Tiger Woods has been disgraced in the media because of his infidelities.  Olympian Michael Phelps was disgraced by the public disclosure of his use of marijuana.  David Hasselhoff was publicly disgraced by the unveiling of video of his inebriation and ‘compromised’ parenting.  Then you have the sad narrative of my governor Mark Sanford and his sordid tale of infidelity. The response, both in the media and in conversations around the proverbial water cooler is one of universal condemnation and disdain for the moral failures of these public figures.  In times past, I have joined in on the lambasting of, and laughing over, public figures caught in their moral failures, their sin.

More recently however, I have had a change of attitude, of perspective.  I have to check myself that I do not place myself in the position of being innately morally superior to those aforementioned characters.  You see, what I have come to recognize more and more clearly is that I am just as deserving of condemnation as those celebrities.  My sins, my moral failures, may not be of the same specific and public nature as theirs,  but I am not without my own guilt.  Have I loved my wife as Christ loves His bride, the church?  No, I have at times failed at that.  Have I faithfully loved God with all my heart, soul, and mind and my neighbor as myself?  No, I fail every day.  So has everyone who reads this post, so has everyone.  We have all murdered with our words, and committed adultery in our hearts. Perhaps the most pernicious trap in which to fall is the ‘thank God I am not like the Pharisees’ mindset.  None, apart from the work of Christ, are without guilt before God.

I think about 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 in context the the failings of others.  I think, too, of Luke 18:9-14.  Do I sometimes, as already mentioned, self-righteously place myself in the role of the Pharisee who gloats over the moral failures of the unregenerate?  I think of Ephesians. 2:1-5.  Ultimately, the only thing that separates me from those other miscreants is the grace and mercy of Christ.

1 Corinthians 5:12-13 (New American Standard Bible)

For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?

But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.

Luke 18:9-14 (New American Standard Bible)

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

“The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’

“But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’

“I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Ephesians 2:1-5 (New American Standard Bible)

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved,

OK, I am, at least for now and after thought and prayer, rescinding my blogging  hiatus.  Here I go again…

I found our recently that some focus on the family kind of group sent out an email encouraging Christians not to buy Pepsi products because Pepsi supports gay rights.  All this is probably old news in some denominational circles. After giving this issue some time to percolate, here are some thoughts on Pepsi and boycotts.

• Do we need to come up with a WWJD (what would Jesus drink) bracelet? But that might lead people to abandon Pepsi for wine!!! Irony….

• Is there a list of approved beverages? Can someone point me to a sinless company from which to buy my sodas?

• Does the advancement of the Kingdom really come about due to boycotting the consumer products of the world?

• Related to the previous bullet point, so what if we get everyone to behave nicely and quit with all those outward expressions of sexual immorality. Do we do the world a favor by forcing the Law on them without also pointing them to Grace? I think Satan would be quite happy, quite satisfied, if the gay people quit being gay and the adulterers quit adulterating and the drunks quit drinking as long as they think they are being ‘righteous’ by their own efforts.

• I assert without ambiguity that marriage is to be between a man and a woman. I also declare abortion is wrong; it is a holocaust. So, our government condones and supports partial-birth abortions. It is easy, it is without cost, to refrain from drinking Pepsi and send them them emails explaining your moral outrage. Now, put your money where your mouth is. The United States of America collects taxes, some of which goes to funding legal partial-birth abortions. If you think the dyslexic sexuality (I wish I could remember who came up with that description) of gay people is bad, how much worse is infanticide? Quit paying your taxes and boycott a country that funds killing babies if you think boycotts are the way the Kingdom is grown. (I hear crickets chirping.) “But I have to pay taxes” you say. No you don’t. You will go to jail if you don’t. It will cost you and your family unlike switching from Pepsi to Coke and sending Pepsi a few emails. So, do your really think boycotts are the way to go out into the world with the Good News to the glory of the Triune God?

• Do you think gay people going to be redeemed by Christ and change their orientation due to your boycott?

• Are there non-gay people, even some Christians, working for Pepsi that may lose their job if your boycott actually takes a substantial toll on Pepsi’s income-earning potential?

• Does not these boycotts sound a bit like the tactics of Islam Lite? “Conform to our moral codes or suffer the consequences!!” “Say ‘Merry Christmas’ during the holidays or we will take our business elsewhere!!!” So, if people do change there behaviors and marketing practices due to your boycotts, does it really reflect a change of heart or is it more due to a desire not to lose your Christian dollars?

• Do boycotts really reflect the call to be salt, to be a light on a hill?

• That all being said, if you desire on some personal level to refrain from drinking Pepsi because of their politics, I think that is quite OK and honestly admirable. Many years ago, I decided not to buy Hitachi stereo equipment because they sold the Soviets equipment that made Soviet submarines more difficult to detect. As an aside, and if memory serves, the president of Hitachi later killed himself. I hope there was no cause and effect.

I have had the pleasure of engaging dialog on things of faith and science with atheist friends and family on more than one occasion. Either the conversation has centered around the evidence for a Creator, or it has centered on the foundation of morality. I am, in this post, more interested about atheism and inferred foundations of ethics and morality.

A while back, there was an advertising campaign in London, if I recall correctly, that questioned the need to believe in God to be ‘good.’

The question that should follow is this: why be good for goodness’ sake? For the sake of argument, let us assume a materialistic world-view: suppose there is no God. All that exists is matter that has collected itself into different forms by natural processes without any intervention outside of nature. This matter either created itself ex nihilo, from nothing, or has existed for eternity. Those options are all that is reasonably available to the materialist without regard to the cosmological flavor to the day.

Following that matter is all there is, then life must be a product of natural forces and processes, some inferred to be random, and is imbued with no special significance other than that found in the unimaginable enormity of the odds stacked against life rising from said undirected natural processes. We are here, to reiterate, due only to natural selection driven by random mutation and environmental pressures.

The bottom line is this: all there is…is matter. Following inexorably is death. All life ends in death and the annihilation of self, of consciousness, for the self-aware. All that remains is the decayed flesh and the memories of self carried by those who briefly remain after one departs, dies. Those memories, too, will be eventually be erased by time as will every edifice, every proud monument, constructed by the defiant, hairless ape. To assert otherwise is shear irrational romanticism, perhaps itself a survival mechanism born in light of consciousness, of self-awareness aware of death, before a vast, uncaring universe.

So then, we courageously exhort one another, given what ultimately lies before us, to be good for goodness sake. Again, why? How can anything be called evil, or good, in light of mere insensate matter being the ultimate arbiter? Do we call the actions, the effects, of tornadoes, chipmunks, and supernova good or evil? No, we do not. In a materialistic context, we can only say we prefer one action over another. We can only say some things are better for the functioning of society than others. Common good of society becomes the arbiter of good and evil. Again, why? Why should I care about the common good of society? Pragmatism, utilitarianism fail here. Who decides what is the common good? Society, a majority?   What about societies with differing standards?  Why should I, as an individual, even care about the common good? Is survival of the species the most important moral imperative? The earth, the universe, does not care on whit if humanity lives another moment or a thousand millennia. To state otherwise is, again, unabashed, irrational romanticism. Ultimately, there are no consequences for behavior if one can get away with it. Death is the common leveler and materialism is the ultimate reducing agent of morality.

The bottom line is this: humanity has no intrinsic value if we are only products of blind natural forces and process; there is no firm foundation for morality. Atheism, in its reductionism and when honestly examined, places a value on humanity that is tenuous and at very best utilitarian. The question that follow is this, who, or what, imbues us with this utilitarian value? Progressive, secular, egalitarian, compassionate societies in the west engage abortion on demand, infanticide, and euthanasia. Do you remember the circumstances that bought about the death of Terri Schiavo?

I can’t let others off the hook. Just any theism won’t do. Pantheism -belief in a impersonal ‘all is god, god is all’ – , foundational to much of New Age spiritualism, and deism – belief in an uninvolved, impersonal ‘watchmaker god’-, what many embrace, acknowledged or not, in actual function, are really in little better, if any, condition to provide intrinsic value to humanity. Too, what of that errant offspring of orthodox Christianity, the progressive Universalist, those who assert that eventually all go to heaven? Essentially, this is just a weak-kneed flip-side to atheism. In some respects, I would love for Univeralism to be true, but if so, there would be no accountability for moral actions if there is no punishment, no retribution for evil, no justice. Here is an undemanding god of love, but without the absolute holiness of the triune God. Is Stalin in heaven with the god of Univeralism?

Also, I absolutely do not infer that atheists are better or worse than theists in their ethics and behaviors. All I am saying is that their moral foundation is, consciously or not, second-hand, pirated, derived from that which they have rejected. Also, I do not infer that belief in God equals high morality in practice. People obviously act in opposition to what they profess to believe all the time. That many have done evil in the name of religion does not invalidate the assertion that a personal, transcendental God is foundational for morality.

It is only the fact that mankind, even in our fallen state, is created in the image of the personal, holy Triune God of the Old and New Testament that we find any intrinsic value and worth.

I want to end on the following, on the day before Christmas, with these words from an earlier post:

As profound and foundational are the doctrines of the trinity and the physical resurrection of the Messiah, and absolutely in no means do I intend to diminish their import, it is the incarnation of our Savior that leaves me most breathtakingly at a loss for words. That Christ, fully almighty God, immutable and fully in transcendence over creation, Who spoke into existence, ex nihilo, the natural order, should step out of eternity and condescend to take on flesh, a sinless human nature, and, out of love, subject Himself to a fallen creation, leaves me wanting for words. Christ, God almighty, His incarnation realized by His conception and virgin birth to Mary, was obedient to Father God to the point of death on the cross to provide propitiation for sin and, after defeating death, will for eternity forward, walk with us as we behold His cross-scarred body. Here we find incomprehensible truths that followers of the Messiah will feast on for eons.

How unbelievable is this grace to the ears of those who think that God grades us on a curve. How odd to the ears is this grace to those we engage some sort of concept of karma. How unbelievable is the transcendent God is to those who engage a the fuzzy self-deification of new-age, neo-pagan pantheism. How daunting and unbelievable is the true, utterly independent and omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God of the Bible to those who engage those strains of liberal protestantism who travel with the impotent, dependent god of panentheism. How simply unbelievable it is to so many that we simply cannot approach and commune with the absolute holy God of creation on our own devices, on our own righteousness, but only through the cross of Christ.

Here is hope for a broken, sin ravaged world: Repent, acknowledge and turn away from your sin, your rebellion and disobedience to God, and believe, trust, in Christ, fully sinless man and fully God, who physically rose from the grave defeating death, for the forgiveness of sin so that God counts to you the righteousness of Christ when He looks upon you that you may spend eternity with Him. That is the Good News.

Wishing all a Merry Christmas!

HT:who am i?

Interesting how Americans, Christian or otherwise, respond to turbulent times. So many are in need as financial engines grind to a halt. In strange counterpoint, so many Christiians, not being satisfied with what they have, think the priority is to go on a spending spree at the gun shop as a fearful response to political threats to the Second Amendment. I make this observation as one who used to be an avid shooter and collector of (inexpensive) firearms, as one who even competed for a brief season in IDPA. (1911A1 in .45ACP) I also find no fault with such interests in proper context. We can disagree while maintaining unity in Christ over issues of gun ownership and the role of such in self-defense. That issue is not the thrust of this post. What does interest me is what people place their trust in. As a public confession, if financially able and at the place now where I was spiritually just a three of four years ago, I am ashamed to say my overriding priority in these current political circumstances may have been to buy things before they were banned.

If a reader of this post is a shooter and a collector of firearms, I am not beating you up. Though currently inactive in both collecting and shooting, I am not, as said earlier, condemning those activities. I do question the priority of those who call on the name of Christ who, by their words, seem to be more concerned about and elevate Second Amendment issues above the Gospel. And yes, this post is born from the thoughts that have risen after more than one relatively recent conversation. Though at one time I may have chosen to die on the hill of the Second Amendment, I would not chose to do so now. There are other hills of far more ’strategic’ importance.

That all being said, here is another poll for you. You get a new hammer, everything looks like a nail. You start using the WordPress poll feature, every issue, every post, needs a poll. The following poll does pose a serious question, at least for me. If, as a Christian striving to be faithful to the Word, the government says you are turn in all your firearms, what do you do as one who is Biblically called to be obedient to the law?

Some rather randomly assembled, ill-knit together, stream-of-consciousness thoughts and questions, some of which are rhetorical:

• I absolutely trust in sovereignty of God knowing that He often works through human agents. Often, I do not understand why Abba Father allows many things to happen, but my faith and trust abide.

• My thinking now is that, yes, I would turn in my firearms. I would not like it and hope that I am never required to do so, but I am now compelled that such is the obedient, Biblical response.

• Does the government have that right to take away effective means of self-defense without the reciprocal promise to provide for one’s protection? Do you feel some tension with the first ‘bullet’ point?

• That being said, I affirm that I am also, as the covenant head of my family, their protector.

• Do some trust their firearms more than they trust God?

• Do some trust political processes more than they trust God?

• Some decisions are easy (though costly, perhaps to the point of loss of life) If living in WW2 Germany, then no, you absolutely do not aid the government in The Final Solution. In hypothetical 2010 America, do you aid the government by your obedience to the law, to some draconian measure, that may lead up to something worse further down the road?

• In regards to the poll, I think that Christians who love the Messiah can reach different conclusions.

• I acquired my concealed carry license about six years ago, though I do not carry as often as I once did. Knowing that I can legally carry the means to take a life weighs increasingly heavy on me. I know, too, that states issuing concealed carry have experienced lower rates of violent crime.

• That I, at one time, cared more about the Second Amendment than about the holocaust of abortion is to my great and never-ending shame.

Could ramble on for hours, but for brevities sake, I will refrain

Luke 22:36 “He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.”

Romans 13:1-7 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

Hebrews 13:5 (ESV) Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Not long ago, I saw a SUV with a number of decals on the rear window. One was a pro-choice decal; one of the others was an anti-war decal. Therein resides some kind of tension………

I am green. In fact, I am so green, the following post has been recycled, with some modification, about three times since I originally posted it on my now fallow Stumbleupon blog. I have thought a bit about the “new atheism” that has been gaining traction for some time as evidenced the works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al, on the the best seller lists. Below are some brief thoughts on secularism and its claims on environmental stewardship. More broadly, there is the question that seeks an answer as to what foundation can a secularist build a substantial moral framework. I would assert, in reference to the aforementioned question, that materialists essentially piggyback onto the ‘moral bandwidth’ of the Judeo-Christian world-view.

Where exactly does humankind reside in the natural hierarchy? If, as the materialist would assert, we are merely a hairless ape with no more importance or than an amoeba in the greater scheme of things, how can our impact on nature, on the environment, for better or worse, be given an ethical value when that of other natural phenomena is not? Is a volcano evil when it spews ‘toxic‘ gases into the atmosphere? Does the beaver wrongly exploit the environment when it fells trees and builds dams? I have cats for pets and have observed them stalking, catching, and then toying with chipmunks that they found in the backyard. Are they cruel or are they acting in accordance with their nature? How is the drilling for oil in the ANWR wrong? How can an oil spill be `wrong‘? How can the deforestation of a rain forest be condemned? All the aforementioned are natural results of a natural action by a natural entity.

What can truly be defined as ‘unnatural‘? How can a materialist, for all intents and purposes, deify nature and then place humanity outside of nature? The point is this: Unless nature is the effect of a transcendental cause and humanity occupies a position of ascendancy over nature, one cannot coherently and rationally make moral judgments concerning humanity’s stewardship and impact on nature. Indeed, how can one derive any moral imperatives from a naturalist framework? The foundation is so plastic, so pliable, that any act can be justified within the confines of natural selection.

Think on this: Zoology Professor Pianka of the University of Texas seems to endorse the elimination of ninety percent of the human population, perhaps by Ebola, in order to preserve sustainability. He has received accolades for his ideas.