“Better for the church to have peace in the next life than in this one. Better to proclaim the true gospel, with earthly divisions, than to abandon the gospel for spurious, humanly crafted unity.”
-Michael S. Horton, What still keeps us apart?

1) The Husband is not Christ
The husband is like Christ, which means he is not Christ. The husband is finite in strength, not omnipotent like Christ. The husband is finite and fallible in wisdom, not all-wise like Christ. The husband is sinful, not perfect like christ.

2) Conform to Christ Not to the husband
The aim for the godly husband’s desire for change in his wife is conformity to Christ, not conformity to himself. Eph 5:26 “that he[Christ] might sanctify her” Eph 5:27 “that he[Christ] might present the church to himself in splendor” These words sanctify and splendor imply our desires for our wives as measured by God’s standard of holiness, not our standard or personal preferences.

3) Dying for the Wife
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her.” Husband are to lead without lording over their wives. Husbands are not to self-exalt but to self-deny, just like Christ.

This Momentary Marriage by John Piper, pg 67

To help answer that question Nathan Glazer helpfully points out that Evangelical activity in the realm of politics should be understood as defensive not offensive.  He says

Abortion did not become an issue because Fundamentalists [and evangelicals] wanted to strengthen prohibitions against abortion, but because liberals wanted to abolish them… Pornography in the 1980s did not become an issue because Fundamentalists [and evangelicals] wanted to ban D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, or even Henry Miller, but because in the 1960s and 1970s, under-the-table-pornography moved to the top of the newstands.  Prayer in the schools did not become an issue because Fundamentalists [and evangelicals] wanted to introduce new prayers or sectarian prayers, but because the Supreme Court ruled against all prayers.   Freedom for religious schools became an issue not because of any legal effort to expand their scope, but because the Internal Revenue Service and various state authorities tried to impose restrictions on them that private schools had not faced before.

[cited from Roman Catholicism, Moody Bible Institute 1994, pg 191]

Jesus Hates Religion

If I could summarize three things that I love about my Powerbook it would be:

a) The keyboard is so buttery smooth. The more I type on this keyboard the more I realize all the other keyboards out there really suck

b) The design of the Powerbook was just ahead of its time. I hated the colored G3s that came out prior to the Powerbook G4 but when the Titanium and faster Aluminum models came out I was sold. I actually owned a Powerbook G3 “Pismo” that I sold on ebay for $800. Truth be known I got it for free and at the time found it ridiculously slow.

c) The ambient light sensors on the keyboard. Didn’t I just talk about the keyboard? I suppose if you write and type as much as I do, keyboards become really important. As I mentioned in b), the design was ahead of its time. The keyboard system that lights up when the room gets dark is just beautiful. To this day all my keys still work, all of them still light up when the room gets dark.

I will probably not buy another mac computer since the prices are just way too high. I remember buying this PB for $2600.

Another reason why I probably won’t buy another Mac is my work gives me more computers than I know what to do with. I may be one of those guys who keeps old computers, takes out the guts and replaces them with more modern parts. Maybe in 5 more years I may do that with this powerbook.

It is hard for us to realize this today, but when Christianity first arose in the world it was not called a religion. It was the non-religion. Imagine the neighbors of early Christians asking them about their faith. “Where’s your temple?” they’d ask. The Christians would reply that they didn’t have a temple. “But how could that be? Where do your priests labor?” The Christians would have replied that they didn’t have priests. “But… but,” the neighbors would have sputtered, “where are the sacrifices made to please your gods?” The Christians would have responded that they did not make sacrifices anymore. Jesus himself was the temple to end all temples, the priest to end all priests, and the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.”

No one had ever heard anything like this. So the Romans called them “atheists,” because what the Christians were saying about spiritual reality was unique and could not be classified with the other religions of the world. — Tim Keller, Prodigal God

Indeed Christianity is a non-religion. In fact the ministry of Jesus exposed religious leaders showing the emptiness that religion brings. Christianity is about a Person whose name is Jesus Christ, whose work is what we place our faith on. Religion is about a work, that we place our faith on.

To illustrate this fact, he makes an arresting statement about how so many religions and philosophies have argued about how a person is justified before God, how they can enter into heaven. He says:

The concept of hell has been all but erased from our consciousness. The currently most popular doctrine of salvation is not justification by faith, nor justification by works, but justification by death. In this view, all one has to do to be transported into heaven is to die.

B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile activists and mental health professionals, is behind the August 17 conference, which will include panelists from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois.

B4U-ACT science director Howard Kline has criticized the definition of pedophilia by the American Psychological Association, describing its treatment of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading.”

I posted this link on Facebook and received an interesting response. I titled my post, “One logical end to sexual freedom.” I said that because the moment some sexual sin is “declassified” as sin, it will lead to a host of other sins. The argument for why pedophilia is bad (i.e. a sin) is due to it’s non-consensual nature since the child did not consent and that it damages the child psychologically.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that it’s a moving target when defining what is morally right or wrong. I insert morally right or wrong because the issue is a violation of moral standards. If we base what is morally right based on the consensus of society it may differ depending which members of society place their vote. Over time the votes from society tend to always shift morally downward or what some would consider “progressive.”

What I propose is to consider something that is outside of ourselves. We view the world through our own lens and our view is tainted by the influences of our society and the skewed laws of our land. I propose we look to what God has declared to be right and wrong. The moral standards that God has established are written both in His Word, the Holy Scriptures, but also in our very being. From the opening pages of the Bible we hear that God made man in his image. The meaning is that we are made in the likeness of God in that we are able to think, rationalize, evaluate, and establish morality based on the one whom we were made in the image of. So this is important to note as we consider moral standards.

When pedophilia, the idea of an adult having a sexual relationship with a child, enters our minds we don’t need a federal law, state law, city ordinance, or post-it note to tell us that it is wrong. Something within us tells us that that is simply wrong. Our hatred for that vile act comes from the moral standard that God has given to every individual.

Now a rational person would quickly raise the point that not everybody can “sense” or “feel” that something is wrong. In fact the people in conference in Baltimore feel that adults having sex with children is not wrong. Why the difference if we are all made in God’s image? The degree of differences is proportionate to how much we fight the truth that we know about morality. Romans 1:18 says:

men who suppress the truth [l]in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident [m]within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Since we are made in the image of God, each of us have something evident within ourselves. We are “god-like” in that we have a sense of the existence of God, a sense of God’s truth within ourselves. But notice there are “men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” When a person begins to suppress that truth you get a conference where something that is clearly wrong is being attempted to be something right.

When this behavior happens in a society God does something. He judges a society by giving them over to these very lusts Rom 1:24:

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie,

That is the consequence of rejecting, supressing, and ignoring God’s truth that is both written in the law of God and rejecting the law of God written in the human heart. The downward spiral continues in Rom 1:26:

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is [r]unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing [s]indecent acts and receiving in [t]their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Now as you hear this you are either in agreement, indifferent, or angry. I hope you are in complete agreement or completely angry. If you are indifferent, thank you for visiting my blog. You can leave now because the rest won’t apply very much to you. I hope at the very least you are angry at what you have read.

The reason you are angry is the same reason I was angry. I was angry because I don’t need anybody to tell me or explain to me how this world works especially through an ancient book that nobody reads. Well I read that book and God opened my eyes to spiritual truth.

I realized that my moral standards are completely imaginary in the sense that I have no clue where they came from. They are at best a confused and twisted revision of what God had intended. Attempting to go back to that standard through ritual, religion, or simply being good I found impossible. In fact the Bible declares it to be impossible. Jesus said to a religious man “there is no one good.” Romans 3 says “there is none righteous.” I tried being righteous through the religion of the Catholic church. In appearance the Catholic church should be the most holy and righteous of all religions but just like Pharisees in the time of Jesus, it was all outward. The problem was I could not obey the law that God intended for me to follow no matter how hard I tried. I could never do enough “good” to satisfy the holiness God demands. My moral-standard was not only skewed but it led me to the exact path God does not want anyone to take and that is to try and please him by our self-effort of living a good life, doing good to others, and being religious or righteous. No – God realizes that our moral standards are skewed because of the sin that is our heart and the only way to escape is if He would change our heart.

God wanted me to realize the helplessness that I was in before He could show me the way out. I was angry and frustrated. God wanted me to see the bad news in order for the good news of the Gospel to make sense. The bible says that God sent His Son to take away our sin. How? Does he take it away if we follow him? If we obey him? If we serve Him? If we go to His religion or to His church? No. Sin is removed if we receive by faith what Jesus Christ did on the cross which is die for our sins. Jesus had to die because sin’s consequence is death. Our payment for our sin can only be paid through an eternity of death. Instead He died the death that we deserved. He took our place. The great shepherd laid down His life for the sheep (John 10). You do nothing but receive by faith, believing that your moral standards fall short from God’s standards and that nothing we do will please Him. What brings God joy is when we place our faith in what He has provided for us: believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for us and rose again on the third day. That’s the Gospel.

You see the goal is never to establish righteousness on earth through religion. That’s the exact opposite of what God wants. God wants you to see that your righteousness (based on your moral standards) as unable, incapable, deficient to do any good that would bring merit or favor with God. Instead He says, “receive by faith what I have provided for you. The sacrifice of my Son for your sins.”

This article of normalizing pedophilia is both a judgment where God is handing people over to the lusts of their heart as Romans 1 says. But by you reading it and being angered by what you’ve read, it can become a grace because God wants you to realize at how your moral-standards fall short and you cannot ever attempt to please Him by self-effort. The grace is this: God has given you a gift. He has given you Himself in His Son Jesus Christ. Believe who He is and what He did for you – it will change your life forever.