Nana & The Lay Lutheran Pastor

Randy,

I don’t think I misunderstood you. You said, “I, too, used to “thwack” people upside the head with God’s Word.” By your use of the word “too” you did more than imply that Mrs. Nanna was, like you, being legalistic. As I pointed out, that was inaccurate.

I praise God that he rescued your from the GRBC with its dispensationalism and its fundamentalism. I pray that God will continue to deliver His people from the errors that their current respective faith communities entertain.

You said Randy,

“Still, now having said that, while legalism is ultimate a “Law+Grace=saved,” the end effect can be the same if a Christian believes that in order to be a “good Christian” or a “real Christian” then you really need to do “X,y,Z.” That is a very dangerous place to go and we need to be careful when we head there.”

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. I do know that throughout the Scriptures the Apostle Paul warns people against behavior that is inconsistent w/ confessing Christ. The Apostle Paul doesn’t seem to shy away from saying that we may not go on sinning that grace may abound.

As a contrary example to your statement the Apostle Paul seems to suggest that the Galatians can’t be good Christians if they deny being saved by faith alone. Another contrary example to your statement would be when the Apostle tells the Corinthians that they are not being very good Christians when they take one another to court, or when they allow the one caught in incest to remain a member of their Church. But perhaps I’m misunderstanding your concern?

Actually, Luther, in his writings was more predestinarian than Calvin ever was. And I agree w/ you that Lutherans don’t mind contradictions. That is why they have a mystery box to throw them in.

I think Anna’s post in which we are responding to is not the legalistic admonition that you fear it is. Thanks for your concern for her though. It is always good to be reminded that we need to tell people of God’s grace.

Reuters News Service Reports New Obama Administration Policy

Reuters news agency reports that the Obama administration has come out with a new program intended to stimulate the US economy. This new program is called, “Cash for condoms.” The thinking is by stimulating the condom market that not only will condom producers increase the size of their market share but also that at the same time STD’s and unwanted pregnancies will decrease.

When Condom Czar Peter Gravida was asked if the “Cash for Condom” program was intended to intersect with the “Cash for Clunkers” program he answered by saying,

“It must be appreciated that the Auto industry is not the only manufacturer in our country that is to big to fail. It is also the case that the US Rubber industry is a industry that is to big to fail. As such we thought that in the interest of fairness we would provide seed money to the Rubber industry as well as to the Auto industry.”

Rumors are circulating among Washington insiders that next week, the Obama Administration will report its “Cash for Cancer” program. The thinking here is that by promoting financial incentive for contracting cancer there will be the effect of reducing the unwanted surplus human population that is such a burden on our health care industry.

The Greatest Generation …. Oh, Please

Tom Brokaw wrote a couple books invoking the idea that the generation prior to the Baby boomers should be referred to as “The Greatest Generation.” Now, this generation includes my parents (barely) and my grandparents. Now, I love my kin as much as the other person but to suggest that that generation is “The Greatest Generation” begs a great number of questions.

After all it was this generation that,

1.) Made communism an international phenomenon. Sure, the greatest generation contributed to victory in WW II but what kind of victory was it when we put all of Eastern and much of Central Europe behind the Iron Curtain? What kind of victory was it when we put much of Asia behind a Communistic Bamboo curtain?

2.)Gave approval and participated in the un-Christian and barbaric acts that were the bombing of Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuking of Japan. If Christian views of warfare had been followed such a thing could have never happened.

3.) Were standing guard when abortion was legalized. I’m supposed to get all misty eyed about a generation that stood by while abortion became a sacrament of the West?

4.) Were responsible for “The Great Society,” “The Welfare – Warfare State,” and the Military Industrial complex. In short it was on the “greatest generation’s” watch that we became increasingly and perhaps irretrievably socialist.

5.) Stood by and watched while gambling became legalized, while contraception became socially approved, and while immigration laws were changed in such a way that this country was assured that it would no longer be have a singular identifiable culture. Further the greatest generation watched as laws were put into place that feminized us as a people.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the generation in question didn’t have strengths. Neither am I suggesting that my generation has done well. It’s done even worst than their parents and grandparents. What I am suggesting is that is stretches credulity to suggest that the generation prior to the boomers should be referred to as “The Greatest Generation.”

This is why I’ve never bought into the whole “Greatest generation” bumble-fumble.

Of Slaughtered Piglets and Destroyed Automobiles

During the New Deal the Roosevelt administration came up with a bright idea as to how to keep agricultural prices high. Roosevelt, through his Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), proposed to pay farmers for decreasing their production. The thinking was that by decreasing the supply they would increase the prices for agricultural products. This however was deemed not sufficient enough. The Roosevelt administration went further in their price propping schemes and legislated the killing of six million pigs and the plowing under of ten million acres of cotton. At the time, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, described the wholesale destruction of crops and livestock as “a cleaning up of the wreckage from the old days of unbalanced production.”

Now in 2009 the Obama administration has come up with the bright idea as to how to prop up the auto industry. Obama, through his “Cash for Clunkers,” is paying the owners of older cars to destroy their automobiles. The thinking is that by decreasing the supply of bad cars that will increase both the productivity of the auto industry while at the same time saving on energy. The effect of this action will be to,

1.) Increase the price of used cars.

As older cars are destroyed the effect will be to shrink the supply of older cars. With the number of older cars diminished the effect will be that the older cars that remain on the market will increase in price since demand, remaining consistent, will find that it takes more dollars to purchase a older car since supply is constricted.

This is bad news for those young people who are looking to purchase their first car.

2.) Increase personal debt

People, who are pursuing the “Cash for Clunkers” program, are people, on the whole, who will go from owning their vehicles outright to people who have taken on debt in order to finance that new car they purchased.

3.) Increases public debt

The government is going into debt to the tune of billions of dollars it doesn’t have in order to fund this “cash for clunkers” program. The government doesn’t have any money that it does not first steal from its citizens. Funds to pay for “Cash for Clunkers” are funds stolen from the American taxpayer.

4.) Create an entitlement mentality

“Cash for Clunkers” is a middle class entitlement. These kinds of programs turn the middle class into a slave class as the expectation grows that entitlements are acceptable as long as they are entitlements that serve my wants and needs. With this program the government is not giving away money as much as it is buying slaves.

And none of what we have said so far begins to approach the problem of taking perfectly good used cars and destroying them. “Waste not, want not,” keeps pounding through my head.

Oh, and could anybody point to where the Federal government finds authority in the US Constitution for “Cash for Clunkers”?

Supernova Gospel

“(The Apostle Paul) saw that it was paradoxically through the narrowing down of his redemptive acts to unique singularity of one single man — the Messiah, Jesus, that God opened the way to a universal offering of the grace of the gospel to all the nations.”

Christopher J. H. Wright
Knowing Jesus Through The Old Testament — pp. 52-53

Try to imagine the Gospel as dense matter getting smaller and smaller, and yet at the same time increasingly concentrated, with the passing of redemptive history. Jesus arrives on the scene and with the confluence of redemptive events that characterize his life completed, the dense matter Gospel explodes, and goes super nova, having a re-creating effect wherever the impact of the explosion is felt. This is the book of Acts chronicling the initial fulfillment of the OT prophet’s foretelling of the streaming in of the nations to serve the Lord (cmp. Acts 15:15-17).

The Church, for the Glory of God, impelled by the Spirit, preaching up Christ crucified, is still to be God’s supernova re-creating institution. The Church should still have the expectation that God will use it as the agency whereby the nations and their cultures know and experience redemption. The church is not waiting for some cataclysmic end for the cataclysmic end, with its promise of a new heavens and a new earth, has already come in the death, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost of Christ. The old Judaic order has passed and God’s new Kingdom order has come. In order for that present new Kingdom to progressively come as a reflection of its definitive arrival we must be adorning the Gospel w/ beautiful community life, proclaiming the crown rights of King Jesus, and commanding all men everywhere to repent. Because of the Supernova Gospel we have been given a Kingdom that can not be shaken. This Kingdom is destined to make the places of this current world that are arid and hostile deserts (The lands of the Son’s of Allah, The land of the Jews, The lands of the humanist) which are the last outposts of the falls resistance into beautiful and flourishing gardens of the Lord.

However before any of this happens the church has to awaken to what it is as members of the age to come, and what the seed of the serpent is as it holds membership in this present wicked age. Until we understand this eschatological antithesis we will forever be putting up garden wallpaper on the desert spots and deluding ourselves that it has been changed by the supernova Gospel.