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.

Notes …. Deuteronomy 28 … Cause & Effect World

 

Historicsim — The view that history is “the whole show” all there is. Historicism is the view that there is no God outside who is governing and sustaining History. According to Historicism, all History is determined by the immutable laws of some kind of Hegelian Historical fate. The dirty secret of Historicism is that it is the Historian who gets to craft those supposedly immutable laws of Historical fate via his written history and so History is read with the Historian as God and so a History textbook is in point of fact a Theology textbook.
 
History is best understood, not by spatial metaphors (Rise, Decline and Fall — Gibbon) or organic metaphors (born, growing, decaying and dying — Comte, Spengler). These metaphors hide from us the Historian’s unstated religious standard for what constitutes “Rise, Decline, and Fall” or the unstated religious standard for “birth, growing, decaying, and dying.” As such the pagan Historian can sweep the reader along without the reader realizing that he is not reading a book on History but rather a book on Theology where the Historian is God.
 
All of Scripture, including Deuteronomy 28, teaches us that History is best understood through the lens of divine judgment unto cursing or blessing. History is not a matter of impersonal time plus chance plus circumstance, as the atheist might suggest. History is not, as Historian Arnold Toynbee said, merely, ‘one damn thing after another.’ Rather History is riven with the actions of a personal God who intimately governs the affairs of men. This God … our God, “changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men And knowledge to men of understanding (Daniel 2:21). This God … our God, “raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. “For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s; on them he has set the world.” (I Samuel 2:8).
 
And this God … our God has told us that His rule throughout History, though never completely plumbed and understood by men, is a rule that is rational and has a ethical cause and effect relationship. This is what we read in Deuteronomy 28.

Because God’s people have always understood God’s rule as rational and having a ethical cause and effect relationship they have always read History in just such a way. Now, they perhaps were not always correct regarding how they traced out the hand of God’s movement in History but they nonetheless understood History as matter of God’s personal dealing with men.

Examples,

Habakkuk,
The people of Judah had grown wicked, violent, and corrupt. There was no justice in the land that was supposed to be known by God’s name. Habakkuk couldn’t take it anymore. These people shouldn’t be allowed to disregard God’s law. Surely God would set things right.

So Habakkuk pleads with God, asking Him to save Judah from her own wickedness. God answers, but not in the way Habakkuk expected.

To judge Judah’s wickedness, God says He will hand them over to the Chaldeans: a nation even more wicked, violent, and corrupt.

Positive

1 Samuel 7:6, 10b:

And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lordwith all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” So the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only….And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the LORD, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the LORD. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh.  Now when the Philistines heard that the people of Israel had gathered at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the people of Israel heard of it, they were afraid of the Philistines.

10B But the LORD thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel.

Because of this observation that God’s judgments were rational and could be traced to cause and effect the Puritans developed doctrines that taught,

The sword of God’s justice lies quiet in the scabbard till sin draws it out. Affliction is good for us: ‘It is good for me that I have been afflicted’ (Psa. 119:71). Affliction causes repentance (II Chron. 33:12). The viper, being stricken, casts up its poison; so, God’s rod striking us, we spit away the poison of sin. Affliction betters our grace. Gold is purest, and juniper sweetest, in the fire. Affliction prevents damnation (I Cor. 11:32). “ –  Thomas Brooks

And so if they were afflicted or if that which they thought of as punishment would come into their lives they would examine their lives to see if there was sin that need to be repented of in order that God might bless them again.

This mindset was captured by R. L. Dabney, who could say following our great fratricidal war,

“‘A righteous God, for our sins towards Him, has permitted us to be overthrown by our enemies and His.'”

R. L. Dabney

They inherited this mindset from passages like Deuteronomy 28.

Now we are going to spend a little bit of time looking at Deuteronomy 28 but before we do I want to say that there is also danger lying in this mindset that I’ve just teased out. The danger in this mindset is the potential development of a Health, Wealth, and prosperity theology that teaches that those who prosper are automatically seen as blessed by God while those who don’t prosper or who have calamity visit them are being chastened by God. This is certainly too simplistic of a reading of this theology. God often has reasons for afflicting His people that cannot be definitively traced to His displeasure. There are times God brings His severe mercy into our lives in order to grow us in sanctification.

Oh, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus! who hath now let me see how good the wheat of Christ is, that goeth through His mill, and His oven, to be made bread for His own table. Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace; it is glory in its infancy. (Samuel Rutherford)

In such times and with such events God is not displeased with us but is working to take us out into the deeps of His unmerited favor to fashion and shape us according to His good pleasure.  Sometimes in our lives — maybe even many times, we, like Job, are never given the definitive reasons why God has wounded us and must remain content that God does all things well.

In other times we may be able to look back and understand God’s severe mercy. An example of this is all the woundedness of Joseph. Beaten by his brothers. Sold as a slave. Unjustly accused of adultery. Thrown into the foulest of prisons but finally lifted up in order to be God’s agent to save the Hebrews. Joseph can finally say to his brothers that all of this was a matter of their intending evil but God intending good.

Having given those qualifiers we do understand though that disobedience has consequences.

Here in this passage God is speaking to His people. And here He warns them of the consequences of disobedience to His law.

Note here that God is NOT anti-nomian. He is not against His law. Indeed, so highly does He esteem His law that He places a nexus of cause and effect between the disobedience of His people to His law and their circumstantial demise. This is so true that it should be the case that when we see God’s hand heavy upon us that we should ask ourselves if there is any way in which we have dishonored God and His Law.

Another thing to note here is the corporate and covenantal nature of this chastisement. When God’s people walk contrary to God’s law so that God visits them with calamity it is often the case that there are individuals who are caught up in that covenantal chastisement who were, individually speaking,  not direct participants in the corporate covenantal sin. We think here of Daniel and the three faithful Hebrews carried into Babylon as God visited chastisement upon His disobedient people. One can think of Jeremiah, who was faithful to God but carried into exile into Egypt.

Well, as we look at this segment of Scripture particularly we see that,

I.) Cause and Effect Govern God’s people

15 “But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.

As we said at the outset, we do not live in an impersonal time + chance + circumstance world. This world, and our lives are lived before the face of God and so the world is ablaze with the handiwork of God in all our living.

The modern “Christian” man desires to live life as if it is disconnected to this divine cause and effect. We seldom tremble at the notion of sinning against God’s law because we don’t really believe that at a foundational level God governs the universe. We, might believe it at some abstract level, but we don’t really believe, concretely speaking, that God governs the affairs of men in such a way that every wind of sin is responded to by the whirlwind of God. The Scriptures repeatedly remind us that “God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall He also reap.” We have forgotten the basics that this life is both the Theater of God’s grace and the theater of God’s judgment.

When we strip God’s law from this world so that the obedience of it or the disobedience of it has no impact the result is that we lock God out of this world.  The world then has no meaning except that which we sovereignly give to it by our own fiat word. If God’s law has no cause and effect impact in this world then we should not be surprised when we see a rash of Ministerial sin which is high handed against God and man.  When God’s law is deleted from this world God sovereignty becomes a hollow phrase that nobody really takes seriously.

But here in Deuteronomy we read that God’s cause and effect do govern God’s people. And the ironic thing here is our insistence that God’s law no longer governs us as a Church in all of our living brings upon us the very consequences that we see here.

We note again then that we live in a world of cause and effect. Not man’s cause and effect but Gods. So we see here that the curse is a reality. It cleaves to the sinner, pursues him, chases him down, ruins and and eventually even slays him as we see in ver. 45.

“All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you.  

Now of course some will contend that this is all Christian boogeyman God superstition to which we reply that all of History bears this out and while it might be the case that the wheels of justice grind slowly it also remains true that they grind exceedingly fine. It remains true that we can be sure our sins will find us out.


The Dark Soul-ed Storm

Europe’s Sons,  adopted by God
Have rejected Christ and forsaken kin
Bear the Father’s wrath and rod
Just penalty for such rebellious sin
Judgment is this dark souled storm
Abaddon’s migrant locust swarm

Will warning come from God’s Kirk?
Siren from the place of truth?
Alas, the prophet’s voice is now berserk
And the Holy desk is a carny booth
Judgment is this dark souled storm
That finds the Kirk in Apollyon’s form

A consecrated remnant can still be found
A band of blades for Christ supplied
But enough to halt the  Cerberus hound?
Or to turn back the dark souled tide?
Relief must come from He who calmed the storm
And those committed to Christ’s Reform

Arise ye clan of bards, prepare for siege
Kindred of Christ and Europe’s blood
We must defend our Lord and Liege
We must roll back the Dragon flood
For Christ and Country and future Kin
To now repose ‘twould be mortal sin

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? 

Ask the Pastor — What of John Donne’s Divine Ravishing?

Dear Pastor,

I wonder what you think of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, “Batter My Heart.” ? It ends with a rape of the soul. But he links it to chastity. The paradox is present.

 
Jayson Grieser
 
 
Jayson,
 
Donne’s couplet in question,
 
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
 
I think one has to understand the points of perspective in order to dissolve the paradox. We, as humans, will always be ravished either by God or by the devil. As such, it is never a matter of being “ravished” or “not being ravished,” it is always only a matter of “ravished by whom.”

I think what Donne is getting at is akin to Luther’s prose in his, “On the Bondage of the Will,”

 
“Man is like a horse. Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider.”
 
So, man is always a ravished being, just as man is always a rode being. If we are ravished by the devil it is a ravishing unto corruption. If we are ravished by God it is a ravishing unto chasteness and purity. Man, having no free will, will thus only be a ravished being. Either we will be ravished unto purity by God or we will be ravished unto impurity by the Dragon.
 
Donne uses the “ravished” language but in my estimation he is using the language from Lucifer’s perspective when he uses that language. If he were to speak from God’s perspective he would have written instead something like,
 
Except you possess me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you keep me.
 
But that doesn’t make for as good poetry. I hope that helps.
 
Thank you for stopping by Jayson and thanks for a thoughtful question.