Blog Posts - Ironworks Pike Community Church

What's the Difference Between A Cult and A Sect?

10/19/2018

A cult is a religious organization that says it's Christian but denies one or more of the fundamental truths of Christianity. These would include monotheism, the Trinity, the inspired reliability of the Bible, Christ's deity and humanity, or salvation by faith. They are usually dominated by one overbearing, dictator-type leader, use abusive forms of authority, and exploit the members financially and often sexually.

A sect is a Christian group that is basically sound in its preaching and teaching, but has elevated some secondary doctrine, peculiar tradition, or unique practice up to such a level of importance that the group breaks fellowship with other believers. Examples of this could include foot-washing, modes of baptism, or opinions about the time of the Rapture.

Cults are not Christian at all, even though they claim to be. For example, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) is not a Christian organization. Sects are Christian but they're divisive over secondary issues.

For example, the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church forbids its members to take Communion with any church but another Missouri Synod Lutheran church. If a Missouri Synod Lutheran was to break bread with us at our church, he or she would be excommunicated by the Missouri Synod. The Lutheran policy seems to say that no other Christian churches are "real" Christian churches, but that we're all heretics. This is the sin of sectarianism. Paul talks about this in 1st Corinthians 1.

Both of these are bad, though cults are worse because they actually deny the faith, where sects unbalance the faith. However, a spirit of denominational superiority, church-splitting, and judging one another over matters of personal conviction, weakens the Body of Christ and makes us more vulnerable to Satan's attacks.

God is "Impassible."

10/2/2018

There is a very old Christian doctrinal term, which is hard to understand and needs some up-dating: impassibility. Have you ever heard it? I only began interacting with it a couple of years ago. It's important, because it's about God.

The word "impassible" comes from the Latin passionem, later changed into passio, taking over for the Greek word pathos. The word "impassible" did not mean that the person was empty of all sentiment, though the word has turned into that for some writers. The word speaks of suffering. For example, Christians speak of Christ's "passion" week, the week that led up to His crucifixion.

The word passio can refer to what we might call "irrational gut impulses", like blinding rage. The virtuous person's goal was to act from noble affections, not those kinds of gut instinct.

In popular use, the word "passion" has watered-down to a mere synonym for "lust." There used to be a daytime drama named Passions, in which characters acted out their various lusts. Or, people speak about their "passion" for music, or some other intense enthusiasm. Their emotions become inflamed by overpowering desire.

Reclaiming the original meaning of the word sheds light on what kind of Person God is. There's comfort and warning to be found from the fact that God is impassible.

First, God can't suffer. Passio refers to suffering so that means God can't suffer.

He can't suffer physically, because He is purely a Spirit (John 4:24). He doesn't age. He can't get sick. He can't die. He is all-knowing and all-wise, Isaiah 40:28, so nothing surprises Him. God is perfectly righteous (Psalm 145:17), so He never suffers from sin's psychological effects or sin's practical consequences. He is all-powerful, so even if anything might make Him suffer, He could stop it!

"What about Jesus?", you might ask. Jesus of Nazareth suffered, because He was (and is) a human being. Christ was eternal God the Son united to a fully human nature (body and soul), minus the sin. Classical Christian doctrine teaches that Christ's human nature suffered while on the earth, therefore Christ the person suffered. But He was one person with two natures. His divine nature, because it was divine, did not suffer. (For more study on that, I refer you to the Creed of Chalcedon.)

We should be thankful that Christ in His human nature suffered, because that makes Him our sympathetic high priest. But we should also give thanks that God, in His essential eternal nature, cannot suffer, because people make terrible mistakes when they're suffering. Their judgment becomes impaired, and their abilities can become disabled. God is never in any danger of either thing happening.

Second, God never acts out of "irrational gut impulses."

Aren't you glad? How many mistakes have you made because, in a moment, you felt driven to say or do something that in hindsight you know was very foolish? God never, ever does that.

God is only wise (Romans 16:17); there's no foolishness in God at all. Everything God has ever done was directed by His wisdom (Psalm 104:24). And every bit of God's wisdom eternally springs up from within Himself -- He doesn't need to learn anything from universe He created (Isaiah 40:13). No one advises God. He advises everybody else!

Third, God's emotions are clean and free of sin.

It is clear from the Bible that God experiences emotion. Some Christian theologians in some circles deny this, on the basis that God doesn't change ("immutability"). Since emotion reflects a psychological change, therefore God doesn't really experience emotions. I think this confuses categories. God's essential nature doesn't change, but His interactions with people in time reveal different aspects of His character. Extrapolating ideas about God too far out from God's eternality is speculative and dangerous.

The Bible depicts God as expressing sentiments (affection, friendship, wrath, regret). Any teaching that leads us to say, "Well, the Bible only seems to say that" is dangerous, because there's no end to doing that. You could deny everything in the Christian faith using that approach.

We certainly should say that it's mysterious how the eternal God can already know all that will be, or could be, but still sincerely interact with us in each moment. God is eternal, and God is with us, at the same time. No one but God can interact with the world in that way.

We should say that God's emotions are just like ours, and yet very much unlike ours, in different ways. God is other, but God is not wholly other.

We should say that God's essential, perfect serenity is never disturbed, even when He says he regrets something, or is grieved (Genesis 6:6), or laments something (Deut. 5:29). God never experiences misery. His composure is invincible, even when He expresses displeasure.

God isn't just a giant projection of ourselves. God is different from us. Parts of God are unknowable. But the Bible is also clear that God isn't completely unknowable, or else we could not be saved (John 17:3).

So, give thanks that God has emotions, and give thanks that His emotions are pure, holy, untouched by sin or the tumultuous frailty of fallen flesh. God has righteous sentiments and affections, but He never experiences wrenching gut reactions, and is never impelled to unwise action.

God is impassible -- free from suffering, free from impulse, free from foolishness, free from sin, free from ignorance, free from every psychological weakness. This is why we can trust him, and rely on Him.

Five Circumstances When God Didn't Heal.

9/19/2018

The default faith of the Scripture is that God takes care of His people in every sense. He forgives all their sins, heals all their diseases, rescues them from destruction, crowns them with lovingkindness, and renews their life with vigor (Psalm 103:1-4). However, when the complete context of the entire Bible is taken into account, we find out that there were times when God did not heal every every disease in this life. The five benefits of God's care listed in Psalm 103 should each individually be understood in light of the whole Scripture.

For example, Christ doesn't heal a Christian when it's time for them to go to heaven (Psalm 139:16). It's obvious from practical experience that Christ doesn't heal every Christian of everything, because all Christians age, get sick, their bodies die, and they go to be with the Lord. Sin's curse still rests on this material world, in spite of Christ's death. The earth still groans. Christians groan with it (Romans 8:22-23). There were a few extraordinary cases in Scripture where a believer got to go to heaven without dying (Enoch, Elijah), but the rest of us age, wear down, and most of us will die of natural causes.

The Lord doesn't heal when he is punishing sin. King Uzziah sinned grievously by intruding into the sacred role of the priests. Uzziah should have known better! In fact, he did know better, which is why God smote him so sternly. I do not doubt that God forgave Uzziah, but the text says God never took the leprosy away (2 Chron. 26:27). God could have healed Uzziah (He did for Miriam in Numbers 12:10-15), but He did not. Uzziah died a leper.

Any sin can be forgiven, but the punishment of the sin might remain. Sin , especially sin by a leader, always carries serious consequences, and some of those consequences involve physical ailments. Paul said in 1st Corinthians 11:30 that some of the Corinthian congregation were weak and sick, and some had died, because of their selfish mistreatment of others in the flock and the way they dishonored the Lord's Table.

Christ doesn't heal while He is testing faith (Job 1-2). Not every sickness is punishment for sin, and we commit the sin of Job's judgmental friends if we assume this. It's a sin to just automatically assume a sick Christian is in unbelief or did something wrong. God Himself, in Job 1, said Job was a man of excellence, guiltless, so teachings that Job somehow brought his illness upon himself are wrong. Rather, God was vindicating His own praise of Job's faith, and shaming the devil for claiming Job was a religious mercenary, although Job never knew that (and God didn't tell him).

James 5:11 promises God will reward us as we come through His tests in faith. Job's example shows us that illness is one of those tests, along with natural disasters (lightning killed some of Job's herds, a windstorm collapsed a house on his children) and crime (gangs of thieves murdered Job's workers and stole all his flocks). But the Lord eventually stops the test, and rewards the believer.

Christ doesn't heal the payback for foolishness. Not everything bad is from the devil. Some of our problems are self-inflicted. Proverbs 3:18 says wisdom is a tree of life and blessing, so what fruit do you imagine foolishness grows? Elsewhere in Proverbs, Solomon says that drunks get bruises, lazy people get poverty, adulterers get beaten up by jealous husbands, and schemers fall into the pits they themselves have dug. Christians could catch AIDS because of immorality, and they shouldn't count on Christ miraculously healing them of it.

Christ knew not to throw Himself off the temple mount on the notion that God would catch Him, because you don't try to force God's hand by deliberately doing stupid, reckless things (Luke 4:9-12). Christ will let us live with the physical consequences of our own foolishness.

Christ doesn't take away the physical scars of persecution. In Galatians 6:17, Paul reminded his readers he still carried in his body the scars of Christ -- referring to wounds left on him by persecution. Paul suffered physically in his service to Christ. In 2 Corinthians 11:25, Paul said he had been pelted with stones and beaten with rods for the Gospel. He still had those scars. Christ allowed Paul to carry those badges of faithful honor in his body, like the medals of a military hero.

Psalm 103 doesn't contradict these other passages. Instead, we take them all side-by-side, believe all of them, and, with the help of other sound Christian teachers and thinkers, think through the best way to harmonize them. Unlike the saving forgiveness of sin, God makes certain exceptions to His normal, default work of ministering to His people's diseases. In the end, all of God's people will be forever immortal, vital, and whole through the redeeming work of His Son.

Social Justice.

9/10/2018

Recently, Dr. John MacArthur made a statement on social justice which, to my mind, was inadequate and reactionary. On the other hand, I dislike the current habit of fellow evangelicals to quote Martin Luther King Jr., as if he was a reliable guide on justice (due to his liberal disrespect for Scripture, he was not). But what does "social justice" even mean? People bat that phrase back and forth, often plunging into specific topics, but often without defining basic terms.

God is the ultimate basis of justice. The community isn't the basis of justice, neither is individual intuition. Justice exists because God exists. If there is no God, or if God hasn't spoken, then there is no justice. There can be no justice in an atheist world.

God has already spoken definitively about justice in the Bible. The Bible is God's out-breathed word, without error over-all, and in each individual part. This makes it the highest authority.

The Bible defines what is just, and the Bible's definitions of justice are sufficient for all peoples at all times. The Bible does not need to be supplemented by human reason, and is not defined or evolved-past by human culture. Sociology, law, and economics do not define justice, the Bible does.

The Torah states rules of justice in both narrative and prescriptive ways. Genesis tells many stories in which many characters act unjustly. God held them accountable for their unjust acts, even though Moses hadn't written his law yet. Then God gave His written law through Moses.

In the pursuit of clear rules of justice, Moses' Law must be handled with extreme care. Christians have erred toward theocracy (such as Rousas Rushdoony) by applying all of Moses' laws to Gentile societies, which is incorrect. On the other hand, other Christians (such as J. H. Thornwell) preached the exclusive "spirituality" of the church, and that Christianity had nothing to say to the civil society and laws of its own times. This too was wrong.

I believe that nine of the ten commandments can be seen in the stories of Genesis, and the New Testament gives us guidance on which portions of Moses' Law were timeless versus which ones were discontinued; and which of Moses' laws illustrated justice at work. For example, Moses forbids the moving of boundary-stones. This was an example of the timeless law, "Do not steal." We don't use boundary-stones today, but the principle would be not to steal by altering ownership markers.

The New Testament is clear that the entire priestly system of Moses was fulfilled by Christ, and is obsolete. Only Israel was supposed to be God's real theocracy. Christ said the Mosaic food laws were no longer in force. God gave the blessings and cursings of the Law for the Hebrews as they dwelt in the Promised Land. The Puritans, misguided by their "replacement theology" errors, never had the right to claim them. The U.S. was never the New Israel.

I believe God governs the 'secular' world by the general moral laws we see in Genesis. Another way to describe these laws is "conscience."

God affirms the right of non-theocratic governments to exist, both during Israel's time in Babylon (where God tells the Hebrews to be a blessing to the city), and in Romans 13 (where Paul says God appoints the secular rulers and requires us to respect and obey them within certain limits).

This is why the absence of blue laws doesn't bother me in the least. The Fourth Commandment (Sabbath) was only for the Jews, was only for the seventh day, and was fulfilled in Christ. God never expected Gentile nations to keep the sabbath, not even in the Old Testament times.

My bottom line is that true standards of justice are defined by the Bible. The Bible affirms the basic, universal instincts of conscience (even bad people object when evil acts are done to them!). It is a sin to falsely define "justice" by an unbiblical philosophical authority, such as Ghandi, Rousseau, or Marx, then try to Christianize those definitions with verses -- almost always quoted out of context.

So, please don't be wildly swept along by the passionate purveyors of politics. Political theories of justice, social or otherwise, fall under the dissecting sword of Scripture as much any religious sermon does. Scripture alone, studied carefully, defines the fundamental laws of justice. Not sociologists, economists, or philosophers.

Political Talk, & Conduct Worthy of the Lord.

8/24/2018

I'm appalled by the vile verbal river that flows in nearly every forum of public discussion today. There is no excuse for anyone who names the name of Christ for talking in the way we read in chat-threads. As Christian citizens we need to set a higher standard. Even on explosive topics we need to write and speak in self-controlled, godly ways.

At the simplest level of ethic, the Lord does not permit a Christian to talk abusively to others. Merriam-Webster defines "revile" as to inflict verbal abuse about another. This includes profanity, name-calling (such as calling someone an "idiot" or worse), dirty innuendos, and other such things.

Reviling is a serious sin in God's eyes. We're not to associate with revilers (1 Cor. 5:11), revilers are on their way to hell (1 Cor. 6:10), and the Lord lumps it in with other reprehensible sins, such as self-love, greed, boastfulness, arrogance, rebellion against parents, ingratitude, and ungodliness (2 Tim. 3:2). 99% of what I read on Twitter, comment threads, and sites like Reddit pertaining to current-event talk, is reviling.

Second, God is politically impartial, which should make all politicians of all parties in every nation tremble. God doesn't take sides. He does not favor Republicans. He does not support the Democrats. Jesus was not a socialist. God is not even an American.

He is His own side.

Third, God has a moral law. God's law hangs over America like a sword dangling on a thread, and only His mercy holds back the blade. If God's law condemns something, like abortion, homosexuality, needless wars, and the abuse of the poor (which it does), then we Christians are obligated to condemn those things also. God's law condemned Herod for taking his sister-in-law as his wife, and John the Baptist was right to call him out on it. (I bet there were people who called John a snowflake.)

Fourth, Christians in every nation need to remember that this world is not our home. We are not living in the Promised Land. We're more like the Jews in exile in Babylon. We ought to seek the peace of the various places where we all live, but we are not of this world.

I believe it is possible for Christians to serve honorably in public office. The Bible does not support the Amish way of withdrawal. Total withdrawal from society would betray our commission to be salt and light. Deborah served as a judge. Daniel worked for a pagan government. Isaiah served as a prophet and as a government official. I'm sure it's hard, but with God's help I believe Christians can serve in public elected office, and we should.

But to imitate swinish behavior disgraces the holy name of Christ. If worldlings are tearing each other up, we should take a step back. Do not join in. We need to maintain a higher standard, even if we are mocked as weaklings. We Christians need to set a godly example to a lost and dying world, including when we engage with the heated social issues of the day.

Top Church-Growth Myths

8/13/2018

When I attended seminary, our dean was a big fan of the late Donald McGavran and his sociology-based theories of church growth. During the 1980s and 1990s there was also an avalanche of books, seminars, and live-streamed conferences purporting to grow the church of anyone who used the principles. Because I pastor a small congregation (less than 100), I had to wrestle with these ideas, that worked their way into my mind and caused me all kinds of frustration.

Myth #1 is that people want a relationship with God at all. There are Pentecostal church-growth theories, many of which promoted by C. Peter Wagner, that talk as if the only force keeping people from the Lord is the devil. But the Bible says that people by nature dislike God, strongly. His authority offends our desire for freedom, His righteousness makes us feel guilty, and His rules clash against the very things we like (or at least feel normal to us). We like the gods of our own imaginations, but we sure don't like the real God.

Myth #2 is that a needs-meeting ministry will result in true conversions to Christ. Bob Schuller's old motto was, "Find a need and meet it; find a hurt and heal it." That's a good motto in itself, because it reflects a servant's attitude. We should help people just out of love for neighbor.

People flock to needs-meeting ministries, but then at the same time they'll turn away from the Gospel. Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 in John 6 describes this situation. Crowds of people surrounded Jesus as He healed their sick and made bread and fish for everyone. But at the same time, Christ knew they were only there for the miracles. When He started preaching about Himself being the bread of life, the people turned away.

Myth #3 is that the preacher is the primary cause of church-growth. Pretty much all of the contemporary church-growth gurus are celebrity pastors, or the writers use celebrity pastors as their examples of how to do it. (To be fair, that wasn't McGavran's focus. He put a lot of emphasis on impersonal ethnic and social forces).

The idea is, if your preacher does certain things, growth was always occur. If growth occurs, it automatically proves God is pleased with your preacher. As one staff-pastor at Willow Creek told a visitor who was caught griping about celebrity preachers, "Bill Hybels has more people in the church bathrooms on a Sunday than you have in your whole church". In other words, Willow Creek's attendance proved that God approved of Bill Hybels and how he did things.

But the Bible contradicts this myth. Some preachers in the Bible were very popular, but the audiences were hypocritical. Ezekiel was very popular among the Jews in exile, but they also never did what the Lord said. Jesus was very popular, then they killed Him.

God must have been very pleased with Jonah's attitudes, since Jonah had a national revival break out in response to his preaching. Right? Elijah on the other hand must be judged a huge failure, based on numbers; and Jeremiah was an even bigger failure. Rick Warren said that growth results from the quality of a ministry, so Elijah's quality must have been pretty bad.

You can't use numbers alone to judge a preacher's effectiveness, pro or con. A community's interest in spiritual things shifts like the sands of the seashore shift from one generation to another. The Holy Spirit blows wherever He chooses. One town can be in revival, while the next town over is as cold as a stone.

A community's biases differ. There are some white communities who would never give a black preacher the time of day, no matter how anointed he was. A community's embedded traditions change from place to place. There are towns where nearly everyone is a Lutheran, and other towns where the people would not even consider visiting a Lutheran church. There are churches where the pastor is fine, but the congregation has a bad community reputation for some reason.

In other words, there are complicated, multiple forces (spiritual, cultural, psychological, styles) at work in every community. To credit all success or all failure to just one man isn't wise. That makes way too much of the man.

I know there definitely are some preachers who are poor at their jobs, or who are ill-fitted to the particular community where they serve. There are preachers who aren't gifted, and they have no business preaching. There are preachers whose foolish attitudes or methods turn people off. But Paul attributed success in preaching to the Lord's working, not to any power in himself or his co-workers (1 Corinthians 3:5-7).

What I'm saying is that a lot of the church-growth material to which I was exposed in past years was unbiblical and simplistic. Much of it was built on an underlying semi-Pelagianism, as if people of this world weren't biased against God. Much of it quoted the Bible selectively, cherry-picking a verse here or there, but Christians leader should develop a rounded, Bible-based approach to church expansion.

How to Discern A "Prophetic" Ministry.

8/3/2018

1. A truly prophetic ministry will not add to the Word of God.

God has given us 66 books of the Bible, and no more. Jude made it clear that the Christian faith has been once-for-all-time delivered to believers (Jude 3). The apostle John made it clear that God's curse is on anyone who added to or subtracted from his prophecy (Revelation 22:18-19). Paul made it clear that the written word of God is sufficient to equip the man of God for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Christ gave the apostles alone the unique authority to bind and loose the Church with His word (Matthew 16:19). The apostles were the foundation of the Christian faith (Ephesians 2:20), and that foundation has been laid. We don't need apostles anymore, because they completed their founding work by writing the New testament.

This means that a Christian who goes to church wanting a "fresh", new word from the Lord, or goes away disappointed that the Lord didn't say anything "new", is thinking like a cultist. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent word! What more can He say than to you He has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? To be dissatisfied with the Word of God is a mark of great immaturity.

2. A prophetic-quality ministry will not teach heresy.

This is not to say that a spiritually-gifted man will have infallible doctrinal knowledge. We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 Jn. 4:1).

A preacher who confesses that Jesus of Nazareth is the crucified and risen Christ promised in the Old Testament, and that He is God come in the flesh, is from God. Anyone who denies these truths is an Antichrist (1 Jn. 4:2-3). A preacher who heeds the teachings of the apostles is from God. One who twists or ignores them is not from God (1 Jn. 4:6).

This means that every prophet/preacher must be judged (1 Cor. 14:29). Anyone who claims to be above judgment, or claims to be untouchable because he or she is God's anointed, is a false prophet.

3. A truly prophetic ministry should be controlled by love.

A prophetic ministry without love is nothing (1 Cor. 13:2). This means that a teacher, or prophetic-style preacher, who screams and rants and raves, one who constantly points the finger at others in condemnation, or acts in ways to exalt himself, is displeasing to the Lord. The Lord Jesus was not a ranter.

This also means that being "judgey" toward the Church doesn't mean one is a prophet. The Old Testament prophets didn't just throw stones at Israel. They also preached faith, hope, assurance, and comfort. A preacher who only spits out lacerating condemnations of the Church isn't a prophet, he is just arrogant and self-righteous. The late singer Keith Green was hailed as a prophet, but he later confessed a lot of what he said was just him giving out criticism in a self-righteous, Pharisaical spirit.

4. Along that same line, a Biblically prophetic ministry uses the Word of God to build up. 1 Cor. 14:3.

God reveals to the true prophet an insight from the Word of God, and when he delivers it, all learn and are encouraged, 1 Cor. 14:30-31.

There's nothing uniquely prophetic about telling other people what's supposedly wrong with them. There are abusive people in the Body of Christ who claim to have prophetic ministries, but really they're just chronically critical.

This line can be hard to draw, because the NT prophet might discern hidden needs that others don't see as clearly. The Lord might guide them to address weaknesses that aren't visible on the surface.

Sometimes a prophet will correct and rebuke, because the Word of God sometimes corrects and rebukes. But a true NT prophet wants to build up the people of God. Even when he's trimming the tree, it's so the tree will grow healthier, sweeter fruit. Someone who just loves to tear trees down is not of the Lord.

5. A Biblically prophetic ministry will always be accurate.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 says that the gift of prophecy reveals things otherwise unknown. This is different from simple teaching. Also, this is also a unique work of the Holy Spirit that can't be controlled by the person. I know we are wary of this sort of thing. But most conservative writers allow for the Lord to do extraordinary forms of guidance, such as angelic appearance. Spurgeon was no charismatic, but even he recognized the existence of God-given "impressions" that impelled believers to take action at key times.

Agabus by a special action of God knew a famine was coming (Acts 11:28). This was not an inner impression, but a warning to the church filled with intelligible content. It was a guidance warning. He later warned that Paul would be seized in Jerusalem (Acts 21:11). This was also not an inner feeling. It was another warning.

Then what happened? A famine did come, and Paul was seized.

There are some theologians who labor to claim that Agabus erred, at least in the second case, but their real agenda seems to be to justify their churches' error-filled "prophecies." This false teaching of error-prophecies promotes the further proliferation of more false prophecies. We should not justify the "prophesying" that goes on in churches by reverse-engineering a doctrine that validates it.

God miraculously revealed to Peter that Ananias and Sapphira lied about their gift (Acts 5:3-10). Ananias and Sapphira indeed had lied about their gift, proven by their sudden deaths. This accuracy is consistent with Moses' teaching back in Deuteronomy 18:20-22. A "prophet" may claim to foreknow something from the Lord, but if it isn't true, they are a false prophet.

* My guess as to why the church responded so readily to Agabus' famine warning is that he must have been known to the brethren as a reliable minister. A stranger would not have commanded such a quick response.

In the strict sense, the office of New Testament prophet finished in the first century, because they along with the apostles received the new revelations of the faith (which was an indispensable element in being a prophet), and laid the foundations of the Christian faith (which is a finished work). But the spirit and power of godly prophecy lives on in the faithful preaching of God's pastors. These are six marks of a truly prophetic ministry:

It does not add to the Bible.
It is judged by the Bible.
It upholds the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
It is animated by a spirit of Christian love.
It comforts, encourages, and builds up the saints.

And...

If some extraordinary guidance happens, it will always turn out to be doctrinally orthodox and factually true.

Debt Free, No Tattoos?

7/25/2018

There is an internet stormlet currently happening over a home-schooling lady blogger who wrote that nice men prefer women who can come into the relationship debt-free (this meaning, the girl didn't go to college, which is the real agenda behind the debt thing), and women who don't have tattoos. This is such a peculiar controversy, I can't help but make a few mundane pastoral comments about it before we all move on to something else equally peculiar.

I agree there is no rule that every young Christian woman needs to attend a four-year college. I also agree that most colleges are dominated by liberal/progressive philosophy, which is an evil influence. It isn't always God's guidance that every young person go to college, at least not a liberal arts four-year college. There are other paths in life.

However, young Christian women will need ways to support themselves financially, and some of them have exceptional talents in the Arts and Humanities that they should steward for the Lord. Post-high-school training provides this. And if a Christian husband dies, the Christian wife will benefit from having a good way to pay the bills and put food on the table for the children. Impoverishment is a bad thing, even in the absence of college debt, and so is failing to develop God-given talents. Especially if those talents might lead to blessed common-grace breakthroughs in, say, medicine, or in influential works of art, NGO work, architecture, or other areas of skill (just to give a few examples).

The blogger also seems to assume that it's God's will for every Christian woman to marry.

The blogger, third, seems to assume that young Christian women have no discernment. Maybe many do not, but that would be the failure of their churches. A church youth ministry that is all morality and music has failed its young people, male or female.

It's no wonder church young people allegedly "lose" their faith when they go off to college. Many of them never really had faith, so when presented with philosophical alternatives that don't make you feel guilty and let you live as you please, they go for it. Others have never be taught how or why Christianity is rational, so in their first year in college their puny little twig-faith gets blown around badly. But this is not true of every young Christian woman.

Also, certain majors involve less direct indoctrination than others, like Physical Therapy. Unless you're going to say that a Christian should never have a non-Christian teacher, ever, on any subject.

Paul's injunction to all Christians, including to young women, is to work hard with our hands so as to share with others (Ephesians 4:28). If college is the best way for a young Christian woman to get equipped to work, because getting married and having children are not sure things in God's plan, then go to college. But attend a good church while you're in college, and find a good, solid collegiate fellowship like Campus Outreach.

Regarding tattoos, my personal opinion is that they are unwise. The Bible warns against women "adorning" themselves with eye-catching accouterments (1 Peter 3:3-5). Too much jewelry is adorning enough; I'm even less in favor of an adornment you can't take off.

If a person gets a racy or profane tattoo then receives Christ at a later time, they're likely to feel ashamed of it, and need to suffer a lot of pain having it removed. Why not stick with modest adornments that you can take off and put in your jewelry box at night? Plus, no one ever got a disfiguring, painful skin infection from a necklace.

So, personally speaking, I don't like tattoos. However, any implication that not having a tattoo means you are an innately more godly girl is obviously untrue, and silly, and a teaching like that shows a really poor grasp of Biblical holiness.

https://theconservativemillennialblog.com/articles/no-men-want-debt-free-virgins-without-tattoos-isnt-biblical/

Christianity & Homosexuality.

7/20/2018

The Christian view of sexual ethics is a religious view.

It is built on the claim of Jesus Christ that He was the Son of God. Jesus unconditionally affirmed the divine origin and authority of the Old Testament in its entirety. He said He would not abrogate Moses' Law, but rather every last bit of it would be fulfilled (Matt. 5:17-18). He claimed the Law was prophetic in nature (Matt. 11:13). He built a teaching on the historical existence of Adam and Eve (Matt. 19:1-6).

This is why the LBGT claim that Jesus never talked about, or against, homosexuality is false. Jesus affirmed the five books of Moses. Because Jesus affirmed Moses in his entirety, that means Jesus affirmed each individual law contained in Moses. When Jesus endorsed Moses as a whole, He endorsed all the particular laws contained in it. Christ endorsed Moses' teachings against homosexuality.

So, whenever you debate anything about sexual morality, you are actually debating whether Jesus was God's Son, and whether He rose from the dead. If Jesus was the Son of God, then His authority is unique and absolute on matters of morality. If He wasn't the Son of God, then His was just one more voice among many.

The Christian view of sexuality is actually "worse" than most people know. Right now a battle rages over homosexuality, as if Christians oppose this only. What many people no longer seem to know is that Christianity limits every type of intercourse to heterosexual, monogamous marriage only. Every other form of intercourse is off-limits.

Heterosexual, engaged couples. Formerly-married spouses with each other. Elderly couples living together to avoid the loss of Social Security benefits. Contracts freely entered into with prostitutes. Every act of sexual intercourse outside of heterosexual, monogamous marriage is sin. This is the Christian teaching. It is incredibly rigorous, and all Christians fail it, at least in mind and often in body. But it is still the rule.

That is what I mean by calling the Christian view of sex "worse" than you might imagine. Christ taught we are not even allowed to imagine lustful thoughts about other people (Matthew 5:27-30). So, when we look at Christianity and homosexuality, we should keep it all in the context of the greater whole.

Another key factor in the Christian view of sex, which puts us at extreme odds against U.S. culture, is that none of us are gods.

We are not all-knowing, or all-powerful, or authoritative. We did not create ourselves. We have no authority to decide what is right or wrong. However, because we have become philosophically insane, we teach our children that we create our own morality. This is the way of the sociopath.

In the real world, most people realize that this idea -- that you can just make up your own morality as it suits you in the moment -- leads to violence, crime, confusion, and hypocrisy. Yet we keep on acting as if we think we are gods. We call ourselves masters of our own fate, then shout in outrage when someone else transgresses against us, or against someone we love. We call for justice for the oppressed, but by so doing we are saying that there even is such a thing as "justice", and it should not be violated.

We are hypocrites when it comes to sex. We lament the HIV-caused death of millions of young men, but we won't lament the behavior which caused their deaths. There is justice regarding everything else found in the evening news. We fight against sex trafficking and pedophilia, and we should. We fight against bullying. We oppose the selling of young girls as "brides", which still goes on covertly in some Mormon-dominated areas of the U.S. We oppose the foot-binding of women, and vaginal circumcision.

Then we claim, from out of nowhere, based on nothing, that there are no rules for sex other than consent. Where is it written that "consent" makes something right? We are not gods, not even when we consent. If Jesus Christ says something is morally wrong, who cares about our consent? It would mean we're all freely consenting to doing something that's still wrong, and for which we will pay a harsh price. Our consent is the empty howling of wind in the night.

Christianity upholds the humanity of gay people because Christianity believes in free-will, where "pop" LGBT theories deny free-will, and dehumanizes gays. If a behavior can't be criticized, taught-against, or legally prevented because the person doing the behavior was "born that way", then that is a denial of free-will. And that is a denial of human dignity.

I do not have blue eyes by choice, I was born with them. I have no free-will about the color of my eyes, and so, yes, it would be unjust to punish me for having blue eyes. If a homosexual can't be exhorted to change his or her ways because they were born that way, then that's saying the homosexual has no free-will. But then having no free-will makes them less than human. Christianity, by opposing homosexuality, reflects a high view of the humanness of gay people, because it doesn't believe they are animals or machines.

This denial of free-will, and the personal responsibility that goes with it, opens a door to all sorts of other harm. It would be wrong to criticize rage, because the angry person was born that way. It would be wrong to criticize greed, because the person was born that way. It would be wrong to criticize Obama, or Trump, or any leader, because they were all born in certain ways.

The LBGT denial of free-will (which seems to usually be an implicit or even unaware denial) leads to bad social and legal consequences. But Christianity upholds that we are people, not things. Homosexuality is an ethical behavior, and it is not an involuntary behavior. If it is involuntary, then it counts as a slavery, an addiction, and therefore it is also a self-destructive evil from which many people wish to be freed. Jesus Christ can free them.

Christians are not surprised when people say they have felt certain desires since childhood, because Christians believe that we are all born sinners. We are not born good. We are not even born as blank slates. We are born sinners, and evil feelings -- selfishness, rage, coveting -- rises up out of us spontaneously from our earliest.

Christ taught that evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander, all come from the heart (Matthew 15:19). Not from the physical part of humanity, but from the non-physical part. Of course, Christians believe we have a non-physical aspect to us, which is called our souls. Molecules don't think, feel, or make choices, yet we do all three of those things. Therefore, our reasoning, emotions, and choices come from something other than our molecules. That is the soul.

Christians do not believe human nature is good. The human soul is born fallen, dark, and cut off from God. Evil pumps up through our personalities, like the BP oil pipeline spewing raw crude out into the Gulf of Mexico. Jesus Christ can begin the process of capping it. But only Jesus Christ can cap it.

Our faith and our church opposes sexual sin. Our opposition is based on our belief in the divine sonship of Jesus Christ, and the truthfulness of the Bible. Sexual intercourse should be limited to monogamous, heterosexual marriage, which is the only God-approved form of marriage. We are not gods; we do not get to make up our own morality. Unlike race, homosexuality is a behavior and therefore a choice. We teach that human beings are made in God's image and, though born sinners, still have a degree of free-will. People are sick and dying from every kind of sexual sin, and children are suffering from this perverted, pornographic culture we have created, so we cannot stop teaching that Jesus Christ can save us from every sexual sin.

God's Sovereignty, & Lines We Should Not Cross.

6/29/2018

Are you a Christian who puzzles over God's sovereignty and how it relates to salvation? It's easy to get lost in this labyrinth, especially as clever writers have been sharpening their pens about it for 500 years. But, even though it's a hard subject, I am convinced there are some Scriptural lines we should never cross. Below are a few of those lines.

Is God sincere when He says in various verses that He wants everyone to be saved? God does say so, in passages like 1 Timothy 2:3-4 and 2 Peter 3:9-10. God never lies, and any teaching that attributes insincerity to God is blasphemous. I reject the ingenious twists of hyper-Calvinists like the Rev. Dr. John Gill, A.W. Pink, or Herman Hoeksema, who distort verses that clearly say that God sincerely wants every person without exception to come to Him. No creed is so precious that it justifies attributing misleading intentions or language to the Lord.
Does God love the world (John 3:16)? The Bible is clear that, even though God is righteously angry toward the world because of its willful sins, He also loves the world and sent His Son to save it. This is why His love is merciful -- we deserve to be condemned, but God sent His Son. Any denial of God's love for the non-elect is the heresy of "hyper-Calvinism". Christ in Matthew 5 said that the Father shows daily love even to His enemies. The idea that God only loves the elect is hogwash.
Can God be trusted, if He has a "secret will" which is the exact opposite of what He says in the Bible He wants? It is no easy task to explain how God's actions in history harmonize with what He planned in eternity. But theories that empty out what God in the Bible says He wants are poisonous to faith. If God's stated wishes in Scripture about the lost can't be trusted, then God's stated wishes in Scripture toward believers can't be trusted either. The "secret will" theory breeds doubt. We need a better harmonization.
Christ died for everyone in some sense (Isaiah 53:4). There is no question that the Bible clearly teaches Christ died for everyone without exception, regardless of the fact that everyone is not saved. The cross does not work unilaterally. Limited atonement is, at best, a sincere attempt to interpret the substitutionary nature of Christ's death. But it produces a confused construct of special pleading, semi-truths, and logic fallacies. John Owens' syllogisms about "double jeopardy" cannot change the plain meanings of plain verses.
God dislikes judging sinners (Ezekiel 18:32). The fact that Ezekiel 18 deals with earthly judgments is irrelevant to the question of how God feels about it. Hyper-Calvinism teaches that it pleased God to preordain most of humanity to become sinners, walk in unbelief, and thus inherit eternal damnation. Except that God Himself said it doesn't please Him. This is why there must be an element of permission in God's decree.
Is wickedness God's fault? One of Calvinism's problems is that it usually descends into determinism (not fatalism, because God isn't Fate and we aren't just leaves in the stream). If free-will doesn't exist at all, then God caused Adam to sin, and then every sin of every person that sprouted from that one original decreed sin, is caused by God. (The existence of secondary causes is irrelevant to this knotty problem, since the secondary causes are passive). This is an unacceptable theodicy. If there's no free will, even in some limited sense, then God causes all sin. John Calvin and Martin Luther both clearly and strongly denied the existence of free-will (Luther more brutally, in his classic book, The Bondage of the Will). This denial entangled them in many logical, ethical, and theological knots.
Is God lying, if He had Christ only die for the elect, and then has His preachers tell everyone He wants the listeners to be saved? God, being truthful, cannot lie, and being holy, cannot hand-wave sin. God by His nature requires a blood basis for offering a grace forgiveness. Otherwise, God, when he offers forgiveness to everyone, is like a grocer who advertises something which He not only doesn't have in stock, but which he intentionally did not order. This is a problem.

Any system of doctrine that implies that God is untruthful, or makes God the ultimate Cause of sin, or gives us cause to doubt the reliability of God's promises in the Bible, or portrays God as play-acting in His interactions with people, is wrong. It doesn't matter if the system affirms election. The buzzer goes off, the red flag flies, and it's time to go back to the drawing-board. Hyper-Calvinism is as bad as semi-Pelagianism.