame and humiliation not to mention being torn away from the safety and care of a nuclear family; The grandparents are immediately estranged from the children as they are required to take sides with their sons and daughters; Grades plummet; The teenagers begin the usual divorce trauma process of sexual and drug experimentation; The pregnant woman decides to have the child as she is opposed to abortion and is put out of the home by her offended husband; She sues for child support from the father of the child so that she can have a bare subsistence; He denies the child is his own not from spite but because his alimony payments to his ex-wife and child support payments for his other four children have already left him bankrupt while living in a studio apartment and still making court ordered house payments on the home where his ex-wife, her new boy-friend, and three of his four children live, the oldest having run away to avoid abuse by the new live in boy-friend; The courts decide against the adulterous woman as the legal assumption is that any married woman’s pregnancy is caused by her husband and so her now ex-husband is assumed to be the father by law and her claim for child support is denied; She does the only thing that she thinks she can do and files for child support from her ex-husband whom she knows is not the father of the child; The court finds in her favor and attaches the ex-husbands wages causing him to go into bankruptcy and flee the state in order to avoid paying child support for the child of his ex-wife’s lover; Before leaving the state he and two of his friends exact vengeance upon the adulterous man beating him severely with tire irons and leaving him hospitalized for months; Since he can no longer afford coverage his bills are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, public assistance, and what is not covered is sent to his ex-wife’s address in the form of a bill for $137,000.00; The adulterous woman raising the child alone takes to a combination of prescription medication and alcohol just to be able to emotionally function as now that she has no money and is raising a child alone men no longer find her attractive for more that a few days; The ex-husband of the adulterous woman is arrested at the state line by the highway patrol and sentenced to 2 years in state prison after a plea down to battery from attempted murder; and then things just go on from there…

Really this kind of thing should be regulated by law. The things that have the greatest negative effect on the society are the things that the laws should regulate. There is nothing with more severe or long lasting effects than sexual immorality, specifically, adultery. If there were laws against this kind of thing the situation involving Governor Sanford, President Clinton, and whomever else would be a done deal, but as there are no laws against this kind of thing in mature and socially sophisticated cultures like ours, we just let it be.

I’m not trying to “pass judgement” upon Mark Sanford or anyone else. I’m just saying that nobody has a right to complain because we as a community have said yes to adultery. We have embraced it, we have justified it, and we have made room for it as an acceptable and irremediable part of our social behavior, so stop complaining. If you really thought it was wrong you would be shocked by the irrationality of no-fault divorce and astounded by the idea of decriminalization, but as it is, we indulge it, and as we indulge it, we should expect it and every ounce of human suffering there associated. We’ve been suborning adultery for years.

Neiswonger

I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.   Phil. 3:8

Our hearts are easily lured away by the fleeting shadows of this world, and these shadows have a way of slowly enticing our hearts in ways that are so subtle that we are often unaware of how tightly they have begun to grip us.  Unaware that is, until we find ourselves reeling emotionally from being pulled in two opposite directions.  If we follow the ways of Christ, our hearts break in longing for that which we will have to deny, and if we give ourselves to whatever it is that has our hearts inordinately bound, we know that we will find ourselves disappointed in the long run, even though it seems like it is the very thing we need to give us the peace that seems to be eluding us.

We know in these moments that it truly is impossible to serve two masters, for we will end up despising one of them.   If we were left to ourselves, we would run headlong into sin, but praise God, our savior has ways of showing us our folly.  The things that have held us captive and entranced are often exposed, by some providential means, to be things to which we must bid farewell.  

How does the Lord do this?  Often it is through trials, for when we are tried, we are reminded that this world is not our home, and no matter what it was that we were pursuing, we begin to realize that next to the excellency of knowing Christ, all other things will let us down.  For if we are pursuing youth and beauty, he can remind us of our own frailty through illness and make us to be cognizant of our own end.  If we are pursuing wealth and affluence, even if he allows us to attain it, he can cause us to experience great emptiness in the midst of it all through a time of spiritual depression.  If you have made an idol out of some relationship, he has ways to show you how easily it is to be let down by those we trust or how easy it is to let someone down ourselves.

After the Lord has broken our hearts by showing us the futility of making anything of this world our ultimate treasure, he then reveals to us in even greater ways the unfailing treasure of knowing Him. For anything we may pursue in this life apart from Christ, only leads us to greater condemnation.   Our sin separated us from a Holy God, and no amount of youth and beauty, wealth and affluence, or any earthy relationships could have removed the penalty that we deserved.  But Christ, the Lord of Glory, stepped out of heaven into human flesh to save those who will have faith in him.  He was a man who had no form or comeliness (Isaiah 53:2), and any youth and beauty he did possess was marred beyond recognition as they crucified Him.  Being born in a stable he was not a man of affluence.  He had no place to call his home (Luke 9:58), and even the robe he did own was stripped from his back and gambled away by the roman soldiers.  Finally, he was denied by those closest to him; he was betrayed by Judas, disowned by Peter, and the rest of the disciples scattered as he was being tried and sacrificed for our salvation.   

If Christ denied himself all these things when it was necessary, how much more should we who follow him.  What good would it be if we had all these things, but did not have Christ?  For there was one aspect of suffering Christ bore in order that we would not have to.  While Jesus was suffering on the Cross, he was bearing something much more terrible than the loss of beauty, wealth, and friends.  He was bearing the very wrath of God the Father.  When Jesus told the people, “do not fear those who can destroy the body, but fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell,” he knew that he would be bearing that destruction in our place, and the blow would be given by his Father in Heaven.  As he cried, “my God, my God why have you forsaken me,” he was doing more than simply drawing a comparison to the suffering servant of psalm 22.  He was fulfilling its prophecy, and it pleased the Lord to bruise him (Isaiah 53:10).

Now why would Christ, who could have refused the suffering, choose to bear it, and why did the Father, who loved the son, choose to pour his wrath on his only son?  It was so that we could be reconciled to God, through the forgiveness of sins.  The punishment for our sins has been met in Christ, for He loves us with an everlasting love.  In Christ, though we may lose some of what this world calls pleasure, relationships, and maybe even our lives, we will gain all the blessings of God, including eternal life and a friend who sticks closer than a brother.  As we experience these losses, we must remember that those losses will be gain as we find our Savior.  There is no treasure that can compare to the greatness of knowing Christ. 

Doug Eaton

I love the old hymns of the Christian faith. It wasn’t always the case, but over the last couple of years, I have become something of an apologist for hymns. Where once I found them dry and boring, I see them now as fresh, alive, and bursting with God-exalting theology. The hymn “I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow,” by John Newton, is a particularly good example of what I mean by “fresh,” “alive,” and “God-exalting”.

It tells the tale of a believer asking the Lord for personal growth “in faith, and love, and every grace,” to know God’s salvation more fully, and seek God more earnestly (worthy desires if ever there were any). Nevertheless, when I listen to/read this hymn, I cannot help but crack a tiny smile at the way God answers the prayer (and has answered it in my own life): He answers it in such a way that drivers the believer nearly to despair.  In essence, the Christian wishes for God to simply flip some sort of personal growth switch at once “in some favored hour.” God, however, answers the prayer by making the believer feel the evils of his heart and human nature, removing all his designs and plans for earthly joy to set him free from self and pride, finally allowing the believer to find joy and rest in God. Enjoy.

I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow
By: John Newton

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.

’Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
“’Tis in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ,
From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in Me.”

A few thoughts on fighting against sin, and making Christ your treasure.

The Ethics of God Pt.2 Intermediate Christian Ethics

The Ethics of God Pt.2 Intermediate Christian Ethics (click the link to listen to the audio)

Autonomy, Theonomy, and Heteronomy;
Immanuel Kant
Paul Tillich
Barack Obama
Reinhold Neibhur
Pope John Paul II
Cornelius Van Til
Greg Bahnsen
Voluntarism and Essentialism
Duns Scotus and William of Ockham
Legislative hierarchy
Augustine
Necessity and Arbitrarity
The Ontological and Moral freedom of God
Justinian
Matthew 5
Continuity and Discontinuity
The “Abolish/Fulfillment” matrix
Are we are under the law?
The Old Testament vs. the New Testament
Jurisprudence: applying the general to the particular
The Classifications of the law: Ceremonial, Judicial, and Moral
Thomas Aquinas
The Eternal law, the Natural law, the Divine law, and human law
The Two Tables of the law
The Ten Commandments
The Relationship of Ends and Means
The Personal and the Social

Christopher Neiswonger

http://apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=362:the-ethics-of-god-a-beginners-class-on-traditional-christian-ethics-pt2&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74 Click the link to listen to the audio

“Blackest darkness is reserved for them.”

(In Response)

Should we obey the authorities that God has given for our personal good and the harmonious interaction of society? Well of course. For the Christian I think that should go without argument.

If the worry were that some might use that authority in an abusive or over-reaching way, well again I would say, of course. Any due authority given can be a due authority abused. But that doesn’t mean that the essential authority is not a good in itself, just that the due authority has been used in a way that is out of proper alignment with its God given intent.

There are three basic God created “institutions of authority”: The Church, the State, and the Family. Each have a real and divinely established authority for the good of those under that authority, and we have seen each of them severally and together abused horribly for profit and selfish interest, made destructive through neglect of the duties inherent to them, or made a tool of lust and power. Still, they as institutions are good, and are to be respected out of respect for God, because He ordained them.

We do not need to be so anti-establishment that we lose all reasonable accommodation to authority so as to harm our neighbor and ourselves. We do need to be so mature in our understanding of human nature and the limited abilities of our leaders that we measure carefully the difference between legitimate and illegitimate uses of that authority and have the courage to speak and act when such abuse causes harm.

It would be like using the fact that policemen sometimes abuse their authority to abolish the practice of law enforcement; or that some men are oppressive to their families to abolish all fatherhood; or that some Presidents act beyond the measurement of their Constitutional authority to abolish all government. It just goes too far; it says too much.

The cure for this kind of thing seems to be to have a clear and scripturally secure grasp upon both the freedoms and the obligations of the Christian life, and the powers and limitations upon those who hold Offices of God given authority, so that we develop the ability to identify ungodly exercises of power beyond that which has been given for the common good. Is it inherent to the office of Pastoral staff to withhold communion from a man that is known to be cheating on his wife, or beating her, until he repents and resigns his heart to God and his actions to the community? Of course… that is one of the reasons Pastors give communion in the first place; to include and exclude; and so it is within the very nature of the office.

Do they have the authority to tell you how to live your life? Well that would depend on what you mean by it. By definition, the Pastor should be telling you how to live your life every Sunday, from God’s perspective and through biblical example, so it kind of goes with the territory. But can that be over-reached into an undue exercise of personal intrusion that pierces the veil between the institutions and acts and a transgression of the sanctity of the institutional Family by the institutional Church? That happens all the time, because it is common that neither the clergy nor the laity have a sufficient grasp of God’s “central planning” for the separate but dependant institutions and their beneficial limitations.

Now granted, the most common problem today is the under-reaching of the Church in respect to authority. It’s like a parent that refuses to do what the nature of being a parent calls for, and so their children run about in rags of neglect uncared for and untutored in personal and social goods. By the Church being unwilling to be the Church, we create analogous disorders particular to the Church itself; those things that the Church was created to cure being left to themselves to fester and spoil. Most Ministers these days live in a “holy fear”, not of God, but of their congregations and Deacon’s boards, having sworn an oath of allegiance to the retirement fund. The conflict of interest between the professional Minister as CEO and Shepherd of a flock is impossible to reconcile; and in the end all of them choose how to define their ministry.

But even worse than this, both ministerially and in its effects, is “over-powering” by the clergy. When a Church thinks of itself institutionally as a set of Kings set by God to rule the people, they take upon themselves the sins of the Nicolatians and can grind those unfortunates to powder. They can destroy families, businesses, denominations, nations and occasionally… minds. The corrupt use of power is continually called out in Holy Scripture for special scrutiny as an offence against God by the inordinate use of His graces toward men, and He holds those graces as something holy and their perversion as intolerable.

Quite simply, there is nothing that God hates more than a corrupt Priest or a craven Prophet. Thus Peter taught… “Blackest darkness is reserved for them”.

Neiswonger

2 Peter 2:17
“These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them.”

Micah 3:11
“Her leaders judge for a bribe,
her priests teach for a price,
and her prophets tell fortunes for money.
Yet they lean upon the LORD and say,
“Is not the LORD among us?
No disaster will come upon us.”
Therefore because of you,
Zion will be plowed like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble”

Jeremiah 14:14
“Then the LORD said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that prophesy in my name, and I sent them not, yet they say, Sword and famine shall not be in this land; By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed. And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and they shall have none to bury them, them, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters: for I will pour their wickedness upon them.”

Well, first of all *****, you are hitting the nail right on the proverbial head. Let me see if I can help you to flesh out some arguments and to identify the inconsistencies in your friends accusation against Theism as a superior mode of interpretation.

As to materialistic creationism being supposedly more reasonable than personalistic creationism:

There is nothing that we have any experience of, either existentially or scientifically, that provokes changes in matter in an unchanging state, except for intentional willed activity. If your atheist friend wants to posit something else, let him be the one to pony up with the theory so that we can all breathe a sigh of relief and call it religion.

Second, his definitions of time and space are non-scientific and highly speculative; certainly his own definitions and not something endorsed by the scientific community and thus by the standards of his own theoretical bias, false. If “space” is simply the distance between objects, as he defines it, how then can it be “affected” by an object’s mass? Nonsense on stilts. Space-time does not admit these kinds of reductionism.

As for how can the immaterial have an effect upon the material, that is not the question. The question was how one can explain change in a non-inertial motionless unliving intemperate “singularity” (which is a nonsense term if we’ve ever heard one). Your friend is using the old tactic of trying to shift the burden of proof; he does not want to answer so he asks you another hard question that is not to the point; he has made a statement and now in the light of the complete inability of the claim to justify itself or be justified by any of the evidence, instead of answering his insoluble problem he asks you to answer another riddle that will still, even if answered, not provide him with an answer to his dilemma. Do not allow for diversion as it is unethical.

If one wishes to be obtuse one can say that the actions of a personal “will” being a better explanation of the ultimate cause of the universe is a “the most ridiculous naked assertion”… blah blah blah… but really, experience with personal wills of myriad varying descriptions is one of the most common human experiences, and so, obvious and rudimentary, while experiences of the 1st billionth of a nano-second of the universe and categorical descriptions of the forces at work there are entirely absent from human experience, and for the most part the realm of imagination, hearsay, and creative writing. It is a creation myth for the self interpretation of the one’s who posit it.

Now one might say the Christian version is also myth, well… mabye so, but it would still be myth rooted in a vast network of observable human experiences and not a piecemeal hypothesis about the world based upon intuition, imagination, and merely theoretical axioms that are chosen more than observed. For the most part the materialistic creationist’s theory is rooted in the human interpretation of “un-observables”;things that can’t be seen, touched, or tasted; things that have not been experienced and cannot be experienced. In short, it is imaginary. It is a human’s eye best guess at how a tiny sentient being almost completely blind to a posited actual event should choose to interpret that event apart from anything but arguments from current effects to hypothetical causes from within the scope of our current admittedly mediocre understanding of the nature of the universe now.

The argument is, if we now think the universe might be like “this”, then we should think the universe was once like “that”, all things being equal. But if one finds little reason to think that we really do understand the universe “now” and the constant flux of scientific theory and interpretation bear this out, then what great confidence should we have as to that we understand the universe “then” when then is even farther from the limited scope of our current apprehension? This is the kind of question that tends to make the most thoughtful scientific minds into, at worst, agnostics. Atheism is thought to be from outside of the scientific tool box.

Now, that it is imagination, does not mean that it might not be true. People can imagine things that are true just as they can imagine things that are false. But when we are talking about something as fundamental as the Cause of the universe, answers should be grounded in reason and experience. That’s all we ask. That we can make up an answer is not sufficient for it to be an answer. Even if the scientific method can get you to the beginning of the universe, it cannot get you behind it. All theories that do are penultimately religious.

The Impersonal Cause of the universe is not something that any efforts through the scientific method either can or do, “prove”. It is a fundamental posit; an axiom; a bias; and any evidence to the contrary will not be admitted by those that hold to it with a zealous fervor, which shows that the axiom is indeed not science at all but… choice.

True scientific methodology understands its limitations and that certain kinds of knowing are outside its purview. Everything can’t be understood by examining little balls in space and the way they bounce off each other. The idea that it can is not science, it is religion in a lab coat. Of course the activity of an intelligent will is the most obvious explanation for the existence of the universe, because it is the most obvious explanation for just about anything with regard to activities that seem to happen on their own, like drinking coffee, or thinking eternally true thoughts. Materialism, even if true, would make itself quite meaningless. Even pantheism is a more reasonable interpretation that materialism because material cannot justify materialism as a philosophy of life, but I would think Christianity better still, and we have history on our side.

All the best,

Neiswonger

This is a short quote by Charles Spurgeon to remind us that sometimes suffering is part of our ministry.

“One Sabbath morning, I preached from the text, `My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ and though I did not say so, yet I preached my own experience. I heard my own chains clank while I tried to preach to my fellow-prisoners in the dark; but I could not tell why I was brought into such an awful horror of darkness, for which I condemned myself. On the following Monday evening, a man came to see me who bore all the marks of despair upon his countenance. His hair seemed to stand up right, and his eyes were ready to start from their sockets. He said to me, after a little parleying, “I never before, in my life, heard any man speak who seemed to know my heart. Mine is a terrible case; but on Sunday morning you painted me to the life, and preached as if you had been inside my soul.” By God’s grace I saved that man from suicide, and led him into gospel light and liberty; but I know I could not have done it if I had not myself been confined in the dungeon in which he lay. I tell you the story, brethren, because you sometimes may not understand your own experience, and the perfect people may condemn you for having it; but what know they of God’s servants? You and I have to suffer much for the sake of the people of our charge….You may be in Egyptian darkness, and you may wonder why such a horror chills your marrow; but you may be altogether in the pursuit of your calling, and be led of the Spirit to a position of sympathy with desponding minds.”

-Charles Spurgeon-

The Ethics of God: A beginner’s class on traditional Christian ethics. (The new audio from apologetics.com radio.)

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=358:the-ethics-of-god-a-beginners-class-on-traditional-christian-ethics-pt1&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

What are the basic presumptions common to all “Christian” ethical systems? The moral law of God and the cultivation the traditional Christian virtues.

1. The existence of God.
2. The identity of God and the uniqueness of Christianity.
3. The veracity, historicity, and inerrancy of Holy Scripture.
4. The presentation and defense of a basic orthodoxy.
5. The promotion of a healthy spiritual life in faith and practice.
6. The understanding of a consistent Christian ethic applied to all of life.
7. Communicating the coherence and defensibility of the Christian faith with clarity, kindness, and grace to any that might be inclined to hear and teaching those that desire such how to do the same.

The Classical form for Individual and Social Justice

The Moral Law of God-
“Love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself; on these hang all of the Law and the Commandments”
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“What you have done unto the least of these you have done to me.”
“Have mercy on the little children and do not keep them from coming to me for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them.”

The Cultivation of the traditional Christian Virtues-
Faith, Hope, Love, Wisdom, Justice, Courage, and Self Denial

Faith- “Without faith it is impossible to please God because to please God one must first believe that He exists and that He is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.”
Hope- “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
Love- “These three remain: Hope, faith, and love, but the greatest of these is love…”
Wisdom- “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”
Justice- “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Courage- “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Self Denial- “Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

www.apologetics.com

Christopher Neiswonger

Dear *******,

How’s law school treating you? It’s not too bad once you get used to it, eh? Time management for the most part. I have had the pleasure of meeting both Kmiec and Starr. Both great guys. Don’t let Kmiec sell you on that Protestant Reformation was a terrible mistake thing; his arguments on those issues are horribly weak when analyzed.

We are at a place in history where the Protestants have pretty much given up the practice of law and the study of jurisprudence. Fine Catholic scholars like Kmiec, McConnell, and Scalia have filled the hole left behind in the liberal Protestant exodus. But still, our ideas are the ones that have made the country great and established a new standard of personal freedom and responsibility, under law. Absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, aristocracy, and a centralized church-state could never compete with that, as long as the personal ethics of the people were sufficient to counter the tendency toward social chaos with the application personal integrity.

Communitarianism is also no replacement for traditional constitutional civics. That a community has standards says nothing about whether or not the standards are good or evil. The common good is a relativistic Aristotelian standard that only works out well if it is applied to an already existing Christian context for the interpretation of the common good. That’s why a political liberal loves the idea of the common good. They think it is a standard in and of itself apart from an ultimate good or some standard for truth apart from or higher than the opinion of “the people”.

For a traditional conservative, we could care less about “states rights”, (the position of Jefferson and the pro-slavery south until and after the civil war) or erroneous conceptions of what the common good might be that carry inherent concessions to Marxist ideology.

The two sides were always, do the states have rights in and of themselves that are absolute and depend ultimately upon the will of the people? Or are even the rights of states and the people within those states, as those that vest their rights in their elected representatives, under a higher law that neither men nor states have the right to violate? The first is the view of the South under Jefferson and the French ideology of the voice of man as the voice of God. The second, is the view of the North under Lincoln and the Christian idea of all men as free under the moral laws of God. Everyone has to choose. The first are Democrats. The second are Republicans. Both have a “place” for God but the Democrats think they have his proxy.

That God has created all men equal and endowed them with inalienable rights that correspond to His eternal moral laws is our bread and butter, and if men’s individual Libertarian or group based Communitarian theories of policy are against His moral laws then all the worse for theory in the face of theology. This is why Libertarianism is not much more Christian than Socialism; some, but not much. The freedom of the individual is not God’s highest priority. It is that he freely does good. Freedom for freedom’s sake is a farce. It has no meaning.

Well this little note has grown beyond any reasonable explanation.

All the best,

Neiswonger

Hi *****,

(A friend sent me this article for thought: Augustine’s origin of the species http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/22.39.html)

Augustine is my favorite writer on this subject, and I’ve read McGrath on this extensively. Still, he misses a lot about Augustine’s understanding of these things. Sometimes McGrath seems to favor Augustine as presenting McGrath’s position more than letting Augustine be Augustine.

For example, in the work “On the Literal meaning of Genesis” Augustine was patently accommodating his understanding of the scriptures to the scientific understanding of his day. He even gets into things as complicated as weather cycles and heliocentric theories of orbits. In the book in question Augustine says this plainly. None of this was new to the educated classes in the 4th century AD. That we might think it was caters the error of being later and so thinking that this makes our understanding more secure for the sake of our lateness. It is easy to know more and less. It is McGrath’s bias that all of this talk was “pre-scientific” that blurs his vision. They well understood the methods of observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion; if we want to take that kind of thing as being the scientific method in the midst of the boiling arguments over what the scientific method actually is.

The battle even in Copernicus’ day was between two scientific views both straining to claim that theirs was reconcilable with scripture, or better, the view of Aristotle that had been adopted by the Roman Catholic establishment. It was a battle between Aristotle (the terracentrist adopted by Aquinas) and Plato (the heliocentrist adopted by Augustine) and not at all a battle between ’science’ and ‘religion’ and reading the primary texts bears this out. All of it was considered to be ’science’. All of it was considered to be ‘religion’. In that at least, they were right. There is no war between religion and science, only between truth and error.

Neiswonger

Sotomayor’s Judicial Record Could Be Battlefield for Critics, Advocates

“Though Obama said he was looking for a nominee who demonstrates empathy and a “common touch,” some critics have cautioned against such criteria in a high court justice and issued reminders that the law must come first.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in a written statement, said Tuesday he’s concerned Sotomayor has shown “personal bias based on ethnicity and gender.”

“Judge Sotomayor will need to reassure the country that she will set aside her biases, uphold the rule of law and interpret the Constitution as written, not as she believes it should have been written,” said Smith, who will have no vote in the matter, as the confirmation is a Senate matter.

Perhaps Sotomayor’s most controversial decision was in Ricci v. DeStefano, in which she was part of a panel ruling against a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn. — they objected after the city threw out the results of a promotion test because too many white firefighters, and not enough minority firefighters, scored high.

She and two other judges summarily dismissed the case without tackling the complex issues outlined in stacks of briefs and debated in extended oral arguments. Instead, the court issued an unsigned, one-paragraph opinion. Sotomayor’s colleague, Judge Jose Cabranes, was so concerned that he wrote a lengthy dissent highlighting what many saw as an attempt to bury the case.

“This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal,” he wrote.

The discrimination case was later kicked up to the Supreme Court, and a decision is expected by late June.

Sotomayor has a record of being rebuffed by the high court. Of the six decisions she was a part of that came before the high court, five were reversed. In the sixth, the court disagreed with Sotomayor’s reasoning.

Senior administration officials said they have no concerns about the reversal rate or Sotomayor’s position in the firefighter case. But that and other cases are now ripe for analysis.

– In one case reversed by the Supreme Court, Sotomayor and the majority on the appeals court ruled that an inmate could sue a private corporation for injuries he suffered in a halfway house run by that company. Though the company operated the house on behalf of the Bureau of Prisons, Sotomayor argued that the company was not shielded from liability. The Supreme Court reversed the appeals court decision in 2001.

– In another case, Sotomayor dissented in a 2006 opinion that rejected a challenge to a New York law denying convicted felons the right to vote. She argued in her own dissenting opinion that the state law “disqualifies a group of people from voting.”

– Sotomayor, in 2003, also wrote an opinion that reversed a district court decision that a Muslim inmate’s rights were not violated when he was denied a holiday feast. Sotomayor argued that the inmate’s First Amendment rights were violated because the feast was important to his religion.

– In 1999, Sotomayor dissented in a decision to dismiss a case in which a black student claimed his school discriminated against him by transferring him mid-year from first grade to kindergarten. Sotomayor argued that the “lone black child” in the class was not given an “equal chance.”

– In 2007, Sotomayor wrote an opinion holding that the Environmental Protection Agency could not perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine the “best technology available.” She wrote it could only consider cost as a factor in more limited ways. This decision, too, was overturned by the Supreme Court.

– In 1993, Sotomayor threw out evidence obtained by police in a drug case, because a detective lied to obtain the search warrant — prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain. However, during sentencing Sotomayor made controversial statements by criticizing the five-year mandatory sentence, calling it an “abomination” that the defendant did not deserve.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., later grilled her on this, suggesting it showed disrespect for the law, during her confirmation hearing a decade ago for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sessions was one of 11 sitting Republican senators who voted against her at the time. Now the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions on Tuesday said Sotomayor would get a “fair and respectful hearing.”

But he said some conservatives who voted against her a decade ago felt she had a “history of activism.”

“I think she needs to address that,” Sessions told FOX News. “I think she’s entitled to a full and fair new evaluation.”

Sessions also released a written statement saying the Senate must determine whether Sotomayor understands that the “proper role of a judge is to act as a neutral umpire of the law, calling balls and strikes fairly without regard to one’s own personal preferences or political views.”

Arguably, her public statements may stir more controversy than her judicial decisions.

A YouTube video of Sotomayor speaking at Duke University about what some interpreted as judicial activism drew early fire for the judge.

In the video, she said: “All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with court of appeals experience” because “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”

She also once said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

One administration official said critics who want to attack Sotomayor as a judicial activist must balance that against what the White House regards as a clear example of deferring to legal precedent — in the New Haven firefighters case.

The official said Sotomayor merely followed Circuit Court precedent in that case, and exhibited judicial restraint.

Sotomayor’s opinions also cannot be pigeonholed as exclusively liberal or conservative.

In 2002, she ruled against an abortion rights group that claimed the so-called “Mexico City Policy” — which prohibited U.S. funding from going to foreign groups performing or supporting abortion services — was a violation of the First Amendment and other rights.

The government is “free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position,” she held.

In another 2004 case, Sotomayor’s opinion ruled in favor of anti-abortion protesters who claimed a town had improperly trained officers who allegedly used excessive force in arresting them. Plus she has sided against minority plaintiffs who brought discrimination cases to her court.

Sotomayor, speaking after Obama announced his decision to nominate her, said Tuesday that her underlying commitment is to the law.

“I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights,” she said.

And she cited her personal story in her qualifications for the seat. She grew up in a Bronx housing project and lost her father at a young age. She later graduated from Princeton and Yale universities, earning her first appointment to the bench in 1992.

“This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear. It has helped me to understand, respect and respond to the concerns and arguments of all litigants who appear before me, as well as to the views of my colleagues on the bench,” she said. “I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.”

Supporters, including New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, touted her record and the fact that she would add diversity to the high court.

Schumer said Sotomayor is a “moderate” and that Obama “has not reached to the far left end of the spectrum” in his decision. He, too, cited her back-story as a qualification.

“It’s a great New York story, and it’s a great American story,” Schumer said. “And she will give the courts a needed understanding of how ordinary Americans live.”

A White House official said it’s “absolutely essential” for the Senate to confirm Sotomayor before it adjourns for the summer recess on Aug. 10. Top administration officials predicted Sotomayor would “be very forthcoming” at her confirmation hearing.”

FOX News’ Major Garrett and Shannon Bream contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/26/sotomayors-judicial-record-battlefield-critics-advocates/
http://apologetics.com/

Neiswonger

Dear ******,

Your question is, since our understanding of the deaths of the Apostles seems to be from weak or even spurious works, should this cause us to doubt, since we cannot know that they died for the faith?

Thank you for writing. This question is a little complicated in that some of the deaths of the Apostles carry stronger evidence than others. What we do know is that the persecution during the first hundred years of the Church in history was extremely severe, and that leaders in the churches were both very public persons and were called out for special persecution by both the Jewish and Roman governments. This fact alone would make it extraordinarily unlikely that any of them survived, their fame carrying with them.

This would also include the idea that you wrote of, that there seems to be little possibility for a motive of personal gain, and with that, nothing for which we would expect a person to be willing to die unless they believed the things for which they were being persecuted. The testimonies within the scriptures themselves have a lot to say about the martyrdom and persecutions of the Apostles and various disciples, and those manuscript’s authenticity and veracity is among the best researched and documented in all of ancient literature.

As to there being no evidence, the apocryphal works are definitively ‘evidence’ and so the claim that there is “no” evidence is obviously false. Still, the evidence for the historicity and veracity of the non-biblical or even apocryphal accounts is not as strong, and is sometimes even highly unlikely when compared with the scriptural works, and the difference would depend upon which work one is focused upon. “The assumption of Mary” for example is drawn from a very late work, was not known by the early church, and is very probably mere fabrication. But this does not make it no evidence, it just makes it poor evidence; so poor that a Christian should not be inclined to believe such a thing.

The evidence for the deaths of some of the Apostles is stronger than others. But still, none of them from outside of the Bible is resolutely determinative, to which we might say, so what? Is there some reason that we need to know the exact mode and circumstances of the deaths of the Apostles? If we do not know how they died, does that change any article of the faith? There seems to be reasonably strong evidence that Thomas died in India and you can visit the memorial they built in his honour to this day (Run through by spears as the histories tell it) but I would be very slow to say that any matter of faith or practice is dependant upon that being fact.

History is for the most part a sifting through the persuasion of the evidence and sometimes we draw conclusions from evidences that are comparatively thin in relation to what we would use today. In the end we have the firm evidence in the scriptures and relatively weak evidence outside the scriptures, so it would be best to take them for what they are worth, and take as important what God seems to take as important.

All the best,

Neiswonger

Heavenly Father,

I have sinned against you, I have violated your law and my conscience, my transgressions are great and numerous, you know my shame. I have given opportunity for the enemy to accuse me in Your presence and his accusations are not false, he does not need to exaggerate my iniquity in order for his allegations to condemn me. I plead guilty, I am wretched and wicked and diseased with sin, unworthy to carry your name upon me. You above all others know what a hypocrite I am, zealous for your law yet weak and foolish and incapable of fulfilling it even to the slightest degree. Oh, I am quite skilled at speaking of the majesty and greatness of your law and how the weight of it is thrust upon all of our shoulders, but when asked to keep it oh Lord, I will certainly fail you. How is it that a man like me can be such a liar and a hypocrite, loving your law, studying it, being very careful to understand how it should be applied, and yet transgressing it, stacking disobedience one atop of another, until the stench of my deeds no doubt reaches your nostrils? How do you bare not spewing me out of your mouth? I sicken myself and would not blame you at all for doing so. My body decays with the stain of my sin, it deteriorates and rots, as I grow older I begin to see sins effect upon me, not only is it inward, it is becoming evident now to all who look upon me. I am a sinner and I now look like one and I am ashamed of myself, I am destroying my body and soul, and yet, like a child full of folly, I sprint towards my destruction. Will you save me from myself, oh Lord, will you teach me, strengthen me, and discipline me? Will I ever obey you? Will I ever fulfill what you have given me to fulfill? Will I ever be worthy of the blessings You have heaped upon me?

How much have You given my God? It seems that that is all You ever do is give. You give life, You give Your law, You give Your word, You give Your Spirit, You give Your Son. How can I fathom this? Understanding my guilt before You, how do I reconcile this? If I were to begin to thank You now, and never cease until my sin finally stabs at my heart for the last time, I could never thank You enough, and yet if I were to do this, what could I possibly say to You when I meet you, when I stand before you naked and vulnerable? I will be at Your mercy and I will have absolutely nothing to offer in defense of myself. I cannot bear the thought of having nothing of value to present to You on that day. My time is coming, I have an appointment set already, and I will be standing on the edge of my eternal destruction looking into the abyss with nothing but a hope. I am frightened, oh Lord, to come into Your presence, knowing that all I have ever done in my life condemns me to Hell. After all is said and done, I have failed in love, in obedience, in faith, in piety, in devotion, all is lost. I grit my teeth in anger over all the rich blessings that I have squandered, that I have taken for granted and have perverted. I wish to scream from the rooftops how I hate the deeds I have done and yet I cower-being ashamed of them, hiding from my neighbors. Tell me, oh God, what is it that You find precious in men like me, liars, hypocrites, arrogant servants pretending to be godly? What is precious about a blackened heart?

Yet, in all of my twisted thinking and in all of my evil deeds, there remains a hope, a promise, a Mediator, a Savior. Someone who can change the rotting corpse into a living man, someone who can wash the stain of sin away forever, someone to restore the rusted shells of men into glorious sons of God. I cannot begin to understand the magnificence of what it is that You have done sending Your Son to die for unregenerate men. I can only marvel at the level my tainted mind exists in, and that marveling falls short of the glory due to You and Your Son. All You have done has been done to bring glory upon Your Son and Yourself, to redeem a people of lost and wayward men to Yourself, that You may glorify Yourself through them. That it brings You glory to redeem these rebels baffles me, but I am thankful that it does. Those who are Yours are blessed exceedingly, and will serve You forever, in joy and delight. The question I have is: Am I one of them? Oh, I certainly hope that I am, for if I am not I will perish beneath Your great fury and wrath. What I have to offer You Lord is nothing but unfaithfulness and idolatry. Oh Lord, my God, help my unbelief, grant me repentance, grant me a hatred of my sin, sprinkle clean water on me, and make me clean. Cleanse me from all of my filthiness and from my idols, put a new heart and a new Spirit within me. Take out the heart of stone from my flesh and give me a heart of flesh and put Your Spirit within me and cause me to walk in Your statutes. For I am helpless to follow You on my own, prone to wonder, prone to leave the One I love. Save me, oh God, call me one of Your own, adopt me. Father, but if you would count me among the reprobate then grant that I be the only soul in Hell that cries out praising Your Holy name for all of eternity.

Clay

Christopher Neiswonger and Doug Eaton on this weeks www.apologetics.com radio show.

Unitarianism, Universalism, and Inclusivism Against the Kingdom of God (Audio)

There are moods in theology just as there are in culture. The pressure from the dominant culture upon the church is to find a way, any way, to re-interpret the scriptures so as to make soteriology (The doctrines of salvation) less exclusive.

John Hick created the new standards for religious pluralism by arguing for the move away from a needlessly “christ-centered” theology to a more moderate “god-centered” theology. There has been a move in Evangelical Christianity to follow suit.

Karl Rahner posited something a little less ambitious, arguing that though Christianity (of the Roman Catholic denomination) is the true religion sincerity and good works within the context of other religions is sufficient for God’s purposes soteriologically speaking. While Protestant orthodoxy has always taught “justification by grace alone through faith alone apart from the merit of works”, the new theology, especially as adopted by the Emergent church movement and Christian Liberalism seems to favor a ‘Justification by works alone, apart from faith’. Assent to certain beliefs or intellectual content is thought to be merely incidental.

Unitarianism (not simply the variety that denies the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity) is willing to argue for the veracity of all religions which makes it equally comfortable with any of them or none of them.

The most offensive teaching of traditional Christian Theology, to those in these revisionist movements, seems to be the doctrine of endless punishment, or more properly, the doctrine that God would ever punish anyone at all. The accusation is that there is some kind of inherent personality defect in any god that might have the capacity for Justice, or anger over sin, or “punishment”.

Of course nothing is being said here that has not been said before about Christian thought or religion in general. Religious syncretism was the norm in the first and second centuries AD. But none of this has ever been mistaken for Christian thought. The Scriptures being the source and center of Christian faith and practice, this kind of thinking has always been understood to be irreconcilable with an orthodox Christianity. Not only has it been condemned again and again by the historical church but the Christian laity have had an easy enough time seeing something very different in the words Jesus and the Apostles. There seems to be very little that would lead anyone to find universalism in the scriptures in any obvious way. This is why so many find them so offensive.

At the end of the day, we read the scriptures the same way we read any other book. We use the text to interpret the text. It builds theme upon theme; idea upon idea. These alternatives to traditional orthodox Christianity seem lacking in both the weight of the necessary internal evidence to support their claims and in coherence as a worldview supposedly Christian.

Neiswonger

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=353:unitarianism-universalism-inclusivism-against-the-kingdom-of-god&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

How to Evangelize the Emergent Generation (audio)

Christopher Neiswonger teaching a class on the current postmodern climate as it influences the Christian churches. Postmodernism reigns, but does it have the legs to last? At Cornerstone Church in Riverside California. (With question and answer)

http://apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=350:how-to-evangelize-the-emergent-generation&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

Some people think that using labels like Calvinism or Arminianism is wrong.  After all, shouldn’t we follow Christ, not men or schools of thought?  This video takes a look at these questions.

Postmodernism’s influence upon the Evangelical and Emergent Churches www.apologetics.com audio

Christopher Neiswonger and Doug Eaton discuss some of the ways in which secular philosophers have had a direct influence upon how the Church is doing theology and the ways that that thought might be irreconcilable with traditional orthodox Christian theology. (W/calls last half hour)

Subjects include: Postmodernism, Emergent theology, J. Gresham Machen, Richard Rorty, Brian McClaren, Tony Snow, propositional truth, faith and practice, being followers of Jesus, Christendom, law and gospel, communitarianism, individualism, metanarrative, narrative, evangelization, hermeneutics, universalism, doubt, Rob Bell, Michael Horton, analogy, absolute truth, Augustine, C.S. Lewis and others.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=348:postmodernisms-influence-upon-the-evangelical-and-emergent-churches&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

Our own corruption is no excuse for allowing evils to progress unabated. We will of course be judged for what we’ve done but perhaps more so for those things we fail to do. The true sign of a Christian is not moral perfection, but repentance. And the sign of a false faith is not failing to fail, but failing to condemn even our own failures while continuing to proclaim what is right, and just, and good.

Neiswonger

Pew Forum studies religious affiliation changes

As the Church universal struggles with declining memberships and a growing number of people who do not worship or believe in God, a report fromThe Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life offers insight into why people are changing their religious affiliations or ending them altogether.

Released April 27, the 75-page “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.” report outlines a consumer-driven attitude for those shopping for a faith. Much like the comment cards or online surveys measuring a customer’s experience, participants offered a variety of reasons for changing denominations by answering both open-ended and closed-ended questions.

Asked to name the main reasons one left the denomination of their childhood or why they joined a particular church, after deciding to leave another, they cited disagreements over moral issues, the church’s failure to meet spiritual needs, marrying someone of a different denomination or preferring worship styles at a different church. Divided into three study groups – Catholic, Protestant and unaffiliated – approximately 2,867 were interviewed by telephone from Oct. 3, 2008 to Nov. 7, 2008.

The new data is a follow-up to the 2007 study “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” which found that nearly half of U.S. adults (44 percent) do not currently belong to their childhood faith. That statistic led to the “Faith in Flux” in search of why. The “Faith in Flux” sampling was taken from participants of the original survey.
Among the findings were:

On average, between one-third and half of those surveyed have changed their affiliation only once, with 49 percent of former Protestants opting for a different denomination among the Reformed faiths and 30 percent of those who changed only once now are unaffiliated. In contrast, 47 percent of formerly unaffiliated now are affiliated.

The largest group that has changed affiliation is made up of those who have changed from one Protestant denomination to another.
About seven-in-10 in the unaffiliated segment (73 percent of former Catholics and 71 percent of former Protestants) say religious organizations focus too much on rules and not enough on spirituality. A slightly smaller fraction of those who have become unaffiliated say religious leaders are more concerned about money and power than with truth and spirituality. Forty percent of them say this is the reason they became unaffiliated.

Seventy-one percent of the “unaffiliated” who left their childhood faith “gradually drifted away” and 65 percent who were raised Catholic simply stopped believing in the teachings, compared with 50 percent of Protestants.

Most who left their childhood faith did so before age 24. Almost half of Catholics who are now unaffiliated left before reaching age 18, as did one-third who are now Protestant. Among both groups, an additional three-in-10 left the Catholic Church as young adults between ages 18 and 23. Only one-fifth who are now unaffiliated and one-third who are now Protestant departed after turning age 24.

Pew Forum director Luis Lugo told Time magazine he was surprised at the variety of reasons one would change religious affiliation.

“It’s an open religious marketplace as well as a very competitive one,” he told Time. “This is the supermarket cereal aisle.”

The Catholic Church
As the largest American denomination with 67 million members, the Roman Catholic Church has shown the largest losses due to religious change. According to the report, one in 10 Americans is a former Catholic, and a majority who left did so for religious reasons. Even though it’s seen major losses – those who have left the Catholic Church outnumber those who have joined by four to one – the church continues to have a high retention rate. Nearly 70 percent of those surveyed who were raised Catholic are still Catholic. That’s in contrast to 15 percent who are now Protestant and another 14 percent who are now unaffiliated.

When asked closed-ended questions, the most common reasons for Catholics becoming Protestant is failure to meet spiritual needs (71 percent) and they found a religion they liked more (70 percent). Former Catholics who now are unaffiliated cited a gradual drifting away from the religion (71 percent).

More than half (56 percent) of former Catholics surveyed who now are unaffiliated say dissatisfaction with teachings on abortion and homosexuality were the reason they left. About half cite concerns with Catholic teachings on birth control and approximately 40 percent were unhappy with its treatment of women.

When asked to explain in their own words the main reason they left their childhood religion, half of former Catholics pointed to religious and moral beliefs with 18 percent of Protestants who were raised Catholic leaving for a “Biblical/Scriptural reason.” Based on the research, evangelical Protestantism is an attractive alternative for former Catholics. Most former Catholics who are now evangelical Protestants, for example, say they left Catholicism in part because they stopped believing in Catholic teachings (62 percent) and specifically because they were unhappy with Catholic teachings about the Bible (55 percent).

For those who became unaffiliated, the report shows it was more of an issue with faith of any kind. For those former Catholics who became unaffiliated, 42 percent claim to not believe in God or most religious teachings.

The sharpest criticism of the Catholic Church came from those who converted to evangelical Protestant faiths. More than half were unhappy with the church’s teachings about the Bible with 46 percent saying that the faith did not view it literally enough. More than half currently in an evangelical church cited religious teachings as their main reason for leaving Catholicism.

In contrast, 84 percent of former Catholics who switched to mainline Protestant faiths did not leave the religion for this reason. Those who converted to mainline Protestantism listed “Religious institutions, practice and people” and family-related issues as their main reason for leaving. Those who switched from Catholicism to unaffiliated mirrored the evangelical group in its reason with more than half citing religious teachings.

Based on survey findings, a majority of those who left the Catholic Church (81 percent) and Protestantism did so based on the religious services and style of worship. Nearly 75 percent of evangelicals felt called by God to make the change, as opposed to only one-third of mainline Protestants.
Even though four in 10 former Catholics who joined the ranks of the unaffiliated indicate they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions, many of them said they remain open to the possibility that they could someday find a religion that suits them.

The Protestant Church
In contrast with other groups, the prevailing reason for Protestants making a change is family related or geographic, while fewer Protestants were leaving their church based on social issues such as abortion and homosexuality or dissatisfaction with the clergy or congregation.

Nearly four-in-10 people who have changed religious affiliation within Protestantism (e.g., were raised Presbyterian and now are Lutheran) say they left their childhood faith, in part, because they relocated to a new community. Nearly as many say they left because they married someone from a different religious background.

Overall, 15 percent of Americans who were raised as Protestants now belong to a different Protestant denomination from their childhood one. Nearly four-in-10 within this group say they left because they moved to a new community. One-third say they left because their spouse is from a different religious background. Those who have changed within Protestantism also are less likely than others to say their decision to leave was motivated by a loss of belief in the religion’s teachings.

More than half of those who switched their affiliation within Protestantism found a church they liked more or said their spiritual needs were not being met. Less than 15 percent cited reasons such as treatment of women, abortion/homosexuality, teachings on poverty/war/death penalty and teachings on divorce/marriage.

The most common reason for switching affiliation within Protestantism was the religious service and style of worship (85 percent). The most common reason for joining a church, for those who have moved within Protestantism, was “religious institutions, practices and people.”

Of those who now are classified as unaffiliated after leaving the Protestant faith, 39 percent pointed to their spiritual needs not being met, while an equal percentage claimed unhappiness with teachings about the Bible. Protestants were half as apt as Catholics to leave based on social issue teachings such as abortion, homosexuality and treatment of women.

More than one-third of former Protestants who now are unaffiliated claimed they no longer believe in God or religious teachings, while another 38 percent haven’t found the right religion for them.

The Unaffiliated
The unaffiliated – defined as claiming no particular religion – category has grown more rapidly than any other religious group in recent decades. According to the 2007 Landscape Survey, 16 percent of American adults say they are currently unaffiliated with any particular religion, compared with only 7 percent who were raised unaffiliated. The group also showed contempt for organized religion, based on a majority of those polled (ranging from 60 to 78 percent on average) agree that religious people are hypocritical, judgmental and insincere; religions are partly true and none is completely true; religious organizations are too focused on rules not spirituality; and religious leaders want money and power, not truth or spirituality.

Nearly half of those who were raised Catholic (49 percent) or Protestant (45 percent) have become unaffiliated due to religious or moral issues. The most common reason was agreement/disagreement with religious teachings.

Even though the unaffiliated group has grown the fastest, it has one of the lowest retention rates of all religious classifications. According to the survey, 40 percent of those raised unaffiliated end up in a Protestant denomination.

The study also shows that worship attendance nearly doubles from childhood to adult for those who join a denomination. In contrast, those who are raised unaffiliated and remain unaffiliated worship half as much as adults as they did as a child. According to the report, only 5 percent of unaffiliated adults who were raised unaffiliated attend church at least weekly. More than half of those adult who became affiliated after being raised unaffiliated attend weekly services.

In the group raised unaffiliated, the survey shows they consider their faith strengthening with age. Comparatively, a higher percentage of people in both groups claim stronger faith than the number who attend at least weekly worship services. Weekly worship attendance (51 percent) and having a “very strong faith” (63 percent) was much higher in adults who switched from unaffiliated to affiliated. Adults who remained unaffiliated had lower numbers for attendance (5 percent) and “very strong faith” (16 percent). A majority of those who joined a religious group after being raised unaffiliated did so because their spiritual needs weren’t being met (51 percent) or they found a religion they liked more (46 percent). Marriage to someone from a particular faith played a role in one-quarter of the cases.

A majority of those (74 percent) who chose a Catholic or Protestant church after being raised unaffiliated did so because they enjoy the services or style of worship, while 55 percent felt called by God. Nearly 30 percent listed a draw to a particular pastor or being asked to join by a member of that religion for becoming affiliated.

By Edward Terry, The Layman, Posted Friday, May 1, 2009
http://www.layman.org/news.aspx?article=25911

Friends, I have no intention of summarizing each chapter of the venerable Thomas Brooks’ Precious Remedies of Satan’s Devices. Nor, do I pretend to improve upon or enhance the subject matter he has so masterfully expounded in his book. So when I write concerning some of the things from therein, it will simply be to highlight and promote it. My commentary should be brief and unprofound, but will hopefully spur folks onto reading the precious armory of Puritan works that we have neglected since the time of the Reformation.

Mr. Brooks:

SATAN’S DEVICES TO DRAW THE SOUL TO SIN

Device I To present the bait and hide the hook; to present the golden cup, and hide the poison; to present the sweet, the pleasure, and the profit that may flow in upon the soul by yielding to sin, and by hiding from the soul the wrath and misery that will certainly follow the committing of sin. By this device he took our first parents: ‘And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’ (Gen. 3:4-5). Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods! Here is the bait, the sweet, the pleasure, the profit. Oh, but he hides the hook,—the shame, the wrath, and the loss that would certainly follow!

Upon reading Brooks here I’m reminded of Christ’s admonition to the disciples concerning temptation (Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22). “Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.” I have often heard this misquoted, and have most likely misquoted it myself, as “Watch and pray that ye fall not into temptation.” There ought to be such an hatred of sin within us that we strive to not even enter into temptation. We are foolish to think that we can play the let’s-see-how-close-to-the-edge-I-can-get-without-falling-off game without putting ourselves in great danger.

There are providential times where we are placed under times of testing. This accomplishes a few things. If we are victorious and stand despite the temptation, the Lord develops within us greater perseverance. From this perseverance flows gratitude for God’s work in always “[making] a way to escape” (1 Cor 10:13). If we fail and fall under temptation, it will serve to humble us, shame us, and teach us why we failed . . . driving us back to the Gospel. Either we were not hating our sin enough or we were depending too much on our own “remedies” to escape temptation. Needless to say, there is a far difference between being providentially placed under testing and flirting with temptation.

Jesus tells us to watch and pray that we wouldn’t even enter into it, much less falter under it. Satan’s wiles are persuasive and strong. Satan’s stratagem are tricky and they morph according to our spiritual growth and maturity. Rather than strive with his trickiness and ingenuity in deception, why not rather flee from temptation, clinging to the holiness and strength of Christ for our protection?! YES, there will be times when temptation is unavoidable. YES, there will be times when we’re not looking for opportunities to sin but will be nonetheless thrusted therein. But when it need not be so, why would we flirt with so deadly a snake that is sin?

It is not a sign of maturity that one thinks himself strong enough to enter into temptation and show that he may overcome it. Rather, it is a sign of immaturity and ignorance as the power of temptation and sin, even to those who have been redeemed by our Great Creator. It is a sign of maturity that a Christian fear temptation, flee from it, and cling to Christ, praying as directed “Lead [me] not into temptation, but deliver [me] from evil!” It is a sign of maturity that a Christian come to terms with what he is: a sinner saved by grace, still in need of Christ’s intercession, intervention, and deliverance from temptation. I leave you with Brooks’ first remedy to this device:

Remedy (1). First, Keep at the greatest distance from sin, and from playing with the golden bait that Satan holds forth to catch you; for this you have (Rom. 12:9), ‘Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good.’ When we meet with anything extremely evil and contrary to us, nature abhors it, and retires as far as it can from it. The Greek word that is there rendered ‘abhor,’ is very significant; it signifies to hate it as hell itself, to hate it with horror.

There are many pastors that seem to have lost their way a bit by following hard after some kind of “seeker” or “emergent” model. They have such a desire for growth and relevance that they have lost their relevance, which makes their growth questionable. With them in mind, here are four common pitfalls which must be avoided by pastors who desire real growth and relevance. In other words, these are things they should not do.

1. Think that church is about reaching the lost at the expense of feeding the sheep, because you have failed to realize that a church of mature Christians can accomplish more for Christ than one shepherd with malnourished sheep.

2. If you do decide to go deeper into the scriptures for those in your church who hunger for it, give them a class on a weeknight night, because you mistakenly believe that the Lord’s Day is not for the Lord’s people, and instead think it is for giving the unregenerate things that will keep them entertained.

3. In order to emphasize relationship and de-emphasize the commands of God, argue that sin is not breaking rule, it is betraying a relationship, because you failed to understand that you cannot betray a relationship unless there are rules to relationships. Then proceed to make up new principles on how relationships are betrayed that have nothing to do with the word of God.

4. Believe that the church needs to be more experiential and less doctrinal, and think that experience is found by manipulating the lighting, music, and dramatic pauses, because you have forgotten that the word of God can cut to the heart with surgical precision and can comfort its wounds like a soothing balm.

I am sure there are plenty more, but these four seem to plague many churches. My prayer is that all pastors and their churches will experience growth and be relevant, but we must remember that a packed house does not necessarily indicate spiritual health. All we have to do is look at many sporting events or concerts to realize the using natural things to appeal to the natural man can fill a house. The Gospel and the word of God are what are relevant to a sinful world, and to sheep who desire to grow. May we all “preach the word.”

God Bless,

Doug

What do pulpits, a stool, community, relationships, and the Word of God  have to do with being relevant?