Tyranny and Murder by Presidential Decree

In America, we’ve lost the right to be born, the right to practice our faith without government dictate or penalty, the right to proclaim moral sanity in the public square, and now the right to due process of law against a president who thinks he literally can pull the trigger and execute fellow citizens at his whim.

Who's Next?

Who’s Next?

In a bizarre “legal memo”, President Obama has asserted that he can target and assassinate Americans – at will – simply on his belief that they are subversives.

The memo’s specific focus is Americans who President Obama has unilaterally concluded are affiliated with al-Qaida (not that this makes it right), but its rationale and justification can now be applied to anyone else who he likewise concludes is a non-combatant subversive.

America was once a great nation, ruled by law under a Constitution that was consciously written to embody a Judeo-Christian worldview.

The bedrock of our constitutional republic – rooted in Biblical principles articulated by men like James Madison and his mentor John Witherspoon – was the liberty to pursue virtue by imposing checks and balances against the evil of unrestrained government power.

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Beyond Scripture? (Part 2)

Jesus Loves Me

(An existential version of that favorite childhood song.
I encourage you to have some fun by singing along as you read it.)

Jesus loves me, this I know
Postmodern grace has made it so
With His Spirit in my heart
External truth now has no part

Chorus:

Did Jesus tell me?
Oh, how can I know?
I feel Jesus told me,
I hope that makes it so.

Additional Verses:

The Bible says that I must go
Proclaim His Word – oh no no no
Now existential I’ve become
‘Cause His commands just leave me numb

My sense of Jesus is true light
I do not worry what is right
With my sensibilities
I do not need moralities

The Bible’s NOT the Word of God
My own perceptions earn my nod
The Jesus I have come to see
Surprisingly looks just like me

I only want the Living Word
The Bible seems just too absurd
Now I perceive reality
The way I want it all to be

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Is There Not a Cause?

Is There Not a Cause?

A cry of confession…

A plea for forgiveness…

A call to repentance…

…for myself and my Christian brothers and sisters in the West:

• By drifting into self-absorbed, post-modern subjectivity and relativism, we ignore the liberating blessing and power of God’s transcendent and objective truth, goodness and beauty for all of life and culture.

"All authority in heaven and on earth ..." ~ Jesus

• By neglecting the historic doctrines of the faith to embrace the attitudes of our day and the latest theological fads, we proclaim a disjointed and shallow “gospel” that lacks answers to the great issues of our age.

• By promoting a narcissistic “me”-focused faith, we forget that Jesus wants us to know Him not merely as savior, but also as sovereign creator, lawgiver, judge and provider.

• By seeking grace without truth, we no longer serve as salt and light to our neighbors, cultures and nations.

• By falling prey to Gnostic dualism, we fail to equip believers to be disciples who live out God’s precepts and authority in all spheres of human endeavor – including the “secular” and “material” world of our day-to-day existence – as our fellowships and churches instead focus, ad nauseum, on only so-called “spiritual” matters.

• By ignoring Biblical injunctions to renew our minds so we can be faithful stewards over all aspects of God’s creation, we’ve become trapped in intellectual lethargy.

• By embracing recent eschatologies of retreat, defeat and escape, we sit on the sidelines as God’s triumph over evil continues its progressive march through history and in other parts of the world.

Forgive us, Lord, for wanting only you and not also your Kingdom. Even so, we honor your name. May your Kingdom come as your will is done on earth, just as it is in heaven …


Gnostic dualism is a system of belief that views, among other things, the temporal material world as inherently bad and only what is spiritual as inherently good. It thus tends to withdraw from any redemptive involvement with the “world” to focus only on what is “spiritual”.

The main theological battle of the first several centuries of church history was between Biblical Christianity and gnosticism. The core beliefs of gnosticism, however, can be seen in segments of the Church throughout history, including today.

Beyond Evangelical? (Part 2)

Post-Modernity

History Repeats Itself

History demonstrates that a mainly subjective faith is a largely anemic faith, which increasingly becomes insular and irrelevant.

In the 19th century, an overly subjective focus within the Christian community in the West produced an existential form of pietism, which said that everything about anything came down to one thing: a personal relationship with Jesus.

In the 20th century, this came to a more extreme fruition in the existential theology of Karl Barth. Barth concluded that the Bible is not the Word of God, but rather only leads us to the person of Jesus. Furthermore, our subjective experience of Jesus is the only valid authoritative revelation of God’s word. As such, Barth rejected the plenary authority of Scripture as the written Word of God, and it’s role in providing external standards for judging the authenticity of our experience of Jesus.

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Beyond Evangelical? (Part 1)

Post-Modernity

The spirit of this age – at least in the West – is post-modernity, which views reality as subjective and truth (if it even exists) as individual and relative.

It is not all bad, but neither is it Christ!

Steeped in a post-modern culture, Western Christians are increasingly re-defining Jesus through post-modern sensibilities that we’ve uncritically inherited from the world.

As a result, we focus on a personal, highly individualistic relationship with Him – which is often driven more by our own needs, our own hurts, and our own insecurities than by Jesus Himself.

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Scientific Faith

Whether or not you believe in the “Big Bang”, it is worth noting that it requires belief in an initial “singularity” of zero volume with infinite density and infinite energy. The dictates of the Big Bang theory, therefore, mandate faith in nothing which nonetheless contained everything.

Contemplation

Why is belief in something so impossible under current scientific laws acceptable, but belief in a God who is eternal and transcendent not acceptable to the neo-atheists — many of whom seemingly accept the Big Bang uncritically?

Such neo-atheists must rely on faith, having chosen to believe that:

No one plus nothing times blind chance = everything.

That requires more faith, it seems to me, than belief in an eternal God who created the universe.

Given the leap of faith required to accept the Big Bang theory, there is raging debate in the scientific world on whether our universe instead is simply the newest incarnation (or possibly an extension) of an eternal “multi-verse”. Some neo-atheists are now jumping on that bandwagon, as though it allows them to avoid the need for faith.

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Regeneration

A friend posted this short video on Facebook and it’s too precious, timely and relevant to pass up. As you listen, may God mercifully and lovingly wound you in order to heal you.

It’s by Paul Washer, who I first mentioned in a blog back in March (see God Is Not Passive). His burden for the Church touched my heart then, and continues to do so now.

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