American Vision Daily News Features

Never Give Up. Never Surrender.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:37:35 EST

By Gary DeMar

Alexis de Tocqueville was a keen observer of American society. Writing from the perspective of the 1830s, the French author concluded that the exceptional virtue, moral fiber, and self-restraint shown by Americans were due to the extraordinary influence of the Christian faith in this land. “It was religion that gave birth to the English colonies in America,” Tocqueville wrote.[1]

The religion that Tocqueville wrote about was Christianity. “While the United States embraced ‘an infinite variety’ of religious sects, Christianity stood in this new land as an ‘established and irresistible fact which no one seeks to attack or defend.’”[2] Tocqueville considered America’s religious climate superior to that of Europe.

All foreign visitors to America, Tocqueville noted, agreed that sexual morality was “infinitely stricter” in the new United States than anywhere else in the world. In America, he reported, all books even novels supposed women to be chaste, and no one boasted of amorous adventures. He was astonished to discover that in cases of sexual immorality, both the seduced and the seducer were scorned; he was equally surprised to learn that rape was punishable by death, while in France it was difficult to get any jury to convict rapists, even given much lighter sentences.[3]

The Puritan ethic was solidly entrenched in America prior to Tocqueville’s visit. His observations were later incorporated in his celebrated Democracy in America. But by 1830, European Enlightenment philosophy had gained a foothold in America and was making a significant impact.

Because of the strong influence of Christianity, Enlightenment philosophies were diluted enough so their impact was minimal. Even so, the incremental strides the movement had made were real. Add to this Darwinian evolution (1859), combined with Higher Criticism as propounded by Graf and Wellhausen (1869–1878), and a volatile mix had been concocted to destroy biblical ethics.

Having turned away from the knowledge given by God, the Christian influence on the whole of culture has been lost. In Europe, including England, it took many years in the United States only a few decades. In the United States, in the short span from the twenties to the sixties, we have seen a complete shift. Ours is a post-Christian world in which Christianity, not only in the number of Christians but in cultural emphasis and cultural result, is no longer the consensus or ethos of our society.[4]

In all of this man became the interpreter of reality. The Bible was just another book about religion. What Tocqueville saw as differences between European and American worldviews have now become nearly indistinguishable, especially at the academic and political levels. The rallying cry of the nineteenth century was “freedom” without restraint. “To be free was to be modern; to be modern was to take chances. The American century was to be the century of unleashing, of breaking away, at first from the 19th century (as Freud, Proust, Einstein and others had done), and eventually from any constraints at all.”[5]

What we are seeing today is the fruit of a nation’s steady but determined rejection of the Bible. “Everywhere this thinking, rooted in godlessness, bears fruit today we can see that the fruit is bitter. In all areas of life man is trying to take control of his own ship. Meanwhile the ship is out of control, and many live in a state of helpless perplexity.”[6]

The libertines began to turn the ship slowly. They knew it would take time. In terms of television, there is a starting date: November 1, 1972 with the airing of That Certain Summer. This ABC TV-movie featured Hal Holbrook as Doug Salter, a divorced father whose son comes to stay with him for the summer. The boy is shocked to learn that his father has chosen homosexuality and to live with his “lover” (played by Martin Sheen).

The taboo had been broken, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put the taboo back together again. That Certain Summer was the vehicle the homosexual community needed to make their lifestyle seem normative. They were not after drama, “they wanted propaganda.”[7] Even though homosexuals are a minority, they persisted in normalizing their worldview. They never give up; they never surrender. We’ve won a few small battles in the past week. The Maine anti-homosexual marriage reversal was big. Do you think this 31^st setback is going to stop the homosexuals? Don’t count on it. The New York legislature is about to vote on homosexual marriage. It will probably pass. Then it will be up to the voters . . . again!

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Endnotes:

[1] Quoted in Allan C. Carlson, “Our National Self-Confidence: Understanding its Decline and Supporting its Revival” (Rockford, IL: The Rockford Institute, 1984), 6.
[2] Carlson, “Our National Self-Confidence,” 6.
[3] Carlson, “Our National Self-Confidence,” 7.
[4] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1984), 28–29.
[5] Roger Rosenblatt, “What Really Mattered?,” Time (October 1983), 25. Emphasis added.
[6] Eta Linnemann, Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology?, trans. Robert W. Yarbrough (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1990), 34.
[7] Richard Levinson and William Link, Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at the Making of Prime-Time Television (New York, St. Martin’s, 1981), 133. Quoted in Montgomery, Target: Prime Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 77.

Four Sheets of Parchment v. 2032 Pages of Government Control

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:01:02 EST

By Gary DeMar

The Constitution of the United States was written on four sheets of parchment. If you count the Preamble and all 27 Amendments (remember there were originally only ten), it comes out to 20 typed pages. If you don’t count the signatures and amendments, you’ll have a document of 11 typed pages. No single Amendment is a full page. Many are only a single sentence in length. The First Amendment covers a multitude of freedoms: religion, press, assembly, speech, and the right to petition the government. It does it with only 45 words. Those original four sheets, about 4500 words, were good enough to serve as a document to govern a nation.

Can you imagine a 2032-page healthcare care bill with similar interpretive powers for Congress, the courts, and an always-in-power bureaucracy? Consider how much damage the two governmental branches have been able to do with just four sheets of parchment. What will they be capable of doing with 2032 pages of a healthcare bill that will enable them to govern every facet of our lives?

Do you remember how the Supreme Court came to legalize abortion in 1973? Seven of the nine justices agreed that they had found in the “penumbra”—the “shadows” of the Constitution—the right to abortion. Here’s how Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion, argued for the shadowy “right” to kill preborn babies:

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however . . . the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment . . . in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments . . . in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights . . . in the Ninth Amendment . . . or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . .These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed “fundamental” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” . . . are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage . . . procreation . . . contraception . . . family relationships . . . and child rearing and education . . . .

Notice that first line: “The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy.” But it doesn’t matter. One can be found in its shadows, and like shadows, they can be interpreted in almost any way, like the game parents play with their children asking what they see in cloud formations. “I see a bear. . . I see a dog . . . I see healthcare rationing . . . I see the right to abortion because the Supreme Court says it’s a right.”

But didn’t some Congressmen vote for the healthcare bill because abortion was stripped out? A lone Republican fell for this nonsense. Once government is in control of something, it gets to define it. Bureaucrats, judges, special interest groups, and all around guilt-manipulators will shine their lights on the dark places of this bill and create the shadows they need to force their long-term agenda on all of us. This healthcare bill is not about health; it’s about control.

It’s a shame that many in the pro-life community don’t see this. They believe they won one for the unborn. They haven’t. They only made it easier for so-called moderates to vote for a bill that one day will support abortion on demand and many new government mandated provisions that will affect us in ways that we cannot now imagine.

While abortion is a violation of the sixth commandment, this healthcare bill additionally violates the second (sets up the State as an idol), fifth (makes the State our parent), eighth (supports legislative theft), and tenth (makes covetousness a national pastime) commandments. No one has described what we are in for better than Herb Schlossberg did in his book Idols for Destruction:

“Rulers have ever been tempted to play the role of father to their people. . . . The state that acts like a wise parent instead of a vindictive judge has been an attractive image to many people. They include ecclesiastical authorities who have completely missed the point of the gospel warning to ‘call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven’ (Matt. 23:9). The father is the symbol not only of authority but also of provision. ‘Our Father who art in heaven. . . . Give us this day our daily bread’ (Matt. 6:9, 11). Looking to the state for sustenance is a cultic act [an act of worship]; we rightly learn to expect food from parents, and when we regard the state as the source of physical provision we render to it the obeisance of idolatry. The crowds who had fed on the multiplied loaves and fishes were ready to receive Christ as their ruler, not because of who he was but because of the provision. John Howard Yoder has rightly interpreted that scene: ‘The distribution of bread moved the crowd to acclaim Jesus as the new Moses, the provider, the Welfare King whom they had been waiting for.’

“The paternal state not only feeds its children, but nurtures, educates, comforts, and disciplines them, providing all they need for their security. This appears to be a mildly insulting way to treat adults, but it is really a great crime because it transforms the state from being a gift of God, given to protect us against violence, into an idol. It supplies us with all blessings, and we look to it for all our needs. Once we sink to that level, as [C.S.] Lewis says, there is no point in telling state officials to mind their own business. ‘Our whole lives are their business’ [God in the Dock, p. 134]. The paternalism of the state is that of the bad parent who wants his children dependent on him forever. That is an evil impulse. The good parent prepares his children for independence, trains them to make responsible decisions, knows that he harms them by not helping them to break loose. The paternal state thrives on dependency. When the dependents free themselves, it loses power. It is, therefore, parasitic on the very persons whom it turns into parasites. Thus, the state and its dependents march symbiotically to destruction.

“When the provision of paternal security replaces the provision of justice as the function of the state, the state stops providing justice. The ersatz [artificial and inferior substitute] parent ceases executing judgment against those who violate the law, and the nation begins losing benefits of justice. Those who are concerned about the chaos into which the criminal justice system has fallen should consider what the state’s function has become. Because the state can only be a bad imitation of a father, as a dancing bear act is of a ballerina, the protection of this Leviathan of a father turns out to be a bear hug.[1]

If this bill passes the Senate, abortion will be the least of our problems because the government will have a new definition of welfare to work with. Healthcare can and will be interpreted to mean what the judges say it means. We are under a Constitution, but as history has shown the Constitution is what the judges say it is.

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Endnote:

[1] Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and its Confrontation with American Society (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1983), 183–84.

The Theology of Evicting Congress

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:46:24 EST

By Joel McDurmon

American Vision has teamed up with The Patriot Update and other concerned Americans to establish the “Evict the Congress” campaign. This is an organized effort to tell our radical ram-rodding representatives and president, “Listen to your constituents, OR GET BOOTED.” A lot of Christians think such political action lies outside the scope of Christianity. Even those who do get motivated to political action sometimes feel uncomfortable linking their political opinions to their faith. I think we should begin with the faith and then move to political action based upon it. We should, therefore, first secure within our hearts and minds the theological basis of political action itself. This article will assay a bit upon at least a part that theme.

The theological basis of political action, including voting, lies in this simple but rarely discussed doctrine: the Kingship of all believers. In Reformed and Reformational circles we have grown accustomed to hearing a lot about the priesthood of all believers, but Scripture speaks just as clearly about the Kingship of all believers. We are not just a priesthood, but a royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9). Jesus Christ, the “prince of the kings of the earth… has made us kings and priests unto God…” (Rev. 1:5–6), “and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:10). Paul echoes the prophet Daniel in saying “the saints shall judge the world” (1 Cor. 6:2; Dan. 7:22; cp. Rev. 20:4). Indeed, Paul says, we shall even judge angels (1 Cor. 6:3).

We exercise this “power” now due to our union with the King of kings, Jesus Christ. Paul confirms the institution, continuation, and omnipotence of Christ’s current rule in Ephesians 1:18–22:

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church.…

The reader will notice the references to Psalm 110:1 which I have written about before. Note also that the inheritance of power and rule spoken of here is an inheritance in the saints. We share in His rule. Paul tells us explicitly a few verses later that God “raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6). As Christ is seated at the right hand of God, so are we seated with Him—in Him—by virtue of our union with Him.

So as kings, how are we to rule? We should rule as ambassadors of Christ, spreading God’s word and promoting His law wherever we can in this fallen world. We are to rule not according to our will but His will. And the idea of “will” brings us to a very important point: voting. In a Facebook post this week Gary mentioned that one of the things we can do to “change things” is simply to vote when we have the chance. In reference to the recent defeat of homosexual marriage in Maine, he wrote, “We can change a lot by just showing up and saying no!” I would add that we need to exercise our voices to our local representatives, letting them know that if they don’t vote “no!” when we say “vote no!” then we will work to evict them and replace them with people who will. This is a simple exercise in the political sovereignty of individual kings.

Someone commented on Gary’s post with a challenge, “If voting is such a key instrument of bringing righteousness, why doesn’t it get any emphasis in scripture?” Two quick issues here before we address the substance of the question: first, Gary did not say that voting is “a key instrument in bringing righteousness,” he said it could bring “change.” I think he would say that voting can restrain evil (in this sense it would help the cause of righteousness), but not necessarily bring righteousness itself. Political power can never make other people more righteous even if it forces them to conform to a more righteous set of laws.

Secondly, there is a fundamental awkwardness in assuming that if Scripture doesn’t explicitly emphasize something, then therefore it’s not important. Scripture doesn’t emphasize buying pasteurized milk in plastic gallon jugs. Shall we there stop this great supermarket-imposed evil? Scripture nowhere emphasizes arguments for the existence of God. Shall we therefore not believe in Him? Of course not, because silence on an issue should never automatically be interpreted as dismissal or denial of any certain position on that issue. On the contrary, lack of emphasis on a subject often occurs because of common assent by the audience involved. Scripture does not argue the existence of God, for example, it rather assumes it from page one, because it was the given understanding for those to whom it was written.

Could the same be said for “voting”? Certainly not if we understand “voting” to include the whole system of modern political theory of federalism and representative republics (although this grows directly out of Scripture, and goes through Calvinism historically). But given two things I think we must find a theology of voting in Scripture:

First, understand the idea of “voting” in general. The word “vote” comes from the Latin, votum, which simply means “a vow.” The verb form is vovere and means “to vow, dedicate, promise, will.” At its root, a vote is simply a vow expressing your will. When you vote, you express your will for social changes. As a Christian you must express your will according to the will of your Head, Christ. It’s a simple as that. By voting in the public arena we live out our baptismal and communion vows of faithfulness (devotion) to Christ’s law and exercise our judgment upon social issues according to that law. If our representatives do not faithfully represent our will (Christ’s will) while voting in place of us, then we hold the same power of judgment upon their term in office. The public vote is one historical sanction we can exercise as part of our kingship. There are others—private property, gold, and bearing of arms—but the vote is one, and we dare not fail to speak out for the cause of Christ using every power and right that we have, including the vote. (There remains much to be said about covenant, authority, law, oaths and sanctions, and inheritance in relation to voting. This is a beginning.)

Secondly, Scripture provides more than one instance of the power of the people to choose their laws. God Himself issued his covenant to such a ratification. Even though He essentially demanded its ratification and promised blessings for doing so or curses for declining, He yet left the people free to choose (I am not endorsing Arminianism here, please don’t write and try to out-Calvin me): “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants” (Deut. 30:19). Likewise, once Joshua established the people in the promised-land, the ratification of the covenant was a voluntary affair. The people voted unanimously in favor, yet Joshua offered them a genuine choice: “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:14–26). God’s people are expected, as He rules their hearts and minds, to express their will according to God’s will. We must make godly choices in society. We are to choose against evil and oppression (Prov. 3:31) and this certainly means voting “no!” when necessary.

I realize that there is much else to say on this matter—ideas further to flesh out, objections to answer, qualifications to consider—but this bare bones background sets us in the right direction. Christ rules, we rule with Him, we must advance His law-order in every area of society through persuasion and through the tools of kingship (sovereignty) that he provides for us in history. Where we can, we must exercise those tools as means of expressing His will.

Right now, among other things, we can vote. If government power continues to grow and welfare programs continue to reduce citizens to dependents, the right to vote will increasingly grow more and more insignificant. Right now, we can get the attention of representatives by threatening their tenure with our vote. This is limited power, but real power. Exercise it while you can. Call and write your Senators and Congressmen at state and federal levels to voice Christ’s will today. Let them know, “Listen to your constituents, OR GET BOOTED.” And, send them a notice of this sentiment today.

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Endnote:

[1] See Douglas F. Kelley, The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World: The Influence of Calvin on Five Governments from the 16^th Through the 18^th Centuries (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992).

The Secret Things of God

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:41:39 EST

By Eric Rauch

Hermeneutics is the technical word for the study of interpretation. We "do" hermeneutics every day in the routine of our lives. Anytime we receive messages from someone else—whether written, verbal, or non-verbal—we must "decode" those messages to arrive at what we believe is what the other person was trying to communicate. Some messages are much clearer than others, i.e. less prone to interpretational difficulty. For example, "Watch Out!," is less likely to be misunderstood than, "that's an interesting painting." Some messages are actually designed, like the one about the painting, to be arbitrary. When my mom doesn't like a particular food, she will call it "different." Technically there is nothing untrue about calling something "different," but the real purpose is to avoid the unpleasant social situation of telling the cook that his food stinks. Since I am aware of this (having made some "different" food of my own), I am a better "interpreter" of what my mom really means, than is someone she has just met. Knowing what the "code" is, my hermeneutical abilities in this one area are better than others due to experience.

Deuteronomy 29:29 tells us that "the secret things belong to the Lord." This passage has been used countless times by pastors and teachers to try and wiggle out of interpretive difficulties in the Scriptures. In his second epistle, the apostle Peter admits that some things in Paul's letters are "hard to understand." He further informs his readers that "the ignorant and unstable twist [Paul's words] to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures" (2 Pet. 3:15-16). In this passage, Peter is warning his readers of the very real danger of improper hermeneutics. He tells them that misinterpreting Scripture can actually lead to destruction. This is why James soberly advises his readers to carefully think about becoming a teacher: "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1). If God places such a price on His truth, and knowing that the "secret things" belong to Him, how can we know anything? The rest of Deuteronomy 29:29—the part that most pastors do not quote when they appeal to this verse—gives the answer: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."

The canon of Scripture—the completed, inspired and infallible word of God—is the Bible. The Bible is God's revelation to His people, His instructions to them. What Deuteronomy 29:29 is actually teaching is that the things which God has NOT revealed—things like how He can be One and Three, or how He can be omnipresent, or why He elected some and not others—are not for us to understand, they are "secret." However, the things that God HAS revealed, which is to say everything in the Bible, are meant to be understood and obeyed. Peter wasn't condemning the false teachers for teaching the Scriptures, he was condemning them for teaching them wrongly. But the question will arise: "How can we know if we are teaching the Bible rightly or wrongly, when even Peter said that some of it was difficult to understand?" The answer is a simple one: "Hermeneutics;" but how, when, and where to apply hermeneutics is a more difficult answer, one that takes years of practice and familiarity with the Bible itself.

Jim Jordan has been studying the Bible his entire life and is a very gifted teacher. Jordan understands the "analogy of faith," a hermeneutical principle that has existed since the days of the early church—often simplified as "Scripture interprets Scripture." The analogy of faith states that the unclear passages of Scripture must be interpreted in light of the clear passages. In other words, the Bible teaches one message, it does not contradict itself. Knowing this, we can safely deduce that one portion of Scripture will not contradict another portion. As faithful interpreters of the Bible, we must allow the Bible to teach us and not allow ourselves to reinterpret the Bible to fit our own preconceived ideas about what it teaches. For example, we know that the Bible teaches that God is absolutely sovereign over everything in His creation, so we must not take control away from Him at any moment, even if we have the noble intention of preserving God's reputation. Christians have a tendency to do this when the topic of sin comes up. But, if God is sovereign over everything, then He is also sovereign over sin, no matter how uncomfortable this may make us. The how of this truth is one of the "secret things," but the fact of it is one of the "revealed things."

Over the course of six lectures in his audio series, Reading the Bible (AGAIN) for the First Time, Jordan helps his students to begin to "see" with biblical "eyes," by applying the analogy of faith time and again to familiar passages in the book of Genesis. One of the very real problems with biblical hermeneutics is that we tend to overlook important details when we read the Bible. Biblical scholarship over the last two centuries has become overly enamored with a "systematic theology" approach, and less concerned with "biblical theology." Jordan applies a biblical theology to the book of Genesis and brings out many details that have long been ignored. Seemingly mundane things like the rising of the sun, clothing, land and water, washing of hands, and moving from place to place take on a whole new significance when they are understood biblically. The Bible builds upon itself and we should not overlook recurring word pictures. Jordan understands the Bible is a work of literature, written by God Himself, and we must understand it as such. Although the Bible does contain maxims and laws, interpreting it as only a book of maxims and laws (like the Koran) misses the bigger picture of what it is trying to communicate. Jordan helps modern students of the Bible, steeped as they are in the minutiae of systematic theology, to step back and look at the whole picture of the biblical revelation; understanding the Bible as a story of growth and maturity—from childhood to adulthood, from immaturity to wisdom.

I can think of no better series than this one to introduce someone to the topic and practice of hermeneutics. Jordan's teaching is sometimes abstract and brain-challenging, but so is the Bible itself. Jordan helps his students to see that Deuteronomy 29:29 is not some hidden escape clause endorsing hermeneutical laziness, but a call to a deeper and more observant reading (and hearing) of the words of God Himself. God has revealed Himself in His Word and he expects His children to read and understand. The "things revealed" belong to us and our children FOREVER, so we should probably set ourselves to learning them now. God's truth is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8), and the things revealed will be ours in heaven just as they are on earth. Reading the Bible (AGAIN) for the First Time is a great place to begin to motivate yourself to look deeper and think longer about the profound but simple truths of God's revealed Word.

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Make Money, Buy Socialism, and See What Happens

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:00:22 EST

By Bojidar Marinov

December 7, 2000. I was sitting at the Greyhound Bus Station in Springfield, Missouri, waiting to board the bus to Detroit. My friend Will and I were watching CNN on the TV set in the lobby. CNN was reporting about the shortage of electric power in California, the blackouts affecting hundreds of thousands of people, and then Governor Gray Davis’ intention to declare a state of emergency.

Will, who had lived in California most of his life, couldn’t believe California could have such a crisis. “What do you think caused this, Bojidar?”

To explain it to him, I told him a joke of the times of the Cold War, one of those that were very popular on the other side of the Iron Curtain, one that could send you to a concentration camp or at least get you a good beating by a KGB officer:

“Two guards, Ivan and Johnny, pace their ranges on both sides of the border between a Communist and a capitalist country. It’s 8 pm, Johnny’s side is brightly illuminated, a small town in the distance shines like a Christmas tree with all the street lights and buildings and houses. Ivan’s side is dark, being in a constant blackout because of shortages. Johnny cheerfully shouts at Ivan: ‘You all have no electricity!’ Ivan is silent, he doesn’t know what to say, truth is truth, they have no electricity.

“As soon as he is back from his watch, he approaches his commissar and asks, ‘Comrade, I want to be ideologically strong, but I have no answer to that.’ ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ the commissar replies, ‘tell him, you all don’t have socialism.’

“The next day Ivan is on the border for his watch, ready for his ideological battle. Johnny appears and shouts, ‘You all have no electricity!’ Ivan replies, ‘You all don’t have socialism!’ Johnny is quick to answer, ‘Ha! Big deal! We have money, we can buy socialism.’ Forced to find a quick reply, Ivan automatically shouts back: ‘Then you won’t have electricity!’”

That’s what happened to California. It used to be the most capitalist state in the USA. The people made lots of money, then they bought socialism with it, and as a result they didn’t have electricity.

These days the president of Venezuela warned his countrymen not to sing in the shower and wash in three minutes. The reason is power and water shortages in a country that has enormous oil reserves and has a humid tropical climate. “I take shower in three minutes,” he said, “and I don’t stink.”

Maybe he doesn’t stink. What stinks though is socialism. It stinks shortages. Every country that has been affected by socialism in one or other degree has experienced shortages of one or another commodity, or of everything. Soviet Russia, the nation with the largest area of fertile land, managed to have several famines and imported food during all 70 years of its existence. Just five years before the Communist revolution, the “backward peasants” of Tsarist Russia exported more grain than all of Western Europe combined. Nations like Ethiopia or Cuba had the same experience. Sweden, with more land per capita than any European country and stagnant population, manages to have housing shortages. The French healthcare system, the pride of the French governments, experiences severe shortages of qualified physicians. Germany has the same problem with computer specialists. My own home country, Bulgaria, was a net exporter of vegetables and other foods to both Germany and Russia in the interwar years. Under Communism we had to grow our own vegetables— unless we wanted to spend hours waiting for the limited quantities that made it to the grocery stores.

On the other hand, capitalism, like Karl Marx rightly pointed out, has the opposite problem: overproduction, i.e., surpluses of goods. (I’d take surpluses over shortages anytime, thank you very much.)

No matter how carefully you introduce socialism, no matter how “scientifically” you build it, no matter how many educated socialists there are, no matter what natural and human resources a country has, socialism produces shortages every time, in every place. By its nature, socialist ideology makes the woefully unrealistic assumption that production of goods and services remains a constant irrespective of economic and political systems, and therefore all that is needed is distribution and redistribution of the goods and services. And of course, every redistribution of resources has one major consequence: It discourages initiative, industriousness, courage, and long-term planning. The result is decreased production, and shortages. Always.

These are common sense facts and truths, and I shouldn’t have to even write about them, if it wasn’t for so many of our Christian brethren who have fallen prey to lies and deception believing that “Christian” socialism can be better than “non-Christian” socialism, and that the Bible advocates socialism. Supposedly our “Christian duty” to show “love” and “compassion” requires that we engage in a large-scale redistribution of wealth.

What they need to learn is that this country started as an experiment in failed “Christian” socialism. (Read more about it in Gary North, The Puritan Economic Experiments.) And the Puritans’ “Christian” socialism ended as all other socialisms do: It created shortages and famine. And shortages and famine never helped anyone, and certainly never helped the poor and the weak.

Therefore, if you are serious about helping the poor, rally against socialism. Look at what admittedly creates surpluses: Capitalism. Work for capitalism and create surpluses. And then you’ll have enough to feed your poor.

The alternative has proven a failure, every time it has been tried. But if you want to try it yourself, try it on a local level. Get a small group of people, make money and buy socialism. And then see what happens.

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Movies, Worldviews, and . . . Appliances?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:02:35 EST

By James DeMar

My wife and I love re-watching movies we loved as kids. Some we still love for the nostalgia or the movie itself holds up well to the test of time. Others can be a train wreck, and we will look at each other and ask “why did we ever think this was any good?” The Sword in the Stone is a perfect example of the latter. As soon as that movie hit the top of our Netflix queue we could not wait to see it. Then came the time when we couldn’t wait for it to end. It was primitive and boring. The other night we finally got our hands on the 1987 production of the animated feature The Brave Little Toaster (TBLT). This gem of a movie was regular watching for my brother and me when we were little.

The basic premise is that five appliances that were used by a boy during his childhood set out on an adventure to find their Master. During the course of the movie the five appliances go through trials and tribulations on their way finally to be reunited with the one whom they loved. While it may sound hokey, it is a precursor to the Toy Story films and is very similar in execution. A portion of the Pixar Animation Studios employees worked on TBLT before Toy Story was even in development.

While watching TBLT I started noticing some things that almost seemed like they were pulled straight from the Bible. The author of the original novel, Thomas Disch, received his first formal education at a Catholic school, and what he learned there may have contributed to the themes throughout TBLT even though later in life he wrote scathing criticisms of the Catholic Church. We can’t escape God’s world even when we reject it.

Eric’s article “The Sacred Cow of God’s Love” reminds us how important it is to read God’s Word critically, that is, to have it criticize our thinking, instead of letting our ideas govern the meaning of the text. Sure we can read the Bible and see that it is teaching us something, but until we pull ourselves out of our own thoughts and dwell upon God’s we will never see what God says. The same can be done with all areas of our life. There is much to be learned from everything around us. There is rebellion and decay along with the regeneration and life that comes through Christ. When my wife and I watch movies we try to see it through God’s eyes. This approach gives us a completely new level of enjoyment and sometimes disgust when we watch movies. This is a blessing for those of you with children. A family-friendly film can be completely anti-God and should not be shown to children who lack discernment. Likewise a film rated for an older audience can be shown to young minds when the message can be used as a teaching tool. I am not condoning a free-for-all when it comes to movies, and I don’t want anyone to accuse me of saying we should show R-rated films to a 5 year-old just because there is a glimmer of redemption in it. Brian Godawa’s book Hollywood Worldviews is a good place to start.

This brings me back to TBLT. From a surface watching it is a lighthearted yet sometimes dark film about struggling through a difficult journey on the way to happiness. It will keep the children entertained and the parents happy. I would like to present a new way to watch the film using a biblical model.

Taking Dominion

The most striking biblical theme occurs at the beginning of the movie after the appliances have awakened from their nightly slumber. Who knew appliances need their sleep too? There is only one task worth completing in their Master’s absence; preparing the Master’s home for his eventual return. “Kirby,” the vacuum cleaner, (Thurl Ravenscroft: the voice of Tony the Tiger) states that they must do what they have done for the past 2000 days—chores! Can we equate the 2000 days with the 2000 since Jesus’ ascension and Pentecost? Their daily routine is to take dominion within the domain their Master has placed them in. Christians have been placed in this world to exercise servanthood dominion over the domain that God has entrusted us with.

At first I thought this was a ploy by the filmmakers to include a “do your chores because it’s fun” scene for the children. Sure, that may be the intention, and it is appreciated by adults, but they went above and beyond by including the attitude of pleasing their Master. Doing chores aren’t fun because the appliances like doing chores. They did the chores and enjoyed them because they wanted to please the Master they loved. Christians need to remind themselves of this attitude. We take dominion and do what God commands because we love Him (John 14:15).

Self Sacrifice

From the viewpoint of the appliances the Master is the divine figurehead. He is the giver of life and health. When “Lamp’s” bulb goes out Master gives him a new one. When “Air Conditioner” overheats Master fixes him. The appliances know no love without him. He is the center of their being and without him they can fulfill no good purpose. The entire film is based around the appliances journey to be reunited with their Master so they can please him.

“Toaster” is the main character who leads the group of appliances through their journey. She (I always thought it was a boy until I found out “Toaster” is voiced by a woman) is always at the forefront of the group and is willing to risk both “life and limb” for the others. They must press on and persevere until the end no matter how bad things get.

Towards the end of the movie there is a scene when all of the appliances are stuck with the Master on a conveyor belt about to be smashed by a waste compactor. “Toaster” is faced with only two choices, and ultimately only one is the right choice. She can choose to deny her Master and not save them and face a life without happiness and one of despair by being separated from her Master or she can give her life for him. Ultimately, his life is more important than hers. Toaster leaps into the cogs and gears of the compressor and is destroyed. She is dead.

The viewer knows that can’t be the end. Lo and behold, Master has resurrected her by repairing her into a new creation and brought her into a new world (a dorm room) where she and the other appliances, now reunited with old friends of times past, can find a new purpose in life.

This is a Child’s Movie?!

When we bring God’s world to the forefront and realize that God is the true and real order of life we can see Him in everything. God’s creation isn’t limited to the things He created in those six creation days. Everything that extends out from that is His creation. Apart from God our world can’t exist.

The examples I have outlined from this 90-minute child’s film are quite few compared to the plethora of examples I could have used. This article started off as an idea to compare Pilgrim’s Progress to TBLT (It’s all in there. Trust me). I decided that would be too much for an article and that the main themes of dominion and sacrifice are a great starting point for those unfamiliar with the film and with looking at God’s creation in this way.

I challenge you to view God’s entire creation with a critical mind and to see His workings in all things. We can’t do anything apart from the One Who created us and the unbeliever must always borrow from God’s order to “create” anything, even in his rebellion.

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Predicting Obama in 1983

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:44:33 EST

By Gary DeMar

One of my habits is to read books and articles about social and political trends that were predicted more than 25 years ago to see how well the prognosticators did. I used to love to read Popular Mechanics magazine and the stories that were published about what the future will be like. The article “Miracles You’ll See in the Next 50 Years,” published February 1950, showed a picture of a woman hosing off her sofa that carried this caption: “Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose.” My wife is still waiting for that one to come true.

Science Fiction writer Wilson Tucker (1914–2006), who had his first story published in 1941 made an interesting observation: “To my knowledge, not a single writer of the early era foresaw email or the introduction of the internet concept. We were busy with variations of the telephone—radio phones, picture phones and the like. Yes, we missed the boat.” Tucker’s 1971 novel The Year of the Quiet Sun was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novel and a Hugo Award for Best Novel. The book is about the use of forward time travel to determine future political and social trends. Tucker commented frequently on the subject. Here’s one he wrote on January 1, 2001:

When I woke up on January 1, 2001, I was disappointed in this respect: Nothing in the world outside my window resembled Arthur C. Clark’s novel or movie “2001.” No busy space ships, no hotel in orbit, no mining activity on the moon, no black monolith leading us to the far planets. After peering through the window and finding none of that I almost went back to bed.

While Science Fiction writers and films inspired generations of young people to reach for the stars and the future, many of them were no more accurate in their predictions than the prophetic claims of certainty of Hal Lindsey, Chuck Smith, and Harold Camping.

Alvin Toffler is probably America’s most noted futurist. His books Future Shock and The Third Wave set the standard for predicting social, political, information, and technological trends. Future Shock sold more than seven million copies around the world. This is an astounding number for a non-fiction book that isn’t about Marilyn Monroe or Michael Jackson. The Third Wave was another international bestseller and was translated into Danish, Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Turkish. The following was taken from his 1983 book Previews and Premises. It’s as if he had this present administration in view:

“Imagine not centralized data banks and computers, but an Apple or TRS-80 [personal computer by Radio Shack] in every kitchen, all linked up in ever-changing networks. That’s more like we’re headed and it’s a nightmare for central planners.

“That kind of society is much harder to control from the top. The ‘decision load’ of the planners becomes literally unmanageable.

“Here’s the key: the more diverse or differentiated any society becomes, the more the local conditions vary, the faster the changes become, the more variation there is from moment to moment. . . . You can’t make good decisions unless you can continually monitor their effects. For this you need people who are located on the periphery to tell you what’s happening. You need information and you need it on time. You most especially need information about your errors. It’s called negative feedback.

“But that’s the last thing you, as a central planner, want to hear. You’re always afraid your boss will punish you. Whole careers are built on denying error.

“So the people down below, not being stupid, sugar coat the information or just plain lie, or send in the truth too late, or play any number of other games with the information.

“Why not? If they can’t participate in making a decision, or setting quotas, and have no responsibility for the decision, it’s better to tell you what you want to hear or, better yet, tell you as little as possible. Or, alternatively, drown you in useless information. They have no control over how the information will be used. It might even be used against their best interests.

“At a minimum, the central planner must have multiple, parallel channels of information extending into every capillary of the system under control, and he or she needs internal devil’s advocates, whistle-blowers, critics and nay-sayers who have nothing to lose by talking back. But I know of no centrally planned economy in which anything remotely like this exists—and for obvious reasons. Any such system, honestly run, poses a continuing threat to the central planner.

“So the central planner in a non-participatory system lives in a world of lies, illusions and anachronisms—and whole economies can be wrecked as a result, and, indeed, have been. History is littered with stupid decisions made by quite intelligent central planners.”

* * * * *

“I don’t care how intelligent the planners are, how many Ph.D.s they hire, or how good they are at delegating, or how big their computers are. At some point, in the high-diversity, fast-change environment we live in, they’re overwhelmed. The people at the center have to make too many decisions about too many things they can’t possibly understand.”[1]

Toffler wasn’t a prophet. He was a student of history and past social and economic trends. It’s not difficult to predict what damage economic planning can do and why it is impossible. Socialists claim it is the duty of the State to implement laws to break down economic and social “inequities,” a form of class warfare, pitting the “rich” over against the “poor.” The effect of socialist policies has been disastrous. Rich and poor do reach parity under a socialist system—everybody becomes poor, except those implementing the laws.

One of the first attempts at a socialistic economy took place in colonial America at Jamestown (1607). For the first four years, all property was held in common. There were no individual property rights. The work was communal. All of what was harvested was put in a centralized storehouse. Since everybody got an equal share no matter how much work any individual performed, there was no incentive to work any harder than the next person. Historians record that after four years, no crops were planted, houses were falling apart, and the prime occupation of the men was bowling in the streets. The Jamestown Colony ultimately failed because the necessary incentives to work were taken away. Socialism begins with “interventionism,” the gradual manipulation of the economy through governmental decree. Again, it’s always with the promise that things will be better if the State steps in to “fix” things.

The history of the Plymouth Colony (1620) is a study in contrasts. Early attempts at a common storehouse were quickly abandoned. Every member of the colony was given his own plot of land to cultivate as he pleased. In just one year, even after losing half their members to death, the Pilgrims of Plymouth were so prosperous that they were able to celebrate a bountiful thanksgiving feast. In 1621, Edward Winslow wrote the following to those back in England: “I never in my life remember a more seasonable year than we have here enjoyed. We are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty. You might, on our behalf, give God thanks, who hath dealt so favorably with us.”

Politicians have little regard for history. Many of them believe that they can change the course of history with their brilliant ideas. Some new bill with their name on it will overturn the laws of the universe. Don’t hold your breath.

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Endnote:

[1] Alvin Toffler, Previews & Premises: An Interview with the Author of Future Shock and The Third Wave (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1983), 96–98.

Calvin's Greatest Error

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:38:53 EST

By Joel McDurmon

In honor of Reformation Day, here’s an excerpt on Calvin from my book, Biblical Logic: In Theory and Practice:

An unfortunate example of the fallacy of Epithet comes in the writings of John Calvin himself. That such a gifted theologian as Calvin commits this error testifies again to the insidious nature of fallacies—even the best can and do fall prey. When addressing the validity of Old Testament law for modern governments, Calvin does not seem to deeply engage the implications of the question, but skirts them with mere insult:

For there are some who deny that a commonwealth is duly framed which neglects the political system of Moses, and is ruled by the common laws of nations. Let other men consider how perilous and seditious this notion is; it will be enough for me to have proved it false and foolish.[1]

Instead of providing reasons to back his denial, Calvin merely labels the position “perilous,” “seditious,” “false,” and “foolish.” This commits the fallacy of Epithet as clearly as anything. Calvin does go on for a few paragraphs to outline the classic medieval distinction between moral, ceremonial, and judicial divisions of laws in Moses’ code, but he provides no argument to show the biblical warrant for this division, nor does he show a biblical basis for deciding his view to be adequate while the revealed Mosaic view to be “false,” let alone “foolish.” What really drives his persuasion here is the widespread acceptance of his view already, and the Epithets he hurls upon to opposition.

Of course nearly everyone writing during the Reformation employed invective and insult on top of their argumentation, and such practice does not always count as fallacy. God’s prophets often spoke in vulgar metaphor and insult against rebellious people. But when the insult itself begins to do the work of persuasion, then we have fallacy. And while Calvin rarely made such a logical slip, on this issue he slid badly.

We could go so far as to argue that the exaggerated severity of Calvin’s epithets here really betray the emptiness of his case. Even if Old Testament law did not supply the most biblical and ideal legislation for modern states (though I believe it does), could he rightfully really argue that such a notion was seditious and foolish? Are they really fools who hold God’s prescribed judgments and punishments for theft, etc., in higher esteem than man’s?

The historical context in which Calvin wrote makes his appeal to “the common laws of nations” and his rejection of Moses somewhat understandable. The most outspoken proponents of Mosaic law at the time had used the name of Moses as a means to carry out violent social revolution in Munster. Kings everywhere feared that local Protestants, wishing to reform society according to the Bible, would follow the same course and incite violence against the throne. Roman Catholic writers stirred fear amongst these leaders by pointing to Munster’s violence and murder as an example of what the Reformers’ Sola Scripture (the Bible Alone as our ultimate authority) would inevitably lead to (a Slippery Slope Fallacy!). Into this scene stepped the very young John Calvin.

The furor in Munster began in 1534 and lasted until the middle of 1535. By this time it had gained fame throughout Europe as a symbol of “Protestant” rebellion against the throne. Calvin published the first edition of his Institutes in 1536—less than a year later—partly because he wished to distance the true Reformation from the unjust association with the violence done in its name. In his dedicatory epistle to King Francis I, he wrote,

Lastly, they do not act with sufficient candor when they invidiously recount how many disturbances, tumults, and contentions the preaching of our doctrine has drawn along with it, and what fruits it produces among many. The blame for these evils is unjustly laid upon it, when this ought to have been imputed to Satan’s malice.… And first, indeed, he stirred up men to action that thereby he might violently oppress the dawning truth. And when this profited him nothing, he turned to stratagems: he aroused disagreements and dogmatic contentions through his Catabaptists [Anabaptists] and other monstrous radicals in order to obscure and at last extinguish the truth.[2]

Calvin thus made it clear that the advancement of God’s Word in no way necessitated social disasters like Munster, nor did those violent radicals represent the whole of the Reformation.

In pursuing this defense, however, Calvin unwittingly refuted his own argument against the Old Testament standard. Against those who impugned the Reformers’ adherence to the Bible by associating it with sedition, Calvin defended,

Furthermore, how great is the malice that would ascribe to the very Word of God itself the odium either of seditions, which the wicked and rebellious men stir up against it, or of sects, which imposters excite, both of them in opposition to its teaching![3]

I hope you note the irony here when you compare this quotation with the earlier one I cited as a fallacy. Earlier Calvin impugned the argument that Moses applies to modern governments as “seditious.” Now he defends adherence to the ultimate authority of the Bible as right and refutes those who ascribe to such preaching “sedition.” Why the disparity here? I believe the issue of biblical law at this early stage in Calvin’s career to have been a glaring inconsistency—one which his own biblical standard refutes.

I consider this inconsistency to be Calvin’s greatest error (he committed very few, of course). In everything else Calvin overtly relied upon the standard of God’s Word; elsewhere he thunders against the church of Rome and the mere words of men which, when even questioning the authority of God’s Word, Calvin calls a “great insult to the Holy Spirit”;[4] but when he comes to the issue of civil law he faced two enormous pressures which overcame his exegesis: his education and then-current politics, things still enormously responsible for the same error today.

On the issue of education, Calvin had studied law at the Universities of Orléans and Bourges, and engaged Roman natural law ideas deeply. His first published work, in fact, was not the Institutes, but a commentary on the laws of Seneca (not of Moses). He had imbibed a pagan view of law for six years, 1526–1532, and since he pursued it at such length, he had the comforts of familiarity, confidence, and authority when he wrote on the issue. This naturally coalesced with the second problem, the political situation described above. When the moment called for distancing the Reformation from the evils done in the name of biblical law, Calvin readily responded with a politically acceptable view of law that would keep the Protestants out of trouble with both the king and Christian scholarly tradition, despite not having a clear biblical warrant.

Much later in his life he would preach through the book of Deuteronomy, speaking clearly that God intervened in history and judged nations according the historical sanctions mentioned in chapters 28 and 29 of that book of Moses. Whether he addressed the standard by which those sanctions get judged needs more study, though he still refers to pagan theorists in the Preface to that work, and his Epithets against Moses remain intact in the 1559 edition of the Institutes, published just before his death. I suspect he never really saw his own inconsistency by this point, since he was consumed with his duties and his failing health.

Pointing out this fallacy in Calvin is important because some “modern” Reformation theologians (like this one) love to quote the same “foolish and false” statement from Calvin as if it provided an actual refutation of the biblical law (“theonomic,” or “reconstructionist”) view. When they do so, these theologians (more modern than Reformed) can’t but help themselves to add the Epithet “theocratic,” as if it would be an insult to man if God Himself revealed civil laws (He did). The insult, rather, is against God, for rejecting His very clear legal standards. They prefer the “diversity” of the natural law standard. Yet even Calvin when defending the natural law view acknowledges that “Heathen authors also saw this,” though he adds, “although not with sufficient clearness.” One should ask why we should wish to pursue the unclear “equity” shrouded in “nature” when we have the crystal clear standard given in God’s Word. Calvin’s regard for Seneca and natural law—deeply buried in the presuppositions of his condemnations of Moses and biblical civil law—need to be pulled out, dusted off, put to the light, and refuted.

Calvin himself provides the type of refutation needed in biblical terms. His remarks provide us a way to understand the rightful limits of Epithet and Euphemism as well. As far as God’s Word determines “good” and “evil,” to that extent we can understand something as “godly,” or “foolish,” but even then we should take care in our language lest we risk judgment for unjustly slandering a brother (Matt. 5:21–22). Calvin used God’s prophet as a frame of reference for the charge of “sedition”:

Yet this is no new example. Elijah was asked if it was not he who was troubling Israel [I Kings 18:17]. To the Jews, Christ was seditious [Luke 23:5; John 19:7 ff.]. What else are they doing who blame us today for all the disturbances, tumults, and contentions that boil up against us? Elijah taught us what we ought to reply to such charges: it is not we who either spread errors abroad or incite tumults; but it is they who contend against God’s power [I Kings 18:18].[5]

Exactly. Epithets and Euphemisms mean nothing if they run counter to God’s revealed Will. When they do, we may justly charge them with fallacy. When they do not, we must consider their weight in the light of God’s Word. Even then, wisdom and love for our neighbors dictate that we should avoid them when possible.

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Endnotes:

[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975 [Original 1536]), 215. The wording remains verbatim in the two volume edition of Calvin’s later version of the Institutes (4.20.14) 2:1502.
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Ed., 11–12.
[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Ed., 12.
[4] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559 (1.7.1).
[5] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Ed., 12.

The Sacred Cow of God's Love

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:48:28 EST

By Eric Rauch

One of the primary difficulties when discussing theological issues is the problem of technical language. Although technical language, in any field of study, is designed to be precise and accurate as it is related to that particular field, it is as prone to being misunderstood as is the vernacular—the regular everyday language of a culture. Problems are especially prevalent when a theological concept is expressed using a common term. For instance, the word propitiation is a much more technically precise and accurate description of what the death of Jesus Christ on the cross accomplished than is the word sacrifice or even atonement. While most pew-dwellers are nominally familiar with propitiation as a word, they are less familiar with what it actually means. Because of this, most pastors and teachers will use the word interchangeably with sacrifice and atonement, never stopping to clearly define the difference. Over time, the technical word becomes synonymous with the common word and the preciseness of the original word gets lost.

The above scenario is one that gets played out countless times in countless ways with countless words. Language changes over time for this very reason. The King James Version uses the word suffer much differently than we do today. If a modern reader was not aware of this he would get hopelessly bewildered when reading this verse in the KJV: "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence" (1 Timothy 2:12). If we applied our modern understanding of suffer to this verse, we would believe that Paul found it excruciatingly painful to be taught by a woman. But of course, this is not what Paul is communicating, as a modern translation immediately makes clear: "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet" (NASB). In order to understand the real meaning of the KJV, we must take into consideration what the words meant when they were written, not what they mean today.

The short article that I wrote last week on the fallacy of unconditional love is another example of this misunderstanding of meaning. My goal was to communicate one thing, but—based on the emails and responses I received—some did not grasp the main point. The problem is that I didn't bother defining what I meant by the term love. I thought that the rest of the words of the article were clear enough to communicate that I didn't mean the "Hallmark" version of love, that emotional feeling of euphoric bliss that accompanies really, really liking someone. In other words, when I said love in my article, I had in mind the biblical definition, but some readers had the emotional "heartfelt" definition in mind. This is my fault. A writer should never presume that his readers have a particular understanding of something that can easily be taken a different way. With the remainder of this article, I hope to make it a little clearer what I was actually trying to say.

The Bible never refers to love as an emotion. In fact, the Bible commands us to love God and each other; only actions can be commanded, not emotions. If God had an emotional "warm-feeling" type of love in mind when He commanded husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25), this is not the way the apostle Paul describes it. We are well aware that more is being said here than having an emotional attachment to your spouse. Christ loved the church to the point of death, forsaking all of the human emotions that caused Him to doubt if He could follow through with what the Father required of Him (Mark 14:36). The love of Christ for the church was not an emotional good feeling, but a total and complete commitment to finishing the work that He was sent to accomplish on her behalf. Christ loved the church despite what His emotions were screaming at Him in His hour of testing. His love went far beyond His emotions, just as a husband's love should transcend how he "feels" about his wife at any particular moment. As DC Talk so eloquently put it: "Love is a verb" (although they spelled it "luv" because it's cool to intentionally misspell werds).

It may (or may not) be helpful to readers to think commitment when reading love in last week's article. That is, don't think of God's unconditional feelings toward men, but His unconditional commitment toward men. It is unfortunate that our modern understanding of the word has become almost exclusively emotional and feelings oriented, because biblical love knows nothing of this. We should thank God that His love is not conditional in this sense, otherwise God's "love" for us could disappear as easily as the "love" between two high-school sweethearts. There is no doubt that love as a commitment produces emotional feelings of joy and happiness (as well as resentment and anger), but biblical love is not defined by the emotional responses that are produced at any given moment. This is the only reason why a marriage ceremony can include the phrase "till death do us part." If a wedding ceremony is based on simply the romantic version of emotional love (and sadly, they all too often are), then it makes perfect sense why so many weddings are followed by divorce ceremonies a short time later. You can fall "out" of love as easily as you can fall "in."

Praise be to God that His love is not conditioned on emotions, but on the faithfulness of Christ. If we are "in Christ," we are unconditionally loved by the Father, but being "in Christ" is the condition of God's love. Salvation is an unconditional gift as a result of God's love being directed toward us. Salvation is not conditional, as some commenters put it; salvation from God's wrath is a direct consequence of being loved by Him. Making the claim that God's love is unconditional but that it is actually salvation which is conditional only changes the words being used. This wordplay is similar to when certain evolutionists explain away the impossibility of abiogenesis—life coming from non-life—on earth, by claiming that life was seeded here by aliens. The problem of the scientific impossibility of abiogenesis still remains, but they push it out into space and hope that no one will notice. We are only forced into these types of word games when we begin with a faulty premise.

We must be careful to not make the Bible say what we want it to say. Although I am genuinely thankful to those of you who recommended that I read the Bible to straighten my faulty views out, I can only offer my assurance that I have read it. I would hasten to add that “read the Bible” is pretty dangerous advice. I only recommend reading the Bible to those that are willing to abandon a lifetime of preconceived and misguided notions about the character of God. Scripture changes us; we cannot change the Scripture to suit our own preferences. Although it is sometimes difficult to get our minds around biblical truths, we shouldn't seek to redefine them. Sacred cows are hard to kill, but they sure make for tasty steaks once they're dead.

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Taking Dominion Starting with Guitar Hero

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:08:50 EST

By James DeMar

There are usually a few things in life one can look back on and pinpoint as a major life-changing event. I am only 25 so those events are quite few. This one event put me on a course for advancing the kingdom of God in a way I never imagined and involves a simple video game that was semi-popular when it first came out in 2006.

I’m sure most of you have at least heard of the Guitar Hero series of video games. Every time I walk into a Wal-Mart I see the big boxes of GH and Rockband boxes stacked high. In case you don’t know, Rockband is a much more fleshed out gaming experience than GH was originally designed to be. I sort of miss the days when most people thought these games were strange. These games have become a cultural phenomenon on their own but in my life they have had much more long-term meaning than hitting a barrage of colored notes with a fake plastic guitar.

In December 2006 my wife-to-be bought her brother, Matt, Guitar Hero II as a Christmas present, and I must confess, I had never heard of it and thought it strange myself. But hey, appearances aren’t everything. Sometime during January we visited Matt to play GH one night. As soon as I started playing I was hooked. I believe that very night my fiancée and I ran across town visiting store after store searching for the game. We got lucky and found one copy.

For those of you who have never played this game you must understand something about it. It in no way resembles real guitar playing. It takes some serious hand-eye coordination to get anywhere with this game and you must not care about looking stupid to get any good at it and you most definitely must not care about failing as you progress. You will fail and fail miserably. There are four difficulty levels and 8 tiers of 5 songs each. The higher the tier, the more difficult the songs become. You have difficulties Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. I remember testing Expert out in my early days just to see what it was like. “Forget that. I’ll never be able to play well enough to do that.” The difficulty was something I had never expected. I believe from that day my only long-term goal was to be able to “play” on Expert and didn’t care about beating the Expert career.

In March of 2007 I had moved past the stage of just being “hooked.” I had moved into full-blown addiction and determination to be the best at all costs. This really isn’t an exaggeration. Just ask my wife, family, and co-workers. American Vision even posted an article I wrote that contained an explanation of how GH works. There was even a video that showed an 8 year-old kid playing who was quite good. This 8 year-old was the one who got me addicted. He introduced me to the possibilities of having fun and being good at the same time. He also introduced me to either the worst or best website of my life depending on how you look at it. ScoreHero.com took me into its arms and embraced the GH addiction like it meant something. You could submit scores to see how you compared to others, there were charts with the best Star Power paths (special score multiplier), tips and tricks, and loads of wonderful community tidbits. It was self-help for those who only wanted help to continue their addiction. My dad began asking me the same question almost weekly as I became more involved: “Yeah, but can you do anything with this”?

From the ScoreHero.com resource I spent hours upon hours of refining my playing abilities and with a new-found knowledge of how to best play these digital songs dozens of times in a row just to get a few new high scores I set myself up for a new career path. Just stick with me a bit longer. We’re almost there.

This community I had found, this primitive resource of information was so basic. It had only one purpose; to make people extraordinary at a video game. It has accomplished this and much more with closing in on 500,000 members, yet I had joined at lowly #21,000 back when it was a niche game. The massive growth and success of this website showed me something. Scorehero really proved to me that content with a purpose is king. In real-estate it is location. Content is the location of the internet. The most boring website can be a huge success and an online forum can be a wonderful resource. It creates a community of like-minded individuals who all can have one purpose, and when they are all focused on that purpose, great things can be accomplished.

How is any of this relevant in the Christian’s life? How did any of this change my life? The job I currently occupy, Director of Internet Services, at American Vision came about because of Guitar Hero and ScoreHero.

In a weird way Guitar Hero helped me see all of this with the untold amount of lost hours to my life playing Guitar Hero and browsing the ScoreHero forums. I started to read and read and read as much as I could about websites and design and content and anything else I could find. This information was useless to me at my old job as an accountant. At most it was trivia that I would never use; a bunch of useless information for an accountant.

After a while I started relaying the things I was learning to American Vision to help them create a better web presence. There was no one there who could help them implement any of these ideas and especially no one to help design and start up an online forum. Eventually I was offered the chance of helping American Vision with its mission “to restore America to its biblical foundation—from Genesis to Revelation.”

A new-found purpose overcame me from the day I began my new job. I have spent more time reading and studying God’s Word in the past year at American Vision than I have in the past 10. There is still much for me to learn and do, but I am doing everything in my power to take dominion. Where God takes me I do not know. He can use something as silly as a video game to turn a non-productive entertainment gizmo into a productive web presence that is affecting people around the world. My dad’s infamous line “yeah, but can you do anything with this?” was answered in a way neither he nor I ever imagined.

View my Guitar Hero I scores here and my Guitar Hero II scores here.

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What is True Spirituality?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:27:01 EST

By Gary DeMar

Being “spiritual” does not mean “made up of spirit.” “Spirit” is not a ghost-like substance that inhabits the truly “spiritual Christian.” The adjective, as in “spiritual man” and “spiritual body,” does not mean ethereal, incorporeal, immaterial, otherworldly, or even unworldly as depicted in movies like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Ghost, and The Sixth Sense. True spirituality takes form as we live in this world in our own bodies following God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit:

To be Spiritual is to be guided and motivated by the Holy Spirit. It means obeying His commands as recorded in the Scriptures. The Spiritual man is not someone who floats in midair and hears eerie voices. The Spiritual man is the man who does what the Bible says (Romans 8:4–8). This means, therefore, that we are supposed to get involved in life. God wants us to apply Christian standards everywhere, in every area. Spirituality does not mean retreat and withdrawal from life.[1]

Spirituality is measured by “good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Good works manifest themselves at the personal level as the Christian exhibits the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22–24), at the family level as children obey their parents (Eph. 6:1), at the business level where employers pay a promised wage (Deut. 24:15), at the judicial level where all should be considered equal before the law (Lev. 24:22), and at the civil level where civil governments are paid their due (Matt. 22:21) and do what’s right (Rom. 13:4).

We have been redeemed and rescued from the pollution of the world. This does not mean that we are to turn our backs on life. Rather, we are to avoid all participation in the world’s uncleanness. “Christians, indeed, as our Lord taught, are the light of the world; this they cannot be if their light is hidden or withdrawn. Thus they are to let their light shine before men (Mt. 5:14ff.), though at the same time shunning the depravities of unregenerate society and of unchristian worship.”[2]

A prevailing and false understanding of true spirituality is the work of the gospel turned in on itself. To be spiritual, in the modern and corrupt sense, means to internalize the effects of the Holy Spirit’s regenerating work on the sinner “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). The weakness of this definition is not that spiritual “renewal starts in the private world, but that it ends there too.”[3] While there is an internal and spiritual reign of Christ in every believer, there must also be an external expression of that internal faith. This is the Good Samaritan faith where Jesus tells us to “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). Jesus does reign in the hearts of His saints. This is a necessary first step:

The internal, spiritual reign of Christ as Savior and Lord must not be overlooked or minimized in importance. One cannot enter into the kingdom of God apart from spiritual rebirth: “Truly, truly I say unto you, except one be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Those who are redeemed have already been transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Colossians 1:13) and as such appreciate that “the kingdom of God is . . . righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).[4]

If the new birth stops with growth on the inside, then it is not true saving faith, just like a light that is hidden under a bushel is not a real light (Matt. 5:14–16). Encouraging someone to be “warmed and filled” is not an expression of true faith (James 2:16). True spirituality is the Christian faith manifested. Jesus exhibited His love for the world in deeds of love and righteousness.

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Endnotes:

[1] David Chilton, Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (Horn Lake, MS: Dominion Press, [1985] 2007), 3–4.
[2] Philip E. Hughes, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT) (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1962), 256.
[3] Os Guinness, The Gravedigger File: Papers on the Subversion of the Modern Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 78.
[4] Greg L. Bahnsen, “This World and the Kingdom of God,” in Gary DeMar and Peter Leithart, The Reduction of Christianity: A Biblical Response to Dave Hunt (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1988), 351.

Are Attempts to Reclaim the Culture a Pointless Exercise?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:11:39 EST

By Gary DeMar

First-century believers could have offered tangible evidence that there was little chance for the gospel to have an impact on the status quo of religious and civil oppression in their day. How could a small band of men—led by a fisherman (Peter) and a tentmaker (Paul)—living under Roman occupation ever conceive that their circumstances would change enough so that the gospel message would lead to the transformation of the world? To add to the improbability of a world-wide impact, soon after the victorious ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on His disciples, one of their own was killed by the religious establishment (Acts 7:54–60). What did God do? He converted the man who led the persecution and made him a missionary to the Roman Empire! (9:1–31). After Stephen’s death, James, the brother of John, was executed by the local civil governor (12:1–2) and Peter was arrested and thrown in prison. What did God do? Herod “was eaten by worms and died” (12:23). Through tradition we learn that every apostle, with the exception of John, died a martyr.

The Roman Empire was the major kingdom force in the first century, and the church was relegated to footnote status by the historians of the day. How times have changed. The historians are footnotes, time is still measured by the birth of Christ—even with the use of BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) by the academic establishment)—the Roman Empire is a memory and its remaining buildings a tourist attraction, and the church of Jesus Christ circles the globe. If God accomplished all of this with a few disciples with little or no social influence and no political connections, why does it seem incredible to accomplish something similar with hundreds of millions of believers today? Is the gospel any less effective?

In his book The Vanishing Conscience, John MacArthur tries to argue that “‘Reclaiming’ the culture is a pointless, futile exercise. “I am convinced,” he writes, “we are living in a post-Christian society—a civilization that exists under God’s judgment.”[1] MacArthur and other Christians believe that such conditions serve as immovable impediments to reformation. Scripture and history are not on his side. The gospel entered a non-Christian society and transformed it. We may live in a post-Christian world, but it wouldn’t take much time or effort to reverse the trend. Even Tim LaHaye, co-author of the popular Left Behind series that presents a pessimistic view of the future, thinks MacArthur is off base. “Personally,” Tim and Beverly LaHaye write, “we have serious problems with that kind of thinking. . . . If we just give up on our country, America may be sentenced to an unnecessary hundred or so years living without the freedom to preach the gospel here or around the world—simply because we gave up on our culture too soon.”[2] In their book Mind Siege, co-authors David Noebel and LaHaye write the following:

The Christian life should never be dull or boring. There is plenty to do in all spheres of life. The importance of Christians entering the cultural sphere (art, music, popular entertainment, theater, media, law, religion, education) cannot be overlooked or underestimated. As Robert Bork makes very clear in his work, conservatives who hold a pro-moral point of view might control the White House and the Congress, but still “they cannot attack modern liberalism in its fortress . . . Hollywood, the network evening news, universities, church bureaucracies, the New York Times and the Washington Post.” Modern liberals, says Bork, “captured the government and its bureaucracies because they captured the culture.” Christians need to ponder this point carefully.

Christian parents need to prepare their sons and daughters to invade the fortress of the left. Someday the major newscasters will retire, and there is nothing amiss in believing that well-prepared Christians can replace them.[3]

America could be reduced to a burned out cinder, and God’s Church will still go on. Even world-wide disasters (plagues and world wars) did not mark “the end.” As history shows, there have been many who have been premature in writing the obituary of the Church and Christian civilization. The doctrine of Church is bigger than our nationalist limitations, and it is more powerful and resilient than the most demanding evils. “Over the past five centuries or so, the story of Christianity has been inextricably bound up with that of Europe and the European-driven civilizations overseas, above all in North America. Until recently, the overwhelming majority of Christians have lived in White nations, allowing theorists to speak smugly, arrogantly, of ‘European Christian’ civilization. . . . Already, today, the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America,”[4] and we can add, China. The struggles of these third-world nations far outweigh the moral and political struggles we are facing in the United States. They have none of our evangelical infrastructure (a church on every corner), but they seem to be making remarkable evangelical progress. Only time will tell what type of evangelicalism is sprouting and how it will be maintained.

The structures are in place to turn our nation around. What do we lack? It’s not money, people, organization, or skills. We lack motivation, knowledge, and vision. Modern-day American Christianity is not what I bought into when I became a Christian. The first light of the gospel brought a dramatic change in my life. Paul’s words about being a “new creature in Christ” (2 Tim. 5:17) were and are real. I believed that what was true for me as an individual was also true for the whole body of Christ. But as I’ve traveled around the United States, watched and listened to what passes for Christianity on “Christian” television and radio, frequented Christian bookstores and had to endure passing bookshelves filled with countless books on “relational” Christianity (“What can Jesus do for me?”), Christian fiction, end-time novels, Veggie Tales[5] and Bible Man videos, before I could find the few dusty works of theological substance tucked away at the back of the store, I have often wondered if Christians really understand the true power of the gospel.

I realize politics is a dirty business (what isn’t?), but it wouldn’t take much to reshape the face of Congress and the Senate. With this accomplished, the make-up of the Supreme Court and the lower courts could also be affected. What would it take? One way would to get Christians to vote to limit the power and jurisdiction of civil governments. The few conservative Christian voices that are struggling in Washington need help. A five to ten percent shift in the balance of power is possible in upcoming elections if Christians will take advantage of the opportunity. LaHaye and Noebel point out that “only 48 percent of Christians bother to vote, even in presidential elections.”[6] The goal, of course, is not to use politics as a club to impose a top-down moral regime on America. Christians must understand that civil government has a very narrow focus and limited jurisdiction. The goal is to get the welfare genie back in its bottle and the activist court back in Pandora’s Box and close the lid down tight. Politics is not a reforming agent, but it is something that needs reforming. It certainly can be an inhibitor of reform by creating draconian laws designed to relativize public discourse on any issue.

We are told that there are no simple answers. As New York University president John Sexton stated: “Our [secular] universities are committed to the deep and nuanced study of humanity. The more sophisticated you are, the more you tolerate ambiguity.” The goal of secularism is ambiguity, intellectual as well as moral. That’s why when Christians proscribe placing the Ten Commandments in a court house, and in granite no less, the political establishment faints in disbelief and awakens in outrage. There is a fear that people might actually obey the Ten Commandments and begin to believe that there is a God, and He’s not any of the justices who sit on the Supreme Court. Am I exaggerating? In Stone v. Graham (1980), the court wrote, “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.” The fear is that people might actually believe that there is a God who demands something of His creatures. What a shocking assertion. How can Christians remain silent and sit still when such nonsense passes as a Supreme Court decision? In 1965, Rousas J. Rushdoony spotted the logic of a court that sees itself as the foundation of law:

If there is no God and no divinely ordained law, then not only does perversion have equal rights with morality, but actually truer rights, because Christian morality is seen as an imposition on and a dehumanization of man, whereas perversion is an act of liberty and autonomy for this school of thought.[7]

As the courts mumble about toleration and diversity, we are beginning to see a pattern: If any law is based on religious assumptions, in particular, Christian religious assumptions, they cannot be by definition part of America’s legal discourse. So what do we do about this? According to MacArthur, not much. Preach the gospel, to be sure, and hope that this will have a leavening effect on the culture. But even if the country were 80 percent Christian, and this majority decided not to involve themselves in the broader culture, the remaining 20 percent would rule us and in the end deny Christians and everyone else their freedoms.

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Endnotes:

[1] John F. MacArthur, The Vanishing Conscience: Drawing the Line in a No-Fault, Guilt-Free World (Dallas, TX: Word, 1994), 12.
[2] Tim and Beverly LaHaye, A Nation Without a Conscience: Where Have All the Values Gone? (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1994), 243.
[3] Tim LaHaye and David Noebel, Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium (Nashville: Word, 2000), 228.
[4] Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1–2.
[5] Gary DeMar, MeatyTales: Should Talking Vegetables be Used to Teach the Bible? (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2009): http://www.americanvision.com/meatytalesebook.aspx
[6] LaHaye and Noebel, The Mind Siege, 279.
[7] Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Religion of Revolution (Victoria, TX: Trinity Episcopal Church, 1965), [11].

Collision with Pietism

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:32:31 EST

By Joel McDurmon

Oh my! Doug Wilson has really stepped in it this time! Well, perhaps that’s not quite the right metaphor: he didn’t actually step in it, he said it. That’s right. Near the end of the brand new, action-packed, mind-bending, worldview-challenging debate-documentary-film-experience Collision, before a tavern-room full of skeptics and atheists, Wilson encapsules the atheistic worldview with a particular two-word sentence distinguished greatly by its down-to-earthness. Stepping into the atheist’s worldview, he shows them—using their own presuppositions, beliefs, and language—exactly what they really believe and why they have no reason in their worldview to get upset over “evil” or suffering. But certain Christians are upset over Rev. Wilson’s use of terminology. They think no Christian should ever say the word he said at that juncture. So here we are at a classic impasse between reaching unbelievers and coddling life-time pew pietists. Wilson let it fly, and now it’s hit the fan.

So what was Wilson thinking when he quoth the atheists’ naturalism as, “Shit happens”? You can bet it was thinking indeed—calculated precisely for audience and timing in order to produce the most coveted of all reactions to rhetoric: impact. It was perfect. Can you think of a better summary of the atheistic worldview? Nowadays it has grown fashionable for atheists to pretend moral outrage: Christianity is a “wicked cult,” according to Christopher Hitchens; the “root of all evil,” according to Richard Dawkins; “pernicious” and “vilest lunacy,” according to Sam Harris, ad nauseum. They make an outcry over the problem of evil: “How can an all-powerful and good God allow evil and suffering to exist? Either he’s not all-powerful enough to stop it, or he’s not good enough to want to. This is a moral outrage!” Wilson simply pulls back the curtain on their charade: in the atheistic worldview, there are no such things as purpose, good, evil, or morality. There is only matter and chance. Why, then, does the atheist react with real moral outrage? Why does it matter what one concentration of matter chances to do upon another concentration of matter. It just happens, and whether you like it or not, it carries no ethical meaning or judgment at all. The bruised and battered victim may wish her rapist to burn in hell, but he will never. And if human authorities never capture him, he will walk freely to do as he wishes again, and die peacefully with his little secret. There is no judgment. In fact, in an atheistic world, the rapist has done no wrong. The victim may have suffered, but, big deal.

Rev. Wilson argued thusly, and just as he began to see his skeptical audience beginning to feel the weight of his argumentation, beginning to look slightly uncomfortable with themselves, beginning to squirm a bit, stare away a bit more awkwardly… he encapsuled their whole life, beliefs, and struggle for them in what they already knew: “shit happens,” deal with it, get over it. Doug showed the atheist that not only does their emperor have no clothes, he doesn’t even have a tailor to go to.

What Wilson was doing was what evangelists like to call “building a bridge.” As one who spent fifteen years in the civil engineering business, I can talk with some tiny bit of authority on bridges. Here goes: it is very important when building bridges that the bridge touch the ground on both sides of the chasm. This means that a bridge must stretch its life-saving pathway all the way into the dirt on the other side. Good evangelists know this: they must be able to meet the unbeliever where he is, in his culture, in his neighborhood, on his dirt. Sometimes this means seizing the opportunity in which speaking to him with the very dirt of his own culture will have some impact upon his tidy little compartmentalized worldview. The unbeliever will begin to see that what clean laundry of morality he has in his mind he has actually stolen from the Christian worldview, and to be consistent he must either let his dirt soil his mental laundry too, or leave matter-and-chance-ism completely and cross the bridge into Christianity.

Christians can do this because we are the new creation, unspoiled and unsoiled by touching the unclean things of the old fallen order. We gain this imperviousness via our relationship to the New Creation, Christ. He illustrates this for us in the Gospels. Under Old Testament law, a leper was decreed “utterly unclean” (Lev. 13:44), was segregated from society, and continually had to pronounce and indentify himself as “unclean, unclean” (Lev. 13:45) so that others would not come near him (lest they should be made unclean by association?). It was the priest’s duty to pronounce verdict of “unclean,” whether upon a person, garment, or house. Before he entered a house to inspect it, everything in the house had to be removed lest it also fall under the condemnation by association (Lev. 14:35–36). The point is clear, before Christ, unclean things could defile clean things; the clean thing touching the unclean thing defiled the clean. Corruption ruled. While this understanding holds in some ways still in New Testament thought, there is also a radical transformation. When a leper comes to Christ for healing, Christ does what is unprecedented: “And He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed” (Luke 5:12–14). After Christ, mere contact with the unclean thing no longer defiles the clean thing. Rather, power flows the opposite direction: the clean thing cleanses the unclean. Redemption rules instead of corruption.

This does not mean, of course, that Christians should freely avail themselves of vulgarity and “cuss words.” They should not habitually associate with bad characters (1 Cor. 15:33) lest bad manners grow habitual as well, nor should they freely associate with the plethora of idolatries in the unbelieving world. From these our faith by its very nature requires us to separate ourselves, certainly covenantally as in marriage and religion (2 Cor. 6:14–18). Yet we should not be afraid to encounter, contact, brush up against, and even reach out and touch the uncleanness of the fallen world. A mature Christian, walking in faith, will not fear getting a spot from the world on his Christian garment. Rather, like Christ, trusting in the power of God, will reach out and touch it seeking to transform it.

This type of communication is not only a matter of evangelism, it also pertains to Christian discipline. Both the law and prophets (referring to the law) use the imagery of excrement as a description of idols. Ezekiel even uses the Hebrew word gillulim (from gel, meaning piles of dung)[1] as his favorite word for “idols.”[2] The reference comes from Leviticus 26:30, where God promises judgment for disobedience. “The NEB freely translates, ‘I will pile your rotting carcasses on the rotting logs that were your idols.’” It could as easily translate, “I will pile your carcasses upon the piles of dung that were you idols.” Nothing would shock a Hebrew more thoroughly than this—corpses and dung were about the two most unclean things one could touch, let alone become. So God chose this revolting image to communicate how revolting idolatry and disobedience are. When the Hebrew people did grow so disobedient, Ezekiel went right back to that imagery, even so far as to say the leaders of the people had erected such piles in their hearts (Ezek. 14:3).

Worse yet, God had Ezekiel bake bread with human dung mixed in it (Ezek. 4:9–12), in order to communicate to the people “Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them” (Ezek. 4:13). God used excrement to symbolize sin: “make them eat their own presuppositions.” When Ezekiel pleaded with God, God mercifully allowed him to substitute cow’s dung for human dung in the bread (Ezek. 4:15).

Other prophets used the same image. Through Zephaniah God said he would destroy the people and leave their flesh as dung (1:17), and through Malachi He denounced the corrupt priests saying, “Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it” (Mal. 2:3).

Isaiah used another revolting image of ritual uncleanness, describing the people’s best attempts at righteousness as “menstrual rags” (Isa. 64:6). None of our popular English translations has the guts to be literal here: “filthy rags,” “polluted garment,” etc. Not even Young’s Literal Translation is literal: “garment passing away.” Even The Message—sensing the need to transcend mediocrity, yet still not having the guts to offend our modern cloaks of piety—only ventures, “grease-stained rags.” One wonders where Mr. Peterson thinks the ancient Hebrews got their petroleum. Alas, only St. Jerome had both the critical eye and the nerve: pannes menstruate. You do the Latin.

All said and done, the law and prophets had no problem at all crossing the line of decorum into the realm of vulgarity when the situation called for it. In order to make points about sin and corruption, foolishness and vanity, idolatry and judgment, they had no problem with crude imagery, crude language, or the shock that such communications brought.

This is why it seems so unbiblical to me for Christians to get upset over “the S-word.” It doesn’t, mind you, seem strange to me, but rather unbiblical. It doesn’t seem strange because our Christian culture is one of pietism and taboos—just the kind of outward, fig-leaf religion that demonizes dancin’ and drinkin’ but couldn’t recite more than four of the Ten Commandments, and those not in order. Let alone actually apply the commandments to society—family, church, and state—at large. We have been trained in a sissified, neutered, and whitewashed opinion of human life, especially as it concerns our interactions with fallen human nature. We prefer to ignore it, avoid it, look the other way. We even refuse to translate God’s own Word properly in order to pretend our Christianity is spotless when in reality it is just gutless and spineless.

It is most unfortunate that today, more Christians will get offended over that one word than a whole list of worse and more pervasive evils, probably in their own lives. They could sit and watch the whole Collision DVD, watch the debates, imbibe 90 minutes of atheistic arguments and denunciations of our faith, and yet get offended at once turn of phrase from the Christians. They’ll commit a hoard of other evils, send their children through the dung-factory of public schools, ignore the poor in their own churches, support socialistic government, gossip, church-hop, etc., etc., and yet be up in arms over one word another man says. That’s like mixing dung with your corn flakes and then complaining that the coffee’s too strong.

We have been called to have our hands and feet planted firmly in the soil of this earth, not fearing it will defile us in some way, but working in God’s power to redeem it from its corruption. Doug Wilson knows this. He does not fear this world, he confronts it. He even ventures to show it its own foolishness, using its own foolishness. He speaks the truth to it. That he does so in its own language shakes the heart of the unbeliever. It rattles his cage, and shows him he’s in a cage. Then he shows the way out.

For those Christians who believe in actually talking to the world outside, trying to build bridges, or who would accept a God Who in His Word does not shy from comparing disobedience to human feces—in short, for those Christians who can accept Christianity as it really is—I highly recommend the new DVD Collision as a wonderful example of how these things are done. Doug builds a relationship with atheist Christopher Hitchens, gaining his respect and admiration along the way, yet never failing to confront him for the flaws inherent in atheism. I dare to suspect that from that particular talk in that particular tavern, a few skeptics walked away really questioning their skepticism. Once they consider that things don’t just “happen”—that purpose infuses everything in the universe—then they must consider that the first part of that two-word sentence ain’t so universally true either. To accept or deny either word, either way, requires you to be consistent. Either “God decrees what happens, and whatever happens is God’s purpose,” or “Shit happens, and whatever happens is shit.” I suspect even the most reactionary and mindless Christian, were he an atheist, could figure it out after that. Thanks, Doug. And God bless your work.

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Endnotes:

[1] Earl S. Kalland, “galal,” Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 2 vols., eds. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L Archer, Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 1:162–164.
[2] Earl S. Kalland, “galal,” Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 1:163.

The Fallacy of Unconditional Love

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:35:27 EST

By Eric Rauch

Modern Christianity is known, among other things, for teaching the idea of God's unconditional love. It is often spoken of in terms of evangelism, when believers express their concern for the "afterlife" of unbelievers. "God loves you unconditionally," they tell their unbelieving audience, "and He wants you to be with Him in heaven." I cringe every time I hear something like this said, not because I doubt the motivation behind the evangelistic sentiment, but because the unbeliever has such a perfect opportunity to ask a question of the believer that would probably end the conversation on the spot. Although I have never heard an unbeliever ask this question, it is important that we think about it so that we may be "always ready with an answer" (1 Peter 3:15).

What is the question? Simply this: "If God loves me unconditionally, why does it matter how I live my life?" Or it could also be phrased this way: "If God truly loves me unconditionally, why should it matter whether or not I 'become a Christian?'" Be careful to not miss how powerful and deadly this question really is. It is not just a clever twist of wording, meant to sidetrack the evangelistic efforts of well-meaning proselytizers. Far from it. This question is the stake in the heart of the modern evangelical notion of God's "unconditional love." In fact, I challenge you to search for the phrase "unconditional love" in the Bible or find the concept that God unconditionally loves every person on earth being taught anywhere in Scripture. In fact, R.J. Rushdoony makes the bold claim that "unconditional love is contrary to the Bible."

Unconditional love is a more revolutionary concept than any other doctrine of revolution. Unconditional love means the end of discrimination between good and evil, right and wrong, better and worse, friend and enemy, and all things else. Whenever anyone asks you to love unconditionally, they are asking you to surrender unconditionally to the enemy. [1]

Strong words, but necessary ones because modern Christianity finds itself exactly where Rushdoony claimed they would be: in an unconditional surrender to the enemy. Any situation that does not have "conditions" can play to the advantage of either side. Imagine entering a marriage with "no conditions." There would never be grounds for divorce (even in the biblical "condition" of adultery), because no terms were ever agreed to. We tend to think of unconditional love in a positive sense, but there is just as much an equal and opposite negative side. Rushdoony continues:

We are told to love our enemies, that is, those who offend us personally on non-religious and non-moral issues. When the cause of division is petty and personal, we must rise above it with an attitude of law and justice; we must continue to extend to all such persons the full protection of the law from injustice, malice, and false witness. But the enemies of God's justice and God's law, of fundamental law and order, must not be loved. To love them is to condone their evil. The accusation of the psalmist is to the point: "When you see a thief, you delight to associate with him, and you take part with adulterers" (Psalm 50:18, Berkeley Version). What we condone morally, we also approve of or delight in. St. John forbad hospitality to those who trying to subvert the faith: "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds" (II John 10,11). [2]

Notice that Rushdoony says that we are to love our enemies unconditionally, but never God's enemies. This is precisely what is wrong with saying that God's love is unconditional. We are applying a command that has been given to us by God back onto God Himself. While it is true that God loves his friends unconditionally, that love can exist only because Jesus Christ has already fulfilled the conditions of the friendship on the cross. The same Jesus who said "no longer do I call you slaves..but I have called you friends," also said that His friends do what He commands and "if you love Me, you will keep My commandments" (John 15: 14-15; 14:15). God's friendship/love is conditioned upon obeying Him and doing what He commands. If we show love for Jesus by keeping His commandments, then we also show hate for Him by not keeping them.

Those who preach unconditional love are simply trying to disarm godly people in order that evil may triumph. The same is true of the idea of unconditional forgiveness. Forgiveness in the Bible is always conditional upon true repentance. Unconditional forgiveness is simply the total, unconditional toleration of and acceptance of evil. It demands that we accept the criminal, the pervert, the degenerate, the subversive as they are. But to do so means that we must change. We must surrender our laws, faith, religious standards, and all godly order. The demands for unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness are demands for total change on our part, total revolution in society. They are in reality demands that we commit suicide in order that evil may live. [3]

By now you should begin to understand why I said that the unbeliever's question above is a deadly pill to modern evangelism. The very fact that we are telling the unbeliever to come to Jesus so that he might be saved from eternal punishment and separation from the holy God implies a condition. If God truly loved everyone unconditionally, there would be no need to evangelize. In fact, there would be no need for the church at all. If God was truly an "unconditional" God, then it wouldn't much matter if we gave Him praise or not, it wouldn't much matter if we read and taught His word or not, it wouldn't much matter if we lied, cheated, and stole our way to fame and fortune or worked diligently and honestly. In fact, the entire Bible would be a waste of time and effort if God did not expect us to learn something from it and respond to it in obedience and faithfulness. God's holiness is completely opposed to sin and disobedience. God's love is conditioned upon repentance and obedience, therefore it can never be offered as "unconditional."

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Endnotes:

[1] Rousas J. Rushdoony, Roots of Reconstruction (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1991), 625. Emphasis mine.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, 626.

The Mother of All Wars

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:18:11 EST

By Bojidar Marinov

No wonder the Norwegian Nobel Committee is so misguided in its decision. As with so many other words in our language today, the word “war” has lost its true meaning. It doesn’t even mean what it meant to Alfred Nobel himself. To him to “work for peace” meant to work for the “abolition or reduction of standing armies,” and for the “holding and promotion of peace congresses.” These phrases don’t seem to mean much today to the Committee itself.

I don’t know what “peace congresses” means exactly. I remember the Soviet leaders doing “peace congresses” almost every year. They had one about the time the Soviet tanks were entering Prague, and there was another one in the early 1980s when the Soviet tanks were entering Afghanistan. Oh, and by the way, does anyone remember the “Peace of Our Time,” the Munich Conference of 1938? But whatever it means, Obama never held or promoted peace congresses.

I do know what “abolition and reduction of standing armies” is. I know very few of the Peace Prize Winners have actually done something like that. Certainly Obama never has.

But there is one more phrase that Alfred Nobel put in his will. And I think this is his worst mistake. Self-consciously or not, with this little phrase he limited the meaning of “war” to exclude the worst and the cruelest of all wars:

“...the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations...”

In other words, “war” in Nobel’s definition is a conflict “between nations.” Therefore as long as we promote “fraternity between nations,” we are working for peace. Very few delusions in the history of human thought have been more dangerous than this one.

Even in its limited definition, war is not conflict “between nations.” World War II was not a conflict between the American nation and the German nation, or between the Russian nation and the German nation. As a matter of fact, in the first months of the war after June 1941, German officers were startled to find out that the Russian population believed Germans were there to liberate them from Stalin’s regime; hence the reason for the Soviet debacle in the first year of the war. Germans in Germany in 1944–1945 did not look at the advancing Allied troops as their personal enemies. Nations do not start wars. Governments do. Therefore “fraternity between nations” can’t contribute too much towards peace. There was no lack of fraternity between the American colonists and the British nation at the time of the Revolutionary War. It was the British government that created the war, not hatred between the two nations. Curb the governments is the formula for peace. The most limited civil government in the West has always been Switzerland; how many wars did Switzerland start? And Samuel warned the Israelites: Your king will love war, and he will accumulate chariots and horses and make you serve him in war (1 Sam. 8).

But in this limited definition, one war is excluded. It is the eternal war in history, the war that has tied the largest amount of resources, a war that has never stopped, and the war that claimed the largest number of casualties, both in people killed and in resources destroyed. A war that remains outside of the official statistics but is more real than even the Cold War: It is the war of the governments against their own peoples.

In a very perceptive book about the Soviet communism in its 50th anniversary, Workers’ Paradise Lost (1967), Eugene Lyons points to that obvious and seldom discussed aspect of the Soviet reality:

“From the day the Bolsheviks seized control of a weakened and chaotic nation, there has been in effect a continuous civil war between the dictators and those to whom they dictate. In the first years, as we have seen, the contest was open and military. Since then it has been largely concealed and political, yet quite obvious to those who watched with unblurred eyes; and even bloodier than the military phase. Once we grasp this concept of permanent internal conflict, much about Soviet Russia that seems enigmatic and baffling begins to make sense.”[1]

Yes, it surely does make sense. The 70 years of Soviet communism were years of constant war; the regime’s vocabulary from the time of Lenin until the time of Gorbachev never really changed: warfare, sabotage, enemy spies, final death blows, propaganda wars, etc. And it wasn’t just paranoia that inspired that vocabulary: The Soviet government was in a very real war against its own people. And no wonder: Any government committed to violate its citizens’ rights to life, liberty, and property, is necessarily on the war path. No individual will willingly and voluntarily give their life, liberty, and property to a bunch of government bureaucrats. Therefore, war is the necessary means to achieve the dream of submitting a nation to its government.

What Lyons doesn’t mention is that that civil war was not and is not limited to the Communist East. Kings and prime ministers in Europe have always been eager to enslave their subjects, but around the turn of the 20th century the war began in earnest in Europe. It began in earnest in the United States about a decade later, in the 1920s, when the American government started it’s colossal long-term projects of confiscating the nation’s wealth in the hands of its bureaucrats. Hitler and Lenin and Stalin and Mussolini in Europe were only the visible tip of the iceberg. Many “democratic” nations like England, Sweden or Belgium have in effect started on the road to their own mild form of National Socialism, where a bunch of faceless bureaucrats control the life, liberty, and property of the voiceless Volk. When the people did not want to part with their hard-earned wealth, they were taxed to extinction. When the taxes didn’t work anymore, the governments inflated the currencies. When the individuals learned to buy gold against the inflation, the governments put a ban on owning gold. And when individuals responded by starting their own businesses, large and small, to be independent from the governments, the bureaucrats responded by imposing feudal systems of government regulations, down to the minutest details of production and trade.

The governments have their own standing armies for that war: KGB and the party apparatus under Communism in the East, bureaucrats, tax-collectors, police, regulatory agencies in the West. The actions of our own government in the last few months are very revealing as to the war activity against their own nation. The White House recruitment of informants for “fishy talk” is one example, but many other cases can be cited. The hostility against the “Town Hall Movement” among politicians goes beyond the acceptable personal resentment, and even the President himself sounds more and more like delivering war communiques in his propaganda for his healthcare plan.

No wonder. As I said above, any government committed to violate its citizens’ rights to life, liberty and property will have to be in a war mode. People don’t give in voluntarily. Americans, more than any other nation on the planet, are the most resistant. There is a war going on.

This war is not officially recognized by the political establishments and therefore there is no Peace Prize designated to those who work to stop this war. If there was, the Founders of the United States would have been its greatest winners. And Ron Paul. The Founders understood that real peace comes only from limited government, a lesson that we need to remember today.

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Endnote:

[1] Eugene Lyons, Worker’s Paradise Lost (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967), 95. Special thanks to Gary North for recommending this book to me.

"How American Vision Impacted Me"

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:59:29 EST

By Philip Hardin

Most of you don’t get to see the many encouraging emails I get on a daily basis. I tend to comment on the negative ones. (They’re much more fun.) I’m a “the glass-is-half-empty” kind of guy. That way I’m not disappointed if things turn sour. It’s what I expect. The following email was sent to me yesterday. It details how American Vision’s books and articles are having an impact on people around the world. (I’ve been invited to speak to 300 pastors in Kenya.) This is why AV does what it does. Eschatology is a big-issue topic. It comes up everywhere I speak. I am amazed how steeped people are in the dispensational interpretive paradigm and how debilitating it is. (I know there are exceptions, but mostly with caveats.) My comments usually bring on stunned silence from first-time hearers. At John Piper’s “Desiring God” conference there was a round-table panel discussion on the topic of eschatology. One comment by a viewer caught my attention: “The mere fact that a preterist/postmillennialist [Douglas Wilson] was even asked to take a seat (let alone given a mic) at a round-table discussion at a major evangelical conference . . . is a monumental victory.” Amen! And there will be many more. The following article was sent to me. I thought you would be encouraged by it. I certainly was.

—Gary DeMar

I just wanted to write a short fan mail to say thank you for your work in eschatology and to give a small testimony of its impact in my life.

I attended one of your seminars on Preterism at a church in Dallas, way back in 1993. At the time, I had never heard of Preterism. However, by my own study I had become very perplexed by the belief that Jesus had not yet returned (which I assumed was a universally held belief throughout Christianity), and the apparent tension of that belief with what the New Testament actually said. I was particularly troubled by the NT’s seemingly pervasive message that Jesus’ return was soon, imminent, very close, close at hand, etc. for its original readers. And that message of imminence seemed everywhere in the NT—gospels, epistles, etc. And also, I couldn't help notice that Jesus’ original hearers would have had absolutely no way to know that Jesus wasn’t coming back for 2000 plus years—in their original context, all of Jesus’ words would have led His hearers to believe that He was coming back in their lifetimes.

For me, this caused more than an academic problem: it had direct implications on the nature of God. How could God so intentionally mislead his closest followers? I was perplexed that God would do such a thing, and it was seriously disturbing my faith.

I think I mentioned my dilemma in my small group at church (Christ Church, Plano). One of my fellow members was familiar with your work, and by God’s providence that was apparently right at the time you were coming through the Dallas area, promoting Last Days Madness. So my friend invited me to your “prophecy seminar”—without telling me the nature of the seminar I was going to!! I went along—but glumly so. I had assumed this was going to be another one of those things where the speaker tries to get everybody riled up, anxiety-ridden, and oohing and ahhing about how many “signs were being fulfilled” that Jesus’ return and the end-of-the-world were imminent.

Boy, was I in for a shock.

As I recall, your seminar was a full six hours long. By the end, I was feeling elated, and my head was swimming! I felt enthralled by the Preterist viewpoint. But it seemed too wonderful to be true. How could so much of Christendom have gotten it wrong? And yet, the arguments you presented that day seemed powerful and persuasive. Preterist arguments really seemed to respect the text of the Bible, and history, far better than arguments of other viewpoints did.

However, despite liking what I heard that day, since I didn't know you and the viewpoint seemed so radical, I didn't trust you. So I did a little research of my own. I found out that the University of Texas at Dallas library happened to have, in their stacks, the works of Josephus. Since many of your arguments in LDM relied on quotations from Josephus, I figured I would check you out there. My fear was that maybe you were somehow quoting Josephus out-of-context. So I set aside time, and spent several weekends at the UTD library, checking up on your usage of Josephus. Thinking that you might be twisting quotations in some way that was not legit.

Well, that turned out to be an exercise in futility.

I soon came to the conclusion that LDM’s use of Josephus was on the level. And not only that: I came to the conclusion there was additional material in Josephus that supported the Preterist viewpoint. Additional supporting material that LDM hadn’t even bothered to use! (maybe because LDM's arguments were already adequately strong?!) So, I had gone in to this little endeavor looking for misuse of quotations, and instead, I found even more supporting evidence.

So at that point I joyfully accepted the Preterist viewpoint.

I hope you enjoyed that little story of how your work has impacted me. Thanks again for your work in this area. Encountering Preterism has been a joy to me and enriched my faith. It certainly resolved the dilemma that I faced in my faith at the time. That was years ago, but I wanted to express my gratitude, and give witness to some of the fruit of your work. Thanks so much, brother!

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We Need Watchmen to Sound the Alarm

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:49:21 EST

By Valerie Head

In recent months, I’ve been noticing how young families are taking action within their own circles of influence to return our nation to its founding principles. They’re learning that the place to start is in the home. They understand that to rebuild a nation a proper foundation must be laid. The leadership we have in Washington and in our state houses is a reflection of what we have in our homes. Change the family and you will change the nation. G. K. Chesterton said it well “The most extra extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” So what do you think will happen when we have extraordinary men, women, and children? Last week I spoke at a gathering of concerned Christians who can no longer remain quiet and passive. The event was sponsored by Julian and Valerie Head of Franklin, Tennessee. Valerie opened the evening with a statement of her own. With her permission, I’ve reproduced it below.

—Gary DeMar

We want to thank each of you for coming tonight, we are the Head Family. Standing with my husband, Julian, and me is our Posterity, Rose, Sonny and Andy. These are who our Constitution and Declaration of Independence were designed to protect and provide for. And that brings me to why we are here, because that protection and provision have ceased.

Nothing New is Under the Sun. The church is today, as it was in the days of Peter and John, held captive by the Romans, “allowing” us to practice our religion as long as it does not conflict with Rome’s teachings, as long as we conform to their education. We have been told they will not tolerate our intolerance. So, like the Sanhedrin, we have learned how to practice within their boundaries, not stirring their anger against us. From our pulpits we teach relativism that we all worship and serve the same god! That we should be tolerant, learn from one another, and that there is not one absolute truth!

We refrain from issues that might single us out as radical, judgmental, or intolerant, issues such as teaching a literal six-day creation, young Earth position and pointing out sinful practices and unjust laws practiced by our government and its leaders. We have been told we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted or speak the name of Jesus in any government building. Thank God HIS WORDS have been etched in stone all over the Nation’s Capitol because “IF THESE MEN ARE SILENT, THE VERY STONES WILL CRY OUT.”

I believe we need a “WARRIOR” mentality, willing to die for the cause of Christ, or at least be willing to suffer a little criticism. Second Timothy 3:12 says that ALL WHO DESIRE TO WALK WITH CHRIST, WILL BE PERSECUTED. Our Founding Fathers well understood that this was a battle that would require every generation to contend with it, in order to preserve our God-given Liberties. As in the War for Independence, this is not an offensive war; this is a defensive war. America did not fire the first shot then, nor have we today. Do not be deceived, this battle is of a spiritual nature; it has existed since the Garden of Eden. And let me be clear, this battle is NOT against the “institution of government” which is established by God but against those leaders who have themselves rebelled against God and have ceased to be “a minister of God,” serving God by promoting the good and punishing the evil and using “just weights and measures.”

We no longer hold weekly Sunday services in the U.S. Capitol. Some elected officials can even take their oath of office using the Koran. We invite Hindu Priests to pray over our congress. Will our new national motto be “In gods we trust”? Or will we sign our historical papers “in the Year of our lord Krishna?” Not on my watch. Lord forbid it!!! This country was founded by and for Christianity.

This Nation in two hundred years has outdistanced the world in discoveries and inventions in medicine, housing, education, power-energy, transportation, space, aircraft and agriculture. We’ve been the bread basket of the world; we have created more wealth than all the rest of the world combined. We have fought wars throughout the world in defense of freedom, asking nothing for our efforts and sacrificing the lives of loved ones in return. We have always been the first nation to provide relief in natural calamities, sometimes even providing aid to our enemies. We have given more dollars in aid and relief than most of the world nations combined. And in spite of our efforts, WE ARE THE TARGET OF THE HATE AND ENVY OF MANY IN THE REST OF THE WORLD. Why do you think we have been and acted differently than the rest of the world? Why do you think we are more despised than any other nation? It is because the Lord built this house, and we have allowed the enemy to plunder what He has given us. It is time that we acknowledge our duties and responsibilities of our citizenship. America’s future depends on us accepting and demonstrating God’s government!!!

We need watchmen on the wall to sound the alarm. The enemy has not only approached without warning but has entered our gates, having taught our children, having counseled our leaders and slipped irons on our ankles while we slumbered.

Tonight, our family raised this flag, that my daughter Rose, my little Betsy Ross made. She modeled it after the American Patriots of the Revolution who flew a similar flag over their Navy and Army service men who understood who they are accountable to. It is our family’s appeal to heaven and to God. May He Grant His servants Boldness, to speak the truth in opposition, even when it’s from the Sanhedrin, and May we approach God with sincerity seeking His aid and blessings.

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Christian Socialism and Violence

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:37:22 EST

By Joel McDurmon

Socialism means the denial of private property to a great or even total degree. It means the use of State power—violence inherent in the power of the sword and gun—to redistribute property according to the dictates of some officer or committee of officers. Violence is therefore inherent in socialism. Why some Christians see this as a means of fulfilling God’s will defies reason (and revelation).

The Social-Gospel historian C. H. Hopkins notes that Unitarians formed the seedbed of the Christian Socialist movements and planted some early seeds in it.[1] To those familiar with the liberalism associated with Unitarianism, that socialistic activism grew out of it will come as no surprise. I would like to mention the links between socialism and violence in the context of allegedly Christian activism. In short, since violence is inherent in socialism, “Christian” socialism—whether its proponents call it by that name or not—will necessarily rely on violence as well. To the extent it relies on violence beyond the few instances God’s law allows the civil ruler to exact punishment, to that extent—which is nearly the whole of it—we must understand Christian socialism to be anti-Christian in essence.

As early as 1826, although the idea of redistribution of property already abounded, few Christian or Unitarian representatives had begun calling for State coercion to effect it. Instead, Unitarian ministers (and others) organized private Christian social services, such as Joseph Zuckerman’s “ministry at large.”[2] In fact, some Unitarians vehemently defended the sanctity of private property. Harvard Professor of Moral Philosophy Francis Bowen wrote in 1856, “No nation has ever been discovered on earth, so low and brutal in their inclination and habits, so destitute of any idea of right, that the institution of property, to a greater or lesser extent, does not exist among them.”[3]

The literary critic and radical abolitionist William Ellery Channing some twenty years earlier had argued from the principle of private property against socialist movements among workers in Boston. He urged them not to be “so insanely blind to their interests [or] so deaf to the claims of justice and religion,… as to be prepared to make a wreck of the social order, for the sake of dividing among themselves the spoils of the rich.”[4] Channing, in fact, argued against the ownership of slaves by acknowledging private property as a sacred law, not merely a civil law. In this sense, some of the pro-slavery crowd subverted society by making property rights (and thus the right to own slaves) dependent upon civil legislation:

Of all radicals, the most dangerous, perhaps, is he who makes property the creature of law; because what law creates it can destroy. If we of this Commonwealth have no right in our persons, houses, ships, farms, but what a vote of legislation or the majority confers, then the same masses may strip of them all.[5]

This devotion of the sanctity of individual property unfortunately did not stick. Channing’s nephew, William Henry Channing, who had moved into Transcendentalism while remaining a Unitarian minister, had a greater appetite for government force and even violence if necessary to bring in a socialistic society. In 1848 he published The Christian Church and Social Reform—his opinion that a collectivist society would be the literal fulfillment of Christ’s kingdom on earth.[6] When pulpits and scholarship would not be enough to persuade, the radical nephew would set the tone for revolutionary activism: “The next thing is guerilla war … at every chance.”[7]

A little-known story of terrorism and revolutionary causes in American history involves the abolitionist John Brown and the “Secret Six.” The Six was a group of Boston Unitarian ministers (a point rarely if ever emphasized) intent on using and financing agitation, violence, and guerilla tactics in order to advance their cause. They imposed themselves in more than one theater, notably in raids in Kansas in 1856, and Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, 1859—a bloody confrontation that hastened the War.

One of the six, the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, made little secret of his inclination for armed conflict. Master-historian James C. Malin notes,

T.W. Higginson announced to [financier] Gerrit Smith that he intended to “start a private organization of picked men, who shall be ready to go to Kansas in case of need, to aid the people against any opponent, state or federal.” He confessed that he wished “to involve every state in the war that is to be.…”[8]

Higginson had “prophesied” the war he spoke of, calling for revolution if need be. Malin tells of Higginson’s prophecy, that whoever was elected president that year,

the administration would be “resisted as one. If that is treason, make the most of it. Such treason as this is fast ripening in Kansas. Call it Revolution if you please. If the United States Government and Border Ruffians are to mean the same thing, the sooner the people of Kansas have revolution the better.” Before the conflict was ended, he declared, the two Nations, North and South, would be separate.[9]

Higginson had been the ringleader of early agitation and violent actions that foreshadowed the secret six. His beginnings in Boston with several others of the six included an organized campaign of violence to buck the fugitive slave laws. Hearing news that a U. S. Marshall had just imprisoned an escaped slave, Higginson organized some sixty men to storm the courthouse and free him. The group bore at least one pistol and wielded a dozen axes freshly purchased by Higginson at the local hardware store. In the short version of the story, the plan failed as armed guards subdued the invaders with clubs and cutlasses. One guard was shot dead and Higginson escaped with a slashed chin which he thereafter wore proudly as the scar of a hero-martyr for the cause. Not long after, Higginson delivered a powerful sermon that was printed and influenced a broad audience.[10]

The U.S. Marshall who arrested the slave later encountered an attack in Worcester. Abolitionists somehow conjured a warrant for his arrest though his mission was legal. At trial he was rushed, beaten, and threatened with calls for lynching and tar and feathers. When a judge acquitted him, abolitionist crowds pelted him with eggs and spat tobacco upon him. By the time he reached the train to Boston he might have counted himself lucky to be alive, save that Rev. Higginson had been among the crowd and now traveled back to Boston at his side “to lecture him on the evils of his ways.”[11]

It is no surprise, then, that when the famous vigilante and known terrorist murderer John Brown came to Boston, Higginson and his circle were drawn to him. Brown had come seeking money for his radical raids; he found much more. He met the Unitarian ministers Higginson, Parker, Howe, and Stearns, all of whom were “either famous or wealthy men who shared a common despair of the wisdom of their countrymen; each seemed to believe that slavery could only be ended by revolution.”[12] Higginson, at least, among them knew of Brown’s murderous past. Many people did. “In accepting that knowledge—and by silence and protection accepting the principle that innocent lives could be destroyed in the name of Higher Law—all these men darkened their cause and altered its essence.”[13]

Otto Scott explains how matter-of-factly John Brown approached his revolutionary violence: “Brown’s project was fairly simple. He wanted thirty thousand dollars to ‘fight for freedom’ in Kansas and ‘carry the war into Africa.’”[14] Rev. Higginson had expressed his revolutionary violence just as plainly: “Give me a convention of ten … who have drawn their swords and thrown away the scabbard and I will revolutionize the world.”[15] Playing off his abolitionism as the central cause (perhaps it was), he argued for violence in general to get political control: “Give us the power and we can make a new Constitution … how is that power to be obtained? By politics? Never. By revolution, and that alone.”[16]

Nearing the beginning of Brown’s most famous raid—that upon the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry—his train’s engineers heard the tracks were blocked ahead. They scouted ahead to see but were met by gunfire. “Hayward Shepherd, the Negro baggagemaster at Harper’s Ferry, ventured out, was shot, and hit.”[17] His wounding was the first in the raid, and turned out fatal. In an ironic twist of fate symbolic of the tyranny of good intentions, “The first casualty of John Brown’s blow for black freedom was a free black man.”[18]

Otto Scott’s masterful work on the subject suffers from that bane of all hard-truth-telling: it was ignored by the establishment literati. Though Scott’s book was still in print and had long since been entered into the Library of Congress, a New England journalist named Edward J. Renehan, Jr., wrote another with the identical title, The Secret Six.[19] Coming some sixteen years after Scott’s, Renehan’s book has the nerve to boast, “The existence of the six has been known to scholars, but there has never been a book devoted to them.”[20] He includes a bibliography: notably absent are Scott’s far superior work as well as Malin’s two-volume masterpiece.

Despite all of their talk about equality and freedom, at least one of the Six, Rev. Theodore Parker (also a Unitarian Minister), expressed his rank elitism in absolute disdain for the black race. Near the end of his life, he penned to fellow Sixman Rev. Howe, “What a pity that the map of our magnificent country should be destined to be so soon torn in two on account of the negro, that poorest of human creatures, satisfied, even in slavery, with sugar cane and a banjo.”[21]

Elitism expressed as racism is bad enough, but the greater expression of elitism is the violence in support of one’s cause. As long as man thinks he is the great liberator (and that was the name of the Boston abolitionists’ newspaper—The Liberator), and that his agenda for liberation is justified, he will have no problem imposing his will on other men, using violence if necessary, in an attempt to further that agenda. And he will easily convince himself that whatever blood he sheds, or has shed, is justified by the goodness of his cause.

This justification of violence—be it for abolition or redistribution of property (as with the socialists)—appears in all of the great exponents of revolution. A few come to mind. Karl Marx, in his earlier writings (around 1844), expressed his ultimate reliance not to be persuasion, but force: “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force.…” His preferred version of force was to agitate the masses into mob action: “theory also becomes material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.…”[22]

Marx lamented the fact that in his situation in Germany no one had a strong enough grip on the masses to effect a violent revolution:

But no particular class in Germany has the consistency, the severity, the courage or the ruthlessness that could mark it out as the negative representative of society. No more has any estate the breadth of soul that identifies itself, even for a moment, with the soul of the nation, the genius that inspires material might to political violence, or that revolutionary audacity which flings at the adversary the defiant words: I am nothing and I should be everything.[23]

Note how Marx called for the “me” generation over a century and a half ago, urging people to think “I am a nobody in society, but society owes it to me to give me everything.” Socialism is institutionalized envy and selfishness—institutionalized by government force. With the promise of the use of material might to achieve his ends, Marx provided a powerful incentive to realize the workingman’s envy of greater wealth.

Likewise, Marx’s partner in crime Friedrich Engels argued against socialists whose theory got too consistent. Certain socialists were beginning to take the idea of equality literally (a no-no for elitists who know the word is just a useful illusion). They thought that since they believed in abolishing all material difference, and leveling everyone to the same status, they should get rid of hierarchies in the workplace as well. End oppressive authority of man-over-man altogether. Engels saw this as unrealistic. Who will organize and schedule? We need some authority! Someone (guess who) should make the rules after all. In advancing his argument, however, Engels might have rhetoricized a bit much:

Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannon—authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.[24]

He might have been saying this in hyperbole, but the truth of revolution rings out through his words. Even if he ultimately denied violent revolution—oh nooo… we’d never call for violent revolution to seize and redistribute property—he nevertheless expressed it pretty clearly in this passage. Socialism, redistribution, is obtained and maintained through the barrel of a gun. This is authoritarian, Engels argued. To call for an end to this authority, he finished out his essay, would be to sell out the cause of the working masses.

A final example comes from Chinese Communist murderer Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. In 1926 he expressed the exact same sentiment as Engels:

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.[25]

This is the violence inherent in the systems of socialism. Violence is justified by proponents when an elitist acts in the name of the “common good,” or some beneficent law. If redistribution of property lies at the heart of the cause, you can bet they will need violence to enforce it.

It was a split-off of orthodox Christianity that paved the way for ideas like this to take hold in the Christian world. It was a combination of atheists, radicals, Unitarians, and liberals—all groups that could care less about God’s commandments—that brought socialism into the modern world. But the quasi-Christian groups made it sound acceptable to Christians. This continues today as I have written elsewhere. None of them can justify their implicit appeals to violence in light of God’s law, so they ignore that law. They speak of benefits, care, loving one’s neighbor, welfare, help, aid, etc.—but they call for the use of government guns to fulfill those values. It is a subdued, modern version of John Brown and the Secret Six. Except it is no secret—except insofar as Christians in public schools and drawing from welfare programs refuse to admit it. There is no greater oxymoron than Christian socialism.

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Endnotes:

[1] Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism: 1865–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 4.
[2] Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism: 1865–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 4.
[3] Quoted in Daniel Walker Howe, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 230.
[4] Quoted in Howe, The Unitarian Conscience, 230.
[5] Quoted in Howe, The Unitarian Conscience, 273.
[6] Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 5.
[7] Quoted in Otto Scott, The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (New York: Times Books, 1979), 15.
[8] James C. Malin, John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six, 2 vols. (New York: Haskell House Publishers, Ltd., (1942) 1971), 2:698–699.
[9] Malin, John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six, 2 vols., 1:226–227.
[10] Otto Scott, The Secret Six, 10–13.
[11] Otto Scott, The Secret Six, 14.
[12] Otto Scott, The Secret Six, 228.
[13] Otto Scott, The Secret Six, 227.
[14] Otto Scott, The Secret Six, 229.
[15] Quoted in Scott, The Secret Six, 231.
[16] Quoted in Scott, The Secret Six, 243.
[17] Quoted in Scott, The Secret Six, 288.
[18] Quoted in Scott, The Secret Six, 288.
[19] New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1995
[20] From the dust jacket front flap.
[21] Quoted in Scott, The Secret Six, 285.
[22] Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, Introduction,” Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3:182, 185.
[23] Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, Introduction,” Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3:182, 185.
[24] Frederick Engels, “On Authority,” Basic Writings on Philosophy: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ed. by Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959), 485.
[25] Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 23.

Waiting for a Leader

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:16:41 EST

By Eric Rauch

When you think of the term "Religious Right," does any particular name or face come to mind? For many, Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy personified the Religious Right movement of the 1980s and 1990s, but both are now gone. Pat Robertson resurfaces every so often, only to disappear back into his hole after saying something that makes the press go apoplectic. It is difficult to come up with one name (much less two) that could be considered a driving force of evangelical activism on the right. While many conservatives are active and doing good and necessary things to influence the culture for Christ, the name recognition among this group is fairly limited.

One scholar, in a recent address to the Evangelical Leaders Forum, has made the claim that young evangelicals are more likely to name Rick Warren or Bono as a major influence in their own lives than a figure connected with the Religious Right. Michael Gerson told the crowd gathered at the Forum that "we are seeing a head-snapping generational change. The model of social engagement of the religious right is increasingly exhausted." Gerson cites three reasons for the shift in focus: a recovery of scriptural emphasis, a revolt against the tone and style of the Religious Right, and the effects of short-term mission trips. [1]

Gerson's use of the word "exhausted" is a good one for two reasons. 1) The individuals associated with the Religious Right or the Moral Majority are getting old. They are either dead or dying, and so is their influence. 2) The political and social activism of the Religious Right was an emotional and desperate attempt to try to reverse the trend of political and theological liberalism. The efforts of the Religious Right, however impressive and well-intentioned they may have been at the time, were physically and mentally draining. When Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson wrote the epitaph for the movement with their book, Blinded by Might, in 1999, many on the Right took the opportunity to find a park bench and sit down for a while. Most never got back up.

There is a sense in which Thomas and Dobson were correct in their caricature of the Religious Right movement as being a failure. Politically-motivated activism can only take you so far, as the left is quickly beginning to realize with President Obama drunkenly spinning the wheel of the U.S.S. Constitution into every socialistic sandbar he can find. Change has never been as easy as criticizing and fighting against those currently in power. Something must re-place what is currently in-place. Political liberals loudly condemned President Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, only to turn the same checkbook over to Obama with a fresh supply of rubber checks. In reality, they had no plan; "change" was only a word that had a much nicer ring than "more of the same." Big government looks the same regardless of who is sitting behind the desk. Political change can only do two things: spend and legislate. Thomas and Dobson came to realize this and their book is a reaction against the futility of relying on politics as the sole method for effecting change. Their premise is correct in this regard, but advocating the wholesale abandonment of the national political realm for neighborhood evangelism is not the answer either. We should, and must, do both.

To their credit, Rick Warren and Bono both understand this. We may not agree with either their politics or their theology, but we cannot take away from the fact that they are both doing what they preach. Warren and Bono both hold to a version of the social gospel, but it is their action that makes the youth sit up and take notice. I have already stated that many conservatives are also putting their theology into practice, but this never reaches the eyes and ears of the youth. Most conservative charity and mission work labors in obscurity, never receiving the media's attention. Gerson rightly pointed out in his speech that a "combination of moral conservatism with social activism is the evangelical tradition." The fact that most youth are now associating social activism with the morally liberal wing of evangelicalism only highlights the fact that conservatives need to be doing a better job of raising awareness of their activities.

In their recent history, American evangelicals have been known for their commitment to biblical authority and tenacious affirming of what "the Bible says." In and of itself, this is commendable. At the same time they have not been particularly known for their contributions to theology and philosophy, ethics (i.e., moral philosophy), law, economics, statecraft, the social sciences or public policy—which is to say, areas that require considerable reflection on the interaction between Christian faith and pluralistic society. Happily, there are indications now, at the cusp of the third millennium, that this is changing. But evangelicals in the main will need to step back, learn to think historically with the whole of the church and begin training their own based on a vision that is long-term in nature... Educating for the future requires vision that extends to future generations. Theologically and ethically speaking, the present generation of American evangelicals is a generation that "knew not Joseph"; thus, we must begin to reason, reflect and educate at the level of "first principles." [2]

Educating at the "first principle" level is certainly needed and, as Charles points out in the quotation above, is beginning to happen with increasing regularity. But education is only a starting point. We also need to be providing the example of what these "first principles" look like out there in the world. This is where the conservative wing of evangelicalism needs to get more proactive and visible. "According to Gerson, young Americans return from short-term mission trips with a changed worldview. Their exposure to poverty, HIV/AIDS, and economic injustice make them concerned about these issues and want to improve the problems." [3] But these problems can be just as readily found in America as they can be in third-world countries. Short-term mission trips can be taken by traveling on a bus, as well as a plane. Lobbying congress and fighting injustice in Washington may seem to be a noble thing to do, but taking a group of kids from your church to a local Habitat for Humanity project can be just as effective, and probably more so, as a lesson in Christian compassion.

Evangelicals, with some notable exceptions, [are] prone to being theologically deficient. That is, they seemed to have an inherent bias against theology and Christian doctrine, as if the task of theology were the exclusive domain of the theologian, the seminarian or the technical expert. This theological deficiency inhibits our ability to work constructively over the long term; we are creatures of the moment, reacting to issues and dilemmas on the basis of stopgap measures rather than developing the implications of our worldview (which, truth be told, is hard work). A related tendency among evangelicals was (and remains) our inability to relate biblical theology to ethics, which would seem to suggest a rather tragic divorce between belief and practice, in the end revealing a faith-works dichotomy that is roundly condemned in the epistle of James. [4]

While Gerson is correct about his "head-snapping" moment, it is not as though the warning signs haven't been present. Most conservative evangelicals will simply laugh this "head-snap" off as yet another example of theological liberals "working their way to heaven." Waren and Bono are influential because the youth are looking for these kinds of practical examples. Conservatives have their counterparts as well; it's just that they aren't household names. This is a good thing; grassroots activism nearly always happens under the radar. And if the activism demanded by theological conservatism is being modeled at home and in the church, our kids wouldn't need to seek out the Rick Warrens and Bonos of the world.

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Endnotes:

[1] Michelle Vu, "Evangelical Movement at 'Head-Snapping' Moment, Says Scholar," The Christian Post. Online here.
[2] J. Daryl Charles, The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism: Recovering the Church's Moral Vision (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2002), 14.
[3] Vu, "Evangelical Movement."
[4] Charles, Unformed Conscience, 15-16.

Caught in Their Own Nets

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:17:36 EST

By Bojidar Marinov

No wonder Whoopi Goldberg said what she said. She can’t help it. She is a victim. She is a victim of the liberal propaganda she believes in. That same propaganda that is based on emptying the words of our language of any moral meaning. So when it comes to applying moral meaning to words, she is confused. “Rape-rape” or “just rape”?

“I don’t necessarily want my 13-year old to have sex with a 45-year old man.” What does that phrase mean? She probably wouldn’t be able to tell. Does she say that it is not “necessity” that tells her what to want or not? Or does she say she is not forced to want her 13-year old to have sex, she just wants it on her own accord?

Depends on what the definition of “sex” is, declared President Clinton. Again, he is acting on premises that exclude any moral meaning in language, and therefore excludes any possible absolute definitions, including his own.

President Obama is smarter: He uses a teleprompter. But the moment his eyes leave the teleprompter, he is forced to speak out of simple common sense, and says things that directly contradict all his policies and ideology.

These are all connected symptoms of the same sickness: Language emptied of moral meaning eventually turns against those who use it. The shrewd are caught in the nets of their own craftiness. The history of the US in the 20th century abounds with examples. My personal favorite is the trade unions’ accusation against the employers: “If you don’t give us more money, you are greedy!” Or the communist critique against fascism: “Fascism is an immoral dictatorial one-party rule with total control over the economy by the State and persecution of political opponents.” Or atheism’s basic tenet: “To believe in the existence of absolute moral standards is absolutely immoral.”

Language was created by God for a purpose: to convey the moral truths of God. It has first and foremost an ethical function, and then everything else. We inescapably talk morality every time we open our mouths, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we admit it or not. Created in the image of God, man is first and foremost a moral being, and his language necessarily must have moral content and meaning before everything else. Whether we talk about biology, math, entertainment, computer programs, art, or cleaning a house, we are declaring certain moral truths to the world, and we are declaring them on the basis of a worldview that has first and foremost an ethical foundation on which everything else stands. We can’t escape talking morality, and we can’t escape making moral judgments every time we open our mouths.

That’s why the liberal war against God in the 20th and 21st century is self-defeating. Based on moral relativism, it is trying to negate God by negating the very moral character of language, by emptying language of its moral meaning. Far from giving the liberals a weapon in the debate, it is in fact setting fire to their own intellectual house. Every definition now is dangerous because it turns against them, every statement becomes its logical negation—and by default, negation of the very liberal position it is designed to promote and defend. Therefore every definition needs multiple sub-definitions and sub-sub-definitions, until the very talk of the anti-Christian thinkers becomes completely meaningless even to themselves.

Cornelius Van Til informed us about the “epistemological maturing” in history of the two seeds. The epistemological maturing of the unbelievers will make them more and more irrelevant and helpless to use language as their tool and weapon against God. More and more every word they say will turn against them and will undermine their own position. No wonder there is no great philosophical thinker in the non-Christian world today; no wonder Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins pass for “thinkers” these days: the unbelieving world is becoming more and more epistemologically self-consistent with its own basic premise of meaninglessness.

The unbelieving world is in intellectual bankruptcy, and has been so for the last 60 years. It has tried to preach meaning while negating the very basis of meaning; it has been trying to moralize by negating morality; it has been trying to speak while defining its very language out of existence.

This is the time for Christians to wake up and see that the “giants” are in fact very small. There is no logical reasoning left in the world, there is no meaning, there is no purpose to live and exist. The expectation that a mythical “Antichrist” will rule the world is not Biblical, and is not realistic. Such a world ruler will have to overcome the very fruits of the anti-Christian ideology—the lack of meaning. Without meaning no one can rule themselves, let alone the whole world. No one gets excited about ultimate meaningless, and no one gets excited about an ideology that can’t even defend itself against its own inconsistencies. Meaning can be found only in Christ, and therefore Christianity is the only religion that can overcome the world in an active, aggressive sense of the word.

The supposed triumph of liberalism is non-existent. All the social, economic, legal and political “victories” of liberalism in the United States and abroad are only result of the cultural retreat of Christians. God catches His enemies in their own nets—like He does with Whoopi, Obama, Clinton and many others—and thus He gives us assurance for our victory in history. If we will only act.

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Who has the Real "Anti-Semitic Bent"?

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:21:14 EST

By Gary DeMar

After writing “Debunking ‘Last Days Fever’ at Charisma” I received the following from a friend who got an email from someone who did not like my article. Here’s a portion of what the critic wrote:

I have preached through the Book of Revelation twice, verse-by-verse, in a 38 message series. I study the Greek New Testament nearly every day. I do not profess to know everything, but I am 100% convinced that Preterism is a fable and patently unbiblical. Gary North, Hank Hanegraaff, Demar [sic] and others flat out do not know what they are talking about. Many of them, such as the late North, have an anti-semitic bent, where he said that he would rejoice in the day that the Arabs pushed Israel into the sea! God’s immutable promise to Abraham is that he would “bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Gen. 12:3).

A couple of preliminary points are in order. First, there are many people who have preached through the book of Revelation, some have even written commentaries (e.g., David Clark, David Chilton, Kenneth Gentry), who are very well versed preterists. Our emailer needs to take a look at Steve Gregg’s Revelation: Four Views—A Parallel Commentary and C. Marvin Pate’s Four Views on the Book of Revelation.

Second, I invited this man to come on my radio show to demonstrate that “Preterism is a fable and patently unbiblical.” I’ve made this offer to others who have written similar things to me in emails. So far no one has taken me up on the offer. Maybe this person will be different, but I don’t think so. I’ll let you know if he accepts my offer.

Third, Hal Lindsey tried the anti-semitism charge when he wrote his book The Road to Holocaust. Peter J. Leithart and I wrote The Legacy of Hatred Continues in 1989 as a refutation. It’s never been answered. We showed that it was Lindsey’s dispensational system that has it in for the Jews after the “rapture,” a point I made in my article in response to the “Last Days Fever” article that appeared in Charisma. Dispensationalists teach that two-thirds of the Jews will be killed during their version of a future Great Tribulation, and that prior to the rapture Israel has no prophetic significance since God is now dealing with the church. Lindsey describes the judgment against Israel in A.D. 70 as a “picnic” compared to his super holocaust that will kill billions of people, including two-thirds of the Jews living in Israel.[1] Kay Arthur, another dispensational author, has stated publicly that what lies ahead for Israel will make Hitler’s Holocaust look like “a Sunday school picnic.” In her novel, Israel My Beloved, “Arthur has the heroine standing in a massively destroyed Jerusalem, dead and dying Jews littering the ground around her as she whispers in horror, ‘Auschwitz was never like this.’” Let’s not forget Israel’s Final Holocaust by Jack Van Impe. Chuck Missler has called Auschwitz “just a prelude” to what will happen to Jews in the Last Days. Consider what Thomas Ice writes in his article “What do you do with a future National Israel in the Bible?”:

The Bible also indicates that before Israel enters into her time of national blessing she must first pass through the fire of the tribulation (Deut. 4:30; Jer. 30:5–9; Dan. 12:1; Zeph. 1:14–18). Even though the horrors of the Holocaust under Hitler were of an unimaginable magnitude, the Bible teaches that a time of even greater trial awaits Israel during the tribulation. Anti-Semitism will reach new heights, this time global in scope, in which two-thirds of world Jewry will be killed (Zech. 13:7–9; Rev. 12). Through this time God will protect His remnant so that before His second advent “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:36).

In reality, it’s “all that’s left of Israel that will be saved.” In a December 2, 1984 sermon, the late Jerry Falwell said the following: “Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra.”

Fourth, I don’t know why this person refers to the “late [Gary] North,” since he is very much alive. In fact, I just saw him yesterday! On North’s comment about Arabs pushing Israel into the sea, here’s what he actually wrote: “Should Israel ever be ‘pushed into the sea,’ these people will have to face what the rest of us began facing early in life: the prospect of our statistically inescapable physical death.” North’s point is quite clear: If anything happens to Israel, either their being pushed into the sea or “converted to Christ,”[2] dispensationalists will have to do a lot of explaining. Their hope of the rapture will be gone, and they will die! Who does believe that Israel will be thrown out of their land? Dr. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a dispensational premillennialist:

The present state of Israel is not the final form. The present state of Israel will be lost, eventually, and Israel will be run out of the land again, only to return when they accept the Messiah as Savior.[3]

Fifth, the use of Genesis 12:3 is curious since the “thee” is singular and refers to Abraham.

Now let’s take a look at what non-dispensationalists (mostly postmillennialists) believe about the future of Israel. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Westminster Larger Catechism, in the answer to Question 191, outlined the hope for a future conversion of the Jews. Part of what we pray for in the second petition, “Thy kingdom come,” is that “the gospel [be] propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fullness of the Gentiles brought in.” In his commentary on the Larger Catechism, Thomas Ridgeley (1667–1734) wrote, “Hence, we cannot but suppose that those prophecies which respect [to the conversion of the Jews], in the latter day, together with the fullness of the Gentiles being brought in, shall be more eminently accomplished than they have hitherto been.”[4] Ridgeley spends a number of pages refuting “ancient and modern Chiliasts, or Millennarians”[5] and defending what can only be described as postmillennialism over against premillennialism.

We freely own, as what we think agreeable to scripture, that as Christ has, in all ages, displayed his glory as King of the Church, so we have ground to conclude, from scripture, that the administration of his government in this world, before his coming to judgment, will be attended with greater magnificence, more visible marks of glory, and various occurrences of providence, which shall tend to the welfare and happiness of his church, in a greater degree than has been beheld or experienced by it, since it was planted by the ministry of the apostles after his ascension into heaven. This we think to be the sense, in general, of those scriptures, both in the Old and New Testament, which speak of the latter-day glory.[6]

* * * * *

We have, hence, sufficient ground to conclude, that, when these prophecies shall have their accomplishment, the interest of Christ shall be the prevailing interest in the world, which it has never yet been in all respects; so that godliness shall be as much and as universally valued and esteemed, as it has hitherto been decried, and it shall be reckoned as great an honour to be a Christian, as it has, in the most degenerate age of the church, been matter of reproach. . . . In short, there shall be, as it were, a universal spread of religion and holiness to the Lord, throughout the world.[7]

Ridgeley knew his history well enough to know that the majority of theologians in the seventeenth century held to an advancing kingdom through the proclamation of the gospel which includes the future conversion of the Jews. Amillennialist Johannes G. Vos, in his commentary on the Larger Catechism, takes a similar view.[8]

In the same way, the Westminster Directory for Public Worship instructed ministers to pray “for the Propagation of the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ to all nations, for the conversion of the Jews, the fullness of the Gentiles, the fall of Antichrist, and the hastening of the second coming of the Lord.”[9] In 1652, a group of eighteen Puritan ministers and theologians, including both Presbyterians and Independents, affirmed that “the Scripture speaks of a double conversion of the Gentiles, the first before the conversion of the Jews, they being Branches wild by nature grafted into the True Olive Tree instead of the natural Branches which are broken off. . . . The second, after the conversion of the Jews.”[10]

What dispensationalists like the person who claims that preterists have an anti-semitic streak need to explain is how their regard for the future of Israel means that two-thirds of the Jews will be slaughtered before the promises are fulfilled (Zech. 13:8) in what Charles Ryrie has described in his book The Living End as “the worst bloodbath in Jewish history.”[11] Then they need to answer what postmillennialists have always believed: “the conversion of the Jews.”

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Endnotes:

[1] Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 220.
[2] Personal letter from Gary North to Peter Lalonde, April 30, 1987.
[3] Stated on Dallas, Texas, radio program (KCBI) in a debate with me on May 15, 1991.
[4] Thomas Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 2 vols. (Edmonton, AB Canada: Still Waters Revival Books, [1855] 1993), 2:621. Ridgeley’s original work was titled A Body of Divinity: Wherein the Doctrines of the Christian Religion are Explained and Defended, Being the Substance of Several Lectures on the Assembly's Larger Catechism and was published in 1731.
[5] Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 1:558–562.
[6] Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 1:562.
[7] Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 1:563–564.
[8]Johannes G. Vos, The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary, ed. G. I. Williamson (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 552–553.
[9]Quoted in J. A. DeJong, As the Waters Cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-America Missions, 1640–1810 (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1970), 37–38.
[10]Quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (London: The Banner of truth Trust, 1971), 72.
[11]Charles C. Ryrie, The Best is Yet to Come (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1981), 86.

Just a Little Hairy Ape

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:12:32 EST

By Gary DeMar

When evolutionists present their latest fossil finds as “evidence” of evolution, keep in mind that they could never find any bit of evidence that would disprove evolution. Their minds are made up before they ever dig up a single fossilized fragment. To be blunt about it, they are looking for evidence to prove what they already believe but can never prove. The facts are interpreted in terms of their necessary materialistic paradigm. This isn’t my opinion; it’s what evolutionists claim for themselves. Richard Lewontin is honest enough to admit that for an evolutionist, “materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”[1]

The discovery of facts has little to do with the building of the paradigm since creationists and evolutionists study the same evidence. Evolutionists evaluate the evidence in terms of a pre-conceived worldview based on (the impossibility) of naturalism. There’s nothing new in this. R. J. Rushdoony describes the faith-based character of evolution as it was operating 50 years ago in the work of Louis Leakey:

Louis Leakey, director of Kenya’s Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology in Nairobi, described his discovery, together with his wife Mary, of a bit of skull and two teeth, in these words: “We knelt together to examine the treasure . . . and almost cried with sheer joy. For years people had been telling us that we’d better stop looking, but I felt deep down that it had to be there. You must be patient about these things.” The time was July 17, 1959. This scene is a curious one on two counts. First, the scientist Leakey knew what he had found before he had examined it: he worked by faith, and viewed his findings by faith. He was finding “proof” for a theory already accepted, and he accepted his finding as “proof” on sight. Second, the intense emotionalism and joy sound more like a revival experience than a scientific analysis.[2]

In 1999, an article appeared that unquestioningly assured us that “A Baboon-sized ape that lived in East Africa 15 million years ago might have been among the first primates to leave the treetops and live on the ground, a key step in the evolutionary path that scientists say eventually led to humans.”[3] Fifteen million years ago!? Give me a break. Now we learn that a 4.4 million-year-old fossilized ape is one of our ancestors. An ABC News article was honest enough to write the following:

In the case of “Ardi,” the ape-like fossil recently discovered in Ethiopia and already being celebrated as the oldest found relative of modern human beings, the final determination depends on who is doing the talking.

Exactly! We have film of the JFK assassination, and people still aren’t sure if Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter and that one bullet did all that damage, but these evolutionists are sure that a few fossilized fragments are nearly 5 million years old and are in some way related to humans. They have to be. There is no other option because evolution must be, has to be, true. Non-evolutionists looking at the same bits of fossilized bone and teeth come to a different conclusion because there’s no way that life can spring from non-life. In order to be taken seriously, evolutionists must explain how life started in the first place. They can’t, so like a stage magician (also here) they trot out a few bits of bone and teeth to divert our attention from the evolutionist’s real problem of how to explain something out of nothing. The evolutionist will convince an ignorant public by presenting their fragments as an artist-rendered specimen when in reality “that all of these conclusions are inferred from digital reconstructions and fallible reconstructions of bones that were in very bad shape.” In fact, “Ardi is a partial skeleton put together based on the bone fragments of at least 35 sets of skeletons—many of which were in such bad shape that it took 15 years before the research team could fully analyze and publish its findings on the combined skeleton.”

For David Menton, who served as an anatomy professor for 20 years at Washington University School of Medicine , “all the fragments indicate is that Ardi is an ape, plain and simple—and not anywhere nearly as old as scientists would have you believe.”

In reality, evolution is a substitute religion. Time, chance, and necessity make up the evolutionary trinity. Evolutionists tell us that nothing can be understood unless interpreted through the corrective lens of the Darwinian worldview. Darwinism is comprehensive, acting as “a universal solvent” that cuts “right to the heart of everything in sight.”[4] The evolutionists have their popes (Stephen Jay Gould), priests (professors), seminaries (universities), and dogma. For example, Arthur C. Clarke expresses the evolutionary dogma in emphatic terms: “Though I am the last person to advocate laws against blasphemy, surely nothing could be more antireligious than to deny the evidence so clearly written in the rocks for all who have eyes to see!”[5] Daniel C. Dennett, author of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, proposes that anyone who holds a theistic view of origins should be allowed to live in America but only in “cultural zoos,” otherwise they would be a danger to society:

If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods—that the Earth is flat,[6] that “Man” is not a product of evolution by natural selection—then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well-being—the well-being of all of us on the planet—depends on the education of our descendants.[7]

When evolutionists cannot make their case using science, the next step is compulsion. You will believe this or else. Notice how Dennett appeals to “free speech” to cut off “free speech.” Also, if you insist on questioning the evolutionary paradigm, you might be charged with educational child abuse.

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Endnotes:

[1] Richard Lewontin, “Billions and billions of demons,” The New York Review (January 9, 1997), 31. Here’s the full quotation: “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. 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.”
[2] Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Mythology of Science (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1967), 85.
[3] Paul Recer, “Newly discovered ape fossil boosts evolution knowledge,” USA Today (August 27, 1999), 4A.
[4] Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 521.
[5] Arthur C. Clarke, Foreword, in James Randi, An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), xii–xiii.
[6] On the “flat-earth myth,” see Gary DeMar, America’s Christian History: The Untold Story (Atlanta, GA: American Vision, 1995), 221–34; Gary DeMar and Fred Douglas Young, To Pledge Allegiance: A New World in View (Atlanta, GA: American Vision, 1996), 75–82; Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (New York: Praeger, 1991).
[7] Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 519. Quoted in Phillip E. Johnson, “Daniel Dennett’s Dangerous Idea,” The New Criterion (October 1995), 13.

Is Socialism Biblical?

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:07:33 EST

By Joel McDurmon

A reader recently sent us an email regarding socialism and the Bible. His friend, he says, contends that socialism is biblical. I hear this all the time. Having just completed the manuscript for my refutation of some modern Christian Socialists—Ronald Sider, Tony Campolo, and Jim Wallis—I felt the unction to reply to this claim. The email reads thusly:

I had an acquaintance who tells me Socialism is biblical. As he put it, “Think about it, the Israelites were required to give up their income for the benefit of 1. the priests 2. Levites 3. poor 4. those in debt 5. those countrymen who were slaves and 6. the farmers were not allowed to pick their produce up from the ground in order to give to the poor. That is called socialism. Oh and on top of that, they had a free will offering.”

I have a difficult time equating God’s direction with Socialism. What do you think?

The email is signed by a Chaplain, though he doesn’t say where or in what capacity. Chaplains often cross social lines that pastors and other church officials do not (unfortunately). Chaplains often deal with military men, public officials, officers, wardens, and prisoners among others. These men need a clear understanding of where the Bible draws lines between private versus State functions.

Our reader’s acquaintance introduces his arguments for Socialism by saying, “think about it.” Unfortunately for him, he has not thought about it enough. The refutation of his points is simple: in none of these instances was the “Socialism” involved enforceable by the civil State. Thus, to talk of “Socialism” is misleading. The measures are socialistic if by socialism you mean private application of charity by individuals, families, and churches in order to benefit the poor and needy of society. It is emphatically not socialism if by that label you mean taxation and redistribution enforced by the State’s gun. Big difference.

Christian Socialists have employed this sort of equivocation for 120 years as an intellectual bait-and-switch. I present a good example in my forthcoming book, God versus Socialism: A group of Boston social gospelers formed the Society of Christian Socialists in 1889, and immediately began publication of a monthly journal called The Dawn. Its mission statement read:

The Dawn stands for Christian Socialism. By this we mean the spirit of the Socialism of the New Testament and of the New Testament church. In man’s relations to God, Jesus Christ preached an individual gospel; accordingly in their relations to God, Christ’s disciples must be individualists. In man’s relations to man, Jesus Christ preached a social gospel; accordingly, in these relations, his disciples must be socialists.[1]

Notice the squirrely switch between the use of the capitol “S” “Socialism,” and the call for Christians to be lower-case “s” socialists. By the same logic, all humans are Humanists, all people who exist are Existentialists, all people who take communion are Communists, all rational people Rationalists, all people who eat cereal are Serial Killers, ad nauseam. These guys knew Jesus didn’t call for State Socialism, meaning government-power to redistribute wealth. Yet they could play off of the fact that Jesus called us to be hospitable and charitable in our social life among our fellow man—thus, we should all be good “socialists.” Once the Christians get on board with “socialism” and helping the poor in general, then the latent appeals for government Socialism start coming to the fore, as Christians are taught that all property should be socialized, “managed,” and receive “equitable distribution.”

Of course Christians are obligated by the Word of God to take care of the “priests” and “the poor,” but never does God’s Word authorize the civil government to tax people and redistribute wealth for these goals. Each of these measures was part of God’s law, but not part of the subset of God’s law that established and limited civil law. To make this point clearer, let us look briefly at each of the instances our Chaplain relates:

1. the priests and 2. Levites: The Old Testament law required that a portion of yearly tithes go to support the priests and Levites. The priests and Levites were the temple workers and servers for the twelve tribes. No one else was allowed to perform these offices. The offices themselves came at a price: priests and Levites were not allowed to own land. In exchange for not having their own productive capital, God mandated they live off of the charity of those who did.

Yet God nowhere said that the civil rulers could use the force of the sword of the State in order to collect this tithe. The civil authority had no power to collect it by force, nor to punish those who did not pay up. It was for this reason that the prophet Malachi could complain about the people “robbing God,” for they were not paying their tithes (Mal. 3:8–12). The punishment was not to send tax agents knocking on doors or garnishing of wages. The punishment was left up to God, Who Himself could bring punishment in the form of historical sanctions: captivity, plague, etc. God would also pour out financial blessing upon obedience (Mal. 3:10–12). God was very serious about the tithe, but He did not empower the State to carry it out. No Socialism here.

An exception to this may appear in Nehemiah’s reinstitution of the law in Neh. 12:44; 13:10–13. But this was Nehemiah’s solution to the problem, and not explicitly commanded by God. Even here, it does not say that the “rulers” and collectors mentioned were empowered with the sword to do the collecting or punish those who refused. Further, they did not even have the knowledge of how much each household had in order to verify that what was given was a tithe. No IRS here. No Socialism here.

3. the poor: There were several “poor laws” in the Old Testament; none of them involved State Socialism. The yearly tithe went to the Levites at a national level, at a central national location. Every third year, however, the tithe remained locally, and was distributed locally to the resident Levites, aliens, orphans and widows (Deut. 14:28–29) (it says nothing of “the poor” in general). Again, nothing is said of government power to collect these tithes or punish those who did not give. The Israelites were expected to give voluntarily and themselves knew God would punish them if they refused, and bless them immensely as they obeyed (Deut. 12:19–21).

4. those in debt: Again this can only refer to certain poor laws, where God’s law allowed for poor brethren to receive no-interest loans for up to six years. In the seventh year any unpaid balance of the loan was cancelled. This was a measure designed to allow the poor brethren to borrow money to get back on their feet. Nevertheless, God gave the civil State no authority to regulate, monitor, or enforce these loans, nor to punish those who refused to lend. This law did not apply to foreign nationals living among the Israelites. Of them a lender could charge interest and continue to receive it indefinitely until payoff. See Deuteronomy 15:1–11.

5. those countrymen who were slaves: Jews who through debt, theft, or need were sold into slavery would face a six-year term. At the end of this term, they could decide whether to remain with their master, or return free into the marketplace. If they decided to return free, the master was obligated by law to give his former slave clothing and enough money to get going (Deut. 15:12–15). This income was indeed forfeited by the master, although the slave would have more than earned it through seven years of unwaged labor. Had he been a productive worker, the master would have profited greatly. The master would still be well ahead after giving him his freedom bonus. Had the slave been an “unprofitable servant” (Matt. 25:30), however, causing his master loss, then the master would surely be glad to see him go, and would surely pay to send him along and avoid any future losses. The aim of Old Testament slavery, of course, was to avoid such a situation. It aimed at reform and restoration of the unsuccessful individual. By spending six years working under a wise, successful, and productive master, a slave should learn the skills, mentality, and wisdom to succeed on his own once free. In this case, the six years of servitude and the payment upon release profited everyone involved.

All of this said, God’s Word adds nothing to this about the role of the civil State, nor of civil punishments for those who refused to obey the ideal.

5. the farmers were not allowed to pick their produce up from the ground in order to give to the poor: By law, owners of property were to not harvest the corners of their field, nor pick up sheaves that fell to the ground during harvest. These were left for the poor of the land to come along and “glean.” The gleaning laws gave the poor an outlet, for a very limited time of the year, for a very limited amount, to get food for themselves. They would have to do the hard work of finding and harvesting the slim pickings for themselves, and they would have to do so in competition with all other gleaners. As part of the charity involved here, this was good practice for becoming productive in a competitive market place.

Note again: the State did not enforce gleaning. The State had no mandate from God to punish those who refused to leave their corners unharvested. The State did not collect the gleanings and the hand them out to the poor: the poor had to go pick them up themselves.

So, in none of these alleged measures of socialism, do we find anything that genuinely earns the name “Socialism.” In no instance did the State have the power to redistribute wealth. In each instance, the “socialism” depended entirely upon individuals obeying God’s mandate for charity towards the Levite, the poor, and the disadvantaged.

God kept the State out of the charity business. There’s a good reason for this. If the power of the sword ever mixed with the power to distribute bread, there would be no end to political corruption: the State would use its powers of distribution to control the people; worse, people who grew dependent upon the State’s bread would also then be dependent upon the State’s sword. Acquiring provisions would no longer be an issue of personal responsibility, but of institutionalized force. It would teach the dependent of all shapes and sizes that deriving food at gunpoint is legitimate. Thus, State socialism would be nothing short of legalized armed robbery.

When Jesus fed the 5,000, the people were amazed. But Jesus realized they were not following Him because of the miracle, but because of the free bread:

Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal” (John 6:26–27).

When Jesus knew that the people who try to make Him king because of His generous welfare, He fled:

When therefore the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, “This is of a truth the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus therefore perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.

Jesus was wiser than to mix civil power with welfare. This reflects the wisdom of Old Testament law. Our Chaplains need to understand this. So do their acquaintances, and every other Christian out there.

For those who wish to pursue this further, read David Chilton’s Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, and look for my forthcoming refutation of the New Social Gospel in God versus Socialism: A Biblical Critique of the New Social Gospel.

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Endnote:

[1] Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 171.

The Politics of Poverty

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:11:23 EST

By Eric Rauch

In a study released in Financial Times in late 2006, it was revealed that the richest 2% of adults in the world own more than 50% of the total assets, while the poorest half of the population hold a mere 1%. [1] Statistics like this were highly prevalent during the Obama presidential campaign, and they are gaining resurgence from Michael Moore's recent bit of uninformed celluloid propaganda, Capitalism: A Love Story. Although these statistics may help to foster greed and envy among the poor of the world, they really only confirm the "Golden Rule" of politics—i.e. he who has the gold makes the rule—a point that is well-made by Hernando de Soto in his book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else.

Not to be confused with the 16th century Spanish explorer by the same name, de Soto is an economist by trade. His main focus is what we might refer to as the "shadow economy"—one that operates directly alongside the "legal" economy, but without the paper trail. "In his native Peru, de Soto found that the rural and urban real estate held outside the legal system was five times the total valuation of the Lima Stock Exchange and fourteen times the value of all foreign direct investment in the country through its documented history. Nor is Peru unique in this respect. Much the same story could be told of the Philippines, Egypt and other Third World countries." [2] De Soto’s research helps to put the seemingly lopsided statistics from the Financial Times into a different perspective.

While the Bible declares that "the earth is the Lord’s and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it" (Psalm 24:1), the balance sheets of the top 2% tell a different story. De Soto shows that the lion’s share of the world’s wealth never ends up being accounted for or even reported. If the thinly distributed wealth of the bottom half of the economic food chain cannot be shown to be an asset or a liability to the upper half, it will be virtually ignored. As far as government bookkeepers are concerned, it doesn’t exist if it can’t be taxed. But it also can’t be counted toward that country's GNP. The economic elites of that country (or at least the ones with a paper trail) take their investment capital to stronger foreign economies, which causes their own country’s governmental economy to get that much weaker. It becomes an economic “survival of the fittest” where the fittest get to define the terms.

The same philosophical assumptions that drove the worldview of Marx and Hegel are being used today to deny a huge segment of the population any stake in the wealth of the world. "In the hands of the communists and other revolutionary reformers, the Darwinian emphasis on the survival of the fittest was used to justify their revolutionary activities and their efforts to destroy the traditional theistic political and economic philosophies and institutions which stood in their way in their struggles to remake the political and social life of both Europe and America." [3] The Lord may own the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10), but the social Darwinists at the pinnacle of the “legal” economy are redefining wealth to be strictly monetary in nature. Real estate, livestock, land, resources, etc. don't get counted toward the legal system if they don’t show up on paper. The miles of bureaucratic red tape involved with the legal system make this next to impossible.

De Soto and his team of researchers have examined the processes in a number of Third World countries. In Peru, the process to get a legal title to your home consists of 5 stages and the first stage alone involves 207 steps. In Egypt, anyone who wants to acquire and legally register a lot on state-owned desert land must wend his way through at least 77 bureaucratic procedures at thirty-one public and private agencies. These procedures can take anywhere from five to fourteen years. In Haiti, it is 19 years. Against this background, it is hardly surprising that most economic activities in most Third World and former Communist countries take place illegally, in the underground economy. Less than half the people employed in Venezuela work in legal enterprises. [4]

Armed with this understanding, we can say this about the statistic that the wealthiest 2% own 50% of the world’s assets: “So what?” The statistic itself is as meaningless as Darwin's phrase "the survival of the fittest." Statements like this are self-authenticating (they are known in logic as tautologies). In other words, the wealthiest 2% in the world—on paper—own more than 50% of the stuff—on paper. That is, the wealthiest people in the world own most of the stuff. Duh, we don't need economists to tell us this. Similarly, when Darwin gave "survival of the fittest" to the world, he merely taught us that the fittest ones are the ones that survive. That is, he made the scientific observation that the strong will dominate the weak...thanks Charles, for clearing that up. The top 2% may own half of the reported monetary assets of the world, but this only begs the question: What is wealth? If we allow wealth to be defined by loudmouths like Michael Moore and those in the top 2%—i.e. if we allow the Golden Rule to be applied—they do indeed own 50% of the world's "wealth." But if we broaden the definition to include more than money, as de Soto has, the picture looks much different.

Endnotes:

[1] Chris Giles, "Richest 2% hold half the world's assets," Financial Times (Dec. 5, 2006).
[2] Thomas Sowell, "A gem of a book," JewishWorldReview.com.
[3] C. Gregg Singer, From Rationalism to Irrationality (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1979), 130.
[4] Sowell, "A gem of a book."

Whoopi Goldberg was Right. . . Sort Of!

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:56:05 EST

By Gary DeMar

If you believe in evolution, there is nothing wrong with rape. In fact, you can’t really call it rape. Whoopi Goldberg dismissed Roman Polanski’s rape conviction by declaring that it “wasn’t rape-rape” (see her comments on The View.) As a firm believer in evolution, she should have said, “There’s nothing wrong with rape or sexual aggression. That’s how we all got here!” Here’s the premise: Whatever animals do in nature is natural. What’s natural is normal. What’s normal is moral. So if penguins engage in homosexual behavior, then that behavior must be natural, normal, and moral. How can we mere mortals impose our rules of sexual behavior on what’s natural in the animal kingdom? Homosexuals extrapolate that what animals do naturally in nature applies to what higher “animals” can do naturally without any moral judgments attached.

Consider the case of Timothy Treadwell depicted in the movie Grizzly Man (2005). He lived among bears for 13 years and thought of them as his friends. In 2003, Treadwell and his companion, Amie Huguenard, were mauled and mostly eaten by one of the Alaskan grizzly bears. While he thought of the bears as his brothers and sisters, the bears thought of him as lunch. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred Lord Tennyson put it. Then there’s the case of Armin Meiwes who killed and ate 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes.[1] What did Mr. Meiwes do that was wrong given the premise that animal behavior is a normative model for human behavior?[2] If the bears that ate Treadwell were only doing what came naturally, then how can the cannibal nature of Meiwes be judged as abnormal given evolutionary assumptions? Whoopi missed a great opportunity to extol the virtues of the evolutionary religion of the intelligentsia by pointing out these examples of evolution in action.

A few years ago, I saw an advertisement for a television special on Turner Network Television—“The Trials of Life.” The full-page advertisement showed a composite picture of six animals, one of which was the bald eagle, with the following caption: “Discover how similar the face of nature is to yours. The way you love, the way you fight, the way you grow, all have their roots in the kingdom we all live in: the animal kingdom.” The implication here is obvious: Humans are only an evolutionary step away from other animals.

While channel surfing, I came across the second installment of the six-part series. I soon learned what Benjamin Franklin meant when he described the eagle as a bird of “bad moral character.” With two eaglets in the nest and not enough food to go around, mamma allows the weakest eaglet to die. She then cannibalizes the dead eaglet and feeds it to the survivor. Was this natural or unnatural? Is this moral animal behavior that we should emulate? How do we know? Should we follow the example of the eagles or just the homosexual penguins?

If animal behavior is a template for human behavior, then why can’t a similar case be made for rape among human animals? As hard as it might be to imagine, the connection has been made. Randy Thornhill, a biologist who teaches at the University of New Mexico, and Craig T. Palmer, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia, attempt to demonstrate in their book A Natural History of Rape[3] (MIT Press) that evolutionary principles explain rape as a “genetically developed strategy sustained over generations of human life because it is a kind of sexual selection—a successful reproductive strategy.” They go on to claim, however, that even though rape can be explained genetically in evolutionary terms, this does not make the behavior morally right. Of course, given Darwinian assumptions, there is no way to condemn rape on moral grounds. If we are truly the products of evolution, then there can be no moral judgments about anything. So then, if homosexuals want to use penguins as their moral model, then they need to take all animal behavior into consideration when they build their moral worldview. If we should follow the animal world regarding homosexual penguins and thereby regard human homosexual behavior as normal, then we must be consistent and follow the animal world regarding rape, eating our young, and eating our neighbors and decriminalize these behaviors as well. Whoopi just needed some help in framing the issue a little better.

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Endnotes:

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3286721.stm
[2] Theodore Dalrymple, “The Case for Cannibalism” (January 5, 2005): http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_01_05_04td.html
[3] Randy Thornhill, and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).