Iron Ink

The King is the King, the subject is the subject, only within the law. The husband is the husband, the wife is in subjection, only within the law. The Elder is the Elder, the member is in subjection, only within the law. No delegated sovereignty is ever absolute. All delegated sovereignty is only as legitimate as it acts within the constraints of God’s empowering and restraining law.

When delegated authority violates God’s revealed law by egregious measures and constant disregard then those called to be in submission are no more automatically obligated to submission but instead are required to first insist upon repentance of the governing authority. If those in authority refuse the calls for repentance by those called to subjection then those called to subjection are duty bound due to their higher loyalty to King Christ and His revealed law to either escape, or if escape is not possible, to overthrow such illegal authority when wisdom dictates that the opportunity for such overthrow is both ripe and advantageous.

There is only one authority that is absolute. All other authority only retains its legitimacy as it operates within the law.

Luke11:37 “When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.

39Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41But give what is inside the dish [j] to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

42″Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

43″Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.

44″Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.”

45One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult (Amplified – outrage) us also.”

46Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

47″Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. 48So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. 49Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ 50Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, 51from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.

52″Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

53When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, 54waiting to catch him in something he might say.”

Given our cultural climate, where playing the victim has so much traction and where appeal to hurt feelings is advanced as some kind of argument against well reasoned truth Jesus’, not only ignores the victim’s emotional plea (i.e. – “you insult us also”) of the expert in the law, but also lays the hard words on even heavier once the victim and appeal to emotion card is played by the proto-politically correct expert in the law.

Jesus does not allow victimology to alter his words. He does not allow an appeal to emotion get in the way of saying what needs to be said. Jesus is thoroughly non-pc here.

Now, were this narrative to play out in our culture, the emotional appeal regarding having hurt feelings (“you insult us also”) would have shut down the conversation or instead turned the conversation to a discussion on how terrible it is to have hurt emotions.

When I was at the CRC synod I witnessed this appeal to emotion as an “argument” against various positions being advanced as if somebody having hurt feelings on a topic or subject is supposed to matter one whit regarding the truthfulness or non-truthfulness of the argument being advanced. I sat in dumb-founded amazement to see how the registering of a person’s “hurt” or “pain” scored great rhetorical points when discussing an issue of truth. Being sensitive to our culture currents, at one point I turned to the guy next to me, after a several people made strong appeals to emotion, and said, “Well, that is the end of this discussion. There is no way moderns are going to vote against that kind of appeal to emotion.” In point of fact the ambiance that was created by the appeal to victimology and the appeal to emotion were so great that it is an open question whether or not if somebody had spoken on the floor of Synod like Jesus spoke to the expert in the law whether or not they would have been tarred and feathered right then and there.

As long as we are a people who can not discuss positions because some group or people suddenly begin to appeal to emotion and play the victim card we are a people who are already defeated by those who claim to be victims and who put their emotion on shameless parade. As long as we are not allowed to refute the victim and the player of emotion with words they will find that fill them with even more distraught emotion and will convince them that they are now doubly the victim then they were before the refutation was entered into the victim will be the automatic victor and emotion will reign supreme over any truth.

None of this is to say that I doubt a person’s sense of being victimized nor do I doubt the very real emotion to which is being appealed. What I doubt, at certain points, is that the worldview out of which a persons sense of victimology is being nurtured is legitimate. What I doubt is whether or not the person would have the same visceral sense of emotion if they were embracing a Biblical worldview. As emotion is driven by truth, it is past obvious that heartfelt but misguided displays of and appeals to emotion are a consequence of wrong understandings of truth. Change the theology / worldview and the emotions are changed.

Political correctness speech is a Machiavellian command and control device born of cultural Marxist presuppositions. Its purpose is the imposition of cultural Marxist uniformity in thought, speech and behavior. It seeks to alter all the previously Christian influenced rules – both formal and informal – that govern relations among peoples and institutions. It desires to change behavior, language, and even a person’s thoughts, and to a significant extent it has already accomplished its goals in the West. Keep in mind that whoever controls the language controls thought.

Political correctness often comes in the form of psychologized speech. It is psychologized because it often comes selling itself as “more sensitive, caring, and humane.” Indeed, one of the main carriers of the political correctness virus is the mental health industry. Psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, and others who have (sometimes unwittingly) bought into the cultural Marxist political correct speech standards and so pass it on to their numberless clients.

Because political correctness seeks to constrain thought, speech, and behavior there is now a need more than ever to be precise, blunt and even sometimes crass in our language. When a people have been lulled to sleep by a witches words of enchantment the only thing that might wake them up are angular, razor sharp and barbed words used like a sledge hammer with the hopes that such angular, razor sharp and barbed words will come crashing through the ideological haze of those infected by political correctness in order to awaken them from their linguistically induced coma.

“So, to respond to Rabbi Bret, my beef with the CRC and its worldview is not only that it is progressive. I also object to worldviews like Rabbi Bret’s that are politically or culturally conservative because opposing abortion, if done for the wrong reasons, is as much a form of works righteousness as is adopting a mandate on global warming. If Rabbi Bret wants evidence of the way that a right-wing worldviewitis leads to churches fudging the gospel, he only needs to say, “Federal Vision.” Can he do that? Sure he can.” ~ Dr. Darryl G. Hart

Dr. Darryl seems to be reasoning here that all because there exists progressive worldviews that have no business being in the Church or right wing worldviews that have no business being in the Church therefore the worldview that insists that worldviews in the church are bad should be the worldview that is in the church. Dr. Darryl is advocating that the Church take up a ‘public square antinomianism worldview’ that if done for the wrong reasons, is as much a form of works righteousness as is adopting either global warming or pro-life positions.

Dr. Darryl (and presumably his other brother Darryl) seems to think that it is possible for the Church to be worldview free. Yet, as I have been saying relentlessly, it is only Dr. Darryl’s law oriented worldview that is pushing him to advocate what he advocates. Dr. Darryl’s worldview (public square antinomianism) is law oriented because he seems to suggest that anybody that does not share his anti-worldview worldview is a someone who can not be saved. So, for Dr. Darryl, a person who does not keep the law of having a anti-worldview worldview is a person who must be born again. At the very least, for Darryl, all sanctified Christians, keep the law with him, that teaches that mature Christians don’t allow the Church to have any worldview in the Church.

Dr. Darryl accuses progressivism to be a worldview that is law and not Gospel and so should not be embraced by the Church. Dr. Darryl accuses right wing worldviews to be worldviews that are law and not Gospel and so should not be in the Church. Dr. Darryl insists that the worldview that advocates no worldview and which says that any law is an acceptable law in his “common realm” is to be preferred over progressivism law or right wing law.

Dr. Darryl’s problem is that he honestly believes that Christianity, as promulgated in the Church, neither asks nor answers the question, “How shall than we live.” Dr. Darryl’s worldview believes that all attempts by the Church to speak God’s mind on this question for the public square is sinful. The consequence of Dr. Darryl’s worldview is that the Gospel’s impact in saving individual lives reaches no further than those individual personal lives. For Dr. Darryl, a medical doctor is saved by the Gospel but after being saved by the Gospel, Christianity, as promulgated by the church, has no word for the medical doctor on how he should speak about medical ethics. For Dr. Darryl, a public square Economist is saved by the Gospel but after being saved by the Gospel, Christianity, as promulgated by the church, has no word for the Economist on whether Keynesianism is consistent with the 7th commandment. For Dr. Darryl, a civil magistrate is saved by the Gospel but after being saved by the Gospel, Christianity, as promulgated by the church, has no answer for the civil magistrate on whether political or cultural Marxism is consistent with the 1st commandment. For Dr. Darryl the third use of the law, as it pertains to the public square, completely disappears. For Dr. Darryl God speaks clearly on how individuals get saved but God speaks only a incredibly contested word (i.e. - Darryl’s appeal to Natural Law) on how Christians as Christians should live.

Dr. Darrly has not escaped the fact that his worldview for the public square antinomianism that he would have the Church embrace, if pursued for the wrong reasons, is as much a form of works righteousness as is adopting a mandate on global warming or as adopting legislation that is pro-life.

Dr. Darryl had more to say on this subject though this was the only portion that was pointed at me. I may return to clean up his messy thinking which he displayed in the rest of this post at oldladylife.org

Calvin notes that the main object of Peter’s first epistle,

“is to raise us above the world, in order that we may be prepared and encouraged to sustain the spiritual contests of our warfare. For this end, the knowledge of God’s benefits avails much; for, when their value appears to us, all other things will be deemed worthless, especially when we consider what Christ and his blessings are; for everything w/o him is but dross. For this reason he highly extols the wonderful grace of God in Christ, that is that we may not deem it much to give up the world in order that we may enjoy the invaluable treasure of a future life; and also that we might not be broken down by present troubles, but patiently endure them, being satisfied w/ eternal happiness.”

In summary then Peter’s goal is to remind his readers that what is to be gained by the certain future by the faithful Christian far exceeds the hardships and struggles of the present as well as what might be considered as perceived loss of the present.

Surely, we can understand the necessity to speak words of promise and hope to a people who are suffering for the cause of Christ. Surely, we can understand the temptation that might be present to conclude that the promise of the unseen as held out by Christianity was not worth the perils of the seen as brought by the tormentors of these Christians.

Consequently Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes to these recipients encouraging them to press on doing so by means of the Character of God and the abundance of mercy.

In the midst of their trials, Peter, following his salutation, opens with

I.) A Blessing Of God For His Goodness

By doing so, Peter subtly reminds his readers that this whole life is about God. Yes, trials may be present and hardships may descend upon us but even under these constraints there is a necessity to bless God and to remind ourselves of the objective truths regarding his goodness.

A.) Note the specific God that Peter references is brought to the fore by God’s sui generis (one of a kind) relationship to Jesus Christ

1.) Pursue the idea of the exclusivity of God
God can’t be known apart from a known Christ.
There is no knowing God in his naked majesty apart from Christ

2.) Pursue the idea that God is God to us because of the relationship
that both the Father and the Church has to Jesus Christ

3.) Pursue how Peter references Christ - 1.)Lord 2.) Jesus 3.)Christ

B.) Note The Piling Up Of God’s Blessings Upon God’s People As The Reason Why Peter’s Open’s With a Blessing of God

1.) Abundant Mercy

As I stated at the outset the spotlight is cast upon God here. To a people who are grieved by various trials the Apostle becomes radically God-centered.

He immediately reminds them, in a general way, of God’s abundant mercy and from there Peter will get into specifics as to the character of that abundant mercy. The emphasis here is on the objective truth of God’s goodness. Hardship and persecutions may come but in the midst of those subjective experiences we must remain mindful that God is good to those who trust in him.

It seems what is happening here is that Peter is reminding his readers to view their circumstances through God’s character and not begin reading God’s character through their dire circumstances. Trials may come and go, but God remains always full of abundant mercy (Covenant hesed) towards his people.

The radical God-centeredness of this passage continues as the specifics of God’s abundant mercy are named. Note in all that is to be named here as instantiations of “abundant mercy” the repeated emphasis is on the fact that God has done all the doing for His people.

God has begotten us to a living hope (cmp. John 1:13). We did not beget ourselves to a living hope.

The Father is the one who raised Christ from the dead as the foundation of our living hope. We did not raise Christ from the dead so that we could have a foundation for our eventual living hope.

The Father is the one who has given us an inheritance. We did not give ourselves an inheritance.

The Father is the one who keep us. We do not keep ourselves.

All of these markers that testify of God’s goodness are received by us passively. God is the one who does all the doing. God is the one, through the work of Christ, and by the ministry of the Spirit who both makes us alive and who causes us to contend till the very end.

This is why we say … “To God be the glory.” This is why we dwell so much on the idea of “grace alone.”

It is the greatness of God that is dwelled upon here and so upon which we dwell.

But let us look at each of these blessings a little more carefully.

– Begotten – regeneration

– Living hope – This living hope is characteristic of the one who patiently waits for the salvation God has promised to his people. It is living because it is a sure and real thing. It is hope because it raises our minds beyond our trials to God’s sure and certain promises.

It stands in contrast to the dead hope of the pagans. Whether their hope is Nirvana, or the voluptuaries of Allah’s paradise, or the reincarnation to progress of the Hindu, or the pagan after life of the Jew, or the envisioned utopia of the humanist. All of these are dead hopes. Only the Christian has a living hope.

– This living hope comes through the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

In the middle of this God centered passage that is intended to give encouragement to believers Peter puts the Cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

– Inheritance

Described as – 1.) Incorruptible 2.) Undefiled 3.) Doesn’t fade
4.) Reserved

Application

1.)God is the center of every narrative and the center of that center is that God has done all the doing in Christ to rescue and redeem His people.

2.) A Christian’s plight and sorrows are never so defeating that they lose reason to bless God. Despite the greatest opposition or the greatest hardship the Christian remains the person who blesses God for His goodness to him.

3.) It is this living hope that Peter describes that keeps our dying and resisted efforts alive. We keep on contending for the crown rights of King Jesus because we have this living hope.

Two Kingdoms … Yes … But which Two Kingdoms?

http://www.credenda.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=218%3Atwo-kingdoms-critique&catid=96%3Atheology&Itemid=122#_ftn1

This first one gives a historical reading to the Magisterial teaching of Two Kingdom theology. It is a refutation of contemporary Radical Two Kingdom authors and readings which seek to suggest that they are the heirs of the Magisterial Reformers on Two Kingdom theology. Steven Wedgeworth’s article blows away the smoke surrounding that claim. In this article Wedgeworth admits that the Reformers used Natural Law theory. No anti R2Kt person should ever deny this. The point isn’t that Natural Law theory, historically speaking, is not Christian or that it is not Reformed. The point is that Natural Law theory, as embraced by the Reformers and their heirs, who all lived in Christendom, was a Natural law theory that was definitively Christian.

Wedgeworth also spends time exposing how the Two Kingdoms, as defined by the Magisterial Reformers, covered different realities then the Two Kingdoms of Escondido fame. For the Magisterial Reformers the Two Kingdoms were defined as such that there was a diversity in unity. For Escondido the Two Kingdoms are defined in such a way that there is diversity (Nature realm vs. Redemptive realm) with no unity. (Hence the constant charge of Dualism.)

Wedgeworth has done a real service for the church with this beginning explanatory piece. Now, it will be ignored by the Escondido crew but it is a good response to much of their theorizing.

Burn The Wooden Shoes

http://www.swierenga.com/Africa_pap.html

In this article Wierenga chronicles the worldwide transformation of lives and communities in the Christian Reformed Church from its once Reformed Kuyperian Confessionalism into a Church that is a living expression of Democratic modernity. Wierenga’s work is objective, dispassionate, and well footnoted.

Wierenga starts with the changes made in the post WWII CRC and insists that the changes in the CRCNA over the last 65 years is a result of progressivism. Wierenga chronicles the changes in the CRCNA, over the last 50 years, on issues such as theistic evolution, women in office, infallibility of Scripture, ecumenicity, and homosexuality.

In reading this article my only frustration is that more authors don’t spend more time tracing out exactly what “progressivism,” as a worldview is. It is true that the progressives are in hegemonic control of the CRCNA but folks need to realize that progressivism is a worldview that is in competition with the worldview of Christianity. People tend to think instead that progressives just have a different view of Christianity. Doubtless, that is true but what people need to start realizing is that the reason progressives have a different view of Christianity is due to the fact that they have a worldview that is different than Christianity.

Which brings us to our next link that spends just a little bit of time exploring cultural Marxism, which is largely a synonym for “progressivism.”

Progressivism nee – Cultural Marxism – as a Worldview

http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=hh2DdJLycPM&feature=related

The links above are merely a introduction to what I believe is the predominant worldview among the culturally elite today in America and the West. Googling terms like “Frankfurt school,” “critical theory,” “political correctness,” “Theodor Adorno,” “Herbert Marcuse,” “Erich Fromm,” “Jurgen Habermas,” “Max Horkheimer,” and “Antonia Gramsci,” will yield more and more writings on how cultural Marxism (progressivism) is its own unique world and life view, and so creates its own unique church and own unique culture.

The reason that it is so important for Biblical Christians to understand Cultural Marxism is that without understanding this worldview, as a whole, they are incapable of understanding how the different parts form a whole. Without an understanding of the competing worldview of cultural Marxism that is redefining Christianity Christians will forever be missing how all the parts (feminism, evolution, homosexuality, globalism, climate change, victimology, hate crimes, social justice, etc.) fit together to form one identifiable competing worldview.

Dr. Darryl D. (Dualist) G. (Gnostic) Hart felt compelled at oldlife.org today to add insult to injury regarding my frustrations with the recent CRC church synod. You can always count on the R2Kt boys to liven up a dead party.

Below are some interactions w/ Dr. D. G. Hart.

Dr. Dualist G. Hart commented,

Our friendly but misguided theonomic sparring partner, Rabbi Bret, is a delegate to the Christian Reformed Church’s Synod. Let that sink in.

Amazing!

Bret responds,

I quite agree that the fact that I was a delegate to Synod was a remarkable providence that can only can be categorized as “amazing.” Lesser people have to carry on when greater people have left their former activist liberal denomination and have moved on to try and be the majority voice in new denominations that they would have be passivist liberal denominations should they have their way. The disagreement that Darryl had with his former denomination is the disagreement that occurs between those who will transform culture actively in a liberal direction and those who will transform culture passively in a liberal direction by allowing the anti-Christ theology that informs the culture to go unaddressed.

Dr. D. G. Hart writes,

True to his voluble ways, Bret is peppering his blog with updates on the affairs of Synod. Having spent four years in the CRC and seen how Reformed-world-and-life-viewism of a left-leaning sort transformed that once vigorous church into a communion that ordained women, sponsored contemporary worship, and shied away from TULIP, I was wondering when Bret’s views on women, American politics, and the Christian magistracy would catch up with him in the progressive CRC. Now we know. It is not going so well.

Darryl calling me voluble is like the Victoria Falls calling the Niagara falls majestic.

Anyway … the funny thing here is that Darryl and I agree on so many issues. We also agree completely that it is a matter of sorrow that the CRC has gone in the direction it has. Our difference though is that Darryl believes that it is possible to be a-transformationalist and I believe that it is never a question of whether or not one will be a transformationalist but only a question of which direction will one be a transformationalist toward. I believe that by Darryl’s attempt to retreat from the issue of cultural transformationalism he is at that very point contributing to the majority leftist transformationalism if only because he is doing precious little to resist it. Indeed, by Darryl’s theology it just may be the case that Natural law is ok w/ cultural marxism (e.g. – Darryl’s “progressivism").

In the end Darryl has not escaped his own version of “Reformed-world-and-life-viewism.” His world and life view is dualist and gnostic. He sees little if any relation between nature and grace (creation and redemption) and the view that cuts off any relation between creation and redemption is a view that creates a very specific world and life view. Now, it is not a particularly Reformed world and life view but it remains a world and life view.

Dr. D. G. Hart writes,

I can certainly sympathize with Bret’s confusion about the CRC’s understanding of transformationalism. It is the classic difference between soft and hard theonomy. Both want a Christian society/nation/culture, but go to different parts of the Bible (or mind, as in worldview) for it.

At this point Darryl is assuming his position without arguing for it. Darryl is assuming that the Scriptures are silent on what he styles “progressivism.” Darryl identifies the problem (progressivism) in the CRC but then he implicitly suggests that the Scriptures are silent on whether that progressivism is really a problem. Now, if progressivism is a problem in the Church (women in office, gender neutral language, sponsored contemporary worship, and shying away from TULIP) then it stands to reason that progressivism is a problem in the culture when it manifests itself as anthropogenic climate change, suspicious views on illegal immigration, or theistic evolution. Surely, Darryl doesn’t believe that the fountainhead worldview of progressivism that is creating so much havoc in the Church is perfectly acceptable when it continues to be a fountainhead worldview that creates havoc in the culture?

But it is at this point, that we once again see Darryl’s dualism. He can (rightly) lament what the evil worldview of progressivism has done in the Church but he refuses to lament what the evil worldview of progressivism is doing in the broader culture. It is perfectly acceptable for the Church to attack progressivism when it seeks to come into the Church but it is not perfectly acceptable for any individual in the Church to attack progressivism when it is the Church that is advancing progressivism for the broader culture.

I must say that the only thing that might possibly be able to confuse me more than a Church that endorses progressivism is the double speak that comes out of the mouths of R2Kt proponents.

D. G. Hart writes,

I am all for Bret’s causing a little commotion at Synod. As much as I benefited from the CRC during our sojourn, I am also saddened that worldviewism cost the church its heritage of Reformed confessionalism.

Bret responds,

It is only Darryl’s strange worldview that is pushing him to say that “worldviewism” cost the church its heritage of Reformed confessionalism. Further, I’d be willing to bet good money that if the R2Kt boys get their way in the URC that in 20 years the URC will be where the CRC is now.

By Darryl’s own words it is not worldviewism that is costing the CRC its heritage. By his own admission it is the worldview of progressivism that is costing it, its heritage. This progressivism will not be turned back by a worldview (R2Kt) that can’t authoritatively say that progressivism is un-biblical. This worldview progressivism can only be turned back by a Christian worldview that recognizes the progressivism for what it is and offers Biblical answers. Darryl wants to damn the night but refuse to light a candle.

D. G. Hart writes,

At the same time, I’m not all that bothered to see Bret struggling with his left-leaning communion. If he had bothered to heed the teaching of his two-kingdom targets at Westminster California, many of whom had experience opposing the liberal drift of the CRC, he would have known where transformationalism leads.

Ah yes … the nectar of R2Kt compassion just flows from Darryl’s fingertips.

Look … in the end you can ride the rails to destruction on the train of progressivism or you can ride the rails to destruction on the train of R2Kt Gnosticism / Dualism. No matter which ride you choose you’re going to have to eventually pay the conductor. There is, after all, a thousand different ways to achieve destruction.

The CRC has decided to gives its confessions a soft gender inclusive makeover.

I rose to speak against this noting that there were many times where the word “man” was replaced by the word “Humans,” or “Human beings.” I noted that I had done some etymological spade work on the word “Human” and had discovered that it literally mean “pertaining to man.” I then made the point that I did not understand what was accomplished by deleting the word “man” or “men” in favor of a word (human) that literally means “pertaining to man.” I also noted that I thought such gender inclusive language “played with” our covenantal understanding of men having federal headship.

I had thought about proposing that instead of the word human we should require those who are re-working the confessions to use the words “human and huwoman,” but as this was the first issue that I spoke to I was a bit nervous and wasn’t sure that my humor would be appreciated. (Now, in retrospect, I am quite sure it would not have been appreciated.)

A female delegate spoke after me insisting that deleting man was important since her 12 year daughter had heard some scripture read where only the word man was used (as being inclusive of both men and women) and the 12 year old daughter couldn’t figure out why women were left out.

I sat there thinking, after this comment, that we are spending an untold amount of money to revise these confessions in a soft gender inclusive direction because people either don’t know or have not yet learned what words mean? All because a little girl and apparently many like her do not know that the word “human” is just as insulting to them as the word “man” means that we have to change the confessions? What happens then if these people ever wake up to the reality that the word “human” means “pertaining to man?” Will we have to change them again?

Look, the whole pursuit of gender inclusive language – soft or otherwise – is nonsense driven by the attempt of feminists to escape what they can not escape and that is that their identity is derivative of the identity of man.

I said what I desired to say at the Christian Reformed Church synod. To their credit no one sought to muzzle me or to turn off my microphone or rule anything I had to say out of order. However, nothing I had to say, in terms of its original intent and context was reported accurately by the CRC news agency. Instead what was reported by the CRC news agency are things I did not say. I was consistently misquoted, or if I was not egregiously misquoted my words were so taken out of context from the overall position I was seeking to advance that the result was that it made it look as if I was supporting the exact opposite position as the one I was actually supporting.

I’ve already had one friend contact me when he read my comments in the Kalamazoo Gazette and tell me that he almost swallowed his tongue when he read the comments which were attributed to me – comments, as I’ve established, I never made.

Was this accidental? One mistake I can understand. Two mistakes … well, things happen. But three mistakes? A inaccuracy surrounding my comments every time the CRC news agency reported on my comments? Surely, no one can fault me for thinking that it stretches credulity to believe that this misreporting was merely accidental.

Now, I suppose it is possible that the reporters worldview is so deeply lodged that they were not even aware that they were twisting my words beyond recognition. This is the only explanation for this journalistic malfeasance that allows me to escape the conclusion that there was intentional malice in the reporting mechanism.

Here is what was reported by the CRC news agency regarding what I said. The block-quotes are followed by what I actually said.

What I Did Not Say At Synod – #1

“No one here challenges our need to care for creation,” said Bret McAtee, a delegate from Classis Lake Erie. “But I question the need for a task force to identify a biblical and Reformed perspective on climate change.”

The context for this comment was the issue of anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. I spoke strongly against receiving the report of the Micah Declaration. I said on the floor of synod that it was my preference that instead of receiving the report we merely ignore the report. I likewise made the point that 20,000 Scientist are on record as opposing the idea that anthropogenic climate change is settled science. I mentioned by name, the Oregon institute as a Science think tank, led my Dr. Art Robinson, which is the institution that opposes anthropogenic climate change and which collected the 20,000 scientists who vigorously disagree with the conclusions of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I strongly opposed the motion on the floor to receive the Micah Declaration with its advocacy for anthropogenic climate change as settled science and with its recommendation that a UN agency be entrusted w/ the responsibility of producing a fair, comprehensive and adequate climate deal.

I did preface the substance of my opposition with the quote, “No one here challenges our need to care for creation,” but what followed was not what is attributed to me above but rather what I have given in the above paragraph. I never said anything close to what is attributed to me in the second quotation in the block-quote above. Good night … I am known as the “go-to guy” for anti Radical two Kingdom arguments and yet in the second quote they have me championing a R2Kt position.

Now, to the credit of the CRC news agency, after I went to them and protested their reporting on this first story they did change the news account so that the second quote was no longer attributed to me. However, the problem of inaccuracy remains because by only quoting the first sentence regarding the need to care for creation the impression is left that I did not strongly oppose the idea that was on the floor that man has a large role in anthropogenic climate change.

What I Did Not Say At Synod – #2

Rev. Bret McAtee said,“People wonder how this issue (illegal immigration) will or won’t impact jobs for persons who are in this country legally.”

Now, I said something like this but again it is not a direct quote which those quotations marks require and it significantly misses the overall point I was making which was that US immigration policy needs to be compassionate on American citizens.

Someone from the CRC news agency needs to take a basic journalism course that teaches them that you only put in quotations that which is exactly said. What we have above is a paraphrase and not a exact quotation.

The other problem I find with this quote is that it makes it sound as if my point was that I was selfishly concerned only about Americans having American jobs. Again this misses completely the point that I was making. The point I was making, as I took the floor to speak to the inadequacy of the denominational report on in illegal immigration was that the report only considered the issue of compassion on illegal immigrants quite apart from thinking through how compassion to illegal immigrants may be the very essence of a lack of compassion towards legal immigrants, people who are waiting in line to immigrate to America according to the established procedure for doing so, people who provide the mechanisms that make for the social safety net in America, people whose property is being destroyed and lives threatened by illegal immigration, Americans who are dealing with a extraordinarily high unemployment rate, and finally to America as a whole in its struggle to establish a common culture. My thrust was that the report was short-sighted because it only took into consideration compassion for illegal immigrants without taking into account the necessity of compassion on hosts of people who would be impacted by having a short sighted policy that only considers the plight of the illegal immigrant without also considering the plight of any number of other people.

And while we are on the subject, I also learned from one of the denominational chieftains that, at least he believed, that amnesty was the answer to our illegal immigration problem. Now, he refused to call what he was advocating “Amnesty,” but you can call allowing people to stay who have broken the laws and have come here illegally anything you please but in the end it reduces to Amnesty. Making people pay a fine who have come here illegally in order to gain legal status is still amnesty. Further, such a policy only encourages the continued influx of illegal immigrants knowing that if they can stay here long enough they eventually will be given the opportunity to be legal citizens just as amnesty was granted in 1986 and just as it is being advocated now in 2010. Also, such a policy makes a fool of those people who have been waiting for years to come into the country legally. Those who have abided by the rules are being punished so that those who broke the law can be preferred.

What I Did Not Say At Synod – #3

“Rev. Bret McAtee, a delegate from Classis Lake Erie, said that he was pleased by the way in which the CRC allowed in-depth discussion on this issue.” “Although his church is one that is not in favor of women in office, it decided to remain in its classis, which has a more open stance on the topic.”

I never said anything approximating, “I was pleased by the way in which the CRC allowed in-depth discussion on this issue.” Somebody else may have said such a thing. I do not remember. As God as my witness though I never said, I was pleased by the way in which the CRC allowed in-depth discussion on this issue, and I wouldn’t say that since I do not believe the CRC allows in-depth discussion on this issue. In the hermeneutics course I took at Calvin there was no discussion on the Women in office issue and the only position that was taught was the pro-woman in office side of the equation.

Second, it completely left out the reason I gave on the floor of Synod for staying in the Classis that Charlotte CRC is currently in and that is I didn’t see any sense in driving 1000 miles to go to a Classis meeting twice a year. It also completely misses the context of the point that was being made and that context was my strong opposition to a motion denying the right of two CRC churches to transfer out of their current Classis due to their being convinced that the seating of women officers at their Classical meetings is sin.

Third, on this score, once again the CRC news agency trying to paraphrase what was said instead attributed words to me as a direct quotation that I never uttered. The first quote is a complete falsehood. I never said it and never came close to saying it. The second quote is so mangled that I barely recognize it.

As an aside, note how they put in my mouth that the classis I am in has a “more open stance.” Does anybody, who knows me, believe that I would ever characterize a Classis that allows women in office to be one which has a “more open stance"?

God’s Love As Father Is Particular

1 John 4:10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

2 Timothy 1:8 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; 9Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,

Colossians 1:12Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us qualified to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: 13Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: 14In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:

Of course you will note the particularity that just sings through these passages. God, revealing His Fatherly character, loved “us” – His particular people. The love of God, as Father, is unique to His people. This particular “love” is to be distinguished from The love of God, as a general benefactor, who gives generic providential gifts to the just and the unjust.

Whenever God loves in a familial sense His love his particular, and it is this love in this salvific familial sense that we agree with the Scripture when they teach that God hates the wicked.

Now before we move on to a bit of application allow us to suggest one implication that we can draw from this reality that God’s love as a Father is particular … and that is

As God’s love as a Father is particular for His children so the children’s love for God as their Father must be particular as well.

As God’s dearly beloved children we are jealous for God’s reputation and His name. Understanding the great love of our Father wherein we have been loved, we in turn return that great love by intensely hating all other false gods and false representations of the true god. In a similar vein we likewise love our Brethren in a way that is unique and distinct to the love that we have for those who are the children of other false gods … for those who have fashioned and taken for themselves false gods.

Application

As God, our heavenly Father has a particular love for His own people, so any given Father has a particular love that reveals itself in the responsibility he has to his own children first and foremost. Because this is true, a Biblical Father acts in such a way as to uniquely protect his children from harm and danger. A Biblical Father seeks to uniquely regulate his own family life in prudent and wise ways – in ways that he does not do for families that are not his own. It is not selfish for a Father to take care of his own children ahead of the children of other families, though it would be selfish for a Biblical Father to only consider his own family. The argument here isn’t that heads of covenant homes and families should have no concern for anybody else except their own. The argument here is that charity starts at home. Just as God the Father’s love begins w/ His own children and then from there extends itself more generically to others so a Father’s love begins w/ His own children and then extends itself generically to others.

Illustration – Concentric circles of love.

If a Father so loved those who were not his own more than his own it would be tantamount to a disowning of those who are his own.

On a even larger scale Nations – which by historic definition have always been considered a family of related families – do the same type of thing. Nations, for example, set immigration policy in accord with the needs of the citizens. A nation has a responsibility to its own citizen’s first and foremost and so a nation sets an immigration policy that fits the needs of the citizenry before it fits the needs of potential emigres. If a nation so loved those who were not its own more than its own it would be tantamount to a disowning of those who were its own.

God’s Love As Father Is Unconditional In A Very Specific Sense

Often times the truth of unconditional election (which is the love of the Father for His particular people) is understood inadequately. Often, the unconditional love of the Father for His children is explained in ways that forgets that God’s love for His children was conditioned upon Christ’s work for them.

So the condition of God the Father’s love is that His particular people be pure and without fault. As we know, this was not a condition that any of God’s people could meet but, nonetheless, it was a condition. And so God setting this condition for His love and determining and knowing that His people could not meet this condition God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, met this condition for His particular people.

The condition is one that God set and God met for His particular children.

So, God’s love, for us, as a Father, is unconditional in the sense that we aren’t involved in any per-formative acts that curry God’s love but God’s love for us, as a Father, is conditional in the sense that certain conditions had to be met before we could be accepted by the Father. These requirements God fulfilled in the birth, life, and work of the beloved Christ on behalf of love to the Father and love to the Father’s particular people.

All of this is communicated in Romans 3:21f

Romans 3:21 “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

Now I spend some time stating the obvious because I fear that in some quarters the idea of God’s love as unconditional is being inappropriately twisted beyond all recognition. At least in some quarters the love of the Father as unconditional is being made to mean that as long as we invoke the magic talisman of some alien Jesus’ name, therefore, w/ God’s unconditional love in our pocket, we can autonomously create our own standards as to what the Christian life looks like. We seem to reason that “As long as I have God’s unconditional love we can go call good … evil, and evil …. good and we can go on sinning that grace may abound. We can turn
God’s standards upside down and we can make words like “compassion,” “social justice,” and “fairness,” to mean whatever we ruddy well like them to mean.

And so while God’s “unconditional love” is supposed to mean in Historic Christian theology that God Himself met all the conditions that He required so we might have a living vital covenant relationship with Him – as set by His terms – so that we might be equipped to live for His glory and be His servants, what God’s “unconditional love” has come to mean in post-modern “Christian” theology is that God Himself met all the conditions that He required so we might have a living vital covenant w/ Him – as set by our terms – so that we might be equipped to live for our glory and so that He might be our servant.

This changing of the definition of God’s “unconditional love” reminds me of Lewis Carrol’s famous “Alice in Wonderland.”

‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. ‘They’ve a temper, some of them – particularly verbs: they’re the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’

‘Would you tell me please,’ said Alice, ‘what that means?’

‘Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ‘I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’

‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.’

‘Oh!’ said Alice.

(Carroll 1893, 113–15)

So, on this Father’s day, I am Alice insisting that the “unconditional love” of the Father means something while much of what I am seeing and hearing going on around me passing itself off as the “unconditional love” of the Father seems to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean.

Unconditional love made to mean that God Himself met all the conditions that He required so we might have a living vital covenant w/ Him – as set by our terms – so that we might be equipped to live for our glory and so that He might be our servant is more of a revolutionary concept than any other doctrine of revolution. Unconditional love, defined this way, means the end of discrimination between god and not god, his standards and our standards, his definitions of morality and our definitions of morality, who our brethren are and who our enemies are, and all things else. Whenever anyone insists that God loves unconditionally, in the sense defined above they are telling you that they intend to make God in their own image.

Application

Now, after going a long way around I would say that as we apply this to earthly fathers I would likewise say as earthly Fathers our love for our children is likewise unconditional. This is true for adopted or biological children. No matter what might happen in a parent-child relationship a parent never quits loving their child.

Dads we need to tell our children this frequently. We need to keep reminding them that as our children they are loved unconditionally. We must be careful that we don’t place upon them, implicitly or explicitly, the idea that our love for them is based upon some kind of performative act or accomplishment on their part.

Just as we as Christians operate from the security that we can never increase God’s love for us because of God’s unconditional love for us, so our children need to realize that they operate from the security that they can never increase our love for them because of our unconditional love for them.

Many are the children who live their lives trying to meet the expectations of some demanding parent who has, implicitly or explicitly, communicated that their love was dependent upon the performance of the child. This ought not to be named among God’s people and when it is named among us it is a violation of Ephesians 6

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Dad’s throughout the lives of your children, regardless whether your children are 5 or 65 you need to communicate consistently to your children that you love them. A Dad’s influence on a childs life is monumental, and one of the best gifts you can give to your children is the stability, certainty, and confidence that comes from knowing that you love them unconditionally.

Carmon Friedrich, next to my own wife, is the wisest woman I know. This is a piece that absolutely nails the ugly contradiction of very public women leading the charge in the conservative family values campaign. Would to God that more women thought like Carmon.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The nomad and the anarchist accuse the domestic ideal of being merely timid and prim. But this is not because they themselves are bolder or more vigorous, but simply because they do not know it well enough to know how bold and vigorous it is. – G.K. Chesterton

Have you ever sat too long in the doctor’s waiting room and resorted to browsing through a children’s magazine, desperate for something to read? (For the sake of my example, we’ll assume you never even considered cracking the cover of the ubiquitous People magazine beckoning on the table.) Remember those mind-bending — to a five-year-old — puzzles which show two similar pictures, but in the second picture there are some differences which you are supposed to spot? What’s wrong with this picture? is the name of the game, and some of the changes can be quite subtle, making a mature woman spend way too much time poring over those junior periodicals and missing the nurse’s call when the examination room is finally free.

Ahem.

Life mirrors art, and I’ve been thinking of how we can get the wrong impression if we don’t carefully examine the picture we are presented by those who paint a scenario they want us to believe in.

Last January I happened to be in Washington, D.C. with my daughter and a family friend during the annual March for Life. As ardent pro-life supporters, we knew we needed to join with the thousands of others on the Capitol Mall and by our presence, at least, show that we were on the side of life and unborn babies. It was encouraging to be among so many people who oppose abortion and want to see it stopped. But as I listened to the speeches from the podium, I grew restless and frustrated. I had heard the same speeches before, many times, over the past couple of decades. “If we only elect so-and-so” or “If we only get rid of so-and-so” were the most common refrains. That seductive stick with the juicy carrot of judicial appointments which could overturn Roe v. Wade was waved about several times. Most of the speakers were women.

I turned to the girls with me and looked them in the eye, and quietly gave them my take on the things I was hearing. Abortion in all 50 states throughout all nine months of pregnancy was declared “legal” by the Supreme Court in 1973, 27 years ago. Some in the pro-life movement claim minor victories as some abortion mills close down or statistics show slight decreases at times in the number of abortions, or Congress passes a law banning partial birth abortion. But reality is that we still have the blood of over one-and-one-quarter million babies each year crying out from the ground (Gen. 4:10). I told the girls that legal action to stop those deaths would be a wonderful blessing, but I don’t believe anything will change until the hearts of women who want those abortions are changed. They don’t want their babies. Why?

I notice that more and more of the leaders of pro-life and pro-family organizations are women. They are articulate and gifted women, skilled at public speaking and good at rallying the troops, like Joan of Arc or Deborah. It doesn’t take being a Sherlock Holmes to make a reasonable deduction that in order for these women to hold those leadership positions, they have to devote a lot of time and energy to their careers. That doesn’t leave much time for home and family. I will get in trouble for saying it, but I can’t help noticing that the empress is wearing a business suit and not an apron. And these are the women who are supposed to encourage women inclined to end an inconvenient pregnancy to instead sacrifice their time and energy in order to have a baby. Titus 2 for the twenty-first century.

That is one way the picture has some subtle changes from what we ought to see: many of the spokeswomen for the blessing of babies are living a lifestyle which portrays the feminist dream of power, prestige, and leadership in the public realm, a lifestyle which is not conducive to family life, let alone so-called “traditional family values.”

This brings me to a related issue which skews the picture our conservative friends are crafting: the whole-hearted endorsement of so many women for political office in the recent elections.

The frequent mention of the anomaly of Deborah during a time when every man was doing “what was right in his own eyes” has become a din almost as annoying as those vuvuzelas at the World Cup. She was one woman called out by God when there were no men with the gumption to take the lead and fight the scary Canaanites. Today, we have numerous women stepping into positions of leadership in every realm, but the real phenomenon is the strong support of so many conservative Christians for female political leaders, to carry the banner for those “traditional family values.”

“I do not think it means what you think it means.” –Inigo Montoya

The most prominent Deborah, of course, is Sarah Palin, who is angling for the highest office in the land. She recently proudly proclaimed herself a feminist. As she travels around the country giving high-paid speeches to tea party activists anxious for political hope and change, she speaks of “empowering women” and a “a new revival of that original feminism of Susan B. Anthony.” Unfortunately, that feminism laid the ground-work for the feminism of NOW, Hillary Clinton, and Gloria “A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle” Steinem.

And I know I will get in trouble (again) for saying it, but what about Baby Trig, single mommy Bristol, and husband Todd? What are they doing while Sarah is taking on the liberal establishment and reclaiming feminism? Who is holding down the home fort?

We hear a lot about Deborah today, but not so much about Jael. Some friends just had their fifth baby the other day, and her middle name is Jael. That same day, I was in a store and the young woman who was the clerk had a name tag that said, “Jael.” I commented on it and told her about my friends’ baby. The clerk, who sported several tattoos, was touched and told me her parents named her for the woman in the Bible, and she said she needed to go back and read the story again. I encouraged her to do so.

Do you know the story? After Deborah rallied the troops and encouraged General Barak to stop hiding behind her skirts to go after the Canaanites (she did NOT go into battle herself), the Israelites kicked their numerous behinds (i.e., “routed their troops”), and the enemy General Sisera ran for his life. Tired and scared, Sisera was given refuge by a woman named Jael, who lured him into her tent with assurances of safety. She kindly offered him a glass of warm milk, which every woman knows has soporific effects, and this time was no different. Soon he was sawing the logs, and Jael put an end to him with a tent peg to the temple. It’s not a story often told in Sunday schools, which may be why Deborah is more well-known than Jael.

This tale set in the context of a time of great turmoil and apostasy in Israel begins and ends with a woman. Deborah herself pointed out the irony of victory coming at the hand of a woman. Not exactly an imprimatur for future generations of women leaders. And the second woman stayed home and finished the job, using her domestic skills to foil the enemy. Imagine that.

What is it we are wanting to accomplish? Do we want to address symptoms or causes in our quest to set things straight? First we need to agree on which picture is true and which is distorted. We need to portray a lovely picture of the blessings of being a woman at home, having babies, being content as the helpmeet rather than taking the lead. We need to understand the great power in that privileged position and see God’s great providence at work as He brings opportunity knocking at our door, without the need to gallivant about looking for greener pastures or quixotic quests. Faithful service over a couple generations will generate greater hope and change than dozens of political campaigns filled with the same old platitudes, wrapped in a different package for a new crop of gullible voters.

We need more Jaels, not Deborahs.

I worked for United Airlines for 15 years as a Customer Service agent and as a member of ground support personnel. As you can imagine, during my time working w/ a Airline I met all kinds of people from all kinds of nationalities, faiths, and cultures. One chap I remember was a Hindu name Kartik Bavishi. Kartik and I established a good working friendship. I thought he was hilarious in his quips and observations and he thought I needed to learn how to market myself. Kartik was a good guy to know because for whatever reason he had the ability to find incredibly insane deals. I remember once on a vacation trip to the East Coast he secured a car rental for us at the price of $5.00 per day. To this day I have no idea how he did that.

Once while having a conversation Kartik said to me in his still heavily Indian accent, “Bret, I believe in Jesus.” To which I replied, Yeah, but you also believe in every other god that I could name as well.” He laughed his crazy Indian laugh and noted that he couldn’t fool me.

Here is the point at which I am driving. I can have all kinds of friendships. I can think, on a personal level, that people are great to hang out with and laugh together. I would have no problem going to a Ball game and drinking a beer with the Dali Lama or the leader of the first Church of the Unitarian, Universalist Sophia worshipers, or the most liberal member of the PCUSA. I could honestly think they are “nice” people, but after the last out of the last inning was recorded and after the last drop of the last beer had been polished off I could not subscribe to their theology and would have to earnestly and imploringly plead with them to repent. I could and would laugh with them, cry with them, commiserate with them and have compassion on them regarding life circumstances that come their way but still, at the end of the day, my plea with them would be to repent.

Kartik, had a different worldview then I did. Where he was inconsistent w/ his worldview we could have touchstones of real common grace commonality and so we could laugh together, debate together, and have compassion on one another, but my touchstone of real common grace commonality w/ Kartik never allowed me to soften my insistence toward him that he must repent and trust Jesus Christ as his savior, even though by his own sincere admission “he believed in Jesus.”

Instinctively liking Kartik the way I did, it could have been easy for me to not to grate on the friendship by insisting that his worldview was not Christian even though he was a nice chap. It might have been easy to ignore the whole issue of Kartik’s alien worldview which had him doing the most unethical of things. (He used to tell me all the time that I should come to the mini-mart gas station, of which he was the manager, and get some free gas that he could just mark up as his allotted “drive off” quota for the month.) Obviously though, such action would not have been faithful to Kartik and more importantly it would not have been faithful to Jesus Christ.

Of course the same principles apply to those who know Jesus in a strange way. We can and do have friends w/ all manners of people who are not Reformed and still are, in a tangential sense, “Christian.” We can break bread with them, laugh with them, have them over for cookouts, but at some point, if we are going to be faithful to them and faithful to Jesus Christ, we must tell them, in whatever manner it is done, that they have need to repent. To be perfectly honest, they should be of the same mindset in their thinking regarding us. They should, be thinking to themselves, “What can I say or do that will help this person to see their egregious error in their thinking and worldview and repent.”

The tenor of the times however is contrary to this. We live in a “don’t rock the boat world,” where no culture is wrong culture … culture just is. Living in that kind of world it is almost impossible to believe that it is incumbent upon us to insist that people must repent.

Yesterday Morning we heard from the fraternal delegate of the Canadian Council of Churches. She said, during her time at the podium, “Faith leaders of the world will gather together to speak that ‘We all profess a God of life.’”

Jeremy Walker responded,

Hers is a good comment. Some are just disobedient servants. But still servants.

And Jeremy, quite w/o realizing it just identified the definitive problem w/ being able to fight in this synodical context. The words that are so often used are capable of any number of understandings depending on the Worldview in which they are placed. Now, clearly, there is no way that this woman meant what Jeremy is suggesting but certainly her words could be parsed to mean this and so the sting taken out of them. But they clearly did not have the spin that Jeremy puts upon them which was confirmed later.

So much of the language works this way. I have taken to calling them “weasel words.” The worldview (Cultural Marxism in my estimation) driving the whole agenda lies well below the surface and so there is no ability to get a grip on what is being done. Words and Christian jargon are used to promote an agenda that is, for the most part, quite anti-Christ. People hear the words (justice, social justice, equity, fairness, etc.) and they automatically assume that these words are resting in a Christian worldview. However, when you see the issues you recognize a pattern that is all informed by cultural Marxism. (Those are issues like, Women in office, Gender Inclusive language, Belhar Confession, Climate Change, Immigration Reform that is leaning towards Amnesty and I would contend the erasure of borders, Theistic evolution, etc.) All of these issues like so many beams and timbers set aside to build one particular house, are crafted and shaped to be fit together to build one particular kind of Church that might be known as

“The Church of Cultural Marxism that has a coating of Christian jargon paint.”

The worldview lies below the surface. It never shows its face. It is like trying to wrestle w/ a incorporeal ghost. There is nothing to get a handle on. One is left therefore w/ having to make two arguments to two types of people. The first type won’t get your argument if you made it because there is no way that somebody unfamiliar with the subject matter (The intricate details of how a worldview works and how this worldview is other than Christian) can absorb all that needs to be absorbed in order to get. This is not to suggest that many of these types of people are not bright. Many of them are extraordinarily bright. They are like Van Til’s buzz that cuts sharply but at the wrong angle. The second type of people don’t want to get your argument because they know your argument and they are quite aware what they are doing.

The two arguments you have to make to these two types of people are,

1.) The language isn’t doing in these documents what you think it is doing. That word there “justice” really means “injustice.” That word there “equity” really means “inequity,” etc. etc. etc.

2.) Then you have to go into the Macro issues of worldview thinking and cultural Marxism to explain the worldview that is making the words mean other than what most of the people think they mean.

And you have to do all this in mere minutes…. sometimes seconds.

Most of these people are really quite well intentioned. They have been duped. On the whole they are a very “nice” people. I have been touched by the personal generosity of one of the people I describe here who has gone out of his way to show me kindness knowing how utterly frustrated I am. As I said … I have genuinely been touched by his kindness, but having said that, he still doesn’t understand what is going on and at this time and in this place he does not have the tools to possibly understand.

I believe that there are a few in leadership that are epistemologically self-conscious about what they are doing. I had a conversation with one of them privately that did not end well. May God have mercy on the souls of those who are quite aware of what they are doing.

30 minutes to the start of this last days “plenary session.” I will be filing a minority report on the women in office issues and I will be speaking in favor of allowing Churches to cross geographical boundary lines in order to go to other Classis who they believe are more sympathetic to their theological views.

There is, in the Church in America today, a profession of a love for Jesus that is in reality a masquerade for a self-loathing and self-hatred that stems from the conviction that White, Western, Male and traditionally Christian is the fountain head of all that is evil in the world. This pseudo-love for Jesus expresses itself as a love for others who are non-White, non-Western, feminist female, and marxist-Christian but in reality this faux love that seeks the advantage of the non-White, non-Westerner, feminist female, and marxist Christian is in reality an attempt, based on a overwhelming sense of unrelieved guilt, to provide a self-atonement by means of ethno-cide.

This kind of behavior is expressed in the countless ways that different expressions of the Church are advocating wealth redistribution away from the West to the non-West, and from a people still limned as Christian to a people who are certainly not historically Reformed, nor possibly even Christian. Whether it is the pursuit to continue to combine illegal immigration with a unfettered entitlement culture or the pursuit of junk science claims of anthropogenic global warming that end up de-funding the West in favor of the non-West or whether it is pursuit of gender neutral language that seek to emasculate the traditional male in favor of the Feminist female. It doesn’t matter that such attempts have never worked to enrich those who have funds redistributed in their direction, or that attempts to empower women have consistently, in the long run, ended with women being hurt and embittered and men becoming effeminate and without courage. All that matters is that the ongoing attempt to provide self-atonement for the perceived and conjured sins of some imaginary wicked past that is being carried as a great burden, and which serve as the foundation of the self-loathing.

What makes this self-loathing and self-hatred – this attempt at self-atonement – so insidious and reviling is that it is wrapped in Jesus talk. This self-loathing and self-hatred is made to appear that it is the very love of Jesus that has Western “Christians” immolating themselves in favor of non-Western non-Christians. What makes this self-loathing and self-hatred so sad is that it cannot help either non-Westerners who need the Gospel nor Westerners who are re-defining the Gospel to mean self-destruction. The result of this re-defining of Christianity will be death both for those it is intended to help as well as death for those who are doing the “helping.”

With this self-loathing, wrapped in happy Jesus talk, comes the death of the West by means of the pursued self-atonement that demands the West’s death in favor of the non-West in order to find some elusive forgiveness for past evils. The person who questions this self-loathing “Christianity” is the selfish, racist, bigot, sexist, hater of Jesus who is only trying to keep everything for himself. Even when that accusation is met with the reasoned reply that if our house is burned down we can not help those who are homeless, it is insisted with some kind of reply that amounts to “equity demands that true love for others means we burn down our own homes.”

This is not to say that the West has not had its share of sins. Nor is it even to say that the West has not often played the role of the oppressor. It is to say that for all its crimes and sins, the West, because of the past influence of Biblical Christianity, has exceeded every other culture that can be named in providing a context where people can live with the dignity that being made in the image of God demands.

However, though I believe that with God all things are possible, I also believe a fair reading of the times indicates that the self-loathers are going to succeed in tearing down the West. Then it will be seen to be true what Winston Churchill once said of Socialism,

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Minority Report – Regarding Overture 19 – Advisory Committee #9

Motion – That overture 19, “Revise Biblical-Theological Argumentation That Presents Evidence in Favor of Ordination of Women Ministers, Elders, and Ministry Associates be acceded to by Synod 2010.

Grounds

A.) That the recommendation of the advisory committee did not deal with the substance of overture 19. The majority report’s ground #1 suggests that overture 19 is seeking to overturn the entire Biblical-Theological defense of women in office when in point of fact overture 19 only seeks accuracy in the interpretation in defining kephale and authentein.

B.) That even though the Biblical Theological rational that was approved by Synod 2000, as one of two possible Biblically defensible positions, there is still a need for the denomination’s articulated position to be accurate.

Respectfully Submitted,

Harry Frielink
Bret L. McAtee

Minority Report – Committee to Study the Migration of Workers (Advisory Committee #9)

Motion 1: That recommendation “I” of the committee report (Agenda, p. 566) that was adopted by the majority report that originally read,

“That synod, mindful of the need for governments to create and enforce laws that protect the security and integrity of a given nation’s borders, nevertheless encourage congregations and church members to support the need for comprehensive immigration reform in ways that will reduce the number of people without status and/or non-status workers and provide increased opportunities for immigrants to gain legal status within the nation.”

Be altered to read,

“That synod, mindful of the need for congregations and church members to support the need for comprehensive immigration reform in ways that will reduce the number of people without status and/or non-status workers while advocating for the adequate number of needed legal immigrants with legal status within the nation, nevertheless encourages governments to create and enforce laws that protect the security and integrity of a given nation’s borders.”

Grounds,

The report repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of compassion to the alien over against an emphasis for the necessity of maintaining and respecting appropriate immigration law. By changing “I” to read as is offered above, a balance begins to be restored to the committee report that honours the tension between the necessity of compassion for aliens and strangers and the necessity of compassion for the current citizenry who rightfully expect the protection given by Sovereign nation-states which includes borders that have integrity and are secure.

The problem with recommendation “I” (Agenda, p. 566) as it is original expression is that its emphasis, in the spirit of much of the report, views the necessity for compassionate action in a unilateral direction. Recommendation “I” (Agenda, p. 566) rightly calls for action that directs compassion towards the illegal immigrant but, like much of the rest of the report, says comparatively little about the necessity for compassionate action, in a multilateral fashion, towards citizens who likewise stand in need of compassion as a result of illegal immigration.

Classis Toronto Communication #2 states,

“The church abides in a wider community, a community that provides security, freedom, and order from which the church benefits and is able to pursue its mission.”

Recommendation “I,” (Agenda, p. 566) like much of the rest of the report, calls for compassionate action in regards to illegal immigrants but it says comparatively little, like much of the rest of the report, of the need of nations to compassionately establish laws for the protection and need of its own people who live in the “wider community” that the Classis Toronto communication brings to the fore (compare the comments of Peter C. Meilaender in Agenda, p. 559 paragraph 2-3). The adoption of the suggested motion for the new language of “I,” adjusts that imbalance.

Respectfully Submitted,

Bret L. McAtee – Classis Lake Erie

“Although we witness to the powers-that-be & may advocate for certain policies, we do not want to act as though our goal is a ‘Christian nation modeled on the theocracy of ancient Israel.”

From Biblical-Theological background for position on the treatment of illegal immigrants at local churches

CRC Synod Agenda

Committee participation

Bret

Question

Is our goal to be a Christian nation?

Answer - No, Our Kingdom is not of this world.”

Bret

Observation - Then if our goal is to not be a Christian nation therefore all that is left is a goal that our nation would be non-Christian, right?

Answer - “No.”

Bret

Huh?

Now this is coming from people whose motto is …. “Transforming lives and communities worldwide.”

So, we are for “Transforming lives and communities worldwide,” but we are against the goal of a nation being transformed from non-Christian to Christian?

Now, some contended, “Well, we only want to speak as the Church to these issues.” I quite understand that but it should still be the goal of every Christian that the Gospel would have such impact among his countrymen that the nation itself could be rightly considered Christian.

I then asked … “If our goal is to be a Christian nation then what is that Christian nation modeled on except Ancient Israel? What other theocracy do we model a Christian nation on if not the theocracy of ancient Israel?:

Answer,

The laws of Old Testament Israel are not for today.

I also learned that the metaphors of salt and light are soft metaphors that indicate that we should not be to belligerent in our contending for Christ. I thought … “you know … I’m not to sure how soft and non-belligerent darkness considers light to be when the light is beating the stuffing out of darkness’s attempt to smother everything.

I guess soft people discover soft metaphors.

In the kicking off our committee work were watched a power-point presentation on the differences that obtain between cultures. It was really pretty standard stuff. the presentation was kicked off w/ this comment.

1.)"No culture is the right culture.”

Later in the presentation it was made clear that,

2.) “Worldview produces culture.”

So, when the discussion time came, I asked if no culture is the right culture and if worldview produces culture is it not inevitably the case that no worldview is the right worldview? I asked how this was not cultural relativism.

Initially there was merely silence. I never got an answer.

Now, understand, I was not arguing that the current Western culture is the “right culture.” I gave instances of practices in other cultures where we ought to be able to affirm make for “wrong culture.” I queried about the cultural practices that find women being forced to walk two steps behind the men, or widows being burned on funeral pyres w/ their deceased husband and still I was met with, “well, to them that is the right thing to do.”

I asked if there is such a thing as a universal standard by which to measure culture. To be honest, I don’t know if anybody affirmed that. But if one honestly believes that “no culture is the right culture … culture just is” how can there be any universal standard by which to measure culture?

Finally, someone did pipe up and say that there can be differing instantiations of biblical culture. And I agree with that. But that was not what the presentation was pushing and that was not what the people in the room were saying. Somebody else offered that there is one Super-culture that we can universally impose on people. Again, I agree with that but the problem I’m having here is that I’ve never seen a formerly Hindu culture that is now Christian or a formerly Muslim culture that is now Christian. However, I have read of Western cultures through time that were formerly Christian and so that is the only (imperfect) model of which I know. So, the only super-model I have for Biblical Culture is Western because in no other part of the world has the culture been so imbued with Biblical Christianity. As such, all I can continue to say is that Western culture has been more right than cultures of many non Western cultures – not because Westerners are made of better dirt but only because God, for whatever reasons, has given greater effusions of unmerited grace to the West.

What this means is that the West thus has greater responsibility in being the herald of Christ to unbelieving cultures. This is not only a great responsibility but a grave one as well. It is a responsibility that can not and will not be met if we in the West continue to say silly things like, “no culture is the right culture.”

I pressed on in this conversation trying to come the issue from another direction. I asked,

“If no culture is the right culture and if the position that no culture is the right culture itself produces a culture that believes that no culture is the right culture is it not the case that we are asserting that the right culture is the culture that asserts that no culture is the right culture.”

Somebody asked me to repeat that. I did so and was met w/ initial silence.

Somebody did eventually say that cultural relativism was not what was being advocated. But I would be willing to bet a great sum of money that this is a case where the same person affirms two contradictory truths together. On the one hand they would affirm that “no culture is the right culture” while on the other hand they would affirm that “cultural relativism is not true.”

I would contend that all of this is a sign of how post-modernism in a very practical way is seeping down into the crevices of our Christian being. The crashing together of cultures that is increasingly a part of our day to day landscapes have rendered us impotent to adjudicate between cultures. We have had drummed into us so thoroughly that we must respect other cultures that we have begun to conclude that we must respect the pagan belief systems that drive other cultures, or alternately, we are completely missing that culture is theology dependent and theology driven. We are missing the reality that culture is naught but theology incarnated and that in as much as a culture is wicked in that much their theology is wicked. It is one thing to say that we must respect the food, clothing, or quaint habits of other cultures. It is quite another thing to make the leap from that position to suggest that “no culture is the right culture … that culture just is.”

I would contend that culture is the issue of evangelism before us in the 21st century. If we really believe that no culture is the right culture then what are the implications of that belief for the demand that all men everywhere repent? If repentance has cultural implications (personal culture, family culture, corporate cultures, ethnic cultures, national cultures) then personal repentance and faith in Christ by necessary and inevitable logic demands that those cultures change. It is not only individuals that are sinful but it is also the cultures that those individuals incarnate and build that are sinful. How can we call people to trust in the risen, ascended, and ruling Christ if we are not at the same time calling them to repent in such a way that has impact on the cultures that they build?

No …. all cultures are not equal. Cultures are better or worse as they conform to the norm of Scripture.

1.) We dealt with the issue of illegal immigration today. Well, kind of… We were given a committee report that we were to analyze but the the struggle was that on one hand we were told that we were only to think of illegal immigration in terms of the local church as it comes across illegal immigrants who are hurting and in need, while on the other hand there was all kinds of language about the necessity to advocate for social justice and immigration reform. However, the advocacy and reform parts were amorphous and vague, but the language that was used to describe advocacy was language that is often associated with Marxist categories (i.e. – “social justice") I had a sense that the language of the report touching the call to “advocacy,” “social justice,” “immigration Reform,” “fairness,” “equitable” and other such verbiage was kept purposely undefined and blob-like in order to keep concrete objections from being raised as to just exactly what those things look like. Everybody agrees that something needs to be done about illegal immigration. That is easy to say and agree upon, however division easily arises when we begin to concretely argue what that looks like. So, we run the flag of Reform up the flagpole and salute it but nobody really knows what it is we are saluting.

For example, I heard one person pray that President Obama would keep his word about immigration Reform. Now, I know that Obama is pursuing a globalist, Corportist, marxist-like immigration reform that includes amnesty. I want immigration Reform as well but the last kind of immigration Reform that I would find being in harmony w/ Scripture is what Obama wants to give us. Consequently, when the vote for immigration reform comes up both people who have diametrically opposed convictions on what that looks like both vote “yes” and then kick it to a Denominational agency that is officially responsible for advocacy. That agency can now say, We have a mandate to advocate, and can clothe their advocacy in the garments of Synod’s approval but I do not approve in the slightest in what I believe their advocacy is going to be.

When that point is raised then we are told …. “well, we must trust the experts on these matters. That is why the denomination has them. They are professionals and trained on these issues.” Well, I don’t trust the professionals to do what is right because more often than not when I meet an expert I meet someone who has been trained upon humanistic presuppositions. I don’t trust their expertise because I see to many weasel words in this document that are to easily used to hide and obfuscate intent and I see hints at globalist intentions.

It kept being said that we need to show compassion to illegal immigrants. I found it hard to believe that there really was a necessity to tell Christian churches to have compassion on illegal immigrants in need. I mean are there really Christian Churches that would not offer basic Christian compassion if they came across a illegal immigrant family who were starving or who were injured?

I’m all for giving the “least of these,” a cold drink. I am all for the least of these being treated by Christian standards when they are caught for their criminal activity of illegal entry. I am all for extending to those who profess Christ Word & Sacrament. Were I in their shoes, and lived in their countries I would likewise hazard all to escape those conditions. These are all truths when the issue of immigration is considered on a micro scale.

However on a macro scale, I am not for amnesty for 15 million or so illegal immigrants. Such a move only increases the likelihood that we will lose the notions of sovereignty and become what we are already tending towards and that is a “universal nation.” I oppose the balkanization that such a policy would officially create. Nations cannot exist unless they have a core self-identity and when that core self-identity is missing and the only thing that holds people together are economic relationships a nation is created that can only be held together by force of arms when economic hardships inevitably arise.

The issue of “love” was constantly returned to and the climate was created that if you opposed illegal immigration (or even used the phrase “illegal immigrant") you were not “loving.” However, I alone tried to bring up the issue of love as it moves in other directions. Is it really loving to the illegal immigrant to create conditions in this country by our immigration policy that may very well recreate the conditions in this country that he fled from in his country in order to come here? It is loving to potential immigrants who want to emigrate here and have been trying to do so legally to pursue a policy that rewards people who came here illegally while leaving those who have sought to come here legally waiting for a turn that may never come? Is it loving to our children and grandchildren to bequeath to them a country that no longer has a common culture and identity? Is it loving to our posterity to basically disinherit them in favor of the stranger and the alien – most of whom are not Christian? Is it loving to those whose property is being destroyed and whose lives are being threatened by continuing to support illegal immigration? Is it love to God to support an alien invasion? We certainly would not think it loving if these invaders came w/ guns in order to re-colonize and yet if they come in such dense numbers that re-colonization happens anyway is it loving to support that?

2.) Constantly we were informed that the issue that we were looking at was only local church specific. Constantly we were told that the only reason for the committee was to affirm the necessity of compassion. Constantly we were told that we “were not the US Congress and we were not gathered to fix illegal immigration.” That is fine and I understand the impossibility of a called committed in 8 hours to solve all the problems that are implied in illegal immigration. Yet, after being constantly told we were not to try to solve the problem of illegal immigration we were asked to affirm,

“That synod, mindful of the need for governments to create and enforce
laws that protect the security and integrity of a given nation’s borders, nevertheless
encourage congregations and church members to support the need for comprehensive immigration reform in ways that will reduce the number of people without status and/or non-status workers and provide increased opportunities for immigrants to gain legal status within the nation.”

So, after constantly having the door shut in our face in trying to discuss the macro issues surrounding illegal immigration (and I understand why that needed to be done given time constraints) we are asked to endorse a particular macro type of approach.

Notice that while the first sentence gives a nod to the need for national integrity and the actions that are needed to foster national integrity the emphasis lies on action that would lead to the increased dissolution of national integrity.

Once again, I would say that by pursuing a policy that provides increased opportunities for illegal immigrants to gain legal status within the nation that what is being communicated is that if you break the laws there are comparatively few consequences to your actions. Second, such an action once again rewards those who have acted illegally and punishes those who are patiently waiting in line seeking to gain legal status before they come to this country. Thirdly, such an action will only encourage more illegal immigrants to come since such an action communicates that legal status can be gained after they arrive. Such an action of providing legal status after the fact only encourages people to come illegally.

I was the only person to vote against this recommendation.

3.) I also voted against this recommendation along with one other person,

“That synod instruct the Board of Trustees to encourage the Office of
Social Justice and Hunger Action and the Canadian Committee for Contact with the Government, in collaboration with their denominational and nondenominational
partners, to engage in, as a priority, policy development and advocacy strategies that will lead to immigration reform and the enactment of fair, just, and equitable laws regarding those without status in Canada and the United States.”

The reason I voted against this is that this is far to indefinite of a mandate to give to denominational agencies that will be collaborating w/ other people synod doesn’t know in order to craft policy upon which synod is giving no concrete guidance. Will the denominational agencies do for illegal immigration policy what they are seeking to do w/ Climate change proposals?

I do not trust bureaucrats and bureaucracies to get policy right. Hence, I do not believe in merely turning over policy to unknown bureaucrats to arrive at positions they think are “fair, just, and equitable.”

1.) The “melting pot” metaphor may have been appropriate when immigration came largely from Europe, with similar languages, religious beliefs, political cultures, and moral and social values. Today it doesn’t since immigration is coming largely from countries which have never been a part of Western Christendom. As immigrants today are coming from countries which had a different organizing religious motif the differences in their concepts of culture, social order, moral and social beliefs turns the metaphor from “melting pot” to a “tossed salad,” where none of the constituent parts of the salad compliment one another.

Today not only do the fragments in the pot not melt into the common
history and common culture of this country, they openly and deliberately reject that common history and common culture as “racist” and exclusive. Immigrants, in particular Hispanics, who make up the largest component, now have the numbers to thumb their noses at the common history and common culture and the very suggestion that they should assimilate to it. Soon they will have the numbers to kick the common culture into the gutters.

2.) Referring to illegal aliens as “undocumented workers,” is like referring to prostitutes as part time unmarried wives or to Drug dealers as unlicensed pharmacists. Second, what percentage of undocumented workers are workers? Many of these illegal aliens are here precisely because in being here they don’t have to work thanks to our entitlement culture. They could just as easily be referred to as undocumented non-workers.

Economist, Milton Friedman once said, “it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.” As long as the entitlement culture in this country goes un-reformed the embrace of untrammeled immigration is a sure guarantee, to a country that already is in arrears to the tune of trillions of dollars, of total financial collapse. Adding up all unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Government sponsored pension funds gives us a figure slightly in excess of $100 TRILLION dollars. Amnesty for illegal immigrants without entitlement reform is national suicide.

3.) God’s law does require benevolent treatment of aliens but it also puts some fences up around how far that benevolent treatment goes. God was not interested in seeing Israel become pagan in order to accommodate the immigrant Canaanite.

For those who invoke the necessity to welcome the strangers and alien apart from considering how Israel structured the rest of their “social order” in order to maintain its uniquely religious character is to severely distort what Scripture teaches on immigration. In old Testament Israel, there were apparently no restrictions on outsiders becoming residents of the larger society. If they did not become part of the OT church by circumcision, they were still protected by the law. HOWEVER, they did not have the same rights of full participation in the civil government as Israelites. From this we learn that in a fully theonomic society immigration may be open, but citizenship (including voting and office holding) must be closed until such a time that said immigrant would make confession of faith.

In a modern pluralistic nation (such as the US), the principle may be partially applied by allowing open immigration while restricting the rights and privileges of citizenship in the civil order. The reason this would be done is to try and preserve a common culture.
Now, naturally, the dilemma then become which culture to preserve? There is no principled way to determine this in the context of pluralism. Some Americans propose “Americanism.” However, in a pluralistic culture what does such a thing really mean?

As far as I am concerned the alien is welcome to be here as long as the alien doesn’t present a clear and present danger to our culture. The alien does currently present this clear and present danger w/ their criminal activities (35% of those in Federal Prisons are illegal immigrants), with their swamping of the entitlement system, by the intent of Caesar to use the alien to continue the balkanization process that allows the State to retain its status as the entity that is need to forcefully keep the peace, and by the certainty that illegal aliens are being used to facilitate a transfer of wealth to the mega Wealthy.

The state is effectively electing a new people w/ the immigration policy it is pursuing. Indeed, given what is happening with our porous borders it is more fitting for us to speak of invasion then of immigration.

Only by reliance on Biblical ethics can immigration and a common culture be reconciled. Biblical ethics alone can create a common internal Christian culture w/o necessarily restricting immigration.

4.) There is sometimes a tendency to tell the story of the struggling illegal immigrant, thus seeking to pull on the heartstrings of the Christian. However, if we are going to cast narratives then others stories need to be told as well.

What of the story of one Rancher who testified that 300 to 1200 people a day come across his ranch vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles and property, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles.

What of the story of a second rancher who testified that, daily, drugs are brought across his ranch in a military operation. A point man with a machine gun goes in front, 1/2 mile behind are the guards fully armed, 1/2 mile behind them are the drugs, behind the drugs 1/2 mile are more guards.

These ranchers listen to gun fire during the night. It is not safe for them to leave their families family alone on the ranch and they can’t leave the ranch for fear of nothing being left when they come back.

Narratives touching illegal immigration must not only tell the story of the oppression of the illegal immigrant (an oppression that often comes with the territory of being an outlaw) but narratives must also tell the stories of the increased kidnapping going on in illegal immigrant points of entry, stories of the lives and property of Ranchers threatened, the narratives of the inner city youth who can’t find work because illegal immigrants are taking work that would otherwise be available, the narrative of a social safety net infrastructure that is nigh unto the point of collapsing due to the added demands by illegal immigration, the narrative of Americans fearful that they are going to be disinherited from their own homeland, the narrative of the ongoing balkanization of these united States as illegal immigration threatens to set this country ablaze with conflicts of interests among the various un-homogenized cultures.

The Narrative of the struggling illegal immigrant should certainly be told but so should the narratives of those impacted by the illegal immigrant.

“Miracles do not cluster. Hold on to the Constitution of the united States of America and the Republic for which it stands – what has happened once in six thousand years may never happen again. Hold on to your Constitution, for if the American Constitution shall fail there will be anarchy throughout the world.”

Daniel Webster
19th Century US Congressman

The Constitution is primarily a document concerned w/ structure and process. It specifies and details who is to exercise what powers and how those powers get exercised. It is a body of law, given not so much so as to govern the people as to govern the government, and it is a body of law written in order to be accessible to the people so that they might easily know whether or not it is being obeyed. It is most certainly not a document that set out to achieve a certain kind of society based on natural rights, social justice, egalitarian hopes, or democracy. It had no societal end in view, understanding that such societal ends were to be left to the sovereign states. What we have done w/ our Constitution is a complete perversion and violation of the original intent of the framers and the ratifiers.

And so we should expect anarchy to be released upon the world.

Declaration F of the 1991 Decision on Creation & Science

“The church declares, moreover, that the clear teaching of Scripture and of our confessions on the uniqueness of human beings as imagebearers of God rules out the espousal of all theorizing that posits the reality of evolutionary forebears of the human race.”

Acts of Synod – 1991

“The church would be better served simply to remain silent on this issue. Overture to remove declaration F of the 1991 Decision on Creation and Science”

2010 Overture From Classis Rocky Mountain

When T. H. Huxley (Darwin’s Bulldog) campaigned for evolution he did not argue for Darwin’s theory (which he soft pedaled in his debates) but what he championed was the principle of pagan evolutionism as a “reasonable” explanation for life that could putatively stand against the Christian teaching of creationism. Darwin’s theory of evolution has for its reason for existence a denial of creation. Yet, despite this reality the Christian Reformed Church has before it an overture, beholden to concepts of theistic evolution, to no longer disallow the teaching that man descended from evolutionary for-bearers. The very life of Darwin’s theory, as promulgated by the chief advocate for Darwin, was that it provided for non-theistic explanations for life. Now, however the Church is seeking to to take Darwin’s theory and combine it w/ Creation. Huxley must be laughing in his grave for Huxley has won when Christians think it necessary to appeal to the theory of their enemy in order to explain and justify their Cosmology.

This appeal to allow the Church to teach that man descended from evolutionary fore-bearers completely misses the reality that particles-to-people evolution continues to be, after over a hundred years of opportunity to settle the science, an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture. The fossil record that Darwin earnestly believed would substantiate his hypothesis has failed to materialize, (thus leading to theories of punctuated equilibrium) and despite the hypothesis’ necessary key premise that mutations increase genetic information thus eventually leading to species advance, we have yet to find a mutation that increases genetic information, even in those rare instances where the mutation confers an advantage.

Also, there is the necessity to take into consideration, as the CRC discusses this issue, that in the 1960’s the mathematicians acquired mainframe computers, and some of them, having taken a look at neo-Darwinian theory, reached the conclusion that random genetic events combined with the demands of survival could not possibly account for the enormous complexity of life. Marcel Shutzenberger, a mathematician from the University of Paris asserts that computers are capable of calculating the probabilities of evolutionary theory, and as a result, the theory is shown not to work. At the very least, the mathematicians have shown us that the science is far from settled on Darwin’s or the neo-Darwinian hypothesis.

But, in the interest of fair play, the mathematicians should give the evolutionist the benefit of every consideration. So, assume that, at each mutational step, there is equally as much chance for it to be good as bad. Thus, the probability for the success of each mutation is assumed to be one out of two, or one-half. Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then (½)200, or one chance out of 1060. The number 1060, if written out, would be “one” followed by sixty “zeros.” In other words, the chance that a 200-component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion! Lest anyone think that a 200-part system is unreasonably complex, it should be noted that even a one-celled plant or animal may have millions of molecular “parts.”

The idea that we should allow our Pastors and Professors to teach that man descended from evolutionary fore-bearers upon such astronomical permutations would require us to fall in the grips of a kind of “secular” fundamentalism where the interest of science is thrown overboard in the interest of autonomous ideological (dare we say religious?) authority. Even teaching origins that God breathed life into a mud doll would be scientifically preferable to the amount of wishful thinking it takes to believe in the yet unproven hypothesis of evolution, if only because that is what the Scriptures teach.

Also this desire to stand mute for the sake of not being possibly embarrassed by new revelations coming to the fore that might authoritatively disprove creationist science and the traditional historic understanding of the creation account stands in stark contrast to the call to possibly be embarrassed by new revelations that might eventually disprove global warming that this synod is being asked to approve. If we must drop the restriction that disallows us to speak of man descending from evolutionary forbears, then why are we being asked to embrace a restriction that forces us to speak of climate change?

“One can very well hear God’s voice through Scripture just fine without the AHA, but you will never understand Scripture as it actually is if you think the meaning you see in it is “in there.” Meaning is not “in” a text. Meaning is a function of the way words are used by readers. The meaning of the Bible is not in the Bible. It is in the reader of the Bible.

If the reader of the Bible reads the words with the assumptions of common Christian faith, they will read it as Scripture. They will read it Christianly. If a person reads it with their denominational assumptions, they will read it and see the teachings of their denominations. And if one reads it in terms of the assumptions of the original contexts of each text, then one will read in it in terms of what it actually and originally meant.”

1.) Ken Schenck has given us a text in which, according to his own testimony, has no meaning in it. There is no meaning in this text. The only meaning in the text that Ken has given us here is a meaning of how I, the reader, use the words. Though it should be kept in mind that given Ken’s understanding, Ken has not really given us any meaning but only words in which we bring meaning.

So given that reality, the meaning I, the sovereign reader, find in this text is that “there is a need to pick up some Hairspray for Cinco-De-Maya day festival, condoms for party favors, hair glue for that stand up finish, and horses for pool dipping excuses.”

Now, of course everyone thinks that silly but there is a point that I am making here and that is that in order for Ken Schenck’s postmodern interpretive process to get off the ground he is assuming what he denies to be the case. He is assuming some kind of static meaning in what he writes that is decipherable and yet he wants to deny that same static meaning to be found in other texts.

Second, on this score, clearly as an author trying to communicate with a reader, Schenck would not want someone to do such interpretive damage to what he has written and yet that is a legitimate outcome according to his hermeneutic. Once the author is dead, there are no limits on where the sovereign reader can take a text.

2.) Schenck denies that there is meaning in the text but still insists that God’s voice can be heard in Scripture. Clearly the question is, “How.” Whatever voice of whatever god that Schenck is hearing in the text is a God and a voice that has no connection to God has author of the text. The advocacy of hearing God’s voice through Scripture in such a theory can only be the hearing of a completely objectively unknowable god. Schenck has given us the mystical hearing of gods voice that one might find in the writings of Meister Eckhart.

3.) Note that Schenck still writes about “understanding Scripture as it actually is,” as if the text of Scripture has some stable objective meaning that can be appealed to. And yet such a statement is in clear contradiction to everything else Schenck writes in these two paragraphs. If meaning is what the reader invents and has no correlation to any authorial intent then there is no understanding Scripture as it actually is because there is no Scripture that objectively is apart from a plethora of potentially differing sovereign readers.

4.) For all I’ve said so far, it must be conceded that meaning is not isolated to the text. In order for meaning to be realized there has to be a confluence of the authors intent w/ the readers understanding. The text does have objective meaning but if the subject who is reading the text never arrives at that meaning, meaning has not been achieved for the subject and remains dormant in the text and unrealized in the reader.

5.) It is curious that Schenck would admit that “Meaning is a function of the way words are used by readers,” and yet not simultaneously realize that meaning also is a function of the way words are used by writers. Still, we have to realize that for Schenck, the author is dead.

6.) Schenck tells us that we must get to the assumptions of the original contexts in order to get to what was actually and originally meant. This is either subterfuge or ignorance on Schenck’s part for it it simply is the case that according to Schenck’s own paradigm it is impossible to get to the assumptions of the original contexts since it is only by means of texts that have no inherent meaning that one can explore the assumptions of the original contexts. If only texts can give original contexts and if no text has meaning that the reader does not bring then how can original contexts give us assumptions that informed texts?

7.) Note that for Schenck that God has author has completely disappeared. One can read the text w/ Christian assumptions and so come up w/ Christian meaning. One can read the text with Denominational assumptions and so come up w/ denominational meanings. And in a contradictory voice (see #6) Schenck writes that one can read the text with originalist assumptions and come up w/ originalist meanings. However, what Schenck never says is that the text can be read w/ God’s assumptions and so one can come up with God’s meaning of the text.

8.) Now having said all this, I would insist that arriving at God’s meaning in the text is not a “science.” I do think that arriving at God’s meaning in the text is as much intuitive as it is following some kind of 10 step method. However, in order for the intuitive to work our intuitions have to be trained by a ordered process. Much like before an acclaimed artist can break the boundaries of his art, thus creating true masterpieces, so the Maestro Biblical interpreter will break the boundaries of his circumscribing methodologies and discover truths in God’s word that others will never see because he follow intuition that was formed by years of ordered process.

Schenck wants to skip all the ordered process and go straight to the Masterpiece. This is like thinking that a 5 year old just beginning to learn the violin will create some masterpiece.

Schenck’s methodology is going to give us a generation of men in the pulpit that are just as idiotic as he is.

“We, members of the Micah Network1, gathering together from 38 countries on all five continents, met at Limuru, Kenya, from 13–18 July 2009 for its 4th Triennial Global Consultation. On the matter of Creation Stewardship and Climate Change, we sought God’s wisdom and cried out for the Holy Spirit’s guidance as we reflected on the global environmental crisis. As a result of our discussions, reflections and prayers, we make the following declaration:

3.) We, however, have not always been faithful stewards. Through
our ignorance, neglect, arrogance, and greed we have harmed
the earth and broken creation’s relationships (Gen. 3:13-24).
Our failure to be faithful stewards has caused the current
environmental crisis, leading to climate change, and putting
the earth’s ecosystems at risk. All creation has been subjected
to futility and decay because of our disobedience (Rom. 8:20).

6.) We acknowledge that industrialization, increased deforestation,
intensified agriculture and grazing, along with the unrestrained
burning of fossil fuels, have forced the earth’s natural systems out of balance. Rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions are causing the average global temperature to rise, with devastating impacts already being experienced, especially by the poorest and most marginalized groups. A projected temperature rise of 2°C within the next few decades will significantly alter life on earth and accelerate loss of biodiversity.

It will increase the risk and severity of extreme weather events, such as drought, flood, and hurricanes, leading to displacement and hunger. Sea levels will continue to rise, contaminating fresh water supplies and submerging island and coastal communities. We are likely to see mass migration,leading to resource conflicts. Profound changes to rainfall and snowfall, as well as the rapid melting of glaciers, will lead to more water stress and shortages for many millions of people.

7. We repent of our self-serving theology of creation and our
complicity in unjust local and global economic relationships.
We repent of those aspects of our individual and corporate
lifestyles that harm creation, and of our lack of political action.
We must radically change our lives in response to God’s indignation
and sorrow for his creation’s agony.

9.)We join with others to call on local, national, and global leaders to meet their responsibility to address climate change and
environmental degradation through the agreed intergovernmental
mechanisms and conventions and to provide the necessary resources to ensure sustainable development. Their meetings through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process must produce a fair, comprehensive, and adequate climate deal. Leaders must support the efforts of local communities to adapt to climate change and must act to protect the lives and livelihoods of those most vulnerable to the impact of environmental degradation and climate change. We recognize that among the most affected are women and girls. We call on leaders to invest in the development of new, clean technologies and energy sources and to provide adequate support to enable poor, vulnerable, and marginalized groups to use them effectively.”

Micah Declaration
Proposed to be adopted at 2010 CRC Church Synod

The 2010 CRC Synod has elected to take up the most recent science quackery dujour in order to be one more institution that supports the unsettled science of anthropogenic (man made) climate change. Climate change as you will recall used to be called global warming but in order to give the “science-ideological” community more wiggle room the term was expanded to “climate change” so that any climate disturbance could be seized upon as proof that anthropogenic climate change is true. We must keep in mind though that the recent hysteria started as “global warming.”

The reason that this is important to keep in mind is that it was only 35 short years ago that our “science-ideology” community was screeching about the onset of a new ice age that was going to destroy the planet.

“”There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change and cool dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it.” - Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

“This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.” - Lowell Ponte “The Cooling” (1976)

“The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.” - Reid Bryson, Global Ecology (1971)

“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.” - Prof. Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)

“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” - Prof. Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

“This cooling trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.” - Peter Gwynne, climatologist, Newsweek (1976)

“If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000…This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” - Kenneth Watt, Earth Day (1970)

These quotes alone ought to throw ice water (pun intended) on all the hot air (pun intended) regarding what started as the global warming hysteria, which has morphed in to the “Climate Change” hysteria.

Also, we need to keep in mind that the recent release of the e-mails of Professor Phil Jones indisputably revealed that the “science” behind the climate change hysteria has been cooked and is being manipulated and massaged by those with both an ideological agenda and a financial agenda. The infamous Jones “Hockey stick” graph was phony as Jones worked to hide the decline in the numbers that supported his position.

As we consider the Micah Declaration we provide protest and refutation to the following bullet points to the above citations,

#3 – Many renowned climatologists strongly disagree with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) conclusions about the cause and potential magnitude of Global Warming. More than 20,000 scientists have now signed the Oregon Petition which criticises the IPCC document as ‘flawed’ research and states that “any human contribution to climate change has not yet been demonstrated.” Dr Chris Landsea resigned from the IPCC because he “personally could not in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.”

The science is far far from settled that mankind has “failed to be faithful stewards thus causing the current environmental crisis, which is leading to climate change, and putting the earth’s ecosystems at risk.” Indeed, the science is far from settled that we are currently in a “environmental crisis,” or are experiencing anthropogenic climate change.

Since the science is far from settled on this issue it is not wise to implement “solutions” that can not speak to a yet unknown problem.

#6 – We do not know that industrialization, increased deforestation,
intensified agriculture and grazing, along with the unrestrained
burning of fossil fuels, have forced the earth’s natural
systems out of balance. The science on this is unsettled. We do not know that rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions are causing the average global temperature to rise. The science is unsettled on this. Indeed, there is some science being ignored as the natural emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere far exceed human contributions. Humans contribute a measly 0.035% of the total annual carbon flux. Any system that can be perturbed by such a tiny fluctuation would be very unstable indeed. The Micah declaration also ignores the fact that water vapor is by far the most dominant greenhouse gas. The atmosphere consists of 40,000 ppm of water vapor, whereas carbon dioxide weighs in at a minuscule 380 ppm. Instead the Micah declaration relies on dubious computer models that the IPCC itself admits exclude complex parts of the climate system that they don’t yet understand.

This article,

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1396&linkbox=true&position=1

by Scientist Stephen Wilde does irreparable harm to the assumptions that are guiding the Micah Declaration.

Further we do not know whether or not the projected temperature rise of 2°C within the next few decades is supported by the science, and since we do not know that we do not and can not know if any putative temperature rise will significantly alter life on earth and accelerate loss of biodiversity. Indeed, Dr. Phil Jones has admitted in interviews to,

“the absence of evidence of statistically significant global warming since 1995. Jones also said the “vast majority of climate scientists” don’t agree that the issue is settled.

What is settled is that the climate certainly has warmed considerably since 10,000 years ago (the end of the last Ice Age) — and much less since 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. No one disputes these facts. But the climate has not warmed during the past decade — in spite of the steady rise in human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. The science that finds the Micah Declaration claiming a 2 degrees Celsius increase over the next few decades is not settled.

Keep in mind this is the same kind of hysterical language that was used in the quotes above to tell us that they knew that the globe was cooling.

#7 – Concretely speaking just what changes does the Micah Declaration envision when it calls on people to radically change their lifestyles?

#9 – We most certainly do not call on the government to fix anything, given the fact that we don’t know if anything is broke and given the fact that governments are marvelously inept at fixing anything that really is broken we would not call on governments to fix the problem even if a problem was known to exist.

Second, on this score we wonder what standard is going to be used in order to determine what is a “fair, comprehensive, and adequate climate deal.” Since when as the UN ever been concerned to use the Scriptures as a standard of what would be “fair, comprehensive and adequate?”

How does the Micah declaration know that women and girls are the most affected by this putative holocaust scourge that is global warming?

Does the call on leaders to invest in in “the development of new, clean technologies and energy sources and to provide adequate support to enable poor, vulnerable, and marginalized groups to use them effectively,” just another way to encourage leaders to lay onerous taxation upon the producers in various countries in order to redistribute wealth?

I encourage the delegates to the 2010 CRC synod to vote against affirming the Micah Declaration until the science is settled on this issue. It makes no sense whatsoever to try to fix something that we don’t even know is broke.

“Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It wants to produce a certain kind of human being. This intention is more or less explicit, more or less a result of reflection; but even the neutral subjects, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person. In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious. Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle. Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality. Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime. Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime… This education has evolved in the last half-century from the education of democratic man to the education of the democratic personality.

The palpable difference between these two can easily be found in the changed understanding of what it means to be an American. The old view was that, by recognizing and accepting man’s natural rights, men found a fundamental basis of unity and sameness. Class, race, religion, national origin or culture all disappear or become dim when bathed in the light of natural rights, which give men common interests and make them truly brothers. The immigrant had to put behind him the claims of the Old World in favor of a new and easily acquired education. This did not necessarily mean abandoning old daily habits or religions, but it did mean subordinating them to new principles. There was a tendency, if not a necessity, to homogenize nature itself.

The recent education of openness has rejected all that. It pays no attention to natural rights or the historical origins of our regime, which are now thought to have been essentially flawed and regressive. It is progressive and forward-looking. It does not demand fundamental agreement or the abandonment of old or new beliefs in favor of the natural ones. It is open to all kinds of men, all kinds of life-styles, all ideologies. There is no enemy other than the man who is not open to everything. But when there are no shared goals or vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?”

Allan Bloom
The Closing of the American Mind – 26-27

And here is one asking if the social contract is even legitimate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNj0VhK19QU

Antinomians are almost always legalistic. Where ever you find an antinomian you will find vacuous rules like don’t smoke, don’t drink, always be nice, being sentimental is necessary, etc. Whenever God’s law is abandoned some other law inevitably becomes the standard by which antinomians will measure themselves as “good little Christians.”

In the same way all Legalists will always be antinomian since to be a legalist is by definition to be against the law. The legalists aren’t legalist according to God’s law because God’s law teaches “don’t be a legalist.” As such their legalism is antinomian every time.

“To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that that is an excellent argument for world government – for how can we allow individual countries to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yet the dangers of world government speak for themselves.”

Congressman Dr. Ron Paul
The Revolution – pg. 61

This is my problem with Libertarianism. When it is given its head it turns into license for criminal behavior.

Paul, argues here for states rights on the issue of abortion but if he were to be consistent why wouldn’t we argue for states rights on the issue of first degree murder? Why wouldn’t we argue for the rights of individual states to sanction rape? Why wouldn’t we argue for states rights to turn their state into a Muslim Caliphate ruled by Sharia law? Why wouldn’t we argue for states rights to require burning widows upon the death pyre of their dead husbands?

I’m all for allowing maximum liberty but there is a point where liberty becomes criminal license. Allowing states to sanction first degree murder, in terms of abortion, when the Constitution guarantees due process for all citizens, as well as a speedy trial (where is the trial for the unborn child?), is simply not something that falls under states rights. States do not have the right to sanction first degree murder.

On the whole nonsense that Paul raises suggesting that insisting on a uniform policy outlawing abortion will lead to a world government forcing other countries not to preform abortions is simply answered by the word “jurisdiction.” These united States have no jurisdiction on abortion in other sovereign nations.

Congressman Paul is completely wrong on abortion and his stance suggests that he doesn’t really believe that abortion is murder.

For Christians to esteem the Battle Hymn of the Republic would be like unto current Jews esteeming the poetry of Himmler which praises the destruction of the Jews. For Christians to esteem the Battle Hymn of the Republic would be like unto a current Armenian singing the slaughter songs that the Turks used to visit holocaust upon the Armenian people by the Turks. For Christians to esteem the Battle Hymn of the Republic is like unto Ukrainians esteeming the Holodomar poetry of Stalin esteeming the political starvation of the Christian Ukrainians. Come on American Christians quit being so thick by lustfully singing a song that esteems the destruction of a Christian civilization by a pagan people.

Mark Twain was no Christian but Twain, the great American satirist, understood what the Battle Hymn of the Republic was all about. Twain, penned his own satirical version of the anti-Christ song.

“Mine eyes have seen the orgy of he Launching of the Sword
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps;
His night is marching on!

I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom (i.e. - Yankees) crush the patriot (i.e. – Confederates) with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”

We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgment seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! Be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on.

In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom — and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich –Our god is marching on.”

Julia Ward Howe, author of the words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic that encouraged the North, in a Christian cause, to crush the South and set the Black man free had this to say about Blacks.

“The ideal Negro would be one refined by white culture and elevated by white blood….”

“The Negro among Negros is a coarse, grinning, flat-footed, thick skilled creature, ugliest Caliban, lazy of the laziest brutes, chiefly ambitious to be of no use to any of the world and he must go to school to the the white race and his discipline must be long and laborious.”

Julia Ward Howe – Author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic

If you want to learn more detail about the pagan song I encourage you to listen to this free lecture.

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=11200617523

“…if the bishops and ministers of the churches have not performed their duty, if in handing down dogmas and administering the sacraments they forsake the just regulation of the divine letters, who will recall them to the right path unless it be the godly prince? Your Majesty should not expect in the current situation that they will be impelled to these by themselves; unless royal spurs move them they will not rebuild the ruins of God’s temple.”

Peter Martyr Vermigli, “An Epistle to the Most Renowned Princess Elizabeth by the grace of God Queene of England, France and Ireland", as printed in Torrance Kirby’s _The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology_, p. 191.

Hat Tip – Kevin Johnson