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Praying With Those Who Kill the Unborn?

“He who does not get angry, when there is just cause for being so, commits sin. In effect, irrational patience sows vices, maintains negligence, and encourages not only bad men to do wrong, but good men as well.”

John Chrysostom

“Reason opposes evil the more effectively when anger ministers at her side.”

St. Gregory the Great

“The absence of anger is a sign of the absence of reason.” —

Thomas Aquinas

There is this chap who makes his way by being a pro-life activist. One of the things that he does as a pro-life activist is that he meets with pro-abortion politicians on a regular basis to “pray with them.” The Church he attends applauds this “activist” as being a model for the way that pro-life work needs to be done. They tell the congregation that we all need to be activists like Brother Wrongway.

Now, see, I’d be the floating prophylactic in the punchbowl on this issue at that Church. In my way of thinking this is an example of full-on Pietism. You don’t effectuate change on politicians who are pro-abortion by praying with them. You affect change by making those politicians feel the electoral pain. You affect change by making them hate you because you are out there exposing how they are baby killers. You’re not showing these criminals love by praying with them. You are showing them how weak you are and how weak your God is.

Certainly, in our own private prayer life we should pray for our enemies that they would repent. We should pray in our private prayer times that if they do not repent God would visit them with boils and take them out of the positions they hold whereupon they can continue their baby killing activity.

This mindset of meeting with God’s enemies to pray with them is the ultimate in pietistic 2-Kingdom Gnosticism. Imagine the Magdeburg pastors when surrounded by Charles V armies saying “let’s lay down our arms and go out and pray with them.” Imagine John Knox inviting Bloody Queen Mary to a prayer meeting. Imagine Oliver Cromwell pausing to pray with Charles I before the battle of Worcester? This mindset by the “pro-life activist” is pietistic 2-kingdom escapist “theology” and it has destroyed both Evangelicalism and much of the Reformed church. Some might argue that is a reason to rejoice.

You want to effect change with pro-abortion politicians? You don’t meet with them regularly to pray with them. You make them get to the point that they are praying you would die since you are doing so much harm to their re-election hopes.

I mean I suppose you could pray with them but I have a hard time imagining that they are going to stay at the prayer meeting long if you are praying imprecatory prayers combined with prayers that they may know God’s just anger against them that they might repent.

Clergy Malfeasance

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Romans 12:9

Hate evil and love good; establish justice in the gate … Amos 5:15

“We cannot properly love what is good without hating what is evil. But I still want to be known by what I love and appreciate more than what I hate and disapprove.”

Rev. Uri Brito

The quote from Brito sounds so pious and sweet. Just the kind of thing a Christian minister should say until examined closely.

The problem here is the false dichotomy Rev. Brito sets up. It is simply the case that what I hate and disapprove of is evidence of what I properly love as good. None addlepated people should understand that by hating what is evil I am at that very same moment loving what is good. What I hate and disapprove of make me known for what I love and appreciate.

For example, if I hate Federal Tyranny, it is because I love my family, my people, and ultimately my God. If I don’t show hate for Federal Tyranny I am not showing love to my family. For example, if I hate the contemporary Church, it is because of my love for Christ and His people.

It is simply not possible to divide these matters the way Rev. Brito desires. I love consistency in thinking therefore I hate false dichotomies. If I am known as a “lover” or a “hater” is up to the person who on one hand wants to villainize me or on the other hand to the person who wants to praise me.

If I am to be known for what I love I also desire it to be known that I was a great hater of those things that would do insult or dishonor to those matters I loved. I am convinced that our hate for that which denigrates what we cherish should be as grand and glorious as those things that we love.

Simply put, if I end up being known for my great hates at least some people are going to figure out that my great hates existed because of my deep love for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and for those realities that He likewise loved.

Postmillennial Honesty

I do buy into, at least for the immediate short term, the gloom and doom narrative (so-called) that says we are going to remain in this dark age for a substantial period of time. (Which of course is not forever.) We’ve been in this narrative since the enlightenment.

To deny this is akin to the alcoholic denying he is an alcoholic. Denying it doesn’t change the reality of it. The social order of the West is going from having broken down to continuously breaking down with increasing vigor with each passing year. The Church in the West is in a Dark Age that is every bit as comparable to Dark Age the Church was in in the 14th & 15th centuries. Our ministerial corps and Seminary leadership is just an outrageous joke. Pietism continues to be the ethos of the Church and Dispensationalism (whether in the original version or the R2K Reformed version) is the theology du jour. There are next to zero civil magistrates that are worthy of honor. The nuclear family is in absolute shambles and the Trustee family is a long-forgotten concept not even remembered among the gaffers and gammers among us. Our tatted Great-Grandmothers today are more likely to have fond memories of Woodstock than fond memories of 65 years with one husband with the blessings of many children and grandchildren. Our schools excel in intellectual lobotomy as they continue to churn out apparatchiks who only know how to keep the machinery of humanist society rolling as they prioritize their sexual organs over their brains.

We must play the part of men and be honest about these matters. They will not change until we stare them in the face and admit where we are at. The pollyanna-ism of some post-mill types drives me absolutely bonkers. Look all around you. See what has been done already to deteriorate Western Civilization. Our enemies are already crowing how Europe is going to become a multicult polyglot cult. How can we not be suffering from delirium when given this reality we are going around saying that “all will soon be well?” All will not soon be well. The next election cycle is not going to reverse the course. Jesus is not coming back to beam you out of this mess you have contributed to making, and unless you think Pentecostal revivals change anything (and I pity you if you do), there is little expectation to have in terms of modern notions of revivalism.

None of this contradicts a postmillennial world and life view. I do believe that one day the knowledge of the Lord will cover the nations as the waters cover the sea. I do believe that the nations will bow to Christ in space and time. I do believe that families will one day be whole again and that the Trustee family will again be the norm. I do believe that Churches will be healthy again and people will again look forward to each Lord’s Day to come under the blessing of Word and Sacrament. I do believe a day is coming again when one will not have to be embarrassed if they are a member of the clergy corps. I do believe civil magistrates will one day again consult God’s Law-Word in order to make decisions regarding cases. However, none of that will happen unless we admit where we now are, determine to roll up our sleeves and get to the work of Reconstruction in every area of life.

We have to be realistic and realize we are where T. S. Eliott wrote about long ago;

“If Christianity goes the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready-made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great-great-grandchildren; and if we did, not one of us would be happy in it.”

T. S. Elliot

Liberty

Humanist man is an irresponsible man, and he manifests that irresponsibility by refusing liberty. Humanist man, as irresponsible, pursues his escape from responsibility either by looking to the State to take care of him (thus freeing him from the responsibility that Liberty requires) or by demanding libertinism (thus freeing him from the order that Liberty requires).

The unstated premise above is that true liberty is an “ordered liberty”; that true liberty can only exist under the rule of law and, ultimately, that law is none other than God’s Biblically-revealed law. Any law, therefore, not founded in God’s law is illegitimate and contrary to true liberty.

Liberty without order is a railroad train running without railroad tracks. Liberty without order is a fish swimming without his fishbowl. Order without Liberty is living with the Stasi or the Cheka as your neighbor.

Liberty is not and cannot be more stable than the law in which it is enshrined and by which it is defined. Modern man, therefore, by daring to mess with and change the laws as founded in the LORD’s infallible law, threatens to enslave, if not destroy, himself outright.

This is all Christianity 101, so why is it “rocket science” to so many and, dare I say it, to most, people today? What we have today is malleable sociological positivistic (man-made/man-manipulated) law instead of unchanging, normative, revelational law.

In both Tyranny and Libertinism Humanist man refuses Biblical Liberty.

Baptist “Reasoning” on Babies Not Being Baptized

Baptist reasoning

A man who belongs to Christ

Marries

A woman who belongs to Christ

AND

Have a baby.

This baby though, belonging to the man and woman who belong to Christ, should not be thought of as one upon whom Christ has a claim of ownership and so should not be baptized.

UNTIL

The baby is old enough to claim that Christ is owned by him.

So … claims of belonging and ownership moves from the divine to the human.

And yet, the parents do not wait before being responsible for the child until the child asks the parents into their lives.

Tom Wolfson responds,

Repentance and faith are evidence of election, more so than the parents being saved, unless you contend that no saved couple ever gave birth to a reprobate.

Bret responds

I contend that the recidivism rate for adults baptized by Baptists is likely worse than the recidivism rate for Reformed babies baptized in keeping with God’s command and promises. As such man’s claim of “repentance and faith” is no better evidence of election than the waters of Baptism. Indeed, they are worse evidence since faith and repentance are about man’s claim on God while Baptism is about God’s claim on man.

So the point is that Baptists baptizing adults no more ensures that the baptized will be saved in the end than Reformed baptizing babies ensures that same.

As such the argument that avowed repentance and faith of those baptized as adults by Baptists are proof positive of evidence of election is indeed not true.

Besides, who said Babies can’t have faith?

But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts. Psalm 22:9