Monthly Archives: April 2014

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an article here

As I read Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals for the umteenth time, and as I read this article, I'm reminded that (Rule #5)

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”

“…you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”

I put "false accusation" in that category.

Read this article quoting Mozilla, and consider Brendan Eich.

Eich co-founded Mozilla. His guidance got it up and running. Last week, he quit in disgrace. His "crime?" Eight years ago, he donated $1,000 to California's Prop 8 (Constitutional amendment banning homosexual "marriage." I'm not going to send any readers there, but find an article on the matter and read the comments.

No longer can "same sex marriage" be a matter of opinion - those who hold the view that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman should be drummed out of the public square.

Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.

Really. What standard are they not living up to...the one that the co-founder helped to set in place? If this is the "true to ourselves" that they want to live up to, the world, in one week, became a much scarier place for people of a more conservative faith.

We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.

How did we "expect" them to act? Obviously, liberals expected Eich to be forced out (or not promoted in the first place) much more quickly.

Oh...and "engage" must equal "get rid of all those who don't toe the gay agenda party line."

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

As long as "standing for both" means "getting rid of everybody who disagrees," Mozilla is doing great at that.

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.

And some are more equal than others.

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.

The rank hypocrisy makes me angry.

This week, not quite so diverse,

Not quite so open,

The beliefs and opinions of those who think that marriage should remain defined between a man and a woman...not quite so encouraged to share.

If their "higher standard" is anti-Christian, shutting down of conversation, and shutting out all who disagree, they seem as if they are on the right track.

As I write this, an alert came in telling me that SCOTUS has declined to hear Elane Huguenin's case in New Mexico. The world can now force Christian photographers to either act against their conscience, or be forced out of the public square.

There can be no disagreement on the "SSM" issue, or you will be ridiculed, fired, sued, forced out, called vile names...

all for the sake of "tolerance."

Welcome to the New United States of...

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In a book that I'm reading (I'm not at a computer so I'll add the link later) the author talks about public prayer.

Says that if you're in any position of authority, no matter how small, you should brush up on public prayer.

I don't like praying publicly, but have on occasion prayed in a public setting. It's hard for me, and it was hard for my dad, so maybe I learned it from him.

I'm not sure how you pray, and pray *to* God, while also praying for the edification of those around you. I mean, I sort of get it, but where's the overlap - how do you tell when you take your attention off God, and start worrying "more" about the people you're with?

I don't think that prayers should be a sermon with your eyes closed. They shouldn't be used to guilt people into anything.

But...Jesus prayed for the benefit of His listeners. When He raised Lazarus, He prayed,

So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “ Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me

If we use the Lord's Prayer as a pattern for prayer, shouldn't we use this as a pattern for public prayer as well?

So yeah...authority or not, we should brush up on our public prayer.

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"Signature in the Cell" was written by Stephen C. Meyer - a Cambridge trained philosopher of science.

Unlike previous arguments for intelligent design, Signature in the Cell presents a radical and comprehensive new case, revealing the evidence not merely of individual features of biological complexity but rather of a fundamental constituent of the universe: information. That evidence has been mounting exponentially in recent years, known to scientists in specialized fields but largely hidden from public view. A Cambridge University-trained theorist and researcher, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, Dr. Meyer is the first to bring the relevant data together into a powerful demonstration of the intelligence that stands outside nature and directs the path life has taken.

The book is dense - the science part...I caught maybe half. Meyer,a philosopher of science, and writes like a...philosopher of science. If you can partly follow the writing about DNA, its significance, and why it's important to the debate, the pieces of the book on the debate, stifling, and politics of science will fascinate you.

We live in a world where everybody assumes the "fact" of atheistic evolution - "everybody knows it's true." Meyer doesn't know that and sets out to prove he's right.

Meyer asks the answerless questions that atheistic evolutionists should be asking themselves. The world tells Christians that we must examine our beliefs against "known" science; "Signature in the Cell" examines atheistic evolution in that same way.

This is not a "Christian" book - Meyer may be a Christian, but religion has no place in this book. Meyer does not name the "Designer;" his purpose is to make a place FOR a designer.

That doesn't mean the book doesn't have religious implications: once a person is convinced by logic and science that there must be a designer, the next question is who that designer is. (I'm not saying it was aliens...~inside joke from "Ancient Aliens~)

The book leaves out the question of "literal six-day creationism" - we may ask that question another day, but not this one, not in this book.

Also absent is the question of theistic evolution. Did God create "as is" or did He direct the evolution of His creation? Also...a question for another day.

The purpose of the book is to make a case from DNA for a designer, and that he does.

The book is important because it gives a solid reference point of "Intelligent Design" that doesn't get sidetracked by arguments against Christianity. The question stands: "Does DNA point to a designer?"

It took me a while to get through this book. One, it's a big book. Two, I had to read a lot of things twice and let it sink in.

It took work to get through, but it's worth the trouble. Like most books in this genre, you get out of it what you put into it.

Read this book if you want insight into the "Intelligent Design" debate and how the most basic pieces of the stuff we're made of points to our Designer.

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Or a variation on the theme.

I've talked to a few people about the way language and thought patterns creep into the church little by little.

We may not be Pentecostal, but we accept the language of prophecy with not even a blink.

There is a very widespread belief that if God doesn't talk to YOU, there's something wrong with you. If you haven't had a private, clear, and personal word from God, you may not even be a Christian.

Going beyond what Scripture says the Holy Spirit will do for us, we now have the "word" from Pentecostals that private prophesy is a "sure thing" and something we must have for a good walk with Christ.

Bringing me to what I saw on a sign in front of a church I pass every day on the way to work:

"Be quiet enough to hear God whisper."

Assuming that

1) God cannot make Himself heard if we don't have the correct amount of quiet (ask Paul about his trip to Damascus)
2) The correct amount of quiet will result in hearing God whisper
3) Hearing God whisper is a necessity.

I think this is just another example of Pentecostal creep.

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Reading "Surfing For God"

When I was in high school, my best friend's dad smoked a pipe.  Coming from a Baptist family, who were all non-smokers, had only used pipe cleaners in craft projects.  I was waiting for Denise one day, at their dining room table and amused myself with what was available.

Now...imagine the horror that she felt when she discovered that I had made little animals out of all of her dad's pipe cleaners!  Imagine my confusion when told her dad used "pipe cleaners" to...well...clean his pipes!  She was afraid that her dad would be angry at the wrong use of his pipe cleaners.

There was a legitimate use of the pipe cleaners that I didn't quite have the experience to "get."

(this is not a good parallel, but it meant something to me.)

In reading "Surfing for God," the author, Michael John Cusick, related a story:

My friend Danny is passionate about baseball. He is also deeply committed to working on his soul—understanding his brokenness and walking with Jesus to be restored. In 2005 we drove together to the Colorado Rockies’ opening day game. During our drive he shared that he hadn’t missed an opening day game in years.

Through his involvement in a men’s group, he realized that he “needed” to attend opening day the way an alcoholic needs a drink. Danny had recently discovered that opening day numbed the pain of growing up with an absent father because it symbolized the minimal time and attention his father gave him. His legitimate desire for fatherly involvement attached itself to a designer gift—a legitimate good.

But because attendance at opening day was an attempt to protect himself from the pain of his wound, the legitimate good became a counterfeit good. He was turning stones into bread. The game we attended was the first time his heart was free from the need to be there. (1)

It reminds me of something that C.S.Lewis wrote

If Dualism is true, then the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad... But pleasure, money, power, and safety are all, as far as they go, good things.

The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much...I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness.

Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled...In order to be bad he must have good things to want and then to pursue in the wrong way: he must have impulses which were originally good in order to be able to pervert them.(2)

Cusick echoes this:

Every gift from our Designer has a corresponding gift from the deceiver—a “shadow” gift. And you can bet your three hundred ringgits that every deceiver gift is a counterfeit. Satan cannot create anything; he can only take what has been created and twist it against its design. So, we are tempted to overindulge the Designer’s gift of food. We might make a god out of alcohol—turning to it addictively to meet all sorts of inner needs—or maybe we make a god out of not drinking alcohol. We are deceived into believing that deceiver gifts will actually make us flourish.(3)
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So, something in the sermon on Sunday reminded me of those pipe cleaners, which triggered the memory of this segment of the book.

I had taken a "thing" with a use - a use for which the thing was made, and made something frivolous of it.   I cannot see making animals out of pipe cleaners as "bad" - but it certainly isn't the intended use.

Food isn't bad - God gave us the good gift of food.  But abusing food twists the good gift into a bad use.

God gave us the good gift of sex, with an intended good use.  We can twist that good gift by using it outside of the intended arena.

I've written on "lady porn" - trashy romance novels that twist the good gift of romance into mere fodder for emotional flights of fantasy.  This abuse of a good gift can twist a marriage into a competition of sorts, where the husband feels the need to live up to the "romance" of his wife wanting to be swept off her feet by a "knight in shining armor."

More and more current studies show that women share the porn problem with men.  Women may get different things from porn than men do, but the problem gets shared.  Women twist the good gift of sex and intimacy just as easily as men do.

Cusick wrote:

We begin our journey from slavery to freedom when we expose the counterfeits at the root of our brokenness and admit our thirst for the real thing.(4)

.When a woman uses porn (or lusty romance novels, or food, or anything else) because we thirst for something else...what do we thirst for?

When I feel stressed at work, I do this crazy thing:  I hit the quarter machine.  You know, you put in a quarter and turn the knob and it gives you 11 or 12 Good~n~Plenties.  But I can't just eat them.  I need to line them up...pink and white and pink and white...and I need to eat them in the right order.  When I thirst for order and control, I feel that I can quench that thirst by arranging and eating pink and white candies in the right order.  That's some sort of twisted...

Humans twist all sorts of things, and the point of this post centers on porn, but it doesn't need to...throughout life test all things...do you have the "right use" in mind?  or something else?

 

  1. Cusick, Michael John (2012-06-05). Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle (Kindle Locations 1174-1183). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
  2. Lewis, C.S.  Mere Christianity, Book 2
  3. Cusick, Michael John (2012-06-05). Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle (Kindle Locations 1183-1187). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
  4. Cusick, Michael John (2012-06-05). Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle (Kindle Locations 1195-1196). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

 

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The Trinity; the doctrine of the Trinity is a core Christian belief.  Easy to say, impossible to unpack.  So I'm not doing "research" on for this post, other than what I've done, probably resulting in a "stream of consciousness" sort of thing.

1.  The Trinity is a mystery

Christians worship the Triune God; meaning that one God exists in three "persons.".  Or three distinct persons are one God.

T.D.Jakes (who has been accused of "modalism," an old heresy) dislikes the word "person."  You cannot see God as a "committee of three" - that implies that each member of the Trinity can be independent of the others, as if they are not truly One, but three that get together to be "God."

Yet "person" seems to be the best word that we have.

Each member of the Trinity is distinct, but none of them are EVER out of communion or unity with the others.  Our God is ONE, yet three.  Our God is THREE, yet one.

It is a mystery, and one that we may not fully understand even in heaven.  Maybe the closest I can come (and still a really bad example) is the the three blind women oracles.  They are three, but they function as one.  They share an eye, and what one sees, they all see.  They speak as one.  They see as one, and they cannot function except as one.  Yet the are three.

2.  There is equality in the Trinity

No one in the Trinity is more equal than the others.  The Trinity IS God.  As one, God is complete, no person of the Trinity is more important, no person of the Trinity is more powerful, no person of the Trinity is more holy, no person of the Trinity is more eternal.

For a deeper look, read "The Forgotten Trinity" by James R. White

3. There is a hierarchy within the Trinity

This is hotly debated.

Many Complemetarians use the example of this hierarchy to demonstrate how absolute equals still live out a hierarchy.  We look at the Trinity as an example of what life can look like.  We believe the Trinity is a perfect example of persons who are equal, yet different in authority.

Many Egalitarians reject any notion of hierarchy because they believe it is impossible to ontologically live in submission (or in authority over) to an equal.  In order to have equality, you must also have equality of authority.

But there is, in Scripture, as clear "sentness."

The Father sends the Son, who does not come in His own authority, but on the authority of the Father.  "I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak.  What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me..." (John 12:49,50).

The Son petitions the Father to send the Holy Spirit: "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever," (John 14:16)
Jesus testifies to the hierarchy: "Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him." (John 13:16)

For more on the different understandings, read "The New Evangelical Subordinationism? : Perspectives on the Equality of God the Father and God the Son"

 4. The Trinity is in "Oneness" - true unity.

Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!”

The "one" means a plurality that IS ONE.

5. There is purpose in the Trinity

God's two greatest gifts are creation and salvation - and all three members of the Trinity are involved in both these gifts.

in Creation:

Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? Malachi 2:10

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him Col. 1:16

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:2

In salvation, all are present in Ephesians 1.
Conclusion:

The Trinity is indeed a mystery.  I cannot explain, but I know that God is not a modalist.  The modern day heresy is known as "Oneness" theology.

The Trinity is a Biblical reality, as impossible to comprehend as eternity - all we can do is fall down and worship Him in His fullness, thanking Him for all good gifts.

For deeper reading: "The Forgotten Trinity" by James White

More than 100 things...

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I recently started, read, and finished “Another Jesus Calling: How False Christs Are Entering The Church Through Contemplative Prayer” by Warren B. Smith, who wrote the book because he's so concerned about so many Christians reading (and falling into) “Jesus Calling” by Sarah Young.

The unusual use of language by the “Jesus” of Jesus Calling was also disturbing. It seemed to run the gamut from “everyday Joe” language to strange word choice, unwarranted flattery, worldly clichés, repetitive phrases, disparaging comments, and not-so-subtle mockery. All in all, Jesus Calling seemed to be an obvious attempt by our spiritual Adversary to get an even further foothold inside the Christian church. While I was surprised that Sarah Young’s devotional had become such a huge best-seller in the Christian marketplace, I was not completely surprised. Deceptive occult/ New Age teachings are swallowing up much of what calls itself Christian these days. In this book , I have done my best to raise some of my questions and concerns. I am sure my conclusions will upset a great many people who are devoted to Jesus Calling. Obviously, what you do with these conclusions is completely up to you. But I couldn’t imagine not bringing what I discovered to your attention. Hopefully, you will consider what I have presented here.(1)

“Another Jesus Calling” is “quote-heavy,” drawing from a variety of sources, comparing “Jesus Calling” to New Age sources, as well as “God Calling,” in order to show how New Age beliefs, terminology, and practices have crept into mainstream Christianity.

Smith is uniquely qualified to speak to these comparisons, coming, as he did, out of the New Age movement. Armed with this knowledge, he spots and points out to his readers how the “jesus” of “Jesus Calling” pulls Young's followers toward a false Jesus.

In the prologue, Smith reminds us that Jesus said, "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before." (Matthew 24: 24-25) With this warning in mind, we can work through “Another Jesus Calling” with a discerning eye, comparing and contrasting Young's jesus with the Jesus of the Bible.

I had previously worked through a bit of “Jesus Calling” and left it knowing that something was wrong there. The jesus of that book was not the Jesus of the Bible, but I had written it off to the longing voice in Young's head. Reading “Another Jesus Calling” makes it clear that it's much, much worse.

It would be a mistake to condemn “Jesus Calling” because Young uses terminology similar (okay, identical) to New Age writers. But many of these terms are very specific: visualization, co-creation, channeling...Smith spots these and more.

As I finished “Another Jesus Calling” I wanted to reach those who “like” “Jesus Calling” and tell them to follow the real Jesus, not the fake jesus of Sarah Young.

You should read “Another Jesus Calling” if you've read “Jesus Calling” (in any of its forms) and felt a little “off.” You should read it if you've contemplated giving “Jesus Calling” to anybody you like.”You should read this book (with an open and discerning eye) if you want to read (or have read0) “Jesus Calling.” You should read this book if you have a friend who wants you to read “Jesus Calling.”

“Another Jesus Calling” is a warning bell that is well written, well researched, well qualified to tell us of the problems of (generally) false teachers and (specifically) “Jesus Calling.”

What it all comes down to is this: Do we have a love of the truth or do we just experience what we want to experience and hear what we want to hear? Ultimate truth is not found in channeled messages, “new” revelations, or “new” truth. Ultimate truth— God’s truth and nothing but God’s truth— is explicitly, authoritatively, genuinely, and most amazingly found in the pages of God’s inspired Holy Word.(1)

 

  1. Smith, Warren B. (2013-11-19). Another Jesus Calling (Kindle Locations 216-225). Lighthouse Trails Publishing. Kindle Edition.
  2. Smith, Warren B. (2013-11-19). Another Jesus Calling (Kindle Locations 2100-2102). Lighthouse Trails Publishing. Kindle Edition.