Category: Culture

The Hypotheticals of Littlejohn and McAtee

Over here

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/09/thinking-thrice-before-support.php

Dr. Brad Littlejohn gives a series of  hypothetical examples that might prove that Christians should re-think supporting Kim Davis’ resistance to issuing sodomite marriage licenses. His examples are as follows,

In the year 2006, Captain Joseph Rodriguez of Aurora, CO, a Christian, was dishonorably discharged from the Army after refusing to follow orders to deploy his company to Iraq, on the grounds that it was a Biblically unjust war.
In 2007, Amy White of Evansville, IN, a Christian, was fired from her job as a grocery sales clerk for refusing to process any purchases of pornographic magazines.
In 2008, Judge William Clark of Macon, GA, a Christian, was forced into early retirement for refusing to hear the majority of divorce cases in his court, on the grounds that none of them met biblical grounds for divorce. 
In 2009, Molly Thompson of Billings, MT, a Christian, was fired from her job as a hotel clerk for refusing to allow gay couples, or obviously unwed couples, to check into the same hotel room. 
In 2010, John Barlow of Rochester, MN, a Christian, lost his job as a loan officer at a payday loan company for actively advising his customers not to take out loans from the company, and to go elsewhere where they would not be usuriously exploited,

In 2011, Michael Jones, a policeman of St. Petersburg, FL, and a Christian, was jailed and suspended from the force after conspiring to shelter an undocumented immigrant mother and her son, rather than arresting them to get them deported, as he was ordered.

 

From these examples Dr. Littlejohn asks rhetorically,

Here is my question: if Christians are going to hold up Kim Davis as a paragon of Christ-like refusal to compromise with injustice, then how soon are we going to hold up the hypothetical John Barlow or Joseph Rodriguez or William Black as well? Are we all prepared to examine our own vocations with the same rigor, and leave all to follow Christ? And if not, then is our admiration of Kim Davis simply proof of what progressives accuse us of–namely, a highly selective Pharisaism that takes sexual sins with profound seriousness, and everything else as relatively negotiable?

But this is a case where sauce for the good is sauce for the gander.

** In 2006 Mary Lewiston worked as a organ procurement agent for Planned Parenthood. Everything that Mary does is in keeping with the law. Mary is asked to cut a baby’s head open to secure it’s brains for delivery to the buyer. Mary does so because she follows Dr. Littlejohn’s advice and decides this is “prudent.”

** In 2007 John Sanchez worked as a Pharmaceutical salesman. He knows that his task is really to get people hooked on prescription drugs. His job is perfectly consistent with the laws. John decides to continue being a drug pusher because to raise a Christian objection would ruin his testimony with his coworkers who desperately need Christ.

** In 2008 Alex Cho worked for Pepsi. His wife Donna Cho worked of Lays. Both of them realize that fetal cells are used to enhance the taste of the products of the companies they work for. Everything they do is consistent with the laws of the land. The do not raise a protest as Christians because they learned from Dr. Littlejohn that, Christians, like their Savior, are never supposed to be quarrelsome.

** In 2010 Dr. John Little worked as the head of research at Monsanto. He is responsible for genetically engineering food that he knows increases the likelihood of tumors in people as well as demonstrating a pattern of reproductive problems in those who consume the food. He knows his food is modifying human DNA. However, Dr. John Little reasons that the vastly increased yields of his crops can feed the world. Dr. John Little operates perfectly within the bounds of the law. Dr. John Little keeps poisoning the food source for the glory of Jesus.

** In 2011 Dr. Thabiti Smith worked as the head of vaccine development for Merck Industries. Dr. Thabiti Smith knows that deadly agents are put into the vaccines but reasons that the good outweighs the bad. Dr. Thabiti Smith decides that this passes Dr. Littlejohn’s “Prudence test.”

Here is my question: Where would Dr. Littlejohn have us draw the line for Christian resistance? If we don’t draw it at the point where the enemy is seeking to protect the institution of Marriage and family won’t it make it easier to not draw the line in other places? If we will not draw the line at the point where Marriage is being redefined how are we not complicit in social order libertinism?  If we will not draw the line here will it not prove what the progressives accuse us of — namely that at the end of the day we are not really any different from them.

A Christian take on non-Christian views masquerading as Christian views on Kim Davis

The following is a response to this,

That Public Square Thing

1.) I don’t buy the “pluralism” argument as enjoined against Kim Davis. This idea insists that, since we are not a Christian nation, therefore Christians must tolerate and live with pagan practices, such as sodomite marriage, of heathen practitioners. Those who argue for this tolerance for pluralism seem always fail to realize that toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance. Secondly, as it pertains to pluralism what most people don’t seem to recognize is that pluralism always hides a monotheistic non-pluralistic order where the God is the State policing how far the other gods in the pluralistic order can walk in the public square. Since, it is impossible for the God-State to exist without being animated by some belief system that belief system, which always animates every Government in existence, mocks the whole nonsense of “separation of Church and State,” as that phrase is currently used and understood. More on “separation of church and state later.”
 
2.) Some have argued that because Kim Davis issues marriage licenses to those who, in a manner inconsistent with the Scripture, are marrying again, after being un-biblically divorced, therefore Kim Davis is being inconsistent by refusing to issue marriage licenses to sodomites and lesbians who, like their heterosexual counter-parts, are also marrying un-biblically. This argument seems to posit that since some of God’s standards for marriage have been abandoned therefore all of God’s standards for marriage must be abandoned. This is like arguing that since we let a filthy and unclean dog in the house therefore we are inconsistent if we don’t let that filthy and unclean dog eat from the table or sleep in our bed. What will follow from this type of reasoning? Will we now argue that since County Clerks issue marriage licenses to sodomites they therefore must give marriage licenses to necrophiliacs and to Farmer Clyde and his prize milk cow Bessie?

Do you see why the wise are telling you that Obergefell vs. Hodges is the end of marriage having any stable meaning?

 
3.) Many ministers and others who are championing ignorant opinions on the Kim Davis case have no understanding regarding our law and the way it works. First, on this score, no law condoning sodomite marriage currently exists. Constitutionally speaking only Congress can make law. Article 1 Section 1 of the Constitution states, “All legislative power herein granted is vested in a Congress….” Please understand that ‘All’ means all. Congress has passed no law allowing for sodomite marriage. No law like that exists. SCOTUS, constitutionally speaking, can not legally make law. SCOTUS only interprets law. Can anyone take me to the law or point to the law that says that sodomites can marry? They can’t because no such law exists.

Second, on this score, even if the US Congress had passed a law saying that “sodomites can marry” such a law would be null and void before the ink was put to the page and county clerks would be under no obligation to follow such an illegal legality. The Federal Government is restricted, by the US Constitution (our covenant document) to only the enumerated and delegated powers outlined by the US Constitution. Guess what folks? Granting sodomites the legal right to marry is not one of the Federal Governments “delegated or enumerated powers.” I’ve read the US Constitution. Such a enumerated and delegated power is just not there.
 
Third, the 9th and 10th amendment make the above paragraph abundantly clear. Law on matters not enumerated or delegated to the Feds are reserved to the States or the people.
 
Amendment IX
 
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
 
Amendment X
 
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
 
Now, the Feds can certainly interpret this language any way they damn please but all because the Feds say the US Constitution gives them the authority to judicially or legislatively force sodomite marriage down our collective throats doesn’t mean that the US Constitution agrees with the Feds. Repeat after me slowly … “The Feds have zero Constitutional authority that allows them to force upon the States sodomite marriage.”
 
So, that being said we pause to ask, ‘How can the federal courts enforce a law that Congress, Constitutionally speaking, cannot even make”?
 
Fourth, on this score,since the Feds can point to no law passed by any legitimate Congress, wherein it is required that the States embrace sodomite marriage, Kim Davis is exactly correct in following the only law that speaks to the matter — Kentucky law. Kentucky law is the only law that currently exists on this subject and Kentucky law does not allow for sodomite marriage. It is everyone else besides Davis who are not following the Law. Let them sit and rot in jail.
 
4.) Some have argued that Kim Davis should do the “honorable thing and resign.” These folks fail to realize that Kim Davis is acting as a Public person. She does not have the luxury of resigning if she is take her public vows seriously. She, in her public capacity, is protecting her constituents from violating the current law of the land of Kentucky. In point of fact, a resignation would be the dishonorable thing for her to do.
5.) A brief word again on the “separation of Church and State.”
 
a.) The ability to completely divorce Church and State is a impossibility. All States reflect and are animated by some God or god concept as taught by some church somewhere. As the State has to do with creating and enforcing a societal law order. all states are expressly religious as all law is nothing but religion externalized into the social order.
 
b.) there is indeed a jurisdictional distinction between Church and State that absolutely must be abided by. The State, jurisdictionally speaking, is the realm of justice. The Church, jurisdictionally speaking, for the Christian, is the realm of grace offered and / or conferred in Word and Sacrament. The distinction exists. However, a jurisdictional distinction is far different than the idea of a “separation” as that is currently invoked.
 
c.) The phrase “separation of Church and State” is not part of our founding documents. The usage of it arose in a private letter of President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist convention in 1802. Jefferson’s phrase, “separation of Church and State” was not invoked as part of our political landscape until invoked in a SCOTUS “Everson vs. Board of Education” in 1947. The invocation of this unfortunate and misunderstood phrase has been lamented by legal scholars. In 1962, Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, complained that jurisprudence was not “aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the ‘wall of separation,’ a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution.” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, likewise found the phrase “separation of church and state” lamentable, In addressing the issue in 1985, Rhenquist noted “unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years.”
 
d.) Until Everson the Establishment clause, which was originally intended to be applied only fully to the Federal Government (i.e. — The Federal Government could not create a religious establishment for all the states) was now fully applied to all the states so that the Federal government would insure that the States also had a wall of separation between church and state. (The famous doctrine of incorporation.)
 
Separation of church and state is a myth, created by a progressive court for the purpose of setting the influence of Christianity aside in favor of more enlightened views. The Founders never envisioned a State that was separated from religious influence. Their intent was to insure that the Feds didn’t influence the States in the states having established religions.
 
6.) And even if 1-5 were inaccurate (and they’re not) “Let God be true and every man a liar.”
 
The point here is that those who tell you that Kim Davis is in violation of the law just don’t know what they are talking about. A second point here is that Christian ministers, who speak of the need for pluralism, are in point of fact saying that Christian ministers must champion polytheism for the public square. Pluralism is just not possible without polytheism. Don’t you think it passing strange that a Christian minister would tell you that God is pleased with Christians insisting that God is pleased by requiring room for false gods in the public square? 

Sexuality and Man & Woman as Image Bearers of God

In the embrace of homosexuality there is the attempt to strip off the imago dei by the Lesbian or sodomite in question. Sexuality is so closely tied up with the Image of God in men and women that when one defiles and reverses their sexuality they at the same time are seeking to rip the image of God out of themselves.

The reason this can be advanced is that male and female together comprise the image of God.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

When a man or a woman seek to strip themselves of their God ordained sexuality they are therefore seeking to undress themselves of the Image of God appointed to them in their composite role as image bearers.

There is also the reality that in man and woman together reflecting the character of God, in all their glorious God appointed sexuality, the fact that, together as image bearers, they reflect the one and the many found in the Unity and plurality of the Godhead. In seeking to strip off their God ordained masculine or feminine sexuality there is the attempt to turn God into a monad absent of His plurality.

The embrace then of Lesbianism and / or Sodomy then is, at its foundational level, an attack on God via the means of the attempt to erase God’s Image by erasing God’s ordained sexuality placed upon the man and the woman as God’s creaturely image bearers.

This explains why this particular sin is so dangerous and why St. Paul can write,

I Corinthians 6:17 — Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.

The lesbian and / or the sodomite is sinning against their own body because by illicit coupling they seek to disembody themselves of the image of God contained in their physical bodies as given in their sexuality.

Sexual sin is particularly primal. It goes to the core of our identity as image bearers of God. While one can never successfully sanitize themselves of the fact that they are the Imago Dei, one can so twist their self understanding of the reality that they are image bearers that the twisting begins to approach a searing of the conscience so severe that few recover.

The Way Madmen Speak

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Barack Obama

Only a madman, one might think, would dare to speak of changing the entire milieu — “building a new society” — or even to speak as if such a thing were possible. And yet this is the current political idiom. It is seriously out of touch with a set of traditions whose good effects it takes too much for granted; it fails to appreciate them, as it fails to appreciate the human situation.

Joe Sobran
Pensees

Doug Wilson on Ann Coulter … McAtee on Wilson

Over here, the barely conservative Doug Wilson chimes in on a Ann Coulter tweet,

Ann Coulter and the Disease of American Conservatism

I agree with Doug that American Conservatism is diseased but I also think there is some disease in Doug’s reasoning on this piece.

Doug starts off by saying that Ann Coulter has done good work and then goes on to give her tweet  to which he so strenuously objects,

“I don’t care if @realDonaldTrump wants to perform abortions in White House after this immigration policy paper. http://bit.ly/1EvT3Ja”

Doug then concedes that Coulter was using hyperbole here, in the cause of supporting Trump’s immigration policy. Doug complains though that, “what she is willing to say represents the central confusion of American conservatism.” And then offers this question,

What are we conserving? America or that which makes America worth conserving?

Maybe there is a third answer to this question that Doug does not consider. Maybe the answer to this question is that we are conserving the time and space that is needed for us to exist so that we might more thoroughly repent. Doug needs to be reminded that dead people don’t repent. And so while our mad border-less immigration pursuit is only a symptom of a far greater disease it is a symptom that must be dealt with now so that the patient lives long enough to be cured of the disease. It could be the case that to say what Coulter says above is to say in effect, “I know we need to repent but if we don’t craft a sane immigration policy we, as a people, will be aborted before we can repent.”

Doug then puts all kinds of words in Coulter’s mouth which I’m sure she would say is a misrepresentation of her intent, Doug writes,

“Put another way, oh, how I wish God would govern the world in ways other than the ways He has revealed to us in Scripture. I don’t care if we sow the wind in the White House, I just care that we don’t reap the whirlwind on our borders (Hos. 8:7). I don’t care if we mock God in the White House, just so long as God does not visit us elsewhere with the consequences of mocking Him (Gal. 6:7). I don’t care if we are deserving the wages of sin in the White House, just so long as we don’t have to actually do any dying (Rom. 6:23).”

Now, I am not a shill for the neo-conservative Coulter but neither am I a shill for the neo-con Wilson but in this case, I think Coulter is correct. She is not saying all that Wilson puts in her mouth above. She is merely using hyperbole to say that, “all things being equal if I had to choose between the dangers to this country that immigration represents and the dangers to this country that abortion represents I’d choose immigration.”

And, in this case, Coulter is correct. The current attempt to create a borderless nation (an oxymoron if there ever was one) guarantees turning what remains of this nation into a third world hell hole where death and disease would be so familiar that the days when deaths by abortions were considered “shocking” would be seen as the “good old days.” If you doubt this go visit the high-density suburbs of a third world country. Now add to this that a borderless country guarantees a Tyrannical government that will give us the usual “Death by Government” numbers that tyrannies always give and one begins to see the sense of what Coulter is saying.

Coulter is not saying that abortion is good. She is merely saying that open borders is so bad that it makes abortion look good.

Wilson is correct that what is needed is a boatload of repenting but repenting also includes the idea of repenting that we desire to commit ethnocide and Christocide by an open borders policy that is nothing but an insane policy of pursuing the death of both a people and a faith. Repentance includes not throwing ourselves on the bonfires of the NWO with its white-hot intense hatred for all things Christian and for all those who have, through the centuries, been the bearers of Christ.

Wilson is correct that we deserve the judgment of plague, pestilence, and poverty against us for our sin but perhaps by pursuing a sane immigration policy God is going to give us space to later repent even more? Doug doesn’t know God’s mind that a sane immigration policy might be God’s mercy to us to repent more deeply at a later time for the sins of our defiance against Him.

The diseased conservatism that Doug champions think that because we cannot yet be cured of the disease (rebellion against God) that we should not be given time or space by God that our children and grandchildren might come to their senses and repent for our high handed sins.

I hate this country as much as Doug does for its sins against God … sins that cry out for justice. But I also love this nation enough to pray like Habakkuk of old,

LORD, I have heard the report about You and I fear. O LORD, revive Your work in the midst of the years, In the midst of the years, make it known; In wrath remember mercy.

“Oh Faithful, Merciful and Just God we plead for the sake of Christ that you might be pleased to give us repentance. For those who refuse to repent and who adorn our nations’ life with the vile, the ugly, and the psychotic we pray that you would arise and crush them. We beg of you to bring upon them the burning, cutting, and torture they have brought upon the ‘least of these.’ We plead Father against the apathetic who are content with their personal peace and affluence that you might afflict them and awaken their conscience and if they refuse to be awakened we pray that you would visit them with the boils of Job. O great God for the bureaucrat and politician who makes the machinery of wickedness function smoothly we pray for restoration but if they will not be restored Father, we ask that you might make them now bureaucrats and politicians in Hell so that a righteous person might take their place. We plead with thee that you might defend thy own name, reputation, and honour by cleansing our land and causing us to repent in dust and ashes for the wickedness for which we are clearly responsible and in which we delight.

Make the Name of thy Son, the Lord Christ, a name to be both feared and cherished again.

In Christ’s name, we pray