Category: Culture

In this piece,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576416284144069702.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Dr. R. Albert Mohler does a good job laying out the problem with the tsunami of the hommosexual agenda that is washing across these united States.

However, I do have some observations on Mohler’s segment below,

(1)”In this most awkward cultural predicament, evangelicals must be excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins….

(2) It is now abundantly clear that evangelicals have failed in so many ways to meet this challenge. We have often spoken about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic. We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue. We are the ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our own.

(3) We have demonstrated our own form of homophobia—not in the way that activists have used that word, but in the sense that we have been afraid to face this issue where it is most difficult . . . face to face.”

A.) In reference to sentence 1 of paragraph #(1)

All sins are equal in our culture today. This is why Dr. Mohler has to write this sentence, and it is why every time a Christian raises his voice against some public square sin the charge of “Hypocrisy” is leveled.

The conversation seems to go something like this,

Christian: “Homosexuality is evil.”

Public Response: “How dare you declaim against homosexuality when you are a sinner as well. We are all sinners and we need to keep that in mind before we go around faulting some people for the sins that are not ours. If we really took our sins seriously we would never speak against another persons sins.”

Yes, we are all sinners. And while all sins separate the one outside of Christ from God not all sins are equal in their malignity. Do we really believe that the sin of stealing a cookie from the cookie jar is the same in malignity as a College professor convincing a classroom that Government theft is righteous?

Yes Christians are sinners. Yes they need the Gospel of forgiveness preached to them because they are sinners. But the fact that Christians are sinners does not mean that Christians therefore can not raise their voice against malignant sins that destroy people and ruin civilizations.

B.) In reference to sentence #3 of paragraph (1),

1.) Mohler gives us a false dichotomy. It is our concern that Homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Jesus Christ that drives our concern that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted. Is Dr. Mohler trying to divide the concern that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Jesus Christ from the concern that homosexuality will become normalized and accepted? I would insist that a love for the Lord Christ and for those living with the burden of homosexuality dictates that both concerns be present as mutually reinforcing truths in the Christian community.

C.) In reference to paragraph #(2)

As a thought experiment imagine paragraph #(2) in 25 years being slightly rewritten from some erstwhile, nationally known Evangelical.

“It is now abundantly clear that evangelicals have failed in so many ways to meet this challenge. We have often spoken about Bestiality in ways that are crude and simplistic. We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see the challenge of Bestiality as a Gospel issue. We are the ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our own.”

I write the above paragraph for shock value. It is my hope that people will realize that the reason that that homosexuality was spoken of in crude and simplistic ways in the past was because people were, once upon a time, as appalled by it as they now are of the thought of coupling with farm animals. Surely we can understand why something this crude was spoken of in a crude and simplistic fashion. I think saying things “crude and simplistically” (Mohler’s phrase) also served to reinforce the taboo against homosexuality. In other words such disapproving shame type speech served the purpose of keeping homosexuality in the closet and away from our children and families. Now we speak all respectfully and with complexity on this issue and so the Homosexual is emboldened by this new found respect and the previous taboo is no longer taboo. Indeed, now we reserve our taboo reinforcing crude and simplistic language for those who believe that homosexuality is a perversion.

Secondly, I agree homosexuals need the Gospel. However, the Gospel begins with, “God is Transcendent and Holy and will not abide with wickedness.” Some would say, and Dr. Mohler is not one of these, that such a message is crude and simplistic.

Without going into all the details, without ever being homosexual I have seen the homosexual lifestyle up close. I have been to the gay bars. I have befriended the homosexual and have had them confide in me. It is a lifestyle of destruction and hatred. If it is cured it is only cured by regeneration accompanying someone compassionate enough to speak of the peril, both temporal and eternal, in which the homosexual finds themselves. The Love of Christ constrains us, with tears in our eyes, to command all men everywhere to repent.

D.) In reference to paragraph #(3)

But this can’t just be dealt with on an individual level, though I agree that it must start there. This has also now become a public policy issue to which Christians and Churches must speak. The Homosexual agenda is flooding our schools, it is now on the verge of normalizing homosexual “marriage.” It is an agenda that is anti-Christ to its core and is committed to perpetuating its strength through recruitment. We must shepherd the individual Christian homosexual who has this as a besetting sin they loathe but we also must speak publicly against the theology out of which homosexuality prospers — a Theology that hurts people that are created in the image of God.

Piper’s piece

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/my-eyes-shed-streams-of-tears-thoughts-on-the-new-calamity

is actually pretty good right up until he shows his historical Baptist skirt by saying that,

“My main reason for writing is not to mount a political counter-assault. I don’t think that is the calling of the church as such …”

Later he writes again,

“This is what I am writing for. Not political action, but love for the name of God and compassion for the city of destruction.”

A few observations about Dr. Piper’s statement,

1.) A lack of political action is a sign of a lack of love to God. Should the Church remain silent concerning the Public Square as a sign of love to God? This is preposterous. The Love of God constrains us to not only weep for the wicked but also to show compassion by championing the second use of the law in order to show compassion to the wicked by setting a legal bulwark against their inflamed wicked passions. This bulwark should not only include a legal code against homosexual sexual acts but a legal code against heterosexual sexual acts outside of marriage.

If people were gathering to celebrate the institutionalization of anti-Jew laws would Piper still go out of his way to say he is not writing to mount a political campaign and that such is not the calling of the Church as such?

Why should the Church be any more mute regarding a call to political action against institutionalizing homosexual deviancy then it would be mute regarding a call to political action against anti-Jew laws?

It is all so contradictory.

2.) There is a false dichotomy in Piper’s writing. He seems to imply that weeping over the city of destruction can only be done if we also don’t respond with some kind of political action.

3.) This sentimental piety that has us weeping like little girls instead of fighting like Charles Martel is going to get all us ruddy well killed. I don’t mind weeping over the lost as long as I can fight to make sure the pagan doesn’t pull my house down along with his own.

“Yes, one has freedom to believe socialism is a better system than capitalism. Obviously a true believer would not accept the Marxism of enforced atheism and persecution of Christians, but as simple economic theory Christians are allowed to have dumb or misguided opinions on economic theories”

OPC R2K Minister

What? Does this parson really believe that a people can have economic Marxism without Political Marxism? Worldviews have a nasty way of being systemic and working out their implications all across various disciplines. We are talking about Worldview systems here, … we are not talking about the Chinese Buffet food line at the local “We serve plenty good dog-meat as well as Chicken flied lice” restaurant. Have these people forgotten their Van Til? It was Van Til who talked about systems vs. systems. These people have lost the ability (if they ever had it) to think systemically. Everything is compartmentalized.

How far shall we press this?

Does one have freedom to believe that Bestiality is a better sex system than heterosexuality? Does one have freedom to believe that polygamy or polyandry is a better marriage system then monogamy? Does one have freedom to believe that Child sacrifice is a better alternative to actually raising your children?

Where does this kind of thinking end?

This is why being associated with the ministry embarrasses me. Do your recent history … it is the ministers and the Church who have led the Church and this culture into utter ruin.

A quote from C.S. Lewis, as explained by Dr. Ravi Zacharias,

“In A Pilgrim’s Regress, C.S. Lewis wrote about a man who ordered milk and eggs from a waiter in a restaurant. After tasting the milk he commented to the waiter that it was delicious. The waiter replied, “Milk is only the secretion of a cow, just like urine and feces.” After eating the eggs he commented on the tastiness of the eggs. Again the waiter responded that eggs are only a by-product of a chicken. After thinking about the waiter’s comment for a moment the man responded, “You lie. You don’t know the difference between what nature has meant for nourishment, and what it meant for garbage.”

This morning I was involved in a brief exchange with one who advocates advertising for those who advocate Homosexual, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transvestite acceptance into the Church of Jesus Christ as normative.

http://roomforall.com/about-us/purpose/

That brief exchange reminded me of this C. S. Lewis quote. In Lewis’ story the Spirit of the Age had captivated John (Lewis’ main Character) and insisted that what was intended for nourishment was garbage. My conversation was the inverse. Unlike Lewis’s story where nourishment was taken for garbage, my conversation was a case where someone was insisting that moral garbage was morally healthy. My conversation partner didn’t know the difference between what God had intended for misery and what God had meant for pleasure.

The Spirit of the Age when uninformed by the Spirit of Christ always teaches this kind of upside down world, where good is evil and evil is good. Bertrand Russel, the 20th Century renown Atheist caught something of how this achieved methodologically speaking,

“The social psychologist … will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influence of home are obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age ten. It is for the scientist to make these maxims precise and discover how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies of policeman”

Luther said 500 years ago on this score that,

“It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.”

Our prevailing zeitgeist is not interested in creating a conscience that tells us that snow is black or that cow milk is a secretion akin to urine or feces. No, what our Spirit of the Age is set upon convincing us is that morality is pluralistic and that the only evil that exists is the person who declaims against the evil of immorality.

And many are the children — young and old alike — who have been convinced that “snow is black,” and who will seek to destroy anyone who insists that, “no, snow really is white.”

With the advent of Materialism and Darwinism in the West in the 19th century certain changes came about in our perception of reality that does a great deal to explain how we have arrived at the point we are in the 21st century.

Take the issues of “knowledge” and “will” as just two examples.

With the introduction and embrace of the evolutionary Weltanschauung knowledge is no longer regarded as the internalization of an external object into a soul that no longer exists through a contemplative process that no longer can happen because neither external object, nor non-corporeal soul nor the mind thinking exists. Now knowledge is, as Dewey said, “the adaptation of an organism to its environment.”

This explains the 20th century rush to mass man (Edward Bernays), sociology (Herbert Marcuse), psychology (Sigmund Freud), historicism (Franz Boas), and the art of propaganda (George Creel). All of these disciplines are committed to bypassing knowledge, in the Christian sense, in order instill pseudo-intuition by creating environment. If knowledge is merely the adaptation of an organism to its environment then manipulating the environment is EVERYTHING. Man is no longer considered to be a rational being with a set nature, as in Christianity, but rather man is chameleon with no set nature who can be manipulated by those who control his existential environment.

This also explains movements like “Church Growth,” and “Emergent Church,” because both concentrate on conversion by means of creating an environment where the human organism can adapt in a direction they desire. The newer movements in Christianity from the advent of Darwinism have had very little to do with Biblical Christianity. Whether one is considering the Social Gospel movement (Walter Rauschenbush, Washington Gladden) of the beginning of the 20th century or the Liberation Theology of the Mid-20th century (Gustavo Gutierrez) or the Church Growth movement (Donald McGavern) or the current Emergent Church movement what they all have in common is this social engineering view of Christianity that redefines and so plays down the historic Christian understanding of “knowledge,” in favor of “adaptation.” These movements have had more in common with Joesph Goebbels then they do Jesus Christ.

Now, when all of this is combined with the redefinition of the “will” as set it is defined in a Materialist / Darwinian worldview much else is explained about the current contours of our church and culture. In Biblical Christianity the will is the mind choosing. In Biblical Christianity as that will is in bondage to sinful human nature all it can choose is sin, all the time. According to Biblical Christianity it is only in regeneration that the human will is set free to choose other then sin. However, with the advent of Materialism-Darwinism the will is no longer regarded as the faculty by which the individual Christian overcomes his appetites, but rather the will is the supreme appetite to orgasm which can not and should not be controlled.

With this definition of the will one understands the explosion of all things pertaining to sex in our current culture. If there exists no external reality, and if there is no soul, or no mind all that is left is the will to gratify the primal urge to satisfy the sexual appetite. Man finds his being and identity in whatever orgasm he can achieve.

Linking these two thoughts together on Humanist understandings of “knowledge” and “will” one sees that the cultural elites are cynically creating environments where control is achieved by exploiting the new definition of “will.” It is as if in order to adapt to this culture (hence having “knowledge”) one must pursue a will to orgasm. As such man is enslaved both to the environment created and to the conditions of that environment. Enslaved, both because, for modern man, God is dead, and because modern man can do nothing else but conform to the environment created for him.