The Lessons of the Twentieth Century - by John C. Wright

Found here. A very good article.

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A reader asks:

I’m used to hearing leftists say that capitalism (free markets) are driven by greed, and therefore bad. Now, since I know where their end game leads (mass graves), I don’t feel any serious need to rebut their claims. I’ve recently heard some sincere Christians, non-leftists, say something much similar, and I honestly didn’t know how to respond.

What would you say in response to this charge?

My response: What I would say depend on whether I am answering a Christian or a Leftist, because the same words, in their two different mouths, come from two different backgrounds, hence mean two different things.

If your Christian friends mean to say that anything, no matter how good, becomes an idol when elevated above God, then it becomes corrupt and evil, then I say “Amen.” They are exactly right.

The free market is a good thing the way marriage is a good thing. It is an institution calculated to channel otherwise harmful passions into productive uses: a way to harness the dragon to a chariot, so to speak. But keeping a harem is overdoing it. The bridegroom makes marriage an idol, a source of pain and woe, if he starts gathering wives and concubines like Solomon.

10 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT OPEN THEISM - By: Sam Storms

Found here. My comments in bold.
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I'm not entirely sure the author is accurately assessing the situation. I'm not a proponent of open theism, but I'm definitely not in agreement with TULIP either.

The problem, and the root of the debate is that somehow we must define God in a binary manner. If He's this, He's therefore not that. If He says A, He opposes B. 

But God is not binary. He's not 1 or 0, yes or no, up or down.  Repeat: God is not binary! This means that He does not "change his mind" Nu. 23:19 while simultaneously he will relent and "not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened." Ex. 32:14 

He "will take vengeance" De. 32:41 while at the same he says, "I am merciful." je. 3:12 

He says, "Esau I have hated," Mal. 1:3, but His great love and mercy abounds to all flesh (La. 3:22) 

There no contradiction. Paul even explains this to us in Ro. 9:13!

If we truly understood that the nature of God exceeds the bounds of logical and systematic classification, many of the doctrinal controversies would simply fade away, and articles like the below would be entirely unnecessary. 

Is God completely sovereign? Yes. Does He let humankind choose? Yes! 

Does God know the future? Yes. Does the future play out as it will? Yes!

Does He determine what we will do? Yes. Does He allow freedom? Yes!

What appears to be a conflict is nothing other than our Western minds locked into a system of thinking. It is our thinking that needs to change.
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More thoughts from an 80 year old - Jeanette Swim

3/9/12 - Middle of the night thoughts after meditating on Mark 11:

Examples of the power of faith. There is nothing greater than the power of faith:

1. The faith to believe in God
2. The faith to know that God created you
3. The faith to know Christ died for you
4. The faith to know your sins are forgiven
5. The faith to know you are a child of God
6. The faith to know you are a joint heir with Christ
7. The faith to know God knows best
8. The faith to know you have eternal life

Don’t Title People “Pastor” If They Aren’t An Elder - by J.A. Medders

Found here. The author is correct.

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Ministry titles abound in the church today.

Student Pastor. Children’s Pastor. Creative Environment Pastor (No idea). Senior Pastor and Worship Pastor are pretty standard fair on the leadership page of a church’s site. And what is also becoming standard is the willy-nilly way people use the word pastor.

I don’t think we should put Pastor on people just because they are on a church staff. A pastor isn’t someone who gets a paycheck from a church and is responsible for running events for certain age groups while holding a Bible.

Pastor = Elder

A pastor is an elder. An elder is a pastor. Same same.

ROB BELL, FUNDAMENTALIST: 5 IRONIES FROM THE NEW BELL FILM - by OWEN STRACHAN

Found here. A very perceptive article.

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It’s the strangest thing: the heretic is actually the fundamentalist.
I just watched the new Rob Bell documentary. It’s entitled The Heretic. Here’s a better title for it: The Fundamentalist: Rob Bell Walks Through Airports. I’ll explain what I mean below, and encourage you to look for the early April podcast I just recorded with Isaac Dagneau of indoubt ministries.

After viewing The Heretic, I was struck by five ironies that relate not merely to Bell, but “progressive” post-evangelical gurus more broadly. Here they are.

First, the so-called “heretics” are the new fundamentalists. The worst people for a post-evangelical are the so-called “fundamentalists.” According to Bell and others in the film, fundamentalists believe in a woodenly literal Bible, emphasize the bloody death of Jesus, and get really excited about preaching on the damnation of sinners. Fundamentalists do not exhibit an open mind; they guard their fences with extreme watchfulness; they do not show generosity of spirit to others; they draw the lines of doctrine sharply, and are eager to keep the bad guys out.

Bell’s doctrine is heretical, as is well-known. In the documentary, he continues to espouse his soft universalism, he argues that the Bible has damaging teaching in it, and he downplays biblical morality. But here’s the curious thing: Bell actually operates and speaks as a “fundamentalist.” He does not exhibit an open mind toward conservative religious types; he censures them. He does not truly believe that everyone has an equal place in the Christian tradition; he believes that serious evangelicals are bad people. He does not show generosity in the film toward his disputants; over and over again, he drags them through the mud. He does not truly hold an open, flexible, free-thinking faith; he draws his own doctrinal lines precisely, and makes no bones about excluding conservatives. He talks openly—to my honest surprise—about helping “people read the Bible in a much better way.” That’s how a conservative talks!

It’s the strangest thing: the heretic is actually the fundamentalist.

Divine causality and human freedom - By Edward Feser

Found here. An interesting presentation.

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Is the conception of divine causality defended by classical theists like Aquinas (and which I defend in Five Proofs of the Existence of God) compatible with our having free will? The reason they might seemnot to be compatible is that for Aquinas and those of like mind, nothing exists or operates even for an instant without God sustaining it in being and cooperating with its activity. The flame of a stove burner heats the water above it only insofar as God sustains the flame in being and imparts causal efficacy to it. And you scroll down to read the rest of this article only insofar as God sustains you in being and imparts causal efficacy to your will. But doesn’t this mean that you are not free to do otherwise? For isn’t it really God who is doing everything and you are doing nothing?

No, that doesn’t follow at all. Keep in mind, first of all, that Aquinas’s position is concurrentist rather than occasionalist. The flame really does heat the water, even if it cannot do so without God’s cooperation. You might say that God is in this way like the battery that keeps a toy car moving. The car’s motor really does move the wheels even if it cannot do so without the battery continually imparting power to it. It’s not that the battery alone moves the wheels and the motor does nothing. Similarly, it is not God alone heating the water. The flame, like the motor, makes a real contribution. Now, in voluntary action, the human will also makes a real contribution. It is not that God causes our actions and we do nothing. We really are the cause of them just as the flame really causes the water to boil, even if in both cases the causes act only insofar as God imparts efficacy to them.

A woman has a right to her own body - FB conversaton

Rod  shared The Conservative Millennial's video.

Yesterday at 3:20am · 

-2:14

Amelia  I just love how everyone and their effing brother point out every bad thing about planned parenthood and none of the good. Come with both sides not just the negative. Pph also promotes safe sex as well as exams to those who couldn't afford it otherwise. When they shut them down in the mid west they had HIV epidemics within a year. If folks want to focus on the bad then youve got to look at all medical facilities as well because pph isn't the only facility that performs abortions and that's not the only thing they do.

WHEREVER TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED - (in context) - Ferocious Truth

Found here. My comments in bold.
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The doctrinal police are at it again. Here Ferocious Truth getting it wrong about "where two or three are gathered in My name."
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"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

"For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.
(Matthew 18:15-17, 20)

"So not about Jesus showing up or being 'in our midst.' It's about Church discipline.

"And church discipline is not about kicking people out of the Church. It's about keeping people IN the Church, but on God's terms and to the purity of the body."

Ferocious Truth would have us believe that the only time the "two or three" principle applies is when discipline needs to be discerned. Certainly it is true that the Bible establishes this principle when dealing with matters of sin and discipline (2 Co. 13:1, 1Ti. 5:19, He. 10:28, De. 17:6, De. 19:15), but Ferocious Truth leaves out some critical information. Their selective use of quotes omits these two verses:

Mt. 18:18 “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Mt. 18:19 “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.

Notice the verses say "whatever" and "anything." Jesus is taking a Biblical principle about the need for witnesses and expanding it to include agreement on Whatever and anything. This is a very common technique used by Jesus to bring spiritual revelation to things. "You have heard it said" gets expanded to "but I say to you." 

We Don’t Need To Go Back To The Early Church- by J.A. Medders

Found here. My comments in bold.
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You’ve heard people say, “We just need to go back to the early church.” We need to be more like the raw, organic, on-the-go church we see in the New Testament.

I disagree.

Now, I don’t totally disagree. Obviously, there are elements of the early church we should imitate. Fellowship, sacrifice, mission, unity, endurance in persecution, and more. But let’s not pretend that the early church didn’t have their problems. (Non sequitur. No one is pretending the early church was perfect.)

When we talk about the New Testament church we can fall prey to the chronological snobbery C.S. Lewis cautions us against. Oldness doesn’t constitute betterness. Nor does newness.

People often over-celebrate the early church in a veiled attack on the present church. “The church today is lame, too organized, not free-wheeling enough.” They look back on the early church and crave those early days. But Solomon tells us not to do such a thing. “Don’t say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). (Oh my. Perhaps if the author actually read Ecclesiastes he would discover that Solomon was explaining contentment, and admonishing us to not long for another time when things were better in our lives.

This has nothing at all to do with the state of the church today or 2000 years ago. We look in vain for any precept or Bible verse that tells us that wanting to improve today's church is a bad thing.)

Did Old Testament Law Force a Woman to Marry Her Rapist? - by Katie McCoy

Found here. An interesting article that refutes a major criticism leveled by the doubters and mockers.
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“If you were not already engaged when the rape occurred, you and your rapist were required to marry each other, without the possibility of divorce.” –Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood

“The laws [in Deut 22:23-29] do not in fact prohibit rape; they institutionalize it…” –Harold Washington, St. Paul School of Theology

“Your objective divinely inspired Bible is full of sanctioned rape.” –Official Twitter account of The Church of Satan.

It’s a frequent accusation about Scripture’s treatment of women.

But is it really what the Bible says?

Like all biblical law, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 reflects God’s character; when we see the meaning of the Law, we see the heart of the Lawgiver. This law describes how the community of Israel responded when an unbetrothed virgin was violated through premarital sexual intercourse.[1]

The verb used to explain what happened to the woman is תָּפַשׂ (tāpas). Tāpas means to “lay hold [of],”[2] or “wield.”[3] Like חָזַק (ḥāzaq, the word for “force) used in vv. 25-27, tāpas can also be translated as “seize.”[4] Unlike ḥāzaq, however, tāpas does not carry the same connotation of force. As one Hebrew scholar explains, tāpas does not, in and of itself, infer assault; it means she was “held,” but not necessarily “attacked.’[5]

There’s a delicate difference between these two verbs, but it makes all the difference. Tāpas is often used to describe a capture.[6] Tāpas also appears in Genesis 39:12; when Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph, she seized (tāpas) him to wear down his resolve. This is distinct from ḥāzaq, which describes a forcible overpowering. Daniel Block notes that, unlike the law in verses 25-27, this law has neither a cry for help, nor an account of male violence.[7] It’s likely that the woman in verses 28-29 experienced overwhelming persuasion, perhaps an erosion of her resolve, but not necessarily a sexual assault.

Why the Common Good Disappeared (And How We Get it Back) - Robert Reich

Found here. My comments in bold.
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Dr. Reich is up to his usual obfuscation.
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In 1963 over 70 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing all or most of the time; nowadays only 16 percent do. (Let's see if he tells us why.)

There has been a similar decline in trust for corporations. In the late 1970s, 32 percent trusted big business, by 2016, only 18 percent did. (Same question. Why?)

Trust in banks has dropped from 60 percent to 27 percent. Trust in newspapers, from 51 percent to 20 percent. Public trust has also plummeted for nonprofits, universities, charities, and religious institutions. (Why?)

Why this distrust? As economic inequality has widened, the moneyed interests have spent more and more of their ever-expanding wealth to alter the rules of the game to their own advantage.

Too many leaders in business and politics have been willing to do anything to make more money or to gain more power – regardless of the consequences for our society. (Um, yeah. Greedy people are obviously a new phenomena on the scene. No one was greedy before. Suddenly we have more greed, and thus the trust in institutions has eroded... Actually, maybe trust has eroded because these institutions are not trustworthy. Particularly government.)

Keys to a praying church

Having been in many churches and prayer meetings over the years, I have found some recurring problems. If you want to develop a culture of prayer in your church, here's a good start: