Thursday, July 10
Calvinists Overly Critical Of Altar Calls
Such humor is an attempt to ridicule the practice where pastors and evangelists encourage those under conviction to come forward so that they might invite Jesus into their hearts for forgiveness and salvation if they are not exactly how to commence this journey towards a beatific eternity.
Granted, such tactics might prompt an insincere or misunderstanding person to rush forward thinking the profundities being approached are formulaic.
However, what those spreading this missiological propaganda fail to reveal is that they don't really want you making a decision irrespective of the venue.
If they had their way and preached sermons consistent with their soteriology, you'd remain neutral with your fingers crossed (unless they make a fuss about that gesture also somehow being pagan in origin) with the mystery resolved of whether you'll awaken after death in Heaven or Hell only after you arrive in one of these two regions of the Afterlife.
It is claimed that this ritual urging the penitent to march forward to receive Christ is not in the Bible.
But neither are many other traditions that these hardline Biblicists of a Calvinistic persuasion insist upon retaining.
For example, it should be pointed out to those holding to this variety of predestinarianism from a Presbyterian or Anglican perspective that there is nothing about infant baptism providing salvatory protection for a baby.
It might be a beautiful symbol of welcoming a child into the covenant community.
But if you, dear Christian, are relying on that liturgical act to protect your precious little one from the fires of Hell throughout a lifetime and do nothing more to introduce that child to Christ as the Savior they must claim for themselves, spiritually you have doused your child in gasoline and edged them to the brink of those unquenchable flames.
Next, there is really not a thing in the Bible about formalized membership in one particular church organization.
At most, the Scripture speaks of one church in a particular town.
So if we are going to be such a stickler on detail, if your church is not the oldest congregation in town, are you guilty of being a schismatic?
Interestingly, those looking down their noses at those congregations that make use of altar calls as part of their order of service certainly don't mind going out of their way to whack me over the head about not “belonging” to a particular congregation even though I go to church most weeks out of the year, listen to sermons and conservative talk radio at least four hours per day, and nearly every day post conservative and/or Christian content to the Internet.
The Bible provides the basic rules by which the Creator expects us to abide if we are to please Him and for us to receive His blessing even if that reward is not granted this side of eternity.
However, one truth that each of us often struggles with is that the specifics in which those absolutes are implemented on the practical level might not be as clearly spelled out.
By Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, July 9
Tuesday, July 8
Monday, July 7
Of Elves, Angels & Dueling Theologies
Most Evangelicals would agree that few twentieth century writers was as successful in getting the reading public to consider the relevance of religious ideas to the complexities of modern life as C.S. Lewis. Yet it may come as a surprise, many of his most vociferous critics happen to be fellow Christians.
Writing in response to a recent Christianity Today article examining Lewis' use of the literary approach in presenting Christian truth to the modern mind, David Cloud of the Fundamental Baptist Information Service elucidates why Christians adhering to more strident varieties of Fundamentalism ought to avoid this acclaimed author's brand of apologetics.
To Cloud's benefit, he does point out areas in which Lewis thought may have veered from Biblical standards. Cloud sites as evidence a number of sources detailing where Lewis questioned traditional orthodox understandings of doctrines such as the bodily resurrection of believers, the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and the existence of Hell as a physical place rather than simply a state of mind.
Christians ought to be cautioned where the writings of Lewis stray from the narrow path. However, that does not mean there is not insight to be gained from Lewis or that his collected works should be consigned to the garbage to prevent weak minds from falling prey to their questionable aspects.
Particularly annoying to Cloud's brand of Fundamentalism is Lewis' use and defense of myth as a tool whereby skeptical minds might be introduced to the truth.
Of The Chronicles of Narnia and Christianity Today's endorsement of the series, David Cloud writes, "I don't know what to say to this except that it is complete nonsense. In his Chronicles, Lewis depicts Jesus Christ as a lion named Aslan who is slain on a stone table. Christianity Today says, 'In Aslan, Christ is made tangible, knowable, real.' As if we can know Jesus Christ best through a fable that is vaguely based on Biblical themes."
Such a conclusion fails to understand the reasons why and with what techniques C.S. Lewis wrote. For even though the Bible is the most detailed and forthright account attesting to the truth of Christ, many hardened hearts are not always open to such an outright presentation of the facts. Some minds may need to take a more circuitous route.
Lewis did not initially embark to compose an outright Christian allegory, and neither did his associate J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings saga for that matter. Rather these scholars endeavored to craft tales utilizing the classic motifs with which they had considerable expertise as professors of historical literature. Lewis was himself inspired to write The Chronicles of Narnia from the image of a faun, a half human/half goat creature from classical mythology. Tolkien wanted to establish a fantasy world for the language of elves.
Lewis stated in a BBC interview when asked if his Space Trilogy had been written for evangelistic purposes, "...everyone thinks that. They are quite wrong. I've never started from a message or a moral, have you. The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story."
It is only natural then that authors with an abiding respect for the truth will end up addressing eternal realities and principles. Romans 2: 14-15 says, "Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts...(NIV)."
This means that all truth --- despite man's intentions to distort it for his own diabolical purposes --- is ultimately God's truth. Not all ancient myths revel in Bacchanalian debauchery. For example, some explore the dangers of humans possessing a godlike pride called "hubris". The skilled apologist can use these chunks of truth adrift upon the seas of falsehood as a lifeline to those drowning in a deluge of deception.
This is not unlike what the Apostle Paul did in Acts 17 when he addressed the philosophers gathered on the Areopagus.
Paul did not begin outright by berating them for their pagan belief. In verses 22 and 23 he extols, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious. For while I was passing and examining your objects of worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'To an Unknown God'. What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. (NASB)."
From this point, Paul goes on to explain how the message of Jesus Christ fulfilled and surpassed the best in Greek thought. Therefore, those who have a problem with C.S. Lewis' use of literature may also have a problem with the technique employed by the Apostle Paul.
While these rigorous Fundamentalists are to be commended for their eagerness to expound the plain Gospel message, many of them --- especially a number of the preachers --- fail in realizing that a fully-orbed expression of Christian thought requires more than preaching. It requires the translation of these eternal verities into other artistic and literary forms that prepare the heart and mind for a more direct assault upon fallen sensibilities.
By composing a narrative utilizing universal archetypes, Lewis hoped that his saga of these British children encountering a mystical lion in an enchanted land would spark readers into realizing they could have their own encounter with another cosmic cat, namely the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Jesus Christ.
Certain Fundamentalists have done their share of criticism. When are these preachers going to start producing stories of their own or encourage members of their congregations to contribute their talents in forms other than that which goes into the collection plate? At least C.S. Lewis attempted to make an effort in this regard.
David Cloud writes, "...a Christian is what he hears and reads ... it should come as no surprise ... they are seeking to continue the legacy of C.S. Lewis ... it should come as no surprise ... if we find them working towards a common mission with the enemies of the gospel. The young Christian should be very careful what he reads."
In the days before most Christians yielded their paradoctrinal thinking to the control of their pastors or stopped thinking about these cultural issues outside the immediate confines of the church all together, individuals would employ a kind of intellectual selectivity known as discernment. This meant they were capable of sifting through the good and bad ideas in a given work on their own without a critical clergyman standing over their shoulder chastising them for daring to make a literary selection with ecclesiastical consultation.
Lewis may have propagated questionable ideas in the course of his life's work. But so do a number of Fundamentalists for that matter as some believe one is not really saved unless introduced to Jesus through the King James version of the Bible, that being innocently infatuated with a member of the opposite sex is the moral equivalent of promiscuity or prostitution, and that women ought never get their hair cut or wear trousers.
Unfortunately, faulty ideas are often a symptom of living in a fallen world. But so long as we put our faith in what Lewis referred to as "mere Christianity", one day those of us who do so will have the blessed opportunity of having our thoughts put straight in the presence of none other than the Creator Himself.
by Frederick Meekins
Thursday, July 3
Pope Francis Allies Himself With Televangelists Of Questionable Doctrinal Quality
Wednesday, July 2
In addressing the issue of church leadership, homeschool activist Kevin Swanson rhetorically inquired in his 7/1/2004 podcast if female bloggers are running the church. Technically, unless the blogger is on the church payroll or holding a formalized position within the ministry, how can she be accused of leading the church? The only way that can occur is if the pastor is negligent somehow in the execution of his ministerial duties in terms of either being too lenient or in a growing number of instances perhaps even too strident. As someone in the congregation as either a member or frequent attender, anyone (either male or female) can use the technology available to them to speak out as to what is transpiring in the public ceremonies, liturgy, or doctrinal teaching taking place within the assembly. To say otherwise is to introduce a procedural gnosticism leading to the festering of a cultic atmosphere potentially leading to the harm of both soul and body. And if you are going to be that secretive, don’t go complaining about how the Mormons and the Masons run things so secretively.
Fascinating how these ministries that condemn education anywhere but in the home and the concept of youth groups altogether rather than just those administered in a liquefied kidney expellant impoverishment manner rank among the first to condemn and ridicule those not married by the time they are 22.
Tuesday, July 1
Monday, June 30
In analyzing the gluten-free fad, homeschool activist Kevin Swanson poked fun at those that cut out gluten without even understanding what gluten is or conducting extensive research tests to determine whether or not they might have a biological sensitivity to the substance. Does he intend to make similar observations of what goes on in assorted churches across the varying swaths of Christendom? Don’t just as many sitting out in the pews simply go along with a particular theological application because they have been told to do so by someone in the pulpit without coming to these conclusions on their own through their individual process of ratiocination? In a podcast just the other day, this same minister attempted to work listeners into a panic not to let their children go to the library over a pro-homosexual book that might be on the shelves even though a good library offers works on a wide array of topics from a variety of perspectives. Wouldn’t the wiser, more responsible counsel have simply been to urge parents to exercise caution and discernment rather than to impose a blanket prohibition for those that want to be considered upstanding homeschool families?
Hillary Clinton remarked that, as laboratories of democracy, states should be able to decide the legalization of recreational drugs on their own. Does she intend to make a similar policy pronouncement regarding gay marriage and decry the federal judicial intervention jamming this unnatural cohabitational arrangement down the throats of jurisdictions not wanting to approve it?
On an episode of Issues Etc defending marriage, it was said that there is nothing wrong in getting married and not going to college or getting a big important job beforehand. Shouldn’t it have also been emphasized that, if that is the path you decide to take, be prepared to paddle it yourself and not expect everyone else to float your boat financially. Not my kids, not my financial duty no matter how allegedly large my apparently invisible pile of single person money.
Fox News Pundits Deride Creationists As Unfit For Public Office
Each of these spokesmen for the secularist perspective (though Williams made a fuss over his Episcopalianism which has been one of contemporary Christianity's most spineless forms) insinuated that one's position regarding origins somehow represents an intellectual deficiency if one does not enthusiastically embrace Darwinism. Perhaps we should take a moment to examine how this might impact a politician's political philosophy.
Often ultrasecularists assure we dimwitted rubes that religion has no bearing on the nuts and bolts issues voters really care about as the nation edges closer to financial ruination and social collapse. These days, one is as likely to hear this from certain varieties of grassroots conservatism as you are from ACLU types.
Even if evolution was true, what bearing does Rick Perry, Michelle Eichmann, or Sarah Patin believing the world was created six thousand years ago have on the proverbial price of tea in China? Given the worthlessness of the US dollar, such an example is no longer as merely rhetorical as it once was.
On the national level, it's not like a singular figure would be able to reverse the inertia of an entrenched technocratic bureaucracy steeped in scientism.
If a more creationist approach to science held sway in the jurisdictions where the aforementioned politicians enjoy a constituency, who are elites to criticize the prevailing conceptual framework?
After all, aren't these the same multiculturalists that dare anyone to criticize the adherents of a particular unmentioned religion who have a penchant for flying jetliners into skyscrapers and to strap sticks of dynamite to their chests.
Those thinking, to paraphrase Bernard Goldberg, that is is ignorant to believe that dinosaurs and human beings might have shared the earth at the same time apparently also believe that how the world came into existence impacts other areas of existence. That is a notion that they share with the Christian that actually just comes at the question from the opposite direction.
Since those wanting to shut God out or at least hold Him at bay in one's approach to one of life's most fundamental questions on what is constantly tauted as cable's most highly rated news program, perhaps we should examine these assumptions a little more closely.
Those holding to evolution believe everything is in a constant state of flux and change. There are no unaltering realities or lasting principles.
For example, Congress shall make no law abridging the free exercise of religion or speech, or the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Those might have been alright in the 1700's, but those provisions aren't meant for today since we have progressed so far beyond them, the evolutionary collectivist would argue.
Rights are not something we are endowed with by our Creator as individuals made in his image. Rather these protections are statutory provisions that can be extended and contracted for the benefit of the elite ruling any given society.
The contrasting perspective holds that every detail in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis are to be taken literally. Such an assumption produces a number of worldview implications.
For example, the theist holding to the Genesis account generally believes that the individual is created in the image of God. This doctrine is taught in Genesis 1:26.
As such, the individual possesses an innate dignity and worth. The person is not some random conglomeration of cells to be manipulated, reconfigured, and even obliterated for no valid reason. Thus, those principles viewed as outdated and obsolete are often the only things that prevent us from being obliterated by those so deluded that they can remake the entire world in their own warped image.
By Frederick Meekins
Saturday, June 28
Friday, June 27
Radical homeschooler Kevin Swanson said that, because public libraries stock books sympathetic to the homosexual agenda, he likely will not allow his children to visit such facilities. So given the increasing number of pastors that can’t seem to keep their hands off minors below the age of consent, does that mean Christians should stop attending church?
Thursday, June 26
Interesting. Apparently the White House invites to receptions those that flout Southern Baptist beliefs as in the case of a pastor that altered his congregations stance on homosexuality in support of his morally deficient son but the White House persecutes those challenging the assumptions of Islam in the case of the filmmaker that administration propagandists went out of their way to blame for the Benghazi uprising and kept him in prison as long as possible on unrelated charges.
Evolutionists More Insistent Than Ever About Being A Monkey's Uncle
Even Darwin himself is alleged to have relented that his theory would ultimately be proven or discarded on the basis of such geological evidence.
For well over a century now, those wanting to extol what passes for education over and above commonsense have attempted to elaborate any number of conceptual bypasses around the 800 pound subhuman hominid in the room.
An article in the May 2011 edition of Discover Magazine makes such an attempt by positioning that we ourselves are the transitional forms or at least what's left over of them in terms of primate evolution.
No longer are we to think of ourselves in terms of being exclusively modern homo sapiens. Rather we are to view ourselves as the genetic composites of previous ancestors such as Neanderthals and those other creatures reminiscent of Chaka from Land of the Lost.
This theory is put forward as an attempt to silence the critics of naturalistic evolution.
Yet the hypothesis ends up raising a number of questions that reveal just what one has to ignore and overlook in order to accept this particular narrative's attempt to account for the origins of man.
Foremost, if other higher order hominids were eventually wiped out or disappeared because they interbred increasingly with what we would recognize as human beings, why wouldn't these alleged ancestors we are more reluctant to embrace as part of our own kind, if they are able to produce a fecund offspring as a result of copulation through mating, be considered fellow human beings?
For is not the history of Anthropology literally littered with the corpses of people thought to be of the status of less than fully human? I recall Ken Ham one time claiming that at one point in the 1800's Australian Aborigines were harvested as research specimens.
Even when these remains are uncovered as part of legitimate research and excavation, it must be asked if a number of these conclusions arrived at are really inherent to the evidence or are active imaginations reading back into the data what these researchers instead intensely want to see.
For if Neanderthals could interbreed with run of the mill human beings to the point where certain evolutionary theorists are insisting that we ourselves are partially Neanderthal, aren't Neanderthals just anther racial or ethnic group?
Researcher Jack Cuozzo hypothesized in “Buried Alive:The Startling Truth About Neanderthal Man” that Neanderthals may have been the extremely aged or the diseased suffering from degenerative bone conditions similar to arthritis. For daring to proffer such a conjecture foremost proponents of inquiry and knowledge resorted to intimidation and threats of violence for presenting such an unconventional perspective.
By downplaying distinctions between human beings and what were at one time categorized as species preceding us along the chain of primatology obviously nothing more than glorified apes, radical evolutionists hope to further erode the preconceived boundaries between the species for the purposes of biological manipulative amalgamation.
Several years ago, I posted a column about Darwinistic propaganda speculating that in prehistoric times that the genetic boundaries might not have been as set in stone with jungle fever taking on a connotation that might shock those of us entrapped by a morality that frowns upon transpecies romance.
Sophisticates of the scientific establishment easily dismiss bloggers for being out of touch and not playing with a full deck. However, seldom will they speak out against media mouthpieces allied in the cause of foisting a revolutionary secularism upon the nation such as The New Republic.
On the cover of the April 23, 2008 issue was a photo that bordered on the creepy. Depicted was a chimpanzee gazing dreamily off into the sky. However, that was not the truly disturbing aspect.
For as the chimp looked to the sky, tucked beneath his arm was a human female. However, this was not the embrace of a zookeeper showing a little affection to one of her charges or like one would share with a pet. Rather, from the depiction, one gets more of the impression that these two are somehow lovers.
The look on the woman's face with head tilted back with her eyes shut and her hand intertwined with the paw of the chimp causes one to wonder if the duo might go swinging in the trees together a bit later if one gets the drift.
Some might dismiss such shock as the rantings of a prude with too much time on their hands. However, numerous credentialed scientists have come out speculating as to the possibility of a human/chimp hybrid as mankind's technical expertise continues to advance while moral expertise among the overly educated continues to atrophy.
According to an article in Wired Magazine titled “Science Without Limits”, such a primate hybridization program was suggested by renowned evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould. Categorizing the experiment as “the most potentially interesting and ethically unacceptable experiment I could imagine”, Gould speculated such a hybrid would theoretically shed light on how the retention of juvenile characteristics in chimpanzees led to the rise of human beings. That is if one believes in that sort of hooey.
The Wired article insists such an endeavor would not be as outlandish as it sounds. Research conducted with baboons and rhesus monkeys suggests that given genetic similarities such an undertaking might be biologically feasible. Such a creature could be brought into existence through the techniques of invitrofertilization and placed within a human surrogate.
Proverbs 8:36 teaches that those that hate God love death. That not only applies to the individual existential death that comes to mind when contemplating that term horrid to all people of goodwill. It also applies to the broader obliteration of our species that will result from the failure to properly recognize those distinctions that set mankind above his fellow creatures in the natural order below.
By Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, June 25
In a Youtube video on introductory Lutheranism, the viewer was assured that Martin Luther was no saint. Foremost among the flaws listed was nothing more than that he irritated people. But is that necessarily a flaw in itself without context or elaboration? Did not Christ, the sinless Lamb of God, so irritate people that He was crucified in part because of that character trait?
Pastor Preaches Superman-Themed Sermons In Connection With Smallville Festival
Tuesday, June 24
Cosmos Promotes Universal Deception
That famous catchphrase is itself non-scientific at best and pseudoscientific at worst.
Even if one grants that the universe is billions and billions of years old (to employ rhetoric of nearly that many parodies of Sagan), on what grounds can one state such an absolute conclusion from the basis of observational science?
For example, in the worldview espoused by Cosmos, it is held that the cosmos began at the moment of the Big Bang.
Thus, if one cannot peek back beyond that point, on what grounds apart from a faith as deeply held by the most adamant of theist does one conjecture that something else did not exist to bring the something into existence?
One can make the case of the cosmos being all there is all one wants.
But if the triumvirate of space, time and matter is all you are going to appeal to, on what grounds do you lodge a complaint should those not wanting such a gospel of nihilistic hopelessness to infect the minds of their children want to blow your brains out?
The last segment of Sagan's trademark mantra dogmatically asserted that the cosmos is all that will ever be.
If we are to exist in an epistemological framework where nothing is certain and there is no purposeful supreme intelligence superintending so that everything continues on a routine path, how do we know some manner of quantum cascade won't take place tonight where one subatomic particle is so knocked off course that all of reality disintegrates back into nothingness?
For did not even the great skeptics such as David Hume concede that, just because the sun rose from time immemorial, that was no guarantee that it would do so tomorrow?
Interestingly, the proponents of the Cosmos invocation might insist that they are providing viewers insight into whatever was or ever will be.
However, what these propagandists are conveniently leaving out are those aspects of the totality they happen to disagree with or cannot flippantly gloss over.
For example, in the premiere episode, an inordinate amount of time was spent badmouthing the adherents of a supposedly non-existent God in the case of Giodarno Bruno who was persecuted for believing that an infinite God could have created additional inhabited planets.
If nothing is to be concealed in the name of approaching a comprehension of the universe as it is rather than how we would like it to be, at any point in this documentary's presentation did Neil deGrasse Tyson --- himself an avowed atheistic humanist --- give an as lengthy presentation about the liberties infringed and abridged by assorted forms of atheism such as Communism in the attempt to maintain a stranglehold on power by preventing the dissemination of not only competing perspectives but as well as facts deemed inconvenient to adherents of that particular ideology?
Thus, if the hallmark of what distinguishes the modern era as supposedly superior to that of the medieval is that by the definition of these terms that we know better and are more enlightened, doesn't that make the atrocities of Communism far greater having been committed by the self-professed adherents of science?
In another episode, Tyson became emotionally discombobulated that if we as a species did not repent of our carbon combusting, global warming ways, we could very well cease to exist.
However, once again, if the only thing that exists is the material totality of the universe and there is no noncontingent intelligence or personality sustaining these complex systems, who is to say existence is superior to nonexistence?
Science writer George Johnson suggested that the tendency to view the universe as designed is an evolutionary holdover that humanity ought to progress beyond.
Then why not this desire for continued existence beyond that of our immediate selves?
For is this for the most part a trait and bias of the human plague infesting the planet?
Swarms of grass hoppers defoliating an area don't reflect if there will be enough to go around decades down the road.
One truism is that any resident of this realm will be subject to some kind of ultimate authority.
One can either settle for that of other flawed human beings that will in the end lead to disappointment and eventually destruction.
Or, one can look to God as the foundation and utilize a number of the tools that He provides such as His word foremostly followed by reason contemplating upon principles derived from that revelation and their operation through the handiwork of His creation.
By Frederick Meekins