Church and Culture

I received today an “urgent” appeal to sign a petition demanding the US Senate filibuster an Obama nomination to the federal bench of a certain “anti-Jesus” judge. The judge opposes public prayer using Jesus name, is very much pro abortion and in general is a liberal twit. I will sign a petition opposed to the fellow for being very much pro abortion and in general a liberal twit – but not for being anti-Jesus! Evangelicals in a misguided attempt to be “salt and light” to a decadent culture have gone from preaching to meddling. The moralistic drones of today's Christian Right have proved the secularists correct. We have gone so far over the line in politicizing The Gospel, that charges that Christians wish to impose a theocracy in America have become more right than wrong.

I am grateful to Our Lord that we are not a Christian nation, nor Mohammedan, nor Jewish nor any other theistic political construct. Constantine the first “Christian Emperor” of Rome proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the empire in the 4th century. Once joined to earthly power The Church mutated over the next 1000 years becoming a venal, corrupt and voracious monster that punished unbelief and dissent with death and oppressed its own nearly as harshly. In Ireland state churches have fostered murder and mayhem for centuries.

The Puritans of New England sought to establish the “New Jerusalem”, a “holy city set on a hill.” The laws of New England based on the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy including idolatry and blasphemy were ecclesiastical in nature harsh in enforcement. Dissenters mostly Baptists, were persecuted and banished. In response to these abuses Roger Williams established Rhode Island, the first political entity in the new world to secure free expression of one’s faith. James Madison, a devout Presbyterian and arguably the most truly Christian of our founders was militantly opposed to any attempt to establish The Kingdom of God on the western shore of the Atlantic. We should be as well.

In the second chapter of Revelation Christ chastises the church at Ephesus for abandoning The Gospel in favor of good works. “I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.” He did not criticize the good works - only that they had eclipsed the purer and more important purposes of His Church.

Just what are the more important purposes of The Church and its people? Jesus answers this in numerous accounts but three seem to summarize them well. According to John’s gospel [21: 15-18], Jesus asked Peter three times “Do you love me”? Peter answered in the affirmative all three times. In reply, on each occasion Jesus said, “feed my sheep”. In what is known as the Great Commission, Christ calls his disciples to "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation”[ Mark 15: 16] and teach them [those who believe] to “observe all that I have commanded of you” [Matthew 28: 20]. Where within these texts does one find instructions to either establish “Christian Nations” or compel unbelievers to observe what Christ commands? According to Jesus the pure work of the church is to evangelize and then educate and care for those who accept His offer of salvation. Nowhere does He compel atheists, agnostics or pagans to obey Christian precepts. Atheists don’t believe in God or His Son, why would they follow His rules or respect His axioms? To expect unbelievers to accept and obey Christian principles is as preposterous as expecting Christians to obey Buddha or The Koran! Trying to pressure goats to fly accomplishes nothing save making them angry, so too efforts to coerce heathens to follow a code meant for Jesus’ followers.

Jesus also made very clear statements about His Kingdom. “Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world." [John 18: 36]. The biblical task of The Church is not ambiguous. Clearly we are to be about evangelizing, teaching, worshiping and ministering to each other. Clearly we are not to be about establishing His Kingdom on earth or creating and ruling Christian Nations. We are to Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Civil government is Caesar’s by God’s ordinance.

Doesn’t Christ call us to be “salt and light”? Of course! "You are the salt of the earth . . . "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. [Matthew 5: 13-16]. We are always to model Our Lord and oppose sin both as individuals and corporately. The analogies found in these texts are of great import in this discussion. Salt is but one of many ingredients in a meal. Without salt the stew is not very tasty. However as we all know, too much salt ruins it. A light does not compel, it illumines. The light forces no one to take the right path it only makes it visible. Christians then are to season the world not embalm it, to show the way not coerce the unwilling to follow it.

For one who has been a staunch “culture warrior” the above realization has come painfully. “I have been wrong” does not form easily on my lips. To acknowledge that even a jot or tittle of truth is found in secularist indictments of The Church swallows hard. However I have been wrong in demanding that pagans abide by Christian mores and they have been right that Evangelicals attempt even unwittingly to establish a North American Christian theocracy. I repent.

Does this mean I no longer think I should take a position on public political and moral issues? Again, of course not. I am still to be a light amidst the darkness, revealing the truth. I am to meliorate the culture by proclaiming The Gospel and encouraging public policies that uphold the sanctity of life, respect our God given liberties and secure the future for our children. None of these are exclusively Christian yet all reflect His goodness. It is past time pietistic, Evangelicals repent, quit moralizing the culture and “do the works it did at first” It may be astonishing what a few decades of fervently trumpeting the grace of God in Christ His Son might effect on our perishing civilization.

Emergent Heresy

I have spent considerable time lately reading about the “Emergent Church”. There is much to read, too much. What one may ask is the Emergent Church? Based on my reading Emergent [it goes by this part of the formal name to distinguish itself from the "Emerging Church"] is a “conversation” about the refusal of the hierarchical evangelical church to meet the demands of postmodern man and what must be done about it. It is the latest effort by the “all about me” community to remake The Gospel in its image. What puzzles me is that so many see this movement as something new and take it so seriously. Emergent is nothing more than the extension and updating of the revolt against form, doctrine, and propositional truth that began in the sixties when Father Tim first took his Martin to Mass.

The Emergent conversation begins with the premise that The Age of Reason [modernism] beginning from The Enlightenment of the 18th century, has passed away. Postmodernism has arrived, an age in which there are no absolutes and objective reality does not exist - a sort of updated, intellectualized “Free to be You and Me”. The thoughtful postmodern will not be reached it is said, by arguments from doctrines that order all creation under a singular universal authority.

Postmodern thought offers a worldview, actually a non world view claiming that every pretense to reality is culturally informed and one culture's perspective is no more or less valid than another's - though it may be antithetical! It is an anti-philosophy that precludes knowledge at all. Emergent proposes to adapt Christianity to these ideas. I am at a loss how one one might merge ultimate truth with nonsense and produce anything but rubbish.

Young postmoderns the Emergents insist, will not respond to the “exclusive” “arrogant” and “intolerant” message of the traditional church. If it is to survive the 21st century, Christianity must be stripped of its hard-edged dogmatism and rigid, confessions. God's precepts must give way to “poetry” “community” “affections” and “mystery”. In other words, The Church must surrender truth and embrace emotion if it is to be palatable to these young Hegelians. The message is clear. Unless the gospel is post-modernized an entire generation will be lost and perhaps The Church as well.

Save that this movement has a smokey smell and will surely lead many astray it would be unworthy of thoughtful consideration. It is derivative, vapid, self- indulgent and intellectually dishonest. The Emergent Church proposes its own anti meta-narrative to answer the questions of a world rejecting all meta-narratives. It offers its own non dogma to a society that denies all dogma. The Emergent conversation prescribes incoherence to a culture dying of incoherence. It would replace an ancient edifice built up in service over centuries on the blood of martyrs and standing on the "shoulders of giants" with an amorphous accretion of free form ,leaderless "faith communities" and house churches, un-guided by un-thinking fresh faced, neo hippies.

The visible church is not infallible, nor is it always warm, loving, accepting or authentic. She is made up of hypocrites, idolaters, drunks, adulterers and every other type of malefactor one can name. St. Augustine is quoted as saying of The Church “she’s a whore but she’s my mother”. She has persevered through a never ceasing progression of persecutions, heresies, corruptions, inquisitions and scandals. She has survived Rome, Marx, Nietzsche and unbelief. Until abandoned by Her betrothed, She is the face of Jesus' Bride.

The Church is slow to learn and slow to turn. She is by nature and necessity a conservative establishment. She must also be organized and functional. The apostle Paul set forth the hierarchy and qualifications for leadership and church discipline in his letters to the New Testament churches. The Church is called to do all things properly and in good order and to hand down the gospel and tenets of the faith to its children. This task requires structure and continuity. Emergents pillory the late 20th century churches for failing in just that mission. I suggest that failure to the extent it is failure is the result not of the constitution of those churches but of abandoning truth reverence and tradition in fearful pandering to whining and demanding children. Emergent offers more of the same poison as cure for the first.

Jesus said,"I am the truth”. How do these new age spiritualists plan to season that clear assertion of universal and exclusive truth to the tastes of multiculturists? He also proclaimed Himself The Son of God and that only through Him may one be reconciled to His father. To all who believe on Him He offers eternal life. To those who don’t He promises Hell. How does Brian McLaren or Rob Bell soften these “hard edged” absolutes?

The entire New Testament teaches the exclusivity of Christianity. Can Christo-Buddhism be true? What about Christian-Satanism? I read recently a progressive believer declare that a Muslim-Christian may acknowledge both Jesus as Savior and Allah as God. Would Allah then be Jesus' father? How can this be? Allah’s word expressed in the Koran denies the deity of Christ. Accommodation with other “equally valid” faiths demands just this sort of syncretism on a massive scale. Be it syncretism or 21st century gnostic mysticism, The Emergent Church preaches something but not the revealed Word of God.

“For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart”.[Hebrews 4:12] -
“So shall My Word be that goes out from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it”. [Isaiah 55:11]

So the Bible says and it still is news. The common thread in all the movements or conversations to make Christianity more "relevant" is the disregard for the timelessness and power of God’s Word and the sweetness of The Gospel. The Apostles preached, “Christ and Him crucified” to a cultural milieu thoroughly Jewish and pagan. With fearless audacity, they proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection. They built Christ's Church in a militantly, antagonistic environment. The Great Commission commands “spread The Gospel to all nations”. For nearly two thousand years, this message in its pure and unadulterated form has proven relevant enough to win the hearts of Kings and Emperors, sustain The Church and add millions of vastly diverse citizens to The Kingdom of God.

The wise of this world proclaimed God dead, Jesus a fraud and The Church an anachronism - in the 1960's. Oddly since then, Jesus has continued to call His sheep, they have continued to recognize His voice, come to Him and be added to His Church. S0 it was in the 1st century, so it is in the 21st, so shall it be until He returns.

From The Pen of Abaddon

Do Tom Daschle and other Democrat pols not have tax accountants?

If the government actually did something that created real money and if it maintained a massive excess stockpile of the stuff - then - federal spending would be stimulating to the economy. As it is our benefactors in DC first take it from us schmoos losing 10%-20% per cent in the process, move it around through the bureaus burning a few more percent and then returning it to some other schmoo at 50 cents on the dollar. I guess they would call this "addition by subtraction."

The next time you consider trusting your well-being to Washington be sure and remember that your house is cooler in winter, warmer in summer and your lights dimmer all around in order to protect you from a "Global Warming" threat that has seen the earth's temperature plummet almost a degree and a half since 1998.

Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. Why would you believe anything else he says?

If you think the $20 billion in bonuses Wall Street bankers gave themselves last year was grand, imagine what Uncle Hank got for making it possible.

Banks too big to fail, politicians too important to pay taxes and a nation full of plump little schmoos ripe for the harvest. Are we almost there yet daddy?

Hacker's First Law of Roundball

All Wildcat fans fancy themselves experts on the game of basketball. I am no exception. That said 50 years playing the game and of listening, watching live and watching on TV the winningest team in history does I think, qualify one at least an educated ,amateur expert. Some things about this team are so obvious they are overlooked. In other areas the stats tell an interesting story.

Kentucky’s problems this year are not – despite CBG’s assertions - toughness or defensive rebounding. Nor is want of talent the issue. The turnover problem, while troublesome is merely symptomatic of the coaching style employed by coach G. That we lack talent when possessing a lottery pick center and a guard who makes 44% of his threes and is the fourth leading scorer in America is akin to bemoaning that one’s ten-thousand square foot home has only eight bedrooms.

First the obvious, basketball teams make turnovers for three primary reasons, timidity with the ball, inability to make jump-shots [which increases timidity] and lack of unit cohesiveness.

With the exception of Jodie Meeks and Pat Patterson, no Wildcat player appears offensively aggressive or seems comfortable with the basketball. In the case of Darius Miller, it is painful to watch him start and stop, start and stop and then pass up an open jumper for a bad pass.

With three of the five players on the floor routinely passing up open shots early and midway through the shot clock opponents are able to surround Patterson and face guard Meeks. As the clock approaches zero, passes [and individual offensive efforts] become panicked and forced, resulting in miscues. The plain reason UK commits so many errors is so obvious it goes without scrutiny. Efficient, crisp, offense requires cohesiveness and hopefully a bit of chemistry, cohesiveness alone though is sufficient to limit turnovers to a manageable number. Gillispie’s purposely-erratic substitutions, two minute playing stints and practice of “disappearing” players for games at a time categorically precludes any sort of unit cohesion and obliterates the chance of team chemistry. The ‘system” breeds uncertainty, indecision and constant “bench checking” by players on the court. These are qualities that demand large numbers of mistakes.

Too many turnovers is an easy target for blame in losses. However, turnovers are only one factor – and not the greatest – limiting this team to mediocrity. For a long time I have instinctively suspected that [despite coaches’ reflexive denials] the 3pt shot is the most important element in the game. I posit the secret to winning college basketball games is “make the 3 – stop the 3”. The value of a good big man is as a rebounder and inside scoring threat requiring “double downs” to open up the perimeter. Even PPat is not strong enough [too little time for enough 2’s] to carry the team without outside help.

After the S. Carolina game, I did a little statistical analysis of the season so far. Kentucky has only one player making at least one 3pt field goal per game. By contrast, every team in the current top five has at least three and two have four players. In the sixteen wins, this year UK makes on average seven 3pt shots in 16 attempts while opponents go six for 19. In its six losses, Kentucky has averaged only four 3pt goals in 17 tries. Winning opponents are making nearly 10 in 22. When losing the Wildcats give up four more 3’s on three more attempts than when winning. In losing vs winning efforts UK is making three less per game on the same number of shots. For the season Kentucky commits an average 18 turnovers a game, 21 in the losses. Only in the S. Carolina game was rebounding [offensive or defensive] a statistical factor. In fact UK out-rebounded all six opponents.

Summarizing, in the six losing games the ‘Cats have scored on average three less 3pt goals, and given up four more per game than when winning, an astonishing negative 21 point per game turnaround. Clearly this stat explains the difference in winning and losing for UK this year. Soon I will undertake a more exhaustive analysis of this phenomenon including the perennial top teams. If this investigation supports my premise as well as the current data does the “make the 3 – stop the 3” hypothesis must soon become Hacker’s First Law of Roundball.

If I am correct, employing a stubborn coach who values “length”, athleticism and head games over unit cohesiveness and making and defending the three does not bode well for UK, which may well be bearing down on its fifth straight 10 loss season.

1860 and 2009: The First Shot

Less than four days into his presidency and one day after the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade Barack Obama overturned an executive order that has barred US dollars from funding abortion overseas for twenty of the last twent-eight years. This could be the action [see 1860 and 2009 posted 1.16.09] that initiates a struggle for the soul of the nation.

From The Pen of Abbadon

The ga-ga press has imbued Barack Obama with the combined attributes and vision of Abe Lincoln and FDR. Heaven help us if they are right!

1860 and 2009

The most serious and divisive moral issue since black slavery tore the Republic apart in the mid nineteenth century is that of abortion. We are divided almost equally among those who oppose it and those who do not. The lines are drawn clearly. Abortion on demand has been the salient issue for feminist groups since the sixties and is a galvanizing theme among the liberals who control the Democratic Party. Opposing these are Christians who have steadfastly opposed abortion since long before it was legalized in 1962 by the dubious Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade. To them abortion is no less than the killing of innocents, a direct and monstrous violation of the Sixth Commandment prohibition of murder.

It was once argued that abortion is not infanticide because a fetus is not a person until it is born. Science and medicine have since shown irrefutably that a fetus from its earliest stages is an unborn human being. Only the most partisan abortionists deny this today. As intolerable as is slavery, it involves only the enslavement of a person, abortion on the other hand is the destruction of a person. If eradicating the former lesser offense justified the death of 500,000 Americans, how much more the latter? Our country may be on the precipice of having to answer that ominous question.

For the first time since Lyndon Johnson was President 40 years ago, Democrats have overwhelming control of both houses of Congress and the White House. During Johnson’s term, many of the Democrat legislators were southerners and most of these conservative. Today the left wing of the liberal wing of the party exerts hegemony. The Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader and both President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice President-Elect Joe Biden are long time supporters of abortion on demand.

The abortionist lobby, in anticipation of a friendly reception from the new regime has submitted a fifty page, pro-abortion program involving more than a billion dollars in public funds. Among the recommendations are $65 billion for UNFPA a United Nations family planning group that promotes abortion in the third world. $700million for grants to pro-abortion clinics and organizations such as Planned Parenthood andthe repeal of the Hyde Amendment that limits Medicaid from funding abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger. Obama has been a vocal opponent of Hyde and can be expected to support its repeal. In addition, the proposal asks the new President to sign an executive order repealing the Mexico City Policy that prohibits non-governmental-organizations like the UN from using US funds to finance abortion overseas. The most odious of the demands is that funding for abortion become a part of the mandatory national health insurance scheme supported by the left. President Obama is drifting right on the environment and the economy. He must give the left something of significance or risk losing his base; that thing is likely to be abortion on demand with all its attendant sorrows.

Heretofore what little use of public money for abortion has been hidden, quiet, and abroad. Abortion opponents have chosen to turn a blind eye toward it. If the above proposals become law, they - particularly Christians - will not be able to ignore it. Believers will be put to the ancient test. How will they respond when the power of government demands they pay for an activity that so grossly offends their true Sovereign?

Christians are by faith and habit quiet people. Not only are they about peacefully worshiping their Lord and raising families; they are commanded to obey their government - or civil magistrate - as an instrument of God for policing society. There are only two exceptions to this mandate, when the magistrate forbids something The Lord requires and when the magistrate commands something The Lord forbids. The question before The Church is to be; in using one's tax money to fund the killing of innocents, does the magistrate command the believer to participate in what The Lord forbids?. For the only time in our nation’s history, individual believers will have to decide whether to obey Caesar or God. The consequences of that decision are grave for the Christian, The Church and the nation.