Back To Warren’s Invocation

Warren’s prayer was confusion on steroids. Take for example the reference to God as being “Compassionate and Merciful.” Now, certainly the God of the Bible is “Compassionate and Merciful,” but which God of which religion is typically addressed as “the Compassionate and Merciful one?”

You got it …

Allah.

Now combine that insight with the one I mentioned earlier where Warren opens the prayer dwelling on the Unity of God but conveniently stepping aside the issue of the Trinity — the name of God which all Christians are Baptized into — and it begins to look like Warren was fishing for least common denominator God.

Look, Rick Warren is not dumb. None of us are setting here thinking of angles that Rick Warren didn’t think of. There is a purposeful blending going on in this prayer. As I said earlier it is an an attempt to be Christian and pluralist at the same time.

Think of the prayer as a compromise document — the purpose of which is to satisfy everybody who hears it because they are going to interpret it through their grid. In my estimation this is what Warren was reaching for. Evangelicals could hear it through their grid and be satisfied. Pluralists could hear it through their grid and be satisfied.

Look, Rick’s problem, like the problem of legions of Evangelicals today is that he has, consciously or unconsciously come up with a twist on the first and greatest commandment.

‘Please men with every word and deed. Rather, please humanity.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it: ‘To the fullest extent compatible with the first commandment, love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind.’ All the principles of popularity, comfort and satisfaction hang on these two commandments. (Hat Tip — Keith LaMothe)

When you think about it, there really is a kind of twisted brilliance to it all.

One more thing on this score before I close. Recently, I got in on the tail end of a conversation with Dr. John Armstrong on this subject. Armstrong was defending Warren’s attempt as being “Missional” which he assured us was different from “emergent,” or “post-modern.” (Just as Johnny Cake is different from Corn-bread.) Armstrong insisted that Warren’s route is the way we have to go since the hegemony of Christian culture is dead. The idea Armstrong presented was that since Christians are no longer in the drivers seat culturally they must shape their gospel message to that reality.

Now once upon a time that meant that Christians shaped their gospel message to that reality by suffering persecution and martyrdom for the Gospel. But Armstrong’s idea seems to be that the way we shape the gospel message to this new post-Christian reality is by emptying the Gospel of its content. In short we must learn to be comfortable with the back of the cultural bus. John Armstrong said that unless we are willing to do that many of our young people are going to leave our Churches.

Rick Warren and John Armstrong being Evangelical leaders reveals that we are living in some dark times.

A Genocide By Any Other Name …

“Many Americans fail to recognize the largest abortion provider in America is also the largest recipient of federal taxpayer dollars through Title X.”

US Congressman Mike Pence

Often when I will speak or write on the scourge of abortion comparing our holocaust to the work of Mao, Stalin, or Hitler, someone will inevitably respond that, “the representatives of America government, unlike those other countries, doesn’t directly involve themselves in the killing.” The idea is that we are somehow more righteous than Stalin’s Russia, or Mao’s China, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia because these United States merely allows murder to happen unabated without bloodying their hands in the role as executioner.

It is true that we are much more subtle than murderous regimes that have gone before. We are better at the propaganda, marketing, and indirect sales end of things. The State here doesn’t directly enter into genocide, it merely creates the climate where genocide can be profitably pursued. It gives millions and millions of tax dollars to Planned Parenthood through the title X program. It then pushes sex — lock, stock, and barrel (condemn, pill, and diaphragm) — in the government school curriculum which results in generations of animals posing as human beings which spikes the pregnancy rate which spikes the abortion rate. Our publicly funded Universities then force those who are training to become Doctors to learn to preform abortions.

The way I see it the only difference between Americans in our genocide and the genocides of Russians, Germans, Chinese, and Cambodians who preceded us in genocide is that we are much more smooth and crafty in the way that we practice holocaust.

Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

From StandTrue.com:

20 days: Foundations of brain, spinal cord and nervous system are laid.

24 days: Heart begins to beat.

30 days: Child has grown 10,000 times to 6-7 mm (1/4″) long. Brain has human proportions. Blood flows in veins (but stays separate from mother’s blood).

35 days: Pituitary gland in brain is forming. Mouth, ears and nose are taking shape.

42 days: Skeleton is formed. Brain coordinates movement of muscles and organs. Reflex responses have begun. Penis is forming in boys. (Mother misses second period.)

43 days: Brain waves can be recorded.

8 1/2 weeks: Fingerprints are being engraved. Eyelids and palms of hands are sensitive to touch.

9 weeks: Child will bend fingers around an object placed in the palm. Thumb sucking occurs. Fingernails are now forming.

10 weeks: Body is sensitive to touch. Child squints, swallows, puckers up brow and frowns.

11 weeks: Baby urinates, makes complex facial expressions – even smiles.

12 weeks: Vigorous activity shows distinct individuality. Child can kick, turn feet, curl and fan toes, make a fist, move thumbs, bend wrists, turn head, open mouth and press lips tightly together. Breathing is practiced.

13 weeks: Face is prettier, facial expressions resembling parents’. Movements are graceful, reflexes vigorous. Vocal chords are formed (but without air baby cannot cry). Sex organs are apparent.

4 months: Child can grasp with hands, swim and turn somersaults.

5 months: Sleeping habits appear, but a slammed door will provoke activity. Child responds to sounds in frequencies too high or low for adults to hear.

6 months: Fine hair grows on eye brows & head. Eye-lash fringe appears. Weight is about 640g (22 oz.), height 23 cm (9″). Babies born at this age have survived.

7 months: Eye teeth are present. Eyelids open and close, eyes look around. Hands grip strongly. Mother’s voice is heard and recognized.

——

Hat Tip — Pieter Friedrich

So What Is Johnny’s Education All About Anyway?

“‘Parent choice’ proceeds from the belief that the purpose of education is to provide individual students with an education. In fact, educating the individual is but a means to the true end of education, which is to create a viable social order to which individuals contribute and by which they are sustained. ‘Family choice’ is, therefore, basically selfish and anti-social in that it focuses on the ‘wants’ of a single family rather than the ‘needs’ of society.”

– Association of California School Administrators — Circa 1979

1.) Who gets to determine what the needs of a society are and by what standard are the needs measured?

2.) Here we have it in bold print. Education is not about education but rather about forcing people to work in a prearranged social order.

3.) If this is the way things operate than doesn’t it make sense for Christians to start thinking about what a “Biblical Social Order” looks like?

4.) Understand here that what is being advocated is that the decision of those concerned about the “social order” is seen to be more important then the decision of the parents for the good of their children.

5.) Concomitant with #4 is the idea that the social order is of higher importance then the family order.

6.) This quote communicates the idea that an individual is sustained more by his social order then his family or church context.

7.) Understand that as this type of thinking has won the day the result has been that those who have been saturated in Government Schools have almost universally adopted the premises of the social order as taught in Government schools. The implication of this is that those people will take the premises of the social order that they were taught and will shape and form their family orders and church orders to fit the social order that they have been brainwashed in.

8.)Parents wanting to raise and educate their children so that their children have their belief system and their value matrix are considered selfish. According to this ideology it is selfish for Parents to go against the social order.

People, if that quote doesn’t make you turn green from illness you need to go to the undertaker because you are dead.