Andy Sandlin on Racial Identity …. McAtee on Andy Sandlin

“Racial identity is incompatible w/ the Christian Gospel. The Gospel was created partly to overcome racial identity. The Gospel was created to forge religious identity.”

Andy Sandlin
Really Bad “Theologian” 

1.) The Gospel was created to partly overcome racial identity? So, as creator God created races and racial identity but in a move wherein grace destroys nature the Gospel is created to partly overcome racial identity? I mean, does this mean that the Gospel was not intended to completely overcome racial identity and if it means that how much of racial identity was the Gospel not supposed to overcome?

2.) Clearly Abraham, whom Scripture teaches was justified by faith alone, had no concept of the gospel when he sent his servant to find a wife of his own kindred for Isaac. Apparently good ole Doc Sandlin would have just recruited a local Canaanite girl who had recently attended a Billy Graham revival in order to get Isaac married off. 

3.) Certainly that first sentence in Andy’s quote above explains why Jesus had to be descended from David.  (Sarcasm off)

4.) Is Jesus, who is now at the Right hand of the Father, no longer to be referred to as “The Lion of the Tribe of JUDAH?,” or would that be a non Gospel sentiment Andy?

5.) The Gospel was created in order that the Ethiopian could no longer be used hypothetically as one who could not change his skin?

6.) How can it possibly be the case that given this view that Christianity is not pure on Gnosticism? Seems the Manicheans were correct after all.

7.) More of the modern Gospel that teaches that grace destroys nature. Once you love yourself some Jeebus you no longer are “Red or Yellow, Black or White, because after all you’re all the same in God’s sight.”

8.) Since the Gospel was forged to create religious identity clearly we can also do away with biological gender identity since it must be the case that if the Gospel was created to partly overcome racial identity it must also be the case whereupon the Gospel was created to partly over come gender identity.

Honestly, I am left absolutely gob-smacked that this man could have his own wife listening to him, never mind having scads of people hang on his every word.

And he, as well as his opinion, are not that uncommon among those reputed to be pillars in the Church.

Christ Has Come

After 2000 years the wait is done
The King is born, His reign begun
All Hail long-promised Mighty God
All Hail the Wielder of Father’s Rod

Competing Kingdoms are now over-run

Born sin’s penalty to assuage
Born to turn the Father’s rage
Born the Elect’s sin substitute
Born to tame the Dragon Brute

Kingdom come of God’s new Age

Fall and worship while you may
Kiss the Son or die in the way
Now is our time to repent
Our proper response to Christ’s Advent
Merry Christmas on this Festive Day

Christmas Poetry 2024

A promise to crush the dragon’s head
A Kinsman Redeemer to deliver my soul
The Passover becoming our living bread
A serpent hoisted high on a pole

Christmas in Scripture has Christ as the goal

A goat led away to remove all our sin
Another goat slaughtered so as to atone
Blood on the mercy seat sprinkled within
Prophets deserted and suffering alone
Christmas in Scripture is how Christ is known
/

Smoking pots, and slain beasts lying in half
Sacrifices and Covenant and the promised seed
An ark which is Christ and a child named laugh
Priests in the Holy of Holies, standing to plead
Christmas in Scripture is our doctrine and creed

Writings Of The Ghost Of Christmas Past

I have a wee bit of a diary I keep. These are some of my scribblings from Christmases past.

Whatever 2012 may bring we have a Messiah who was given to us as he was born of the Virgin Mary. We have been delivered from our sins by the Sin Bearer. Whatever may come we, of all people, have reason to be Merry.

Merry Christmas 2011. Christ is King.

My young adult Catechism / Worldview class gave me a wonderful Christmas gift. They have me a grey hooded sweatshirt that says on the front, “McAtee University,” with the two words separated by a University insignia.

So very cool!

On this Christmas, we have had once again the reminder of the comfort of Christ. Now let us be a warrior assembly and risk all for the Great King in light of that comfort.

He by whom all things were made was made one of all things. The Son of God by the Father without a mother became the Son of man by a mother without a father. The Word Who is God before all time became flesh at the appointed time. The maker of the sun was made under the sun. He Who fills the world lay in a manger, great in the form of God but tiny in the form of a servant; this was in such a way that neither was His greatness diminished by His tininess nor was His tininess overcome by His greatness.

(St. Augustine, Sermon 187)

There is the same hope this Christmas day, and the same reason to be encouraged as there was the day before the Birth of Christ. God has not forgotten His people and He still intends to “Holpen His People, Israel.” God still intends to pull down the wicked mighty and to raise up His people. We still live in a time of “Glad tidings and Great joy.”

Christmas 2013
God reigns… let the earth be silent.

____

It’s Eggnog and Booty
And time with my Cutie
This festive time of the year
What I am after
Is grandchildren laughter
And Steins full of dark beer

Christmas is the proclamation that the old gods have been shown the door.

“Maker of the sun, He is made under the sun. In the Father, He remains, from His mother He goes forth. Creator of heaven and earth, He was born on earth under heaven. Unspeakably wise, He is wisely speechless. Filling the world, He lies in a manger. Ruler of the stars, He nurses at His mother’s bosom. He is both great in the nature of God and small in the form of a servant.”

Augustine of Hippo
Merry Christmas — 2014

____

National Lampoon Christmas — 2015

And so wanes Christmas 2015
survived with amphetamines
And ample strong liquoring
to ward off the bickering
Sobering now with caffeine

Christmas @ 0300. 2015

May we, as a people, always have a reason to argue with each other (Covenanters vs. non-Covenanters) over whether we should celebrate Christmas. May there always be enough of us on each side of the question to make the discussion interesting. May our grandchildren not grow up wondering what it would mean to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas 2016

Merry Christmas to you Old Narnians out there. We remember the old ways before the Calomarines (Cultural Marxists) took over.

All will be set right.

Christmas 2017

Merry Christmas.

I always wonder what my Grand sires were thinking on Christmas day when they were my age … say 100 years ago?

And I wonder what my great Grandchildren will be thinking about on Christmas day 100 years from now.

Time … keeps rolling like a river

To the Sea.

My “Bah Humbug” On All The “Bah Humbug Christmas” Types In My Life

I have a couple chaps I know online who I count as friends. We likely agree on 75-80% of theology. Maybe. But when they get it wrong it is like fingernails across the chalkboard.

One such friend is a Baptist clergy named J. S. Lowther. Now Baptists come in all contradictory shapes and sizes and I’ve never met one yet that didn’t have a hitch in their gitty-up. Rev. Lowther is no different. Lowther is good on the Kinist issue, understanding the need to think categorically according to ethnic/racial/family groupings and yet despite that he refuses to Baptize babies because he doesn’t understand that God has placed our children in Christian ethnic/racial/family groupings. Go figure. On one level he understands that the family is the basic social order unit over and above the individual while at the same time by not baptizing babies he proclaims he doesn’t understand that the family unit is the basic social order unit over and above the social order taught by Scripture. He’s like the former Soviet Sub commanders who were famous for their “crazy Ivans.”  (Look it up.)

Rev. Lowther, being both Baptist and a strict regulativist (another odd combination) also is a Christmas hater. Lately he’s been knocking my chops about celebrating Christmas. Of course, the tradition I’ve spent the last 30 years part of (Dutch Reformed) have throughout their history celebrated Christmas. The Dutch Reformed Churches will often be found having a Christmas Eve or Christmas morning Church service. The Dutch likewise love their SinterKlaas. Over the years I’ve learned about their past tradition of stuffing wooden shoes full of goodies much the way that most people stuff stocking. I’ve learned from them about Zwarte Piet,  De Sint, De Goede Sint and De Goedheiligman’s (3 other Dutch names for St. Nick)  helpers. Why a Dutch Elder who is a lawyer even tutored me on the anti-Santa named Krampus.

All that to say, that in the Dutch Reformed tradition, as well as the Hungarian Reformed, the Swiss Reformed, the German Reformed, the French Reformed and others have all celebrated Christmas. I mean, its not as if the Christmas haters have any kind of ability to go about constantly yakking that “this is a papist tradition.” Put a sock in it guys and belly up to the spiked egg nogg and loosen your underwear a tad bit. It will do your pietism some good.

Now to address this issue of Christmas celebration. Look …. I get why the Puritans (some of them) didn’t want to celebrate Christmas. If I had been alive at that time I would have likely agreed with them. But if they were alive today they would agree with me because our problems today are the opposite problems they had. Their world was threatened by the Superstitions of Rome with its Mass and with its every day of the week is some kind of saints day. They had over-enchanted the world. But we don’t live in that epoch. We live in a world that has been disenchanted. There is no longer any sense of the Holy in the way we measure time. And so, I support the small celebrating of Christmas in the hopes that by doing so it will be a small step to bringing back the enchantment of the world.

Second, there is the reality that if we refuse to measure time by a Christians standard we will measure time by a heathen standard. Think about it. Right now Martin Luther King gets as much billing as Jesus Christ in terms of days marked as special. If we dropped Christmas we would allow the heathens to completely bring in their litany of heathen saints. Christmas would be replaced by Rosa Parks day or Harvey Milk day or Trannie day. Folks who want to insist that celebrating Christmas is not pleasing to God are dullards who do not realize what time it is — where we are in history. We need more Christian High days and not fewer. We need to bring back the Lord’s Day especially as a high day.

However, in order to show what a reasonable chap I am, I’ll make a deal with the Rev. Lowthers and Ryan Halls of the world. When the larger culture brings back honoring every Lord’s Day as Holy unto the Lord I’ll be all in on dropping Christmas off the calendar as long all the other pagan saints day are extinguished as well. But as that is not going to happen any time soon, I am celebrating Christmas along with Luther and a punch bowl full of spiked egg nogg. Merry Christmas to JS Lowther and all my Covenanter type Grinch friends. I hope before you die your heart grows 4 more sizes.