Islam Is Not The Enemy of Christianity

As shocking as the events of 9/11 were, as horrible as the various random attacks in Boston and other places are, the recent hacking to death of a British soldier by two young Muslim is, at least to me, something different. It was so brutal and yet so casual, the men waiting for an audience so they could rant about British foreign policy and why it led them to slaughter a man in the street. Their fairly calm speech while a man they butchered lay in the street behind them, along with the instinctive filming of these men by passerby's is chilling and speaks to the general coarsening of our society.

When Western Christians observe events like this, we can easily fall into the trap of seeing horrors like the one in Woolwich and other terrorist attacks as part of a religious war between Christianity and Islam. Nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly there are secular issues surrounding Islam, Western foreign policy, immigration, assimilation, oil and of course terrorism but those are not issues that are the primary concern of the church. There is nothing inherently more sinful in these two young Muslim men than there is in your next door neighbor that let you borrow his hedge-trimmer.

The same thing that makes two young men hack up a man they apparently didn't know on the streets of the U.K. also leads people to believe that flying a plane into a building full of people going to work gets you rewarded in paradise. It also is what leads people to believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet or that Jews are deserving of mass death in gas chambers or that people of one tribe should be hacked apart with machetes in Rwanda by members of a different tribe. It is also the same issue that leads to the ambivalence of so many people in America who think they are basically good people and if there is a God, He certainly wouldn't keep them out of heaven. It is the same thing that every single human being that destroys every single human being that ever has or ever will live that is not born-again: sin.

These two young men in the U.K. are unregenerate sinners who need something, Someone, desperately and don't even realize it yet. Outside of the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit I would be in the same state even if I was not hacking people apart in the street. We can be saddened and troubled by what we see. We can and ought to pray for the family of the young man who was killed but we likewise ought to do the same for these two men and their families. What we must not do is lose sight of the truth that the men who perpetrated this crime are the very type of people we are called to reach and commanded to love. Islam is not the enemy of Christianity. If we believe what the Bible teaches we know that our future is secure, that our Lord reigns now and forever and that the end is set. As we eagerly await the return of our King we must be about His business and not caught up in the wars and rumors of wars, the hateful endless exchange of violence and the picking of sides in conflict. Even when it is difficult, especially when it is difficult, we must love our enemies, do good to them that hate us and overcome evil with good.

The Local Church Or Seminary?

Very interesting post from Phil Newton today writing on the idea of the local church being the place to learn the work of ministry:Founders Ministries Blog: The Local Church: The Training Ground for Ministry. Phil is a sharp guy and I have always enjoyed reading and listening to him.

I liked a lot of what he had to say in this piece. In places I think he elevates or overemphasizes the "local church" organization but much of what he wrote is spot on. This was my favorite:

The typical church’s approach with someone that expresses a call to gospel ministry has been to immediately send him to a seminary for training. While every local church may not be able to replace a theological seminary education (and I am not advocating such replacement), churches must realize that seminaries cannot replace the shaping influence of the local church community for future ministry. Instead, churches must not relegate to seminaries what local churches do best: preparing the next generation for gospel-centered ministry by mentoring young ministers in the context of church community. 

Spot on. The church has been given the task and responsibility to equip the saints for the work of ministry. That is why we have elders, men who lead by example and teaching of others so that they in turn may reach spiritual maturity (Eph 4:11-16). It makes no sense to have elders in your local church only to send young men from that local church away to be trained rather than staying put where the men that Christ has charge with equipping them already are!

There is a place for the seminary in the church but not as a subcontractor for the work properly done by the elders in the local assembly of the church. In a post-Christendom America we won't have the "luxury" to send men off to get an expensive degree, we will need to carry out that task right where they are. This is another one of those areas where we need to radically change our thinking and get back to the Biblical example. Great article, give it a read!

When Sovereignty Stinks

As always happens when there is a “natural disaster” of some sort we see a lot of soul searching and question asking, especially as it applies to God. Many people seem eager to put God on trial, as if He needs to answer to us when something horrible happens in a world that is polluted by man’s sin. This is of course happening right now with the tornado in Oklahoma and it inevitably raises the question: if God is sovereign, why did this happen? I don’t have an eloquent, theologically deep answer but I wanted to throw out some thoughts as someone who relies on Christ as sovereign over everything, from my salvation worked out and predestined before the world began (Eph 1:4) to a dear friend and co-laborer in Christ looking for a house.

First and foremost, we are not in a position to dictate to God. I don’t get to ask God why He permitted or ordained something I don’t like. My position is not an innocent man hauled in before a kangaroo court where I might be justified in demanding that the judge answer why God is infinitely and perfectly good and as such He is not only incapable of doing evil, anything He ordains to do is by definition good. When God slaughtered all of the first born males of Egypt, He actively killed children. He didn’t just “permit” it to happen, He did it. Is that evil? Well we consider killing children to be evil but God cannot commit an act that is evil so in this case no it is not. Further it is dangerous ground at all to even entertain that idea. In our hubris born of privilege and cultural arrogance Christians in the West and especially America have often gotten too big for our britches and deign to stand in judgment of God. Let me take it a step further. God would be justified, simply because He is God, if He destroyed the world in fire today and incinerated every single human being. Thanks to His forbearance He chooses not to but if He did it would be good because God and God alone is the standard of what is good.

If we lose sight of this foundational truth, we run into the question of whether God is able to stop evil from happening and chooses not to or He wants to stop it from happening but is unable. Either way God comes across poorly in our eyes. I find it helpful to look at every event through the lens of God as infinitely sovereign, omnipotent and omniscient and then to ask: what does God want from His people as a response?

I want God to do things. I want God to heal people of cancer and I know He can. I want God to stop terrible things from happening at places like Sandy Hook and Boston and Moore, Oklahoma. The real question I should be pondering is: what does God want me to do in response? Our acceptance of God as sovereign doesn’t mean we don’t suffer along with those who suffer and show compassion and minister to them. It doesn’t mean we don’t pray for healing or intervention. It means that we trust in God that all He does is good even when it is precisely the opposite of what I want. That is so hard. We want God in a manageable format. We want a God who will do what we want and not do what we don’t. God doesn’t work that way and I am glad He does not. What we should want is what God wants and how we react says a lot about how we view God. I liked an article from Tony Reinke writing for Desiring God, God’s Sovereignty and Personal Compassion in Public Tragedy. Below is his summary:

Maybe I will just close with one of the most practical illustrations. It says in Acts 4:27 that God predestined what Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the Jews brought to pass when Jesus was crucified. In other words, the worst sinning that has ever happened in the history of the world was planned and predestined by God, for the death of his Son, that we might be saved. The murder of the Son of God is the worst act in human history, and it was planned by God according to Acts 4:27.

Now God wills that evil for the sake of thousands of good responses. He wants us to be saved by it. He wants us to trust this Jesus. He wanted Mary to come to the tomb with compassion in her heart. He wanted to show that Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus were men of courage and godliness because they were willing to take the body and put it in their own tomb.

God had millions and millions of good and holy purposes in willing that this happened. And the same would be true of everything he wills in this world. So we should determine how we respond, not by any false, human, logical deduction that we are drawing from the sovereignty of God. We should determine it from what the Bible says should be our response, namely compassion, and outrage at sin, and efforts to be involved in bringing relief.

Exactly. Our question shouldn’t be “why”, it should be “what”. What do I do when bad things happen in a sinful world? How do I honor and glorify God in the midst of tragedy? If we focus there and not on the “why” we will do more to honor and glorify God and after all is said and done that is the chief end of man.

A Lack of Leadership

How about a broad sweeping generalization on this fine Tuesday?

The church suffers from a lack of leadership.

Now I am not saying we have a lack of attempts to cultivate "leadership". Books and seminars and professional education/vocational training aplenty purport to help men be leaders in the church. We are told to defer to leaders. On this very topic I give you an interesting quote from a few days ago from Dave Black on that very topic.

I am not saying we should not have seminaries or Bible schools. What troubles me is that we so often equate a formal biblical education with true biblical understanding. It seems to me that it is time to say "Enough!" to the fallacious notion that a degree in theology makes one qualified for leadership in the church.

We also don't have a dearth of those who claim to be leaders, leaders like "Bishop" Katharine Jefferts Schori who seems to think that what the world needs is diversity rather than Jesus. Then there are those who seem to buy into the hype surrounding themselves and think much of themself based on the accolades on their books. Of course there are plenty of people enriching themselves

I am also not saying we don't have any leaders in the church at all. We certainly do! What we lack is a recognition of people who are actually leading in the church through the Biblical means of service and example in favor of focusing on people based on position and title.Those are the leaders, the people who live and love as Christ lived and loved as best they can. It is the example of your life, the way you live, that makes you a leader.

The church is full of leaders and those leaders rarely if ever make demands of deference to their supposed "authority". Say what you like and dress it up all you want in religious jargon but someone who is more concerned with people "submitting to their authority" than they are with serving people in humility and love is not a leader in any Biblical sense.More pointedly, the more you have to remind people that you are a leader, the less of a leader you really are.

Being a leader isn't easy. Sometimes being a leader means saying difficult things. Anyone can say something to please people. It is harder to say something that you know will anger the very people you depend on for your paycheck. Even harder yet is to not only teach hard truths but to extend people the grace to grow while modeling proper behavior.

Being a leader also isn't hard. Just worry about living your life as Christ taught and modeled. It doesn't require a certain educational achievement or a certificate on your wall or a title in front of your twitter or facebook profile. It just requires taking up your cross daily. Under your own power that is impossible but with the Scriptures and Holy Spirit to guide us we have all we need to be leaders in the church.

Why The Old Labels No Longer Work (And Probably Never Did)

America is deeply divided along political lines. That is no surprise to anyone. While that has always been true in our two party, winner-takes-all system, it certainly has grown sharper and nastier over the last few decades. Old fashioned opposition has turned somehow more ugly, more personal. I usually point to the ridiculous "borking" of the late Robert Bork as the turning point but there is no credible doubt that we are a nation that is at war with itself, for now limited to rhetoric but I fear that in the future it may morph into something else.

I have started to see this dichotomy, once a critical part of my life, as entirely unhelpful both politically and doctrinally. I blame some of this on the two party, win take all system we exist in where it is natural and expedient to draw a line in the sand and then start appealing to lowest common denominator positions. What we are left with is a two party system loosely based on two ideologies that have little to do with the original meaning of their labels and I (and many others) find ourselves without a home in either party.

Modern "conservatism" is not terribly conservative at all. Rather than conserving it is about consuming. To protect our consuming, "conservatives" are willing to send young people to kill and die over and over, intervening in wars we have no business in and no real chance of "success", whatever that means. This means that the same people who complain about larger government when it comes in the form of food stamps are the first to freak out if we even suggest cutting back on military spending. Quaint notions like liberty are steamrolled by "security". Shameful though it may be to say it, the Republican party (the "conservative" party) is largely built to appeal to middle and upper class, mostly white, voters who are terrified of minorities and foreigners and angry at the poor.

Modern "liberalism"? Please. Unlike early liberalism what we call modern liberalism is simply replacing a hereditary elite ruling class with a bureaucratic elite ruling class. While homosexuals can "marry" and women can kill their unborn children, by virtually any other measure modern liberalism seeks to reduce liberty and make people less free. That is not liberalism, it is servitude and enslavement.  The Democrats take a different approach from their opposites in the GOP, rather than appealing to fear they appeal to envy, painting everyone who has more than you as your enemy, an enemy that needs to be punished. Dress it up all you like in the language of "fairness", what it really comes down to is stealing from some people to bribe others for their votes.

While the modern conservative movement is deeply, perhaps fatally flawed, it is less wrong than what passes for modern liberalism. That is faint praise indeed and intended as such. With these two "choices" that are not really choices at all, it is little wonder I am done with the whole dog-and-pony show that happens on the first Tuesday following the first Monday of November. The American electoral process is a farce and everyone that pays attention knows it but most people keep doing it out of some misguided notion of civic responsibility and virtue. That isn't my primary concern.

As clearly inadequate as the terms liberal and conservative are in a political context, they are both inaccurate and deeply harmful in a church context. I say inaccurate because the things that modern political liberalism and conservatism alike stand for, or at least advocate for, have no bearing on Christian discipleship and Kingdom living. Lower taxes, defending 2nd Amendment rights, a strong "national defense"? Um no. Abortion on demand, forced income redistribution and institutionalized generational poverty. Double no.

What about harmful? Indeed and even more so than inaccurate. When we use these terms within the context of church discussions we invariably divide ourselves into camps that are as much political as they are doctrinal and the differences between the two categories is lost. Just because someone is "conservative" from a theological standpoint it doesn't always follow that they are "conservative" from a political standpoint, especially on an issue by issue basis. For example as someone who fits most possible definitions of "conservative" theologically, I am also someone who is strongly opposed to war in all forms even when it allegedly serves the national interest of America. I oppose war for the same reason I support complementarian gender roles, namely a consistent and "literal" interpretation of Scripture.

A perfect case in point was an older article someone linked to that purported to prove that reading your Bible more makes you more "liberal": Survey: Frequent Bible Reading Can Turn You Liberal . Granted it in Christianity Today and as such was immediately suspect but as I read through the article what kept jumping out to me is that the way the article defined "liberal" didn't seem so much theological as it did political. For example one statement said: But the more someone reads the Bible, the more likely he or she is to believe science and religion are compatible. Well I am pretty conservative by any measure and I think they are compatible and would affirm that statement. Now if you start getting into the particulars we would find some major points of difference on issues like evolution and "climate change". Other examples included questions about the Patriot Act and social justice issues: Some of the most interesting findings relate to moral attitudes. "How important is it," the survey asked, "to actively seek social and economic justice in order to be a good person?" Who is against social justice? Now again when you start to define "social justice" in political terms it can become code for "forced income redistribution", something the Bible never supports. I am all for social and economic justice but I also don't think that a welfare state and a permanent dependency class does anything to alleviate injustice. So the flaw here is in methodology but the message is that reading the Bible more leads to voting for Democrats.

Our insistence on using political labels loaded with cultural baggage to divide from other Christians is enormously unhelpful to our mission and harmful to our witness as the church. It happens on both sides, many "conservatives" use "liberal" as a way to dismiss anything another believer says and likewise there are many "liberals" who sneeringly use terms like "fundie" to mock those who have a more literal view of the Bible. Both groups do it and both claim to be preserving the foundations of the church in doing so but what they are really doing is dividing us up based on our positions on tax policy and national security, issues that have no bearing on our universal call to be ambassadors of a King with no army, no taxes and no borders. Can we declare a moratorium on using this language to bite and devour one another? I will volunteer to try to start with my own writings and would call on anyone reading here to do the same.

Happiness Is....

...a huge bag of free leaf lard! We got this from our Amish guy who butchers and processes our hogs. The bag must weigh 35-40 lbs and we have our first batch chopped up and in the crock pot rendering down!

Our Double Standard Is Showing (Again)

There was quite an uproar a few days back when President Obama addressed an event for Planned Parenthood and closed his comments with "God bless you", a "blessing" aimed at Planned Parenthood. The uproar was understandable. Planned "Parenthood" is the face of the American abortion industry, a business that is responsible for unimaginable butchery on a daily basis. To invoke God's blessing on their endeavors, even in the throw away manner that politicians typically say "God bless ", is an affront. George Weigel writing for  First Things described it as blasphemy in his essay yesterday, Tribulation Compounded by Blasphemy: 

But there was worse. For President Obama concluded his remarks as follows: “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you . . .”

And that is nothing short of blasphemy.

Too harsh? No. For in its discussion of this grave sin against the Second Commandment, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 2148) teaches that “it is also blasphemous to make use of God’s name to . . . reduce people to servitude, to torture persons or to put them to death.” That is precisely what happens in Planned Parenthood abortuaries. And on that, the president of the United States called down the divine blessing.

Pray for him. Pray for the United States, which is in very, very serious trouble.

Now I don't put much stock in what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say on a topic but it is interesting that it says that it is blasphemous to use God's name to put people to death. I would agree that invoking God's name in the process of putting people to death is blasphemy (an irony I will leave unexplored for now). To ask for God's blessing on a group that murders children for money on a daily basis is a perversion and gross blasphemy indeed. No issue there but that also raises a sticky question that most Christians in America not only refuse to consider but get awfully mad when someone else does. Many, many Christians and generic religious Americans alike pray loudly and fervently for God to "bless our troops". What is the connection you ask?

We don't say "God bless the troops of every country". No, often Christians in America thank God for our soldiers, the soldiers that "keep us free" and ask God to "bless our troops". A quick Google image search for "God bless our troops" brings up some pretty extensive results as a testimony to the notion that somehow American soldiers are more deserving of blessing and serve in a more righteous capacity than soldiers of other nations. After all America is a "Christian nation" founded on "Judeo-Christian values" so of course our soldiers are carrying out God's will.

If someone were to say "God bless Planned Parenthood" and mean "God bring repentance to those engaged in their bloody work of murder for profit" that would be one thing. Likewise if our desire for God to bless our troops was a call to change hearts and bring repentance that might be something else indeed. However I cannot imagine that is what President Obama meant in his attempt to invoke God's blessings on the mission of Planned Parenthood nor is that what American Christians mean when they pray for God's blessings on "our" troops to prevail over "our" enemies. The blessing in both case is for a blessing on their current efforts to continue and that is problematic.

Just as I cannot divide my loyalty by pledging allegiance to a flag, I cannot pray for God to intercede on behalf of one side of a secular military conflict over another side. I don't see that God calls me to be concerned over a "way of life" or state sponsored "religious liberty" or the various economic, territorial or ego driven reasons we go war. I understand the very substantive difference between the military which has a legitimate secular function even if I don't agree with the policies and a business that makes money from carving up unborn children in the womb. They are not the same but that doesn't change the very real double-standard in play here where we place our loyalties to nation on a pedestal and pray for God to bless the armies of Caesar because we are terrified that we might lose our precious "rights" or have to pay more for gasoline. We have not faced a real threat to America proper since the beginning of the 20th century but those intervening decades are filled with war after war that American Christians have dutifully and often eagerly participated in not just by praying for our troops but by filling the ranks of those troops with our sons. In spite of this, if you dare to ask the question of why God should bless our troops you can be sure that you are in for a hostile response.

The double-standard in our pro-life position is glaring and if you think that the world we are called to reach doesn't see it you are fooling yourself. We pray outside of abortion clinics but cheer when unbelievers die. We talk about loving out enemies on Sunday and pray for God to smite them or at least assist our troops in smiting them on Monday. We worship a Savior executed by the state and have no problem with the state executing others. We speak of the sanctity of human life, especially children, but turn a blind eye to the dead children who are "collateral damage" in American wars. The often hurled charge that American Christians only care about children until they are born is spurious but we seem bent on trying to prove our accusers right. After Kermit Gosnell was convicted of the heinous crimes of which he was accused, some Christians seemed to be tripping over themselves to call for his execution while the majority of the church seemed disinterested once the cause of the day left the headlines. Even while it was going on the church in America was largely silent on the killing in our name of innocents abroad. Out of sight, out of mind I guess and after all when it comes to "national security" you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.

Few things undermine our witness more than hypocrisy and even when it is in our blind spots, the world sees it clear as day. People reject Christ because of the hardness of their unregenerate hearts but they reject "Christianity" because they see our hypocrisy and double-standards, preaching one thing and practicing another. No matter how much we cherish our American identity and the privileges that come along with our worldly citizenship, it pales compared to the holy and eternity impacting mission we are called to. If our loyalty to our land of birth impedes our witness, it is unhealthy and needs to be cut out of the church. If we can rail against President Obama asking for God's blessing on an organization of butchers and do so while driving cars asking for God's blessings on those we send to kill and die on our behalf for secular reasons we shouldn't be surprised at the derision of the world. 

Being pro-life means all life. Loving our enemies means all of our enemies. The commandments of Christ don't change at the borders of America.

Control the food, control the people

The older I get, the less crazy some conspiracy theories sound to me...

You can live without cars or cell phones or cable TV. In fact a lot of what people think are necessities are little more than luxuries and a many of them are actually harmful. But food? You simply cannot live for very long without food. Food, water and shelter are the essentials of life but with each passing year all three become less free and more controlled by the government.

Our food system is completely and almost inextricably linked to our government control. For the vast majority of Americans, even families that raise some of their own food like we do, it is virtually impossible to feed your family without eating food that has been regulated, controlled and subsidized by the Federal government. Walk through a supermarket with me and I bet that you would be hard pressed to find a single food item that didn't get handled, subsidized or regulated by the government. Now that may not seem like a big deal, after all don't we all want "safe food"? Sure but at what cost? I am not talking about the price sticker on a bag of Doritos, I am talking about the real costs of food that you don't see at the checkout line but that we all pay.

Thanks to onerous and usually unnecessary regulations that make smaller scale (and more local) operations economically nonviable, more and more of our food is produced hundreds or thousands of
miles away. Have you ever stopped to wonder how it is that you can buy virtually any food you want, regardless of where you live and what season it is? We used to live in one of the northernmost towns in North America, a place where the growing season is very short and winter is very long, but I could still buy "fresh" fruits and vegetables year round even though the nearest place that could raise strawberries in February was over 1000 miles away. I wasn't buying produce that was "produced" locally, I was buying food that had been trucked from all over the country (and outside of the country) to provide me with whatever food I desired, whenever I desired it (and at a low price of course). Gone is any sense of the seasonality of food, something that makes sense when you realize that the harvesting that happens in fall now is mostly field corn and soybeans that are completely inedible for humans. The crops that are harvested in the fall will be shipped off to a food processing plant or a feedlot somewhere far away or stored until the prices hit the right level.

Of course to move that food efficiently requires a key ingredient, namely cheap fuel. If we paid $7 or $9 per gallon for diesel fuel you can be sure that it would be far more expensive to buy food from far away processors and you wouldn't be able to obtain produce in the winter, or at least not at such a low price. One of the most insane features of our modern food system is that it is built not so much on sun and soil as it is on petroleum, petroleum that we on the one hand refuse to extract from our own domestic sources but on the other hand are perfectly willing (and often eager) to sacrifice countless lives and limbs of our young people and innocent by-standers overseas to keep the river of cheap oil flowing. If we ever suffer a real petroleum crisis you can be sure that a food crisis will follow right behind. Our food system is dependent more on oil than on crop yields or biotechnology or the good old American farmer. Without oil, cheap and plentiful, we could not continue to feed ourselves as we are used to doing. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. It also shows what a farce the idea of cheap food really is. Between crop subsidies, disaster insurance, trade deals, military interventions around the world, etc. we pay an enormous cost for our food supply but the difference is that it is an indirect cost, something lost in the morass of the income tax system.

Another way that Uncle Sam controls food is simply having the government become the provider of food for many Americans, more now than at any time in history which is a symptom of the bitter irony of the "War on poverty" that has made poverty generational and more common rather than reducing it in any meaningful way. There are over 23,000,000 American households receiving food assistance via the SNAP (Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program) program administered by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. Broken out by actual people and we see that over 47,000,000 people or 15% of the population is enrolled in the SNAP program with some states like Mississippi and the District of Columbia having over 20% of their population enrolled in the "food stamp" program. The modern day United States Department of Agriculture is mostly involved in regulations and in supplementing tens of millions of Americans food purchasing budgets rather than anything having to do with actual agricultural practices, having long ago abdicated the development of agricultural practices to international food and agriculture companies like Monsanto, Tyson and Conagra as well as land grant universities funded in large part by those same companies. This isn't a knock on people who legitimately are in a position to need food assistance but it is an accusatory finger pointed right at the same organization that on the one hand provides "free" food for some while perpetuating an economic system that leaves so many people in need in the first place, namely the United States government. Not only can you not really buy much food that isn't controlled by the government, many families simply cannot afford to feed themselves at all without that assistance.

So what is my point other than conspiracy ranting? Not much other than pointing out that the majority of Americans and the citizens of other industrialized nations are more or less completely dependent on the government for feeding themselves to the point of being completely incapable of procuring even the most basic food needs without the assistance and permission of their government. It is easy to assume that the government will always be there but given the troubling instability of European nations and the incredible debt level of our own government that permanence is no longer a given. The seemingly steady and secure food system we enjoy is actually on pretty shaky ground and any disruption could have serious, potentially catastrophic consequences.

Each little step toward food independence, no matter how small, is important. Whether you have a small square foot container garden or a few backyard chickens or you raise most of your own food yourself you take a small step of peaceful, lawful rebellion against those who would enslave us by controlling our food supply. Cheap food is anything but inexpensive and a people cannot be free when they are not able to even feed themselves without a by your leave from the government.

Having A Baby Is Not A Disease

I saw this video linked the other day and liked it a lot....




Again, we had all eight of our kids in hospitals, the last couple attended by a midwife. We have never given birth at home. We also don't think that women who choose to should be seen as backwoods kooks and furthermore don't think that midwives who assist a woman in doing one of the most natural events in life should be criminzalized for doing so.

There might be a point when more and more drugs and c-sections and inductions and extraordinarily expensive hospital care might be overkill, frightening women into thinking they are incompetent to deliver their own child. Sometimes the old ways are really better.

My How Things Have Changed (And Not For The Better)

Sometimes the best blogging is the simplest and I love Dave Black's lists. This morning features a great list of bullet points, each one dead on the money and worthy of extensive study in its own right (and I would love to see him do a point by point on each topic below) about how the church has changed from the New Testament model.

•  The Lord's Supper has changed from a celebration to a ceremony. 
• Worship has changed from participation to observation. 
• Witness has changed from relationship to salesmanship. 
•  Leadership has changed from servanthood to professionalism. 
•  Mission has changed from being missionaries to supporting missionaries. 
• Body life has changed from edification to entertainment. 
•  Buildings have changed from functional to sacred. 
• Child care has changed from the hands of parents to the hands of strangers

All true I am afraid. Then he simply adds this:

The New Testament shows us that the need great of modern Christianity is to return to biblical faithfulness and the profound simplicity of the New Testament. 

Indeed. Many of us tend to blog in great volumes about the church but that simple statement kind of captures it. Anyway I don't have anything to add to that (well I do but it probably can wait!) but I think it is worth pondering.

Pray For Kermit Gosnell

The news is abuzz with the verdict of guilty for Kermit Gosnell. Caesar has meted out a just verdict and now will carry out the wrath of the state on an evil doer. While many who kill children for profit still walk free, a mockery of justice, at least in this one account justice will be done. As far as what is to happen to Gosnell next, there remains the possibility of a death sentence. Many will cheer if that is the sentence.

I will not.

First, Mr. Gosnell is 72 and unlikely to live long enough to have a death sentence carried out. More importantly, as heinous and inhuman as his actions were no one is too great a sinner for Christ. I will not call for his death because he is already dead in his sins. I will instead pray for his life, a new life in Christ where he can receive forgiveness for his crimes. Mr. Gosnell, a butcher of children, is no more deserving of hell than I and if a killer of children is not the sort of enemy I should pray for I don't know who would be.

Pray for this man that while he still draws breath that God will call him to Himself. If God chooses not to, He will see to it that Gosnell faces the eternal justice that he deserves (and that I do as well). Regardless there is hope for Kermit Gosnell in Jesus Christ and I am far more interested in seeing his salvation than I am in seeing him strapped to an electric chair.

Replay: Christians and the sword

I thought it was about time to post this series again, especially since someone yesterday posted something on Facebook  about why non-resistance was naive and invited conversation about his post only to get mad when I very gently suggested some alternatives to his theories, unfriended and blocked me. I am afraid I don't understand why someone would post something, invite comment and then get mad when comments come in but I have seen this before on the topic of the sword and followers of Christ.

Why the anger at the suggestion, from Scripture, that Christians should not take up the sword and commit violence toward others? Do we love bloodshed so much? It is not a difficult case to make from the Bible, a case made from the teachings of Christ, the manner of His life and His death, the testimony of His apostles and the witness of His people throughout the ages who have gladly laid down their life for the sake of the Kingdom. Nevertheless I get more backlash from this topic than almost any other.

I would hope that I would not be misinterpreted as saying that those who take up the sword are not Christians, I simply ask if we should not seek the way of the towel and basin rather than the way of the sword and not just when it is safe and convenient but especially when it is not safe or convenient. It is easy to talk about loving our enemies in theory but many of the teachings of Christ are easy in the abstract. It is when we are faced with a situation where following Christ means great cost to us that we find out where our allegiance lies and who our trust is in.

The sword is the tool of the world, a tool that wields the power of finality by taking the life of another. That is what it is made for and that is what the powers of the world have always used it for. It is what the Jews expected from their Messiah, that He would lead them in overthrowing their oppressors. Jesus showed them a different way, a way that makes no sense to the world. He showed them and the Romans and His sheep throughout the ages that love of enemy can overcome the sin of the world.

Anyway, here is the series presented for your enjoyment and consideration.....

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The state, the sword and Christians


Can Christians take up the sword? - Intro


Can Christians take up the sword? - The pro-sword view


Can Christians take up the sword? - The anti-sword view


Can Christians take up the sword? - Conclusion