Tuesday, September 23
Monday, September 22
Why Aren’t You Entitled To Know The Background Character Of A Potential Mate?
However, if a relationship begins to progress beyond the stages of merely going out casually, especially if the person claims to never have been married before, aren't you entitled to know more about this aspect of an individual's character?
Why shouldn't someone that has lived a morally chaste life be able to decide for themselves based on all of the available information if they are willing to settle for soiled goods? Jesus does indeed forgive.
However, His record really isn't all that impressive in preventing the spread of the AIDS virus or other related diseases.
Are we to also avoid questions about other important issues such as previous marital status or doctrinal preferences in ascertaining the suitability of a potential mate?
According to this logic, one is suppose to accept being saddled in a relationship with a Baptist that has been a total whore rather than a Catholic or a Holy Roller that has kept their pants on and their legs together. Interesting how a sense of forgiveness or whatever one wants to call it should be so blind and stupid regarding one particular sin but if one decides to marry someone that is honest about a divorce about the only thing you will be allowed to do in some of these hardline churches is to empty your wallet into the collection plate.
by Frederick Meekins
A pastor mentioned that, during Puritan times, if someone in the congregation nodded off during the sermon, the somnolent could be whacked by a roving usher. The pastor joked that perhaps we should return to our heritage. If one is to hold to the sola scruiptura of rigorous Protestantism, in what passage is such a use of force called for? How about pastors introducing or suggesting ideas nowhere called for in the pages of the Bible being beaten with a rod?
Where does it say if you are committing a sin when Jesus returns that you will be punished for that throughout all of eternity if you otherwise embrace Christ as Lord and Savior? And why is that moment any different than at the moment of a traditional death? What if you see a car barreling towards you and the moment before you die you shout “HOLY SH-T”? Even Paul admitted that he did that which he did not want to do.
A pastor remarked that there is no greater service than Christian service. The pastor than limited Christian service to those instances where one directly shared the Gospel. But given that we are not solely spiritual beings, shouldn't service intending to meet these other needs if those are the specific fields one has been called to address as one's vocation also be considered Christian service? Do you really want a Christian fireman to be exegeting the Scriptures to you when he should be putting out your house fire? Wasn't one of Protestantism's initial goals to correct this kind of errant perspective that had crept into medieval Christianity?
Saturday, September 20
Would Graham Have Preferred To Meander Down The Canterbury Trail?
A Harvard University Press biography of Billy Graham claims that, if the world's most famous Baptist had his life to live over again, he would consider becoming an evangelical Anglican.
Such a spiritual and ecclesiastical path would have a number of things to commend it.
Foremostly, to be baptized into such a church, one would not necessarily have to be dunked underwater.
Anglicans also accept sprinkling and pouring as appropriate modalities of this primary Christian rite.
To Baptists, it is immersion or nothing at all.
Though identifying as Protestant and distinct from Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism is not so hostile to the other form of Western Christianity so as to forsake that which it is still capable of teaching the believer despite the shortcomings that have taken root in that particular theological expression over the centuries.
Some Baptists, on the other hand, are energized by little more than just how much they can stick it in the eye of the Church of Rome.
by Frederick Meekins
Thursday, September 18
Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty has enunciated more than his dislike of homosexuals. He has also made known his disapproval of fat kids, city dwellers, men that like cats, and females not married by the age of 15. In one episode, his wife insinuated that it is inappropriate for unmarried couples to hold hands. Wonder if they will make similarly doctrinaire statements regarding their granddaughter shaking her backside in a skimpy outfit on national TV. Or, as “Christian leaders”, do they get the customary exemption from the standards we non-celebrities are expected to adhere to.
Wednesday, September 17
Tuesday, September 16
Southern Baptist Missions President Applauds Family Neglect In God's Name
As an example, Pastor Platt praised John Bunyan who was tossed into prison for refusing to stop preaching when ordered to by Anglican authorities despite the hardship endured by his family in general and his blind child in particular.
The Christian should not deny Christ.
However, Bunyan was initially imprisoned for preaching without a license.
Whether we agree with that or not is a secondary matter.
Often in a fallen world, the situations are so bad that the individual is forced to prioritize from a list of less than ideal options.
From the Wikipedia entry on John Bunyan, one gets the impression authorities were not initially inclined to imprison Bunyan until he blurted out that he'd be out preaching again the next day.
That causes one to ponder was it necessarily Christ that Bunyan was infatuated with or the adrenaline rush one can get from a good fight.
I Timothy 5:8 admonishes that those that do not take care of their own family are worse than an infidel.
The same ones praising John Bunyan for in their minds putting Christ in a proper place above the needs of his family would turn around and heap condemnation upon others for not taking care of the Bunyan urchins.
However, shouldn't taking care of the spiritual and physical needs of these children have been the foremost life's mission of the Bunyan parents?
Why couldn't have Bunyan been as an upstanding Christian example ministering to the needs of his ailing child and instead return to spreading the Gospel to others behind the back of authorities at a later time?
Jesus did indeed counsel that the believer's love of family should look like hate in comparison to that for Him.
However, the most profound expression of devotion to Christ may be in loving our family members in those times we feel like loving them the least or get distracted by a cause we deem much more exciting than the mundane duties of this world.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, September 15
Halloween Sermon Exposes Minister's Desire For Religious Dictatorship
Rather he argued against it from the standpoint of the Reformed belief against the impropriety of man authorizing holy days not found in Scripture.
In this homily, he seemed to praise and certainly did not criticize Scottish authorities at the time of the Reformation that forbade under penalty of law those celebrating such commemorations after Presbyterianism became that nation's established church.
However, if man does not have the authority to compel extra-biblical holy days, on what grounds does one then forbid an individual from incorporating these practices as part of their individual devotion after they have been informed that observation of the day is not necessarily a requirement?
For does not Romans 14:5-6 seem to indicate that these sorts of matters are more in the realm of individual conscience?
In a sermon against Halloween, Presbyterian Brian Schwertly described a prank he use to engage in during that particular time of year where he would light a bag of, in his words, “poop” on fire and leave it on someone's porch.
Instead of remorsefully recounting this story in a tone of repentance, he actually laughed about it.
If Halloween really is as evil as the hardline Fundamentalists make it out to be, wouldn't that be the equivalent of fondly recalling before the congregation how Buffy down at the gentleman's club would twirl as she was giving him a lap dance?
Wouldn't an ultalegalist such as himself consider a person exhibiting such glee in the House of God sufficiently contrite?
Yes, he should be classified as an ultralegalist as he insinuated at another point in the sermon series that Roman Catholics and Arminians should be denied citizenship in the idealized Christian Reconstructionist regime.
In the sermon “Halloween: A Biblical Critique Of James Jordin & American Vision, Part 2”, Brian Schwertly examined the argument that Christian participation in Halloween is valid and legitimate as a way of ridiculing the power of Satan.
Schwertly contends that such a perspective is inappropriate in light of Jude 1:9 in which it is suggested that even the mightiest of angels are cautious about underestimating the Old Deluder.
However, it has been suggested that often conceptualizing of evil in a literary or narrative form similar to a fairy tale can assist the young in placing these kinds of fears and terrors in a proper perspective.
Why can't the symbology of Halloween play a similar kind of role?
But more importantly, perhaps the argument about justifying Halloween as a way of minimizing Satan's influence through good old fashioned ridicule came about as a result of the need in some of the more rigorous wings of Evangelicalism to always find itself in an “on position” in terms of some grand outreach effort or engaged in some never-ending confrontation.
Can't a kid just go out for a night dressed in costume to collect some candy without it being as if the Apocalypse was looming or the fate of the world hanging in the balance?
By Frederick Meekins
Southern Baptists Oddly Silent On How Whorish Behavior Also Undermines Respect For Women
And the point being of “Jesus was never involved with politics”? There were plenty of things Jesus was never involved with. He likely never used toilet paper as we know it nor ever road in an automobile. Does that mean we shouldn't partake of those either. When I pointed out that Jesus never used Facebook either, I get the typical reply that I am the one that doesn't know what they are talking about.
Radical Homeschooler Calls For The Elimination Of Retirement & The Return Of Child Labor
It is often requested during opening prayers at many churches that those gathered in the House of God be there solely for God alone rather than out of a sense of tradition or because of friends. But is it really an either/or proposition? For the most part, is it not good or at least a potential good that these days that the person is there at all? Why can't those things such as tradition or friendship which God created for good be used to draw someone to the Lord?
In an exposition on the verses from Romans 14 teaching that two Christians can hold differing convictions on a matter and still each be within the will of God, it was insisted that it is still the prerogative of the pastor to expound their particular interpretation given the nature of the homiletical act. And it is the prerogative of the average believer if they feel so called to use social media to analyze and critique such oratorical pronouncements.
Thursday, September 11
The National Council Of Churches on 8/18/2014 issued a statement regarding the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The statement read in part, “These killings, as well as those of hundreds of Americans...at the hands of increasingly militarized police forces is a great and growing concern. A peaceful, healthy society requires trust...between citizens and law enforcement.” One must stop and ask if the National Council Of Churches was a morally reflective and critical of Communists and Socialists when the organization was snuggling up to these kinds of regimes, movements, and revolutions during the Cold War years.
Wednesday, September 10
Tuesday, September 9
Monday, September 8
A pastor enunciated from behind the pulpit that Communism was not inherently in opposition with Christianity. Rather, only that ideology’s anti-religious accretions were evil, not necessarily the systemic imposed material equality. But doesn’t that violate the dictum of “Thou shalt not steal”? And what about the Biblical truism of a workman being worthy of his hirer? Furthermore, if everyone was to be given the exact same allotment, why should anyone break their backside or put forth anything beyond minimal effort?
Isn’t griping about people’s griping itself a form of griping? Interesting when a pewfiller makes a negative observation the verbalization is condemned as “complaining”, “bickering”, or “murmuring.” However, when such pronouncements are enunciated from behind a pulpit, they are categorized as the “sharing of a concern” or “admonition”. Average Christians are told to keep their innermost thoughts and concerns to themselves unless they are confirmation about how peachy-keen everything is. They are then reamed a new one if they fail to articulate sufficiently incriminating confessions during the intelligence gathering exercise known as the taking of prayer requests.
Homeschool activist Kevin Swanson condemned as “traitors to the cause of freedom” World Magazine for publishing a story drawing attention to a number of homeschool students believing they were not served well by that pedagogical modality. Swanson is correct that those with a Christian worldview ought to expose the deficiencies and abuses of the secularist system. However, if one's loyalty is to God's truth and just not those claiming to be on your side, aren't those that were possibly mistreated in the name of religion also allowed to verbalize their concerns so as to better protect the movement from falling into Satan's snares? If entire ministries can be established to expose the dangers of the public system, what is wrong with someone doing the same regarding the underside of private and home education? True freedom must remain vigilant to protect against both the overly and areligious.
In a sermon on the purpose of the church, an Orthodox Presbyterian pastor remarked that the believer does not have the right to determine their own mission. It depends what is meant by that. One is not free to pursue a lifestyle in violation of the parameters of the “Thou shalt nots” of Scripture. However, within those boundaries one is free to “work out one's own salvation in fear and trembling”. If you zigged into one legitimate career instead of zagging into another, on what grounds can Jesus get ticked off at you unless He deliberately tells you what to do in the areas marked by considerable individual choice and preference?
Friday, September 5
Contrary to a suggestion of what might be done to reform America, literal 24 hour around the clock prayer vigils are not required. Aren't such gestures more the worship of prayer rather than the One that prayer is supposed to be directed towards? Is God such an egomaniac that He is going to refuse to grant national revival or restoration unless he is constantly spoken to during those hours He has designed most to be sleeping through? Are around the clock prayer vigils so much about the God of Heaven or the finite human beings organizing such spectacles?
Homeschool activist Kevin Swanson in a 9/2014 broadcast suggested that Christian civilization might stand a better chance after America's collapse. But by that does he mean a generalized Christianity that respects economic liberty, private property, and individual theological conscience? Because often in environments characterized by profound social upheaval it is the most doctrinally strident expressions of a faith or creed that ends up imposing its peculiarities not through reasoned persuasion but rather through the force of violence.
Thursday, September 4
Is Chief Southern Baptist Missionary More Eager To Bash America Than Convert The Heathen?
The pastor is also author of “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream”.
A description of the tome at Amazon.com reads, “It's easy for the American Christian to forget how Jesus said how his followers would actually live...They would, he [Jesus] said , leave behind security, money, even family for him.”
Here we go with yet another attempt to use missions not so much as a methodology to bring those in other lands to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ but rather as a pretext to bash the American way of life.
For how are those things listed above: security, money, convenience, and family any different than what the inhabitants of nearly every other country on earth desire?
If one does not consider security all that important, perhaps one should be willing to exchange places with the persecuted and slaughtered Christian populations of Iraq and Syria.
Without money and security, it is doubtful that Rev. Platt would have wiggled his way into a megachurch pastorate nor American's rich enough to purchase his reflectively narcissistic manifestos.
God has indeed blessed America with an abundance of these things that have enabled Pastor Platt to become something of a celebrity in Evangelical Christian circles but which he begrudges the remainder of his fellow countrymen and coreligionists.
Is there a reason why we must flagellate ourselves in shame because of what God has given us?
For example, on the list it is insinuated that loyalty to family even when they are not tempting you towards things forbidden by God is not so much a strength but rather a weakness.
Yet the very same leftwing religionists that applaud the renunciation of bourgeoisie values insist that we must embrace nearly every illegal that pours across the border because these new arrivals are such family oriented people (even though the relationship arrangement being admired is not so much pro-child as it is the mother being afraid to cut off carnal access whenever daddy comes home sauced three sheets to the wind).
Interestingly, most of the migrants pour here for the same things we are supposed to be wracked with guilt over like Phil Donahue for possessing.
In his acceptance of the presidency of the Southern Baptist International Missions Board (a body found nowhere in Scripture if one is going to argue how we as Christians could lead more spiritually meritorious lives if we were more willing to embrace penury and destitution), “We talk all the time at Brook Hill [the church Platt pastors] about laying down a blank check with out lives, with no strings attached, willing to go wherever He leads, give whatever He asks, and do whatever He commands in order to make His glory known among the nations.”
And that is absolutely correct.
However, that blank check is to be written out to God, not so much the prelates and functionaries operating in His name through the organized church.
As Ann Coulter quipped, how come no one can serve God in America anymore?
It is about time religious leaders stop bashing those in America leading the perfectly ordinary lives that keep the mundane operations of a complex society functioning so robustly that there exists sufficient leisure time for a particular class to arise that enjoys nothing more than to wallow in this kind of existential criticism.
By Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, September 3
Cardinal Dolan Lifts His Skirt In Support Of Gays Marching In St. Patrick Day's Parade
Tuesday, September 2
A somewhat prominent homeschool ministry is suggesting that churches should assume a more direct role in the care of the elderly. So what safeguards will be put in place to ensure that the disbursement of these provisions won’t be manipulated in a form of doctrinal coercion? For example, would a church refuse to provide granny with her heart medication unless she agrees to no longer wear slacks or toss out the Jesus painting hanging in her room if she belongs to a particularly legalistic congregation? Likewise, in such a world, what is to prevent the elderly from joining a church not because it is a reflection of their theology but rather because it is more generous and lenient in terms of its charitable goodies?
A Facebook meme depicts predestination as a railway track one rides along. The advocate of free will and choice is pictured as riding along in a coal car, mistakenly holding a map detailing the numerous paths which the individual can decide to follow. If that is the illustration one desires to believe in and promote, what one is saying is that God alone is at fault for what ultimately becomes of the individual that has no control over anything whatsoever. For example, using the train track as the paradigm, should this coal car over which the individual can exert no influence whatsoever derails with the passenger being profoundly injured, what the proponents of the illustration are saying is that the passenger is at fault rather than the one that laid the track and sent the car careening towards the destination. Likewise, if the individual cannot do anything whatsoever to alter the destination at the end of the track, there really is no reason after all to tell them beforehand where it is that they are headed.
A somewhat prominent homeschool ministry is suggesting that the children of the elderly ought to be the ones responsible financially for their ageing parents and required to plan accordingly. They can do so by setting aside a significant portion of their tithe dollar that would have otherwise gone to institutionalized churches or the foreign mission field. Why not? Throughout this podcast discussion, one of the Biblical texts emphasized was James 1:27, admonishing that true and pure religion is that which cares for widows and orphans in their distress. Nowhere does the passage say anything about these funds having to be funneled through denominational middlemen that claim their cut for services rendered. Why can’t assisting your own elderly be some of that overlooked serving God in America asked about by Ann Coulter? Why does it only count for God when the helping hand is extended beyond your own family and especially into the slums of the Third World?
A pastor assured that a difference of opinion is not necessarily wrong. Does that include when there is a difference of opinion over matters that are not clearly discussed in the Scriptures but over which the pastor not only hands down pronouncements as if they were but stops just short of calling down divine retribution upon those questioning these opinions?
Friday, August 29
What Is Eastern Orthodoxy?
Thursday, August 28
Pastor Would Make Church Membership More Like Prison Sentence
But what if an individual can find a church of comparable teaching that is a better subjective or existential fit?
Why should someone in the name of an outdated understanding of ecclesiastical identity renounce other components of overall well being that could increase one's comprehensive quality of life such as companionship and opportunity?
Many of these rinkydink congregations rank among the same ones that would bash an individual for going to another church for “selfish” reasons and then turn around and slug even harder with the other rhetorical fist these same souls not married by the age of 25 despite there being no one appealing in the congregation or if the person does nothing more than fill a pew in a church where there is only one Sunday school class that the pastor sits in on to shout down anyone that might raise a sincere question or differing perspective still within the parameters of Biblical acceptability.
In this sermon on church membership and separation, Pastor Dykstra insisted that the Christian is obligated to hold formalized membership in a local congregation.
He then proceeded to argue that church membership should be viewed like marriage.
However, nowhere in Scripture is one obligated to be yoked to a human spouse.
If anything, the Bible lists both the glories and downfalls of both the single and married states, allowing the individual to select for themselves the path that they believe will minimize the inevitable miseries of this life while attempting to maximize its fleeting pleasures.
In continuing the marriage analogy, Rev. Dykstra suggested that the ability to pick up and leave a church is a moral outrage comparable to no fault divorce.
Would pastors holding to such an ecclesiology prefer the dissatisfied and disenchanted just remain in the congregation and drag the whole vibe down?
Even more disturbing is the insinuation that one cannot leave without deliberate or explicit fault being assigned.
So if these ecclesiastical potentates had their way, would they smear you with some kind of mark akin to Hawthorne's scarlet letter where no other church would ever take you in?
So be it.
What is to prevent the clerically dispossessed from banding together to establish their own churches?
And what if these loose associations began bearing spiritual fruit?
In the idealized theocracy or theonomy, would establishmentarian denominations use the weight of law and the use of force commonly referred to as violence inherent to the enforcement of such to destroy these fellowships?
If so, what makes those holding to such a position any better than the worst of the Medieval papalists that those of the extreme Reformist perspective spend an inordinate amount of time railing against?
In the sermon, Pastor Dykstra mentioned a sect from the time of the Reformation known as the Nicodemites, a reference to the influential Pharisee that came to Jesus who, though sincerely curious, came to Jesus in the middle of the night so as not to endanger his status and position as a member of the Sanhedrin.
This label was used to describe those drawn to the claims of the Reformed message but who were reluctant to embrace this interpretation of the Gospel for fear of leaving behind the modalities of worship and religious expression they had known their entire lives.
The term was intended to be applied condescendingly.
However, as conveyed in the Gospel of John, chapter 3, one does not get the impression that Jesus was irritated with Nicodemus for coming to Him secretively indicating potential ambivalence to the implications embracing the Messianic claims would have in the life of such a foremost Jewish voice.
Rev. Dykstra claims the label accurately describes those that waffle as to what congregation it is that they actually want to be a part of.
He goes on to assert that, when one leaves a particular church, what you are saying is that you no longer want to fellowship with the saints there.
It says nothing of the sort.
What about those that stay in the church and get their rearends so high up on their shoulders that they will no longer have anything to do with those that could have their spiritual needs better fulfilled elsewhere?
You don't need the pastor's permission to remain someone's friend.
If you are afraid that remaining friends with someone that has left the church but otherwise still walking in the faith will set minister off, other than a cordial but distance greeting each Sunday, DON'T TELL THE MINISTER THAT YOU ARE STILL THEIR FRIEND.
The world is in a profound state of turmoil and decline.
Instead of complaining about how often a particular visitor is or is not there and whether or not they have agreed to a commitment sufficiently arduous to placate the rigors of the professional religionist, perhaps it might be more prudent to convey the basics of salvation and moral living in the brief time that any particular soul might be brought into contact with a specific congregation.
By Frederick Meekins