Slavery, Lies...and FREEDOM

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you.  I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father . . .

Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."     (John 8:31-38, 43-44)

I have been hearing from God for some months that He will be setting free many of His people.  I came to this scripture-passage to look at what He says about slavery.  It's necessary to understand with God's understanding what slavery truly is, to know what God rescues us from . . . and how we got ourselves into that situation..

Jesus tells it, both sides.  Sin makes you a slave.  Truth will set you free.  That simple.

The Jews listening to Him..."Jews who had believed Him"...are greatly offended.  They say slavery and freedom are existential: a matter of who they are because of their patrimony.

Yes, says Jesus: your spiritual patrimony.  I speak My Father's words.  If you cannot hear His Truth, it's because your spiritual family-heritage is directly from "the father of lies."

This is very bad news for today's "post-truth" Christians.  Some are no doubt sincere in saying they believe in Jesus: they just don't want to believe "The Truth"...and that's Who He said He IS.  Their spiritual patrimony is manifest, that they "want to do the desires of [their] father" (my emphasis).  They show who they really believe, and who they really are, by their violent hatred, and their lies.

Lies are sin: an especially definitive sin, since Jesus says that is the very nature of satan, who is the source of all lies.  Lies are also very much the definitive political sin.  American Christians are, and have long been, enslaved by that political sin.  Christians are, have long been, persuaded by lies to unthinkingly do the (political) will of others: and that is the definition of slavery.

Jesus says knowing Truth will set us free.  God is now promising us "FREEDOM !!"  I believe Him; and I understand Him to mean He will set many free from their political slavery, to political lies.  I'm confident He will open the eyes of all whose hearts are truly set on Him above all else.  I'm rejoicing that He will open the eyes of many to know The Truth, and The Truth will set them free.



I don't think it coincidental that God led me in this meditation today, as people prepare for the supposed "holiday" of Christ's birth upon earth.  He Who identified Himself as "The Truth" still lives among us, and still sets free any who will receive Him.  But in this "post-truth" year and world, He is less welcomed than ever before...even by those celebrating that He formerly came among us.

But He is still here.  And He is still coming.  And He will still come.  And in every time and place and heart He comes, He sets free all who welcome Him.
 

HALLELUJAH !!  Come, Lord Jesus !!

The Spirit of Reality

The blog-post by our Australian brother Tim about "post-truth" Christianity, which I re-posted a couple weeks ago, included a particularly striking insight

"It’s sad fact that many (even professing Christians) really have no love of the truth, preferring to mould a more appealing (to them) version of 'reality' to live by."

His linkage of "truth" and "reality" is spot-on.

We know there's a profound sense in which "truth" and "reality" are somehow the same kind of thing: though we can't easily say how that's so.  "Reality is the manifestation of truth" is the working definition I've come to: though I'm certain there's a lot more to that equation than my formulation takes into account (or that limited human understanding can take into account).

Another way of putting it might be that "reality" and "truth" are both what really and truly IS.  And that makes both, to my understanding, theological quantities, since God IS "I AM THAT I AM."  Theologians who have opined that God is "Ultimate Reality" are probably close to the mark.

Jesus' Own Person seems to bear out that equation.  He used God's Own Name when He revealed His Being is exactly Truth: "I AM...The Truth" (John 14:6).  Jesus is the Word (Logos) of God through Whom "...all things were made," and without Whom "...nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:3).  "Truth" and "reality," including the physical reality of creation, are joined in Who Jesus IS.

The confirmatory "flip-side" is that the enemy, rebel against All that God IS and does, is, in Jesus' words, "the father of lies" (John 8:44).  From the first time we meet him in scripture, he is working to deceive human beings by questioning God's Truth ("Has God really said . . .?", my emphasis) and denying the reality God made ("You surely will not die . . .", my emphasis).

The enemy has not changed his tactics.  They still work.  Even though, as Tim notes, refusal to love truth necessarily means relinquishing reality as well...and forces people to invent their own.

I find it interesting that the political faction Christians have followed for 40 years is the premier anti-Truth and anti-reality voice in America.

Like all political factions, it's always "spun" truth to achieve electoral success (the only "good" political factions serve): though rather more outrageously than other factions.  But the surprising election of its "post-truth" candidate this year has hugely confirmed that faction in the "wisdom" of post-truth politics: that truth doesn't really matter for electoral success.

It's no accident that the same faction also champions various kinds of reality-denial.  One major example is that "climate-change denial" is a virtual litmus-test for members of that faction, a legacy of their demi-god founder, Ronald Reagan.  Other varieties of reality-denial, including some very "fringe" ones (white-supremacy, for example), also make that faction their ideological home.

Tim's observation that "truth" and "reality" are linked seems sound theological insight: both are established by God, in His Own Being.

It should tell us something that American Christians have followed factionalists whose spirit is contempt for truth, and denial of reality: the same sins Adam and Eve fell for.  To those with spiritual eyes to see, that faction...and the Christians who do its will...abundantly show their spiritual patrimony.

May deceived Christians repent !  May God destroy those who deceive His people !!

Amen.
 

Evangelical Hypocrisy on Religious Liberty

Dr. Russell Moore is head of the ultra-"conservative" Southern Baptist Convention's "Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee."  He was critical of candidate Trump.

He is currently under attack by "evangelicals" for his comments about post-election American Christians' situation.  Mike Huckabee (himself a Southern Baptist) has said he is "...utterly stunned that Russell Moore is being paid by Southern Baptists to insult them."  Some Baptist leaders and organizations have called for Moore to be fired, or defunded.

Moore's comments actually seem thoughful and conciliatory to me, urging that we act toward each other, and toward the president-elect, with gospel-righteousness.  His essay is posted on his website:

 http://www.russellmoore.com/2016/12/19/election-thoughts-christmastime/

The dispute seems to point up the blatant hypocrisy of much "evangelical" culture: which finds a violation of "religious liberty" in baking a cake for a gay wedding, but itself turns furiously on anyone who questions the "evangelical" politics.

I wrote Dr. Moore a letter of appreciation:

Dear Dr. Moore:

As a former Southern Baptist, I was encouraged to hear on N.P.R. about your comments on American Christians' situation after this year's election.  I came to your website to read your full blog.

The critical responses to your comments highlight a problem among American "evangelicals."  Religious liberty is under attack in America less from a few well-publicized government actions (many of which, in my opinion, are over-blown and "spun" by political manipulators, for their own purposes): religious liberty is under attack from within the "evangelical" movement, when it deviates any whit from the party-line.

More important than our religious liberty in civil law is the attack on any Biblical criticism of "evangelical" politics.  Criticism not only of the personal morals of "evangelicals' " current political darling: criticism of his moral formula, that the unrighteous policies he has promised will "make America great again."

You rightly cite Romans 3:8's reference to the teaching of "do[ing] evil that good may come."   That teaching is wholly contrary to the moral law guaranteed in God's Own Character.  It didn't work for Adam and Eve.  We must be skeptical it will work to "make America great again."

Thank you for challenging American Christians to measure our culture, including the political culture Christians themselves have so widely embraced, by Jesus' righteousness and teachings.  Without such challenges, our faith is entirely a creature of our culture (including our "evangelical" culture), and no good for anything except to be thrown out (Matthew 5:13).

blessings,  ----- -----

 

EXTRA !! EXTRA !! DONALD TRUMP JOINS ISIS !!!!

N.P.R. yesterday interviewed Canadian Graeme Wood, author of The Way of the Stranger.  The book is an expansion of Wood's 2015 cover-story for Atlantic magazine, "What ISIS Really Wants."
__________________________________________________________________________

[N.P.R.]: How do they justify the violence?

WOOD: You'll find some who will say the violence is temporary. We are Muslims who are reviving the faith and we have to do this in a fallen world, so we'll cut off the hands of thieves right now. But once the Islamic State is stronger and people realize this is the punishment, we won't have to cut off hands.

[N.P.R.]: The violence is a way to peace?

WOOD: Yes. That's what you find with the nicer ones.

__________________________________________________________________________

Note that the "nicer" adherents of ISIS operate by the lie called out in Romans 3:8, that doing evil will bring about good.


Note that Donald Trump joins ISIS in that operative lie, promising that his unrighteous policies will "Make America Great Again."

Merry Bogus Christmas

Anyone who’s ever read my blog during the Christmas season knows I consider it a bogus holiday.

Not totally bogus: Jesus was born: though almost-certainly not on the day we celebrate His birth.  Not that that's a big deal, or at all unusual.  Even as recent an event as July 2nd 1776, we celebrate on the 4th.

That God was born into the world in human flesh, and lived in this world among human beings, IS a truly big deal.  It's the most important event that ever happened, for the human race, and for our understanding of God . . . except when He willingly died an unjust human death to set human beings free from death, and sin.  Which was His reason for being born as a man.

In previous years, I've gone into the bogus history of Christmas in detail, at length.  That Christians of the first centuries didn't celebrate Christmas, for example: that Christian writers in those centuries ridiculed pagans for celebrating their gods' birthdays.

One of the major pagan "birthday" celebrations in Rome was for "Sol Invictus" ("the unconquerable Sun") on December 25th.  It also fell on the last day of Saturnalia, the great feast of the god Saturn: a period (which got longer, and more riotous, through the centuries) celebrated by giving gifts, and drinking, and decorating trees.

Both those Roman "holy-days" continued among pagans into the early years of Christianity's official status as Rome's religion.  It seems pretty clear that the invention of "Christ's Mass" in that same period was a deliberate attempt to give the people a Christian holy-day like the ones they were used to.  Even the Christianizing Emperors weren't brave enough to tell people the new religion did away with their favorite, most licentious, birthday party.

It seems significant that many of God's purifying moves for His Church since the 300s A.D. have taken direct aim at the pagan custom of Christmas.  Particularly significant for American Christians, because most of the reforming churches of our colonial ancestors considered the celebration of of Christmas (in the words of Puritan Governor William Bradford) "pagan mockery:"
 
The story of how the celebration of Christmas became resurgent, and dominant over Christianity's teaching against it, is well told in a biography of Charles Dickens, The Man Who Invented Christmas.  The title says it all.  Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" (which notably does not contain the name "Jesus," nor the title "Christ," except as an element of the words "Christian" and, especially, "Christmas") was the origin of modern Christmas: not Jesus' birth.

Many people of course have warm sentimental feelings about the Christmas season. That's obvious.  Good for them.  That is, however, not what Christmas is about, or what Christmas celebrates.  Personal sentiment has no place in validating Christian truth.

I can testify that God still speaks past, or around, the bogus sentimental religiosity of churches' "Christmas," to anyone who will listen for Him.  But I can also testify that the Christmas season is, for anyone who wants to listen to God and worship Him, the year's greatest season of Spiritual drought.  For the whole month of December (and sometimes longer), all the Church' thoughts and efforts are mostly...sometimes entirely...toward, and for, and about, the holiday.

This basic incompatibility of "Christmas" and Christianity is particularly well-illustrated this year by the churches in my area.  Several area churches (including my daughter's church, in a nearby area) have cancelled their Sunday services on the 25th...because that's Christmas day.

I don't say this to censure those folks.  In our cultural context (and our "Christian-culture" religious reinforcement of it), their decision is practical.  Many church-members will be traveling, or have a houseful of out-of-town family.  Opening all the Christmas presents takes up the whole morning.  Preparing Christmas dinner (especially for a large family) takes hours and hours of exhausting work.

It is nevertheless a telling example of core Christian purposes marginalized in favor of the purportedly-"religous" holiday.  Church-people like to chirp that "Jesus Is The Reason For The Season."  Get down to it, I have to doubt that's anything more than an empty slogan.  It's something of a real-life parable this year, that worshipping God is canceled because of Christmas.

Procedural Note

Some people have objected to my calling the incoming-president an "unrighteous" man.

My using that term comes from a recent conviction that human beings don't have moral "standing" to call any other human being "evil" or "good."  Both are assertions what someone's spirit IS, absolutely and without admixture.  At the most basic level of reality, that's a dishonest view of any human being.

Certainly Jesus forbids us to call anyone "good": even Himself in the days of His flesh: because "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18 and Luke 18:19).

But Jesus does speak of "evil" people.  In all the other gospels, His references are to men's evil deeds or thoughts: but in Matthew, there is an evil generation of men (12:39, 12:45, and 16:4), an evil slave (24:48), an "evil person" He tells us not to resist (5:39), an "evil man" who brings forth evil treasures (12:35).

Collective mankind on which the sun rises (5:45), and which the king invites to the marriage feast (22:10), includes evil people.  And Jesus is completely direct about who these people are, and what their nature is: "you, being evil" (7:11, 12:34).

I'll be the first to admit I don't understand everything about Jesus referring to people as "evil."  But knowing Who Jesus IS, I think He has the spiritual authority to make that judgement, which belongs to God Alone.  And I think His "...you, being evil" means no human being has spiritual "standing" to call any other human being evil.

I'm convicted we should rightly only characterize people by the nature of their deeds, and thoughts, and words.  We can call someone who does righteous things and speaks righteousness, "a righteous man."  Jesus has forbidden any characterization beyond that, for "no one is good except God alone."

And a man whose deeds, and thoughts, and words are manifestly evil and harmful is "an unrighteous man."  I'm convicted I'd be spiritually unwarranted in judging Donald Trump "an evil man:" but only as "unrighteous."

But that only explains the terminology I've chosen.  I could yet be factually wrong about Donald Trump.  God knows the thoughts of his heart.  My characterization is only based on what he's publicly done, and said.

So I here publicly invite correction.

If anyone who objects to my characterizing Donald Trump as "unrighteous" will make me aware of an instance I might have missed, in which he did or said a righteous thing, I will post it here.

In light of any verifiable evidence of his doing any righteous thing, or saying a righteous thing,
I will also re-think my characterization of Trump as "an unrighteous man."  And if anyone shows me proof that I have mis-characterized him, I will here publicly apologize.