Does Sheltering Under the Gospel Mean We Can Flaunt Our Shame?

I Used to Hide My Shame. Now I Take Shelter Under the Gospel.

This is the tag line on the Christianity Today article where Rev. Dr. Greg Johnson (he of sodomite but celibate PCA Pastor fame) tells “his story.”

It is an interesting tag line for a few reasons. Remember that the shame that Johnson is speaking of is the shame of same sex attraction.

1.) While the Gospel delivers us from the shame of sin and so is a proper place to find shelter the unique thing with Johnson is that as he is finding shelter under the Gospel he now flaunts what he used to hide.

2.) Is it really the case that taking shelter under the Gospel allows us to no longer have shame for partaking in the same sin that we once were ashamed of before we were taking shelter under the Gospel?

It’s almost as if the man is saying, “I used to hide my shame but now I take shelter under the Gospel and so I can now flaunt my shame.”

Just one question … “Shall we go on sinning that grace may abound?”

Eucatastrophe

This morning we are speaking about the Gospel as eucatastrophe. We want to see how the God’s Word employs eucatastrophe as a literary technique in order to turn the gloom of the story into bright happiness by a desperately needed deliverance that occurs at the last second. It is that moment when seemingly all hope is lost and yet by God’s providence there is a sudden turn in events and the relief is so sudden and unexpected that the consequent joy is driven all the deeper because of the darkness that had preceded it.

Eucatastrophe – An event wherein a person or people go through much unpleasantness, tears, and trials that finally ends with a great good to the people coming from the most unlikely of sources – all of which could not have happened except for the great cost that happened to them.

Eu catastrophe – A series of monumental and tragic series of events that by divine serendipity end in unexpected deliverance by unexpected means and so rapturous joy.

The word ‘eucatastrophe,’ adds the prefix ‘eu’ to the word “catastrophe.” That little “eu” there means “good” in the Greek. We use it when we say “eulogy,” or “euphoria,” and “Eucharist.” The word catastrophe then comes from the Greek meaning ‘down or against’, and ‘strephein’ which means ‘to turn’.

So literally eucatastrophe is a good turn in that which is down or against.

Tolkien who coined the phrase had this to say in applying it to literature

Eucatastrophe “is a sudden and miraculous grace […] It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; Eucatastrophe denies… universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium (good news), giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy. Joy beyond the walls of the world, and is as poignant as grief because it was so completely unexpected.

We see this usage in the fairy tales we read to our children.

Jack and the Beanstalk Begins with a widow who is very poor and has a son she has to provide for, and their daily bread comes from selling the milk of their cow at the town market. What happens to the cow though? Jack, the son, sells it for some beans which are promised to be magic. Now they are impoverished with no source of income. There is the catastrophe. However, the very beans which where thought to be ruinous end up providing Jack a beans to seize a goose that lays golden eggs and so is family is rescued after many harrowing turns. There is the Eu in the Catastrophe and as brought on by means which were thought to have been the catastrophe.

In C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle (1956) the children in their world experience a train wreck while in Narnia Aslan makes an end to the old Narnia. The train wreck was a catastrophe that found them dying but the Eu in it is that the children find themselves running “further up and further in” Aslan’s land.

We see this in our films … I’m going to let you trace this out in your heads but if you think of films like Braveheart.

When William Wallace dies, all seems hopeless; the Scots have just lost their leader, the only man who could keep them from fighting each other long enough to fight the English. There is the Catastrophe

The Eu is found in how the death of Wallace becomes a rallying point so that 9 years later in comes the smashing victory that he had been preparing them for all along. It’s one of the fiercest, grimmest happy eu-catastrophes in film history.

But as look in Scripture we see Eucatastrophe at its most thrilling and poignant point.

Biblical Eucatastrophe

Catastrophe – Fall (Eu – Incarnation)

We are all familiar with the fall but have we ever considered that without the Fall there would have been no incarnation of Christ … no prefect obedience … no sin bearing on the cross … no resurrection, ascension, and session.

Remember God did not come up with the intent of Christ on the Cross after the fall occurred. From eternity past God decreed the fall as He decreed the cure and reconciliation that would be found in Christ. When God created Adam He had already ordained the Last Adam who would repair what Adam had marred so the Fall catastrophe and the incarnation Eucatastrophe.

The fall was instrumental to the good ending that we call good Friday.

Here we find all the elements of Eucatastrophe. We find the what the catastrophe that is the fall, we find the sorrow, trials, and tears that come from the catastrophe, we find the longing for relief and rescue, we find help coming not from the kind of power for deliverance that man might expect but instead we find relief coming from a low born child born to a virgin peasant in the backwaters of the Empire with a court comprised of riff-raff shepherds and eventually foreigners. Without the previous millenniums of disappointment that no Messiah had risen could there be the joy experienced by Anna & Simeon as they beheld the one long promised as the deliverer?

We find eucatastrophe in some of the stories that lead up to the Incarnation.

Catastrophe – Bondage In Egypt – (Eu – Entry into the Promised land)

We find in Israel going down into Egypt which eventually ends in bondage. Then there is the 400 years of looking and longing for relief … for a deliverer. One arises – Moses — but he seeks to deliver in his own power and is exiled to the far side of the desert before God brings him back to be Israel’s deliverer. This deliverer ends up being the reason for the increase of their labors and trials and yet the one who made life harder for them ends up being the one that God uses to deliver. Eu-catastrophe. Deliverance coming unexpectedly from the last place one might expect it.

Catastrophe – Samson – (Eu – End of life)

One more example is Sampson. He experiences the catastrophe by his loss of strength because he was shorn of his hair. This leads to the catastrophe of his being blinded and imprisoned. But the Philistines slept and his catastrophe grew back and so became to Him eucatastrophe as the Scriptures praise him by saying, “So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”

Catastrophe – Cross – (Eu – Defeat of Satan)

The whole notion of our phrase “Good Friday” has eucatastrophe hard-baked into it. We could not … dare not call it “Good,” if we did not know how it was that despite all appearances of catastrophe, there was a goodly ending in that God’s name was vindicated, Satan was defeated and our rescue was accomplished, and that by the very means of the Cross which was catastrophic.

Colossians 2:15, the text this morning captures this idea of Eucatastrophe. Speaking of Christ the Spirit-inspired Apostle writes,

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

The disarming or stripping of power and authorities is likely a reference to angelic beings who are here pictured as resisting God. Paul perhaps interjects these fallen angelic beings as the personal accusers who correspond to the Law as the impersonal accuser who he mentions in vs. 14. These accusers who are hinted at also in Romans 8:33-34 Christ has disarmed so that their accusations no longer carry any sting.

Alternately, Paul may be referring that the believers in the ancient world filled with the occult as it was, was no longer a threat to the Christian. Christ in his Eucatastrophic work had defanged them. Christ, by the cross is the victor over all who would oppose His people.

And he did all this by the most unexpected means.

The public spectacle

This refers to the way a conquering general would return from victory, with his conquest marching in humiliation behind him. The spoils of his victory would include prisoner from the nobility of those conquered. They were being made a public spectacle to be scorned and laughed at. It was public inasmuch as it was done in the face of the whole cosmos. It refers to the grand display of victory as achieved by Christ. It is another way of stating that Christ has bound the strong man (Mt. 12:29). Another way of Christ stating that “He saw Satan falling from heaven as lightning (Luke. 10:18). Another way of demonstrating His victory has He did in casting out Demons and healing the sick. Satan and His minions have been the booty of the conquering Son.

And all this occurred by

“Triumphing over them by the cross.”

Eucatastrophe. Who but God could have ever written such a marvelous true story? The Cross was seen in the ancient world as torture endured by the worst of criminals. It was dehumanizing and degrading — reserved for only the wickedest of men. And here in classic Eucatastrophic fashion, God saves the world in the last place one would expect salvation to be found. On the Cross Christ disarms His enemies and makes a public spectacle of them. Mankind experiences catastrophe by eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree now experiences eucatastrophe only by looking to the one hanging on a tree.

To those with eyes to see this is the deliverance from chaos, sin, and disharmony that had characterized life. He was God in Christ reconciling the World to Himself.

Jesus Himself hinted at this when he said… 32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

Of course the Resurrection and Ascension and Session continue with the good in the Eucatastrophe.

For those who have seen their sin … their rebellion … their utter selfishness the Cross is reconciliation after all hope was lost. The hopelessness of it all before seeing the Cross makes the seeing of the Cross all the more good. It makes it Eucatastrophic.

The perplexity in tales of Eucatastrophe is that the Eu can’t be appreciated apart from the Catastrophe. The joy is only as sublime as the night was dark. It is the sense of gathering gloom that makes the Eucatastrophe so spectacular.

I think it was the Eucatastrophic that Thomas experienced after examining the wounds of Jesus when he cried out … “My Lord and My God.” It was to impossible to believe and yet it was true.

It was the Eucatastrophic that filled Rhoda with joy in Acts 12.

14When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that she forgot to open the gate, but ran inside and announced, “Peter is standing at the gate!”

What more can we take from this idea of the Eucatastrophic that God has weaved into our reality?

We can take from this the reminder that no matter how hard the trials … no matter how dark the night … no matter how insane the church and culture is … no matter how corrupt the clergy corps becomes … no matter how absolutely certain it seems that defeat is imminent that God has in the past and can again go all Eucatastrophic.

That doesn’t mean He will at every turn. Sometimes the Eu only comes after a long time of Catastrophe so that generations could well pass before weeping ends and the joy comes. But the point is that it can come suddenly … unexpectedly … from the least likely of sources.

The Eucatastrophe reminds us that though

Truth forever on the scaffold,
wrong forever on the throne.”
Yet that scaffold sways the future.
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows
Keeping watch upon His own

The Christian has no reason to utterly and completely despair. Oh, sure, there will be disappointments that drive the blues. There will be times of being downcast because of what we have before us but the Christian can always say, because of the truth of Eucatastrophe,

Why are you so downcast O my soul
Hope yet in God.

The Christian can sing,

3 This is my Father’s world:

O let me ne’er forget

That though the wrong seems oft so strong,

God is the Ruler yet.

This is my Father’s world:

The night shall be dispelled

The Good shall come; God’s Triumph won

God Reigns; let earth be glad

We’ve seen God do the Eucatastrophic in post-Biblical times.

In 1588 the Spanish Roman Catholics had sent an Armada to defeat the English so as to destroy the Protestant Kingdom of Elizabeth. Their force was superior. Matters looked bleak for the Protestants. But God decided to go all Eucatastrophic. He raised an unexpected storm that aided the English in the battle.

So great was the seeing of God’s hand in all that happened to the Spanish Armada the Latin phrase, “He blew with His winds, and they were scattered” was used to describe the Eucatastrophe. Later that was reduced in history books as “the Protestant Wind,” inspired by the phrase inscribed on medallions to honor the event.

We can see the Eucatastrophic in the events of the Alamo. The catastrophe was found in the defeat of that small mission outpost but that defeat led to the Eu that became Texas independence from Catholic Mexico. Without the catastrophe that was the Alamo there would not have been the good of a Texas state.

God gave the victory by the most unlikely means anticipated.

So, how can we end this?

We can thank God for the way He Eucatastrophically worked to bring about so great a salvation.

We can look for the Eucatastrophic in our reading of our Bibles, our Western literature and our history in order to see God’s providential hand at work.

We can be brave when it is easy to lose courage.

We can affirm that only the understanding of the Eucatastrophic is key component of postmillennialism. The postmillennialism does not believe that things will go from bad to worse as Amillennialism and Premillennialism does. The Postmillennialist believes that Reformation can come in the darkest of situations and that is because of this belief in Eucatastrophe.

We can be thankful that we belong to a God who always leads us in triumph.

If we can hold on to the possibility of Eucatastrope we will confound God’s enemies and ours. They won’t know what to do with a people who look for and believe in looming victory when they should be acting defeated.

Of Liturgical Calendars & The State

“State is the March of God on Earth.”

G. F. W. Hegel

If the state is God walking on the earth, per Hegel, (and I believe that it believes that it is) and if the State as God assigns a National Holiday then by default that holiday is a religious holiday. In the situation we are now in the West the State is the God in whom we live and move and have our being. The State, in controlling the calendar year the way it has by assigning annual feast days (Thanksgiving), and by assigning days for the acknowledgment of the humanist saints (Martin Luther King Day) and by assigning high holy days (Juneteenth) is giving us a Statist liturgical calendar. This is another way of identifying the State as God and ourselves as the worshipers of the State God.

This means by merely looking at our Statist religious liturgical calendar with its federal holidays the wise man can see what the civil religion is that we as a people objectively practice. To be sure, many of us subjectively practice other religions, but as the State, as God now owns the movement of the calendar we can see that what we own subjectively and what the state is giving us objectively are two very different religions. Likewise, when we consider the recent Federal holidays that have been sanctioned (Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth) we begin to get an idea of the drift of the State in terms of where the State God’s interest lies.

This brings us to the most recently minted Federal Holiday labeled “Juneteenth.” Initially, this was recognized as a state holiday in Texas in 1938 for the black people. Here is the original language recognizing that state holiday for Texan blacks;

Whereas, the Negroes in the State of Texas observe June 19 as the official day for the celebration of Emancipation from slavery; and

Whereas, June 19, 1865, was the date when General Robert [sic] S. Granger, who had command of the Military District of Texas, issued a proclamation notifying the Negroes of Texas that they were free; and

Whereas, since that time, Texas Negroes have observed this day with suitable holiday ceremony, except during such years when the day comes on a Sunday; when the Governor of the State is asked to proclaim the following day as the holiday for State observance by Negroes; and

Whereas, June 19, 1938, this year falls on Sunday;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JAMES V. ALLRED, Governor of the State of Texas, do set aside and proclaim the day of June 20, 1938, as the date for observance of EMANCIPATION DAY in Texas, and do urge all members of the Negro race in Texas to observe the day in a manner appropriate to its importance to them.

Notice that the State holiday recognized Juneteenth as being important to blacks but did not recognize the holiday for the non-black community such as been done by the FEDS in creating of Juneteenth.

In the last two Federal Holidays now we have set aside days to honor non-Whites. If one counts the ever-expanding change of “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous Peoples Day,” the count is three. That means 30% of paid Federal Holidays on the state liturgical calendar are given over to non-caucasian citizens. Each of those days implies offense given to the non-caucasian citizens by caucasian citizens.

Six other paid Federal Holidays all recognize the glory of the State in one way or another.

New Year’s Day (January 1).
President’s Day (Third Monday in February).
Memorial Day (Last Monday in May).
Independence Day (July 4).
Labor Day (First Monday in September)
Veterans Day (November 11). Of the other two paid Federal Holidays I would argue we find days wherein the citizenry is encouraged to bolster the state economy.
Thanksgiving Day (Fourth Thursday in November).
Christmas Day (December 25)
So, when all that is considered as a whole it is clear that the following conclusions follow;

1.) The State is incrementally a God who favors itself above all.
2.) After favoring itself above all the current State is making it clear that the new favorites of the State are non-Caucasians.

These are the religious convictions of the State. Clearly, the God-State is non-caucasian Humanist as seen in its bequeathing to us the liturgical calendar we currently have.

Eavesdropping Among the Baptists at Their Convention

Watching the Southern Baptist Convention

I’m reminded why I practiced Baptist prevention

They are only outdone

In the stupidity run

By Presbyterian and Reformed “comprehension”

1.) “If some people in this room were as passionate about the gospel as they are about (opposing) critical race theory, we would win this world to Christ.”

James Merritt,

Chairman of the resolutions committee

Former Southern Baptist Convention president

“If some people in this room were as passionate about the gospel as they are about (opposing) Caesar worship, we would win this world to Christ,” said nobody in the early Church.

I wonder if James would agree with this,

“If some people in Germany were as passionate about the gospel as they are about (opposing) the sale of indulgences, we would win this world to Christ.”

Johann Tetzel

or this,

“If some people at this council were as passionate about the gospel as they are about (opposing) the idea of Christ as a created being, we would win this world to Christ.”

Arius

Or this

“If some people in this debate were as passionate about the gospel as they are about (opposing) freewill and the innate goodness of man, we would win this world to Christ.”

Pelagius

If James wasn’t so stupid he’d know the meaning of a false dichotomy… he’d know that someone could be passionate about opposing CRT because they are so passionate about winning the world to Christ. If James wasn’t so stupid he’d realize that the World can’t be won to Christ by those holding to CRT and so we need to be passionate about stopping CRT in the Church.

2.) Pastor Bryan Kent of Compass Church in Mason, Michigan, commended outgoing Sothern Baptist President Greear’s remarks, saying that if critical race theory “has an echo of truth among our brothers and sisters of color… we should not be in such a rush to condemn.”

—

So all it takes to not be in a rush to condemn obvious in your face heresy (CRT) is minorities hearing an echo of “truth.” What if I said I heard an “echo of truth,” in polygamy since it is in the Bible? Would Pastor Bryan Kent decide not to be in such a rush to condemn? What if I said I heard an “echo of truth” in owning slaves since it is in the Bible? Would Pastor Bryan Kent decide not to be in a rush to condemn?

Or is it the case for Pastor Bryan Kent that one has to be a minority before they can hear echoes of truth that mean that we decide not to be in a rush to condemn?

3.) During its annual meeting in Nashville, the Southern Baptist Convention approved a measure rejecting “any theory or worldview that finds the ultimate identity of human beings in ethnicity or in any other group dynamic.”

Online Article

Any other group dynamic?

The promise is to you and to your children…. Acts 2:38

There goes covenant theology out the window. Well, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Baptists don’t desire to find their ultimate identity in Christ as their families rest in Christ.

4.) File Under: The New SBC President’s explanation of the Trinity.

“God is the creator and ruler of the universe. He has eternally existed in three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three are co-equal parts of one God.”

For those not in the know, the above is heresy. The SBC has just elected a President who believes that the one God is made up of three co-equal parts. This would be either some form of Tri-theism or some form of partialism.Oh … and when the man was elected and this was noticed on his church’s webpage it suddenly disappeared down the memory hole.

5.) File under: I need to start a blog called “The Stupid Things people say.”

“There are a lot of conservatives with a Biblical Worldview that are going to go to hell because they don’t know Jesus.”

J. D. Hall

Baptist Minister and Luminary

Ummm … except it isn’t possible to have a Biblical Worldview if you don’t know Jesus. This is idiocy at its finest.

R2K as Kulturkampf Deniers

There is a recent phenomenon in our ongoing saga of the kulturkampf (Culture War) and that is the denial by those Cultural Marxists waging the kulturkampf that the culture wars really exist. This follows the same technique that government school teachers were taught to employ decades ago. Teachers were taught that when parents came to them at different times about the same problem going on in the classroom that the way to defuse the parent’s complaint was by telling them, “Really? You are the first parent to come to me with a complaint on this subject.” The teacher would keep dishing out that line no matter how many parents came to her with the same complaint about the same problem. By implicitly denying the problem while at the same time sending the multitude of parents home thinking that somehow they were seeing problems that were not present the government schools were able to continue with the educational malfeasance without a problem. The teachers were winning the kulturkampf with the parents by denying that there was a problem that anybody was noticing but one complaining parent. It really was a stroke of manipulative genius.

Today that kind of denialism is happening in our broader culture. People are raising their voices in complaint but the cultural gatekeepers at the Fake News Outlets often keep saying, “problem? what problem?” These people are in denialism mode.

Culture war denialism is pursued not only by Fake News outlets but we are getting it in pulpits all across America. Whenever the clergy refuses to address from the pulpit the attack on cultural institutions that are immediately and obviously downstream from and are being informed and shaped by Biblical Christian categories there the parishioners are experiencing kulturkampf denialism. The parishioners are implicitly being told by their Clergy’s silence that they can continue to remain asleep as what little remains of Christian cultural norms burn down around their ears.

The above paragraph explains one of the dangers of Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2K). R2K insists by way of dogma that the pulpit should be silent on cultural issues. R2K insists that a man in the pulpit who preaches on abortion, Marxism, the destruction of the family unit as state policy, etc. is making Jesus unhappy. Such ministers who preach on these matters are, per R2K, at best unfaithful to Jesus and at worst are going to occupy hell forever. R2K “theology” has taught the clergy to practice functional kulturkampf denialism.

If the above observations about R2K are true (and they are) then we see how R2K with its kulturkampf denialism fits hand in glove with the agenda of the Cultural Marxists. R2K guarantees the success of the Cultural Marxists because the effect of its dogma is to both keep the church asleep or failing that convinces the church that as there is no such thing as Christian culture therefore it should not be exercised about imaginary things called “kulturkampf.” The best friend in the conservative Church in the West that the Cultural Marxists have are the R2K boys at Escondido and now salted in Seminaries all across America.

Culture war denialism, in its broadest expression, is an attempt to pretend that nothing is happening around us as Western Civilization — a grouping of social orders that are immediately downstream of Christianity — is pulled up by its roots. If the denialists say anything about the kulturkampf they merely note in an offhand way that any changes should be supported by Christians because Jesus Loves social justice. God loves everybody, the Kulturkampf denialists tell us, and if we don’t love everybody also then we are haters and deserve to be labeled as “White Supremacists.” Naturally, this means we need to open the sluice gate for the pervert, the feminist, the Marxist Academic, and the minority hordes who have become enchanted and poisoned with Cultural Marxism.

Those who are denying the Kulturkampf in the West claiming instead that there is no real culture struggle but rather that only a small percentage of reactionaries are displeased that they are losing their cultural gatekeeper status are those who are seeking to lull Middle America to sleep so that it does not wake up and see what is going on. The only way the Cultural Marxists can succeed in this endeavor to pull down what little remains of Western civilization is to make sure the great American Middle does not clue in on what is really happening, or if it does clue in, it clues in, in such a way that the great American Middle is convinced that these are only minor changes that will pursue equity for everyone. To that end, the cancel culture deniers keep denying that cancel culture exists or that it is only minimal. Only by that denial combined with the continued aggressive effort to engage in the kulturkampf can the Cultural Marxists hope to win.