Read the Over and Underneath journals at the link below, written by Mike, the lead singer of the band Tenth Avenue North, and you will know what I mean. God has blessed this man with a way to say tough things lovingly and without judgment or condemnation. It's several pages long--I heartily encourage you to take a few minutes and really read it, REALLY delve into the simple truths of what God is saying through Mike. It will blow you away....
http://www.reunionrecords.com/interactive/tenthavenuenorth/TheOverandUnderneathJournals.pdf
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Fatalistic or Freeing?
Christian faith: Calvinism is back
In America's Christian faith, a surprising comeback of rock-ribbed Calvinism is challenging the Jesus-is-your-buddy gospel of modern evangelism.
By Josh Burek, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
posted March 27, 2010 at 12:00 pm EDT
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/
Washington —
Snow falls resolutely on a Saturday morning in Washington, but the festively lit basement of a church near the US Capitol is packed. Some 200 female members have invited an equal number of women for tea, cookies, conversation – and 16th-century evangelism.
What newcomers at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) hear is hardly "Christianity for Dummies." Nor is it "Extreme Makeover: Born-Again Edition." Instead, a young woman named Kasey Gurley describes her disobedience and suffering in Old Testament terms.
"I worship my own comfort, my own opinion of myself," she confesses. "Like the idolatrous people of Judah, we deserve the full wrath of God." She warns the women that "we'll never be safe in good intentions," but assures them that "Christ died for us so we wouldn't have to." Her closing prayer is both frank and transcendent: "Our comfort in suffering is this: that through Christ you provide eternal life."
It is so quiet you can hear an oatmeal cookie crumble.
IN PICTURES: Calvinism at Capitol Hill Baptist Church
Welcome to the austere – and increasingly embraced – message of Calvinism. Five centuries ago, John Calvin's teachings reconceived Christianity; midwifed Western ideas about capitalism, democracy, and religious liberty; and nursed the Puritan values that later cast the character of America.
Today, his theology is making a surprising comeback, challenging the me-centered prosperity gospel of much of modern evangelicalism with a God-first immersion in Scripture. In an age of materialism and made-to-order religion, Calvinism's unmalleable doctrines and view of God as an all-powerful potentate who decides everything is winning over many Christians – especially the young.
Twenty-something followers in the Presbyterian, Anglican, and independent evangelical churches are rallying around Calvinist, or Reformed, teaching. In the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant body, at least 10 percent of its pastors identify as Calvinist, while more than one-third of recent seminary graduates do.
New Calvinism draws legions to the sermons of preachers like John Piper of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Here at CHBC, the pews and even rooms in the basement are filled each Sunday, mostly with young professionals. Since senior pastor Mark Dever brought Calvinist preaching here 16 years ago, the church has grown sevenfold. Today it is bursting at the stained-glass windows.
Yet the movement's biggest impact may not be in the pews. It's in publishing circles and on Christian blogs, in divinity schools and at conferences like "Together for the Gospel," where the rock stars of Reformed theology explore such topics as "The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability."
"There is a very clear resurgence of Calvinism," says Steven Lemke, provost and a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
The renewed interest arrives at a crucial inflection point for American religion. After reviewing a landmark opinion survey last year that showed a precipitous decline in the number of people who identify themselves as Christian, Newsweek declared ominously that we may be witnessing "the end of Christian America."
In some ways, Newsweek may have understated the shift. Five hundred years after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses challenging the Roman Catholic Church, some religion watchers see not just a post-Christian America but an unraveling of the Protestant Reformation itself. Their alarm is rooted in surveys that show a watering down of
Christian beliefs.
Now come the New Calvinists with their return to inviolable doctrines and talk of damnation – in essence, the Puritans, minus the breeches and powdered wigs. Is this just a moment of nostalgia or the beginning of a deeper revolt against the popular Jesus-is-our-friend approach of modern evangelicalism? Where, in other words, is Christianity going?
• • •
When people today hear the name John Calvin, they think mainly of predestination – the controversial idea that God has foreordained everything that will happen, including who will and won't be saved, no matter what they do in life.
What people often forget is that the 16th-century French theologian transformed Western thought both by what he taught and how he taught it. His 700-page "Institutes of the Christian Religion" became the reference manual for Protestant faith. And his detailed and explanatory style of preaching – he spent five years expounding on the book of Acts, verse by verse – became an example for generations of clergy.
Detractors, and there are many, see Calvin as a harsh theocrat who punished heretics (including one who was famously burned at the stake) while molding the city where he preached, Geneva, into a model of his fatalistic and hopeless ideology.
But supporters view him as a man who recovered God-centric Christianity, set the stage for religious freedom, and encouraged countless believers to read the Bible for themselves.
"Like it or not, he is one of the great minds that shaped our modern world," says Gerald Bray, a professor at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala. "Ideas of democracy, open-market capitalism, and equality of opportunity were aired in his Geneva and put into practice as far as they could be at that time."
Calvin's influence on America's founding is unmistakable. The nation's patriotism, work ethic, sense of equality, public morality, and even elements of democracy all sprang in part from the Calvinist taproot of Puritan New England. When Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards told worshipers in 1741 that they were loathsome spiders held over the pit of hell by the gracious hand of an offended God, he wasn't speaking a heretical creed but the basic vocabulary of American faith. It wasn't until the 19th century that Calvinist doctrines waned.
By most logic, the stern system of Calvinism shouldn't be popular today. Much of modern Christianity preaches a comforting Home Depot theology: You can do it. We can help. Epitomized by popular titles like Joel Osteen's "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential," this message of self-fulfillment through Christian commitment attracts followers in huge numbers, turning big churches into megachurches.
At the same time, a strict following of the Bible, which Calvinists embrace, hardly resonates the way it once did in American society. The Barna Group, a California-based research firm, recently did a survey to find out how many US adults hold a "biblical worldview" – for instance, believe that the Bible is totally accurate, that a person cannot earn their way into heaven simply by doing good, that God is the all-powerful creator of the universe.
The result: a steeple-thin 9 percent. Among 18-to-23-year-olds, it was 0.5 percent, fewer people than might show up at a Lady Gaga concert. Even among "born again" Christians, it was only 19 percent.
In a separate report, Barna found that more than 6 in 10 born-again Christians say they are customizing their faith, not following any one church's theology. "Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible," the report notes.
The blunt implication: Scripture is no longer the sheet anchor of American spirituality.
This, of course, was the Roman Catholic warning to early reformers five centuries ago: If you break away from the church, orthodoxy will spiral into fancy. By emphasizing sound doctrine and the naked gospel, New Calvinists want to restore what they see as stability to Protestant faith.
Indeed, CHBC has a sister organization called "9Marks," which strives to promote "biblically faithful" churches across denominational lines.
"A lot of people think religion is something you piece together [from] ideas you think are sweet and that you personally find beneficial," says Mr. Dever. "No. It's like a doctor's report.... It's an objective reality. It's just what is."
More broadly, the Calvinist revival reflects an effort to recast the foundation of faith itself. From conservative evangelical churches to liberal new-age groups, the message of much modern teaching is man's need for betterment. Not New Calvinism; its star is God's need for glory. And the gravity of His will is great: It can be denied, but not defied.
"God either knows everything, or He knows nothing at all," says CHBC member Jeannie Hagopian, a young mother from South Carolina.
• • •
As morning light filters into a fourth-floor room on a Sunday, students huddle on tiered seats, listening to a lecture on substitutionary atonement. The teacher poses a tough question, but a hand shoots into the air, eager to answer with a recitation of the week's memory verse from I Peter 3:18: "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."
Scholars and seminarians call this systematic theology. Kindergartners at CHBC just call it Sunday school.
Their parents are downstairs, absorbing seminars, prayers, and a Scripture-saturated sermon that add up to five hours of worship over the day. Just before noon, the adults jot notes as they listen to an hour-long sermon on II Samuel 5-9. These chapters cover King David's glorious reign over Israel, but Dever doesn't skip the tough verses, such as when God strikes Uzzah dead for trying to steady the ark of the covenant.
"Friends, have we sinned like Uzzah?" he asks.
Such statements are meant to prick the hearts of his listeners. Yet he often follows up the hard questions with reassuring comments like: "You and I should not draw a breath today, without living for the praise of God's glory."
This pattern – convict worshipers of their sin, then show them spiritual elation – has a gripping effect on the assembly. After the service, churchgoers linger for an hour, hugging and sharing heartfelt conversation. "I've come to believe and understand that God is not fundamentally about me; He's much bigger than that," says Dan Wenger, a government employee. "The teaching at this church has helped me to see that in context of the whole story of the Bible, not just the parts that make me feel good."
Dever acknowledges that people might well ask, "Why would God make anybody who is going to go to hell?" His answer captures the essence of New Calvinism. "I don't know," he says. "I didn't do this. I'm just trying to tell you what I think is true, not what I like."
Membership at CHBC isn't for the faint of holy. Classes on theology and Christian history are required before joining. At the "Lord's Supper" once a month, members stand and recite an oath that ties them to one another. In addition to Sunday worship and Wednesday night Bible study, they spend hours each week in small-group study or one-on-one "discipling." They say those sessions – a time for confessions, encouragement, and prayer – are the most challenging and rewarding feature of church life.
"Christian fellowship is so much more than hanging out with friends," says Claudia Anderson, a magazine editor. "It involves spiritual intimacy, support, learning, counseling, and stunning acts of kindness."
Christopher Brown, a lawyer, concurs. "I came for the theology but stayed for the community," he says. "As Americans, we're so individualistic. But the New Testament rebukes this 'rugged individualism.' We're not saved to be lone rangers."
The BlackBerry-wielding Millennials who worship here say they crave teaching that challenges them – "preaching for PhDs," as one puts it. Ask them what books they're reading, and they won't mention "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." They'll reel through names of 17th-century Puritan preachers like a pack of baseball cards.
"The resurgence of Calvinism indicates that America hasn't changed so much as some might suppose," says Collin Hansen, author of "Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists." "American Christianity has splintered in myriad directions since the Puritans settled New England. But the God they worshiped – attested in the Bible, sovereign in all things, and merciful toward sinners through the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ – still captivates believers today."
• • •
What captivates outsiders, however, is that New Calvinists are restoring the doctrine of predestination – God choosing from the outset whom He will and won't save – to a land that long ago shifted toward a "No Child Left Behind" view of salvation. Taken to its logical end, predestination means God has always regulated everything, even evil.
This belief bothers many Christians. "The shooting at Fort Hood: Did God foreordain that? 9/11? The Holocaust?" asks Professor Lemke, who's also a Baptist pastor and critic of some, though not all, points of Calvinism.
In 2008, Southern Baptist organizers put on a John 3:16 conference to counterbalance tenets of Calvinism, including predestination. [Editor's note: The original text misstated who put on the John 3:16 conference.]
What critics see as a grim and fatalistic doctrine, however, Calvin saw as good news: that God's purposes can be fulfilled despite man's sinful ways.
"To him, predestination was a liberating belief because it says that God can choose anyone, however humble, and use him to overturn the great men of this world," says Professor Bray. "It makes real change possible and puts ordinary people like you and me in charge of seeing it happen. What could be better news than that?"
Many followers agree, adding that Calvinism is not fatalism: You are responsible for you behavior.
"Calvinism is 'big picture' Christianity," says Allen Guelzo, the author of "Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate." "It is less interested in asking why God lets bad things happen to good people, and asks instead whether there have ever been any genuinely 'good' people."
For all its controversy, predestination is something New Calvinists accept as part of their take-it-all-or-leave-it approach to the Bible.
"Today we have more Bibles and more study guides to Scripture than ever before, but people know the text itself less and less," says Bray. "This is disastrous. Calvin's deep and expository approach to it is therefore more necessary than ever."
At CHBC, several members say they became authentically Christian only after a friend studied the gospel with them verse by verse. "As I studied the Bible, I saw that God has every reason to send me to hell," says Connie Brown, a kindergarten teacher. "God broke me down – and renewed my heart."
New Calvinists talk about their sin a lot. Despite that – or rather because of it – they exude not guilt but great joy. Their explanation: If we play down our sinfulness, we'll play down our gratitude for the magnitude of God's love and forgiveness.
Many members were drawn to CHBC precisely because they had yearned to be "convicted of their sin" again and grown frustrated with "watered-down preaching." School vice principal Jessica Sandle says she came after the pastor at her former church read a book on growth and became consumed with filling pews. "So he stopped talking about sin, and why we need God," she says.
Another congregant, who declined to be named because he is running for office, was searching for something more substantial as well. "I went to other churches and I came away feeling good, but I came away hungry, too," he says. "They [the sermons] were mercifully shorter, but they'd leave the gospel out, and I wouldn't be convicted of my sin.... Here, your deficiencies are laid bare."
Ultimately, Calvinism's contrast with chummier, Jesus-is-my-friend forms of evangelicalism may highlight a more fundamental change in the world of faith. Bestselling religion writer Phyllis Tickle sees the interest in Calvinism as the first phase of a backlash against the dominant religious trend of today: the rise of "Emergence Christianity."
Emergence Christianity, which she identifies as a once-every-500-years religious shift, is less a doctrine or a movement than a postmodern attitude toward religion itself. Loosely organized, it values experimentation over traditional rules and Christian practice.
"When things go through this upheaval," Ms. Tickle says, "there's always those who absolutely need the assurance of rules and a foundation."
Or, as Ms. Hagopian puts it with uncompromising Calvinistic clarity: "The dominant philosophy of American Christianity is so far removed from biblical truth. Life is not hunky-dory."
Sunday, March 28, 2010
What's the Standard?
"What we believe determines how we live. Men who sincerely believed that what they were doing was right have perpetrated many of the most hideous crimes against humanity. Again, the recent events in France serve as a clear example of this fact. Almost all people believe they are living good and moral lives. Yet the measure their lives against some subjective criteria without realizing that vice is often the product of ignorance or error. Such people often lack the ability to distinguish right from wrong or truth from error.
This is one reason why the diligent study of the Bible is so important. It is here that God has given us the instruction we need to be able to tell right from wrong and truth from error. Without understanding its principles and precepts, we become victims of our own subjectivity. How profitable is subjectivity if our conscience has been seared, our heart hardened, and our mind blinded to all moral distinctions?
An authentic faith requires an honesty of mind, the consistent use of the means of knowledge and instructions, the humility that fosters a desire to be instructed, and unprejudiced conclusion about what this inquiry reveals. If we approach the study of the Bible this way, God fulfills His promises. If we seek and keep on seeking, we will find; if we ask and keep on asking, we will receive; if we knock and keep on knocking, the door to truth will be opened. How can we refuse an offer like this?
Yet such opportunity is accompanied by responsibility. If we have settled for cultural Christianity and remained ignorant or unresponsive to authentic faith, what kind of justification will we be able to give to God?"
-William Wilberforce in his incredible book Real Christianity
This is one reason why the diligent study of the Bible is so important. It is here that God has given us the instruction we need to be able to tell right from wrong and truth from error. Without understanding its principles and precepts, we become victims of our own subjectivity. How profitable is subjectivity if our conscience has been seared, our heart hardened, and our mind blinded to all moral distinctions?
An authentic faith requires an honesty of mind, the consistent use of the means of knowledge and instructions, the humility that fosters a desire to be instructed, and unprejudiced conclusion about what this inquiry reveals. If we approach the study of the Bible this way, God fulfills His promises. If we seek and keep on seeking, we will find; if we ask and keep on asking, we will receive; if we knock and keep on knocking, the door to truth will be opened. How can we refuse an offer like this?
Yet such opportunity is accompanied by responsibility. If we have settled for cultural Christianity and remained ignorant or unresponsive to authentic faith, what kind of justification will we be able to give to God?"
-William Wilberforce in his incredible book Real Christianity
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Denial
The Sin of Public Education
By Lee Duigon | Published Today [March 10, 2010]
Retrieved 3/10/2010 from http://www.chronwatch-america.
If you have school-age children, what’s the single best thing you can do for them, for your family, and for your country?
That’s an easy one: pull them out of public school! And that goes double if you call yourself a Christian.
What’s that? You can’t afford it? Bunk! You can’t afford not to do it!
Consider this statement by former vice president Al Gore, winner of a Nobel Prize for fear-mongering. This is what Fat Albert said to an audience of high-school students last year at a special Inauguration Eve wing-ding (see http://www.businessandmedia.
“There are some things about our world that you know that older people don’t know… [T]he old assumptions sometimes just don’t work anymore because they’re out of date. New knowledge, new understandings are much more widely available, sometimes to young people who are in school who aren’t weighed down with the old flawed assumptions of the past.”
And, “The current day anti-global warming sentiments are similar to racist sentiments of decades ago. Look, there are lots of things you understand instinctively, but your parents don’t understand those things because they are trapped in old thinking.” (http://global-warming.
This is the kind of “teaching” that goes on every day in public schools. “Don’t listen to your parents, kids. They’re not as smart as you. They don’t understand about things like global warming, social justice, homophobia, and why we ought to march around singing hymns to Dear Leader. This whole country would be paradise, if it wasn’t for them and their old-fashioned thinking.”
We are talking about a public education system for which a self-confessed pedophile enabler, Kevin Jennings, serves as “Safe and Drug Free Schools” boss in the Dept. of Education. Jennings is the founder of GLSEN, an arm of Big Sodomy that has installed homosexuality clubs in thousands of public schools around the country.
Merely to list the defects, sins, and follies of public education would fill up a Manhattan phone directory. It cannot be done here. There are tens of thousands of examples--and that’s only the ones that have been publicly reported.
Nevertheless, Christian parents and their pastors are notoriously in denial. I personally know individuals employed by pro-family organizations, who draw a paycheck for documenting the public schools as wastes of space and hatcheries of moral imbecility--who send their own kids there for five days a week! That goes beyond being in denial.
But why should parents and pastors have a problem with schools that teach their children that parents and pastors are all wet? That the Bible is wrong about just about everything, and anyone who takes it seriously is either stupid, or evil, or both?
Tens of millions of Christian children are getting this poison drilled into their skulls every school day. The message to Christians from their enemies is, “You breed ‘em, you feed ‘em--and we’ll do our level best to lead ‘em into being socialists and pagans.” That Christians are oblivious to this rather blatant message testifies to the hardness of their hearts and the woodenness of their heads.
How many times, and in how many different forms, can we make the argument? How high must we heap the evidence? What do these schools have to do, to convince Christian parents that they mean business when it comes to turning children against the Christian faith? How much hostility to Christians must the teachers’ unions spew out before the Christians realize they’re not kidding?
We are not sure we want to know why Christian parents refuse to provide their children with a Christian education--at home, at church, or in a Christian school. Is it the flat-screen TV? The two new cars? Or is it just plain sloth? The truth is not likely to be pretty.
The Bible warns God’s people not to get too comfortable in Babylon: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Revelation 18:4) But apparently a lot of God’s people feel pretty much at home in Babylon. They send their 8-year-olds to anti-Christian schools with the excuse that these little kids are there to be “salt and light” to a pagan public school establishment.
Your kids are not salt and light to this beast, Christians.
They’re only lunch.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Ant versus Grasshopper
NOTE: THIS WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ME--I GOT IT AS A FORWARD Enjoy :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two Different Versions...................
Two Different Morals
________________________________
OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays
the summer away..
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
________________________________
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays
the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed
while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home
with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper
is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody
cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news
stations film the group singing, We shall overcome Then Rev. Jeremiah
Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's
sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President
Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that
the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call
for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green
bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is
confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends
finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house
he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house,
crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house,
now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the
ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood..
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two Different Versions...................
Two Different Morals
______________________________
OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays
the summer away..
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
______________________________
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays
the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed
while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home
with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper
is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody
cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news
stations film the group singing, We shall overcome Then Rev. Jeremiah
Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's
sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President
Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that
the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call
for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green
bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is
confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends
finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house
he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house,
crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house,
now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the
ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood..
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Honest Feminism and Tebow
Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics are
Tim Tebow's 30-second Super Bowl ad has already provoked plenty of criticism.
By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.
As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow's pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We're always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.
I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.
Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.
Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.
ad_icon
There's not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the "need" for abortions wasn't so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow's ad.
Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.
You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.
"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.
"Yes, I am," he replied.
The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.
"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"
That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.
Obviously Tebow can make people uncomfortable, whether it's for advertising his chastity, or for wearing his faith on his face via biblical citations painted in his eye-black. Hebrews 12:12, his cheekbones read during the Florida State game: "Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees." His critics find this intrusive, and say the Super Bowl is no place for an argument of this nature. "Pull the ad," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "Let's focus on the game."
Trouble is, you can't focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it -- and that is the genius of Tebow's ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn't just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers -- who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW.
Let me be clear again: I couldn't disagree with Tebow more. It's my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don't care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening -- or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.
Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Fiery Love
"The actress Katharine Hepburn had little patience for actors who surrendered to 'the tortuous inspection of the Method,' Time says. 'You do what the script tells you,' she said. 'Deliver the goods without comment. Live it--do it--or shut up. After all, the writer is what's important.'
That goes for us Christians. There IS a script. If there wasn't, then we'd have to muddle through on our own, hoping by introspection and experiment to come up with something that might work. God hasn't left us to that method. He knew what we'd get into by sinning, and has made provision for us. Let's live it--do it--or shut up and quit pretending to follow Christ....
There is a common assumption today that whatever we are and wherever we are is somehow fixed and inevitable, while it is the Ancient Word that must be bent. For example, a woman cheats a university by plagiarizing and is refused a diploma. She decides she has a right to the university's credentials even though she happens to be a cheater, so she sues. Another woman chooses abortion. It is fixed and inevitable, in her mind, that what might turn into a baby must be got rid of, never mind the possibility that it's murder..... To be loving, caring, sharing, and daring in the Christian community too often means, for example, to tell [sinning Christians that it's 'ok' and that no one is blaming them].
'Blame'? The question here is who assigns blame? There is an Ancient Word, fixed, settled, which shall stand forever. The present situation is only grass which withers and flowers which fade. WE MUST QUIT BENDING THE WORD TO SUIT OUR SITUATION. IT IS WE WHO MUST BE BENT TO THAT WORD, OUR NECKS THAT MUST BOW UNDER THE YOKE. Love is no pleasing sentiment but a fiery law: THOU SHALT LOVE.... I can imagine it, all right, for I know the sinfulness of my own heart and how much dross is there to be purified by the Refining Fire, how excruciating it is for me to submit to the Word that never permits the least indulgence of self-pity, self-vindication, self-aggrandizement, self-justification, or any other form of the self whatsoever!....
We have laid many traps for ourselves by forgetting how sinful we are and how badly we need the Script. We get into a mess and we declare ourselves bankrupt. Nobody can make any moral claims against us anymore. We are, spiritually speaking, out of business, closed. We're doing our own thing, defying those who judge us, telling them it is always wrong to judge (which is in itself a judgment, but not one based on the Script).
A correspondent told me we should remember we've all broken vows, that [a person who divorced his/her husband/wife] was doing the best he could and that I shouldn't make matters worse by making him feel bad, that I should love and care about him instead of criticizing so harshly. He said divorce was common in Bible times; it's better to separate than to live in hatred; and why don't we all just try to support the good and stop condemning the bad?
My correspondent was muddled. Trying to be humble and sensible and loving, I'm sure, but muddled nevertheless. Let's try to be clear. When sinful people live in the same world, and especially when they work in the same office or sleep in the same bed, they sin against each other. Troubles arise. Some of those troubles are very serious and not subject to easy solutions. God knows all about them, and knew about them long before they happened. He made provision for them. His Son bore all of them--all grief, all sorrow, all disease, all sin--for US. By why on earth (or in Heaven) should he have done that? Why 'should' he? He shouldn't, but he did. BECAUSE OF LOVE. THE LOVE THAT IS STRONGER THAN SIN, STRONGER THAN DEATH.
And here is the profound lesson for us in the midst of our troubles. To rescue us out of them, Christ relinquished his rights. Are we his followers? Then let's take a hard look at what we have a right to expect from others. What do wives rightfully expect from their husbands? Love. 'Husbands, love your wives.' What do husbands rightfully expect from their wives? Submission and respect. 'Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord,' and 'the woman must see to it that she pays her husband all respect' (Ephesians 5:25, 22, 23). What if the husband doesn't do what he's supposed to? What if the wife doesn't? Face up to it--in this world nobody gets what he is reasonably entitled to. There is the world's 'solution' to this problem: fight. There is the Christian's: RELINQUISH. God did not get what he had a right to expect--the love and obedience of the creature he had made. Instead he got rebellion and disobedience. Adam and Eve made a general mess of everything, and we carry on making new messes daily.
We have a Script. 'Let your bearing towards one another arise out of your life in Christ Jesus. For the divine nature was his from the first, yet he did not think to snatch at equality with God but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave' (Philippians 2:5,6). What Christ gave up was not his divine nature (people are always worried about losing their 'personhood'), but the glory that nature entitled him to. He was God by nature and he voluntarily became a slave, so that the Father would give back to him in boundless measure the glory he had given up.
What a Script! What a lesson! Christianity insists always on the RIGHTS OF OTHERS. A Christian lays down his life to obtain them. If he asks, Have I no rights? the answer is 'The servant is not greater than his Lord.'
Selah.... And God help me when the next test comes. It probably won't be more than five minutes from now."
The above excerpt is from Elisabeth Elliot's book "On Asking God Why", a book I heartily recommend! It is chock full of spiritual truths that have really encouraged me and been very honest as well (not something I can say for many "modern" Christian books that speak of little more than health, wealth, and happiness). I hope you got something out of it, as I certainly did. I welcome your comments and thoughts! Even read it again if you want! It's definitely worth your time...
In Christ alone,
Katie
That goes for us Christians. There IS a script. If there wasn't, then we'd have to muddle through on our own, hoping by introspection and experiment to come up with something that might work. God hasn't left us to that method. He knew what we'd get into by sinning, and has made provision for us. Let's live it--do it--or shut up and quit pretending to follow Christ....
There is a common assumption today that whatever we are and wherever we are is somehow fixed and inevitable, while it is the Ancient Word that must be bent. For example, a woman cheats a university by plagiarizing and is refused a diploma. She decides she has a right to the university's credentials even though she happens to be a cheater, so she sues. Another woman chooses abortion. It is fixed and inevitable, in her mind, that what might turn into a baby must be got rid of, never mind the possibility that it's murder..... To be loving, caring, sharing, and daring in the Christian community too often means, for example, to tell [sinning Christians that it's 'ok' and that no one is blaming them].
'Blame'? The question here is who assigns blame? There is an Ancient Word, fixed, settled, which shall stand forever. The present situation is only grass which withers and flowers which fade. WE MUST QUIT BENDING THE WORD TO SUIT OUR SITUATION. IT IS WE WHO MUST BE BENT TO THAT WORD, OUR NECKS THAT MUST BOW UNDER THE YOKE. Love is no pleasing sentiment but a fiery law: THOU SHALT LOVE.... I can imagine it, all right, for I know the sinfulness of my own heart and how much dross is there to be purified by the Refining Fire, how excruciating it is for me to submit to the Word that never permits the least indulgence of self-pity, self-vindication, self-aggrandizement, self-justification, or any other form of the self whatsoever!....
We have laid many traps for ourselves by forgetting how sinful we are and how badly we need the Script. We get into a mess and we declare ourselves bankrupt. Nobody can make any moral claims against us anymore. We are, spiritually speaking, out of business, closed. We're doing our own thing, defying those who judge us, telling them it is always wrong to judge (which is in itself a judgment, but not one based on the Script).
A correspondent told me we should remember we've all broken vows, that [a person who divorced his/her husband/wife] was doing the best he could and that I shouldn't make matters worse by making him feel bad, that I should love and care about him instead of criticizing so harshly. He said divorce was common in Bible times; it's better to separate than to live in hatred; and why don't we all just try to support the good and stop condemning the bad?
My correspondent was muddled. Trying to be humble and sensible and loving, I'm sure, but muddled nevertheless. Let's try to be clear. When sinful people live in the same world, and especially when they work in the same office or sleep in the same bed, they sin against each other. Troubles arise. Some of those troubles are very serious and not subject to easy solutions. God knows all about them, and knew about them long before they happened. He made provision for them. His Son bore all of them--all grief, all sorrow, all disease, all sin--for US. By why on earth (or in Heaven) should he have done that? Why 'should' he? He shouldn't, but he did. BECAUSE OF LOVE. THE LOVE THAT IS STRONGER THAN SIN, STRONGER THAN DEATH.
And here is the profound lesson for us in the midst of our troubles. To rescue us out of them, Christ relinquished his rights. Are we his followers? Then let's take a hard look at what we have a right to expect from others. What do wives rightfully expect from their husbands? Love. 'Husbands, love your wives.' What do husbands rightfully expect from their wives? Submission and respect. 'Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord,' and 'the woman must see to it that she pays her husband all respect' (Ephesians 5:25, 22, 23). What if the husband doesn't do what he's supposed to? What if the wife doesn't? Face up to it--in this world nobody gets what he is reasonably entitled to. There is the world's 'solution' to this problem: fight. There is the Christian's: RELINQUISH. God did not get what he had a right to expect--the love and obedience of the creature he had made. Instead he got rebellion and disobedience. Adam and Eve made a general mess of everything, and we carry on making new messes daily.
We have a Script. 'Let your bearing towards one another arise out of your life in Christ Jesus. For the divine nature was his from the first, yet he did not think to snatch at equality with God but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave' (Philippians 2:5,6). What Christ gave up was not his divine nature (people are always worried about losing their 'personhood'), but the glory that nature entitled him to. He was God by nature and he voluntarily became a slave, so that the Father would give back to him in boundless measure the glory he had given up.
What a Script! What a lesson! Christianity insists always on the RIGHTS OF OTHERS. A Christian lays down his life to obtain them. If he asks, Have I no rights? the answer is 'The servant is not greater than his Lord.'
Selah.... And God help me when the next test comes. It probably won't be more than five minutes from now."
The above excerpt is from Elisabeth Elliot's book "On Asking God Why", a book I heartily recommend! It is chock full of spiritual truths that have really encouraged me and been very honest as well (not something I can say for many "modern" Christian books that speak of little more than health, wealth, and happiness). I hope you got something out of it, as I certainly did. I welcome your comments and thoughts! Even read it again if you want! It's definitely worth your time...
In Christ alone,
Katie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)