Classic Totalitarian rhetoric

Read this.

Now ask yourself: "Why does he want a nuclear bomb if he believes what he is saying?"

When someone is either this self-deceived or this willing to openly lie, there is no reasoning with him. His texxtbook was written by his historical fathers in totalitarian encroachment over the last 150 years, and if we do not recognize it we are our own worst enemies.

UPDATED: That Mike Wallace -- he's about as sharp as white American cheese. You read the first one, right? Read this.

Let's see -- Ahmadinejad is a short man who seems friendly and outgoing, but if we get past Wallace's star-struck view we can also see that this person is tempramental and skiddish (note the part about the schedule interview nearly being called off -- until the cameras are about to go home to the Great Satan; also note that a 30-min interview turned into 90 minutes of tape -- apparently face time with Mike Wallace is a lot more important to Ahmadinejad that anything else he had scheduled as President)(nothing like Hitler, btw). Wallace also forgot to mention what a great soccer fan Ahmadinejad is, which is unforgivable.

Today in her column, Ann Coulter said that the defeat of Joe Leiberman in the CT Democratic senate primary this week is proof that Americans have lost the will to survive in a post 9/11 world. I think this Mike Wallace proves her right.

Non-link

I will not link you to the Daily Gut because of the language. It's disgusting.

UPDATED: So why did you click the link? did you think I was kidding?

A Separate Peace [2]

got a little side-tracked in part 1 of this series because of a necessary qualifier, but I had really intended to talk about the issue of Gene and Finny as archetypes in which Baptists can learn a lesson. In A Separate Peace, Gene and Finny have to separate – because Finny dies. They go their own ways because Finny dies during an operation, but the author’s point in writing the story is that Gene realizes, in the end, that while he called Finny his friend he was never really “right” with Finny – he was jealous of him, and was somewhat slyly-hateful toward him. Finny’s death was a catalyst for Gene, sadly, to “get over it” – that is, it took a cataclysmic event to make Gene know something about himself that needed fixin’, and he was able to fix it. Or to put that last phrase more precisely, he was able to fix the part with which he was left.

Let’s have no doubt that this book is a secular book, yes? And may Memphis and the IMB forbid that Baptists (Southern Baptists, anyway) ever learn anything from a non-biblical source. But with the primary qualification that we ought to contend for our faith in a right minded, generous, and humble way, and the secondary qualification that the metaphor I am drawing on is a secular source (even if it bears some resemblance, for example, to Cain and Abel [Gen 4:1-15], and to Saul and David [1 Sam 18:6-8], and to Peter and Jesus [John 21], and to Paul and Barnabas [Acts 15]), let’s ask ourselves a serious question: when, exactly, should we formally “separate” from people who, yesterday, we were in full fellowship with?

You know: for example – at what point should the prohibitionist fundamentalist social conservatives separate from the non-prohibitionist fundamentalist social conservatives? The rhetoric for such a thing is out there – because the non-prohibitionists are (among other things) obviously sympathic to baby-baptizers and drunk drivers. Can the case be made that the non-prohibitionists have actually tread upon the fundamentals of the faith in such a way that they are in sin, and cannot or will not repent, and ought to be disfellowshipped – especially for the sake of doing missionary work in places as diverse as China, Pakistan, the Sudan, and Webster, NY? Specifically, over a beer at dinner, or a glass of champagne at one’s 25th wedding anniversary?

Yes, I know: I have painted this issue in pretty stark terms, but what is at stake is the viability of the missionary work of the SBC. In the U.S., it is the largest relief organization on the ground at any given time, and is internationally renown for demonstrating compassion in every nation without regard to their political or religious beliefs. In the end, the issue is whether or not we’re going to send missionaries to the largely-Catholic state of Louisiana who can break bread with the indigenous peoples there and not be offended by a glass of wine at the dinner table – or perhaps even show good manners by having one like an appreciative guest.

Splitting the convention along prohibitionist/moderationist lines will certainly cripple the missionary work of the SBC because the line there drawn will demand that all missionaries be prohibitionist -- which is not to say, "don't partake themselves" but "actively work to abolish all uses drinkinguses of alcohol". It will place the work of abolishing alcohol on the same cooperative level as the demand that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scripture. Someone will have to do some work someplace to demonstrate for me how those two things are of equal importance in Scripture – when the former cannot be found in Scripture at all.

See: for Gene and Finny, somebody had to die and the other had to suffer the catastrophic loss of a close friend for redemptive change to happen. For Baptists, we have to realize that somebody already did die for the sake of redemptive change – and His death is Sufficient for redemptive change. And I’m not talking about honored men like Adrian Rogers here: I’m talking about the Son of God, the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world that God has made both Lord and Christ – this Jesus who was crucified.

In the end, Gene lived with the regret that he was never the kind of friend Finny had been – which is to say, seeing the whole world (including Gene) as perfectly innocent in motives, and thereby allowing even Gene to take advantage of him. Gene in fact held himself separated from Finny even as his friend for the sake of protecting himself – which was never necessary! And that separation – that method of self-interest – ultimately was the cause of the death of Finny.

Is that the kind of peace the prohibitionist Baptists want – a peace which can only result in the permanent alienation of brothers in Christ? We should think on our roots – and on the political reasons the SBC was formed in 1845. We are not guilty of the sins of our fathers in the faith, but if we are not careful we are going to commit the same kinds of sins – which would be placing our worldly interests, both in the form of fear and of political influence, ahead of the Gospel which is the only power to redeem the nations.

The Gospel is more powerful than alcohol. Maybe if we focused on that, we could do something greater than separate from brothers who agree with us that drunkenness is evil and an abuse of good conscience.

A separate peace [1]

You read that book in High School, right? Gene and Finny? Gene is jealous of Finny but Finny can’t muster up the cynicism to be angry at Gene for being jealous? That book, as I remember it, is about Finny coming to “peace” with the fact that the world is not perfect (even if it is the eternal peace of death), and Gene coming to grips with the fact that he had no reason to hate Finny at all – Finny was the truest kind of friend, even if he was insufferable in his innocence.

Baptists (especially the Reformed stripe) and the rest of the Christian world are a lot like Gene and Finny. It’s not a perfect allegory, but there’s enough correlation to make some fine points about both parties. For example, neither side is actually perfect: one side is a little too concerned with being the best (in spite of his self awareness that he has many flaws), and the other side has no regard for such a thing to the point that it clouds his judgment and causes him to be foolishly innocent.

Fair enough, right? That’s a broad brush, and a broad brush tends to slop the paint around, and one winds up getting some on his own hands. In this book, Gene and Finny have to separate – because Finny dies. They go their own ways because Finny dies during an operation, but the author’s point is writing the story is that Gene realizes, in the end, that while he called Finny his friend he was never really “right” with Finny – he was jealous of him, and was somewhat slyly-hateful toward him. Finny’s death was a catalyst for Gene, sadly, to “get over it” – that is, it took a cataclysmic event to make Gene know something about himself that needed fixin’, and he was able to fix it.

In my mind, this is exactly what the Baptist ideal of separation is like – and I know this is going to draw some ire from people I consider friends, so let me lay out a qualifier before I go any farther: when it comes to the Gospel, we ought to give no quarter to those who want to water it down. We ought to contend for the faith. We ought to stand for fundamentals as if there was nothing else to stand for.

That qualifier, of course, comes back to the issue of orthodoxy and what the essential doctrines of the faith are, right? So I’m not talking about having some index card of faith-truths we are willing to die for, and the rest is cotton candy: I’m talking about a robust orthodoxy which holds up as important everything the Bible holds up as important, to the same extent that the Bible holds it up as important, and then the rest is fine for rumination and consideration.

If you want a specific example of what I’m talking about, marriage is a non-negotiable of the Christian faith. The mere orthodoxy types never consider this, but marriage is an essential part of Christian theology for a long list of reasons (I have listed some of them elsewhere), and those who would corrupt it or abolish it or tamper with it are the kinds of troublemakers we should separate from.

However, the marriage ceremony is not non-negotiable. There’s no fixed ceremony expounded in the Bible, and the kind of marriage celebration sort of taken for granted in the Bible makes the Baptist practice of marriage rites look somewhat bloodless and mopey. It ought to be joyful; it ought to be public; it ought to be focused on Christ; it ought to be honoring to the bride and the groom. That’s it – after that, I think we have the liberty to enjoy ourselves. We ought not to be separated from people who have Tarzan-themed weddings, or whatever: the ceremony is only a tactic in implementing the strategy of the actual institution of marriage. I might have more to say about stupid objections like, “well, what about a nudist wedding,” or “what about a cannibal wedding,” or “what about a wiccan wedding”. Each of those violate one of the things I have already mentioned as hallmarks of what the Bible describes in wedding ceremonies.

Nathan Busenitz has been off on the issue of separation over at Faith and Practice blog, and my good friend Phil Johnson has called that series “stellar” – and I think Phil is right. But Nate’s last post in that series drew this comment from a reader:

Fundamentalists would agree with your view of Billy Graham and would have no association with him. Then, I think, the argument would go this way: since Dr. Mohler does not separate from Billy Graham, but associates with him (the Louisville Graham Crusade), Dr. Mohler, by his practice, is rejecting the doctrine of separation, and therefore is a disobedient believer who must be separated from.

Which, of course, is a pretty lousy argument if you ask me, but it’s the kind of thing that comes up when this issue gets tossed around.

Now, I want everyone reading this blog to think about something: does this person actually “get” the doctrine of separation at all? I am pretty widely on-record as finding stadium evangelism for the most part disreputable because it removes the responsibility for evangelism from the local church, but do I think we ought to be separated from anyone who cooperates with a stadium event?

Good heavens – I’d have no church to belong to!

Listen: at the core of the doctrine of separation are a couple of things which the reactionary, the zealot, and the bigot (which are not all the same things) ignore pretty strenuously – that is, they have to exert a lot of energy to ignore these things.

The first thing is this: every mistake is not apostasy and sin. Can we agree on that? For example, when Paul separated with Barnabas over Mark, neither man was falling into apostasy. Barnabas may have made too much out of the necessity of bringing the young man along, and Paul made have made too much out of leaving him behind, but neither man was violating the Gospel over that matter of tactics.

We all make mistakes. Some of us make bigger mistakes than others – because some of us work on a bigger canvas. You know: a guy with a blog that pulls in 500 readers a day can make a bigger mistake than a guy with 5 readers if they both express the same opinion at the same time over the same subject – like demanding that Joel Osteen is a rank heretic. I don’t think Osteen is a rank heretic: I think he’s a pastor who has made some grave tactical errors, and he’s unable to demonstrate that he can express or defend the Gospel on national TV. What that means is that he’s poor evangelist, and he doesn’t have a lot of experience in apologetics. On those grounds, you’d have to call a lot of pastors in America today heretics. Does that sound reasonable to anyone? It doesn’t sound reasonable to me to call a lot of pastors “heretics” because they aren’t skilled in arguing and facing arguments about the doctrines of the faith.

So every mistake is not apostasy. Sorry! If it was, it would be a lot easier to exercise separation, but it would also probably leave you personally as a person from whom we need to be separated.

The second thing is this: choosing to separate is a matter of conscience. In the post Nate made which elicited this response from his reader, he (Nate) cites Spurgeon’s willingness to separate from his church association as a fine example of separation in practice, and in doing so quotes John MacArthur as saying this:

Spurgeon did not actively seek to pull others out of the Union, but he could not understand why men who wanted to remain faithful to the Scriptures would continue to belong to an organization that was so obviously barreling down the down-grade

Certainly, Spurgeon was withdrawing for “principle” – but he did not condemn those who did not withdraw as heretics but as brothers who were making a faulty choice. They have joined to what Spurgeon himself calls a lost cause, but that doesn’t mean they are themselves lost.

In that, the example of Al Mohler “cooperating” with the Billy Graham Crusade is significantly misused. Dr. Mohler has chosen to do something, frankly, I would not choose to do – but that doesn’t make Dr. Mohler a person of theological disrepute. Dr. Mohler has made the choice to go where there are lost people (along with his church) and seek to deliver the Gospel to them. Is there some question of whether or not they will be confused by seeing Catholic, Reformed Baptists and Finney-esque “evangelicals” all lined up together? Why yes: I think there will be some confusion, and there may be some equivocation.

But what is worse: standing next to a Catholic or a wobbly evangelical and preaching the Gospel to the lost, or sitting in at your desk someplace typing on your computer demanding such a stringent form of separation that we have no opportunity to ever see a lost person, and we studiously avoid events where the lost are bound to be. I think the latter is an offense to Christ, and the former is not.

Last (for the sake of the blog this week) is this, which I have eluded to, above: it’s not a sin to preach the Gospel. Um, Duh? It’s not a sin to preach the Gospel – it’s the #1 thing we are called to do. In that, we don’t, for example, become strip-club owners to preach to strippers and their oglers, but we do have an obligation to preach the Gospel to strippers and their oglers. We don’t become murderers to preach the Gospel to murderers. We don’t become thieves to preach the Gospel to thieves, or drunks to become a preacher to drunks. But we must engage our faith in some way that preaches the Gospel to murderers, thieves, drunks, oglers, and strippers.

You know: the sin is in actually being the servant with the single talent. You know that story, right? Mat 25:14-30? The one servant gets one lousy talent, and rather than do something with it for the sake of his master, he does nothing with it for the sake of his master and is frankly punished severely.

Don’t be that servant. That’s the guy who is going to have a very long and uncomfortable time in front of Christ in the final account because he had received the mercy of the Father (allegedly), and then he did nothing with it or because of it.

That’s where I’m going to stop this week, and just as a reminder to myself, this actually has something to do with the alcohol stuff I’ve been posting, so think about that as you try to keep your grass from spontaneously combusting this weekend.

And, of course, be with the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day in the Lord’s house this weekend. Don’t pretend you’re alone in this world: there are plenty of other hypocrites and sinners just like you who this week will turn towards their savior and worship Him for what He has done. You can join together in the praise. Go do it, and stop pretending that you’re a better person for using separation from sin as an excuse for failing to be obedient to God.

Michael Spencer eats worms

Listen: he started this, OK? He's the one who has "new found respect" blahblahblah, which you can read about here. Pheh.

Here's what I didn't say in my last post: I didn't say, "Gospel and Missions More Important Than Occasional Impolite Language". My apology to Pastor Driscoll is about the way I have positioned myself against him as if he didn't preach the Gospel, or as if he was off the Gospel path, or whatever that means. I didn't make any apologies for casting the stink-eye on his application of James 3 (or lack thereof): the apology I sent Pastor Driscoll had to do with my motives in some of my criticisms of him.

He and I share a singular vice: we have sharp tongues which, often enough to exceed once in a blue moon, cut deeper and perhaps not as surgically as we would like them to. That's bad. I didn't apologize for that. I apologized for forgetting that the Gospel has to be preached to the lost even though they don't want to hear it -- a virtue he has which I have sometimes lapsed away from, and which is more important that having content for my blog.

I didn't apologize for what he did: I apologized for what I did - and that's a distinction I think iMonk's victory lap seems to miss.

UPDATED: Oh please -- iMonk went and deleted the post. Frank disagreed with me and it'll spoil my weekend! W-a-a-a-a-a-a! This wasn't even very insightful correction -- it was pretty run-of-the-mill "my side of the story" stuff. How's that rate anathemacious behavior?

Technorati tag: Mark Driscoll

I'm posting this just to watch the Technorati traffic from the Mark Driscoll police pass through the blog. I'm really a jerk about stuff like this, but when I figure out somebody is as cross-eyed as I am about who's talking about one's self on the internet, I like to contemplate my own sanctification (or lack thereof) by making fun of theirs.

BTW, I sent an apology to Pastor Driscoll about my attitude toward him -- because in the end, there's a pretty significant truth about what he does vs. what 95% of all churches in America do: he's making disciples and planting churches that are making disciples. You might want to pick a fight over whether he's making disciples like John Knox and Charles Spurgeon made disciples -- you know, disciples that change their culture rather than disciples that are making another kind of the same culture most Christians live in now -- but as I said before, even if Mars Hill winds up being a Dolly Madison cake with a secret Gospel filling, it's doing a lot more of what's right than (no offense, Tad) my local church is doing.

When was the last time your church -- you, the reader -- preached the Gospel to a porn star or a drunk, or any kind of sinner who didn't just happen to wander in? Jesus didn't come for those who are well, but for those who are sick. We should think about that as we baptists think about the matter of "separation".

Which is a nice segue for the rest of the posts this week ...

It’s not up to you [4]

Some smart-aleck reading this blog said to me, in words to this effect, “cent, I am sure your advice makes plenty of sense to actual Christians with conservative values and theological leanings, but to others it is boring and doesn’t have any appeal. No wonder your hits are down.”

I find that point of view interesting because it seems to think that there’s another equally-valid point of view which is yielding as-many or more successful marriages, and that people can look any ol’ place to find advice that not only is good for them, but it tastes good, too.

There are several things that come to my mind as I mull that over, and the first one is this: the idea that marriages founded on, and nurtured under, the view which I have proposed here fail at about the same rate as all other kinds of marriage is complete twaddle.

Listen: I have fallen for that line, and I’m a stats junkie. Turns out that the truth is that people with a Christian view of things have Christian marriages – and you can read more about that right here, particularly the answer to Question #13.

If you’re just blowing past this blog, or you think it’s either quaint or invasive to talk about what makes marriages work, I feel sorry for you. Why? Because it’s not up to you to decide what does and does not make marriages work. You didn’t invent marriage, and it doesn’t exist for your pleasure. It exists specifically for the sake of knowing God better and giving Him Glory – just like everything else does.

Here’s what I think about people who find the tactic of placing this discussion inside the bounds of theology offensive in some way: God isn’t real to you, friend. If you think marriage is just a social convention which we can toss out or revise when we think it needs an update – as if it was word processing software, or a car we are leasing – don’t pretend that you believe in a God who is Creator and Sustainer: you believe in a God who is beta-testing the universe, and is uploading patches thanks to the feedback of the fairly-large beta community which is using his product.

Don’t treat what God has joined together as if it was a terrible accident: it is not an accident but a purpose in this world.

There’s something else that comes to mind in considering this, so bear with me as I spell it out. It’s the idea that the world thinks anything at all of marriage. You know: using the logic I have proposed to defend the occational, responsible use of alcohol, someone might come back and say, “cent: about 75-80% of all marriages don’t fail. What you’re saying, in effect, is that there’s a solution in search of a problem. Most people who get married stay married – by more than a 2:1 ratio. You’re trying to cause drama where there is no drama, and you're drumming up tragedy for the sake of preying on hysteria.”

That seems like a pretty good point, I’ll admit. The problem is that it is trying to make the marriage issue only about people who stand up and take the vow. The marriage question, for example, is applicable to people who are not married but think they have a right to have sex. The marriage question applies to people who choose abortion over celibacy. The marriage question applies to what kinds of unions should and should not be fostered by the law and government. So while the divorce rate may only represent 20% of all people, all the peripheral issues around this matter touch on almost every single adult who can read this.

You know: for example, why do you want to have sex with someone who, honestly, doesn’t care what happens to the rest of your life? This isn’t a cheap song by Meatloaf I’m talking about here: this is your life, your body, your spiritual and emotional wellbeing I’m talking about. If you think you want to have sex with someone, ask them, “listen: I was thinking about what you look like naked and what a great thing it would be to be your 7-course meal, and then I realized that I have no idea if you are willing to love me in a sacrificial way which would bring both of us closer to God. Does my spiritual well-being matter to you? If so, how can I know that?”

If they think you are joking, you have your answer. Your spiritual wellbeing ought to matter more to a person you think you’re hot for than as a punchline for a joke.

The world doesn’t think anything at all about marriage – because the world thinks you ought to be “happy” (whatever that means), and “satisfied” (whatever that means), and “free” (but not cheap, of course, and not easy – well, maybe easy). Everything the world stands for is diametrically opposed to marriage. And while it is not up to you to decide what marriage stands for, it is up to you to decide if you’re going to stand with God in marriage, or with the world – in spite of your spouse’s unloveliness, and in spite of your own.

So you choose. And if you need some help thinking about it, you know where to find me.

more secret technorati tags:marriage divorce relationships

You're missing out

Listen: if you aren't visiting Eric Svendsen's blog, you are just a gossip-monger in the blogosphere. His current series on Phillipians is not only worth reading, it's worth studying.

Get yourself together, people. Your day should not be absorbed in whether or not Michelle Malkin is manipluating digg.com for the benefit of stats, or by whether or not Ellen at BHT comprehends complementarianism, or whether Mark Driscoll admits that only about 30% of his attenders are members and therefore real disciples. Study to show yourselves approved.

Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Dakotas

I have been combing over the stats, and there is clearly a shortfall of visitors to the blog from Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. We get plenty of traffic from the rest of the country (perhaps too much from the LA area, but that's mostly Phil and his network of Protestant remonstrators checking to make sure I haven't broken the faith), but the last great frontier does nothing for us.

Hey -- do you people not have the internet? I guess it's possible. I say good on you if that's the case.

Why blogging is evil

I write this post which, in my humble opinion, could save marriages and change the church, and my traffic goes down by a third.

But if I posted a 250-word piece of sassy-lip against iMonk or Mark Driscoll, traffic would go up by a third and I'd have to defend my opinion against all kinds of people who think I'm the one looking for a fight.

Bookmark this post. You'll see how wise it is over the course of the next 6 months.